speak." Napoleon grinned, touched his forelock in an imaginary salute, and then watched as Calvin rushed from the room.
Calvin the American Maker and Honor‚ Balzac the annoyingly ambitious young writer, both gone from the country in the same day. And the pain of the gout now gone from him.
I'll have to be careful getting into the bath. I might scald myself to death without knowing it. I'll have to get someone else to climb into the water before me. I think I know just the young servant girl who should do it. I'll have to have her scrubbed first, so she doesn't foul the water for me. It will be interesting to see how much of the pleasure of the bath came from the slight pain of hot water. And was pain a part of sexual pleasure? It would be infuriating if the boy had interfered with that. Napoleon would have to have him hunted down and killed, if the boy had ruined that sport for him.
* * *
It didn't take long for the ballots to be counted in Hatrack River - by nine PM Friday, the elections clerk announced a decisive victory countywide for Tippy-Canoe, old Red Hand Harrison. Some had been drinking all through the election day; now the likker began to flow in earnest. Being a county seat, Hatrack drew plenty of farmers from the hinterland and smaller villages, for whom Hatrack was the nearest metropolis, having near a thousand people now; it was swollen to twice that number by ten in the evening. As word came in from each of the neighboring counties and from some across river that Tippy-Canoe was winning there, too, guns were shot off and so were mouths, which led to fisticuffs and a lot of traffic into and out of the jail.
Po Doggly came in about ten-thirty and asked Alvin if he'd mind too much being put on his own parole to go spend the night in the roadhouse - Horace Guester was standing bail for him, and did he give his solemn oath etcetera etcetera because the jail was needed to hold drunken brawlers ten to a cell. Alvin took the oath and Horace and Verily escorted him through back lots to the roadhouse. There was plenty of drinking and dancing downstairs in the common room of the roadhouse, but not the kind of rowdiness that prevailed at rougher places and out in the open, where wagons filled with likker were doing quite a business. Horace's party, as always, was for locals of the more civilized variety. Still, it wouldn't do no good for Alvin to show his face there and get rumors going, especially since there was bound to be some in the crowds infesting Hatrack River as wasn't particular friends of Alvin's - and a few that was particular friends of Makepeace's. Not to mention them as was always a particular friend of any amount of gold that might be obtained by stealth or violence. It was up the back stairs for Alvin, and even then he stooped and had his face covered and said nary a word the whole jaunt.
Up in Horace's own bedroom, where Arthur Stuart and Measure already had cots, Alvin paced the room, touching the walls, the soft bed, the window as if he had never seen such things before. "Even cooped up in here," said Alvin, "it's better than a cell. I hope never to be back in such a place again."
"Don't know how you've stood it this far," said Horace. "I'd go plain bonkers in a week."
"Who's to say he didn't?" said Measure.
Alvin laughed and agreed with him. "I was crazy not to let Verily go with his plans - I know that," said Alvin.
"No, no," said Verily. "You were right, you came through in your own defense."
"But what if I hadn't figured out how to let the salamander's voice be heard? I've been thinking about that ever since yesterday. What if I hadn't done it? They was all talking like I could do anything, like I could fly or do miracles on the moon just by thinking about it. I wish I could. Sometimes I wish I could. It's still nip and tuck with the jury, ain't it, Verily?"
Verily agreed that it was. But they all knew that he wasn't likely to get convicted of anything now - assuming, of course, that the shelf of rock was still there in the spot Hank Dowser marked for