hand to us and come between us and our quarry, it is in our righteous duty under God to strike that man down if need be. Nothing matters but the road and the man, and where the two meet.” His greasy fingers crisscrossed over the fire. “Nothing matters but where this ends. And it will end, regardless of the cost, and it will end in blood. For everyone he’s taken from us and for those he’s taken from others, it will end in blood. Will it not, Mr. Connelly? Will it not?”
Connelly stared into the fire, hunched over his lap, his eyes aglow and his hands clenched. He said, “I suppose so.”
“Then that is settled,” said Pike, and spat into the fire. They watched it sizzle among the embers.
“But he ain’t here,” said Connelly. “No one saw him.”
“He’s not here any longer, no,” said Hammond.
“We heard from some people in the camp,” said Roosevelt. “Some folk in there said they seen a man with a cut-up face in Oklahoma, just across the border. He’s headed south. They saw him in Shireden, not much more of a town than Rennah. But that’s where he’s at. That’s where he’ll be. That’s what’s next.”
“Amen,” said Pike.
And to that they had nothing more to say, and turned to sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Connelly listened to the men sleep restlessly around him. Stones dug through his bedding and the whisky did not sit right with him and so he chose to watch the clouds roll in above and think.
The hobos said that when Father Time woke up Mr. Shivers was there waiting, just sitting on the ground beside him and smiling. They said he took his blade and cut Father Time across the hand and ran away laughing, and from then on Father Time was bitter and cruel and gave every man hardship and ate every dream.
They said Mr. Shivers had been in every jail in the country. The bulls would lock him up and he would sit there waiting for nightfall and when the moon shone through the bars he’d climb up the beam like a man on a staircase and be out just as fast as you could think. The next day the cops would come on by and just sit scratching their heads at the empty jail cell.
They said that when bums and all the runaway boys and girls die they get their last chance to ride freight with Mr. Shivers, that he has a train made of night that rides straight to hell and the furnace don’t run on coal or wood, the furnace runs on
Mr. Shivers, the moonlight man, the black rider. Mr. Shivers, the bum’s devil. The vagrant’s boogey man.
There were a lot of stories about Mr. Shivers. Connelly had heard most of them. In the dark when he could not sleep they often came back.
It had been a hard time getting here. In the days in Memphis when it had just been him and his grief and his empty home he had not known what to do. But he remembered. He remembered that ruined face.
How could he not.
Months ago. Years ago. Lives ago. When he had still been himself and was not this wreck, this empty hulk that was half a man, functional only in terms of endurance and rage. Seas of time lay between himself and that man.
And Molly. Between him and Molly. His little girl.
“I’m close now,” he mouthed silently. “I’m closer than ever before.”
Someone has to put the world right, he said to himself. Someone has to make things right. And he shut his eyes.
Somewhere a train whistle moaned like a man dreaming under a fever. None of the other men stirred. Connelly rolled over and tried to sleep.
* * *
They spent the next three days waiting for a train that would take them into Oklahoma and close to Shireden. Roosevelt spoke to a man who was in at the freightyards and learned of the schedule and Pike told them to rest while they could, and so they caught small game and did their best not to drink or spend money. Each day they watched the camp outside of Rennah ebb and flow, grow and swell with the people who had abandoned their homes, and each of them would go among the people and ask if they had seen the scarred man. From two they heard the same—south, and to the west. If there’s anything left of Shireden, they said, he’ll be there.
“What do they mean, left of?” asked Connelly.
“Beats me,” said Roosevelt. “But that’s what they said.”
And with each day the land to the west became a deeper red, like the horizon was a gash in the sky and it was bleeding out.
“Don’t know what’s coming,” said Pike as they watched it at evening. “But it’s not good.”
On the third day Roosevelt came back from camp with a smile on his face and a small heavy bag in hand. He sat and produced a revolver and a box of bullets and began playing with the weapon.
“What in the hell is that?” said Hammond.
“It’s a gun.”
“What the hell are you going to do with a gun?”
“Shoot stuff.”
“And what do you know about shooting?”
“I know where the bullets come out.”
“Huh. Anything particular you going to shoot?”
“Whatever needs it, I suppose,” he said, and he spun the cylinder and snapped it back.
“Damn, Rosie. Take care of that thing, will you?”
“I’ll try,” he said, and stowed it in his bag.
Finally their day came. They went down to the tracks and crouched in the soggy ditch next to the woods and waited for the train to pass. As it lumbered by they sprinted out and seized hold of the back railing. They lifted themselves aboard where they stowed away in a car carrying lumber. It was already occupied by two old men, both in denim and rawhide, and they watched the new arrivals with faint interest.
“Where you boys going?” asked one as Connelly and the others settled.
“South,” said Hammond.
“To Shireden?”
“Yes,” said Hammond, surprised.
They looked at each other and nodded. “You going to go see the gypsy girl?” one asked.
“The what?”
“The gypsy girl.”
“No. What do you mean?”
“They got a gypsy girl down there, at this carnival. She’s famous. She can tell fortunes, tell you your whole future. It’s why we’re going. I knew a fella who went and talked to her and she told him exactly where he’d be when fortune did him good, and the next week all she done said came true and he was in a gambling hall and he won close to a hundred dollars.”
“And you’re going to hear your fortunes?” said Pike.
“Sure are.”
“Boy, I’d like to get a listen to what she had to say,” said Roosevelt. “It’d be nice to know when the next windfall was coming my way.”
“You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?” said Hammond.
