“Really? Dang. It didn’t feel like we’d been in here but five minutes. . . .”
The boys stared at one another, as if there were something wondrous about their shared trance.
“You mean to say we’ve been sitting here reading all that time?”
Mr. Sitwell held out his hand. “Give it to me.”
Frederick gave him the book. On the cover was a picture of a tall, thin, white man with green eyes and a long red beard, clutching a pistol in each hand.
“What is this?”
“The Life and Times of Cherokee Red, Wild Man of the Reconstruction,” Frederick said. “You ever read it?”
“No.”
“But you heard about him, right? Started out during the war, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Now his gang’s all busted up. He and his ladylove moved out west to put the past behind them and he’s been trying his hand at being a farmer. But, just when it seems like his gunslinging days are over, he finds out Wash Talbot, last surviving member of his gang, was caught stealing hogs and got himself locked up back in Florida—”
“What?”
“He stole a hog.”
“Who did?”
“Wash Talbot.”
Mr. Sitwell squinted at the cover. He’d never heard of Cherokee Red but he knew the name Wash Talbot. From when he was a boy back in Florida. Just like in the book.
He handed it to Frederick. “Where does it say that name? Show me. Wash Talbot.”
Frederick opened the book and started flipping pages. After a while he set his finger down and read.
“Another infamous member of the gang was Wash Talbot, who never would renounce his lawless ways. For years after the gang disbanded he was still hiding out in the swamps of Seminole County, a terror to the neighboring towns—”
“That’s enough,” Mr. Sitwell said. “Pernicious lies.”
“Sir?”
“I knew that man.”
“Who? Cherokee Red?”
“Wash Talbot. He was a simple farmer.”
The boys looked disappointed.
“Probably not the same man then,” Mac said. “Was your Wash from Seminole too?”
Mr. Sitwell shook his head. “I don’t recall.”
He was lying, compelled by a childhood admonishment to say nothing about where he came from, even though he realized there was no cause for it any longer. It was the same reason he’d refused to give his real name when, lured by the promise of food, he’d voluntarily entered the doors of the asylum twenty years before. And then again, a few months after that, when he found himself standing on the Barclays’ back porch, hands clasped behind his back and wedged between those other two boys.
“Where did you get this?”
“One of Mr. Barclay’s guests gave it to us after Tuesday’s party.”
Mr. Sitwell frowned.
“It’s the truth, sir,” Frederick said. “We didn’t steal it, Mr. Sitwell.”
“I’m going to have to ask Mr. Barclay about that.”
“That’s fine but . . . can we finish it first? We were just getting to the best part.”
“What part is that?”
“It’s the beginning of the end.”
Mr. Sitwell sighed. Despite the lives they’d led and the work they did, they were still such children. Yet he knew if they did not learn certain lessons they would not last long in the Barclay house, to say nothing of the world outside it.
“You boys are going to have to be more careful. You’ve got to remember who you are, you’ve got to remember where. You shouldn’t be in the front of the house. You shouldn’t be talking to Mr. Barclay’s guests, much less, as you say, accepting gifts from them.”
“I didn’t lie.” Frederick pouted. “I tell you he said we could have it.”
“That’s not the point. What if you misunderstood the man’s meaning? Or what if the man simply changed his mind? Don’t you realize that an accusation of theft can be just as bad as a theft itself? Sometimes it’s even worse.”
“No, sir, I suppose we didn’t think about those things.” Frederick nodded. “I understand.”
Mr. Sitwell frowned. He could tell from the boy’s expression that Frederick thought he understood but also that, in truth, he did not.
“Best get back there and finish that kitchen before Miss Mamie sees it.”
“Yes, sir.”
They scrambled to their feet and sprinted down the hall. Mr. Sitwell stood for a moment with the book in his hands, trying to decide what to do with it.
He looked at the cover. Mr. Sitwell was only nine when he left Florida, and there were many things about those early days he no longer recalled—the name Wash Talbot, however, was not one of them. The man had been a neighbor-friend of his mother’s and, as he’d told the boys, came from a family of subsistence farmers much like his own family had been. It certainly seemed more than mere coincidence that, as was true of the outlaw in the book, the Wash he remembered had come to his end over conflicting claims with a man from the neighboring town over livestock. Except—and this too Mr. Sitwell remembered with perfect clarity—the Wash he’d known hadn’t been jailed over a hog. It was a mule. And he hadn’t stolen it.
He’d shot it.
He watched the boys push through the swinging door to the dining room. You had to be careful in this world. Had to take precautions, always be prepared, even if you were telling the truth. That was the thing he remembered when he thought about Wash Talbot. One thing at least. If he didn’t want the boys getting in trouble it was best to take care of this now, make sure there was no misunderstanding. He reached the door to the dining room then walked past it, headed toward Mr. Barclay’s study.
The room, as expected, was still lit. Mr. Barclay did most of his work at night; the dinner parties that preceded these long evenings were just a part of how the man conducted his business. Through the half-opened door he saw his employer seated behind his desk, hunched over a stack of papers. A man in his sixties now, he’d gotten fat and lost most of his hair in the twenty years Mr. Sitwell had worked for him. He had bushy eyebrows and small, pale eyes that reminded Mr. Sitwell of glass beads.
“Is that you, Sitwell? What on earth are you doing in my house, lurking about in the dark, at this time of night?”
Mr. Sitwell nodded and tried to smile. He was already in the room before he recalled the foul mood his employer had been in lately. Mr. Barclay was a speculator by trade, which, so far as Mr. Sitwell could tell, meant he bought and sold properties he hadn’t the least amount of knowledge about or interest in. Somehow he managed to make a good living this way, but it was a bit like musical chairs. As had happened a few times in the past, following the recent financial panic he’d found himself sitting atop ownership shares of several food manufacturing plants, charged with the sudden and somehow unexpected task of actually trying to make them profitable.
“Yes, sir. Hope I didn’t startle you. I was just on my way out when I come across the kitchen boys with this.”
He held up the book.
Mr. Barclay squinted. “What is it?”
“A book, sir. It looks like a book.”
“What are you showing it to me for?”