Ghost Dance Read online

  Grawson looked at himself in the reflection in the window, from the small kerosene lamp above his head. He twisted the screw, extinguishing the lamp. He did not want to look at himself. He had few mannerisms, few things, unimportant things, he worried about, but one was looking into a mirror. Grawson chuckled to himself. It was foolish, he chuckled. He knew it. But he did not care to look into mirrors. He was not sure what might, someday, look back at him. Maybe it would not be him. Maybe it would be something else. His left eye flinched twice, and he squinted out at the lights.

  The train was passing now between freight tracks, passing coal sheds, passing piles of ties, passing other cars, drawing into the station.

  It was a hot night.

  Grawson wiped a roll of sweat and dirt from the inside of his high, stiff collar. He twiddled it for a moment between his thumb and forefinger and then mashed it with his thumb into a crack in the cane seat.

  It was a damn hot night.

  Grawson stood up and pulled his wicker suitcase from the rack, and his coat and newspaper. He put the suitcase between his feet and the coat and newspaper on his lap.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the rolling of the wheels on the steel track. Five minutes, he thought.

  Yes, she had been pretty, thought Grawson.

  Clare Henderson had been a damn fine figure of a woman, the bitch.

  God how I loved her, said Grawson to himself.

  Grawson opened his eyes and saw the couple in the seat across the way staring at him. When he scowled at them they turned away. His left eye blinked, and then he closed his eyes again.

  Now the wind came across Barlow's meadow some eight miles north of Charleston, a chilly wind in that gray time of day. It had rained the night before, that five years ago.

  He could make them out now, Edward Chance and someone, alighting from the carriage, making their way through the high wet grass toward him and his brother, Frank.

  "He won't fire, Frank," Grawson had said.

  "I know," said Frank.

  In the cane seat Grawson shook as though twisted with pain and groaned.

  He opened his eyes and saw that the couple across the aisle had gathered their baggage and pressed to the head of the car, joining with others. Grawson looked out. The train was in the station now, the platform crowded. Redcaps scurried here and there. Relatives, spouses stood on the cement lanes under the lights, here and there one waving and running beside the train.

  Grawson closed his eyes again. There was time. There was plenty of time. He had his whole life and how long did it take to pull a trigger?

  Not long, Grawson remembered.

  He had watched the two men, gallant Frank and the moody Edward Chance, back to back, with their white shirts, open at the throat, the red sashes, the long-barreled single-shot weapons held before them.

  Damn Clare Henderson, cursed Grawson, not opening his eyes, pressing his forehead against the cold of the window.

  Chance was to die. That had been understood. What had Clare told Frank, who wanted her and her house, and her people, so bad he would kill for them? What had Chance done to her? Grawson rubbed his nose with one pawlike hand. Not a goddam thing, I'd guess, he said, but crazy Frank, he'd do anything for her. And I would too, said Grawson to himself. I would, too. Amusing, swift, graceful Frank–a rider, a sportsman, a marksman–my brother, my brother.

  "He won't fire," Grawson had told Frank.

  And Frank had agreed.

  It was the thing to do, not to fire. That was Edward Chance's job. He could not kill the man Clare Henderson wanted. In honor he could not refuse to meet him. Had he not been engaged to Clare himself?

  Chance had wanted medicine, a profession. It would mean waiting years. He had no feeling for the cotton, for the land, for the tradition.

  Chance was no better than a Yankee.

  So he wouldn't marry her. So he couldn't. So he had to wait. But she would not. And how would she understand him?

  I wonder, mused Grawson, what she told Frank.

  He could imagine her twisting that scented, lavender handkerchief, the white face, the long black hair–the wringing hands, the tears. No one would protect her. No one would stand up for her. Her fathers and brothers were dead, honorably. If they had been there Chance would have been horsewhipped.

  And so Frank Grawson had begun to take target practice, walking a dozen paces, turning, waiting for the handkerchief to drop, lifting his weapon, firing a single shot at a playing card tacked to a tree now some twenty-four paces away.

  Why not me? Grawson asked himself. Why not me? And Grawson's lips twisted. Him, with his face like a grizzly, his teeth, those hands like clubs!

  "He won't fire," Grawson had told Frank.

  "I know," Frank had said, and smiled.

  Grawson had gone to Clare, had begged her. "My choice is Frank," she said.

  "He won't fire!" said Grawson, sitting up on the cane seat.

  "We're in the station, Sir," said the porter. The man made no move with his whisk broom.

  Grawson looked out.

  He reached into his pocket and took out a liberty quarter and turned it over. He looked at the eagle on the reverse, with arrows in his talons.

  "Like an avenging eagle," said Grawson looking at the man, "I come like an avenging eagle with arrows in my claws."

  "Sir?" asked the man.

  "Here," said Grawson, holding out the quarter and dropping it into the black palm.

  The man lifted the whisk broom.

  "No," said Grawson. "Don't touch me." And he left the car.

  He heard the quarter drop to the floor behind him, but he did not turn.

  "Like an avenging eagle," muttered Grawson, bundling up the platform, carrying his coat, the newspaper under one arm, his wicker suitcase in his left hand. "With arrows," he added. "With arrows."

  * * *

  Edward Chance had black hair, gray eyes, a thin face, not handsome, an unhappy face. There was little noticeable, little remarkable about Edward Chance, saving perhaps that he had once shot and killed a man. Chance had a good memory, and the patience to think things out, and ambition, and something to make up for. And his craft, medicine, was more than a business with him, more than a professional skill. It was a way of healing for his own heart too, and his heart had need of its healing, for the single bullet that had torn through the heart of Frank Grawson with such swift, irreversible finality had left its second wound in the heart of Cain.

  Somehow Chance had expected Lester Grawson to appear, and now, five years later, five years, long years, after Frank Grawson had fallen to his knees, his face looking more surprised than anything, the pistol dropping off his limp fingers, the splash of red on his silken shirt, his brother, the gigantic, improbable Lester Grawson, as implacable as the winter or hungry dogs, had found him.

  Chance studied the man across from him, over the green felt of the pool table, in the gaming salon on the third floor of the Manhattan Athletic Club. Grawson leaned over the table, lining up his shot, and the cue moved as though on wires, cleanly, swiftly, and struck the colored, wooden sphere with a sharp click, driving it into a side pocket.

  "How did you find me?" asked Chance.

  Grawson was lighting a small cigar. It was his fourth in the game. He chewed them down as much as smoked them, his large jaws absently, complacently grinding and shredding the brown leaves, leaving wet, black scraps of tobacco on his chin and mustache.

  Grawson looked at him and grinned.

  The man's left eye flinched several times.

  Chance had seen this twitching several times before in the evening. He had seen this type of thing before and wondered about it. Chronic, guessed Chance, origin obscure, a nuisance, perhaps not really aware of it. So much we don't know. So much.

  Grawson reached into his wallet and pulled out a small, stained, carefully folded piece of yellowed paper. It was a clipping from the New York Times. Chance had seen it before. He had even had one. It was the graduation list
of his class, 1889, Harvard Medical School.

  "Where did you get it?" asked Chance.

  Grawson smiled, and pulled a wet piece of tobacco from his chin with the nail on his right forefinger. "Washington postmark," he said.

  "Clare," said Chance, not bitterly.

  Clare Henderson had done well for herself. The ruined fortunes of her family had been well recouped by judicious marriage. She was now the wife of a congressman from Virginia.

  Beautiful, pale, black-haired Clare.

  "Most likely," said Grawson.

  Chance watched the smoke from Grawson's cigar, and the massive movements of the heavy jaw.

  Grawson leaned to the table again, and sent another ball gliding smoothly across the felt and into the darkness of the pocket.

  Again and again he shot, not missing.

  Chance admired skill. He himself had skilled hands. He admired the work of carpenters, of ironworkers, carvers, saloon painters, the men who could handle ten-horse teams, the men who could use a rifle or a handgun well, and he admired Grawson, and the game was slowly taken from him, shot by shot.

  Grawson stood up.

  He replaced his cue in the rack.

  "You've lost," said Grawson.

  Chance put his own cue back in the rack.

  "You're taking me back to Charleston to stand trial?" said Chance.

  Grawson's left eye trembled, and the lid flickered.

  "Yes," he said.

  "May I see the warrant for my arrest?" asked Chance.

  "It's in the hotel," said Grawson. "The warrant is my business."

  Grawson reached into his wallet again and placed a silver star on the green felt.

  "This is warrant enough," said Grawson.

  Chance looked at the badge, the silver detective's star, Charleston of the Sovereign State of South Carolina. Grawson replaced the star in his wallet.

  "I don't mind if you make trouble," he said, smiling, dabbing the ashes from the cigar on the felt on the table, "but I would not advise it."

  "I don't want any trouble," said Chance, and he had spoken truly, for he was tired and now overcome with the shock, numb with the shock of being found. And now medicine, and himself, everything was finished, everything but the ride on the train, the formalities that would satisfy justice and the last climb, thirteen steps to the scaffold.

  Chance felt as he had when he had resolved to die like a gentleman, as Clare had wanted, as Frank and Lester Grawson had expected, as he himself had expected. But that was before the moment the handkerchief had fluttered to the grass, the moment before he had raised his weapon with a gesture that now seemed incomprehensible to him, a gesture that was incredibly swift and sure and that terminated with a crack of a shot and a moon of blood on the shirt of a man twenty-four paces away. It the last instant, moody Edward Chance, the gentleman, or something within him deeper than the gentleman, deeper than his training and the proprieties of his tradition, had decided that he would live. That he did not want to die, and that thusly he must, and would, kill.

  He saw the body of Frank Grawson in the white silk shirt, the scarlet sash, face down in the wet grass of Barlow's meadow. He shook his head.

  "You can get your coat and bag," said Grawson. "I'll wait."

  Chance looked at him quickly.

  "You won't run," said Grawson. "If you did, I'd find you again."

  Those blunt eyes like shovels seemed to burn for a moment, With pleasure.

  He would like that, thought Chance, he would like for me to run–to run once more–as I did from Charleston, after the killing, when I didn't want more, when I wanted to get away, when I had to leave, when I cried and ran because there was nothing else to do, nothing else.

  "Wait here," said Chance.

  "All right," said Grawson, starting to light another cigar. "Take your time."

  Chance disappeared.

  Grawson's hands trembled for a moment on the cigar, and then he managed to get the tiny sheet of flame to the tobacco.

  Grawson walked over to the window and looked down to the corner of 45th Street and Madison Avenue, at the gas lamps and the people in the street. A cab clicked by, drawn by two horses.

  So it was coming to an end, thought Grawson. Five years was a long time to wait, but I could have waited more, plenty more.

  He took the badge out of his wallet and looked at it, small in the fat palm of his huge hand, and then put it back again.

  His letter of resignation to the Charleston Force had been tendered the day he had received the envelope from Washington. He had taken his savings and boarded the train for New York. The death in Barlow's meadow had been a duel, in a sense self-defense. It would not be murder, at best. No formal charges had ever been filed, nor would they be. Grawson had not filed them, nor would he. His brother had had a pistol, had asked for the duel. And Clare, she would not file charges, for the scandal would be improper, and what was Frank Grawson, or indeed, Edward Chance, to her? And the state would not make charges. It was as Lester Grawson had wanted. It left him alone with Chance.

  It was right, wasn't it, to kill the man who had killed your brother? Especially when the law wouldn't do it. There was a higher law wasn't there, blood-law? I am the law, thought Grawson, the law that you can't write down but you know, the law before the books, the right before there was the earth or people or animals or Adam or Abel or Cain.

  Grawson looked down through the window and saw the men in the cold meadow, and saw Barlow's oak in the background, the two white shirts.

  "He won't fire," Grawson had said.

  And Frank had smiled and said, "I know," and didn't run from that field but stayed there, and was going to shoot a man that wouldn't fire!

  Grawson pressed his forehead to the window. He blinked and all he saw below was the dark street, and the pools of light on the sidewalk, spilled by the burning lamps.

  * * *

  Chance made his way to the cloakroom, moving without feeling the floor, seeming to move through a dark corridor. The lamps seemed dim, the conversation of groups he passed as meaningless as the click of the cues and spheres of the room behind him.

  He wondered idly if he should have spent the last years differently, and decided he should not have.

  He was more now than he had been and he felt that it might have been somehow worth it, and wondered whether they used the black hood still in Charleston, and if the knot were tied so as to break the neck when one pitched to the end of the rope. Faster. More merciful. Or if it would be suffocation, twisting at the end of the rope, bound, his tongue inside the hood thrusting out of the mouth, the eyes moving from their sockets.

  He hoped the knot would be thick and tied below the right ear.

  He wondered if he could ask the hangman for that favor.

  His coat and bag were placed on the counter before him, and pushed towards him.

  He took his coat and drew it on, and lifted the bag, heavier than a general practitioner's bag, from the weight of the pistol.

  He placed a silver quarter in the shallow wooden bowl. He noticed the arrows in the claws of the eagle, and then the coin was gone.

  "Good-night, Sir," he heard.

  "Yes," said Chance. "Good-night."

  Edward Chance, physician, returned to the gaming salon, where he was joined by a large, red-mustached man who accompanied him down the three flights of stairs until they emerged together on brick-paved Madison Avenue.

  * * *

  "Cigar?" asked Grawson.

  "No," said Chance.

  A cab clattered past, like a high black box on four wheels, the cabby sitting behind with a long whip, touching the flanks of his team.

  Grawson made no move to light himself a cigar. Chance had expected that he would, and was surprised when he did not. Grawson folded his arms, holding each in the hand of the other. Chance noted that the fingers of his right hand had trembled a bit. Then Grawson was calm. Grawson unfolded his arms.

  "You'll want to stop by your rooms, or whate
ver," said Grawson, "pick up some things–maybe settle the bill with your landlady."

  "Yes," said Chance, absently. "Thank you."

  Somewhere across the street a girl was laughing.

  "Then," said Grawson, "we'll stop by the hotel for my things–and then go to the station."

  "Tomorrow night at this time," said Chance, not really thinking about it, "I'll be in Charleston again."

  Grawson said nothing. His left eye and the left side of his face moved once, uncontrollably.

  "I'll hail a cab," said Chance.

  "No," said Grawson. "We'll walk."

  It would be a long walk, but not more than two or three miles. Chance did not care. Let that walk be as long as it could. Let it last as long as it might.

  Grawson looked up and down the street, which was not crowded now, the hour being well past midnight. Yet there were couples here and there. And an occasional cab.

  The left side of his face twitched again.

  "This way," said Chance, turning left and crossing 45th Street.

  They walked on in silence.

  To Chance it seemed their footsteps were very loud.

  Inadvertently he noticed that Grawson's hands moved against the sides of his trousers, wiping sweat from the palms.

  "Hot," said Chance.

  Grawson said nothing.

  * * *

  I am the law, Lester Grawson told himself, I am the law, and I do not swerve, I do not yield.

  He looked at the slighter man beside him, the pale, rather homely face, the deep eyes, the shoulders that seemed somehow crushed with whatever weight it was they bore.

  How could he, Grawson asked himself, have managed to fire before Frank?

  Dashing, swift Frank, splendid figure on a horse, laughing, supple as a whip, booted, debonair, gallant Frank–my brother. Frank is my choice, had said Clare. I have always watched out for Frank, said Lester Grawson to himself. He was what I should have been. I loved Frank, said Grawson. I loved Frank. Grawson's fists clenched and unclenched. I love him! Grawson could feel the side of his face move. He didn't like that. His face did that sometimes. And I loved Clare, said Grawson. So I must do this. For Frank, who would have wanted it. For Clare, who wants it. For–and Grawson looked at the slender, solemn Edward Chance, young but old–and he wants it, said Grawson to himself. He wants it! He won't run. A lamb. Blood on the hoofs. This lamb who shot my brother dead. He wants it