Abandon

Bart was not a man to stand when there were chairs on the premises. He installed himself on a bar stool and he and Joss worked their way through the bottle while Lana played Christmas carols and the deputy snored. He said things he’d already said ten times before on nights just as quiet, about the town in its heyday, the art of following a rich vein deep into a mountain, and how he meant to close the mill next year and make a new fortune in Montana.

“Hey, how ’bout shuttin the f**k up for a spell? You’re makin my head hurt.”

Bart attended to his whiskey. Looking through the window behind the bar, he could see it snowing harder than before. The walls strained against the wind.

After awhile, he got up, staggered over to the piano. He stood beside Lana, watching the spill of her blond hair, her tiny gloved fingers moving across the keys. The piano had been out of tune ever since a miner had shot it two years ago in a fight, mistaking it for an adversary. When she’d finished the song, he said, “That was very pleasant, Miss Hartman,” and reached into his pocket. He withdrew a burlap sack that fit in his palm and placed it on the piano.

Lana picked up the sack, her hand dipping with the weight. She untied the string and peeked inside, saw the dull gleam of dust and tiny slugs, probably two hundred dollars’ worth.

She looked up at Bart and shook her head.

“Oh no, it has been my greatest joy this year to watch you play. You’re too good for this deadfall.” He started to lay his hand on her shoulder but then stopped himself. He’d never touched her. Instead, he allowed himself a long drink of what he thought was far and away the softest face ever to grace the streets of Abandon.

Bart returned to his seat at the bar. “One more for the cold road home,” he said, and Joss poured the last of the bottle into his tumbler. Lana had begun to play again.

When he finished his whiskey, Bart dropped another poke on the bar. “And a merry Christmas to you, Joss,” he said. She weighed the sack in her hand, as if it might not serve, then smiled and leaned across the bar.

“You love her, don’t you?” she whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a seldom f**kin hombre. Come in here ever goddamn night, skip your own Christmas shindig just to listen to her bang—”

“Well, that don’t mean—”

“Calm the f**k down, Bartholomew, and listen. You never know when it’s your time. Mine’s comin in the spring, and I guess this is just the long way around the barn a sayin I hope you won’t leave this world with any regret.”

“I don’t understand what you—”

“Before you hive off, do what you been meanin to ever since you laid eyes on that filly.”

“What in hell are you—”

“I want you to kiss her.”

“I couldn’t.”

“What’s the worst she’ll do? Slap you? I’m sure you been slapped plenty. Hell, you ever tried somethin like that on me, I’d f**kin shoot you, but that’s neither here nor there. I reckon you love her, and this is my Christmas gift to you. Kiss her on your way out.”

Bart stepped down off the stool and walked toward the door. He put on his overcoat and his hat and reached for the doorknob.

He stopped. He walked back to the piano. His weak heart pounding, he leaned down and kissed Lana on the cheek.

She stopped playing and bowed her head. They both trembled.

“I apologize,” Bart said. “It’s just that . . .”

He hurried outside and shut the door.

Lana took a deep breath, then looked out the window, up to the second floor of the hotel across the street, at the woman sitting in the bay window.

You could hear the noise from the dance hall down the street, where most of the town had gathered for Christmas Eve. She started “Silent Night” on the discordant keys.

Joss took a candle out from under the bar, went over to the stove, opened it, and held the wick to a flame. She set the burning candle in the windowsill behind the bar, stood there watching torrents of snow fall through the darkness, wondering if they could see her signal in the blizzard.

EIGHT

Stephen Cole buttoned his black frock coat and stepped onto the musicians’ platform, tall, pale, thin to the brink of fragility. His brown hair, parted down the middle, fell in greasy strings to his shoulders, and the only facial hair he could grow was a lean mustache more befitting a teenager than a twenty-seven-year-old man. It wasn’t the snipe-gutted appearance people noticed, however, but his large eyes—brown, gentle, occasionally radiant.

“Let us pray,” he said. “Dear Lord. Redeemer. Maker of all that is good. We thank You for the bounty of that which we are about to eat, for the hands that prepared it, for the generous Mr. Packer, who allowed his boardinghouse cooks to make this feast for the town. We thank You for Your perfect and loving Son, Jesus Christ, Who You sent to save this despicable world. Let us remember the Child born in a manger as we celebrate His birth this night and on the morrow.

“Finally, dear Lord, I ask that You pour out Your protection upon Abandon. Protect us from the cold and snow, the deadly slides, the beasts of the mountains, the heathens, and, above all, from the wickedness in our own hearts. Kyrie eleison. Amen.” As Stephen stepped down from the stage, the fiddlers took up their instruments and plucked at the strings, turning the tiny hardwood pegs.

Two years ago, this hurdy-gurdy would have been lined with whores of every make and model in threadbare peignoirs, bright stockings, some only children, others topless, a handful naked entirely, all painted up like lewd clowns, and the miners staggering drunk through the horde of dancers, the room redolent of a foul ambrosia—whiskey, sweat, and tobacco smoke com-mingling.

But the mine had pinched out, the revelers departed, though their nights in the dance hall stood memorialized in the bullet-holed walls, stains of vomit, tobacco juice, and blood on the floorboards.

This night, half a dozen tables had been arranged in the center of the room, decorated with ribbon, spruce saplings cut from the hillsides above town, and a whole multitude of candles.

Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice sat at the end of the table nearest the sheet-iron stove, a silence descending as the residents of Abandon filled their plates from the pans of corn bread, vegetables, fried potatoes, sop, and whole roasts. The hanging lamps did little to illumine the hall, the faces an indistinct canvas for shadow and candlelight. Gloria sat across from Harriet McCabe, watching the little girl devour her supper, dripping sauce on her white pinafore.