The Winslow Incident (48 page)

“No.” James shook his head. “But
his brother showed up a little while ago.”

“Aaron?” Her heart leapt. “Are
Violet and Daisy with him?”

“Yeah, they’re all here. I think
something bad might’ve gone down at their house though, but they don’t seem to
want to talk about it.”

“Where are they?”

“Second floor of the Never Tell.”

They stepped into the assay
office. She’d expected it to be cool inside because of the refrigerators, but
the air was hot and stale. She went to the white porcelain freezer and grabbed
the handle.
There could be body parts in here
, she thought, suddenly
sure and horrified.
Blackened, rotted feet.

“Is it stuck?” James asked behind
her and she jumped. Reaching around her, he pulled up the lid. Ice cream
sandwiches were nestled inside, like they always were, and little sundae cups
with wooden spoons wrapped in paper. No hands, no feet.

“These are perfect.” James grabbed
two ice cream bars and turned her around. Carefully, he stretched away the
t-shirt and positioned the frozen bars in the sling, one above and one below
her elbow.

Hazel raised her eyebrows, impressed.
“Thank you.” Looking up at him, she saw how pleased he was to have helped her.
So she stood up on her toes and kissed him, knowing that since people were
dying and the whole town was imploding it was a good thing to do.

When she stepped away they both
smiled, hers saying,
It’ll be our secret
, and his,
I’ll take what I
can get.

She reached into the freezer and
grabbed four ice cream sandwiches. “If Sean shows up, please take care of him,
he’s really sick. Tell him to stay put, tell him I’m looking for him.”

James didn’t reply but the dubious
look on his face said it all. Why should he provide comfort to the enemy?

“Please, James.” She was stuffing
the ice cream sandwiches into the top of her sling.

“Okay, I will.” He reached down
and straightened the sling. “Stay with us.”

“I can’t. I have to find him.”

He considered her for a moment,
maybe thinking he should knock her on the head and drag her by the hair back to
the safety of his fire pit. Finally, he said, “I’d go with you but I have to
stay with the squirts. In case anyone comes.”

She nodded, marveling at his
selflessness.

“No matter what, Hazel, don’t tell
anybody we’re here.”

“I won’t tell, I promise.” She
gestured across the rainbow on her chest and smiled. “Cross my heart and hope
to die.” Another promise. This one she’d have to keep. No matter what.

It was hard to walk away from James—he
of relatively sound mind and strong body, he who actually cared about her. She
did it anyway. She walked out the door, alone, back into the brutal late-morning
sun.

The brothel sat cattycorner from
the assay office.
Must’ve been convenient
, Hazel thought.
Cash your
lode, then—

“Here, Jinxy, Jinx.” The high
voice sounded like Daisy’s, and it chilled Hazel’s spine.

The Never Tell had lost its door
at some point so she stepped right in. The brothel had a lurid history. Patience
once told her that during the ghost town tours, no story played better than
that of the night a miner, Dinky Dowd, shot dead the upstanding purveyor of dry
goods, George Bolinger, over a beautiful prostitute’s favor. The town’s
founders had done their best to keep civilized folk separate from the miners,
yet nobody could stop the gentlemen of Winslow from frequenting the Mother Lode
to gamble or from paying a drunken visit to the Never Tell.

“C’mere, boy, c’meeeere.”

Daisy was definitely upstairs.
Without allowing herself time to contemplate the staircase’s obvious lack of
structural integrity—let alone the entire second story, which sagged down
into the first—Hazel hauled herself up the steps.

“Doggie c’mere.”

Amateurish paintings lined the
hallway of the second floor: portraits of rouged women in dark velvet dresses,
displaying cleavage and garter belts. Hookers with hearts of gold, Hazel
supposed. The rooms she passed were tiny, all stood empty.

“Jinxy!”

“Daisy, be quiet!” Violet’s voice.

Last room on the left. Hazel hoped
the ice cream hadn’t completely melted. The room they occupied was larger, she
saw, and still contained a bed on which Aaron lay in his cowboy pajamas. Though
he faced the doorway, eyes open, he didn’t acknowledge her when she entered.

Hazel had never been happier to
see three snot-nosed kids in all her life.

“Hazel!” Daisy ran up and grabbed her
around the thighs.

“Hey, string bean.” She tried to
pry her off so she could get into the room, and at the same time smiled at
Violet, who looked about to cry with relief. Disengaging Daisy, Hazel pulled
the ice creams out of her sling, soft now inside their foil wrappers. She
handed one to Daisy, another to Violet, and held out the third to Aaron on the
bed. “Eat. It’s good for you.”

He sat up and took the ice cream
sandwich from her, holding it by his fingertips as though it was something
foreign and possibly dangerous.

“Eat,” she ordered again and sat
down on the edge of the soiled bed.

The girls didn’t need to be told;
they were already in, Violet taking deliberate nibbles (she’d never finish
before it turned to complete mush) and Daisy going at it full bore, mouth
ringed in chocolate.

Hazel opened the last one and took
a big bite.

The kids’ eyes flew wide open in
alarm when Hazel screamed.

“What! Are you okay?” Violet held
up her little hands, fingers splayed, in a gesture that said,
Help! I don’t
know what to do!

“I’m okay. Give me a second.”
Hazel cradled her jaw in her hand, thinking,
Sonofabitch!
She had hoped
the cold would numb the pain of her broken tooth. Instead, it had the opposite
effect and sent her nerves—and her—shrieking.

A loud whimper issued from beneath
her.

She threw her head between her knees
to look under the bed and found a hairy red haystack. Jinx. The dog scampered
out and sprawled his body across the doorway as if he did not intend to let
anybody leave the room.

Swallowing the ice cream that felt
like a rock in her throat, Hazel went to her dog, leaned on her left arm all
the way down to the filthy floor, and placed her chin in front of his muzzle so
she could look straight into his dopey eyes. “I’m glad to see you,” she said.

He chuffed in her face as if to
ask,
Where have you been?

“Such a good boy.” She touched her
nose to his. Wet, as usual, which she took to be a good sign. She sat up on her
knees and gingerly poked and prodded him in order to assess the extent of his
injuries.

“Lemme eat your ice cream if
you’re not gonna!” Daisy bossed Aaron.

Jinx whined when Hazel touched his
ribcage.

“I took one in the ribs too,
buddy,” she told him. “I know it hurts.” Gently she pulled back his lips to
check his teeth. All there, she let out a loud
phew.
But one floppy ear
had an inch-long tear in the side, cleaved and wet with blood. She leaned down
and kissed the soft fur on his other ear and murmured, “I know it hurts, but
you’re going to be fine.”

He whined back at her,
maybe
,
while his wagging tail thumped up small dust explosions.

How am I going to tell him Molly
is dead?
she thought. And when she looked
back at the girls, who were watching her with big eyes, red curls framing round
faces, she wondered,
How will I ever tell them their mother is dead?

She didn’t have to.

“I know why you’re sad, Hazel.”
Violet came over and stroked Jinx on the head with tiny, gentle fingers.
“You’re sad because now none of us have mommies.”

And with that, Daisy went from
joyous ice cream eating to wailing despair.

“It’ll be okay,” Hazel tried to
calm Daisy.

“It’ll be okay,” Hazel told Violet
next.

But to herself she thought,
How
will it ever be okay again?
Gazing into their sorrowful eyes, she said, “If
you two keep being so brave, my dad will make you his deputies. Does that sound
good?”

Mouths aquiver, the sisters both
nodded.

“
I’m
not a scaredy cat,”
Daisy insisted.

“No, you’re not.” Hazel’s heart
ached deeply for the girls, knowing firsthand the pain and loneliness that their
motherless existence would bring. At least they had each other. At least their
mother had loved them. “You’re good, brave girls, both of you.”

She stood and gave each girl a
long hug despite the misery it caused her arm and ribs. Then she went to Aaron
on the bed, where he was still holding the limp ice cream sandwich, a sour look
pasted on his face. Hazel took it from him and handed it to a sniffling Daisy.

“Did you ever find Sean?” she
asked him.

“Yes,” he whispered.

Her heart sped up and she grabbed
his hand. “You did?”

“He found me.”

“When?”

“When we were in the apple orchard
and mean Mr. Rhone came for us.”

“Daddy’s not well.” Violet shook
her head dolefully.

“Sean saved us.” Aaron’s mouth
twisted with despair.

“Why are you so sad? That’s good,
isn’t it?”

Aaron nodded, eyes downcast.

“Where’s Sean now?”

“He was just gone,” Violet said,
“after the bakery caught fire and Daddy didn’t come back out.”

Hazel let out a long, relieved
breath.
Zachary didn’t come back out . . .
And instantly she felt ashamed—truly
horrified—at her relief because the girls had already lost their mother.

Aaron added, “The little girl
ghost kept us safe until Sean could get there.”

Little girl ghost?
Hazel did not like the sound of that. “But where did Sean
go after that?”

He wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t look
at her.

“Aaron—tell me.”

Finally, he raised his eyes to hers.
“Sean’s a ghost now too.”

Terror stabbed Hazel. “Don’t say
that!”

Aaron began to cry, tight and
squelchy as if he were trying hard not to.

Realizing she had been squeezing
his hand too tightly, Hazel let go. Then she put her arm around him, pulled him
close. “I’m sorry, Aaron. I am so sorry.” She laid her cheek on top of his
head, against his shiny brown hair that smelled like puppy, and let him cry.

After a minute, she pulled away.
“I’ll find your brother and bring him back. You’ll see.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. Hazel
touched his cheek. Still burning hot.
Are you ever going to get better?
she
worried.

Daisy had stopped sobbing long
enough to eat her second ice cream and now stood in front of Hazel, wringing
her hands in that nervous way she always did when she had a question she wasn’t
sure she wanted the answer to. At last she asked, “Is Hawkin Rhone gonna get
us?”

“No. Don’t worry.” Hazel dug into
her pocket and retrieved the garnet ring, which Daisy promptly snatched from
her hand. “He’s not here,” Hazel continued, too exhausted to argue the truth.
“He’s out there—across the creek.”

Hazel heard Aaron gasp. Thinking
that talking about Hawkin Rhone had frightened him, she turned toward him.

He was staring at something above
her head with terror in his eyes.

“Aaron,” she said, alarmed, “what
is it?”

“Blood is pouring from the sky,”
he whispered. “We are going to drown.”

A
lot of men died during the short time the
mines were active: mangled in accidents, struck with typhoid fever, murdered over
a misdealt card game or perceived slight. Their graves in Matherston Miner’s
Cemetery were identified by wooden markers, epithets burned in pine.

The boneyard was full of ghosts today
and it was all Sean could do to stay out of the way.

So he sat at the top of the rise
between two grave markers, his back against the granite wall, and wondered when
Winslow had gotten so crowded. There were a lot of people wandering around town
all of a sudden, whom Sean didn’t know but who bore unsettling resemblances to people
he did.

At present, on Sean’s right, was
the restless spirit of George Bolinger / Outstanding Purveyor of Dry Goods /
Shot Dead / Never Tell Brothel / Oct. 13th 1889.

And to Sean’s left: The ghost of
Dinky Dowd, hanged for the murder of George Bolinger, Oct. 14th 1889, by order
of the Hon. E. A. Winslow.

Sean, George and Dinky all preferred
to keep to the shade of the purple-leaf plum tree. Sean wished like hell that
he had something to smoke. Something to mellow him out.

George Bolinger looked a lot like James
Bolinger, he realized. Half his face had been blown off and his guts hung out
of his shirt like uncooked sausage, but still Sean noted the
resemblance—tall with big hands and feet. Dinky was skinny and short like
he never grew up all the way and had a face marked by toil in the mines.