Winding Stair (9781101559239) (14 page)

My belligerence increased as the level in the bottle of rye dipped downward. By dark the place was crowded with men, some of whom eyed me with hatred. It was exhilarating. With the bravado of youth and the whiskey dulling my sense of self-preservation, I stood at the bar declaiming on the fine art of fisticuffs and prizefighting, an endeavor I had never actually witnessed. What was worse, I began to cast aspersions on those stupid enough to sweat over oily locomotives, then waste their money betting on something they were not intellectually competent to understand. I used all the fine words I could recall from the University of Illinois and various law offices, browbeating them with terms beyond their comprehension. But they got the hang of most of it.

There was a scuffle near me along the bar and I realized one of the railroaders was trying to get at me—to emphasize, I thought drunkenly, how little I knew about fighting. Henryetta was beside me then, shouting that there would be no disturbance in her place. Big Rachael, against whom I had just wagered almost fifty dollars, gently escorted me toward the door, his hand on my back like a slab of bacon. They pushed me to the door and across the veranda and down the steps into the street, a large number of whorehouse customers immediately behind. It finally came to me that I might be in for a severe beating, and at that thought I began to laugh. I kept thinking that already darkness had come on, and a good bottle of rye not yet finished. The headlights of the switchyards engines looked like dingy mothballs.

But more serious considerations overtook me as the dark forms of railroaders closed around me. There would be no chance standing among them, for they could get at me from all sides, so I somehow moved over against the wall of Henryetta's, dancing along like the drunken man I was. My hat blew off in the still-gusting wind and for an instant I thought of the little Smith & Wesson pistol back in my room. Then they were on me. I struck the first blow, happily feeling knuckles against breaking teeth. Their fists hammered me. Blood was salty in my mouth and my nose was smashed but I managed to land a few more hard punches before their weight overcame me and I was on my knees.

I tried to cover my face with both arms, expecting them to finish me in a final rush. But nothing happened. The dark forms heaved around me, grunting and cursing, and I heard then the dull thud of something solid against flesh. They were falling back, two of them thrashing about on the ground like beheaded chickens. Over me was a formless shape, crowned by a wide-brimmed hat. At first, I thought it was Big Rachael, come out to prevent homicide, but then I saw the cake-knife blade of the hatchet in his hand.

“I don't want to kill nobody here,” Joe Mountain shouted, the hatchet swinging at his side like a metal snake's head. “But you men come in here again, I'll start using the edge on you.”

“You goddamned red nigger bastard,” someone yelled.

Joe Mountain pulled me to my feet, still watching the group around us. They shouted insults, but no one wanted to come within striking range of the French hatchet. The two men who had gone down from blows by the flat of the blade were up on wobbly legs, moving back among their fellows, screeching at us.

“You goddamned dirty red nigger son of a bitch.”

Joe Mountain pulled me toward the corner of the house, along the wall. My legs were weak as water, and he had to haul me like a limp sack of wheat grain. In the lights from the switch engines I could see his teeth shining.

We were around the house then, and there was no purpose in hurrying because the railroaders had already started back inside, still shouting their insults about Yankees and red niggers. We stumbled along through backyards, over one picket fence and through the gap in another. We came to the next block, on Commerce Street, and only then did Joe Mountain stop and look at me.

“You're bleedin' like a cut pig, Eben Pay,” he said. “You can't whip the whole Frisco railroad.”

“Like hell,” I said, laughing. I spat a mouthful of blood onto the sidewalk and the big Osage laughed with me.

“Come on. Cap'n got a place just up the street where he stays when he's in town. We better go and get you cleaned up.”

“Where the hell'd you come from, Joe?” I asked, stumbling along beside him. He held one hand under my arm to keep me from falling.

“The Osage reservation,” he said.

“I mean at the damned whorehouse. Where'd you come from?”

“The Osage reservation,” he repeated, grinning.

“Joe. Joe, I'm sure glad you did.” I grabbed a light pole and hung on for a moment and Joe Mountain waited, watching me bend over and throw up.

“Eben Pay, you puke more'n any man I know,” he said.

A long Commerce Street there were a number of boardinghouses, some of them new, others from before the war and now dilapidated and unpainted. In one of these, Oscar Schiller shared the basement room with a furnace, stacks of empty cardboard boxes, and worn-out bedsprings. It was a large room and the light from a single kerosene lamp on the night table beside Schiller's bed left deep shadows in all the corners and behind the furnace that squatted like a concrete-coated toad at one end. There were old ladder-back straight chairs discarded at various times by the people who lived above, and in addition to Schiller's bed, covered by a homemade quilt cover, there were two bare mattresses on the floor with rumpled blankets.

In the shadows of one corner, leaning back in a chair tilted against the wall, was a well-dressed black man, his dark hat set at a jaunty angle over one eye. From beneath his coat I could see the butt of a large pistol and on his vest a metal star large as a Mason jar lid. He watched me with an even stare, seeming not at all surprised to see my bloody face and red-stained clothes.

Oscar Schiller was sitting on his bed, his shirt off and the long flannel underwear showing dampness under the arms as he bent over the night table. There, arranged in neat rows, were five snuff cans, a box of snuff, and a sheet of paper. On the paper was a mound of white powder that looked like sugar. He was mixing snuff and the white powder in the snuff cans. I knew it was cocaine, the powerful stimulant so popular among much of Saint Louis high society. I had never tried it, but I knew it was expensive. Also on the night table was a cup of hot tea, and into this Schiller sprinkled a spoonful of the narcotic, stirred it, and took a long sip before looking up at me.

“I see you found him,” he said.

“He was at Henryetta's,” Joe Mountain said. “Trying to stomp a bunch of railroad men.”

“Is the local law looking for him?”

“No, it was just a friendly fight.”

It began to dawn on my befuddled mind that the big Osage had not appeared at the whorehouse by accident. Schiller had had him out looking for me. I was infuriated.

“I don't need you to change my pants,” I said.

“Evans told me you might need some watching,” he said, spooning his snuff and cocaine into the little cans. “When Joe came in from The Nations this afternoon, I sent him looking for you, Mr. Pay.”

“I don't need you to change my pants,” I repeated. “And I'm sick and tired of this ‘Mr. Pay' foolishness. ‘Mr. Pay' this, ‘Mr. Pay' that! You're old enough to be my father. Even my grandfather, maybe.”

Schiller watched me swaying, with Joe Mountain's hand under one of my arms to keep me from falling. In my mouth was the sour taste of vomit and blood.

“What would you like to be called?”

“Well, hell,” I said. My mind shot off on another tangent. “Why the hell do you use that stuff?”

“Cocaine? I don't see it does me any harm. It's not against the law. You know I don't do things against the law.”

From the corner, the black man laughed softly.

“Well, there's another damned thing,” I said, defensively. “I don't want anything more to do with all this crooked horseshit. All this confiscating Nations whiskey to sell here. And those damned railroad passes you get by threatening people and then selling them. I don't want any more of that horseshit. When we go someplace from now on, I'll pay my own way. I don't want any more of that railroad pass horseshit.”

Oscar Schiller sipped his tea and the corners of his thin mouth twitched, and for a moment I thought he might smile.

“He's rambunctious, ain't he, Cap'n?” Joe Mountain said.

“He's drunk and disorderly,” Schiller said. “But that's all right. From here on, we'll call you Eben, if that's what you want. And next time we take a train somewheres, you can pay your own way. I'll even sell you the tickets for half price.”

Joe Mountain and the black man laughed. Although I suspected Schiller might be serious, the situation suddenly struck me as ludicrous and I laughed, too. It hurt my swollen lips.

“This here is Burris Garret,” Schiller said, waving a hand toward the man in the corner. “He's a deputy marshal. He works out of Okmulgee, in the Creek Nation. Burris, take a look at that nose.”

Garret came over and shook my hand. He was almost as tall as I, a broad-shouldered man with a strong neck and a well-shaped head. He wore a close-trimmed beard that formed a black frame around his full-lipped mouth.

“Why don't you lay down over here?” he said. Joe Mountain led me to one of the mattresses and I managed to get down on it without falling. I lay there faceup and Garret bent over me, feeling my nose. His face was the color of drugstore chocolate syrup, glistening in the lamplight. The room was spinning and I held fast to the mattress with both hands. But then my head began to clear, and one of those moments of abrupt clarity came when Garret squeezed the bridge of my nose between his heavy fingers.

“You got a busted nose, Mr. Pay,” he said.

“Better not call him that,” Oscar Schiller said and Joe Mountain laughed again. Burris Garret chuckled and it sounded like air bubbles coming up from the bottom of a full rain barrel. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and ripped off one corner, rolling it like a cigarette. He pushed the cloth cylinder under my upper lip, pressing it hard against my gums. What was left of the handkerchief he took to a dry sink near the furnace, wet it in a water bucket there, and placed it across the bridge of my nose.

Joe Mountain was telling Schiller about looking along Garrison Avenue for me and finding me at Henryetta's. Not being allowed inside he had watched through the windows as my little escapade developed.

“Eben Pay was making bets on the prizefight,” he said. “I could hear him from outside. Was pretty noisy about it. He was betting against Big Rachael. Them railroad men was mad as wet yellow jackets.”

“Well, Joe, I suspect maybe you and me ought to go down there and show some displeasure about one of our men being rough-handled,” Oscar Schiller said. He rose and came over to me, pulling on a shirt. I was still hanging on to the bed, but in the whirling room I could see the marshal's face over me. Joe Mountain and Burris Garret walked outside the door and I could hear their voices as Schiller stood above me, buttoning his shirt.

“You sober enough to understand something needs saying?”

I mumbled that I was. He had his jacket then, and after slipping into it he took a handful of peanuts from a pocket and began to hull them, tossing the meats into his mouth and chewing. It was a long spiel, and I struggled to hear it all in my alcohol haze.

“Do you know how much money I make? Because I'm a district chief deputy, I get a hundred dollars a year flat rate. But other than that, I get paid like all the other deputies out of Parker's court. I get two dollars for every prisoner I bring in alive. He may be mean and try to shoot my ass off, but I get two dollars for him. If my posse has to kill him, I don't get a dime, and I have to pay for burying him. For each witness I bring to court, I get fifty cents. I get ten cents a mile travel. If I'm traveling with a prisoner, I get ten cents apiece for each one, the same for my scouts. That covers transportation and eats and lodging. The marshal of Parker's court gets thirty-five percent of everything I make, just like he does for all the deputies.

“Sometimes I get a reward on a prisoner convicted, paid by one of the railroads or a bank or even a community. I've got to gouge out all I can get otherwise. You may think a lot of what I do is dishonest. But let me tell you, in my day, before I joined Parker, I did a lot of things worse than what I do now. The Wyoming Cattleman's Association got a reward out for my hide right now. There are at least two counties in Texas would like nothing better than to get me in front of one of their jake-leg courts for appropriating various horses. I haven't had to kill a man since the war, but I've done about everything else.

“Most of the men who ride for Parker are no better than me. Some are a lot worse.”

Throughout all of this he had been looking down at me with those unblinking eyes shining behind his glasses, chewing slowly. Now he turned away and moved to an old trunk and took out the big nickel-plated revolver I'd seen in his hand in Eureka Springs. He slid it under his coat and started for the door, but he wasn't finished.

“That's one reason I hate these little pop-head no-accounts we're after now. Most of the people I chase are just like that. They haven't robbed any train or bank. They don't have any reward posted on 'em. So if we bring all of them in, I'll make about enough to buy a new pair of boots. Provided I don't get killed in the process.”

“Well, why the hell do you do it, then?” I asked.

“It's the best way I know to stay out of the pen or off the gallows,” he said. “Hell, Eben, if I wasn't doing this, I'd probably be robbing banks myself. So don't begrudge me a dollar here and there. And don't start that holier-than-thou business with me again. This isn't your high-society Saint Louis you're involved with. The people we chase ain't no band of angels. And neither are we.”