Haints Stay (12 page)

Martha grabbed Bird by the wrist and pulled. He yelled stop and
reached for the edge of the bed to counter her yanking. No arm rose to meet the
impulse and he slid out from under the bed. When he would not stand, Martha dragged
him through the doorway, into the living room, and out the front door. She paid no
mind to the fire and Bird somehow made it out without a wound. She dragged him
through the dirt and over a rock and out to the barn where she finally loosed her
grip and released him into the dirt. She had traced an enormous S in the dirt with
his back, avoiding the fallen bodies.

“Get up,” she said.

Bird turned his belly to the ground. He was crying and could not
stop.

“Stand up,” said Martha.

He was in the long johns that had once belonged to Mary. He was without
footwear.

“Go to the barn,” she said. “You'll find John's boots
there and a pistol.”

The house was burning, nearly half-consumed by flame, and she had no plan
or desire to stop it, it seemed.

“They won't fit,” he said.

“They'll cover your soles. Now get up.”

She scanned the perimeter for anything — another man, Mary. She saw
nothing but bodies and a little Bird crying in the dirt.

“Up,” she said, “we're moving.”

She headed to the barn and got the boots from beside the door. She found
the pistol with the rest of the various tools near the back of the barn. She also
found a rifle.

When she stepped back out from the barn, she found Bird had hoisted
himself into a sitting position.

“I said up,” she said.

She gripped him by his armpits. It felt loose and awkward where the stump
was, like she was hurting him.

“What are we going to do ?” he said.

“We're going to find Mary,” she said.

“Where is she ?” he said.

“We're going to look for her,” she said.

He was up finally. She brushed him off and handed him the boots. They
were indeed far too large. They were comically large on him. She nearly grinned when
he took his first few steps. He started crying again and she fired a shot into the
air with John's pistol.

“No,” she said. “Cry all you want once we've got Mary and we've set
rangers on those marauders.”

“Were they marauders ?”

“I don't know.”

“Did they take anything ? What did they want ?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Why ?”

“That's not how this works.”

“Why ?”

He was crying again.

“Because we are always in the wilderness. Beneath everything is the
wilderness and there is no end to it.”

“What do you mean ?”

“You know exactly what I mean, and that is why you're scared.”

“Are they going to come back ?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Why ?”

“Because we won't be here.”

They searched for Mary near the well and did not find her. They searched
for her in the fields and found only the plow. They followed tracks that led away
from the house and into the woods. There were two trails. One led to the cemetery
and the other led deeper into the woods and on into town.

“She's in the cemetery,” said Martha, “or she's gone.”

Bird was kicking stones and dragging his feet behind her. He was no
longer really crying but only because he was exhausted and spent. He was dripping
pathetically and running at the nose. He knew he had failed in every way you could
fail in such a situation. He had been afraid and miserable and had acted as such,
which only made him feel more afraid and more miserable.

Mary was kneeling on a grave and arranging dandelions into a cone
shape.

Martha lifted her and held her up and examined her. Then she held the
girl against her chest and shut her own eyes.

Mary asked what had happened.

Martha did not speak.

Mary asked Bird what had happened.

He was crying, and said nothing.

“We've got to go,” said Martha.

“Where is John ?” said Mary, because it felt like the right thing to
ask.

Sugar's delivery had to be overseen by several of the town's
deputies, partially because the doctor had spoken out so strongly against it.

The doctor was a committed drinker. He had steady hands until
around 3 o'clock and then he was more than worthless.

Since Sugar's arrival, the doctor had committed himself to enfeeblement.
He would sit in the bar and drink, then he would drink in front of the bar, and then
he would drink in the alley off to the side of the bar, and all the while he was
calling Sugar an abomination and a creature and the devil. He said Sugar was
pregnant with his own cock and if he, the doctor, were to squat before him while he
was birthing that cock, it would be more or less the same thing as inviting the
animal, Sugar, to fuck him.

“I will not be fucked by an animal,” insisted the doctor, on a nightly
basis. He was a man of medicine. A church-going man. He had survived two wives and
had two sons working to keep the peace. He deserved better.

The morning Sugar went into labor, the doctor opened up the bar. The
bartender, who lived upstairs in the inn above the bar itself, and who could be
blamed to some degree for answering the doctor's insistent pounding at the door,
would not take it so far as to serve the doctor at six in the morning. Instead, he
suggested that the doctor take lodging upstairs and try to sleep
off
what was clearly still clinging to him from the night before. The doctor had simply
stepped past the bartender, who was in his night cap and pajamas, and had gone
around the bar to open the shutters and get the drink himself. The bartender
protested but did not make a move to pry loose the doctor's hand. In theory, the
doctor was a respected man. He was educated and on the richer side of things and,
above all, he was necessary to their way of life. He was not a bad doctor, though he
was unreliable. He'd once cured the bartender's ringworm without much fuss, and
saved the lives of several men and women who'd come down with some kind of horrible
fever just the year before. In theory, he was one of the town's more important men.
In practice, he was universally ignored whenever possible.

In the jail, Sugar demanded help but could form no specific requests
other than, “Please bring a doctor,” or, “Please let me go.”

The doctor, drink in hand, held court on the porch of the bar.

“While I've never dealt in creature before this day, I can confidently
say that to let this one out early, to open the cell any time within the next three
or four hours, would be the same as letting it loose to wreak havoc on the women and
children of our good town. A beast like that won't be slowed down by something so
casual as labor, at least not until it's well enough along that it's more or less
immobilized by the pain and by the position its body will naturally assume.”

Four men, one woman, and three children were gathered before him, pausing
their daily procession in order to hear more details about what was going on in the
jail and why so many deputies were assigned to its security and why the doctor
himself had been so put out over the last week. Rumors were spread and
the doctor was always talking but something was different about
this morning. Curiosities were as bright as the sun breaking over the hills. The
doctor rose and swung his bottle like a young girl dancing her doll across the
floor.

“We live and see the world progress into strange, dark places,” the
doctor said. “The stench of what evil is on the horizon is beyond repute. Every
morning I wake to the relief that we are still here, that there are familiar faces
and friends about me, and then the horror of our situation settles in and I feel
both pity and fright. At my life. At our lives. At what's to become of them. We are
witnessing the de-evolution of morals into muck. The degradation of decency.”

“You're a doctor ?” said one of the men. He was sporting a bright white
hat and a long button-down shirt tucked into a snug fit of jeans.

“I am THE doctor,” said the doctor. “I am the man who would take the
bullet from your leg should the rest of the day go rotten for you.”

“I appreciate that,” said the man, “but right now you're sounding more
like a washed-up preacher or a watered-down drunk. Aren't there some kind of
preparations to be made ?”

The doctor laughed excessively and forcefully. He laughed so hard that a
fine mist of spittle glazed those children perched on the steps below him. They
wiped their eyes and covered their mouths and crept in closer.

“Of course I'm drunk,” said the doctor, “and this ain't spiritual.”

“What's the advantage ? What's the gain from how you're carrying
on ?”

“There is none of either. I'm hoping not to gain something, but to lose
something.”

“Lose what ?”

“It's obvious and not worth taking the time to say and you're a fool,”
said the doctor. “My fear, of course.”

The doctor lost his footing for a moment, trying to settle himself back
down onto one of the many rocking chairs that lined the wall-length porch of the
bar.

“What's to be scared of ?”

“The heinous child of two murdering sons of bitches,” said the doctor.
“The rage of one at learning what he's been through and what he is and the revenge
of the other learning what we've done and what we've revealed. We're caught in the
middle of two predators, easing their union into the world.”

The children were laughing now because the doctor's verve had loosed more
spit onto his shirt and thighs. He was a drooling mess and also sweating profusely.
He was making no effort to stop or clear his body's leakings.

“They've caught the Dreaded Joneses ?” said the woman.

The doctor shook his head, his bottle. “No, no,” he said.

“The Upriser Gang ? The Broke-Bottlers ?” said one of the men.

Again, the doctor shook his head.

“Jack Kraus and Splinter Cogburn ?”

“Not them. These are not celebrities. There is no news here, only
darkness.”

“Who then ?”

“Brooke and Sugar,” said the doctor.

The small crowd was silent. Then they began to murmur.

Finally, one of the men said, “Who ?”

“Brooke and Sugar,” said the doctor. “Two men who murder. They aren't
celebrities. They're
murderers
.”

“But we've never heard of them.”

“Which makes them all the more terrifying,” said the
doctor. He darted to grab his bottle as it slipped from his hand, but only thumbed
the neck, tipping it as it fell. It broke on the porch but spilled next to nothing,
as it was almost entirely empty.

“Seems hardly worth all the fuss,” said the woman.

“All those deputies are watching two unknown criminals ? With no
reputation ?”

“One unknown criminal,” said the doctor, “but they are not unknown.”

“We don't know them.”

“You might have had the unpleasant experience of
getting
to know
one of them, if we hadn't rounded them up like we did. They are an endless
outpouring of wrong-doing. They are a sickness.”

“You didn't round them up.”

“I was an essential member of the team,” said the doctor. “Who has a
drink with them ? A flask or a dram ? I will buy it from you for twice its
worth.”

The men and women bid their goodbyes without much politeness at all. They
had expected a grander reveal. This was all much messier and less exciting than was
hoped.

“There's only one ?” said a chubby boy at the steps.

“They've been separated,” said the doctor. “Not everything is rustling
and gunfire. There is an element of planning that can make one's life easier.”

“So why all the deputies ?” said the same boy.

“Because the devil himself could come tearing out of this murderer,” said
the doctor. “And his brother's wagon never arrived where it was going. So, caution
is the game.”

“Are you going to pull a bullet out of him ?”

By now, only the children were left, and they were only three :
the chubby boy asking the questions, a pockmarked girl named Alice,
with whom the doctor was familiar after last year's pox revival, and the town
rascal, Clint. Clint was chewing his fingers and looking restless.

“What they want is for me to deliver whatever he's got inside of him,”
said the doctor.

“We need more information,” said Clint, between bites.

“You'll make yourself sick doing that,” said the doctor, “and spread
disease. Spit your fingers from your mouth.”

“I won't,” said Clint.

“Regardless,” said the doctor. He rose to fetch more to drink from the
bar, but found the door locked and barred.

“You dog,” said the doctor to the unyielding oak.

“Is it the appendix ?” said the chubby boy.

“A medical man,” said the doctor, turning back to the children grandly,
drunkenly, with a stutter in his step and sweat on his brow.

“You took out my dad's,” said the boy.

“A worthless organ, just waiting to be occupied by this or that malady,”
said the doctor. “We're sacks of vestigial organs and bones. Most of us is hardly
necessary.”

He approached the chubby boy then and pinched his gut.

“Ow.”

Clint lowered his hand to laugh and lean forward as if he were planning
to take part in what was sure to become an ongoing harassment of the chubby boy.

“No, my boy. It is not the appendix.”

“What then ?” said Alice.