again and stayed at the counter, her hands braced against it, looking down.
He was there behind her again, and he wasn’t giving up.
He said, “Were you planning to settle? You know you can’t do it. Aren’t you the Wanderer? You can’t ever stop.”
That was it. That was the limit. She whirled around and angrily faced him. He’d stepped up behind her and she stopped him in his tracks.
His face registered astonishment, and he looked down.
After a moment, she followed his gaze. The base of the bill spike from the counter had somehow fixed itself to his chest, right in the center of it above his stomach.
He looked up at her. Then down again.
She realized that she’d put it there.
The speed and the drastic nature of her response had surprised even her.
“There, now…,” she said, haltingly and without conviction. “See what you did?”
Still disbelieving, he reached for the wooden base and, taking hold of it, pulled. The spike seemed to come out as easily and as painlessly as it had gone in. Bloodstained sales dockets rained down onto the floor, where they scattered around his feet.
He looked her in the eyes. She didn’t know what to say. This was not something she’d consciously intended. But there was no denying that she’d done it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He staggered and fell.
Upstairs and over her head, someone was crossing the floor. The owner would be here at any moment, expecting to close their deal.
Down before her, the stranger was slowly curling in around his wound, as if to protect it from the air. His knees were drawing up, his shoulders hunching in. Blood was spreading out underneath him. He coughed once, and the pool rapidly doubled in size.
There was no point in her staying. The spike had pierced something vital and he was done for. She might regret it, but there was nothing she could do for him now. Pinkerton man. Or whoever he might be.
The furniture in the warehouse, the Patenotre house on the River Road, the home and the future on which she’d been setting her sights…all that was lost to her now. She felt almost no disappointment. It was as if she’d known all along that it could never be, and that it had only been a matter of time. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. Perhaps sooner, maybe later. But it surely would have come.
She looked around for the man called Henry. Had he seen what had taken place? Had he run to tell someone? It hardly mattered if he had. All that was left for her now was to dump her dreams and go.
Someone was descending the stairs. She had to step over the man on the floor to get out of the office before he arrived.
It was true what they said, Sebastian was thinking. Your mind stays clear, and everything else grows cold. He could only wonder how they knew.
It didn’t hurt.
Ice becomes ashes.
He was vaguely aware of the woman leaving, of someone else arriving, and then of others arriving as well. But only vaguely. Someone leaned right over him and shouted something at him, but he paid them no attention. His attention was an increasingly precious thing, and he had none of it to spare.
He felt himself being pushed back and forth. Someone was going through his pockets. They seemed to find what they were looking for, because then everyone started shouting a name. It might have been his own. It was hard to be certain.
Sebastian wasn’t listening. He needed his attention for the important things. The things he had to take with him. The wife that he’d never felt he deserved. The life they’d made together. The way dust motes danced in the sunlight in their bedroom on a summer Sunday morning. The smell of books. The taste of cold water.
He’d often wondered what this would be like. He needn’t have worried. The final priorities took care of themselves.
Down on the office floor, with people shouting over him and the light slowly fading, Sebastian Becker was remembering the rare look of awe in his boy’s eyes, shaking the hand that once shook the hand of Buffalo Bill.
FORTY-NINE
The first that Tom Sayers knew of it was when the nurses came around asking for volunteers to provide blood for transfusion, and even then he didn’t realize that Sebastian Becker was the emergency case in question. Only when a cross match had confirmed his suitability and they trolleyed him down for the procedure did he discover the identity of the recipient.
Sayers wasn’t the only donor. Five other volunteers were lined up, all able-bodied and noninfected, and all of them were needed to get Becker through the surgery.
Afterward, Sayers told the medical staff all he knew of their patient. Which was actually little beyond Sebastian’s home address and the name of his wife, but enough for them to be able to send off a wire.
He had to stay around the hospital. Becker remained in danger, and there was a chance that Sayers might be called upon again. Blood couldn’t be taken and stored, but needed direct transfusion. After his second session, he all but fainted when he tried to stand. They put him in a chair and took him back to his bed, where he slept for fifteen hours straight.
One of the Sisters told him of Elisabeth Becker’s arrival. She’d come all the way down from Philadelphia alone, an epic journey involving more than two days of hard travel. After what he’d done to their family, Sayers didn’t dare face her. No apology could suffice.
Oh, God…if Becker died now. She’d be turning around and taking her dead husband home. They’d had a boy killed on the road once, half his head taken off by a flying cable, and his widowed mother had come all the way out to the tent show to take his body back with her. They’d all followed the hearse down to the station, and he remembered the sight of the baggage car with the casket on board. It was ebony black with silver handles, raised from the boarded floor on two firm trestles and lashed so that it wouldn’t slide around. An empty chair stood alongside it.
If that was to be Sayers’ gift to the Beckers, after all the other blind damage that his obsession had brought…then let the Lord take him now, for in his time on this earth he’d surely done nothing but harm.
Anyway, he didn’t need to worry about seeking Elisabeth Becker out. She came and found him. He was dressing to leave, but the effort was exhausting him. He looked up, and there she was.
“How is he?” he said. His injury was healing, but his voice still didn’t sound like his own.
“Spare me your concern.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry does nothing for me, mister,” she said. “I had a home, a good man, and a family with a future. Now I’ve got this.”
“The fault is all mine,” Sayers said.
“And may you never be forgiven for it,” she said, and then turned her back on him.
FIFTY
After Sayers had quit the hospital, he set out on foot for the River Road. He rode a streetcar to the end of the line and then struck out toward the river country beyond. Even hitching a ride on a wagon, it took him most of a day to get to the Patenotre plantation.
The grass in the long driveway was all beaten down, and in places it had been churned into raw dirt. As he walked toward the house, he saw that the gates were wide open. When he went through them and stood before it, he glanced down and found that he’d acquired a dog.
The animal followed him as he circled the house. He was looking for a way in. When he climbed the outside stairs to the upper deck, he found that someone had neglected to secure one of the doors. The dog followed him, and promptly set off on its own to explore. He could hear its claws on the boards as it trotted elsewhere in the
