Past All Dishonor (13 page)

I must have dropped off, though, because when the knock came I jumped and gave some kind of a moan. It was Mrs. Finn, to tell me a Mr. Arthur Haines was in the front parlor, waiting to see me. I washed up, strapped on my gun, and dressed. When I went in there he had on a new checked suit, and got up and shook hands, though until then he had never shown any great interest in me. He was a good-looking Irishman, in a flashy kind of way, with round, pale face, and light blue eyes that were warm and soft and friendly, specially when he was singing a song, and he picked some girl out there to smile at. I asked him how everything was, and he said fine, and then I asked how he’d like to step out and have a cup of coffee with me, but he said he was due at the International in a few minutes for lunch and wouldn’t have time. “Well, Art, what’s on your mind.”

“Just a friendly warning, Roger.”

“Is any warning friendly?”

“This one’s supposed to be.”

“What’s it about?”

“Renny. And Biloxi. Both of them.”

“They’re friends of mine.”

“They were.”

“Well, Art, say it.”

“On account of Brewer, they’re sore at you, Roger. They were close to him, you know. And then another thing, now he’s gone, it’s mixed up the house question the worst way. He gave it to her, you know. He gave Biloxi the house, and had it built so there’d be a wonderful music room for Renny, and had all that furniture sent up, some of it from San Francisco, so it’s still on the wagons and hasn’t been unloaded yet—but not one deed, check, or draft has been signed yet, and Biloxi’s going crazy. She’s sold out on D Street, and she’s lost out on A Street, and Renny’s out to get you.”

“Why me?”

“The brother says you killed George.”

“The brother’s a goddam fool.”

“And Renny says you did.”

“Was he there?”

“He claims he didn’t have to be.”

“And what have you got to do with it?”

“Roger, it’s just like I said. It’s a friendly warning, that’s all. He says he’ll get you, and I don’t know if he will or not, but he might try. I’m a good hombre. I don’t like to see nice people in trouble.”

“Meaning me?”

“And him. And her. All of you.”

He lit a cigar, sat back, gave a nod, and that little smile. I tried to get my mind on Renny, but it was like the night before, when I had tried to get my mind on Raymond Brewer and what I was going to do about him, and all I could think about was nothing. But this little smile was going all the time, and all of a sudden it struck me there was something funny about it. What was he doing here, talking to me? I didn’t mean a thing to him, and if he was just somebody that knew something why didn’t he get on a stage for Carson or Reno or some place like that and get as far away from it as he could? And if he was such a friend of Renny’s, why was he telling me, and giving me the one thing I would need to take care of myself, which was a tip in advance? “Upsets me about Biloxi.”

“I can understand that, Roger. She’s nice.”

“Good-looking, too.”

“Yeah, those Creoles have got something.”

“How is she?”

“How do you mean, how is she?”

“In bed.”

“Good God, Roger, how would I know?”

“She’s got it for sale. Haven’t you bought any?”

“Roger, you’re quite mistaken. Sure, Biloxi’s in business. All her life she’s been in business, it’s the only thing she knows. But since Renny moved in, down in San Francisco after she went there in ’52, she’s been strictly one man’s woman. That was nice, that was. He showed up one night, with a message from her sister, that lives up in Shreveport. He’s a little younger than she is, you know, and at that time he was nothing but a nineteen-year-old kid. And he just moved in. I mean, just like that. He took one look at Biloxi, and a few minutes later, when she started upstairs with a colonel from the Presidio, he pulled a rapier out of his walking-stick and said there’d be nothing like that. Biloxi, of course, she loved it, and when she heard him play, that clinched it. No, don’t jump to conclusions, Roger. I’m just a friend.”

“But you
could
be more?”

“In what way?”

“If Renny got it.”

I didn’t expect him to jump out of his skin, or do anything, as a matter of fact, except what he did do, which was to act hurt, and smug, and tell me I’d hung around too many gambling saloons to know what real friendship was like. Just the same, for one second he was caught by surprise, and there came this little flicker in his eye, so I knew I wasn’t talking so foolish as he said. I thanked him for his warning, and he left. On my way back from breakfast I stopped at a bar and got a pint of wheat.

I don’t really like liquor, but all afternoon I lay in bed and drank, trying to get up some interest in what was going to happen to me, and by six o’clock I had a bellyful of booze, but I didn’t any more give a damn than I had before. I shaved and washed up, and walked over to the International for dinner. As I walked through the bar it fell quiet as a church, and in the dining room I don’t think there was one person that wasn’t watching me as I went to my table. There was something about the way they acted that told me things were going on that I didn’t know about, and still it seemed to me my whole insides were made of lead. I was due for work at eight, and at a quarter of I stopped in the lobby for a cigar, then started down the street.

As I turned the corner of C for the Esperanza I noticed men standing all up and down the boardwalk on the other side, like they were waiting for something. Then, on my side, I noticed not one human being was in sight. I had the boardwalk to myself as far as the Esperanza, but in front of that Raymond Brewer was walking, with Red Caskie beside him, and two other men following behind.

I stopped. From things being said on the other side I knew they had spotted me. I don’t know if I felt scared, or how I felt. Since killing that man I hadn’t felt anything, except some horrible sense of guilt, and for the rest of it just this vacant pain. I stood there, trying to make myself go on. My feet wouldn’t move. I turned around, started back to Union. “Well, that yellow son of a bitch.”

I climbed up Union to B and walked home. But when I felt in my pocket for my key, a rifle shot popped down the street and raw splinters jumped out of the front door, where it was lit up by the gaslight on the corner. I drew and turned as quick as anybody ever did, but there was nothing there but brick. I looked at every doorway and window, but couldn’t see anything. I went inside and clumped up the long board tunnel to the floor where the rooms started. Mrs. Finn came out of the front parlor. “What was the shooting, Roger?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“Was it intended for you?”

“It might have been. Your door got ventilated.”

“Don’t you think it would be safer for you—just so they can’t keep track so easy where you are—if you moved somewhere else?”

“No I don’t.”

“I’ll have to have more for your room.”

“How much more?”

“Instead of six dollars I want ten.”

“All right.”

I went in the room, lit the lamp, and started to undress. Then I figured the lamp was a little too much of a good thing, if anybody happened to be watching, so I blew it out. Then I felt around in the dark for my pint of wheat, and had the last drink out of it. Then I lay down on the bed. I lay there quite a while, without dressing or undressing, except pretty soon I took off my coat. I tried to be ashamed I had run out on Raymond Brewer, and to be afraid of Renny, if he was the one that had shot at me. I couldn’t get up any interest about either one. They didn’t seem real and they didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. And then all of a sudden I was off that bed like I had shot up on springs and pulling the door shut after me. If it was imagination I didn’t know, but it seemed to me I had seen something coming through that window, from the sidewalk. I took a chair from the landing, jammed it against the door, and went down to the street. Mrs. Finn was looking at me from the landing as I went downstairs with no hat, no coat, and no gun. When I started to undress, I had hung it where I had always hung it, on the bedpost, so it was less than a foot from my head. But when I jumped, I didn’t have it.

On Taylor Street, up from the Enterprise, was a miners’ hangout, and I went in there and ordered beer. But from the way they acted when I came in, I knew some of them had been in the crowd in front of the Esperanza, and when a couple of them went out, it was no trouble to figure what they were up to, and that wasn’t so good. Because by then I had figured out pretty well why I had been acting like I had, which was a pretty funny way to act when you stop to think about it, because up to then I had faced a few slugs, and while I own up I was just as scared as anybody, I claim I wasn’t a hell of a sight scareder. The thing was, Brewer meant nothing to me, and Renny didn’t, and Biloxi didn’t. But Morina did, and no matter who hollered I was yellow, I had to face her, and tell her what I had done, and why I had done it. And yet she was on her way to San Francisco, and couldn’t get back for a week, and here I’d got myself in a hole where if I didn’t do something pretty quick I wouldn’t even live through the night.

The sergeant came in, the one that had talked to Brewer and got called down for forgetting that getting rich for your country is more important than fighting for it. He gave the miners the old recruiting spiel, about how wonderful the army grub is, and how the new uniforms have just come in, and how good-looking they are. He let them feel of the one he was wearing, to see what fine wool it is. And then I thought of the United States Government, and how it doesn’t let its soldiers get killed until the proper time comes. “Well, Bud, where do you take these rookies of yours, after you get them?”

“First we bed them down in our recruiting office in Gold Hill, in a back room we got, then when we get a bunch we take them to San Francisco.”

“That back room, is it under guard?”

“That’s not for a soldier to worry about.”

“I want to know.”

“There’s a sentry out there.”

“Then let’s go.”

And an hour later, when I sat on the edge of a bunk with the stuff they’d given me, I knew I was as low as I could get, that I would put this uniform on, instead of the one that was mine, for the sake of one more look at something that had brought me nothing but misery since I’d seen her. And next day, when Raymond Brewer saw me with a squad in dungarees, and laughed at me, and I did nothing about it, for the first time in my life I felt yellow.

“Duval?”

“Yo.”

“Visitor.”

She was out there in the dark, still in her travelling dress. I could feel a drawstring tighten around my stomach as I went over to her, because I knew my piece by heart, but I didn’t know what hers was, or whether it was engraved on a bullet. But when I got to her, it looked like there were two drawstrings out there, the tightest one around her face. It was all twisted, like she was in pain, and it was hard to remember she’d ever been pretty. She took hold of me and looked in my eyes, like she was trying to see in them something she had to find out about. It was quite some time before she spoke, and when she did it was in a whisper. “You did it, didn’t you, Roger?”

“Who do you think did it?”

“I know it was you, but tell me.”

“I killed that bastard, I meant to kill him, and I’ll kill any other bastard you sell yourself to, and if there’s just one more bastard I’ll kill you.”

“Kiss me, Roger.”

“...What?”

“I never knew there was any such feeling as this.”

“The only feeling you get is from money.”

“Not like this. That you’d kill him. For me.”

I held her tight and kissed her, and she didn’t kiss like she had in Sacramento, when she always seemed to be laughing at me, but in a hot, hungry way, with tears in her eyes. “I can’t pass this night without you, Roger.”

“Listen, this is a men-only army.”

“Then you’ll have to leave it.”

“God, do I want to!”

“Where’ll we go?”

“I guess not to Biloxi’s.”

“Oh Roger, the most awful thing happened. They set her out in the street. And the piano broke down the boardwalk and went sliding down into a yard back of one of the houses on B Street. And Renny tried to stop it, and it mashed him, and he’s hurt. Biloxi moved him to Arthur Haines’s.”

“Arthur’ll take care of him.”

“You think so?”

“I know it.”

“But where can we go, Roger?”

“I know an old mine.”

“All right.”

“It’s no International Hotel.”

“I won’t mind.”

So how I left the U. S. Army was walk off and leave it, her hand pressed in mine, take an omnibus to Virginia, pick up my blankets and clothes that had been sent to Mrs. Finn’s, get my gun again, and then take her to Pioneer for her stuff that was checked there. Then we climbed the mountain. We went up to an old drift Paddy and I had run across when we were all over the place organizing the union. We cut pinon branches with my jack-knife, and laid them in the tunnel mouth, and on top of them made our bed. We didn’t make very quick work of it, on account of being in each other’s arms all the time, and I don’t know which was most exciting, tearing that uniform off at last, or tearing off her clothes. Except that the little black dress didn’t seem to need much tearing. She was wriggling out of it and into the blankets even before I took hold of it, and when she slipped into my arms, all naked and warm, she closed her eyes before she kissed me, and her face looked like she was in church.

“Roger, this never happened to me.”

“To me either.”

“Nothing like it. Ever.”

“Do you know when I knew you were mine?”

“When, Roger?”

“That night, under the pier.”

“That was sweet. ...
Roger!”

She raised on one elbow and looked down on me with eyes so big they frightened me. “... What is it, Morina?”

“I never been had by a man before!”

“You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course! It’s the first time!”

And so in Brewer’s blood we washed out all she had been, and said we were married, and that she was a virgin until this night, and that I was.