Oliver is uneasy. This is the third time the short, stocky young man has walked past. The boy isn’t looking at him, not in particular, but there’s something about the expression on his face, the look in his eye, that makes Oliver uncomfortable. Plenty of people have walked by several times, but this boy isn’t just walking, he’s walking. It’s a sense Oliver has, something he thinks likely just comes from being black in a white man’s world, from being different. He suspects that Fan has the same skill, an ability to know that this isn’t right. It’s an instinct of self-preservation, a way to head off trouble before the trouble starts. Normally, Oliver would have simply walked off, himself, gone wherever the man wasn’t, but Lyman had told him to stay here by the wagon, so here he would stay. He’s already crossed Rhoades once tonight, an act for which he knows he’ll have to pay, soon enough, in addition to what else he owes. In lieu of leaving, then, he tries to shrink down into himself, to look as inconspicuous as a large, nearly naked black man in a leopard cape can look. Averting his eyes from the stocky boy, he looks down at his feet.
Sol strolls by one more time, feigning innocence. Just another sightseer, here at the show. It’s been almost an hour of slow circuits, looking for Elizabeth and Josiah, working through the crowd, which is thinning out now with the late hour. They have to be here, but he just can’t seem to find them. Maybe he misunderstood what the old man in the wagon had said, misread Josiah’s intent as he galloped off. Maybe they’ve already come and gone. None of that seems right, though: it just feels like they’re here. He doesn’t even know where Ag is, now; he’d seen him a time or two, earlier but, for the last while, his brother is nowhere to be found. The little camp just seems to have swallowed everyone up. He’d give it another circuit and, if he can’t find the McDaniels, he’ll track Ag down somehow and they’ll go into town to check the hotels. He doesn’t like the way that huge black man is looking at him, as if he knows Sol is up to no good. Unconsciously, Sol touches the butt of his gun, for security, like a baby with a blanket, even as he tries to hunker down a bit and look inconspicuous.
Oliver sees the boy put his hand to his gun and tenses, nervous, flexing the muscles in his broad shoulders, tightening his legs in preparation for action. Just in case. That boy is definitely not just a sightseer. Best be on guard. From time to time the show has trouble with thieves or with white folk looking to hassle a nigger or a Chinaman; usually, between his own size and Alexander’s wits, nothing much comes of it. Sometimes a stupid drunk will be left minus a few teeth and plus a few bruises but, all in all, there was usually no real danger from the normal type of drinker, thief, or man looking for a fight. Something about this boy seems different, though.
After Sol walks past the big man again, he ducks behind the large tent to take stock of things. He’s anxious and sweating even more; something about this place sets him on edge, and he has no idea why. Maybe it’s the way that black strongman, who looks like an African savage in that catskin cape, is watching him. The man is damn near twice as wide as Sol and half again as tall and Sol has no desire to tangle with him. A bullet would be of no more nuisance to him than a chigger bite, by the looks of it. Where the fuck is Ag, damn it? It’s time for them to get out of here, take a minute to think over the situation, and then go into town and see if the McDaniels are there. Sol has a bad fucking feeling about all of this. He peeks around the edge of the tent, trying to be subtle, just in time to lock eyes with the old man that appears to run the show, presumably the one with his name on the sign. The quack has sidled up to the huge African and they’re both staring at him now. Hurriedly he ducks back around the corner of the tent.
“That him?” Alexander says, muffling a cough. The stress of the night is making his lungs tighten again, rattling thick and heavy in his chest.
“Yeah. Fourth or fifth time that boy’s been around,” Oliver says, rubbing a hand along the side of the wagon.
“Thief?”
“I don’t know, Alex. Something about that boy ain’t right.” He looks down at Dr Potter. “You think…?” He cocks his chin towards the wagon’s covered tent.
Alexander starts to shrug, until another cough takes him. Maybe the boy really is just a thief, just a punk. He hopes so. Not knowing why the kid is here makes Alexander worry, though, which he doesn’t need, tonight of all nights. It seems too coincidental, given what’s happened earlier in the evening. He figures that he and Oliver can take care of themselves, if it comes down to it, maybe not against Lyman but certainly against some kid with a pistol. He worries about Mercy and Ridley and Fan, though. Even if the boy is nothing but the normal kind of punk, any minor ruckus tonight could turn into something much worse, for everyone, that boy included. Alexander knows Lyman has something planned, and Lyman likes his work to proceed in a certain manner.
“Well, just keep an eye on him and don’t let him start into any mischief, if you can,” he says. “I need to close us down and get these fools out of here. I want to check on the others, while I’m at it.”
“You gonna be all right, old man?”
Alexander looks up. “Shit, I hope we all will.”
When Alexander passes the big tent again, the boy is gone. He makes his rounds through the little camp, then, telling the few stragglers that they’re closing, in as jovial a voice as he can summon, reminding them that they’ll open again tomorrow afternoon. To a couple of the most truculent patrons, he gives a bottle of the Sagwa, the normal kind, assuring them that it cures insomnia and will rid them of the need to walk about during the night, hoping they’ll take the hint. From a distance, he sees what he thinks is the stocky boy, walking south along the river with a lanky young man. Maybe that’s it, then; maybe he and Oliver are simply too keyed up and the boy had been nothing but a bored townie out with a friend, on the hunt for girls. Unsuccessfully, by the looks of it.
When he sees Ridley, carrying a pail of river water to Mercy’s tent, he takes him aside. “I need you to just stay in the big tent tonight, Ridley.” He holds up a hand, forestalling objection. “Just do it. I’ll tell you why tomorrow.” Alexander knows that he won’t. It’s getting harder and harder to keep the boy in the dark. He takes the bucket from Ridley, clapping him on the shoulder and squeezing hard. “I need you to do this for me, son.”
Ridley nods, moving off toward the big tent, looking back over his shoulder. Dr Potter smiles at him. He’s a good boy. Alexander decides then and there that it’s time to cut him loose, for real this time, for his own safety. Ridley has to leave the show, as much as it will hurt both of them. The kid will never know why, and he’ll be bitter, but Alexander knows that it’s for the best, that Ridley deserves a chance at a normal life. Maybe, if taken away from the show, the good boy that Ridley is can become a good man someday. It’s small enough consolation, a tiny bit of light in the darkness of Alexander’s life, but it will have to be enough. First thing tomorrow, he’ll fire the kid.
Alexander calls softly into Mercy’s tent, ducking under the flap when she answers. Mercy is wrapped in a dingy shawl, washing her face with a wet cloth. She looks tired, worn, used up, but, when she smiles at him, some of her beauty is allowed to peek through. “Brought you some more water,” Alexander says. “It’s cold, though.” He shrugs.
“Is it going to be bad?” she asks, the smile fading. Unbidden, she thinks of Papa, thinks of the Dreamer in the black tent.
At first he thinks she means the water, and then realizes she’s talking about Lyman. He shrugs again, wondering how she knows but then understanding that, of course, Lyman will have shared the news of the McDaniels, for no other reason than for her to suffer along with the rest of them. “Isn’t it always?” They stare at each other for a long second. “I should go,” Alexander finally says. “Stay inside tonight.”
“Don’t I always?” she says, giving a weak smile. As he starts to duck under the tent flap, Mercy feels a sudden need to say something more, to tell Dr Potter that he’ll survive, that it isn’t his fault, even the things that are. That he’s always done his best, for them all, tried his hardest. She wishes they could have known one another under different circumstances, in a different life. “Alex…”
Dr Potter looks back. Mercy never calls him Alex; he’s always been Alexander to her. Once again he can see how beautiful she really is, there in the lamplight, wrapped in a dirty shawl, with a half-washed face, bruises on her bared arms.
“Never mind,” she says, the words not coming.
Alexander smiles sadly at her. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Sol and Ag are hidden in a little clump of trees at the edge of the river, whispering furiously. When they’d finally found one another, they’d left the camp and gone through town, checking all the hotels and rooming houses, even the ones in Baker City’s small Chinatown. Eventually, a helpful woman who knew Elizabeth had directed them to the McDaniel house; they’d somehow missed the fact that Baker City was her home. Sol and Ag had hurried to the place and pounded on the door, though the house was dark. The McDaniels weren’t there, and now Sol and Ag are back outside the medicine show.
“Maybe they just moved on,” Ag says, once again. “They had a healthy start on us.”
“I’m telling you, Rideout, they’re in that fucking camp. I can feel it.” Sol is keyed up, not quite understanding himself why he’s so sure that the McDaniels are there, but he knows it on some deep level nonetheless.
“Hogwash, Sol. Besides, if they are, why’re they hiding from us, then? Maybe they don’t want us around any more. We should just go.” Ag is entirely less than enthusiastic about Sol’s plan to sneak through the tents in the dead of night, looking for their erstwhile employer and his sister. As he sees it, if the McDaniels don’t want to be found, so much the better, as it means that he and his brother won’t have to do any killing or robbing and can just move on to San Francisco and make a start at something different.
Sol couldn’t have said himself why he’s so adamant about finding the McDaniels. Maybe it’s just the sense that something isn’t right. Maybe it’s an artifact of the guilt he has for killing that man in Twin Falls, an act that weighs heavier and heavier on him, instead of getting lighter with time; perhaps on some level he just wants to do something to start balancing out that black mark on his ledger. It’s nothing to do with Elizabeth, he tells himself. It’s just that, if the McDaniels are in that camp, they aren’t there by choice. Maybe. Sol doesn’t know it for a certain, but he has that feeling. Sol figures there’s a good chance that the man Josiah had run off after has done those two some mischief. He can’t simply shrug and leave, even though the thought of skulking through a camp full of magicians and African savages and whatnot, in the dark of night, has not much in the way of appeal. Not much at all. But he’s not a coward like that, regardless of how he feels. He’s not, so best just button up and get on with it.
“Goddamn it, Ag, we’re fucking going.” Before he can let his mind out-think himself, Sol stands up and starts jogging, hunched over, moving as best he can from shadow to shadow towards the camp. He figures that Ag will follow, if for no other reason than not wanting to be left alone in the dark. Sol’s fingers are clenched so hard around the handle of his Colt that he can feel five individual starbursts of pain in his knuckles.
“So, here we are, then,” Lyman says, rubbing his hands together briskly. He and Alexander stand outside the black tent, watching as Oliver brings the two McDaniels over from the wagon. The man looks a little dazed, still, but the girl is struggling in Oliver’s big hand. Lyman had insisted that they be gagged when he’d had Oliver tie them up in the wagon, and the girl’s muffled voice doesn’t hide the fact that she’s now cursing in a very unladylike manner. “Now, now,” Lyman says, leaning forward and pushing the gag a little tighter into her mouth. “Language.”
Alexander looks up at Oliver, seeing the same bleak expression that he no doubt wears himself. From the way Lyman is acting, his warm cheer, tonight is going to be bad, very bad. They’d crossed him, twice now, and they will be punished. Lyman is not a man to carry a debt like that for long.
“Now, sir,” Lyman says, smiling at Josiah. “Now. It’s passing strange to see you again, I must say. You interrupted me once before, back in, where was it, Boise?” He looks over at Alexander for confirmation, and then points at him and Oliver. “But these two sent you on your way, that night, didn’t they? They did. Yes. Oh, it’s no great thing, but I don’t like interruptions, and, you see, I don’t like my privacy invaded in such a way. But you weren’t to know that, were you? How could you know that?” He shakes his head mournfully.
“Really, the fault lies with my colleagues here,” Lyman continues, turning a new smile their way. “They know the parameters of my work, the delicacy, my need for privacy and yet – yet! – they just sent you on your way. They did. Just like that. In deliberate defiance of my wishes, and of those of our patron, Dr Hedwith. That I will not have. No, I will not have it.” He shakes his head. “But, I must say, it seems that, perhaps, you’ve had some tough times since then, by the look of you, sir. Some very, very tough times. For that, I do apologize. Again, you were not to know what it was you did, not exactly. A victim of circumstance. So, by way of recompense, then, I’m going to give you the thing you most want. The very thing.” He claps his fat hands together, beaming.
Alexander’s heart sinks. He’d had an idea what Lyman had had in mind, when he’d first seen him walking up with the McDaniels, and now he knows. Just kill the dentist and be done with it, Lyman, but no: but that would have been too easy, too gentle. Besides, this punishment is for Alexander and Oliver; poor Josiah McDaniel and his sister are simply the instruments that Lyman has chosen.
“Now, first things first,” Lyman says, turning to Oliver. “Hold him tight.” Lyman steps over, pulling out the gag and forcing the fingers of one hand into Josiah’s mouth, widening it.
With the other hand, he reaches in with his hooked knife, cuts out the man’s tongue and tosses the red, meaty thing at Alexander’s feet.
“There we go, now,” Lyman says, smiling, stepping back to admire his handiwork.
Josiah is too stunned to scream, at first. The pain seems to take an eternity to hit; time stretches and his mouth simply feels hollow at first and then coppery full. The pain comes then, and he gags on the blood in his mouth. Distantly, through the agony, he watches the fat man open the black tent, and then strong hands grab his arms and he’s dragged inside, thrown to the floor. A lantern is lit. The fat man leans down, then, and says, “Well here she is, sir: go to your wife.”
From his knees, Josiah looks up into the cage, into vacant blue eyes. He knows her from those eyes, even if he doesn’t know the rest of her. She’s crying a noise deep in her throat and howls are coming from the cages across from her own, the things inside thrashing and rattling the bars. What had been his wife, once, looks at him, seeming to know him now, and then his screams finally come.
Ag feels his brother’s hand clamp down over his mouth as he and Sol watch the fat man cut Josiah’s tongue out. He’s never seen anything so horrible, the way the man just reached in there and then tossed the thing on the ground. Ag can feel his eyes growing too wide and he’s having difficulty catching his breath. He knows that he’ll never forget what he’s just seen, that he’ll still dream about it if he lives a hundred years. It isn’t so much the act itself, even, it’s the casual competence the man displayed, as if chopping out another man’s tongue is of no more note than slapping a mosquito. Ag feels his mouth filling with spit and his stomach is ready to come up.
“Shut up!” Sol whispers furiously. “Shut it!” He’s almost as horrified as his brother but, along with the fear, comes anger. This has to be the man Josiah sought, the doctor who had killed Mrs McDaniel. Right at that second, Sol feels that shooting the man would be no difficult thing, not at all. He could put a bullet into that fat fucking face without a second thought, and sleep like a fucking baby afterward. But Elizabeth is there, gagged and in the hands of that big African; there’s no way that Sol can shoot them all before the savage has a chance to snap her apart. Sol shakes Ag, trying to bring him back to himself. Ag can’t shoot, or at least not well, but maybe he can at least be a distraction, give Sol time to get Elizabeth free. He’ll figure something out. As a plan, it’s not much, but it’s all he fucking has.
Sol watches the fat man drag Josiah into the tent, returning alone. For a long few moments there’s no sound, and then a horrible, ragged wail peals from the tent, a sound like a dying animal, a sound that puts the hair up on the back of Sol’s neck. It’s maybe the worst thing he’s ever heard, and he knows, given what he’s just seen, that it’s a scream made with no tongue. Sol doesn’t know what’s in that tent, but he has to get Josiah out of there, somehow.
The fat man has come back over to Elizabeth. He raises a hand and rubs her cheek with his thick fingers, slowly. Sol creeps closer, fearing for one hot second that the man is going to cut her too, take her tongue out along with her brother’s.
“You think she’s looking all right, Dr Potter?” he says. “A bit peaked, maybe?”
“Lyman.” The old man from earlier is looking at the ground.
The fat man shushes him, and then places a damp palm on the girl’s forehead. “I think she might have a bit of a fever. What do you think?”
The feel of the man’s hand on her makes Elizabeth’s skin crawl. She’s still in shock at what he’s done to Josiah. What is happening here? What is happening? It’s hard to take her eyes from the bloody piece of meat on the ground, the thing that had once been Josiah’s tongue. He’ll never sing again, she realizes, stupidly. Her brother had always had a wonderful singing voice, a real talent, whereas she can only ever manage a thin, off-key wheeze. Josiah, though, he can sing just about anything, in a voice surprisingly deep and rich-toned from such a narrow chest as he has. But now he can’t, not ever again. All he can do now is scream.
She realizes that the fat man is asking her something. Trying to pull herself together, she understands that he’s telling her that, if she can’t be quiet, she’ll wind up like Josiah, separated from a part of herself. For a hysterical moment she wants to tell him that she can’t sing, not anything you’d want to hear, but then gathers herself enough to nod, letting him pull the gag down. Once free of it, for a hot second her old self comes back and she draws breath to curse him, maybe to try to bite his face, tear his flesh with her teeth like an animal, but then she sees the thing on the ground again and the breath leaks back out of her. She feels herself slumping until it’s only the big Negro’s hand that’s keeping her upright.
“There, you see, Dr Potter?” the fat man says. “She’s obviously suffering from low spirits. There’s only one cure for that, isn’t there?” His voice loses its cheery tone. “Give it to her.”
“Lyman,” the old man says again, in a weary-sounding voice.
“Give it to her.”
Alexander knows he has no choice. He fingers the bottle in his pocket, the one he’d been ordered to bring. Yet again, here he is, helpless and afraid, with a bottle in his pocket. Everything he does twists into despair, that’s the sum of it. Everything. His life has been nothing but one long series of mistakes and failures. The weight of it feels crushing, so much that it’s almost a struggle for him to breathe. He just wants to walk away, into the dark, forget about all of this. It’s too hard to think, to move.
But he must; if he doesn’t give the Sagwa to the girl, Lyman will kill her, slowly. He’ll make them watch. They’ve pushed Lyman too far, and there is no going back from that. They can’t fight him, so, better then to just give the girl the Sagwa, and hope that she’s one of the lucky ones. He touches the scalpel in his other pocket, vowing that he’ll end it quickly for her, if it comes down to that. So Lyman can’t have her, afterward. It’s the best he can do. If she begins to change, he’ll kill her, no matter what.
Alexander steps forward. He’s tired. The little bottle is so very heavy as he raises it to her lips, nodding at her to drink. “I’m sorry,” he says, the same words he’s used so many times before. “I’m so sorry.”
He tips the bottle up.
“NO!”
There’s a shout and Alexander sees the stocky boy from earlier, running out of the darkness into the light of the lantern that hangs nearby, pointing a pistol their way and screaming, “No no no no! Don’t drink it!” The boy comes to a stop a few feet away, wildly waving the pistol back and forth between him and Lyman, between Lyman and Oliver. Behind him Alexander can see the other boy, the lanky one, holding another pistol and looking wild-eyed and scared.
“Don’t drink it!” the stocky boy says again.
Alexander sees Lyman smile, the kind of smile you’d imagine a cat would get around a broken-winged bird. “Why, son, why ever not?” Lyman says. “The Sagwa is vital for health, you know.” He shrugs. “Besides, the good doctor here has already given her the medicine. It’s working in her as we speak, with its – how does it go, Potter? – electro-chemical induction? These later formulae are so much more refined, after all. So much stronger and quicker. More efficacious.” Lyman laughs.
“Spit it out, Elizabeth! Puke it up!” The boy looks desperate. She can’t hear him, the Sagwa already working, as Lyman has said. Alexander knows that she will be drawn down into herself and will eventually come back, one way or another. It’s inevitable now; he only hopes it will end quickly. The Sagwa doesn’t hold the key to immortality, regardless of what Hedwith and Lyman believe. It contains only sickness and death.
“I’ll tell you what, my young friend,” Lyman says, smiling even wider. “You give your gun to the doctor here and I will have him give your sweetheart an emetic. Yes. Something to make her vomit,” he explains, solicitously, seeing the puzzled expression on the boy’s face. “Maybe that will be enough although, really, I don’t know why you’re so concerned. I do not.” He shrugs again. “But we want our customers satisfied – don’t we, Dr Potter? So, if you’re concerned for your paramour, it’s the least we can do. What do you say? Then we can sit down like gentlemen and discuss your grievances. Yes?”
Alexander sees the look of despair in the boy’s eyes, his gun dropping ever so slightly as he considers, looking for a way out. Oh, don’t do it, he thinks, don’t be stupid, son. Just fucking shoot. He wants the boy to shoot: shoot Lyman, shoot him, even Oliver, if that’s what it will take to get these people away from here.
The smile leaves Lyman’s face and his voice hardens. “Listen, you little shit. Give us the gun or I’ll have the nigger here tear your little girl in half with his big, black cock. I’m tired of this.” He looks at Alexander. “Potter, go get that wretched thing.”
Alexander sees the boy sag, beaten. Lyman always wins. The boy can’t know that, of course, can’t have understood just what he’s put himself in the middle of. Lyman always wins. It will go even harder on the girl now, and only God knows what will happen to these two gun-toting fools. Better that they’d stayed away in the first place. His legs feel almost too heavy to move as he steps between Lyman and the boy, reaching out a hand for the gun.
“Just give it here, son. It’s over,” he says, softly. But it isn’t. It’s just getting started. It’s hard for him to meet the boy’s eyes.
“Why?” the boy whispers. “Why?”
Alexander remembers Rula’s husband, the little dentist, saying the same thing, as they’d pulled him away outside Boise that night. That same broken, unbelieving word. Something changes inside Dr Potter, then. Just a bit: some small spark of defiance he’d thought entirely extinguished flares into weak light. Whatever the dentist had told this boy, the story is nothing like the reality. Better the boy dies without knowing what is going to happen. Before Lyman takes him. Better to just cut the girl now, too. Save her the pain that’s coming, spare her the Salt’s work. With his free hand, Alexander fingers the scalpel in his pocket. It will only take a moment. If he’s quick he can get to them both; the other boy is too far away and will have to take his own chances. It’s the best he can do. Once, Dr Potter had been the fastest surgeon in the Hospital Corps, and cutting throats isn’t entirely different than lopping off an arm, when it comes down to it. Easier even, with no bone to saw through. The work of a moment. He knows he won’t be fast enough to cut his own afterward but he will take what comes.
Do it, Potter, move.
But he can feel the failure growing inside him; yet again, he knows, somehow, that all he will manage to do is to make things worse for everyone. Yet again. Another head in a jar, another freak in a tent. Bruises stippling a girl’s body.
Move, Potter! Move! he tells himself, but he can already feel that spark of defiance fading. Please, you have to move. The scalpel is slippery with sweat in his hand.
As always, Lyman is quicker.
He takes one long stride past Alexander and, without pausing, drives his knife into the belly of the girl, yanking it upwards on the way out. He steps back, smiling, as she staggers, eyes wide, and then he starts to laugh. Before she can fall, Oliver scoops her up in his arms, holding her out helplessly, staring with horror at Lyman as the girl’s blood run down to his hands, dripping off his fingers. The boy drops the gun from nerveless fingers, his mouth opening and closing, making no sound. His eyes go from the girl to Alexander.
Why?
Dr Potter’s thoughts leave him.
He steps forward and, with one smooth, lateral motion, draws the scalpel across Lyman Rhoades’ throat, opening it to the spine. He sees himself act, as if from a distance. He feels nothing, only a vague puzzlement as to what has occurred.
A gasping hiss of bloody air bursts from Lyman’s neck, one last breath, and then the blood begins to pour out, dark in the lamplight. He draws up straight, takes a stumbling step or two, and then slumps to his knees, eyes wide and shocked, his mouth hanging open. He presses his hands to his neck, trying to keep the blood in. Alexander and the others watch silently and, after what seems like such a short amount of time, Lyman Rhoades, alchemist, body thief, and murderer, falls over on his face, dead.