Longarm said, “It ain’t no secret. I’ve been boarding with that Widow MacUlric, and last night somebody shot her place up trying to get at me. I figure the least I can do is put things back the way I found ‘em when I first moved in.”
Ramsay said he’d heard the gunplay the night before, and congratulated Longarm on his brush with Porky Shaw, saying, “Somebody was sure to shoot such a pain in the ass, and I’m glad it was a lawman from other parts. We have enough steam simmering around here without a blood feud over a tub of lard.”
Longarm cocked a brow and asked, “Do tell? From your book I just read I’d gained the impression all the white folks in these part were just one big happy family.”
Ramsay shrugged and said, “I wrote that brief history over a year ago. Why don’t I run over to that boardinghouse with you and have a look at what needs to be done before I sell you the wrong stuff to do it with? I’m a general contractor as well as a merchant and, I hope you won’t take this wrong, it’s often cheaper in the long run to pay a professional than to do it yourself.”
Longarm started to say he’d always been handy enough with tools and simple repairs. Then he wondered why he’d want to say anything like that when he had a local historian gassing away at him like the hostess of a church social.
Longarm allowed he valued the opinion of a professional hardware man and house fixer. So Ramsay called one of his lumberyard helpers over to say he’d be out for a while and to just sell stuff but not sign any papers on his own.
Longarm was afoot that morning. But Ramsay had his buckboard hitched up out back. So they rode the short distance in style, if one found Missouri mules stylish.
They found the Widow MacUlric alone with her broom and dust mop at mid-morning. It turned out she and the hardware man knew one another on a business basis. He’d sold her that orange-flower wallpaper way back when, and allowed he could order the same pattern for her if she was dead set on it. He agreed with Longarm that it would be easier to replace the bullet-riddled ceiling tin than attempt to make it look like new.
As she led them upstairs, Mavis MacUlric asked how long it would take Ramsay to get her the same pattern she and her late Martin had picked out in their golden yesterday when it had still looked as if they’d chosen the best location in town.
Ramsay said, “I remember the two of you starting out to pioneer as purveyors of room and board, Miss Mavis. Mr. MacUlric was a man who kept his word and paid his bills on time. Might you be of Scotch descent as well?”
She brushed a strand of hair from her brow and replied, “He was. My people were Pennsylvania Dutch. What has that to do with wallpaper?”
The man who sold the stuff by the gross said, “They keep changing the pattern. Some ladies seem to admire new wallpaper patterns as the time to paper over draws nigh. I’m sure I can get you this particular pattern if you’ll give me time to write back and forth to more than one wholesale supplier I do business with. On the other hand, I have stock on hand right now that should give the same general effect.”
She stared wistfully at the ugly bullet gouge through her familiar orange, spinach, and mustard pattern. Longarm was about to suggest the same colors with a different design, or a similar design with different colors, might not be too bad, when the beefy blond hardware man stepped over to the wall and knelt to run thoughtful fingers along the torn edges, assuring her as if she was a little kid whose heart had been set on a particular play-pretty, “I suppose we could fill it in and smooth it over, then watercolor over to hide the gap.”
“Oh, could you?” the young widow gasped hopefully. Then she beat Longarm to the punch by asking, “Wouldn’t hiring such an artist cost an awful lot?”
Ramsay smiled like an older boy showing little kids how to bait a hook as he modestly replied, “I’ve always been handy with a paintbrush, ma’am. It’s not as if you need the services of a Rembrandt or even Currier and Ives here. It should be easy to match and feather in the background color. Then it’s just a matter of daubing orange and green edges where they really look torn away. It should only take me a few hours, giving the background wash time to dry before I fake in the rest. I’d naturally feel silly charging anyone for just fooling around like that.”
She protested there was no way on earth she’d ever let anyone go to that much trouble for nothing.
Longarm said, “He’s making a modest profit on the materials. Ain’t that right, Mr. Ramsay?”
The helpful hardware man rose back to his considerable height as he gravely replied, “I am. Let’s consider my helping with the repairs part of the deal. Who knows, I might end up with a whole new line as a wallpaper repair man as word gets around and night riders keep shooting at Deputy Long here.”
The three of them laughed. Longarm was starting to like the cuss in spite of his dumb book about family trees. Longarm asked, “What about the floor, ceiling paper, and such?”
Ramsay raised the new bedding and mattress from one corner of the bedsprings to see daylight lancing up through the floorboards, and said, “Driving in pegs, planing them flat, and staining them to match ought to serve where nobody’s liable to look too closely to begin with. That ceiling paper’s a mite smoke-stained as well as plain. So it makes more sense to just paper over.”
Longarm pointed at the one wall papered with old Confederate and railroad bonds, asking what Ramsay thought they ought to do about that.
The hardware man shrugged and said, “I assumed that engraved bond paper held some sentimental value. Would you like us to paper that wall with some pattern that might harmonize, Miss Mavis?”
She hesitated, shook her head, and decided, “Fair is fair and that was the way I’d hired this room out to Custis here. I’m not being sentimental. You can see, where it’s torn, that I papered over a lot more of those worthless stocks and bonds before we got to the last roll up here in this one front room. But maybe some other time, after I’ve fixed things around here that really need fixing.”
Then she said, “I have to get down to my kitchen and see about a roast I put in just before the two of you arrived. You’ll be staying for dinner out back with us, won’t you, Mr. Ramsay?”
Ramsay looked surprised, but said he’d be delighted.
Longarm was neither that surprised nor delighted. He’d only set out to fix up her house, not fix her up with a cuss who bragged on all the fancy folks he claimed as kin. Sometimes it seemed as if Lexington and Concord had been a waste of gunpowder to some self-styled fine old American families. For it seemed they’d no sooner gotten shed of that stuck-up English peerage than they’d taken to sprouting coats of arms and claiming descent from kings, queens, and other mythical beings.
Longarm was surprised at the tone of his own voice when he allowed he had other chores that morning and might as well get cracking, seeing that the handsome hardware man seemed to want to tether his mules in the shade and help her set the table.
Longarm caught himself stomping as he strode away, and had to laugh at his own natural but foolish feelings. He paused on the cinder path to light a cheroot before moving on in restored humor.
The last thing a man who might be leaving on the evening train had any use for had to be a lonely widow in the market for a strong man to lean on. From the little he really knew about Remington Ramsay, old Mavis was likely as well off leaning on him as any other skirt-chasing son of a bitch in town. The husky bastard was surely fixing to prong her, and somehow Longarm knew she’d take her pronging sweet and submissive, at least compared to that clinical Nancy Calder. But a man had to be a sport about the ones he just couldn’t have, and there was just no way any man could plan on having them all, dad blast it.