by Beth Lewis
Thought about cutting Penelope’s leg off then just so’s I could get out this town. Wolf would a’ done that if one a’ his pack was hurt. I stood outside the doctor’s house like a crabapple hanging off a low branch. Feet wouldn’t move to go in or turn away. I was easy pickings.
The barrow boy stopped his selling and I saw him duck inside the doctor’s office. Didn’t have time to think on why.
“Are you lost, miss?”
I spun ’round to a skinny man in a dark-blue suit what looked like it came out a museum. Pair a’ eyeglasses on a chain ’round his neck and a green, shiny waistcoat hugged a paunch what seemed a bit too big for the size a’ him. He had a skinny mustache, waxed to neat points, black gumboots kept the mud off his trousers, and he wore a tie printed with dancing birds.
“Miss? Are you lost?” he said. His voice sounded like he was holding his nose.
“I know where I am,” I said, and took a few steps to block his view a’ the poster.
He must a’ sensed my tensing up. He shook his head and said, “Excuse my manners, I am Stanley. Stanley Bilker.”
He held out his hand, clean and pink and too soft for a man in this part a’ the world. I shook it and left crumbs a’ dirt in his palm. He gave a little “heh” sound then pulled out a gleaming white handkerchief to clean himself up.
“Now, miss,” he said, “you look like the kind of girl who is not afraid of hard work. Am I correct?”
“I suppose,” I said, and found myself wanting to get away. Something about this fella sent my blood chilling.
“Well, now, I have just the thing.” He dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a stack a’ papers, all folded up neat. “A girl like you, clearly strong, obviously determined, and a dynamite to boot, well, all you need now is a claim.”
Felt my gut sink.
“I have one here.” He rifled through the papers and pulled out one. “Fifty dollars and you get land worth at least a million, guaranteed.”
“I ain’t interested and I ain’t got fifty bucks,” I said, backed up a step toward the doctor’s but Stanley weren’t giving up.
He pulled out another paper. “Thirty dollars gets you this prime piece on the inner bend of the Kannat River.” Then another paper: “Twenty-five gets you the outer bend.”
“I told you, I ain’t interested.” I stepped up onto the porch a’ the doctor’s and towered over the little man in hope he’d get the message. Didn’t want to have to pull my knife to get him to listen.
He held up his hands, both full a’ claim papers and said, “I see, maybe it is the upfront payment that’s putting you off. We have many payment plans available; you can take the inner Kannat right now, right off me, right now, no charge, not even a cent.” He held it out to me like he was giving candy to a kid. “Then come month’s end, I’ll visit and take twenty percent of your cleanup as payment. What could be easier? You look trustworthy, look like you could really make it up here, which is why I’d do this for you, I wouldn’t do it for everybody, there are a lot of people here who won’t find a nugget all season, even on land rich as mine, but you…”
Stanley was pattering like he was practicing in front of a mirror. It didn’t matter who he was talking to. I shouldn’t a’ been worried about him recognizing me off the poster. He didn’t see faces, just marks.
Heard a door open and a bell ding behind me. Stanley stopped. A tall man in a long white coat stood half out the doorway. Old ’round the face but sharp in the eyes, he had hair on his head same color as the coat and a shadow a’ stubble across his jaw. Jaw like a steel girder that was, square and solid to match his nose, both a’ which had taken a fist or two in his time.
“Afternoon, Doc,” Stanley said. “Me and the lady are just conducting a little business, sorry for the disturbance.”
“We ain’t conductin’ no business,” I said sharp. “I ain’t interested in your papers.”
The doctor raised both black and white eyebrows and said, “You heard her, Bilker, run along.”
The waxed mustache twitched and he clenched his fists around them neat papers. “You got some nerve interrupting a sale, Doc.”
I caught sight of a revolver in a holster on Stanley’s hip. Blood went freezing, last place I wanted to be was in the middle of a gunfight. The doctor stepped fully out the door and both me and Stanley saw the twelve-gauge he was using as a walking stick.
“My porch isn’t a market, Bilker,” he said, and the salesman paled. “Take your business, and your stink, elsewhere.”
There was more ’tween these two than just me and I weren’t in no mood to find out what. Stanley shoved his papers back in his pockets and held up his hands in defeat.
“This time, Doc, and only because we’re in the presence of a lady.”
He bowed to me and said, “Miss, when you change your mind, I will do you a great deal.”
Then he straightened his jacket and turned, striding away in his rubber boots like a kid what’s just tripped over and don’t want no one to notice.
The shotgun knocked on the boards as the doctor went back in his office. “Are you coming in or should I give you a toadstool and a fishing rod?”
“I don’t like fishin’,” I said, not getting the joke, and followed him.
Smell a’ alcohol hit me. Not the drinking kind but the pure, clear stuff what stings up something vicious. We was in a small, square room. One wall was taken up by a glass-top counter, one was a faded-green curtain what touched the floor and the one that didn’t have the front door and windows was rows and rows of jars, full a’ potions and dried-up herbs, little white pills and tiny vials. Ain’t never been in a doc’s like this. The one in Ridgeway was a fat toad of a man and whatever he could fit in a suitcase.
“What ails you?” the doctor said, taking his spot behind the counter and laying the shotgun right on the glass. Weren’t no sign a’ the barrow boy.
“Ain’t me,” I said, looking ’round wide-eyed at all them bottles and jars, “I’m fit as one a’ them bettin’ horses.”
A smile crinkled up his eyes. “Have you passed through here before? I feel we’ve met.”
I looked at him straight then. “No, sir, I don’t think so.”
He kept that smile and said, in a tone what meant he was really saying something else, “I never forget a face.”
I swallowed hard then saw, through the glass counter, right ’neath the shotgun, that poster a’ me and beside it, one a’ Kreagar. Alcohol vapors pricked the back a’ my throat and my voice came out weak.
“I ain’t never been to Halveston afore,” I said, and he just stared at me.
Felt my blood heating up. The door was closed. Maybe there was a back door through them curtains. Maybe I could grab that shotgun afore him.
If he caught me staring at the poster or saw the shifting panic in my muscles then he didn’t let on, just asked what he could help me with.
“Friend a’ mine got hurt and the cut turned rotten,” I said, keeping the tremble out my voice best I could. “I need me some a’ them broad…broad spendin’ biotics.”
Them salt-and-pepper eyebrows raised up again and a silvery scar on his forehead caught the light. He scratched at his cheek and it made a sound like a steel brush on stone.
“Broad-spectrum antibiotics?”
I winced, thought I’d remembered it right after all that practicing. I nodded and the doctor pulled open a drawer ’neath the counter. Few seconds a’ looking and he set a small white box on the glass.
“Doxycycline,” he said, “two a day for a week should clear up any infection.”
I picked up the box, looked at all them jumbled-up letters, weren’t even sure if they was in English.
“That everything?” he asked, kindness in his voice.
“Throw in a couple a’ them bandages,” I said. Seeing how white and clean they was showed me just how rotten them others were.
He took two tight rolls from a shelf, along with a squat glass bottle. “For ster
ilization,” he said. “That’s forty-five dollars.”
My chest went tight. I ain’t got forty-five bucks. I ain’t got many more’n ten. I pulled out Colby’s coins and held ’em in my open hand. “I…” I said, hell, I didn’t know what to say. “What will this get me?”
The doctor looked at me sadlike, then held up the bandages and the bottle, took the box out my hand. “Just these. Doxy is hard to come by these days.”
Chest went tighter. Penelope weren’t going to be on her feet again with just bandages and rubbing alcohol. She needed them pills and I needed her.
“What happened to your friend?” doctor asked out a’ nowhere. Could sense the decency in his voice. He weren’t asking questions to get ahead or swindle me, he was asking out a’ doctor’s concern.
“Fell in a flood river. I pulled her right out a’ there quick as I could thinking it’d be the cold what’d get her. Didn’t pay no mind to no cut. More fool me.”
I weren’t really paying attention to what I was saying. I was just filling time while I thought of a way.
“That’s very brave of you,” he said. “Not many people would do that.”
“It’s what you do for friends, ain’t it?” I said, felt my eyes going hot and prickly. I needed Penelope and it weren’t just for her letters. Sure she had her secrets but hell, we all did and mine weren’t rosy. I had to find a way.
“I need them pills,” I said and my eyes went to the shotgun, felt the weight a’ my knife on my belt. But that weren’t the way, I told myself, that ain’t no way to live.
“I can trap,” I said, “get nice furs for your missus. I can…clean up, I can work it off.”
Doctor pursed his lips and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have need for that.”
Someone shouted hello from behind the curtain and I heard the banging a’ boxes. “Delivery,” the voice said.
The doctor looked at me curious-like, eyes scrunched up and lips moving around like he was chewing up a thought. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, then nodded to me.
He barely moved the curtain when he went through it and I heard him greeting the other fella.
That white box was staring right back at me. My blood was running all through me, galloping alongside my heartbeat like horses on a stampede. The devil and angel on my shoulders was arguing up a storm. One was screaming ’bout Penelope and my parents. Other was shouting ’bout rules a’ living. I break them rules I ain’t no better than Kreagar but hell, I had black sins in my past already and weren’t no angel could shout loud enough to blow them away.
Heard the doctor’s footsteps coming back, saying his goodbyes to the delivery man.
I snatched the box and bolted for the door. Then I was outside, boots slapping in the mud. My head whipped ’round expecting to see a twelve-gauge following me but there weren’t nothing but an open door. Should a’ kept my eyes front. Should a’ kept my wits sharp. Should a’ hid them pills.
I ran right into the back of a man on the street. I bounced off his black coat, slipped in the mud onto my backside. The man turned around and all my air went out a’ me. I knew him. I’d seen him at Kreagar’s hut. I’d seen him at the Genesis hanging tree. Standing right beside Lyon.
Her lieutenant, the stocky one with a beard down to his chest, saw the open doctor’s door, saw the box in my hand, saw the panic in my eyes, all in less than a second. He grabbed me up, took the box off me, and looked me straight in the face. He had to know me; my like was on every wall and post in this whole damn town. I cursed myself. I cursed that devil on my shoulder for showing me wrong. This is what I get, I told myself, this is what I get for breaking them rules. This was it, he’d drag me off to Lyon and she’d start asking questions. Questions I couldn’t answer yet. Questions about Kreagar and her son. Penelope would never get her pills. I’d never see my parents.
“You got a receipt for those?” he said, sneering, voice like tumbling rocks. He knew the answer a’ course.
I didn’t say nothing, I couldn’t. My voice was froze up in my throat. My eyes was froze up wide open. Fear put ice in me and everything went stiff. Felt like I would shatter if he let go.
“I think you need to see the doctor,” the lieutenant said and as he dragged me, I saw a shining six-shooter on his belt. I remembered that squirrel outside Kreagar’s hut, shot right through the eye, and I started looking around frantic for Lyon.
But she weren’t nowhere. It was just me and him and a few people who stopped to stare, including that Bilker fella a little ways down the street. Mercy was, Lyon’s man didn’t seem to recognize me. He didn’t put them charcoal faces to mine. He hadn’t seen me up close in Dalston like Lyon had. But soon as he took me to the jailhouse, she’d see me and my life, and Penelope’s, would be done.
The lieutenant pulled me through the doctor’s door and threw me ’gainst the counter. My eyes saw the shotgun and the white coat and the doctor staring down at me, look a’ confusion on his face.
The lieutenant grabbed the back of my head and pushed my face ’gainst the glass. He put the pills right next to my eye and said to the doctor, “I caught this girl stealing, I thought you’d want to face the snipe before I take her up the hill.”
The doctor picked up the box and read the label. I braced myself. Then I noticed that the poster a’ me ’neath the counter was gone.
“You left before I could write up your ticket,” the doctor said to me, and picked up a pad and pen chewed up at the end.
Lyon’s man looked as confused as me, but I tried to keep my face turned away ’case he figured me out.
“The gank stole those pills,” the lieutenant snarled, grinding my head ’gainst the glass so hard I thought it would crack. “She was seen running from this building.”
The doctor scribbled something on the pad but didn’t look up at the lawman. “Because she has a seriously ill friend in need. She stole nothing.”
The lieutenant gaped like a fish, looked from me to the doctor and back. “She bought these?”
Doctor nodded and ripped the page off the pad, handed it to me with the pills. “And these,” he said, taking the rolls a’ bandages and bottle a’ alcohol back off the shelf, “but you left in such a hurry, you must have forgot them. Let her go, she’s done nothing wrong.”
Took the grunt a few seconds but he let me up. I kept my face toward the doctor.
The doc handed the bandages and such to me with a wide smile and a glint in his eye from the afternoon sun. My mouth went fishlike too and that paper trembled ’tween my fingers. I weren’t at all sure what was happening or what I’d have to do to pay back the doctor. All I knew was I was in deep, stuck right ’tween Lyon and that shotgun with no way a’ squeezing out.
Lyon’s man scratched the back a’ his neck. Then he looked at me and said, “You paid for them?”
Kept my eyes on the counter, didn’t want him seeing too much a’ my face. I nodded.
He grunted and said his sorrys to the doctor. Then, like he’d been stunned by a slap in the face, he wandered outside, black coat disappearing among all the people.
Just me and the doctor. I sighed heavy, felt squirmy in my chest, waiting for the hammer to fall right on my head. Was worse’n that time I cut too deep when I was gutting a deer and spilled all the shit and poison out into the meat. Trapper came raging at me and hung me upside down in a tree for the whole night. Said he was gonna use me to replace the doe I ruined. When he came back next morning, big ol’ cleaver in his hands, I felt the squirmy fear like nothing I felt afore. He just cut the rope a’ course, but that feeling stuck right with me. Felt it again now, in the doctor’s office, but worse ’cause this time it weren’t just my life hanging.
I handed back all the medicine, figured I could always cut Penelope’s leg off if I needed to, though not if I was full a’ pellets or behind iron. I mumbled some kind of apology, shoved it all ’cross the counter, but the doctor shoved it right back.
“Bill of sale is final,” he said, little
smile on him said more’n his words.
I opened my mouth to say, What the hell you mean, what you want in return?, but nothing came out. Then I opened my mouth to say thank you, but it didn’t seem close to enough. So I just nodded and he nodded back and that was that. I left the doctor’s office with the pills, the bandages, and a whole heap a’ kindness what was heaviest of it all. He’d put an invisible mark on me. One what weren’t going to wash off in the rain. One what couldn’t be cut away or burned out. It was a piece a’ bright light that sent that darkness from Colby and the hog man scurrying into a corner. I seen true kindness in that doctor, a man what carried a shotgun as a walking stick, and I’ll tell you, that’s like seeing the face of God.
I tried to figure it all as I walked out a’ Halveston and back to Wolf and Penelope. I tried to understand what the doctor was doing and why. Took me the whole walk. Half a day uphill. It weren’t till the sun dipped and streaked red and yellow ’cross the sky that I figured it out. I saw my future in that sky like one a’ them fortune-tellers at the county fair. I was heading right for blood and gold. I was heading for a reckoning. I was heading for Kreagar and Lyon and whatever plan they both had for me. There weren’t no escaping that, no matter how far north I ran, no matter if I found my parents or not. The sky don’t lie. It don’t know how. Sun is sun, rain is rain, storms is storms, and future is future. Didn’t need no letters to read that. The doctor had taught me all I needed to know ’bout the rest a’ my life in that one act. He was giving me a chance to do the right thing like he had. To face down Kreagar and face down my past ’stead a’ running from ’em both. I just had to be brave enough to do it.
I didn’t tell no one ’bout the doctor or Lyon’s man. Weren’t sure why. I knew Penelope wouldn’t judge me for it, knew Wolf wouldn’t care none. I suppose I wanted to keep it just mine. That doctor, didn’t even know his name, names are the last things to matter in this world after all, gave me something more’n pills and bandages.
