Breath and Bones (27 page)

S
TANLEY
W
OOD
,
O
VER THE
R
ANGE TO THE
G
OLDEN
G
ATE

That evening, having fortified herself with a bottle of sarsaparilla, a dose of Dr. King's New Discovery for Coughing, and a handful of oyster crackers, Famke contemplated the daintily lettered sign hanging over the door to which the ex-miner had directed her:
IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN
.

She took this as a portent of encouragement, hoping that Dixie Holler would shout out some news of Albert, perhaps even produce him from some paint-splattered studio. So she knocked on the door with masculine force, and when the door was opened—this time by a tarnished blonde in a yellow-and-black striped dress and heavy face-paint—she gave a lecherous grin and made sure her arm brushed the girl's breasts as she entered.

The girl threaded her arm through Famke's. “My name's Myrtle,” she murmured, just a little too loudly, in the neighborhood of Famke's ear. Famke gave a start. Myrtle concluded hopefully, “Some folks call me Sweet Myrt; have you heard of me?”

Famke had to shake her head at that; she'd startled only because of the similarity to her former co-wife's name. Imagine seeing Myrtice here! Of course that was a silly thought. And yet Famke suspected that no one in Prophet City would be entirely surprised to hear that
she
had been to Dixie Holler's, or that she'd come as a man. Even Heber must know by now that she was not what she'd initially seemed to him.

“I'm new to town,” she said to Sweet Myrt. “But I've heard there is a beautiful painting of you here.”

At that, the practiced smile that had never faded from Myrtle's face grew wider and more genuine. “Yes, hanging over a sofa in the parlor, the most rightful little portrait of the six of us you've ever seen.”

She brought Famke straight to it, past the row of handsomely made up boarders and the stout carrot-tressed madam in black silk and lace. “See!” Myrtle said proudly, waving her arm to display the painting and her bosom at the same time. “It's called”—she frowned, recollecting—“
The Hero's Rest in Valley High, Among
—”

“
The Hero's Repose
,” corrected the madam, “
in Valley Hall, Among a Passel of Walled Kiries
. That's a kind of bird.”

This frame showed no title, but that did not matter; for once Famke knew words that an American did not. “Valhalla,” she said. “And Valkyries. They are women who care for the men who have died well.” She did not have the vocabulary to correct the word
passel
, though it sounded wrong to her. She pulled Myrtice's spectacles from her pocket and fumbled with putting them on so as not to disturb her slicked hair. Closer inspection showed the plain gold frame did bear the faintest trace of lettering, as if Albert had begun to paint his title there and then grown dissatisfied with it, or perhaps pressed for time.

Dixie decided to indulge her customer. “Whatever it's called, it's sure pretty, isn't it?”

So, clad in the scantiest of costumes, with the customary girdles of mist, the proud warrior women of Norse legend had gone the way of the Muses. The colors were pleasant and the likenesses good, though even less detailed than in Amy Oggle's painting; the carefully arranged Valkyries-for-hire fawned over their faceless hero and wove a web of silken hair about him—golden, ebony, brown, and brilliant red. In the lower right-hand corner, nearly lost against the hero's silver shield, stood the peaked castle made of the letters A and C.

Famke felt tears springing to her eyes.

Dixie sized Famke up. “You need a drink, my friend. What'll you have?”

Famke hesitated. “Whiskey.” It was the only drink, other than beer, whose name she knew in English. “How long have you had that picture?” she asked in her deepest voice.

Dixie did not hear her, for at that moment, the doorknocker sounded. The professor at the piano said, “Company, ladies,” and played even louder.

A second blonde went to answer the door. Sweet Myrt, still hanging on Famke's arm, spoke up again: “You talk like him.”

“Who?” Famke asked.

“The man that painted us.” Myrtle combed her bright yellow locks with her fingers and fluffed up the fringe in front. “He had that way of sounding a word. Are you from England, too?”

The remaining girls, now perched on chair arms all around the room, looked at Famke with renewed interest.

“I'll be switched!” Mrs. Holler said. “Could you be his brother?” She took Famke's chin in her hand and turned her head sideways, looking for resemblance, until Famke grew nervous and jerked away.

It appeared she'd given a decisive nod. The girls squealed in delight.

“Albert's brother!” Myrtle was so excited that she tore an artificial tress accidentally free of its pins and had to hide it behind a sofa cushion.

“Do you paint?”

“What's your name?”

The new customer entered then, and he thought the question was aimed at him. “Bill,” he said, looking around with the authority of a man who knew just what to expect from a place like this. He was the one-legged man from the general store and had obviously been lured here, as Famke was, by the tale of the marvelous painting. Leaning on a crutch, the empty trouser leg pinned up by his belt, he, too, stood looking at the Valkyries a long moment, comparing their faces with the faces in the room.

The girls paid him scarce attention, fascinated instead with the man they thought was the painter's brother.

“What's your name?” repeated a girl who looked like she might have a bit of savage blood in her.

Famke gave the first that came to mind, a name suggested by what she thought was her special familiarity with Albert's history: “Dante.”

“Don Tay?”

She spelled it aloud: “D-a-n-t-e. Dante.”

“Dante!” They all repeated it at once, savoring the exotic taste of it.

At the sound of her voice, the new customer looked over and lifted his chin in recognition. While she nodded back, blushing unaccountably, the
girls avoided meeting Bill's eyes. A Dante was much more fascinating than a Bill.

“I must find my brother,” Famke said desperately to them, her head down. “Do you have any—do you know where he has gone?”

Before anyone could answer, Dixie Holler snapped her fingers. “Ladies,” she warned, and that was enough. They lined up in front of Bill, dutifully displaying their figures in the tight colorful frocks, inviting him to choose.

In the commotion, Famke touched the canvas. Dry. She sank down on the couch, feeling her lungs constrict.

Bill took a girl with pale brown hair—bottom left corner in
The Hero's Repose
—and despite her lingering look back at Famke they disappeared down the hallway. An
IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED
sign hung over the inner door, too.

As soon as Bill was gone, the other girls began to chatter. Apparently they had liked Albert very much, for they were eager to make friends with Dante. They began by telling him their names, none of which Famke could make out in the din, and they plied her—Dante—with questions about the accomplished brother, for all the world as if they'd forgotten the reason Dante gave for coming here.

“I need to find Albert,” Famke broke in at last, though she felt a strange reluctance to say the name out loud again. She was aware of being somewhat rude. “You know more about him now than I do. Where is he?”

Mrs. Holler said shrewdly, “Doesn't know you're coming, does he?”

“I believe he never got my letters.” This much was true, as she had never written any.

“Well, my boy, your brother ain't in Leadville anymore. Said he was moving on to Denver. Were I you, I'd look for him down Holladay Street.”

Famke nodded dispiritedly. It seemed she had stepped backward, not forward, in her search; she looked again at the Valkyries and sighed. “After Denver? Did he say where he would go then?”

The madam shrugged, and all the girls appeared to wait for her answer. Myrtle surreptitiously reattached her lost curl. “You might try the towns north of there,” said Dixie. “Maybe Box Elder. Or south—Greenland, Monument, Pueblo.”

While Famke digested those names, Myrtle presented herself in Famke's
line of vision again, her hair now intact but slightly askew. “Would you like to see my room?” she asked, with a note of wistfulness beneath the brass.

Dixie Holler licked her lips and made ready to name a price.

Famke was spared the possible embarrassment of a reply: The door-knocker sounded again, so hard and rapid that everyone startled. It kept going for nearly a minute while the professor stopped playing and the girls turned white.

“Any of you in trouble with the law?” asked Mrs. Holler.

No one bothered to reply, and the knocking continued. It seemed likely that some very bad news had arrived.

“Lazy Izzy, you go,” said Mrs. Holler, but nobody wanted to wait; if one girl was going, all would go, and the professor with them. They all forgot about Dante for a moment and trooped into the foyer, some of them holding hands.

Famke lingered behind. She knew this would be a good opportunity to make her exit, but she wanted a few moments alone with the painting. She stood and examined it again, marveling that Albert had allowed himself to finish and frame what to her was so obviously an inferior example of his work. These Valkyries were pretty enough, it was true, and their colors were vivid and clear, but where were the finer points that had distinguished Nimue? The delicate tracery of her veins, the fine shadows of her garments; the details, the grace.

Grace
. She thought of her silver tinderbox and patted herself to make sure it was still there in the yellow pocket inside her pants. Looking up at the picture, she wondered if there had ever really been a time when women wore helmets with horns, particularly with so little on their actual bodies. Somehow it was easier to believe in the absolutely naked world of the three entwined Graces.

Dixie Holler alone had not answered the strange knock; she leaned in the doorway, watching Famke like a stout but agile cat, always with a view to the kill. She scratched with one finger among the carroty curls that—Famke looked again to be sure—were brown and gray in the painting. “Now, sir, if you don't like Sweet Myrtle, we have many beauti—”

She would never complete that sentence. Suddenly, at the back of the building, there was a tremendous explosion. A lamp fell from a table, a shepherdess from a carved shelf, and then the shelf itself. Both Dixie and
Famke were knocked down.
The Hero's Repose
dropped from the wall onto the sofa and bounced face down to the floor.

There was a moment of strange, false silence, not really silent at all. Famke's ears rang. At the front of the house, the girls wailed and wept—Valkyries sorrowful rather than celebratory. Bill's voice came from somewhere farther off, cursing a blue streak. Plaster rained over everything.

When the world seemed settled again, Famke slowly picked herself up. She felt dazed, unsure what had just happened, and her lungs rasped on the dry dust. Dixie Holler half-sat on the floor, hacking, the plaster giving her the lips and cheeks of a corpse. She waved Famke away.

With nothing else really to do here, Famke pushed down the foyer and through the girls who were toppled willy-nilly over the front steps and down into the street. Still confused, she stood looking up at the sky, at the haze of dust collecting beneath the stars, while women and men in various stages of deshabille poured out of the boardinghouses around her and someone, far away, set to a piercing howl. She stood in the way of a swarm of boys, and they skirled around her, bumping and shouting until they'd spun her dizzy and breathless once more.

Now there were running bodies everywhere, and voices, snatches of conversation.

“Dynamite—”

“—mines—”

“—Pittsburgh—”

“—Matchless—”

“—Blaze!”

It seemed that, behind the row of fancy-houses, a fire had started. There was another explosion, or perhaps just a loud crash, and the first flames showed above the roofline. A fire wagon jolted by, the horses' eyes showing the whites. The crowd drew Famke along toward it. When she rounded the corner she found that the house directly behind Dixie's was on fire—that might explain the knock on the door . . . She tried to turn back away from the flames, but the press of bodies made it impossible. And then she saw that the flames were licking not just at Dixie's place but also at Famke's own hotel, at the very wall behind which she'd secreted her female clothes.

With the crowd stopped dead around her, Famke stood in the street, mouth open to smoke and astonishment. She was utterly terrified. For
nearly an hour she watched as flames writhed toward the sky like worms that would gobble the stars, and ashes flew from them like moths; the fire-men's feeble hoses could do nothing against them.

Ashes of wood, of paper, of cloth. The homespun skirt from Myrtice, the nice blouse she'd bought in Copenhagen, the petticoat on which she'd essayed her first artwork—the yellow shawl . . . All Famke's feminine belongings, everything that made her Ursula Summerfield Goodhouse. She owned nothing in the world now but what she carried in her pockets. Famke wiped her nose on her sleeve and realized that she had become, to all intents and purposes, a man. A man with no reason to stay in Leadville any longer, with every reason to flee it.

She fought her way through the watchers and headed for the train depot. Others would be fleeing here soon; she had to arrive first. Heedless of the pain in her lungs and the dizziness in her head, she consulted the chalked schedule and saw a train was due in under half an hour—“Fare for one,” she gasped out at the ticket window.