Against the Day (89 page)

“Jephthah runs this Christer roadranch
out on Cherry Creek, and this is how he gathers his flock. I thought he was off
tonight, so I—It’s all right Jeff!” Slowing down. “Don’t shoot!”

   
“Those
souls are mine, Moss.”

   
“Who
done all the work? I’ll take fifty cents per head.”

   
“Defrocked
if I’ll let you have any more’n twentyfive.”

   
“Forty,”
said Moss Gatlin. The passengers gazed on with interest.

   
“Rev?”
said Frank, “about my religious faith here—”

   
“Can
we talk about it later?”

They rode the train up to Divide and
changed to the narrowgauge, and the Rev told stories about Webb, some of which
Frank knew, some he’d guessed, a couple that were news to him.

“Sometimes,” Frank admitted, “I feel
funny about Sloat. It should’ve been the other one, ’cause Pa was nothin Sloat
would’ve gone out and done on his own.”

“Sloat was a traitor to his class,
Frank, the worst kind of stoogin for the plutes, and you done us all a favor,
maybe Sloat himself more than any. Case you’re worryin about him. He won’t get
into Anarchist Heaven, but wherever he goes it’ll be good for his soul.”

   
“Plute
Hell?”

   
“Wouldn’t
surprise me.”

Hauling into Cripple Creek, Frank
could see how forlorn and beaten down that recent battleground had become. The
owners had sure won. The Union had gone invisible if it was there at all,
though to Moss Gatlin it looked like they’d moved on and left a whole
population of honorable fighters out of work and free to make what crawling
arrangements they had to to get hired again, even for mucker work, or likely
just leave for someplace else. Scabs were everyplace, wearing these peculiar
South Slavic knitted caps. Camp guards stomping the streets they now owned,
picking out foreigners they knew didn’t speak English and rousting them,
testing the general docility level in town.

“My ministry.” He nodded to include
somehow the whole offshift population. “These Austrian boys that look so easy
and obligin right now will come back as vengeful ghosts to haunt Colorado
someday, because it is a law uni

versal as the law of Gravity and as
unforgiving that today’s scab is tomorrow’s striker. Nothin mystical. Just what
happens. You watch and see.”

   
“Where’ll
you be stayin, Rev?”

“Noplace that won’t be different
tomorrow night. Simplifies things. For you, now—that house there across
the street is said to be pretty good. ’Less you want the National Hotel or
something.”

   
“Will
I be seeing you?”

“When you need to. Rest of the time
I’m invisible. Step careful now, Frank. Remember me to your Ma.”

Frank got a room, wandered down to
the Old Yellowstone Saloon, started drinking, brought a bottle back to the
room, soon became drunk and miserable and fell into a stupor, from which he was
roused sometime in the middle of the night by loud screams from the room
adjoining.

   
“Everybody
O.K. in here?”

A boy about fifteen years old crouched
wideeyed against the wall. “Sure— just fighting off some bedbugs.” He
worked his eyebrows energetically and pretended to brandish a horsewhip. “Back!
Back, I say!”

   
Frank
took out a tobacco pouch and rolling papers. “You smoke?”

“Havanas, mostly—but I guess I
wouldn’t mind one of those things you’re making there.”

They smoked awhile. Julius, which
turned out to be the kid’s name, was here from New York, part of a song, dance,
and comedy act touring the country. When they’d got to Denver, the lead artiste
had taken everybody’s pay and skipped in the middle of the night. “Landlady
down there is friends with Mr. Archer, and so here I am driving his grocery
wagon.”

   
“And
I guess that team is giving you trouble, huh?”

“Only when I try to sleep.” The boy pretended
to look around wildly, eyes rolling a mile a minute. “It’s the old showbusiness
curse, see. You want work, whatever they ask you, you tell them yes. I was
crazy enough to tell Mr. Archer I knew how to drive a wagon. I still don’t know
how to, and now I’m
really
crazy.”

“Horses up here learn the trails
pretty good. I bet yours could go over to Victor and back even with nobody
driving.”

   
“Swell,
that’ll save me a lot of work next run.”

   
“Why
not see if he’ll let you do something else?”

“I need the money. Enough to get back
to dear old East Ninetythird anyway.”

   
“Long
way from home.”

   
“Far
enough. You?”

“Lookin to find my Ma, latest I
heard, she’s here in Cripple, figured I’d have a look around tomorrow. Or do I
mean today.”

   
“What’s
her name?”

   
“Mrs.
Traverse.”

“Mayva? heck she’s just a couple
blocks from here, runs that icecream parlor, Cone Amor, over back of Myers.”

“You foolin me? lady about yay high,
real nice eyes, smokes a pipe sometimes?”

“Yeah! She comes in the store for
rock salt, cooking chocolate, things like that. Best icecream sodas this side
of the Rockies. Gee. That’s your mom, huh? You must’ve had a great childhood.”

“Well. She was always in the kitchen,
known for cookin anything, don’t surprise me she learned to make ice cream too.
All long after my time, o’ course.”

   
“Then
you got a treat coming, mister.”

Before he even
kissed
her hello, she
had him cranking the machine. “Cherry apricot, special of the day, sounds
peculiar, but the truck shows up from Fruita every other day, and it’s pretty
much what comes along.”

They stepped out a side door into an
alleyway, and Mayva took out her corncob pipe and stuffed it with Prince
Albert. “Still sayin your prayers, Frankie?”

   
“Not
every night. Not always on my knees.”

   
“Better’n
I thought. Course I’m prayin for all of you, all the time.”

Kit was over in Germany writing back
regular letters. Reef was never much of a writer, but she thought he was over
there in Europe too, someplace. Before Lake’s name could come up, there was a
jingle at the street door and in came a welltodo matron with a couple of
daughters around eight and ten. Mayva put the pipe someplace safe and went to
tend to them.

   
“The
children will have their cones, Mrs. Traverse.”

“Comin right up, ma’am. Lois, that’s
a real pretty gingham dress, is that new?”

   
The
girl took the icecream cone and devoted her gaze to it.

“And, Poutine, here’s yours, special
of the day, turns out to be my favorite, too.”

The younger sister flashed a quick
smile of apology and began to whisper, “We’re not supposed to—”

“Poutine.” Coins rang on the marble
counter. The woman gathered her daughters and swept out, leaving a cloud of
crabappleblossom scent behind.

“
’Fraid I’ll say some’n unRepublican, I guess.”

   
“You
seein a lot of that, Ma?”

   
“Enough.
Don’t get bent, I don’t.”

   
“What’s
going on?”

   
“Nothin
’t’ll do you any good to know.”

Groping after the worst it could be,
“The owners are paying you off. Widow’s compensation, a monthly check which
will make everythin perfectly jake.”

   
“Been
gettin one of those for a while, Frankie.”

   
“You’re
letting those—”

“No lap o’ luxury here, case you
missed that.” When she laughed, he saw how a couple of teeth were gone. “Hard
times for everbody, you know, even them people too.”

He had a rough idea of the dimensions
of insult she must have had to swallow from respectables like the one just out
the door, of how many passedby towns and back ends of mine booms moved
indifferently elsewhere she might’ve had to get through, and how many
embittered wives there must have been in them so without recourse that they’d
had only Mayva to take it out on—

She was looking at him steadily, the
old gaze, pure as smoke. “Heard you settled up with that Sloat Fresno.”

“Might’ve known you’d hear somethin.
Durndest thing, Ma, the minute I wasn’t lookin for him, there he was.”

   
“Somethin
steerin you, son. Them prayers you don’t always get around to.”

She might’ve been about to ask, “How
’bout the other one?” But disconnected her gaze, went darkly bustling after the
cat who was about to fall into the eightquart freezer again, and Frank guessed
she was just as happy not talking about Lake. Any attempt, however gingerly, to
bring up the topic would get him queer looks and a grief in Mayva’s face he
couldn’t bear to see laid out all in detail.

The one time she did mention Lake was
his last night in Cripple Creek. They’d been out at the National Hotel for
supper, Mayva was wearing a flower and a hat newer than any Frank had seen on
her, and they’d been talking about Webb. “Oh we both thought I was going to
save him. I believed that for so long
. . .
that
he wanted me to save him, for don’t women just love
that
eyewash.
Chorerunnin angels, ’at’s us—never get tired of it. So the men end up
convinced they can get away with anything, is why they ’s always pushin, just
to see what it’ll finally take to get us to break
. . . .
”

“Maybe he really wanted to spare you
that chore,” said Frank. “Savin him.”

“He was so damn angry,” Mayva said.
“Always somethin.”

“So
was everybody else up there,” it seemed to Frank.

“You just saw the little stuff. He
kept the other away from you kids and pretty much even from me, though we did
have our war dances round and round the cookstove every now and then. Tryin to
protect us, forgot to protect himself. I thought about it since, some days
didn’t do much else. He might’ve wanted to use that anger somehow, aim it where
it’d do some good, but sometimes . . .”

   
“Do
you think—”

   
“What,
Frankie?”

They had themselves a good long
silent look, not really uncomfortable, just itchy, as if it wouldn’t take much
to break apart—one of those rare moments when both of them knew they were
close to thinking the same thing, that Webb all along really had been that
legendary Phantom Dynamiter of the San Juans—that troops of fancy ladies
and poker colleagues, invoked to explain his absences over the years, were all
fiction, and had best pack up their bright bengalines and taffetas and satchels
of cash and pile on the next train out to the Barbary Coast or beyond, for all
it mattered. And that in each explosion, regardless of outcome, had spoken the
voice Webb could not speak with in the daily world of all whom he
wished—wished desperately, it now occurred to Frank—never to harm.

“Ma.” He looked at the food on his
plate and tried not to let his voice fade in and out too much. “If I keep on
with this, if I try to find that Deuce Kindred and settle that up
. . .
way I did with Sloat. . .”

Mayva smiled grimly. “And what
happens if she’s there when you find him.”

“I mean, it ain’t like fixin the
porch or somethin—”

“How over does it have to be that we
can finally all sleep, well,” patting his hand, “I sleep fine, Frankie.
Sometimes a little lettuce opium just to get me into it, but don’t feel like
that you need to give me no happy endings here. Sloat was plenty and I’ll
always be proud of that.”