Beautiful Bad Man (9 page)

Asking Becky for help had been a mistake. Next week Norah would ask the preacher. “He’s at least an inch shorter than Joe, maybe two.”

“For heaven’s sake, that means he’s still at least six feet tall. Joe was a monster.”

“Joe was not a monster!”

“Well, a bear then, or a buffalo.”

In spite of her exasperation, Norah had to smile. She’d often thought of Joe as a bear.

“Caleb Sutton is more of a wolf and every bit as dangerous. He said he might leave town soon, but in case he doesn’t and he comes by again, I think it would be prudent to find out as much about him as I can.”

“Prudent.” Becky made a face as if the word tasted bad and stopped teasing. “Do you mean — is he bothering you?”

“No, not any more. I mean not that he ever did, but it felt that way at first. Please, do you know anyone I could ask about him?”

Ethan wrapped an arm around his bride and said, “She’s being a brat. My grandfather claims he put up the first tent to start the town. Roy Butler. He lives....”

Becky put a hand over his mouth and favored Norah with a defiant smile. “You can just stop by our house, and I’ll show you where Grampa Roy lives.”

“I can’t be there until two.”

“Two! You’re supposed to have the afternoon off. After. Noon. It’s afternoon right now, and you should just....”

Ethan pulled Becky away, a smile on his face. “We’ll see you at two, Mrs. Hawkins.”

Norah didn’t make it to the young couple’s rented house near the railroad station until almost two thirty, her tongue sore from biting it over all the last minute Tindell demands. Her bad mood lifted when she found Becky and Ethan had brought Grampa Roy Butler to their house and primed him for a chat.

“Ethan wouldn’t even let me ask him about your gunslinger yet,” Becky grumbled. “What could it hurt if I warmed him up for you?”

Ethan’s grandfather had snowy white hair and a stout body he had trouble lifting from his chair when Norah walked into the parlor, but she saw a keen interest in her and her concerns in his bright blue eyes. She hoped he’d known the Suttons well enough to turn that gaze on them.

Becky insisted on showing Norah every detail of the house. Norah controlled her envy over the separate rooms and wood floors and even over Becky’s new sewing machine, but the soapstone sink in the kitchen with the water right over it turned her green. The house was cozy with some things she recognized from the Carbury house and others that were new.

She caught herself taking comfort from the memory of Caleb Sutton telling her he liked the way she had fixed the soddy. He had, in fact, paid her more compliments in the hour or two they’d spent together than her husband had in eight years of marriage, and he’d done it in spite of the fact the one time he’d been in the house all they’d done was insult each other.

Compliments or not, he was evil, or at least very bad. The whole reason for her visit was to determine how bad, and she couldn’t let a few casually tossed out compliments affect her commonsense.

When Becky finally ended the house tour, Norah settled in a chair across the fire from Grampa Butler and leaned toward him. “I appreciate your coming to tell me a little about town history, Mr. Butler.”

“I don’t think a young woman like you is interested in town history. With you ladies, it’s always a man. Who is it you’re investigating this week?”

Norah couldn’t help but laugh. “Caleb Sutton. He’s Henry Sutton’s nephew.”

“Caleb. Caleb. I never heard of a Sutton with that name. Henry had three sons, Jason, Eli, and hmm. Malachi? No. Matthew? No. Something like that. It’ll come to me.”

A stab of disappointment went through Norah, but the old man continued.

“Nephew. I do remember a nephew, but I never heard a name. Only saw him a couple of times. Skinny little boy, a towhead. Never heard a word out of him. Sat where he was put and stared off into the distance.”

Norah swallowed hard. “That’s the one. So you don’t know anything about him? What about the uncle? I met him a few times back when people used to get together, and he seemed ordinary enough.”

“Henry Sutton was a Bible thumper, and not the good kind. You know there’s good and righteous men like Reverend Densmore, there’s those of us who do our best, and then there’s self-righteous hypocrites. Henry was the worst kind of hypocrite. He was a mean man and used scripture to justify his meanness.”

Grampa stared into the fire and stroked his chin. “Thinking back on it, I remember more. The reason I never heard the boy’s name is Henry never used it. Called him the devil’s spawn, bad seed, like that. He was sure dealing with the boy was earning him his ticket to heaven.”

“So that’s what....” Norah heard her voice wobble and started again. “Caleb told me that. He said he was the devil’s spawn, but I thought he meant because he’s working for Mr. Van Cleve.

“I hate to hear Henry was right about the boy, but I guess even one like him was right some of the time.”

“He wasn’t right!” Norah avoided Becky’s knowing look and lowered her voice. “He’s not a good man. He’s working for Mr. Van Cleve, and that’s the kind of work he does, but he’s not the devil’s spawn either. What could a little boy do to deserve being treated that way by his own family?

“First thing he did was get born. Henry had a lot to say about his sister too, the boy’s mother.” The old man exchanged a look with Ethan. “I shouldn’t be talking about this to you ladies.”

Becky went to him, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “Now, Grampa, we’re both
married
ladies, and I think we already know what you’re going to say. Tell him it’s all right, Ethan.”

Ethan rolled amused eyes at his wife, but from the look he gave her, Norah knew Becky would be able to wheedle most anything from him.
I hope it lasts for her
.

Grampa also saw the way of things and continued with his story.

“It happened before they came out here, of course. They were from Pennsylvania or someplace like that, farmers, but they didn’t own the land, and Henry had ambition. He saved. Considered himself thrifty, but the truth is he was a miser of the worst kind. Anyway, he came out here as soon as he learned he could get government land for a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. No Homestead Act back then, you know. He bought under the Preemption Act.”

Norah nodded. Her own family had discussed the ways to acquire government land for hours on end back in Baltimore. She knew them all.

“So Henry’s sister got herself in the family way without a family,” the old man said. “At least without the husband part of a family.”

“And the baby was Caleb.”

“Must have been. Like I said, he never used that name. Henry still got himself worked into a lather about it all those years later when I knew him, and he’d rage on about it at the drop of a hat. What bothered him most was she never repented and she never named the man. So he cast her out.”

“Cast her out?” Norah said doubtfully, unable to believe he meant those words literally.

“Made her leave that farm that had belonged to both their parents, sent her out into the world without a dime or a change of clothes.”

Becky made a sound as if someone had hurt her. “My folks would never do that. They’d be so hurt and angry, but they’d never do that.” Ethan reached over and took her hand.

Norah wished she had someone to hold her hand too. “He kept her baby and made her leave?”

“Oh, no, he shoved her out into the world with the babe in the womb as they say.”

“Did she die birthing him? Is that how Henry got Caleb?”

“No, he didn’t get the boy until years later. The sister did what she had to and kept body and soul together and raised the boy.” The old man eyed Ethan again, checking to see if he should stop, but Ethan said nothing.

“A prostitute,” Norah said, remembering what she’d said about whores to Caleb and how that was when he’d turned nasty.

“She died when the boy was about ten, and I guess the other — people — in that place were going to keep him, but something happened.”

Everyone looked at Grampa, waiting, and he drew out the pause, enjoying the attention.

“Henry didn’t know exactly what happened. He claimed the boy almost killed a couple of those women, said one day the owner of the place showed up with the boy, said what happened, pushed him out of the buggy, and left. I didn’t believe him then, and I still don’t. It was at least a year after that I saw the boy, and he was barely big enough to kill a frog then.”

Norah leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and thought of the Boy in the wagon and the way he’d fought the grown men who captured him. She did believe the story. Caleb could have almost killed two women at ten, especially if he had a weapon.

“It’s a strange thing,” the old man said thoughtfully. “To hear Henry tell it, on the one hand the boy was born bad. Sins of the father and all that. On the other, he was determined to drive the devil out of him. He was hard on his own sons. They were always quieter than healthy boys should be. The youngest one, Micah, that was his name, he left home young, and so far as I ever heard no one saw hide nor hair of him again. I never heard what happened to the nephew.”

“He ran away,” Norah whispered. “He ran away, and a girl helped him keep running.”

C
AL KNEW HE
was getting way too fond of something that didn’t belong to him, but he found a peace he’d never known in Norah’s house and on her land.

He slept without nightmares, the ghosts weren’t too troublesome, and he walked the land studying what had been done in the past and planning what he’d do the same and what he’d do different.

A few forays onto the V Bar C kept his hand in and provided material to partition the soddy shed for storage and for shelter for the horses if a blizzard hit.

Inventorying every abandoned homestead for miles in all directions, he found two places with enough unburned hay to be worth salvaging and hauled it home by travois.

Home. That was the problem. It felt like that but wasn’t.

Another trip to Hubbell assured him Norah Hawkins was safe. Her first month at Tindells’ had passed, and a lot of disappointed bettors in the saloon were trying again with dates far into the spring and even into early summer.

Cal thought of Norah collecting her ten dollars and pictured her in a new dress with color. Yellow as sunshine. Blue as the sky. Anything but gray.

Toward the end of December he decided to see for himself.

Wednesday afternoon. He’d checked and made sure of the day. Cal waited until Norah stepped out of the back door with a rug over her arm. She shook it, threw it over the clothesline, and pulled out a carpet beater.

The bright dress he’d imagined was nowhere in sight. Her old coat hung open and under that was the big white apron that hid everything female.

Her dress was gray, not gray from a washed out color, but
gray
. Between that and the little white hat on her head a twist of anger started in his belly. That hat looked just like the thing that had been on the head of the woman serving food in Van Cleve’s house.

“Didn’t you use any of your ten dollars to buy a decent dress?”

She started at the sound of his voice, and he expected hostile words right back. Instead he got a smile that on another woman would mean she was glad to see him.

“I thought you said you were going to move on.”

“I changed my mind, and you changed the subject. All your other dresses are gray, but they don’t look like they started that way. Why get a new dress and get it gray?”

“Mrs. Tindell likes her housekeeper to wear gray.” She gave the rug a good whop.

“If she likes it, did she buy it?”

“She bought the material.” Another whop.

“Did you buy something with some color for yourself?”

She stopped beating the rug but didn’t look at him. “No, I.... The dresses I have are all I need. I’m saving my money.”

A very good liar himself, Cal recognized a bad liar when he saw one.

“She did pay you, didn’t she?”

“Of course she paid me. I have the whole ten dollars.” Whop.

“You hit that thing again when we’re talking, and I’ll take it away and break it.”

She lowered the beater and stood facing him, slightly slumped, smaller than he remembered. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake the defeat right out of her.

“You don’t understand. I have to keep working.”

“You need to tell that old woman to back off.”

“I did ask her if we could send at least the linens to the laundry. She lectured me for half an hour on how she doesn’t want to sleep on sheets a Chinaman touched.”

Norah walked to the porch steps and sat down as if now that she had stopped moving, holding herself up was too much effort.

“You know how you told me I was doing so well? I think the more I do, the more she decides I can do, but at least I’m working for my second ten dollars now.”

“How many goats will that buy?”

“Don’t make fun. I don’t know. I don’t even know where to buy goats.”

“I’m not making fun. If you can eat them and drink their milk, they’d be useful, and anything you can sell for cash is a good idea, but you don’t want livestock until Van Cleve gives up. If it’s alive, someone can kill it.”

She bobbed her head a little, a faraway look on her face, then snapped her attention back and lifted the beater in her hand. “I have to get back to work.”

“It’s Wednesday. It’s afternoon. You get in there and tell that old bat you’re leaving and not going to be back till late. Bring your ten dollars. We’ll walk through town, and you can buy something pretty, and I’ll take you for your second restaurant meal.”

She bit her bottom lip and a little color flushed across her pale face. “Caleb, I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”

“You get in there and tell her, or I’m going to find her and wrap my hands around her neck so tight she’ll wish I was a Chinaman.”

Norah scrambled to her feet. “An hour, I need an hour.”

As she disappeared through the door, he yelled, “Put on your own dress, and get rid of that damn hat.”