Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Quincey didn’t see any point to stretching things out, not when there was serious fence-mending to do at the Westenra’s house. “I hope you boys will think on this real seriously,” he said as he stepped over Holmwood and made for the door.

There was a Mexican kid pretending to do some work behind the big house. Quincey gave him a nickel and took him around front.

The kid wasn’t happy to see the box. He crossed himself several times. Then he spit on his palms and took one end, delighted to find that the box wasn’t as heavy as it looked.

They set it in the parlor. Quincey had to take a chair and catch his breath. After all that time on the ship, and then more time sitting on his butt slapping reins to a pair of swaybacks, he wasn’t much good. Of course, this wasn’t as tough as when he’d had to haul the box from the Westenra family tomb, all by his lonesome, but it was bad enough. By the time he remembered to thank the kid, the kid had already gone.

Nothing for it, then.

Nothing, but to do it.

The words came back to him, echoing in his head. And it wasn’t the voice of some European doctor, like in Stoker’s book. It was Seward’s voice. “ One moment’s courage, and it is done .”

He shook those words away. He was alone here. The parlor hadn’t changed much since the day he’d left to tour the world. The curtains were heavy and dark, and the deep shadows seemed to brush his cheek, one moment buckskin-rough, next moment satin-smooth.

Like the shadows in the Westenra’s garden. The shadows where he’d held Lucy to him. Held her so close.

No. He wouldn’t think of that. Not now. He had work to do. He couldn’t start thinking about how it had been, because then he’d certainly start thinking about how it might be, again…

One moment’s courage, and it is done.

God, how he wanted to laugh, but he kept it inside.

His big bowie knife was in his hand. He didn’t know quite how it had gotten there. He went to work on the lid of the box, first removing brass screws, then removing the hinges.

One moment’s courage .. .

The lid crashed heavily to the floor, but he never heard it. His horror was too great for that. After all this time, the stink of garlic burned his nostrils, scorched his lungs. But that wasn’t the hell of it.

The hell of it was that she had moved.

Oh, she hadn’t moved. He knew that. He could see the stake spearing her poor breast, the breast that he had teased between his own lips. She couldn’t move. Not with the stake there.

But the churning Atlantic had rocked a sailing ship, and that had moved her. And a bucking wagon had jostled over the rutted roads of Texas, and that had moved her. And now her poor head, her poor severed head with all that dark and beautiful hair, was trapped between her own sweet legs, nestled between her own tender thighs, just as his head had been.

Once. A long time ago.

Maybe, once again…

No. He wouldn’t start thinking like that. He stared at her head, knowing he’d have to touch it. There was no sign of decay, no stink of corruption. But he could see the buds of garlic jammed into the open hole of her throat, the ragged gashes and severed muscles, the dangling ropes of flesh.

In his mind’s eye, he saw Seward standing stiff and straight with a scalpel in his bloodstained grip.

And that bastard called himself a doctor.

There were shadows, of course, in their secret place in the Westenra garden. And he held her, as he had before. But now she never stopped shaking.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” she said. “Arthur is behaving like one of Seward’s lunatics. You must be careful.”

“You’re the one has to be careful, Lucy,” he said.

“No.” She laughed. “Mother has disregarded the entire episode. Well, nearly so. She’s convinced that I behaved quite recklessly– and this judging from one kiss on the terrace. I had to assure her that we did nothing more than tour the garden in search of a better view of the moon. I said that was the custom in Texas. I’m not certain that she accepted my story, but… ” She kissed him, very quickly. “I’ve feigned illness for her benefit, and she believes that I am in the grip of a rare and exotic fever. Seward has convinced her of this, I think. Once I’m pronounced fit, I’m certain that she will forgive your imagined indiscretion.”

“Now, Miss Lucy, I don’t think that was my imagination ,” he joked.

She laughed, trembling laughter there in his arms. “Seward has consulted a specialist. A European fellow. He’s said to be an expert in fevers of the blood. I’m to see him tomorrow. That ought to put an end to the charade.”

He wanted to say it. More than anything, he wanted to say, Forget tomorrow. Let’s leave here, tonight . But he didn’t say it, because she was trembling so.

“You English,” he said. “You do love your charades.”

Moonlight washed the shadows. He caught the wild look in her eye. A twin to the fearful look a colt gets just before it’s broken.

He kept his silence. He was imagining things. He held her.

It was the last time he would hold her, alive.

THREE

Quincey pushed through the double doors of the saloon and was surprised to find it deserted except for a sleepy-eyed man who was polishing the piano.

“You the piano player?” Quincey asked.

“Sure,” the fellow said.

Quincey brought out the Peacemaker. “Can you play ‘Red River Valley’?”

“S-sure.” The man sat down, rolled up his sleeves.

“Not here,” Quincey said.

“H-huh?”

“I got a big house on the edge of town.”

The man swallowed hard. “You mean Mr. Owens’s place?”

“No. I mean my place.”

“H-huh?”

“Anyway, you go on up there, and you wait for me.”

The man rose from the piano stool, both eyes on the Peacemaker, and started toward the double doors.

“Wait a minute,” Quincey said. “You’re forgetting something.”

“W-what?”

“Well, I don’t have a piano up at the house.”

“Y-you don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Well… Hell, mister, what do you want me to do?”

Quincey cocked the Peacemaker. “I guess you’d better start pushing.”

“You mean… you want me to take the piano with me?”

Quincey nodded. “Now, I’ll be home in a couple hours or so. You put the piano in the parlor, then you help yourself to a glass of whiskey. But don’t linger in the parlor, hear?”

The man nodded. He seemed to catch on pretty quick. Had to be that he was a stranger in these parts.

Quincey moved on. He stopped off at Murphy’s laundry, asked a few questions about garlic, received a few expansive answers detailing the amazing restorative power of Mrs. Murphy’s soap, after which he set a gunnysack on the counter. He set it down real gentle-like, and the rough material settled over something kind of round, and, seeing this, Mr. Murphy excused himself and made a beeline for the saloon.

Next Quincey stopped off at the church with a bottle of whiskey for the preacher. They chatted a bit, and Quincey had a snort before moving on, just to be sociable.

He had just stepped into the home of Mrs. Danvers, the best seamstress in town, when he glanced through the window and spotted Hal Owens coming his way, two men in tow, one of them being the sheriff.

Things were never quite so plain in England. Oh, they were just as dangerous, that was for sure. But, with the exception of lunatics like Arthur Holmwood, the upper crust of Whitby cloaked their confrontational behavior in a veil of politeness.