And Sometimes Bone: Chapter One
Chapter One
I brace against the ground with my left hand and drag my right arm across my mouth. Spit bile from the back of my throat to the pool of vomit below my face. My knees press into wet dirt. The sun burns my neck, my back, and the sweet humidity from yesterday’s thunderstorm mingles with the stench of the rotted child a few feet from my hands. I spit again, swallow bile. Stand, and turn to the body of my runt son.
Henry.
I regard the gravity of it: the completeness of a corpse.
My lungs barely fill with each breath; still, I pull a carved cherry pipe from my breast pocket, rap it to my boot, and fill the bowl with leaf. I’m cognizant of Sheriff Brooks’ eyes upon me. I strike a match and hold the flame to the bowl.
“Not a damn track,” Brooks says, “save these dog prints.”
I study Henry’s face, mostly shredded by fangs. The dog was here after rain softened the ground. Tracks lead across the field and of the thousand possible places he could have come from, the trail suggests that after dining on my youngest, frailest son, the dog loped toward the Hardgrave place.
Tobacco smoke and stomach acid burn my throat. The bite is harsh but the tobacco fortifies. I know my mind. I stare at Henry, resting on his back, flies circling the oval that used to bear his countenance.
The surrounding dirt is pocked with a jagged mess of paw prints. I stare to Hardgrave’s until Sheriff Brooks looks that way too.
“You need anything else?” I say.
“No, Mister McClellan. Plain enough he was beat to death. There’s nothing left on the ground to study. I’ll have Doc look the body over, just same.”
Holding my breath, I slip my arms beneath Henry’s back and shoulders and lift him. His head falls back where his neck was cut. Air escapes. I grit my teeth.
“I’m truly sorry,” Brooks says.
“Get the hell out of here.”
Long past rigor, Henry is limp. I carry him across the field toward my house and marvel that in all the searching I and the others did, none crossed the field between my house and Hardgrave’s. Everyone agreed the boy had wandered off with some kind of mischief in mind, and my foreman Eddie suspected Henry had run off for real, like I did fifty years ago when I joined the Union to fight the Rebs.
But Henry never had that kind of grit.
No one searched until he was gone two days, and it took two more to locate him—half way to Hardgrave’s house.
I keep my face pointed toward the lake breeze and try to outpace stink that follows faster than I walk. Carrying my youngest is brutal work. I’m an old man.
I arrive at my house. Brooks has already driven the team around.
“Mister McClellan, I got to take him into Walnut.”
“I wanted him to come home.”
I land Henry on the wagon bed. Look deep into the boy’s sunken eyes, take in his torn flesh. Behold his crushed cheek, battered brow, sliced throat. I suck in the stench of my dead flesh and blood one last time.
“Who would do this?”
“You’ll find him, Mister McClellan,” Brooks says. “You’ll find him.”
“When I do—”
“Don’t say no more. Best you don’t say no more.”
Brooks circles to the front and climbs to the seat. “Hiyah!”
I watch my son judder on the wagon until dust and distance render him invisible. Enter the house and sit at a writing desk. Listen to the silence.
Maybe I’ll bring in a woman. Maybe one from the house in Dubois—have some clucking around. I slump deep into the chair, confused at feeling so much. Bring a woman and set her to work cleaning and doing laundry. One girl comes to mind, has a fine education but teaching school doesn’t fill her bottom half.
No, I’ll stick with the plan. Mame Gainer, from Pittsburgh—a madam of considerable skill who has proven too wily for ordinary negotiations. She wants a contract, total control over all my cat houses, and a salary—regardless of the fruit of her efforts—of twenty thousand per annum. I considered her demands and now that the situation with Henry is resolved am eager to make an alternate proposal. That will wait another day or two.
Henry’s odor comes up through my sleeves, my chest. I gag at the wash basin. Nothing comes. I rinse my mouth, strip my shirt, dump pipe and tobacco on the table and keep the matches. Outside at the porch edge I strike one and light my shirtsleeve. Toss it to the grass and watch flames lick across the cloth. Gray smoke wavers low to the ground. I remove my undershirt and cast it to the fire as well.
Upstairs, I dress in a suit. I’ve spent two days in farm clothes; the time has arrived to get about business. I have the houses to run and a madam to woo from her comfortable situation in Pittsburgh. I have grain to purchase.
Big plans in Oil City.
And I have to assign blame.
I drive a Saxon Six, a smoke-farting touring car with a six-cylinder engine. The newspaper advertisement claimed the manufacturer achieved twenty-five point nine miles per gallon of gasoline over a seventy thousand mile test. Further the advertisement stated the car averaged a hundred and seventy-five miles per quart of oil.
My experience has been different, but I have arranged for a car man—Eddie’s brother—to serve as my car man. Meanwhile I make do. Normally the drive to Walnut is pleasant; today I slip into thought and find myself jerking the wheel to keep the Saxon out of the ditch.
I arrive in Dubois late in the afternoon. Like all of my houses, this one is cracked and peeling drab white, deliberately unattended, and located beyond the bars in a neighborhood populated with proprietors of businesses catering to humankind’s baser desires. I pay a stipend, usually in tail but sometimes cash, to each police chief in whose jurisdiction I operate. My cat houses draw little unwelcome attention and are seldom visited by evangelists or worse, progressives, except in the anonymity of night when they arrive not to rail against whoredom, but to purchase it.
I sit in the Saxon with the engine running and the clutch disengaged, my foot on the brake. Upstairs a curtain moves—Ursula—a pendulum-titted and ambitious whore who speaks her second language English better than most of the men she uses it upon. I think of her powdered skin and perfumed hair and my stomach hesitates on the edge of violence.
My son is dead. I’ve one left, globe-trotting Mitch.
Bernadine meets me at the door. “Word on Henry?”
I pass her, turn left at the parlor and enter the anteroom she uses as an office. Ursula perches at the top of the stairwell and jiggles to the lower floor, flesh lopping against her corset like waves on a steep bank. She joins Bernadine at the door.
I study the ledger.
“Anything on Henry’s whereabouts?” Ursula says.
“I’m here to collect. Bernie?”
Bernadine enters the office and kneels at a floor safe. “I don’t see why you don’t use the local bank.” She aligns numbers on the knob. “Just as good as the one in Walnut.” She passes to me a thin handful of paper money.
“Light for two nights,” I say.
“That’s every bit of it.”
I count fifteen dollars. Examine—and count—names on the ledger, an operational necessity I learned from an early conversation with Mame Gainer.
“You ever wonder what them boys would do if they knew you kept track of their likes?” Bernadine says.
Ursula, standing behind Bernadine, fetches my eye. Bernadine turns as well and Ursula smiles as if she had nothing to say to begin with.
“What’s with McCoy only coming in for head?” I flip pages deeper into history. “Each Tuesday McCoy comes in for a slob. With you, Ursula.”
“It’s his mother. She’s with Christian Temperence.”
“She services his other wants?”
“He feels guilt.”
I study the wall while I collect my thoughts and frame my next action.
“It’s the truth,” Bernadine says. “The boy’s saving himself.”
“Ursula. Run upstairs.”
The corners of her mouth twitch upward. “Of course.”
I close the door. Bernadine steps backward. I fan the fifteen paper dollars and place them on the desk, then watch Bernadine until she looks away. Clench my right hand and relax it. I press fingers to the bridge of my nose, but I do not yet have the clarity I desire. I stack the bills, tuck them to my wallet.
“Don’t leave,” I say, and open the door. “I’ll have a conversation with you.”
“Yeah, well I ain’t going nowhere. And before you dip your wick—the roof’s leaking again. I know you like Harvey and all, but he’s no roofer.”
I close the door on her.
Ursula reclines against a stack of pillows, legs apart, fingers woven across her midsection. Several undone buttons leave the top corners of her blouse folded open, revealing mounds of blue-veined flesh behind a corrugated corset straining withstand the pressure.
I sit at the edge of the bed and place my hand on her foot.
She sits upright. “What is it?”
“Found Henry.”
I extract my pipe and fill it. Ursula swallows. I inhale smoke and lean forward, one hand on my knee. She’s silent, her face painted with dread. “There in a field,” I say. “His head beat in.”
She spins her legs over the mattress edge and shifts beside me. “God’s mercy.”
“I only said so because you asked. I come up here…”
“Anything you need, Mister McClellan.” She rests her hand on my shoulder.
I lift it. “You had something on your mind, downstairs.”
Ursula crawls behind me and her fingers work the stiffness in my shoulders. “There’s something you should know. This isn’t an appropriate time, but I’d never forgive myself for keeping quiet.”
I observe her reflection in the dresser mirror.
“The book you checked is incomplete.”
“I know. How many?”
“Six I’m aware of, from Friday. Then I counted every man who entered the house on Saturday and there were twenty-two. The book says fourteen.”
“Why’d you think to count?”
“Bernadine asked me to mind the parlor on Friday. She stepped out.”
“Where to?”
“An errand, she said.”
“Say who she was seeing?”
Ursula shakes her head. “I found Billy Kroh wasn’t in the book, though he was with Linda an hour before. I thought of telling Bernadine, but thought again. I read all the names and discovered another five not on the list.”
“Why’d Bernie pick you?”
“I had Aunt Flo.”
I release a long blast of smoke and look at Ursula’s reflection.
“But she’s gone. Aunt Flo.”
“Don’t you girls usually polish knobs about that time?”
“There’s only so many need polishing, and none take more than a few minutes.”
“Uh huh.” I glance over Ursula’s belongings. A few European baubles on doilies, maybe frilly things in the closet and bureau. I stand. “Gather your things—”
“I—”
“Shut up. In an hour Bernie’s room will be empty. I’ll give you the same terms I gave her.”
“You’re giving her an hour?”
I consider. “You’re right. I’ll throw her out now.”
I enter the parlor. Bernadine sits at the desk with a deck of cards arranged in a game of solitaire.
“Local bank where you keep what you skim from me?”
“That’s a lie,” she says. “I been honest by you.”
I head down the hall toward her room.
“What are you doing?” Bernadine shuffles behind, gaining quick, tugs my elbow and I belt her. She’s on the floor looking up, hand on her jaw, insolence in her snarled nose and eyes.
I pivot at the last door, try the knob. “Unlock it.”
“You got no right going through my effects.”
“Open it.”
“No.”
I stoop, clasp her by the neck and pin her to the wall. Fish between trussed tits and come out with a key. I snap the necklace chain and release her. Bernadine sinks like I ripped out her spine.
“I got six cathouses, Bernie. You have more girls than any of them, and there’s more screwing going on here than anywhere. Give me fifteen dollars and I’m fucked too. But I don’t get fucked, Bernadine.”
“I turn over every cent to you.”
I unlock the door and enter. Lifted an ostrich-plumed hat, step to the hall and spin it to her. “Put it on.” I rifle through each drawer of a maple bureau; open the closet and cast articles to the floor. Strip the bed and flip the mattress upside down.
“What’s this, Bernie?” I slip two fingers inside a slit in the side of the mattress she’d had pressed to the wall, and withdraw a fold of paper money.
Counting the bills I stop at fifty, though most of the stack remains.
Bernadine sits with her legs crossed, weeping. I split off ten dollars, let them fall to her one by one, fold the remainder and tuck it into my pocket. “Get out, Bernadine, and don’t come back.”
I drive the Saxon to the legitimate business district and park in front of Miller’s, my barber. A shoeshine boy snaps his cloth and watches my legs, waiting to judge the condition of my shoes. The boy is Marshall Brady, a chap with moxie and apparent intelligence. Under my tutelage, a boy like that could become somebody.
“That’s a lot of scuffs, Mister McClellan. C’mon here for twenty-cent you’ll be strutting like a game cock.”
“I am a game cock, Marshall. Maybe you’d ought to learn another line.”
“You got better, tell it.”
“Tell it? I’m a businessman. I’ll sell it.”
“What for?”
“Free shine.”
The boy squints. “I dunno. My line works fine.”
“It’s a business deal, boy. I sell you the line, and if it works, you increase your business, and cover the cost of purchasing the line. See?”
“But my line fetches any man needs a shine as it is.”
“You know why?”
“Cause quinny likes shiny boots and men like quinny. And there’s no one else around shining boots.”
“Monopoly, son. Beautiful.”
“I don’t need your line as much as I need the twenty cents I’d give up to get it.”
“I see. But what if my line would allow you to charge twenty-five, even thirty cents?”
“Give me the line and I’ll decide if it’s worth a shine.”
I grasp the boy’s shoulder and kneel until he is eye-level. “Here’s what I’m thinking, son. You got a sharp mind, and good instincts. I’ll give you the line free of charge. Maybe one day when I have an errand needs accomplished, you’ll be interested in taking your business to a higher plane of profitability?”
“Yes sir, Mister McClellan. Yes sir.”
I sit on the bench outside the barbershop window.
“What’s the line, Mister McClellan?”
I place my hands on my knees and lean to Marshall. Look left and right—and notice farther down the road, a gleaming Willys Knight parked at the curb. Unless some new dandy’s rolled into town, banker Thurston Leicester is in the vicinity. I twist, spot him in the barber shop. Miller brushes Thurston’s suit jacket as the banker retrieves a note from his billfold.
“The line, Mister McClellan?”
I give Marshall twenty cents. “You do the best shine you can, and we’ll see if it lives up to the line.”
Marshall sighs. With his brush he raps my sole—harder than usual—and sets about cleaning the dirt from my heel.
“How’s your schoolwork holding up?”
Marshall shrugs.
“Your pap don’t mind you playing hooky all the time?”
“He set me up with this shine kit.”
“Whole family’s business-minded.”
Thurston Leicester stands at the step. “If it isn’t Jonah McClellan.”
Marshall finishes his brushwork, dabs his bare fingers in polish and massages the wax into shoe leather.
“I been after that girl of yours up the house,” Leicester says. “Struck me the other day I work with every businessman in town. Pay top interest, charge the least. But I’ve never sat across a desk of contract paper with the great Jonah McClellan.”
I hold Thurston’s look as I reach to Marshall, touch his shoulder. “Marshall, listen. If I took a bushel of corn to the granary and they gave me a receipt, that’d be as good as money. I’d be able to give it to the barber if a haircut cost a bushel of corn, wouldn’t I?”
“Suppose so, yes sir.”
Thurston looks at the boy, then me.
“Marshall, son, what do you think would happen if the folks at the granary said, ‘People pass our notes like money. Why don’t we print up a bunch of extra receipts, and lend them out at interest?”
“You mean without having the corn in the granary?”
“That’s right,” I say.
Thurston checks his pocket watch.
“That’d be wrong,” Marshall says.
“Why, son?”
“It’s just like musical chairs, ‘cept the last man wouldn’t get no corn.”
“That’s good thinking, Marshall. I might give you another line for that. What do you think, Thurston? Got any ideas on that?”
“Talk like that causes bank runs.”
I stand. “Marshall, here’s lesson number two. Never put your money in a bank, or trust a man who makes his living from numbers alone. They’re thieves. I’d call them lazy, but some are damn industrious. Anything you want to add, Thurston?”
Thurston Leicester steps closer and looks up steeper into my face. “There’s two ways of putting down a bank run, McClellan. One involves bringing in more money. The other, guns. You think you’re sucking first tit, got Sheriff Brooks and your man, Eddie. You got the town sewed up.” Thurston shakes his head and steps backward. He turns toward his car. “You keep thinking you got things the way you want them. Good day.”
I sit, place my hand on Marshall Brady’s shoulder. “That lesson make sense, son?”
“Yes sir.” Marshall snaps his rag one last time. “Lookit that. That shine’s worth three lines.”
I squeeze his shoulder. “Indeed. But I only brought the one.” I lean. “You ready?”
Marshall tips closer.
I whisper.
Marshall’s mouth draws into a wide smile. His eyes gleam sunlight. He mouths the words and I follow each one on his lips. Marshall finds his voice. “Make your boots shine like snot on a glass doorknob.” Marshall beams. “Like snot dripping on a glass doorknob. A glass doorknob covered in snot.”
“Endless possibilities, that glass and snot,” I say.
“Yes sir!”
“Use that line right, you can charge any price you want.”
I quarter five hired men in a bunkhouse set fifty yards from the main house. Currently I employ six, including my jack-of-all-trades foreman, Eddie Bonter, a man who has spent time in the Pittsburgh state penitentiary, and only works in Walnut to escape the reputation he’s cemented with Pittsburgh law enforcement. Capable of hard work and willing to do jobs assigned in quiet, he has proven discretion and flat nerves.
Today I will test him.
I stand at the bunk house entry. Eddie sits at a table at the far end with Jerome, a young fellow who has eschewed education in favor of permanently tilling another man’s fields, harvesting another man’s corn. The world needs such men.
Eddie looks at me and breaks off his sentence. He slaps Jerome on the shoulder and the younger man exits through the back door, his head low with a sidelong glance.
I note the thud of my heels on the sodden floor planks. Pause and look outside at Jerome, barely discernible through dirt-filmed glass.
“I’m amazed that men can live in conditions like this—free men—and not want to look out clean windows.”
Eddie doesn’t live here with the men he oversees, but often spends his final minutes of the day chatting with them. He stands as I arrive at the table.
“Ain’t a whole lot of time or ambition left, after a twelver in the fields.”
“Much as you nanny after these men, you might share with them that a man can bootstrap himself out of poor straights only by changing himself, and that starts with cleaning the fucking windows.”
Eddie exhales. “Sure, Mister McClellan. I’ll get after it. That what brings you here?”
“You look like a beat dog.”
“I am a beat dog.”
“Well, I’m going to Pittsburgh tomorrow. Back the day after.”
Eddie nods. “Running two sites tomorrow. Expect twenty gallon. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Twenty is fine. Don’t let them skip the doubler. If I get less than twenty, I’ll charge more.”
Eddie thumps the table with his thumb.
At the door I say, “Came by to tell you Bernadine’s leaving town.”
“What?”
“What I said.”
Eddie stands. “Where to—another your houses?”
“Not one of my houses.”
“She gone yet?”
“I give her an hour—two hours ago.”
“You give her? You run her off?”
“She’s a thief, Eddie. Shake her hand you got to count your fingers. Your pecker if you poke her.”
Eddie wipes his brow. He faces the wall and sits on the chair like it’s a raft adrift.
“I left her with money. Twenty years ago I’d have left her dead.” I turn part way out the door. “You was soft on her and I wanted you to know I did right by her, though she didn’t do right by me. And there’s yet plenty of whores to get soft on. Plenty better’n Bernadine.”
Eddie turns to me.
I say, “Two weeks back you said something about your brother?”
“He’ll be along tomorrow’s train.”
“Skilled with motorcars?”
“He’ll be ready to work.”
“Younger brother?”
A nod.
“What’s got him running up here, so far from the action?”
“I don’t know, Mister McClellan.”
I open the door, step to the landing, swat a moth that alights with the noise.
Eddie calls after me. “Brubaker found another fire pit.”
“I’ll be interested to see it.”
“Like any other. Coal seam’s close to the surface. Ground’s falling in all over the place.”
“A strange geologic phenomenon.”
I pass the charred remains of my shirt along the way toward my house. Standing on the porch, I look to the left through a neck of hemlock bordering my lawn and Hardgrave’s wheat fields. Almost invisible through the trees stands the Hardgrave house.
Inside I select a .500 Weatherby from the cabinet in the main room.
