THE WAITER’S SINISTER remark did not bother Mark Talbot. He’d spent the last six years bunking with men who carved their own tattoos and stabbed each other for snoring.
He sipped his beer slowly, then killed it when the waiter poked his shoulder and pointed to the time on the clock above the bar.
Snugging his hat on his head, Talbot picked up his sea bag and headed down the long hill toward the ferry docks whistling. He was going home, by God! He was going home!
He turned down a secondary street; rough cobbles and shipping crates and trash lined the boardwalks. Raucous music seeped through the thin walls of the saloons; lamplight and moving shadows angled from the windows. A chill breeze stirred the fog, and buoy bells rang far out in the soup.
Two men appeared out of the fog before him. They were his size, rawboned longshoremen with jug-like necks. Their tattered oilskin coats stretched taut across their sweatered chests. A foul-smelling cigarette dangled from the lips of the one on Talbot’s right. He could smell the booze on them both.
“Pardon me, mates,” Talbot said jovially when they closed the gap between them, not letting him pass. “You must not have seen me coming. But now that you have, kindly move your asses.”
“Smart one, are you?” said the man on Talbot’s left, lifting one bearded cheek with a grin. Talbot detected a faint Scottish accent.
He turned his head to see the fat businessman come up from behind the uglies. “I told you you’d pay,” he said happily, puffing out his chest, a fat cigar clutched between the small, plump fingers of his right hand. “Apologize.”
Talbot wrinkled his nose. “What makes you think you can treat people like freight rats, you little mackerel fart!”
The fat man screwed up his tiny, deep-set eyes. “I will not be humiliated by the likes of you, you common … deckhand!”
“Insulting deckhands now, are you? Some of my best friends are deckhands.”
The fat man tipped his head to the brutes he must have recruited from a nearby tavern. They stared glassy-eyed at Talbot, swaying slightly from drink. The stench of alcohol was almost palpable. “Okay, teach him who’s boss around here.”
“Come on, boys,” Talbot said affably. “You’re too drunk to fight.”
The big Scot on Talbot’s left pulled back his coat to reveal a wide-bladed skinning knife in a bloodstained leather sheath. “Why don’t you tell this gent you’re sorry now, laddie, so we can get back to our crap game?”
Talbot sighed and shook his head. “Sorry, I won’t do that.”
They all stood their silently for several seconds, the fat man and his two brutes staring at Talbot, Talbot staring back. The fat man puffed his cigar and smiled.
At length, from the corner of his eye, Talbot saw the man on the right pull a knife. He was too drunk to pull it quickly, and the tip caught on the sheath. As the man fumbled with it, Talbot took one step back, turning to his right, and kicked it out of the man’s hand. The man gave a yell. Talbot
punched him in the gut so hard he could hear his ribs crack. The man doubled over with a groan, dropped to his knees, and aired his paunch on the cobblestones.
The other man moved in quickly on Talbot’s left and slammed his fist against Talbot’s ear. Talbot staggered to the right, wincing from the hot pain. He came around just as the man poked a blade at his side. Sensing it coming, Talbot deflected it with his left arm and landed a crushing right to the man’s jaw, feeling the bone come unhinged beneath his knuckles.
Maintaining his feet, the man straightened. His jaw hung freely in the skin sack of his lower face. Giving an animal wail, he put his head down and charged, bulling his powerful shoulders into Talbot’s ribs. Talbot smelled the fish and smoke odor of the man’s hair as he ground his chin into Talbot’s chest and heaved him over backwards.
Talbot flew through a stack of crates and landed with a groan. His teeth snapped together and his head bounced on the cobblestones, sending shock waves through his skull and a ringing through his ears. Still howling, the man grabbed two handfuls of Talbot’s hair and smashed his head against the street.
Before the second smash, Talbot jerked both legs straight up in the air, lifted his knees to the man’s head, and gripped it like a vise. Grinding the man’s ears against his skull, Talbot pulled. The man went slowly back and sideways, yelling curses all the while.
Talbot staggered to his feet, trying to blink his vision clear. Feeling as though an ice pick had gone through both ears, he regarded the man on the ground, who was gaining his knees. Seeing that the man was going to keep coming, Talbot took a step forward. The man jerked to his feet, but before he gained his balance, Talbot delivered a lights-out uppercut dead center on his chin.
The man fell back on the cobbles with a grunt and a sigh, out like a light.
Talbot looked around for the other man. He was kneeling in the shadows, over a puddle of what had been his supper, gazing at Talbot with dark, fearful eyes. “Who the fuck are you, man?” he said breathlessly. Then he turned and disappeared in the dark fog.
Suddenly Talbot heard feet shuffling on the cobbles behind him. A sharp pain skewered him. He gave a grunt and dropped to his knees, clutching at the wound about halfway up the right center of his back.
The fat man appeared before him, running away, his right hand holding the bowler on his head. Talbot heard the clatter of the knife as the man threw it down. He could hear the man’s hoarse, frightened breath and the patter of thin-heeled shoes.
“You little bastard!” Talbot yelled. Then he sank to his hands and knees, clutching his back. He didn’t think the blade had done any real damage—the fat man was obviously no hand with a dagger, thank Christ—but he was bleeding like a stuck pig.
“You okay, mister?”
Talbot looked behind him. A dark, slender figure stood in the shadows before one of the two taverns sitting side by side across the street. Faded lantern light fell onto the boardwalks. Muffled music penetrated the quiet night.
Talbot waited for a carriage to pass, driven by a stiff-looking man in a silk top hat, then walked across the street bent forward at the waist and clamping his fist on the wound to slow the bleeding.
“Do me a favor?” Talbot said. “I’ve got a ferry to catch in a few minutes, and I need you to stop up this wound in my back.”
“That was some lickin’ you gave those men, mister!” said
the boy, sliding his gaze back and forth between Talbot and the injured man across the street, who was rolling around and cursing with a hand on his back.
A Negro swamper, the boy couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. He was smoking a cigarette. There was a white apron around his waist and a red knit cap on his head. His gray wool shirt was open above his breastbone. Talbot could smell the musty sweat on him.
“Would you mind?” Talbot said, stopping before the lad, wincing and breathing heavily.
The boy turned his head and looked askance at Talbot. “What you give me for it?”
“How ’bout a half eagle?”
“Half eagle!”
“Sure.”
“You ain’t got no half eagle.”
Talbot dug inside his left coat pocket and pulled out a five-dollar gold piece. The boy reached for the coin, and Talbot jerked it back.
“That’s for your apron tied around my back.”
The boy smiled broadly and wagged his head. “Mister, for a half eagle I’d give ya my shirt and my pants and my long johns, to boot!”
“The apron will do,” Talbot said. “And make it fast, will you, son?”
They hurried to the end of the block and stepped into the alley. With the boy’s help, Talbot painfully removed his vest, sweater, and undershirt. All the garments were soaked with blood.
“Mister, you loaded!” cried the boy, eyeing the money belt wrapped around Talbot’s trim waist.
“Keep your voice down, will you, son?”
Removing his apron, the boy said, “You like black girls, mister? My sister’d do you good for only five dollar!”
“No, thanks. Fold it up tight now.”
When the kid had folded the apron into a long, thick bandage and had tied it around Talbot’s back, Talbot struggled into the rest of his clothes.
He appraised his condition and decided the apron had slowed the blood flow. The blood that had soaked his clothes was cold against his back, but he saw it as a small discomfort, considering.
“You sure you won’t visit my sistah?” the boy said. Gesturing lasciviously, he added, “Biggest melons you ever seen. Sometimes she even lets me—”
“Much obliged, kid,” Talbot said with a nod. He patted the kid’s bony shoulder. “Now I’ll let you get back to your smoke.”
The kid followed him slowly out of the alley and up the street. The boy stopped before the tavern and watched the stranger dwindle in the darkness and fog. “Mistah, where you so all-fire headed, anyways?” he called.
Talbot turned. Walking backward downhill, he said, “Dakota.”
The boy frowned skeptically. “Dakota? What’s in Dakota?”
Talbot grinned in spite of the pain in his back. “Peace and quiet, kid,” he said. “Peace and quiet.” Then he turned and hurried toward the ferry docks.