Cactus Blues: Part 2
By seven o’clock they were outside and waiting for the clucks, a company car idling near the train, its wheels sunk into the still-muddy ground. Karen, impatient to be off, drummed her fingers against the dull steel of the car’s hood with its bas relief woodlouse. Thorpe fidgeted with his tie. E. W. smoked alone by the passenger car’s front right leg, eyes red and hair disheveled. Jon hadn’t slept, but he felt strangely refreshed. Dressed in his only surviving clean clothes he waited beside Thorpe, hands in the pockets of his pinstripe trousers. The air still held the flat, metallic smell of rain and grey clouds hid the sun.
“Foul weather,” said E.W. He laughed, hysteria tingeing his voice.
“Quiet,” said Karen. She straightened up, hands clasped behind her back. “Here come the birds.”
The clucks came robed and hooded out of the dust, their stilts sinking into the cracking mud. They moved with staccato grace, heads bobbing up and down as they approached the car. Four yards away they halted, six of them, claws wrapped around the pegs of their stilts, hands clasped at chest level. Their leader bent his head to Karen, his wattles trembling. “She-khan,” he grunted. His beak clicked. The smell of wet feathers and musty wool surrounded him. Jon tried not to wrinkle his nose.
“Good morning, khan,” said Karen. She didn’t offer her hand, and the cluck seemed not to expect it.
“We will take you to the wellspring,” said the cluck. It turned, its hood hiding its profile, and set off at a bounding lope. The others followed, cloaks flying.
“Gentlemen,” said Karen. “Into the car.”
****
The company car, driven by hatchet-faced Sutton, rattled and bounced over the muddy hardpan. In the backseat, Jon sat with his chin resting in his hands. The wind ruffled his dirty blond hair and made his eyes water. Even with the night’s rain it was still dusty in the desert. The clucks kept ahead of the car with ease, bounding along on their stilts. Beside Jon, Thorpe twiddled his thumbs and looked troubled. “What do you think it is?” he asked Jon, shouting over the wind’s thin howl. “Their god, I mean.”
“Big fucking cactus,” said E. W., grinning thinly.
The rest of the ride passed in silence. Jon thought about smoking, but didn’t.
The clucks halted at the base of a low sandy ridge and Sutton brought the company car to a shuddering halt. Jon stepped out of the car, a sense of bleak serenity settling over him. Whatever happened, it was going to happen soon, and he had a pretty fair idea what he’d see over the hill’s crest. His dream was waiting for him there.
“We walk from here,” said the khan, tapping the ground with his left stilt.
They set off up the ridge in a group, the clucks walking with exaggerated care in the loose soil. Jon’s heart began to pound as they came to the top of the ridge. The clucks spread out in a half circle around the Company men. They kept their feathered hands raised and their beady black eyes downcast, except for their khan who stood proudly with his hood thrown back. “Behold,” he said, sweeping a clawed hand across the sweep of the bowl valley beyond the ridge, “the Mighty Griswold, Font of the Sacred Spring.”
The cactus, two stories tall and wide as a house, loomed in the center of the valley, its bulk ringed by a moat of pure water. Grass covered the rich, dark earth and pink flowers bloomed amidst the verdure. Small black eyes stared out over the water and its wrinkled, fibrous mouth was twisted in displeasure. Karen pushed past Thorpe and began to descend the curve of the bowl. Jon followed her, his eyes on the immense cactus that had spoken to him in his dreams. Behind him, Thorpe and E. W. followed at a distance, Thorpe hesitant, E. W. miserable and drunk.
When they reached the edge of the Mighty Griswold’s moat, Karen halted. The cactus-god stared down at her and she returned its gaze without flinching. The cactus’s mouth moved, wrinkled lips shifting slightly. “You…are…she…khan,” it rasped. Its voice was like old tree trunks breaking. “I…see…fire…in…your…eyes.”
“You know,” said Karen, reaching into her coat with a slim, elegant hand, “I thought you’d be bigger.” She produced a stick of dynamite and, with a casual flick of the lighter in her left hand, lit its fuse.
Jon stared. The hiss of burning cordite was drowned out by the roar of an approaching engine as a second company car flew over the hilltop, sand pluming around its wheels. It slewed down the valley’s curve, workmen with rifles and shotguns leaping from its running boards. Karen wound her arm and hurled the sputtering dynamite at Griswold, who closed his eyes and sighed deeply. The clucks were squawking furiously, long knives appearing from beneath their robes. The stick of dynamite flew in a graceful arc over the moat and landed at the cactus’s roots.
“Oh Jesus,” said E. W., on his knees in the sand. He cradled his head in his hands, weeping. “Oh Jesus.”
The dynamite went off with a bang that sent Jon reeling, hands pressed to his ears. Chunks of fibrous vegetable matter rained down around him along with sticky blue sap and broken thorns. Heat and wind slammed against the barkeep-turned-foreman like a pounding wave. He stumbled away from the blast, ignoring the soundless screams of the clucks as they advanced with knives drawn on Karen. Bragg drew the pistol holstered at her hip and shot their khan clean in the throat. His stilts folded and he fell to the sand. The workmen opened fire on the rest. Griswold’s immense bulk had been scorched and blasted half to pieces, his face, apart from one beady black eye, had been entirely burned off. His remains were slumped like an invalid, smoking copiously.
Jon saw Thorpe standing pale and drawn beside Karen as she watched the clucks retreat, sprinting away while the workmen fired at them. Two stumbled and fell, one without a head, the other clawing at its ruined side. Jon halted, breathing hard. His ears were ringing. Four of the six clucks that had escorted them to the spring were dead, sprawled on the grass with blood soaking through their heavy robes. “Jesus God,” Jon breathed. “What the hell did you do?”
Karen, if she heard him, said nothing. She’d holstered her gun and was walking toward her car without a care in the world, long hair swinging from side to side. She turned to look at Jon and a smile curved her lips, slow and satisfied. Jon fought the urge to throw up on his shoes. The workmen were laughing, slapping one another on the back as they cleaned their guns and followed their employer toward the automobile.
“E.W., no!”
Thorpe’s strident cry was distant in Jon’s damaged ears. He turned, his feeling of nausea worsening, and saw the scientist lying on his back beside the moat, Thorpe kneeling beside him and cradling his head. E. W.’s thin chest was rising and falling in short, labored hitches and there was blood all over his chest and shoulders. Thorpe looked at Karen and shouted something, tears running down his broad face. The woman looked back at him without pity and Jon saw her lips form the words: “What the hell use is he to me?” She turned and climbed into the car, dark glasses flashing.
“Help me get him to the other car,” said Thorpe. Numbly, Jon walked to the dying E. W. and took his legs while Thorpe slipped his arms under the tall, thin scientist’s and lifted. E. W. was light, easy to get over the hill and back to the first company car, abandoned in the sand. Sutton, Karen and the workmen were already diminishing into the distance by the time Jon and Thorpe had gotten E. W. strapped snugly into the backseat and pulled away from the column of greasy smoke rising from the crater. Jon’s hearing was returning in increments. He stared at his hands while Thorpe drove back to Lawson.
****
There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Oceanside a month later. The mayor, a huge goateed man with the Company’s woodlouse on his ascot, loomed in the center of a sea of aides, thugs and lickspittles. Half of Oceanside had turned out to watch. Jon and Thorpe stood to either side of Karen as she climbed the steps to the railroad platform and, with a flourish of her shears, snipped the red ribbon neatly in half. The crowd applauded, led by their smirking mayor and his cronies. Jon felt like laughing, or sobbing, as the suspension trail glided smoothly into the station. It hung eight feet from the ground, each car connected to the suspension cable by electric wheels.
There was a speech by the mayor that Jon didn’t listen to, and then the huge man left the platform with Karen in tow and the crowd started to break up. Jon, hands in his pockets, looked over at Thorpe. The other man looked sick. “Bar?” asked Jon, arching an eyebrow.
An hour later they were slumped across from each other in a booth at the Sunflower Tavern, Thorpe on his third glass of whiskey while Jon spun his empty wineglass on its stem and ignored the laughter and conversation of the bar’s other customers. He had money in his pocket, but it felt like lead weights, not freedom. “Think E. W.’s alive?” he said.
“We did what we could,” said Thorpe, putting down his drink. “Besides, I don’t think he cares one way or the other.”
“Boys,” said Karen.
Both men turned, Jon blinking blearily. Karen Bragg was standing beside their table in a sleek black dress. Her hair was up in an elegant knot, dark and shining in the bar’s dim lighting. Jon could smell the alcohol on her breath as she put her hands on the table and leaned in toward him and Thorpe. “How’d you like to work the new rail line?” she asked, her lips curving up from her teeth in a smooth, callous smile. Bragg stepped back from the table, one hand pressed self-importantly to her chest. “I’ve been promoted, of course. Company liaison to the Mayor’s office, and supervisor of the Hoover-Oceanside line.
“I’m a powerful woman now,” she said quietly, sliding herself onto the table. “I can give you anything you want.” One of the bar’s patrons whistled loudly, but if Karen heard him she gave no sign. Her eyes, half-closed above the slim crescent of her smile, were bloodshot slits. Her slim hand flicked out, fingers walking slowly up Thorpe’s wrist. There was a look of naked, desperate greed on her thin face. Jon felt a sudden deep sense of pity for her. He stood, slapping a few coins and a crumpled bill down on the table.
“I’ll take the job,” he said. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Bragg turned sharply, a few strands of her dark hair escaping her knot. She slid off of the table, her fingers leaving Thorpe’s arm. The other man looked tired and troubled.
“You won’t regret it, Mr. Morton,” she said softly.
As Jon turned to leave, Karen put a hand on his shoulder. He half-turned, removing his glasses. Thorpe was already out the door, his broad back vanishing into the evening crowd. “You know why I did it?” hissed Bragg. Her face was close to Jon’s, the smell of alcohol heavy on her breath. “The Mayor paid us to wipe the clucks out, to take the spring from them. He needs that water to survive what’s eating his lungs, and we’re going to be the ones bottling it.” The smile slid cunningly back into place, making her look for a moment like a grinning fox. She kissed Jon full on the mouth, her tongue sliding snakelike between his lips. “I make you sick,” she said, pulling back an inch. “That’s good. I like that.” She took his hand and pulled him out of the bar, sliding with smoky grace through the crowded bar.
“You’re going to run the line,” she said as they stepped out onto the street. “I’m going to make sure the city serves the Company’s, and, more importantly, my, interests. I don’t think we’ll see much of each other.” She turned, her hair falling out of its knot and across the left side of her face. Jon felt his skin crawl. “Let’s enjoy tonight. I can pretend you’re Edward, and you can pretend I don’t make you want to shoot off the roof of your mouth.”
She pressed a finger to Jon’s lips. “I’m drunk,” she said. Tears glistened in her eyes. “So are you.” She took her hand away and kissed him again. “In the morning, you won’t even remember hating yourself for this.”
****
Jon sat sleeping in the locomotive of the Hoover-Oceanside suspension line, his head resting on his arm in the car’s small, square window. The wind ruffled his hair and the sleeve of his shirt. The sun was just rising and in the front of the locomotive the engineer was easing the train’s brakes into place as it approached its first stop. Jon woke with a start and sat up, blinking away the fog of sleep. He was disheveled, his clothes three days old and stained with spilled wine. Outside, the smoke-wreathed bulk of the bottling plant sat brooding on the carcass of Griswold the Mighty, its pipes sunk deep into the sand. Jon stood up and went to the engine’s ladder, ignoring his driver’s greeting.
The ladder unfolded with a hiss of pistons working and Jon climbed down to the dead brown grass of the bowl valley. E. W. was waiting for him in a camp chair, the stump of his right leg swathed in cotton bandages. Workmen surrounded him, carrying boxes marked RENAISSANCE BOTTLING PLANT 019 to the train’s lowered cargo cars. The scientist looked thinner than he had on Jon’s last visit and there were shocks of grey in his wild hair. “Everything’s on schedule,” he said. “Problems with the tribes have been minimal.” His lips thinned into a bitter line. “This place is dying, of course, but what does that matter?”
“To her?” said Jon. “Not a whole hell of a lot. How’s the leg?”
E.W.’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Still missing.” He gestured to the padded wooden peg leaning against his chair.
Jon pulled a cigar from his breast pocket and lit it with practiced ease. “It’s been a year. You’d think they’d have something better than a stick for you.”
“You’d think,” agreed E.W. “Any word from Thorpe?”
“No,” said Jon. “Not since the rail got built.”
An uncomfortable silence descended on the two men. After a minute or so, E.W. picked up his peg leg and fastened its leather straps around his knee. “We’ll watch the men load the Mayor’s magic bottles,” he said, levering himself upright. “I can sign your forms, you can sign my forms and bureaucracy will live another day.” He stumped off toward the cargo cars where his men were lifting crates and placing them on padded pallets. Jon followed, blowing smoke.
“I’ve had enough,” said E.W. His voice was tight, strained. “She’s having them killed, Jon. The men here don’t answer to me. They’re only here to shoot clucks.
“When you took me to Lawson, the doctors had their hands full just keeping me alive. It was a cluck medicine man healed me, even if they still had to take off the leg. One of their khans sent him, because a survivor told him that I’d grieved for Mighty Griswold.” The scientist laughed bitterly. “Grieved for it. I was drunk, and scared out of my mind. I didn’t deserve to be saved.”
When the boxes were loaded, they shook hands and Jon climbed back into the train’s locomotive while the cargo cars rose back into position and E.W.’s workmen retreated from the boarding platform. Jon turned at the top of the ladder, but E.W. was already gone. “Poor bastard,” he said to himself, and closed the door behind him.
A day later, the train pulled into Oceanside’s station. Jon stepped out onto the platform. He liked the city, cleaner than Lawson or Hoover and with the smell of salt in the air. His nightmares weren’t so bad when he slept here. Karen was waiting for him on the platform with two men in the uniforms of Oceanside’s sheriff’s department. He blinked, surprised. “Karen,” he said.
“Relax, Jon,” she said, smiling thinly. “I’m not here for you.”
Jon turned, looking back along the train’s gunmetal length. E.W. was stepping calmly out of the rear passenger car, a gun in his hand. Thorpe was with him, sunburned and grim. The rest of the car’s passengers gave them a wide berth. “Don’t try to stop us, Karen,” said E.W. “Everyone’s going to know what you did. Whether they give a shit or not, they’re going to know.
“I’ve had enough lies.”
Karen drew and fired without a hitch. E.W. staggered and his back hit the side of the train, his own gun falling to the platform. The platform’s occupants, frozen watching the scene, began to scream. Thorpe caught E.W. before he fell, cradling the other man in his arms. “You shot him,” he choked.
“Yes,” said Karen, holstering her pistol. The deputies to her either side had drawn their guns and moved out to push back the panicked crowds. Other officers joined them. “I know he was your friend, Marvin,” she said, spreading her hands, “but look at the big picture. In a few hours, I’ll be the Mayor of Oceanside and you can either be with me, or you can be against me.” She straightened, hands behind her back. “What’s it going to be, Marvin?” Her eyes narrowed. “Jon and I, or the corpse in your arms?”
Thorpe looked down at E.W. and gently, slowly, he lowered the dying man to the platform. He straightened, looking at Karen. Jon couldn’t take his eyes from E.W. This is it, he thought, watching the scientist’s chest shudder. I let this pass and I might as well kill myself. I’m going to go to Hell.
There was a pause, Thorpe and Karen staring at each other. Thorpe’s mouth was twisted, his hands clenching and unclenching. Karen looked like an eel, slippery and full of teeth. And then Thorpe turned and ran. He vanished into the crowd before Karen could so much as raise a hand. Jon watched his friend go. I don’t even have the stomach to run away. I’m sorry, E.W.
“We should get to City Hall,” said Karen, tearing her eyes away from the place where Thorpe had vanished into the crowd. “The Mayor should be half dead by now.”
“You poisoned him,” said Jon dully. He couldn’t seem to feel surprised. On the platform by the train, E.W. coughed, wheezed and sagged into stillness. A dull ache joined the rhythm of Jon’s heartbeat. He wanted a drink.
“He had it coming,” said Karen. She turned and left.
Jon stayed on the platform until the county doctor came to collect E.W.’s corpse, and then he followed Karen to City Hall.
****
Mayor Walter M. Thurgood had died just after lunchtime, complaining of a stomachache. His deputy, Karen Bragg, was sworn in before his body was cold. And before Bragg’s hand left the Bible she was calmly dispatching orders to the Sheriff and deputies were streaming out of City Hall in automobiles and on foot. The whole while, Jon sat in an antique chair in the office of the former Mayor and, with his feet on the dead man’s desk, drank Thurgood’s expensive whiskey. E.W.’s gun lay on the desk beside his feet. Karen paced back and forth in front of the window, watching the city as evening fell and the electric streetlights came on.
“What’s the matter, Karen?” Jon asked. “All the right people are bought. All the trains are shut down. So”-he paused to take a long swallow of Thurgood’s whiskey-“it must be Thorpe. He’s got you…got you riled.” The one-time bartender chuckled darkly. “Guess we’ll all see what’s what ‘fore tonight’s over.”
“And just what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” snapped Karen, rounding on Jon. Her hair flew, outlined in stark black against the sunset. “Keep your mouth shut while I’m thinking, you fucking hayseed. Every move I make from here on out is vital-”
“Yeah,” Jon interrupted. He took another swallow of whiskey, enjoying bitterly the warm golden feeling as it burned its way down his throat and into his stomach. “Vital, sure. God knows Oceanside’ll never last without you as Mayor.”
Karen threw him a poisonous look and turned back to the window. She looked small in silhouette, a slim little woman with long hair and narrow shoulders. Jon felt again a sort of nauseous pity for his employer. Why he’d stayed with her, he still didn’t know. Nowhere else to go. I’m in the bottle and the bottle’s in me. Ha, E.W. would you love to see me now. I’m right where you were, but I’ve got this gun…
It was nine o’clock when the deputies stopped sending back reports. Karen returned to her pacing. Jon drank and brooded. At half past nine, a fire started near the docks and neither of them said anything. By ten, Jon could see small mobs gathering in the streets, and by quarter past they were in the town square with guns and torches. He knew without looking who’d be there with them, at the head of the crowd. “Just like old times,” he said, getting unsteadily to his feet and placing Thurgood’s empty whisky bottle on the desk.
Karen half-turned, her expression drawn. “You don’t see what’s at stake here, Jon,” she said tersely. “You don’t understand the first thing about it.”
Jon put a hand on the desk to steady himself. “Your deputies all went home,” he slurred, “or else they’re out there with the crowd. Either way, we’re gonna die.”
The crowd raised its voice and surged toward City Hall. “Looks like they know Walt didn’t die clean,” said Jon. He sat down behind the desk and clasped his hands between his knees. Somewhere below, doors began to break. Jon heard the hungry crackle of fires spreading.
Karen stood in the center of the room, her hands shaking. The big oak double doors were closed and locked, but there were footsteps coming up the stairs and the floor shook under their feet. Jon lit a cigar and started to smoke. Something slammed into the doors and Karen jumped, biting herself hard enough to draw blood. Jon laughed to himself as the doors began to splinter and cave inward, hinges screaming. Thorpe came through first, pushing the door in ahead of him. He crossed the room in three huge strides, slapped Karen’s gun out of her hand and, grabbing a fistful of her hair, forced her to her knees. He put his gun to the back of her head. Eight other men stepped into the office, one carrying a phial of gold-tinged water. From the building’s lower floors came the sound of breaking pottery. “Poisoned him,” said Thorpe. “Killed E.W. in broad daylight. You didn’t really think you-”
“Stop it, Marvin,” snapped Karen, straining her neck until blood ran from her scalp. “You don’t know what you’re fucking with.”
“I know you’re a murderer,” said Thorpe, and his voice was tight with grief and reluctance. Jon stubbed out his cigar on the Mayor’s desk.
“None of this was my idea,” said Karen, her tone changing from bullying to pleading. She twisted her head as far as she could, looking with wide, tearful eyes at Thorpe. “Please, Marvin, you have to believe-“
He shot her. Jon saw what it cost him, saw the agonizing pain that flitted across Thorpe’s honest face, the way he averted his eyes from the blood and brains fanned out over the carpet. He let go of her hair and she fell flat, trailing smoke from the hole in her skull. Thorpe took a deep breath and let his gun fall to the carpet. The other men in the room, dockworkers and the lads from the steel mill, even a few railroad employees, looked on in stony silence. Thorpe turned to Jon. “I guess I don’t have to worry about you,” he said. His voice was an older man’s voice, tired and beat.
Jon picked up E.W.’s gun. “Not for much longer,” he said, and stuck the barrel in his mouth. Thorpe’s eyebrows rose. Jon pulled the trigger.
Jon Morton’s life ended in much the same way his daddy’s had, with a bullet in his head. He lay slumped on a dead man’s desk, blood dripping from his mouth. E.W.’s revolver lay smoking a few inches from the curled fingers of his left hand. Marvin Thorpe stood for a while and stared at his friend’s body, and then he turned and left the office with the other men. Outside, the moon was out and the city was burning.
Jon was buried next to his mother in Potter’s Field, just outside of Lawson. People from the city came to pay their respects. Thorpe didn’t come. It wasn’t so bad, and it wasn’t so strange. Jon didn’t mind, anyway.