House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“I was drunk. I looked for Logan after I slept it off. He and Longabaugh had both left town. I feel like somebody spit in my face.”

“You tried. That’s all that counts.”

“You told me the truth, didn’t you, Maggie? Please say you told me the truth.”

“I won’t discuss this anymore. You use the whip and rub salt in the cut.”

“That’s not my intention.”

“I kept the white cake in the icebox. I’m glad you weren’t hurt. Do you want coffee?”

He looked at the dining room table and flower vase on it, the place where each put mail addressed to the other. “I didn’t get no mail?” he said.

“We got an invitation to a garden party at the mayor’s house. I think we should go, don’t you?”

“I thought I might hear from the Ranger Frontier Battalion in Austin.”

“Were you expecting something from Ruby?”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “I need to lie down. It’s been a long trip.”

“You don’t want any cake?”

“Maybe not right now.”

“Undress and I’ll bring it to you in bed.”

“I’m plumb wore out, Maggie.”

“You’re glad to see me, aren’t you? That’s what you said. Let me take care of you.”

He went upstairs and sat down on the side of their bed and gazed out the window at a cloud in the west, one that was bottom-lit a bright gold by the late sun and swollen with rain and trailing horsetails across the sky. For just a moment he wanted to drift away with the cloud and break apart in a shower over a wine-dark sea filled with cresting waves that never reached land. Yes, to simply slide down the shingles of the world, he thought, and be forever free, swimming with porpoises and mermaids. What’s wrong with that?

He heard Maggie coming up the stairs, saucers and cups and silverware clinking on a tin tray. He lay down and turned his head toward the window and placed the pillow over his head, pretending to be fast asleep.

EVERY DAY FOR a week he went to the post office, but there was no letter from Ruby. He also went to the telegraph office at the depot. The regular telegrapher was down with influenza. His replacement told Hackberry that no wire had come for him since he had taken over the key.

“The other man didn’t receive one?”

“I’ll look through his carbon book,” the replacement said. “No, sir, I don’t see it. ’Course, he’s been ailing awhile. I can telegraph your party and check it out.”

“Let’s give it a try.”

Hackberry wrote out a message similar to his first telegram, asking Ruby if she wanted for him and Ishmael and Ruby to be a family again.

A week passed with no response from Ruby. When Hackberry returned to the telegraph office, the same telegrapher was still on the key.

“Nothing came in for me?” Hackberry said.

“No, sir. We would have delivered it.”

Hackberry sat down in a wicker chair by the telegrapher’s desk. The window was open, the breeze warm and drowsy and faint

ly tannic with the smell of fall. A passenger train was stopped on the tracks, the people inside it stationary, like cutouts. “The season is deceptive, isn’t it? It sneaks up on you. You turn around and it’s winter.”

“I’d be happy to send off another message,” the telegraph operator said.

“It wouldn’t do any good. She’s a union woman. She moves around a lot. I’ll try again directly.”