House of the Rising Sun: A Novel (16 page)

She was wearing a long pleated green dress with a white blouse she had probably washed in a tub behind the house for the express purpose of eating dinner with him and his son. And now they were arguing. Over what? The misfortune of men for whom they were not accountable.

“I don’t know about these things,” he said.

“Maybe it’s time you learned.”

She had not taken the candy or the bouquet or the whirligig or even acknowledged them.

“I brought y’all these,” he said.

“That’s nice of you.”

“I’m not good at expressing my feelings,” he said. “That’s probably why I’ve committed so many violent deeds in my life. But I flat-out adored you, Ruby.”

“Do you love me now?”

“What do you think? Ishmael was my darling little pal, and you were my darling companion.”

“You want us to move back to Texas?”

“If you like. But I’m legally bound to Maggie. I cain’t change that.”

“I see,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder at Ishmael, who had just come out of his room.

His face lit when he saw Hackberry. “Hi, Big Bud,” he said.

“How you doin’, you little woodchuck?” Hackberry said.

“I’m not a woodchuck.”

“I know that,” Hackberry said.

“I’ll fix something for us to eat here. We don’t need to go to town,” Ruby said.

“That’s not the plan. I have us a reservation at the best restaurant in Trinidad. The kind of place Yankee swells eat in.”

“Then what
is
the plan? Tell me, would you please? Yes, I would love to know the plan.”

Hackberry couldn’t find words to answer her question. In the room’s silence he could hear the wash flapping on the line, the door to the privy slamming on its hinges, a ball of tumbleweed slapping against the window. The light had gone out of Ishmael’s face. “Is something wrong?” he said.

T
WO HOURS LATER
, when Hackberry returned to the hotel, a telegram was waiting for him in his key box. Without reading it, he folded and placed it in his coat pocket and rode upstairs in the birdcage elevator, determined that the content, whatever it was, would not control him. But before the operator could open the collapsible door, Hackberry split the envelope and unfolded the square of yellow paper the telegrapher had handwritten the message on. It read, “Harry and Harvey at house. Afraid. Come home. Maggie.”

He went to the telegrapher’s office, but it was closed and would not be open until eight
A.M.
He bought a Pullman ticket for a train headed south at 4:17
A.M.
, then walked back to his hotel room and lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling until it was time to leave.
Woe be unto the wicked,
he thought. He couldn’t remember if the admonition was from the Bible or if he had made it up. Why did it matter? Regardless of what he did, the end result was the same: broken trust, flaming buildings, spilled blood, and the object of his affection eluding his grasp. “Dear Lord,” he said to the ceiling. “I get nothing right. If you want me to wear sackcloth and ashes, I’ll gladly do it. I’ve got nary an answer to my troubles.”

If there was a response, he did not hear it.

M
AGGIE WAS WAITING
for him in the buggy when the train pulled into the station at dawn three days later, the air brown with dust, the eastern sky as red as a forge. She had fixed coffee and hot milk for him in a covered pail. He drank it with both hands as she drove the buggy out of town, her shoulders erect, her face tight. She glanced sideways at him. “You miss me?”

“In your telegram you said you were afraid.”

“I was. Answer the question.”

He studied the side of her face. “Of course I missed you. You’re my wife. Where are they?”

“Where are who?”

“Longabaugh and Harvey Logan. Who else would I be talking about?”

“I don’t know where they are. They came to the ranch.”

“What for?”

“Old times’ sake. They don’t need a reason. Maybe they plan to rob a bank.”

“You let them in?”

Her cheeks were blotched with color.

“They were in our home?” he said.

“Harvey was drunk. Harry went to buy more liquor. I was alone with Harvey.”

He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.

“Stop the buggy,” he said.

She reined in the horse and glared into his face. “What?”

“What did Logan do?”

The rims of her nostrils were white, her cheeks bladed.

“I’ve been on a train three days, two of them in a chair car,” he said. “Now, tell me what happened or get out and walk.”

“Sometimes I hate you,” she replied. She pulled the top of her blouse loose from her skin, her chin up.

“Logan did that?” he said.

“With his cigar. I hid in the canebrake. I could hear him looking for me, beating the cane with a stick.”

His eyes searched her face. “Why did you let them in?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You said you were out of the life forever.”

“No one says no to Harvey Logan when he’s drunk. Not even Sundance.”

“Where are they?”

“Probably at Miz Porter’s.”

“They’re living in a brothel?”

“She holds parties for them.” She rested her hand on his. “Let them go. You’re home now.”

“They told you they’re going to rob a bank?”

“No, they didn’t. You’re not a lawman now, anyway. I cleaned the house. I put flowers in every room. I baked a white cake with strawberries. Come home, Hack.”

“Did Longabaugh put his hand on you?”

“No.”

“Did he eat off our plates? Did he use our dinnerware? Or sit on our furniture?”

Her eyes started to tear.

When they reached the ranch, he went into the house and came back out with his Army Colt and saddlebags and entered the barn and saddled his horse. She followed him inside, silhouetted in the doorway against the red sky. He hung his pistol belt on the pommel and swung into the saddle. “You’re pretty as the sunrise. But the contradictions in your eyes confound me and turn uncertainty into a way of life.”

“Stay.”

“Then tell me the truth.”

“You just heard it,” she said.

He stooped as he rode under the door frame. He heard a drop of rain tick on the brim of his hat. He turned in the saddle and looked down at her. “Did you think I’d be unfaithful to you in Trinidad?”

“Not if you were sober.”

“That’s not much of a recommendation.”

“It’s as good as you’ll get.”

From atop the horse, he could see the curled flesh above her breast where she had been burned. “You put me in mind of a line from William Blake. The one about the canker in the rose.”

She took a pin out of her hair and reset it, her eyes empty. “Sundance is faster,” she said. “But Harvey is the one most apt to put you in a box.”

H
E PAID A
brakeman to let him and his horse ride most of the way to San Antonio inside a slat car loaded with baled cotton and barrels of pickles that leaked brine on the floor. It was dusk when he rode into the section of San Antonio that had been the concession of the city to Old Nick since the 1870s. Most of the cowboys had departed since the coming of the railroads and the outbreaks of tick fever and the closing of the Chisholm and Goodnight-Loving trails, but others had taken their place: gandy dancers and cardsharps and drummers and pimps and derby-hatted salesmen and slaughterhouse meat-cutters who washed off in a horse tank and left the water dark red before entering the saloon.

Busthead was fifteen cents a glass, mug beer a dime. There was always a free lunch on a counter. The dirt streets were lined with wood buildings that had never been painted. Seagulls spun in circles above a garbage dump next to a dilapidated loading chute where the train tracks used to be. Hackberry rode past a dance hall and a gambling house and a café that never closed. A calliope was playing in the middle of the street. On the corner of South San Saba and Durango was a two-story brick building with a wide balcony and wood pillars. The light had turned to purple horsetails in the sky, and he could smell rain and feel the barometer dropping, and for a moment thought he heard thunder, like cellophane crackling. He unlaced his saddlebags and pulled them from his horse’s rump and draped them on one shoulder, then stepped up on the porch of Fannie Porter’s infamous bordello.

The woman who met him at the door had a British accent and did not vaguely resemble an ordinary madam. “You look like a weary traveler,” she said. “Are you in need of a boardinghouse? I’m afraid this one is only for ladies.”

He removed his hat. “Do you know a Mr. Longabaugh or his associate, Mr. Logan?”

Her face was rosy, her eyes thoughtful. “I don’t think I recall those names offhand. What did you say your name was?”

“Hackberry Holland.”

“Were you an officer of the law at one time?”

“I was. I’m not now. Mr. Longabaugh and his associate paid a call at my home. I’m sorry I was not there to greet them. Perhaps I could leave them a message.”

“These may be cattle buyers you’re referring to. Most of the cattlemen gather at the saloon. You’re welcome to come in, if you like. You seem to be a man of manners and education.”

“Not really. San Antonio is the only place in Texas that will allow me inside the city limits.”

She winked. “Let sleeping dogs lie, Mr. Holland.”

“Always,” he said.

T
HEY WERE SITTING
at a felt-covered card table, next to a faro wheel, playing dominoes. Two years earlier he had seen their ink-drawn likenesses on a circular handed out at the Texas Ranger headquarters in Austin. The taller man was more than six feet and had been called “distinguished-looking” in the circular. Hackberry thought otherwise. The taller man, Harry Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, had a head that seemed dented on one side, or a bit warped, as though the bone had gone soft. Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry, was cut out of different stuff. On first glance he seemed to have the features of an ordinary workingman, until one realized that the large nose and luxurious mustache were a distraction from the defining attribute in his face: namely, the moral vacuity in his eyes.

Longabaugh was bareheaded, his hair neatly combed, his beard less than two or three days old; his friend wore a derby and a gold stick pin and a gold watch and chain and rings on his fingers, although his nails were rimmed with dirt. The business suits of both men had lost their creases; their shoes were scuffed and powdered with dust and manure. They had the appearance of men who had never decided who they were or in which century they wished to live. Longabaugh seemed to have a habit of breathing through his mouth and staring at a thought six inches in front of his face. The opacity in Logan’s eyes and the thickness of his mustache made it impossible to read his expression, provided he ever had one. Neither man appeared to be armed.

Hackberry set down his saddlebags on the bar and watched the two men in the mirror. Several prostitutes in dance-girl costumes were gazing down from the balcony rail and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.

“Send a shot and a beer to those fellows at the table, will you?” Hackberry said.

“They buy their own drinks,” the bartender replied.

“I owe them a round.”

“Not here, you don’t.”

Hackberry set his Stetson crown-down on the bar. “This is a tough place. Could I have a beer? With an egg in it?”

“Coming up.”

Only one,
he thought. What was the harm? It wasn’t busthead or tequila. He watched the bartender draw the beer and rake off the foam with a wood spatula. “Now a bottle of Jack Daniel’s for my friends. I’ll carry it to the table. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

The bartender took a square uncorked bottle of whiskey from the back shelf and set it on the bar. He set three shot glasses next to it, his grimed fingers inserted inside each glass. “Anything else?”

Hackberry flipped his saddlebags over his shoulder and walked to the felt table by the faro wheel with the whiskey and the glasses. “You boys mind if I sit down?” he asked.

“Suit yourself,” Longabaugh said.

Hackberry set his saddlebags on the floor next to his chair. “Thank you. I’ve been riding trains for four days. I still hear the wheels clicking on the tracks.”

“We know you?” Logan said.

“Probably not. Two or three years back I saw y’all’s faces on a circular regarding a bank robbery in New Mexico. You were cleared of the charges, though.”

Longabaugh put a peppermint in his mouth and sucked on it. He smiled with his eyes. “Can we help you with something?”

“You boys know a lady by the name of Maggie Bassett?”

“That’s twice you’ve called us boys,” Logan said.

“Figure of speech. Maggie says y’all came to our house.”

“You’re her husband?” Longabaugh said.

“Yes, sir. You were just in the neighborhood, knocking on doors and such?”

“Mr. Logan and I are buying cattle hereabouts. I knew Miss Maggie from a few years ago. We stopped by. She gave us a glass of lemonade. Out on the porch.”

“You smoke cigars, Mr. Logan?”

Logan opened his coat, exposing an inside pocket with a silver case stuffed in it. He looked down at it as though he had never seen it. “Yes, I do. Would you like one?”