Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

“No,” said Brooke, “but we’d settle for a modest homecoming of sorts. We’d like a bath each. We’d like the promise of a bed or two with a window, at least temporarily. The peace of mind to rest. We’ve been traveling for days. We lost our beloved horses with many miles still between us and here. Give us the opportunity to get fresh, to adjust. We’ll keep our pampered heads about us.”

Sugar placed the fabric back into his front pocket. He crossed his legs and eyed the tiny man, who looked at Brooke as if he were still speaking. Finally, the tiny man nodded and a hand set itself on Brooke’s shoulder.

Brooke had the ashtray from the desk in his hand then and was already withdrawing the blow he’d spent on the broken-nosed thug behind him. Blood spilled from the thug’s nose. He clutched his face as if trying to collect the blood that gathered there.

Brooke set the ashtray back on the desk and Sugar settled himself into his chair.

“Okay,” said the tiny man, with a grin. “A bath it is.”

The baths were crowded. Men of indeterminate age, but none of them young, lined the edges. A mix of tobacco smoke and steam crowded the air. Sagging wooden guardrails led down a row of steps into the water of the communal bath. The floor and walls wore a yellowing tile.

The heat pressed against Brooke’s and Sugar’s lungs as they moved along the bath’s perimeter to hang their towels from a row of silver hooks lining the far wall.

Someone whistled. Others coughed, shifted, and began to whisper.

“I think they like you,” said Brooke.

Sugar smiled and Brooke stepped into the water. The blood on his left hand lifted and dispersed. He bent at the knees and submerged himself up to his shoulders. He shut his eyes, listened to the sounds of the other men as they examined his brother.

“You don’t even smell like a woman,” said a longhaired man sitting alone in the corner of the large square, now shared by nearly twenty men.

Sugar had seated himself on the bench lining the edge of the bath. He crossed his legs, then thought again and uncrossed them. He parted his knees just slightly. He nodded at the longhaired man sitting a foot or so from him.

“It’s because I’m not a woman,” said Sugar. He snapped his fingers at a passing boy in white. The boy paused and removed a thin cigarette from a pack on the silver tray he carried before him. Sugar gripped it with his lip and the boy lit it with a smile.

“Your charge number, sir?”

“It’s on your man,” said Sugar, and the boy nodded. He made a mark in a small notebook beside the cigarette pack on the tray and began again to circle the bath’s perimeter.

“You’ve got the finer parts,” said the longhaired man. “I don’t mean at all to pry or stare. I just haven’t seen a woman’s parts… in years, and… well you don’t expect to come across them in a place like this.”

“Is he bothering you, Sugar?” Brooke rose from the water before them. He was lean and cruel looking. He looked as if he should have been covered in scars, but all of the wounds he bore were fresh. His muscles were mottled with age and effort.

“No,” said Sugar. He let the smoke drift between his vaguely parted lips. “He’s just admiring my parts.”

The longhaired man smiled and shifted and put his hands up. “No,” he said, “I’m just noticing is all. I don’t mean either of you any discomfort or trouble.” He slunk away to a far corner of the bath and settled between two older men who were leaning against the bath’s edge, eyes closed, either sleeping or dead.

Brooke took his spot there in the corner near his brother.

“You should cross your knees,” he said. “In a place like this.”

“You should avoid giving advice,” said Sugar. “You haven’t got the face for it.”

“Did you notice our friend?” said Brooke. He ran his palms along the surface of the water, examined the edges of his scabs as they softened.

“How long do you think we’ve got?” said Sugar.

“Get your hair wet,” said Brooke. “Then we should go.”

The broke-nosed thug was bleeding between two gangly men in the bath adjacent Brooke and Sugar. His eyes had not lifted from their movements.

Sugar crab-walked out from the bench and lowered himself under the water. He ran his hands back and forth through his hair and could feel the grit coming away in sleeves. He opened his eyes to see the water had yellowed around him. He picked at the pieces that clung directly to his scalp. He felt a shiver in his shoulders, the rare delight of a long-awaited bath. He admired his brother’s legs through the chalky water. The pressure in Sugar’s lungs grew more intense with each passing moment. He exhaled and Brooke’s legs lifted suddenly up and out of the bath. Sugar kicked himself toward the far edge of the bath and rose up and out as well.

Brooke was on top of the naked, broke-nosed thug, pounding his chest and stomach and face. The sound was that of a cow collapsing into mud, again and again and again.

Brooke broke the skin of the broke-nosed thug in various patches about his body. Brooke rose only when the reach of the blood surpassed his wrists. He rose naked and bloody and examined the room. Some looked angry, put out. Others were frightened and without a plan. The longhaired man who had been talking to Sugar sank between the two old men at either side of him, until the water reached his ears. He eyed the brothers across the surface of the water, bubbling air from his slender nose.

Sugar gathered their towels from the hooks and Brooke backed slowly into his as Sugar opened it to greet him.

They left the bath together, dressed hurriedly in the adjoining room where they had left their clothes, and sped toward the front door with the air of practiced men.

They were back in the woods only a few minutes later. They had slid out of town, uninterrupted. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, to disappear when they needed to. It just wasn’t what they’d been hoping for.

“I can’t do another night of this,” said Sugar. He was standing, pacing, looking between the trees.

“At least we got the bath.” Brooke set his head on a small rock at the base of a tree. It was sundown. The woods were cooling around them.

No one was after them. They’d been given no chase. They were gone and that was all that mattered. In a place like that, in a time like this, people had more immediate concerns. All the better if he’d killed the pummeled thug. He was the only one who might have taken the whole thing personally.

“Have we got another plan?” said Sugar.

Brooke set his hands palm down where his ribs met his belly. “Perhaps we’ll live and die in the woods,” he said.

Finally, Sugar sat. The night grew dark. They talked on as their eyes adjusted. They got along well when there were empty hours ahead. They’d been out for so long already, it was almost easier for them to talk like they still were, like they’d never been back. Only things were soured now. They hadn’t the same tolerance they’d had when headed home.

“We’ll just wait a few days,” said Brooke. “No one’s going to care in a week.”

“So we’ll wait a week, or a few days?” said Sugar.

“We’ll just wait,” said Brooke, “until it feels right.”

“Here’s what’s eating me,” said Sugar. “The man you nearly killed. What was he hoping to get out of approaching us in the bath?”

“What do you mean?” Brooke rolled on to his side to examine his bedded-down brother.

“I mean, was he after you for breaking his nose, or to finish what he’d started?”

“The difference being?”

“The difference being, one agenda is personal. The other was a task assigned him by the same tiny man who sent us to enjoy his newly acquired facilities, only moments after you broke the nose of a man in his employ.”