As he sits at Eliza’s bedside, Steiner unravels his past. The years melt away as he loses himself in the memories. He does not think about his childhood. He worked his way west, first on the railroad and then as a barkeep in Seattle, before he went to Orcas to visit his lame uncle. Old Steiner’s Jennie couldn’t tend the counter anymore, and the little general store at Doe Bay needed more than one shopkeeper. In exchange for his nephew coming to Orcas, Old Steiner bribed Steiner with the promise that the store would soon be his. Old Steiner didn’t have a son, and the son of his dead brother was the closest thing to having a son that he would ever know.
The bribe worked, and Steiner returned by steamer in late fall. Orcas Island was nothing like Seattle. The Great Depression of 1893 had left that burgeoning city damaged and dulled. And Orcas certainly was not like the hell-on-wheels towns he experienced on the route west while working on the railroad. Plus, if his luck held out, no one would find him here. Orcas was a near paradise of lofted hills, ample apple orchards, and small livestock farms, and filled with simple folk who minded their own business when they weren’t minding everyone else’s.
The railroad had brought Steiner west.
A Union Pacific man, he had thought. I’ve found my place.
The work had been exhausting: twelve hours per day, six days a week, month after month of hard manual labor. Thousands of men worked at a speed that a beaver would envy, crating shovels, picks, plows, and scrapers west. On the lead team, surveyors assessed the landscape and drove indicators in the hardpan to mark the rail route. On the second team, Steiner worked with other Huns and Coloreds and massive teams of oxen to place wooden cross ties on the surveyed grade. Flat cars filled with rails and supplies followed just behind Steiner’s crew, and the hard-driven spike drivers—Micks and Chinks, mostly—laid the rails, their spike mauls pounding six-inch iron barbs into the wooden cross ties to hold the iron rails in place. In this way, the caterpillar inched forward, repeating the process over and over again, six or seven miles a day depending on weather, or Indians, or lack of supplies.
The crew landed in a new town each payday. Some of them were little more than tent towns—muddied hellholes really—and they epitomized a sense of place in the loosest sense of the word. They were all hastily built and rebuilt main streets lined with canvas tents, makeshift storefronts, and windowless shanties, and they all looked exactly alike. It was like a game of leapfrog, Steiner thought; the rails moved west, and the tent towns moved west just ahead of them. But Steiner didn’t care. Each tent town offered every distraction he could ever want: bartenders, gamblers, shopkeepers, prostitutes.
The goal, like the carrot in front of the horse, was Promontory Point, Utah, the place the Union Pacific would meet the Central Pacific line and create the first U.S. overland rail route. By the time the Union Pacific reached Utah, Steiner had been laboring next to other German, Irish, Chinese, and black-skinned drifters who allowed themselves the indignity of working a month for thirty dollars’ pay. He was one of thousands of men who walked across the west.
Steiner had other reasons for continuing his journey west. Pearly topped the list. Her lusty body enveloped Steiner many nights, first in Omaha, then in Ogallala and Laramie, as the boomtowns busted up following the railway west. After that, Steiner thought he might try his luck in Seattle. He had an old uncle in those parts if he ran out of money. Or he might go to San Francisco. There might still be gold up in the Placer Valley. And there was always Mexico.
Steiner kept to himself. He rarely talked to other workers, preferring to stay out of the daily fray. One day was much like the rest: hot, sweaty, and exhausting. Now three miles from Benton, a mirage of pleasures, Steiner stopped for a moment and rested on his pick. He would have Pearly tonight. If he was lucky, he might even have her twice.
Mike O’Malley, the crew boss, knocked Steiner on the back of the head with a huge hand. Steiner was momentarily stunned, and his gut reaction was to throw a punch. He wheeled around and then thought better of it. Trouble with the crew boss meant trouble every day. He reeled his anger in.
“Get yourself back to work, you lazy sod,” O’Malley said. “I got my eyes on you, now, you worthless Hun.”
Steiner bristled with hatred.
Damn Mick.
Steiner worked faster than almost any man, and was nearly as strong. Only a few of the Coloreds worked faster, and none of the Chinamen. As for strength, there was one gigantic German who could lift a rail spur on his own, but he was nearly a freak of nature. Steiner glared at O’Malley and decided to distance himself from the foreman. He had gotten into trouble in Chicago by reacting too quickly to a slur and barely got out alive.
The Micks are the worst, he thought, all that Hail Mary-ing on a Sunday and living the life of the devil the six other days of the week.
Steiner knew the system, and he resolved to let his anger simmer rather than blow. Good thing they were only three miles to payday and a much-deserved day off. And Steiner didn’t want to chance any possibility that he wouldn’t see Pearly. Thinking of her face, the way her neck opened the way to her cleavage . . . he stiffened and raised his pick up over his head and dug into the last few hours of work for the day.
Steiner’s crew arrived in Benton at dusk, and the dust that remained in their wake settled into every crevice of their bodies. Lights flickered inside hastily erected tents and saloon doors opened to reveal the first of the railway workers, no doubt the Irish foreman and his cronies, boisterous and unruly. Benton was reconstructed from its predecessor, town after town the same, and with the same unsavory characters.
There was money to be spent. The thought of a shot of whiskey and a game of cards won over the need to see Pearly right away. Steiner would end his evening with her, not begin it. The Whistling Dog Saloon offered the quickest respite. Steiner usually frequented Belle of the West, but he saw O’Malley enter that establishment, and didn’t want to fraternize with his superiors. Not a night for chance.
A large gilded mirror hung above the bar at the Whistling Dog, and shelves of liquor lined the wall. The reconstituted bar—dismantled piece by piece as towns moved west just ahead of the railway—showed its wear and tear, from water stains to bullet holes. Steiner pulled up a stool and ordered a whiskey. The sweet poison flowed down his parched throat like satin. A warm glow lay like a mantle on his filthy shoulders. He had another, and then another, feeling warm and empowered. He listened to the barkeep and to the men on nearby stools. He heard a good joke, and laughed under his breath. He ordered a fourth whiskey.
He felt himself aroused looking at the women of the night straddling other men in the bar hall. The one closest to him looked past her client’s shoulder and licked her red lips sensuously at Steiner.
Damn the cards, he thought; Pearly’s waiting. And if she’s not here, I’ll take my pick of any of these other women here tonight. Maybe two of them.
Steiner paid his bill and pushed through the saloon doors. He headed to Mrs. Smith’s Boarding House, a long block north of the Whistling Dog. The streets were dark but lively. Groups of drunken men sparred and stragglers arrived by horseback and on foot. Early winter soaked into his bones, and he pulled his pea coat closer.
Steiner continued to be aroused as he thought of the last time he had lain with Pearly in a hastily built bordello in Laramie.
“Here, my love,” she had whispered in his ear, as she soaped up his long, lithe body in the deep claw-foot bathtub.
“Come into the bath with me,” he had said.
Pearly had focused on Steiner’s stubbled face and did not break eye contact. She let her red satin robe slide to the floor; her lush black hair cascaded down her white body. Her body was a visual wonderland of curves, beginning at her full, porcelain breasts, and following downward to a tiny waist and curved hips. And there, beneath her navel, a bushful of black hair covering her vulva. She sank down on top of him, maneuvering his hardness inside of her. She washed his chest slowly with castile soap. He held her narrow shoulders with rough hands and panted as she rode him straddled; a warm delicious pleasure overlapped his senses. They lay in the warm water together clasped in an embrace. Steiner didn’t speak; neither did Pearly. They knew nothing about the other except what transpired in their bed and bath, and for both of them that was enough.
“You are my reward,” Steiner had said. “It’s been twenty days of hard labor since I’ve had you last.”
Pearly had smiled, and bit her bottom lip.
Steiner rounded the corner at the edge of Benton and entered a dim shanty. Mrs. Smith reclined on a frayed red divan in the anteroom. The room bathed in a red glow from two flickering gas lamps. No one else was about; all the hall doors were closed. The subdued light cast eerie shadows on the gaudy curtains.
Mrs. Smith rose to greet Steiner.
“Mr. Steiner! Such a surprise! We weren’t expecting you until much later.”
She moved toward the hallway and barricaded herself between the narrow door jam and Steiner.
“I’ve come directly. Where’s Pearly?”
Mrs. Smith held her ground. She smelled Steiner’s breath and knew he was drunk.
“Why, she is indisposed at the moment, Mr. Steiner. Perhaps you can come back in an hour.”
Steiner’s ire crept slowly up his neck into his ruddy cheeks. Fueled by the whiskey, he pushed Mrs. Smith away and burst through the first door on the left. He knew exactly where Pearly was and what she was doing.
“Mr. Steiner, please . . .”
Mrs. Smith pulled on Steiner’s coat and he pushed her away again.
The door opened to a sight that Steiner crowded out of his mind every time he thought of Pearly. She lay splayed on the coverlet, breasts heaving, and enjoying the attentions of a client, whose mouth was buried in her vulva. Mike O’Malley.
Steiner reacted without thinking. He reached for an armchair next to the bed, and lifted it up and over his shoulder with a swift motion. The heavy armchair came to full height before he slammed it down with full force. A loud crack of wood filled the room as the chair landed square on O’Malley’s skull. The man slumped down between Pearly’s legs and lay motionless. Pearly screamed.
“You filthy whore!” Steiner had roared. “You bloody filthy whore!”
Mrs. Smith moved to protect Pearly in the face of Steiner’s anger.
“Steiner!”
Pearly screamed again.
“Don’t!”
Steiner shook Pearly with brute force. He raised his hand toward her and the blow glanced off of Mrs. Smith’s forehead. Both women looked momentarily stunned. Pearly collapsed backwards on the pillow. Mrs. Smith wiped blood from her forehead and lunged toward Steiner. Several clients from other rooms gathered in the doorway, including another Union Pacific man, one whom Steiner recognized as one of O’Malley’s cronies.
“What the hell are you doing, Steiner?” the man had said. He reached for Steiner and Steiner bullied him off.
“Get out of my way.”
Steiner burst through the gathering crowd and continued out into the night. He saw nothing but blood, and the hot rage of the fire that burned the image of Pearly and O’Malley into his mind. He roared out of the makeshift bordello and caught his breath in the frigid night air. O’Malley’s horse stood tied to the front post. Steiner untied him, and mounted him in one swift motion. Steiner knew he could be hanged for stealing a horse. But what would it matter? They’d hang him first for murder. His blood boiled, his head hurt. The horse, nervous under the new rider, shook his mane and whinnied. Steiner dug his heels into its sides and turned the anxious beast west and out of Benton. Only darkness lay ahead.
STEINER LOOKS AGAIN AT THE SLEEPING WOMAN SNORING lightly in the bed beside his chair. He shakes his head.
Better to put all that behind me, he thinks.
Just past six o’clock, Steiner hears the back door to the Doe Bay Store bang open. Voices grow louder as his uncle and the doctor reach the stair. The stairs creak under the men’s weight as they ascend the treads. Steiner bends closer, and traces the woman’s face again with his finger.