The Bully of Order Read Online Free PDF Page A

stumps rising and falling like concatenate and diurnal creatures that subsisted on mud alone. God, was it a big wet mess of a place. Not that it’s improved much. Some of the roads are planked now and we have proper buildings, some of them quite nice with ornate woodwork and various styles of shingles due to our ever-expanding selection of mills and carpenters. Our shipyard is growing, too, and that’s a real business. A battlefield doesn’t have a shipyard. Still, the Harbor remains a mean, ignorant cousin of civilization. I see a passable mind, but cruel; a functional form, but twisted and ugly. What we lack in greatness we make up for in possibility. And what am I but another spark in this great conflagration of business and empire building? What am I but a man indicative of all I see?
    Duncan was suddenly loose from the kitchen and coming at me, nearly knocked over my tray, ink sloshed onto the blank page. I caught him by the arm and steadied him, and when he was still, I let him go. A gust of wind. “You’ll be running the streets soon,” I called after him. “Running the world.” He stopped and stared at me, swayed, swayed deeper, and fell over. I felt guilty as if I’d lied to him, because I had. He was angelic, unmistakably Nell’s; but at over two years old, and with a growing vocabulary, he still hadn’t called me father. There were moments when I’d rather stare into the sun than into my son’s eyes. Surely, one was more damaging than the other. Nell came and scooped him up and without a word took him back into the kitchen.
    â€œHe could’ve stayed,” I called after her.
    â€œNo sense in him driving us both to wickedness.”
    In my darkest hours I believed myself to be somehow poisonous and that I should never have had children. It pains me to admit that I preferred the window and the rain and the harbor to my son. Nell understood, or seemed to, and she gave me the room I needed. She believed I would come around just as much as I did. I loved deeply the idea of my family, and I promised myself to someday make sure to deliver on that idea. The contract was signed but the goods were in transit, yet to arrive. I was watching the docks. I’d keep watching. And dinner was ready. Dinner was on its way.

Tartan
    T he Feather rolled heavily with the weight of the lumber filling the hold and stacked on deck. The line from the tug slacked and tightened and slapped the surface of the water and rose dripping, a meaty rope thick as a hambone. Nitz and Burheim were on the foredeck with the Feather ’s crew. Nitz was swinging from the rail of the lifeboat, kicking his feet in the air, while Burheim was angling to get the captain’s boy into a corner, but a few of the deckhands had him courteously blocked.
    Tartan stood crookedly by himself in the stern and watched the water easily rise up and slip away, the pain in his leg rising and falling with it. The shotgun had been loaded with rock salt. So he should count himself lucky. It was worse than a steam burn, but he was all right. He’d had worse. He’d have that slint of a doctor with the pretty wife clean him up when he got back. It’d make for a long night, waiting for the salt to sweat down. Think of something else, breathe, and think of something else. He’d worked in the now-defunct Meyer mill when he first arrived in the Harbor and the overpowering smell of the lumber on the deck brought back unhappy memories. Nights in the bunkhouse the continuous drone of the mill, of the engines and cutting blades, came through the walls and tricked him into working in his dreams. Not that he liked being out on the water either. He was no sailor. He’d just as soon stay on dry land and keep his water crossings to the bridges. The mud bothered most, but not Tartan. It was easy to catch people if they ran in the mud, and they were ready to give up as soon as they fell. The mud did half the