by D. J. Butler
He said it three times. Then he stood, feeling fatigue and hunger dragging at the long muscles of his body. If Ammon were healed, maybe he’d be in a more tractable mood. Could Gus Dollar be the cause of the boils? For a witch, boils might be a simple curse.
Hiram made his way back to Michael in the truck. He tied the shovel into its place and wadded the flour sack into a ball in his pocket.
“Did he sign the offer?” Michael asked as they drove back down to the main road.
“No. Take a right and we’ll bed down farther up the canyon.” He didn’t want to camp too close to either the mine or Gus Dollar’s store.
“No hotel room?” Michael objected. “What about my delicate constitution?”
Hiram grunted.
About a mile farther up, the canyon opened and the road split. To the left wound a road that looked as if it would climb over the hill to the far side of the ridge from where the Kimball Mine lay. It most likely led to Apostate Canyon. What would lie on the right hand, then? More mines? Former ranch lands?
“Go left,” Hiram said.
A quarter mile farther up, they stopped at a place where the road crossed a broad patch of flat ground. Hiram found a good spot about fifty feet from the track, beside a dry creek. A stretch of sand beneath a leafless cottonwood was ideal for the tent they’d set up. There was no flowing water, but they had several gallons on the back of the truck; it was freezing, but they had the camp stove and piles of wool blankets.
They pulled on warm hats, scarves, and leather gloves, their fingers warmed by rabbit’s fur. With their coats on and moving about, the cold wasn’t too bad. They moved in frozen white clouds of their own breath.
They pulled their camping gear from the back of the truck, lit a kerosene lamp, and cut long branches off the cottonwood. They used the tree branches to form a frame for their tarpaulin and Hiram lugged over the hobo stove, a portable hunk of iron. A fire might warm them for a bit, but once the iron heated up, the hobo stove would do a much better job. Hiram had several big lumps of coal that would burn through the night. They would have to keep rolling over, with one side of their bodies always heating up and the other always going cold, but it would be tolerable sleeping.
While Hiram started the fire in the stove under their shelter, Michael undid his bedroll, then sat on his bedding with his Sears, Roebuck.
He started plucking, and yodeling in a low voice. The salty dog was gone, but now Michael was singing some sort of blues drone, promising to be some woman’s monkey. Hiram shook his head.
He put twigs and dry grass inside the stove as tinder, then lit it with his Zippo. He’d put it to the side of the shelter so it would vent up and out and not fill their little space with smoke.
Once the stove was started, Hiram threw the balled-up flour sack into the flames.
Michael continued to yodel, playing another blues song.
Hiram let out a sigh. “That’s enough, son.”
“Not a fan of Jimmie Rodgers?” Michael asked.
“I have no idea who that is. Let’s just get some rest.”
Michael didn’t put his guitar away. “How about this one, Pap?” He then strummed a strong series of chords, which meant nothing to Hiram, until Michael began to sing: “The spirit of God like a fire is burning…”
Hiram had grown up singing that hymn, with his mother and Grandma Hettie, and on rare occasions his father. It was an early Mormon hymn, by W.W. Phelps, written for the dedication of the Kirtland Temple in 1836. Hiram loved Phelps’s hymns, and often sang them to himself while working.
Michael had noticed.
Hiram sang along now in a quiet voice, quiet, because Michael sang so much better. But for the second verse, he had to raise his voice because Michael failed on the words. They sang the third verse, finishing on a pair of lines that made Hiram’s hair stand on end.
That we through our faith may begin to inherit
The visions and blessings and glories of God.
Michael ended in a flourish of extra-loud chords.
“Now that’s a good old song,” Hiram said.
“True.” Michael nodded. “But you know, Pap, someday these new songs are going to be good old songs. And I’m sure a hundred years from now, some old-timer will be complaining about whatever new music there is about, and he’ll say that the only good music is the old music. Like Jimmie Rodgers, for example.”
“Undoubtedly,” Hiram agreed. “But I don’t think W.W. Phelps ever begged to be anybody’s salty dog.”
“So you’re still a believer?” Michael asked. “Even after all the trouble we’ve seen here, the fighting, the greed, the insanity of the Kimballs, fighting each other over a mine that should be open, you still believe there’s a God in heaven with our best interests at heart?”
Hiram stuck a hunk of cottonwood, its bark peeling away in dry strips, into the stove. The fine tendrils caught. “You think because we don’t have everything we want in this life that God can’t exist?”
Michael shook his head. “That’s too easy. If I say yes to that, you’ll point out that you don’t let me have everything I want in life, so does that mean that Hiram Woolley doesn’t exist? But I’m not just talking about natural disasters, I’m talking about general wickedness. Greed and theft and murder.”
“So because there’s evil in the hearts of men, we shouldn’t believe?” Hiram asked.
“I guess I think that means that God isn’t doing His job very well,” Michael said. “If you gave me ultimate power, I’d make sure every kid got a meal. And I don’t mean cat meat. And when people did rotten things to each other, I’d step in and straighten them out. I wouldn’t let things lie until some final judgment.”
Hiram nodded slowly. “If you went and intervened any time somebody did something wicked—which happens all day, every day—there would be no room for faith. If God wants us to develop our capacity to act in a world of uncertainty, He has to stay mostly out of sight.”
“Faith, huh? So the whole point of life is to learn to do what you’re told, even when no one can give you a good reason for it??”
“Doing what’s right is reason enough,” Hiram wished he could be arguing theology with a ham sandwich in his belly.
“And how do you know what’s right?” Michael pressed. “Isn’t it because someone tells you?”
“You might have a point,” Hiram said. “Maybe God isn’t good at His job. That doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. Maybe He’s busy doing other things, and so He leaves the work to us. That way we can develop not only our faith, but also our love for other human beings.”
Michael jumped on that. “So what good is a God that doesn’t do a perfect job? Isn’t that the point of God? To be perfect? And if he’s all-powerful, why can’t he just make me love other people?”
Hiram felt that his mind was clear and his reasons sound. He also saw that Michael had far more energy than he did, and very strong feelings.
“If I answer this, can I go to sleep?” Hiram asked.
“I’ve been practicing a jazz tune about whoopie that I wanted to shock you with. But maybe if you answer my question, I won’t scandalize you tonight.”
Hiram stoked up the fire before he slid in a shoe-sized hunk of coal. Adult-shoe-sized, rather than baby-shoe-sized, like the stone on Ammon’s mantel. What kind of stone would Ammon Kimball put on display? Not some lucky rock. Something with historical significance? Something that was passed down in the family? A stone the possession of which was evidence of status, or power, or blessing.
Had Teancum Kimball possessed a peep-stone?
“You know that bucket we had, the one with the crack in it?” Hiram asked.
Michael didn’t quite guffaw, but he got close. “Sure, the bucket with the crack in it.”
“Did that bucket work?” Hiram asked.
“Yeah, but it dripped, so you couldn’t keep it full, and it’d get you wet if you weren’t careful.” Michael gave Hiram a quizzical look. “So the bucket wasn’t
perfect.”
“No. And neither is the world. Neither are we. And maybe, somehow, neither is God. At least, the way we experience God isn’t perfect. There’s static on the radio, traffic on the road, unexpected bad weather, but it somehow works. Makes a mess, sure, but I didn’t say God was clean. That’s what some folks think. But in an imperfect world, God has to deal with both imperfect possibilities and imperfect people. Coal is dirty, but it burns long and hot, and on a night like this, I don’t want to wake up with a dead fire. Imperfect choices, dirty possibilities, buckets with cracks.”
“Huh.” Michael didn’t sound thoroughly convinced.
“Genesis says that God planted the garden in Eden, and Jeremiah says He was a potter. Do you know what gardeners and potters have in common? Dirty hands. Earth is dirt, Adam was dirt, you and I are dirt, and God is down here working among us.”
“With a crack in His bucket.”
Hiram nodded. “God is as dirty as we are, and most of the time, that’s okay.”
Whether he was satisfied or not—and probably he wasn’t—Michael fell silent. Hiram stretched out on his bedroll, laid his head on a gunny sack stuffed full of his extra clothing, heaped blankets over himself, and tried to sleep.
The sand under the tarpaulin was soft, and it was easy to get comfortable. Hiram let sleep take him. His dreams never came into focus, but the bright pinks and yellows gave him the idea he was dreaming of Samuel Kimball’s painting of Apostate Canyon. The lines kept blurring out of focus, and when he got close to it, the whole thing erupted into a swarm of flies.
A noise woke him.
He thought it was a howl. He lay next to the stove, which was glowing red hot. His chest was warm and sweating, his back ice.
He lay on the ground, listening to Michael’s breath, coming in regular intervals. He was sleeping, but Hiram was wide awake. What had awoken him?
Coyotes probably. If they yipped and yowled once, they’d do it again. He sat.
Crack!
Michael snapped awake. “What the hell was that, Pap?”
Hiram kicked off his blankets. He didn’t go for the lantern, and he wasn’t about to throw a stick of wood in the stove. Either action would only make him more visible.
He groped for the flashlight in the sand, and couldn’t find it.
“Who’s there?” he called.
No answer.
Hiram stood now and stepped toward the Double-A, eyes straining to pierce the darkness.
He heard footsteps, and a sound that might be laughter. A high-pitched giggle.
“Jesus Christ, Pap.” Michael sprang to his side. “It sounds like it might be people out there.”
Hiram didn’t comment on his son’s profanity. The noises could be made by innocent hunters, or bandits, or animals. Could there be ghosts in the darkness outside his camp?
“Hello out there!” he called.
There was no answer. Innocent people would answer. His chi-roh amulet lay cool on his chest. Was it a tad more cold than usual? He reached into the gunny sack, under his extra clothes he used for a pillow, and came out with his revolver.
He heard laughter again, high-pitched, a cackle, from something that might or might not be human.
Hiram felt a shiver trace cold fingers down his spine. “Let’s get to the truck.” The Double-A was about twenty feet away, sitting in the weeds, with the main road another thirty feet off.
Across the dry creek the land sloped upward into pines and rocks. Could whoever was laughing be on the other side?
But then he heard the crash of branches down the creek. With no visible moon, and only a few stars peeping here and there, the sky was pitch black. The glow of the stove didn’t do much, except show their position.
Hiram smelled something out of place, a vaguely fruity smell. That cackle again, staccato, high, and then crashing into a giggle. An image of a dead girl, leering with black teeth, filled his vision. In one hand, the dead child held an equally dead cat by the tail. The other gripped a cottonwood stick spear. That was Callista, with a maniacal gleam in her eye. Was it his imagination? A hallucination?
“I’m armed!” Hiram yelled.
Silence.
“We’ll get in the truck and drive away,” Hiram whispered to Michael. “No sense risking trouble.”
Then his ears started to ring. Ringing, and buzzing, and Hiram had the sensation that flies were crawling on the skin of his arms.
And then the smell of garlic.
He heard the sound of running footsteps. “Into the truck, now!” he barked.
As they both scrambled to get into the Double-A, the smell of garlic thickened in Hiram’s nostrils. He sucked in air desperately, trying not to plunge into darkness.
In the camp they had just vacated, the hobo stove crashed to the ground, spilling coals onto the dirt. In the bloody light, Hiram saw two man-shaped shadows, coming at him from the creek bed.
“Drive,” Hiram muttered.
“Pap! You okay?” Michael wasn’t starting the truck. Why wasn’t he starting the truck?
Hiram couldn’t answer, the sickly-sweet stench overwhelming him. Mustard. He smelled mustard in the garlic.
He found himself pressed against the dashboard, not sure how he got there. Then he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, he could only smell and then could do nothing but slide forward into darkness.
The dead girl’s giggles followed him downward.
Chapter Thirteen
Michael’s hands shook so much, driving into Helper, that Hiram nearly took the wheel.
Given that he’d just had a fainting spell, he held back. Instead, he rested a hand on Michael’s shoulder and whispered words of encouragement. “You’re alright, Michael. It’s okay to feel nerves after something like that, son.”
Michael said nothing in return and kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Hiram didn’t have a charm for calming nerves as such, but he knew a passage from Isaiah forty-three, and he repeated it several times. He whispered it under his breath, probably inaudible to Michael over the growl of the Double-A, but for Michael to hear the words wasn’t the point.
“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”
The scents that had overwhelmed him earlier had faded, leaving behind a bitter stink. If he thought about it, he could just find in that odor a faint olfactory halo reminiscent of picnic mustard, as if someone had broken a bottle of French’s in the cab of the Double-A, and it had only imperfectly been washed out.
He realized he had dreamed. Clutching the Saturn ring, he searched his mind and found the images again. He’d raced down a desert road, calling out Michael’s name in vain, as he had before. He’d also dreamed of a pit. There was no exit from the hole in the ground, and a deep voice calling a question to him over and over again.
But Hiram couldn’t remember what the question was. Perhaps that was just his own fear tricking him.
“I left the stove,” Michael said. “And I found the flashlight in my coat pocket.”
Hiram nodded.
He took a deep breath and recited the Isaiah verse again as Michael turned onto Helper’s Main Street, and the washboard rattle of the dirt road was replaced with the smooth hum of rubber on asphalt.
“Do you think we can find a boardinghouse here that isn’t a bordello?” he said.
“I’m pretty sure we can’t.” Michael’s face cracked into a shaky grin. “We may just have to gird up our loins and face the spiritual danger.”
“‘Gird up our loins’ doesn’t sound very good in that context.”
“‘Gird up our loins’ doesn’t sound good in any context, Pap.”
“That one.” Hiram pointed at a signboard that read Boarders Welcome, Long and Short Term. It hung on the front of a building that might otherwise have been a large brick house.
“E
xcellent,” Michael said. “The most boring-looking front on Main Street. We shall be spiritually safe there.”
“I’d settle for physically safe.” Hiram shook his head.
Had someone tried to attack him and Michael in their camp? Or merely frighten them?
Who would have done such a thing? Naaman Rettig? But Hiram had been on his errand. Ammon? But he had just given the man a healing balm, and Ammon had shown him no hostility.
Gus Dollar?
And if Gus, then what was the nature of the persons…or creatures…that had invaded their camp that night?
A second sign on the boarding house said Bufords. Pale light shone through the first-floor windows, and when Hiram and Michael slunk into the parlor, a long hallway extended back in front of them. To the right was a door with a little sign tacked to the panels: Mr. and Mrs. Buford. Proprietors.
Hiram hated to do it this late, but he rapped on the door. It took several knocks, but eventually the presumptive Mrs. Buford, a substantial woman in a sleeping cap and a nightgown under a thick robe, cracked the door open and gave him a glare that could have lit coal. Through her open doorway, he saw a phone on the wall in the entryway into the Bufords’ room.
Michael raised an uncertain hand. “Good evening, Mrs. Buford. Sorry to wake you.”
She grunted but agreed to rent to them as long as they paid for three nights, up front.
At Hiram’s request, the room was on the second floor, the street-facing side of Buford’s Boarding House. When Hiram pulled back the heavy crimson curtain, he could see the Double-A, parked diagonally at the curb between a Dodge Model KC and a bright yellow convertible roadster with white sidewalls. The room had a single bed, large enough for both of them, and a porcelain wash basin on a table beneath a tall mirror. A second mirror hung on the door. There was a slat-backed wooden chair, painted black. The water closet was at the end of the hall.
Michael hung his coat on a peg on the wall. From his pockets, he removed the revolver and the extra loader.
