Jack Williamson looked so familiar I might have known him all my life. He was a barrel-chested, smiling man with arms the size of tree trunks and thick black hair that curled over his forehead.
After we were introduced, I told him our situation.
He stopped working to listen and draped himself over his anvil, like it was hard work to hold up all that weight on his own. He was nodding halfway through my first sentence. “Go on up and look,” he said. “If it’ll do, it’s empty right now. Dollar a night and all the hay you can eat.”
From somewhere, a horse snorted at the joke.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine. We just wanted to make sure we could have it before we moved our friend.”
“That sick, is he?”
Oh, shit. I hoped I hadn’t scared us out of our shelter for the night. “He’s pretty sick, sir.”
“Jack. Call me Jack or I’ll have to arm wrestle you.” He was pounding out a shoe on the anvil, and his muscles bulged even bigger. My eyes must have bulged too, the way he laughed. “I was just getting ready to unhitch that team back there”—he tossed his head—“but why don’t you take the wagon over and bring him back on that? If you think it’d be easier than puttin’ him in the auto.”
I stood a little taller just for being trusted. “Thank you, sir. Jack.”
He grinned and went back to work.
I spread out Henry’s bedroll on the wagon before Paul and I hoisted him between us and dragged him outside. We were as sweaty as he was when we got back to the livery.
Jack Williamson ambled over and took stock. He squinted at Paul. “You, I haven’t met. Call me Jack.” He held out his right hand.
I was about to explain Paul couldn’t see when Paul took the man’s hand and shook it. My mouth stayed open.
“Paul Bricken, Jack. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Jack went over to the wagon and, in one motion, picked Henry up and slung him over his shoulder.
Henry promptly threw up all down his back.
“All right, buddy,” Jack said. “Better here than in your quarters, right?” He made some adjustments to Henry’s position. “We’ll fill you back up after we quit jostling you around.” And with that, he started up the ladder to the loft like he was carrying no more than a cat.
The ceiling of the room sloped down on both sides from a gabled roof, but it was plenty tall for standing in the middle. There were two cots tucked into the short sides. Jack laid Henry down on one of them like he was handling a newborn.
He stood and stripped off his shirt, bundling it around the mess in back. “I’ll get you another cot and have my wife bring up some soup.”
This man was larger than life its own self.
“Oh, no, sir—Jack—we don’t expect—”
“Eh.” He waved me off. “Woman can’t have children and tries to mother everything that gets within a mile of her. Do her good to leave off on me for a while.” His face was a picture of what good-natured means.
Mrs. Williamson—Anna, she insisted—was a vision. She had curly brown hair, dimples, eyes as green as shamrocks, and a waist that Jack could likely span with his hands twice over. I broke a commandment or two just looking at her.
She cooed over Henry while she sat on the edge of his cot and fed him clear soup. Then she told me, “If you’ll change him into dry clothes, I’ll wash the ones he’s soaked. Just that much should help him feel a little better.”
“Those are the only clothes he has, ma’am. At least all he brought along.”
She fixed me with a green glare. “One dollar at the dry goods store and he could be clean and dry. I’ll loan it to you myself, if you don’t have it to spare.”
“Oh, he can pay,” I said. “I guess . . . well, I don’t know, ma’am—I mean Anna. I reckon Henry just never put much of a premium on havin’ clean clothes to change into.” I stopped short of telling her he was pretty much a jackass and a lout, to boot.
She nodded, watching me. “Well?” she finally said.
“Oh.” I had gotten stuck, looking at her. “Right. Right away.” I skedaddled.
By the time I got back, Paul was in love with her. The way he looked when she spoke to him made me feel flat-out jealous. Of course that was crazy. When the courting only takes place in your head, there’s plenty of any one woman to go around.
The following morning, when Paul and I came down to find the outhouse, Jack was already in the stable filling water troughs. “Sleep okay?” he asked.
We assured him we had.
“How’s your friend?”
About the same, we told him.
“How long you boys fixin’ to stay?”
I hadn’t thought about it. Big breath. “I really don’t know, Jack. Do you . . . need to put us out soon?”
“Oh, no, nothin’ like that.” He grinned. “But that boy likely doesn’t need both of you all day long, and I can always use help around here. Switch off, if you want to. Dollar a day between you and all the hay you can eat.” He did like that joke.
“Well, I don’t know.” I looked at Paul.
“You go ahead,” he told me. “I’ll take care of Henry.”
I was starting to think Paul was getting sick himself, between the ears.
But Jack gave him a warm look and said, “You do what you need to do, son.”
So I went to work for Jack and found it a pleasant way to spend the day as well as earn an easy dollar. I mucked stalls, changed out hay, cleaned and polished tack, brushed and fed and watered horses—did everything but work the forge. Jack stayed busy with that and thanked me for everything I did. That would have been payment enough.
The work at the stockyards and now this. I was very nearly rid of the voice inside my head that second-guessed everything I did.
It occurred to me that maybe I’d be a smith when all this was over. Maybe I could learn that trade. But then a little more time watching Jack—seeing how strong he was and how hard he worked all day, every day, without seeming to get tired—got me thinking some things can’t be learned. Some places you just can’t get to from where you are. And from my puny arms to Jack’s looked to be one of those distances.
Paul wouldn’t leave Henry longer than it took to visit the outhouse, and so Anna insisted on bringing all three of us Missouri boys our meals. It didn’t seem right, what with Jack already paying me same as we owed for the room, but one wink from him told me Anna was enjoying herself.
When we quit for the day on Monday the thirteenth, I climbed the ladder and found Anna reading the newspaper to Paul. He looked like hell, and I asked if he felt sick too. He shook his head but didn’t offer any assurance beyond that.
I sat down and listened too. I didn’t much care what was going on in the world, but I did like the sound of her voice. Suffrage meetings, speeches by Theodore Roosevelt and President Taft—even stories about Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson—they all sounded like music when she read about them.
Middle of the night, I woke up and knew something was wrong. I lit the lantern and it showed Paul’s bed empty. I got up to check and found Henry’s cot groaning with the weight of the two of them. “What’re you doing?” I hissed.
“Keeping him warm,” Paul whispered back.
“But what the—?”
“Didn’t you hear him crying out? I can’t believe you slept through it.” Paul hadn’t put in ten hours of manual labor that day. “He was shaking with the chills so hard the whole bed rattled.”
“Well, there’s blankets in the chest.” I started across the room.
“He was calling for his mother, John.”
I stopped.
“I just—he needs more than blankets. And the way he was thrashing around, they wouldn’t stay on anyway.”
“But, Paul—”
“Look. If he’s delirious enough to call for his mama . . . Well, look at him. He’s so slick with sweat he was freezing. At least he’s quieted down.”
I shifted foot to foot. “You think I ou
ghta go try to find the doctor?”
Paul shook his head. “He already said there’s nothing he can do for influenza. Either he’ll get better or he won’t.”
I went back to bed unsettled and didn’t get close to sleeping through any more of Henry’s outbursts. Sometimes he called for his mother, sometimes for Ellen. It was a pitiful and eerie sound. Each time I got up, I found Paul wrapped around him, whispering, “Shhh. It’s okay. You’re gonna be just fine.”
I hadn’t had a thought about Henry not getting well. But he’d been nigh on inhuman going on four days at that point, and this was something still beyond that. One time I got up when he cried out, and I asked Paul if this was it . . . if he was dying.
“Either that or getting well.” Paul looked even worse than earlier.
I felt my own forehead. It seemed fine.
When a rooster crowed at daylight, it took me a minute to realize what it meant—it wasn’t Henry that had woke me up this time. I sat up and saw Paul in the gray light, sitting on the edge of the cot across from me. He had his head in his hands, crying. I stood up so fast I cracked my head on a low rafter.
“What?” I whispered. “What happened, Paul? Is he—?”
Paul managed a snotty laugh and shook his head. “His fever broke about half an hour ago. Just went, all at once, the way it came. Come see.”
I knee-walked over, holding my head. Henry’s breaths were deep and calm. I touched his cheek. Clammy, cool.
“Thank God.” I was ready for more sleep if it was available.
Paul broke down all the way, heaving and all-out sobbing.
“Hey now.” I felt as awkward as a one-legged dog. “You’re wore out—that’s all. You need to get some sleep your own self now.”
He finally nodded and felt his way back to his own cot.
I dropped off to the sound of him snuffling.
Both of them slept all day. I went up the ladder a few times to check and then waved Anna away when she came with food. I figured they needed the rest more.
I was still trying to figure out Paul in all this. I told Jack about it, how it was almost like Paul had taken it as something personal, Henry getting sick.
Jack didn’t seem surprised at all. “He knows what it’s like to need comforting, don’t you think?” He had a point. “I think sometimes the best things we do for others are really just the things we wish someone would do for us.” He finished hammering a horseshoe and flipped it into a trough of water to sizzle.
“Don’t get any ideas that the reason I make your meals is because I really want you to cook for me.”
We spun around to find Anna with yet another tray.
Her green eyes danced. “I have eaten your cooking, Jack Williamson.”
They both laughed.
I sneaked up the ladder and reported back that Paul and Henry showed signs of waking up.
Anna sent me up with the tray and said she’d be back.
All five of us ate supper in the loft that night, and it felt like a party. Henry was still so weak Anna fed him with a spoon, but his broth had some noodles in it, and she gave him sips of cold milk between bites.
When Henry found out it was Paul who had nursed him around the clock, he looked stunned. “Thank you.” His first real words in over four days. He closed his eyes and laid his head back with the effort.
He had no memory of any time in Junction City—everything we asked, he shook his head. And since the Williamsons had never met him in any way that counted, we spent a lot of that first conversation catching everybody up.
We stayed two more days while Henry got his feet under him. Anna still insisted on feeding us, although we wiped our boots and ate at her table once Henry could make it that far. After supper, she read aloud from the newspaper and we all daydreamed to the sound of her voice. Well, I know I did.
Thursday evening, Anna asked Paul, “Are you still interested in that fight in San Francisco?”
He sat up straight. “Yes, ma’am. Is there news?”
“Hmm.” She frowned while she scanned the story. “It seems Governor Gillett has banned the whole spectacle from his state.”
“What?” Paul said. “Why? Does it say?”
Anna read on and chuckled. “Well, he seems to have decided this is to be a prizefight, which is illegal in the state of California.”
Jack joined in. “What did he think it was before, a tea party?”
“Before, it was a boxing exhibition,” Anna said.
“Ohhh,” we all chorused.
“What’s going to happen now? Does it say?” Paul was tapping his foot.
Anna read to herself. “Well, it says this Mr. Rickard has three weeks to find another place to hold it, or the contracts they signed are null and void.”
“Oh.” Paul took this in.
“I still don’t understand,” Henry said. He had lost half his swagger and all his edge, and it was strange to hear him talk in such a quiet voice. “Why are you so all-fired interested, Paul? I mean, I can see why the white people are. And why the coloreds are, for that matter—”
We all busted out laughing, and it took him a minute to catch on. “You know what I mean.”
“Well, I think you’ve just answered for yourself why I’m interested. All this building it up to be bigger than it is—the Great White Hope, the Black Man’s Colossus. All the fear that goes along with that. It’s ghoulish, but it’s fascinating to follow.”
“What do you mean by the fear that goes with it?” Anna asked.
“Something I’ve known— Well, here’s an example. As recently as Kansas City, a pair of goons threatened to beat me up or even kill me. I hadn’t done anything, and a skinny fellow like me is hardly intimidating, right? The fact that I wasn’t like them scared them into wanting to hurt me.”
The room was so quiet I heard the clock chitchatting.
Henry blurted out, “I robbed them.”
That got everybody’s attention.
“That’s what I figured.” Paul nodded.
“Those thugs that threatened Paul,” Henry explained to the room. “I was so mad, I cut out of work early and followed them on their last delivery of the day. I guessed that they collected cash for the store, and I was right. That’s where our . . . sponsor money came from.”
“You did it because of me,” Paul said in a quiet voice.
“Well, hell, yeah—excuse me, ma’am. They had no business jumpin’ on you. They didn’t even know you, just that you’re different. That’s not fair.”
“But saying one man can’t be champion of the world because of what he looks like—that’s fair?”
Henry looked like all the air went out of him. The rest of us shifted in our seats, and there was a fair amount of throat clearing.
“Who wants to play gin rummy?” Jack asked the room.
We all thought it a fine idea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Friday morning, the seventeenth, we said good-bye to the Williamsons. Jack shook hands, and Anna gave us hugs a lot more innocent than the thoughts they inspired. She sent us off with a parcel to rival the Heversons’ and told us to be sure and stop back by on our way home later in the summer. We had no problem promising we would.
We’d been stopped so long it felt like we were starting our trip all over again—but with a different group. Henry didn’t spend any time at all trying to get a rise out of me, his laugh didn’t raise the hair on my neck, and—best of all—he’d started talking to Paul like he might have been anybody.
I didn’t know if it would last. In his quiet moments, it was pretty clear Henry was wrestling with something. He couldn’t think too hard about anything without the effort showing up on his face. But as long as he was being civil, I was determined to enjoy it and not ask. Like my mom always says, when you see a can of worms, remember it’s for the birds.
The company was more pleasant, but the drive itself was starting to feel like work. West of Junction City, past the farmed ground, there still wasn’
t a lot to Kansas other than flat miles of blowing dust. Trees here and there, but none close to the road and not enough of them to anchor the dirt anyway. Then more grain fields as we got closer to the next cow town that looked just like the one before it. Carry Nation and her temperance union had shut down every saloon in the state long before we got there, so there wasn’t even that distraction at the end of the day.
We did find a rhythm. We’d drive into a town—Abilene, Salina, Ellsworth—find the biggest store, and go in for provisions. We could tell by the way we were told hello and the way people acted toward Paul whether we wanted to find a room in town or push on and camp out. Mostly we camped out.
We’d build a fire, and after we finished cooking supper, it was like a hearth with the whole prairie our parlor and the sky a ceiling shot through with stars. More than once, I thought of the great comet that I knew was just out of sight. If it was still there to see, the night sky would’ve been even more spectacular, but I always hurried that thought away as quick as I could. I didn’t want to be regretful about any part of it whatsoever. A good luck charm is a good luck charm.
We’d listen to the coyotes sing, and the wood would crackle and send sparks spiraling into the black sky, and we’d talk. Henry and I saved up things to describe to Paul at night—since swallowing road dust was not a favorite pastime for either of us.
Often as not, we’d sit around the fire and argue over what we’d seen. One night, I described a scene of three men on horses driving a hundred head of cattle off to the north of us, and Henry remembered it as more like two hundred. The same night, I said we’d seen a rotting horse carcass being pulled apart by buzzards five miles west of Salina, and Henry said it was a dead cow east of town. Before long, we were all three laughing so hard we couldn’t talk. But the truly funny thing was, Henry and I both meant what we said—we just remembered some things different from one another, even a very few hours later. That was as much a revelation to me as the fact that folks could disagree without getting mad.
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