A fire-engine red Chuck Taylor hightop, toe-cap snowily spotless, nudges aside a leaning sheaf of long green-yellow grass. The ragged shreds beneath it, short acrylic fur a white gone wetly grey, marred by streaks of grimy mud, a stuffed toy animal, belly of it twisted, torn, and matted clumps of fiber stuffing spilt from the wound. All in black Jo Gallowglas lowers her foot, pushing back more grass with one bared arm. The head of the toy’s vaguely equine, with a short black mane of some material stiffer than the fur, and sewn there, just above the blackly glassy eyes, stripes of rainbow colors spiraled into a horn-shape stiffened, perhaps, by a length of wire within. Gingerly she lifts it, sagging, limp, out from its dew-damp hollow, tenderly she turns it about, to cradle it in the crook of her arm. More loose stuffing drifts from the rip to float away, snagged by the lightening grass. There’s a tag, sewn to the seam of one stubby leg, and over the faded washing instructions blocky letters have been written in a child’s persnickety hand, ROY G BIV.

“Boss! Hey! Hey, boss!”

She looks up, eyes hidden away behind small round sunglasses. Sweetloaf, pompadour a-bob, stumbles toward her over junk-strewn tummocks, holding up a flat black something, “I think I fucking found it! Over there, by the,” looking back, missing a step, “shit!” waving an arm for balance, “that fucking tent, right?” The debris trailed off behind him, cinder blocks and bicycle wheels, boards from broken pallets, an upright shopping cart, that bent torchiere at a drunken angle, all spread from a raggedly irregular mound, edges of it knocked and tossed about in churns of mud and torn-up grass, surmounted by a small dome tent uprooted, tossed aside but still intact, a-wobble beige and orange in the morning breeze. “I mean,” Sweetloaf’s saying, “I don’t fucking know, I can’t turn it on. Not sure if it’s the fucking battery or, you know,” handing it to her, “that.”

The screen of the phone is softly misshapen by a web of countless whitely splintering cracks where there isn’t, here and there, a missing shard to offer a glimpse of the occulted inner works. She hands it back. “Get rid of it.”

“You sure?” He frowns, to see it back in his hand. “There’s a guy, out by Mall Two Oh Five, he’s a fucking wizard with that Gorilla Glass shit. Which,” but she’s turning, walking away, “fun fact,” he’s hastening after, “is not fucking made by gorillas!”

Past the trailer tipped over, hitch driven into the grass, past the van its side door gaping, unshaded, on toward the dull green motorcoach, stranded at the edge of the field, spray-painted bedsheet still hung by a hook or two on the side, and littering the ground before it, beside it, around it, tumbled from it hundreds of, thousands of magazines tossed, torn, crumpled, ground into mud, all of them each and every with the same bright yellow frame edging their covers. Picking her steps with care, Jo wades into them, over them, through them, across toward the door of the coach hung askew, reaching there to lay the stuffed toy on a cleared bit of the coach’s floor.

“Boss?” calls Sweetloaf, over the yellow-lapped field. “The fuck is all this? Somebody’s chucked, like, fucking,” he kicks something, “kibble, everywhere.”

Jo’s started clearing the steps, picking up magazines, stacking them neatly on the grass.

“Boss?” calls Sweetloaf. “Hey. Boss. Everything okay?” Offering a hapless shrug to Astolfo, coming up in his grey sweatsuit.

“Go on,” says Jo, flatly quiet, stacking magazines. “Get out of here. You’re done.”

“Boss,” says Sweetloaf. “Come the fuck on.”

“Your grace,” says Astolfo.

“You want to help?” snaps Jo. “Drag over some plastic. A tarp. Somewhere to stack the clean ones, go on. The ones they, they fucking,” tamp, tamp, evening the magazines in her hands, “trashed,” she says, stacking them with the others on the grass. “Set those aside. We’ll, figure something out. You.” She points to the third of them, young, slender, ashen hair in curls to his shoulders. “You’re new.”

He lifts a hand to his neatly knotted tie of gold, tucked safely within the placket of his fine white shirt. “Jeffeory, your grace. The Axe.”

“You’re the Axe.”

“I am but freshly dubbed.”

“Yeah,” she says. “If you’re the Axe, shouldn’t you be over across the river? With the Count?”

He looks to either side, but Astolfo’s already off that way, tugging at the van’s downed awning, and Sweetloaf’s stooped to gather magazines. “I serve the Queen,” he says.

“Yeah?” says Jo. “Well, okay. Let’s go. Hop to.” Smoothing a torn cover with her hand, the yellow of it framing what’s left of an image of an iridescent beetle, with great curving horns, that almost fills the palm of an unconcerned hand. She tips back her head, eyes hidden away behind those sunglasses, then sets the ruined magazine aside.

The weakly brightening air is breathless, still, untroubled by even a rumor of engine-rumble or tire-roll. By the back door, under the flight of stairs bolted to the brick, he leans out the doorway, one hand on the jamb, to peer at them, three worn plain cardboard boxes stacked one atop the others, hard by the foundation. The sky above a ceiling of flat pale shapeless clouds without definition.

Inside, though a cramped dark kitchen, down a narrow hall lined with cubbyholes, stuffed neatly each with mismatched pairs of shoes, and more of them lining the floor below, croc by stiletto, wedge by boot, sneaker by mocassin, he’s awkwardly looking around the two boxes in his arms so as not to step on anything. Clatter through a beaded curtain, strings of it rattling loud as they drag the cardboard, up to a worktable mounded unstably with yet more shoes, and more besides, fallen and tumbled in piles on the floor. He squats to let drop the boxes, shoving shoes out from under till they both sit flat. Lifts a hand to the mighty round of tight black curls crowning his head, but pulls away at the touch of them, scowl twisting. Up on his feet in a practiced, stoop-shouldered stance somehow at odds with the lanky power in his frame. Out through the curtain left swaying in his wake.

The beads, slowly, still. Silence for a moment, or two, before a slithery, shifting slip, a Chelsea boot, destabilized, disturbed, tips toppling flop from the worktable to the floor, taking with it buckle-clack an undone sandal, a brogue a-slide the slope of shoes, a  plimsoll tumbling end over end to fetch up at the edge of the table, buffered by a shower shoe, rustle and settling slump until all is once more still.

Back through the clattering beads with the third box, that he sets atop the other two, brushing down the front of his dull blue shirt. He pries up a stiff flap and reaches into a tangled nest of footwear to pull out a running shoe of teal and neon green. Eyes it, the pile on the table, the alluvium littering the floor, and lets it drop. Reaches in for another.

Unlocking the door he swings it open with a jingle of the bell, “Okay,” he’s growling, “okay, come on in,” and “I’m sorry,” says the woman stood there, shoulders draped in a wide pink scarf, “are you open?”

“Might as well be,” he says, switching on the lights in the front window. George’s, say the letters painted in red and yellow in an arc across the glass. Shoes Repaired.

“Is the,” she’s saying, “old man, here?” That pink scarf, her blue jeans palimpsested with felt-tip grafitti, her scuffed suede mules. The floppy knit toque on her head. “I heard,” she says, “he ran a sort of, lost-and-found?” Turning over what’s in her hands, a worn brown low-topped boot, panels of darker elastic on either side. “This is ridiculous,” she says. “Who cares about a shoe on the sidewalk. Lost and found. I could’ve just, I should just throw it away.”

“You could,” he says, his stern expression not quite a frown. She looks up to meet it. “No,” she says, looking away. “No.” Down to the boot in her hands. “If there’s a chance.”

He tips back that black-crowned head, his expression reluctantly letting go. A flick of a gesture, another, at her hands, the boot, she holds it up for him. “I might’ve seen the like,” he says, looking over his shoulder to the worktable, the whelming mound of shoes. “But it might take a bit.”

There’s a knock at the door, “A moment,” he says, but quietly, to himself, dabbing the mottled back of the photograph before him with the rubber-stoppered top of a small brown bottle. Presses a yellowed strip of paper to the glistening daubs of mucilage, 6/17/1983 Law Firm Seals Deal For Top Floor, the browning typescript stretched across it, (l – r) S. Yoelin, J. Dunn, G. Welund, F. Pinabel, G. Rhythidd, A. Pinabel, J. Sap, ending there in a feathery torn edge. He unscrews the cap from a fountain pen and sets to inking a second p there, beside the first, deftly counterfeiting slabby umber serifs. Again, a knock. “A moment!” he calls, louder this time.

“Package!” Muffled, from the other side of the door. “For the Outlaw!”

“She’s not within!” He starts on an e, finickily etching the curl.

“Well could you maybe take it for her? Come on!”

He lifts the pen, eyes the cap in his hand, looks up, lips pursed in a put-upon moue. Unfolds his legs to get to his feet.

He’s young, the man at the door, cheekbones hunched like shoulders under a squint at the effort of hauling the box in his arms over the threshold, “Where do you want it,” into the kitchen, and “Wait,” he’s left to say, hastening after, screwing the cap on his pen.

“Right here?” The young man hoists the weight of the box up onto the counter there, overlooking the room beyond.

“What, what,” he’s blustering, tucking the capped pen away in his vest, “what is that.”

The young man, stepping back, shrugs, his oversized yellow plaid shirt new enough that sharp creases still clench the back of it, and the sleeves. “For the Outlaw. Came to the warehouse for some reason,” he’s headed around the counter, looking down into the room beyond. “I drew the short straw.”

He nods at that, poking the box with his long and slender fingers, prodding it about. A bright red logo haltingly turns into view, Archie McPhee, it says. Home of the Original Horse Head Mask.

“So, like, what is this?” says the young man, headed down the three short steps, and he starts up, eyes owled with alarm, “No!” he cries, bustling around the counter, “Wait! Stop!”

“It’s, okay, it’s okay,” says the young man, hands held up, away, stood among all those banker’s boxes white and brown stacked in that room beyond, its windowed walls narrowing to a point. “What is all this? It’s not the Outlaw’s, is it.”

Arrested there at the top of the three steps, his still-wide eyes dart back and forth, the unsettled boxes, the photographs stacked here and there, the low table laden with his work, his tools, the onionskin paper, bits of newsprint, the tweezers, the scissors, the small brown bottle. “This one,” he says, slender fingers twining, one hand folding up the other over his narrow breast, “does maintain the morgue, at the direction of her grace, much as was done for the Devil.”

“Morgue?”

“Moments,” he says, those slender-fingered hands now firmly clasped, “fished from the river of time,” taking one step down, and another, “laid out for solemn and dispassionate consideration.”

“These are from, newspapers?” Looking over the boxes, a lid skewed here and there, the papers, folders, photographs within. “Like, their, paper files?”

“Clippings, and other ephemera, there, there,” a hand released, to vaguely point, “the bulk of the collection does consist of photographs, along with their accompanying captions, indices, and tags,” that hand withdrawn, refolded, “there are, several archives represented,” a wince, that’s almost a shrug, “and thus several such, systems, protocols, codes,” he frowns, not unhappily.

“What,” says the young man, unsquinted eyes gone serious, “what do you got on the Black Panthers?”

His frown pinches contemplatively. “Panthers?”

“Portland chapter of the Black Panther Party. Nineteen sixty-nine, seventy – Kent Ford? Johnson, Oscar Johnson? Sandra Ford? George,” he says, “Honeycutt?”

“This one must humbly admit the effort to secure the Skanner’s files was not met with much success.”

Those cheekbones hunch again, higher than before. “Then what have you got on Vanport?”

“Ah!” Eyes brightening, frown swept away, “yes, of course,” stepping among the boxes, “the Vanport flood, thirtieth of May, nineteen and forty-eight. The files should be,” one long hand lifted, wavering, but “No, no,” the young man’s saying, “not the flood. Anything but the flood.”

Those brows pinch again, lips pursing, “Construction, and the opening, would’ve been nineteen and forty-two, there may be files,” turning to point, but “Not the beginning,” says the young man. “Not the end. Just, what it was like, in the middle. Regular, everyday, whatever, you know? Anything like that.”

Those slender hands spread in an apology. “If it did not make the news, it will not be in this collection.” Arms folding, one long finger lifted to tap at thoughtful lips. “Perhaps,” he says, “the Historical Society?”

“Forget it,” says the young man, heading up three quick steps, “forget it,” but then, his hand on the doorknob, “Cora Bunch, okay?” he says. “You want the news, you find out what happened to Cora Bunch. She lived in Vanport.”

He doesn’t slam the door when he leaves. The short man looks away, back to his low table, “But, that would be absurd,” he mutters. “This one does not investigate.” He plucks the pen from his vest, and sets to unscrewing the cap.

“Tell her, Gee!” a burst of spangles and glitter, “you tell that bitch she can’t have my fucking song!”

“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” he says, without looking up from his ledger.

“Tell her, Gav,” says the woman following after, loosely wrapped in green terrycloth, “remix is not song. Song is not remix.”

“And I’ve asked you not to call me that,” he says, but the first woman’s whipped about, “The beat, it’s the fucking beat is the same, whenever everybody hear Charli kick in that Pink Diamond beat, that bip bip, doo boop-dee-boop, they know it’s about to be the Merch on the pole, only no, no, they hear that beat, that Pink Diamond beat, only it’s a fucking remix, and it’s your skanky Slavic ass instead!”

He looks up, then, rich red hair a-flop from a high widow’s peak. “This is about a song?”

“It’s about respect,” snaps the first woman.

“This is about a song,” he says, looking back to his ledger. “Play whatever you want.”

The second woman smirks at the first, who throws up her spangled hands, “No, Gee, goddammit!”

“Don’t shout, Merch.”

“Is Galveston,” says the second woman. “Like Glen Campbell. Galveston, oh Galveston – ”

“My aim is true,” croons a newcomer, crowding the doorway to that tiny, white-lit office.

“Rocky,” he says, shaking his head, “you aren’t helping.”

“Not in the job description.” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “Company.”

“It’s Saturday. It’s hardly almost noon. Who could possibly,” but his expression collapses, from indulgent bemusement to affronted disgust, “what,” he says, suddenly vehement, “under all the stars above, could you possibly want here?”

Rocky squeezes back against the wall of the hallway, making room as the Merch, glittering, shrugs back against the paper-piled cabinet, and Gina, resettling her robe, smiles bitterly to see who stands revealed. “Hello, old boss,” she says.

“Ladies,” says Chilli, yellow beard a-blaze in the white office light. “Been a while. Maybe head out front, get a party started? Need a word with your new boss.”

“Gina,” calls Gaveston, over the rash of departure. “Find another blasted song. Merch, don’t ever yell in this office again. And Rocky?”

“I know, I know,” she says, “make some damn money.”

He turns back to his ledger. “Get out,” he says, after a moment, companionably enough, but without looking up.

“There’s nowhere else I can go,” says Chilli.

“Not a problem,” turning a long lined page, “I need to address.”

“Oh,” says Chilli, “but Stirrup. You’ve been with us at every step of this path we have taken. Together.”

Gaveston looks up, then, and makes a show of turning his head to the left, then the right. “I see no us. I see you. Who sought a boon from the Gammers. Who abandoned that quest, to pick a fight with the Outlaw. Who – ”

“That was a duel,” snarls Chilli. “I prevailed.”

“Whose hand, last night, was on the hilt,” says Gaveston, quiet, cold. “Yours, and no one else’s.”

“That?” spits Chilli. “Is that why, that’s why you, that mewling sack of berry juice? She drew on me!”

“She was the Queen’s Huntsman, you rotten fool. You will not speak so, of her.”

“Whyever not?” The words too loud, and with a ragged edge. His gesture too sudden, his smile too ostentatious. “You think she’ll mind?”

“She was sent,” says Gaveston, flatly, “by the Queen, and you must – ”

“The Queen!” That big yellow head thrown back. “You said it yourself, Stirrup: the Queen? Is done!”

“No!” roars Gaveston, up on his feet, “no.” Leaned forward, planting balled fists on the cluttered desk. “I said, and I maintain, that an open Apportionment is dangerously foolish. I worry now, as I did then, that we will never see another bounty enough to keep it possible. But to say her majesty is done? Those words are yours, Harper. Not mine.”

“When I spoke them,” says Chilli, and his is now the quiet voice, and cold, “you were with me.”

Gaveston straightens, fingertips on the desktop now, not fists. “Do you know, Harper, where I was, but a year ago?”

A blink, another, uncertain at the slackening of the tension he’d been leaning on. “Sellwood?” says Chilli.

“I was a banneret, in Sellwood,” says Gaveston. “Four streets, and all their folk: Tenino, Umatilla, Harney, Sherrett. Their medhu mine to glean; mine the hand that received their portion, direct from her generous majesty.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Chilli.

“Then you remember, how it was never enough. How they would give, and give, and all we ever brought back were miserable pinches. You remember, how it was, just one short year ago.”

A wave of dismissive agreement from Chilli.

“September, then,” says Gaveston. “Eight months gone. Not even three full seasons – the Bride’s champion, in his foolish pride, lost a duel to a mortal slip of a girl, and the Bride and the Queen fallen out over it. And I thought to myself, it must be time, time to pass, from the one, to the other, and what harm could there be, in helping it along?”

Chilli, arms folded, beard hunched about his grim-set mouth.

“I went to the Duke, and urged him take the Bride, for with her hand would come the Throne. So was I there, the night a mortal slip of a girl sent Tommy Rawhead down to dust, and for my pains,” says Gaveston, sat back in his chair, “for his grace’s embarrassment,” adjusting the drape and knot of his burgundy tie, “my arms were sworn in service to the Hawk, my streets pledged to his coffers, and now,” a hand laid on the open pages of the ledger, “I manage a bawdyhouse on Foster Road, and it’s been far too long, since last I was in Sellwood.”

“And when the wind blows?” says Chilli, hoarsely gruff. “The one that doesn’t stop? That whittles her majesty’s bounty back down to generous pinches? Who will you whisper to then, Stirrup?”

“You miss my point,” says Gaveston. “I may grumble, I may growl, I may well have a beer, but I’ll take the pinch and be glad of it. My politicking days are done.” Smoothing the long page of the ledger with his hand. “Go on,” he says. “Get out. Bruno will soon enough know you’re here.”

“You,” says Chilli, “you wouldn’t call him, on me.”

Gaveston opens a drawer of the desk and pulls out a little phone, flipping it open. Chilli’s yellow beard gathers in a scowl, and he turns and steps without a word from white-lit office into the cramped shadows of the hall. The light shifts, as out there the door to the bar’s swung open, music coming into focus, snapping drums, relentless riff, a woman coolly chanting would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother, muffling again as the door swings shut. Gaveston deliberately folds up the phone. “Soon enough,” he says, and drops it back in the drawer.