Free States

8. GRACIAS NADA MAS

‘CABALLERO AND MUKHAMIR, you may be, Mr Oakenhurst, of the highest principles and most excellent suba’, but Captain Ornate allows no desafio aboard The Whole Hog and so your affair must be abandoned until such time you are both ashore. Those are Captain Ornate’s rules.’ Paul Minct speaks with a certain weariness.

Sam Oakenhurst now understands that he has been tested and that his honour is not at issue. He shrugs the matter off.

They sit together in the snug in the back shadows, a candle burning on the table giving unsteady life to Paul Minct’s geographic mask.

Mr Oakenhurst finds himself reading the fragments of words - ELMONTE, OLA, AX WELL HOU, CRISCO, CASTRO, ONT MAID, OHNSONS WAX and others - remembering his childhood when such brands were vital and had complex and casual meaning to everyone. The world’s realities changed, he thinks, long before the advent of the Fault. The Fault is perhaps the result of that change, not the cause. He cannot give his entire attention to Paul Minct’s words. The man disturbs and fascinates him. He gathers Paul Minct respects him, which is why he has been taken aside like this and not admonished in public, and he is relieved. But he knows he could never trust the enmascaro. Paul Minct could change his mood at a moment’s notice and casually kill him. Sam Oakenhurst is close to admitting he made a mistake. He should have found the nerve to stick it out at Ambry’s until the stem-wheeler came by. His self-disgust only serves to fuel his discomfort. He wishes the enmascaro would leave him alone, but already guesses Mr Minct plans somehow to use him.

(Paul Minct had been a blankey-chaser in the old days, Carly O’Dowd said. Mr Minct had gone after bounty boys, always willing to take a dead-or-alive. One day he had crossed the big bridge into Louisiana with six red scalps on his belt, all that was mortal of the Kennedy pack which ran wild for a while up near Texarcana and announced they’d founded a “white republic”. Captain Ornate retired. Mrs O’ Dowd called for more drinks. ‘Paul Minct’s a man who gets what or who he wants, one way or another,’ she said. ‘He was Peabody’s main chaser. He hates whiteys with a passion and would wipe them all out if he could. He loathes them so bad some of us think maybe he’s a blankey himself, or anyway a breed, who was fortunate enough to be burned in a fire - like the blankey who went to hell, got burned black and thought he’d gotten to heaven! Loosen up, Sam. Nothing much ever happens on The Whole Hog.’)

‘I was in a bad fire or two in my time, Mr Oakenhurst.’ Paul Minct fingers the tufts of hair on his skull. ‘You should hear my wife complain. But someone has to bring home the bacon. We’re the chaps who have to get out there in the world, eh? Nobody will do it for us. We are never allowed nor encouraged to the best. That’s the shame of it. We must seek the best for ourselves. It is what drives us, I suspect. Almost secretly. Will you be joining our little pasatiempo? You’d be very welcome.’

When Mr Oakenhurst accepts the veiled order with the same grace with which it is given, one of Paul Minct’s unsightly hands reaches into his and welcomes him to the school.

(‘He told me he had been in and out of the Fault five times. He says he knows secret trails which only he had the courage to discover. It is true that in the main he has no fear.’

‘Does he fear anything, Carly?’

‘Something. I don’t know. Is there a jugador brave enough to find out?’) Paul Minct offers his own pouch. ‘A cut above the Brandy Rake. It’s M&E’s Number Three. They’ll try to tell you it’s extinct, but they’re still making it down in Mexico.’

Against his better judgement, Sam Oakenhurst fills his long-stemmed pipe.

‘Señor Heat is an old colleague of mine. ‘ Paul Minct receives the ope again and puts it away. ‘Volatile and blunt, as you know, and a little uncouth, but one of the world’s great people He discovered the factory. The last Meng & Ecker’s is in a place called Wadi-al-Hara, the River of Stones, in Arabic. The Indian dialects give it a similar name. Guadalajara, the Spanish say. Mr Heat made his second fortune bringing it back. This stuff’s what the old days were about, Mr Oakenhurst. Not much of a vice compared to some we hear of. That’s what I remind my wife. She’s overly worried. My health. That’s women for you, isn’t it? My health, as a matter of fact, has never been better. But there you are. Now, Mr Oakenhurst, I know your credentials and I must say I’m impressed. How would you like to come in on a small venture I’m organizing?’

‘Well, sir,’ says Sam Oakenhurst. ‘I guess it depends on the game.’

‘Very good, Mr Oakenhurst. I take your point. This is in the nature of an exploratory expedition. But only the likes of us can even contemplate the kind of expedition I have in mind. Only a trained jugador has the patience, the experience and the gumption for it. And Mrs O’Dowd says you’re one of the best. Played evens with Jack Karaquazian.’

‘Once,’ agrees Sam Oakenhurst.

‘Quite enough for me, sir. I’m recruiting, Mr Oakenhurst, a few brave souls. Outstanding individuals who will join an expedition to accompany me into the Biloxi Fault.’

Sam Oakenhurst has a taste for pain but not for death. He resolves to play along with this madman whose pale unblinking eye awaits his acceptance, but if the time comes he will never go with him. That would be suicide. He will jump off the raft the first moment they sight land and put this fresh lunacy behind him.

He shakes Paul Minct’s hand.