After Eli Page 10

  Michael fell back into his chair, laughing with the men.

  “Fifty-pound tit! Goda’mighty,” thundered Job. “That sounds like Wanda Harper, don’t it, boys? Biggest sack for one tit I ever seen. Hey, Bailey, you ever see that woman?”

  The man named Bailey answered, “See her? Lord, I guess. I seen that ol’ woman whip a man crazy just slingin’ them things around.”

  There was more laughter and a roll of loud, tumbling voices remembering Wanda Harper. And then the voices quieted down and the men looked again to Michael.

  “I tell you, men,” Michael began easily, “there’s all kinds of women out there. Big women. Skinny women. Short women. Tall women. Sweet women. Mean women. And—and damn mean women.” He laughed and added, “That’s a fact. I remember one out in California, it was. Good-lookin’ woman. Followed me up and down that state like a bloodhound, she did. Seems she thought I’d won her in a wrist-wrestlin’ match.”

  “A what?” Garnett asked. It was the first he had spoken during Michael’s storytelling.

  “Wrist-wrestlin’, Doc,” explained Michael. “That was my sport. Even took me a job in a travelin’ circus one time, wrist-wrestlin’ any man who’d take the dare.”

  “What was you?” asked Job. “Some kind of cham-peen?” He said the word mockingly.

  “I was, Mr. Franklin,” replied Michael. “Strong as a horse, I was. But that was in my younger days and I’ve lost the touch for it.”

  “Well, damn,” Job said. “Must run in the family.”

  “What’s that?” asked Michael.

  “Why, wrist-wrestlin’,” Job told him. “Ol’ Eli was a wrestler. Wouldn’t take seconds to no man. He was always wrestlin’ for drinks. Bein’ cousins, I reckon you ain’t too far kin to be the same kind of man.”

  Garnett lifted his head and pushed back his hat. His eyes turned to Job and then to Michael. The question was on his face like a tattoo and Michael read it.

  “Now, that’s a puzzlin’ thing,” admitted Michael, avoiding the doctor’s gaze. “Puzzlin’, indeed. Fact is, I’m not clear where the cousin line runs between Eli and me. Never met him. Way it happened that I even know about him goes back to Ireland. It was a thing taught us by my dear mother. When we was just tots, she gave each of us a cousin in America to remember his name and to find, if we ever had the chance. Eli was the cousin’s name I had given me. His name and where he lived. I’m shamed to say it, but I’ve been in America for a long while now, but I’ve never thought of findin’ Eli. Not to a few weeks ago. I was up in Knoxville and I heard a fellow mention the town of Yale and it struck me like a hammer. I’d heard of the place, but couldn’t figure out why. And then it all came back, like a spring snapped loose in a pocket watch, and I put it in my mind to look up Eli. It was providence, the luck of the Irish, happenin’ up on the farm by accident, and findin’ the snake by Sarah.”

  “Didn’t nobody around here know Eli was Irish,” the man named Bailey said solemnly. “Could of been, though. Way I remember it, his mama come from somewhere else. Maybe it was Virginia. Died real young.”

  Michael shrugged. He replied, “Could be that, friend. Bein’ little like I was, I never asked about it. I just remembered his name. Eli. I wrote him a letter once, I think. When I was a lad. But I never heard back.”

  “His name was Elijah,” Garnett said. “Like the prophet.”

  Michael did not answer. He knew the doctor was testing him, prying into his brain with an insight as sharp as an operating instrument.

  “Well, Doc, that may’ve been Eli’s real name,” a man with a hard, cold face remarked, “but the only time Eli ever come close to a Bible, I reckon, was in some courthouse when he was swearin’ to tell the truth.”

  The man was sitting at a table in front of Michael. He swallowed from his own whiskey and placed the empty glass on top of the quart jar before him and laughed alone at his humor.

  “Don’t matter, nohow,” the man said roughly. He looked up at Michael. “C’mon, Irishman, let’s have a go at that wrist-wrestlin’. Me’n you. Best man buys a drink for the other’n.”

  No one spoke. Michael could feel eyes on him.

  “It’s a sportin’ offer, friend,” Michael replied, “but I’m a bit past the prime for it.”

  “Prime? Hell, man, I’m older by ten years, I reckon,” the man declared. “Way you been braggin’, I’d say you must be made out of cast iron.”

  There was a pause, a sudden quietness.

  “Braggin’?” questioned Michael. “Ah, friend, if it’s braggin’ you think I’ve been doin’, I’ll ask your forgiveness. I’m a talker, all right, but not for braggin’. That’s a different thing.”

  The man’s voice was as cold and hard as his face. He said, “Up around here we call it braggin’ if a man can’t do what he says he can.” He leaned toward Michael and pushed his jar and glass to one side of the table. “Now it’s up to you, mister,” he added. “You said it. I reckon you got to live up to it, or say out that it was braggin’.”

  Michael looked at Garnett. Garnett smiled and laced his fingers behind his neck and pushed his head against his hands. Michael returned the smile. He knew the doctor had read the lie of his kinship to Eli Pettit. He did not think the doctor cared. To the doctor, he was a relief, an amusement, and that was more important than the charade of an Irish blood scent in a mother’s tale about cousins. Michael thought of the story he had just told the men in the café; it was absurd, but the men had believed him. All except the doctor.

  Michael propped his elbows on the table and closed his hands together and rested his chin on his knuckles.

  “Friend,” he said to the challenger, “you’ve got a point. I’ll go you. Arm to arm, wrist to wrist. Weak as I am, I’ll go you.”

  A mild, approving party cheer fluttered throughout the room. The man grinned and stood and moved his chair to Michael’s table, opposite him.

  “What would your name be, friend?” asked Michael.

  “Teague,” the man answered. “The name’s Teague.” He offered his hand as a greeting and an agreement. Michael accepted.

  “It’s a fine grip, Mr. Teague,” Michael said. “You’re a worker, I can tell.”

  Teague grinned proudly. He said, “Pick the judge, Irishman.”

  “The doctor’ll do fine,” replied Michael. He did not look at Garnett.

  Garnett laughed cynically. He stood up and leaned on the table, his arms straight, his knuckles down.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am honored. I have long yearned to participate as an official in an event as noble and athletic as you are about to indulge in. I have even thought of nominating the great township of Yale and the fertile Naheela Valley as a site for the Olympics, and this act of manliness convinces me I am right.”

  “Aw, hell, Doc, let ’em wrestle,” Bailey said.

  The doctor grunted an objection; then he said, “Gentlemen, here are the rules: Anybody breaks anybody else’s arm, they have to pay for it, but I’ll do the setting for half-price.” He dropped into his chair and scowled at Bailey.

  Michael and Teague pulled their chairs close under the table until its edge pushed into their rib cages. They leaned into the center and placed their right elbows firmly against one another, with their forearms up and their hands spread open. Their left arms rested flat on the table, braced beneath their right arms.

  “Are you ready, Mr. Teague?” asked Michael.

  “Ready enough,” answered Teague.

  Their hands touched, thumb to thumb. Michael could feel Teague’s strength as his fingers closed over the thumb ridge, and he knew it would not be an easy contest; Teague would hurt him if he could. He shifted his weight in the chair, planting his feet solidly against the plank floor. He looked across the gun-sight of his thumb to Teague and smiled. Then he dropped his eyes to Teague’s massive arm and his face blinked perceptibly in surprise at the sight of a scar from an old wound that ran in an ugly, white wrinkle from Teague’s elbow to his wrist. Teagu
e saw the surprise and answered it.

  “Crosscut saw,” he said simply. “Never did heal up right.”

  “Would have if I’d put a stitch or two in it,” the doctor remarked.

  Teague grinned at Garnett. Garnett had bitched at him for years about the scar.

  “Call the start, Doc,” Teague said.

  Garnett laughed aloud.

  “Start,” he said.

  And the match began. Arm shoving against arm. The clenched hands quivering. Finger tips reddening. Eyes closed. Heads bowed like pawing bulls. The cords of muscles and veins bulging on their necks.

  The crowd, standing jammed close to the table, bellowed, but Michael did not hear them. He heard a loud, internal fury crying at the pain in his shoulder and arm, and a demonic anger pounded at his rib cage. He could feel his wrist bending from the vise of Teague’s hand and his arm convulsed violently to hold the pressure. He opened his eyes and saw the long scar on Teague’s arm, brutally white against the flushed red flesh of the knotted muscle. His mind clicked and a black seizure coated his brain, and his mind could see the arm split apart, seeping with blood, muscle hanging like torn meat, and a giddiness rushed through him. A wide smile trembled onto his face and a laugh like an animal’s bray leaped from his throat and drove through the room. His hand tightened in a steel band around Teague’s thumb and his fingernails gouged into the flesh of Teague’s hand. A great strength was in him and he began to ease Teague’s powerful arm down.

  “Goda’mighty,” someone hissed.

  “Goda’…”

  And then the room was silent and the men of Pullen’s Café stood frozen by the curling laughter that continued to roll from Michael.

  “Goddamn, Teague, get him,” someone shouted desperately over Michael’s shoulder.

  Michael’s head snapped at the sound. He shook his eyes into focus. He could feel perspiration dripping from his face and the ache returning to his arm. He heard the silence around him. He looked across his hand into Teague’s face; it was pale and bewildered and fearing. His brain pounded with the echo of the screaming, and then it cleared and he knew what he must do.

  He sucked hard from the thick, hot air and pretended to weaken. His arm relaxed. He pulled Teague’s wrist straight and forced his hand to quiver unsteadily, and then he let it collapse in a thump against the table.

  “Damn,” a voice whispered. Then louder, “Damn!”

  The one voice triggered other voices of disbelief.

  “By God, Teague, he almost had you.”

  “Damned if he didn’t.”

  “Sounded crazy, didn’t he?”

  “Teague’s a scrapper, ain’t he?”

  “He is, by God. He is at that.”

  Michael released Teague’s hand and dropped his head to the table, across his extended arm. He laughed merrily and rubbed his sweating face over the sleeve of his shirt. Then he pushed up from the table and slumped wearily against his chair.

  “You’re a man, Mr. Teague,” he said with admiration. “Bull-strong, I’ll tell you. I’d wager you could make it with the circus tour without a worry.”

  Teague said nothing. He sat, his limp arm stretched over the table before him, and stared blankly at the tiny nail punctures on the back of his hand. The men around him had heard Michael’s crackling, demented laugh, but Teague had felt it and it was like a madness that had swallowed the power of his hand.

  “Losin’ man buys the drinks,” declared Michael. “That was the proposition and I’m buyin’ for Mr. Teague.” He waved his hand to a man standing behind the crowd. “Mr. Pullen, whatever his pleasure is,” he sang. “But make it a bodied one. He deserves it.”

  * * *

  An hour later Michael left Pullen’s Café with Garnett.

  The doctor had leaned to him and whispered, “Let’s go. I’ve got to make a call and then I’ll drive you up to the farm.”

  Michael had thought to protest, but did not. He recognized an urgency in Garnett’s voice and nodded agreement and made a short farewell speech to the crowd, promising to return the following week.

  Outside, Garnett and Michael walked quickly and silently across the paved road leading through Yale, along the row of darkened stores and toward a small brick building that stood alone on the bank of the Naheela River. As they approached it, Michael saw the windows were barred with thick steel.

  “Jail?” he asked curiously.

  “The only one in thirty miles,” replied Garnett. He stopped in the street and looked at the reinforced window. There was a weak sheet of light behind it. “Got a customer in there,” he added solemnly.

  “What’s the poor fellow done?” questioned Michael.

  Garnett continued walking until he reached the door of the jail. If he had heard Michael’s question, he refused to answer.

  “Tell me something,” Garnett said, standing before the door of the jail, staring at Michael with his studied, practiced gaze.

  “Anythin’, Doc. Just ask.”

  “Why’d you let Teague beat you?” Garnett asked bluntly. “You had him and you knew it. Why’d you do it?”

  Michael laughed easily. He said, “Why, Doc, I’m a guest here. You don’t come in and make the home people feel like fools. You’re a man to understand that.”

  Garnett nodded. He spat on the street and looked back toward the lights in Pullen’s Café.

  “I do,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t’ve mattered if somebody hadn’t shouted in your ear and snapped you out of whatever fit you were in. What was it? Some kind of hypnosis?”

  Yes, thought Michael. The doctor had noticed it, and so had Teague. But Teague did not know what it was; the doctor did, or believed he did.

  “You could say that,” Michael answered. “I’d call it a circus trick. Nothin’ more. Puts the other man off guard for just a minute. Gives you a chance to be turnin’ the tide on him.” He smiled and searched for the assurance that Garnett believed him. Garnett’s face did not change.

  “Was it the laughin’?” Michael asked gently. “Was that what it was? Sometimes I do that, I’m told, and I don’t even know it myself.”

  Now Garnett’s face changed. It wrinkled into a frown and he sniffed hard and coughed.

  “Now that you mention it, I guess so,” he remarked dryly. “Sounded like some damn crazy on the loose. I’ve heard it in the hospitals in Boston. Don’t hear it around here, even though there are some crazies. I guess they treat it different and nobody pays much attention to it. It’s the best way, I suppose.”

  Michael leaned close to Garnett. He whispered, “Well, now that you know, I’m grateful for whoever it was that broke it up. I would’ve felt bad by winnin’.”

  Garnett pushed his hat back on his head and looked at Michael as he would examine a patient. His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened.

  “I won’t say anything,” he said. “I don’t give a damn if you sit up on some fence post and crow every morning, if you know what you’re doing yourself.” He turned to the door of the jail. “C’mon, let’s look at this fellow,” he added. He opened the door and walked inside.

  9

  MICHAEL SWEPT THE jail with his eyes and memorized it.

  The building was made of rock and mortar and heavy timbers, and it was square—perhaps twenty-five feet. In the far right corner from where he stood at the front door, there was a single cell, also square; ten feet, he judged. The steel bars were dark and close, like a cold curtain. There was one small window in the cell, cut high in the back wall. The window was also covered with bars. Across from the cell, in the left corner, was a storeroom, built in the exact dimensions of the cell. The hallway that divided the cell from the storeroom led to a back door that had been nailed closed by a braced framework of two-by-six boards.

  The rest of the jail was open. A wooden bench and three ladderback chairs were to the right of the front door. To the left, in front of the storeroom, were a rocker, a desk chair, and a rolltop desk pushed against the inside wall of the store
room. A gunrack holding two shotguns and a rifle was bolted to the wall beside the rolltop desk. A framed picture of Franklin Roosevelt was on the wall beside the gunrack. And there was one odd piece of furniture: an ancient chifforobe with an ornate facing and round, protruding doors. It was in the corner of the room, to the left of the door. To Michael, the chifforobe seemed out of place in the jail. It belonged in a house, a very fine house.

  A deputy whose name was George English slumped sleepily in a chair, his feet propped comfortably across the shelf of the rolltop desk. He was young, in his early thirties, and impressively tall. His hair was thick and curled in tight, oily knots around his neck, and his face was pockmarked from smallpox.

  George smiled happily at the introduction of Michael.

  “Heard tell about you workin’ on that fence up at the Pettit place,” he said. “If I’d of known you’d be over at the café tonight, I’d of walked over.”

  “And you’d have the sheriff’s boot up your ass,” Garnett snapped.

  George giggled. He said, “Hell, Doc, don’t see why this man’s got to be treated any different’n anybody else. Shape he’s in, he ain’t goin’ nowhere, even if he could break out. But ain’t nobody done that since—” He paused and laughed. “Now, this is somethin’, ain’t it?” he said. “Last man to break out of here was Eli, best I can remember it, and that was on some damn bet with the old sheriff. Turned hisself in the same day. That’s why they nailed up the back door. Anyway, it was Eli, and here comes his own flesh and kin, from what I hear.”

  “Distant flesh,” corrected Michael. “Distant flesh.”

  “Don’t matter. Kin’s kin,” George said nonchalantly, smiling. He turned to Garnett. “You gonna give him another look, Doc?” he asked.

  “Soon as you get up the energy to open the door, George. In your own good time, though. Wouldn’t want to rush it.”

  George grinned again. He said, “Doc, you some kind of smartass, you know that?” He lifted the key ring from the rolltop desk and strolled to the door of the cell and unlocked it.