Unbury Carol(88)

“Yes it is.”

“That doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.”

Opal considered. When Wolfe first entered the station he thought it might be someone Dwight hired. Like everything else with Evers, it was too tidy. But the man was convincing. Wolfe didn’t know everything: a trait Opal looked for in a sincere person.

“Quite an illness hit Harrows just four weeks back.”

“Of course, I know of it. A deluge of rot.”

“Pardon?”

“Many graves, Sheriff. Too many.”

Opal paused.

“You think it had anything to do with Missus Evers’s death?”

Wolfe considered. “Well, I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer, but I would say no. I really do believe it was her heart.”

Opal studied the doctor’s face a moment before rising.

“Thank you,” he said.

Wolfe stood up as well and attempted to make small talk, summer weather, the view from Harper’s Hill. But Opal wasn’t biting and Alexander Wolfe took his leave.

Opal watched the man climb up a stanhope and guide a brown horse back up the road from which he’d come. He watched until the carriage vanished into the shadows beyond the Northern Theater, beyond the ice-and-candy parlor, beyond the gunsmith’s, too.

When Cole came in to take over for Opal, the sheriff said there’d been a change of plans. He wanted Cole to ride out to Dwight Evers’s place and thank him for delivering the doctor. He wanted Cole to take note of Evers’s reaction to the thank-you. Write down what he saw. The deputy did as the sheriff asked. When he returned, he told Opal that Mister Evers said not to worry but he hoped things were cleared up. He also said Dwight looked bad. Grieving bad. Opal frowned. Always so tidy, always so clean. Cole shrugged and said, “That’s what I saw.”

What Cole didn’t see was Dwight’s face after the deputy left.

Breathing heavy, paranoid, and sweating, Dwight tried desperately to figure out who would have done this for him.

Who would have known to do it?

In the mirror Dwight looked skeletal: his lips far from his teeth, his eyes wide as divots in the Trail. The scratch on his cheek had stopped bleeding. Had become something of a solid purple line.

Alexander Wolfe was an invention of Dwight’s splintering mind.

And yet…tonight…

The figment walked. He talked.

Dwight locked the front door.

The man with the shifting face had woken him, told him to hide his wife.

And now…Alexander Wolfe.

Dwight laughed. A single high-pitched shriek. Then he brought his hands to his lips as though it were possible to retrieve it, as if it were terrible luck to laugh now, so close to Carol’s burial.

He wanted to feel grateful. He wanted to thank the man, the thing that was helping him. Instead he brought a hand to his heart and trembled, unable to take his eyes from the shadowed corners of his home.

Yes, thank you was what he wanted to say, but he mouthed the words What do I owe you?

instead.





Moxie Moxie Moxie mo

go to where the dreamers go…

Moxie Moxie Moxie me

lay thee down and go to sleep…



As he sang, Smoke’s legs were screaming.

The hole in his upper shin cut into his skin, and the wound was getting worse.

Moxie was in Harrows by now, Smoke knew this.

    Oh, Moxie Moxie Moxie mine!

Sweat drips heavy from the vine!

Moxie Moxie Moxie mug!

You’re cornered like a common bug!



A match came to life between his fingers, and Smoke saw he’d reached the thick northernmost woods of the Trail. Shades of great pines showed in the scant light. Beasts scurried in the brush. Smoke sang to them.

Beyond the horse’s head he saw the tracks he’d been following for two days.

Looked like the outlaw’s horse was getting tired, as the hoofprints were closer together now.

A second set of tracks, too. The same Smoke had seen all day. Small hooves. Quick steps. As if someone were riding a dog. Whoever it was, they weren’t riding with Moxie, and Smoke relished the idea of a simple civilian, a messenger, an innocent caught in the crossfire.

Fire.

Smoke smiled, but his eyes remained cold white in the darkness.

He thought of Moxie’s myth, re-witnessing the conviction held by the small man in Griggsville he’d torched on the shitter.

He started to laugh but the pain cut him short.

Beyond the drone of black hooves clacking he could hear the outlaw’s voice, the things the legend would say when Smoke caught up to him. It’d be straight from the Book of Cliché Pleading, the words all the older outlaws used when the End was nigh; words they learned back when phrases were hotter than burning oil. Take that hermit. Had he shot more and talked less Smoke would be dead. But the old outlaws loved the talk.

I’ll give you five seconds, Moxie would say.

You better be planning on dying today, he would say.

I hope you said your goodbyes.

Oh, the shibboleths of the Trail.

Smoke tucked his chin low and feigned a deep voice.

“Break a leg, hit man!”

“On your knees!”

“It’s gonna be a short fight, Cripple!”