The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  “So your Father mailed it to him? And Samuel came back because of it?” Hiram asked.

  “Samuel came back to paint the West, paid by the WPA. Someday art collectors around the world will be glad President Roosevelt gave artists the work.”

  Teancum Kimball had mailed his son Samuel a stone and then disappeared. Samuel had then returned to his family home. But then, how did the stone wind up on Ammon’s mantel and not with Samuel out in the desert? Might this have something to do with the argument the two brothers had had at the mine opening? Maybe the stone had come with a letter, and the letter contained the information about the mine that Samuel was so confident that Ammon also knew?

  Or…the stone was a peep-stone, a seer stone, and Samuel had had visions in it, and he believed Ammon had had the same visions. Had he given Ammon the stone?

  Hiram would have to go to Apostate Canyon to ask Samuel directly.

  “Thank you for your time.” Hiram put his hat back on and left.

  Michael was waiting for him at the end of the hall.

  Hiram sighed. “Could you be a little less…”

  “Caustic? Sarcastic? Opinionated? Clever? No, wait…brilliant?”

  Hiram frowned.

  “Probably not,” Michael said. “Did you and Eliza Kimball have a moment? Is she going to be my new mother?”

  Hiram guffawed, slapped his son on the back, and headed for the truck. “Come on, son, let’s go to jail.”

  “Ah, the union lady.” Michael followed Hiram down the hotel’s stairs. “Is she my new mother?”

  “I don’t think you should expect to have any new mothers,” Hiram told him. “But it’s my fault she’s in jail, and I’ll do whatever I can to get her out.”

  “Like call her lawyer,” Michael said.

  “Yes.”

  Or employ more unusual means.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Double-A’s engine refused to turn over. When Hiram pressed the starter, it made no sound at all. He checked the key and the spark and tried again. Both he and Michael tried the crank with the throttle half-down and the ignition started. They inserted the metal arm into the socket in the front and spun the arm up, but the engine stayed dead.

  “The good news,” Michael said, “is that you just want to go to the jail next, and that’s about two hundred yards down the street.”

  “Helper’s a small town.” Hiram made a face. “But if the truck won’t start now, it probably won’t start in an hour, either.”

  “Well, you’ve tried all the tricks you know.”

  “But I haven’t tried all the tricks that the guy at Conoco knows.”

  A long whistle from a train shrieked and the city seemed to shake from the cry. Hiram took a deep breath; the train sound was not the whistle he had heard in the canyon. Hiram turned to lope down the street and Michael quickly caught up.

  The man working at the Conoco had long arms, greasy hands, and a cheerful smile. A shock of red-orange hair peeked out from under his forest-green cap. Hiram checked the name embroidered on his shirt.

  “Good morning, Bert. My Ford Double-A won’t start. I’m thinking it’s the spark plug, because I don’t get any noise at all when I hit the starter. It’s parked in front of the Hotel Utah. Can you walk up and take a look at it, or do we need to get it towed here?”

  The mechanic looked up from the engine of the car he was working on. “I’ll get to it in about half an hour. You can just leave the keys right there on the table.”

  * * *

  Mary McGill woke to the sound of the door opening.

  The drunks in the adjacent cell had been let out as they had sobered up, each receiving a lecture about the importance of savings and sobriety, and maybe it would be a good idea to let their wives control the spending. She had been dozing and dreaming of receiving just such a lecture herself when the door groaned open, and she sat up.

  Police Chief Asael Fox entered first, swaggering across the room on his bowed legs. Behind him came the tall farmer, Hiram Woolley. Fox walked right to Mary’s cage and grabbed it. “This gent here says he’s got a message from your lawyer.”

  Mary stood. “I’m glad you’ve let him in.”

  “He also admits he ain’t a lawyer himself. So I think I might just sit right here and listen while the two of you talk.” Fox pressed his florid face to the strips of the cage. There was something wrong with his appearance, but Mary couldn’t quite figure out what.

  Hiram Woolley looked flummoxed.

  “That’s very generous of you, Chief,” Mary said.

  “How do you figure it?” Fox frowned.

  She realized what was strange about his appearance. Where he gripped the cage with his right hand, Mary McGill saw a thumb and, opposing it, four fingers. But where he gripped with his left, there were a thumb and five fingers.

  Six digits on his left hand.

  “When I appeal my conviction,” she said, “my attorney, Mr. Nichols, will show the judges in Salt Lake City how I was denied my right to the assistance of counsel, because when he sent his agent, Mr. Woolley, the police chief insisted upon eavesdropping.”

  Fox stared with beady eyes. “That ain’t a thing.”

  “Sure it is,” Mary said. “It’s in the sixth amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” She was no lawyer and couldn’t have recited all the constitution’s amendments, but she knew this one. “You know, in the Bill of Rights? The first ten amendments?” Without meaning to, she held up her hands, palm out, and wiggled her ten fingers at the policeman.

  Fox hissed like a snake and leaped away. He glared at her and Woolley both as if he were considering just beating them with his nightstick then and there. Hiram Woolley gazed back coolly, and the policeman backed down.

  “Fine!” he called over his shoulder as he retreated. “I’ll just go get myself a cup of coffee. That means you got fifteen minutes, at most!”

  “Maybe you should be a lawyer,” Hiram Woolley said when the policeman had shut the door.

  Mary curtseyed. “When this country has the laws its people deserve, then I’ll hang out a shingle and speak at the bar. Until then, I have more urgent things to do.”

  Hiram nodded and said nothing.

  “So you spoke to Jimmy?” Mary prompted him. “As I suspected, the police chief has not let me have another phone call.”

  Hiram suddenly looked flustered again. “Maybe I should have written it down. Jimmy says there’s a problem with…jurisdiction, maybe? And he’s on his way with a writ right now. He says hold on, no later than tomorrow morning you’ll be out. If he’s driving all the way from Denver, I guess he must value you highly.”

  “He might be taking a train.” Mary smiled. “But he didn’t say hold on.”

  “No?”

  “No, he said sit tight. Didn’t he?”

  Hiram chuckled. “He did. I guess you know Jimmy.”

  “This isn’t my first jail, and it isn’t the first time Five-Cent Jimmy has come to fish me out of hot waters. Does that shock you, Hiram?”

  “No,” he said.

  “So I’ll sit tight.”

  He shuffled his feet. “I’m a little worried. Jimmy told me to keep an eye on you, in case they moved you.”

  “Where would they move me? There are only ten buildings in this town.”

  “I don’t know,” Hiram said. “But I guess if they’re willing to arrest you when they have no legal right, you being outside of town at the time, they might be willing to do other things they have no legal right to.”

  “I don’t want to say anything that will wound your tender heart,” Mary McGill said, “but it wouldn’t be my first beating, either.”

  “This is going to sound odd,” Hiram said, then stopped.

  “Go on,” Mary told him. “I just noticed that the police chief has eleven fingers. Whatever you have to say can’t be odder than that.”

  “It might be.” Hiram reached into the pockets of his coat and produced two items: a cheap copper ring and a large
dried leaf.

  “What is that, mint? How adorable. You’ve come to propose marriage, and you’re offering me tea as a dowry.”

  Hiram Woolley blushed. For a moment, Mary wondered whether she might want to spend more time with this Utah farmer, in a more romantic environment.

  “Before I go any farther,” Hiram said, “promise me you won’t mention these things to my son.”

  “Does the boy despise tea?”

  “You’re teasing me, but I’m serious. This is between you and me.”

  The flustered air had fallen away, and Hiram looked as solemn as a priest.

  “I promise,” Mary said.

  He handed her the leaf through the cage. “You’ll see writing on that sage,” he told her. “Those are the names of the twelve apostles.”

  “Ah, which twelve?” she asked. “I spent the better part of my youth at St. Francis Xavier Academy for Females in Chicago, you see, and I know that there’s more than one list.”

  “I prefer John, where possible, only John doesn’t have a list of the twelve apostles. So I followed Matthew. Because, you know, Matthew was a tax collector, and that’s kind of like being a lawyer.”

  Mary laughed, then caught herself. “You’re serious.”

  “Very.” Hiram nodded. “If it comes to an appearance in court, will you promise me you’ll put this leaf in your shoe? Under your right heel, if possible, but in your shoe.”

  “You want me to wear a leaf listing the twelve apostles when I go to court.”

  “Under your heel. In your shoe.”

  “My God,” Mary said. “You’re a witch.”

  Hiram grimaced. “A witch is what you call someone who means harm. I mean you no harm, Mary McGill.”

  Out of shock, or tenderness for the open-faced farmer and his tough, timid ways, Mary found herself taking the leaf. “I’ll wear the sage to court. And I won’t mention it to the boy.”

  “And here’s the other thing.” He nodded and held up the copper ring. It had a rough inscription that read ✝ achio ✝ noya ✝.

  Smart comments flooded into Mary’s mind, and she bit them all back, giving the farmer time to explain himself.

  “This ring helps a person escape from prison,” he said. “It will help you.”

  “Magic words?” she managed to ask without laughing.

  “A special name of God that Joshua used to defeat twenty-two kings and make the sun stand still.”

  “I don’t remember Joshua’s ring from when the nuns told me the story.”

  “Not everything was passed down in the Bible.” His gaze was so solemn and so vulnerable, she took the ring.

  “How does the magic work?” she asked. “Does it turn me invisible, or help me slip through the bars?”

  “I dislike the word magic,” Hiram said. “People expect that magic means you fly, or you can catch bullets, or you throw around balls of fire. Most charms are much subtler than that.”

  “Okay.” Mary nodded. “How does this charm work?”

  “Wear the ring,” he said. “You’ll get out of this jail.”

  “I’ll get out…because Jimmy will show up with the writ?”

  “Maybe,” Hiram said. “Maybe the ring will stop Jimmy from getting a flat tire, so he gets to you in time. Or maybe it will make the judge better disposed to your case. Or maybe it will make the police chief change his mind and let you go. Or maybe it will cause an earthquake, and you’ll walk out of the ruins of this building.”

  “Like St. Peter.” Mary smiled modestly. “The nuns told me that one, too.”

  “Will you please wear the ring?”

  “I’ll wear your ring, Hiram Woolley,” she said. “I can see you have faith in it, and didn’t Jesus say that if you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could move mountains?”

  At the word mustard, a shadow flitted across Hiram’s face, but then he smiled. “That’s exactly right.”

  She put the ring on her finger. “Two charms together should do the trick, don’t you think?”

  Hiram nodded.

  Mary smiled. “And where are you off to now, then?”

  Hiram took a deep breath and blew air out through loose lips. “Now I have to go figure out what’s wrong with my truck.”

  * * *

  Hiram and Michael walked back to the car in silence.

  Mary McGill’s questions had Hiram thinking. Did he know a charm that would get the car started?

  He knew plenty of healing charms, and healing charms were flexible. You could take a hex for warts and apply it to blisters, with a few changes. A charm that eased the pain of a broken arm could relieve the pains of childbirth, with some word substitutions.

  Could he adjust one of his healing charms to heal a car?

  But surely, it was a dead sparkplug, and Bert from Conoco would have it replaced by now.

  Only when they reached the Double-A, they found Bert sitting behind the wheel, turning the key and pressing the starter in vain, with an expression of frustration on his face that mixed in large quantities of bafflement and was quickly mounting toward rage.

  “You changed the sparkplug, I guess,” Hiram said.

  “This is the second plug I put into your truck, mister, and it still ain’t turning over. I checked all the connections, they’re good. I tried to crank her up until I nearly broke my arm. I can’t figure it out.”

  Hiram felt a cold fist wrapped around his heart. “Let me look.”

  Under the hood of the Double-A, everything appeared in order. But when Hiram lay on his back in the street and scooted beneath the truck, he found what he’d been looking for: a scrap of paper, stuck to the bottom of the engine with wads of chewing gum. He pried the paper and the gum off and tucked it into his pocket as he stood.

  “Alright, I’ll figure this out, Bert. How much do I owe you?”

  “Not a thing. I didn’t get it to start.”

  “Can I give you fifty cents for your time?” he suggested.

  “Only a fool would say no.”

  With Bert walking back to the Conoco with two new quarters in his pocket, Hiram climbed into the back of the truck and opened his toolbox. “Stay in the truck, will you?” he called to Michael. “I have to take care of something.”

  “Is that something finding another mechanic?” Michael climbed into the cab. “Perhaps a…lady mechanic?”

  “Sort of.” Hiram dug into his tool chest and found the bit of wooden shingle from Gus Dollar’s roof. He touched the brass plate and the lead lamen he’d taken from the old man’s basement workshop, shaking his head. The Lord hath given you the city…what wall did Gus Dollar want to bring tumbling down? He shut the chest again and hopped down.

  Then he picked a restaurant—the letter in the front window read mandurino's and its front door was open—and stepped inside. As he walked, he examined the paper he’d taken from the underside of the truck. It was a written Sator Arepo charm:

  sator

  arepo

  tenet

  opera

  rotas

  Someone had hexed the truck. Not just anyone but, it seemed clear, Gus Dollar had hexed the Double-A.

  He had overcome Hiram’s defenses to do it. The lamen in the truck’s door should have blocked the spell, or if not that, then the two chi-rho amulets he and Michael carried—one around his neck, and the other in Michael’s boot.

  Was Gus simply a stronger magician than Hiram?

  Or had Hiram compromised his craft? Had he failed to keep a chaste and sober mind, so that his defenses failed?

  Mary McGill? Did his attraction to the union organizer render him unchaste? But surely, no.

  And what about Gus? He had vandalized Gus’s shop, convinced he’d been justified, and then he’d stolen from the man.

  Had he been wrong to do so?

  Had he exposed himself and Michael to danger by wronging Gus?

  And what else did the charm consist of?

  He gave the hostess a friendly smile and walked back,
as if headed to the restrooms. Instead, he stepped into the kitchen.

  There it was, the big pizza oven, with an open mouth and with burning wood lining the inside. Hiram tore the sheet of paper right through the Sator Arepo grid, balled it up, and threw it into the flames. Then he tossed in Gus’s shingle, too.

  Burning thatch from a witch’s roof was a good counter magic. Gus had no thatch, but the shingle should work.

  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” he murmured, and, “I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God.” Gabriel was the archangel who had dominion over flame.

  He watched a few moments to be certain that the paper and the shingle both took fire, then turned to leave.

  “Ma tu, che ci fai qui?” a big-chested man in striped trousers and an apron yelled at him.

  “Thank you.” Hiram left the kitchen.

  “Wow,” Michael said when he reached the truck. “Again, you let me down with the food. You go into a pizzeria and don’t come out with pizza. Shakespeare couldn’t write a worse tragedy.”

  “I must disappoint you profoundly.” Hiram climbed into the passenger side of the cab.

  Michael shook his head. “You didn’t bring the lady mechanic, either. But I know you’re doing your best.”

  Hiram laughed. “Try starting the truck now.”

  Michael pumped the clutch and pressed the starter. The Double-A coughed into life.

  “Let’s fill up the tank and the gas can at the Conoco,” Hiram suggested.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On the drive up Spring Canyon toward Apostate Canyon to see Samuel, Hiram debated internally. The lamen in the door of the Double-A had failed to protect them from Gus’s curse.

  If they got in a wreck, it would also fail to protect Michael from injury.

  By the time they’d reached Dollar’s, Hiram had come to a decision.

  “Stop the car,” he said. “Wait for me here.”

  “Coke?” Michael asked.

  Hiram felt thirsty, too. So Gus had restored his poppet-charm and was once again besting Hiram. There was probably no way harm could come of a couple of Cokes, as long as Hiram himself chose them out of the icebox, so he didn’t get doctored drinks.