Death Train to Boston (12 page)

"Hmm," Michael commented, stroking the silver streaks in his beard, which ran downward from the corners of his mouth. He pressed a subtle advantage by not sitting down but leaning instead against one of the wide arms of his chair and crossing one foot over the other. The advantage was psychological only, as it required the other man to look up; physically Ramsey already had the advantage due to Michael's injury, which he must surely have noticed by now. And with his weight forward, solidly balanced on both legs, Ramsey could bolt up to attack in a heartbeat. Well aware of all this, Michael played his mind game, saying in a drawl, "Since you thought me easily found, you can't have been looking too long. Where've you been hiding all these years, old boy?"

Ramsey dismissed the question with a well-manicured gesture. "None of your concern. I'd still be there if I hadn't run out of money."

"Living high off the hog, were you?"

"Not exactly. But I heard you were. In fact, Misha, I've heard a number of interesting things about you."

Michael continued to stroke his beard. "Such as . . ."

"That you were leading a dissolute lifestyle in some bohemian artists' colony."

"True enough."

"That you'd publicly taken back your Russian name."

"A matter of record."

Silence. Hilliard Ramsey merely inclined his head.

Michael wondered what he was playing at. Then a new and fascinating thought came to him. He said, probing, "Then perhaps you also heard I've retired from the game. What about you? Maybe you faked
your own death. Maybe you also wanted out. How about it, Hill? Am I on the mark?"

Both eyebrows rose in that unremarkable face, and the pale, pale gray eyes, the color of water, sharpened in their intensity. "You know people who have done what you and I do for a living never get to retire."

"Michael Archer did." The man who no longer went by that name shrugged his good shoulder.

"Is that so."

"Absolutely." It was quite true that Michael Archer no longer existed, that his name had been expunged from the U.S. Government payroll. It was Michael Archer who had been the double agent. Michael A. Kossoff was, however, another matter.

"The people who hired me to watch you think differently. They think you're up to something. Have a care, old boy." On these parting words Hilliard Ramsey shot up from the chair and strode without haste from the club car.

"Hmm," Michael said, stroking his beard. He had not moved a muscle, not flinched at the other man's sudden movement, not even so much as uncrossed his ankles. Yet his blood, which had felt the heat of challenge only moments earlier, now felt a paralyzing cold.

I felt as if I'd been chosen by the hive to become queen bee, which as we know from scientific study is not an honor but a lifetime sentence to do nothing but reproduce. For a few more weeks I could lie encased in my pupa—or whatever queen bees are encased in before they emerge full-blown to replace the one who has worn herself out and died—but after that I'd better get out there and lay those eggs, produce those children, or else. No matter how I tried to find the absurdity in this, I failed—because there was no one to laugh but me. And I was not amused.

I allowed myself to sink into melancholy.

When I had been in this funk for about two weeks, that is to say, around the beginning of the month of November (in my melancholy I'd lost precise track of the days), Selene came to see me. For the most part up until that time Melancthon Pratt's youngest wife had ignored me, and when she appeared at my bedside looking rather like an angel herself, with her long corn-silk hair and wide light blue eyes, I felt a bit of my old curiosity stir. It was like a tickle, or an itch.

Not only was Selene in my room, beside my bed, but she also spoke to me. "Father thinks you may die. He is convinced it is his fault, that he has failed to heed the angel's direction in some way," she said. "He is a good man, and so I have come to see what I may
do."

A rather remarkable statement, coming from a girl of fifteen who had been subjected to the barbaric custom of polygamy, bedded God knew how many times by a man old enough to be her grandfather—well, almost— not to mention that she was a tiny thing and he a very large man. It had to be one of the Wonders of the Western World that he did not simply crush her in The Act. Yet here she was, gravely lovely and sweet, standing up for him, which made my heart go out to her.

"I'm not dying," I said. My seldom-in-two-weeks-used voice sounded like the hinge on a rusty gate. Then suddenly my sluggish mind produced one clear thought, an idea that shone like a ray of hope. I cleared my throat and spoke again: "However, I do need the doctor to come because I'm not recovering properly. As anyone can plainly see."

Selene nodded solemnly. Her skin was so fair that at her temples I could see the blue veins beneath its alabaster surface. "We know. Your fever broke, you seemed to be getting better, you were more lively, the wives were getting to know you, but then—"

"Something happened," I supplied when she stopped,
obviously at a loss for words. "I need the doctor. If you want to help me, and Father too, then ask him to have the doctor come."

"I will tell him," Selene said. Then she went away.

I lay there thinking about my plight. I knew full well there was nothing physically wrong with me except my broken legs, and they were getting better. No, what had happened was that by a certain light in Pratt's fanatical eye when he told me exactly why the angel had brought us together, I had understood the depth of his obsession, and I had simply lost hope. Physical escape being impossible, I had dropped instead into a gray land of silence and inaction. A land called Melancholia, which existed solely in my mind.

While living in this gray land I had unwittingly stumbled upon something that proved very useful to me: Melancthon Pratt could not bear to be ignored. If I did not talk to him, if I did not respond when he read or lectured in continuance of my "lessons," he went wild with frustration. Yet he would not strike me in order to make me respond. I believed he may have wanted to, because his face would flush a purplish red, and once he even raised his hand to me. But still he did not strike; instead he went away. He did not come again for at least three days, and since that day he had been less and less often in my room.

I thought about his not striking me. Perhaps he'd only refrained from physical violence because he believed I was under the protection of that angel of his; or perhaps because, although no one could deny Melancthon Pratt was a religious fanatic, he was simply not an abuser of women. He liked women. He liked them very much. Why he could not get any children on his women I had not the slightest idea.

One thing I did know for certain. It was only common sense: When a man tries repeatedly and fails to have any children with five different, healthy women,
the fault most likely lies not in the women but in himself. Pratt was not impotent, and he must have been physically satisfying the wives, for they vied for their time in the Big House with him. All, that is, but Sarah, who could probably have done without her turns. So if not impotent, then he must be—whatever was the male equivalent of barren? Ah yes, sterile. Such a charming word. No wonder one would not want to admit it, especially someone like Pratt.

Sarah and her sister Tabitha often sat with me during the two weeks of my sojourn in the gray land of Melancholia, and I listened to them talk. Once when they'd gotten up to go, as if it were a waste of their time to sit with a woman who lay immobile, no longer smiling or laughing or speaking, I had whispered and asked them to stay. So they'd stayed that day, and continued to come regularly even though I was about as much fun for them as a knot in a pine board. But I learned a lot from listening to their quiet talk as they sewed. Mainly I learned that the Pratt household—in fact his entire colony of True Saints—was a mass of contradictions.

Imagine, if you will, a society where all grown men are priests; whose members believe that when they die and go to heaven they will all be gods—even the women if I'd heard that part right; where a man may have as many wives as he can support (this was true only for Pratt's so-called True Saints—the main body of Mormons had given up polygamy years ago); where the wives in fact like that situation because they aren't alone, they have each other's help and companionship, and no one of them has to be everything to a demanding man all the time, every single night and day.

After listening to Sarah and Tabitha—not to mention the others—for all this time, I was beginning to be afraid that if I didn't get away soon it would all begin to make a kind of crazy sense to me.

Of all the wives, the one most likely to come to my
aid was Sarah. Norma, oddly enough, was a close second. Norma doted on Melancthon Pratt. She alone was jealous of the other wives, and would not welcome one more candidate for her idol's affection. She was also physically the most intimidating. She would be good in a fight—or so I thought. Not due to sheer strength (that would be Verla), but because she had a large, firm, voluptuous body and she was not afraid to use it. When Norma entered a room, she filled it with her presence. Altogether she'd have been good to have on my side, except for one thing: She could not be trusted with a secret. Norma's need for Pratt's approval was so great, she'd do anything for him, tell everything to him—he had only to ask. Even though she herself wanted nothing more than to have me gone, she would capitulate in a heartbeat to his least importuning.

Verla I'd ruled out as a participant in any escape plot because she had no imagination. She was perfectly content to be first wife to a Great Man. Tabitha was smitten with this same Great Man, though nowhere near as much as Norma. So that left Sarah . . . and the unknown quantity: Selene.

Selene, more child than woman, and yet she was the one in whom the Great Man had confided his concern about me. Or perhaps he had told them all and she had been the only one to come to me and plead on his behalf. Again I felt touched, in spite of myself; touched and something more, though I was not sure what. I had a sense that there was much more to that young woman than met the eye.

Ah, here was another puzzle to occupy my mind: How could I gather information about Selene without calling attention to the fact that my melancholy had been short-lived? I certainly didn't want Pratt to know it had lifted.

Well, I shall just have to dissemble,
I thought, then
grimaced in dismay. I had never been particularly good at play-acting, unless I was wearing a costume or disguise. Hmmm . . .

I folded the top sheet and quilt down to my waist and scrutinized the nightgown I was wearing. Never in a million years would I have chosen such a garment for myself: It was bulky cotton flannel, gathered to fall shapelessly from the shoulders, buttoned from neck to waist and at the hem of the long sleeves; a garment altogether without redeeming value . . . save warmth. The color, a medium blue, was one I might have chosen —but as for the rest of it, never.

This is a costume,
I thought,
this is Carrie's costume, and Carrie is a role I play. Fremont Jones may feel her legs getting stronger, but Carrie James is languishing. Carrie needs a doctor in the worst way.
I didn't know exactly what Carrie's symptoms were, but suddenly I realized I would soon find out.

The sound of the door handle rattling had me pulling the covers up to my chin, and then I barely had time to lean my head back against the pillow and arrange my face in what I hoped might appear as lines of suffering.

"What's the matter with you, then?" asked Pratt in a stentorian voice as he strode into the room. I have often observed that big, powerful men will bluster and assume an angry tone when in fact they are emotionally upset, being unable to express their more tender feelings. I hoped this was the case with Pratt. He might not be violent with women, but still his anger had felt dangerous on the one or two occasions I'd seen it.

I coughed and brought my hand up to partially cover my face, as if I could not bear to look at this man who had called himself my savior not so very long ago. I affected a hoarse half-whisper: "I am very ill. I need the doctor. It's entirely possible I may not have long to live."

"Nonsense. The doctor said if you stayed off your legs, once you'd gotten over the inevitable infection, in about six weeks you should be right as rain. They're not bad breaks of the leg bones, more like cracks."

I wondered how the doctor could tell that, since one could scarcely look beneath the skin to see. Feeling about, I supposed, when I had been unconscious— I put that thought away.

Screwing my face into a frown, I clutched my midsection with both hands. "But I have persistent pain, right here. I'm sorry to be such a disappointment to you. ..." I let my voice trail off plaintively.

Pratt came to my bed, frowning hard too, though his was genuine and mine was faked. "Show me," he commanded, holding out his hand palm down and fingers spread, "place my hand where you are hurting."

"Oh no," I said, cringing with false modesty, "I couldn't do that, you're not a doctor." Even as the words came from my mouth I recalled how minutely Pratt had examined my naked body that first night he'd found me.

Whether or not he himself remembered, at least he did not argue. He didn't capitulate either. "How long have you had this pain?" he asked, withdrawing his hand and looking at it for a moment as if not knowing what to do with the appendage. Then he let it drop by his side.

"Since the first, off and on," I said, feeling almost as if the pain were real and I did have it. "It never really goes away."

Pratt frowned mightily. I could almost feel the weight of his indecision.

"I couldn't very well tell the doctor about it, could I," I persisted, "seeing as how I was either unconscious or delusional with fever when he was here before."