Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

Sam nodded slowly and gave Andrew a wink. “Take care of yourself while I’m gone, Doctor,” he said and turned to leave.

When he was gone, Harper noted that their cups were empty. “Would you care for more coffee?” he asked.

Andrew shook his head. “If it’s all right,” he said, “I’d like some tea. I’ve got the fixings for it in my bag, if you’d care to join me.”

Andrew pulled the cloth from his bag, and pulled free a handful of the mixture he’d rescued from the Tavish clan.

He found a clay teapot that was empty on a sideboard, and he wasted no time filling it with the mixture, and hot water from the stove.

The tea was steeped and ready to drink just as the servants brought their breakfasts—fried eggs with bread and a generous helping of bacon. Andrew downed his quickly, as he’d learned from Norma, and advised Mr. Harper to do the same.

Harper sniffed at it, and made a face. “Perhaps later,” he said.

“As your physician,” said Waggoner, “I’d advise it sooner than later. You see, there is something else—something, I believe, that is on its way here.”

Harper sighed, and brought the cup to his lips. Andrew was considering how he’d explain the next part—the massacre he’d escaped; the sure sense he had, that the dying baby Juke had called that massacre down—when Sam Green, ashen-faced, hurried back into the kitchen.

Harper set the tea down and glared at the man.

Sam spoke very quietly as he relayed what he’d learned. Jason Thistledown, he said, was missing from his room.

Also absent, said Sam, was Mr. Harper’s daughter Ruth and her friend Louise Butler.

“And it appears,” said Sam, his moustache tucked close over tense lips, “that Mrs. Frost is also abroad this morning.”

“Abroad?” demanded Harper, half-standing. “Where?”

“No one will admit to knowing,” said Sam Green. “I’m sorry sir, but that’s the full of it.”

23 - The Incident with the Shotgun

The old man sitting back in the chair across the room did not affect to notice Jason. The wooden chair legs creaked as he pushed back on two of them, leaning the back of the chair against the wall beside the window. He smoked as he sat there, his eyes focused on the glowing bowl of the pipe. The stem of it disappeared behind a thick moustache, over a whitening beard that drooped down onto his shirt. Hanging from a peg on the wall was a long white sheet that reached the floor.

Jason lay very still on the cot. The only move he’d made, he figured, was his eyes opening up and there was nothing to be done about that. He kept them narrow, so maybe this fellow wouldn’t see, and think him still unconscious.

Jason had in fact been awake off and on for some time. He first came to slung over the shoulder of a sheet-backed man, as his own shoulder banged against a door jamb that he thought might have been part of the rear door of the hospital. He’d gasped and passed out again, and then thought his eyes might have opened in a brighter room, looking up at a couple of ghosts in sheets talking about something. He might have seen Dr. Bergstrom at one point, or he might not have. Because here in this little hospital room, with a window just starting to lighten with the pre-dawn sky and the light just so and the quiet man who had no obvious gun on him, Jason thought that he was finally coming properly back to his own mind. Those things outside—the first one and maybe the others—they’d done something to him, whether with the whistling or the stuff the first one had coughed at him.

Whatever had happened to him, he’d had a chance to shake it off. Now he just had to figure out how to take this fellow. That sheet on the wall made it clear that he was no friend.

The man took the pipe out of his mouth and examined it.

“You’re a smart boy,” he said, still not looking up, and Jason’s heart fell. There was no fooling this fellow.

Not with any simple ruse, anyhow.

“Don’t know how smart I am,” said Jason, swinging his feet around and sitting up. “I’m here, ain’t I?”

The fellow looked up. His eyes were deep-set under thick, silvered brows. He took a puff on that pipe of his as he looked Jason up and down. “Smart mouth on you too,” he said in a flat voice. The two front chair legs made a sound like a coffin lid closing when they hit the floor and he leaned forward.

“That’s all right, young Mr. Thistledown,” he said. “You can be just as smart as you like. Ain’t nobody going to hurt you.”

“Late for that.” Jason looked down at his trouser leg, which was torn and stained in blood and dirt, and at his arm, which was also cut from the attack out-of-doors.

The man shrugged and said, “You had worse, I expect.”

Jason looked at the fellow. He had a long face, with cheekbones sticking out far as those brows, like ledges on a cliff. Jason got to his feet and the fellow stood up as well. He was a tall man, six foot or more Jason guessed. He moved in an easy way that Jason knew should make him afraid.

“I don’t know you,” he said. “You sure seem to know me.”