Unbury Carol(49)
“You mind my asking why you’d pick a place like this to get some peaceful sleep?”
“I never said I was looking for peace.”
The girl felt a strong urge to fetch the madam and almost did, but recently she’d been scolded for calling when she could’ve handled the situation herself. You get my attention when it’s an emergency, Susan, and you do it yourself when it’s not. Was this an emergency? Hardly. Not yet, she thought. But the man talked crazier than he walked.
“I’m not sure there are any rooms available.” Her voice betrayed her blossoming unease.
Smoke looked at the girl for a long time. She could tell he was thinking, and all she could think was that he was thinking whether or not to kill her.
And he smelled, yes, he definitely smelled of oil.
“Hell’s heaven,” he finally said, his face calm, too calm. “Here’s what we’ll do. You’ll go and set me up a room where I’m alone for the night and I won’t burn this pig-shit palace down. You go and clear a room out for me and I won’t torch you. You like your face? Sure you do. I do, too. I like your face. It’s a fine face! Do your fine face a favor and go along…make room for me…get me the dirtiest mattress in this place if needs be, but be quick about it. My legs hurt. My legs always hurt. But they hurt more than usual now. And if you go and get me that room, I’ll let you all continue to make merry. Hell, I’ll let you live. You wanna live, doncha?”
He glowered. “Get me a room, girl, and I won’t sear the flesh from your bones.”
Smoke snapped his fingers and a small flame appeared at the head of a match and the girl let out a little scream.
* * *
—
An hour later, the sounds from below considerably quieter, Smoke sat on a fold-out wooden chair and stared into the darkness of a rotten room. He thought of the lawman who’d stopped him at the head of town. He thought of how the officer didn’t laugh when he told him his name was James Moxie but then told him he wasn’t the first. Not the first what? Smoke had asked him. Not even the first one today. Smoke smiled. I tell you what, Smoke said suddenly, taking the lawman by surprise. I’m gonna go to that there cathouse right there and spend the night. I may bed one of the girls and I may not, but either way that’s where I’ll be and that’s the only place I’ll be. The officer said something about himself being the one to make the rules here and Smoke said go on, then, make the rules. Then the lawman told him that he better go straight to that cathouse and do whatever he was going to do and get out by sunup. Smoke smiled. He hated towns like this one. He thanked the officer and passed and the officer asked him what was wrong with his legs and Smoke told him he done broke his knees fishing. Straight to the cathouse, the man said. Smoke thought about pulling the strings. He even had his fingers in the little holes and was set to drop oil all the way to the pig-shit northern exit from town. And if he did that, and then passed the cathouse and the law came running to ask why he hadn’t stopped like he said he would, Smoke would toss a match and the whole sour town would go up at once. He liked this idea. It was a good idea. A town with so many troughs burning too fast for the buckets. The sound of the storefronts splintering. The crack of an entire town square. The crush would be magnificent. He would enjoy watching it burn, the good wood turned to dust, ash in the sky, sailing upward before coming back down like a gray rain…pieces of the general store settling in the street…bits of the tavern mixed with ashes from the church.
Suddenly Smoke wished for an urn of oil as big as the bat-black sky. He had his fingers in the loops, but his legs told him to rest. They demanded it.
Now he stared into the darkness of his room and listened as the hullabaloo diminished below. The sound of the girls gave way to the sound of the women and the sound of the women gave way to the sound of the glasses being gathered, the doors locked, and the women again, dulcet tones now, reviewing the night they’d had.
He leaned forward in the chair and removed his shins, setting them beside the mattress on the floor. Then he lowered himself down. The stubs of his knees throbbed and the sores on his thighs were hot, then cold, then he was partially free of the pain. One of the sores had split open, and Smoke touched it and grimaced. He could never quite get rid of the sensation of wearing the legs altogether. Like a man with a hand just cut off. Still thinks it’s there. Only Smoke felt it double. Old legs, new legs. Still there. On his back he could smell the oil and the oil smelled good. He fell asleep that way…the scent of the oil giving him strange dreams…dreams of himself dripping with it…swimming in it…a full tin-man with enough oil in him to burn all the pig-shit towns on the Trail.
In one dream he caught up to James Moxie and invited him into a tavern for a drink and the outlaw went with him and Smoke gave him a glass full of the good stuff. Moxie thanked him and drank it and Smoke laughed and told him to open his mouth and then he tossed a match down the outlaw’s throat and red flames came rushing out of Moxie’s mouth. But Smoke recoiled when this happened, for the flames came out too fast, too strong, and reached for him instead. Stay back, outlaw, Smoke said and the outlaw breathed fire and the fire caught on Smoke’s shirt and pants and his shins, too, and then the whole place went whump boom! and beyond the flames, beyond the fire he saw the outlaw staring at him, not burning, and Smoke howled as the fire caught the hair on his arms, the hair on his head, and his flesh smelled like rotting mice and his bones blackened and the flames scurried up his neck over his teeth across his paperlike tongue down his ashen throat.