They’d agreed, and he’d inwardly rejoiced although outwardly he remained his usual weary, jaded self. He was ashamed to share the real reason he wanted to go. For a man who had made a career of declaring his every intent and folly, he found himself surprisingly circumspect about his true mission.
Embarrassed, to be blunt.
Even when he had one last drink with Ol’ Lieutenant and Dan Forsythe at the Lily before he headed out, he made sure to consume a smaller amount of whiskey than usual, lest the truth, prompted by his heart, push through his tight lips. It was only in the last few days that Gavin remembered he had a heart. He wasn’t quite sure how to go about dealing with it, to be honest. Should he placate it? Make deals with it? For now, he thought it best to douse it in a moderate amount of alcohol and hope it might be pickled back into dormancy.
At the Lily, Forsythe, who had sheltered with the sleighing party in houses over in Council Bluffs—none of the party had perished in the blizzard—lamented the fact that it hadn’t turned out to be much of a story.
“Rosewater has me in the doghouse about it. The man has ink for blood and a printing press for a heart. He expected nothing less sensational than cannibalism,” Forsythe grumbled, shaking his head forlornly. “Like the Donner Party. Have you ever heard him envy the newspapers who got that story, back in the day? The amount of ink they sold over that?”
“He’s a son of a bitch,” Gavin agreed. “It’s a fine line, though—he wants to keep the story alive, sell the papers—tragedy on the plains, all that. It’s good for business—until it’s not good for business, if you get my drift. The boosters are hovering, too, because none of them—the trains, the state, hell, even Rosewater—can afford to scare more of these poor sods off from coming out here. You can bet there’s going to be an exodus of them come spring, all heading back across the ocean. Land’ll be even cheaper than it is now—you might want to think about it.” Gavin addressed this to Ol’ Lieutenant, who looked up from the book he was reading—Bleak House—with an arched eyebrow. “And say, why weren’t you open the other day? I was in dire need of a drink.”
To Gavin’s surprise, Ol’ Lieutenant held his gaze for a long moment, then deliberately closed the book and placed it on the counter between Forsythe and Gavin.
The two men exchanged looks.
“I have kids like everybody else. I had to go get them. And, boys, congratulate me. I’m selling the Lily but I’m not going to homestead.” Then Ol’ Lieutenant did the unthinkable: He poured himself a drink and leaned closer to the two newspapermen. Gavin wasn’t sure how to behave, sharing a drink like this with a colored man; it was all well and good to have him behind the counter, serving. But this was awkward; Forsythe leaned away from the bar a little. Gavin smiled weakly but clinked his glass with Ol’ Lieutenant’s before taking a swig.
“No, after this storm, when I had to stay with the kids over on the North Side at school—and it’s a damn good thing I did—leaving Alma…” Ol’ Lieutenant looked up at the ceiling, toward the upper floor where evidently he lived, and Gavin understood him to mean that Alma was his wife. He’d never heard her name before. Or maybe he had, and he’d never taken the time to note it?
“She was here alone in all that—I left her plenty of fuel before I went out to find the kids, but nobody knew that, nobody checked in on her, even though there are plenty of folks—white folks—livin’ around here. So I’m moving to the North Side. Isn’t any place for someone like me here on this side of town anymore. We have to stay with our own kind, take care of ourselves, our kids; this storm just kind of reinforced that in my mind.”
Forsythe looked annoyed by this speech, and took another drink.
“Was she all right? Your wife?” Gavin heard himself asking, then blushing, afraid to say the woman’s name for some reason. It seemed wrong—too familiar—when he’d only just learned it. When he’d only just acknowledged the fact that Ol’ Lieutenant had a wife and she had a name and apparently they had children, too. Then he found himself wondering what Ol’ Lieutenant’s first name was, his real name—was it Marvin or Coleson or Harry or Sam?