The Road to Reckoning (19 page)

There would not be a class for me.

We were near on the exterior of Jackson by nightfall. There were lots of townships here that profited on the passing lumber and coal companies and Jackson was one of those. By passing companies I mean those of the Lehigh canals and the wagons that supplemented them, for the horse was still the burden bearer over all.

First would come a tract of land purchased by a Smith or a Jones, then a log church by the Friends or the Mennonites. Hotels and mercantiles follow. Then, on the outskirts, where the single men and the drunks that the taverns of the town discourage gather, where the teamsters pass, come the saloons and brothels. Eventually they fall into the townships’ quarters but for now, for travelers like Henry Stands and me, they are the rim of the pots of life. And without him speaking of it I knew that the plank building with the plank porch and full rank of four horses tied to its fence was just such a place he was looking for.

‘We have no money for bought food,’ I said. ‘Or drink,’ I offered, knowing that Henry Stands would seek spirits. ‘We have nothing to trade.’

I did not want to stop here.

‘I’m just looking for news,’ Henry Stands said, but did not look at me. I could not argue. At that time the inns of the road were the mail drops and polling stations and if you wanted word that is where it was posted. But I think Henry Stands sought something else.

‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Get up and stay on the horse.’

I watched him sidle away to our left. The saloon was nothing more than a log house with paned windows either side of the stable-door, the top half open, but I could see little of the inside.

I lost sight of mister Stands; he could be Indian when it suited. Me and Jude Brown stood in the dark and I patted his neck and soothed.

It was only moments later when I felt the stout body beside me and Henry Stands laid a hand softly to me so as I would not jump.

‘They are here,’ he said, and I knew what he meant.

‘All of them?’

‘All of them,’ he said.

‘So we go for the law, do we not?’ My voice was not as strong as I wanted.

‘The law is in Stroud,’ he said. ‘We are here. I have checked their horses. There are no guns there. They would have them all with them.’

I looked up at the light from the saloon. ‘So we have nothing to go against them?’

He ignored that and pushed me to take the wooden Paterson from my belt for himself, still stained with tea and ash.

‘Take the barrel of the gun to the back door. It is in the corner and covers the room. You will be behind them.’

I stared, and he described the horror further with glee in his voice and the plaything being fondled in his fist.

‘Around the back. It is a half door like the front. You will hold over the half like you have a shotgun on them. They will know no better. They will not see you covering them and I will show you when it is right. When I make my play.’

He did not seem to comprehend that our weapons were nothing but toys and broken things and I thought it timely to mention.

‘We will be killed!’

He put the steel barrel of his dead wind-rifle in my arms. ‘Thomas Walker,’ he said, ‘have I not shown you cowards? What did I say about Lewis and his rifle?’

Sniffling, I wiped my nose. ‘He put fear in the Indians.’

‘He put fear in the Indians,’ he repeated. ‘And if you make a man afraid?’

‘You can beat him.’

‘You can beat him.’ He took my hand but I pulled away. He let me do this and stood aside.

‘I may need you here, son,’ he said, and waited. I could hear coarse laughter from the saloon. He looked to the soft light. I did not move. He let me sit in silence.

‘Stay then,’ he said at last, and spat to the dirt. He wiped his foot on it.

‘I forget you are a boy.’

He set off toward the light. Invisible at first in the night and then, as he gained upon it, he was a black coat and hat framed against it, smaller than I had ever seen him.

My hands held tight the barrel he had left me and I watched him go on with the fiction of a gun hanging from his right hand.

I may have overdone the fisherman’s lure that was Henry Stands’s bravery or I may not. The gullible fish snaps at the shine and meat and is whipped from the river to the bank. Even in his last breaths he is unaware that his end has come by just painted wood and wire. He believed it glorious and worthy of the risk.

What you may make of a man
approaching abomination with a wooden pistol in his hands is your faith’s decision. If you are young I hope it does not inspire too much. I told the same story to my late sons. If you are older you may think Henry Stands foolish, or worse, bitten by madness, or you may yet feel something rising in your chest at the thought of yourself about to stand down four armed men with nothing but your valor and self as your only true weapon. I have given you only a wooden toy.

I did not know what faith Henry Stands had. He said he was a Proverbs man.

They must have been his own proverbs.

I patted Jude Brown, left him, and walked toward the light.

‘Mister Stands?’ My questioning voice was a whisper, the metal tube writhing in my fists. He looked down at me, half his face lit by the glow from the log building. He instructed over the doubt in my words.

‘To the back,’ he said. ‘You will see the door. It is open. Wait for my call on it. When you hear me, stand up. They will be looking on me.’ That was all he said and carried on his slow path and did not look over to see if I was going on.

I had the empty steel. I had Thomas Heywood encased in a room and armed with my father’s guns. I could hear his raucous laughter as I crept to the back door. He was roaring over my destitution, my orphan position of his making. He had triumphed over Henry Stands and the orphan was surely dead. He was safe in this place. Safe with his partners and the rum bought with my father’s guns and coin. Safe as any man in his coffin and I looked down at what I had against him and thought of Henry Stands coming through the front door with the model of a gun, and I did not want to think further. But I would keep my faith.

Their laughter was loud now and as if aimed at me, as if they could see through the walls and watched and mocked my fool’s approach. The top half of the door was swung outward and showed the shadows of them, the heads of them stretched and warped as the stove-light played. I heard the flap of cards and the friendly curses of rum and villainy. No music or the sense of others, just the flat echoes of an expansive room.

And then I had no time for fear as I heard the front door open slow and a new shadow rose on the wood above my head.

There was the sound of chairs scraping and glass dancing but then Henry Stands’s voice silenced it all.

‘Easy there, boys,’ he said. ‘I’ll shoot if you ain’t respectful.’

I stood up now, and what a picture I saw!

There were only two tables and these were sorry poor, as was the whole, which was not much more than a barn.

The bar was a bookcase with a blanket tacked across its front and another bookcase on the wall behind with crock and glass bottles. There was a vegetable box for spitting.

The tramp of a barkeep was ducked and looking at Henry Stands in the door. I had all the backs to me, all standing, and it was just them backs of the four who had changed my life, the place empty save for them. I saw two rifles propped under the bar.

This was the whole world.

I saw Henry Stands pass the wooden pistol over them, keeping it at his waist.

The light was low, just the stove and one lamp above the table where their game was waiting. Everything just shapes like puzzle pieces, all half-lit, and Henry Stands had plotted well. He had the shape of a gun pointed at them. And he could read their thinking.

‘The boy at the door.’ He raised his left hand slow to indicate.

Indian-hatband turned his head and saw me with my steel ready to paint their backs and I made my face hateful as best I could. He made a whisper to Heywood.

Heywood lifted his hands away from his belt. I could see that the saw-toothed blanket he wore as a coat was crudely cut up the back for when he rode. He cared nothing for what he looked like. If he lay asleep you would pass him by for a pile of rags.

‘You got the drop, old-timer,’ he said, and raised himself up. ‘What you want?’

I thrilled! Had we done it?

I brandished my gun like a lookout with an eight-gauge in a city bar.

Had we done it?

‘I want you to drop your belts and irons, boys,’ Henry Stands said. ‘I want only my goods back and what is left of the boy’s. The law is on you, so good luck to you. I don’t hold that against, but you took from me. And I cannot stand for that.’

Damn if I could still not see the face of that man who was just black coat and hat! He moved a step away from the others and Henry Stands moved with him with just wood to threaten.

‘Hold there,’ Henry said to Black-coat’s twitching. ‘You’ll go first.’

He called to me.

‘Boy? Shoot Heywood’s back. I’ll nail this son of a bitch.’

And I lifted that empty barrel to my underarm, making to fire! Hatband saw and gritted his teeth at Heywood.

‘N-now hold there!’ Heywood stammered, and lifted his arms higher. ‘Ain’t no reason to go, old friend! We can talk this out.’

Henry lowered the gun.

‘You keep calling me “old,” you wet bastard.’ He set his feet apart with the wooden gun by his thigh. ‘Drop. That’s the end of it. You can drink on and I’ll be gone with them pistols. Keep your own.’

I saw Heywood’s head tilt in thought and the scene was as a painting, not a finger moving.

‘My boys said you were dead?’ He said this to himself.

‘Lot of folks tell that.’

Heywood moved one pace.

‘Where’d you get that gun, old man?’ There was
backbone in his voice. ‘We cleaned you out. That’s one of the boy’s pistols …?’

He swung his head to me and his eyes were black like Strother Gore’s.

‘Where’d you get any gun, come to think …’

I began to shiver within and Heywood smiled.

Henry brought him back.

‘Damn if I don’t have friends,’ he said, and moved to the bar. Black-coat shifted with him and Henry lifted the gun just enough. Black-coat’s boots stayed at that.

‘You may not know that word, son,’ Henry said kindly. ‘My man Irish. Back on the road. Friend of mine. You sold him our property. I went back to my friend. I stand with his guns. Right pleased he was to understand what a fool you made of him. The road’s closed to you boys now.’

Heywood’s hands lowered.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ve done that. I think, old man, that you’re standing there with the wooden piece we left with the boy … I think that’s the measure of it …’

Henry Stands turned his wooden gun to the barkeep.

‘They sell you them stolen guns for their drink?’

I could not see the man for he had shrunk below his bar, and then I stopped looking, for the four went for their belts, slow, or I recall it as slow, but they never concerned themselves with me, and if I was truly armed that would have been their last mistake.

The scrape of leather, my father’s guns, the table heaved over for a shield, glass and cards flying.

I never saw Henry Stands drop behind the bar, only the twin barrels of the shotgun that came up with him. Providence! You go try and find a barkeep who does not have such at his knee!

He brought up the gun, as they say when you shoot bird, and calmly, like shooting the same, planted his aim. No care for the iron at him. This was his measure. I could see him draw and hold breath.

The others fired loose, as if afraid of their guns, and they huddled together as they shot wildly like at the fluttering of bats. They were back-shooters not shootists. Counterfeits all their lives.

Henry Stands sewed them with the shotgun’s sight. One closed eye and a pull and Indian-hatband’s face exploded to the wall mid-giggle and his teeth rattled on the floor still laughing. Henry swung left, never minding the bottles blowing out behind him, and Black-coat cocked but nothing else, as his head painted the window and his legs danced him to the corner. He brought the other table down and it covered him and I never did see what he truly looked like.

Just Heywood and Silver-hair now. Heywood was near on his back, pushing himself to the wall and palming back the Colt but playing it high. Three shots he had done, all above Henry’s head, and Henry went below the bar again.

Silver-hair had got back his sense. He had one of the revolvers also and went to a knee for the rest of his shots.

I drew the bolt of the door and came in running. Two steps and I was on him.

I swung that Italian steel and cleaved it into Silver-hair’s head like an ax. It stuck, which I did not expect, and I let go, a horrible shiver up my arm. It carried with him as he keeled over and I could do nothing but stare as it stood out of the back of his head like a candle. My eyes ran to the Colt quivering in his fist and I dove on it.

Prying it from that hand was the first time I had it placed for real. I had known its press into my belly when my father had clasped me that night in Milton and when I had shown Henry how to load it, and the wooden grip was the same in my hand as the model. But now it was a weapon. I had a pistol in my hand. And nothing feels the same as that. It has a beauty to it for sure. Like it was meant to be. You understand that or you do not.

Thomas Heywood was at the back wall, legs spread, his chest panting. He looked to his dead and cocked the Colt again. Silence then.

There had been Henry Stands’s two shotgun blows and the repeat of the Colts, their white smoke turning in the air and hanging under the stove’s blue, but now no sound but the dying breath of men and the roll of bottles across the planked floor.

Heywood saw the pistol in my hand and shakily leveled his own to me. Mister Colt’s craftsmanship now destined to be the tool of the slovenly saloon brigand.

Colt spoke of army and navy contracts, of the defense of the homesteader.

I would tell him what the future of his guns was to be.