Ross Gilfillan - The Snake-Oil Dickens Man

II

I knew quite soon what it was that Elijah Putnam had come so close to divulging to me that night. He had been sick for several weeks and he must have thought himself a lot worse than we did because he had indeed called in a lawyer and he had made his will. He was unwell, we all knew that. His failing sight, that had been so poor he had utilised my services as reader, amanuensis and discreet guide whenever he made a rare excursion from the hotel, was now entirely gone.

Elijah appeared to interpret his blindness as a terrible and significant portent, an indicator that his illness was progressing towards its final stages and that the next time he beheld a scene that was bright and clear and full of colour it would be in the Kingdom of Heaven.

By the next day I had clean forgotten about Elijah’s strange preoccupation, his suggestion that he had something to reveal to me and the behaviour of Merriweather in the hallway. My daily routine was one that left no time for idle imaginings.

I rose, as usual, to the sound of the roosters in the yard and shimmied down the stairs to the front hall where I unlocked the doors and swept the front step. I hung out the sign that advertised that we had vacancies and that our vittles were always hot and fresh, which stretched the truth a little, and fixed up the saloon. I washed up the glasses, righted the chairs, collected up the stubs of cigars and cleaned out the spit-boxes. Next I made a swift inventory of the stock and made sure that Irving, who kept bar, hadn’t been cheating. Not that Merriweather considered this a bad business practice – it was he who saw to it that I qualified every bottle of liquor we kept – it only became a problem when someone else got the benefit.

By the time the saloon was shipshape there were stirrings in the kitchen. I wouldn’t get anything to eat before I had prepared the table for the commercial gentlemen’s breakfasts and assisted in the laying on and clearing away of the plates of ham, pickles, salmon, shad, liver, steaks, sausages and other sundry items that these voracious salesmen and drummers demanded every time they sat down to board. I had emptied the pail of leftovers into the hogs’ trough and helped myself to bread and butter before changing out of my overalls to run errands in the town. We all had to look our best in town; Merriweather’s wasn’t called the ‘Particular’ for nothing and appearance counted for a lot.

There was a mirror in the porch, which was there for the gentlemen to set themselves aright before sallying forth to engage the town’s merchants. The glass swung on a central pivot and depending on how he placed it, a fellow could check the arrangement of his neckwear and hat, or the shine on his shoes. I always inspected my turnout thoroughly in case I should, accidentally on purpose, run into Cissy Bullock.

I can’t say that using the glass ever boosted my self-esteem. My store-bought clothes were good enough when they were gotten me, but now I had grown and the pants were too short, the sleeves the same and the ill-fitting stove-pipe hat, which Merriweather passed on to me, now served mainly as a challenging target for small boys with slingshots. But I thought that no mere apparel could mitigate the physiognomy with which I had been cursed. The deep-set blue eyes were much too big and doubtless I appeared as if perpetually amazed. The nose was sharp and much too small and my lips, I was told by a schoolfellow, were like a girl’s. This montage of errors was crowned with a tangle of tumbleweed that served as hair. I mustered what dignity the application of a little bears’ grease would afford and took up my basket.

On that occasion, the morning after the encounter with Merriweather, I had a small list of items to buy, a couple of letters to mail and some bills to settle. Then I planned to attend to a little business of my own: I traded in the gossip of the commercial gentlemen; in this way some merchants were able to hold out for better terms when they came to dealing with our guests and I was able, sometimes, to make fifty cents or even a dollar for myself.

Meantime, I would need cash to transact the business of the hotel. I could hear Merriweather in conversation in his parlour and considered postponing my departure. I preferred to encounter him on other ground; there had been times when a summons to Merriweather’s parlour had occasioned terror. It wasn’t that the room with its huge and heavy furniture and a crimson wallpaper such as Satan himself might have picked out was ugly and reeked of the sweet and stale smell of Merriweather’s cigars. Nor that he had beaten me in that place. There was something else about that room, some childhood memory that time had erased, but whose palimpsest was still traceable on the adult mind, which made me strangely awkward and uncomfortable whenever I addressed Merriweather in his private sanctum.

Merriweather was breakfasting in his shirt-sleeves, his black moustache twitching and collecting crumbs as he ate buttered toast and listened to what Silas Amory, the newspaper editor, was saying. ‘Now this town has the railroad, we need to give the city folk a reason to use it, get ’em coming into the town. Trading, settling, starting up businesses. It’s not happening yet. Tell me, Merriweather, has the railroad brought you the business they said it would?’

Amory’s slight and angular figure perched upon his chair. Only his small dark eyes showed animation as he awaited Merriweather’s reply. I thought he looked like a thieving magpie, intent on stealing morsels from the hotelier’s plate. Merriweather sneered and swallowed. ‘Waal, I allow it might have done that,’ he said, reaching for his cigar-box, ‘had not the railroad company gone and erected its own hotel hard by the depot. They never said nothing about that and I call it low-down and irregular.’

‘Sharp, too, though,’ said Amory. ‘So I guess you have to lower your prices to secure the custom.’

‘That I do, and allow for some little expenditure on advertising that fact, too. There just ain’t enough people coming through this town. Not for us all to turn a good profit.’ He swallowed some coffee and said, ‘What this place needs is a magnet of some kind. I don’t know, s’posin’ someone was to let on, to a newspaper, perhaps, that a little gold had been found in the creek?’

‘We’d get the wrong kind of people,’ Amory said, ‘and they’d be gone soon as they knew the truth.’

‘I reckon you’re right at that. This business needs some kind of a shove, though. Couple more years like this one and I’ll be looking for a job at the Central Pacific.’

‘Bad as that?’ said Amory.

‘Close to it,’ said Merriweather. ‘You know I got a little capital left. It ain’t much but maybe the time has come to venture it. Find some sure-fire investment opportunity. How about precious minerals?’

‘Nothing sure about that line. Lot of people lose their shirts. You might reconsider that matter we spoke of last fall. I’d still welcome a backer if you’d like to make your investment in me.’

‘You?’

‘I’m running for mayor whether or not you stake me, Melik. I’ll get the money if I have to put the Bugle in hock. But if you come in with me now, you won’t see no new hotels going up in Hayes. When I’m mayor I can put all kinds of interesting business your way.’

I cleared my throat and asked Merriweather for the money and I thought I saw Silas Amory damning me with his eyes.

‘Gaul-durn it, boy, allus asking for this or that. I tell you, Silas, this boy has drained me of a sizeable fortune since I took him ’n’ his mother in, nigh on twenty years ago. Twenty years of feeding and clothing. Sizeable, I tell you. Ah, but that’s the cross a true Christian has to bear, I suppose.’