The Harrows of Spring

by James Howard Kunstler

  Before he was quite finished, Sister Zeruiah burst into Brother Jobe’s office and interrupted, saying he must hurry to Mary Beth Ivanhoe’s chamber to witness “a strange and awesome transfiguration.” Zeruiah was in an emotional state so tumultuous and agitated that Brother Jobe supposed that Mary Beth, the woman known variously as Precious Mother and the Queen Bee at the spiritual center of the New Faith sect, must be dying.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Loren steered clear of home, the parish house of the Congregational Church, and his wife Jane Ann. He could not tell her that the gunshot young man lying in the doctor’s recovery room was their son, Evan. The doctor had warned him that the danger of infection and complication from surgery was hardly over, was really only beginning, and that, frankly, the chance that Evan would die was not a small one. In case he didn’t make it, Loren would rather that Jane Ann never knew Evan had made it within ten miles of home, only to be gunned down by bandits. He’d been away from home for exactly three years now. The accepted story, Daniel’s, was that Evan had been lost when their boat foundered in a storm on Lake Erie off the shoals of Sandusky, Ohio. Jane Ann would never get over the loss of a child—no parent ever does—but she had accepted it and moved on, as he had, Loren thought, and now she had the four orphaned small boys to look after, and at the level of practical, day-to-day existence, as he observed her, she was okay. She was able to laugh and find joy in the world and abide with the affections of her husband, and Loren didn’t want to bring all that crashing down. The doctor promised Loren he would not tell Jeanette what they had discovered. If Evan didn’t make it, the secret would remain between the two of them.

  Loren sat with Evan for an hour afterward, talking to him, though Evan remained in a deep, heaving sleep all the while. Eventually, Loren left to attend to his own pressing duties. He rode a New Faith mare to Ben Deaver’s farm, which was closest to town of all the big farms. Ben had six men available for the muster, and he sent a seventh man on a very fleet horse around to the other farms of Todd Zucker, Ned Larmon, Bill Schmidt, and Carl Weibel to inform the men they could spare to report to the old high school at midafternoon, and meanwhile Loren returned to town to round up the other available, able-bodied men who did not work as laborers out on the big farms.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Robert Earle got a sturdy paint saddle horse named Mookie from the New Faith stables and set out for the rural townships with much on his mind besides the mischief of the Berkshire interlopers. As he left the village behind and ventured into the lush, mid-spring landscape, with pink and white phlox starting to bloom along the roadside and the trees fully fledged and the stupendous quiet of a landscape without motors, he was stunned as ever by the contrast between the world’s beauty and its cruelty. And he marveled that it was possible for an ordinary man to function in that world made of those overpowering oppositions.

  Britney was the main thing on his mind, like a musical refrain in a minor key stuck in his head. He knew her well enough to be sure that she absolutely required a child, just as she had said, and he knew for certain that he was unable to give her one. His vasectomy was his last encounter with modern medicine before the times finally turned. He’d gone with Sandy to the outpatient minor surgery facility in a strip mall outside Glens Falls. These were the first weeks when the electricity had just begun to falter. It would go out mysteriously for an hour or so every few days, enough to spook people without upsetting all of everyday life. It happened to go out that day fifteen minutes into Robert’s procedure. He was under an IV sedative and a local anesthetic, and he was very much aware when the lights flickered and the emergency diesel generator kicked in. The doctor and other medical personnel carried on with a semblence of jaunty normality, as if it were England bedeviled by the Luftwaffe in 1942.

  But the war in the Holy Land was far far away, and the situation was quite different. The nation was cracking under the weight of bloated modernity and all the patches pasted onto its excessive and malfunctioning hypercomplexity, and people were bewildered by the strange glitches, failures, and shortages. Going forward, nothing would really work anymore as it was designed to, yet the hope and expectation that it would all magically recover dominated the chatter in the rare moments when people could step back from their frantic lives and share a meal or a drink.

  Now, this day years later, Robert carried a pistol as he rode the old county highways and back roads, alert for trouble in whatever form it might come in, but nothing untoward crossed his path. He stopped first at Holyrood’s establishment, the county’s leading cider works with several hundred acres of fruit, sixteen workmen resident on the premises, most with wives, all very busy in the orchards this week as the trees had blossomed and set fruit and needed a lot of tender love and care. Robert was relieved to see that Holyrood’s barns, cider mill, and outbuildings were all unharmed, and Felix Holyrood himself had not heard of the arson at Temple Merton’s place, which was seven miles away. He said he would set watchmen before sundown and that he had enough firearms and ammunition to put up a fight if someone came looking for trouble.

  Robert proceeded from there, stopping at seven other farms in his planned nineteen-mile circuit. Of these farms, two had suffered arson and robbery by men dressed up like Indians following a visit by Buddy Goodfriend. One of the farmers, a goat dairyman named Brett Maun, had killed one Indian with a trenching shovel as the rascal was about to torch his birthing barn. He said it was the most startling thing in his life to be fending off an Indian attack, having been a small boy when that sort of thing happened only on TV. The dead man, suspiciously green-eyed, had lingered through the night after his cohorts slipped away into the dark woods. Maun and his wife gave him what attention they could, but his head was visibly cracked and he expired before dawn. He had been unable to speak while in their custody, so they learned nothing of his origins, purposes, or connections.

  Robert completed his circuit of the rural townships late in the afternoon and set his course toward home, knowing that the combined town and New Faith defense force by now would have left the village seeking to evict the visitors from Massachusetts from their campground. He was a little sorry not to be there but confident with Brother Joseph in charge of the operation. Meanwhile, Robert knew Daniel was likely to have returned from his journey to Albany and, as he made his way home with the sun blaring in his eyes, an idea presented itself to him that seemed both inescapable and dreadful.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Brother Jobe entered Mary Beth Ivanhoe’s chamber gingerly, expecting a grim and ghastly vigil, only to find a stranger sitting up in the bed at the center of the room and daylight flooding in from the cupola above, from which drapes had been removed. The usual group of attendant sisters was nowhere to be seen. The woman in the bed appeared to be in her mid-thirties, sturdy and big-boned with the high cheekbones and sharp nose of her Appalachian ancestors, descended from Scottish border ruffians who came to America before the Revolution. Her light brown hair was short, rather pixieish, as if it was just growing in after a season of chemotherapy. She wore a plain cotton shift and was sitting outside the bed covers with her feet out and crossed at the ankles. She had been buffing her nails when Brother Jobe crept in, his face flushed and his heart up in his throat.

  “Uh, where’s, uh, Mary Beth?” he stammered.

  The woman put down the smooth river stone wrapped in goatskin she’d been buffing her nails with and glared at him with slitty eyes and forehead all scrunched.

  “What’s the matter with you, Lyle?” she said. “It’s me.”

  Brother Jobe took two steps back, as if recoiling from an object of incomprehensible bewilderment.

  “That can’t be you, Precious Mother,” he said.

  “Git used to it,” she said, in a voice that retained some of its raw mountain screech. “And quit callin’ me that.”

  “Where are all your . . . your helpers?”

  “I told ’em to git lost. They
’s makin’ me nervous, fussing and hoo-hahing all about. Where you been at, anyways?”

  In fact, it had been days since the honcho of the New Faith had visited the previously bedridden seer and protector who had led the group north from the violent wilderness of Dixieland.

  “I been busy,” Brother Jobe said. “We got trouble in town. What all happened to you, Mary Beth?”

  “First you tell me what kinda trouble.”

  “Don’t you know? You can see things.”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “I done quit that.”

  “That ain’t something you resign from.”

  “Want to bet? I done it. Last time you come to see me, I was at death’s door, remember?”

  “’Course I do.”

  “Well, I went through that door a ways and up the elevator. Got some face time with the boss of bosses. He said, ‘Mary Beth, we’re not ready for you. I’m sending you back, and you gonna lead a normal life.’”

  “Jesus said that?”

  “He don’t like to be called that up there. But it was him, all right.”

  “Mind if I set down?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Brother Jobe took a seat. He picked up a small metal tray from the bedside table and fanned himself with it.

  “I’m movin’ out of this hothouse,” Mary Beth said. “Goin’ down with the regular sisters. Maybe find a man amongst the brethren. Git back to regular living.”

  “So hold on a second—you don’t have no more powers?” Brother Jobe said.

  “What I said? You even listening? That was part of the deal. He said, ‘You want to live normal, you got to act normal and be normal.’”

  “What about your injuries? Your illnesses?”

  “He done fixed all that.”

  “I be dog,” Brother Jobe said. “Just like that?”

  “You don’t miss it when it’s gone, believe me. Tell you the truth, I ’most forgot already what it was like to feel that way, all bloated up, achy and itchy, and them dang fits I used to git. Tell you something else I like. He said I could eat as much pie as I want now and won’t never put on a extra pound again. I might work in the kitchen. The sisters tell me that’s the place to be around here.”

  “Mind if I ask, what was it like up there where you had your meet-up with you-know-who?”

  “It was nice.”

  “That all you got to say about it?”

  “Kind of like I remember the penthouse suite of the Hilton Grand at Myrtle Beach. I was there one time before that sumbitch bashed me up with the car at the mall, 2006. A boy named Ramsey Burgwyn took me. He come in second in the NASCAR Coca-Cola Six Hundred sprint cup that year. It had a sitting room as big as the Ford showroom back home and a circular bed. He worked me over on it like an unfreshened heifer. The place smelt like a monkey house by the time we was done. Heaven’s different that way. It smells like air freshener up there. Now, what kind of trouble you-all havin’ in town?”

  “Grifters and Indians,” Brother Jobe said. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand now.”

  “Well, I can’t see through the veil of the humdrum no more, but it sure sounds like a bad combo,” she said. “Think we gonna overcome?”

  “I mean to see that we do. I guess we gonna have to wait to find out.”

  Mary Beth leveled her gaze at Brother Jobe. “Do you think I look pretty?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, I do,” Brother Jobe said. “Why you’re prettier than a blue bunting in a tulip tree. I confess, I had no idear what was underneath all that blubber and sickness. Turns out you could dance with the stars, if they was still at it.”

  Just then, another sister put her head inside the room and said, “We’re ready for you down below, Mary Beth.”

  “Hot doggies,” Mary Beth said.

  Brother Jobe rose from his seat.

  “You’ve had quite a life, girl,” he said.

  “And I ain’t done yet,” she said, climbing off the big bed and wobbling a little on her smallish feet. “Ain’t that a novelty, though, standing up by my own self again. Sure feels dandy. Now make way for me, world. Mary Beth Ivanhoe is back in action amongst ye.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  Brother Gabriel was provided a good map of the rural townships encompassing the village of Union Grove, and he made his way north along old County Route 62 toward Temple Merton’s farm in a two-wheeled trap with its load of six rifles and a hundred fifty rounds of ammunition. He had reached the ruins of the old one-room schoolhouse at the intersection of Scotch Hill Road when he saw a figure hunkered by the roadside up ahead. He was alert without being especially alarmed at the sight of a lone stranger and kept his horse on pace on the level grade. As he drew closer, he began to apprehend that the figure was a woman, a young one at that. Her blond hair fell in frizzy ringlets on her shoulders. She wore mannish trousers but a loose button-front shirt and a sweater tied around her slender waist in the fair, warm weather. She rose off her haunches as he came near and he noticed that she was very comely indeed. She began to wave her hand, hailing him. He reined in his mare and the cart soon jostled to a halt nearly at her feet. From up on the driver’s bench, he could see clear down the front of her shirt to a broad brown nipple at the end of a fleshy swell. His hormones reacted violently.

  “Afternoon, mister,” Flame Aurora Greengrass said attempting to approximate a friendly smile. “Catch a ride?”

  “Why, sure,” Brother Gabriel said, practically croaking like a frog. “How far you going?”

  “Just up a ways.”

  “Climb aboard.”

  She scooched up onto the driver’s bench. Brother Gabriel could feel her body radiate heat beside him while the vapors coming off her warm flesh and clothing made his head swim. He geed up his horse to a trot, stole a glance at her, then stole another. He could still see into her loose shirt at the creamy slot within. In an uproar of internal tension, he felt compelled to say something, and what came out was the default salutation of his people.

  “Do you know Jesus, ma’am?”

  He smiled strenuously but she only glared back in return. Next, she grasped the side rail on the driver’s bench, turned toward Brother Gabriel, raised her long powerful left leg, and pushed him off the seat clear out of the trap onto the road, where he fell with a bright yelp. A little farther up the road a swarm of her comrades from the Berkshire People’s Republic emerged from the woods on either side of the road and took control of the horse until they brought the rig to a halt again. Flame climbed down and uncovered the tarp behind the driver’s bench, pleased to discover an assortment of rifles chambered for generic 5.56 x 45mm rounds and a wooden crate of the ammunition.

  Back down the road, Brother Gabriel lay squalling in the dust unable to get up due to his shattered collarbone. The hijackers left him there despite his pleas and his prayers and took their prize to their bivouac in a hayfield down by the Battenkill.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Brothers Levi, Oren, and Titus were down at the new crib dock at the Hudson River awaiting arrival of Daniel Earle, Teddy Einhorn, and the new boat. Their two horses were released from their wagon harness and picketed in a sunny glade down by the riverbank where clover, phlox, and mustard cress grew. The men had a good enough lunch of hard cheese and corn bread. Their rifles were stacked in a tripod down by the dock. The day was warm and peaceful and a refreshing breeze came off the river. They occupied themselves all afternoon working on the small goods-storage building beside the road. The building was a simple twenty-by-fourteen barn with the sills posted up on stone footings. It would get a big sliding door for moving cargoes inside and narrow clerestory windows up under the soffit on one side to admit light while making surreptitious entry difficult. They were still in the early stages of construction, however, spending the afternoon hours nailing cedar shingles on the roof over the still-open framed walls. Oren remain
ed on the ground splitting shingles from sixteen-inch cedar logs with a froe and a black locust mallet while the other two crawled about the roof, nailing the shingles into place.

  Around five o’clock the boat still had not arrived. But a stranger drove by in a smart little pony cart. It was Buddy Goodfriend on his way to Stephen Bullock’s plantation, about which he had heard told many wonders and marvels—especially of the treasures Bullock had laid up in the years since the events that brought on the hard new times. Goodfriend, feeling particularly buoyant this fine, sunny May afternoon, saluted the three New Faith brothers as his pony trotted up the River Road but he did not stop to palaver. He was anxious to get to his destination.

  Not a half hour later the three brothers were still at work, still waiting on the boat, when an even more unusual sight than a man driving a pony cart presented itself: a band of eleven Indian warriors jogging up the River Road in loincloths, feather and claw necklaces, ear wheels, and deerskin moccasins, their heads shaved but for topknots or spikey roaches stuck up in tallow. Their faces were painted in alarming motifs, red and black vertically and horizontally, ghostly white with blackened eyes and clown mouths, red bands, slashes, spots, handprints. They carried war clubs and hand axes, wore crude steel daggers in their loincloth waistbands, or carried bows and quivers over their bare shoulders. The three New Faith brothers stood stock-still in place as the Indians passed by in a kind of relaxed dogtrot. Only the Indian at the van of the party turned to look at them. His painted face evinced an utter absence of emotion, making him appear all the more sinister. The others of the party trotted by as if the dock and the barn and the brothers at work weren’t even there. Nobody at either end of the transaction interrupted the bizarre moment, and then the Indians rounded a bend in the road and vanished.