So you might of heard that my historical novel Earth's Imagined Corners is out, and you're saying to yourself, "Self, I'm not sure. Historical is not usually my thing." Or "Do I want to invest hours of my time in this book?" So here's just a taste, a teaser, to see if you might like the whole meal. Tomorrow, more about the Round Earth series, and Friday I'll talk about what's next.
Chapter 1
Anamosa, Iowa, 1885
Sara Moore should have nothing to fear this week. She had
been meticulous in her entering into the ledger the amounts that Minnie the
cook requested she spend on groceries. She had remembered, just, to include her
brother Ed’s purchase of materials to mend sister Maisie’s doll house and to
subtract the pickling salt that she had purchased for sister Esther but for
which Esther’s husband Gerald had reimbursed her. She stood at her father’s
shoulder as he went over the weekly household accounts, and even though her
father owned Moore Grocer & Sundries from which she ordered the family’s
groceries, he still insisted she account for the full price in the ledger. “No
daughter of mine,” he often said, though sometimes he would finish the thought
and sometimes his neatly trimmed eyebrows would merely bristle.
Despite the buttressing of her corset, Sara hunched forward,
somewhat reducing her tall frame. She intertwined her fingers so that she would
not fiddle with the gathers of soft navy wool in her overskirt, and she tried
not to breathe too loudly, so as not to bother him, nor to breathe too deeply,
in order to take in little of the cigar smoke curling up from his elephant-ivory
ashtray on the hulking plantation desk.
As always, the heavy brocade curtains armored Colonel
Moore’s study against the Iowa day, so the coal oil lamps flickered in their
brackets. Per instructions, Sipsy the maid lit them early every morning,
snuffed them when he left for the grocery, lit them again in anticipation of
his return at seven, and then snuffed them again after he retired. It was an
expense, surely, but one that Sara knew better than to question. The walls of
the study were lined with volumes of military history and maps of Virginia and
Georgia covered in lines, symbols, and labels carefully inked in Colonel
Moore’s hand. In its glass case on the bureau rested Colonel Moore’s 1851, an
intricately engraved pistol awarded to him during the War of Northern
Aggression. Sipsy dusted daily, under stern directive that not a speck should
gather upon any surface in the room.
Sara’s father let out a sound between an outlet of breath
and a groan. This was not good. He was not pleased. Sara straightened her
shoulders and took a breath and held it but let her shoulders slump forward
once more.
“My dear,” he said, his drawl at a minimum, “your figures,
once again, are disproportionate top to bottom. And there is too much slant, as
always, in their curvatures. I urge you to practice your penmanship.” His tone
was one of indulgence.
Inaudibly, Sara let out her breath. If he was criticizing
her chirography, then he had found nothing amiss in the numbers. The accounts
were sound for another week. Later, when he checked the numbers against the
accounts at the grocery, there was less of a chance that she had missed
something.
He closed the ledger, turned his chair, and with both hands
held the ledger out to her. She received it palms up and said, “I will do
better, Father.”
“You would not want to disappoint to your mother.” His drawl
was more pronounced.
So he had regretted his indulgence and was not satisfied to
let her go unchecked. His wife, Sara’s mother, had been dead these five years,
and since then Sara had grown to take her place, running the household,
directing the servants, and caring for six year-old Maisie. Ed needed little
looking after, as he was older than Sara, though unmarried, and Esther, the
oldest, was married with two daughters and farm of her own.
Sara straightened her shoulders again and hugged the ledger
to her chest. “Yes, Father,” she said and turned and left the room, trying to
keep her pace tranquil and unhurried. She went to the kitchen, where Minnie had
a cup of coffee doused with cream and sugar awaiting her. Minnie gave her an encouraging
smile, and though Sara did not acknowledge what went unsaid between them—one
must shun familiarity with the servants—she lifted her shoulders slightly and
said, “Thank you, Minnie.” Minnie, with the round figure and dark eyes of a
Bohemian, understood English well, though she still talked with a pronounced
accent, and Sara had only heard her speak the round vowels and chipped
consonants of her native tongue once, when a delivery man indigenous to her
country of origin walked into the kitchen with mud on his boots. Sara tucked
the ledger in its place on a high shelf and then allowed herself five minutes
of sipping coffee amid the wonderful smells of Minnie’s pompion tart. Then she
rose, rinsed her cup, and applied herself to her day.
The driver had Father’s horse and gig waiting, as always, at
twenty minutes to nine. As Father stretched his fingers into his gloves,
pulling them tight by the wrist leather, he told Sara, “When you come at noon,
I have something unusual to show you.”
“Yes, Father,” she said.
It seemed odd that he would concern her with anything to do
with business. He left her to the household. He had long tried to coerce Ed
into the business, but Ed’s abilities trended more toward the physical. He was
a skilled carpenter, though Father kept a close rein on where he took jobs and
whom he worked for. All talk of renaming the business Moore & Son had been
dropped when Father had recently promoted the young man who was his assistant,
Chester O’Hanlin, to partner. Mr. O’Hanlin had droopy red muttonchops and a
body so long and thin he looked a hand-span taller than he really was, which
was actually a bit shorter than Sara. Mr. O’Hanlin didn’t talk much, either,
and he seemed always to be listening. He held himself oddly, cocking his head to
one side, first one way and then the other, his small dark eyes focusing off to
the left or right of the speaker. His nose, long and wedge-shaped, seemed to
take up half his face. “Chester, the Chinaman,” Maisie called him outside of
his presence because of the way he stooped and bobbed whenever their father
entered the room.
The subject dispatched, Father nodded and then strode out,
mounted the gig, and nodded to his driver, who urged the horse to a brisk trot.
The rest of Sara’s morning was spent as it always was,
planning menus with Minnie and ordering the necessaries for them, overseeing
Sipsy the maid and the cleaning of the house, double-checking that the laundry
was done to satisfaction and sufficiently pressed, planning the construction of
new clothing for the family, arranging the at-least weekly supper parties of
Father’s, and many other things, all the while keeping a watchful eye on Maisie
so that Father never felt the need to punish her. This morning, because the
nursemaid Clara had her day off, Maisie was in the kitchen attempting to help
Minnie, which meant that she picked up tasks, soon became bored with them, and
put them aside as quickly as Minnie could invent them, so Sara soon diverted
her to a chair near the stove with the thread and needle of her sampler.
At twenty minutes to noon, the groom had Sara’s bay mare,
Miss Bailey, saddled and waiting for her. Father had suggested to Sara that she
use the smaller trap pulled by Old Methuselah, the swayback blue roan gelding,
but Sara preferred the singularity of riding sidesaddle on Miss Bailey.
Although the elderly groom still prepared the mare and helped Sara to mount, he
didn’t have to do the heavy work of harnessing, which made Sara feel slightly
better about the effort, and once she reached her destination, she didn’t have
the worry about where to park or Old Methuselah’s habit of working his rein
from the post and wandering off to find a bit of grass to graze.
Sara checked that Sipsy the maid was looking after Maisie
and picked up the packet of Father’s lunch from Minnie in the kitchen and
tucked it into the saddlebags. She scratched Miss Bailey’s withers near the
pommel of her saddle, so that the horse leaned toward her a bit. “Feel good,
Bails?” she said. With the groom’s help, Sara mounted and settled her legs into
the pommels, intent on riding the couple of miles down the hill into the heart
of Anamosa and to the grocery.
The Moore house sat on a hill overlooking the village of
Anamosa, the name of which meant “white fawn,” so dubbed for a sweet Indian
child. The name had recently been changed from Lexington, to avoid confusion
with the plenitude of other post stops so named. The Moore house overlooked the
house of Colonel William T. Shaw—Father made sure of that. Colonel Shaw had
been for the North, and the story goes that when Father came to settle he made
sure his house, though of plantation style rather than the gothic turreted
style of the house of “that scoundrel from Iowa,” as Father called him, rested
above his. Sara did not remember the move, as she was very young at the time.
Nowadays, when Father met the prosperous colonel during the course of his daily
business, he would sometimes extol the virtues of southern cooking, as Colonel
Shaw preferred the cuisine of New England, having grown up in Maine. Colonel
Shaw, in his turn, would sometimes assert the filthiness of the habit of cigar
smoking.
As Sara rode into town, the midday heat of the May sunshine
was relieved by the breeze down the valley and the fluttering shade of the
stately oaks. She could smell the mud of the Wapsipinicon River, named for
Indian lovers who leapt to their deaths from the bluffs, and, faintly, the
smokestack of the industries at the Additional Penitentiary on the far side of
the settlement. The leaves rustled, a faraway train gave a low series of hoots,
and birds sang madly and gaily in the trees. Miss Bailey’s smooth-but-fast
Tennessee Walker gait was as gentle as a drift in a canoe. Sara passed the
modest house of the widow who had taught her her letters, next door to a large
German family whose garden took up most of their plot and whose plentiful
blonde children played in the road and waved to her as she passed. She joined
the main road behind the long freight wagon with its team of six, heads bent in
duty, and then turned off the side street to her father’s store.
Sara rode around to the back alley. The way was partially
blocked by a tall cart pulled by mules, which was being unloaded into the
grocery by a group of men. Three of the men, including the one obviously the
foreman, were brown-skinned and spoke to each other in an undulating language
full of stops and starts, but the fourth was a light-skinned man about Sara’s
height in worn and dusty clothes. Something about him caught Sara’s attention
and held it. Besides obvious differences of origin and skin tone, something
otherwise set him apart from the other three, working alongside them though he
was. The man was tall and stout, with a broad chest and barrel legs. Sara
couldn’t tell how old he was. His shoulders sloped like an old man who had
carried heaviness for a long time, but his face was unlined and youthful about
the jaw. He had light-colored eyes, a mustache, and brown hair under his hat
that was just long enough to curl around his ears, which stuck out a little.
Sara dismounted at the end of the alley—why challenge the
fates and have the horse spook at the men’s comings and goings—and led Miss
Bailey past the cart to the back of the store and wrapped the rein around the
hitch rail. Out of habit, though, Sara did not think to knot the rein but
rather just flipped it around the pole, as Miss Bailey had never run off once
in all the time she’d ridden her. She murmured and patted Miss Bailey and
retrieved the packet of lunch from the saddlebag and took it inside, leaving
the horse to slump her hind end into resting position, one back leg bent with
its hoof resting on tiptoe. When Sara entered her father’s office, he was bent
to his books, but he immediately stood. His stance, normally ramrod straight at
right angles to God’s green earth, today canted a bit forward onto the balls of
his feet.
“Ah, Sara,” he said, “I’ve been wondering when you would
arrive.”
Sara glanced at the case clock on the shelf, which read
three minutes to twelve. She was even a bit early, just a bit. “I’m here,
Father,” she said. She hesitated, glanced at her father, and went to the
sideboard and began to unpack his lunch, as she always did.
“No, now,” he said, “leave that to me. I would like you to
search out Chester. He has that commodity we spoke of earlier.”
Her father never said, “Leave that to me.” He expected her
to perform her duties efficiently and up to inspection. Father believed
everyone earned their place in this world with an array of duties and few
rights. He also took as granted that his place in the world included the
unquestioning obedience of his family and staff. With the discipline of a
well-run army, they took care of him so that his energies could focus on his
ventures.
Despite her surprise, Sara said, “Yes, Father,” and left the
packet on the sideboard.
“Now go find Chester.” He smiled and nodded.
“Oh, yes. Yes sir,” she said and turned and left his office.
Almost immediately, she met Mr. O’Hanlin, as if he had been listening at the
door, though she knew that that was something Father would not have tolerated.
Mr. O’Hanlin wore a wine-red cravat and an ornate vest of green under his gray
flannel coat. Now, he bowed to her and smiled so widely Sara thought his lips
would crack.
“My dear Miss Moore,” Mr. O’Hanlin said, his Irish lilt a
bit broader than usual. He said it again, as if trying it on: “My dear Miss
Moore. What a pleasure it is to see you this fine day.”
“It is a fine day, Mister O’Hanlin,” was all Sara could
think to return. Something bothered her about the way he looked at her. His
usual gaze fell to the left or to the right or skittered around the edges, but
today he looked under his short red eyelashes right into her face—upwards, as
it happened, since he was a bit shorter than she. Well, not exactly into her
face, but rather as if he were looking through her, looking at an idea of her
instead of the flesh and blood woman that she was. She was tempted to glance
behind to see what he was peering at.
“My father said something about a commodity?” Her shortness
bordered on rudeness, but she felt the need to find out whatever it was Father
wanted from her.
“Ah, yes, the commodity.” His focus shifted to the wall.
“You will not believe the sumptuousness of it. We recently contracted with a
supplier who contracted with a broker out west who contracted with a ship from
the ocean isles.”
Mr. O’Hanlin stepped back and indicated she should precede
him out the back door. As they circled round outside and down the back steps
that led to the basement storeroom, Sara caught sight of that man, that dusty
light-skinned man from the street, who was hefting a huge carton, his broad
back quivering with effort. She glanced from him back to Mr. O’Hanlin, whose
lavish clothing contrasted so sharply with that man’s tattered coat, its blunt
sleeves coming well short of the man’s wrists and the shoulder seams yearning
to part.
In Sara’s mind, the comparison did not bode well in Mr.
O’Hanlin’s favor. Though she knew nothing of character of the man on the
street, she noted his determination at the job of hefting this carton, the
contradiction held in the question of his age, his strength, which at this
moment seemed pure and unadulterated and uncomplicated. Even the shabbiness of
his clothing seemed less disingenuous, more honest and more forthright—dare she
say kind?—and even the smell of that man’s perspiration, which Sara could only
imagine, was sweet in her mind. Mr. O’Hanlin, on the other hand, did not
perspire. He was clean and well-kempt. Surely, he was intelligent as well, as
Father would not otherwise have taken him on, much less made him partner. Mr.
O’Hanlin took pride in his appearance, even though he was slightly
pigeon-chested and also shorter than she. He was well off and well provided
for, as he was a partner to Father. However, in this spur-of-the-moment
comparison, something deep within her tipped the scales in favor of the unknown
man. The idea held for a moment. It was as if the clear tone of a bell sounded,
separating this moment from the past and the future.
Sara and Mr. O’Hanlin descended the steps and entered the
storeroom, and as they steered around a precarious pile of crates, Mr. O’Hanlin
put one hand upon her arm and the other around her waist to guide her. She drew
back sharply, almost tipping the crates, and left him standing with his arms
outstretched, fingers twitching. She felt a strong urge to run back up the
steps, away from that moment, and she would have, but there was something that
Father wanted from her, so she must see this through. Besides, Mr. O’Hanlin was
just looking out for her welfare. The pile of crates was precarious, and he
simply was performing the duties required of any man. She tried to smile in his
direction, as if it were her clumsiness that led them to that difficult
situation. Still, she was grateful when Mr. O’Hanlin dropped his arms and
walked to a counter along the wall.
On one corner of the counter was a small crate. With the
tips of his long fingers, Mr. O’Hanlin lifted off the crate’s top, which had
previously been pried up, and set it on the counter. Packed within the crate
were large oblong newspaper-wrapped parcels. Up wafted a faint sweetness with
an earthy undertone. Mr. O’Hanlin held out his hand, indicating she should
inspect them. She took off her gloves, finger by finger, and placed them on the
lid. She pulled one of the parcels from the crate and unwrapped the newspaper,
a San Francisco Examiner dated April 17, 1885. As she did, the ends of the long
narrow green leaves sprang from the parcel and pricked her right index finger,
drawing blood. She shifted the fruit to her left hand and stuck the pad of her
finger in her mouth, sucking the sting from it, tasting the salt of it.
She glanced at Mr. O’Hanlin. He was watching her, his jaw
slack. His red tongue darted out of his mouth and wet his top lip. When he saw
her glance, he pulled back his tongue, and his jaw shut and clenched.
Inside the newspaper was a strange-looking fruit. The top
half bushed into long narrow spiky leaves, and the bottom oblong globe had a
roughly textured skin in brown, green, and yellow. The odor was stronger.
“It is a pine-apple,” Mr. O’Hanlin said. “It originates in
the Kingdom of King Kalakaua, within the expanse of the Pacific.”
Sara stroked the golden green diamonds of the patterned skin
with her fingertips. Then, using both hands, oozing index finger held straight
so as not to touch the fruit, Sara pulled it to her face and inhaled deeply.
What had been faint and sweet before now became thick and pungent. The smell
reminded Sara of apple cider mash—full and wet and ripe, but with a dark,
decaying undertone. It quickly overwhelmed her. It seemed to enter her and make
her body quicken and fill her mind with strange yearnings. If only she could …
what? She didn’t know. But she would settle for a taste to complete the smell.
She held the fruit out to Mr. O’Hanlin. “I’ve never tasted—what is it?—a pine-apple
before. Shall we cut a slice from this?”
Mr. O’Hanlin froze. “No,” he said, “no.” He reached out his
hands, insistent, until she placed the fruit into them. He began deftly
covering the fruit with newspaper and then wrapping it back up. “I mean, your
father expects to sell them for a tidy profit. He would be disappointed if we,
if you …” He glanced back at the stairway. He then tucked the wrapped fruit
back into the crate and scooped up her gloves, which she plucked from his
hands, and then he picked up the lid and replaced it. He talked over his
shoulder: “What I mean to say is, if we partook of the fruit before it’s time,
I mean, before all the proper arrangements were made, it would not be right. It
would go against, um, all that was proper. We must advertise, we must, must, as
it were, tantalize the public, it is an expensive investment, this type of
thing, and we must see it through to its proper outcome, in its proper, um,
time.” He looked at her, his lips pressed together but twitching.
Sara did not know what to think. Was he talking about a
piece of fruit? Surely Father would allow her, if she ventured a portion of the
household budget, to taste this fruit? Mr. O’Hanlin’s reaction was all out of
proportion to the thing at hand. What was Father aiming for her to gain from
this transaction, this viewing of a fruit that she could not even taste? She
shook her head in bewilderment.
Then Mr. O’Hanlin’s face opened up. He seemed to calm. He
took a step closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. They were damp
and very warm through the cotton of her shirtwaist. He said, “My dear Sara, you
will see, in due course, it is for the best.” His eyes looked up into her eyes,
and then he removed his right hand with its long fingers from her shoulder and
lifted it as if to touch her face but then left it suspended so that she could
sense the heat of it on her cheek.
At first, all Sara registered was his physicality, the hand
that encompassed her shoulder, the heat of him on her face, the shattering of
her personal space, but then she registered his familiar usage of her name. He
had used her given name, without invitation nor cause. It was her name, hers,
not to be passed about like an unembroidered handkerchief. This seemed the
worst of all violations. A shock went through her so totally that her mind
blanked, and she stumbled back and turned and pushed up the stairs into the
open air.
Chapter 2
It seemed on purpose, the way the backs of the businesses
hulked over the narrow alley and blocked the May noonday sun. Each time James
Youngblood returned to the cart with that pat-thief Ricci to heft another
crate, he focused on the light at the end of the alley, just as he had on the
light that came through crisscross of bars at the end of his bed. If he let himself
dwell on the enveloping shadows, the walls closed in upon him, and his pulse
began to race. Focusing on the light, however, kept those particular wolves at
bay.
This alley light was reflected light, much like that that
had emanated from the heavens, had streaked gloriously to the earth unimpeded,
had touched the open air, the curl of green leaves, the cool of water sliding
over rocks, before its misfortune of bouncing through those small panes of
glass into that tall dead space near the elevated walkways and then through the
riveted iron flats of the cell door. For those irretrievable months, months
that had added into years, it had helped James to think about what that light
had touched, just as it helped him now.
James pulled his eyes back from the end of the alley to
where he was hefting his end of a small barrel that smelled of apples, but he
was plunged in darkness as his eyes adjusted. Still, Ricci pulled on his end of
the barrel, and James stumbled, nearly dropping his end. They set the barrel down
and breathed. Ricci’s mouth was set in a line, and he seemed on the verge of
saying something, but then the man glanced down the alley, and his face opened
up in surprise as the light dimmed and they were caught in shadow. “The
Colonel’s daughter,” Ricci hissed at James. “Make like beavers.” He turned to
the other two and bent his head toward the cart, indicating that they should
get to work, industriously. And then he bent to pick up his end of the barrel,
and so did James.
As they toted the barrel, James glanced toward the end of
the alley, and out of the penumbra of light came the figure of a woman leading
a horse. At first, the woman loomed large, and James blinked to clear his
vision, but then she shrank to human proportion. James’s heart gave a leap: it
was his mother, there in the street! For that split second, a feeling welled up
inside him and closed his throat. It was a conflicted feeling, one of love and
relief and joy but also of constriction and gravity and panic. It was the
feeling his mother invariably brought forth during their long association,
moving about from place to place, just scraping by, never knowing if the next
day brought light-headed soul-wrenching hunger or the sting of a step-father’s
hand.
But, no, this wasn’t his mother. That was not possible—his
mother was two months’ dead, brought down by consumption. Physically, this
woman was dissimilar. She was much taller, almost as tall at James. Her dress
with its lush green skirts was richly laced and gusseted and tucked, and her heavily
embroidered riding cape was of deep brown wool—more expensive than anything his
mother had ever worn. This woman’s black hair was swept back in the more modern
style, with the curls cascading from the back crown of the head instead of
around the ears like his mother’s. She had a long nose with an ess curve in
profile, well-proportioned gray eyes, a small mouth, and a narrow jaw that at
present she had set in concentration. Instead of a large bonnet, this woman’s
hat was small and perched somewhat to the side, and her stride was different
than his mother’s. His mother’s walk had been both proud and sensual, and even
as she aged men noticed her entering a room, for which James invariably felt
apprehension for what that might bring. This woman, however, even in stride,
seemed to be tucking in on herself, her head bobbing low, as if she wanted to
make herself smaller. James understood that feeling.
James took in this woman and felt his desire for her rising.
It came upon him fast and strong. His limbs weakened and his male member
swelled. He wanted to touch her, to see her without her hat, her hair splayed
down her shoulders, her bare legs peeking from underneath her chemise. But he
turned his eyes away and quelled the thought as best he could. It could only
make him feel worse. It had been so long.
The woman led the horse around the cart to the hitching rail
and flipped her rein around the wood. The other three men stopped and watched
her. James glanced at the expression of hunger on Ricci’s face, and suddenly
James felt protective over this woman whom he’d never met. He wanted these men
to avert their eyes. They had no right. These men were ex-convicts and
immigrants without a penny to their names. What right had they to ogle this
woman? They should limit their desires—and their eyes—to women of their own
race. But, then, he was an ex-convict and penniless too—well, except for the
lucky nickel tucked into his left shoe—what right had he? The thought brought
shame rising within him mixing with the strong desire and jealousy of the
moment before, and surely he turned red to the ears.
After wrapping the rein, the woman retrieved something from
her saddlebags, and before she turned to make her way to the back door of the
store, with her free hand she caressed the horse and whispered to the animal.
It was such an intimate gesture, so private and tender, that a new feeling
arose in James. Though it was desire, it was much larger than mere lust and
swept through James and left him unmanned for a moment. This particular brand
of feeling was something he had never felt in his twenty-nine years. It made
him want both to curl into a ball and to spread his arms, to whisper to someone
and to shout to the world.
The woman disappeared into the back of the store, and the
walls once again closed in. James took a deep breath and gathered himself. He
turned to find Ricci waiting for him. “Cut your lollygagging,” Ricci said and
then called James something in his native tongue. James could not understand
it, but the meaning was clear: Ricci held James in low regard. His body was
turned toward the other two men, and he looked over his shoulder at James. The
other two nodded with wry smiles. Then they began working again.
Bergamasco and Lottardi were the other men’s names. James
remembered because names have power. The two men were fresh off the boat and
had not spoken a word of English in James’s hearing, though Ricci had been in
the country long enough to make it from Halifax to Cedar Rapids and get caught
with his hand in a gentleman’s pocket and thrown in Anamosa for a stretch.
James had known Ricci by sight only when they were both incarcerated. Ricci had
worked to shape the limestone used in the turrets and bastions of the new
penitentiary’s buildings, which were steadily transforming from wood to rock,
and rumor had it he’d carved one of the lions near the flower beds in front of
the administration building. James had had his stint at stonework, too, which
left his hands vibrating and his body sore to the bone for months. Fortunately,
a crotchety draft horse had illuminated James’s equine talents, bringing him to
the attention of the man in charge of the farm, and James had spent most of his
time among the horses in the barns and in the saddlery. The head man took it at
face value and treated James well, even though James’s crime was that of horse
thievery, something some persons responded to a bit overzealously. Ricci was
released months before James, but then James sat across the rooming house
breakfast table from him and he had eyed James for a while before offering him
a job. Pitiful wages even for an ex-convict, James knew it and Ricci knew it,
but there was nothing to be done. It was sustenance for another week. James had
no other opportunities in view.
Ricci glanced at Bergamasco and Lottardi and then at James.
Then Ricci said, “That’s all right.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re
my half-centesimo man.” He said it in English, and then he turned to the other
two and said it again in his native tongue. He smiled and they chuckled.
Lottardi then said something that made Bergamasco snort and Ricci’s broad chest
push forward and his head rest higher on his neck. It was all part of that
thing men did, something the male of the species had been doing to James his
whole life, and James knew that he would have to act in some way. It would
continue until something happened, until he was somehow crushed or it came to
blows. Ricci needed to prove something to these men.
James looked Ricci square in the face and said, “I’ll
complete this job, but then I believe our contract should be terminated, as I
sense it is mutual.”
Ricci’s eyes narrowed as he looked into James’s face. His
mind worked behind the eyes. “You gave me the week, and I mean to keep you to
it,” he said in a loud voice. So he wasn’t going to let James off that easily.
The hope of a facile solution faded. But then it came to James’s mind that he
was a free man, no longer a convict. The feeling swelled, as did the anger.
Once before, he’d been trapped in the employ of his uncle,
and that is what had led to his incarceration in the first place. Shortly after
Mam’s last husband died, they had been in desperate straits, hardly making it.
A step-uncle, the brother of Mam’s last husband, agreed to take James on as a
stable hand. He had worked for a month, and come payday, the uncle said he was
expecting a large payment the next week and that he would pay him then. James
and his mother had a roof over their heads and food on the table, so James had
not complained. But then a week turned into a month, and at the next payday,
the uncle said again that the payment had not come in but it certainly would
soon. James had had his misgivings, but Mam had urged him to stay on. “The man
means to pay us, Son,” she said. “And by the time he does, we will be owed a
small fortune. Be patient.” And so he was. Three months turned into four, which
turned into six, and James became more and more agitated as the months went on.
The uncle if anything became more domineering. Finally, James confronted the
man, who said that beggars cannot be choosers and they were lucky to have him.
They could leave if they did not like it. Mam was cowed by the man’s argument
and tried to calm her son, but it so enraged James that he went to the stable,
saddled a fine gelding, and took off, leaving his mother behind. He had meant
to leave her for good, as she had so obviously chosen against him, and he had
long been wanting escape. However, the sheriff and his men caught up with him
two days later in a town in the next county, and that’s how he ended up in
Anamosa Additional Penitentiary.
This was different, though. There was no cause for him to be
trapped, no woman hanging on him. Anger rose further. Yes, there were three of
them and they were more than willing to take their knuckles to him, but damn it
to hell, he’d had enough of it. The nectar coursed through his veins, and it
felt good, right.
He stepped forward and said, “My job description did not
entail me as your whipping boy, you little tin god on wheels.” Then he braced.
This breached the line of caution.
The anger built on Ricci’s face as he registered James’s
insult. The other two men did not understand what James had said, but they must
have sensed his tone and Ricci’s body language, as they began to circle around
behind James. James started backing away, slowly at first, but then they
quickened their pace, and he scrambled as he tried to protect his back. He had
to find a wall, a fence, something to keep them from grabbing him from behind,
or he needed a weapon of some kind, a stick, a rock. It was his only hope.
Desperately, he pushed backwards, keeping his eye on the three men.
In his haste his shoulder bumped something soft, with a
slight give, something warm and alive, and he turned and saw it was the woman’s
horse, he’d bumped its back haunches, and the surprised horse was curling, tail
tucked, bunching under to kick with both back legs—what any horse would do when
surprised from behind. James dove to the side as the hooves whipped past him,
missing him by less than a handspan. As soon as the hooves landed, the mare
pushed off with her front feet, her body listing heavily to the left. She
jerked her head, snapping the rein, and bolted down the alley, just as the
woman who owned the horse pushed through the door at the back of the store. She
ran to the hitching post, skirts held high, and looked up, bewildered by the
missing horse. She looked both ways just in time to glimpse it as it
disappeared out onto the street at the end of the alley. She looked to the men,
who had stopped advancing on James and stood with their hands at their sides.
Ricci took one glance at James and stepped to the woman’s
side. “This man,” he said, “this man just spooked your horse. He ran her off.
He’s the one.”
James shook his head but then nodded and gave a short bow.
“I did, ma’am,” he said. “My deepest apologies. I did not mean to. Let me
assure you, it was accidental. Let me corral her for you.” Before she could
respond, he turned and trotted down the alley after the horse. He glanced back
to make sure the men weren’t following him. They weren’t—for now.
He had seen which way the mare had turned, so he followed
her onto the street. A horse’s first instinct is for the herd, but if the woman
had gone to the trouble to ride, rather than walk, this mare’s herd most likely
would not be too close. James hoped, though, with nought chasing her and such a
gentle nature, the mare’s panic would ease quickly and she had not gone far.
The street he turned on was bordered by small houses with yards enclosed by
fences. Nothing to draw a horse to stop there. She would be looking for a spot
of green—and there it was. An undeveloped lot with trees and grass. Sure
enough, there was the bay mare, head down and grazing, calming herself, one
long rein trailing. From a distance, he inspected her nose to tail to make sure
she hadn’t hurt herself in her panic. No signs of injury. That was good.
James walked up and stopped, not too close, giving her room,
and turning his body to the side so he wasn’t confronting her, and then began
murmuring low. “That’s a girl. You’re a good girl, aren’t you? Not a wild bone
in your body. Tame as an old kitty cat, aren’t you? Nothing to be frightened of
here. Just little old me, and all I want is to scratch your withers a bit, now
don’t I? Won’t that feel good?” He kept on murmuring as he worked his way
closer. The mare ignored him at first and kept grazing but then raise her head
and eyed him. When he got close enough, he stopped and held out his hand.
Horses were curious creatures and social by nature, but they were also looking
after their safety. If they were decently broke and hadn’t been ruined and you
approach them quietly and with respect, they most likely would take you up on
an offer of friendship. That’s one of the many things James loved about horses.
They were understandable, and unless they’d been maltreated their hearts were
as good as gold.
Sure enough, the mare took a tentative step forward. James
waited with his hand out. She took another step. He had nothing to offer her,
but that didn’t matter. She sniffed his hand and then his face, doing that thing
that horses do in greeting, exchanging breath. James blew in and out, letting
the horse smell his breath and taking in the warm green grass scent of hers,
all the while slowly reaching and gathering in her rein. Then she relaxed.
“Whew,” she was saying, “it was scary out here all by myself. I’m sure glad you
happened along.” He didn’t reach for her head—a mistake many people made—but
instead sidled along to reach her withers and scratched them a bit, not too
much. Then her patted her gently on the shoulder and turned back toward the
store. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” he said and sighed. Just standing next
to the horse made him feel better.
