Butcher's Boy

Yes, everything was still there, still real. He was still on a train bound for someplace called Hell's Half-Acre. Mornings were the hardest.

He'd been dreaming, and in his dreams, Mom and Dad were both still alive. Sunlight was streaming in through the kitchen windows and Dad was making pancakes like he always did on weekends. Dad ruffled his sleepy son's hair and gave him a smile as Jimmy shuffled into the kitchen . . . .

And then Jimmy woke up. Drat it!

Feeling the sudden, sharp pang of reality, Jimmy shook himself the rest of the way awake and lurched up out of the really nice, soft bed he knew he shouldn't be disappointed to find himself in. As bad as things seemed sometimes, he knew plenty of other people had it a lot worse. Of course, most of those people weren't expected to go up against a bunch of cold-blooded killers, but still . . . .

"Focus on the positive," he muttered to himself as he got dressed and ready to greet a new day. He still had a lot to be thankful for. Mandy – who was not going to have to wake him up this morning. Tem – who probably qualified as the niftiest brother-in-law in the history of brothers-in-law. Aunt Kate and Uncle Jeremy. Aunt Adele's relatives, who'd always considered Jimmy and Mandy to be 'cousins by choice,' just like some of his Secret Service family. He even had some real cousins on his Gordon and Fortune sides, though he hardly ever saw them. And Daisy!

Of course, Jimmy wished he had a few more friends his own age, but you can't have everything. He'd find a way to get by.

In a slightly cheerier mood, he went to Wanderer II's kitchen area. Sniffing the air, he got the feeling there was a reason he'd been dreaming of pancakes . . . . .

"Up already?" Tem asked, sounding surprised.

Mandy was standing by the stove and flipping pancakes on a hot griddle. She gave Jimmy a smile and thankfully did not attempt to tousle his hair as he sat down at their galley's wooden kitchen table. Less than a minute later, he found himself pouring melted butter and hickory syrup, just like at home, over a stack of steaming pancakes. Reality wasn't such a disappointing thing after all.

"I'm not always late getting up," Jimmy said as he put the syrup pitcher down.

"And it is the weekend, technically." Mandy sat down with a plate of pancakes herself. Tem must have already wolfed his down. Though knowing Tem, Jimmy thought, he'd probably been up at the crack of dawn regardless of what day it was to practice gymnastics and some of those hand-to-hand combat moves of his. They'd all been so intent on the task ahead of them, that Jimmy had forgotten the date altogether. Not that any of them, including Cole and Micah, would be getting much of a break for the sabbath from the sound of it.

"We'll be pulling into Nashville later today," Tem told him. "From there it's only thirty miles to Murfreesboro and the old battlefield, and the train tracks can take us right to the place in no time."

"Oh, good," Jimmy said, with not nearly as much enthusiasm. Still, maybe it wouldn't be a difficult territory to cover. "A half-acre isn't a very big battlefield."

"That's just the section my father fought in," Tem added. "It's a huge battlefield. There are a lot of other sections, like the Slaughter Pen."

Lovely, Jimmy thought. Hell's Half-Acre. Slaughter Pen. Couldn't we investigate someplace with a nice sounding name?

"It was one of the bloodiest battles of the War," Tem went on, with yet more detail Jimmy wished he didn't have to know. "Over 25,000 casualties. Dad took a wound there himself."

Even lovelier . . . .

Mandy must have picked up on some of what he was thinking.

"We'll handle the field agent part of the assignment," she told him, meaning Tem and her doing the danger duet again. "We'll need you to keep us supplied with materials, help out the engineers as needed, and keep your eyes and ears open in the city of Murfreesboro."

Left behind again. Jimmy felt ashamed at how relieved he felt at the prospect. He didn't want to gain a reputation as the coward or useless one of the trio, but this was the only strategy that made sense. He wasn't a field agent. He wasn't ready to deal with the scary stuff. He wondered if he ever would be.

"You might like Murfreesboro," Mandy suggested. "There isn't a war there anymore, but there are a lot of schools – universities, libraries, even a college for women – obviously an enlightened place. I've heard people call it the Athens of Tennessee."

Now that didn't sound so bad . . . .

"Libraries?" Jimmy asked, focusing on the key word.

"I'll bet there are lots of book stores too," Mandy nodded. "And shops to buy all sorts of things." She didn't sound disappointed by this prospect herself.

"Let's hope so," Tem sighed. "According to Micah, we pulled out of Chicago a little more abruptly than he and Cole were expecting. We aren't as well provisioned as we should be, if we're going to be living on board full time now. Micah would like us to help pick out what it is we want to be eating while we're here."

"That sounds like an assignment for Jimmy and me," Mandy volunteered hastily. Not only was Tem hopeless as a cook, he wasn't particularly adept at anything to do with food except eating it. Jimmy seemed to recall a couple of occasions when their parents had learned the hard way not to ask Tem to run the errand to the green grocer's. He never came back with exactly the right thing. It must be a West trait. Their Dad had confided to Mandy and Jimmy years ago that Uncle Jim was the same way. "Once we get there and the stores are open again, we can go together."

Okay, well he could be useful for some things. That sounded like an easy and straightforward enough task. After all, how dangerous could it be to shop for groceries?

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

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If Murfreesboro had become a base or hideout for evil, it sure didn't look it, Jimmy thought. No open associations with hell here. He was glad, since he and his sister had decided to ride their horses into town instead of trying out the horseless carriage, and he would never want to put Daisy in any danger – or himself either. There were libraries and institutions of higher learning here, and best of all, bookstores just as Mandy had said! He noticed his sister eyeing a local music store (M. Rosenblatt, proprietor), no doubt thinking of getting some more sheet music and supplies for her violin. Jimmy couldn't even imagine this nice, neat little city being a hotbed of Civil War intrigue or large, bloody battles only a generation ago. He almost hoped Tem and Mandy were wrong about their interpretation of the decoded sheet fragments. This place looked so nice he really wanted it to be nice.

Then again, Chicago had always been a wonderful city too, and it was hardly to blame for the calamities that transpired there, was it? If Murfreesboro was another innocent victim, it's a good thing they were here to put a stop to it. Good for Murfreesboro, anyway.

But that was neither here nor there right now. This morning was about something blissfully duller. Jimmy mentally stored the image of every shop and building they passed for future reference, the bookstores, the music shop, Falk's Gymnasium, which Tem might enjoy. The only butchery Jimmy wanted to contemplate today was the butcher shop ('Murphy & Son') they pulled up to. Hitching Daisy next to Diamond at the post with a pat and a promise to be right back, Jimmy followed his sister inside.

Like everything else in Murfreesboro, the shop seemed normal, nice and – for the type of business it was – neat. Large salamis and ropes of sausages hung from the ceiling alongside freshly slaughtered poultry and sections of beef and pig carcasses. Behind a glass counter, resting on paper and thick slabs of ice were other cuts of meat and poultry. Also behind the counter, the butcher, a huge, beefy and bald man had his back to them as he chopped something up on a wooden block for a customer. Their entry into the shop had caused a bell at the door to ring.

"I'll be right with you!" the butcher called out cheerily to his new, unseen customers. Jimmy thought that for a man in his profession, even the butcher seemed nice. The butcher finished up with the order he was working on, wrapped it up in brown paper which he tied with a string and handed it to the current customer before turning to his new clientele. As they got closer, Jimmy gained a better appreciation of the big man's size. He was well over six feet tall, very muscular, and though his head was bald or perhaps clean-shaven, he wasn't old at all. In fact, he couldn't have been much older than Tem and Mandy – who at twenty-six was the eldest of the three. This fellow was maybe thirty, or only a little over that, at most. His friendly smile sported a handlebar mustache just above a row of bright white teeth. But what also gave him a distinct appearance was a purple, heart-shaped birthmark that covered most of his right cheek.

"Can I help you folks?" the butcher asked. "We've got a nice bit of-"

Whatever the butcher had been about to say was cut off as Mandy suddenly pushed Jimmy back and took up a defensive posture in front of him. She raised her white parasol in front of her, and Jimmy expected at any second to hear the clicking sound that would indicate its readiness to release an electrical charge. But Jimmy couldn't understand why she was reacting this way. The man in front of them was big, sure, but he was behind the counter and not wearing any red cowboy hat. He didn't have a nasty scar around his chin either. The butcher seemed equally confused by her behavior. His friendly smile was replaced by a look of genuine alarm and he put up both of his hands as if a robber had just ordered him to do so.

"Is something the matter, Miss?" The butcher peered behind him as if to check for some threatening person that might be standing there. But he was the only one behind the counter.

"Charlie," Jimmy heard his sister say in an unusually flat tone of voice. "Charlie Murphy."

The butcher nodded and gulped, the way that nervous people sometimes do. Jimmy couldn't see his sister's expression, but he didn't blame the man for being nervous right now. Not a bit.

"Yes, Miss." The butcher's voice came out almost with a squeak. "Just like it says on the sign. "My Pa's passed away, but I'm the '& Son.' Uh, can I . . . can I help you?" Mandy must have been giving him her fiercest glare. He sounded terrified.

"You lived in Millwood Grove, Illinois years ago, didn't you?" Now Mandy's voice was a mix of ice and venom. Her words had an even more startling effect on the butcher. The blood drained from his face, his eyes grew wide and fearful and he started shaking like a leaf at the mention of the Gordons' hometown. When his voice did come out again, it really was as a squeak, and instead of an answer, the butcher only had another question.

"Was it you?" Charlie Murphy asked Jimmy's sister. His frightened gaze was looking her up and down, taking her in, as he put his hands in the air a little higher and took a step backwards to put more space between them. "It was you, wasn't it?" Tears began to glisten at the corners of the big man's eyes. "I'm sorry!" he squeaked. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

Jimmy looked from Mandy to the butcher and back with no idea what this conversation was about. His sister was shaking now too a little, not with fear but with anger. Without another word, but keeping her parasol in between them and the butcher's counter, she gripped Jimmy firmly by the shoulder and all but dragged him as she stormed them both out of the butcher shop, slamming the door behind them so hard that the bell on the other side could be heard making a clanging sound rather than a friendly ring. She stormed them straight back toward their horses, who shifted and stamped nervously, knowing the presence of an enraged Amazon warrior woman when they saw it. Then, just as abruptly, Mandy released her grip on Jimmy's shoulder, dropped the white parasol onto the ground, wrapped her arms around herself, still trembling, and lowered her head until it was almost resting on her chest. Jimmy wondered if she was going to start crying.

"God . . . ." she moaned quietly. "Oh, God . . . ."

Jimmy didn't know what to do, besides pick up the parasol – carefully – and try to reassure the horses. He didn't know how to reassure himself. He wished that Tem were here. Whatever was bothering Mandy, Tem ought to know about it or probably did already. How could a simple task like visiting a butcher shop go so wrong so fast?

"Mandy?" Jimmy asked. "Are you all right?" He felt stupid letting the words come out of his mouth like that. Obviously, she wasn't.

But Mandy was never one to stay out of control of her emotions for long. She nodded silently, gave herself a final hug and a shake and then stood up straighter as if nothing was the matter. She held out her hand and Jimmy gingerly gave her back the parasol. He also kept a wary eye on the door of the butcher shop, but there was no sign of Charlie Murphy or anyone else following them out onto the street.

"Yes," she lied. "Yes, I'm fine." Then she shook her head, as if realizing how absurd that sounded. "We'd better go someplace else."

That at least made sense. As they rode away from the butcher shop, Jimmy didn't ask her if she wanted to talk about it. It was plain that she didn't. But they were going to have to do something about whatever had just happened. If the butcher was someone she recognized from back in Illinois, and if he had recognized her, that didn't bode very well for her and Tem's cover as dead people. Mandy must have realized that too. She was pursing her lips in concentration, and frustration.

"Sorry," she sighed after a minute more. "It's me who's been careless this time."

Jimmy shrugged, not knowing how else to respond.

"You always do things for a reason," he said. "I'm guessing you had a pretty good reason."

She nodded, but made no other response. Jimmy was almost relieved when the uncomfortable silence that followed was broken by a vaguely familiar voice hailing him.

"James? James Gordon? Is that you?"

It was a small world in Murfreesboro after all. Jimmy turned around in the saddle and saw one of his favorite professors from the University of Chicago staring up at him. Uh oh. He'd already looked – too late to pretend he was someone else now! But Mandy and his parents had been frequent visitors to the University as well, and the professor might recognize her too. Neither had thought to disguise themselves for running a simple, basic errand in this unfamiliar location.

"Uh, Professor Niebhausen?" Jimmy hoped he looked nonchalant. "What are you doing here?"

The professor was all smiles and effusive hand gestures as he greeted his former prize pupil.

"Why, I've accepted a summer lectureship at the local academy! My boy, you must come visit me! We have so much to catch up on!"

They sure did, Jimmy thought. But most of what Jimmy had been doing the past few years wasn't the sort of thing he could talk to his former mentor about. Still . . . .

"I had no idea you were here too," Professor Niebhausen enthused. "And I see you've brought your sister along as well!"

Just what Jimmy had been afraid of – Professor Niebhausen had recognized Mandy, all right. Could their cover get much more blown if they tried? While he tried desperately to think up something, Mandy stepped in to try and rescue what was left of the situation.

"We're visiting family," she smiled wanly. "Only I'm afraid there's also a former boyfriend of mine I'm trying to avoid. We'd appreciate it if you didn't let anyone know we were here."

The professor nodded, but also looked a little crestfallen.

"There's no chance of your brother assisting me with a demonstration of my latest invention at the academy, I suppose?"

He gave the Gordon siblings an inquiring, hopeful expression. Jimmy shifted a little uncomfortably in the saddle, although Daisy remained a placid and easy mount. A few months ago, this was exactly the sort of opportunity he would have welcomed, but now was not a few months ago.

"Perhaps I could demonstrate it for you in private?" the professor wheedled. "I've invented a chemical solution that can detect the presence of explosives!"

"The presence of . . . ?" Jimmy couldn't feign disinterest. Such an invention, if it worked, would be very handy to have during the search for their mysterious arms smugglers. Mandy was listening with interest too. Now Jimmy was the one with the wheedling expression. Mandy said nothing, but gave him a tentative nod.

"Uh, let me check with the rest of the family, and maybe there'll be time for a private demo," Jimmy grinned. It really would be good to catch up with his old professor, at least a little.

Professor Niebhausen expressed delight and quickly scribbled out his lab's address and even the telephone exchange number at the Murfreesboro Academy and handed it up to him. A lab with its own telephone! Jimmy almost drooled at the prospect of seeing the rest of Professor Niebhausen's facility. No need for a home address – if Jimmy recalled correctly, Professor Niebhausen practically lived in his lab.

After parting with the professor, Jimmy and Mandy made one brief stop at a greengrocer's to pick up the bulk of the food supplies they needed before heading straight back to the Wanderer II with no further delay and – thankfully – no more unexpected reunions. They'd have to figure out the location of another butcher shop they could buy meat at, but in a city the size of Murfreesboro, that shouldn't be much of a problem. It was just a pity they'd had to go to that one unfortunate location first. But as for Charlie Murphy, the butcher . . . .

"Former boyfriend?" Jimmy asked when he and Mandy were out of earshot of everyone but the horses. He couldn't hide his curiosity – or his incredulity.

"Later," Mandy said in a clipped tone that would brook no argument.

Not much later as it turned out, though. Almost as soon as they rode into sight of Wanderer II, Tem came out to help them settle the horses and unpack the saddle bags. Tem was also the one person that Jimmy thought understood his sister even better than he did. His big brother-in-law didn't need to get within twenty paces to pick up on Mandy's emotions.

"Trouble?" Tem frowned.

"You could say that," Mandy admitted. "I ran into a very old 'friend' of ours."

"Just how old a 'friend' are we talking here?" he asked.

Mandy hesitated a moment before speaking. Could the butcher really be an old boyfriend? Jimmy wondered. But Mandy wasn't acting guilty or anything. When she spoke again, the angry edge had returned.

"Charlie Murphy," she growled. "You remember Charlie Murphy, don't you, Tem? The butcher's boy?"

Tem stood stock still as if in shock for a moment. Then his expression grew as quietly thunderous as Mandy's. Tem nodded.

"I remember." From the way he said it, Charlie Murphy had made a lasting impression on both that he would regret. Though judging by the butcher's profuse apologies earlier, he already did. And it didn't sound as if this other man from their home town had anything to do with either agent's Secret Service cases.

"So how come I don't know anything about this guy?" Jimmy demanded.

"You do – sort of," Mandy sighed. "But you wouldn't ever have met him. He and his family left town before you were born. You've heard us talk about him, though, if without a name." She sighed again as they led Diamond and Daisy into their respective stalls in the stable car and Tem, scowling, lifted all four of their saddle bags onto his rock-solid shoulders. She and Jimmy began removing the horses' saddles, while Mandy looked like she was choosing carefully her words before letting them out. "Do you remember me telling you about a boy who attacked me in the town park when I was little? How he held my arms and bruised me, and Tem got a black eye saving me from him?" She favored her husband with a sad, still-grateful smile.

"That's the guy?" Jimmy was astonished. He'd heard the story all right – many times. Even had a few different versions of it saved away in his special file box. But the genial, cowed and apologetic butcher they'd encountered that day acted nothing like what Jimmy might have expected from the junior bogeyman of family legend. He was big and strong, sure – still much bigger than Tem, and possibly stronger too. But nothing about him had struck Jimmy as bullying or the actions of a man who believed in attacking those he perceived as smaller and more helpless than himself, for all that some might argue his profession encouraged such behavior. "Are you sure?" Now that Jimmy thought about it, the butcher had all but confessed to his crime, but . . . .

"Very sure." Mandy's wan smile disappeared, to be replaced by something that almost looked haunted as she recalled the childhood incident from so long ago. "I know I've never given you many details. It isn't something I like to remember. But I'll never forget that birthmark on his face. Or how big he was. That part is sort of burned into my memory, just like I remember how it felt when he grabbed me by the arms and I couldn't get away. That's something I remembered again today." She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself again. This time she wasn't the only one hugging herself, though. Tem let the saddle bags slide to the floor as he wrapped himself around his wife protectively. She relaxed a little in his embrace and the sad, grateful smile came back, but only for a few seconds. "If Tem hadn't been there, if Tem hadn't come to my rescue . . . . The other older children at school had warned me that Charlie Murphy liked little girls. That he did 'not very nice' things to them. That part turned out to be true enough. Dad hadn't wanted to teach me how to do some of the things I know now, but that changed because of Charlie Murphy."

Jimmy had heard all about that too of course. He'd always sensed that their father wasn't too happy about needing to do it either, but Artemus Gordon wasn't a man who would do anything less than his best by his children. Jimmy had been too sickly and fragile to get a lot of the lessons in fighting and athletics that Tem and Mandy had received from both of their fathers. Mandy, though, was a lady who Jimmy knew had been taught just about every brawling, weapons and trickery technique in the book, whether it was considered ladylike or not, and done their father proud in being an excellent pupil. If Charlie were to try attacking Mandy now, his strength and size would no longer give him the certain upper hand. And while Tem might still be the best fighter of them all, Jimmy wouldn't want to lay any bets on which one was the sneakiest.

"I didn't even think about the name on the butcher shop that we went into. Murphy is so common. But I knew him as soon as I saw him, as soon as I saw the mark on his face." She turned in Tem's embrace to face him. "I'm afraid I overreacted, and then he knew me."

"Weird," Jimmy shook his head in disbelief. "The guy didn't seem like that at all."

Mandy frowned and pressed herself a bit more into her husband's embrace.

"Well it was him," she said. "Whatever sort of personality he's trying to hide behind these days doesn't change that. He knows it and I know it. The trouble is, he knows at least vaguely who I am, and right now that isn't a good thing." She sighed and looked up ruefully at Tem. "Oh, and that isn't all. We ran into one of Jimmy's old professors who's doing a summer teaching stint here. He recognized Jimmy, of course, but he recognized me too."

She and Jimmy explained about their encounter with Professor Niebhausen. Tem was as intrigued by the possibilities of the professor's 'explosives detection' material and agreed it needed to be checked out in case it could prove useful. But that didn't change the fact that both Charlie Murphy's presence, and Professor Niebhausen's, presented a problem.

"I'm not doing a very good job of being a dead person," Mandy concluded.

Tem hugged her all the closer.

"I hope you always do a terrible job of being a dead person!" he said.

"Me too," Jimmy added.

"The same for both of you," she told them. "But what are we going to do now?"

Jimmy looked expectantly at both of them. They were the adults here, after all, the real agents. They knew how to handle this stuff better than he did! Still . . . .

"I can go see Professor Niebhausen to try and find out more about his new invention," Jimmy volunteered. "We want to do that anyway." Plus it would give him a chance to look at that lab! "That way I can reinforce Mandy's story too, about us just being in town to visit relatives and about not saying anything to anybody because we don't want trouble with her ex-boyfriend."

"Sounds like a plan," Tem nodded, then frowned. "I think we'd better pay a call on Charlie Murphy as well, whether we like it or not." Mandy shivered a bit, Jimmy could see. "Jimmy, I'd like you with us there too."

"Me?" Jimmy hadn't been expecting that. "Why?"

Tem sighed.

"Because we can't afford other witnesses when we talk to him, but I think you being there reduces the chance that Amanda or I might do something we'll regret later."

Mandy said nothing, but Jimmy could see in her eyes she agreed with him.

"Okay," he agreed. He supposed he could understand that. It's not as if he would be going to talk to such a big man all alone. And the butcher really had acted more threatened than threatening.

As they left the stable car for the greater comforts of what Jimmy was coming to think of as the partnership car, he could only shake his head in puzzlement at the whole business. He'd always thought adulthood wasn't supposed to be this complicated. Turned out it was just one more learning experience – and he'd thought childhood was tough!