The Bully of Order (24 page)

“God will embrace you, Nell Ellstrom,” Reverend Macklin had said. My father was gone, disappeared to the woods or, if Matius hadn't lied, the ocean, with the gyppos or the Norwegians or someone. What was the difference? The murderer had fled. I stood graveside, weeping. On and on.

Macklin still enjoyed giving me news about my father. A few months back he caught me coming from the alley near the corner of Broad and Davis and dragged me onto the sidewalk to blather at me.

“You'll want to hear what I have to say.”

“Not likely.”

“I received a letter.”

“You can cram it up your ass.”

“All men can be redeemed, Duncan.” Macklin was shorter than me and didn't like it; the proof was in the stretching of his neck, the straightening of his back. Not antsy though, far from it; the body squirmed but the eyes were stone. His patience was his greatest weapon.

“I've seen the eagle nests way up in the trees,” I told him in my best impersonation of a preacher. “The sticks and twigs and the grass they're made of, and I've seen eagles in them, white as snow, pure and godly, but I never sat up there. I never looked down from above.”

“Because you've not been redeemed.” The reverend smiled priggishly, like he'd found his lost keys or managed to disguise the foulest interdiction as meritorious and yay biblically good. Slint, deeply so.

“I been to church plenty,” I said. “I know the game.”

“You've gone the other way. You've gone away from the Lord.”

“I haven't gone anywhere. I been here the whole time.”

The reverend nodded. “Sorrow is given us on purpose to cure us of sin.”

“Yeah, well, Cicero said that when you are no longer what you were, there is no reason left for being alive.”

“I don't agree with that.”

“You wouldn't, because you deal in the fleecing of the broken.”

“Judgment, boy, is left to the divine.”

“‘That which has no beginning nor end.'”

He ignored what I'd said, out of a lack of response, I'd say. Then: “You surprise me with your comparison, redemption to an eagle's nest. It's poetic, really. The choosing of a location, the construction, the soul coming home to roost. You're a smart boy. You should come back to us, come see us and sit with us. I'll cite your metaphor, if you like, in a sermon. This Sunday. Will you attend?” His jacket and tie were spotless and without wrinkles. He had a lady that lived with him, a housekeeper, and the rumor went that he was screwing her in the kitchen while his sickly wife wasted away in the upstairs bedroom.

“No, I won't attend, you fuckin bobknobber. You didn't get what I was sayin at all.”

His face went from pasty to pink. “Is that right?”

“Those eagle nests that look so majestic from below, nobody's been up there to check, of course, but I'm guessin they smell every bit as wretched as Dolan's jakes. All the rotten fish guts and bird shit. It's romantic to stare up at them and think of an eagle's nest, a picture in your mind, but you don't know the first thing about what it is. You're on the fuckin ground, aren't you? You get my meaning?”

“This is your argument against redemption?”

I spit at his foot but missed by an inch. “There's my fuckin argument.”

“You have a truly blasphemous streak, Duncan, but you will always be welcomed into the arms of the Lord, no matter the depravity of your soul. You can be saved.”

“If you want to lose your faith, talk to a preacher.”

“Don't you understand? I want you to be saved. The Lord wants you.”

“You and the Lord can go and get solidly fucked.”

That was all Macklin could take, so he took his leave. Admittedly, I felt slightly bad about the rough treatment, but whenever I heard these rare stories of my father's salvation, I hated the words themselves, like rats running the floorboards, because Jacob Ellstrom couldn't be saved. Nobody had the right to forgive him, not Macklin or Jesus or anyone, without my mother's permission they didn't, and that wasn't forthcoming.

Come on, you've had enough. Let's go home.
There he is, falling down in the street, the boy beside him pulling at his muddy sleeve. The two of us stumbling homeward like three-legged racers under a harvest moon.

You go ahead and get pinned to the cross, Jacob. Be righteous. I'm going to see what's happening at the very bottom of the ocean, where I can't see or hear anything about your business or be reminded of you at all. I'll sit there like a trained bear and touch my paws together. Mother said she spoke to a bear once, didn't she; said he had an English accent, which surprised her. I could see God doing that, resting at the bottom of the ocean. The fools probably had it all wrong; heaven was down there beneath the clouds of the sea. Jesus felt so alone and was always trying to make new friends because he'd given bad directions. Walk until you hit water, then go due south.

“Where is the sadness in a life lived?” Macklin had said at her funeral. Some preachers should be muzzled. The nerve of that Calvinist snatch saying graveside that she had lived a full life. No one murdered lived a full life. Vanity, Macklin, you squid, is thinking that you lived well, and to go on and fantasize about your good death, placing sweet punctuation on the fiction of your good life. Three days it took her to die, and she cooked meals for her murderer on two of them. A knot on her head like black water dripped and frozen turned risen pool ice, and we ate and ate. And it was the found fish, or it could've been. It could've been we sipped bowls of warm blood. For kindness or evil disdain—liplickers, bonesuckers—what you would change if you could see the morning next. My father cried when he finally took her to Dr. Haslett. He cried carrying her up the steps, blubbered. “I didn't mean to,” he said. “I swear it. I didn't mean to hurt her.”

It wasn't easy to hate him—he was my father, after all—but I persevered, for Mother's sake. I spent long nights calculating slow death. I'd sharpen blades and load guns, but all of it ended in a dream. I hated how deeply I could sleep when I lay down plotting patricide. Morning arrived with memories of the old man stomping around the kitchen, and it felt like my own blood pouring out of me, aching as it went. I wondered sometimes if it would hurt more or less not to kill him, to let him live, because I feared, ultimately, that I couldn't do it.

I studied the house for movement and, not seeing any, stepped onto the plank path that led from the southern forest. Girdled with canals and mottled with slash piles, the clearing was both expansive and impassable. Limbs stuck out of the mud and danced in the flow of the ditch currents. Stumps like great statues towered, moated. The garden fence strained hopelessly against the swelling of the mud.

I opened the door and tromped inside without even attempting to clean off my boots. Matius was on the floor next to the cold fireplace, facing the wall. He was wrapped in blankets, and beside him there was a piss pot with a tin plate for a lid. The room smelled of excrement and bad meat.

“Who's there?”

“The skookum.”

“Skookum. Where the hell have you been?” The bundle moved. A trembling hand clawed at the floor in an attempt to roll over.

“Workin like a dog. I built an ark. It's waiting outside in a mud puddle.”

“Yer shit is tiresome.” He had a red flannel scarf tied around his head, like he had a toothache. “You haven't seen Miss Eunice around, have you?”

“Nobody's around but me.”

“She picked a fine time to skedaddle.”

I could commiserate. “Thought I'd check and see if I needed to drag you outside and bury you so you won't taint the place any worse than you already have.”

“Where's Jonas? Where's my son?”

“Work. I told him what happened.”

“I been out here I don't know how long. Can't get up. I haven't eaten anything except that bread you brought by. When was that? Three days?” He was talking through his teeth.

“Two. Want me to get you some more food?”

“I didn't say I was hungry, did I? Said I hadn't eaten.”

“Jonas'll be by.”

“Tonight, you think? I need to speak with him.”

“I don't know.” I went back and shut the door, skirted the sicky, and set to building a fire. He lay there and watched me. “Can you stand?”

“No, I told you. I can't. I'm fucking dying.”

“You should let me take you to the doc. It's just your foot. You can spare one.”

“My father amputated a thousand Union legs during the war. I'll go into the ground whole.”

“If that's yer reason, yer a fool.”

“Woefully dying. I'm poisoned. I can feel it in my heart.” He awkwardly lifted his crustily bandaged foot from under the blanket, and when his pant leg slid up, I could see that the black veins had gotten worse.

“You want some water? Or another blanket?” The fire was going, and the light showed the grayness of his face, bristly as a singed hog.

“Don't be sweet.”

“I'm not.”

“Soft boy. I don't want anything from you.”

“Want me to shoot you?”

With that, Matius found the energy to roll all the way over. He couldn't turn his head, his neck was locked. Dirt in his hair and on the scarf. “You wouldn't do it if I begged.”

“I might.”

“Then do it.”

“You're saying that's what you want.”

“I'm tired of lying here.”

Not hesitating one spark, I retrieved the shotgun from behind the door and broke it to see the brass. “You wanna say anything?” Snapped shut, ready, both barrels.

“I wasn't so bad to you.”

“No, you weren't so bad.” I stood over him and used the gun barrels to slide the greasy scarf from his head and onto the floor.

“Tell Jonas I wished he'd have come and seen me.”

“I'll tell him.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Go ahead.”

I cocked one hammer and then the other. My uncle squinted up at me.

“Ready?”

“I said do it.”

I tapped the barrels against his forehead and then swung them around and blasted a fist-sized hole into the wall, just below the window, to the left of the door. Matius tried to roll upright, but he was too weak. He was near tears, just done in.

“I won't help you like that.” I set the gun down on the hearth, well out of his reach. “Shells are on the shelf by the door.” I couldn't believe I could be so awful, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel good.

“I know where the goddamn shells are,” he said.

“You shoulda been better to me.”

“I raised you like you were my own.”

“Course you did, Uncle. Course you did.” With the blanket pulled back, the rotten smell of his wound was unbearable. I opened the door and the flames in the fireplace sucked out and nearly lit him up.

He wormed his way into the center of the room, leaving a wet drag mark behind him.

I leaned against the jamb. “If you would've asked for anything else, I'd a done it. I'd a carried you on my back all the way to town. I'd a cooked you a steak and bathed you and cut yer hair. I'd a built you a casket.”

“Load that gun for me.”

“I won't.”

“Do it, I said.” He'd kill me now if he could. I was sure of it.

“If I see Jonas, I'll tell him your condition. Maybe he'll do what you ask.”

“He'll do it if I tell him to do it.”

“He might not.” I checked to make sure there was water in the pitcher and filled a glass for him and set it on the floor. “So long, Uncle.”

“Wait, Duncan. I have something to tell you. Something I've been holding back for a long time. A confession.” A dark and toothy grin spread over his face. His eyes were shimmering and red, and his brow was covered in milky beads of sweat.

“I was the first one through the door that night.” The grin disappeared, and I could see he didn't want to continue. He took several deep breaths and his bravado, backed by fevered eyes, returned. “I'm speaking of the night your mother took the beating. You were old enough to know, weren't you?”

“What're you sayin?” I shut the door and went and stood over him, towered over him.

“She always had a mouth on her. I did like your father should've been doing for years. He'd spoiled her. Did she ever tell you what happened on her wedding day? What I did to her? Did she tell you? No, she wouldn't. I knew she wouldn't, and that's why I did what I did. No recourse. She'd keep her mouth shut when it came to protecting her own shame. I knew that. But she hit her head against that metal woodbox when she fell and next thing I know yer father comes through the door and he's blind drunk so I says to him, What'd you do, Jacob? Then Jonas is there, and I tell him that his uncle Jacob just hauled off and clobbered his wife. Just look at her face.”

I tried to say something, and my mouth may have moved, but no words came forth.

With his eyes locked on mine, he continued. “When I was helping her up, I told her that I'd kill her if she told anyone. She wasn't for it at first, I could tell, so I told her I'd kill you if she told. Neither of us thought she'd die, you understand.”

“You let him think he did it. You let me think it.”

“Makes no difference.”

His eyes followed me as I retrieved the shells and again loaded the shotgun. “If you're lyin, you'd better tell me.”

“I'm not lyin.”

I rested one barrel against his cheek then pulled it back slightly and pressed them both into his temple and slammed his head against the floor. “Tell me the truth.” Years, I felt all the years pour down my arm like lead and weight my fingers to the twinned triggers.

“I already did.”

“It was you?”

“Did you a favor,” he said, eyes open, daring me.