The Road to Reckoning (20 page)

He would not be able to hear his own verbiage over the epochal horror of the repeating gun.

I mirrored Heywood, he who had my name, and my gun came up less shaky than his. Double-handed I pulled the hammer back, felt the parts within tense in my fist, saw the percussion cap waiting; then a shot came from the bar and put Heywood down.

The first Colt in Henry’s outstretched arm. Small bore for a saddle but fine from across a stinking tavern. I did not fire.

Henry Stands came from the bar with the Colt smoking. I guess they had sold that rotten barkeep one as Henry Stands had supposed.

In his left hand he had taken up the wooden model again. He stepped across the room as Heywood patted at his wound, spluttered his blood, and lifted his gun arm.

Henry Stands came slowly on. He lifted the wooden pistol and cocked and fired its empty flat noise at Heywood and then followed it with the real, which pinned Heywood’s shoulder to the wall. This was his gun arm, now dead, but still he tried to lift it as he fell to his bones.

The wooden gun at him again, fired duly again, and Thomas Heywood choked and coughed blood on the amusement of it. But Henry Stands was not yet done.

He rolled his fist and fired the steel Paterson again and the crack of it shook the walls and Henry walked through the smoke so that it trailed behind and he clicked the wooden one once more at Heywood. Then again the real as Heywood slipped farther, and again the wood, and again the real straight after, and the sickening thud of lead into carcass stays with me still.

He had a pattern now.

The gun loosed from Heywood’s hand, trickled to the floor, and he looked up to Henry Stands. I could not see Henry’s face. He cocked and pointed the wooden pistol and fired its empty promise at Heywood’s head.

The dying trash grinned and found the strength to pull Henry’s skinning knife from his belt. He waved it weakly, his arm crooked like a dog’s paw, and he whimpered like the same.

Henry fired into Heywood’s blood mouth and I shut my eyes at the sight. The last shot.

I opened them at the sound of Henry’s boots. He picked up a bottle from the floor and drained it high down his throat. I noticed only then that he still had his hair tied in the bow I had made.

The barkeep drew himself up and Henry did not take the bottle from his mouth but raised the wooden gun to him and the barkeep went back below. I looked to the wall. A good third of it red from all of them, hair mixed with splinters of wood. It would never paint over. Years later the town decreed to take it out and build another to stop people coming to see it.

Blood from Silver-hair’s head ran to my boot and I looked down at it and the gun in my hand. I stepped away. I had shot nothing. Thomas Heywood’s body was crumpled on his side like he had no ribs.

I minded the blood less than I thought I would have. How I felt about that saloon would come much later. I had killed a man and had been ready to shoot another, but I could not think on that now. When these things occur you will surprise yourself how gathered you can be. Or I was now tainted and familiar.

Henry Stands went to the bar, left the dead behind him, and planted the bottle and called up the keep.

If that skulker had a voice Henry did not care.

‘You. Get up here.’ He drank again as the bony fellow crept up. ‘Any trappings these gentlemen have is yours. Save for the guns they took from me and the boy. They sold you a pistol that was not theirs so I must confiscate or you can give me rum for it. I’ll take one of their horses too. They killed a good horse of mine. I ain’t no thief.’ He tipped his old headpiece. ‘My thanks for keeping your mistress loaded.’

He turned back and stomped to me. He did not even look at Silver-hair. ‘Trade,’ he said, and took the Colt from my hand and passed me the model. ‘Go choose a horse and find my belt. I’ll clear up.’

‘They might have my Dutch oven!’

‘Well, that was my motivation.’ He had already begun to forage about their bodies.

Outside I found Henry’s belt, which still had his long knife on it, and chose a good pale quarter horse who I was sure would be grateful to have some good company for a change.

Looking out I could just make Jude Brown waiting where I left him. He had not come in to see the others and he had not ducked and run at the shooting. I guess he knew we were making good on the friend he had in Henry’s horse. And I would make good on him when I got home. He would be the best-fed horse in New York city. And was not I going home now? No forks in my road?

I stood and waited with the horse, my thoughts on my father as the horse breathed beside my ear and I could feel the warmth from him. How many days? Still April? I would have to think on that. The men who had put my father early to the earth now dead themselves by a man who had never seen him or known why he should have put them down for taking the good John Walker from raising his son proper. And who would do that now? There would be more mister Markhams in my future or that institutional schooling that my aunt had studied. I thought the death of Heywood would be the end of it and I would be as right as the mail from now on. But going home would be the end and the beginning.

Henry came out. He did not say it but I think he admired the horse.

‘Bring him along,’ he said. ‘They did not have my Harper’s pistols. They break one miracle and trade another. Got my skinning knife back.’

‘And the Patersons?’ I asked.

‘Five of them,’ he said. He must have had them in his pockets and tucked about. ‘I gave one for rum. You won’t mind that?’

‘Well.’ I followed. ‘You had no right. And you have made a mess of that man’s business even if you have left him three horses and thieves’ coin. But I suppose the law can clear that up satisfactorily.’

Henry Stands twisted on his heel and angled at me. I hoped in the dark he could see my smile.

‘I made a joke, Mister Stands,’ I said.

‘Good for you.’ He snorted. He flicked a finger at me. ‘You got blood on your face.’ He wiped his own to show me where. ‘Better that than you crying them tears all the time as you do.’

He turned and walked on and I wiped my cheeks and pulled the horse after us.

Behold – I have smitten my hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which has been in the midst of thee.

Ezekiel 22: 12–13.

‘Shaws, McDowells, and Brodheads. God knows what else resides around here.’ Henry Stands was happy and fat next morning. He lolled on his new horse like a king and we had eaten the steak of his other for breakfast. He was already at his rum and singing his songs, the night before not apparent. I can only think back on Chet Baker’s words when describing the man:

‘He likes the sound of guns.’

We were coming into Stroud, the road muddy and wide, and I recognized that I had come through here with my father but it had been almost night then and we rode on through and camped. I did not question at that time why we did not rest here but Henry Stands made sense of my late father’s reasoning.

‘Two Friends’ meetinghouses. Presbyterian church, Methodist, and the Free. They even have a temperance hotel. A man will die of thirst and sleep cold at night in such a place.’

They would not have appreciated a salesman of guns. But I knew civilization when I saw it.

Daniel Stroud had sold plots when his father, Jacob, who had founded this place, would not, but he sold them on condition that the houses were built away from the road with yards in front and behind and proper fences and planked walkways.

Trees lined the streets, and families walked among them. Canes and stovepipes for the men, and bonnet hats with exotic feathers for the ladies. Henry Stands pointed at the ladies’ hats, for which vulgarity they shunned him with their parasols.

‘They wear Carolina parrakeet tails in their hatbands. That bird is almost dead for vanity. People are infinite, creatures are not.’ He tipped his hat at their scowls and their husbands’ frowns. I did the same and enjoyed their bluster. We did not have a carriage so we were low to them. They had forgotten that their town was built by lumber and sweat.

There was no love for men and company in Henry Stands and I am sure the bricks and proper houses had already begun to stiffen his stance in the poor saddle he had inherited. He had left me with his more comfortable rigging on Jude Brown, which my hind was grateful for.

There could have been no decency to us. We slept in the open and wore it on us. I did not care. My clothes were not me. I lived in a redbrick house on sett streets. These folks walked on planks like sailors.

Stroud was the county seat since the year last. She had sawmills and a grist mill, a tannery, and along her river a large iron forge. She was prosperous even in those hard times and had sunk many a settlement around her to become
the
town after the Delaware. Where her academy stood had been a fort and she had once boasted two, and it was to Stroud where the settlers had fled after the Wyoming massacre. But I remembered Henry Stands’s pose on that. When settlers are victorious it is recorded as a battle. When Indians triumph it is a ‘massacre.’ And we do not write so much that there were four hundred loyalist Tory rangers at that killing, plugging at white folks. Some of those scowlers sneering at our hooves were descended from that ilk no doubt.

We pulled up at Hollinshead’s tavern, opposite one of Jacob Stroud’s original houses in the center of the town. We both dismounted and stood still and looked at each other. You may think this ordinary but when you are on the road it is in single file. When you stand it is for food and discourse and important things.

‘There is law here,’ Henry said. He checked both our trappings. ‘What do you want to do?’

This was the only time I remember this man asking my opinion. He stood over his horse, us both sullying the gaily lit afternoon with our weary coats.

‘What am I to do?’

‘Did you not want the law?’ he said. ‘Tell your story?’ He rubbed his beard. ‘I could break. There are folks here that will see you home.’

I watched carriages with padded seats and glass roll past, black broughams and landaus. I had not seen prosperity for a while.

‘Mister Stands? I must pay you for my trouble from my orders. There is Mister Colt’s monies owed through my father’s order book. Paterson is not so far for you to make your way to Philadelphia.’

He stretched his back and stamped his boots, his eyes on the colorful tavern. ‘They have oysters and beer here. And seats. When was the last time you sat well?’

‘I thought we had no coin for refreshments? I do not think they will trade for guns?’ I had done for the Colts now. I would put them in the Delaware.

‘
You
have no coin,’ Henry said, and went to his purse among his folds and flashed me Mexican silver. ‘I have means, and you should know beer and oysters.’

‘I thought we had nothing? You sold powder to that Irishman?’

‘Trade is trade. You get less for coin. You will find this. Especially when the country is in hell.’ He had already mounted the porch of the hotel. ‘You should know what a beer tastes like after days on the road. All is to the good. You have nothing to fear now.’

He was right. The road behind me was closed. A door bolted from my side. Only my own front door ahead of me. Oh, there would be a terrible day to tell to my aunt, but within my own walls I could stop to think, to rest, to judge. But still I wanted this man beside me. I had to confront mister Colt with my sorry platter and an order book with pages that had been strewn about the wilds and tucked back in. I would need a man of consequence.

I tied the horses as he watched and then stamped up the plank steps to join him, then in a flash spun back to my folded blanket behind the saddle to retrieve the tea-stained wooden gun.

Henry Stands waited in the doorway.

‘I thought you wanted to burn that thing?’

I said nothing and tucked it behind my back beneath my coat and ran under his arm.

As a boy I did not retain my Bible. I look through it now and see more and more of what was me then and much that is of me now. Any man’s whole life is there.

When I meet a man who does not have faith in anything other than himself I would be as dumb as him to pity or try to change him. They have great pride, I will give them that. They congratulate themselves for when things go well but are the most likely ones you will find hanging in their barns when things go against. I find that these men do not understand the companionship of animals either. I think of words now. Words that fill me with memories and hope.

There are those of us who in recent years have turned to look on the battlefield to see our hopes, our dearly loved children, swept away. We do not hang ourselves in our grief. We rise and bear, and you can mark us from those cowards and counterfeiters well enough:

We have a Bible in our homes.

And though our boughs can be cut by Heaven I never saw a tree that was ever completely destroyed by lightning.

The beer was a dark porter, with the yeast still on top, it seemed. Mrs Hollinshead herself made up our oysters, which I had to go and collect at the bar. We had to line up with the guests and the travelers and give our order and then wait to be called. It was a smart establishment and fitted out with a high ceiling and mahogany paneling all about. There was a post-table set against a wall even though I had seen a post office and Stroud had a Posten stage that delivered passengers and mail from Easton twice daily. But the post-tables were what folks still expected. Here a lone traveler could pick up a letter that was going someplace on his road and take it with him. He could expect a small meal for his trouble and maybe make a friend or two. People got to hear news and changes from the road even if it was only about the cut of dresses in the east and the politics of the original colonies that made no difference to any of us. But the government was making no money out of that so we got post offices instead of friends. And no government ever did like to have no control over news or the exchange of opinions.