Sweetwater

by Lisa Henry

  “I’m sorry,” he told the dirt. “I’m so sorry. I got no right to be here, but I miss you.”

  It was all right, maybe, to tell the earth that much.

  He knelt there, weeping, until the back of his neck was burned by the sun.

  Sometimes Elijah didn’t know what was worse: the loss of Dr. Carter, who was his cornerstone, or the loss of Grady, who was something Elijah hadn’t figured out yet. Sometimes he didn’t know, and then hated himself for daring to wonder.

  That’s when he lost the nights to ether, and the days bled together.

  He somehow still dragged himself to work, though.

  The bells on the shop door jangled as someone pushed it open. The light reflecting off them drew his attention. The woman ignored him as she approached the counter and began to speak to Mrs. Dawson. She had a small boy in tow. He stared at Elijah.

  Elijah was too tired to have a reaction. He’d been tired all day and was fighting against it. He’d used the last of the ether to sleep last night, and now his mouth tasted sour and his head was filled with cotton. He took the broom from the corner and began to sweep the floor. The bristles stirred up the dust motes, and he watched them dance in the columns of light that slanted through the windows.

  He shifted the dust around some more, then put the broom back. Time to clean the floor in the back room. He hated that the most. It stank, and the floorboards were slippery with blood and fat at the end of the day. It congealed in the spaces between the floorboards and had to be scrubbed out. Some days the stench of it was so bad, it turned his guts.

  Elijah went outside and fetched a bucket and the lye soap. He worked the bristles of the scrubbing brush through the water until he had a decent lather, then hauled the bucket inside.

  Dawson, cleaver in hand, glowered at him. “Leave that!”

  Elijah set the bucket down, slopping water on the floor. “Sir?”

  “Leave it,” Dawson said. “We’re working late tonight.”

  “Late?” Elijah straightened up. “Are the cowboys coming?”

  “Keep your fucking voice down,” Dawson snapped. “Shop’s still open!”

  He slammed the cleaver down, separating bone. Blood splattered over his hands. One day, Elijah thought, he’ll be so drunk, he’ll miss and take off his fingers. Would serve him right too.

  “Come back after dark,” Dawson said.

  “Yes, sir.” Elijah took his bucket and emptied it outside the back door. The soapy water swirled around his boots, and he squinted up into the cloudless sky. He sighed, the tension he’d been holding in his muscles for the last week bleeding away just like that.

  Just that simple.

  And all because Grady was coming back to South Pass City.

  Elijah swung the shuddering gate closed on the last beast, lifting his feet to ride the rest of the way. In the moonlight, he couldn’t see Grady’s face. Not until he tilted his head back and flashed Elijah a quick smile. He smiled back, the shape of it feeling strange, as though his muscles had forgotten which way to move and were only just now remembering. Felt good, though.

  The cowboys took their money. Their leader tipped his hat at Dawson, and then they were gone. To stable their horses, and choose their hotel, and wash the dust from the trails away before they went to spend their money.

  Tonight. Tonight Elijah would find Grady, or Grady would find him, and they’d take their comfort again. He wanted to feel Grady's skin under his fingers, to relearn the places where it was roughened by the weather, by stubble, by scars and calluses. He’d feel Grady’s hands on him in return, drawing heat into his flesh, drawing sighs and moans out of him. Maybe Elijah would even ask Grady if he’d thought of him when he was sleeping under that big, empty sky.

  They worked hard and fast. Lovell stunned the beasts instead of Dawson, whose hands were shaking worse than usual, and Lovell was quick and always accurate. There was one yearling that needed to be run down inside the pen, mad with terror when the smell of blood hit it, but Elijah got the rope around it in the end and dragged it to a stop. Murmured soft noises into its flickering ear to gentle it before Lovell stunned it. He pitied it too. He always pitied them a little, since nobody else did.

  They were done a little past midnight, the butchered carcasses hanging from hooks to be finished off in the morning. Most would be moved to the smokehouse, but it was nothing that couldn’t wait a few hours, and Dawson was desperate for a drink.

  Elijah washed his arms and face in the tub by the back door.

  “Elijah,” Dawson said before he could leave. Held up an envelope. “Take this to Mr. Crane.”

  Elijah took it, his stomach twisting.

  “You understand me, you simple deaf cunt?”

  “Yes, sir,” Elijah said, narrowing his eyes. “I understand you.”

  Lovell shot him a worried look.

  Elijah shoved the envelope into his pocket. Didn’t matter. He’d give the money to Crane and get the hell out. He had Grady waiting for him. So fuck Crane. Elijah didn’t owe the man anything.

  His courage was hollow, though. He was afraid. This thing with Crane . . . He didn’t know how to say no to the man. Wait. He knew how to say no, but Crane didn’t know how to listen. In the beginning, Elijah had liked that about him. Admired it. Crane was a man who took what he wanted, what he believed the world owed him, and made no fucking apologies about it. Elijah had wanted to be that sort of man too—proud, unflinching. But Crane was really nothing but a bully, and Elijah was nothing but a coward.

  He walked through town, his shoulders hunched inward a little, wary of the men he passed and the sounds of their voices, their laughter, that chased him like shallow waves. He kept his head down and his face turned away.

  The lights of the Empire still drew men in, even at this late hour. Elijah walked up the shallow steps, the boards shifting under his weight. Walt nodded at him, narrow eyed as a snake.

  Inside, Crane was waiting at his usual table, his face wreathed in the smoke from a cigar. His eyes dark and knowing.

  Elijah stopped in the door. Saw Grady sitting at another table, and his heart clenched when Grady lifted up his head to look at him. Elijah dropped his gaze and walked to Crane instead. Just business. Just to deliver the envelope, and then . . . and then whatever Crane wanted because Elijah was weak.

  “Good evening, Elijah,” Crane said. He pulled a chair out beside him.

  Elijah sat. He could feel the heat of Grady’s gaze. He didn’t turn around. “I got money for you, sir, from Dawson.”

  “Drink,” Crane said, pushing a bottle toward him.

  He drank. It burned.

  They sat in silence for a while. He kept his gaze fixed on the table while Crane puffed on his cigar and looked around the barroom. Followed the progress of one of his girls, his stare fixing on her swaying hips.

  “Pretty thing,” he said. “Nothing you can’t get from a boy’s ass, though, with about half the fucking bullshit.”

  Elijah’s face burned.

  Crane dropped a hand to his knee and squeezed. Slid it upward, and Elijah flinched. He didn’t want this, not with Grady watching. Didn’t want it anyway, anymore. Not from Crane.

  Crane’s grip tightened on his thigh. “You’re not very talkative tonight, Elijah, when I can tell there’s something you’re just burning to say.”

  Elijah clamped his lips shut and shook his head.

  “Upstairs,” Crane said, rising to his feet.

  Elijah made to follow, but suddenly there was a body blocking his path.

  Grady.

  Relief overcame him as he looked into Grady’s face. Relief, with horror following close at its heels. People were watching now. Watching and listening.

  “You sure you want to do that, Elijah?” Grady asked in a low voice.

  “Gotta,” Elijah said, his voice cracking. “I gotta.”

  I don’t want to, but I have to.

  Don’t make a scene. Please don’t.

  It’s you I want, bu
t I have to do this too.

  People are looking. Please don’t.

  Crane stood at Elijah’s back. “You got some claim here, Grady?”

  Grady’s brow creased. His wind-chapped lips quirked. “No, I got no claim. But maybe you got none, either. Elijah?”

  “I gotta,” he whispered.

  “You heard the boy,” Crane said.

  “Elijah,” Grady said. He reached out and caught Elijah’s wrist. “Come with me.”

  Where? To his hotel? To the cabin? To some other place under the big sky? Where the fuck could Grady take him? Elijah had taken comfort in Grady, and he wanted more, but what about when Grady was gone again? Elijah had to live in this town. Had to walk down its streets and somehow hold his head up. Grady wasn’t his salvation, couldn’t be.

  Elijah shook his head.

  “Get out, Grady,” Crane said. “You’re not welcome to drink here anymore tonight.”

  Grady ignored him. “Elijah?”

  Crane raised his voice. “Get out, and don’t show your face here again!”

  “Don’t . . .” Grady said, releasing his grip on Elijah. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Elijah backed away.

  No. He shouldn’t say shit like that where anyone might hear it, might guess what was going on here. Men were watching, listening, their mouths moving in low speculation. Elijah couldn’t hear and didn’t need to. He knew exactly what they were saying. The truth.

  Walt appeared at Grady’s elbow. “Get the fuck out!”

  Grady showed him his hands, but his gaze was still on Elijah’s burning face. Waiting for something that Elijah couldn’t give him.

  Walt grabbed him by the belt and dragged him away. Pushed him out the front doors and followed, laughing. Elijah watched as Grady’s cousins left too, silent and grim faced.

  His heart was pounding. Most of the customers in the barroom were still watching. And fuck, Mr. Cleaver was here again tonight. So was Mr. Casper from the general store. And Archibald Morris, another newspaperman. By morning, half the fucking town would be whispering about the things Elijah Carter did.

  He twisted his head to look at Crane and saw the smirk playing around the man’s lips.

  “Fucking cowboys,” Crane said. “They spend all their time living like heathen savages and forget their good manners when they come back into town. Bad enough to come into an establishment like mine and paw the girls with no intention of paying, hmm?” His eyes narrowed. “But worse to try and steal this little cocksucker away from me!”

  A roar in Elijah’s head. Blood. Rage. The sudden swell of voices from the men in the saloon. Laughter and disbelief and disgust.

  Elijah Carter.

  Simple deaf cunt.

  Cocksucker.

  Whore.

  Elijah had formed a fist before he even knew it. He saw the surprise flash in Crane’s eyes as it connected. Not hard enough to take him down but enough to make him stumble backward a step or two.

  Elijah turned, headed for the door, for Grady—Wait, please, take me with you. Take me anywhere away from here—but then there was another fist flying. Walt’s. It connected hard with Elijah’s jaw. White pain exploded in his skull. He dropped to his knees but wasn’t finished falling. He put his hands out to try to catch himself, missed somehow, and crashed face-first into the floor.

  “God damn it!” Grady spun as his boots hit the street. He put his fists up.

  Cody caught him around the neck, the crook of his elbow tight around Grady’s throat. Dragged him away from the Empire, from where Walt was laughing at the top of the steps. “Settle down, Grady.”

  “Let me go! Fucking let me go!”

  Then Dale was up in his face. “You wanna go back inside? You know what they’ll fucking do to you? We walk away. We fucking walk away.”

  “Let go!” Grady dug his fingers into Cody’s arm until Cody grunted in pain and released him. Grady doubled over, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. “Fuck you.”

  His cousins boxed him in.

  “Jesus.” Grady straightened up. His anger was already drowning under the rush of hopelessness that overcame him.

  “He made his choice,” Dale said in a low voice.

  “Bullshit he did,” Grady said. “Bullshit.” The look in Elijah’s eyes had been stricken. He hadn’t wanted to—there was no mistaking that look—but he’d chosen Crane all the same. It was the eyes that always gave Elijah away. That silent, secret boy with eyes that said too much. “He’s got nobody to look out for him!”

  Dale glowered. “And that ain’t your problem!”

  True.

  Except that Grady had made Elijah his problem weeks before. No, not his problem. His interest. Elijah had caught his eye before he’d even known his name: that quiet, skinny butcher’s boy with his scruffy hair and his shop apron tied around his hips. Even back then, Grady figured he might have cared more than he had any right to care. But after those few nights spent together in Elijah’s cabin, he couldn’t even begin to pretend that Elijah didn’t matter to him. Those nights where Elijah had let Grady peel back his defenses and see the raw vulnerability underneath. There was no power in the world that could take those nights back or make Grady forget them.

  Grady spat, trying to get rid of the taste of bile in his throat.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel,” Matt said. “Come on.”

  “Let’s get a goddamn drink,” Grady said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

  Of course, Dale and Cody were in agreement.

  The Nugget was down the street from the Empire, and it got a different class of clientele. Not that the Empire was anything approaching exclusive, but it was more expensive than the Nugget. The whiskey at the Nugget only cost ten cents, though it burned worse than turpentine. So did the girls who worked in the place, probably.

  The Nugget stank of vomit and piss. There wasn’t even any sawdust on the floor to soak up the worst of the mess.

  There was no room at the tables, so they stood at the bar.

  Grady choked down a stinging whiskey and tried not to think about what Crane was doing to Elijah over at the Empire. It wasn’t even jealousy that sat like a deadweight in his gut; it was worry.

  “You still sore?” Dale asked him after the bartender poured his second whiskey.

  Grady fixed him with a baleful stare.

  Dale showed him his palms. “You ain’t mad enough to go running back in there, I mean. Get yourself killed for some kid you don’t even know.”

  “Who says I don’t know him?” Grady held the rim of his glass between his thumb and forefinger and rolled the base on the bar. Watched the liquor swirl inside.

  “Can’t know someone after only a few days.”

  Wrong.

  Grady would always know Elijah better than he knew any other man he’d ever met. Elijah felt like a secret Grady had somehow stumbled onto. Grady had seen him bold, seen him angry, seen him transformed by need, and seen his face washed of all expression as he slept. Grady had looked a little closer than most people, he guessed, because Elijah had caught his eye. He’d pushed a little more than he should have, but what had been the harm in trying? He could have walked away when he was done.

  Somehow he’d found more than he’d been expecting. He’d found a smart kid, a lonely kid, a kid who was making mistakes. A kid who needed someone on his side. A kid trying too hard to be a man, who was crumbling under the weight of his grief. Turned out Grady couldn’t walk away from that at all.

  “Grady,” Dale said, frowning. “You won’t go back to the Empire, will you?”

  “No.” Grady threw back the whiskey. “I won’t.”

  Outside the Empire, Crane wasn’t king. There was nothing to stop Grady from going to Elijah’s cabin and waiting for him there. He’d wait, and when Elijah arrived, Grady would take him by the shoulder and hold his gaze to make sure he was hearing him.

  He’d tell him he was sorry for making a scene.

  Tell him it didn’t matter if he
was fucking Crane too.

  Tell him he still wanted him.

  Tell me what you need, he’d say, and the answer would spill haltingly from Elijah’s lips. And whatever it was, Grady would make it happen. He’d rescue Elijah from all his grief and loneliness. In the cabin, Grady would be Elijah’s savior. In the cabin, he thought, his impotent rage building again, because he sure as hell hadn’t been able to save Elijah at the Empire.

  “Another,” he said, pushing his glass across the bar.

  Dale slapped him on the back.

  That was an end to it, maybe. An end to his cousins’ sympathy. Not that Grady wanted that. Just wanted some acknowledgment that Elijah going with Crane wasn’t right. Grady turned his head and met Matt’s gaze. Saw understanding there, and quirked his mouth in a sour grin. Yeah, Matt knew how it felt to stand back and watch another man take what he wanted. What he loved. Matt knew the sting.

  He wondered if Kate Bannister’s eyes were full of the same misery Elijah’s were when she turned her gaze on Matt.

  The world was a lonely enough place. You found someone who made it seem a little warmer, you wanted to do the same for them. It hurt to fail.

  “You think Crane meant that about Grady not being allowed back in?” Cody asked after a while. “I mean, for tonight, or forever?”

  “I don’t give a damn,” Grady said. “Any business we got with him, I’m done. Dale can deal with him. I wouldn’t spend my money in his place again if he fucking begged me to.”

  He almost laughed at himself. As though a man like Harlan Crane would miss Grady’s couple of dollars every few weeks.

  “Ain’t you I’m worried about,” Cody drawled. “Crane’s got the best girls in South Pass City. Hope we ain’t all banned is all. Well, me and Dale. I know Crane ain’t selling anything you want, Grady, and I’m starting to think Matty don’t have any balls.” He threw back his head and laughed.

  Matt compressed his lips into a thin line.

  And that right there was the cost of loving the wrong person. Bearing it silently. Stoically. A burden instead of a joy. He wondered how long Matt had kept his secret before he’d finally confided in Grady.