Power in the Blood (70 page)

“I suppose.”

Omie inspected her shoes, then asked, “Mama, did you ever know a man that’s tall, with holes in his face for a spike or an arrow to go through, and a big hat?”

“Gracious, no. I would have remembered a man like that. Why do you ask?”

“I see him sometimes, and sometimes he sees me too, but I don’t know why. I thought he might be my real papa.…”

“Absolutely not. He was a fairly short man, as I recall, and even if he was not at all handsome, he certainly didn’t have holes in his face, apart from his nostrils and mouth.”

“I haven’t seen him for a long time now.”

“He may have been nothing but a dream.”

“I don’t think so, Mama.”

31

When Madge Clifton’s mother began to die, there was little sympathy in the neighborhood for either woman. The presence of Madge had been tolerated without enthusiasm for a number of years, and it was hoped by the female population of Dry Wash that with the passing of her invalid mother to a better world, Madge would consider moving on also. If Madge chose not to do so, she would be encouraged by means as yet undefined. There had been sympathy for her, even if she was a whore, for as long as she tended her ailing mother, but communal tolerance was nearing its limit.

But Mrs. Clifton, eighty-one years old and incapable of meaningful speech or movement, lingered for a week, then another week, ingesting only a little soup and sips of water. It was considered miraculous that she clung so tightly to a life that must have been sheer misery for years, but cling she did, well into a third week. The women were becoming impatient with such delay to their plans for encouraging Madge to leave, and kept a close watch on the Clifton home for drawn shades in the daytime, or the appearance of Madge with a black shawl around her, anything to indicate that the time for implementing their plan had arrived.

It was during Mrs. Clifton’s third week of lingering at death’s door that an unusual figure came to Dry Wash. Within twenty minutes of his arrival, he drew up his wagon outside Madge’s door, knocked and introduced himself. “Ma’am, I am Reverend Francis Wixson, and I ask you for just a short moment of your time, pursuant to a request that may advance the cause of science and religion both, with your cooperation. They tell me at the store you have a parent in close proximity to her maker, and I beg your indulgence.”

Madge scandalized the town in a new and different manner when it became known she had allowed Reverend Wixson to park his wagon behind the house, then moved her dying mother into it. This apparent callousness and licentiousness (it was assumed the reverend had betrayed his cloth and would move into the house with Madge) was reason enough for a party of women to approach Clay Dugan with a view to having him arrest Madge and the preacher both for outright moral corruption.

“Ladies,” he told them, “you know Madge’s occupation. I guess she has the right to take a man inside her own house if she wants.”

“But her mother is dying, Marshal. She’s gone and put the old lady outside in the feller’s wagon, and don’t be telling us she’s got the right to do that.”

“Well, that does seem like an unusual thing to do.…”

“You get down there and make her throw that feller out and bring her mother back inside. It’s a disgrace to the community when a woman like her thinks she can get away with murder, and that’s what it’ll be, Marshal, if that old lady dies out there in the wagon while Madge Clifton’s inside tucked up warm with a customer, and I don’t believe for one minute he’s a real preacher. What man of God would have dealings with a whore, I ask you? You get down there and put things right like it’s your job to do.”

Clay suppressed a sigh and did as he was told, but he insisted that the women allow him to do his duty without all of them trailing down to Willow Street on his heels. They agreed, and let him approach Madge’s house without an escort.

When he knocked, Madge let him in immediately.

“Good afternoon, Marshal.”

“Afternoon, Miss Clifton.”

When he saw the rawboned figure at the kitchen table, Clay stared. “Don’t I know you?”

“I believe so. The name was Dugan, was it not?”

“Was and still is. I forgot yours. Waxman?”

“Wixson. Reverend Francis Wixson. My calling remains the same, but I see yours has changed.”

Clay saw Wixson’s eye on the badge he wore on his vest.

“People here know about my previous occupation,” he said.

“Oh, I intended no insult, Mr. Dugan. It was an innocent remark, I assure you.”

“Please sit down, Marshal,” Madge invited.

Clay sat and placed his hat on his knee. Madge plucked it off and placed it on a hatrack. Clay was irritated by that, but said nothing. He hadn’t wanted to come to Madge Clifton’s house at all, and had been nowhere near it since the hanging of Maxwell the dentist. The temptation to do so had been there in his mind, but he had resisted until now, because he knew it would do him no good at all to get mixed up with a woman like Madge, not while he was supposed to represent law and order. He thought about her often, though, and lifted his hat to her in passing on the street. No one could have guessed he wanted her so badly he often could not sleep without first pouring himself several stiff shots of whiskey. But he suspected Madge knew, with the cunning instinct of the whore for a potential customer. She said and did nothing to relay her secret knowledge of him, but it was there in her eyes whenever they exchanged the briefest of looks in public. I know you want me, her eyes said, and someday you’ll come knocking at my door. And today he had, but only because a bunch of outraged women had obliged him to. He knew why Wixson was there.

“Your mother, Miss Clifton … she’s in the wagon for weighing when the time comes?”

“That’s correct. I’m sure Mama would want to take part in an experiment like this. She was always very curious about things until her mind went.”

“Well, I have to explain this to folks. Can you guarantee she’s comfortable and warm? If I can tell them that, they’ll likely be less upset.”

“She is indeed, Marshal,” said Wixson, “and I invite you to inspect the wagon for yourself.”

Clay accompanied Madge and Wixson to the backyard and climbed into the wagon. Mrs. Clifton was laid out on a mattress on one of the beam balance’s pans, the other being occupied by a selection of metal weights, large and small. The central needle indicated a perfect balance between the two. The woman’s eyes were open, and she gazed at the wagon’s canvas roof with a rapt expression that suggested to Clay she was out of her head.

“Mrs. Clifton, are you happy with this arrangement here? Are you comfortable, ma’am?”

She offered no reply, seemed in fact unaware that he squatted beside her. She was covered by a heavy quilted comforter, and her breathing was easy. Clay could find no fault with the setup, and stepped back outside.

“All right, Marshal?” asked Wixson.

“I suppose. You really expect to weigh her at the exact moment she passes on, and have the difference register?”

“When her soul departs the physical body, yes.”

“Been finding many takers these past years?”

“Quite a number. My portfolio of statistics is swelling, and in a few years more I expect to be in a position to publish my results.”

“Is that right. Miss Clifton, is there any kind of financial arrangement involved here, I mean, is the reverend paying you for the right to weigh your mother’s soul?”

“No, Marshal. Should he?”

“I don’t know. You ever pay anyone before, Reverend?”

“Indeed no, not once. There are very few individuals who are prepared to submit their loved one into my care, unfortunately, but those that do, do so with a will. They wish to contribute to mankind’s understanding of the unknown, you see, and that is a privilege beyond price.”

“I’ll go ahead and tell people you’re not doing anything wrong here. Any idea how long this’ll take?”

“Miss Clifton informs me her mother is tenacious of life, and in any case I’m no doctor. It may happen at any moment, or not for days. We’ll remain here with Mrs. Clifton regardless, to provide her with comfort until the end, whenever that may be.”

Clay took his hat and left. He had felt extremely uncomfortable in Madge’s house. The bedroom door had been open, and he had seen in passing the bed she made her living by. Most of her customers, Clay had learned, approached the house from the rear, to avoid being seen. He had lately mounted a watch over the open space behind Madge’s house to see just who arrived, and how often. He had done this for two nights, and seen only one man knock and enter through the back door. It had been too dark to identify him. If that was the regular number, it was a wonder Madge was able to survive. Clay himself kept his distance during those two nights, unwilling to risk being seen and associated with Madge’s clientele.

The same delegation of women arrived at his office shortly after his return, and were far from satisfied with Clay’s explanation of Wixson’s apparatus. There were gasps of incredulity as Clay expressed his own satisfaction with the situation.

“It isn’t Christian, Marshal! It shouldn’t be let alone, a foolish business like that. They should be made to quit right now, before the old lady passes on in the back of a wagon when she’s got a perfectly good bed to lay herself down in and die natural-like.”

“Ladies, there’s nothing illegal about what Miss Clifton and the reverend have agreed to between them. Mrs. Clifton is just fine where she is, believe me.”

“Marshal, why are you protecting that woman?”

“I’m not protecting anyone, ma’am; I just don’t see any criminal activity taking place in her backyard.”

“See anything else taking place in Madge’s backyard?” asked another woman. “Heard you were seen snooping around there last week in the dark.”

“That’s an outright lie, ma’am. Whoever told you that is mistaken.”

“Well, which is it—a mistake or a lie?”

“Either or both,” said Clay. “Now I want my office cleared. Good day to you, ladies, and a pleasant evening.”

He herded them out the door like a gaggle of hissing geese, and closed it behind him. So he’d been seen. He shouldn’t have gone anywhere near the place, even as far from Madge’s back door as he had stationed himself. Maybe it was the man he’d seen who passed the sighting on. If the women talked loud enough, it might blacken his reputation, and Clay didn’t want that. He liked his job and its steady wages, and would no more have risked losing it than shot off his toes. The women were still outside his window, peering in at him. Clay hated them for the self-righteous interfering busybodies they were. He wondered how many of their husbands had visited Madge, and found the thought upset him even more.

Word of a scientific experiment conducted in the name of God could not be kept quiet for long. By the end of the day a small crowd had gathered around the leaning picket fence enclosing Madge’s backyard. A lamp burned inside the wagon, and the silhouettes of Madge and Wixson could be seen on the dirty canvas. It was noted that they placed themselves at opposite ends of the wagon. Clay went down to Willow Street himself to see how matters were progressing, and passed through the gathering until he came to the wagon’s tailgate.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Please do, Marshal.”

Clay sat beside Wixson. “How is she?”

“Failing, I believe. Miss Clifton says her mother’s breathing has never sounded like this.”

Clay listened; the woman’s breath was barely there, but it came and went with such rapidity her nostrils appeared to quiver. He looked at Madge, who smiled back. Clay looked away. He didn’t know why he wanted her; she was not especially attractive. It must have been hearing her with Maxwell in the cell the night before the hanging, but even that reason made no sense to Clay; in fact it was humiliating to think he had been snared by such unabashedly crude sounds. He wanted someday to marry again with a good woman, and have children by her to replace poor Silan, but Madge could never be that woman, not if Clay intended remaining in Dry Wash.

His presence appeared to grant the project a sudden legitimacy; soon the watching crowd ignored Madge’s fence and gathered closely around the wagon, expressing awe at the singular appearance of the contraption upon which Mrs. Clifton lay like an unprotesting human sacrifice. Someone asked Wixson to explain his theory, and he stood upon the tailgate to deliver a lecture on the work of a lifetime.

“Here is the message,” he said, pointing along the sides of his wagon. “‘A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is His delight.’ This is no casual reference to honest shopkeeping, my friends, but an exhortation to seek actual proof of the soul’s existence within us. In the days of old, that was not possible, since mankind lacked the precision instruments of modern science, but now at last we may take up the Lord’s work, and seek to prove beyond even the scorn of such doubting Thomases as there might be among you that the soul is indeed there, a thing of such fragile substance it makes the finest gossamer web among twigs and grass on a spring morning seem a veritable tangle of fisherman’s net, so great is the contrast. The soul, good people, is of such rarefied stuff it cannot bear the touch of air upon it, but must hide inside us all until the moment of its release, at which time its natural lightness takes it up among the fluffy clouds, and beyond, to its rightful home in the heavenly abode. My task—nay, my pledge to my maker—is this: that I shall make evident what the book of books has stated, and carry the proof of it before the court of public opinion in this and any other country so disposed to see and acknowledge the holy truth!”

There was scattered applause. Wixson accepted a variety of unsophisticated questions concerning his scientific technique for establishing the weight of the soul, then held up his hands to indicate he would accept no more.

“My friends, I have work to do. I ask that you be as quiet as you can in the presence of your neighbor Mrs. Clifton. We all should pass from this life to the next without unnecessary hubbub and conbobulation, so I ask you please to refrain from conversation while you remain in the area. I thank you.”