by Lisa Henry
Didn’t want God.
Didn’t want the comfort that Grady offered, at least not only the comfort.
Wanted what Crane gave him as well.
Walt was on the door, like always. His beard cracked open with a yellow-toothed smile when he saw Elijah, and he said something in a low voice to the whore standing next to him. She was a plump girl with brassy hair that made her look sickly pale. Whatever Walt said made her laugh.
Elijah walked inside, regardless.
Careless.
Maybe faithless.
He didn’t know about that. He wasn’t sure enough of what he was to Grady to be thinking in terms of faith anyhow. He didn’t owe the man anything, except his life, and he wasn’t certain what that was worth. They hadn’t made any promises. None said aloud, anyway. In the dark, in the quiet, with Grady holding him, the air had been full of unspoken promises, but Elijah didn’t know if he had conjured them from nothing but loneliness and the need for comfort, or whether Grady had felt them as well.
Mr. Cleaver was drinking in the Empire tonight. No girl on his lap, though. He was reading the newspaper and talking to the man beside him. George Scully, the draper. Mr. Scully looked up, surprised, when Elijah walked in, then nodded and went back to listening to Cleaver.
Elijah wondered what they were talking about tonight. The railroad. Gold. The Shoshone or the Arapaho or the Sioux. The indignity of a woman justice. All those old arguments that had been dredged up around the faro board in Dr. Carter’s cabin every Sunday afternoon and never resolved. Just talked at, over and over again, until any points they’d made were just buried in empty noise. A part of Elijah missed it. Another part of him, the part that ruled him now, wanted to laugh at the futility of it.
He didn’t even flinch when Mr. Scully saw him sit down at Crane’s table.
He was allowed to drink with the man, wasn’t he?
Crane slid the bottle of whiskey over to him. No glass. Elijah lifted the bottle to his lips. The liquor burned.
“Where’ve you been, boy?”
Elijah glanced at Mr. Scully and Mr. Cleaver. They weren’t paying him any mind. “Been around, sir.”
“Is that so?” Crane’s smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “You might hurt a man’s pride, Elijah, by not coming begging. A man kicks a mongrel out onto the street, he expects it to come crawling back on its belly.”
The whiskey warmed Elijah’s guts, and Crane’s words gave him gooseflesh. “I ain’t a dog, sir.”
“No,” Crane agreed. “A dog’s got some loyalty.”
Elijah didn’t know if he should be afraid or not. He wasn’t. Crane would punish him, would hurt him, and Elijah would love it. These were the roles they played in this strange game. It was no stranger than the one he played with Grady, though, where Elijah was something soft and gentle and precious.
“I was just doing what you said, sir.” Elijah drank again, keeping his gaze fixed on Crane’s face. He licked his lips to chase the taste of the whiskey, and Crane’s eyes narrowed. Heated. “A dog don’t come unless it’s called, neither.”
Crane’s smile broadened. “Clever boy.”
Elijah watched Crane watch him. His heart beat faster in the absolute certainty of this moment where no words—their meaning distorted by nuance and interpretation and a million other vagaries—were necessary. This was a language that Elijah understood. It was unequivocal. He lifted the bottle to his mouth again, tipped his head back and swallowed fast. The burn was good. Crane reached out for the bottle, took it, and rose to his feet. He walked toward the stairs.
Elijah counted the beats of his heart—three, four, five—before he stood and followed. He had enough whiskey in him now to warm his blood and to blunt all the edges of his fear. Enough not to care if Mr. Scully and Mr. Cleaver saw him follow Harlan Crane up the stairs. What the hell did it prove anyhow? Maybe he was climbing the stairs to pay a visit to one of the whores.
He trailed his fingers along the wall.
Crane didn’t look behind him. Didn’t have to, Elijah guessed. There had never been any question that he would follow. It was as inevitable as the first time.
In the narrow passageway at the top of the stairs where the shadows cast by the lanterns danced, Elijah thought suddenly about Grady’s big skies. Once, at night, Elijah might have climbed the road up to the graveyard, drawn by the silver moonlight, or by storm clouds and the promise of thunder. Running wild, and always alone. He wondered what it might feel like to sleep under an open sky with someone. With Grady.
His footsteps faltered.
At the end of the passageway, Crane opened his door.
Elijah kept his eyes on the floor, unwilling to glance sideways into the girls’ rooms as he passed them. He stepped into Crane’s room and closed the door behind him.
The familiar Turkish carpet. The open doors to the balcony. The curtains shifting in the dusty breeze. The bed. Crane’s smirk, his fingers pulling at the knot of his necktie, that unspoken command in his eyes. From just that one look, Elijah could see the night unfolding in front of him. He knew his place with Crane.
Elijah turned the key in the lock.
“No.”
Even now, even after, Elijah didn’t know where the word had come from. That one word, forced out between his grunts and whimpers. One word that was articulate enough, loud enough, to have given Crane pause. He had twisted his fingers in Elijah’s hair and pulled his head back.
“What did you say to me?”
Elijah fastened his underwear as Crane reclined on the bed. He bent down to step into his trousers and winced at the sharp pain inside him. He was bleeding, he thought.
His own fault. He’d had plenty of chances to turn back, but he hadn’t. He’d told himself it was inevitable, a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was too late to discover he hadn’t really wanted it at all, once Crane was already fucking him.
And hadn’t he come looking for the pain, or at least the certainty that Crane offered? To know his place. It was easier to find it at the Empire than under a shifting field of stars.
“Shut your mouth, bitch.”
And Elijah had.
He buttoned his shirt with shaking fingers, then bent over once more to pick up his coat from the floor. He shrugged it on.
“Come here.”
He looked at Crane.
“Come here, I said.” Crane hauled himself into a seated position, planting his bare feet on the floor. His toenails were yellow and cracked.
Elijah walked toward the bed.
“You are a contrary little bitch tonight, boy,” Crane said. “That’s it. Look at me with reproach in those big eyes. You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? There isn’t a secret in this fucking town that I don’t know.”
Elijah’s heart raced.
Crane curled his lip. “Fetch the whiskey from the bureau.”
I want to go home.
“That’s it,” Crane said, as Elijah crossed to the bureau. “Bring it here, boy.”
He was seized with a sudden wild impulse to smash the bottle against Crane’s temple, to drop him like a beast in the slaughtering yard. His hand shook as he held out the bottle.
Crane took it, swigged, and stared at Elijah balefully. “You think you’re something special now that Grady’s been sniffing around you?”
“No, sir.”
“You ain’t,” Crane said. “You’re still mine, Elijah, and you ought to remember your place. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” he whispered.
Crane narrowed his eyes. “What’s he give you? Some dirty goddamn rustler who’ll end his days on a fucking rope?”
Comfort.
“You fucking cunt,” Crane said. “You’d roll over for any man in town, wouldn’t you?”
Elijah shook his head. “No, sir.”
Just you. Just you and Grady.
Except he hadn’t rolled over for Grady, had he? He’d sought him out like a bitch in heat because that night Crane would
n’t give him what he’d wanted. If he had, Elijah wouldn’t have ever known there was any other way. Grady’s fingers in his hair, gentle. His warm breath bringing out gooseflesh on Elijah’s skin. His murmured words of affection, pitched just so Elijah could hear them.
He suddenly wanted to believe it was real. That Grady, somewhere out there under the big sky, was thinking about him.
Crane snorted. He parted his legs, his cock stiffening again. “Get on your knees, boy.”
“No.”
Crane reached out and grabbed his arm and pulled him close, wrenched him down. The bottle tumbled to the floor, whiskey splashing Elijah’s feet. Crane clamped his other hand on Elijah’s shoulder, forcing him to his knees. Whiskey soaked into his trousers.
“Do it,” Crane said. “One hint of teeth, mind, and you’ll regret it.”
Elijah already regretted it. He raised his hand to his mouth, licking whiskey off his palm. Dropped his gaze as Crane’s finger curled in his hair. Opened his mouth and closed his stinging eyes. Nothing he hadn’t done before, however much it turned his guts now.
Brief sorrow, and short-lived care.
Elijah tried to remember the rest of the hymn. He remembered staring at his boots to keep from staring at Emily, whose smile was pretty and kind. He remembered the gentle weight of Dr. Carter’s hand on his shoulder as the sound of the hymn washed back and forth over him, as dull as the roar of the Sweetwater in flood. He could see the tiny print in the hymnal, pages thin as rice paper and promises even thinner.
The morning shall awaken,
The shadows flee away,
And each truehearted servant
Shall shine as doth the day.
Elijah kept his eyes closed as Crane fucked his mouth, his throat. The floorboards hummed a little under his wet knees, music and revelry from downstairs. Feet stomping to the rhythm of some song that Elijah would never hear.
He missed Grady.
“I ain’t here, but you got me still.”
Elijah wished that were true.
“Look at me, boy,” Crane said. He slapped Elijah’s cheek. “Look at me with those sad fucking eyes.”
Elijah stared up at him, eyes watering. He struggled for breath, struggled not to gag.
Crane gripped his hair tightly, forcing his head back and forth. He grunted, the sound pushing his hairy belly out. He came, thick and sour in Elijah’s mouth, and pushed Elijah backward onto the floor. “Now we’re done. Get the fuck out.”
Elijah wiped his mouth on his sleeve, trying to rid himself of the man’s taste.
Crane spat on the floor. “And next time, boy, you’d best remember your manners.”
“Yes, sir.” He rose off the floor, shaking. He picked his hat up off the floor, jammed his feet into his boots, and fled.
On Friday morning, Elijah woke with the sun. His head ached from the whiskey last night. His throat was sore, and his ass too. When he went outside into the golden morning light to feed the chickens, he found dark bruises flowering on his wrist. Nothing his shirt couldn’t hide.
The chickens pecked around his bare feet for their dried corn.
Three eggs this morning. Elijah carried them inside, his gaze drifting again to the bruises on his wrists. He wanted not to see them, not to feel them. He wanted them to go away, so he didn’t have to think about how his shame and hurt was written on his skin.
No.
But Crane hadn’t listened.
It surprised him a little that it felt like a betrayal.
He really was simple after all.
Elijah set two eggs carefully on the shelf in the corner and put one in a pot to boil. He set the kettle on the stove as well. When it wasn’t quite boiling, he tipped the water into the washtub. He stripped off his underwear and crouched in the shallow water. He wiped himself clean with a damp cloth, one eye on the stove. When he saw the steam rising from the pot, the lid dancing as it rattled soundlessly, he got out of the tub and dressed.
He made coffee with the water he’d used for the egg.
Elijah sat at the table with his breakfast. He peeled the egg when it was still too hot, burning his fingertips. He crushed the pieces of shell into powder under his thumb. Stared at the powder. He ached, and not just his bruises. He was lonely.
When he was a kid, Dr. Carter used to make him toast soldiers. He used to take his charcoal sketching pencil from his desk and draw a faces on the shells of their eggs because it made them both laugh.
A shift in the light alerted him to the cabin door opening.
Grady? Grady, with his cracked lips and his rough stubble that somehow translated into softness.
He turned toward the door, heart racing. But the smile on his face fell as Thaddeus Sherlock walked inside.
“I knocked,” he said.
Elijah nodded his understanding.
“How are you keeping, Elijah?”
“Good, sir.”
Such a lie. He was pretty sure Sherlock saw right through it as well.
“Mind if I sit down?”
Elijah shook his head.
Sherlock’s boots moved across the floor, the boards lifting and falling with his weight, dust rising out of the gaps between them like the slow exhalation of breath. Elijah lifted his gaze to the man: the neatly trimmed beard, the thin mouth, the lines around his eyes from laughing. An honest face.
Sherlock sat beside Elijah at the end of the table, in Dr. Carter’s place.
“I’m sorry, Elijah,” he said and laid the paper on the table.
Harry McCreedy’s share in Adavale, signed over to Dr. Carter.
The blood roared in Elijah’s skull.
“Where . . . where did you find it?” Elijah could hardly force the words out.
Sherlock frowned and placed his hand on Elijah’s shoulder. “Wasn’t ever stolen, Elijah. Your pa took it to Mrs. Morris to get witnessed, and that’s where it’s been the whole time.”
Elijah ran his fingers over the top of the table, tracing the invisible stain. “Doesn’t mean . . . It doesn’t mean Francis McCreedy didn’t kill him anyhow.”
Sherlock sighed heavily. “Yeah, it does, Elijah. He was in Miner’s Delight with his woman. I already told you that. You hearing me?”
He heard the words, but they made no sense. He gazed up at the man, waiting for him to reveal the meaning, but there was nothing that Sherlock could say. No words that would stitch the tear that had already been ripped in Elijah’s world. That gaping hole grew, day by day.
“Yes, sir,” he said, his clumsy tongue and suddenly aching throat making a mess of the words. Zurr zurr zurr.
Sherlock’s mouth tightened. He squeezed Elijah’s shoulder.
Almost killed a man, Elijah wanted to tell him.
Hated a man enough to take a knife and go looking for him.
And he still hated Francis McCreedy. If what Sherlock said was true, that hatred was fucking baseless, but if Elijah let go of it now, he was afraid that he would be left holding nothing at all.
“They’re in Cheyenne now,” Sherlock said at last, dropping his hand from Elijah’s shoulder. “The McCreedy boys. Looking for work on the railroad. They ain’t comin’ back to South Pass City.”
He watched the man’s mouth to see if he had anything more to say, but there was nothing. Just his lips, pressed unhappily together, silent.
“Thank you for telling me, sir,” Elijah said at last.
Sherlock rose to his feet.
Left.
Elijah sat. Wasn’t sure for how long. Wasn’t aware that any time had passed at all until the stiffness in his limbs told him he ought to stand up. Ought to start moving. Except he didn’t know where to go.
Not work. Couldn’t deal with Dawson’s bullshit today, or Lovell’s sympathy.
Not the Empire. Not after last night. Didn’t want Crane’s gaze on him, let alone his touch.
He wanted Grady. Wanted those middle-of-the-night moments back, when he was hurting and Grady made it hurt a little less, smoo
thed the raw, jagged edges of his pain, just by holding him. Like it was the simplest thing in the world. Just touch, and quiet, and another heartbeat.
But Grady was somewhere in the hills, and Elijah didn’t know where. Didn’t know when he’d be back. Didn’t know if he even would come back. Promises were nothing, not really, not even if a man intended on keeping them. It was dangerous country.
Maybe it was ether he wanted, that sickly sweet smell that would send him sinking into sleep. Into oblivion.
No.
Elijah left the cabin, barefoot. The sun beat down on the back of his neck. He kicked rocks as he walked, just like when he was a kid. He half expected Emily Spicer to be walking beside him as he climbed the road up the hill behind the town. Emily, with her pretty wildflowers in her hands, and Elijah chasing lizards.
The graveyard was bright, sun bleached. The scrubby bushes grew close to the ground, funneled into strange shapes by the wind. His sisters were buried here somewhere, under some stone with no name on it. He remembered their flyaway hair and their thin, bubbling laughter. The baby was buried here too. Did Elijah’s dusty footsteps pass over them as he crossed the hard-packed earth?
There was no headstone on Dr. Carter’s grave. Just a wooden place marker sticking out of the dirt like a tilted mast until the stone came from Cheyenne. Not a fancy stone, but something enduring. Something that would stand half a chance against the wind and the dust. Dr. Carter deserved that.
Orville Carter, Elijah had written on the order. Beloved husband and father. That was all. That was enough. No verse from the Scriptures, either, because there was none Elijah could think of that didn’t ring hollow.
“You weren’t my father,” Elijah told the dirt. “You were better than I deserved.”
He sank to his knees on the ground, stones digging in.
There were a hundred things he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Not even now, because he was ashamed. About Crane and Grady mostly, and the things he’d done with them that would ensure he’d never meet Dr. Carter again in Heaven. If he could have told him that at least he’d killed the man who’d murdered him, maybe the rest wouldn’t seem so bad. But all Elijah had were failings—moral and physical and practical. Those were all he’d ever had.
