Boon by Ed Kurtz (top 100 books to read .txt) 📕

When I returned to the table, I was surprised to find Boon’s chair now occupied by none other than Marshal Tom Willocks. He struck a sulphur match against the underside of the table and touched the flame to a cigarette perched in his mouth. Blue smoke spilled from his nostrils once he got the thing going, and he waved the lucifer out before letting it drop to the floor.

“Bad habit,” he said without looking at me. He bent over to retrieve the dead match. “This ain’t that type of place.”

Willocks dropped the match into the ashtray on the table, heretofore clean and empty, and puffed away while I sat down and stared at him over my glass.

“Soup’s cold,” I told him, “but I don’t reckon Boon would mind if you finish it.”

“Thanks, no,” he said. “I took my supper at my desk like always. There’s a little diner at the far north end of Willoughby Street run by the Widow Perkins. She brings me a bowl of beef stew or chili most every evening, bless her heart. I heartily recommend it.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

He drew in a lungful and held it for a moment before expelling the smoke in a great plume that filled the space between us.

“Siam,” he said at some length. “You know, the only reason I ever heard of it is those twins. The Siamese Twins, you know what I mean.”

I didn’t.

“Come again?” I said.

“Couple of brothers, born stuck to each other or some such thing. Used to tour all over the county, charge a quarter to look at ’em. I never did, but I read all about it in the papers from back east. Anyway, they’re from Siam, too. Just like your pretty friend.”

Pretty friend. I wanted to stuff that cigarette up his nose, hot end first.

I said, “I don’t reckon Boon is stuck to anybody.”

“No,” he agreed, “I don’t reckon she would be. How do you suppose she speaks English so well? That on account of her daddy?”

“She grew up in America,” I said. “Back east mostly, way to hear her tell it, though she’s muttered something or other about California, too. I don’t know if she talks any Siamese or not.”

If she did, it was no better than my German, but I’d never heard her say anything that wasn’t in English apart from the odd Mex word, which was the same for just about anyone.

“Abandoned,” the marshal said low.

That was about the size of it. Near as I could tell, the old Englishman had brought them both—Boon and Pimchan—first to Cuba, then to America, with the glowing promise of making them a right and proper family. Boon in a fancy Yankee school and Pimchan made a right and proper wife. Instead, Pimchan ended up in something like indentured servitude but more akin to slavery, never mind the law. By the time Boon ran off to California in search of her mama, she wasn’t but twelve years old and landed in an orphanage for Chinese children because nobody would believe she wasn’t Chinese. Came up the rest of the way with kids she couldn’t understand and grown-ups who wouldn’t listen to her. Seems she was no older than fourteen when she broke out of that awful place, though it was another couple-few years before she learned the full truth of her provenance and parentage.

That was when the hate started.

But I didn’t tell all of this to Willocks. My big mouth had already spouted more than enough. I blamed the whiskey. It was a damned sight better in Darling than I was accustomed to.

“It ain’t been all that easy for her,” I said.

“Between two worlds,” the marshal waxed, “belonging to neither. No, I don’t ’spose that is very easy.”

“Everybody has a cross to bear,” I said, and I slammed the rest of the liquor down my gullet. I’d have loved to follow it up with another, but Willocks was beginning to get on my nerves. “It’s been a right smart pleasure, Your Honor, but I’m sure looking forward to that clean bed upstairs.”

I stood up a little too fast and stumbled a little, grasping the edge of the table to keep from toppling over. Damn fine whiskey. I tried to remember the name on the bottle, but I wasn’t too sure of my own name by that point in the proceedings.

“Hang on just a minute there,” said Willocks. He reached over and grabbed me by the wrist. I did not care for that one whit and I snapped my hand away from him.

“Listen,” I started.

“Just a minute, partner. No need to get riled any.”

“Who’s riled?” I spat.

I was.

“I only wanted to let you know—let both of y’all know—that it looks like I got some good information out of Goliad.”

“That fast?”

I didn’t believe him. Telegraphs were lightning fast, to be sure, but there were plenty of other details to consider, too. Getting the message to the right person, for example, not to mention the time it took to track down that sort of difficult information.

“Like I done told y’all, I know some good old boys in Goliad,” he said with a grin.

Horse apples, I thought. Horse apples and dog shit.

I said, “All right, then—what have you got?”

The grin broadened, slicing across his big face.

“Not so fast,” he said. “Way I see it, between my hospitality this morning and my additional work on y’all’s behalf this evening, the two of you owe me a little something in return.”

“There it is,” I said. I was sobering up quicker than I wanted.

“Don’t misunderstand me, sir,” the marshal said. “It’s not that I won’t pass this information along to you and your lovely friend—” The nerve of this rube! “—I merely want for us all to come to an amicable arrangement that benefits all parties equitably.”

I should add here that though Marshal Willocks tended to turn a pretty phrase with more than a few five-dollar words peppered in,