These Honored Dead (16 page)

B
y the time I got downstairs to prepare the store for opening the next morning, rain was coming down in great sheets. I stood at the front door next to Herndon and watched it fall.

“Doubt we’ll do much business today,” said Herndon.

“I know it’s not your usual shift,” I replied, “but will you watch the counter for me? I’ve an errand to accomplish.”

Herndon readily agreed, and in a moment I had thrown on an overcoat and broad-brimmed hat and pushed open the door. Staying close to buildings wherever possible, and avoiding the muddy bogs forming in the low-lying areas of the streets, I wound my way through town. Soon I was knocking on the door of a familiar small shack, the rain pouring off my hat like a downspout.

“You must need a trim something desperate to come out in this weather,” Billy the Barber said when he opened the door. “Come in, come in. You ain’t got much competition this morning, that’s for sure.”

I stepped inside and took off my outer gear as a pool of water formed at my feet. Billy started setting up his tools beside his barbering chair, but before I walked over I called out, “Hay? Are you about?”

“Mornin’,” came a sleepy voice from Billy’s back room. As far as I knew, Hay had no permanent home, but he spent many nights camped on the floor beside Billy’s mattress.

“Aren’t you due at Lincoln’s office?” I asked.

“Not for another hour,” said the boy as he wandered into the front room, scratching his scrawny chest. From the look of him, deeply begrimed in his dingy underclothes, he hadn’t bathed since the spring.

“Do me a service and leave now,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “Head over to van Hoff’s and rent a phaeton and hitch Hickory up to it. Tell van Hoff it’s for me. Then drive it to Patterson’s house and I’ll meet you there. Here’s a half-dime for your trouble.”

“Where’re you takin’ Patterson’s daughter?” Billy asked.

“I’m not taking her anywhere. And I’m not answering your questions. Just go.”

“But it’s rainin’ out.”

“Do you want the half-dime or not?”

Hay wavered, then nodded and, throwing on a too-large jacket, went out. Meanwhile, I leaned back into Billy’s chair, my eyes closed, and let him comb out my hair.

“This ain’t much longer than you usually wear it, Mr. Speed,” the barber said. “You sure you want me to cut it?”

“Just a little, then,” I said. “It’s been bothering me.” As he started snipping away, I asked, “How long have you been barbering folks, Billy?”

“’Bout ten years now. Started doing it down in New Orleans. White man keeps the Negro in chains, but for some reason he’ll let him hold a sharp blade to his throat so long as there’s lather involved.”

“When you put it that way, it does seem rash,” I replied with a smile. “I imagine you hear all sorts of things while you’re cleaning folks up and making them look presentable.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I continued. “About those people who’ve been killed, the Widow Harriman and her niece and nephew. My younger sister’s here for a visit, and all of a sudden
I find myself worried about her safety, about the safety of all the young women in town in particular.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“So I was wondering whether you might know something about the deaths. Do you, Billy?”

The barber blew out his breath through his teeth, one of which, on the top row, was missing. “That be the sheriff’s business, don’t you think?” he said. “Or Attorney Prickett’s. I’ve got enough to do tending to people’s hair.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said.

There were a few minutes of quiet, during which I searched for another approach, while Billy whistled softly to himself in time with the clacking scissor blades. At length I began again.

“Have you been known to trim Dr. Patterson’s hair, Billy?”

“I reckon he’s been by once or twice.”

“So what’s your opinion? Do you think he’s guilty?”

“Ain’t got no opinion. All I’ve got is these shears.” He held them up for a moment, then went back to work on my whiskers.

“Let me ask you another question about Patterson. Maybe you’ve got an opinion on this. If he wanted an evening away from home, to have a private encounter, say, do you have any idea where he might go?”

Billy’s scissors continued to fly around my head, but the whistling stopped. He put down the scissors and said, “Do you consider yourself a religious man, Mr. Speed?”

The question took me aback. “I’m a God-fearing man,” I said, “the same as any other good Christian.” In truth, it had been many years since I’d attended divine service, but I was not about to admit this to the Negro barber.

“I don’t know about yours,” Billy continued, “but at the church I attend on Sundays, anything said to the minister is said in private. It’s between you and him and the Almighty. The minister’d be run out of town before the sun rose on Monday if he started sharing them secrets around.”

“That’s true at my church also,” I replied with a smile. “Though I’m not sure barbers are held to quite the same standard.”

Billy took a step back, squinted at me, and held up his hands. “Do you think,” he said in a bold tone I had never heard him use before, “these hands could cut and scape with such skill if the Almighty himself hadn’t breathed life into them?”

“I don’t imagine they could.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Billy, and he picked up his scissors again and resumed his tune. “Besides,” he said a few moments later, “you’re asking about something that, if I ever knew it, I knew long ago. My mind’s not what it used to be.” He paused. “Used to be
golden
.”

At $2.50 it was a steep price, but with the trial starting tomorrow morning, there was no time to haggle. I felt through the coins in my pocket, located a single gold quarter-eagle, and placed it on the table holding Billy’s cutting implements.

Billy made a few last snips and put down his scissors on the table. The gold coin had disappeared. “You’re all set now, Mr. Speed,” Billy said. “You ever been to Athens?”

“Yes,” I said, assuming he meant Illinois, not Greece.

“Ever get wet on the way?”

“Every single time. At least I would if it wasn’t for the rope pull ferry at the Salt Creek crossing, the one operated by the keeper of that sorry tavern on the riverbank.”

“It’s a funny thing,” Billy said. “Doc Patterson once said the very same thing to me. You tell me if your feet get wet the next time you’re there.”

I thanked Billy and hurried out into the elements. The rain had relented, but a light mist was still falling as I made my way through town. Here and there I passed townspeople venturing out onto the soaking streets. Soon I was standing at Patterson’s imposing front door. I let myself in.

Gustorf was lying face down on his couch in the parlor, snoring loudly. I tapped his shoulder and he groaned, turned over,
and breathed out into my face. The experience was like thrusting my head into a distilling vat. I gagged.

“How can you be drunk at this hour?” I exclaimed.

“How can you be sober at any hour?” Gustorf muttered. “Leave me be.”

“I’ve got a favor to ask,” I said. Gustorf groaned again and turned away from me. “It involves a trip outdoors,” I continued. “And, unless I’m much mistaken, a woman.”

He turned his head toward me again. “Your sister?”

“Better than that for your purposes.” When he squinted at me through questioning eyes, I crouched down and told him my plan. The longer I spoke, the broader his smile became. When I had finished explaining, I straightened up and asked, “Will you do it?”

Herr Gustorf pulled himself into a sitting position. “My good friend,” he said with a clap of his hands, “it’s as if you’ve been heaven-sent to relieve my tedium. Let’s leave at once.”

I pulled Gustorf to his feet. Hay was waiting outside, holding Hickory’s lead. I helped Gustorf hoist himself up into the light, open-sided carriage. Once he’d positioned his cast to balance himself against toppling out of the conveyance, I gave Hickory a tap.

“How does that damned thing feel?” I asked as we lurched into motion.

“Like I’ve shoved my leg down the throat of a boar. Or up its arse, more likely. Worse, it’s starting to itch.”

“Patterson truly thinks you’ll be good as new when it’s removed?”

“That’s what he told me. But I understand the doctor’s been saying a lot of fantastical things recently.” Gustorf shouted with laughter at his own joke and slapped the cast. It resounded like a hollow log.

The great prairie glistened like an overripe fruit as we drove through it that morning, the sun coming in and out of the clouds. The colors were a little too vivid; the greens even greener than
usual, the yellows looking liquid in intensity. Here and there were faint, rusty hints of the reds to come. The grasses were improbably high, and they stood straight at attention in the still, sultry air.

Herr Gustorf shouted out his approval of the setting several times, and he eagerly scribbled down impressions and sketches in his notebook. But I took in the familiar scene with a kind of sadness. When the prairie reached this state, it was a sure sign the end was near, that the decline and death of the fall and winter would arrive before we knew it. The wild beauty would not last. It never did.

The sun was directly overhead when we came upon the lonely tavern beside Salt Creek. As far as I knew, it did not have a name, in part because it had rapidly gone through a series of owners, each having even less good fortune than the last. When I had stayed there a few years earlier, in the middle of a circuit around the county to get to know my new territory, an unsavory drunkard named Esterly had run the place. I’d heard he’d been replaced as proprietor by his spinster daughter, she in turn by a fellow named Dickey, and then he by one Rugg.

An old man bent over on a walking stick hobbled out of the front door as soon as our cart lurched to a stop. He was taking no chances on letting two prospective customers get away, I supposed.

“Can you tend to my horse while we slake our thirst?” I called as the man approached. “It’s Rugg, isn’t it?”

“Rugg abandoned the place months ago,” the man rasped as he took Hickory’s reins with a gnarled hand. “My son, Sconce the Younger, took over management. Spruced it up quite nicely, he has.” The man looked at the ramshackle one-story inn with pride.

Herr Gustorf and I followed his gaze doubtfully. The inn’s dingy white paint was peeling and several of the shutters were off their hinges and hanging at odd angles. Boards had been nailed onto the roof at uneven diagonals, apparently to cover over leaks.
Two scrawny milk cows grazed in the unpenned front yard. Just beyond the inn, Salt Creek trickled by unhappily.

“I can’t thank you enough for this expedition,” Gustorf murmured with genuine enthusiasm.

The Prussian slid to the ground and limped toward the front door. Meanwhile, I untethered Hickory from the two-wheeled chaise, which we let lean forward onto the ground, and Sconce the Older led the horse into a rickety stable, which stank of moldering manure. Hickory whinnied unhappily, but I scratched her white stripe and whispered assurances she wasn’t going to be here for long. Then I followed Gustorf’s path into the tavern.

Sconce the Younger, middle-aged and officious, stood behind a reception desk just inside the door, quill pen poised above a bound hotel register. “Will that be two rooms for this evening, sir?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Just a few restorative glasses and then we’re back on the trail,” I said, my eyes tightly focused on the ledger. Sconce’s shoulders sagged as he closed the weathered register and placed it into a bottom drawer of the desk.

I continued past him into the dissolute public room. Discolored shades were drawn over the windows, and the place was lit by a single, foul-smelling whale-oil lamp. Two men, looking like they hadn’t moved in weeks, sprawled in chairs next to a decrepit table littered with empty glasses. In the far end of the room, next to the barman’s stand, Gustorf was already engaged in animated conversation with a woman.

The Prussian’s new companion turned as she heard me approaching and gave me a look of composed sadness. She was middle-aged, dressed in frills and ruffles, and heavily painted. Her hair was pulled back by a band of colored beads. In her younger years, I imagined she would have been very pretty.

“May I introduce Madam Grace Darling,” Gustorf said with a grand gesture. I bowed politely.

After a quick glance, Madam Darling returned her attentions to Gustorf, who was already close to the bottom of his glass.
I took a nearby chair, which shuddered as I settled into it, and listened without pretense.

“Why’d you say you were in these parts?” Madam Darling asked Gustorf.

“I’m on a grand tour of your country,” he said, speaking with a more pronounced accent than usual. “I’m writing a book, for my homeland.”

“Oh, a writer,” she replied. She stepped back to squint at him, and I guessed she was assessing the quality of the threads in his jacket. “I like writers—successful ones at least. What country are you from?”

“Prussia.”

“I’ve always wanted to visit Russia,” she replied with mustered enthusiasm.

“I’ve heard that’s very nice too,” he said. Madam Darling gave Gustorf a confused look while he glanced over her shoulder at me and winked. I rotated my hand like a wagon wheel as if to say,
Get on with it
.

Gustorf drained the remainder of his glass and asked Sconce for two replacements. “The hard stuff, this time,” he specified. The Prussian launched into a long disquisition on the Germanic states and their once and future greatness in world affairs. Madam Darling bravely tried to follow the discussion, although once or twice her eyes flicked toward the entrance of the tavern to see if any less long-winded prospects had entered. But no one else came through the door and so Gustorf retained the field unchallenged.

When Gustorf finally finished his lecture, he muttered that he needed to relieve himself, and Madam Darling pointed him through a narrow door at the rear. As he disappeared, she gave a sigh and turned her attention to me.

“What’s your tale?” she asked.