“And you believe him?” Feeney asks.
“Not completely. But I can’t afford to shirk my end of our bargain, not now. And may I remind you that Everett and I aren’t brothers by blood. It was an agreement, made by equally desperate parties.”
“But it worked,” Feeney says. “Your agreement. You survived.”
“Liam, Mr. Lomax will either make things very easy for us, or very difficult. But be certain: he’s going to do one or the other. If he learns Everett contacted me and I failed to inform him, we’re finished. What’s coming to my brother is already on its way; I’m only spurring it along.”
Feeney says nothing, and Harris knows him well enough to register his silence as disapproval. Just then a sudden sense of intrusion comes over Harris, and for the first time he regrets ever mentioning his brother to Feeney at all. He’s been reckless with his personal history and has made too many of his most private thoughts known to his describer; he’s allowed Feeney too deep inside the high walls that have for so long guarded him against those who would ruin him. Harris decides he’ll be less liberal in the future.
“I understand your position, Harris,” Feeney says, breaking his silence and putting a warm hand on his back. “But this Lomax reminds me of a tree that’s been sawn right through and still won’t fall. And while I’m more a sailor than a lumberman, I did my time in your camps, and one thing I learned there is that a tree that’s been cut through and still won’t drop is one of the most dangerous things there is.”
GET YOUR THINGS
THE NEXT DAY a pop-eyed man enters Everett’s cell and stands beside his cot. He’s thick, short, like a wolverine trained to rear upward and walk. McSorley, he calls himself—the railroad detective whom Temple had been so worried about.
“You’ve come a long way, Greenwood,” he says. “But I knew you’d get pinched for something eventually.”
“I don’t know who you think I am, sir. But I’m no vagrant.”
“You’re right,” he sneers. “You’re worse than that.”
“Me and my little girl are making our way west, not troubling anyone.”
McSorley huffs though his broad nose. “Now she’s yours, is she?”
The two men lock eyes. Everett says: “You heard me.”
“I’m no expert,” the detective says, “but as far as I know the male species can’t conjure up one of those little bundles of joy on their own. So where’s her mother?”
“Her mother’s deceased.”
“You seem real broken up about it.”
“Remind me how it’s your business?”
“Now listen to me, you bum,” the detective hisses while baring his teeth, which are disturbingly identical to one another, as though they’ve all been cast from the same mould. “That child is yours as much as it’s mine. The judge said you don’t have papers for her, that right?”
“Lost in a fire,” Everett says flatly.
“Then you just tell me what hospital she was born in and we’ll have them do you up some new ones.”
“I look like I can hire a doctor? She was born in our little shack, beside the woodstove, same as I was. Her mother didn’t survive the night.”
The detective takes a furious stroll around the cell, readying another tack. “You recall that man you beat in an orchard back in Ontario? Near the tracks? Sure you do. Well, he’s the brother of a senator.”
“We didn’t get off in Ontario,” Everett says with as much composure as he can manage. “We caught express freights clean through.”
“Funny, because you were identified by a flophouse manager in Toronto, and we found a baby’s flannels and sleeper in the creek in that orchard, all of which doesn’t matter much. That man you beat will put the finger square on you when I bring you back east. Beard or no beard.”
Everett says nothing. What he did to the man was unavoidable, though silently he curses the world for requiring him to harm one person to save another.
“And when you go away for what you did, that little girl becomes a permanent ward of the state. When she does, she’ll be swiftly adopted by her father, R.J. Holt.”
“I’m her father,” Everett says, crossing his arms. “And nothing you say changes it.”
McSorley yanks his hat down over his meaty brow. “We’ll see about that, Greenwood. We leave tomorrow.”
Everett stays up late, rehearsing his story, practising the expression of shock he’ll assume when the man from the orchard identifies him. But if it all falls apart and Everett loses Pod to R.J. Holt and faces more penitentiary time, he plans to dash his own head against the stone wall of his cell and put an end to it. Because after living free for so long, he won’t survive being imprisoned again.
McSorley returns early the next morning, except this time he’s tight-lipped, almost chastened. With him is another man: enormous yet sickly, with sweat rimming the deep caverns of his eyes. Though Lomax is emaciated, and has an even more sinister and demonic air about him than when Everett first laid eyes on him at the rooming house in Toronto, he has Pod in his arms, wrapped in a soft blanket, and all other details drop away. Everett’s whole body sings at the sight of her.
“Thank you for your time, Detective,” Lomax says, shaking McSorley’s hand, his voice croaky and underpowered. Given the detective’s evident disappointment, it’s clear to Everett that these two men have opposing aims, and that McSorley has been somehow bested—how, Everett cannot say.
“Get your things,” Lomax says in a voice like ashes.
Monster, apparition, rescuer, executioner—to Everett it doesn’t matter what this man is, because he has Pod in his arms and all the iron doors are swinging open.
SENSIBLE
AT THE SMALL train station near the jail, a private coach awaits. Its gleaming wooden shell, filigreed with gold leaf, clashes absurdly with the hardscrabble mountain surroundings. To dissuade Everett from running, Lomax insists on carrying the child aboard himself, though she writhes against him and her very presence unnerves him—the neat contours of her face uncomfortably reminiscent of Euphemia’s. Besides, Lomax has already handled his fair share of babies in his life, and he would rather not be put in mind of his own brood back home, now homeless and shacked up with Lavern’s mother. Though with both Everett and the baby in his custody, the Lomax family’s prospects are looking much improved.
Once they find their seats, Lomax passes the child to Everett, who clutches her against him, murmuring in her ear.
“Old R.J. has a fine coach here,” Everett says, after the baby has dropped to sleep but the train has yet to move. “Where’s it headed?”
“It isn’t Mr. Holt’s,” Lomax says.
“Whose is it, then? Yours?”
“This is your brother’s personal coach. Cut from a single redwood. One tree, hollowed out like an Indian canoe. Impressive, isn’t it?”
“Huh,” Everett says tonelessly. “Back in Toronto you claimed you were Holt’s man.”