Power in the Blood by Greg Matthews

just pork chop and spud hungry. Your little baby there, he won’t eat right if you don’t.”
    “She.”
    “She. Babies, you have to be careful. Have to give babies what they need or they get sick, so the pie, that’s for her, see, even if it’s you that eats it.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I know about babies. I had one, and a wife. They both were lost last year, taken away by sickness, so don’t you be getting sick, you hear?”
    Zoe’s chop had already disappeared. Without pause, she tackled the pie. The waiter watched her eat his gift. He wouldn’t charge for the chop either; it would all come out of his pocket, but he considered it a worthwhile investment.
    “Tully’s my name; what’s yours?”
    “Zoe Dugan.”
    “And the baby?”
    “Naomi. I call her Omie.”
    “I expect you’d tell me to mind my business if I asked where you’re headed this fine day.”
    “West.”
    “West? Now, that brings to mind a mighty big picture. How far west?”
    “I don’t know. I need to find my brother Clay, and Drew, he’s my brother too. They’re out west somewhere.”
    “I hope you find them,” Tully said, his voice somber. He could tell Zoe was admiring his mustache. It was the mustache that first attracted the other girl, the one who’d run off to Kansas City with a man who hadn’t half so fine a set of handlebars. Tully bet she’d be regretting her choice by now. He bet if he showed up in Kansas City and found her, she’d fall into his arms and stroke his mustache and say what a fool of a girl she’d been. She was so pretty, much prettier than Zoe. Her name was Lovey Doll Pines, and Tully had to admit he was still in love with her. There could be no real substitute for Lovey Doll.
    Tully had heard there were jobs aplenty in Kansas City, so much bigger a place than Springfield. He knew also that bold moves were not a part of his nature. He wouldn’t mind striking out for Kansas City if there weren’t the possibility of disappointment when he got there; he needed to be sure ahead of time his attempt to win back the runaway would be met with success, and Tully was intelligent enough to know such things are never guaranteed.
    Of course, if he went there with another girl in tow, and never did meet up with Lovey Doll, or found her and was rejected all over again, he’d have the second girl right there to comfort him. His mind was working quickly now. In Tully’s boardinghouse there was a man named Aspinall, a stonemason by trade, bound and determined to go west. “There’s folks dying out there by the score,” he maintained, “and nothing but wooden markers to show where they lie.” Aspinall didn’t doubt there was a place for him beyond the Mississippi, and Tully didn’t doubt the man could accommodate in his wagon passengers such as himself and the little mother wolfing down cherry pie.
    Several families invited him to live with them, including that of the doctor who sutured his cheeks. Clay used the lattice of horsehair stitches on either side of his face to resist answering them all. He would tap his mouth and shake his head, like a dumb person. Some people in town thought Clay’s tongue had been shot off, but the doctor assured anyone who asked him that no, the boy’s tongue was intact; it was only the flesh of his cheeks that was disfigured.
    Clay took a room at the hotel while recuperating, and it was there a lawyer came to inform him that the Delaney farm and all stock, equipment, dwellings and furniture thereon belonged to him; Edwin had made a new will just ten weeks before his death, stipulating that his son—he referred to Clayton throughout the document as his son—be the beneficiary in the event of Edwin’s wife predeceasing the boy.
    “It’s all yours, Mr. Delaney,” the lawyer said, genuinely pleased for him; the entire county was talking of nothing but Clay’s grit in tackling and killing the murderous Chaffeys. At the Delaney funeral, many complete strangers had shaken his