A Congregation of Jackals (7 page)

She walked up the hallway in which hung individual daguerreotypes of Jesus, Joseph and Mary (the coydogs), one of her and one of her and Jim together (a miniature) in formal attire. She was still outnumbered.

Beatrice’s jealousy was small and a source of amusement and false quibbles more than any real tension between them. The truth was she found his devotion to the coydog trinity a comforting indictor of constancy, his good nature and how he would raise their children.

Still, when she moved in, she intended to rearrange a few things.

Beatrice pulled the apron from her dress, hung it upon a hook and called out to her fiancé. Two coydogs barked in reply, though only Jim entered the house.

“Did you scrape your boots?”

She heard Jim turn back around, open the slatted door, go outside, drag the soles of his boots on the metal bar and reenter.

“Yeah.”

“You should get into the habit of doing that. We are going to have Oriental rugs in here.”

“I was hopin’ for kids.”

She swatted his shoulder and said, “With order, we can have both.”

He looked at the oven and then over at her and hopefully inquired, “Steak and kidney pie?”

“Did Joseph tell you?”

“I smelled it out myself. No peas?”

“I put carrots instead. You are slobbering.”

Jim wiped his mouth, nodded his head in appreciation, threw his limbs around her and squeezed; the sensation was like being hugged by a house. He released her, sat at the table, buttoned up his shirt, tucked a red napkin into his collar and picked up his fork, holding it with the tines facing down as if it were an ice pick. There was work to be done with him for certain . . . but this was a real man, Beatrice thought with an imagined smile.

She put an errant blonde curl behind her right ear, slid her hands into kitchen mittens, opened the cast-iron oven and pulled out the savory golden-brown pie. In the corner of her eye, she saw Jim wipe his mouth a second time.

The petite blonde woman set the food upon the table; the moment her buttocks touched the chair, Jim, his fork still clasped in his left hand, tilted his head down and said, “Thank you Jesus for the food we are about to eat. If there’s any left, you’re welcome to it. We appreciate all that you did for us back then. Now that’s it. Amen.”

“Amen.” Beatrice had never once elicited angry words from her fiancé, but she had hurt his feelings on several occasions by laughing at his extemporaneous grace. In all instances, she had immediately and genuinely apologized, but the damage had been inflicted. They had eaten the tarnished meal in silence, and afterward he had spent a few hours rambling through the woods with his pets. Once when he had thanked Jesus, Jesus the coydog had barked as if in reply; Jim had not seen the humor in that at all, but instead took it for a sign, which (unfortunately) turned her giggles into far louder cachinnations. After two years, Beatrice had mastered her offensive impropriety;
only on rare occasions did she have to bite her tongue to suppress gestating laughter.

The titan opened his eyes and looked at the steak and kidney pie.

He said, “Let’s cut off a sizable piece for you before I go in there.”

After the meal, Jim put the plates and utensils in the washbasin and slapped his stomach, pleased. He leaned over like a tree falling and kissed his bride-to-be. Beatrice slid her tongue into his mouth; his answered hers for two shared heartbeats. She felt a warmth burgeon within her chest and he withdrew from her.

“Not yet, Bea. Just one more week.”

Beatrice nodded, lifted a rag from the soap bucket and went back to the oak table her giant carpenter had shaped with his own tools and hands. Her heart beat fast within her.

“I love you,” he said, as he often did at unexpected times.

“I can hardly wait to share the nights with you.”

“I been thinkin’ of that.”

They both paused for a moment as they considered the intertwining they had abstained from for their two-year courtship. Soon there would be no barriers, she thought.

One of the coydogs howled. Beatrice looked over at Jim. He had a lever-action rifle in his hand, something she rarely saw except when he was hunting. His eyes were hard and inscrutable.

The coydog howled again, an awful, plaintive sound.

“That’s Mary,” she said, recognizing the timbre of the female crossbreed.

“She sounds hurt. I’ll go see what got her. You bolt the door behind me.”

“You be careful with that,” she said, flicking an index finger dripping with soap at the rifle.

He nodded, walked up the hall, went through the slatted door and shut out the night.

“Bolt it,” he called from outside the house.

Beatrice walked up the hallway, slid the iron latch and looked through the slats at her fiancé. He crossed through the rectangle of orange light that the lanterns cast through the dining-room window and walked into the darkness; she stared at thick night, her heart hammering. She heard footsteps on the wet grass. Mary whimpered and the males barked. Beatrice’s apprehensions grew.

The moon picked Jim out, limned him in blue as he strode across the grass. Mary howled pitiably and then whimpered twice. The other coydogs barked.

“Hush fellas.” The males were silent. Mary whimpered. Beatrice watched the blue-edged silhouette that was her fiancé walk toward the coppice at the northern edge of the property; the male coydogs ran to and orbited their master like houseflies, barking, agitated.

Jim stopped, looked at the ground and said, “No.” His tone put a heavy lump of dread in Beatrice’s stomach; she knew that something was very, very wrong. Mary whimpered and the males barked. Jim knelt down in the grass and again said, “No.”

Beatrice grabbed a lit oil lantern, undid the bolt, opened the door and exited the house. She traversed the porch, descended its three steps and walked across the grass; the night dew sparkled like a constellation upon the blades and dampened the hem of her vanilla dress.

Jim, a half dozen yards away from her, looked up and said, “Get back inside.”

Beatrice stopped, “Is she going to be okay?”

“Get back inside and throw the bolt.”

Beatrice looked down; the light of the lantern in her right hand had illuminated the tableau. At Jim’s knees, before the sniffing snouts of Joseph and Jesus, lay Mary. The prostrated coydog’s hind legs and front right leg were gone. Its lone remaining limb—its front left leg—pawed spastically in the grass, digging trenches while its three stumps waggled uselessly in their sockets. Beatrice thought of a partially-eaten roasted hen and was nauseated.

Jim wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve; Mary’s lone paw rent the grass and soil. The dog whimpered.

“Get inside,” the titan said to Beatrice. “Now.”

Beatrice turned away, her hands shaking; beads of sweat chilled her forehead and upper lip. She walked toward the house.

“Run off, you two—scat,” he said to Joseph and Jesus; they barked and then ran past Beatrice toward the eastern wolds.

When her left foot hit the second step, she heard Jim say, “Good-bye girl.” The moment Beatrice put her hand on the doorknob, a gunshot cracked across the night. Mary was silent.

Jim escorted Beatrice home to her father’s house, the repeating rifle clutched in the hand with which he usually held her. He neither spoke nor wanted to be spoken to, but there were too many questions in Beatrice’s mind for her to remain silent for the duration of the entire twenty-minute walk.

Once they were upon the central avenue of Trailspur and the sounds of civilization were audible, she asked, “What happened to her? How did she get like that?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If a bear or some other animal did that to her, she would have bled to death.”

Jim did not respond.

“A person must have done that to her. It looked as if her legs had been amputated, like the way a doctor removes gangrenous limbs.”

Very quietly he said, “I saw.”

“Do you believe that it might have been Indians?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Beatrice, though nervous and agitated, realized the insensitivity of her inquiries and closed her mouth; she hooked her arm through his and walked the rest of the way in silence, allowing him to grieve.

He deposited her on the front step of her father’s house; despite her ascension, he still towered over her.

“Get in and bolt it,” he said. “And lock the windows. And open the door to your pa’s room so he can hear if something happens.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Have a look round.”

Theodore William Jeffries would certainly miss the breakfasts his daughter fixed for him, but as a widower of twenty-nine years, he knew how to scramble an egg and blacken some toast and fry up some sausages. Moreover, it was long past time for that bookish woman to devote herself to something other than reading, writing and the old man who had raised her up.

He walked out of his bedroom rubbing his bad hip, briefly wondering why his door was ajar. He slid his feet into his leather slippers and proceeded down the hall, scratching his side through his blue pajamas.

T.W. inhaled the odiferous emanations that wafted up from the kitchen and was instantly famished. Leaning on the banister far more than he had a decade ago, he descended the stairs. His slippers scuffed across the worn wood of the bottom landing, and hearing his approach, Beatrice turned to him. Her curly blonde hair, blue eyes, chin dimple and shape were so very much like her mother’s, he thought. What a tragedy the two of them never knew each other, except in that horrible moment of her birth.

He castigated himself for his morbid ruminations and said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she replied.

“Smells tasty.”

“I shall have it ready in a moment.”

“Thank you. Was there any particular reason that you opened my door last night?”

A loud knock precluded her reply.

T.W. recognized the familiar tattoo, turned from the face that might have been a window through three decades and called out loudly, “Is that you, Deputy?”

“It is.”

“Do we have an issue?”

“We do.”

“Does it trump eggs?”

“Likely.”

“Come on in and eat something while I get dressed.” He looked at his daughter and said, “Don’t let him eat all of it.”

“I shan’t.”

Sheriff T. W. Jeffries, a hand pressed to his aching left
hip, hastened up the stairs toward his clothes, boots, badge and gun.

Deputy Goodstead, a twenty-six-year-old Texan in blue with shiny boots and the blank face of a simpleton (though he was not one), chewed the crackling remainder of a piece of toast as he walked up the central avenue of Trailspur beside the sheriff.

“What exactly has this fellow done?” T.W. asked as he slid the tongue of his belt through the brass buckle, wincing as the leather bit into his bad hip.

“Unsettled some folks.”

“How so? Has he said anything offensive? Threatened somebody?”

“I don’t think so. He draws pictures.”

T.W. pulled out his single-action six-shooter, swung the cylinder wide and saw that it was full. He closed it and slid the pistol back into the holster on his right hip.

Straightening his hat, T.W. said, “He draws pictures?”

“That’s what Rita said.”

“Is this a prank?”

“She wants us to talk to him. He makes her uneasy.”

“An illustrator? This doesn’t trump eggs.”

The two lawmen strode past Delicious Meats, Steinman’s Hats, Halcyon Hotel, Fine Tailoring for Ladies (and Men Too), the unnamed blacksmith alley run by a different fellow each month, Ed’s Barbershop, Big Abe’s Dancehall of Trailspur, Quality Chandler and the Trailspur Apothecary. They neared the raised wooden edifice that sat at the end of the avenue; beneath the overhang, depending from three ropes, was a sign engraved in elaborate script. It read,

JUDGE HIGGINS
’
S MIGHTY FINE SALOON, OR SIMPLY
—
THE GAVEL
.

The sheriff’s eyes narrowed as he gazed upon the beast tied up to the front banister; he glanced at Goodstead, whose blank face had become blanker, and then back toward the creature.

“Deputy. What am I looking at?”

“Could it be a horse?”

“I’m not putting any money on that.”

T.W. had seen dead horses in far, far better shape than this sorry steed; the smell of it—a pungent combination of mulch and feces—chased away his morning appetite. On his right, Goodstead closed his slack mouth, which was a rarity, and swallowed dryly.

The lawmen strode up to the horse, cautiously and slowly. Every bone of the beast’s body showed through its dirty white coat, the color of which only completed the illusion that this was not a horse, but an erect, living horse skeleton. Flies inched over its ribs and vertebrae; the hairs of its tail and mane were clumped together; its sides were brown and black with scabs from the spurs that had been relentlessly applied; a yellow crust of dried tears ringed its cloudy eyes.

T.W. and Goodstead appraised the awful creature, their left hands clamped over their mouths and noses. The deputy pressed his right palm to the beast’s flank.

“Don’t,” the sheriff yelled.

The beast whipped its head around; Goodstead jumped back; the reins tied to the banister twanged taut; the mare’s mouth snapped shut inches from the deputy’s nose. The horse pulled on its tether, its cracked brown teeth revealed.

The Texan stepped back from the beast. The cloud of flies startled into flight by the activity settled back to continue their survey of the horse’s crenulated hide.

T.W. looked at Goodstead’s blank visage and said,
“Don’t touch a mistreated horse unless it’s got its ears down and comes to you willing.”

“I’m a fool.”

Goodstead’s lack of inflection always made such comments inscrutable, though T.W. would not have deputized the man if he thought he was at all a fool. The Texan was just ignorant of certain things because he was young.

“Let’s introduce ourselves to this illustrator,” T.W. said. He circumnavigated the maltreated and malefic mare, ascended the five steps that led to the swinging doors of Judge Higgins’s Mighty Fine Saloon, or simply—The Gavel, and was joined there by his deputy.