She told me, ‘You should always wear it just like that, and when you see it, you will remember me, and remember your promise to return here.’ Stroking the fabric, she smiled. ‘Will it make your brother very jealous?’
‘I think he will want to know all about it.’
‘Isn’t it a fine piece, though?’
‘It is very shiny.’
I buttoned my coat to cover it. She came forward and put her arms around me, resting the side of her face over my heart, listening to the organ’s mad jumping. After this she said her good-byes, then turned and disappeared into the hotel, but not before I had slipped Mayfield’s forty dollars in her petticoat pocket. I called out that I would see her on my return, but she did not respond and I stood alone, my thoughts dipping and shooting away, dipping and dying. I did not wish to be indoors, but to continue circulating in the open. I spied a row of houses off from the main road and walked in their direction.
INTERMISSION
I came upon a young girl of seven or eight years old, outfitted in the finest clothing from hat to shoe and standing stiffly before the fenced-in yard of a quaint, freshly painted house. She glared at the property with an intense dislike or malice—her brow was furrowed, her hands clenched, and she was crying, not forcefully, but calmly and without a sound. When I approached her and asked her what was the matter, she told me she had had a bad dream.
‘Just now you had a bad dream?’ I said, for the sun was high in the sky.
‘In the night I had one. But I had forgotten about it until a moment ago, when that dog reminded me.’ She pointed to a fat dog, asleep on the other side of the fence. I was startled when I spied what looked to be the dog’s leg lying independently from the body, but upon closer inspection I saw it was the femur bone of a lamb or calf, this for the dog to chew on. It still had some meat and gristle attached, which gave it a fleshy appearance. I smiled at the girl.
‘I thought it was the dog’s leg,’ I said.
The girl wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘But it is the dog’s leg.’
I shook my head and pointed. ‘The dog’s leg is tucked under him, do you see?’
‘You are wrong. Watch.’ She whistled and the dog awoke and stood, and I discovered it truly was missing the leg closest to the bone on the ground, only the skin had long since healed over. It was a years-old wound, and though I was confused, I persevered: ‘That there on the ground is the femur bone of a lamb, and not the dog’s. Don’t you see the animal suffered its loss some time ago and that he is not in pain?’
The statement angered the girl, and now she regarded me with just the same malice with which she had been regarding the house. ‘The dog is in pain,’ she insisted. ‘The dog is in no small amount of pain!’
The violence of her words and temper caught me by surprise; I found myself taking a step away from her. ‘You are a peculiar girl,’ I said.
‘It’s a peculiar lifetime on earth,’ she countered. I did not know what to say to that. At any rate it was as truthful a statement as I had come across. The girl continued, her voice now honeyed and innocent: ‘But you did not ask about my dream.’
‘You said it was about this dog.’
‘The dog was but a part of it. It was also about the fence, and the house, and you.’
‘I was in your dream?’
‘A man was in it. A man I did not know or care about.’
‘Was he a good man or a bad man?’
She spoke in a whisper: ‘He was a protected man.’
I thought at once of the gypsy-witch, of the doorway and necklace. ‘How was he protected?’ I asked. ‘Protected from what?’
But she would not answer my question. She said, ‘I was walking here to see this dog, which I hate. And as I slipped it its poison to kill it there appeared in this yard before me a fist-sized, swirling gray-and-black cloud. This grew bigger and was soon a foot across, then two feet, then ten—now it was big as the house. And I felt the wind from its spinning, a cold wind, so cold it burned my face.’ She closed her eyes and tilted her head upward, as though recalling this sensation.
‘What kind of poison did you slip the dog?’ I asked, for I noticed her right hand had a grainy black residue over the knuckles.
‘The cloud became bigger still,’ the terrible girl continued, her volume and agitation increasing, ‘soon lifting me into its center, where I hung in the air, tumbling lightly in circles. I think it might have been calming if the three-legged dog, now dead, was not also spinning within the orb beside me.’
‘That is a distressing dream, girl.’
‘The three-legged dog, now dead, spinning within the orb beside me!’ She clapped once, turned abruptly around, and left me where I stood, dumbfounded and not a little unnerved. I thought, How I long for a reliable companion. The girl had rounded the corner before I looked back at the dog, which was once more lying prone on the ground, foam issuing from his mouth, ribs no longer rising to breathe, dead as dead could be. There was a shift of the curtains in the house and I turned and left just as hastily as the girl had but in the opposite direction, and I did not at any point look back. It was time to say good-bye and good riddance to Mayfield, for now.
END INTERMISSION
Chapter 32
Passing Mayfield’s parlor I peered in and saw both he and the naked woman were gone, and the pelt stand had been righted. Farther down the hall, one of the whores was standing with her head on the door of the room next to mine. Walking toward her, I asked if she had seen Charlie. ‘He just escorted me out.’ Her skin had a greenish tint to it; she was deathly brandy-sick. Belching, she covered her mouth with a balled fist. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. I opened the door to my room and asked her to tell Charlie to hurry along. ‘I will not tell him a thing, sir. I am headed for my own bed to wait out these long hours in private.’ I watched as she walked away, her fist on the wall, unsure in her footsteps. Charlie’s door was locked and when I knocked he made a guttural sound communicating a desire for solitude. When I called to him, he came to the door in the nude and waved me in.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘I was walking with the girl from last night.’
‘What girl from last night?’
‘The pretty, thin one.’
‘Was there a pretty, thin one?’
‘You were too distracted with your guffawing to notice. Look at how red your head is.’
I could hear Mayfield’s muffled, angry voice emanating from the parlor. I told Charlie about the missing pelt and he stiffened. ‘What do you mean, missing?’ he demanded.
‘Missing. Not there. The stand was toppled and the pelt had been cut away.’
He studied this awhile, then began getting dressed. ‘I will talk to Mayfield about it,’ he said, groaning as he pulled on his pants. ‘We got along very fine last night. Surely the responsible party was one of those filthy trappers he has on the payroll.’
He left and I sat heavily in a low wicker chair. I noticed Charlie’s mattress had been pulled to the floor and shredded with a knife, its stuffing yanked out in shocks. I thought, Will his fondness for senseless carnage ever cease? He and Mayfield were having an argument but I could not understand the words. My body was burning with fatigue and I was halfway asleep when Charlie returned, his face tight, his fists clenched and white at the knuckle. ‘There is a man who knows how to raise his voice,’ he said. ‘What a blusterer.’