by Win Blevins
“Good-bye, Ten,” said Abby. “Eleven.”
“Don’t say ‘good-bye,’” Ten said. “Shawnees only use that word at funerals.”
“What do we say?” asked Sam.
“Paselo, wisheketoowe,” said Eleven.
“What does it mean, exactly?”
“‘Be careful, and be very strong,’” said Ten. “Then you walk away and say nothing more.”
“You can just say paselo for short,” said Eleven. “We do.”
Sam started to speak, but Ten interrupted. “Why don’t we shake hands first?”
They did. Abby offered hers too. Ten kissed Abby’s hand with style, and Eleven followed suit with a big grin.
Sam hesitated, and swallowed the lump in his throat before he spoke. “Paselo.”
“Paselo,” Ten and Eleven echoed.
The three Shawnees walked west down the main street, Captain Stuart in the middle.
Sam, Abby, and Grumble put their arms around each other and swayed the other direction, toward the hotel. It was a warm spring night, even after midnight, and light from the taverns and two hotels spilled into the street, just enough to take the edge off the darkness. All three were a little giddy, Sam from ale and the other two from winning a battle of wits. They came to an intersecting street. Even in the dark it looked muddy.
“Lad, you be the lady’s Sir Walter Raleigh,” said Grumble.
“What?”
“Put your shirt down for Abby to step on.”
Abby giggled.
“The devil with that,” said Sam, “but I’ll pick you up.”
Quick as a flash he did, and staggered into the mud.
Abby laughed with delight.
“This is not so deep,” Sam grunted out.
Came a voice—“Give us the bitch.”
They stopped dead still.
“Give us the bitch and you can go.”
Abby slipped out of Sam’s arms.
“I know that voice,” Abby said.
“Step out where we can see you,” said Sam.
Three of them stepped out. Elijah, Micajah, and Ned. Elijah held the shotgun in their direction.
“Clear out,” said Elijah with a jerk of his head. “We don’t want you.”
“Just the woman,” said Micajah.
“And the money she’s carrying,” said Ned.
“What money I have is on board,” said Abby.
“No, it ain’t,” said Elijah. “We went through everything. It ain’t there.”
“And we saw you sew them gold pieces into your corset,” said Ned.
“You want my … corset?”
Sam caught a hint of the theatrical in her tone. He didn’t think the robbers did.
“If you’re lucky, we won’t take what’s under it,” said Elijah.
“But we might,” said Micajah, “if you make it hard.”
They came closer. Micajah and Ned held wicked-looking knives. Elijah carried the shotgun and had a knife tucked into his belt. “Get gone,” he said, “unless you want what she’s got coming.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Sam. He wished to hell he had a weapon. He waited but Grumble didn’t speak up. “Grumble …,” he said with menace.
“I choose to stay with my friends,” said the trickster.
“Hmmpf!” said Elijah. “What an army! A woman, an old fart, and a kid.”
“Unarmed,” sneered Ned.
“This is gonna be fun,” said Elijah.
They stalked forward.
Sam looked desperately up and down the waterfront street. At this hour it was empty.
“Wait!” cried Abby. She hesitated. Tremulously, she went on. “I’ll give you what you want.”
Elijah laughed.
“I will. You may have my corset. I’ll strip right here in the street. You may have it.”
“I’ll take that little wrist sack, and the big one too,” Elijah growled.
“All right. First, I want you to make sure I’m not deceiving you. I sewed my gold pieces onto the stays of my corset, all six stays. Come up, you can feel them.”
She held her arms high.
Elijah grinned, hesitated, and then lumbered right up and stuck his face inches from hers.
She glared at him, commanding his hands to touch.
First he took the wrist bags and hung them from the arm that held the shotgun. Then he began to feel the stays one-handed.
“You think Elijah’s groping something more than gold pieces?” said Micajah.
“The gold would settle my lust,” said Ned.
“Gold is what it is,” said Elijah with a leer. His fingers seemed to cant a coin sideways.
“Satisfied?”
“It’s coins.”
“Everybody steady now. No one get excited. I’m going to unhook my dress.”
Abby’s hand went slowly to the back of her neck. Her fingers grasped something. Like a snake it darted under Elijah’s chin.
Elijah screamed, but the scream was drowned in a gurgle.
He crumpled, blood gushing his neck and chest.
Abby was holding a short, crimson knife.
Micajah bellowed and charged.
Abby grabbed Elijah’s shotgun in midair.
Grumble’s hand swooped to his boot, and he lunged at Ned with a knife.
Sam crashed into Micajah from the side.
An elbow cracked his skull.
Abby tried to point the shotgun, but it went off into the air.
Micajah drove Abby backwards. She tossed the gun away and gouged at his eyes.
Sam got his hands on Micajah’s throat. The big man roared to his feet. Abby backed off. Micajah picked Sam up under the arms and flung him backwards into the street.
Pain shot down his arms and legs. His back sank into the cold mud.
Micajah landed on him full weight.
Sam tried to roll, but mammoth weight held him down. Huge arms squeezed him to the giant’s chest.
Teeth bit his nose, and he screamed.
He wiggled violently, but the arms squeezed more fiercely.
He heard an explosion, maybe a shot.
He couldn’t suck breath in.
He closed his eyes and heaved his chest with all his might and got nothing.
The world darkened around the edges.
Suddenly the pressure eased.
Sam breathed. Then he looked.
Abby held a lady gun, small as a man’s palm, to Micajah’s temple.
“Let Sam go. Get up peaceably. Then run. One sneaky move and the second barrel goes into your brain.”
The air tasted like honey to Sam.
Micajah stood up. Abby went right with him, barrel to head.
Sam saw there was no second barrel on the little gun.
Footsteps slapped in mud, and then grew fainter.
“Ned’s run off. You better get going,” said Abby. She pushed his shoulder, and he turned.
“You killed my brother.”
“The pair of you dead would make a good night.”
Micajah stretched himself upward, his eyes wild with hatred.
Abby pushed the barrel so hard his head tilted. “Go!”
He ran.
“Help me with Grumble, quick. He’s hurt.”
Grumble’s face was cut, and his chest looked badly cut. His shirt was drenched with blood. They sat him up.
“Help,” he said.
Sam saw that his friend was about to die. Tears ran down his face.
“Help me get him up!”
As they struggled to lift him, a voice called out. “What’s going on?”
Damn it, thought Sam.
“Who’s there? Abby? Sam? What’s going on?”
Sly Stuart ran up and holding his lantern, lighted. He knelt next to Grumble.
“What happened?”
Abby told him. That’s how Sam found out she shot Ned with the lady gun first. “But I hit him in the collarbone, damn it!”
Sam told how she intimidated Micajah in
to running. “You scared the life out of me, Abby. That gun doesn’t have a second barrel.”
“Micajah didn’t know that, did he?”
The captain opened Grumble’s shirt and looked at the wound. “I can’t tell if it penetrated to the lung,” he said. “Hold that lantern close.” Sam did. “Still can’t see a damn thing.”
He inspected Elijah. A brief look was all he needed.
Sam looked closely at Elijah. All that flesh, bone, and muscle, still. It gave him the dreads. He looked at the eyes. He had never looked closely into dead eyes before. His mind was struck dumb, but his body ran chills all up and down.
Sly Stuart looked around. The streets were empty. “This is some town, where guns fire and the constables don’t come.” He turned to Abby. “Elijah, Micajah, and Ned did this?”
“They wanted my money.”
“And maybe her body,” added Sam.
Abby stooped over Grumble. “Let’s get him out of here.”
“And ourselves,” said Sam.
“Help,” rasped Grumble.
Stuart and Sam lifted Grumble.
“Won’t the constables come to the boat tomorrow?” protested Abby.
“Don’t think so.” Stuart smiled grimly. “That crew won’t go to the police about this night’s work.”
“A body on the main street.”
“Won’t be the first time.”
Sam plucked Elijah’s shotgun out of the mud. “What’ll we do with this?” he asked.
“Keep it,” Abby said. “You earned it.” She picked up her wrist bags.
Grumble coughed.
They bent over him. At that moment blood gushed from his mouth and ran down his chin and neck.
All three of his friends gasped. Everyone on the frontier knew that was a fatal sign, blood from the lung.
At Grumble’s feeble request Abby got materials from his trunk and made a poultice. She treated the tooth cuts on Sam’s nose, and then poulticed Grumble’s chest. It was pointless, but she humored him.
They agreed to take turns sitting with him, and to call the others when the end came.
At dawn he was still alive.
“Hard to believe,” Abby murmured to herself.
Frenchy was on watch. Sly and Sam were sleeping, and Sam needed it badly. Abby was holding Grumble while he departed from the earth.
“Not going to make it, huh?” His eyes opened, and the lids trembled a little.
She pursed her mouth. She couldn’t lie to him, not now. “No, you’re not.” She wept openly. “Grumble, you and Sam saved my life. And I can’t do one thing for you.”
“Then would you oblige me with a favor?”
She blinked back tears. “Of course.”
“Tell me the trick you ran on me. No one else has fooled me, not for twenty, thirty years.”
She looked at his big, sad, clown face. Her heart broke. “Of course.”
She took a big breath and let the story run. “My ex-husband Donnell had the idea. He went all the way to Baltimore to have the cards manufactured. The company engraved fifty-two different plates to print them. The backs, that is, the backs of the cards.”
“The backs?”
“Yes. The cards are marked. Not by me and Donnell. By the printer. All those curlicues on the backs of the cards, every one is slightly different. It was very expensive, four thousand dollars. Unique cards. We kept the engraving plates.
“It didn’t really take a lot of effort to memorize them, all fifty-two.” She looked into his sad, weakening eyes. “I knew every card you had. Every face-down card. You were playing just like you had both cards face up. I even knew what you were going to get next.”
Grumble’s eyes twinkled, and he laughed. He actually laughed. Then he coughed. Abby clutched him to her chest.
At that moment Sam stepped up, his face pale. He knelt next to the half-reclining Grumble. “Don’t die, friend, don’t die.”
Grumble shook his head. He blinked his eyes, as though to clear his vision. Then, slowly, he pushed his upper body erect. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t.” He looked sheepish and delighted at once, like a kid who’s gotten away with something. “No, no need to worry. Truth is, the knife scraped the ribs, but it didn’t come anywhere near my lung.”
He labored to his feet and swayed.
Both Abby and Sam grabbed him by his arms. He sat on a keg. “Perhaps I should take it easy. I did lose some blood.”
“But we all saw blood come out of your mouth,” wailed Abby. “It came from the lung. It’s …”
He brushed all that away. “Believe me,” he said, “I’m fine. You might give me something to eat and drink. I’ve been thirsty and ravenous all night, but my little ruse wouldn’t let me tell you.”
Abby caught on. She glared at him. “And exactly what, Mr. Grumble, am I supposed to say about your deception? How you tricked me out of, out of …”
“I think,” replied Grumble, “you should congratulate me on the greatest performance of my life.”
“Is Captain Stuart awake? Grumble went on. “He’d enjoy this.”
Sam disappeared and came back with Sly Stuart. He looked down at Grumble fondly. “Because of you, I didn’t get to use the hotel room I paid for. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Grumble began, “I am an actor. You may call me a flimflam man, which is accurate, but it doesn’t capture the full reality. I can become what people want or fear and make them believe it. I can be their friend, their confidante, their doctor, their pastor. I have been a Boston Brahmin, a John Bull, a Southern plantation owner, a Tennessee backwoodsman, a land speculator, and much more. I have even been a woman. My trunk is full of costumes, and legal-looking papers that help make me believable. I play my little game with people, do my little act, and I take away the symbols of victory, their coins.
“Joskins are easy marks for sport, too easy. I prefer the city man who thinks well of himself. I’m glad to say I have never polished iron with my eyebrows. You straight folk would call it spending time in prison.
“Sometimes, true enough, one of my playmates takes exception to my performance and gets violent. One of my recourses is this.”
He stepped over to the trunk, opened the heavy lid, reached in, and held up a small …
“This capsule,” he said, “is made of sheep gut. It amuses me that condoms are made of the same material.”
Sam blushed violently, but Abby took the remark in stride.
“In it is blood, usually pig’s blood, easy to get when they’re slaughtering.”
He paraded it in front of their eyes. “I always have one on my person. Violent men like to strike for the chest area. If they draw my blood, which offends me deeply, I put this little capsule between my teeth. At the strategic moment I bite down, and—magic!—blood pours from my mouth. Sometimes I can even ask for a priest and get one.”
Abby laughed. Then she actually applauded. “Brother, you got me.”
“Perhaps we’re even now.”
“I guess so.” She looked at Sly Stuart and Sam. “He took me in.”
“My dying wish, I fear, was to know the secret of her decks of cards.”
“I told him. But, forget it, I’m not telling anyone else.”
“Amazing,” said Stuart. “But I wouldn’t trade lives with you.”
“In fact,” responded Grumble, “you should not kid yourself. You and I are a lot alike. We live between worlds, and quite alone.”
Captain Stuart went off to hire a new crew for the Tecumseh. “I hope I don’t get interrogated about Elijah.” He scratched the top of his cap. “Oh, well, if I do, the hands just didn’t come back this morning. I don’t know a thing about it. Looking for a new crew.”
He stuck his head back in the hold, where they had cleared a kind of living space among the kegs. “Oh. You three. Stay on board. Don’t want you seen in town.”
“By the constables?” Sam asked.
“The constables, Ned and Micajah, anyone
. I’ll bring food.”
Lazy day. Nothing to do. Sam relieved Frenchy on watch. Sunny spring-coming-soon afternoon, the kind that makes you want to ease your bones and your mind and, if you’re not careful, doze.
In the shade of the hold Grumble and Abby played chess. Grumble kept a board and pieces in his trunk. It was the only game they could think of where one couldn’t try to out-cheat the other.
Captain Stuart’s footsteps on deck woke Sam. “Damn it, some security we’ve got,” the captain snapped.
“I’m really sorry.”
“Back in a minute.”
He came back with Frenchy and relieved Sam of watch duty. Oddly, Frenchy never seemed to mind watch, and regularly took duty when the crew went ashore to carouse.
As they ducked into the shade, Stuart said to everyone, “I haven’t found a single crewman. This isn’t a boat-building town, like Pittsburgh or Cincinnati.”
Abby said, “Just as well. Grumble needs to recuperate. He’s weaker than he thinks.”
“Then how, milady, did I come to outwit you at chess?”
“Only two games to one. Dancing with Lady Luck, I guess.”
They all laughed.
“Tomorrow I’m going to see a couple of farm boys who might want to go downriver. If they go, the livery hand will too. Meanwhile, we’re stuck.” Being fixed in one place, unable to go, go, go, that felt to Sly Stuart like a terrible fate.
He opened his package and spread the food out on kegs. “From the hotel,” he said. Roast beef, roasted potatoes, carrots, and onions, gravy, a loaf of bread.
Grumble said, “Food to give the blood vigor,” and dug in enthusiastically. They ate every bite, and wiped the heavy butcher’s paper clean with the bread. They topped it off with another pot of the coffee from the pot that had been filling and emptying all day.
Everyone looked at each other like, What now?
“Abby,” began Grumble, “you returned my service to you with a great favor of your own.”
“Under false pretenses.”
“Nevertheless. Our friend Sam also risked his life to save yours. He could have accepted the invitation to walk away, but stayed and fought for you. A friend has the right to know whose life he saved.”
“Naw,” said Sam. “You did the same. Nobody would walk off on a friend.”
“You might be surprised,” said Grumble.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Our young friend idealizes you a bit.”
