Abandon
Page 8As Jerrod fed a piece of clapboard into the flames, she sat down across from him in the grass.
“Jerrod?” she said. He glanced up. “You think it’s a load of shit?”
“What?”
She cocked her head toward Emmett and June, who were a little ways off, on their knees, facing the ghost town, heads bowed in meditative poses.
“I don’t know. They aren’t quite as kooky as I imagined they’d be.”
Abigail pulled off her gloves and extended her hands toward the flames.
In the distance, the outline of Abandon formed an eerie profile in the dusk.
Scott walked over, followed by Lawrence and the Tozers.
“What’s up?” Jerrod asked.
“I was just listening to the latest report on my weather radio. . . . Doesn’t look good.”
“You’re kidding,” Lawrence said.
“This early-season storm was supposed to plow through New Mexico, and now the track is farther north. Not particularly cold, but it should be all snow above nine thousand feet. As you know, Abandon sits at eleven.”
“How much they predicting?” Lawrence asked.
“One to three feet. Winter storm warnings are already up. Supposed to start late tonight.”
“So what does this mean?” June asked.
Jerrod looked up. “You aren’t serious.”
“Actually, I am.”
“Hike back in the dark?”
“Maybe we get only halfway. Be better than postholing all seventeen miles in a meter of powder.”
“You don’t know that it’s gonna be that bad.”
“Don’t know that it isn’t.”
Jerrod looked at Emmett. “You paid a hefty chunk to come out here and shoot this town, have Lawrence give you the rundown—”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Scott asked.
“I’m talking to our client. Maybe he should make the—”
“My client. Don’t know if you forgot, but you work for me, bro.”
Emmett said, “We have to leave?”
“If this storm really winds up,” Scott said, “hiking out will be a bitch. We didn’t bring snowshoes or skis. You ever tried to walk in three feet of snow?”
“Let them decide, Scott,” Jerrod said.
Scott shot him a glare, then turned back to the Tozers.
“Their dime, their permit, their choice.”
Emmett glanced at his wife, then back at Scott. “This is our last chance to shoot Abandon this year?”
“Yeah, it’s late in the season and a miracle there’s not more snow already. We don’t do it now, you won’t be able to get back here until next June or even July, depending on how bad the winter is. And that’s assuming you get another permit.”
Emmett said, “Honey?”
In the silence, Abigail watched dark billowy clouds spilling over the top of the canyon, sweeping down into the ghost town like an avalanche.
June looked at her husband, nodded.
“We’ll take our chances,” he said as Abandon vanished in the fog.
1893
SEVEN
Bartholomew Packer pushed open the door and stepped out of the storm. He brushed the snow from his wool overcoat, hung his derby on the coat-rack. The floorboards creaked under the substantial load as he waddled toward the potbellied stove.
While his fingers thawed, he surveyed Abandon’s only remaining saloon. The light was poor. It disseminated in a smoky dimness from three kerosene lamps suspended from the ceiling, never reaching the corners of what was little more than a thin-walled shack.
There were only four of them in the saloon tonight. He saw Lana Hartman across the room, seated at the upright piano by the front window, playing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” She was always here, as much a part of the place as the bar stools. He’d never seen her in this dress—dark green, with red piping on the collar and cuffs.
Jocelyn Maddox sat on a stool behind the bar, watching Lana play, a cigarette burning in her hand, eyes glazed with boredom.
The young deputy tasked with guarding her had passed out in a chair beside the stove. A raging high lonesome, he snored, a line of tobacco-colored drool creeping down his chin.
“Merry Christmas, you big f**kin walrus. Come to wet your dry?” She smiled and hopped off the chair, dressed tonight, as always, like a man—high-back canvas trousers and a cotton dress shirt with suspenders. The disparity between her masculine outfits and the pitch-black hair that fell in waves down her back and the dark liquid pools of her big eyes drove men mad. She looked Spanish, exotic. The chain between her leg irons dragged across the floor as she set up a glass and uncorked a bottle of whiskey, poured Bart a full tumbler.
“I’m afraid you’re drinking with me tonight,” he said.
“That so?”
“Reckon Miss Hartman would hoist a glass with our ilk?”
“I never seen her take a drink,” Joss said, “and as you well know, many a man, present company included, have sent a whiskey over to that piano.”
“How about our man by the stove?”
Joss’s dark eyes cut to the sleeping deputy, then back to Bart.
“Let that coffee cooler alone,” she whispered. “And keep it down. He sees me drinkin, I’ll hear about it all f**kin night.”
She got a glass for herself, and when she’d filled it, Bart raised his, said, “Joss, here’s how. May the coming year—”
“For Chrissakes.” She swallowed her whiskey—one long, deliberate tilting of the glass. Bart drained his. She poured again.
“Joss, love, wish you could’ve seen Abandon when it was a roaring camp. In ’89, night like this, there’d of been fifty men here, miners coming off shift, card games, whole flock of whores.”
“It’s all over now, huh?”
“Yeah. All over. All gone. The whores, the opium, the fun.” He clinked his glass against hers and they drank. He replenished their tumblers and they drank and he refilled them again. Soon his face had flushed and gone blotchy and the burst capillaries stood out like tiny red worms, so that his nose resembled a rotting strawberry. Lines of sweat rolled down the dome of his great bald head.