A Book Of Tongues (14 page)

Yet it still startled him when Hosteen caught him alone in the
saloon’s rapidly emptying pantry, and told him what he hadn’t been
awake to see: Chess, whetting Hosteen’s former buck-knife to a
sharp edge right in front of Ollemeyer’s wife and children. Forcing
the house pianist to play the same tune over and over again, at
gunpoint. And checking, every few minutes — sure as clockwork —
up the stairs to Rook’s room, as if his gaze alone could make the Rev
wake faster.

“I thought you’d want to know,” said Hosteen. “That you already
would
know.”

“What is it you’re sayin’, Kees?”

“Look, he loves you. I know
that
. I just thought . . .”

“What?”

“. . . nothin’.”

But it wasn’t fear that silenced Hosteen, not alone. It was
resignation. Doubt.

You wonder, sometimes,
thought Rook,
if I love him the same way he
does me. And sometimes — so do I.

Thankfully, the rain of fire ran out before Ollemeyer’s pantry
did, and never set the roof on fire. Even more thankfully, it ran out
on Rook’s watch, not Chess’s. So it fell to Rook to get the rest of the
gang up and moving, then haul Chess into the street — had him up
on his horse, still groggy with sleep, and halfway out of the town
long ’fore he was sensible enough to think about killing.

Nevertheless, it did worry him somewhat — not just that he
was continuing to dictate gang policy around Chess’s offhanded
murderousness, but that Chess’s bloodthirstiness seemed to be
on the increase, generally. Like he never had recovered from Rook
working a hex on him, that one time.

I always thought he was changing
me
,
Rook thought,
from the very
beginning. But what if I’m changing
him
, just like I set out to? Only — not
for the better.

They rode on to the Two Sisters, where Chess — still off-colour,
still uncertain why — started in on a bottle of absinthe, while the
rest of the gang made various sorts of hay. Rook sat in the corner and
watched, nursing a whiskey shot of his own, while Chess cleaned his
guns and hummed to himself tunelessly.

“So here’s the latest,” Hosteen told Rook, sitting down next to
him, and brandished a fresh-printed newsbill in front of Rook’s face,
as he did so. “Turns out, we got us an honest-to-God posse bein’
formed against us.” As Rook took another sip, not even deigning to
look. “Could read ’bout it yourself, right here, you cared to.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and summarize, instead? Seein’ I know
you’re literate.”

For a second there, Rook almost thought Hosteen was going to
snap back at him, in reply —
Saved your life a few too many times, back
when we was still at War, t’play your damn secretary, Reverend!
But the
glance Rook turned his way seemed to freeze the older man in his
tracks, making him clear his throat instead and commence, stiff but
steady:

“
Various recent train and payroll robberies executed at No Silver Here,
Solomonville and Calvary Cross are all to be laid at the feet of one Asher
E. Rook, late of the Confederate Army, a convicted murderer and so-called
‘hexslinger.’ The so-called ‘Reverend’ Rook . . .
”

“I think we both know who I am, by this point, Kees.”

Over Hosteen’s shoulder, Rook could just glimpse Chess casting
drink-narrowed eyes at three newish gang-conscripts playing a
clueless game of whist to his left, all haplessly unaware of how close
they were to risking injury for the grand crime of obstructing his
door-ward sight-line. Even from here, Rook could almost
hear
the
way Chess had begun to tick, an ill-wound watch with just a hint of
lit fuse in the background. That sulphurous
hiss
.

I could stop this,
he thought, whatever “this” turned out to be.
But . . . why should I?

Hosteen ran a blackened finger down the newsbill’s centre
column, and continued: “Uh . . .
the posse against Rook’s gang will
be led by Sheriff Mesach Love, who retired from the Union Army upon
announcement of Armistice. Once a gentleman of leisure, he has since
invested in a small cattle ranch nearby the township of Bewelcome, New
Mexico. The fees paid by Union Pacific for Rook’s capture will go to raise
a permanent church for this district, where Love himself is well-known as
a Nazarene preacher of avid devotion. . . .
”

Rook ground out a short laugh. “Don’t want the competition,
might be,” he suggested.

Hosteen
half-shrugged,
half-nodded.
“‘
Having
heard
ample
testimony that this man-witch Rook quotes Scripture while practicing
his vile sorcery,’ Love states, ‘I take it as a holy charge to see him caught
and punished for propagating such blasphemy. For how can any Christian
stand to see God’s Word perverted, especially by one who — if rumour
holds true — is guilty not only of using Satan’s power for gain, but of
all the sins which saw Gomorrah blasted, along with her even-more-infamous sister city?’
”

Taking a quick shot of whiskey to distract himself, Rook found
his eyes automatically drawn back to Chess, only to find him already
looking his way — tracking one of the Sisters’ resident whores, as she
sashayed in Rook and Hosteen’s direction. Toying with the ribbon
which anchored a faded sateen flower just above her overspilling
cleavage, the woman slung a leg up over Hosteen’s startled lap,
fixing Rook with a sleepy smile.

“Buy a gal a drink, Reverend?” she drawled.

“I’d’ve thought the house already stood you a few per shift, to be
frank,” Rook returned. “Ain’t that what the surcharge is for?”

She made a practiced moue. “Oh, now; we both got our parts
t’play in this affair, don’t we? Go along to get along, that’s what they
say. . . .”

Always assuming you’re my kind of destination, in the first place,
Rook thought. But —

“Move by, woman,” Chess snapped, stepping up behind her in
one quick stride, at the same time. “He ain’t for you.”

The whore barely turned a hair. “Oh no?” she asked, one brow
arching. “Well, I know
you
for damn sure ain’t interested in my
wares, little pussy . . . but I’ll bet the Rev here can prob’ly speak for
himself, one way or t’other. What’cha say, darlin’?”

Rook gave her a sad smile, and shook his head. Before he could
finish shooing her away, however, Chess had already broken his
empty bottle across the whore’s head, knocking her to the ground in
a shower of dirty glass.

Then leaned down and snarled, right in her ear: “’Cept he don’t
have
to, ’cause
I
just did. So how’s your hearin’
now
, bitch? Better?
Or worse?”

The fiddle and squeezebox wheezing away at each other in the far
corner fell silent, and some drunk cried out a name — Sadie, Rook
thought it was. Another barfly lunged Chess’s way, only to end up
froze in place with a barrel to his jaw, while Chess used his other gun
to cover the rest of the patrons; probably couldn’t really shoot all of
them, or at least not all at once. But he certainly looked game to try.

Hosteen threw Rook a begging glance:
C’mon, Rev!
While Rook
just sat there, stony, a fresh-poured shot already in hand.

“Look, mister,” the barfly told Chess, his voice shaky. “I . . . don’t
know what sorta beef you’n her got with each other, but take a
gander. She needs help.”

“Why bother? She’ll be dead in a year, either way — pox, or gut-rot. She fuck you for free the once, so now you think she’s sweet
on you? Or . . .” As Chess’s thumb caressed the firing pin, his voice
dropped into a purr. “. . . is it that
you
’re sweet on
her
?”

Sadie’s prospective saviour blushed. “None of your affair!”

“Sure ain’t. Then again, slow as she moves, I guess she’s probably
pretty easy for any dumbass to throw a leg across. . . .” Confidingly:
“It’s the
syphilis
does that, most times, so best make sure and check
your pecker, once you get somewheres a bit more private — ”

“Oh, you son-of-a-bitching little redhead faggot motherfucker!”

Rook sighed, and rose, before Chess could finish the fool off.
“Stand down, Private Pargeter,” he rumbled.

“What do you care?”

“I don’t, except that my word not be taken lightly. So stand
down
.”

“Make me.”

“Think I can’t?”

“Oh, I know damn well you
can
! You think that makes me apt to
trust you anymore? Who knows
what
-all else you mighta made me
do, when I wasn’t lookin’?”

“
Nothing.
Not one single friggin’
thing, ever
. . . that you didn’t
already
want
to.”

They were outright yelling at each other, now, right in front of
the appalled eyes of everyone, Chess’s kill-to-be very much included.
And though Rook wasn’t exactly sure how things had gotten quite
this far out of hand in quite so short a time, he did know they weren’t
going any further.

“
Put up
,” he growled, slapping Chess’s piece away from the barfly’s
face so the man fell to his knees like his hamstrings’d been slashed,
then scrabbled crabwise ’til his back hit the nearest wall and stuck
there. Pissed beyond measure, Chess swung his other gun ’round,
only to have Rook grab
that
, too.

“Let Goddamn go, Goddamnit!”

“Chess — ” Rook said, warningly. Then: “C’mon, darlin’ — you
know you’re outmatched, so don’t be an idiot, for Christ’s sake. Least
. . . not where folks can see you.”

Provoked beyond endurance, Chess dropped both guns outright
and lunged straight for Rook like a rat-killing dog, all ten fingers
hooked into claws. Without planning it out at all, Rook flung Chess’s
weapons down and caught him by the neck, lifting him neatly off
the ground.

“That how your
Momma
taught you to fight, boy?” he demanded,
voice almost too low to recognize himself.

Chess tore a laugh out through his rapidly bruising throat. “Yuh,
wuh — works pretty well, don’t it? ’Sides which . . . my
Ma
could’ve
wiped the floor with any one’a these fuh . . . fuckers, and she don’t
even pack a gun.”

Rook hauled him closer. “Don’t make me do something we’ll both
regret, Chess.”

“I’d like . . . tuh . . . see
that
. . . .”

A darkness seemed to fall between them, ecliptic. Barely noticing
how fast the Sisters had already cleared out, Rook let Chess fall
momentarily free — doubled up and hacking — before pinning his
arms from behind and hauling him upstairs parcel-style, virtually
tucked under one tree-limb arm. With that same
charge
flashing
back and forth between them, energizing and exhausting, all the
while: each touch a dry powder-burn, a branding iron’s kiss.

And here was where he truly knew it, for the first time — how
with every touch, he was sucking
something
out of Chess. Gulping it
down, the way a gut-shot man will drink ’til he bleeds out and dies,
regardless of the gaping hole where his belly should be. The darkness
rising in him spurred a similar darkness in Chess, rendering him
ten times as dangerous as usual to everything around him (himself
very much included). And though Chess fought
it
tooth and nail,
exhausting himself, he also fought to cleave
to
Rook just as hard, if
not harder.

Rook had been the true trap. And now Chess was caught, fast as
any fly in amber.

Reaching the second floor, Rook kicked in the first door he saw,
popping it clear off its hinges. Then threw Chess down on the bed,
face down, and let the unnatural take its course.

After, he felt bad — as bad as he’d felt so all-fire good, just a
hot, gasping moment previous. The hurt and injustice of it crashed
over him in a wave, sticking him chest-first to Chess’s spine, and
he buried his face in the nape of the smaller man’s trembling neck,
hugging him fit to bruise. Chess stiffened for a moment, mouthed at
Rook’s wrist like he wanted to bite, then curled back into him, with
a little sighing sob.

“I ain’t just
yours
, you know.”

“I do.”

“You’re
mine
, you witch-rode ox.”

“I am, Chess, yes. I — surely, surely am.”

The things I’d do, to keep you safe, little man,
Rook thought, tongue
gone abruptly cold and sour in his own mouth.
What I’d
do
. . . you
can’t imagine.

Thankfully.

“You got to take the fight to him,” Chess said. “Don’t wait for this
bastard Love to come lookin’ — they don’t know what they’re dealing
with, which puts them to a disadvantage. And even if you don’t
know what
you’re
dealin’ with either, half the time, you still got good
tricks to pull out, long as you can control the field of battle.”

“So you think I should count coup on Love in Bewelcome itself,
right where God and everybody can see.” Rook looked at Chess,
genuinely curious. “That what
you
would’ve done? Back in the War?”

Chess snorted. “Hell, no — I’d’ve snuck in under his lines, waited
’til he was asleep, then cut his damn throat. But I’m guessin’ you
probably want to make more of a splash than
that
— send a message.
Am I right?”

“Maybe.”

So it was decided — and five days after that night in the Two Sisters,
Rook and Chess sat looking down on Bewelcome on horseback, from
the same sharply sloping outcrop over which sunrise reached that
threadbare-pleasant little settlement, most mornings. Had any
Bewelcomeites chanced to glance their way, however, they would
have seen nothing but what was rapidly becoming one of Rook’s
favourite illusions, a heat-haze which repelled the eye without
inciting even the briefest comment, and bent the reflecting sky like
water.