Boneshaker

With gentle encouragement, a handful of kindling, and two more lengths of wood, a slow flame caught and held.

One arm at a time, Briar pried herself out of the overcoat and left it hanging on a peg. Without the coat, her body had a lean look to it — as if she worked too long, and ate too little or too poorly. Her gloves and tall brown boots were caked with the filth of the plant, and she was wearing pants like a man. Her long, dark hair was piled up and back, but two shifts of labor had picked it apart and heavy strands had scattered, escaping the combs she’d used to hold it all aloft.

She was thirty-five, and she did not look a minute younger.

In front of the growing, glowing fire there was a large and ancient leather chair. Briar dropped herself into it. “Tell me, Mr… I’m sorry. You didn’t say your name.”

“Hale. Hale Quarter. And I must say, it’s an honor to meet you.”

For a moment he thought she was going to laugh, but she didn’t.

She reached over to a small table beside the chair and retrieved a pouch. “All right, Hale Quarter. Tell me. Why did you wait outside so long in this bitter weather?” From within the pouch she picked a small piece of paper and a large pinch of tobacco. She worked the two together until she had a cigarette, and she used the lamp’s flame to coax the cigarette alight.

He’d gotten this far by telling the truth, so he risked another confession. “I came when I knew you wouldn’t be home. Someone told me that if I knocked, you’d shoot through the peephole.”

She nodded, and pressed the back of her head against the leather. “I’ve heard that story, too. It doesn’t keep nearly as many folks away as you might expect.”

He couldn’t tell if she was serious, or if her response was a denial. “Then I thank you double, for not shooting me and for letting me come inside.”

“You’re welcome.”

“May I… may I take a seat? Would that be all right?”

“Suit yourself, but you won’t be here long,” she predicted.

“You don’t want to talk?”

“I don’t want to talk about Maynard, no. I don’t have any answers about anything that happened to him. Nobody does. But you can ask whatever you want. And you can take your leave when I get tired of you, or when you get bored with all the ways I can say ‘I don’t know’ — whichever comes first.”

Encouraged, he reached for a tall-backed wooden chair and dragged it forward, putting his body directly into her line of sight. His notebook folded open to reveal an unlined sheet with a few small words scribbled at the top.

While he was getting situated, she asked him, “Why do you want to know about Maynard? Why now? He’s been dead for fifteen years. Nearly sixteen.”

“Why not now?” Hale sca

“Another book?” she said, and it sounded sharp and fast.

“Not a sensational piece,” he was careful to clarify. “I want to write a proper biography of Maynard Wilkes, because I believe he’s been done a great disservice. Don’t you agree?”

“No, I don’t agree. He got exactly what he should have expected. He spent thirty years working hard, for nothing, and he was treated disgracefully by the city he served.” She fiddled with the half-smoked wand of tobacco. “He allowed it. And I hated him for it.”

“But your father believed in the law.”

She almost snapped at him. “So does every criminal.”

Hale perked. “Then you do think he was a criminal?”

One more hard draw on the cigarette came and went, and then she said, “Don’t twist my words. But you’re right. He believed in the law. There were times I wasn’t sure he believed in anything else, but yes. He believed in that.”

Spits and sparks from the fireplace filled the short silence that fell between them. Finally, Hale said, “I’m trying to get it right, ma’am. That’s all. I think there was more to it than a jailbreak—”

“Why?” she interrupted. “Why do you think he did it? Which theory do you want to write your book about, Mr. Quarter?”

He hesitated, because he didn’t know what to think, not yet. He gambled on the theory that he hoped Briar would find least offensive. “I think he was doing what he thought was right. But I really want to know what you think. Maynard raised you alone, didn’t he? You must’ve known him better than anyone.”

Her face stayed a little too carefully blank. “You’d be surprised. We weren’t that close.”

“But your mother died—”

“When I was born, that’s right. He was the only parent I ever had, and he wasn’t much of one. He didn’t know what to do with a daughter any more than I know what to do with a map of Spain.”

Hale sensed a brick wall, so he backed up and tried another way around, and into her good graces. His eyes sca

“You grew up here, didn’t you? In this house?” he pretended to guess.

She didn’t soften. “Everybody knows that.”

“They brought him back here, though. One of the boys from the prison break, and his brother — they brought him here and tried to save him. A doctor was sent for, but…”

Briar retrieved the dangled thread of conversation and pulled it. “But he’d inhaled too much of the Blight. He was dead before the doctor ever got the message, and I swear” — she flicked a fingertip’s worth of ash into the fire — “it’s just as well. Can you imagine what would’ve happened to him, if he’d lived? Tried for treason, or gross insubordination at least. Jailed, at the minimum. Shot, at the worst. My father and I had our disagreements, but I wouldn’t have wished that upon him. It’s just as well,” she said again, and she stared into the fire.

Hale spent a few seconds trying to assemble a response. At last he said, “Did you get to see him, before he died? I know you were one of the last to leave Seattle — and I know you came here. Did you see him, one last time?”

“I saw him.” She nodded. “He was lying alone in that back room, on his bed, under a sheet that was soaked with the vomit that finally choked him to death. The doctor wasn’t here, and as far as I know, he never did come. I don’t know if you could even find one, in those days, in the middle of the evacuation.”

“So, he was alone? Dead, in this house?”

“He was alone,” she confirmed. “The front door was broken, but closed. Someone had left him on the bed, laid out with respect, I do remember that. Someone had covered him with a sheet, and left his rifle on the bed beside him with his badge. But he was dead, and he stayed dead. The Blight didn’t start him walking again, so thank God for small things, I suppose.”

Hale jotted it all down, mumbling encouraging sounds as his pencil skipped across the paper. “Do you think the prisoners did that?”

“Youdo,” she said. It wasn’t quite an accusation.

“I suspect as much,” he replied, but he was giddily certain of it. The prison-boy’s brother had told him they’d left Maynard’s place clean, and they didn’t take a thing. He’d said they’d laid him out on the bed, his face covered up. These were details that no one else had ever mentioned, not in all the speculation or investigation into the Great Blight Jailbreak. And there had been plenty of it over the years. “And then…” he tried to prompt her.

“I dragged him out back and buried him under the tree, beside his old dog. A couple days later, two city officers came out and dug him back up again.”

“To make sure?”

She grunted. “To make sure he hadn’t skipped town and gone back east; to make sure the Blight hadn’t started him moving again; to make sure I’d put him where I said I did. Take your pick.”