The Devil's Paintbox, page 3
“Oh, let them have an apple,” her sister said arrogantly. “There are some with spots.” They both laughed.
Suddenly there was a swish of skirts behind them and Aiden felt a light hand land on his shoulder.
“There you are, at last!” A woman bent and kissed Maddy on the cheek. Aiden caught a whiff of perfume. “Mr. Jackson said you would be coming today. I was so looking forward to meeting you!”
She was the most beautiful woman Aiden had ever seen, even in a magazine. She was small but not skinny. Not plump either. Aiden didn't know what to call it, just all round and soft-looking and beautiful in a way that made him strangely embarrassed to notice. She wore a dark green dress that looked finer than a regular dress but not show-off rich. She had sparkling blue eyes and thick brown hair that was caught up in a twist at the back of her head, from which little strands had escaped and curled around her face. She spoke with an accent he had never heard before.
“Forgive me,” she laughed, holding out one soft little hand. “I'm Mrs. Gabriel True; Marguerite True.” The silence hung just a little too long before Maddy spoke up.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. True.” Maddy curtsied. “I'm Madeline Lynch, called Maddy, and this is my brother Aiden.” She nudged him.
“Pleased to make—to meet you, ma'am,” Aiden stammered.
“The pleasure is mine.” Marguerite turned smoothly from the dumbstruck Aiden. “Annie, Polly.” She nodded at the two girls. “How nice you both look in your fine things! Let me introduce you to Miss Maddy Lynch and Mr. Aiden Lynch. They have come to join our wagon train.” She beamed at Maddy and stroked the girl's brittle hair. “You must be tired. Have you come a long way?”
“Yes, ma'am. From Madagascar,” Maddy said. Aiden kicked her ankle. The food had obviously restored her chatty ways. Marguerite blinked but barely missed a step.
“Yes. Well. Ah—and how is the weather there this time of year?”
“Torrid,” Maddy said earnestly. “Quite torrid.”
“Oh.” Marguerite smiled. “Well, then, you should like Washington Territory very much, I imagine, for the change.”
“Yes, that's why we're going.” Maddy smiled and Aiden saw that she too had fallen in love with Marguerite.
“Well, there you are!” A booming voice worked its way through a crowd of people and a giant of a man followed. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered and handsome, with thick curly reddish brown hair. It was cut a little too long and slicked back with pomade in a way that didn't seem to go with his somber preacher's coat.
“Hello, girls.” He nodded at Polly and Annie. “You do look divine. May I have the pleasure of reserving a dance with you?”
“I don't believe preachers are supposed to dance.” Polly frowned.
“Only in front of golden calves they're not,” the man said easily. “Under the cottonwoods, they are certainly allowed.” He gave them a deep sweeping bow. “And who are your new friends, my dear?” He smiled at Marguerite, reached out and squeezed her little hand. Aiden saw her eyes brighten. It stabbed him in some queer place inside. He had seen his parents look at each other like that.
“Madeline and Aiden Lynch,” she purred. “This is my husband, the Reverend Gabriel True.”
“Pleased to meet you.” He shook Aiden's hand and bowed to Maddy.
“They've come a terribly long way,” Marguerite crooned in her lovely accent. “And now they're going west with us.”
“Well, that's grand!” If the Reverend True was confused as to why these urchin scarecrows were suddenly under his wife's wing, he didn't show it.
“Will you excuse us, girls?” Marguerite nodded at Annie and Polly. “I think our new friends will need a glass of lemonade after such a journey.” With a firm hand, she steered Aiden and Maddy away.
iden woke the next morning with the sour taste of vomit in his mouth, the hard ground beneath him and the rough scratch of a wool blanket against his skin. For a moment he had no idea where he was or what had happened to him; then reality came rushing in and he sat up with a jerk.
“Maddy?” The earth lurched beneath him and the sky swirled around so fast he toppled back to the ground, landing face-first in the damp grass. He had never felt so sick and weak in his life. “Maddy?”
He heard someone moving under the cottonwood tree nearby. A gray coat rustled and a man slowly unfolded himself from beneath its shelter.
“Shush,” he said hoarsely. “She's fine. Don't wake the entire camp.” Aiden leaned up on one elbow. The man stretched out a pair of long legs, rubbed his face and coughed.
“Where is she?”
“In the preacher's wagon. His little French wife is looking after her.”
“Marguerite?”
“Is that the one?”
“Yes. Don't you know her?”
“I've seen her.”
He was a foreign-looking man, though Aiden couldn't say exactly what made him look different. He had very dark eyes and black hair, but his skin was no browner than a farmer's. He was taller than average, maybe six feet, but very thin. Aiden couldn't tell whether he was young or old. There were circles under his eyes and his hands trembled like an old man's, but his face was unlined and his hair had no gray. He wore blue wool pants from which a stripe on the leg had recently been torn.
“Are you a soldier?” Aiden asked.
“I'm a doctor.” The man reached into the pocket of his coat, pulled out a small brown medicine bottle, uncorked it and took a drink. One of his legs moved restlessly, the heel of his boot carving a little trench in the ground. Aiden didn't remember seeing him at the party, but all of the party felt like a dream right now. He remembered food and music, swirling dresses and Marguerite's blue eyes. He felt the coarse wool of the blanket against his legs and realized he was half-naked.
“Where are my pants?”
“There.” The stranger nodded toward the tree, where Aiden's trousers hung from a branch. “You had diarrhea every ten minutes, it was easier to leave them off.”
Aiden felt his face go hot. “Is Maddy all right?”
“Yes. She lost it all much quicker than you. People die this way, you know, eating too much after extreme starvation.”
“We were careful—about eating. I thought we were. I tried to be.”
“Careful for you would be a week of porridge and sweet tea, then maybe a potato and some broth,” the man said without emotion. He spoke perfect English, and with a Yankee accent. “How do you feel now?”
“Fine,” Aiden lied. He felt as if he had been turned inside out and dragged behind a horse. The man came over, squatted beside him and pressed his bony fingers to the inside of Aiden's wrist to check his pulse.
“Who are you?” Aiden asked. “Why are you tending me?”
“I told you, I'm a doctor. I had nothing else to do last night. I don't like parties. And you vomited on my boots.”
“I'm sorry.”
“My name is Carlos Javier Perez.” The man bowed his head slightly with an incongruous formality.
“I'm Aiden Lynch. Thank you for tending me. But I'm fine now.” Aiden struggled to get up.
“The sun has just come up, and it takes an hour to get all the wagons moving. You can rest.”
“I can't.”
“Why not?”
“Mr. Jackson won't take me if I'm not strong.”
“Mr. Jackson fully intends to take you. He offered me fifty cents to keep you alive.”
“What—damn! Sorry—”
“What's the matter? You think you're worth more?”
“No—”
“You don't want me to keep you alive?”
“No! I mean yes.”
“Then what's wrong?”
“He'll charge it to my account is what's wrong!”
Carlos laughed.
“It isn't funny!” Aiden staggered to his feet, pulling the blanket around him. He snatched his pants off the tree.
“No. I'm sorry, it isn't. But fifty cents—it's quite a fortune for one man's life.” Carlos wiped his eyes and sat back down under the tree. He fished in the pocket of his coat and took out a copper penny.
“That is what it costs, lad.” He tossed the penny at Aiden's feet. “A penny's worth of shot and powder to kill one man dead.” He took another swallow from the medicine bottle. “I've seen a thousand men die at a penny apiece, so you're a fair bargain.” This time the medicine seemed to do him some good. His shoulders relaxed, he took a deep breath and his hands stopped twitching.
Aiden pulled his pants on and buttoned them up.
“Thank you, Doctor. I'm obliged. But I'll go now.” Doctor or not, this man was far too strange.
“I was serious about the porridge. Eat nothing else for a few days, maybe a bit of bread and honey. And rest. Ride in the wagon. I left some lemons with the preacher's wife, for you both have the scurvy as well.”
“What's that?”
“It's why your gums are bleeding.”
“Everyone bleeds by end of winter,” Aiden said. “Cress and purslane come up and that's the cure.” What kind of doctor was he if he didn't know a simple thing like that?
“Fine. I don't care if you do die.” Carlos closed his eyes. “But it's easy enough to stay alive now if you're not a complete idiot, so you might as well give it a try. Saves everyone the trouble of digging a grave.”
When he got to the group of wagons, Aiden realized he had no idea which one belonged to the Reverend Gabriel True. A couple of them he could rule out right away, as they looked far too rich to be a preacher's wagon, but the rest seemed pretty much the same. All around him Aiden saw and heard the morning come to life. Babies wailed, a rooster crowed, mules stamped and snuffled. Children tumbled from wagons, bigger ones handing down the smaller ones.
The morning sun shone through the canvases, and he saw shadows of people inside, arms thin and spiderlike, made long by the slanted sun. He heard quiet murmurs, the rustle of clothing, the clomp of boots and the swish of oiled laces. The wagons were only feet apart, so every sound was heard. After living so long in isolation, Aiden found the closeness particularly strange. But for the next five or six months, this would be his world: all these people, a whole town on the march to a new world, with their chickens and children, pots and pans and clattering pails. Aiden felt a mix of thrill and horror.
Then he saw Jefferson J. Jackson heading toward the well. He walked with a slow, creaky shuffle that betrayed no specific ailment, just a lifetime of cold ground and numerous small woundings. His eyes were red and foggy, and Aiden suspected the liquor jug had not passed him by last night.
“Mr. Jackson.” Aiden walked toward him. Jackson stopped and squinted over at him.
“Oh. You.” He gave a racking wet cough, churned up something thick and spat.
“Just want to say I can keep myself alive well enough,” Aiden said. “I don't need you putting fifty cents to any doctor on my account.”
“What the hell you talkin’ about?”
“The doc—the foreign doctor said you gave him fifty cents to tend me last night. I am sorry that I got myself sick, but I want to get it straight with you about the money part before we go on.”
Jackson wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I thought fifty cents might be fair. I know what doctoring costs.”
“I would've made do.”
“Well, I'm sure you're right.”
“It's just I know how bosses will pile it up on you. The owing. You work and work and then comes payday but the money is all gone to rent and goods at the company store, which is three times the normal price, and suddenly there's nothing left. I won't have it. Sorry. But I won't. We worked the coal mines between Virginia and here. Stone quarry too, same bad deal.”
Jackson rubbed a hand across his tired eyes. “Well. That's a whole lot of woeful history for my brain first thing in the morning.”
“I just mean to be straight, sir,” Aiden said. “To be up-front about things. Anything goes on my account, I need to agree to it first.”
“Fair enough. I promise in the future I'll consult you, son. If you're not passed out and twitching in the dirt like a stepped-on lizard like you were last night!” Jackson snapped. “Now will you let me go do my business ‘fore I crap my own pants?”
Aiden jumped. “Yes. Sorry.”
“And so you know,” Jackson growled. “No fifty cents on your account. That doc turned back the money.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. Said not to mind it. He's gone a little crazy in the mind, I think, on account of the war, but that's what he said, no charge, so why would I argue against that?”
“So no money charged to me?”
“Not one penny. But you better calm down your attitude or I'll start chargin’ you for sheer annoyance.” Jackson pulled himself up and stretched a little. “Boy—you're spending a lot of energy being mad and turned-up over everything. I know you ain't had the best of it before now, but all you can do is go on from here. So my advice, and I won't charge a penny for it, is that you go easy.”
ne week and a hundred miles later, the ever-gregarious Maddy knew the life story of just about everybody in the wagon train. “People come from everywhere!” she told Aiden as they walked along one bright afternoon. “From Boston and New York and even Sweden. Annie and Polly Hollingford, those fancy-dressed girls? They come from a plantation in South Carolina,” Maddy chatted on, swiping hair off her sweaty forehead. “But they've been living in St. Louis for the war. Their uncle is sending the whole family to Seattle to build a factory for canning salmon. Like canned peaches!” she explained, as if her brother were dim and hadn't heard about canning. She stopped to pick up a buffalo chip and add it to the pile in her sack. Most of the older children spent the days gathering the dried buffalo dung that made their nightly cooking fires. They fanned out on either side of the wagon train, filling burlap sacks and dragging them back to empty them whenever they got too heavy.
Aiden usually kept to the far outside of the group, his bow slung over one shoulder, the quiver of arrows on the other. Twenty-seven wagons and a hundred and eight people scared off most living things, but out here he might hunt up a few rabbits or prairie chickens. He was still feeble enough that he needed Maddy's help to string the bow at the start of each day, but he could draw well enough to kill small game.
He was starting to feel at ease in the wagon train, though he knew he would never fit in as easily as his sister. There were four other “strays” like him, traveling on Jefferson J. Jackson's ticket to work as loggers. Two of the other men were in their twenties, friends from eastern Kansas seeking adventure in the West. Another man was a widower of thirty-two who had left his three children behind with his sister. The fourth was a big man named William Buck. He talked a lot, mostly about all the great things he had done, most of which Aiden thought pretty suspicious. Buck fussed like a child when he didn't get his way and bullied the others, though in the sneaky way of a coward. They all shared meals and slept under Jackson's wagons when it rained, but Aiden didn't feel like any of them would be his lifelong friend. The Kansas boys kept their own company, the widower was too morose and William Buck just plain got on his nerves. So far, the men had light work. They took turns driving Jackson's two wagons, which carried their meager personal gear, food for the six of them and Jackson's store of trade goods. They helped with the cattle, hunted game and dug the latrines for the camp. They took turns standing guard during the night.
Maddy was still staying in the Reverend True's wagon, and it seemed that it would be her permanent home. The Trues had sheltered her the first few days out of charity, but that soon changed.
The Reverend Gabriel and Marguerite True appeared to have no idea of the simplest housekeeping tasks one needed to survive in general, let alone in a wagon train crossing the continent. Marguerite had never even seen a campfire, certainly never cooked over one. She had a book called The Pioneers’ Guide to the Oregon Trail that told how to bake biscuits in a Dutch oven, but she didn't even know how to make biscuit dough. “A minister's wife has so many other duties to attend to,” Marguerite explained vaguely. The first time Aiden brought her a pheasant he had shot, she took great delight in the beautiful feathers, apparently without realizing there was actual meat under the hat decorations.
And so the misplaced pair was completely willing to let a thirteen-year-old girl take over their care. Maddy built the fires, cooked the meals, plucked the pheasants, carried water and mended the reverend's clothes. He tore something every other day, for he was as awkward with the ox and wagon as his wife was with the domestic chores. There was barely enough room in the little wagon for the couple to sleep, so Marguerite piled up a nest of quilts underneath each night for Maddy.
“Those quilts smell so good, Aiden,” she said as she picked up another buffalo chip. “Everything in her chest smells of perfume.”
Aiden also slept outside, though the blankets Jackson provided were not so plush and hardly perfumed. He didn't mind. He liked falling asleep under the stars. After just this one week of simple food, corn bread and porridge and salt pork, Aiden was starting to feel strong in a way he could barely remember. Jackson led them to creeks or springs each day, so there were wild greens to be had, which quickly cured his bleeding gums. The aches in his knees and shoulders were almost gone too; so much for the scurvy. Maddy's face was filling out and there was color in her cheeks. The skin around her fingernails, which had been split and bleeding all winter, was now smooth. She looked like a girl who might even be pretty someday.
“Oh, and listen,” Maddy went on as she slung the bag over her shoulder. “You know those Thompsons? In the two blue painted wagons, with all those children? They have no dead ones at all! Isn't that amazing? Ten alive—Therese, Peter, John, Joseph, Rose, Paul, Monica, Matthew, Catherine and Andrew. Not even any born dead!”
“There's only ten?” Aiden laughed. Children swarmed around those two wagons like a mess of tadpoles. It really was amazing, though. Aiden didn't know of a single family, even rich people back east, whose children had all lived. Two out of three was thought lucky.
