Against the Day (196 page)

Somewhere en route to the Trinidad
field, strolling through the cars, Scarsdale opened a door at the end of one
carriage and there in the vestibule stood— It was a being, much taller
than he was, its face appallingly corroded as if burned around the edges, its
features not exactly where they should be. The sort of malignant presence that
had brought him before to levels of fear he knew he could not emerge from with
his will undamaged. But this time he felt only curiosity. Scarsdale caught the
figure’s eye, raised a

finger as if to speak, as it moved
past him and continued down the aisle of the train car. “Wait,” Scarsdale
puzzled, “I wanted to talk to you, smoke a cigar, socialize a little.”

“Not
now, I’ve got something else to do.” The accent was not American, but Scarsdale
couldn’t place it. And then the apparition was gone, leaving the tycoon bemused
at his own lack of terror, and unable to imagine that this had not been in some
way aimed at him, intending, as always, his destruction. Who else could it
possibly have been after by this point, at the stage things had come to?

Foley came blinking in, awakened by something only he heard.

“Somebody
was here on The Juggernaut that wasn’t supposed to be,” Scarsdale greeted him.

   
“Been
through the place a dozen times,” Foley said.

“It
doesn’t matter, Foley, it’s all in the hands of Jesus isn’t it. Could happen
anytime in fact and to tell you the truth, I look forward to being one of the
malevolent dead.”

Foley
knew exactly what that meant. On battlefields after the engagement, with
cannonballs on the ground everywhere, he had kept company with ghosts by the
thousands, all filled with resentments, drifting, or stationed by cemetery
gates and abandoned farmhouses where halfmad survivors would be most likely to
see them, or not sure, some of them, which side of the barelyvisible line they
walked
. . . .
Not the companionship
he would have chosen. At first he put Scarsdale’s desire to be among them down
to civilian ignorance. Didn’t take him long, however, to see that Scarsdale
understood them better than he did.

After dropping
the shipment
off at
Walsenburg, Frank and Ewball rode down to Trinidad for a look. There were
militiamen all over the place, unhappylooking young men in stained and ragged
uniforms, unshaven, insomniac, finding excuses to roust the strikers, who were
Greeks and Bulgarians, Serbs and Croats, Montenegrins and Italians. “Over in
Europe,” Ewball explained, “all busy killin each other over some snarledup
politics way beyond any easy understanding. But the minute they get over here,
before you can say ‘Howdy,’ they just drop all those ancient hatreds, drop ’em
flat, and become brothersinarms, ’cause they recognize
this
right away
for just what it is.”

Somehow
they kept coming west to these coalfields, and the owners put out stories about
sharpshooters from the Balkan War and such, and Greek mountain fighters, Serbs
with an appetite for cruelty, Bulgars with a reputa

tion for unspeakable sex, all these
alien races coming over here and making miserable the lives of the poor
innocent plutes, who were only trying to get by like everybody else. Even if
some of these immigrant miners had seen military action over there, why come
here, to these godforsaken canyons? It wasn’t for three dollars a day, there
was more to be made in the cities, it sure wasn’t to go down into explosions,
caveins, and lung disease and choose to shorten their lives digging coal so
some owner could live high and mighty—so then why come here of all
places? The only explanation that made sense to Ewball, who had been acting
more and more strangely the closer he got to Trinidad, was that some of them
had to be already dead, casualties of the fighting in the Balkans.

“For the unquiet dead, see, geography
ain’t the point, it’s all unfinished business, it’s wherever there’s accounts
to be balanced, ’cause the whole history of those Balkan peoples is revenge,
back and forth, families against families, and it never ends, so you have this
population of Balkan ghosts, shot dead, I don’t know, up some mountain in
Bulgaria or someplace, got no idea where they are, where they’re going, all
they feel is
that unbalance
—that something’s wrong and needs to be
made right again. And if distance means nothing, then they surface wherever
there’s a fight with the same shape to it, same history of backandforth
killing, and it might be someplace in China we never get to hear about, and
again it might be right here a city block away, right down in the depths of the
U.S.A.”

   
“Ewball,
man, that is some bughouse talk.”

In Trinidad
Frank noticed a figure out on the
porch of the Columbian Hotel, big, unsmiling, sundarkened and slouched against
the siding watching the traffic in the street with a look of unreachable
contempt.

“Not an hombre I would care to tangle
assholes with there,” Frank remarked.

   
“Sure
about that?”

   
“Uhoh.
Ewb, what’s ’at look on your face?”

“The gentleman happens to be Foley
Walker, the devoted sidekick of your old family friend Mr. Scarsdale Vibe.”

“Well, there’s somethin to think
about.” Frank pulled his hatbrim lower and thought about it. “That mean Vibe’s
in town, too?”

“Somebody has to be out ridin that
Champagneandpheasant circuit, make sure the plutes don’t lose their nerve.
Rockefeller couldn’t make it, but

old Vibe’s just as happy to as a fly on shit.”

   
They
found a saloon up the street and went in. Ewball seemed in a state of

almost juvenile impatience. “So?” he said finally, “so? you
gonna make it two notches or what?”

“It might have to be three if there’s
’at Foley to get past. Is he really as bad as he looks?”

“Worse. They say Foley’s a bornagain
Christer, so he can act as bad as he wants because Jesus is coming and nothin a
human can do so bad Jesus won’t forgive it.”

   
“But
you’d be someplace coverin my back, right?”

   
“Why
Frank, how thoughtful of you to ask.”

They checked in at the Toltec Hotel.
Frank understood he would eventually be heading up to Ludlow to find Stray, but
right now the chance that Vibe might present a clear enough target seemed to
take precedence. They decided to track the magnate’s comings and goings.

Out
reconnoitering, they thought once they’d caught a quick glimpse of Mother Jones
herself, being hustled on board a train out of town, a comical exercise at the
time because she would then turn around and come right back, having friends
among the railroad workers all up and down the line, who’d put her aboard or
leave her off wherever she liked. What Frank noticed about this whitehaired
lady was her hellwithit attitude, a love of mischief she must have kept safe
and protected from the years, from the plutes and what their hired apologists
called “life,” as if they ever knew what that was—protected like a child,
the child she had been
. . . .

A
small pack of dogs came whirling down Main Street, as if carried by a miniature
tornado. Lately there had been more dogs in town than anybody could remember.
As if somebody saw an urgent need to get them out of the canyons, where there
was trouble on the way that they really didn’t need to be around for.

There were always
rooms
in these shootout
resorts, small and spare, side rooms, anterooms for their mortal business,
where members of the troupe might go to get ready—greenrooms without
lines to remember, chapels without God
. . .
.

After any number of careful
observations, Ewball had determined the best time to go for Scarsdale would be
right after lunch. “He eats at the hotel, then him and Foley take a short walk
down to the C.F.I. office, where they spend the afternoon seein what new kind
of evil they’ll cook up. There’s a foot or two between buildings I can wait
back in.”

   
“You?”

   
So
arising the delicate question of who would get to shoot whom. “Well he

is yours by all the laws of vengeance, sure,” Ewball said,
“that’s if you want him.”

   
“Why
shouldn’t I?”

Disingenuousness
having begun to ooze from and presently saturate Ewball, “Don’t know. Just that
Vibe’s likely to be pretty much a sitting duck—the dangerous target’d be
Foley. Dependin how much work you’re eager to do.”

“You
want to go after Vibe? and me take Foley? well you have my blessin Ewb, and no
hard feelins, no matter what people say afterwards.”

   
“How’s
that, Frank?”

“Oh, you know, psychological talk and
that.” Frank noticed that Ewball’s smile was no longer what you’d call amiable.
“A way of gettin back at your Pa, and so forth. Backeast thoughts, horseshit of
course.”

Ewball
considered for a minute. “Here,” finding a silver quarter. “We’ll flip for it,
how’s that.”

Two facing rows
of storefronts receded steeply down
the packedearth street. Where the buildings ended, nothing could be seen above
the surface of the street, no horizon, no countryside, no winter sky, only an
intense radiance filling the gap, a halo or glory out of which anything might
emerge, into which anything might be taken, a portal of silver transfiguration,
as if being displayed from the viewpoint of (let us imagine) a fallen
gunfighter.

Frank
decided to borrow a .44 Peacemaker from Ewball instead of depending on his
Smith & Wesson, which needed a new extractor spring. All those years ago,
when he and Reef had let Mayva keep Webb’s old Confederate Colt, Frank had
thought to take with him the cartridges that were still in it. They had rattled
around in and out of saddlebags, duster pockets, satchels, and cartridge belts,
and Frank never used them, not even for Sloat Fresno, telling himself they were
really only to remember Webb by. Not that he was fooling himself—they
were for Deuce someday, of course. But unless the little reptile returned to
the scene of the crime, how likely was it that Frank would ever get to use
them?

Scarsdale
Vibe would have to do—second choice, but no point trying to explain that
to Ewb, who had these strange theoretical branches of Anarchist principle he
was very reluctant to climb down off of. Frank stood in the tight little
alleyway, between a photographer’s and a feedandseed, with Ewball across the
street, and waited for the imperial tycoon who’d turned thumbs down on Webb
Traverse ten years ago.

They
passed the mouth of the alley so quick Frank almost missed them. He stepped out
behind them and said, “Vibe.” The two men turned, Foley

bringing out what Frank needed a
minute to recognize as one of those German Parabellums, and being given that
minute was enough to tip Frank that something was up. Ewball was sauntering
across the street, using a passing wagon for cover part of the way, Ewb’s left
hand almost prayerfully supporting the barrel of his own weapon.

Even
in a town full of murderous Anarchists who hated him worse than Rockefeller,
Scarsdale had seen no need to walk around these streets heeled. In his
accustomed tone of command, at exactly the moment he should not have adopted
it, he now barked, “Well you see them as clearly as I do, Foley. Take care of it.”
In reply, smoothly as if it were another longpracticed personal chore, Foley
stepped away swiveling, lined up the Luger’s muzzle with his employer’s heart,
and chambered the first round. Scarsdale Vibe peered back, as if only curious.
“Lord, Foley . . .”

“Jesus
is Lord,” cried Foley, and pulled the trigger, proceeding to empty all eight
rounds into what, after the first, was a signed deal. As if come to his
ancestral home after long and restless journeying, what had been Scarsdale Vibe
settled facedown into the dirtied snow and ice of the street, into the smell of
horses and horse droppings, to rest.

Foley
stood looking awhile at the corpse, as citizens went running, some for the
marshal, some for safety. “Oh and another thing,” he pretended to address it,
his demeanor oddly gay.

Frank, having counted off the full
clip, nodded. “Well, sir.”

   
“Hope
you fellows don’t mind, but it’s payday today, and I’ve been in line years
ahead of you.”

There was a squad of militia coming
up the street, and Frank and Ewball, having reconcealed their revolvers under
their coats, found little trouble in blending in with the nervous townsfolk of
Trinidad. Foley waited, in patient good humor, watching Scarsdale’s blood,
nearly black in this midwinter light, slowly flow out into a liquid frame
around him.

“
Just
too embarrassing
,” muttered Ewball. “How am I gonna hold my damn head
up?”