Free The Bully of Order by Brian Hart Page B

the next morning and discovered that I was gone.
    I came back in the afternoon. She was still packed and still waiting. Duncan was sitting at the table, dressed in a stiff, brown suit.
    â€œHaslett isn’t coming for you. I talked to him.” This was a lie, I hadn’t talked to the man at all. I’d played trumps at the Eagle and won seventeen dollars.
    â€œI’ll walk then.”
    â€œHe doesn’t want you.”
    â€œWell, I don’t want you, so aren’t we a pair.”
    â€œStay here with me. It’s for the best. We’ll forget this whole business.”
    â€œYou stink of liquor.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œWhy couldn’t you stay away?” She had started to cry. She hated me, but I knew her and knew that she could love me again.
    â€œI missed you.”
    â€œGet out.”
    â€œAre you stayin?”
    â€œGet out.”
    The next day when I returned I was churchly sober and glad to see that Nell had unpacked her things. I’d found a job working at Camp 21, but I didn’t tell her. It wouldn’t mean as much if I told her now. I’d wait until she showed her claws so I could turn her from anger. That was an easier move than turning her from disgust. Duncan was taking a nap in what I saw in the future as being our bed.
    â€œYou’ll stay then?” I asked my teacup, but talking to her.
    â€œI don’t have a choice, do I?”
    â€œIt was a low thing that Haslett did. He took advantage of you.”
    â€œHe did not.”
    â€œWell, it seems that way to me. He should be ashamed.”
    â€œIs this your new adventure? To pretend you’re an ignorant logger from God knows where?”
    â€œIt’s a new start.”
    â€œJacob, I want to be clear.” Then she told me she didn’t love me, didn’t remember if she ever had. “I married a doctor.”
    â€œYou married an impostor.”
    â€œI don’t want to be married to an impostor. I don’t want to be married to you at all.”
    â€œI understand.”
    â€œYou understand? You’re a fool, a weak idiot fool.”
    â€œDuncan’s sleeping.”
    â€œI know that. I know what he’s doing.” She turned her back to me. “You stay out of my garden and the henhouse too. That’s our food, not yours.”
    And that’s how it went. Nell and Duncan stayed in the bedroom, and I slept on the floor in front of the fireplace like a dog. I didn’t have anything to lose, but I wasn’t like my father, a man looking up from a hole. I’d climb into this new life like I was climbing onto a springboard, ax in my hand, kerosene bottle hanging from my belt. My partner across from me, waiting with the whip. Day in.

Nell
    I f there were a headline in the paper, it would read “Wife Surprisingly Un-Forsaken Retraces Bad Road.” I thought he was dead, that I’d never see him again. Strange the way that can play on your mind. It was like we’d never met or maybe I’d dreamed him, but then there he was like a stray dog, and one that had rolled in something besides.
    I went to see Milo but couldn’t bring myself to knock on the door. It was no secret what I’d done, and since Jacob had returned I could see that people were gossiping; their faces changed when they saw me, as if they’d been talking about me or thinking of me. It’s no good searching for guilt in other people’s faces. I was treated coldly, but I felt that walking around shamefaced asked for it, so it was my burden.
    Jacob hired on with a logging outfit and disappeared again. I didn’t know him anymore. He said he still worked as a physician if someone needed it, but no longer advertised. He’d never done that anyway, and I could see now that it was part of his plan, not to be noticed or bold, to fit in. The quiet chicken that eats and scratches and roosts but never lays. Before he left, I had him order supplies