Unbury Carol(32)

But as her laughter died, it was replaced with something much more useful to her.

Hope.





Rinaldo was in Abberstown when Moxie performed the Trick. In those days he was sweeping peanut shells, broken glass, and a wide assortment of disgust from the floor of Lady Hennessey’s bawdy house. He did other things, too, other duties, like cleaning the sheets (just the thought of it now made him rush to the bucket), knocking on the doors when time was up, restocking the liquor shelves, and often dunking a whore’s head in cold bathwater if Lady Hennessey thought her unable to perform. Dark days, yes, but Rinaldo now counted them as penance paid to bear witness to a miracle.

James Moxie in Abberstown. A duel. Moxie the victor without removing his gun from its holster. As if the outlaw had sent a bullet his foe’s way with his mind alone.

Today, to his absolute astonishment, he had in his possession an official piece of paper with James Moxie’s name on it.

A piece of paper he should not have.

Now nearing his fiftieth year, married with two lovely children, and living in a comfortable and clean home in Griggsville, Rinaldo kissed his wife on the forehead and went in to do the same to the little ones. The family took afternoon naps, and he often took this opportunity to muse alone in the big shed in the backyard. After tucking the sheets to his son’s and daughter’s little chins, he quietly closed the door behind him.

Stepping outside, the afternoon air felt calming. He needed that. Calming. Summer sunlight washed the grass path and painted his boots a deep yellow. He came to the shed and whispered, “Who goes there?”

Because today he was nervous; today he’d been a part of something he didn’t want to be a part of. Shouldn’t have been a part of. Had no business with.

Today he’d delivered his hero’s death sentence.

He entered the shed and stepped toward a pile of thick blankets stacked beside a brown wooden chest. On the chest was a small purple box: Rinaldo’s own box of magic. After seeing James Moxie’s feat in Abberstown, Rinaldo took quickly to the craft.

He plopped onto the blankets and reached for a box of matches beside the box of tricks. The small shed and all its clutter showed when he lit one: boxes of newspaper clippings, JAMES MOXIE wanted posters, and the tall wooden cabinet his wife, Liliana, refused to step inside of so that he might cut her in half.

He reached his small hand under the blankets and removed a pipe.

He leaned back into the blankets and smoked.

The fabric seemed to soften beneath him and soon he was sprawled, almost completely lying down. His mind swam with anecdotes and sometimes he laughed and other times he stared seriously at the ceiling. Thirty minutes into this haphazard meditation, he bent forward and slipped his boots off, his feet naked upon the cold earth before he found them too cold and brought them up onto the blankets where it was warmer. He sat this way for a long time, the candlelight dancing on the ceiling.

A wolf or dog howled outside and Rinaldo sat up fast, ripped from his splendor. The noise lent some urgency to the real reason he’d come to the shed.

Removing the piece of paper from his pocket, Rinaldo held it where he could read it and, squinting, read it again for the seventh time this day.


James Moxie STOP Mackatoon STOP On his way to Harrows STOP Send the Cripple STOP Urgent



He felt no less guilty about it for having smoked.

His time at Lady Hennessey’s, long ago, had exposed him to every variety of outlaw and triggerman that traveled the Trail. For reasons he was unsure of, Rinaldo had become a confidant for these men. Usually the bad ones.

At the time this gave him strange comfort—accepted as he was at all, even by men who leered, cheated, and murdered. Many nights he sat at the bawdy house bar, listening to the woes and wonders of real life on the Trail. The men and women seemed to think he was safe. Perhaps it was his kind face. Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t speak much. For whatever the reason, Rinaldo was told things, too many things. Most outlaws, it seemed, experienced something like confession when talking to him. Soon, for this, his role in the bawdy house ballooned, a natural progression: His being a friendly ear became his being an ideal middleman, a nondescript nobody who could deliver their messages, telegrams, and (often) illegal notes. Many an evening at Lady Hennessey’s ended with Rinaldo holding a piece of paper, similar to the one he held now, a word or two from the rapscallion who had written it, a message for someone equally beastly.

See to it Johansen gets this? She’ll be stopping in soon.

Do me a favor, huh? And don’t be showing this off…

Eh, little Rinaldo, do me a favor…

Tell Lafayette I says hello.

For this, Rinaldo, too, became famous on the Trail. But to his distress, not for the same reasons James Moxie had.

Not famous for magic.

Rinaldo in Abberstown. He’s the one to go through.

Did you leave it with Rinaldo? Abberstown? Lady Hennessey’s…you know the man.

Rinaldo, simple as he was, received these papers with the same expression he wore when he mopped. Much younger then, he thought little of the consequences of the words he delivered. He knew the men and women were bad and could guess their correspondences were no better, yet he had felt free from responsibility.

After all, what was he doing but taking a sheet of paper from one hand and placing it in another?

Lady Hennessey’s had a way of pulling even the cleanest men into the mud, and Rinaldo, now very happy in Griggsville, called himself lucky for not having gotten dirtier, stuck there for longer than he was.