The Six-Gun Tarot (43 page)

The homestead was lit up when he arrived. The lights were on inside and a lantern hung on the front porch, glowing. Dawn was not too far off and the sky was blued steel. He brought the horses to a stop in front of the house, pulled the brake and reached for the rifle. The front door crashed open and Charlie Upton strode out onto the porch, a pistol in his hand. Ma ran after him. Her face was swollen from bruises and tears. Jim climbed down from the wagon, leveling the gun at Upton.

“Drop the gun, you sumbitch,” Jim growled, “or I’ll kill you where you stand. Pa told me what you done.”

Charlie cocked the pistol and aimed it at Jim. “You’re just as bug-shit crazy as old Billy was,” he said. “You’re going dance on the end of a rope, you little bastard. I done sent Rick to fetch the sheriff. They’ll be here soon. So you go on and lay that gun down and maybe I’ll make this all go away for you, on account of your mama.”

“Jim, Charlie, please stop this!” Ma screamed, clawing at Charlie’s shoulder and then moving between the two of them.

“Ma. No!” Jim shouted as he tried to take a bead on Charlie. He stepped cautiously sideways to try to get a clear shot.

“Get out of the way, you stupid bitch!” Upton barked. He grabbed Ma by the hair, hard. She was jerked backward by the brutal force of it and collapsed in the dirt beside Upton.

Jim’s eyes were blood. All the numb unreality of the night evaporated in white, perfect rage. Upton saw it and had only a heartbeat to react. He squeezed off two quick shot from the Colt even as Jim fired the rifle, cocked it and fired again. An angry wake of heat fluttered past Jim’s ear with a whine like a mosquito, before the thunder of his own gun filled his ears with cotton.

Upton charged him, bellowing in rage, the pistol vomiting fire and smoke again. Something tugged at Jim’s shirt and he felt heat, like brushing against a stove, at his side. Cock and fire, cock and fire. His nostrils flared at the smell of hot brass as the cartridges flipped from the rifle. He closed the distance toward Upton, his scream of anger crashing into Charlie’s own. Their hate was a force, like wildfire, annihilating everything in its way. Less than ten feet separated them and their guns roared again.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was finished. The man-made storm rumbled, echoed across the mountains and was silent. Charlie Upton slumped to the ground, two scarlet blooms expanding across his shirtfront. He coughed up a spray of blood, made a dry rattling sound and died.

Jim, panting, staggered over to him, cocked the rifle again and aimed at Upton’s vacant face. All Jim could think of was that before he fell down he was going to make sure there was no pretty funeral for Charlie Upton, no open casket. He would die anonymous and unseen, just like Billy Negrey had.

“Oh sweet Lord in Heaven, Lottie!” Ma screamed.

Jim blinked and looked up. Ma was running onto the porch. Lottie was standing in front of the front door. Her nightshirt looked like it had been dipped in blood. The little girl collapsed into her mother’s arms. Lottie coughed and blood dripped out of her mouth.

“Ma, what happened?” Lottie said. “I can’t feel nothin’.”

Jim dropped the rifle and sprang up the stairs. Ma was holding Lottie’s tiny form in her arms, and Jim lifted her head and pushed her blond curls out of her face. She looked at him and smiled a weak, bloody smile.

“Jim, I don’t feel good.”

“Lottie, Ma, I … I didn’t mean to…” The words were nothing, less than nothing. They fell and broke into a million useless pieces. Ma looked at him in a way he had never seen before. It made him wish with all his heart and soul that he was the one bleeding in her arms, or dead in the dirt.

Ma lifted Lottie quickly and carried her to the wagon. “Hang on, baby. We’re going to see Dr. Fleer in town. I need you stay awake for me.” She placed her in the back of the wagon and wrapped her in a tarp to keep her warm. Jim stood beside Ma; his arms hung at his sides. As if coming out of a trance, he suddenly removed his coat and put it under Lottie’s head.

“Lottie,” Jim muttered. “Is that better? Lottie? Lottie! Don’t fall asleep, now!”

The little girl’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled at Jim again.

“Jim, Pa says he loves us.”

Ma was climbing up into the wagon.

“He’s taken it all way from me, Jim,” she said. “He took Billy; he’s taken you. I won’t let him take her too. I won’t.”

She turned to regard her son.

“You have to run now, Jim. Don’t ever stop. If they catch you, they will hang you, you hear me?”

“Ma…”

“Go on, now.” Her voice was hard, almost cracking from the pain. “Take Promise. Take the money in the box on the mantle and remember to take a good coat. Don’t use your real name. Go, Jim. Don’t ever come back.”

She snapped the reins and the horses pulled the wagon toward the road. Lottie looked at him one more time with her weak, unfocused eyes.

“I love you, Jim,” she said.

The wagon rattled down the little road toward Albright. His side was throbbing with pain and wet with blood. The moon was gone; the sun was sleeping. A cold wind caressed his face. He felt no tears. He wanted to cry, knew he should, but nothing came.

He gathered his few belongings, saddled up Promise and headed out just before dawn. He rode away from the sun and its accusing gaze, toward the dwindling darkness, to the west.

The song had ended. Ringo sat still and allowed Jim to finish. Jim looked down, wiped his nose and his eyes on his sleeve. The boy choked back his sob with a wet, sad laugh.

“I haven’t cried in so long, I don’t even remember no more. Didn’t cry when I knew I’d never see my ma and sister ever again. Didn’t cry when I shot Lottie, probably killed her. But now, now I’m bawling like a baby to some stranger in a den of Chinamen. I am crazy.”

“Nope,” Ringo said. “You’d be crazy if all that didn’t finally catch up to you.”

The piano player drained half his mug of beer and lit another cigarette before he continued. “You got to cling on to some hope, Jim. You don’t know if your sister died? Right?”

“The only people they mention on my wanted poster are the Professor and Charlie Upton. I’ve asked around as cagey as I can, but no one I’ve ever met can give me a straight answer. I mailed Ma some money a few times, when I had it, but there’s no way she can write me back. I don’t even know if she would want to.”

“Hope,” Ringo said softly. “Hope, faith, pigheaded stubbornness, whatever you want to call it, there are times in your life when it’s all that keeps you upright, all that keeps you from tasting a bullet, or crawling into a bottle. It ain’t rational, and it ain’t much, but it’s what people got, Jim. You have to hope that we are going to find a way out of this mess, hope that you will make it home someday and that your little sister will come running out to greet you. All those folk who crossed the desert, all those who didn’t make it, they got this far, maybe farther, because they had hope that a little farther out west, they’d find whatever it was that would give them their happy ever after. That hope kept them going when nothing else would, or could. You know that; you’ve been out there.”

“You don’t seem the type to be preaching,” Jim said, rubbing his face dry.

Ringo chuckled. “Places like this, like most of the dives and dens I’ve called home since I was younger than you, they are full of people who have used up pretty much everything they have, especially hope. You know why most of these places have someone like me, a piano player, a band, a singer? Because music is like hope. Between the strings in this box,” he ran his fingers along the keys of the piano and began to play once again, “and the strings in the heart, there is nothing but air and magic. Songs can lead men laughing into battle, lay strong men low, make you fall in love, let you visit with the dead. Ain’t nothing real to it—just words and rhythm—but it’s got power, all the same.”

A Green Ribbon hatchet man approached Jim and Ringo. He addressed the boy in broken English.

“Venerable one ready to see you now.”

Jim nodded, stood. Ringo put his cigarette in his mouth and offered his hand to Jim. Jim shook it.

“Real pleasure to meet you, Jim,” Ringo said around the cigarette.

“Hope?” Jim said.

“Hell, you come up with something better, you let me know.”

Jim followed the tong member to the far side of the room, up a narrow flight of stairs and through a curtain of wooden beads. There was a small alcove off the top of the stairs. In it, a Chinese dragon of gold and jade expelled a rich stream of incense smoke that slowly trailed down the narrow corridor. The second floor of the Celestial Palace had numerous rooms that could be rented for privacy. Tonight no shadows moved behind their paper walls and screens. Jim was led to an ornate golden door with an intricate carving of two Chinese dragons contending for a central pearl the size of a man’s fist. Chinese symbols hovered above and below the dragons. The hatchet man made a contrite bow before the door. The door swung open, seemingly on its own.

“Please come in, my young friend,” a melodic voice said. “Leave us, Wei.”

The hatchet man bowed and departed. Jim entered the room. It was dark. The only light came from a brazier of glowing red coals. Tapestries, faded maps and yellowed charts of the moon and stars covered the walls. The shelves in the room were packed full of strange bottles and vials filled with viscous liquids of every imaginable color as wells as copper coils and tubes, small oil burners, ancient tomes and scrolls.

In the center of it all Ch’eng Huang sat, still as stone, unknowable as fate. To Jim, he appeared to be exactly the same as when last the boy had seen him—snow-white beard, immaculate emerald silk robes. The dark eyes regarded Jim and a razor-thin smile crossed the old man’s face.

“Welcome, Jim Negrey. Please, sit. I took the liberty of having my servants prepare some tea and cakes. I know it has been a difficult night; please relax. You are safe here.”

Jim knelt and took a seat on the large cushion across the short table from Ch’eng. The old man carefully filled a small cup on the table before Jim with hot tea from a beautifully painted porcelain pot. Jim nodded. The boy took a small sip and then cradled the warmth of the cup in his hands.

“Obliged, sir. Mr. Bick sent me. He says none of us is going to be safe much longer, way things are going.”

Ch’eng leaned back and stroked his white beard. “Bick, eh? Well, he and I have had many discussions concerning … philosophy over the years. We come at it from somewhat different backgrounds, you see. What made Malachi think I could be of service in ending this cycle of events?”

Jim regarded his tea. He could make out the leaves setting in the bottom of the cup. He took a deep breath and looked up at the tong lord.

“The eye, sir. He thinks the eye has some kind of power that can help us keep the world from ending. He said it was under your domain, or some-such. He asked me to bring it to you to help me understand it.”

“And I had already extended such an invitation to you previously, yes?” Ch’eng said.

“How did you do that, exactly? I mean, I heard your voice, clear as day in my head, but you were busy talking to the sheriff.”

“A disciplined mind can accomplish much, Master Negrey. May I see it, please, the eye?”

Again, Jim looked down for a moment, then returned Ch’eng’s infinite gaze.

“Here’s the thing, sir. This eye has caused me all sorts of trouble and I think it caused my pa some problems too. I’m afraid of it and I kind of hate it, but it is all I got left of my pa, of my family. So I know you got scary fellas with guns and hatchets downstairs and I know you got some kind of spooky mind-reading wisdom about you, but I intend to keep my pa’s eye, no matter what you say or do, ’less you intend to kill me for it. I just wanted to say my piece.”

He took the eye out of his pocket, placed it on the low table and unwrapped it from the handkerchief.

Ch’eng Huang let out a hiss of air. His placid eyes widened slightly. “Pangu,” he said softly. “Pangu’s eye. Master Negrey, may I please?” He reached out with slender hands that looked like they were carved from yellowed ivory.

Jim nodded curtly. Ch’eng lifted the jade eye and carefully examined it, holding it delicately between his thumb and forefinger. The old man nodded as he squinted at the tiny characters that circled the pupil.

“Yes, yes. There have been many forgeries over the centuries. The monks were very careful to hide their tracks and very clever to bring the real eye here to the West. I’m amazed they actually did it, but there is no mistaking it; this is the genuine eye.”

“So it belonged to this Pangu fella, before those Chinamen gave it to Pa?” Jim said, leaning forward. “Was Pangu a Chinese too?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Ch’eng said. “He was a god.”

“Pardon?” Jim said.

“Pangu is the first self-aware being in all creation, the being that created the world,” Ch’eng explained. “Before man there was formless chaos—darkness and eternal death. Out of the Void was created an egg.”

“An egg?’ Jim said.

“After eighteen thousand years, Pangu emerged from the egg and was the first being to contemplate the Void and idealize the concept of its opposite—creation, life. He balanced the forces of darkness with light, the yin with the yang, and created the Earth and the stars. When Pangu finally rested, his breath became the wind, his blood the rivers, his body the rocks and mountains, his voice the voice of the storm. His right eye became the sun.…”

Ch’eng presented the jade eye back to Jim. “And his left eye, this eye, became the moon.”

Jim shook his head. “So what about all the stuff Ma taught me, about God in Heaven and seven day to make the world and Adam and Eve and Jesus and the Devil? Is that all just made up? Is God a Chinaman?”

“Yes. And no. Tell me, Jim, what do all gods have in common?”

“Um, they’re gods?” Jim said. “They don’t got to wait in line at the general store? Mr. Huang, I don’t know anything about all this, sir.”

“People, Jim,” Ch’eng said. “Gods all need people. People thought them up; people gave them their names, duties, domains. People raise them to the heights of praise and power or relegate them to the darkness of neglect and antiquity. Gods are nothing without people, and depending on what people you ask you will get many different answers to questions about Heaven and Hell, how the universe was made and how it will end. Ask a Chinese, an Indian, a Mormon, a Christian and a Jew. Each one will give you a different answer and they are all correct; they all exist and have power, within their proper domains, with their chosen people, and, if they are strong enough, even beyond.”