The Hider

by Loren D. Estleman

  He frowned. His gray side whiskers almost touched at the point of his double chin. “This is not according to the terms of the will,” he said. “Not according to the terms at all. Your father placed four hundred dollars in my care, from which you are to receive fifteen dollars a month until you turn twenty-one, at which time you will receive the balance. You are not to collect the entire amount until you have reached your majority.”

  I said, “I won’t be twenty-one for two and a half years. By then the four hundred dollars will be gone.”

  “I daresay that your father did not expect to pass away so soon.” He spread his hands. “I am sorry, but I am bound by the will and I can do nothing. Nothing,” he repeated.

  This was lawyer double-talk, and it was getting me nowhere. I decided to appeal to his greed. “If you were to loan me four hundred dollars, the amount to be collected upon my twenty-first birthday,” I countered, “you would not be violating the terms of the will, and would set yourself up for a sizable amount of interest.”

  “It does not seem ethical,” he said doubtfully. But I could tell he was intrigued by the prospect. He had forgotten to repeat himself.

  “It is perfectly ethical,” I answered, “and what’s more it is good business. The balance remaining in the trust fund will be my collateral.”

  “Shall we discuss interest?”

  “By all means.”

  “Shall we say one percent?”

  I frowned. “I was thinking more along the lines of one half.”

  “One percent is customary.” He had dollar signs in his eyes.

  There are those who would think it right for me to remind my mother’s brother that we were family, and that blood ties meant more than green paper, but I am ashamed to admit that no such thoughts occurred to me at the time. I have never referred to J. Bottoms as Uncle Jake anywhere but in these pages. He just never seemed like family to me. In all honesty, I don’t think it would have made any difference anyway. “One percent it is,” I said.

  “One percent, compounded semiannually,” he said. “Annually.”

  “Semiannually is customary.” He gave me a hurt look, but I stood firm. I had already made one concession, and that was more than my limit. “All right,” he said at last. “One percent of four hundred dollars, compounded annually.”

  “I would like it in writing,” I said.

  He got out some paper and wrote out two copies of our agreement. We signed and dated both copies and I put one in my hip pocket. Then he turned in his chair and bent forward to work the combination of the battered black safe that stood with its back to the wall. I should have mentioned earlier that Uncle Jake had decorated his office so that everything of importance (wastebasket, safe, file cabinet) was in easy reach of his desk. As fat as he was, I don’t allow that he relished the thought of having to get up from his chair for any reason. He counted out four hundred dollars and closed the safe door, but before he gave it to me he favored me with a paternal glance.

  “What is this trip you are planning to go on that you need this money to finance it?” he demanded to know.

  “I don’t think it’s any of your business,” I replied, and stretched out my palm for the money.

  He held it back. “As your only living relative, I have a right to know what you are going to do with the money I am lending you. I have a right to know.”

  I didn’t see any other way out. “I’m planning to journey through Oregon and see the sights,” I told him. “I know very little about the state of my birth, and I think it is about time I learned.”

  “A commendable wish,” he said after a moment, and handed me the four hundred dollars. “I have a friend who knows everything there is to know about the north country. If you can wait a few weeks, I will wire him and ask him to serve as your guide.”

  I paused with my hand on the door handle. “I have already engaged a guide, thank you.” Well, it was only partly a lie.

  Jack had not yet been waited on when I got to Slauson’s Mercantile. Old Man Slauson was behind the counter, handing a sack of flour to Mrs. Fleet, the sheriff’s wife. She was a stiff-backed matron in plumed hat and whalebone corset who had been treating Citadel as if it were her town for the past three terms. Jack busied himself in the corner inspecting a display upon which were hung a number of new leather harnesses and bridles. A third man, whom I recognized as one of the local loafers, was leaning against the wall near the counter, his hat tipped back on his head. He munched lazily at the handful of peanuts he had taken from the open sack near his feet.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Fleet,” I said politely. “Hello, Mr. Slauson.”

  He waved me over to the counter. A stout gorilla of a man with a sloping forehead and a pair of hairy forearms that protruded from the rolled ends of his sleeves, he smelled of tobacco and bay rum. “Tell me, Jeff,” he whispered, pointing to Jack’s broad back, “did you ever see anything as old and dirty as that that didn’t crawl out from under a rock?”

  A high, nasal snigger coming from the direction of the wall told me that the loafer had overheard him. Jack had, too; out of the corner of my eye, I saw him pause in his fingering of the harnesses and bridles, then resume as if nothing had happened.

  I drew myself up to my full height and looked the proprietor in the eye. “Mr. Slauson,” I said. “I’ll thank you not to make any more such comments about Mr. Butterworth. He is my partner.”

  “Heavens!” exclaimed Mrs. Fleet, who had been eavesdropping as usual. “He looks like something that belongs in my husband’s jail !” This remark brought loud guffaws from both Slauson and the loiterer.

  Jack turned around, and, with a flourish, removed his campaign hat and bowed. His white hair tumbled over his forehead. “Mrs. Fleet, is it?” he said softly. “Ma’am, I’d be honored to carry that sack of flour for you.”

  Mrs. Fleet melted like butter. I could have sworn I saw her blush, but it might have been the poor light in the store. “Oh!” she blustered. “Oh, no, sir. I can manage quite well, thank you.” With that, she glided from the store, almost dropping the sack of flour when she stumbled on the threshold. Jack chuckled quietly and put his hat back on.

  But Old Man Slauson was not to be put off by the episode. In his youth he had won some acclaim as a bare-knuckles prizefighter, and he still fancied himself a scourge among men. He did a ludicrous imitation of Jack’s bow for the benefit of the other man in the store, thrusting his expansive rear into the air and sweeping the floor with his hairy knuckles. “Mrs. Fleet, is it?” he cooed in a tone of syrupy ridicule. “Ma’am, I’d be honored to carry that there sack of flour for yew-w-w.”

  The other man broke up, and Slauson’s bray of a laugh filled the store. Jack didn’t pay them any attention as he approached the counter. “I want four sacks of bacon if you got them, and two of beans. Oh, and this.” He laid down the six-foot-long strip of leather halter he had taken from the display.

  Slauson regarded him sneeringly for a moment. When the customer said nothing else, he reached beneath the counter and hoisted the required items onto its rough wooden top.

  “Better throw in a sack of flour, too,” said Jack. Slauson grunted and crossed to a shelf behind the counter. He had to stand up on tiptoe to reach the flour, and even then he had to reach past a row of sacks of coffee to get to it. The buffalo hunter waited until he had wrestled it onto the counter before he spoke again.

  “Coffee too.”

  The storekeeper gave him a dirty look, but he turned to fill his order. Tiring now, he nearly dropped the heavy package of coffee, but he finally managed to thump it down next to the other items and stood there, puffing and blowing.

  “Make that two sacks.”

  “No, goddamnit!” Slauson took off his white apron and hurled it in a ball to the floor. “Jeff, tell your looney old buddy to pay for his stuff and get out of here before I bust his face!”

  I wanted to say something equally acid, but I held my tongue. Slauson was soft and flabby, but he had been a bo
xer, and I’d seen what those swollen knuckles of his could do to troublemakers. I didn’t want to see that happen to Jack.

  Jack didn’t show a sign of anger. He just hoisted the enormous Sharps and leaned it on the edge of the counter so that the muzzle tickled the storekeeper’s chin. Jack’s finger rested on the front trigger. “Another sack of coffee, Mr. Slauson,” was all he said.

  Slauson’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down once. The loafer, eyes wide, watched the scene in silence. I reckon he didn’t want to do anything that would get his friend’s head blown off. Slauson’s face was shiny with sweat, and his fat jowls were quivering. And all the time, Jack’s index finger kept caressing that big front trigger as if he were itching to pull it. It seemed like ten minutes before anyone spoke again.

  “Sure, mister,” Slauson said at last. His voice was hoarse. Slowly, lest he make some sudden movement that would startle the man with the gun into firing, he turned to get the coffee.

  Jack followed him with the barrel of the Sharps until the second sack was sitting on the counter before him. Then he let the butt slide to the floor. The storekeeper’s breath came out in a wheeze. “Thank you kindly. Mr. Slauson,” he said cheerfully. “What do I owe you?”

  He told him.

  Jack reached for his pocket, but I stopped him. “I’ll pay for this, Jack.” I pulled the money Uncle Jake had given me from my hip pocket and peeled off the amount quoted by Slauson. Jack didn’t argue. I paid the pale storekeeper, lifted my share of the supplies onto my shoulder, and went out the door. Jack was right behind me, carrying a sack of bacon and two sacks of beans.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Slauson,” I heard him say.

  Chapter Three

  “Jeff! Jeff Curry!” I recognized the voice as soon as I heard it. Everybody in town was familiar with Esther Corcoran’s throaty rasp. I turned and there she was, all ninety-five or so pounds of her, standing on the threshold of the post office and waving so hard it looked as if her arm were going to fall off. I looked to Jack to see if it was all right to join her.

  He was busy securing the bundles on the burro’s flea-bitten back. “I’ll take care of this, boy,” he said. “Go tend to your business.”

  I thanked him and stepped up onto the boardwalk. Mrs. Corcoran met me at the post office door. She had been Citadel’s postmistress for as long as I could remember. Her first husband, a man named Adams, had taken her west from her home town of Philadelphia after the Civil War, but they had only gotten as far as Wichita when Apaches attacked their wagon train and Mr. Adams was killed. She was wounded in the fight; old-timers swore that an arrow had passed straight through her voice box and pinned her to the top bow of her wagon, leaving her incapable of speaking above a whisper for the rest of her life. The story may be an exaggeration, but it is true that she wore high lace collars ever after to hide the scar. While recuperating in Wichita, she met and was taken with a young express-office clerk, Francis Corcoran by name, and a year later they were married. If you look up Oregon in the W. P. A. Writers’ Project. you’ll see Francis Corcoran credited with the establishment of the first U.S. Post Office in Jackson County. He died of pneumonia in the winter of 1886, and that was when Mrs. Corcoran assumed the role of postmistress, which she was to hold until she passed away at the age of sixty-eight just when the United States was getting set to enter the World War.

  “Did you want me, Mrs. Corcoran?” I said, removing my hat.

  She smiled at me and nodded. To do so, she had to tip her head away back, because there was a distance of about a foot and a half between the top of her head and mine. “A letter came for you yesterday,” she croaked. “I was just thinking about sending someone out to deliver it when I saw you in the street.” She motioned for me to follow her, and tottered back inside the building. I should mention here that, although Mrs. Corcoran was not yet fifty years old, in looks and actions she was just like a woman of seventy. I suspect that her ordeal at the hands of the savages in Kansas had something to do with this.

  The post office occupied only a quarter of the one-story frame building; Mrs. Corcoran and her daughter had living quarters in back, and Zeke Donaghue rented the space on the other side of the partition for his harness shop. This left just about enough room for a man of medium size to walk between the heavy oak counter from behind which the postmistress conducted her business and the wall. If someone built like my uncle Jake wanted his mail, he had to ask for it through the caged window in front of the building. I waited in front of the counter while Mrs. Corcoran scanned the pigeonholes that lined the far wall in search of my letter.

  “Dear!” she said, half to herself. “When will I ever learn to put things where they belong? I know I had it this morning. Theodora! Come help me look for Jeff’s letter!” She called this last in the direction of the living space in back.

  I sighed. Out in the street, Jack had finished loading the burro and was removing the cotton clothesline from its neck in preparation for replacing it with the leather halter he had bought at Slauson’s. “I’m in kind of a hurry, Mrs. Corcoran,” I prodded.

  “Theodora!” she rasped. “Where is that girl?”

  I heard a footstep at the far end of the building. I was beginning to get suspicious. “Mrs. Corcoran, do you really have a letter for me, or are you just trying to fix me up with your daughter again?”

  She went on rummaging through the stacks of mail as if she hadn’t heard me. She had a peculiar kind of deafness that only showed up when something was said that she didn’t want to hear.

  “Yes, Mama?” Theodora Corcoran came in from the back, her skirts swishing against the bare plank floor. I suppose she was considered pretty for those times, but then so were a lot of girls who would not get past the gate at a beauty contest today. Anyway, she looked better than most. She had that kind of hair that looked black when she was indoors, but which glowed red the minute she stepped outside into the sunlight. She had been popular in school. I guess she was about a year younger than I was.

  “Oh, there you are, dear,” said Mrs. Corcoran, as if she hadn’t known her daughter was back there all the time. “Do you know what I did with Jeff’s letter that came in yesterday?”

  “No, Mama, I haven’t seen it.”

  Her mother adjusted her gold-rimmed spectacles on her nose and peered as through a spyglass into each of the holes in the top row of the varnished wooden case. “I just can’t seem to find it,” she said in her whispery voice. “Do you suppose I’m getting feebleminded?”

  Theodora chose to be tactfully silent.

  “Look through those sacks, will you, dear?” Mrs. Corcoran indicated the canvas sacks with “U.S. MAIL” stamped on them sitting in the corner behind the counter. “Maybe Jeff can help you look.”

  “I don’t think that’s allowed, Mama. Jeff isn’t employed by the federal government.”

  “Well, what difference does that make? Neither are you.”

  An apprehensive glance passed between Theodora and me. I shrugged surrender and came around the end of the counter to help her search.

  “Is there a letter?” I whispered, holding open one of the sacks while she sorted through the mail inside.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Mama mentioned it yesterday, but you can never tell with her.”

  We searched in silence for some minutes. Then she said, “I didn’t see you at the dance last Saturday night.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t there,” I replied. “Olaf Peterson’s cattle broke through the fence onto my property and he and I were all night chasing them back. I slept straight through church Sunday morning.”

  “Are you going somewhere?” she said, after another pause. “I saw you coming out of Slauson’s with that old man.”

  “His name is Jack Butterworth, and he knows the West like the surface of his saddle. We’re taking a trip through Oregon.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “As long as it takes to see all the sights,” I said. “Quite a while.”
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  “Will you be back in time for the Memorial Day dance?”

  She’d said it quickly, and most of it went into the sack of mail, so that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. I tried to look at her, but she kept her attention on her work. I said, “I’ll try.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t find it.” Mrs. Corcoran gave up on the pigeonholes and came over to us. “How are you children doing?”

  Theodora rose and nodded for me to close the sack. “It’s not here, Mama,” she said. “We looked through everything.”

  Her mother made a little sound of exasperation. “I’m sorry, Jeff,” she said. “All I can say is that we’ll try to have it for you the next time you come to town.”

  “That might not be for a long time. I’m going away in a few minutes.” I said good-bye and strode around the corner. Mrs. Corcoran followed me and stopped me at the door. A little line of worry showed on her forehead.

  “Why can’t I get you two together?” she said.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Corcoran.” I shrugged. “Maybe I’m not Theodora’s type.”

  I stepped out the door and rejoined Jack. He was seated on his mule. He had looped the new halter around the little burro’s neck and tied the other end to the horn of his saddle.

  “All set, boy?” he asked.

  I mounted the bay. “All set.”

  “Then let’s ride. Daylight’s a sometime thing.” He gave his mule a kick, and we started back the way we’d come.

  The sun was on the decline when we got back to the extinct buffalo trail. To the north, the horizon was obscured beneath a row of metallic gray clouds which brought with them a breath of sharp, wet air and the promise of rain. It didn’t seem like the best time to be embarking on a long trip, but I didn’t mention this to my partner. After three years, I figured he’d know more about that sort of thing than I would in ten. I sneaked a long, hard look at the house as we went past it. From this angle I could see nothing about the lopsided farmhouse and the remnants of the picket fence that could have held me there for eighteen years. It had been home, but now it was just another of those prairie hovels through the fissures of which the wind whistled in and out as it does through the mouth of an abandoned mine shaft. I kicked the bay and trotted up to Jack’s side without another glance back. I felt free.