The Threshold (40 page)

“Why’re they all wearing blankets? Do they think they’re Indians?”

“Their clothes are improper, Judge, and not very warm,” the sheriff said. A clock tick-tocked above the judge’s head instead of buzzing. Judge Wardlaw leaned his chair back against the wall. “I can understand the jail needing airing about now, Cal, but what do you propose we do with them?” He yawned, stretched. “Any suggestions, Buck?”

Wells stood and walked to the railing. He clasped his hands behind his back and paced before them as if reviewing troops. When he stopped in front of Renata, Aletha imagined she heard the snap of electricity denied the clock. But he moved on to Aletha. “I’ve seen this woman at the Pick and Gad a few weeks ago and before that a couple of years ago in a patch of sunlight that did not extend to my side of the street. She’s given to dressing like a man and disobeying curfew.” He moved on to Cree. “And this man worked at the Cosmopolitan.” Wells was tall but he had to look up at Cree, which made it difficult to look down his nose as he could with the others. “McCree Mackelwain,” he said softly. “Cal thought he might be a man of mine. I did think to enlist him in our services because … I don’t know. A certain perceived spark of … something useful? That I would prefer to have in my camp rather than the enemy’s? But he ran over to her and the sunlight”—Wells nodded toward Aletha—“and disappeared. Totally. This woman”—he paced back to Renata—“was leaning out a window above.”

“Excuse me, Buck, but you’re not making complete sense of this,” the judge said.

“I’m only too well aware of that, James.” Wells rubbed his lips. They sounded dry. “I think I’d like to question them further. And then perhaps send them out on the vagrant train. They’re not … not quite expected.”

“Maybe not, but they’re yours,” Judge Wardlaw decreed. “Join me for lunch at the Sheridan, Homer? If we make it last all afternoon, I won’t be here to meet those boys from Denver.”

“My pleasure, James.” The old lawyer stood, gathering his papers. “Be careful, Buck. I too find these vagrants unusual … possibly dangerous.”

“I told Meldrum to come back here,” Sheriff Rutan assured him, and then added when the lawyer and judge had left, “The tarts could find work after you lift the embargo on the tenderloin.”

“And you, Mr. Mackelwain,” Bulkeley Wells said, “where have you been all this time?”

“Home, in the future. Aletha, can’t you think of some way to get us back?”

“Yeah, try concentrating on it,” Tracy said. “Or meditating.”

“Do all of you come from the future?” Wells asked. The sheriff snorted and lit a cigar.

Aletha concentrated. Renata removed her blanket and sat on the first pew. She ran her fingers through her hair and shook it out. “Aletha, get me the hell back. You’ve proved your point.”

“The lady has the sound of authority.” Wells perched on the railing separating them and eyed Renata. “Are you the madam of the group?”

“Who are you to call names? Railroading people just because they belong to a union and don’t agree with you.”

“There is no union here, Miss … or do you go only by a first name?”

“Winslow. If there were no union there’d be no trouble here.”

“We refuse to acknowledge a union in Telluride, Miss Winslow, so it does not exist. And you are right, if it doesn’t exist there will be no trouble.”

“Sounds like Ronald Reagan,” Tracy muttered. “Aletha, concentrate.”

“I’m disappointed, Mr. Mackelwain. You let your women do all the talking,” Bulkeley Wells said. “I sensed more of a man in that exaggerated length of yours.”

“Sheriff, I’m ready to take the prisoners to the depot,” Bob Meldrum said from the back of the room. “Even got a couple of volunteers to help me.”

Cree groaned. Aletha turned to see Duffer and his friend Maynard standing beside Bob Meldrum. All three were grinning.

46

“I have often dreamed of visiting the past. A more simple time, when law and order was not so difficult to achieve and a man was born expecting to earn his way.” Bulkeley Wells sat on a corner of the judge’s desk slapping gauntleted gloves against his leg. “I hope that should such a thing happen I would comport myself with considerably more aplomb than you and your ladies, Mr. Mackelwain. I don’t for a moment believe you all have traveled from the future. I do applaud the originality of the idea. And I did see that … that patch of sunlight.”

“I’m surprised you remember so much after so long.”

“I rarely forget. Neither does our fine sheriff. Do you, Cal?”

Sheriff Rutan puffed billows of choking cigar smoke into the room and coughed. “Still think we ought to keep him here to work off his debts.”

Meldrum sat at the back of the room, but Duffer and Maynard had sidled up as close to Aletha as they could and kept staring at her so she couldn’t concentrate. She felt hungry, dirty, irritable, and afraid, so when Bulkeley Wells said, “Perhaps you’d like to tell us something of the future, Mr. Mackelwain,” Aletha answered instead, “You’re going to go bald and shoot yourself in the head in California.”

“No one really wants to know his own future,” Cree warned.

“I noticed you conversing with the O’Connell boy.” Wells changed the subject as if he agreed with Cree. “I’m curious as to your relationship with that family. The father’s transgressions are rather serious. The son left our public school in his final term. It is rare for a miner’s child to complete the fifth grade. This boy was at the head of his class. Rather far ahead of the others, I’m told.”

“Bram’s a friend of mine. I told him to cool his temper. That you and the owners would win.”

“Is that before or after I shoot myself in a hairless head?”

“Before. You may win here, but eventually you lose. Mildred Heisinger says you’re going to put women and babies in cattle cars and ship them out of town.” Aletha caught Cree’s expression. “Well, she did.”

“If you’re not going to take us home,” Cree said through his teeth, “at least don’t make things any worse.”

“How would the Heisinger woman be privy to any supposed plans of mine? Did she bring you here?”

“I’ve told you your future. Well, Mildred lives forever. She’s—”

“She’s hardly that robust.” Wells was watching Renata again.

Renata met his eyes. “History says that you are a womanizer,” she said in her best bedroom alto, “that it brings you grief. You lose your shirt, but I understand you have great fun along the way.”

He rose and motioned to Meldrum. “My interest in you has been out of curiosity. I regret there is too much at stake here for me to indulge myself any longer. The very basis of freedom is endangered—”

“Whose freedom?” Renata asked.

“Any man’s if he wishes to sell his labor as he sees fit. It’s more than a freedom. It’s a God-given right.”

“What about women?” she said as they filed down the aisle toward the door.

“If they possess any intelligence at all they will find a man worthy of their support.”

“Oh yeah?” Tracy said. “Well, we’ve come a long way, baby.”

“We’ve come a long way, baby,” Cree mimicked as they walked to the depot. “Tell me about it when you’re freezing your buns in a boxcar or getting them fondled in a whorehouse. They’re not going to liberate women for years. Men can’t even join unions freely. Have you noticed it’s winter here? We’re in a whole lot of trouble, ladies.”

Bulkeley Wells rode a horse behind them. Bob Meldrum walked ahead, and Duffer and Maynard to either side. The streets were a hardened corduroy of ice ruts in the shady patches and mud ruts where the sun had worn through.

“When are you going to do your stuff?” Duffer asked Aletha.

“What ever happened to Lennard Pheeney?” she countered.

“Somebody shot him. We owe you one, right? And for two years in this fuckin’ place.”

“But if you get us home, all debts are off,” Maynard added hastily.

Bob Meldrum strode ahead, deaf and oblivious of the low voices behind him. Wells seemed not to hear them over the noise his horse made. Many hats were doffed in respect to Captain Wells, many greetings called to him by women and children. He seemed to know everyone by name. When he sent Aletha off on a train, would that end her connection to her own time? Did she have to be where Callie was to move back and forth between worlds?

She recognized several of the modest homes in Finntown that would withstand the years and the inroads of condominiums. Tracks ran past the depot now and boxcars lined up on sidings. The windows on the depot were not boarded over, and inside, a potbellied stove made some of the wooden building dangerously hot while corners still held the chill of outdoors.

“You must’ve lost your stinking coat,” Bob Meldrum said to Aletha. “Audrey said you just disappeared into a fog. You should’ve stayed with Leona when I took you there. See all the trouble you’re in now?”

Bulkeley Wells drew Renata apart from the others and stood talking to her for some minutes. When he took his leave, Renata joined them on a bench along the wall. “Did he offer you a job?” Cree asked. “Better stick with Aletha. If there’s any way out of this, she’s it.”

“He’s one chauvinist-pig hunk,” was all she would say.

“I don’t know when your train arrives, so relax.” Meldrum leaned against a wall and chewed on his chaw. Duffer and Maynard perched close by. Cree’s stomach gurgled, Aletha’s burned. Tracy wiggled. Renata seemed preoccupied. Across the room a man in a visor watched them through an iron grate and then turned as a clacking noise started up behind him. Meldrum sauntered over to talk to him and when he returned he said to Duffer, “Leaving you in charge. I’m going to go eat. I’ll be back to take a turn. Looks like it’ll be a while.” He handed Duffer one of his guns. “Don’t look away from them.”

“You don’t have to take a turn here. We’ll stick with these bummers all day.”

“Yeah, we ain’t hungry,” Maynard said. When Meldrum had left, he looked at Aletha. “Okay, now we’re alone. Get a move on.” But the day wore on and no threats brought the hole with shimmering edges. Antique people in antique clothes came and went. Aletha felt buzzy with hunger and terror that leaving Telluride would be leaving behind her only link to home. It grew dark outside the unboarded windows but the man behind the grillwork came out to turn on weak lights.

“What if I start killing your friends off one by one?” Duffer whispered. “All we need is you, right? What if I start with Mackelwain?”

“If you kill my friends I won’t ever be able to concentrate.” The buzzing in Aletha’s head grew in volume when Duffer turned the weapon on Cree.

“Evening train’s passed the junction,” the man with the visor called out, and then, as if he just noticed Aletha’s group was all that remained, added, “Won’t have another vagrant train together till morning.”

When the doomed sound of the whistle on the evening train moaned closer and closer, Aletha began to imitate it, first in her head and then aloud. Ignoring the startled glances of her friends, she let it grow into a scream. She wasn’t positive she could stop if she wanted to. She wasn’t sure how much was hysteria and how much her desire to keep the stationmaster’s attention on them to make it more difficult for Duffer to shoot Cree without having a respectable witness looking on. Maybe she had flipped altogether, maybe it just felt good to be doing something less passive than she had all day. Maybe it was just the hopelessness of it. Life in either world with Duffer and Maynard likely meant death for them all.

“Here, now, we can’t have that,” the stationmaster said when she’d stopped to take a breath.

“Shut up, dyke,” Duffer yelled when she started in again, and he raised the butt of the gun above her face. She didn’t stop even when he brought it down to strike her. She was shoved aside so suddenly the gun butt hit the wall instead. Aletha really couldn’t stop now. This must be what crazy is, she thought, but oh the wonderful release of it. Renata slapped her. Tracy shook her.

Cree and Duffer rolled about on the floor while the stationmaster stood by helplessly. Maynard circled the struggle, looking for an opening to grab the gun in Duffer’s hand. Cree had Duffer by the wrist to hold the weapon away while he pummeled him with the other hand. Cree’s face was flushed almost blue-red, his lips pulled back in a snarl. He fought disgustingly dirty. Aletha stopped screaming and began a hoarse giggling. She was losing her voice.

Renata motioned to Tracy to help her pry up a loose board off a bench and then tried to sneak up on Maynard with it. But the gun went off and everyone backed away. A hanging light fixture swung wildly. There was a new hole in the reflector. The swinging light bouncing off walls and faces made the whole scene even funnier but Aletha’s giggling changed to tears and the train whistle did the screaming now, very close.

The gun hit the floor and Cree was free to beat on Duffer with both hands. When Maynard made a dive for it Renata brought the board down on the back of his head so hard her feet came up off the floor. Maynard stayed where he was.

A sudden sharp burning on Aletha’s leg made her think she’d been shot too, but the bulge in her pocket reminded her of having stuffed the souvenir pendant in it and she drew it out by the chain. The pink-stained quartz was definitely hot to the touch. The light had slowed its arc but still swung above them. Given the scarcity and weakness of the bulbs in the large room, all the corners were dark but the moving light illuminated a boarded-up window in one corner and a patch of wainscoting with the paint worn and flaked to almost nothing. A ripped cobweb drooped with dust …

“Tracy!” Aletha threw the necklace under a bench and shoved Tracy at the corner. She grabbed one of Cree’s ankles. He’d gone crazy with rage and was no help at all. Renata just looked bewildered as Aletha struggled to hold on to him. Duffer’s nose was bleeding and making the floor slippery. The train had stopped. Steam and smoke fogged the depot windows. The door opened to admit two trainmen. “Renata, if you want to go home, grab a foot.”

Renata came to and they fought together to pull Cree off Duffer and face down toward the corner. Aletha smelled the air change to musty and saw Duffer roll over, crawl toward them on his stomach. “Maynard, they’re gettin’ away!”