Sweetwater

by Lisa Henry

  Just a kiss. His first, and Elijah didn’t know what to make of it. It was warm, gentle, and it tasted like coffee. Grady’s stubble scraped against him. The kiss was almost chaste. Strange that it could suck the breath right out of his body like that, leave him dizzy.

  Grady pulled away and waited until Elijah’s eyes flickered open. “You liked that?”

  Elijah’s blush spoke for him.

  “You want another one?”

  Elijah swiped his tongue over his lips. “No, sir.”

  It was a lie.

  If Grady had bent him over and fucked him, Elijah would have understood it. He might have even loved it, the way he did with Crane. He would have used it to test his strength and feed his anger. It would have honed him to the same cold sharpness as Dawson’s boning knife.

  “You’re someone I think about.”

  Coffee and kisses and blushes. Elijah had no use for them. They distracted him, took his sharp edges and blunted them, blurred them. They let his coldness bleed away. Elijah shivered as he felt it go, leaving empty spaces inside of him. Those empty spaces whispered that they could be filled so easily with coffee and kisses and blushes. Elijah wanted it so much that it ached, and that was the trap. It wasn’t real. It was the same thing Dr. Carter must have believed once: that you could take a stranger and love him and stretch him thin over the shapes of the people you had lost.

  It wasn’t real, and it wasn’t enough.

  “I want you to leave,” Elijah said.

  Grady’s face gave nothing away. “You sure about that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grady nodded. He pushed his mug of coffee away and rose to his feet. “You take care of yourself, kid, okay?”

  Elijah watched him warily.

  Grady’s mouth quirked into something that wasn’t a smile. “Well, you know where to find me.”

  Elijah didn’t move until Grady was gone, then he hurried to the door and latched it.

  Fuck Grady for that kiss.

  Fuck Crane for that slap.

  Fuck McCreedy for not coming to the Palace.

  Fuck everything.

  He hung his jacket up by the door and pulled Dawson’s knife out of his boot. He rested it on the table, beside the bloodstain he still imagined he saw. He added another chunk of wood to the stove out of habit more than anything else—Dr. Carter had never let the stove burn out in case of patients in the middle of the night—and stirred the embers. He got lost in their intricate dance for a while, the little cinders leaping and swirling as he dragged the poker through them.

  He moved over to the table and sat there.

  He stared at the knife.

  So maybe he wouldn’t go to the Palace again. Maybe he’d find out what other places the McCreedy boys went to, and he’d go there. Or maybe he’d hire a horse from Mr. Bowman’s livery stables and head back to Adavale himself.

  Elijah reached out and touched the blade and wondered if it was enough. To get the drop on McCreedy in town, maybe, where the cardrooms got crowded and men pressed against one another without trying, but out at Adavale? It wasn’t like Elijah could sneak up on him like some Arapaho scout.

  It wasn’t like Elijah could scalp him.

  Though he could always try.

  He gently ran a finger down the edge of the blade. Was scalping a man just the same as skinning a rabbit? Men were no different to animals, not when it came to blood and bone and skin. Thomas Spicer maybe thought there was something else inside a man, something more than his base materials, but that was none of Elijah’s business.

  The blade of the knife teased the pad of his finger. The slightest pressure and it would cut him. He was almost tempted. He balanced on the edge of wanting it, of needing to feel it, just a slice, a sting.

  His hand shook.

  He drew a deep breath and laid the knife aside. His gaze was drawn to Dr. Carter’s medical bag, sitting where it always had at the foot of his bed. He stood up, crossed the floor, and knelt down in front of it. He ran his hands over the old, smooth leather, breathed in the scent of it, and flipped the clasp. He opened the bag and looked down at all the little bottles nestled there.

  He didn’t want to think any more tonight. He wanted to escape it all for just a while: McCreedy and Crane and Grady and his own useless misery. He reached for the ether and drew it out. He shook the little bottle and watched the liquid slosh inside. He opened it and tipped a little against the cuff of his sleeve. He closed the bottle again and set it on the floor.

  He just wanted to sleep for a while. Just sleep.

  He climbed onto his cot. He raised his wrist to his face and inhaled.

  Sleep took him almost instantly.

  Elijah was hurting.

  A blind man could see.

  When Grady had seen him getting pushed around—getting mocked—in the street by Crane and his men, something inside him had snapped, and only Dale’s hand on his shoulder had kept him from barreling into a fight he couldn’t win.

  “None of your business,” Dale had said.

  Grady had shaken him off. “What if it fucking is?”

  “How is it?” Dale had asked. “Let Crane teach the kid to keep his mouth shut.”

  It wasn’t Elijah’s silence that Grady had been concerned with. He’d exchanged a look with Matt.

  Dale had been quiet for a while, and then he’d snorted. “You remember that dog? What’d you call it?”

  “Scout,” Grady had said. He’d been twelve. Picked up some mongrel down in Cheyenne. A half-starved, half-wild thing. Figured he could train it up or something. Even now he wasn’t sure what he’d thought, except he hadn’t been able to bear to leave it to starve or get kicked to death. He’d had it a year before it turned on him one day and bit him, and Uncle Robert had dragged it out back and put a bullet in it. “That ain’t what this is, Dale.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  He’d followed Elijah home.

  Kissed him.

  Had never kissed a man before.

  Elijah was different.

  Grady had always known there was a certain understanding that passed between men like him; a handshake, a nod, even a single glance was all it took to reach an accord. But what Elijah had given him was different. With other men, Grady had shared a secret. They were still strangers when it was over, with no obligation except for silence. Elijah though . . . It felt like Elijah had given Grady all his secrets in that kiss because he didn’t have any practice hiding them. He wasn’t used to being noticed. And Grady had responded to Elijah’s vulnerability with protectiveness. Because the kid was hurting. Because he was making a mistake with Crane. Because he was alone, and he was afraid, and he deserved better than anything, and anyone, South Pass City had to offer.

  Something about that pulled at Grady long after he’d left.

  When he was eleven, Grady’s father had died. He’d been in an accident at the mill and crushed his hand. The doctor had amputated, but the wound became gangrenous. Grady could still remember the stench to this day, as though it had crawled into some place in his throat that he’d never been able to hack clear. The stench had gotten so bad toward the end, pervading the entire house, that Grady had been sent to sleep with the family across the street. Then, a week later, to live with his cousins.

  Eleven wasn’t old enough to understand why he’d been packed off to live with strangers and why, once his father was buried, his mother didn’t send for him. He wrote to her. Frantically at first, his letters full of pleas and promises he couldn’t keep. As the months passed and her replies failed to address his entreaties, he wrote less often. After that, it was like writing to a stranger, their letters full of talk about the weather, or the news in town, as though these were the only things that connected them. When she got remarried to a man who didn’t want to raise another man’s son, the letters became more infrequent.

  Strange, what paths lives took. How they diverged. Twisted and shot off in a new direc
tion like a budding growth on a tree. Chance and circumstance and forces beyond any man’s control.

  And sometimes it brought people crashing together who maybe had no business being that way. But Grady wasn’t letting go of Elijah now.

  Dawson the butcher was a drunk. His hand shook when he lifted his cup to his mouth, and his skin had an unhealthy yellowish shine to it, like a jaundiced infant. “I’ll take a goddamn horsewhip to the simple deaf cunt if he even thinks of talking to Sherlock!”

  Grady wondered how satisfying it would feel to plant his fist in Dawson’s nose. “The kid’s pa just died. He didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “You gonna risk your neck on that?” Dawson slurred.

  Harlan Crane shoved the bottle toward him. “There’ll be no need for horsewhipping, I think. Elijah’s been spoken to. He knows his place.”

  “We don’t want any trouble,” Dale said.

  Crane inclined his head. “He’ll be no trouble. He’s all bark and no bite.”

  “A bark is all it takes,” Dale said.

  Crane smiled. “Well, forgive the expression then. You have my assurance that when it comes to this enterprise, young Elijah possesses neither bark nor bite.” He lifted his glass in Dale’s direction.

  Dale settled back, mollified.

  The Empire was quiet. There were a few customers sitting around the tables, drinking coffee with their whiskey and, Grady guessed, a few more still sleeping off their hangovers in the rooms upstairs, entangled with Crane’s girls. But mostly trade was slow on a Saturday morning.

  A woman dumped a load of fresh sawdust on top of last night’s soiled stuff and began to sweep it over the floor.

  Grady thought of Elijah, and of that kiss.

  He’d thought of it most the night as well. Sleep, when it had come, had been full of strange dreams. Grady had dreamed that he was caught in a flood. He’d seen Dale and Matt and Cody on the other side of the sudden water. There was no rain, no clouds, but somehow the water was still rising, rushing down from the arteries that cut through the rocky land and rising on the plain. The Sweetwater had burst its banks.

  “Come on!” Dale had yelled at him above the sound of the muffled water, but Grady couldn’t move. He’d tugged on the reins of his horse only to turn and find the animal had dissolved into mud.

  When he’d looked again, his cousins were gone.

  The dream was hard to shake, even in the daylight.

  Crane held the bottle out toward him, the question in his smile.

  “Too early for me,” Grady said, curling his fingers around his coffee instead.

  “Clean living,” Crane smiled, his dark eyes bright with amusement.

  “Hardly,” Grady said.

  Crane laughed.

  A girl trailed down the stairs, wiping sleep from her kohl-rimmed eyes. She had dirty-blonde hair and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She didn’t look much older than a kid.

  “Good morning, Lizzy.”

  The girl showed a dimpled smile. “Good morning, Harlan.”

  “Come over here and sit on my knee,” Crane said.

  The girl giggled and obeyed.

  “Now,” Crane said, “these gentlemen here are my very good friends. Mr. Dawson, the butcher, and these here are the Mullins boys.”

  “Good morning, gentlemen. I’m right pleased to meet you.” She twirled a limp ringlet on her finger.

  Dawson squinted at the girl and then reached for the bottle.

  Crane slid a hand up the girl’s plump thigh, revealing her flesh as he did. Grady saw mottled bruises. Fingerprints. He wondered if they were Crane’s or a customer’s. Wondered if Crane left bruises on Elijah as well. That was his reputation.

  The girl giggled again and squirmed in his lap.

  Crane whispered something in her ear, and the girl scrambled off his lap and onto Cody’s. Cody grinned like a fool.

  “On the house,” Crane said and left the table.

  Grady finished his coffee and left the Empire with Matt. The big man, Walt, was on the door like always, and he tipped his hat at them. They hadn’t gone more than a few steps before Harlan Crane reappeared, a newspaper tucked under his arm, and looking every inch the gentleman.

  “Not staying?” he asked, a knowing smile playing on his lips. “It may be too early in the morning for liquor, Grady, but pussy?”

  “That’s a matter of opinion, surely.”

  “Well, in my experience, it’s a man of very contrary opinions who’ll turn down an eager thing like that.”

  Grady stood his ground, aware that Matt was shifting from foot to foot at his side.

  “You’ve certainly got an opinion about young Elijah.” Crane smiled. “Unless I’m mistaken.”

  Grady’s chest tightened. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all.” Crane looked him up and down. “Like I said, the boy knows his place.”

  “I guess he does.”

  “Well, good day then.”

  Grady nodded and watched Crane step back onto the porch of the Empire. He said something to Walt, and the bearded man craned his neck to stare at Grady and Matt.

  Grady clapped his hand to Matt’s shoulder, and they headed down the dusty street.

  “What in the hell was that?” Matt asked. “He know you’re sniffing after that kid?” His face twisted as realization hit. “Jesus, is Crane fucking him already?”

  “Hush your voice,” Grady said. “The street ain’t no place to talk about it.”

  Matt caught his coat sleeve. “Grady. Come on now. You’re preaching to me about coveting what another man owns, and that kid is Crane’s?”

  “Yeah, and you saw how Crane treats him,” Grady said in a low voice.

  Matt nodded. “Yeah. I saw.” His eyes were wide with worry.

  Matt and his damned Beadle’s Dime Novels. He bought three new ones at the general store. Afterward, he and Grady had lunch at the Idaho House hotel, and Matt set the books on the table while they ate.

  “Cody’s always saying I waste my money on these,” he said. “But that’s thirty cents right there, and he spent more money on whiskey last night. Besides, when I’m done, Martha reads them.” Color crept over him. “And Kate.”

  Grady couldn’t help the snort of amusement that escaped him, thinking of Matt passing his dog-eared dime novels onto Kate like love tokens. The pair of them sharing lurid tales of adventure and danger.

  “Grady.” Matt stirred sugar into his tea. “What do you think about the ranch?”

  Grady shrugged.

  “I mean, we’re no closer now than a year ago, are we?” Matt wrinkled his nose. “I try to ask Dale, but he waves me away like a gnat.”

  Grady sighed. “I think it’s not gonna happen. I think when men like Harper and Smith are thinking of selling out to the big ranches, then how the hell are we supposed to get a foot in the door? I sometimes think we’re no smarter than all those fools scratching in the dirt expecting to find gold.”

  “There’s still cheap land if you go west,” Matt said. “California, maybe.”

  “Yeah. But Dale won’t leave Wyoming. Which I guess leaves all of us stuck at Ham’s Fork.” He snorted again. “Until we get caught.”

  “Dale’s fixed on buying Pa’s land back,” Matt said somberly. “Like it’s any different than any other piece of dirt.”

  It was.

  It had been Grady’s home too, until Uncle Robert had lost it because of his gambling debts. But Grady had already let it go. It belonged to memory now, that small parcel of land outside Ham’s Fork that had been swallowed up by Bram Harper’s ranch. What did it matter if he remembered the way the golden aspens whispered in the breeze or how the branches of the cottonwood reached out over the creek? What did it matter if he’d once run barefoot on that land?

  “Sometimes you gotta cut the past loose,” Grady said, “before it drags you down.”

  Matt ran his fingertips over the cover of the topmost dime novel, tracing the pict
ure of an Indian. “Well, when you figure a way to get that through Dale’s head, you let me know.”

  In the morning, none of it felt real, and Elijah almost believed he’d conjured it all from loneliness and ether. He lay on his cot and watched the ceiling for a while, thinking of Crane’s threat and Grady’s kiss. The fear and the wonder of both were like a faint memory. Neither translated into the sunlit morning. They both faded, as insubstantial as a dream, and left nothing behind but Elijah’s quiet, fierce resolution to find Francis McCreedy and kill him.

  He dressed, ate sparingly, and went to work.

  It had rained again overnight, just light enough to paint the grass on the hills with wetness and bring out the fresh, hidden scent of the dirt. The sunlight made the damp world shine. In the streets, the rain wasn’t so cleansing: boots and hooves and wheels churned the damp earth to mud.

  The bells on the shop door danced as he entered. He took his apron from the hook, tied it on, and waited for Dawson, summoned by the bells, to come and start on him.

  Dawson was twice the asshole he usually was, punishing Elijah for his refusal to come in the night before. Not that the shit jobs weren’t always Elijah’s, but today it wasn’t good enough for him to scrub the floor on his hands and knees or take apart the meat grinder and clean each part in hot, soapy water until his hands were raw. Today he had to do everything twice. Even Lovell, who’d worked all night, wasn’t sympathetic. Elijah’s empty threat to tell the deputy had been aimed only at Dawson but had a much wider scope. Lovell, Grady and his friends, and even Crane. It was no wonder Dawson was in a filthy temper.

  It didn’t help when Thaddeus Sherlock entered the shop at noon and asked to see Elijah.

  Elijah wiped his wet hands on his apron, avoided Dawson’s narrow gaze, and followed Sherlock outside to speak to him.

  The street was busy. Men jostled back and forth on the wooden walks, keeping out of the mud and horseshit in the street.

  Elijah and Sherlock stood in the shade of the shop awning.

  “How’ve you been keeping, Elijah?” Sherlock asked. He looked faintly uncomfortable, the way people usually did around Elijah, like he was embarrassed for asking a question that forced Elijah to respond. Like he couldn’t possibly be embarrassed enough by his own affliction, so Sherlock was helping him shoulder the load.