Supper was held at the same time, every night, and if you wished to partake, you were welcome to appear. I went every night, in part because I was bored for company, and also because I was hungry. The other passengers always asked me to say Grace, and I didn't mind. I was thankful for the food. The cook was uncommonly good; I would have ridden that boat another week to let him feed me.
I want to say he came from farther down the river. I thought I overheard—or maybe I just inferred—that he was from New Orleans.
There was always wine to go with the meals, but you had to be quick and beat the captain if he was there.
The poor man. I don't know what happened to him. It must have been tragic. He said he was on his way home to his wife; and when he said it, there was a blink and a twitch of his neck that told me one or the other wasn't true. He might have been going home, or he might have been going to his wife. I don't know which.
At the end of the night—after the captain had drunk himself to bed, and after the others had turned in for the night as well, I was left with Christopher at the table.
There was a serving girl, I think her name was Laura. She was pretty and dark. I made a joke with her once, about how we both kept our hair covered all the time. She smiled politely and ducked herself away from me.
Laura came and took our plates and Christopher was mellow, itching to play.
"You could deal some cards, if you like," I said.
His eyebrows went up.
"I know how to play," I told him. "I haven't got much money, but I can play for fun, if you like."
He thought about it and then laughed. "Listen Sister, I don't know if I'd feel right about that. But I do appreciate your offer. Would you like a little nip of brandy instead?"
"You'll drink with a nun, but you won't gamble with one, is that it?"
"I believe so, yes." He rose to get a set of glasses. From under the bar, he retrieved a square glass decanter with a glass stopper that looked like a doorknob. He poured me a splash, and then poured a bigger one for himself—a big drink for a big man.
"It won't be much longer now," I told him, accepting the glass and taking a swallow of its contents. "It's not much farther to Chattanooga. That's where you'll be leaving us, isn't it?"
"It is," he assured me. "I have some business to attend to there, and then in a few weeks, I'll be off for Denver."
"Big card game? That is how you make your living, isn't it?"
"Nothing gets past you, eh?"
"Not much. Oh, that's not true, really." I had to amend myself, since the purpose of my little river trip occurred to me, reminding me that I was a long way from as sharp as I needed to be. "All the wrong things get past me, or so it seems sometimes."
Christopher sat forward and took a big swallow from his glass. "Wrong things like what? Like missing a sermon about the evils of gambling?"
"Very much like that," I fibbed outright. "It's a pity, I must have slept late that day. I missed the ban on smoking too, though I maintain I can't find a verse for it in the Bible."
He gathered the hint and pulled a cigarette case out from the pocket just north of his watch. I accepted one, and leaned in for him to light it off a match. He held the flame steady in his palm and said, "I think there's one about treating your body like the temple of God, isn't there? Or did I dream that during Sunday school, too?"
"Very good, Mr. Cooper. Paul said so, in Corinthians."
"A very fine observation, ma'am. I couldn't have named a book for it if my life depended on it."
"That's a shame," I told him. "'Christopher' is a good Christian name. You should have listened closer at your lessons."
"Good Christian name, eh? Why, does it mean something?"
"It's from the Greek. It means 'Christ-bearer.' You're named for a Catholic saint, did you know that?"
He laughed again, for the wine always made him jolly like that. "I had no idea, and I assure you that my good protestant parents had no earthly idea either. It's probably best they're both passed on now, so I don't get the chance to tell them. But a saint, eh? So I'm saintly? What's in a name, after all? Roses and holiness for me, I suppose."
"As you like, Christopher. He is the patron saint of travelers, and people like ourselves—on long trips—often wear a medallion to invoke him for assistance. I have one on me, in fact, if you'd like it."
"You'd give it to me?"
"If you want it. I have others, you know how it is. It's only a little pewter thing, but if it would mean something to you, I'd like for you to wear or carry it."
The smile on his face told me that he felt like this was a furtive, naughty thing. "Sure, I'll take a magic charm off your hands. It's not like those beads you carry, is it? I've seen you sitting on the deck, praying with them. They're very pretty."
"No, this isn't like the beads. And thank you. They were a gift from my father when I entered the convent." And I'm not sure why, but I pulled them out from my pocket and handed them to him, just to show him.
He turned them over on his hands, stringing them through his fingers as if he might use them to make a cat's cradle. "Ebony?" He guessed, and I nodded. "And this on the back of this space, here? What's this? A wolf?"
"A wolf," I confessed. I hadn't expected the question. I wasn't thinking about it—the small silver link that held the rosary in the shape of a "Y." On the back was a tiny piece of art to remind me of home, and to remind me how the universe thinks in puns and patterns. "It's for my family, the Callaghans. Our crest has a wolf on it." I tried to say it with a gambler's nonchalance. After all, it wasn't important. It wasn't something worth remarking.
It certainly wasn't something to be nervous about.
But I was sitting across a supper table from a man who reads faces for a living, and I had a feeling he knew a liar when he spoke to one.
Christopher tensed, and I thought it must be because he was onto me. I was wrong. He shifted his eyes to the left and right like he was looking for something, or someone. Over his shoulder he cast a glance and, seeing nothing, called out, "Who's there?"
"I'm sorry?" I asked.
"Don't you ever get those feelings? Those prickly feelings like someone's standing nearby and watching?"
"Of course I do," I told him. I'd had those feelings ever since I got on board, when I deliberately trapped myself on that damned boat. I knew what I was doing; but that didn't make the tingling at the back of my neck any less unsettling. After so many hours, I suppose I'd simply become numb to it.
"Who's there?" he asked again, and I would have answered for him—had the fiend not stepped out into the light himself.
"I didn't mean to intrude, or cause any alarm." Jack Gabert slipped into the dining area. He slipped, I said—and I mean it that way. He moved like hot syrup pours across a plate; he glided and rolled. He filled the space he met.
I stiffened, I'm sure.
Christopher relaxed. What a fine primal sense he had! I'm sure it served him well in the gambling halls he frequented. Until he relaxed I almost thought—well, I almost thought that maybe I'd found some assistance. But no, he relaxed. He settled down into his chair and reached into a deep pocket for a cigar to join my smoldering cigarette.
And I'd almost thought. . .but it was just as well.
Here was a man in tune with the world around him. He heard small noises and took them to heart; he saw small details and filed them away in that part of the brain which quietly lies unless the body is threatened. I tried not to be too disappointed in him. He'd known he was being watched, but he didn't know what was watching.
It wouldn't be enough to save him, I didn't think. It wouldn't be enough to simply suspect.
"There you are—Jack, isn't it?"
"John. Or Jack if you like, for it suits me fine." I preferred 'Jack.' He looked me up and down and I let him. It was the first time he'd seen me close in quite some time. It might have been the first time he'd ever looked at me at all.
Oh, he knew what I looked like. He'd gathered a description, I'm sure. He'd glanced me for a few moments here and there, at least. And he knew my scent.
And when he looked at me—when he laid eyes upon me and let them rest there for those pointed seconds, I knew that the information they gave him was scant compared to what his nose was free to gather. He might have thought I smelled like candles and linen, or wool. He might have gathered I smelled like nighttime blue and something red.
He was mentally marking me. What had previously been a faint trail through a crowd—mixed with the interfering smells of the masses—his nose was distilling it down to something more precise and perfectly mine.
I knew, in those seconds, that he would never lose or mistake me again.
"Mr. Cooper," he nodded at Christopher. "And Sister." He nodded at me.
"Mr. Gabert," I called him.
Christopher waved his cigar and patted his chest pocket. "I might have another to share. Would you join us? I wouldn't ordinarily indulge in front of a woman, but Eileen swears she doesn't mind."
"Indeed I don't. I find the smell pleasing, if you want the truth."
Jack smiled and it was a sinister thing—a stretching of that slitted mouth, and a narrowing of those copper-brown eyes. "I imagine the little lady there is quite full of surprises. And I must tell you, I have a remarkably healthy imagination."
"I have no doubt," I murmured, pretending that the obvious and untoward implications were all I observed.
"Now, Jack—that's no way to—"
"I didn't mean anything by it, Mr. Cooper. I was only teasing. Since the good sister here can take a bit of tobacco, then I imagine she can handle a bit of banter as well."
"Whether or not she can—or chooses—to handle it, sir, it's unseemly and I'd rather you watched your language."
"Don't," I told Christopher. I put my hand out and placed it on his sleeve. "It means nothing, and no offense was taken. All is forgiven, as the Lord would have it."
I tried to put some gentle warning into my protestations. Jack was on edge—he was glistening with something malicious and happy. I didn't like the way he stayed on the fringe of the room, lingering at the doorway. The distance between us was surely meant to reassure us, but I knew how little it meant. I'd seen him clear greater spaces in less time than it takes to sneeze.
The gambler had no such frame of reference, though.
"I tell you, Mr. Gabert—ever since you joined us here, I've had some concerns. I've made gentlemanly efforts to be friendly but you rebuff me—and the other passengers, too—with a rudeness that is nearly intolerable." He was warm from the alcohol, I think. Or maybe that quiet, nervous part of his mind was working after all, and feeling defensive. "If you aren't interested in socializing with your fellow passengers, no one here would fault you for it. But there's no need to be crass to a woman of God."
I thought Christopher was going to stand, but he didn't. I left my hand on his sleeve as if by force of will I could hold him down.
Jack leaned against the doorframe. "She's no woman of my God."
"Then what God do you serve, if any you serve at all?"
I braced myself for a bit of snappy blasphemy, but he hesitated and held his breath. The question shouldn't have stalled him. I don't know why it did.
He leaned his head around the wall and glanced into the corridor. "No God serves me," he mumbled. "I suppose I could swear by my own true self, for I am the God of my own idolatry."
When he turned himself away from us like that, I spied something on the side of his neck—beneath his beard, and on it. It was black in the low evening light of the lanterns, but if he were closer, it might have been red.
There was more, too. On his jacket—but his jacket was black and probably silk. It only looked wet, but I wondered—wet with what?
I would have felt bolder if we'd been alone, the monster and I. I would have been more inclined to rise and confront him if not for the slightly drunken chivalry which would surely get in the way.
"Jack," I breathed.
He smiled at the light familiarity. Or maybe he smiled about something else. Upstairs, on another deck, I heard a fluttering commotion—like a large bird, dying. It was hard to sort out from the rain, though. The rain still pounded and poured, and all the sounds inside it were distorted.
"I wish it would stop raining," Jack said as if he'd read my mind. He said it in a faraway voice that changed the mood of the room. There was a coldness in his words, and in his tone.
Such a simple sentence shouldn't have made us shudder, but both Christopher and I did just that. "Yes," Christopher agreed slowly. I think he preferred to let the tension slide. Again the primal mind was working for him, trying to quiet his offense and ease the moment. "It slows us down, and I think we'd all like to reach Chattanooga as soon as possible."
"I wish it would stop raining," he said again. "It makes me feel so trapped. I wish I could see the sky."
With this passing thought, Jack turned on his heels and spilled back out into the hall.
A chill ran through me, from my feet up to my ears. Small hairs on the back of my neck and along my arms began to lift themselves like hackles on a threatened cat. It was the gold in his eyes, I think. It flashes brighter when he's hungry—or more precisely, when the hunger comes for him.
I had wondered if the rain would matter. I didn't know if it would dampen his needs, to use a comically appropriate word. I'd suspected it wouldn't. The night works on faith—clouds may cover it, but the moon needs no evidence to shine.
In retrospect we see these things so clearly. The covered sky only pent him up—it made him harder to control, because he had no point of reference. He could not look up at the sky and tell himself, "Yes, there is the moon and it is almost full of light. This is why my head is clouded, my blood is bubbling in my veins. If I am not careful, I will reveal myself. I must make precautions if I want to remain undetected. In a few days it will be easier. I will be all right for a few more days."
Before the rain came, he walked the decks when they were nearly empty. He knew what the sky would tell him, so he watched himself and his behavior. But with it gone? Even knowing what the moon would say, he was acting blind, with only his own instincts to guide him.
"Oh God," Christopher whispered, stuffing the cigar into his mouth and lighting it with fumbling fingers. And in that moment, in the wake of Jack Gabert, even though Christopher understood nothing at all, I believe that he knew.