BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 28

FEBRUARY 1897

CHAPMAN

Charles Chapman's face drains of movement. He is a painting, a statue, frozen in a moment, a place between a past and a future. A nexus in time, a fulcrum on which the past and future balance, though the future is now more weighted, the past less prominent and dissipating quickly. While his broader thoughts go to the repercussions that will soon result, his immediate perceptions lean to the medicine in his office. The men shutting the bank's doors can't leave soon enough, their flurry of action, a whirlwind that evades his ability to parse their behavior into discrete, particular deeds, can't be completed in a such a manner as to just be done. The two tellers have left, the secretary has left, only he, of the staff, remains. As the major stockholder, he feels he must.

"You'll have to leave, too, Mr. Chapman."

His entire mien jolts at once, his habit of politeness taking over. He adjusts his facial and bodily gestures into an appropriate response. "Of course," he says. "Let me grab my coat." He goes to his office, retrieves the laudanum, keeping himself between the man and his hands. He will have to procure more from Colorado, the Chinaman, the druggist unwilling to give him the necessary amount. Leaving, he tips his hat as if nothing has changed and he hears the door shut behind him, likely for the last time—at least for his purposes.

Some villagers have collected on the boardwalk, their curiosity piqued by the commotion. He nods to them, barely looks at the street as he starts to cross, but then he sees Colorado's unmistakable queue under a greasy, worn out cowboy hat. He is smoking in front of his laundry. Chapman walks down the boardwalk to meet him, his eyes scanning for acquaintances who might intrude on the business to come. "Mis-tah Chapman," Colorado greets him. Chapman goes into the laundry and the small Chinese man follows.

"Three," Chapman says, not interested in small talk.

"You have sklip?" Colorado asks.

Chapman already has the expected amount of scrip to pay him out in his hand. "Bank done?" Colorado asks, counting the paper. "Need more. Not so much worth no more. Maybe half as good, maybe no good, I take chance." Chapman would exert his disagreement but he is in a hurry, in need. He shuffles through his wallet for more. Colorado smiles, counts the stack. "Juss light." He steps to a chest in the back of the room, lifts a small parcel from its store, gives it to Chapman, who breaks off a piece and swallows it immediately. He puts the remainder in his shirt pocket and leaves, stands at the street for but a moment, then crosses.

He has not been well. Not an affliction, but its cure, has stricken him, making him weak and pale, absent-minded and distant, shaky at times and occasionally incoherent. He met Colorado years before. Colorado had been cleaning the bank after hours, saw him take a drink of laudanum and recognized the bottle. He had stepped over to his desk and set a chunk of opium there. "Same," he had said, before going on to finish his task. Soon, Chapman was regularly stopping at the bank after church services, sending his wife home with the children while he 'cleaned up some paperwork'. Colorado would leave however much product Chapman had left money for on Friday in his desk.

The situation with the canals has taxed his resources, the glut of scrip from the United piling up, unredeemable in the near future and perhaps beyond. "Don't mix religion and business," his fellow banker in Pocatello has said, his words not aimed at Chapman but a general surmise. Chapman, a Mormon, peripherally so—as needed for appearance—, had picked the wrong horse, assuming a quick turnaround on the scrip, which he bought for as low as fifty or seventy cents on the dollar and never more than ninety, and expecting a court decision in favor of the United. The Church's clout, which he deemed not just substantial but nigh-infinite, he imagined greater than it was. Their promises he thought more solid than they were, their interest in the canal less particularized than he expected. His appraisal now was that the Church wanted control of its people but to help them as little as possible. Their method, not so different than playing a trout—as he had been played by them.

What comes now, he can't say. The State tried to withdraw $22,000 and he had only $15,000 on hand. How often is that large a withdrawal made? He couldn't have foreseen that, though legally he was expected to. Now, the County will be taking legal action, fifty thousand of their money held in his bank. And not just Bingham County, but Clark and Bannock. The scrip he's not sure of, but it won't be worth anything or available any time soon, given the judicial proceedings coming.

Across the street, he waits for the train to pass. It moves slowly, enough so that a drunken teenager jumps on the hitch and then across, heedless of a potential fall and a consequent death or maiming. It stops, the lurching clangs dominoing down the tracks. A few seconds in limbo, then, followed by sounds of decoupling cars. A narrow quiet, then the engine changing pitch, the train reversing at an even slower pace. Other villagers wait, and he tries not to meet their eyes. He does not know everyone, but he knows most, he is the face of the bank, a man often about town, now he wishes he wore garb less obvious, something to make him blend. Word will have already traveled some, certainly to the shopkeepers. Questions will arise. Threats.

The cars shift to a stop again, the process's various sounds telling a railroad worker what transpires downtrack, sounds that bring up many possibilities to him—a swirl, not just of his own impending moments but the train's, a curious mix. Again the pause, again the reverse. This time, the train's speed picks up. A boy, perhaps eight years old, counts the cars. Another boy joins the count, making it a game. He takes the bottle out, gulps its contents. He will take Viola and the boys to Pocatello to stay, with her parents. They cannot stay here.

Finally, the train passes. "Sixty-one!" the boys cry. Chapman turns and smiles. "Big train," he says. "I saw one with 92 once," one boy boasts.

Snow lies in dirty piles along the side street. Horse dung litters the street randomly. Dirty smoke comes from the chimney of each home, coal turning to heat but also to soot. His home stands just two blocks away, a far enough distance to provide time to plan but not far enough to have second thoughts. When he steps through the door, he doesn't remove his hat, just tells Viola, who has come to greet him, to pack a suitcase sufficiently for a couple days and one for the children. They are visiting her parents, he tells her, her surprise less than her perplexity. But she complies. Good, she has not heard any news.

The United loan has been troubling the bank for well over a year. When the segregation was first overturned, Cluff had approached him and he had eagerly accepted the scrip proposal. Did Cluff know that decision would be rescinded within a week to allow Skeen to respond? Or was Chapman just unlucky? That initial sweet promise soured quickly, that early solid euphoria cracked at once. But it was restored when Dubois joined the fight for the United, before shattering again when Cluff failed to show for a compromise meeting with the governor. Since, letter after letter from Chapman to Cluff yielded nothing more than a trickle of money, barely enough to pay the interest on the United loan. It was the same at the Chapman Store.

Meanwhile, the scrip rolled in. The brethren were so proud, touting their community spirit, that they worked without money and lived as one, but the scrip they used at the few stores that took it had to be exchanged by the shopowners for money to buy goods to stock their stores. The scrip piled up, the settlers only holding what they needed to buy water for their own land and turning in the rest of the paper at the stores. He was the settlers' only source of cash, other than that one dollar a day that came from the United. It was what kept them working, why they kept accumulating scrip, trading it around between themselves some but all of it ending up at Chapman's.

Bundled up, the family gets into the buggy and heads for Pocatello, will get there late, well into darkness. The ruts show the way, the horses know it well, the ground is frozen still except on warm days, like today, when the top turns greasy from thaw—Johnny Hutchinson called it 'clabber', something left from his Scottish background. The opium sets in and calms him, his biggest worry not the bank anymore but his source in Pocatello at the Triangle, where the Negroes, Italians, Chinese and prostitutes congregate. Colorado's supposed brother has supplied him at times there and he imagines will continue to do so. Where he will get the money to purchase what he needs he doesn't know.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston