The Sporting House Killing by G. Powell (free ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📗

“Yes, sir. I recollect going there, but it’s real hard to recall exactly what happened once we got inside.”

“Why’s that?” Papa asked matter-of-factly.

“I must’ve drunk way too much, Mr. Calloway. I’ve had a bad head all day, and I just don’t remember much about last night. I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t come back to me.”

Papa seemed to be studying Cicero’s forehead. There was a bad bruise above his left eye, and Harley leaned forward to see. “How’d you get that knot on your head?”

“I don’t rightly remember that, either.”

His hands were still on the table edge, but no longer so tense.

“Let’s go about it this way,” Papa said. “Tell us everything you do remember about last night.”

“Yes, sir. Me and Jasper went to hear the preaching at the Tabernacle. I remember that because it was way too long. He went over pretty near all the sins. We decided to get something to drink after we got back to our room and took a hack down to Washington Street. I’d heard about a place you could get beer even on a Sunday.”

Harley tilted his head. “Did you know it was a bawdy house?”

Cicero nodded. “As a matter of fact, I believe I did.”

Papa spoke in a tone Harley’d heard many times when he was a boy. “Now son, did you go there for the beer or for the girls?”

“Well, the honest truth is probably both. That preacher got my curiosity up.”

“Tell us what happened when you got there.”

“All I really remember is we had some beer and did some dancing.”

“Who’d you dance with?”

“A real pretty girl. I don’t recollect her name.”

“Miss Georgia?”

“That’s it. Anyways, I remember dancing with her.”

“Who else was there?”

“There were two other girls. And maybe a man too, but I don’t remember him very well. And my roommate, Jasper, of course.”

“Who was the other man?” Harley asked.

“He worked there, I think. I don’t know his name.”

“Did you go upstairs with Miss Georgia?”

“I must have, but I don’t remember anything about that.”

“Do you remember getting in the bed with her?”

“Shucks, you’d think I’d recollect something big like that, but I sure don’t.”

Harley leaned back and watched Papa. He ran his hands through his hair, resting his elbows back on the table. He swept his hand across from cheek to cheek as if something wet were on his whiskers and then propped his chin on the palm of his left hand. His head cocked left. He stared at the boy, his eyes becoming bluer somehow. Harley knew what all that meant: After due consideration of the facts, Catfish Calloway had serious worries.

“They found you passed out plumb naked on the floor of a sporting girl’s room with a derringer an arm’s length away and the girl shot dead on the bed, and you say you can’t remember how all that came to be?”

“No, sir.”

Papa stared at him and shook his head. “Boy, if you don’t recall pretty quick, you’re gonna find yourself in prison for the rest of your life.”

Chapter 5

The Houston & Texas Central Railroad train came rumbling along the river toward the passenger depot on the east side of the river, shrieking like a banshee as it pulled into the terminal. A dozen or so people, Catfish and Harley included, waited on the platform. The colonel dozed by their bench.

Catfish smiled to himself. The whistle reminded him of the first time he’d ever met Henry Sweet. They’d been young men then—boys, really. At the beginning of the war, they’d embarked on a journey from New Orleans to Nashville along with a thousand other farm boys in their newly formed regiment. Most had never stepped outside their own counties. In those days, before war robbed them of youthful innocence, train rides were an adventure. The sound of the guns was still far away.

There were endless good-natured tricks perpetrated by those rowdy young Texans, and that blasted Henry Sweet had been at the bottom of more than a few of them, but Sergeant Miller always blamed Catfish. One time in Mississippi, they stopped to water the train and Henry spotted a scrawny calf grazing near the track. They were always hungry, even that early in the war, and Henry got the idea he’d requisition that beast. Privates didn’t have that authority, of course; not even sergeants could requisition livestock from civilians for food. But Henry reasoned they needed horses because they hadn’t been issued their mounts yet—and the army did requisition horses. Henry talked Catfish into helping him sneak the bellowing calf on board the train. Henry strapped his saddle on it to make it legal, and Catfish mounted up and prodded the poor, terrified beast down the aisle of the passenger car, to the hoots and hollers of their friends.

Just as the ruckus was at its loudest, Sergeant Miller appeared through the door at the end of the car. “God damn it, Calloway, you stupid-ass clodhopper.”

But Henry told the sergeant that Catfish’s family back in Washington County all rode cows. The furious sergeant had dragged Catfish off the hapless beast, and the calf had gone flying off the slowly rolling train.

Over thirty years later, Catfish could still see the sergeant’s red face, and he laughed out loud.

“Papa, what’s funny?”

Catfish sat up. “Nothing. Not a thing funny.”

The locomotive dragged its string of passenger cars, hissing and chugging, to a slow rolling stop. Steam shot out from the locomotive.

Henry was the first passenger off. Catfish broke into a big grin, waving wildly, then jumped off the platform bench and hurried toward him. The colonel hopped up too. Henry tossed his head in greeting. He limped slightly from the war and used a cane. He carried a carpet bag in the other hand. Like Cicero, he had thick, wavy hair, but his had gone gray long ago.

Catfish stopped short of his old friend, stood at attention in the center of the platform, and saluted. Henry shook his head and kept walking with a grin.

They embraced like kin.

“Catfish, you old silver