Gasher Creek Part 23

"Tell me about your ranch."

"What?"

"Please," Jack said. "Please-just talk about your ranch. What's so great about it?"

Charlie didn't say anything for a moment, and Jack could feel his stare.

"It's quiet," he finally said, his voice nearly drowning in the cacophony around them. "Some nights, even the crickets take a breath. That's when you have a choice. You can listen to the silence, or you can play the fiddle. Nights like those, a fiddle's cry will haunt the world."

Jack imagined the wail of a fiddle wafting over the prairie like smoke. "What else," he said.

"My pa and my sister," Charlie said. "I haven't seen them in two years. It'll be good to see them again. Especially Pa."

"He the good sort?"

"Yeah," Charlie said. He chuckled. "Yeah, he is. What about your pa?"

"No."

"Why?"

"It don't matter."

"Liar," Charlie said. "You look kicked in the gut. Tell me about him."

"You deaf, Indian?" Jack said. "I said it don't matter."

"Does it have anything to do with why you're running?"

"I already told you why I'm running."

"No man is hunted for skipping on work," Charlie said. "Especially not through those Badlands."

"Why I left is my own business," Jack said. His leg bounced nervously. The walls of the saloon seemed to close in around him. "You don't want to know."

"Yes I do," Charlie said. "You're hurting."

"You're hurting? What are you, a woman?"

"No, I'm just a preacher. Almost."

"Save it for your sinners, then."

"Tell me," Charlie said, staring hard into Jack's eyes.

"No, I-"

"Tell me!"

"Murder," Jack hissed, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'm being hunted for murder, you satisfied?"

Charlie leaned back. "Oh," he said.

Jack grew cold. His hands trembled. He could barely believe it. The words had just burst from his mouth like a blister. He gripped his knees, waiting for Charlie to condemn him, maybe even announce to the saloon that he'd caught himself a fugitive. Either way, he was finished.

"Who did you kill?" Charlie asked.

"No one-I reckon-I don't know," Jack said.

"You don't know?"

"They say I murdered a wh.o.r.e but I was near dead drunk. I can't remember nothing but snips. I remember her naked, felt her on top of me."

"Who?"

"Sally. She was my sister."

Charlie gasped. "She was your sister?"

"I didn't say that," Jack said. "I said she was like my sister. She was young like her ... fragile as gla.s.s and..." In the corner, the player piano started on a new song. "Oh G.o.d," he said, hearing the melody to Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.

Jack jumped to his feet, knocking the table over. It was loud enough to garner the attention of the entire room. Even the faro players stopped to stare.

Jack turned and ran. He burst through the doors, stumbled onto the sidewalk, and collided with a hitching post. He leaned on it and wiped the tears on his cheeks. They wouldn't stop. Charlie reached him as a couple of tough looking ranchers pa.s.sed by.

"Lost a bundle," Charlie said to them. The ranchers nodded but didn't look convinced. "Let's get out of here," he said, grabbing Jack's wrist and pulling him down the sidewalk. They ducked into an alley.

Leaning against the saloon, Jack gasped for air and said, "I couldn't have hurt her. But what if I did? What if I'm just like my pa?"

"What happened," Charlie said.

Jack could see it all in the dark: the old field, the barn, the rickety cabin of logs and mud. He could smell the stink of the chicken coop. "It was getting late," he said. "I was clearing the field of rocks so my pa could turn the soil in the morning. I hated doing it," he said, sniffing. "The rocks would cut my fingers something awful."

"Yeah," Charlie said.

"I was digging up this rock about the size of my head when I heard the scream. It was wretched, like a pitch fork sc.r.a.ping on stone. Only my sister could've made such a screech. So I ran, almost twisting my ankle on those d.a.m.n field rocks. I booted a couple chickens in my haste, nearly stomped the dog. I didn't care. I had to get to her. Then I heard it again. I thought maybe Indians had burst into the house, killed my pa and was hurting Jeanie."

Charlie didn't say anything. For a moment, Jack thought he might have slipped away in the darkness. Then he heard the crinkle of his boot leather. "When I opened the door," he continued, "I saw her laying on the supper table, her dress hiked up and my pa with his trousers down."

"Oh G.o.d," Charlie said.

His pa had staggered backward in alarm. Jeanie scrambled off the table and dropped to her knees. She starting sobbing-a deep, ugly sound Jack had never heard before. "She looked at me like she'd done something wrong," he said. "Like she'd done something wrong. But I knew why it had happened. I saw it in the way he could barely stand, the stink of whiskey about him.

"'What's going on,' I said like a dummy. 'Nothing,' he said like a dummy. Jeanie kept crying. I shouted at him. I was afraid. It felt like my bones were about to bust out of my skin. But I was angry, too. Usually he'd drink and hit me, or cut me with a switch. But he'd never touched Jeanie before. So I cursed at him."

"What did he do?" Charlie asked.

"Grabbed her," Jack said. "Held her up by the neck like you would a chicken. He hollered at me, saying my ma was dead and he had to do it, I wouldn't understand because I was a boy. Then he told me to go back outside. But I couldn't. I wouldn't let him hurt her. So then I saw a knife on the table. It was a dull thing, could barely cut bread. But I couldn't let him touch her. I picked up the knife, and-and he crushed her neck!"

Jack sank to the ground and sobbed. "She dropped like a sack and didn't move. But her eyes were open and she was gawking up at me like I'd let her die."

"No," Charlie said. "Jack-"

"My pa shouted at me, saying I made him do it."

"It wasn't your fault."

Jack scrubbed his cheeks with his sleeve cuffs. "That's not what vexes me," he said. "What vexes me is what I didn't do next. The old b.a.s.t.a.r.d stood there and I had a knife in my hands and you know what I did with that knife? I dropped it. Any man would have ripped him apart for what he did, but I dropped the knife and ran like a coward."

"And you never went back?"

"No," Jack said. "Did some odd jobs work in Corn Pa.s.s, then on to Rock Hill, then Bear Hunt for a spell. But I never stayed long. I always thought he'd come after me, so I kept moving. I finally ended up in Gasher Creek."

"Where you met this Sally," Charlie said.

"First time I saw her I thought she was a ghost. She looked just like Jeanie, had the same brown hair and same green eyes. It wasn't long before we got to jawing. I'd be sweeping the saloon floor, and she'd talk to me about the places she wanted to go some day, little things like that. For a time it seemed like Jeanie had come back, like she was safe and happy again. But then I started acting the fool. I tried to keep her safe, and you can't keep a wh.o.r.e safe. They get hit and shook and all sorts of nasty things I won't speak of. What a man will do to a woman and smile about it," he said bitterly.

"So then what happened?" Charlie asked.

"She was losing money because of me," he said. "I'd get the rushers to go with Liza, Delilah, or one of the other girls. Finally, she tore me down, did it in front of the entire town. She told me she didn't want me around her anymore. So I left her alone; at least I thought I did. But then, a few days later, I woke up beside her and she was dead." He could feel her cold, dead flesh against his foot, smell the rot in his nose. "The Doc said she was raped and choked, just like Jeanie."

"But you have no recollection of hurting her," Charlie said.

"Don't matter," Jack said. "Look what my pa did. I'm his kin. I have the same devil inside of me."

Charlie didn't say anything for a long time. He was still there-Jack could see his silhouette against the lamplight-but he wasn't speaking.

Jack knew he could only say one thing: that he was guilty. His temper cut short like his pa, he liked to drink like his pa, so he must have raped and murdered like his pa. Maybe Charlie would even call him a monster, deserving to swing and- "You're no monster, Jack."

Jack stared at Charlie's silhouette, stunned. "What?" he said.

"I said, you're no monster."

"Haven't you been listening? I remember Sally laying on top of me. Why would I have the memory if we weren't s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g? I woke up next to her in bed. Why was I there if we hadn't been together all night?"

"Even if you two were-together-it doesn't mean you raped and killed her."

"But-"

Charlie gripped Jack's shoulders and said, "Just because your pa was a devil, doesn't make you a devil, understand?"

"Well, look at this," said a man at the mouth of the alley. "A couple of miss nancies out on the town."

Staring at the shotgun, Jack thought: He's going to be mad when he hears what happened to his horse.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Tracker and Ben followed Delilah up the staircase. She was saying something, but Tracker couldn't make it out. The noise of The Ram was deafening. The bar was thick with rushers. Foster banged on the piano keys and made a mess of Camptown Races. In the corner, a faro game looked like it could turn ugly at any moment.

"Hank would have thrown them b.u.mmers out hours ago," Delilah shouted, looking at the table. "But Andy don't care."

"Where is he?" Tracker shouted back.

She nodded toward the bedroom at the far end of the hall. "Moved into that corner room. He rarely comes out. Today, he spent time at the creek while they filled it in, then it was right back to his bedroom again. The boy's gone twitchy."

They turned left and walked down to the opposite end of the hallway. Delilah opened the door and stepped inside. "Liza took all her things," she said.

The top drawers of a dresser hung out. A wardrobe stood in the opposite corner, its doors flung open. One of the beds lay stripped to its cot.

"Did she say why she was leaving?" Tracker asked.

"She didn't say."

"You didn't ask?"

"I'm not Hank," she said, the lamplight s.h.i.+vering on her face. "He liked to hold on to the same girls so fellas would fancy them and keep coming back, but I don't give a hot p.i.s.s about that. We lose one girl, we gain three more. The rushers don't much care about a girl's face so long as they got a place to stick their p.e.c.k.e.r."

"Gosh," Ben said.

Tracker checked the drawers. Empty. Above the dresser, a corner of the mirror was cracked, but there was no sign of gla.s.s on the dresser top. "Wasn't Liza a good earner?" he asked.

"She kept busy after Sally died."

Moving around the bed, he bent closer to examine the cot. He saw splotches of rusty water on the fabric. Or at least it looked like rusty water. "What is this," he said.

Delilah stepped closer. Stomping her foot, she said, "Lord, I will kill that girl if ever I lay eyes on her again."

"You know what it is?"

"Of course I do," she said. "It's hair dye. I near scrubbed my fingers raw trying to wash it out of her bedding."

"Why would she dye her hair?" Ben asked.

Tracker sat down on a chair beside the bed. "Women dye their hair for all sorts of reasons," he said. "But a woman dyes her hair and runs off for only one reason: to never be found again."

A gla.s.s shattered downstairs.

"That's it," Delilah said, handing the lamp to Ben. "Pardon me, Sheriff, but there are some men needing a taste of my boot." She turned and marched back down the hallway.

"Ben, go help her," Tracker said.

"I don't think she needs my help," Ben said.