This Side of Jordan (12 page)

Then he walked out of the bedroom.

Rose crawled up onto the bed and stretched her legs. Alvin heard the kitchen door open and close again. He looked over at Rose. She smiled. “Nighty-night.”

He nodded.

She whispered, “Don't tell him I said so, but I think your pal's the cutest little fellow I ever saw. If he were another foot taller, I'd bed down with him in a minute.”

 

Stopping at the water trough to wash his face, Alvin worked the pump, studying the horizon for headlights. Chester had been gone quite a while now. Whatever business he had was keeping him longer than Alvin had expected. Of course, he'd probably eaten supper in Harrison, maybe steak and potatoes, pie for dessert, a beer in the basement of a scratch house downtown, afterward. Why the hell had he gone alone?

Alvin stopped pumping and wiped his hands dry on the tails of his shirt. A wind swept out across the fields of grass and chilled the skin on the back of his neck. He felt a peculiar vibration in his bones, but it wasn't fever. Kansas spooked him. The wind carried a smell with it, musty, dry, dead. A spook's breath, stale and dirty. Older than dirt itself. Without a doubt, Alvin believed Kansas was populated by ghosts and haunted like a vast grassy cemetery. He was scared that if he stayed too long, somehow he'd become fertilizer for the same grasses that whispered to him now in the windy darkness.

The farm boy walked to the barn. He heard Rascal singing up in the hayloft. The dwarf loved music, although he could barely carry a tune. The top of his head bobbed just above a bale of hay where he danced in time to his own song.

It was an old railroad song Uncle Harlow used to sing whenever he came back from the depot. Rascal had mangled the tune such that he'd probably helped chase out the spooks. Alvin headed for the ladder to the loft. If not for the lamp hung there, the interior of the barn would have been black as pitch. The dwarf was on his hands and knees, digging into a moldy old bale of hay with a rusty screwdriver.

“What're you doing there?” Alvin asked, looking around. The wood at the dwarf's feet was crisscrossed in scratches made by the screwdriver he was holding.

“Hunting.”

“What for?”

“Rats.” Rascal jabbed at the bale of hay, stabbing randomly here and there. “They make nests in the hay. I have to flush them out and kick them in the head.” The dwarf stood up over the bale and jabbed furiously down into the top of it, zigzagging his attack from one end to the other. His tiny hand was a blur above the hay.

“Get any of 'em yet?” the farm boy asked. He had never heard of anyone hunting rats with a screwdriver. Uncle Henry stuck them with his pitchfork and Frenchy shot one with a pistol after it chewed up his boot. Best was to smoke them out and club them when they ran for it.

“I'd appreciate some help,” said Rascal, jabbing at the sides of the bale now. Sweat dripped off his forehead. “After all, they'll bite you, too.”

“There ain't no rats in here.”

The dwarf quit chopping at the hay. He twisted the screwdriver in his fist and looked up at Alvin. “You lied?”

“Sure I did.”

The dwarf sat back against the bale. “Why did you lie?”

Alvin shrugged. “I didn't care none for how you were whooping it up with Rose, telling those stories and getting her going. It made us both look like dumbbells.”

“The fool and the wise man often reflect a common image.”

“Huh?”

“Envy doesn't become you,” said the dwarf, poking the screwdriver into the bale of hay. “Rose appreciated our attention. She's sad and lonely. We made her smile.”

“She's just joking us, is all. I didn't care for that, neither.”

“Joy has its own rainbow. I'm satisfied that, however we did it, tonight was quite special for her.”

“Says you.”

“I do.”

“I'm going to bed,” the farm boy said, with a yawn. He was sick of jawing over that girl.

“You're not planning to wait up for Chester? I'll bet he has a story of his own to tell. Do you know why he went back into town?”

“No, do you?”

“Yes, but I'll wait for him to tell you all about it. I'm sure it was very exciting.”

“What if he don't come back here at all? What if he throws us over and goes off by hisself?”

“We'll buy a train ticket to Wichita.”

Now that was a spooky thought. A shiver ran through Alvin's heart.

“I ain't never been there before. What would we do?”

“I'm sure we could hire a decent flat in a roominghouse and find ourselves work with the cattle trade, no trouble at all. Uncle Augustus brought me out to the Dakotas one summer when I was a boy and I learned all about working on a ranch.”

“Sure you did.”

“Well, it's the truth.”

“You think Chester robbed the bank?” By now, of course, the farm boy knew his boss was some sort of gangster, because of the associations he seemed to have wherever they went. Alvin just wasn't sure what all Chester did at night while they were sleeping.

“Of course not. There's much more profit today in booze-traffic. Every town in this great republic of ours has its own speakeasy. Who do you think keeps them stocked with demon rum?”

“I never seen a drunkard or a saloon downtown this morning.”

“Did you notice the soda fountains and drugstores?”

“What of it?”

“Well, they're selling more than soda pop these days. Why, I'd wager you'll find overnight liquor in milk bottles on half the stoops in Kansas tomorrow morning.”

Alvin mulled that over. Cousin Frenchy kept quart bottles of whiskey hidden in Uncle Roy's root cellar and had a drink habit he couldn't crack. Uncle Cy believed half the population of Farrington was misusing liquor. “You think Chester's a rumrunner?”

The dwarf replied, “He's no snooper.”

“Well, I ain't for squealing on nobody, neither, but I'll bet you there's plenty of homebrew outfits in these parts. I seen empty gallon jugs packed in straw and sodden boxes in that kitchen cellar. I smelled kerosene and molasses down there, too. Don't tell me that uncle of hers wasn't an old soak.”

“Auntie imbibed Coca Cordials while she was sending dollar bills through the mail to the Reverend Dr. Wilson in support of National Prohibition, and seeing a revenue officer from Peoria, too.”

“Well, my Aunt Clara makes cider with a kick, but it ain't kitchen brew.”

“Laws are made for men,” said the dwarf, “not men for the law. Who can be made moral by legislation? Persecution causes a crime to spread.
This ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
I'm sure there are temperate uses of alcoholic drink, but until they're commonly understood, gangsters like Chester are certain to knock heads with the Volsteadites, leaving the rest of us caught in the middle.”

“Well, I ain't interested in getting pinched over some stall to sell a few bottles of hootch.”

Rascal got up and walked to the ladder. He put the screwdriver aside and went backwards down the first few rungs. Stopping halfway to the barn floor, the dwarf said, “These are dangerous times, my friend. Very dangerous. We must keep our wits about us, if we wish to survive.”

Alvin got up, too, and followed the dwarf to the ladder. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“The heart of the adventurer is sly,” Rascal said, as he descended to the floor of the barn. Stepping away from the ladder, he looked back up at Alvin. “Even in his dreams, he is alert.”

Rascal disappeared into one of the stalls directly beneath the hayloft.

Alvin sat down on the ledge beside the ladder. He felt drowsy and ill. Below him, the dwarf shuffled about in the dark, fixing his bed for the night. After a few minutes, Alvin climbed down the ladder and looked in on the dwarf. He was hard to see, buried in the straw with only the bald top of his head visible in the yellow lamplight. With each breath, little puffs of dust blew free from his mouth. Alvin noticed the light in Rose's bedroom was extinguished. She, too, had given up on Chester, and had gone to sleep. The farm boy took the lantern off the ladder and walked to the back of the barn where he had chosen his own stall. He hung the lamp on a post nail. The night wind hissed in the long dry grass. Trying to ignore the fever chill in his bones, Alvin spread his bedroll out over the straw and lay down on his back. If anyone was worrying about him at home tonight, he was sorry, but they'd intended to send him back to the sanitarium, and that was a lot meaner than him running off. Like his own daddy used to say,
“A man finds his own road one day and starts walking. He don't argue an east fork into a west one, and he don't set hisself facing backwards, neither.”

After ten minutes or so of looking for bats in the upper rafters of the barn, Alvin fell asleep.
Out on the Mississippi with Frenchy, fly casting into a swift green current, sunlight on the water, catfish tapping at the underside of the skiff, inviting themselves to get caught and fried up for supper. Frenchy had trotlines baited with rat tails. The skiff had a hole in it, leaking water in at Alvin's feet. Baling with his right shoe wasn't working, so he removed his left and used that, too. A catfish as big as a pig flew into the boat, landing in Alvin's lap, knocking him over. The skiff capsized. Swimming underwater, Alvin found himself caught in Frenchy's trotlines. Freeing himself just before drowning, he rose to the surface. The river was black. Stars flickered overhead while upstream, fireworks exploded in the night sky above the Illiniwek Bridge where a crowd had gathered to witness another suicide like Mable Stephenson, jilted by her college geography teacher, who did her lover's leap at high noon on Christmas Day in front of a hundred people, landing headfirst on a frozen log and breaking her neck. Alvin swam in that direction. All along the shoreline, giggling voices rang in the bushes. Rose was atop the bridge, her arms spread wide, the hem of her white chemise blowing wildly in the wind. As Alvin swam close, she leaped away from the bridge and
something blunt struck Alvin between the eyes, waking him, and a voice he didn't recognize, ordered, “Get up, you little sonofabitch!”

Alvin felt cold steel pressed to his forehead and opened his eyes. A dark figure stood over him. A rifle barrel extended from Alvin's forehead to the hands of the man standing in front of him. “Nobody robs Charlie Harper, you little double-crossing sonofabitch!”

“Huh?”

“You think I couldn'ta guessed who done it?”

The barrel dug into the skin between Alvin's eyes, hurting more now that he was waking up.

The man yelled, “ROSA JEAN!”

Off to Alvin's left across the barn, a small shadow darted through the railing of the last stall and slipped outdoors.

“Get up,” said Harper, nudging Alvin in the butt with the toe of his boot. He pulled the old Sharp's rifle back a few inches from Alvin's face. “ROSA JEAN!”

The farm boy climbed to his feet as slowly as possible while searching the barn for something to use as a club if the opportunity to fight presented itself. His head spun with vertigo. A cough rattled out of his chest. With the lamp extinguished, most of the barn was black.

“ROSA JEAN!” Harper poked Alvin in the ribs with the rifle, directing him out the barn door toward the farmhouse. “Get on out there, and don't try nothing, you little shit-heel!”

They walked out of the barn in tandem, connected by the length of rifle. A cold wind swirled in the yard, sweeping dust about and scattering stems of dried grass from the empty fields beyond.

“ROSA JEAN!”

The back screen door banged open and shut in the wind. Rose's bedroom window was raised an inch or so, the drapes closed. Nearing the trough, Alvin wondered if she was watching.

Charlie Harper prodded Alvin in the back with the rifle and shouted again. “ROSA JEAN!” Water dripped from the pump. The kitchen door banged hard. Alvin took three more steps, and Harper called out, “ROSA JEAN!”

Then another voice, just off Alvin's right shoulder, said, “Stop right there.”

Harper stopped, and the rifle barrel left Alvin's back. Chester's voice spoke once again, “Go on, dad. Put that rifle down.”

Alvin swiveled his head to see Chester, rising from a hiding place beside the trough. His .38 revolver was held at arm's length and pointed directly at Charlie Harper's head. Chester cocked the hammer back. “No cause for trouble now. Just do like I say.”

The kitchen door flung open and Rose came out into the yard. Her hair blew wildly in the wind, her white chemise billowing up. Alvin's hands and feet felt cold. He studied Rose's face for indications of fear or surprise or anger, and saw none. He was terrified himself.

“They robbed us, Rosa Jean,” said Harper, whose attention was not on Chester at all, but rather on his daughter. “They snuck in after closing and robbed us blind.”

“I don't want to shoot you, old man, but I surely will if you don't set that rifle down.”

“They're crooks, Rosa Jean. Scoundrels. They took every last cent in that safe.”

Rose stood perfectly still, maybe thirty or forty feet from Alvin, teary-eyed in the wind and dust, staring past her father toward Chester who began slowly to circle behind the old man.

“They don't care nothing about people like us, Rosa Jean,” said Harper. “They come here to hurt us, is all. They're nothing but goddamned liars and cheats.”

“Come on, dad, put the rifle down,” Chester said, his voice flat and nerveless. “Let's be friendly here. What do you say? No sense in getting hurt over a little misapprehension.”