Winding Stair (9781101559239) (11 page)

“I figured that's who it might be,” he said. “And get a search warrant, too.”

“On a misdemeanor?”

“The commissioner will do it. You tell him what we're up to. If this is one of our men, we'll want a search warrant.”

“It's our man,” I said. “I'd bet my life on it.”

“Let's hope you don't have to.”

S
ummer tourists arrived in Eureka Springs on the North Arkansas railroad, leaving the cars at the deep valley station in the north end of town where the mountains pitched up sharply on every side. The June hardwood foliage was like a jungle, and through the leaves of trees standing in thick ranks up all the slopes showed the fine Victorian houses and hotels and the peaked roofs of grottoes built around the many springs. The streets were so narrow and winding that barely two wagons could pass, and all along the sidewalks were stone benches where pedestrians making the steep ascent to hotel row could rest and admire the spectacle of houses built almost on top of one another up the shoulders of surrounding hills.

The Carroll County courthouse and jail was only a few hundred yards along the valley from the railroad station. There, Oscar Schiller and I made ourselves known to the sheriff 's chief deputy. The sheriff, we were told, was seldom there.

The deputy was also jailkeeper. He was a genial man of such mild disposition and unimposing manner that he left little impression on us. Within five minutes of having met him, neither Oscar Schiller nor I could recall his name. He was willing to take us as guests of the county under the facade of a vagrancy charge so that we might sleep in his cells and eat at no expense to ourselves. At the same time, this gave him the opportunity to skim off the few pennies' profit a jailer of those times could make on the allowance paid for feeding overnight prisoners.

Johnny Boins was a well-known figure in the town. He had been variously involved with misdemeanors since old enough to walk. Once, his parents had sent him to a private school in Missouri where be vandalized the headmaster's library and assaulted another student twice his size and age with a paring knife from the academy kitchen. Lila's story of the playmate doused with kerosene and set fire was confirmed. The deputy said we might see that victim at any time on the streets of Eureka Springs, a twenty-year-old man now but still with the burn scars across his face. Johnny Boins, the deputy said, had always been a high-spirited boy. A genuine hell-raiser. During his tenure as town terror, he had knocked out the plate-glass windows in most of the stores along Main and Spring streets at different times. As he grew older, his tastes changed. He had been threatened a number of times with shotguns by irate fathers whose daughters he had dishonored and one he had allegedly impregnated.

“I don't reckon Johnny ever felt the sting of a willow switch,” the deputy said. “He was the Boinses only child, and they never could bring theirselves to whup him. He'd get in trouble and they'd pay his way out of it or, later, get theirselves a good lawyer.”

It was an exceptional situation in this deep mountain country, where the young were expected generally to toe the line or suffer the physically painful consequences. But because the Boinses were held in high regard in the community, and because they had the money to spend on him, Johnny was never in serious trouble with the law.

“His punishments run to strawberry shortcake and cream in his mother's kitchen,” the deputy said. “Far as I know, he ain't ever been whupped or convicted of a crime.”

We were closemouthed about the real reason for wanting Johnny Boins. The deputy was cooperative and promised to keep our presence in town to himself. It would be an easy matter to lose ourselves amongst all the flood of tourists when we needed to get out on the streets.

Our first day was given over to an examination of the town so a decision could be made on where Johnny Boins might be arrested. The deputy told us that in winter, when the tourists were not there, Johnny was usually away. But in summer he always returned. He worked part-time in his father's hardware store. Mornings he spent along hotel row, playing croquet with the girls who were in the Ozarks with their parents to enjoy the scenery and take the waters. In the evenings, he played poker with some of the young men tourists and sometimes caroused along the streets with them singing songs unfit for decent ears. And each day, too, after a morning session on the croquet courts and before taking his place among the nails and screwdrivers, he had a bath at the Olympia Bath House, located up the mountainside between the courthouse and hotel row.

Oscar Schiller gave no hint of what he was thinking as we strolled along the streets, but I knew he was figuring where best to arrest Johnny Boins. Too many of his colleagues had been shot to death trying to take a fugitive without planning ahead.

Moving along the steep sidewalks, we paused frequently at one of the benches and sat watching the people pass. The Boinses' hardware store was not difficult to find and we stationed ourselves across from it at about the time the deputy said Johnny Boins would come in to work. I had no way of knowing whether I would recognize him, having seen him only that one time. For some time, I had been trying to recall the features of both men, but as so often happens, the more I tried to picture them in my mind, the muddier became my memory of their faces.

It was half past one when Oscar Schiller and I began our vigil across the street from the Boinses' store. We waited almost an hour. When Johnny Boins finally walked around the corner of the winding street and along the sidewalk toward his father's store, I recognized him at once. He was dressed in a tailored vested suit and wore a small straw hat fashionable among the tourists and much unlike the one I had seen him wearing before. He had a smile on his face, showing fine white teeth, and he tipped his hat to all the passing ladies. Even from across the street, I could hear the metal taps on the heels of his patent leather pumps.

“There he is,” I said.

Schiller fixed his stare on the tall figure across the street. I found it somehow disappointing that he showed none of the excitement that made my own chest pound. He said nothing until after Johnny Boins had disappeared into the hardware store.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It's him.”

“He's some dandy, ain't he?”

“He's the one I saw with Milk Eye on the station platform.”

Abruptly, Schiller rose. “All right. Let's see about that bathhouse.”

The Olympia Bath House looked like a Moorish mosque. Like so many of the buildings here, it was constructed of native limestone. There were columns in front along the sidewalk, and a huge dome above, plated with brass, turned green now and aswarm with pigeons and sparrows. Inside was a lavish waiting room or lobby with a desk at the rear beside a wide door that led back into the baths. The clerk explained that there were immersion baths with cold, warm, and hot water, a Turkish section, a massage parlor, and a sundeck in back for lounging. Immediately behind the reception desk was a long room, lockers built along either wall and padded dressing benches down the center aisle. The fee was fifty cents including a towel, each additional one costing a dime. Oscar Schiller allowed me to pay for both of us, explaining that I could submit a voucher to Evans for reimbursement.

In the locker room, we undressed, wrapping ourselves in the towels. In the instant I saw Schiller's body the impression of a frail, bony child came to mind. His ribs showed and the joints of his spine pressed against his pale skin like the knobby stalks of the hollyhocks we had seen in the Thrashers' backyard. Along his right side was an ugly scar, and I remembered Evans's story of his Civil War exploits. He kept his back to me as he pulled the towel around his hips, as though ashamed to be seen naked.

We did not bathe, but passed through all the rooms with their white enamel tubs, brass fittings, massage tables like long chopping blocks. There were at least two dozen men there, relaxing in the steamy rooms, taking the sun in wicker chairs where it streamed through high cathedral windows. Oscar Schiller looked at everything, mentally marking each door and window and alcove. By the time we had returned to the locker room, damp from the steam, I knew he had everything stenciled in his mind, like the blueprint of a floor plan.

“Everything comes back through this room,” he said while we dressed. “And it's least crowded, too. I don't want a lot of other people around in case there's shooting. Killing innocent bystanders can be embarrassing. We'll take him here, when he comes out, naked. A man caught without his clothes isn't in any frame of mind to resist.”

 

 

It rained during the night and by morning the streets were clean and fresh-smelling. The honey locust was blooming up the hillside above the courthouse, the blossoms like popcorn balls, delicate and sending their sweet smell through the town. By midmorning, I was out of the courthouse and wandering the streets. I bought a china dog for Jennie, white with the words
Eureka Springs, Arkansas. 1890
printed along one flank. In a small bookstore I bought a copy of Blackmore's
Lorna Doone
although I had a copy in my room at the hotel in Fort Smith. Well before noon, I was at the spring across the street from the Olympia Bath House. Within a few moments after I took a seat and began to pretend reading, Oscar Schiller showed himself at the corner of the bank building, as we had planned.

I could imagine Johnny Boins, on hotel row, playing his morning game of croquet with the young ladies all dressed in bright cotton frocks and undoubtedly wearing bonnets to avoid freckling in the warm spring sun. People passed along the street, many of them walking and some stopping at my spring to drink the water from one of the many public cups sitting in neat rows along the ledges of the bluff where the water came out. I waited, the sweat beginning to run down through the hair on the back of my neck. The sun rose higher, warming as it did. At exactly noon, I heard the click of Johnny Boins's heels along the sidewalk from up the ridge.

He was smiling as he came into view. For an instant, his eyes fixed on me and my throat closed. But he gave no sign that he had ever seen me. I sat with my head lowered, my wide hat brim shading my eyes. I could hear his heels tapping toward me, then crossing the street toward the bathhouse. I looked again and he was going into the Olympia, his head up, his back straight like a drum major passing in review. I allowed a few moments before I rose, my knees wobbly. Oscar Schiller was watching me from the corner of the bank. Even at that distance, I could feel his eyes on me. I walked across the street and into the lobby of the bathhouse.

Johnny Boins had disappeared into the locker room. I sat down in one of the lobby's overstuffed chairs, and waited long enough for him to undress and move back to the baths. I could feel the weight of the pistol in my shoulder holster and for a moment wondered if I could hit anything with it. I promised myself that once back in Fort Smith I would go down to the river each day and practice on bottles and cans. The palms of my hands were moist with sweat.

The locker room was deserted when I went in. I found an empty stall midway in the room and slowly undressed, placing my clothes carefully on the shelf with the Smith & Wesson hidden beneath, its butt easily at hand. I sat for what seemed an eternity before Schiller came in and started taking off his clothes. I could feel the warrant, under the folds of my towel, becoming damp from my hand.

We waited. Time seemed to stand still. I tried to put my mind on other things. At the University of Illinois, I could recall at examinations waiting for the professor to arrive with the forms. Always, when the papers were placed before us, the minutes would speed past. But the waiting beforehand was forever.

Bathers passed through the room; conversation swelled, and laughter. They spoke of the bass and other fish to be caught in the local streams. They talked of the excellent string quartet at the Basin Hotel. They talked of the overwhelming scent of honeysuckle along the sidewalks of the town where the vines clung to the dry walls and latticework of homes.

Suddenly, he was there. He walked from the baths wiping his hair with a towel. Another bather was passing him on the way in and they spoke, Johnny Boins smiling. He came along the room, naked, toweling his head and humming. I found myself thinking that Lila was right. He was a handsome man. He paused at his locker a few feet from mine, looked at me, and nodded. Before he could reach for his clothes, I was up, thrusting out the warrant.

“Mr. Boins, I'm from the United States attorney's office in Fort Smith. I have a warrant for your arrest.”

His head jerked around and his mouth opened for an instant as he stared at me and the paper I held out to him. His lips went tight and he was moving so fast it took me unawares. He heaved up one of the dressing benches, throwing it against my side. A wooden bucket for used towels was in his hand as I staggered back against the line of lockers, stunned by the heavy bench, the warrant fallen to the floor. He raised the heavy bucket to strike.

From the corner of my vision there came a spidery form, white and frail. Oscar Schiller, moving soundlessly with bare feet on the stone floor, leaped in close to Johnny Boins as the bucket went up. His arm whipped back and down like the quick stroke of a scythe and I saw a heavy pistol in his hand slam hard against Johnny Boins's head. Boins fell against a locker and collapsed back into the middle of the floor, knocking over a second dressing bench. I stumbled to my own locker and drew out the pistol, cocking it and pointing it at Johnny Boins's form. He was sitting up, his face bloody. Over him, looking absurd in his nakedness, stood Oscar Schiller, his revolver cocked and thrust into Johnny Boins's face. It was the largest revolver I had ever seen, jutting out from the tiny hand, but it did not waver.