Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  De Gracy looked up at them, still not speaking. A small wave crashed into one of the posts under the pier, and little specks of cool water splashed De Gracy’s exposed ankle.

  “That’s one,” said the man on the right, and De Gracy was being lowered. He still didn’t say a word.

  “And that’s two.” De Gracy was lowered even further. He pulled his arm free from his heavy coat, letting it dangle beside him.

  “You’re a god damned stubborn bastard, Gracy. Drop ‘im.”

  De Gracy swooped down through the air, splashing into the sea; the freezing water enveloped him quickly, soaking in around his skin and into the crevices of his clothes, and as he tried to surface for air, his lungs were filled with water instead. He managed to wrestle off the rest of his coat, and as he made way to the nearby beach, the freezing water overwhelmed him constantly, his wet clothes dragging him down, the icy air whipping him across his wet face. He unbuckled the harness that was keeping a pistol to his chest, and the heavy weapon quickly fell into the depths. He tried to keep his focus on the beach ahead, and he struggled to keep himself going, but as he came closer, he noticed that the three figures were standing near the top of the beach, waiting. He finally reached shallow water, and as he broke through, stood on his feet, the cold wind penetrated his thin skin and whirlpooled into his marrow. He grabbed himself, trying to conjure just a speck of warmth as he was leaving the sea. His head kept spinning, and the three silhouettes in front of him kept flashing in and out of existence as if lit by a far away lighthouse. One of the men came down the beach, grabbed De Gracy’s one arm, and dragged him up towards the others. De Gracy kept collapsing and coughing, the sand sticking to his wet body and entering his mouth. He was lifted up before one of the men; De Gracy remembered his voice from before. In this light, the man’s pale face stood out, his smooth and clammy skin and beady eyes. It was hard to tell if he had eyebrows or not.

  “See what happens when you play games with us, De Gracy? It’s a cold, cold month, and we’re cold, cold men.”

  De Gracy’s body kept collapsing in on itself to contain some heat, but the man that had grabbed him kept straightening him up, forcing him to look into the face of the group's leader. He had big, broad lips that spat into De Gracy’s face as he spoke.

  “We know that you and Stone are trying to get back on the market. A very convenient time, too.” The man grabbed De Gracy’s collar and pulled him closer. “I know it was you who killed Bishop,” he said, charging a knee into De Gracy’s stomach. De Gracy crumpled into the sand, coughing furiously as the rest of the air was forced out of his lungs. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t break through the barrier of sand, water, and air. The man pulled him back up.

  “It was you who killed Bishop… Bishop’s son and all those other little kids.”

  “Why…” coughed De Gracy. He was kicked back down, coughing up blood that smeared the sand. He looked up at the three men, summoning all of his will to let out a few words. “Why…. And how… the hell! were we supposed… to kill the biggest crime lord in Plissbury?”

  “Because he beat down on your business... Stone’s business. I’ve met Stone. He can be a fancy bastard, but I know that he becomes a Pitbull when someone tries to take away his money. Some docksman told us he saw you out here a month before, talking to some of the locals about your new stash o' guns? Right after Bishop’s death? Turns out that same docksman had it in for Stone, and he recognized you.”

  “Who the hell… are you, anyway?” said De Gracy. Saliva and blood poured out with every word, and he was wheezing for air.

  “You think,” said the leader,” you think that just because you cut off the head that the snake would die? Did Stone tell you that?”

  “Would I really come here,” said De Gracy, putting up his hands to show his barren chest. “To the docks to sell without… without a god damned gun?!”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m not here to sell weapons… but to buy... to buy something else.” De Gracy's eyes were flickering on and off like a struck bug light, and words, sights, and feelings were being distorted in his head. He knew that if he failed now, if he broke, that the entire Pit would be on end, and his and Stone's dream would slowly burn away never to be fulfilled. He could see the moon up behind the three men’s head, shining.

  “You here to buy?” asked the man. “I didn’t know you were a user, De Gracy.”

  “There's a lot you don't know,” he said. His gaze flew to the building that he’d watched earlier. It was much closer now. “You don’t know much… about shit.”

  The leader of the group pulled out a handgun and pointed it at De Gracy’s face.

  “That may be, but I’mma blast you right here and now, and then I’ll be going for Stone.”

  “For killing Bishop?” asked De Gracy. “Or for killing the kids, too?”

  The gun clicked.

  “That’be a good idea, killing me” said De Gracy with the last of his effort, “If I didn’t know who really killed your boss.”

  The man lowered the gun a bit.

  “It’be a shame,” said De Gracy. “If you went on and killed the wrong guys… And an even bigger shame… to let the guys who actually did it go.”

  “And how the hell would you know that?”

  “Because who did it frequents the Pit a lot. He asked for help, but we didn’t want in…”

  “Who the hell was it?”

  “He asked for us… said there was a perfect time for it all… that there was nothing that could go wrong.”

  The man shoved his gun against De Gracy’s temple.

  “Who the hell was it?!” he screamed.

  “Clayborne,” sputtered De Gracy. “Morris Clayborne.”

  “That makes no sense,” said one of them. “Why would--”

  “Because the Crab, his son… because he killed Kenny in the ring.”

  The three men looked at each other, confusion painted in their faces.

  “Who the hell is Kenny?”

  De Gracy coughed and looked at the three men.

  “Kenny? Kenny… Bishop. Bishop’s nephew.”

  “Bishop had no nephew.”

  “Oh he didn’t? Then tell that to his late brother. Stone took Kenny in as a boxer on Bishop’s behest, as a favor… And Kenny took the Crab’s razor across his face.”

  “Horace Bishop? Horace Bishop had a son? But he died years ago,” whispered one of the three men to the others. “How come we didn't know something like that?”

  “Is that true?” asked the leader.

  De Gracy looked up at him and nodded slowly.

  “Look,” said the leader. He crouched down and grabbed De Gracy by the collar, and, looking him deep into his eyes, he said, “If it’s not true, then you’ve done nothing more than buy you and your buddies a few more days. We came here to kill you, De Gracy, but we don’t kill innocent men… But don’t think we won’t come back, you hear? For all of you.”

  De Gracy kept nodding, and the man slapped him across the face.

  “Because if you’re lying!” roared the man, his voice thundering up and down the pier. He looked prepared to say something more, but he refrained and moved away from De Gracy instead. The three men looked at each other and left. One of them looked back at De Gracy along their way.

  De Gracy pushed himself up a bit so he could sit. The sand around him was soggy with seawater and patches of his blood. He turned towards the sea, and there, along the thin line where the waves met the coast, he saw his hat calmly bobbing up and down. He groaned as he stood up. He limped down the beach and towards his hat. He picked it up, beat it into shape, and put it back on, figuring that a few more drops of seawater wouldn’t make a squat of difference.

  “Jesus, Frank!” said Stone, seeing the beat-up and wet De Gracy step into the office. He jumped up to help, but De Gracy waved at him not to.

  “Easy, easy, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “What the hell happened to y
ou?”

  De Gracy dragged out his chair and collapsed into it with a splash. Thin lines of water, compressed from his pants and jacket, slid down the wood of the chair. Stone was looking at De Gracy with an open mouth.

  “Close the door,” said De Gracy. “We have to talk.”

  The first glimmers of the morning sun were about to show, but the night was very much alive, eating the last crumbs before its slumber. De Gracy looked out, his chest tingling with sweat.

  “Where the hell were you?” asked Stone.

  “I was down by the piers,” said De Gracy.

  “Frank, we talked about--”

  “I wasn’t there to sell or anything! I was… I was just there, OK?”

  Stone looked furious, but the anger drained from him with every blink of an eye, his face settling into a rugged neutrality.

  “I was just there,” continued De Gracy. “And then some of Bishop’s men showed up. They threw me in the water.”

  “How’d you know they were Bishop’s?”

  “Well, Stone, I didn’t at first, you know, but then, when they started kicking me around, throwing shit at me, and then finally talking to me, it turned out pretty clear, you know? Jesus.”

  “Did you recognize any of them?”

  “No, but one of them had a good sense of who we were... Who you are.”

  “Most of Bishop’s men know me,” said Stone.

  “It ain't good, Stone. They know that we killed Bishop.”

  “How the hell would they know?! What proof could--”

  “They don’t need proof! A hunch is enough for those people, and they would have killed me on the spot, if I hadn’t…”

  “What?!” asked Stone as small veins slowly popped out all across his forehead “If you hadn't what?

  “I told them that Kenny was Bishop’s nephew… and that Clayborne killed Bishop.”

  Stone went silent for a while, the different pieces soaring into place in his head.

  “Because the Crab killed Kenny?”

  De Gracy agreed. “They seemed to buy it, but if they found out I lied... Look, either they kill Clayborne, or they come here for us.”

  “No, no, this doesn’t make any sense,” said Stone. “I mean, they must have known that Kenny had been killed in the ring… that someone had deliberately torn a razor across his face. Clayborne should’ve been their first suspect, so why the hell are they coming for us?”

  “I don’t think they knew.”

  “Didn’t fucking know? What was there to know? It was Bishop's own nephew.”

  “And that’s what they didn’t know,” said De Gracy. He groaned a bit. Some blood dripped from his hand and on to the table.

  “Jesus, Frank, I’ll go get you some paper, bandages or something.. Take off your clothes. You can’t sit around like that.”

  “Sure I can. Listen, we need to get this. They didn’t know, I tell you. One of them even said that he was surprised that Horace even had a son.”

  “Horace… as in Horace Bishop?”

  “Kenny’s father, yes, Lawrence Bishop's brother.”

  “Horace Bishop died almost twenty years ago. How couldn’t they know that Kenny was his son?”

  “I don’t know, but remember Bishop too. He was very hush hush about the kid. Some secret shit in the family, no doubt.”

  “He just didn’t want everyone to know that it was his nephew… afraid that people would get into the ring with him just because of that. Maybe even kill him because of that.”

  Stone drummed on the table with his fingers. For a moment he looked over at Eckleburg’s empty chair. “You think they’ll buy it?”

  “That Clayborne did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “They did buy it. Question is if Clayborne can deny it well enough. I mean, it was his idea to begin with, and he’s kind of a jittery bastard. They might just see right through his truth… blast him on the spot, and probably the Crab too.”

  “Yeah…” said Stone. “So here we are then,” he said, “hoping that someone else will be killed for us to pass.”

  De Gracy nodded while coughing. Even though battered to a state of near death, his bones rattling from the cold, he was still trying to put a cigarette to the edge of his blue mouth. He managed to wiggle it in between his lips, and as he lit the cigarette’s tip it was as if the entire room flared up from the tiny spark.

  De Gracy’s face slowly thawed. “Doesn’t this remind you?” he asked.

  “Remind me of what?”

  De Gracy grinned, his lips stiff around the cigarette. He looked up into the rising smoke as it curled around him like a thought bubble in a comic. “The time we met, Stone. I haven’t felt this combination of hot and cold since then.”

  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t beat you up this badly then,” said Stone.

  “I must've been twenty then, not used to pain like this. It feels the same, that’s all.”

  “You ruined my pants, though,” said Stone. “They were soaked to the knees, and you ripped off one of the legs.”

  De Gracy grinned again. “So that’s what you remember?”

  “That’s what I still hate you for,” said Stone, smiling.

  “And I still hate you for almost ruining my letter,” said De Gracy.

  “Yeah,” said Stone, his mind seemingly drifting away again, and De Gracy wondered where it kept going off to; why it couldn't just stay in the room with him.

  “Have we ever done anything but this?” asked Stone. “I mean, we always just sit across one another, and even now with you bleeding out, and murder’s hanging around our heads like a wired piano, we still just sit around... and talk.”

  “Not much sense in doing anything else, is there?”

  “We just have to keep track of the newspapers... hoping for some other man to die.”

  “Yep. But if Clayborne bites it, it won’t exactly be shadowed news. We’ll know, but until then, we can’t do but wait.”

  Stone grunted in casual agreement, pressed his back up against the chair, and scratched his ear in a flight of nervousness. “I’m more worried about Messenger’s bout with Holden.”

  “Yeah,” said De Gracy. The cigarette between his lips had grown shorter, now looking like a crooked, decayed tooth.

  “I shouldn’t have set them up.”

  “Messenger seemed pretty clear about it. Letting himself lose like that; that’s some serious determination.”

  “That's some serious stupidity, that’s what it is. I don’t understand him sometimes.”

  “But he’s a good fighter.”

  “I know that, but sometimes it’s as if he’s fighting against everyone but the boxer that’s in the ring with him. And I’m afraid that it’ll be different against Holden… That he’ll forget the world around him for once.”

  “It’ll be fine. Don’t cut up your thoughts around it. It’ll be a simple match. Won’t net us any big profit, but we’ll settle a score between our two best fighters, you know? Get some steam outta the Pit for once.”

  “Yeah,” sighed Stone. “We’ll see about that.”

  De Gracy could hear Stone's feet splash around in a puddle of his own now. He looked down and saw that the water had travelled all the way under the table and to the other side. He leaned back, coughed, and drew out another cigarette.

  That night, when Stone knew that the Pit would be empty save for Grundy, who he was sure was locked up in his room, he opened up the hatch that led down to the weapon storage room. Down there, led by the little bulb of light that rhythmically moved from side to side like a pendulum, he scrambled among the many wooden boxes until he found one of the colts that they had stashed near the bottom. He picked it up and tucked it into his coat along with several rounds of ammo. He looked up through the hatch; the silence from the enormous, dark hall was harrowing, and Stone quickly restacked everything back to how it was, whereafter he scurried up the ladder and up through the hatch, leaving behind him the extinction of all and any possible trails.r />
  CHAPTER 15

  Julia Sedgewick pranced around the workshop. Her hair was tied in a bun, and all pieces of loose clothing were tucked in where possible to avoid impractical dangling. Her hands were soft against the rough, dark felt, and as she formed it and cut it, pressed it and shaped it, it was like seeing someone working with clay.

  A trinity of candles was burning in the window, lit since the sun had gone down, and most of the melted wax now formed a heavy base near the bottom. The window was slightly open, and a soft breeze was seeping into the room, flickering at the flames. The light, nearly translucent curtains swayed, and Julia looked at them for a while with a pair of dreaming and tired eyes.

  She put the finished hat in the window. The expanse of the city, the rooftops she could see from the top of her little workshop, stretched out so far that it was nearly impossible to see where the sky met the faraway sea. The smoky pillars of the harbor piled up along the horizon, and a ferry was leaving the city. It moved deeper into the night like a silent glacier, leaving behind it only the faintest track of ripples that wouldn’t survive the night. It was mostly the silence of it all that caused her to flinch when she heard her name being called from down below, ripping her straight out of her own mind and down on the cobbled streets of the dark city.

  “Ms. Sedgewick!” the voice called, and she was immediately able to recognize it as belonging to Mr. Stone. She scouted the dark road, but she could only see a dim trace of the man.

  “Mr. Stone?” she asked. “What on earth are you doing here at this hour?”

  “I was told it would be raining tomorrow, you see. I thought it would be irresponsible of me to be walking around without a hat on my head.”

  Julia grinned, knowing he couldn’t see it from so far down. She glanced at the hat in the window.

  “As a matter of fact,” she called. “I’ve just now finished it. You can come see it, if you like?”

  “It’d be a pleasure,” said Stone. He started moving across the street, and Julia rushed away from the window. She took several bobs out of her hair, and it collapsed around her neck and on the top of her shoulders, and she shook it up. She could see Stone’s figure leaning up against the glass door of the shop. She opened the door, the small bell above ringing.