Now, getting them ready to go to the tavern, he wondered what Hannah would think of her oldest daughter going out into the world looking like a miniature madwoman, her hair hanging about in tangled clumps. If you cared, you shouldn’t have left me, he thought, and then wondered at his own sanity. Settling the girls in front of him on the horse, he dismissed the issue as irrelevant. He would have to carry on whether sane or insane, so why even bother to consider it? Nudging Gus gently forward toward the road, he worried over another matter entirely — would the girls be quiet long enough for him to get a swallow of gin and a scrap of adult companionship. At this moment in his life, after five days of working alone, it was all he wanted.
Last time out they had not. Louisa had fretted at the loud men hurting her ears, Callie had seen a witch on the ride over and clung to William’s leg the rest of the evening. Tonight, if they could be still at the same time for a slim half hour, he had promised to buy them each a new hair ribbon at the dry goods store. Bribery, he had discovered, was even better than diversion.
Once there, he set them on the floor in the corner of the tavern with two dolls and a bag of marbles and got himself a glass of gin. Taking a chair at a nearby table, he nodded a greeting to one of his neighbors.
“So you still haven’t found anybody,” Josh Miller said by way of greeting.
“Not looking,” William said, stretching his legs out under the table and leaning back. It felt good to sit down, good to be warm, good to have a drink in his hand and a neighborly body to drink it with. “I don’t need anybody,” he continued, and then took a drink of gin to wash his throat clean of the lie.
“Seems like you do,” Josh said, looking pointedly into the corner at Callie’s matted hair. When William looked daggers at him, he just shook his head. “A man can be too stubborn sometimes, seems like to me. Besides, those two little ones need something better than you to look at.”
“Can’t argue with that one,” William said, and looked over the other patrons in the tavern. The place was crowded with men and boys, with a stray female here and there. One over near the keg seemed to be the centerpiece of a small throng of boys who were vying for her attention with lively words and gestures.
William saw them all as potential murderers, for surely one would win her heart and vent his passion on her until she died. That was the way of the world.
“It’s no use thinking about that one,” Josh said. “Unless you can drop ten years off your body and twenty off your thinking. I doubt she’d be satisfied to tend children, but she might know of—”
“I thought I said, pretty clear, that I wasn’t looking,” William said. “I reckon she’ll die soon enough without coming around me. I’ve killed one already, seems like that’s enough for a while.”
“You stupid fool,” Josh said with feeling but no malice. “If you figure on calling yourself a murderer, I reckon that little baby boy is a killer too. Killed his mama and himself. You reckon that’s the way of it, Will?”
“I reckon some folks need to tend to their own business and keep out of mine. Don’t you have another subject, Josh?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Josh said. “Talking about killing, there was a killing over near your place last night. Ben Pierce was riding early this morning down the Raleigh Road and nearly stumbled over poor old Johnny Grant lying sprawled out beside the road with his throat cut. Been robbed, it looked like. You know that pouch of money he always wore around his neck?”
“Yep,” William said, fighting a numbness that was starting at the tips of his fingers and working up.
“Well, that was gone, and you know he never went nowhere without it, even wore it to bed, they say. That was gone and his old daddy’s pocket watch was gone and that locket that had his mama’s likeness, they took that off him too. I don’t reckon he had much more than that, being an idiot and all. And you know them dogs he always kept running around at his feet?”
William nodded.
“Caught one of ’em with a knife. Ben carried that one home but figured the other one must have got away or crawled off to die, since it wasn’t around nowhere. A damn shame, is what it is. You hear anything at your place last night?”
“Yep. Dogs barking, pitching a fit — late, after ten o’clock. Then a couple of horses running full chisel a few minutes later. I reckon I heard the whole thing.” He had gotten up from his bed to look for peace, to be with Hannah, and had heard a murder. A tiny ember that had been smoldering in his brain sprang to life. “Who do you reckon would kill an idiot boy like that?”
Josh looked at him and tipped his head toward the circle of young people across the room.
William let the gesture lie. “Could have been anybody. Lots of folks knew Johnny took that road home from the sawmill every night. Being the way he was, he’d be easy pickin’s. A stranger could have done it, would have known once he had a word or two with the boy that he wasn’t right in the head.”
“Could have, but didn’t,” Josh said, and with the words came a chill that William sensed in spite of the flames at the tavern’s hearth and the bursts of laughter and easy talk that hummed around them.
“So what are you saying, Josh?” William asked, and then was distracted by Louisa tugging on his sleeve. Her doll, she explained, had suffered a hurt leg when Callie had deliberately dropped her from a dangerous height. William took out his handkerchief and dried Louisa’s tears and then wrapped the doll leg, glancing at Josh and at the rag leg he was tending and then across the room where he’d seen Josh look. Finishing the job, he handed Louisa the doll and told her to run along, but instead she climbed into his lap and lay against him, sucking her thumb and stroking the wounded doll.
“You’re saying it’s somebody we know,” William continued when Josh showed no sign of answering his question. “You’re saying it’s somebody in this taproom, if I’m reading you right.”
“You see that group over yonder?” Josh asked, and dipped his head in their direction again. “Wendell Pike, Jimmy Galton, Eddie Bishop, and all them boys around Mary Ann Graves?”
“I see ’em,” William said. “I’d be blind and deaf not to, the way they’ve been cutting up all night.”
“Well, I been watching them, both before you got here and since. They been cutting up all right, trying to impress that girl, mainly with fancy talk. But some of that fancy talk, a lot of it, I’d say, has centered around Eddie and Wendell and something Eddie keeps bringing out and dangling around to show everybody. I got a good look at it once, when I went out back. It’s a watch.”
“Lots of folks have watches, Josh.”
“That’s so. But what’s so dang funny about that one? He’s showing it off like a square nickel.”
“Could be new to him. Could be his daddy’s or his granddaddy’s or he just bought it himself.”
“It’s new to him, all right. Newly filched off of Johnny Grant’s body. You know and I know that his daddy, being both a drunkard and poor as Job’s turkey, didn’t buy that boy no new watch to show off like that.”
“Maybe the boy bought it himself. He works at the sawmill, doesn’t he?”
“He turns up at the sawmill now and again and Wendell’s daddy might give him a day or two of work if he has it, but that’s hardly enough to go buying a fancy watch when your daddy barely makes enough to keep his own body and soul together, let alone his children’s. That’s Johnny’s watch, I’d bet my head on it.”
“Rather than bet your head, why not talk to the sheriff ?” William said. He felt Louisa flinch in his lap when the group in the corner burst into laughter. When she put both fists over her ears and began to whimper, he knew his time at the tavern was almost over.