Clementine (The Clockwork Century 1.10)

For another five minutes they stood on the stoop, rubbing at their aching shoulders and tightening their jackets around their chests. Simeon fiddled with the tobacco pouch in his pocket and had nearly withdrawn it to roll up a smoke when the side door opened again. The chill-swollen wood stuck in the frame and released with a loud pop, startling the men on the stoop and announcing the man behind it.

Halliway Coxey Barebones was a short man, but a wide one. What remained of his hair was white, and the texture of wet cotton; and what remained of his eyesight was filtered through a pair of square, metal-rimmed spectacles. His hands and feet were large for a man of his understated size, his nose was lumpy and permanently blushed, and his waistcoat was stretched to its very breaking point.

He opened his arms and threw them up in greeting; but the effect somehow implied that he was being threatened. He said, “Hainey, you old son of a gun! What brings you and your boys to Missouri?”

Hainey mustered a smile as genuine as Halliway’s warm greeting and said, “A beat-up, crashed-down, worthless piece of tin and gas we never bothered to name. ”

They shook hands and Barebones stepped sideways to let them pass, a gesture which only barely lightened the blockage of the doorway and the kitchen corridor. The three men sidled inside and followed their host beyond the meat-stained countertops and past the surly kitchen woman who gave them a scowl, and Hainey fought the urge to return it.

Barebones led them into a wood-paneled hallway with a cheap rug that ran its length, and back into the hotel’s depths where an unmarked doorway led to a cellar crammed with barrels, boxes, and the steamy, metallic stink of a still. He chattered the whole time, in a transparent and failing attempt to appear comfortable.

“It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Good Lord Almighty, our paths haven’t crossed since…well, almost a whole year now, anyway. Not since Reno, and that was, yes. Last Thanksgiving. We’ll be coming up on the holiday again, won’t we? Before very long, I mean. Another few weeks. I swear and be damned, I thought Jake Ganny was going to blow the bunch of us up to high heaven. If ever there was a man with a weaker grasp on science, or fire, or why you don’t shoot live ammunition anyplace near good grain alcohol and a set of steel hydrogen tanks, I never heard of ’im. ”

“It was a hell of a pickle,” Hainey agreed politely, and a little impatiently as he watched the fat man walk in his shuffling, side-to-side hustle.

“Hell of a pickle indeed. But you and me, we’ve been in worse, ain’t we? Worse by a mile or more, it’s true. It’s true,” he repeated himself and only partially stifled a wheeze. “And it’s a right pleasure to see you here, even if I must confess, I don’t remember everybody’s name but yours, Crog. ” He pointed a finger around his side and said, “You’re Simon, isn’t that right? And Lamar?”

“You got Lamar right,” Hainey answered for the lot of them. “The other’s Simeon. Looks like your operation’s grown a bit since last I was here to see it. ”

Barebones said, “Oh! Oh yes, it’s been longer than a year since you last came through Kansas City. Closer to half a dozen, I guess. ”

“At least. ”

“Yes, things have been going well. Business is booming like business always is, in wartime and sorrow. The grain liquor is moving like lightning, no pun intended, and we can hardly keep the tobacco in the storehouses long enough to age a smidge. Between Virginia and Kentucky going back and forth, the fields are getting tight and the crops are being squeezed. We have to import from farther down south, these days—as far south as they’ll grow it. And the sweets,” he said. “Tell me how the business goes for the sweets you bring me from back up north, in the western corners. ”

Hainey shrugged and said, “The gas is moving fine,” because that’s what Barebones was really asking after—a heavy, poisonous gas found in the walled port town of Seattle. The gas was deadly on its own, but when converted into a paste or powder, it became a heady and heavily addictive drug. “It’s easy to collect, but it’s hard to process. That’s the big problem with it. There aren’t enough chemists to cook it down to sap fast enough. ”

“That might change, soon enough. ”

“How you figure?” Hainey asked.

Barebones said, “I’ve heard things. Folks have been asking after it, wanting to know where we get it, and how it’s made. The more customers want it, the more it costs and the more of it we have to find; so I’ve heard tale of chemists moving west, thinking of hitting up that blighted little city and taking up the gas-distilling for themselves. ”

The captain smiled a real smile and said, “They’re welcome to try it. But I think they might be surprised by what they find. ”

“What’s that mean?” Barebones asked.

And Hainey said, “Not a thing, except I wouldn’t recommend it. ”

“But I heard the city is abandoned. Surely some of these folks can find a way in to harvest what they need?”

“You heard wrong,” the captain assured him. “It isn’t abandoned, and the people who live there don’t much care for visitors. So if you, personally, have sent somebody west to look into it—and if you give half a damn for this person’s continued health—I recommend you send him a telegram urging him to reconsider. ”

The hotelman cringed nervously but neither confirmed or denied anything. “Well then, I thank you for the good advice. I suppose you’d know, wouldn’t you? You spend a lot of time out that way. ”

“I spent plenty of time out that way, sure enough. And I’m not telling you this because I’m worried about you or your men stepping on my toes. I’m no chemist, and I don’t have one of any preference who I’m interested in protecting. I’m only telling you, in a friendly exchange of information, that there’s a damn good reason there’s only a handful of folks who ever get their hands on that gas. That’s all I’m saying. ”

Halliway flapped his hands in a casual shushing gesture and said, “I hear you, I hear you. And I’ll absolutely take it under advisement, and pass it around. I trust you, more or less. ”

“I appreciate it, more or less. ”

And there they found themselves stopped at a pair of double doors. “Right through here, gentlemen,” Barebones said. He opened one of the doors and held it, revealing a gameroom beyond that was half filled with card-playing men sitting at round, felt-covered tables. Bottles of alcohol were granted to each group, and stacks of red, white, and blue chips were gathered together in puddles and mounds, or clasped between fingers, behind cards.

Most of the men glanced up and held their gaze, surprised and sometimes unhappy to see the newcomers. Three men towards the back folded their hands, placing whatever cards they’d been dealt on the table and gathering their things.

“Fellas,” Halliway said. “Fellas, come on with me, right through here. There’s a spot in the back where we can talk. ”

The captain, Simeon, and Lamar threaded their way around the tables and past them like cogs in a watch, keeping circular paths to dodge the chairs and the quietly gossiping players. One man said, too loudly as they went by, “I didn’t know this was that kind of joint, Barebones. You letting just about anybody in, these days?”