House of the Rising Sun: A Novel (32 page)

“I thought Beckman was joining us.”

“Forget about him. You shouldn’t be on your feet too long. Let’s go somewhere warm. You’re going to get sick. Your face looks chapped.”

“Are you upset about something?”

“Why should I be upset? I don’t want to see you get sick, that’s all. Do you think I’m abnormal because I worry about you?”

He paused, his arms stiffening on his canes. White ash was drifting down on Maggie’s hair, as soft as Christmas-tree snow. “I have to ask you something. Beckman knows a lot about Mexico and a general named Lupa. But he said Lupa may have been killed by his own men. I was at the bordello where Lupa died. General Lupa was killed by an American. The prostitutes told me they fought up in the rocks behind the bordello.”

“You were at a Mexican whorehouse?”

“I was looking for my men. Lupa hanged four of them. For no reason. Before he hanged them, he made them drop their trousers so they’d die in a shameful manner. Then he ambushed a patrol I sent to find my men.”

“Don’t talk anymore of these things, Ishmael. Let the dead go. I’m cold.”

“A hearse full of ordnance had been parked in front. Somebody set fire to it and all the weapons and ammunition inside, including machine guns. Nobody in Mexico burns firearms, particularly Mauser rifles and Maxims.”

“What does this have to do with Arnold? He wants to give you a job. That’s all that matters.”

“There were bodies all around the brothel. I knew the woman who owned the brothel. She was gone when I got there, but the girls said an Austrian arms dealer was hunting for something in the ashes of the hearse. The girls also said the man who killed Mexicans all over the canyon was a Texas Ranger. I think he may have been my father.”

“I don’t want to hear this. It has nothing to do with us,” she said. “I don’t like talking about brothels, either.” Her face had hardened, as though she were examining an image a few inches in front of her face, one nobody else saw. “Look out for yourself, Ishmael. I tried to take care of my mother. Instead of getting any thanks, I got blamed for her death.”

“I see,” he said, realizing she had slipped into a place that only she knew about or understood.

“You
see
what?” she asked.

He shook his head neutrally.

“This place is unsanitary. I want to go and not come back,” she said, lifting a piece of ash from her hair and dusting it off her fingers. “Be nice to Arnold. He has qualities many people don’t know about. He’s fascinated with history. He has degrees from Heidelberg and Vienna. You keep staring at me. Why do you stare at me like that?”

“Sometimes you seem to have two thoughts in your eyes at the same time. Sometimes I can’t figure out who you are.”

“The person who’s going to make you rich. How’s that for starters?”

Beckman was waiting for them by the car, smoking his cheroot, not removing it from his lips, his teeth showing when he took a puff. “What kept you?”

“We thought you were coming in,” Ishmael said. “You might enjoy it. Some of the murals are still on the plaster. Somebody cut the date 1730 on a flagstone. Would you like to take a look?”

“If I wanted to, I would.” Beckman dropped his cigar on the ground and mashed it out with the sole of his boot. Then he cleared his mouth and spat.

“We’re not in a hurry,” Ishmael said.

“Are you hard of hearing?”

“No, sir.”

“Then don’t act like it.”

“Maggie said you’re a student of history.”

“Look at me.”

“Sir?”

“I said look at me.”

Ishmael shook his head again, his eyes focused on empty space.

“I don’t like repeating or explaining myself,” Beckman said. “For you, I’ll do it once. Most Christian churches are built on pagan sites. That’s why Attila the Hun didn’t sack Roman churches. He feared Odin, not a Hebrew god. Are you listening? I have the distinct feeling I’m not communicating with you.”

“You’re correct. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I don’t trouble the spirits, and they don’t trouble me,” Beckman said. “Clear enough?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You learn your manners in the army? If so, they taught you well.”

“I learned them at home. From my mother.”

“That’s a good answer. That’s why I want you to represent my company.” Beckman’s face broke into a grin as he shifted his attention to Maggie. “Ah, you’re a magnificent woman, probably the bane of us all. Payment for the screwing we’ve given women since the time of Eve. What do you think of that, Mr. Holland? Do you think we shit our nest in that pleasure park between the Tigris and Euphrates?”

“Did you ever hear anything about a burned hearse down in Mexico, Mr. Beckman?” Ishmael said. “One that was loaded with ordnance owned by General Lupa?”

The wind gusted in the silence, speckling the air with dust that was cold and shiny, like mica. Beckman untied the bandana from his neck and whipped it into a rope and retied it around his forehead, pinning his hair to the sides of his face. His eyes were elongated slits, a canine tooth showing behind the curl in his lips. “No, I know nothing of burned hearses,” he said. “Do you know there’s a tic in your face, Mr. Holland? Do you have a nervous condition? Maybe an addiction of some kind? You should do something about that.”

T
HE DAYS WERE
growing shorter, the sun unable to warm the interior of Maggie’s house, the rugs full of electricity. It was only five o’clock, and Ishmael could feel his spirits sinking. He paced the floor and looked out the window at the shadows on the lawn and the strips of gunny cloth whipping on a farmer’s barbed-wire fence, a plowed field spiked with brown weeds. Maggie was cooking dinner in the kitchen, banging pots and iron skillets, scraping metal on metal. She had not mentioned his “medication,” a word they both used more and more often. She dropped a skillet heavily on the stove.

“What’s in the syringe?” he said from the door.

“You already know,” she replied.

“Morphine you mixed with whiskey?”

“It’s heroin. It turns to morphine inside the bloodstream. Some people smoke it. There are worse things around.”

She was frying potatoes in the pan without a cover, the grease popping on the stove.

“Why don’t you use a lid?” he said.

“Why don’t you stay out of the kitchen?”

“What did I say wrong?” he asked.

“It’s what you didn’t say. Arnold was talking to me like I was trash, and you didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t think it would help.”

“You didn’t mind bringing up hearses and guns in Mexico. Why is it that I don’t count? Get a plate out of the cupboard.”

“I’m not too hungry.”

“Oh, lovely.”

“It’s not the food, it’s my stomach.”

“Physician, heal thyself,” she said, stabbing at a piece of meat in the skillet.

“You’re talking about the medication?”

“The syringe is in the top drawer of my dresser. Make sure you get the mixture right. Or throw it in the garbage.”

“I sent another telegram to my mother’s union. She took leave. Maybe she’s coming to San Antonio.”

“Stop the presses.”

He wiped his nose and scratched his arms. “You have some brandy?”

“In the cabinet,” she said.

“I feel sick, Maggie. I can’t help it.”

He stared at the back of her neck, waiting for her to reply, his heart rate increasing, his breath growing more ragged. The Brits called it the black monkey. But it didn’t just climb on your back. It turned its fleas loose on your skin and crawled inside you and clawed at your connective tissue, spreading a pervasive itch over your entire body, inside and out, even on your tongue. He wanted to scrub himself with a wire brush.

He went back into the living room and sat on the couch, a hot coal eating its way through his stomach. “Maggie?” he called.

She came to the kitchen doorway, steak fork in hand. “Decide what you’re going to do?”

“I don’t have any memory of leaving the hospital. I feel like I have holes drilled in my memory.”

“Count yourself lucky. You should have seen the basket cases in the open ward.”

“I didn’t have to see them. I soldiered with them.”

She went back into the kitchen. He squeezed his wrists, first one, then the other, as though trying to shut down the malaria-like sickness flowing through his veins. A moment later, he heard her sigh and the tinkle of the steak fork striking the bottom of the sink. He felt her weight on the couch, smelled the odor of cooking in her clothes.

“There’s a price for everything,” she said.

“Price of what?”

“You became an army officer and enjoyed the pleasures of your rank. You paid the cost in France. I was nineteen and treated like the queen at Miss Porter’s whorehouse. I enjoyed it, too. Now I dream about every degenerate I helped degrade my body. You and I let others use us because we had no power. Once you accept that, you make a choice. You use your intelligence and never let anyone hurt you again. You also get even.”

“What’s Beckman after?”

“Control of the world, probably. How would I know? People are driven by their vices, not their virtues, Ishmael. Why climb up on a cross about it?”

“I’m going to have a brandy.”

“You can do it that way if you want.”

“What other way is there?”

“I used opium and laudanum for years. Now I don’t. When you don’t need it anymore, you put it aside. You think you can’t go without it now, but I think you can.”

“Does Beckman’s interest in me have something to do with an arms deal in Mexico? With the lynching of my men?”

“Arnold’s only interest is making money. Forget about Mexico and whatever happened there. They were killing each other on stone altars before the Spaniards ever arrived.”

“I’m coming apart, Maggie.”

“Tell me what you want to do. You want to lie down with me? You want me to do anything for you? Think of me as your movable feast.”

“I don’t know what I want,” he said, his voice strange, removed from the person he thought he was. “I don’t know who I am. I want a drink of brandy. Just a little. To take the edge off.”

“With soda or ice or straight up?” she said.

R
UBY DANSEN WOKE
at dawn in the chair car and looked out the window and saw zebras and giraffes and white horses and at least four elephants in a field, down by a smoking river, men in rolled shirtsleeves flinging armloads of hay from a flatbed wagon. Was she dreaming? The train rounded a bend and passed a grove of bare cottonwoods. The animals slipped out of view, clouds of white fog thicker than ever on the fields and river.

A soldier wearing a peaked campaign hat was standing in the aisle, close by her chair. He bent down and pulled a blanket up to her chin. “I put this on you,” he said. “It’s right chilly. You can sleep some more, and I’ll bring you some coffee.”

“Ishmael?” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“I thought you were my son. I was dreaming. I took him to the circus when he was three.”

“You weren’t dreaming, ma’am. That was the circus out there. Every kind of wild animal you can think of.”

She tried to see beyond the caboose of the train, her breath fogging the glass. When she looked back at the soldier, she realized one of his sleeves was pinned to the shoulder. “Were you over there?”

“Yes, ma’am, I sure as heck was.”

“Did you know Captain Ishmael Holland? He commanded colored troops.”

“No, ma’am, I didn’t. But I heard they done right well.”

“How far are we from San Antonio?”

“We’re fixing to pull into the station any time now. Are you all right?”

“Why, yes, I am.”

“You were having a bad dream. That’s what the cold will do to you. You cain’t be getting that Spanish influenza, either. It can flat put you in a box.”

“You’ve been very kind,” she said.

“The Harlem Hellfighters, that was their name. Did your son come home okay?”

“No, he was wounded badly in both legs.”

“I’m sorry. I hope things work out for y’all.”

“I hate to ask you such a personal question, but maybe you can help me. When you were recovering from your injury, did you have trouble with any of the drugs you had to take?”

His eyes went away from hers. “I didn’t learn anything over there but one lesson, ma’am: You get shut of the war as soon as you’re able.”

He retook his seat at the head of the car with two other enlisted men. One was asleep; one was reading a newspaper. The man who was asleep had a pair of crutches propped next to him; the man with the newspaper wore a rubber mask painted with flesh tones and a neat mustache.

I
SHMAEL COULD NOT
remember with exactitude how he got to the carnival. Maybe in a jitney or maybe a driver in a Model T picked him up on the side of the road. He remembered the loud ticking sound the engine gave off, like a clock mechanism working against itself, gnashing its own cogs and teeth into filings. He remembered the driver placing him in the front seat, sticking his canes snugly by his side. He remembered unstoppering the bottle of brandy again and working on the second half of its contents, his voice too loud inside the confines of the car, his allusions to Mexico and France and pulling a mule uphill loaded with two wounded men lost on his benefactor.