Eutopia (42 page)

“You seem to have an awful high opinion of Jack Thistledown,” said Jason. “You sure you want to hear this story?”

“No, I’d rather you recite a tale from
the Iliad
instead. Or perhaps not. Continue,” Ruth said imperiously.

Jason pulled his knees up to his chest. “You’re not—” he felt his voice starting to tremble, and drew a breath to still it “—not quite right to say he was retired. Just I don’t think he was ever what you would call a gunfighter, ’cause there’s no such things. You don’t fight with guns. You kill folks with them.”

Ruth gasped. “So John Thistledown
is
Jack Thistledown!”

“Sometimes fellows would come to Cracked Wheel,” said Jason. “I was only small, so I didn’t get to see much of them. My pa would hear word that someone or another had come around looking for him. Sometimes, that fellow would go away no wiser. Sometimes a fellow would make it up to the mouth of the pass, and Pa would be there waiting for him.”

“An ambush!”

“You can see fellows coming a long ways off,” said Jason. “Pa picked this place careful, when he decided to settle with my ma. He made himself what he called his trapper’s cabin, with a good clear view of the slope. If he were lucky enough to get word someone was coming, he’d sit there with his rifle, watchin’ for them—shoot them dead before they’d even seen him. You think that’s gunfighting?”

Ruth paused before answering: “He was defending his family,” she said. “His kingdom.”

“Where he spent most days drunk insensible, while Ma did all the work,” said Jason. “And he wasn’t always that good about defending his kingdom, neither.”

“How is that?”

Jason pressed his chin into his knees.
It don’t matter
, he said to himself.
She can’t tell anyone. Not trapped here
.

But “Etherton,” was all he said. Ruth prodded, then scolded him and begged him to continue, but Jason kept quiet until he had it under control enough, to tell Ruth the story of that very bad week, when Bill Etherton came to call on his pa.

“What was this fellow Etherton?” asked Ruth after the longest silence yet. “He sounds a monster.”

Jason could see how Ruth might feel that way. He’d tried thinking of ways to tell the story any number of times over the years, and each time it started with figuring out how to talk about Bill Etherton in a way that did not make him sound like some wild beast. He knew how his mama had told it, not long after it had finished and Jason’s face was healing up:

Bill Etherton was a wicked man from your pa’s past. That’s why he did that to you—hit you like that. No excuse. No blessed excuse.

That was comfort to Jason when he heard it, the cut on his little chin starting to itch rather than hurt and his shoulder still aching where it’d been twisted. But it was no good at all to Jason Thistledown thirteen years on, trying to make some sense of the memories for the likes of Ruth Harper.

“One day,” said Jason, “a man came out of the bush and hit me hard. He was tall as a tree and wore a long coat of brown leather. I think I asked him something—I was playing with a couple sticks—and he looked at me and said something and hit me. That fellow was Bill Etherton. He knew my pa one way or another.”

“He came out of the bush,” said Ruth. “Your father—your pa would have been watching the pass, correct?”

Jason shrugged.

“And Mr. Etherton stole up behind the homestead. Which was unprotected.”

“We were unprotected,” agreed Jason. “I must have cried out loud, because my mama came running. I remember some of that but not all of it.”

Jason remembered more than he would tell. He remembered vividly the tree branch that Etherton had used to whack Jason with across the face. He did not remember getting hit, but he remembered the tears and screaming, for he was just small when it happened.

His mother cried out, and then Etherton said
Good mornin’, Ellie,
like he knew her, and Jason’s ma tried to get back into the house, but Etherton was fast and got in her way, and told her there would be no getting the gun this time.
No gettin’ the gun this time, Ellie, nuh-uh-uh-huh. . . .
That was one thing that Jason remembered clearly, because even though he was small and had only lived through four winters then, those words had the ring of history—ancient history between his mama and Mr. Etherton and somehow wrapped up with Jason himself.

Jason drew his knees up to his chin. It was warm here, but he shivered all the same.

“Jason.”

It wasn’t Ruth this time. It came from across the room, and before Jason could stop himself he said: “Ma?”

“Jason, just tell her the story. Tell
us
the story. Stop fussing.”

Jason sighed. “Sorry, Miss Butler. It’s hard in the tellin’—”

“Yes,” said Louise sharply. “It is hard. For
all
of us, Mr. Thistledown. Forgive me if I don’t—”

“Louise!” Ruth was just as sharp, and she took hold of Jason’s arm tightly. “Let him tell the story in his own time.”

Louise cleared her throat, and cleared it again. Soon, Jason figured, she would be coughing. He put his hand on Ruth’s, and was relieved to find it cool. For now.

“All right,” said Jason. “Etherton was a bad fellow. But I can’t recall everything that happened.”

“It was long ago.”

“I know my ma got herself hit too. In the stomach. Made her sick up. I remember watching that—never saw my ma sick up before.”

Ruth gasped. “He struck her? Jason . . . tell me. Was your father murdered by this Etherton? When he came back and found his family terrorized by his old enemy? When he confronted him?” She wrapped an arm over his shoulder and leaned close—like
she
ought to be comforting
him
. “Oh my dear Jason.”

Jason shook his head. “No,” he said. “My pa came back, but he didn’t confront anybody. Ma’d cleaned herself up and put a dressing on my cut, and when pa came back, he just gave that Etherton a big hug and the two of them set down to drinking. But . . .”

“But?”

“My mama said it was Etherton that pushed her to do it. Not him—but watchin’
them,
Etherton and my pa. After what he did to both of us.”

“Mr. Thistledown,” said Louise in a low tone.

“She—” began Ruth, but Jason finished the sentence: “Took care of my pa.”

There was a silence, and Jason felt embarrassed by it, so he started talking faster: “It was not only that day that drove her to it. My pa would run off whenever he felt like it—he would get himself drunk and do bad things to my ma—he hit me same as Etherton did, for even less reason sometimes. He had it coming; he was no good and so my mama did what she had to, on account of our safety and her dignity and . . .” He stopped again, feeling as though the words were running together. Ruth took his head and drew it down to her breast, and held him there, and he could feel hot tears coming to his eyes as the image of that night, outside the house as the November wind blew black leaves up off the ground and the sky turned colours like bruised flesh and he had watched his ma . . .

“I’m sorry,” he said, and in his ear, Ruth hushed him, and her fingers entwined with the hair on the back of his head, and her other hand brushed down the side of his ribs. He tried to say more—how knowing it or not, he’d brought this fate down on her and Louise, and this whole town, how that sealed-up jar of sickness on the floor was the curse he’d carried here—how in bringing this curse, he’d killed her. He tried to say it, but it was too much for words: even having passed the story, or most of it, of his pa and his mama. Saying he was sorry to Ruth was the same as saying he was sorry to his ma, whom he hadn’t even buried—and saying that right, was more than he could say in words. So all he could do was lift his cheek from her blouse, and try and face her in the pitch black. It was too late after that; her mouth was on his, lips parted, and they were sharing the hot breath of fever.

Hush, darling. No regrets
.

Ruth’s fingers danced like the legs of a spider down to the belt of his trousers, and then below, and Jason held back a gasp, as her hand formed a cup, and held him in it. He pulled away from the kiss, swallowing a mouthful of her, and slipped his own hand up to her blouse. He could feel her heartbeat, fluttering like a bird’s through the cloth and the flesh, and he could feel her grow momentarily rigid at the contact. They both knew that the only thing guaranteeing their privacy was the dark; the slightest noise would leave poor Louise with little doubt as to what they were doing.

So they made quiet work of it. Ruth found the buttons of Jason’s fly, and in no time she had undone the top two of them, which was enough: the cool, soft flesh of her wrist touched him first, and then she drew him into her palm. Jason could not breathe a moment—yet somehow he managed to find the buttons at the side of Ruth’s drawers and with only a little help from her, was able to loosen them enough that she could wriggle free. Louise might have heard that, but she must have been coughing at that instant; there was no comment from her. Jason trembled as he traced the smooth curve of Ruth’s hip with his fingertips; he drew a sharp breath as she twisted her wrist somewhat, in drawing him between her thighs. He thought—he was sure—that he heard her declare love for him, as she gasped, and pulled him deep inside her. But Jason could be no surer of that, than he was of Louise. Jason drew a sharp breath, and in doing he felt Ruth do the same thing—and he recalled—

—the moment on the rail platform, a cool spring breeze catching her as he spied her standing next to Louise, the tiny half-smile that touched only part of her face—as he wondered: did she spy me too?—and now knowing, that yes, it was, as Ruth herself had said, a moment of Fate. And so it was, when that smile widened, and—

Hush, my darling.

He clutched both her shoulders with his hands, and in so doing thrust himself deeper inside her. Her pantaloons were tangled around one ankle, and the fabric wrapped the back of one thigh as she pressed her legs around him, and drew him inside—

—widened, and reached—

Jason thrust in deeper. He fell into an easy rhythm—he was surprised at how easy. It was like he’d been doing this all his life. In his ear, Ruth whispered things that he could not understand; and he whispered them back, and they moved together more quickly, and finally, although they both fought against it, they cried out—first Ruth, and then Jason.

They lay quietly for a moment, wet with each other’s sweat and juices, and slowly returned to themselves. Jason pulled away enough that he could sit up, and as he did so, he was overcome by a sudden shame. He was not a complete fool; he knew what they’d done was private, better kept behind the doors of a saloon, or best yet, the vows of a marriage. But his will had fled him in her embrace, and here he had taken Ruth Harper, in the dark, in a sick room, right next to her good friend Louise.

The same thought might have occurred to Ruth, but she responded differently—with a laugh that only slightly betrayed her embarrassment. “Oh my,” she said, running her hand down Jason’s forearm and entwining his fingers with hers. “Oh Louise,” she said, “I can’t imagine what you are thinking.”

Jason could—and he waited in the dark next to Ruth for a few heartbeats, for the rebuke.

“Miss Butler?” he finally said. “I’m sure sorry about that; I sure wasn’t brought up to . . .”

“Louise?” Ruth let go of his hand then, and scrambled away from him. Jason, slower on the uptake than she, didn’t work it out until he heard Ruth’s gasp, and then a sob.

“Oh,” he said. And he rolled to his knees, and crawled over to where Louise lay. He found Ruth first, and took her shoulders, and brought her to his arm as she let go of the cooling, lifeless hand of her friend and chaperone.

“What have we done, Jason?”

Jason swallowed, and with his other hand reached over to touch the wax-sealed jar that had travelled from Africa, to Cracked Wheel, and now, in secret, to this cellar. “We haven’t done a thing,” he said. “Not a God-damned thing.”

Not you.

“Not us.”

But that’s not to say you’re not going to do anything, is it my boy?

“No mama,” Jason whispered.

Ruth pressed in close to him, and he held her tight. And She, come from the shadow of Montana, tall and beautiful and strong as the sky, held them both in her arms.

They’ve gone Feeger
, thought Andrew as the quarantine appeared through the trees. That was what Hank had said, back in the Tavishes’ little village on the mountainside. They were afraid of going Feeger, and so they kept to themselves, and—until the end—the Feegers kept from them. Then one day, Sam Green sent them a doctor to kill a Juke. And the Feegers came down the mountain, and they killed those stubborn Tavishes.

And now . . . now, the Feegers were upon Eliada. And the folk here were losing themselves . . . going Feeger. He saw it as they hauled past St. Cyprian’s—and a crowd of folk, who stood faces upturned to the rain, hands reaching for the sky beyond it. He heard it, in the off-key voices that sang along with the whistling dirge that seemed to come from every cranny. Fifty of them, maybe more, shuffled outside the sawmill as they passed it.