Except maybe in Waco, he thought. Or Jonestown.
"I guess not," Matt said, then lifted his helmet. "I'd better be going."
She took his arm again, those surprisingly strong fingers digging into his muscle. "Do you have to?"
Matt thought of all those jokes and stories he'd heard over the years about travelling salesmen and lonely widows. But the look she was giving him didn't have any lust in it.
She was afraid.
"Help us," she whispered.
If you liked THE DEAD MAN, you might also enjoy James Daniels' upcoming novel GHOST BRIDE. Here's an excerpt.
GHOST BRIDE
Something everybody knows: if you're in a church in Idaho at midnight, and it's hung with banners painted Bolshevik red, and filled with shouting, stamping miners – well then, it better be Christmas Eve, and they better be shouting Amen, Hallelujah, or Can I get a witness? Because anything else is trouble.
Everybody knows that.
Even I know that.
In fact, if there's one thing I know about after forty-five years, it's trouble: how to spot it, start it, shrug it, sell it, soup it up, side-step it, strong-arm it, swan-song it, so-long it. I know how to tilt it, milk it, and sweep it under the rug. So looking around the noisy gloom of Madre de Dolores this fine cold September night, I know damn well what I've gotten myself into…
Trouble. Of the worst kind.
Start with the kid standing at the altar.
He's younger than I expected, uglier, too, and rail thin – a hundred pounds tops, with rocks in his pockets. But even so, I can see why the Agency wants him dead. He slaps the podium in front of the altar, and two hundred miners stamp their feet. He raises his fist, raises his voice, and they respond in kind.
"Is this what we were promised?"
"No!"
"Is this what we deserve?"
"No!"
"What we sweated for?"
"No!"
"Slaved for?"
"No!"
"And what about our kids?"
At the mention of kids the men leap to their feet and start chewing the pews. They're waving banners and shouting Hell no, call and response-style, like he's a preacher and they're the congregation. And why not? We are in church, after all. But the crucifix above the altar is covered with a bedsheet that says AFL in red slop letters, and there's no priest in sight, only little Sandy Cranovicz, with his orange hair and pitted skin and big mouth.
He'll do, though, he'll fit the bill. The proof is all around me. He's worked these men into a lather. No small feat when most of them haven't eaten in days, and their families likewise. It's the fifth week of the strike, after all.
"A tug for you, big fellah?"
A toothless old miner to my left claps me on the back and puts a bottle under my nose. I slap it away. "Christ no," I say. He shrugs, cocks it himself. Glug glug. I watch him. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, looks back to Cranovicz.
But I'm still watching the miner. His bleary eyes slide over to mine, blank as nickels, and when Carrot Top yells, "Is this what Samuel Gompers died for?" The old guy yells back, "Hell no," with all the rest.
I relax some. Though his hand clapped right onto the butt of my .32, he must not have felt it. I thought long and hard about whether to keep it in my pocket or shoulder holster or the back of my belt. Now I guess it doesn't matter.
"How long are we gonna wait?"
"No longer!"
"How much are we gonna to take?"
"No more!"
"And what about those scabs?"
The room goes nuts.
Suddenly I'm dizzy, and grab the pew in front of me. The place is spinning. Too much smoke, too much noise. But the real culprit, I know, is the bottle of hooch the old miner shoved at me. Silver Dollar Special, the bottle said, but that's a laugh; it was home-brewed stuff if ever I smelled it. This is Idaho, and the miners hereabouts distill potato peelings. It's in their bellies and on their breath, and every time they shout the air in the room gets thicker with the tang of shine, of wood grain, of kerosene.
Now I've got both hands on the pew. I want a drink so badly that my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I'm dry as dirt, and the worst of it is, I have to stay that way. Doctor's orders. Said my life depended on it, and I believe him. But if I ever needed a drink, this is surely the moment.
But that's out. And suddenly, breathing in this haze of smoke and bathtub gin is almost too much. I shouldn't have come, I should have waited out by the water-tower like we planned. But I wanted to be here, to hear Sandy, to see what all the fuss was about. And now, looking up, I'm glad I did.
"What about Frank Little?"
"Frank!"
"Did he cave in?"
"Hell no!"
"When they starved him?"
"No!"
"When they beat him?"
"No!"
"Lynched him?"
"No!"
"And the thirty families Rock-a-feller machine-gunned in Ludlow, what about them?"
"Ludlow!"
"Did they die so you and me could sign some yellow-dog contract to line the fat-cats' pockets while our kids are eating dandelion greens?"
"Hell no!"
He's pushing toward the finish line, and they know it. Every man in Madre de los Dolores has both fists in the air, the miners in front of the altar and the bodyguards behind it. There's five guards in all, three more than I expected, and it has me worried.
But then I see the girl.
She's off to his left, the only one sitting. For a second I can't breathe. She's the spitting image of Ingrid. It is Ingrid.
And then I squint, or the haze clears, or she leans forward, and I get a better look.
Ingrid? Not even close. Too young. She's got the hair though, the thin wrists, the long neck, but the rest is pure Idaho. Her eyes are close together, her teeth every-which-way. Her dress is what you would expect, a place like this. But there's something in her look, in the way she watches Cranovicz, that makes me think of Ingrid.
My head clears. I know Ingrid, the real Ingrid, is near. I can feel it. Either she's at the crossroads already, or she will be soon. Waiting. For the first time in six years. And that means the only thing between her and me is Sandy C.
I let go of the pew. I elbow past the shouting men. By the time they're hitting their high notes, I'm out of the church and into the woods, my head clear, the .32 cocked and ready in my hand.
# # # # # #
The moon's out, but it's what old-timers call a rain-moon, where a light drizzle falls from a clear sky. The branches are black, the footing's slick. Soon I'm wet. Since we're in the mountains, wet means cold and I can see my breath in clouds in front of me. Twice I trip before reaching an outcropping of dark rock halfway up the slope. From here I can see the church and, farther off, the top of the water tower poking through the pines.
I settle on my haunches, break the .32, check the chambers. Six dolls, all tucked in. One slides out, and as I pick it out of the weeds I see my hand is shaking. It's the cold of course, though the scent of the hooch still clings to my slicker, and that doesn't help. And neither does the lungful of mustard I swallowed in '18. Or the bullet I took working for the Agency two years later. It's all mixed together inside me like a cocktail, and when you think about it I'm lucky I can get dressed in the morning.
I slip the shell back into the barrel, shut it, spin it. I hold it up at armslength, looking down the site through one eye at the doors of los Dolores. I should have brought a rifle. This isn't my sort of thing.