A Congregation of Jackals

Chapter 9

“Go home.”

Dicky reseated himself beside the pretty woman at the roulette table, hiding his bruised knuckle from view. The Alabamian spun the wheel.

The woman looked at Dicky and asked, “What did that gentleman want from you?”

“He is my great uncle’s retainer. He came here to inform me of my inheritance. I just now learned that I own a mansion in Connecticut.”

Later that evening, Dicky returned to the brownstone in which he rented a room. The taste of Francine Bouchelle’s tongue upon his own as he warmly pondered the date that they had set for the coming Thursday. He was surprised when the clerk—a sullen and ugly young man who must have been related to someone influential—called out to him.

“Richard Sterling.”

Dicky stopped and turned.

“You have a telegram. Delivered this morning.” There was no person from whom he wanted such correspondence. No woman from his past belonged in his present, and he had not been in touch with his sisters (who now lived in Connecticut with their husbands) since their mother had passed away six years ago. With trepidation, he approached the wooden counter behind which the surly youth sat as if it were a fortress.

“From whom?” asked Dicky.

The youth behind his lacquered ramparts said, “A man named Lingham. Montana Territory.”

Dicky’s blood ran cold.

He took the proffered telegram and read it as he walked toward the stairwell that stood on the far side of the lobby. He pondered the phrase “all old acquaintances will be in attendance” as he climbed the steps, passed by German immigrants who were on their way to the pantry, put the key in his door, twisted the lock, walked inside, and isolated himself. He thought about how his dad had died with only forty-four years behind him and how he was now exactly that old.

CHAPTER FOUR

Conversations with Dirt

Oswell kissed his daughter’s forehead, pulled the blanket up to her chin, walked to his son’s bed, patted his shoulder, walked to the oil lantern that hung upon a door hook, and twisted the key in its base, ushering darkness into the room.

“Have a peaceful slumber.”

“Good night, Daddy,” said Loretta. “Good night, Pa,” said Benjamin.

The rancher walked into the hall and shut the door behind him, acutely aware of every detail as if he were a bug observing enormous minutiae. Tomorrow morning he would meet Godfrey at the station, take a train north to Pennsylvania, meet Dicky there (the New Yorker had wired him yesterday), and then board the continental rail and ride it to the western horizon, where his past awaited him like a dark room filled with bear traps.

As Oswell traversed the hallway, he found the house unusually still and quiet—perhaps because an unexpected chill that night had caused him to shut the windows, or perhaps because of the heightened awareness he had experienced ever since receiving the telegram. He walked to the sitting room, where Elinore occupied her mother’s divan while repairing one of the quilted blankets that they threw upon the colts in winter. She still had some suds on her shoulder from when she had put the scrub brush to the children two hours earlier.

“Elinore.”

The woman poked a needle into the wool. “Yes?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I’ll be gone a while.”

Elinore nodded as she pulled a red thread up through the seam. “When should I expect you back?”

“A month,” said Oswell, who had never been away from his wife for more than a week in the fourteen years that they had been married.

The redheaded woman’s sewing stopped; she stared at the sliver of light imprisoned within the needle and then looked up at her husband. Her eyes were filled with questions and apprehensions that she would not voice aloud.

“Okay,” she said.

“I asked Harper to come over and deal with the cowboys when they come for the beeves. I know you’re smarter than he is, but it helps to have a man around when you negotiate a price with other men. I told him to listen to you and that your word is final.”

“Harper is respectful. And he always gives the kids taffy.”

Oswell was pained by how selflessly, how bravely his wife handled her life being thrown into complete upheaval. He wanted to put his head in her lap and tell her all of the things that he had never told her, divulge what he had done, and let her know why he and Godfrey and Dicky had put the entire width of the United States between themselves and the place in which those horrible events had occurred. (Even Lingham had skittered from that place of iniquity all the way to the north.)

The rancher knew that his wife would not abandon him if he confessed his misdeeds, but he also knew that she could not love a man who had done all of the things he had done. Their marriage would become a partnership, a loveless agreement in which they ran a ranch and raised two children, an agreement in which she would close her eyes when they made love as she had the first few times (though then it was simply because she was shy). Oswell did not know whether his reticence was a selfish act or a gesture of kindness, but he knew one thing for certain: he was not strong enough to risk the love, sanctity, escape, and peace that he had found with this woman and this life that they two together had built.

For a moment, Elinore watched him silently ruminate; she then turned her eyes back down to the colt’s quilt that draped her lap.

The needle moved again, and she cleared her throat. “There’s one thing I need to know, to make this—your leaving—a little easier.”