Sundance

by David Fuller

  • • •

  HE OPENED THE DOOR and was face-to-face with an angry Robert Levi. He stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

  “What were you doing in there?”

  Longbaugh shook his head. No answer would appease.

  “You take chances, mister,” said Levi.

  Longbaugh spoke glibly. “No, just Liberty.”

  “What is that, a riddle? You don’t take chances, you take liberties? Making fun of me?”

  Longbaugh saw Levi tensing, about to come at him. So he moved first, stepped in close, bringing the statue’s flame up near Levi’s eye. The young man backed up, chin jerking close to his neck.

  “This Liberty. Robert, listen to me carefully, I came all the way to New York to disappear. I served my time, and I’m not looking for trouble.”

  Robert Levi looked at the toy, still on his heels but rallying. Longbaugh was impressed that he so quickly recovered his belligerence. “What did you do?”

  “Took this from the room. I don’t know whose room it is, but this was there before your current occupant moved in.” He lowered the toy and placed it firmly in Levi’s hand. But he palmed the olive ribbon.

  Levi considered the toy. “Why were you in prison?”

  “I got caught.” He secretly slid the ribbon into his pocket.

  Irritated: “How’d they catch you?”

  “Robbing a train.”

  Levi wasn’t having any of it. “Sure, train robbery, because it sounds so romantic to the ladies.”

  “Feel free to try it if it makes your sun shine.”

  “You dangerous?”

  “Not to the ladies.”

  “What are your intentions toward my wife?”

  “Pay the rent on time. Compliment her cooking.”

  Levi growled. Longbaugh wondered what had gone wrong in their marriage.

  Levi seemed to be chasing away a thought that would not let go. Finally it flew from his lips. “She likes you.” His snarl was both threat and self-flagellation.

  “She likes that I love my woman.”

  “Dammit, you do talk in riddles.”

  “Women like men who like their women. They like to imagine they’re loved in the same way.”

  Longbaugh had confused him enough to momentarily geld him. Levi uncertainly handed back the Liberty toy.

  “I love my woman.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Aw, what the hell do you know?”

  “Not a lot, since I haven’t seen mine in years. But maybe there’s hope for you.”

  Levi reached for a snappy reply that wasn’t there. Longbaugh figured he’d think of one later and kick himself. “I’d love to get you down in the dig, show you how a sandhog lives, how a real man lives.”

  “All right.”

  Levi was confounded. “What do you mean, ‘all right’?”

  “Let’s go. Show me how tough you are.”

  For that he had a comeback. “Sorry, nothing to steal down there.”

  “You’re onto me. My plan is to rob a freshly dug tunnel.”

  “Mister, you wouldn’t last five minutes there. Ever hear of a compression chamber?” Levi leaned in ominously. “Because you gotta go through one to work down there. The air pressure in there’s so intense, the tunnel actually thinks it’s just more bedrock.”

  When he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, Levi pressed harder. “Know what a blowout is? It’s when you hit a weak spot in the wall and the pressure pushes you through it, right through the dirt and rock till you hit the bottom of the river, then it blows your sorry ass up through the water till you’re thirty feet in the air! Happened to a guy I know, and he lived. You think you’re tough robbing trains, well you don’t know tough.”

  Longbaugh looked at the rage in Levi’s face and shook his head. “Maybe you should build a bridge.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Okay, then. Show me.”

  “Who are you, mister? What is it with you?”

  “You that desperate for my respect? I’m ready to be impressed.”

  “You think I want your respect? Jesus, I’m not taking you down there!”

  “You just read me the book of Job trying to scare me.”

  “You’re a damn civilian, Jesus Christ! What are you thinking?”

  Longbaugh looked at him coolly and tried not to smile. There was more than one way to call a man’s bluff.

  Levi turned away, muttering to himself, “Keep your hands off my wife.”

  Longbaugh watched him until he had reached the stairs and gone down, out of sight.

  He blinked as he stood there. He wanted nothing to do with their marriage.

  He went to the indoor privy and took the piece of olive ribbon Etta had left there.

  He returned to his room. He set the toy high on his own wardrobe, so that only the arm and the flame were visible. He brought out the two olive ribbons from his pocket and rubbed them together idly as he planned the next day.

  5

  He woke at sunrise. It was too early to leave, but he was restless and refused to stay in his room. He dressed and moved through the silent hallway and down empty stairs. He went outside, choosing to walk instead of just waiting. The sky was ominous and gray and pressed down on the city. The smell of rain rode the wind, but he walked on, heading north on Fifth Avenue. He was still dry when he decided to stop at the Hotel Brevoort at Eighth Street. He chose a small table in the main café, thinking the weather too uncertain to sit in the Parisian sidewalk café. He ordered strong coffee and looked at newspapers that were available for customers. He read without absorbing, his mind distracted. He thought about money and how to stretch it, as only that one time, after the Wilcox robbery, had he been wise enough to hide it away. Luckily, he still had most of that left. But if he was to fit into the city, he wondered if he should be like the rest of New York and find a job. He opened a newspaper and turned to the help wanted advertisements. He encountered a need for workers to fill jobs he did not know existed, and in some cases he did not know what sort of work they entailed. He envisioned entering the mind-numbing pattern of daily employment. During his early days out west, that pattern had bored him silly and driven him to crime. But his youth was past. Perhaps now he could better handle a tame existence. He reviewed ads that promised humdrum jobs inappropriate to his talents. The city was an immense industrial machine, and he lacked the skills that would make him employable. From what he was reading, he was perfectly qualified to start at the bottom rung of the ladder for slave wages.

  He abandoned the newspapers in the café and went outdoors. A rainsquall had passed through while he was inside and had left the streets wet, but for now it had stopped. It was still early. He chanced the weather and walked again toward his destination. The air was clear and the city’s edges were sharp, specific. He had given little thought to organizing his future, as organization had been imposed upon him for the past twelve years. He thought about his age and realized he was in his mid-forties. He wondered if he was slowing down.

  He stopped on the sidewalk in the middle of a block, and took stock of his skills. He was a good horseman and an expert ranch hand with talents that had kept him in demand. He could handle a gun. He had a talent for escape, be it handcuffs or small-town jails. The penitentiary had been a different matter: there had been no way to escape from that establishment. He had made brooms there. He didn’t want to make brooms anymore. But mostly, he knew how to rob banks and trains. These were western skills. He smiled ruefully as he thought of applying his skills to the new city. He opened and closed his fist, wondering how rusty he would be with a gun.

  His vision cleared and he saw why he had ventured along that mental path, as the entrance to a bank was being unlocked in front of him, opening for business. He looked around to see if he had arou
sed anyone’s suspicions. But everyone seemed preoccupied with the sky, expecting a resurgence of rain. The sun chose that moment to emerge briefly, a crease between clouds that illuminated bank and outlaw. A lesser man might have taken that as an omen. He checked his glowing reflection in the window, then squinted to see if those inside were in any way concerned about the man staring at them. When no one showed any interest, he experienced a sense of comfort and well-being. With a bank before him, he was curiously at home. He knew banks. He understood them. He was good at banks. They were obvious and consistent, as well as a source of income and self-esteem. A New York bank was likely to have better safeguards than a bank in Utah or Wyoming. Bank vaults would be stronger, more difficult to open, but his approach had never been to use force. He trusted human nature, gaining access through the incompetence of a manager, or the vain self-assurance of a vice president. The human animal was ever the same, it mattered little how technology matured. He looked up and down the block and mentally mapped escape routes. He saw two or three good flights off the street, alleys there and over there, cross streets, crowded sidewalks and busy intersections. He formulated one escape by foot, another by horse, then formulated a third option in case of emergency that utilized hacks and trolleys. He would require information about police schedules, patterns, the location of their precinct, and the number of officers on the beat. Not too difficult. It felt good to heat up the old muscles. He turned his attention to the bank itself.

  He stepped inside. The atmosphere was cozy, especially welcoming after the wet streets and hostile skies. The light was warm and inviting. The employees smiled. He scouted the layout, noted the security guards on tall stools, the lineup of tellers, the desks and seating area at the far end of the room. His inner clock timed the walk from the front door to the tellers, the tellers to the safe behind them, the security guards to the security door. He went to the island and scribbled on a deposit slip, then patted his pockets as if he had forgotten his billfold. There were any number of ways to get information on the safe’s lock, but then he identified the branch manager and his assistant and knew he could talk his way into the back. Yes, he could do it, he could take this place. A bank was a bank, whether in Colorado or New York City. He mentally assembled his team and scheduled more visits, at different times of the day, to know the civilian ebb and flow. It was doable.

  He stepped back out into the gray day, feeling refreshed. He remembered without anxiety that it had been just such an act, albeit with a train, that had taken him away from Etta in the first place. He had no intention of robbing this bank. But the mental exercise made him feel like a kid again.

  • • •

  HE ARRIVED at the brick four-story building on Henry Street. He hadn’t realized how far in the other direction he had walked, so he hailed a cab. The driver dropped him off a few blocks away, near the Williamsburg Bridge, not caring to brave the neighborhood. He smelled the East River mingling with the strong smells of cooking, cleaning, and garbage that came from the tenements. He approached the front door and knocked, and when a young woman answered, he asked for Etta. That caught her attention, and he was invited inside and told to wait in a parlor. The Settlement had been successful and had expanded to four other buildings on the same block of Henry Street, one of them a gymnasium, and he had gone to the wrong one initially before being sent here. After a short time he was led upstairs, taken to the back, and pointed to a rear porch that overlooked an inner courtyard dominated by a children’s playground. Here, deep in the Lower East Side, was a welcoming, homey environment. Had he been Lillian Wald, he too would have spent his time here. Street noise was muted, she had a bird’s-eye view of a tiny garden, and the empty playground, alert with optimism, was littered with the toys of a recent occupation. He waited for her to turn, and took advantage of the moment to observe her. She sat in a low chair, staring off while wrapped in her thoughts, a blanket around her shoulders, a sheaf of papers gripped hard enough in her hand that they curled into a cone. He realized she was probably his age, but she looked older, and had a presence about her that demanded respect.

  She looked up to his face and was surprised. “You are not the one I expected.”

  “My apologies.”

  “Cynthia said a man asked for Etta. I expected another.”

  Lillian Wald rose out of her chair, leaving the blanket behind. She moved close to him and inspected his face impolitely. He did not move, but squirmed inside. Rarely had he been so thoroughly scrutinized. She allowed time to pass before she lifted an eyebrow and half smiled. “You are her Harry.”

  He stood taller and introduced himself with his real name.

  “Have you news of her, Mr. Longbaugh?” She watched his expression, then answered for him. “No. But you’re looking.”

  She went from direct eye contact to seemingly gazing just over his shoulder, and he realized she was thinking. She then looked at the papers in her hand. “This can wait,” and set them on the blanket in the chair. Her voice was authoritative, and with her precise diction, he knew she was comfortable controlling a room. “Political gobbledygook, another useless report on our Federal Children’s Bureau. To be expected with the Bull Moose gone.” She shook her head. “Are you an optimistic sort, Mr. Longbaugh? I’m afraid I believed Theodore when he said we’d continue to enjoy the full support of government. . . . These days our representatives spend more time investigating the boll weevil than looking out for our young people. Apparently I’ll have to go after them the way I did with the New York Factory Law.”

  He wanted to prove he could stand tall in the face of her power, but could only manage, “Factory Law . . . ?”

  “Never mind, just politics, I’m talking to myself.”

  “No, I—”

  “Prohibits employment of girls under sixteen for more than ten hours a day or fifty-four hours a week.” Her words came like a fast river off her lips, as if spoken a thousand times a day. She smiled warmly. “You’ll know better than to ask next time. Did they offer you tea?”

  “No, ma’am, but that’s not necess—”

  “My people are wonderful, but busy, so it’s not technically bad manners. Cynthia! She’ll be along.”

  “You said you expected someone else.”

  “Yes, he came to see me once before.”

  But before he could ask about the one who had come, she changed the subject as she perused the low clouds overhead. “I forget to look around. We built the playground to keep the children from playing in the streets, but you know that. The neighborhood is changing, which is good, but change breeds anxiety. Just Monday, Mrs. O’Brien came to me in tears. Irish Roman Catholic, our Mrs. O’Brien, dismayed by the dwindling of the congregation.” Then Lillian leaned in to whisper Mrs. O’Brien’s secret: “All the new Italians.” She shrugged at the frailty of the human condition. “Mrs. O’Brien is mortified that her children do not share her respect for religion.”

  Lillian Wald set her hands on the banister and gazed down at the children’s playground. He chose to wait and was rewarded when he saw her transformed. Her shoulders opened, spread, and shifted the world’s weight from off her back and onto the chair behind her. “Ach, the old woman grows long-winded. I am become strident, Mr. Longbaugh. I do it on purpose, mind you, it’s difficult to get men in power to do the right thing. I trained myself to sound pompous and arrogant so that I impress those I must impress, and now it’s habit.” She turned and looked closely at him. “She was in love with you.”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “You mean did I think you needed to hear that, Mr. Longbaugh? Yes.”

  “You have a keen eye.”

  “I play politics with presidents and captains of industry, I had better have that and more.”

  She laughed and he smiled at the sound. She was quite full of herself, but she had a way about her that made it charming.

  “Come, walk with me, did you see my lit
tle garden? It was put in for me, to help me relax, but when do I have time?”

  At the bottom of the stairs they came out on a garden set off in a corner of the playground. They stepped over small puddles from the earlier rain. The garden was overgrown here, underwatered there. She pinched off a hard brown leaf from a parched plant and shook off water drops. “This one wants more than just a morning shower. I wonder what sort of plant it was,” she said. She let it drop and a breeze scraped it along the ground.

  “Etta was a wonderful teacher, but much of what we teach here is prosaic, cooking, cleaning, how to carry yourself, how to find work. Etta wanted to do more than prepare them for the grind of life, she wanted to educate them. She was a natural with the children. She took a liking to one difficult girl, and when she found out about the girl’s troubled home life, she got overly involved. She learned the girl had an older sister.”

  “The girl, is she still here?”

  “In fact she is. Many of them stay.” She turned to gauge his mood, then took both of his hands in hers and was surprisingly serious. “Etta was courageous. You must prepare yourself for that.”