The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  To his curse, that is.

  Hiram whispered the prayer and then repeated the process with the second Model T.

  He then drew in a deep breath. This next piece was going to be risky. Lord Divine, help me start this truck.

  He shambled up to the Double-A, head down to hide his face, counting on the darkness to help him. Slipping into the truck with as much nonchalance as he could, he flipped up the spark, turned the key, gave the clutch a couple of pumps because of the cold night air, and hit the starter.

  The truck rumbled to life.

  “In the truck! The Mormon!”

  Hiram slammed his foot onto the gas pedal and the Double-A shot forward. He swerved around a mustached Greek man and then took a sharp turn. He felt the truck lurch to the right and he wasn’t sure his wheels were touching earth. Spinning the steering wheel, he got the vehicle onto the ground again, only to have the Double-A lurch and nearly topple over the other way.

  He fought the truck into submission and he made it through the shacks and out of the camp. The Model Ts didn’t follow him—his curse had worked.

  His first curse.

  And he’d learned it from Gus Dollar. The thought sobered Hiram.

  Hiram slowed as the Ford Model Bs of the Helper police raced past him going the other way. Then he raced toward Dollar’s, where he skidded onto the main Spring Canyon road. He longed to give the Double-A real gas, to keep ahead of those Model Bs with their V-8 engines, but he kept himself in check. If Hiram died in a ditch, he did Michael no good.

  But it wouldn’t be long before the miners told the cops that their prime suspect was on the lam and that they’d driven right past him.

  He found a rough side road, little more than a dirt track, and he pulled off, going up enough distance to get out of sight. He parked the truck and crept down to the main road to wait.

  All the sneaking, breaking in, and acting in a generally guileful manner didn’t sit right with him. What he’d told Michael turned out to be true. It was a dirty world, and even if a man only wanted to do good, he’d likely get his hands filthy.

  Soon, the Model Bs raced by again. They wanted to catch him before he reached Helper and the highway.

  And if they beat him to the mouth of the canyon, they could put up a roadblock and trap him. Or could he drive out some other way? Some of these other tracks must go over the ridges and out. Samuel must have some other way in and out of Apostate Canyon—he couldn’t pass his family home every time, could he?

  Hiram wearily shuffled up to his truck. He hadn’t really slept in two nights, and he felt fatigue now in every muscle, but especially in his eyelids.

  He backed up the Double-A, did a dozen-point turn, and rolled carefully down to the road. He turned. The headlights caught the dust still swirling from the police cars.

  The police might not set up a roadblock, especially if he went soon. They might chase off in the direction they imagined he’d gone. Plus, there didn’t seem to be that many police in Helper. Did they really have the manpower to set up a roadblock anywhere?

  Maybe they would get the Carbon County Sheriff involved.

  Hiram drove slowly, searching for a sign of Michael.

  A smell filled his nose, of strong garlic and sugar, sweet, spicy. His vision tunneled in, more tightly than it had in the mine. His heart thumped like a toad flopping over. “Rupert, Giles…” What was it? He couldn’t remember his charm against sleeping sickness, he was just too tired.

  He tried to stop the truck, get it to the side of the road, to his left, because to the right was a precipice. If he went over that, he wouldn’t be walking away.

  He aimed for a patch of dark green on the left side of the road. He was reasonably sure he’d pointed the truck in that direction when he lost consciousness.

  * * *

  Mary McGill winced when the morning sun pierced the clouds and struck a white wall of Spring Canyon, forcing the glare into her red and white Model A Ford. Her eyes stung and she blinked.

  Were the tears filling her eyes the result of the light, or the events of the night before?

  The evening had started out promisingly enough. Five-cent Jimmy had shown up in his best suit, wrinkled, with his gorilla arms and his necktie all out of control, just in time to drag Mary into the Helper Justice Court. To Mary’s delight, Jimmy had made Police Chief Asael Fox look silly. Jimmy would fight on him on every front: acting beyond Fox’s jurisdiction, censurable behavior, borderline criminal, and of course Jimmy threatened a civil lawsuit against the department if Mary wasn’t released immediately and left alone.

  Mary hadn’t thought about the sage leaf under her heel until later, and then mostly to consider with bemusement the possibility that maybe, in some way, it had helped.

  Jimmy left immediately—business in Salt Lake City, he’d said.

  Mary had stopped to eat at the Chop Suey. A woman named Yu Yan, whose husband worked at the Kimball mine, told her that Bill and Eva Sorenson had been murdered. The prime suspects, she had whispered, were the Mormon do-gooder and his Indian friend.

  Mary had laughed that off as obvious nonsense. Still, a part of her had wanted to rush up to the mine immediately, but she had given in to her desire for a bath and a real bed.

  In the morning, feeling rested, and strengthened by a bellyful of coffee and bacon, she had headed up Spring Canyon.

  On the outskirts of the Kimball camp, a flash caught her eye.

  Mary slammed on the brakes. Dust flooded past her. When it cleared, Mary saw thin legs sticking out from under a low Juniper a few steps from the track, and the hem of a blue dress.

  Her heart hammered. She willed those legs to move, but they lay still.

  Mary left her car, trying to control her breath. The images of dead children she’d seen before, suffocated in a Chicago tenement, drained bloodless in a sawmill, crushed under a fallen tree, flashed into her mind.

  “Please, don’t,” Mary whispered. She crunched quickly across the gravel.

  The child, a young woman, really, lay under the evergreen bushes. Bruises covered her arm and legs as well, but the worst were around her throat—huge, mottled, purple marks, with torn skin. Big hands had strangled her.

  Flies crawled on her face.

  The girl held a long, sharpened stick in her hand, like a spear.

  Mary recognized her—her name was Callista, and her parents were Basil and Medea.

  Mary had to tell Bill Sorenson.

  No, he was dead.

  She slipped into her car. She’d tell Ammon Kimball. That big red house had to have a telephone. And if not, there was Gus Dollar’s store down the canyon.

  But leaving the body felt like sacrilege. Mary got out, took a tarp from her trunk, and covered Callista Markopoulos’s small body. The flies rose up as she whispered Hail Mary after Hail Mary.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Hiram woke up with his forehead pressed into the steering wheel of the Double-A. When he raised his face to peek above the dashboard, a bright yellow sun low on the horizon burned his eyes.

  His ears buzzed, and it wasn’t from flies.

  He was almost certain.

  He’d rammed the Double-A into a stand of junipers. Looking around, he saw now that he’d made it a hundred yards from the road.

  How long had he been passed out?

  He was lucky, but he didn’t feel lucky. A fainting spell gave him no rest, so he’d missed two nights of sleep. He was afraid to stay where he was, but he was also afraid to be on the roads—there were few enough of them, it would be an easy matter to block off, say, one road up to Utah Valley and one to Price, and he’d be trapped.

  Even with the small number of officers Helper had.

  If he were trying to escape, he’d do it by mule.

  He shook his head, trying to clear fog from his brain, and partially succeeded.

  He didn’t want to escape. He wanted to find Michael.

  Michael was alive. He was a smart boy, and no miners would h
ave caught him.

  But the thing in the caves might have Michael. Or Gus Dollar might have taken Hiram’s son, to punish Hiram for escaping from his second curse stopping Hiram’s truck and to continue to raise the stakes in their grindingly slow duel. Or the Helper police might have taken Michael, to warn Hiram away from interfering in their persecution of the union organizer, Mary McGill, or as a suspect in the Sorensons’ death. Or Rettig or his thugs…

  Hiram jerked himself awake—the sun had moved higher in the sky. He’d slept a bit, though he still felt exhausted. He willed his limbs to begin taking action.

  He took his second unpeeled witch hazel rod from his tool chest; he could find Michael with it. He peeled off the rind, taking deep breaths to keep himself awake, then cut the three crosses.

  And for a name? After consideration, he slowly carved michael yazzie woolley on the rod. Because there was room, he also carved both Michael’s parents’ names: yas yazzie and betty yazzie. Then, after a long hesitation during which he almost nodded off, he added his own name: hiram woolley, and his wife’s, elmina woolley.

  He sang as he worked, the same song over and over, to a Grandma Hettie tune. Psalm 130 didn’t feel quite right, or maybe Hiram didn’t like using it to look for Michael because only a few short hours earlier, he had used it to go looking for Teancum Kimball, and had found the man a corpse.

  He chose Psalm 67 instead, just the first two verses, and focused the prayerful desires of his heart on finding his son: “God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah. That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.”

  He crawled slowly over the driver’s seat of the Double-A. His hair and Michael’s were very different, and no one other than the two of them had driven the truck. No, wait, there had been Bert from Conoco. Hiram closed his eyes, trying to picture the color of Bert’s hair, and had to snatch himself back from the brink of sleep again.

  Red hair. Bert was a carrot top.

  Hiram found several long, thick, black hairs on the back of the truck’s driver’s seat. They had to belong to Michael. He made a very thin cut into the soft wood of the hazel rod, inserted the hairs, and then let the still-green witch hazel spring back into place to pin the hairs. For good measure, he tied them in a knot.

  This would not be efficient; he couldn’t operate the Mosaical Rod while driving. He fed several test questions to the rod, getting satisfactory results, and then steeled his stomach.

  “Is my son Michael alive?”

  He nearly wept when the rod dipped, indicating yes.

  It remained only to find him. Find him, and, if necessary rescue him.

  He swung the rod, looking for Michael, and got a tug informing him he needed to drive farther up Spring Canyon.

  He drove half a mile, hid the truck, tried again, and got the same result.

  He was coming close to Gus Dollar’s store. Hunkering low over the wheel—to be invisible? for cover, in case Gus shot at him?—he drove past the store and around the corner. When he could park the truck discreetly, he tried the rod again—and it told him to go back down the canyon.

  Gus Dollar. It had to be.

  Gus had his son.

  He fumbled in his tool chest for his dried dog tongue and slipped it into his boot. He’d walk in the front door and didn’t care if the dogs barked, but the tongue should keep them from biting him, too.

  His clasp knife was a stupid weapon, but it had a locking blade, and if need be, he could cut with it.

  He shook himself. No, that was a terrible idea. He’d confront Gus and demand the storekeeper release his son.

  But, in the case of last resort, and truly dire need…it was strong counter magic to make a witch bleed. If he needed to overcome some last spell of Gus’s, he didn’t have to kill Gus, he only had to bleed him.

  The clasp knife might be enough.

  For good measure, he took the bronze Oremus lamen that had hung behind the mirror in their hotel room, tucking it into the inside pocket of his coat.

  Mosaical Rod in hand, Hiram marched up onto Gus’s porch and threw the door open.

  The Rottweilers scattered.

  The dowsing rod in his hand burst into flame. Dropping it to the floor of the shop, Hiram stared at the branch: the carved letters and symbols stood out briefly in blazing letters, and then they were gone as the entire hazel rod was engulfed in fire. Within seconds, the wood disappeared, leaving a trail of ash.

  The floor itself remained unmarked.

  Clutching his burned hand, Hiram stared into the shop. There was no sign of Gus Dollar. Behind the counter, on two high chairs, sat the twins, Greta and Dietrich. They weren’t the sliding drops of mercury they’d been before. Now the pair sat still and smiled at Hiram, perfect, flawless smiles, like ten-dollar dolls from the Sears, Roebuck catalog.

  Hiram’s eyes shot to the lead signs of Samael, or Mahoun, in the front windows. Not only had they been restored, they had been painted over in a garish red paint. Dollar’s now flaunted its wards, or association, or whatever it was, to the world.

  Only it was a world no longer prepared to see the message that was being clearly published.

  “Opa Gus told us you would be back,” the children said together.

  Hiram shook his head. He’d have sworn they’d just spoken together, mouths perfectly synchronized.

  “You’re the sieve and shears man,” they added. They raised their hands, and their fingers glistened, as if slick with oil. Their nails and fingertips were blackened. Dipped in soot?

  The hair on the back of Hiram’s neck stood up. The children had been normal, happy, healthy-looking children the two times he’d seen them before. What had happened? What had Gus done? “Where’s your Opa Gus?”

  “Not here. No one’s here but us.”

  Hiram could take Gus’s grandchildren. That would be fair, and he could trade them to Gus to get his son back.

  “Your mother?” Hiram asked.

  “No one but us, sieve and shears man.”

  But that would be kidnapping.

  But Gus had done it first. As Gus had pushed Hiram to perform counter magic by charming him first, and as Gus had forced Hiram’s hand, making him commit burglary.

  And something seemed wrong with these children. Maybe the old man had ensorcelled them somehow. He’d be rescuing them from Gus.

  Hiram shook his head. He wasn’t thinking clearly; that might be fatigue and the lingering effect of his recent spell, but it could also be Gus. Gus had influenced Hiram before, with his Jupiter ring and his other charms.

  Did Gus want Hiram to kidnap his grandchildren?

  Was Gus trying to get Hiram into trouble?

  “Michael!” Hiram yelled. There was no answer.

  He wheeled around the ground floor, crying out. “Michael!”

  Silence, but for the low whimpering of dogs.

  He climbed the stairs. If Gus simply shot Hiram now, he’d tell the Helper police—or the Carbon County Sheriff—that he’d interrupted a burglary in process, by a man who’d already burgled him once, and that would likely be the end of the investigation. Gus would be within his rights.

  For that matter, the police might think Gus had shot the Sorensons’ murderer.

  “Michael! Michael?”

  The second story was empty.

  He turned to go downstairs and the twins stood at the top of the stairs, smiling at him.

  “We told you,” they said.

  Hiram shivered. He wanted to lock the children in one of the upstairs rooms so they’d stop following him, but he didn’t dare. Instead, he rattled downstairs as quickly as he could and entered the pantry.

  The Rottweilers lay pressed to the floor on the trapdoor. Hiram grabbed each by its collar and walked back to the storeroom. The front door was open, as he’d left it, and he heaved both beasts out onto the porch, shutting the door behind them.

  The twins stood watching him when he turned around.

&n
bsp; “You shouldn’t hurt the dogs,” they warned him.

  “The dogs are fine,” he said. “Have you seen my son Michael? I’m just looking for my son.”

  “We haven’t seen any boys here today.” They continued to speak in perfect timing together. Unless Hiram was just imagining it. His head hurt. “Are you going to look in Opa Gus’s secret room now?”

  “What do you know about your Opa Gus’s room?”

  “What do you know about it, sieve and shears man?”

  Hiram wished he’d locked them upstairs. But the Mosaical Rod had shown Michael to be here at Dollar’s.

  Hadn’t it?

  Or had Gus tricked the rod?

  Or had Hiram, in his fatigue and hunger, made a mistake?

  He dug into his pocket and found two quarters and a dime, setting them on the counter. “I need ten Cokes. Will you count out ten Cokes from the ice box for me? And two Snickers bars.”

  They stared at him, but then turned to the red icebox in the corner and began to fetch his Cokes.

  Hiram rushed to the pantry. Yanking up the trapdoor, he looked down into darkness. He pulled his flashlight from a pocket and shone it down, illuminating the ladder rungs and the stone wall of the descending shaft.

  “Michael?”

  Nothing. But his son could be tied up and gagged, or unconscious.

  Or dead.

  Or Gus Dollar could be waiting down there with a loaded shotgun.

  Gritting his teeth, Hiram climbed down. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades, and he felt a breeze blowing on the back of his neck. Fear made him drop the last few feet, landing unsteadily on his Harvesters. He whipped around, half-expecting to be blasted into oblivion.

  The room was empty.

  The crack in the corner of the room was gone.

  Hiram’s heart pounded.

  He paced around the room to be sure, angry and mournful that his rod had been destroyed. He pushed at the stone in the corner where there had been a crack—under the glare of his flashlight, the wall there looked like a different color, and the mortar seemed fresh. He shone his light closer; the mortar was wet and had a reddish hue to it.