The Bully of Order (22 page)

“You said the story was long.”

“It is. Not tonight, though. I've lost the spirit.”

“I guess I should thank you for the fish.”

“Guess you should.”

The old hermit stood and shouldered his pack and was gone, lost in the seeping closure of night. I listened to his footsteps disappear and then rose from my chair and put another hunk of wood on the fire. I hadn't spoken so many words to a person in years.

L
ooking down from the
hill it was a scene of a battle won, sacrosanct yet festive. Those that'd been burned out and hadn't been taken in by church or neighbor were living in tents—delivered to us by the Populist governor himself—along the waterfront and among the unclaimed lots of town proper. The moth-white glow of the canvas checkered the night, and cookfires flickered among the few remaining streetlights. Ships were moored at the wharf and along the docks too, but they looked lost, like they'd misread their charts and arrived in the wrong port.

Along with the steam and smoke, sweet sawdust hung in the air above Boyerton's mill. They'd been running nonstop since the fire. Behind the fence, men walked in and out of the mill lights, carrying scaffoldage and timbers, bracing for the inevitable expansion, ever outward, as if setting bulwarks against the nonmillers. Join us or move. The tent people didn't know it yet, but they'd been relegated to serfage. Someone in the mill yard called out in Swedish and another in German. I could tell the difference, but I couldn't tell you how.

Beyond the mill, the streets swarmed with drunken sailors and loggers home from the camps, along with the usual off-shift mill workers. A hundred cookfires spiced the air. Small children smeared in ash darted among the ruins, eyes flashing and moon-white teeth like cracked night.

I passed the last tavern (half tent, half burned hole in the wall), on the block and a woman's cackling laugh rose high above the jabber. Then I was into the rows of burned foundations and rubble piles and standing charred frames of houses too. No tents here; the owners still held claim. I'd heard guards had been hired to keep the squatters at bay. Happens quickly, I thought, tenant to vagrant, citizen to nuisance.

From one lot to the next, the burn ended and the noise fell off. There was a real barrier here, separate as an eyeball from the socket. The houses grew in size and ornamentation and spread out as I went bent-backed, laboriously up the hill toward the Boyertons'. I felt the part of an interloper, a dog of the lowest breed.

I pitched pebbles at Teresa's window until she appeared. The light of her father's study was on, but the curtains were pulled. She came from the side of the house, from the kitchen entrance, and met me on the street.

Standing there, I saw the curtains move, and a hand I took to be her father's. I pushed Teresa away from the light into the shadows. This was an old routine but still gave me a thrill. There are no mistakes, or there are only mistakes, all half measures are imagined.

As we went along, she whispered into my neck a story of how at dinner that night her mother had thrown a coffee cup and hit her father in the face. She laughed, but it wasn't joyous; it was a frantic sound guiding in her imminent tears.

“He's terribly angry,” she said. “He didn't deserve to get hurt, I guess. He was bleeding.”

“He should send her off to the madhouse, let them shave her head and dress her in grain sacks.”

She stopped and held me by the arm.

“I wasn't serious.”

“Yes, you were. All of you are so awful and callous. I can't stand it.”

I took her hand and leaned over to kiss her cheek, but she leaned away from me, away, like she was a block plane and I the wood and the blade wasn't set or it was dull and she just slid over me without the satisfying peel. I needed her to take something, to lock in. I was hers.

We went quietly through the darkened streets under a cloud-sneaking half-moon and looked in on the lit windows of the houses. Nebulated scenes through warped glass. The dark sections of the burn below were like clouds too, stilled shadows.

At the waterfront we skirted the tent city and huddled under a leaky bait shed and looked out over the slapped sheen of the water. Small waves sucked at the mud shore, and rigging clanged on the distant masts of the schooners.

“My father asked about you.”

“Why?”

“It was the fire, that you were at our house. He knows who you are from Oliver. From your father, what he did to your mother.”

“What'd you say?”

“I told him we didn't know each other, that we'd met at school, but he didn't believe me.”

“I helped save your house.”

“I know, but someone from the mill, a friend of his, was robbed, and Oliver said it was probably you and the McCandlisses that did it. He said it offhand, but it didn't matter.”

“Why'd you lie?”

She hesitated, too long, said: “I couldn't imagine telling the truth.”

I turned and studied the fine lines, almost like wood grain, at the corner of her eyes. There was something more to this than indignation; she had a plan; she was justifying herself. I could tell by the set of her jaw. Here she was getting a run to leap into cold water. We'd been to this place before. This was betrayal, this was a wind I knew. I wasn't with her every night. She could keep secrets. I wanted to believe that she'd only been with me, that she loved me. She said she did. I'd said the words too, but who knew what that meant. No, I did know. I felt it all the way into my guts, like my ribs had been dipped in copper. I needed her. An ache started in my balls and went in waves into my rectum and pulsed dully up my spine. In my mind I saw a gutted deer.

Then, like I'd willed it, she said it: “I can't see you anymore.” Her voice brimmed with emotion. “I wish I could die.”

I ignored the latter, what she said—
I wish I could die
—the tail of a horse, stagy bits. All I saw was teeth, white eyes, and hooves:
I can't see you anymore.

“I don't want to live like this, only at night, on the ground. The other girls, girls my age, my friends, they aren't sneaking out at night or fooling with the Harbor boys. They're planning on getting married to someone nice and raising a family.”

Harbor boys, as if I were one of many. No one else was me. To convince yourself of this was to survive. I wasn't falling at her feet, if she thought that was what'd happen.

“I need my father.” She paused and nipped at her lower lip. “Lack of commitment doesn't mean freedom, Duncan, and you know, just because you don't have anything to do doesn't mean you shouldn't do something.”

“I bet your father sounded pretty fuckin smart when he said that.”

She smirked at me and lowered her eyes. “Don't be a dunderhead, it only strengthens the argument.”

“Your father can say whatever he wants, but he doesn't know the first thing about me.”

“But what do you do? When will you do something?”

“I can get a job anytime I want it. I come by money easy enough.”

“By robbing old men?”

“If they could control themselves, they wouldn't get into trouble.”

“You're horrible. I can't trust you. At first that was fine.”

“At first? What do you mean?”

“We had fun sometimes.”

“That's all this was?”

“Of course not.”

“You think I've been with someone else?”

“That's not what I'm worried about.”

“It's what you said. You can't trust me.”

“I'm thinking of what would happen next, is all.”

“Why can't you trust me? What have I done? Name one thing.”

“Why do you want to marry me?”

“Because I love you.” It sounded untrue even to me, and I believed it.

“Don't say that if you don't mean it.”

“I'm not.”

“You know you're lying. I can see it in your face, it's in your voice. You're standing here lying about—do you even know? Do you even care what you're lying about?”

“I said I'm not.”

“Where does that leave me?”

We were on the ice now, above our true intentions, sliding, stumbling into each other, stumbling on. I took a hold of her wrist and squeezed. She tried to pull away, but I tightened my grip.

“You're hurting me.”

“Tell me everything they said about me. What did your father say? Your slinty one-eyed brother.”

She dug her nails into my thumb, and I could feel them break the skin. She was almost free and I twisted her arm harder and she gasped and began to cry. I let her go, and she clutched her arm against her stomach.

“Did I hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You aren't. You're not sorry at all. You don't care.”

“Maybe not.”

“You—”

“What did he say?”

Her eyes darkened, and what I saw in them was fierce and angry, a look I'd never seen cross her face. “He said he'd worked too hard to have me marry trash.”

“You're all fuckin deranged.”

“No, I'm not. I'm not.” She was crying.

“You want bad treatment, and it's because I won't give it to you that you're doing this. It's because I won't treat you badly enough, not that your father disapproves of me.”

“I don't want to be treated badly.”

“You've been screwy all along.”

“I still love you, Duncan. God help me.”

“But that's the beginning and the end of it, isn't it? We started there, and here we've ended. Look at the water and the lights. This is it. Fuck all and done.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not half as sorry as me.” Then I was dragging her along by the back of her coat. The fabric was stretched and ripping at the shoulders. Her feet barely touched the ground.

I undid the hasp on the church shed and pushed her inside and slammed the door shut behind us. We stood and faced each other in the dark for a moment, breathing. I stared at the lumpy shadow of her and then produced a match from the pouch in my hat and lit the candle on the windowsill. The light reflected in the dusty blackened glass, and it appeared that I was looking into another room. She'd stopped crying. Which one wakes from the dream first, and which one is left in the dark?

“I can't see you again. I'm sorry,” she said softly. “This will be the last time we're together.” All I could see in her gray eyes was her father.

“You said you loved me.” The pain of the memory made the breath go out of my lungs in a moan. I pushed her into a pew with a cracked back and dropped my hat on the seat beside her.

“I think it was for the money,” she said. “You didn't want to marry me. You certainly don't want to spend your whole life with me. You don't even know what that means, your whole life. You go from one thing to another and imagine that no one notices, but they do. People see you for what you are. Everyone knows what you're doing but you.”

“They see you too. When all you do is complain about your friends, your family. You make fun of them and talk about them behind their backs. You might as well hate them. They probably hate you anyway. Your father's making you do this just to make you feel pain. I think that's the reason for him, because he likes to hurt the ones he loves. The reason for you is much simpler. You just like to be hurt.”

“Maybe I should hate you.”

“You're heartless in the way you can just switch directions.”

“And you're not as special as you might think. You really aren't anybody. You aren't smart. You don't matter at all.”

“I'm lookin right in your eyes, and I don't understand why you're doing this to me.”

“You wanted to marry my family, my father's money, not me.”

I wanted to smack her one. I wanted to choke her, but I stayed where I was, rocked back on my heels.

“You told the McCandlisses we were getting married.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Someone did.”

“It wasn't me.”

“Don't lie.”

“I've always told you the truth, even tonight when I didn't want to and it would've been easier to lie. You tried to force me into lying, but I didn't. I'm not lying now. I'm leaving.” She went to stand, and I pushed her back down and stood over her with my arm raised to hit her. “Duncan, no.”

I lowered my hand and leaned in to her until our faces were only inches apart and we were breathing each other's hot breath. I held her head, my thumbs just touching her eyebrows.

“We'll be together this last time.”

“Is that what you want?” She had her fingers inside my shirt, clutching the locket.

“If that's all I get, that's all I want.” I knelt down and rested my head on her lap. “This can't be the last time.” I moved my hands up from her ankles to her thighs.

“It is.” Then, without speaking another word, she helped me undress her bit by bit, piece by piece.

I had her on a pile of old church curtains and held her there by her shoulders and pushed into her roughly. She moaned, and it was a different sound than she'd ever made before, and when I was ready I held her by the back of the neck and released inside her, and in my mind I saw her face looking back at me, then only emptiness, darkness. When I pulled out, she reached down and with her fingers scooped out the mess I'd left inside and wiped it on the curtains.

I picked up her dress from the pew and passed it over. Her eyes were scared, her breathing uneven; I imagined her delicate bellows, tattered. I looked down at my cock, the drying sheen, the pathetic skin, then shoved it back into my pants like something I'd stolen. She held the dress against her body. When she stood, I saw that dirt and small rocks were pressed into the flesh of her legs. Her arm, just above the wrist, was darkening and swollen. She trembled as she straightened her clothes and put her hair up. I wouldn't look at her face but waited patiently for her to finish, not caring how long she took. There was no hurry; it was done. I couldn't and wouldn't take anything back.