The High Divide (16 page)

As soon as May had left, Danny coughed. “We ain't just going to wait up here, are we?” he said.

“Depends on how're you doing,” Eli said. He'd been watching his brother fighting it off, rolling his shoulders and making little chicken jerks with his elbows, squeezing his big eyes shut and then popping them wide, as if trying to surprise himself into feeling better.

“I'll be all right.”

“You don't look it.”

“I'm thinking, what if he's here tonight. Here in town. What if he's got a mind to leave in the morning?”

“I was thinking the same,” Eli said.

“Let's go then.”

“You've got to
promise
me you won't get sick,” Eli said, hating himself for saying it, but not able to keep the words in his throat.

“I promise.”

And so they went down the back stairs that led to the the kitchen and then crawled on their hands and knees through the hall that passed an open door behind the big counter where May was perched on a high stool, facing away, toward the front. As they left by the alley door, the grandfather clock in the lobby marked the quarter-hour with a single chiming note, and Eli's stomach clamped up, scared. The night was cool and getting toward cold. A full moon, yellow as rendered fat, hung low and large in the east, glistening with a sheen that made Eli wonder if it was raining off that way. No rain here, though, and no wind either as the boys headed south toward the railroad tracks. They hadn't gone ten paces before they nearly fell into an old cistern with a low rock lip around its edge.

“Judas Priest!” Eli said, stumbling, but managing to steer his brother clear of the thing. They passed behind the buildings whose fronts they walked by earlier, including the livery where the rear window offered a profile of Church, elbows propped on his desk. He was gazing up in thought like a professor or a parson. Behind the saloon the air shook with the beating of hands on piano keys, and then a door swung open, a man and woman falling out of it, clinging together, the woman squealing in fright or pleasure, Eli couldn't tell, the man's arms around her from behind, his face buried in her mass of hair as he carried and pushed her to a stunted tree in the lee of the building where he spun her toward him and pressed her against its trunk with the whole length of himself—all this as the boys slid past, Eli urging his brother, “Come on, come on,” and pulling him along.

Outside the depot an old man, white beard to his waist and reeking of whiskey, sat hunched against a luggage cart, chewing on a leg of turkey. Asked about the boneman's whereabouts, he lifted the turkey leg and aimed it down along the track, east.

“His name's Slovin,” the old man said. “You'll be lookin for a round-roofed building, a barn really, north of the rails. That'd be his bone-house. Might find him there, but I wouldn't put money on it.”

“Where, then?”

The man leaned back and yawned, his mouth a gaping hole. A sharp, wet laugh barked out of it, the spray striking Eli's face. “That other house he's got back there, which he'll be keepin' tabs on.” The old man laughed again, but this time Eli backed off to a safe distance and stayed dry.

The line of the building's roof was like a giant wagon wheel half buried in the ground, a big sliding door taking up most of its high front wall and next to it a smaller door, on which Eli knocked. He knocked again, louder, this time raising what sounded like a voice from inside.

“He's in there,” Danny said, and lifted both fists and pounded on the plank door like it was the single thing standing between himself and his father. He stepped back and nearly collapsed, his shoulders crumpling, arms crossing in front of his chest. Eli grabbed hold of him to keep him on his feet.

“We've got to get you back,” he said.

Danny shook him off.

Then the door opened before them, and the boys found themselves staring at a bald man whose face was smooth and white, nearly featureless, his eyes mere holes, his mouth a straight cut above his soft chin. A man-sized garden slug was what he looked like.

“I hope your visit is propitious,” he said in a voice deeper than Eli would have guessed. “I'm occupied tonight.”

“Slovin?”

“I am.”

“We're looking for our father, who might be a client of yours.”

“Of what variety?”

“Bones,” Eli said.

“Ah.” Slovin turned and cast a look inside.

Eli, looking too, saw a lamplit desk and beyond it the star-salted sky—for the back wall of the barn was gone. The bone pile was eight or ten feet high and extended for at least thirty paces beyond the shelter of the building. There had to be enough to fill two or three boxcars, probably more.

“I have numerous clients,” Slovin said, and he turned and shuffled back inside, signaling for the boys to follow. He dropped himself into the chair behind his desk.

“Who is your father?” he asked.

Eli started describing him, but Slovin slapped the air.

“Give me his name!”

“Ulysses Pope,” Eli said.

“Pope, Pope.” Slovin's doughy hands formed a knot in front of his face, and it was hard to tell if his small eyes were open or closed. The smell coming from the bone pile reminded Eli of the dump behind Johnny's house back home, Johnny's dad the butcher, whose shop was on the riverbank where the carcasses had piled up for years. Slovin straightened himself in his chair and showed something like a smile. He tapped his fingers together. “I've seen him, yes. But God knows where he might have gone. Ulysses Pope—my, what a venerable name for a one-eared man.”

“He sold to you?”

“He did. And I paid him handsomely, more than his shit was worth. What are bones, after all?”

“When?” Eli asked him.

The man yawned, coughed into his fist, then took a neatly pressed handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and wiped his mouth before saying, “Two mornings back, I believe it was. No, yesterday.” He smiled. “I saw your father yesterday.”

Eli wanted to knock the ugly grin from Slovin's face, throw him off his chair and kick him—for the handkerchief he used and for his pale skin, for the haughtiness in his voice. But Slovin stood abruptly. “I know somebody who might be able to help us,” he said. “Why don't we go and see him.”

He led them outside along the bone pile, then across a short dirt yard to the door of a tiny, unpainted house. “Here,” he said, and ushered them inside.

It was a single room, lamplit, with a pair of upholstered chairs and a sofa with ornate carvings on the armrests. “Wing!” Slovin called out, “where in damnation are you?” He walked to a door at the rear of the house and stuck his head outside. “There you are,” he said, and stood aside to let the man enter—a Chinaman with a skinny mustache that drooped from both sides of his chin who was wearing a black skullcap. He looked at Eli and then Danny, and finally back at Slovin.

“Mr. Wing,” Slovin said, by way of introduction.

“Yes,” Wing said.

Slovin pointed at the floor. “Is Skinner here?”

“Yes,” Wing said.

“We need to see him.”

Wing nodded. Then he squinted at Danny and reached out his hand, pointing. “He okay? Don't look so good.”

“He's only tired,” Eli told him.

Wing retreated a couple of steps and crouched down on the floor. He grabbed hold of an inlaid handle and yanked on it, lifting a big trapdoor that revealed a stairway going down. A pungent odor rose up, sweet and flowery—but sharper than that, like something burning.

“Here we go,” Slovin said, and led the way.

Eli followed the Chinaman, and Danny took up the rear, his hands on Eli's shoulders. The steps were narrow, and at the bottom everyone waited in dim light to get their bearings, the smell so strong now that Eli's eyes watered. Soon he could make out bunks against the walls, right and left, two pallets high, figures lying in each one, and a single bunk straight ahead. Five people in all, some on their backs, apparently dozing, some on their sides or half propped up. One of the men groaned—not out of pain but pleasure, as if inspired by the taste or sight of something heavenly. Wing pointed straight ahead and moved toward the bunk at the end of the room, the man lying thereon full-bearded and large. He was smiling sleepily and sucking on a straight, narrow pipe two feet long with a doorknob-shaped bowl affixed to its side. In front of him on a short table was a glass contraption that contained a tarry substance smoldering above a redhot coal. The man's eyes were open, but they looked as shiny as wet tin. Eli wondered if he could see anything.

“What's he doing?” Danny asked.

Slovin laughed. “Taking a well-deserved holiday, but I think I can rouse him.” Slovin bent over and put his face right down close to the man. “Skinner,” he said, “you have a pair of young visitors.”

The man's eyes fluttered and his head reclined to one side.

“Skinner, you piece of dung, pay attention here.”

“Somebody's after me,” Skinner said.

Slovin reached out and rapped him on the shoulder, telling him, “That's right, you're the man of the hour.”

The man straightened up, moistened his lips with his tongue. “Are
you
the one?” he asked, pointing at Eli.

“Me and my brother. We're trying to find our dad. Ulysses Pope.”

Skinner glanced all around, scowling, as if a trap had been laid for him. He pushed a hand back through his long, snarled hair and lifted his nose like a dog scenting the country ahead.

Slovin prompted him: “You came into town yesterday with another man, both of you with bones to sell. Remember?”

“Ain't seen the fellow since,” Skinner said. “Not like we were friendly, or somehow related. But you know? This man, he had no ear on one side of his head. Right side—or it could have been the left.”

“Did Pope tell you how long he planned to stay around? Do you know where he might be headed?”

Skinner lifted a hand, paused. Then he whistled a few notes—not a melody, as far Eli could tell. It sounded more like a bird singing.

“You dreaming fat-ass,” Slovin said, and threw up his hands. But Wing bent down close and slapped Skinner's face hard enough to make his head snap.

“These boys here,” Wing said. “Their father. Okay?”

“Beautiful,” Skinner said, rubbing his beard.

“Okay!” Wing said, and took a fierce grip of one of Skinner's earlobes with a thumb and index finger.

The man winced, blinked, and sighed. He said, “Run into him on that trail down to the Cheyenne reserve. Me on the comeback, filling my cart, him with an ox that give up the ghost. Plumb dead, it was. And shitfire! That high load of his almost tipping over.”

Wing let go of the man's ear and stepped back.

“So you gave him a hand?” Slovin asked.

“Had me a pair of Percherons, yes, which I give him the use of one,” Skinner said. “Piece of pure providence for him that he run into somebody like me.”

Slovin chuckled. “At what cost to him?”

“My horses got the worst of the bargain, pulling twice what they should.”

Wing put his face right in front of Skinner's. “Where was he going? This Pope?”

At which Skinner bolted up straight in his bunk, eyes clicking open. “You think I'm a goddamn fortune-teller?” he shouted. “Well I ain't. Now leave me the hell alone, I paid you good money.” He'd set the pipe aside, but now he grabbed hold of it and clamped his teeth on its tip and drew in deeply, his eyes going back in his head then closing. He turned away toward the wall, and a tremble ran through him.

Slovin pointed a stubby finger at Eli. “I guess you heard him as well as I did.”

“We saw the livery man, Church, this afternoon,” Eli said, “and our father hasn't been around there, not since he rented the rig.”

Slovin huffed. He said, “You think he's going to buy himself a dead ox? I don't think so. We're done here, let's go.”

Yes,
Eli thought.
Let's get out of this crazy-house.

They left by way of the backdoor into a fenced yard filled with sheep, the mist of their breath hanging in the air. A stiff wind had blown up out of the north, and the sky was quilted with stars, wide, gauzy patches of them. Eli took Danny by the hand and led him to the gate, the sheep scattering before them and butting each other. “We'll find him in the morning,” Eli said, but his heart was dead in his chest, like a lump of meat. He filled his lungs with the cold air, trying to free up the choking tightness. Their father wasn't here, Eli felt sure of that. They'd missed him, probably by less than a day, and now Danny was going to be ill.

“I want Mother,” Danny said.

“I know that—but I'm going to take good care of you. And as soon as you're better, we'll put you on the train for home, all right? Everything is going to be fine. I promise you.”

Danny held on tight to Eli's coat as they walked, but his legs kept tangling up with each other. Eli stopped and bent down and hoisted him onto his back.

“I'm going home,” Danny whispered into his ear. Then: “I'm cold.”

By the time they reached the Drover House, Eli's hands ached and his eyes streamed from the cold. Danny's breath came in fast shivers. In the corner room upstairs they found Hornaday bent close over his desk, writing in a notebook. He was puffing on a fat cigar.

“Bitter out there, isn't it, boys,” he said. “And you didn't find your father.”

“No.” Eli lowered his brother into a corner, spread a blanket for him, and rolled him up in it. Danny was inert, as loose as a sack of grain.

“What's wrong with him?”

“He gets headaches. Bad headaches.”

“Just what we need, another sick one.” Hornaday pointed to the corner, and as if on cue a deep moan issued from the bed there. The bedsprings squeaked and jounced. Hornaday took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.