Sweetwater

by Lisa Henry

  Took him a while to fall asleep.

  It was late by the time Elijah limped home. He was afraid he was injured, and afraid that he’d be discovered. But Dr. Orville Carter was still asleep when Elijah crept into the cabin. Dr. Carter’s chest rose and fell slowly, and his whiskered face was illuminated from the dim glow of the stove. His medical bag was resting at the end of the bed, beside his boots.

  Elijah added wood to the stove and then stripped off his clothes. They still smelled of cattle, and of dust and blood, and Crane. He bundled them under his cot and then climbed into bed in his drawers.

  He lay there until dawn, unable to sleep. Unable to stop fretting about the pain.

  As soon as the morning began to soften the darkness, he crept out of bed again. He slipped outside to the privacy of the woodshed, ignoring the chickens that hurried to waylay him, and pulled down his drawers to make sure it wasn’t blood he’d felt wetting him there during the night. He was so fucking relieved to find out it wasn’t because he’d never be able to ask Dr. Carter for help for those sorts of injuries.

  He tugged his drawers back up and went back inside.

  He lifted the kettle onto the stove and stood there while it heated. He only became aware that Dr. Carter was awake when the man shuffled past him.

  “Morning, Elijah.” Dr. Carter wiped sleep from his eyes.

  “Morning.”

  Dr. Carter put his spectacles on and squinted through them at Elijah. “You sleep well?”

  “Yes, sir.” Elijah turned his face away before Dr. Carter caught the lie.

  “Elijah!”

  Heart thumping, he looked back.

  Dr. Carter shook his head and sighed. “You look at me when we’re talking, so that I know you hear me and I’m not just talking to myself.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Just . . . just pay attention, Elijah.” Dr. Carter sighed again. “Please.”

  He nodded, guilt washing over him. Not a day went by that Dr. Carter didn’t have to remind him. Didn’t have to suffer some small disappointment in him. Only small, but Elijah felt the weight of the thousand or more that had gone before. He thought Dr. Carter must, as well.

  “Sorry.”

  “All right,” Dr. Carter said, his expression softening. “Get the coffee made, so we can both wake up before the service, hmmm?”

  “Yes, sir,” Elijah said and waited until Dr. Carter went to wash before he turned back to the stove, just in case he had something else to say.

  On Sunday morning, Grady went past the Empire. He wasn’t sure what he thought. That Elijah Carter would be standing outside? The Empire in the morning was subdued. A scrawny man with a limp swept the soiled sawdust out the door and dumped it in the street outside.

  Sundays were the worst days to pitch up in South Pass City. Usually, they liked to get into town and get straight out again, only stopping to buy whatever they needed for the trip back to Ham’s Fork. On Sunday morning, though, the only places of business open in South Pass City were those that didn’t observe the Lord’s Day. Fine if a man wanted a drink and a fuck. Not so good if he wanted to buy some beans or some boot polish. The saloons were open; the general store was closed until the afternoon.

  Grady returned to the Liberty Hotel empty-handed to find that Dale and Cody had crawled out of bed and were feeding their hangovers in the dining room.

  “Oh, he’s a snake, all right,” Dale said, slathering butter on his bread.

  “Who’s that?” Grady asked in a low voice.

  “Harlan Crane.”

  Grady thought of the kid being led upstairs by the whore. “Special delivery for Mr. Crane!” That still didn’t sit right this morning. Crane had a reputation, one that Grady wasn’t sure lined up flush with Elijah’s wide-eyed trepidation. Not that it was any of his business. Grady had no stake in the kid’s welfare.

  “A snake,” Dale continued, “but he might as well own this town.”

  “Hmm.” Grady caught the eye of the girl serving coffee and waved her over. “The Sherlocks might have something to say about that.”

  A man couldn’t take a piss in South Pass City without splashing the boots of a Sherlock.

  “Well, it’s not the Sherlocks we do business with,” Dale said. He shook his head and covered his mug with his hand as the girl moved around the table with the coffeepot. “No more for me, darlin’.”

  The girl smiled at him and continued on to the next table.

  “Pretty,” Cody said.

  “Too pretty for you,” Dale snorted.

  Cody scowled at him and twisted his head to watch the girl.

  “Don’t stare,” Grady said. He took a sip of coffee. “This ain’t the Empire.”

  Cody flushed and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “You were talking about Crane,” Grady said in a low voice. “Is there a problem?”

  “No.” Dale sighed. “No problem. Heard a few things about him is all.”

  “Heard what?”

  Dale leaned forward. “Heard that anyone who goes behind his back doesn’t live long enough to profit from it. Heard he had a different name out East and changed it to escape the noose. Heard he killed a man who cut up one of his girls. Killed him right there in the saloon, and nothing ever came of it.”

  Grady leveled a stare at Dale. “It’s too late now for second thoughts.”

  Dale’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I know it is. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

  “Mmm.” Grady reached over and took a crust off Cody’s plate. “Last night . . . That kid . . .”

  “What kid?”

  “The butcher’s boy.” Grady chewed the crust. “You see him come down again?”

  “Nope.” Dale glanced at Cody, who shook his head. “But we went upstairs ourselves pretty much as soon as you and Matt left. What’s it matter?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Curious.” Dale raised his brows.

  “Yeah.” Grady shoved his chair back. “I’m going for a walk. Shops won’t be open until the afternoon. We heading out then or staying another night?”

  “We’ll stay another night,” Dale said. “No point leaving late.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you later.” Grady left the dining room.

  There was no church in South Pass City. There was a graveyard just outside of town—rocky and ill kept, the graves dotted with clumps of scrubby grass and sagebrush—a place for the dead to get close to God, but none for the living.

  Every Sunday morning, a small group gathered in the Spicers’ cabin and made a congregation. They were a herd without a shepherd. They prayed and sang together, and Elijah held the brim of his hat in his hands and looked at the uneven floorboards while the muted strains of the hymns washed over him, distant and distorted.

  I know not, O I know not, what joys await us there,

  What radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare.

  In the past, Elijah had tried to follow the words in the hymnal, his fingertip jerking along the close-printed lines, but he had difficulty with singing. The drawn-out syllables and strange cadences were entirely unlike the rhythms of regular speech, and they passed outside the narrow range of his hearing. Song was water, tipped from a ewer into a hollow basin. Song swelled, reverberated, and he couldn’t distinguish the words from the echo.

  Elijah passed the service in contemplation of his boots, fixing his gaze on the faded leather, worn long ago to softness. If he wriggled his toes, he could see the leather undulating. So could Dr. Carter, standing beside him, who cuffed Elijah lightly on the back of the head to remind him of his manners and then tugged affectionately at his hair.

  And Elijah couldn’t think of anything apart from the way Harlan Crane had pulled at his hair and fucked him the night before. He didn’t know for sure, couldn’t know, but he didn’t think it was supposed to be like that.

  Elijah shivered. He stared at the floor again and ignored his aching body.

  Maybe right about now he should h
ave been thinking about sin and hellfire and burning for an eternity, but that wasn’t why he shivered. Those things seemed as remote and theoretical as they ever had, when surely last night should have brought them into sharp relief. He should have been able to smell his own flesh burning, shouldn’t he? Should have been able to feel the agony of his nerve endings curling and crumbling like candlewicks. Except all he felt was the sting where Crane’s stubble had rasped against his flesh and the ache in his ass that echoed his heartbeat.

  He’d liked it. It was wrong, but he’d liked it.

  It scared him that he did.

  Elijah’s gaze was caught by an old bloodstain on the frayed cuff of his shirt. He turned his wrist to hide it, and wished the informal service would end soon. Maybe, when the little congregation was done with their prayers and the hymns, he would be free to walk to the graveyard with Emily Spicer. She went every Sunday to leave flowers on her mother’s grave. Elijah went mostly to escape town for just a little while.

  He lifted his gaze. Emily was standing beside her father, singing the words in her hymnbook.

  She looked up when Elijah did—Emily could always tell when he was watching—and smiled quickly. Emily was seventeen, and pretty, and most likely would be married soon to Thaddeus Sherlock.

  Dr. Carter could always tell when Elijah was looking, as well. He tugged on Elijah’s hair again.

  Elijah flushed and turned his face away. It felt wrong to catch Emily’s smile in this place where God was listening, when last night he had been fucked by Harlan Crane. A sin like that couldn’t be undone, that bridge uncrossed. He was sure it was written large on his face.

  Elijah thought of the graveyard above town. Some of Elijah’s own family was buried under the rocky, uneven ground, but he didn’t know where.

  Mama had died somewhere on the Trail, Elijah was almost certain of that. He remembered the sound of crying and of the baby’s thin, straining wail. He still heard it sometimes, when he hadn’t heard anything clearly in so long. Elijah had gotten sick with scarlet fever on the Trail; they all had. The baby and his sisters were already dead when the wagon train left them in South Pass City. Elijah didn’t know what had happened to his father. He didn’t remember. He’d been too sick. For a long time, Dr. Carter had thought he was going to die.

  When the fever had finally broken, Elijah was deaf.

  Brief life is here our portion, brief sorrow, short-lived care;

  The life that knows no ending, the tearless life, is there.

  Every wagon train that passed through, climbing west, Elijah watched and wondered.

  Dr. Carter was a good man. He wasn’t the only father that Elijah had ever known, but he was the only one who counted for anything. Elijah had been young when it had happened, no older than four or five. He didn’t remember his last name, so he’d taken Dr. Carter’s. Dr. Carter had been patient with Elijah’s affliction, speaking to him slowly and clearly. In time, by listening carefully and by reading lips, Elijah had learned to catch most of what was being said to him.

  Song would always elude him.

  He glanced at Emily again, watched her lips move, and heard the droning of the hymn. The words might as well have been a slurring drunk’s. Elijah couldn’t distinguish them.

  Dr. Carter squeezed him gently on the back of the neck, and Elijah flushed and looked down at his boots again. The people around him sang of sin and redemption, and Elijah only thought of Harlan Crane.

  He wished that Dr. Carter’s gentle touch on the back of his neck was Harlan Crane’s. Imagined it was tighter, rougher, full of force instead of affection. Affection could be disappointed. Force wasn’t. The warmth that crept through him was shame, he thought. He covered his groin with his hat because the heat was pooling there, and Elijah was afraid of what might happen next.

  Suddenly he wanted to be outside again, in the sunlight, on the road out of town. Up in the graveyard, throwing stones at the lizards that skittered along the hot ground, and missing them every time. Tracking the line of the encircling hills with his gaze. Following the path of the sun west. Not knowing and not caring if he was too quiet or too loud.

  And then, in the night, he’d go to the Empire again.

  The things that he’d felt the night before, he wanted to feel again. He wanted to understand.

  All at once, Dr. Carter’s hand felt too heavy, constricting. Elijah fought the urge to shake him off.

  And though my body may not, my spirit seeks thee fain,

  Till flesh and earth return me to earth and flesh again.

  Dr. Carter lifted his hand, but it was only to turn the page of his hymnal. Elijah shifted closer to try to see the words. Too small to read, but he could nevertheless see a break in the text. The hymn was almost over.

  Dr. Carter smiled at him, wrinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes. He brought the hymnal closer and tilted it so Elijah could see.

  Elijah’s gaze fixed on the last line, and a strange, unaccountable thrill ran through him. In his mind, he saw Harlan Crane’s sly, knowing smile all over again. His heart raced.

  His only, His forever thou shalt be, and thou art.

  That afternoon, a storm rolled in from the mountains, black and wild. The day darkened.

  Dr. Carter always invited a group of friends over on Sunday afternoons. They drank coffee at first, whiskey later, and smoked cigars and played faro. They preferred playing in the cabin to going to the card houses where, as Elijah understood it, the faro boards were usually rigged in the banker’s favor.

  Elijah didn’t play. Sometimes he drew up a chair and sat beside Dr. Carter and watched, but not today. Today he was too restless.

  He dropped a handful of coffee into the pot on the stove, leaning over it to inhale the steam’s aroma. Sweat slid down his temple. In the winter, he dragged his cot as close to the stove as Dr. Carter allowed, but on summer days like these it gave out so much heat it made Elijah want to escape the cabin entirely. He liked his coffee too much not to suffer it, though. He’d finished the packet of beans to make this pot, which meant that the peppermint stick used for grinding the beans, included in every packet, was his. He sucked on it while he waited for the coffee to brew.

  When the storm broke, the day would be cooler.

  Maybe he’d go outside when the storm came and walk up to the graveyard to watch the lightning in the Wind River Range. He would wait for the thunder, pressing his palms against the wet earth so that he could feel it. The whole world would tremble as the storm raged above, and laugh at the lizards scuttling for shelter.

  Elijah liked storms. He liked to lie on the ground, breathless, as the rain pelted his face and the lightning tore apart the sky. Storms made other men run for refuge. They made Elijah run for open spaces. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to stay cooped up in a cabin when it was so wild outside.

  The coffee brewed, and Elijah carried the pot over to the table.

  “Thank you, Elijah,” Dr. Carter said and turned back to his cards.

  Elijah forced a smile and retreated to his cot and sat there. He took a book from under his pillow and opened it. He’d always tried to be a good son. He did his chores, and he was quiet in every Sunday service, but it wasn’t enough. How could it be enough? And now . . . now that suspicion that had worried him for years had been proven without a doubt.

  Simple deaf cunt.

  Whole town knew it except for Dr. Carter. But it was worse than that now. Elijah wasn’t just a disappointment now; he was an abomination.

  Elijah didn’t read the book.

  He listened to the men talk instead, the back and forth, the rhythm and the cadence, and the pieces of the conversation that were clear enough for him to catch.

  “They ought’ve put the railroad through Rock Springs,” George Scully, the draper, said. “The coach comes every day now.”

  “The decision ought to have been made by men who know the country. South Pass City is the richest in the territory!” Lewis Cleaver printed on
e of South Pass City’s three newspapers and was angling to be appointed as the next justice of the peace once the County Board of Commissioners saw sense and got rid of Esther Morris. A woman had no business passing judgment in a court of law, Mr. Cleaver said.

  Mostly he said it to sell his papers, Dr. Carter had told Elijah. Mrs. Morris’s son Archibald printed the South Pass News and had feted his mother’s appointment as justice, and Cleaver always took a contrary view to everything his rival wrote. Not a blind man, Dr. Carter said, but one with a very narrow view, because God knows there were more pressing concerns in South Pass City than a justice who wore a dress.

  Like the announcement in the papers of gold discovered in the Bighorn Mountains and how men were already packing up to try their luck there. Like the fledgling Wyoming Territory already pushing for statehood. Trying to run before it could walk, Cleaver said. Or like the Union Pacific Railroad and how it was a travesty that it hadn’t been built closer to South Pass City to be of any great benefit. Months later they were still arguing about it.

  “They built it on the flat for good reason,” Dr. Carter said. “Too many hills here, and too much trouble with the Arapaho and the Sioux.”

  “Well, there’s Fort Stambaugh now!” Mr. Scully exclaimed.

  “The fort was built too late to change where the tracks were laid,” Thaddeus Sherlock said, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth. “And ridding the land of every savage between here and the west coast won’t change the fact there are still hills in the way.”

  Elijah had never seen the railroad, except for pictures in the newspaper. Something about it seemed almost fantastical. Iron tracks crossing the whole of the continent, being built at breakneck speed. A mile a day, the newspapers crowed, though the pace had stalled for a time in Wyoming while important men argued about where the tracks should go. And men like Mr. Scully were still sore about the decision.