SEVEN

 B

artholomew 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.

Bart stepped to the bar, said, “Evening, Joss. Lively tonight.”

“Merry Christmas, you big fuckin 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 fuckin 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.

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 fuck 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 fuckin 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 fuck 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 fuckin 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

 S

tephen 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.