Beatriz Williams - The Wicked Redhead

“Sitting ducks,” says Logan. “Sitting fucking ducks. Forgive my language, Miss Kelly, but it ain’t going to be pretty, if such a thing comes to pass.”

“Stinking Coast Guard,” I say.

“It ain’t the law I’m thinking of, Miss Kelly. The law plays fair, most days, and they got a job to do, I understand that, and if you want to break that law you might get arrested and your booze took away. But the pirates.” He shakes his head. Waves away the gathering smoke. “Pirates just as soon kill you. And when a fellow’s taking a few bottles from ship to shore, and he’s got ten or twenty miles of lonely ocean to cover, who do you think is going to find him? Coast Guard with a few little boats and a stingy Congress behind ’em, or a fellow with no conscience and a nice profit dangling in front of his nose? Why, already they’re getting greedier.” He turns to Anson. “That gang you was taking down the year before last, the Wilson boys. They was killed in ambush a few months ago, and what do you think happened? Do you think the trade went away? Got any softer?”

“I’ll guess it didn’t,” says Anson.

“No, it did not. Got worse. You can’t cough out here at night without some pirate hears you and flies on in with his machine guns. Sometimes mounted right there on his boat, like the Coast Guard itself. And he ain’t there to arrest you. Oh no. He ain’t worried about your constitutional rights. Why, we brought in a crate full of guns just last week, armed every man on board. Had no choice. Some ship got boarded a few miles south, and they killed everybody, everybody, dumped the crew over the rail, and left behind nothing but the captain’s head. Just his head, Marshall, just his head sitting there on the deck by the wheel. Now what kind of fellow does that?”

“Who was it? Which ship?”

“Aw, it was some new outfit, I never knew him. Maybe he was muscling in on somebody else’s neighborhood, I don’t know. But the whole thing shook us up. Put everybody on edge, up and down the Row. Sometimes you can hear the gunshots at night, and I don’t know whether it’s—”

Pop-pop-pop-a-pop-a-pop, comes a noise from outside, like somebody is making popcorn, like somebody is setting off some distant fireworks.

NOW I am already gone cold, already froze up and sick at the image of that dead captain’s head standing guard by his wheel, so what do I do at the sound of those fireworks but shriek. Shriek and startle and spill my whiskey all over the floor, the deck as they call it, while Anson lifts his arm away from my shoulder and puts his hand inside his jacket. Draws out a revolver. Logan jumps to his feet and swears. Heads right out the cabin door, and Anson turns to me.

“Stay here, for God’s sake!”

“You know I won’t.”

Anson is not a man who speaks profane, not the kind of man who takes the name of his Lord in vain, but he does now. Swears good and loud, better and louder than the captain himself, and hands me the revolver.

“You keep under cover at least, all right? You do as I tell you. And if you need to shoot, you just shoot. God knows you can fire a gun straighter than any man here.”

I stare down at the revolver in my palm, and then I look back up at Anson. Blazing, bruised face full of trust.

“Jesus God, how I love you,” I say.

He snatches my hand and commences to bolt straight out that door, pulling me behind, and I move my legs after him so fast as I can, because I will not be left behind to discover Anson’s blank face staring sightless, no sir. No more than I will be left behind to die in some dank cabin.

BROAD DAYLIGHT, and the deck of this Rum Row schooner reminds me of nothing so much as a good old church picnic brawl back in River Junction, except that nobody is drunk. You can chew on that irony if you like. I got more vital things to do.

Anson is all business, you understand. He has done this kind of thing before. He waves me back to the stern, behind some tall stacks of wooden crates, and because I did swear to follow his commands in this fight, I dive right into place, fixing myself a station by which I can watch the deck and fire that gun if I need to. The fear has fallen away from my skin, like it does in a set-to when your blood turns hot and your mind sharp, and only later do you start to shake and cry, only later do your insides curdle up and go cold. Now you’re just nothing but an animal, just a creature bent on keeping alive.

Seems the attack comes from the starboard side. Sound of bullets firing from my right, sound of bullets whizzing dead ahead. Some of them catch a mast or something, and the splinters go flying. Not twenty yards away, a man cries out and goes down, clutching his side. Idiot standing there in plain sight, no wonder. Anson’s ducked under the starboard rail, holding a rifle. Jumps up, aims, fires, ducks back down, all in the space of a second or two. His flat newsboy’s cap remains on his head, good solid plaid wool. I stare at that cap and pray.

But aside from Anson, nobody seems to possess the least idea what he’s doing. How to defend against a surprise attack from a shipful of what has got to be pirates, seeking to hijack Mr. Logan’s valuable cargo. Anson shouts out to a couple of Logan’s crew— Take cover! Wait and aim, goddamn it!— and they drop down and clutch their guns, but I can see they don’t know what to do with them. Me, now. I was reared up inside a mountain holler alongside three sturdy brothers, and I can shoot an acorn off a squirrel’s paws if I need. I can shoot a worm from a robin’s beak. I cradle that revolver in my palm like a diamond. Bring it to the level of my eyes and lift the safety latch, while Anson rises and fires again, rifle aimed at a more acute angle now, like to a boat drawing so close you might could count the noses of the men inside. He turns his head over his shoulder and calls out, and this time those two nearby men are paying proper attention. The deck is full of noise, guns firing and men shouting. I don’t know how you stay calm in a circus like that. He counts off on his fingers—one, two, three—and they rise together and aim down and fire, and maybe they hit a few men, I don’t know, because in the next second a small black ball flies over the railing and wobbles across the deck.

I don’t understand how it doesn’t hit anybody, but it doesn’t. Just wobbles there like an egg while the men carry on, while no one sees it except me, and I scream Anson’s name, scream, Grenade! so loud my throat seems to split, but I can’t even hear myself in that din.

So I run out from behind my crates toward that thing, that black ball fixing to murder us all, and now Anson sees me, now Anson sees what I’m after.

He shouts and motions the men back, dives forward and grabs that thing and tosses it over the side, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t explode a half second later in an almighty boom, right there in midair, smacking everybody backward, even me, straight on my backside on that hard wooden deck.

I crawl forward, calling Anson’s name, but he’s already picking himself up from the deck, staggering a little, while a pair of hands appears over the side and then a man, skinny and blood-streaked. Anson’s lost his rifle—anyway, you can’t fire a rifle when a man’s that close—so he grabs the fellow by the shirt and hauls him back over the side into the water, and I yell with relief, except I can’t hear anything now, ears all stuffed up with cotton wool.

Yet already there are more men climbing over, five or six at a time from some rope ladders hooked over the rail, and I lose sight of Anson in the jungle of slinging arms and tangled bodies. Pick myself up and reel back to my crates and look for my gun to fire, but it’s gone. Clean gone.