A Congregation of Jackals Page 17

  Beatrice inquired, “You intend to be the mayor of Trailspur?”

  “Until they need me in Washington, D.C.”

  Beatrice waved to Goodstead as her husband-to-be whisked her away.

  Jim carried her past the ebullient Mayor Warren John and his frail wife, the small gray Judge Higgins (joined an hour ago by his barmaid Rita), her father’s cousin Robert (and his tall spouse), her friends Lilith Ford and Judy O’Connell (who was with her husband Izzy), Deputy Kenneth John, Wilfreda (who congratulated her with eerie cachinnations), Big Abe and his slim wife, the ribald tailor (who was staring at Tara Taylor’s backside), the three Albens in from Colorado, those marshals Smith and Smiler, the Danfords (the heavy one now holding the hand of Annie Yardley) and ultimately in front of her father who sat beside the Widow Evertson (both on wooden chairs).

  “Jim is going to take me home.”

  Her father had not seen her coming; the moment he heard his daughter’s voice, he hastily removed his hand from the widow’s. Beatrice thought that he looked happy and comfortable alongside the woman.

  “Why are you grinning like that?” her father asked defensively.

  Beatrice responded, “Perhaps you and Miss Evertson would like to stand alongside us when Minister Bachs performs the ceremony?”

  “A twofer,” Jim added.

  “Stop that kind of talk,” her father said, unable to look her or Jim in the eye.

  The widow leaned forward and surveyed her father’s face. “You are blushing.”

  “I’m not. It’s just red in here.”

  “The lights are yellow.” The woman took T.W.’s hand and squeezed it. She looked up at Beatrice, suspended in Jim’s arms, and said, “Your father tells me that you have an interest in painting.”

  “I do.”

  “I know that you will be busy in the immediate future”—her eyes went up to Jim’s face and then returned to Beatrice’s with a grin in them—“but whenever you are so inclined, I ask that you please join me for an afternoon of painting landscapes. I have extra brushes and canvases and many, many colors from which to choose.”

  “Thank you Miss Evertson. Do you prefer to be called Miss Evertson?”

  “In general, I ask to be called Mrs. Evertson, but I would prefer for you and James to call me Meredith.”

  “Thank you Meredith.”

  “I read that article you wrote for the Trailspur Gazette last month and the one in the winter edition. It would be a pleasure to have an intelligent companion to paint with. Your father thinks that I spend too much time alone.” She looked at Beatrice’s father with a gaze that was both wry and earnest.

  “He thoroughly understands women and their needs,” Beatrice remarked facetiously.

  “I am pleased to hear that,” Meredith responded.

  “You get her to bed,” T.W., discomfited and fidgety, said to Jim. “I’ll be home in a little while. Need to rest my hip a bit more before I go.”

  Jim swept Beatrice forward; she delivered a kiss to her father’s cheek and then shook Meredith’s hand. The titan carried her from the room, into the cool Montana air.

  The couple climbed the lone stone step at the front of the house within which Beatrice had lived for fifteen years. They paused before the door.

  “I’d like to wait inside with you—’til your pa comes home.”

  “He may be a while, and we both need to get to sleep. You should head back to your home.”

  Her titan hesitated and then looked up and down the dirt road at the neighboring houses that sat like bricks against a blue-black sky. There was something nagging him that he did not voice. Beatrice had first noticed this unnamed pregnancy three weeks ago and watched it burgeon when Mary was mutilated—something he still refused to discuss with her. Since the moment his friends arrived, she had never felt as if she had all of his attention.

  “What is troubling you?”

  “I just want to wait until T.W. gets here is all.”

  She knew something was wrong, but her trust in him was absolute: if he did not wish to disclose the source of his unease, she would not pry. At some later time, he would explain it to her if there was a reason for him to do so. He did not know everything about her either—she had never once mentioned the Catholic to whom she had been secretly engaged when she was studying out East—and she would not make him uncomfortable over his discretion.

  “Let’s get inside,” he said, surveying the environs and then pressing his left hand to the door. The wood swung wide into the dark house. She noticed for the first time that Jim had a gun tucked into his belt.

  Beatrice walked into the darkness, took a match from the brass box on the wall, struck it on steel and lit an oil lantern. The warm light radiated throughout the den and connecting kitchen.

  Jim shut the door. He slid the bolt across as quietly as he could; Beatrice pretended not to hear it.

  She asked, “Would you like some tea?”

  “That would be a salve.”

  Beatrice lit the tinder within the stove, put three cups of water into the kettle and added dry tea leaves. She furtively observed Jim sit, tuck his gun behind his back and recline upon the abraded throw quilt her mother had made that adorned the couch.

  “I didn’t see Minister Bachs there,” Jim said as she poured steaming tea into two wooden mugs.

  “I do not think he comes out for shindys. I doubt he would approve of the punch or the way people close-dance.”

  “I s’pose. And a holy man at a celebration makes people feel anxiousness.”

  Beatrice set the cups upon the table before the couch. He looked at her, half of his long face illumined by the lantern, half of his face in shadow.

  “You looked so pretty tonight,” he said. “Still do.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jim picked up his wooden cup with his left hand (even though he was right-handed) and was about to drink when she said, “Blow on it first so you do not burn yourself.” He blew the steam from the small cauldron and then sipped.

  “Is there enough sugar in yours?” She had given him five lumps, which was usually the correct amount.

  “Just right,” he said absently, his eyes fixed on her face.

  Beatrice blew upon and sipped her tea (which had no sugar in it). There was a crack upstairs, and Jim hastily twisted around in his seat; his right hand slid behind his back, and his left knee knocked into her thigh. A tablespoon of tea sloshed over the lip of her unbalanced cup and splashed upon the top of her green dress; the hot liquid seeped into her corset and stung her skin.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed.

  Jim looked at her and asked, “Are you burnt?”

  “I shall be fine.”

  “If it’s gonna blister, you should put a tomato on it, quick.”

  “I shall be fine. I was just startled.”

  Jim nodded, set his tea down and said, “I’m gonna have a look upstairs.”

  “There is no need—that noise was the door to my father’s armoire. The wind catches it whenever he leaves his shutters open.”

  “I’ll go have a look.”

  She watched Jim rise from the couch, walk across the den and ascend beyond the lantern’s amber luminance into the obscurity of the second floor. She heard his weight bend the wood above her, eliciting dry creaks. There was a pause; a heavy moment later his footsteps continued, diminishing as he went down the upstairs hallway. Beatrice’s heart thudded.

  The footsteps halted; somewhere above her, a door opened and closed. She heard a dull thump. Beatrice put the cup down. The silence was oppressive.

  “Jim . . .?”

  “Just lookin’ round, Bea,” he said, his voice tinny and muted.

  The skin beneath her corset scalded by spilt tea started to throb in time with her racing pulse. She needed to set something cool and moist upon it soon so that it would not blister. The footsteps above her head resumed an even tattoo.

  She asked, “Is everything in order?”

  “Nothing to worr
y about,” Jim said, his voice louder, closer.

  Beatrice went into the kitchen and there untied her shoulder straps; the fine-stitch cotton fabric came loose. She pulled the top of the green garment down to reveal the black corset beneath. With nimble fingers, she unfastened three of the hooks on her left side, pulled the material halfway down her breast and saw a bright red mark glowing upon the skin.

  “You got a mark?”

  She looked over and saw Jim descend the final stair.

  “A small one.”

  “I’m sorry for knockin’ into you. I’m just anxious ’bout the wedding. You got a tomato to put on it?”

  “No.”

  “A raw steak maybe? Or pork chop?”

  She shook her head. Jim took a hand towel from the wall and strode to the wash bucket. He plunged the fabric into the soapy water, drew it forth, wrung out the excess liquid (with his strength, it took him only one twist to get out what would have taken her three), and walked over to her.

  She reached her hand out for the cloth, but he shook his head and said, “Let me get it.”

  He placed the chill, wet towel upon her reddened skin; immediately the prickling wound cooled.

  “I am capable of holding it there,” she said.

  “I’m the fool that did it to you, so it’s my responsibility.”

  He pressed the cloth more firmly to her skin. Two beads of moisture rolled from the fabric, down the top of her left breast, beneath her corset and converged upon the textured curve of her nipple. The water felt cold upon the sensitive skin and she felt a tingling within her. Jim pressed the cloth more firmly to the burn; a rivulet snaked down the swell of her left breast and sluiced across her nipple, now stiff beneath her corset. Her mouth became dry.

  Jim placed his mouth upon hers, his tongue warm and tasting of tea; more cool water drained from the cloth beneath her corset, down her left breast, across her ribs, down her stomach and pooled in a whirl at her belly button. He squeezed the cloth in his fist; the weal stung in a way that pleased her. Water ran down her breast and stomach and into the blonde curls of her pubic mound.

  She thrust her tongue more deeply into Jim’s mouth; he released the washcloth and slid his fingertips beneath her corset and squeezed, eliciting the most exquisite ache she had ever felt in her breast. A moan that sounded like it came from a stranger emerged from her own throat.

  The wall of the kitchen struck her buttocks and shoulder blades; Jim pressed himself against her front, his phallus hard and warm at an angle across her stomach. He pulled down her corset and lowered his head to her left breast; he took half of the lobe into his mouth and wrote circles with his tongue tip around her stiff nipple. She ran her fingertips through his blond hair.

  “Jim,” she said as the delicious agony grew in her bosom and the blonde curls at the bottom of her corset dampened with her own moisture. (She knew they should stop, but the ache in her breasts and the warm pins in her loins made it hard to speak.)

  “Jim,” she said again. He raised his mouth from her breast, the pale skin and red nipple of the lobe gleaming, and kissed her again with a fire he had never once before allowed himself to exhibit.

  Another crack sounded—this time from outside of the house. Jim twisted from her and drew the gun he had slid down the back of his belt. He watched the front door for a moment.

  Her voice quiet and dry, Beatrice said, “That was just the front door to the Meyers’ house.”

  “Okay.”

  He replaced the gun beneath his belt. She raised the cups of her corset and then refastened the hooks on the side. Beatrice did not look at Jim as she pulled up and then tied the straps of her dress. She was embarrassed, yet her heart still hammered with excitement.

  “I shouldn’t have done that—gone an’ gotten us all crazy riled up,” he said. “We should wait for God’s blessin’. We waited this long.”

  “Tomorrow night,” she said. She felt certain that had Jim not been distracted by the noise, the two of them would have prematurely joined together as husband and wife.

  They drank tea and talked about the shindy. She did not ask why a man who had patiently abstained for over two years had lost his self-control the night before the wedding, because she was almost certain he would not tell her the truth when he answered her.

  When her father arrived, smiling and with a smear of lipstick just beneath his chin, Jim shook his hand, kissed her good-bye and departed into the night.

  Beatrice, filled with myriad concerns, asked her father if he would read her to sleep as he had up until she was eleven years old. His voice carried her from the anxieties of reality into the realm of children’s stories and ultimately into the velvet domain of slumber.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Victuals and Revolvers

  The small room was lit blue by the dawn sky. In the middle of the narrow bed, Oswell set down a sealed envelope upon which he had written,

  Should Oswell Danford go missing or perish please deliver this parcel to—

  Elinore Bass Danford

  13 Cutter Way

  Harrisfield, Virginia

  Thank you.

  He left five dollars legal tender on top of the missive to cover expenses and to encourage an honest delivery.

  Oswell had not slept very well, and when he walked into the hallway and looked at his brother’s weary visage, he did not need to ask if Godfrey had fared any better. The rancher knocked on the door to Dicky’s apartment, but received no response.

  “Maybe he’s in the lobby,” Godfrey said.

  Oswell, who wore a dark brown suit and cowboy hat like his brother’s, a fresh white shirt and a new union suit beneath it, said, “Let’s see if he’s down there.”

  The Danfords descended the stairs into the quiet lobby of Hotel Halcyon. An old man wearing a white suit stared at a window on the other side of which the coming sun announced itself in swaths.

  Oswell sat in a cushioned chair; he set the guest ledger upon his lap and his enameled pen case atop that. Godfrey sat next to him; he placed the valise with the revolvers on the floor beside his feet.

  “You get any sleep at all?” Godfrey asked.

  “A couple of hours—in slices and slivers.”

  “You have any dreams?”

  “I had one about Elinore and the kids.” His children and wife had not recognized him in the dream.

  “I had one about Mr. Ferguson. You remember him?”

  “The bank manager,” Oswell said. “The one who took Ma’s house from us.”

  “Yeah. I had a dream that it didn’t happen like that. We didn’t beat on him at all, and instead of taking the house, Mr. Ferguson hired on some special doctor who brought Ma back from the dead and fixed her eyes and everything. And afterward, he went and married her.”

  Oswell imagined the scene and asked, “And then what happened?”

  “I had a restaurant. You became a sheriff like you always said you were going to. Things were real different.”

  “Sounds like we were good men.”

  The brothers sat in silence for a minute.

  Godfrey said, “Too bad it didn’t happen that way.”

  “Yeah.” A silhouetted figure passed in front of the window. “There’s Dicky,” Oswell said, pointing to the front door.

  The handsome man walked into the lobby, looked at the old man in white and then at the Danfords.

  “Give me a moment to refresh myself,” the New Yorker said to Oswell.

  “It’s early. You’ve got some time.”

  Dicky, his suit wrinkled and shirt stained with sweat, climbed the stairs toward the second landing.

  “I guess Trailspur women aren’t any cleverer than the girls elsewhere,” Oswell said with a grimace.

  “I liked the one that I was dancing with,” Godfrey remarked.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Annie.”

  “I saw you holding hands and close-dancing. She looked pretty.”

  “She’s very prett
y. Her grandfather was from Spain.”

  “You always liked girls like that—like that one you asked to marry you in Arizona. What was her name?”

  “Consuela.”

  “You had some good times with her.”

  “I should’ve just told her I was Catholic. Jesus is still Jesus, no matter what the minister calls himself.”

  “Is Annie going to be at the wedding?”

  Godfrey nodded, but did not look happy in so doing. Oswell knew that his sibling’s attachment to the woman was yet another source of concern on a day ripe with peril.

  A few minutes later, Dicky descended the stairs, wearing a black suit and round, broad-brimmed hat. To Oswell, the man looked refreshed and alert.

  “Do we have time for breakfast?” Dicky asked.

  Oswell looked at the window; the sun had not yet risen from the earth.

  “Let’s have some chow,” he said.

  “Blackie,” Dicky said to the old man in the white suit.

  The elder turned to face Dicky; Oswell saw that he was blind.

  The old man said, “You’re the one that weighs one hundred an’ seventy, right?”

  “You are correct.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We are hungry. Is there a place in town you would recommend for us to breakfast at?”

  “Go to Harry’s Good Eats. Her coffee’ll turn you into a nigger. Food’s good too. Get the pork chops.”

  “Thank you,” Dicky said. “And I hope that Isabel comes to have tea with you this morning.”

  “I’ve got a good feelin’ about today. A very good feel-in’,” he said, and looked back at the window with blank, blind eyes.

  The three men walked into Harry’s Good Eats, sat upon three stools at the burnished counter and then looked at the menu that was painted in red calligraphy upon a green placard nailed to the wall. A bearish woman, wearing her blonde hair coiled like a cobra atop her head and a grease-spattered apron, walked past the diminutive Negro standing at the smoking griddle in the rear of the kitchen alley, and over to the three new arrivals.

  “Do you need for me to read you the menu?” she asked with an accent that indicated to Oswell that she was German or perhaps Swedish.