Past All Dishonor (10 page)

He motioned with his hand, and two miners stepped up, that I hadn’t seen before, and began tying me down, with rope. I fought and they fought back. I screamed at Hale, told him he’d be better off if I was dead, on account of what I knew, and why didn’t he make them let me alone? He screamed back, and I got the point a little bit then. Paddy and Williams had been paying him a few visits at night and he had just prayed them out of there when now I’d be teaming up with them, and the three of us, he figured, would really be tough. So he helped tie. And then all of a sudden they let go, and she was standing there, and my heart gave the same jump it had given in Sacramento, because she had that same look on her face, and I knew neither they nor fifty more like them could do anything to me now, because she wouldn’t let them. How she got there I didn’t at that time know, but it was easy to figure, later on. The house entrance was on B Street, but you climbed stairs in a long tunnel of a staircase to the rooms, which backed up on A. The boardwalk ran right past the window of my room, and she had just stepped off it to the sill, and then to the floor.

She looked things over, and said: “Thanks ever so much, doctor, for what you’re doing to Roger, but I’ll take charge of him from now on, if you don’t mind.”

“And who are you?”

“Just a friend.”

“Do you know what this man has the matter with him?”

“I see it’s his hand. I’m curing him up.”

“Not in my house you’re not.”

That was Mrs. Finn, who had been looking Morina over. One of the miners or somebody must have whispered something, because she cut loose with a spiel that sounded like something she had learned up for church, all about the respectable house she ran, and how nobody like Morina could come in it, even over her dead body. She was one of those dumb, worked-out women that naturally has it hard no matter where she goes. She had run a lunchroom for rivermen in St. Louis before she married Finn and came with him to the minefields. He put down so much booze she got religion, and after he died in Grass Valley she came on to Nevada and opened up the same old rivermen’s joint, except here it was miners.

She was hooking it up good when Morina stepped over to her, her hips swinging and her eyes showing that same cold glitter I’d seen there before. Right in the middle of a holler Mrs. Finn broke off, and when the doctor wigwagged her she went out in the hall with him and for a whole minute they were whispering to each other, while Morina looked from one to the other in the room, trying to figure out what was being said. When they came back Mrs. Finn nodded to the doctor, and he did the talking. “You’re willing to assume responsibility for this man, knowing as I now warn you that his injury will probably prove fatal unless he submits to the surgery I have recommended?”

“I told you once I am.”

“You know you’re not allowed out of this room?”

“If that fool says so, it’s her house.”

“You’ll provide him with what he needs?”

“I will.”

“You—”

“I’ll put you out if you don’t go. Now git.” By that time she had spotted my gun, where I kept it, hanging by the straps to a bedpost. She walked over, unstrapped it, let it swing over her arm. They got out of there fast, and when they were gone she hung the gun up again and came over to the bed.

“Roger, I got to tell you something.”

“How’d you know what they were up to?”

“Oh, things get around.”

“You mean you keep track of me?”

“My little piece of live bait, I got to watch him.”

“You mean you love me?”

“I mean I got something to tell you.”

“Then tell it.”

“I know a salve I can make.”

“I need it, God knows.”

“It’s a conjure salve, Roger.”

“All right.”

“You know what that is, a conjure salve?”

“If you make it, it’s all right with me. I know you won’t let me die. And if I do die, I’ll know, from how you came here today, that you love me.”

“Conjure, that’s in cahoots with the devil.”

“I said all right.”

“It’s like you pray that somebody gets well, only you pray to the devil, and you got to give him a live snake, and then while you pray you got to put the snake in the salve, and then you get well.”

I thought a long time about that, if you can say you think when your ears are ringing with fever, and your hand is pounding like a sledge hammer was mashing it up, and you’re so sick you want to throw up even when you haven’t got anything to throw up. It seemed so funny, that no sooner she did something that made me want to stand up and cheer, and brought me so close to her it seemed we were made to be together, than here would come this other thing, this side of her that was sin, or evil, or whatever you’d want to call it. If a snake went in the salve, what did I care? I’d eaten five hundred eels that I caught off Bay Ridge, and that part meant nothing to me. But what kind of Louisiana swamp drip did she have in her blood that made her get the devil in it? Once more I said all right, but for one second it swept over me to tell her no, I’d die before I had any part of the devil, because even if I didn’t believe he was there, she did, and that made it wrong.

What woke me was a drum-beat, and when I opened my eyes it was night, and there by the wash-stand was the biggest, blackest man I had ever seen, with a broken nose that was mashed flat all over his face, nothing on from the waist up, and a little drum in front of him, made from a gourd with a skin stretched over it, that he kept touching with the tips of his fingers. Later I found out he was named Scott, and was the husband of Mattiny, the cook down at the house on D Street. In a minute she stepped through the window, just as black as he was, with a red tignon over her head and big gold rings in her ears, and carrying a pot. She crossed the room, and all of a sudden her face was in the light, and I noticed the smell of rock oil. I looked, and there on the floor, kneeling in front of a big lamp, was Biloxi, whispering to herself, and motioning for the pot. Mattiny set it on top of the lamp, on a little attachment that held things that were to be heated. Then Biloxi closed her eyes and began waving her hands.

Outside, a board creaked in the hall. I opened my mouth to tell them to watch out, somebody was out there, probably the whole damned boarding house. But Mattiny went over and listened, so they knew about it.

I must have gone Under again, because next thing I knew a chill was going up my back like cold feathers had tickled it, from a sound in the room you’ll never forget if you hear it once, and in that God-awful country you hear it often: the rattle of a rattlesnake. It’s dry, like the rustle of old leaves, but it gets louder, and all of a sudden it’s going right into your belly, or wherever you keep your guts. I opened my eyes, and across the ring of light on the ceiling something was waving. I looked toward the lamp, and Morina’s face was right over it, white, and screwed up hard. The pot I couldn’t see and her hands I couldn’t see, but then came a hiss and the bang of a pot lid, and for three seconds the roar of all hell boiling. Then it was quiet, and her face relaxed, and she nodded. Mattiny came into the light beside her, and lifted off the pot.

“Roger.”

“Yes, Morina.”

“This is going to hurt.”

“Then send them away, Biloxi and the others. I can’t stand much more. If I bawl or something, I don’t mind if it’s only you, but I don’t want anybody else to see it.”

“There’s nobody here but me.”

“Then go ahead.”

“It has to go on hot.”

“If that’s all, I’ll be all right.”

“Boiling hot.”

“I won’t mind.”

I almost hit the ceiling when she put it on, a whole big gob of it in the middle of the cloth, but I clenched my teeth and didn’t holler. When it was bound on tight it got worse, and she held my head to her breast, and I could feel her tears falling down over my cheek. After it had been on a few minutes it had to be changed, and each time was worse than the last, and each time she held me to her was sweeter than the last, and I could feel it stronger, the way she loved me. And then one time after she bound on some more of it, my hand gave three or four throbs, like a knife had been stuck in it and I told her I thought something had happened. She took off the bandage and washed off the salve, and looked. Then she told me to double up my hand as far as I could. Before I half moved my fingers it squirted across and hit the wall. “That’s it, Roger! That’s what it wanted!”

“Christ, but it stinks.”

“Never mind the stink, let it come!”

She bathed it and squeezed it and pulled strings out of it all that day. And then around sundown the pain, the fever, and the fear were all gone, and I sank down in a deep, wonderful sleep.

Around dawn I was thirsty, and reached out to pour myself a drink of ice water from the pitcher she had set on a little bench beside the bed. She came over and did it, and held the glass while I drank, and sat down and felt my head. “You slept nine hours.”

“I feel so much better.”

“Your hand hurt?”

“None any more. It’s better. I can feel it.”

“Later on I’ll bandage it.”

“Tough on you.”

“Oh, I’m all right. I caught some sleep in the chair, and Biloxi’s feeding me wonderful. Your breakfast’ll be along directly.”

“What do you call this dress?”

“Gingham.”

“Never saw you in that before.”

“I’ve been working.”

“Makes you look like a young girl.”

She smoothed my pillow and patted my cheek and gave me a little kiss on the forehead. I put my arm around her and half pulled her down beside me. We lay that way a long time, she running her fingers through my hair, me touching her and smelling her and feeling how warm and soft she was. I kissed her on the cheek, just a little brush of a kiss. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t come closer either. I kissed her again, a little nearer the mouth. “No.”

“Just one.”

“If you ask for more, I’ll move.”

I kissed her, then held her tight and kissed her again, and again after that. I could feel her lips get hot under mine. “Roger, I don’t want you to kiss me that way.”

“Why not? We love each other, don’t we?”

“I’ve told you why not.”

I held her tighter, and her lips got hotter, and I knew I was going to have her. But when I did, she cried, and kept on crying.

W
HEN HE FOUND OUT HE
could trust me, Hale wanted me back, because things went sour under the new super, and he felt I brought him good luck. That was why he worked on Mrs. Finn that I could stay there, and told her Morina was just a girl I had known back home, and I wouldn’t be surprised he said she was my cousin. Anyhow, I didn’t have to look up any new place, and he began making the best propositions I ever had, beginning with a raise, and maybe some stock, and whatever I had in mind. But those three or four weeks, when I needed a new bandage every day, I had gone down to D Street, and when I didn’t mention what had happened, she didn’t, and we’d sit on the back porch in the afternoon, and look down at the trees in the flats four or five miles away, the only patch of green you could see anywhere around. And sometimes Biloxi would sit with us, and if Renny came out there they’d talk French, but mostly he stayed inside and practiced the piano. The square one was gone now, and a big grand was in its place. Sometimes Haines would come over, and if he was sober, and they were doing Italian selections with high notes in them, he could shoot a nice piece of silver, I’ll say that for him. And the other girls would come out there, but I didn’t care much for them. Two or three of them, Reiner’s Mexican girl Lola, Chinchin the half-Chinese girl, and Pat Kelly the New York chorus girl, were pretty enough, but dumber than hell and they fought a lot. I was with Morina, though, that was the main thing, and I’d try to forget what went on at night, and for an hour or two be happy. In her room was a photograph of an hombre in uniform, and when I asked who he was she said: “My husband.” It was the first I knew she’d been married to a Venezuelan general in Caracas, and only came to Virginia City when he got killed in a street fight.

But I wanted those afternoons, and if I went back with Hale I couldn’t have them. I kept thinking about my shooting, and one evening I went back to the same old gully to see how it felt to use a gun again. But at the first shot, what that stock did to the palm of my hand almost knocked me over with pain. The next night, though, I tried it with a little leather guard I had a shoemaker make me, and it was better, though the gun popped off it like a pickle off a fork. When I got a little soft leather pad, and a strap to hold it in place, I could hardly feel anything at all, and I began the same old schedule I’d followed before, popping at playing cards to start off with, and then when the rabbits came out, drawing and wheeling and firing at them, for speed. In a week or two I was as good as I ever was, and marched myself down to the Esperanza, one of the big gambling halls on C Street, the morning after the lookout quit, on account of a little trouble with a dissatisfied customer, horizontally. The proprietor was named Rocco, the son of an Italian charcoal-burner on the Sierra. He didn’t pay much attention when I applied for the job. “You look a little young to me, son.”

“It’s a young fool’s job, isn’t it?”

“It’s a shooting job.”

“Anything around here you particularly want shot?”

“Out back, as it happens, there is.”

“Then let’s go out back.”

“I’ll get you a gun.”

“I might have one, if I looked.”

He tried to see where I was carrying it, but by now it lay so snug you could hardly see it. He led the way out back, and tiptoed to a privy that had a board fence running back of it and a lattice built around it. Then he picked up a rock and heaved and it hit the privy like a grenade or something. Three rats jumped out the backside of it, and began running along the bottom of the board fence toward a pile of crates in one corner. I plugged them before they’d gone five feet. He stared at the bunches of blood and fur that were kicking around, and then he turned to me, but by now I had the gun back in the holster. “... You spit that stuff, or what?”