The Shadow Catcher

The world at arm’s length, for that matter.

Eight years had cost him his youth. Vigilant, serious, silent, the twenty-year-old bore the burden of Johnson on his bones like those Chinese, coolies, he had glimpsed at Western depots, laying iron in the sun and the rain for The Railroad.

Now at last he could welcome these strangers, his family, as his own freeing agent. A way out. A blessed release from the thieving old man.

Asahel, who had stood only a yard high when he’d last seen him, was now an eager young man. Dark and compact like their mother, Edward’s brother was not as tall nor as fair-haired as he but they shared a singular trait: they were the good sons, the ones who had stayed under steady employment — one to the mother, the other to Johnson.

They were dutiful, decent.

They weren’t Raphael.

But Edward was already planning escape. He had built with particular care a room in the house for his parents. A matrimonial room, three times the size of the other two bedrooms, same size as the kitchen. He had bought them, with his own wages, a bed. And a glazed-tile wood-burning stove he bartered off a Norwegian.

Give them a few weeks. Settle them in. Teach Asahel what he needed to know of the region.

Then he’d be off.

On his own.

Come and give us a smile, Ellen had begged him. She seemed shocked at the sight of her husband, half the size of his former self but still gamey, wild-haired and fierce for her flesh. Johnson had clawed through their first night together in the new bed and was dead of paroxysms of ardor and bile the next day.

Martyr, Clara’s mother had sighed when she’d learned of his death.

Ass, Clara’s father repeated.