The Bully of Order Read Online Free PDF

work. Bellhouse said that if Tartan knew how to swim he wouldn’t mind the water, but it wasn’t the drowning that scared him; it was the swimming darkness that would slide by his legs and nip his fingertips before it swarmed on him and ate him like an apple, one bite at a time.
    The tug stood funeral-calm at idle while Bellhouse and the captain were in the wheelhouse. The door was latched, and a golden, somehow nautical light filled the single window, and like the golden light Tartan felt his exclusion fill him absolutely. I should be paid, Tartan thought. I should be able to face the son of a bitch that shot me, even if he did aim low and with rock salt. But no, I’m the second man, never held command. A fox for the traps and lion for the wolves.
    When Bellhouse finally opened the door and came out, Tartan expected to see the old man bloody or possibly dead but he was sitting unharmed in his chair with both hands on his desk.
    â€œNot to the ground then?” Tartan said to Bellhouse.
    â€œThe bastard’s a straight line. We’ll let him run. He’s sorry as hell for shooting you.”
    At Bellhouse’s signal a deckhand on the tug began to winch them in. When the two vessels closed, Burheim and Nitz dropped to the deck, and they all went over the rail onto the tug one after the other. Tartan went gingerly, the pain making him swoon, and once he’d boarded the tug he clung to the rail and took a moment to gather his courage. Bellhouse went into the wheelhouse, and moments later the engine was shut down. The wind and the roar of the distant breakers were the only sounds. They drifted away from the Feather and waited for the merchant ship to drop anchor, and then they did the same. It was well after midnight, judging by the glow of the moon behind the clouds. They’d wait until dawn to navigate the shoals.
    Tartan found a place among the line and tackle and settled in to rest. He took off his pistol and his knife and shoved them behind his back. Nitz and Burheim sat on the massive cleat at the rear of the wheelhouse and pulled their knees to their chests and shared a cigarette. Sometime later one of the deckhands brought them blankets. Tartan watched the clouds and waited for the first drop of rain.
    People had called him Michael and Joseph and William before, but it had been Mr. Billings at St. Mary’s who bestowed the name Tartan on him, and he’d kept it, allowed it, nudged it along. At the orphanage they’d taught him the value of secondary and tertiary lives. Names were lives. The heart is a light and the body a vessel. They taught him the power of lust and violence. What makes a man willing makes a man weak. Or strong, like Bellhouse was strong, and he could be. God knew Tartan could snap bone, but for now, he was done in, weary to his blood. And Nitz and Burheim were still babbling about one or another of their runs on the Line. What makes a man loud makes a man weak. What makes a man blunt stupid makes a man weak. A hog for the mud, a mule for the traces.
    â€œYou shoulda seen it,” Nitz said. “I picked him up and spun him and right when I was about to let go and send him headfirst into the fireplace he bit me.”
    â€œThe fuckin badger boy,” Burheim said.
    â€œI slammed him down and I had my thumb in his eye to the root, felt his brain slime go under the nail.”
    â€œMama.”
    â€œDrippin like I’d had it up a cooze when I finally thwupped it free.”
    â€œAnd he was dead?”
    â€œTwitchin and pissin in his drawers but not dead, no.”
    â€œEyeless?”
    â€œOne-eyed in Aberdeen, worse than no-eyed in Gaza.” They laughed.
    â€œShut yer mouths,” Tartan said.
    â€œApologies, sir,” replied Burheim.
    â€œWe’re stone,” said Nitz. And save for a little nervous laughter it was finally quiet. The two of them were all of seventeen, and last week Burheim had killed a man at the Alaska Bar and