Free The Bully of Order by Brian Hart Page A

yanked the rope on the bell. Cheers erupted, and the bartender stepped to. My neighbor peeled off bills and let them float to the bar top.
    â€œShe assisted in the surgery that removed my appendix. She had to shave my belly. Saw my mighty whitefish.”
    â€œI wouldn’t worry about it.”
    â€œI wouldn’t either. Ain’t my wife.”
    â€œNo, she’s not.”
    â€œMaybe she could be, the way you let her run.”
    When the bartender poured our drinks, I slid mine away and walked out. The smell of cordite was stuck in my nose.
    My empire, gone. Wife, gone. Son, gone. A fine joke was unspooling against me. It was then that I went entirely sentimental for my days as a physician and the respect that came with it. I’d been great. I’d been right there in the cupboard where I was to be found, and then I’d left. Now my place had been taken. I’d come home and presented myself as a fool and a liar and had been treated accordingly. Another among the fallen, and when I got up I didn’t rise half as far, and that’s why they laughed. Shaking with rage, I headed out; what was expected, what I’d deliver. Another bar, another drink. I could be a man about this and go find her and cut her throat. Truthful now, the last thing I wanted was to hurt her. I’d rather let the smug bastards kill me. Nothing so kind as that, they laughed me out the swinging doors. Still, it took me three days to break free of the Line, my big stories all told, my money half spent.
    Up the road, dreary and forlorn. Since I’d left they’d planked most of it, but the work had gotten shoddy as they moved away from the town proper. Half the planks were going to the mud by the footfall, some were missing altogether, slapped onto someone’s chicken coop or icehouse wall most likely.
    Without a knock or call, I entered Matius’s house, my home. Nell was speechless, eyes locked on the upended corpse. I was what had been missing, so I thought, but I was useless to her, plain as that. A broken hinge served more purpose than me. She said she’d heard that I’d returned and she’d packed all of her possessions to take to Dr. Haslett’s. She was leaving me. She’d left.
    Her speech concluded, she walked by me, dumb stump that I am, and went to the bedroom and gathered the boy in her arms. His dirty socks kicked stains on her dress. He’d grown long and wiry and wore my furtive brow.
    I reached in my coat pocket and produced a small, fuzzy-looking bear I’d carved from redwood. “For the young explorer, grown so big while I was away.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œA bear. What does it look like?”
    He took the toy with him to the table and sat down and studied it. “It looks like a pig. Are you sure it’s a bear?”
    â€œIt’s a bear.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œBecause I made it.”
    â€œYou did not. You can’t make bears.”
    â€œI can.”
    â€œNo, you make pigs.” He looked at me and pushed up his nose and snorted.
    â€œWhy did you come back?” Nell asked.
    â€œYou’re my wife still.” From the other pocket I brought out my wad of money, what was left from town, and set it on the table. I gently kicked my toe against Nell’s steamer trunk, opened the lid, and looked inside at the folded clothes. “You’ll stay the night at least. No time to be struttin off into the darkness lookin for a place to sleep. You ask me, you belong under this roof with me, not someone else’s.”
    â€œI’ll not share a bed with you ever again.” She gathered the boy and went into the bedroom and shut the door. I pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. She was in there thinking that I’d be coming in after her but I let her stew, let her get worked up with excitement for the fight or whatever she thought I’d bring in there. Imagine her surprise when she came out