And the Hills Opened Up (9 page)

15

The gunfire across the street lasted longer than Revis Cooke expected, an impressive symphony of noise and chaos, and the longer it went on the more squirrely Hollis Wells grew, pacing up and down at the front of the house like he was bent on wearing a groove into the floor, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air. 

“Really, Mr. Wells.  Look how agitated you’ve become.”

Wells scowled and returned to the front door, sliding the viewing slot open and peering outside for the twelfth time since the shooting had started.

“I should be with my men.  I should be in that saloon.”

“Life does not always make way for our intentions.”

Wells turned back round.

“You are acting in a prissy manner, Mr. Cooke.  Are you really so scared you cannot, for a moment, open this goddamn door and let me out?”

Cooke smiled and studied his fingernails.  “You can rant and rave and call me names, Mr. Wells, but company policy is firm.  I cannot, in good conscience, open that door until I feel certain the scene outside is secure and there is no danger of a holdup.” 

Wells snorted and turned back to the door.  Cooke got up from his chair, circled around the accounting table, and crossed the room to the bookshelf against the wall.  He was about to recommend a volume on patience and fortitude when something crashed into him from behind, knocking him into the shelf.  It was Wells—the coachman had sprinted across the room and bull-rushed him.  Cooke whirled round, thrashing as white lights burst across his vision. 

“Just give me the key, Mr. Cooke.”

Wells’ reach was greater, but Cooke was able to free one of his legs, pull it back, and land a solid kick to his assailant’s groin.  Wells groaned and fell back, allowing Cooke just enough space to grab a heavy volume off the shelf and smack it across the side of the guard’s head with a satisfying thud.

Cooke scrambled to his feet while the other man, clutching himself, tried to recover. 

“I haven’t fought another man in years, Mr. Wells, but I think you’ll find me suited to the task.”

Wells opened his mouth to reply, but Cooke threw the heavy book at the knot in his throat.  The coachman coughed and gasped, grabbing at his larynx, and Cooke delivered another weighty kick to his groin, dropping the National man to the floor.  More white lights popped in accountant’s vision as he staggered toward the room’s unlit fireplace.  He grasped the iron poker leaning against the brick chimney, untouched for the past few summer months, and felt its solid weight in his hand. 

“You’re not so different from the rock trolls here in town,” Cooke said, turning back round to face his fallen opponent.  “They have little patience as well.  You should see them, shifting from one foot to another as they wait in the line on payday, fidgeting as if their boots were filled with red ants.”

The guard was on his knees now, reaching for his belt.  Oh yes, he was wearing a long-knife.  Every good stagecoach man carried a knife. 

“I am sorry, sir,” Cooke said, landing the iron on Wells’ arm with a crunching force that caused the coachman to drop the blade and holler.  “A knife is not included in a fair fight.”

Wells raised his head, his eyes flashing as he clutched his forearm.

“Goddamn you.  You broke my arm.”

Cooke laughed. 

“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Wells.”

Tears filled the coachman’s eyes, his chest heaving like a bellows.  He swallowed and spat on the floor.

“You think you’re so high and fancy in this stone shack, don’t you?  Well, you ain’t.  You ain’t any better than any other man in the town, or any other.  You’re just a bagman for Mr. Dennison.  No different from any of the miners you pay out, except they come by theirs through honest sweat.”

Cooke nodded, tightening his grip on the iron.

“Is that your true opinion of me, Mr. Wells?”

The coachman drew a hissing breath between his teeth. 

“Yes, sir.  It is.”

Cooke smiled and brought the iron down with all his might, landing it on the coachman’s right shoulder.  Wells cried out and toppled back, exposing his body to any angle Cooke decided to take. 

He’d take his time working the coachman over.  Patience was a virtue, was it not?

Billy Atkins watched the shootout in the Runoff Saloon from the porch of the general store down the street, moon-eyed and delighted, his mission to bring his father home for dinner long forgotten. 

Actually, there wasn’t much to see, since the gunfight was indoors, but he could watch the pretty ladies on the saloon’s front porch watching the fight, how they crouched real low and peeked inside the building while the shots went CRACK CRACK CRACK, still loud even from down the street.  The ladies were so excited that they forgot to keep their short dresses down and he could see their bloomers showing, red and pink and white, and the sight made him giggle and rub his crotch.

Finally, two shots rang out, cracking so fast they almost sounded like one, and the gunfire stopped inside the saloon.  The ladies got up off the porch floor, straightened their dresses, and went inside.  Men poured out of the Copper Hotel and started mingling in the street.  A minute later more folks showed up from both ends of town. 

“Hey!  Boy!”

Billy turned and looked into the general store.  It’d gotten darker, both outside and in.  He could barely make out the man sitting at his pa’s desk, chained up to that metal ring in the floor. 

“What the hell is going on out there?”

Billy wiped his nose with the back of his hand, wondering if he should answer or run back home.  Either way, he’d probably get a whipping for how long he’d dawdled.  He could picture that juniper switch his ma kept beside her dresser.

“Answer me, son.”

“Why should I?” Billy hollered back into the store.  “You’re a criminal, ain’t you?  I don’t have to say nothing to you.”

The man didn’t respond.  Billy took a few steps toward the doorway and peered in, wondering what he was up to.  He saw him hunched over his pa’s desk with his face in his hands.  His pa sat like that, too, when he was tired.

“There was shooting.”

The man raised his head and scowled.

“I figured that.  Where was it?”

“At the saloon down the street.  The Runoff.”

The man nodded his head like he’d been expecting that, too.  Billy stepped inside the doorway to see him better, toeing the doorway with his foot.

“You see anyone get shot?”

“No.  Just the ladies watching from outside.”

The man sat back in his chair, rattling the chains around him.  “My friends were in that saloon,” he said in a soft voice.  “I wonder if they took it to those shotguns, or if the shotguns took it to them.”

Billy squinted and scratched the back of his head.

“You have friends?”

“Yup,” the stranger said.  “One punched me out cold, too.  But I reckon he had his reasons.  I shot a man who spilt beer on my knee.”

“Shot him dead?”

“Dead as a stuffed cougar.”

“And that’s why you’re chained up and sitting in my pa’s chair?”

“That’s right, kid,” the man said, nibbling on one of the metal bands on his wrist.  “You’re figuring it right out.”

Billy rubbed the instep of his foot with his other foot.  He’d never thought much about criminals having friends or losing their tempers.  The only trouble they ever had in Red Earth was fighting, and that was usually only between the miners, who his father said were just drunk and ignorant.  The man in chains didn’t look drunk to Billy, though he did smell like beer.

“What’s you name, boy?”

“Billy.  Billy Atkins.”

“Well, Billy, my name is Johnny Miller and I’m hungry.  Haven’t ate all day, but I’m thinking my dinner is low on your father’s chore list tonight.  Would you agree with that, boy?”

“I guess.”

Johnny Miller yawned and nodded his head.

“So, Mr. Billy, think you could fetch me something to eat?”

“From my ma?”

“No, you don’t need to run all over town.  Just grab me something from behind the counter over there.”

Billy looked over to the store’s counter, which he’d never been behind his entire life.  Only the Jamesons were allowed back there.  He could see cobwebs covering the store’s two back windows.

“It’ll be square, son.  I’ve got money.  I’ll pay for the food when the men get back to the store.  I only need you to fetch it for me.”  Johnny Miller held up his wrists and gave them a shake, rattling the chains.  “I can’t eat these, can I?”

Billy looked back to the door again, feeling another urge to fly outside and run into the street.  He was tired of talking to this man, even if he really had killed somebody for spilling beer on his knee.  He was tired of how the man’s eyes stayed on him every second, in a way no grown-up had ever watched him before.  Just standing in the store with him made Billy feel unsettled. 

“You ever been hungry, Billy?  So hungry it feels like something’s chewing on your guts, making them ache?”

“I don’t know.”

Johnny Miller sat forward, settling his hands flat on the table and he stared into the boy’s eyes.  “You don’t know?  Well then, I’d say you ain’t never been hungry enough to know what I’m talking about.”

“I guess not.”

“You don’t know a goddamn thing about a goddamn thing, kid.  You ain’t lived long enough to know what it’s like to grow up.  The pressures that build in a man till his head feels like it’s going to burst.”

Billy took a step back. 

“You think life’s all home cooking and warm blankets.  How your pa’s cheek smells nice after he shaves.”  Johnny shook his head like an invisible fly was buzzing around him.  “But you wait.  You just wait and see.  Someday you’ll run into something bad, something real bad, and you’ll wish it was just being hungry and maybe you won’t feel so high and mighty anymore, with that stubby nose of yours all stuck up in the air.”

Billy turned and bolted for the door.  Chains rattled as the criminal jumped from his seat and thrashed about, pulling at the ring in the floor.  Billy ducked his head, pumping his arms and legs.  More ugly words came from inside the general store and the boy tried to outrun those, too, dodging the dim figures of more adults as they gathered in the fading light.

16

A new breed of weariness seeped into Hank Chambers’ soul as he stared into the dark barrel of Milo Atkins’ revolver, a vast and all-encompassing fatigue that had nothing to do with the horrors he’d witnessed in the mine below and everything to do with the number of fools in the world.  So many fools, covering so much of God’s fertile creation.  What could their purpose be?  And in what poorly-lit hour had they been conceived?  Throughout his entire mining career—heck, throughout his whole damn life—fools had been dogging Chambers at every turn, weighing him down like rocks in his pockets.  They’d nearly killed him a hundred times beneath the ground—not minding their chisels, their hammers, the tightness of their knots—and now one more fool was trying to get him killed.  It was enough to drive a man plumb crazy.

But he had to keep his head on straight.  Bonnie was expecting him home for dinner and to drink as much water as she saw fit.  He would drink whole jars of water, one after the other.  He’d fill himself with so much water his body would puff out and gurgle when he walked—

“Lord, Hank.  You stink to high heaven.  What are you covered in, anyhow?”

Chambers spat on the ground, trying to regain his senses.  Harder now.  They wanted to run off like wild horses, all skittish with nerves and fever.

“It’s gore, Milo.  Something in the mine killed my men.”

“I heard.  Three of them, is that right?”

Chambers looked past the sheriff and counted four others, including Leg and Henry Jameson.  Nobody had a gun except the sheriff. 

“More than that, Milo.”

“How many, then?”

Chambers turned around, looking for the sun.  It had already set behind the hills, throwing the whole town below in shade.

“About all of them, I’d say.”

The sheriff’s jaw went slack.  Chambers could hear the cogs grinding inside the young man’s brain, needing a bit more lubrication in the July heat.  The sheriff lowered his gun a bit and let out a big guffaw, glancing at the men behind him.  Leg Jameson tittered with him, but his mute son Henry and the two old loafers, Butch Hastings and Larry Nolan, did not make a sound, their somber eyes glued on Chambers.  Some men expected the worst, some did not.

“All of ‘em, you say?  Huh.  That fever you’re running is worse than we all thought.”

Chambers shook the fuse cords in his hand, wishing he could light them with the power of his mind alone.  Every second that passed was one more second toward the death of them all.  That Charred Man would find his way to the mine’s opening sooner or later, like water finding a hole in a dam. 

“Don’t mistake my sweat for madness,” Chambers said, taking a step toward the sheriff’s gun.  “I know what I saw down there.  Some creature got loose, tore into the men, and killed them all.  I’m blowing the mine so it doesn’t do the same down in camp.  Every second you hinder me you risk your own imminent death, Sheriff.”

Atkins smirked and motioned at him with the revolver. 

“You stay where you are, Mr. Chambers.  I like ghost stories myself, but I’ve never heard of anything killing seventy some men.  Nothing except what you’re attempting here.”

Butch Hastings, one of the old general store loafers, cleared his throat.  He had rheumatism in both hands and it made them shake as if they had a mind of their own. 

“What about the two adits?  It’d get out through them, wouldn’t it?”

Chambers nodded at the crate of extra dynamite and fuse caps.

“There’s enough sticks left to close those, too, if we get lucky and have the time.  I figured it would follow me up to this entrance first, though.  I felt it hunting me. ”

A fly lifted off the ground and circled round Chambers, intrigued by the slickness and odor to his clothes.  The wind had died down.  The hillside was so quiet you could hear the fly buzzing and everyone breathing, including the horses tied to a post outside the dry house.  Atkins was squinting like he had a headache and a toothache at the same time, his eyes darting from Chambers to the mine entrance and back again.

“What’s really going on, Hank?”

“I told you already, Sheriff.  I’m not to going to make up a lie to make you feel better.  The truth is strange enough already.”

Atkins frowned and scratched his chin.

“Why don’t you set down that cord and we’ll check out the mine together?  You show me the seventy men murdered, as you say, and I’ll let you blow the mine, even if it costs us both our jobs.  We’ll create a big old tomb for your crew.  We’ll even get Father Lynch to bless the whole affair.”

Chambers swatted the fly away, which just looped around and came back again.  Like the conversation they were having.

“Fine, Sheriff.  Let’s do it your way.”

The foreman dropped the blasting cord on the ground and stepped back, holding his hands in the air.  It was growing clear to him that there was no good way out of this situation, that he’d finally run into the King Fool himself, and that he might not survive this last foolish encounter. 

“Thank you, Hank.  I know—”

The sheriff stopped in mid-sentence, whatever grating thing he was about to say suddenly wiped clean from his mind as he looked over Chambers’ shoulder, eyes widening at what he saw there.  The foreman swore softly and closed his eyes, apologizing to his wife in his mind.

The sheriff lowered his gun and Chambers turned around so he was facing the mine’s entrance.  He couldn’t make out anything except dark.

“You saw it, didn’t you?”

“I might have.  I might have seen something walk past.”

“Big hands, like claws?”

“I don’t know.  Could have just been a shadow.  Or a regular man.”

Butch Hastings shook his head.

“I saw it, too.  Wasn’t no regular man.  Never seen anything that moved like that.”

Chambers bent over and picked up the pile of cords again, hoping they still had time.  Atkins licked his lips, eyes still fixed on the mine’s entrance.

“Maybe you got me spooked, too.  Maybe you spooked everybody.”

“The Charred Man.  That’s what I call him, Milo.”  Chambers touched the end of the cords to the lantern’s open fire.  They smoldered for a moment, then caught in a dozen sparking strands. 

“You should all get back now.”

Atkins broke from his paralysis and looked down at the fuse cords, which had already burned a foot down. 

“Jesus Christ, Hank.  This is going to kill the town.  We lose the mine, the whole show is going to close up.  We’ll be a ghost town by fall.”

“There’ll be other towns, Milo.  Now, you and Henry grab that crate and haul it around to those adits.  If it’s truly up here with us and we seal it in, I doubt it’ll make it to those adits faster than men on horseback.”

Chambers handed the lantern to the sheriff, who looked like he was finally catching on.  The foreman started forward, moving before he could think too much.  He caught up to the burning section of cord, passed it by, and headed unarmed into the mine.  He thought about how any day you worked underground could be your last.  How every miner knew it and accepted it as a risk he could not get around, not with prayer nor luck nor goodness. 

Still, it felt strange, knowing you were entering a mine for the last time, realizing you would not emerge to see the stars again.  The feeling pushed Chambers’ summer fever away and flushed it out of him.  When he sprinted into that first big room of the Dennison Mine, hollering for the Charred Man to come out and fight, to fight him like a goddamn man, Hank Chambers felt stronger than he ever had in his life.  Strong enough that when the Charred Man did find him, smelling like burnt copper and smoke, Chambers was able to wrap his arms tightly around the clawing devil until he heard an enormous blast, a thunderclap that brought the world to an end.