The Name He Used
They had Jack saddled when Hollis came through Clara’s gate.
The marshal held an envelope between two fingers.
Mary Jane watched him approach.
“If that’s another statement, put it in the post.”
“It came from the post.”
Eddie tightened the last strap on his saddlebag.
“For me?”
“For the office. Care of you.”
Hollis handed it over.
The paper had traveled. One corner had softened where it had been damp, and the address was written in a cramped hand Eddie knew before he saw the name on the back.
Elias MacRae.
He opened it beside the hitching rail.
His uncle had written only two pages.
Eddie read the first standing.
Then he sat on the porch step.
***
*Eddie,*
*Your letter reached us. Your mother has read it enough times to wear the fold. She says you are to write again before she begins deciding for herself what “mostly all right” means.*
*I have asked after the name on the quarry papers.*
*The Ash Springs Stone Concern was dissolved years before the mine employed you. Its remaining papers changed hands more than once. That alone proves very little.*
*The copy of your burial entry is another matter.*
Eddie lowered the page.
Hollis waited by the gate.
Mary Jane sat beside him.
“Go on.”
He read the next lines aloud.
“‘I sent Harrow your question. He compared the original death entry with the wording you copied from the strip beneath the bell.’”
Eddie stopped again.
The strip had named him.
Edward Bone.
Ash Springs.
He could still see it beneath the brass pressure arm.
Mary Jane took the letter when he offered it.
“‘The wording matches the copy made for the account of burial expenses,’” she read. “‘That copy was requested after your return was already known.’”
Hollis came closer.
“After?”
Eddie nodded.
His uncle had underlined the date.
Someone had asked for a dead man’s paperwork while the man himself was walking around repairing fences.
Mary Jane continued.
“‘The request was submitted through an agent. Harrow has not identified him. The fee was paid in ordinary coin. Do not assume everyone involved knew what they were supplying.’”
Eddie took the letter back.
At the bottom of the page, Elias had added one final sentence.
*They did not need to discover that you had died. They needed someone willing to certify it after you had returned.*
For a while, Eddie looked at the road beyond the gate.
Then he turned to the second page.
***
His mother’s handwriting filled the lower half.
Elias had evidently left her the space.
*Your uncle says this is useful information. I say useful information can wait while you eat.*
*Silas has repaired the garden latch. Your father has repaired Silas’s repair. It closes now.*
*We have not moved your things.*
Below that:
*Come home when you can. Come hurt if you must. You needn’t make yourself presentable first.*
Eddie folded the letter.
Mary Jane looked at him.
“What do you want to do?”
He glanced toward Hollis.
“Make a copy of the part about the burial expense.”
The marshal nodded.
“And then?”
Eddie stood.
“Then we leave.”
***
He found Anna in the kitchen.
She was wrapping bread in a clean cloth while Clara argued that they ought to take another jar.
“You’ll want it tomorrow.”
“They have to carry it.”
“They have horses.”
Anna saw Eddie and stopped trying to settle the matter.
“Samuel’s awake.”
“I’ll go up.”
She put down the bread.
“We’ve decided to write again before we travel.”
“To Ellen?”
“Yes. Tell her enough that she can choose whether she wants us to come.”
Eddie nodded.
Anna smoothed the cloth with both hands.
“I keep thinking of her as a child.”
“She may have children.”
“I know.”
She looked toward the ceiling.
“Samuel said the same.”
For a moment, she seemed to be listening to a house much older than Clara’s.
Then she picked up the parcel.
“This is yours.”
He took it.
“Thank you.”
Anna held his hand a moment longer than necessary.
“You told me the truth when it would have been easier to promise.”
“Not always quickly.”
“You told it.”
She let go.
***
Samuel sat beside the upstairs window.
His breathing was still rough, but he no longer had to stop between every few words.
Lucy occupied the floor near his chair, arranging the striped stone Jonah had given her among three ordinary pebbles.
She looked up.
“You’re going.”
“Yes.”
“Will you come back?”
“If the road brings me this way.”
She considered that.
“Could you make it?”
Eddie sat on the edge of the empty bed.
“Maybe.”
Samuel smiled faintly.
“That means she’ll expect you.”
Lucy returned to her stones.
After a moment, she held one out.
Not the striped one.
A small gray pebble, nearly round.
“For your pocket.”
Eddie accepted it.
“What’s it do?”
“Nothing.”
He turned it over.
“That’ll be useful.”
She grinned.
Samuel waited until she had moved closer to the window.
“Hollis showed me the statement about the letter.”
“Rell’s?”
“Yes.”
Eddie rested the pebble in his palm.
“They knew enough to use my name.”
Samuel looked down at his hands.
“A name gets written a great many places in a life.”
“And after.”
“Yes.”
Outside, someone called for a horse to stand still.
Samuel shifted in his chair.
“When I copied the account, I thought I was making a second set of figures.”
“You made something they couldn’t quite get rid of.”
“I nearly didn’t.”
Eddie looked at him.
Samuel kept his eyes on the window.
“I had a wife. Children. Wages I needed. Cress knew that.”
He drew a careful breath.
“I would like to tell you I challenged him in front of the whole camp. I didn’t. I changed the line when he wasn’t looking. Then I hid the copies.”
“They were there when we needed them.”
Samuel nodded slowly.
Eddie rose.
At the doorway, the older man called him back.
“If somebody has made a false account of you, keep your own.”
Eddie looked at the folded letter in his hand.
“I think I will.”
***
Jonah waited in the yard.
His cane leaned against the fence. He stood with both feet on the ground, though most of his weight remained on the sound leg.
“Clara says I can help with the pump when the doctor agrees.”
Mary Jane was checking her mare’s bit.
“Has the doctor agreed?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you’ve got time to find out how the pump works.”
Jonah smiled.
He handed Eddie a folded sheet.
“What’s this?”
“My statement.”
“Hollis has it.”
“That’s his copy.”
Eddie opened it.
Jonah had written slowly, pressing hard enough that some letters showed through the back.
*My name is Jonah Reed.*
*Mr. Bone and Mary Jane found me at the quarry. They brought me to Mercy when I was hurt.*
*I did not understand the paper Martin Rell told me to sign.*
*I am staying at Mrs. Mercer’s because she has offered me a room and I have chosen to stay until I can travel.*
At the bottom:
*I owe Mr. Bone no passage, service, or keeping. He asked for none.*
Eddie read the last line twice.
“Who helped you with the wording?”
“Mary Jane said to write what I meant.”
He glanced toward her.
She continued adjusting the bridle.
Jonah held out his hand.
Eddie shook it.
The boy’s grip was warm.
***
Doran was across the street when they brought the horses out.
The wooden horse rested beneath his arm.
Its new wheel had been painted a slightly different brown from the others.
“Leaving?”
“Yes.”
Doran nodded toward the toy.
“Couldn’t match it.”
“You’ll know which one you made.”
The man ran his thumb over the fresh wheel.
“I thought I’d put it by his photograph.”
Eddie nodded.
Doran looked past him at Clara’s house.
Through the open front door, they could see Esther carrying folded linen. Nathan followed her with a chair.
“I’m glad they stayed,” he said.
It took effort.
Eddie could hear that.
But Doran said it without looking away.
“So am I.”
The man shifted the horse under his arm and offered his hand.
Eddie took it.
Neither tried to add anything.
***
They stopped at the marshal’s office.
Hollis had already copied Elias’s letter.
The original lay on the desk beside a new sheet bearing the town seal.
He handed both to Eddie.
“What’s this one?”
“An account of your involvement here.”
Eddie read the first paragraph.
His arrival in Mercy.
The inquiry.
The recovery of evidence.
Further down, Hollis had written that no agreement by Edward Bone to receive or assume the quarry’s obligations had been established.
The statements obtained through concealment or false representation were identified and attached by reference.
It was dry reading.
Eddie liked it more the farther he went.
“Does it help?”
“With a court, I expect so. Elsewhere, I won’t pretend to know.”
Eddie folded it carefully.
“Thank you.”
Hollis hesitated.
Then he opened a drawer.
Inside lay the notice taken from the pine box.
**FINAL CONVEYANCE**
Eddie’s name beneath it.
“I was going to put this with the rest.”
“Do.”
“The box itself belongs to no one willing to claim it.”
Eddie glanced toward the side wall.
He had avoided looking there on the way in.
Hollis noticed.
“We can break it up.”
Mary Jane stood by the door.
Eddie looked at her.
Then back at the marshal.
“Where’s the screwdriver?”
***
They worked in the shade beside the office.
Eddie removed the handles.
Mary Jane backed the screws out of the lid.
Hollis found a pry bar, and together they separated the boards without splitting them.
The breathing holes remained.
So did the black lettering.
When the box had become a stack of lumber, Eddie lifted the lid onto two empty crates.
His name ran across the center.
He borrowed a plane from the carpenter next door.
The first pass barely touched the paint.
The second lifted a dark curl.
He worked slowly.
Mary Jane held the board steady.
No one spoke.
Edward disappeared before Bone did.
At last, the blade passed across clean pine.
Eddie set down the plane.
The board was thinner in the middle.
It would never be perfect.
Hollis ran his hand over the surface.
“Could use this for shelves.”
“Use it.”
“What about the holes?”
“Put that edge against the wall.”
Mary Jane brushed shavings from her sleeves.
Hollis stacked the lid with the other boards.
By the time they mounted, there was no box beside the office.
Only material waiting for work.
***
At the western wash, Eddie stopped.
The stone he had scratched on their way into Mercy still lay beside the trail.
He dismounted and found the mark.
A short line made with a nail.
Nothing impressive.
He stepped across it.
Then back.
The sky remained the sky.
No red moon.
No sudden darkness.
Jack lowered his head to investigate a tuft of dry grass.
Mary Jane watched from the saddle.
“Well?”
“Still a wash.”
“That’s encouraging.”
Eddie picked up the stone Lucy had given him.
He held it beside the marked rock for a moment.
Then he put it back in his pocket.
He did not need another marker here.
The road had one.
***
They rode west until Mercy disappeared behind the hills.
For a while, Mary Jane let him be quiet.
Then she said, “You read that letter as though it told you to stay.”
“Which one?”
“Your uncle’s.”
Eddie looked down the road.
“Somebody asked for the burial account after I was alive enough to object.”
“Yes.”
“They could do it again.”
“Probably.”
He glanced at her.
She shrugged.
“I don’t see how telling you otherwise helps.”
He thought of Rell’s forms.
The place left for a signature.
The account waiting for someone who could be persuaded to carry it.
“I want to know who sent the name.”
“We’ll follow what Harrow finds.”
“And if he finds nothing?”
“Then we’ll know that much.”
They rode on.
At the next bend, Mary Jane brought her mare closer.
“Where are we going now?”
Eddie looked toward the mountains.
Home lay beyond the miles ahead.
His mother’s letter rested inside his coat, beside Lucy’s drawing, Jonah’s statement, and the marshal’s plain account of what had happened.
“Home.”
“All right.”
She settled back in the saddle.
It was a simple answer.
For once, the road allowed it.
***
They camped beside a shallow stream that evening.
Eddie loosened the saddles while Mary Jane made a small fire.
The bread Anna had wrapped survived the day better than Clara’s jar, which had leaked syrup into the corner of the saddlebag.
Mary Jane discovered it first.
She held up the sticky cloth.
“Horses,” she said. “Apparently that solved everything.”
Eddie laughed.
The sound surprised him.
He sat beside the fire and opened the small notebook he used for repairs.
Past a sketch of a pump linkage.
Past measurements for a hinge at home.
He found a clean page.
Mary Jane watched him dip the pen.
“A letter?”
“Something Samuel said.”
He wrote the date.
Then:
*We left Mercy this morning.*
He paused.
There was a great deal he could put next.
The quarry.
The moon.
The people who had come back.
The man who had tried to make a debt out of them.
Instead, he looked across the fire.
Mary Jane was scraping syrup from a spoon with the edge of a knife.
Jack stood beneath a cottonwood, tearing steadily at the grass.
Water moved over the stones.
Eddie wrote:
*Mary Jane is here. The horses are sound. We are going home.*
Then he signed his name.
Eddie Bone.
The ink dried while he watched.
Hello World!!! 3