lives here. He just drinks when he can and sleeps in whatever alley he finds. There’s more and more of them. They’re almost like dogs.”
“Another whisky,” said Connelly.
The bartender poured, gave him the glass, and watched again as Connelly drank in one swallow.
“Well, you don’t spend like an Okie and you don’t drink much like an Okie, either,” said the bartender.
“Probably ’cause I’m not an Okie.”
“Oh?”
“No.”
“Where you from?”
“Back east.”
“Ha. People who’re east ought to stay east, I’d say.”
“You going to give me another earful like the old man?”
“No. I just don’t see why you’d want to come here. Nothing to come for. No one wants to stay here.
“I’m not looking for work.”
“What are you doing here, then?”
“I’m looking for a man,” said Connelly quietly.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He came this way. Took a train, hitched his way here. I’m looking for him.”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“Got some questions for him.”
“What sort?”
Connelly didn’t answer.
The bartender grunted. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“I don’t mean to give you any,” Connelly said.
“Ain’t that what they all say.”
“You may have seen him.”
“I see a lot of men. Too many of late.”
“You would remember him,” said Connelly. “He was scarred, on his face.”
“Any working man is liable to be scarred.”
“He had a bunch of them, all over his face. Three big ones, here and here,” he said, and drew one finger from each edge of his mouth along the cheeks, back to the angle of the jaw. Then once more, around the socket of his left eye.
The bartender turned to watch. His mouth opened slightly in surprise and he looked away.
“You seen him,” said Connelly.
“I haven’t.”
“You have.”
“I said I haven’t and I meant it. I haven’t.”
“Then why’d you almost fall over on yourself when I asked?”
“I didn’t. Just… You ain’t the only one looking for him,” he said.
Connelly’s eyes opened wide and he sat forward. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t want trouble,” said the bartender. One hand reached under the bar. Almost certainly searching for some hidden cudgel.
Connelly sat back down. “I just want to know what’s going on,” he said.
“I don’t rightly know,” the bartender said, and sighed. “Three men come in here, just a day or two ago. Came in, asked if I’d seen a man with a scarred face. ‘Like he’s got a big mouth. Big,’ they said, and they drawed on their own faces just as you done now. I hadn’t seen him, not a man with scars as such, and I told them the same as I told you.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know. How the hell should I know? Don’t know you, either. I don’t know you from Adam.”
“What else did they say?”
“They didn’t say anything else. They just come in here, ask, then when I said no they just go on out.”
“Where’d they go?”
“To the camp, I guess. Back out to that camp outside, with all the other people who pitched out there. I guess they came in on the train,” he said, and eyed Connelly once more. “Much like you.”
“Where are they camping?”
“You got a hell of a lot of questions for a guy who only drank two whiskies.”
“I just want to know. That’s all I want. Please.”
“Little bit northwest of here, I think. At the old tree. Bent tree, big dead tree. You can’t miss it.”
Connelly thanked him for the drink and walked out.
* * *
Outside the sun had fallen until its light was a pale pink halo in the distance. Pools of shadows swept down out of alleys and ditches and into the streets. Miserable fires glowed in the darkness, like mad fireflies or failing stars. Connelly wound through the streets and the camp and out to the hills on the other side of the town.
As he walked through the weeds and the stones he looked but saw no other encampment. Just the growing dark and the faint outline of the country. The chatter of cicadas rose and fell, punctuated by the chirps of the nighthawks circling far overhead. As he mounted the next knoll he saw the greasy spark of a small fire not far away and above it the twisted skeleton of an ancient tree. He stood watching the flame and began to ascend. When he heard the mutter of quiet talk he stopped.
He took off his cap and used it to dab at the sweat on his brow. He knelt to think and as he did the voices ceased. Then a hoarse shout came: “If you’re going to come out then come out. We can’t wait on you all day.”
Connelly hesitated, then tramped up the hill. He saw three men standing before the fire looking down on him, their faces almost masked in the dark. One, the shouter, was very tall, and while not as tall as Connelly just as broad. His face was aged and hoary and was half hidden by a grisly, raw beard. The one beside him was shorter and more slender, his face narrow and handsome and somewhat amused. The third was short and portly. His eyes were runny and frightened and unkempt hair grew around his chin and upper lip. He wore a ragged bowler hat that he could not stop touching and he stayed back farther than the other two.
“The camp is back that way,” said the leader. “Plenty of room there.”
“I didn’t come here to throw down a mattress,” said Connelly.
“Then what did you come here for?”
“To ask a question.”
“A question, eh? If you want to ask, then ask.”
“I came looking for someone.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. A… a man. A scarred man. Cheeks all tore up.”
They did not answer, did not move or tense or twitch. They stood as statues crowning a hill, eyes placid and blank, faces dark.
“Heard you were looking for him, too,” said Connelly. “Came to… to see. Just to see.”
The men still did not speak, nor did they glance among themselves to confer. They remained quiet for far longer than any man had the right to.
“Why are you looking for him?” said Connelly. “What’s he done? What’s he done to you? Who… who is he?”
“The camp is back that way,” said the leader, this time quieter. “Plenty of room there.”
Connelly looked at them a moment longer, waiting for some answer or at the very least some sign of knowledge. They gave him nothing. He walked back down the hill to the camp. When he glanced back they were still standing, still watching him, unmoving as though part of the hill itself.
