New Jerusalem News

by John Enright

  Perhaps there was a slight tremor in Atticus’s hands Dominick had not noticed before, a caution in movement that tried to mask pain. Atticus never did mention how he was feeling, as if it was not a topic open for discussion. Dominick wondered, if he were dying and could hide it, would he want others to know? Probably not.

  “That’ll be it for the summer wardrobe,” Atticus said, looking up.

  “Good-bye seersucker,” Dominick said. “Fix you a drink?”

  “Thanks, just a scotch, straight.”

  “Heard any more from our friends at ICE?” Dominick asked.

  “Ice? No ice, thanks. Oh, those guys? No, nothing more.”

  Dominick had passed on the message and calling card from the short federal agent, and Atticus had called him. Lord Witherspoon? He didn’t know anything about a Lord Anybody. It had just been Dominick and him out on the bay that day. The agents must have been misinformed. Who was this Lord Witherspoon, anyway, Atticus had asked. That’s what the feds were trying to find out.

  “Excuse me for asking, Atticus, but how old are you?”

  “Seventy-five this year. Born the same day Will Rogers died.”

  “But your parents didn’t name you Will or Roger.”

  “No, Atticus was my dad’s idea. He was a classics professor, Swarthmore. I was named after Cicero’s best friend.”

  “A rare honor.”

  “My mother disliked the name. She always called me Teddy for some reason that I never discovered. Grew up that way, never sure if I was a Roman aristocrat or a Rough Rider.”

  “Tough.”

  “Not really. Easy, actually. I never had to worry about money, just make more of it. Married my distant cousin.”

  “Lydia?”

  “Oh, yes. My roots go back to that Rutman tree too.”

  “That sounds a bit like royalty.”

  “Does it? Never thought of it that way. More like a cage that I couldn’t escape.”

  “But it has kept you healthy.”

  “Can’t take much credit for that. Longevity runs in the family.”

  Was that a sideways suspicious glance Atticus shot at him from his armchair?

  “But I did get shot once, when I was just a boy,” Atticus went on. “Buckshot in the back while out hunting quail with my uncle. Still got the scars from where they had to dig them out. Only time I’ve been under the knife.”

  “Still hunt?”

  “Haven’t in years.”

  He has family, kids and grandkids, Dominick thought. Why don’t they come and play with him? When I get to that stage I won’t have anyone. “How about a game of pool?” he asked.

  Charlie called. Brenda had already headed south to their place in the Keys, but Charlie wasn’t ready to migrate yet. He was wondering if Dominick wanted to go hunting. “Season’s on for most varmints,” Charlie said, “and we don’t have to worry about licenses over here. The Fish and Wildlife folks can’t spare a warden for the island. It’s always worked pretty much on the old honor system here. Especially if you’re on private land, no one questions.”

  “And which private land would that be?” Dominick asked. “Your backyard?”

  “Remember that first place we looked at out on the coast road? That empty French villa-like place? Well, it’s still vacant, and the folks to the north and the south of there are gone for the season. I checked it out. It’s a private Sherwood Forest, man. Let’s play Robin Hood and do a little poaching.”

  “It’s safe?” Dominick said. “I mean, from the authorities and all.”

  “Look, those billionaires should be happy if we go in there and do a little varmint culling for them for free. No one will even hear the gunshots.”

  Dominick was not a stranger to hunting. He had opened his homeless career in Virginia horse country, where shooting parties were de rigueur. “The weather has to be good,” he said. “I want to shoot dry, happy beasts.”

  And so it was that three days later when the rain let off that Dominick, Charlie, and Atticus found themselves in Charlie’s Bronco stopped at the locked chain across the French villa’s driveway. They had with them a collection of shotguns and rifles—Charlie’s and Atticus’s. Charlie had not been clear on exactly what they might be hunting. “Well, deer, of course, but then maybe turkey and pheasant or quail, depending on what’s there. Maybe an opossum or bobcat. I’d love to get myself a coyote. They’re in there.” So they had brought with them a varied-purpose arsenal, including Atticus’s ancient flintlock muzzleloader from Commodore Rutman’s time.

  Charlie got out of the driver’s seat. The chain was fastened by a big Yale lock in the middle, but Charlie easily unhooked it through a broken link at one end of the chain, rehooking the chain after they drove through. “I told you I had scoped it all out,” Charlie said as they headed up the pointlessly curving drive through the pine forest. All the trees were the same height and were planted almost too perfectly equidistant from one another, so that it looked more like a German park than a French one.

  “Of course, they had to tear a real forest out to plant this one,” Charlie said.

  “This is the Hitchenses’ place.” Atticus said from the back seat. “He got caught in a defense contract scam during the Reagan years and was sent up just as he finished the place, so the trees are that old.”

  They parked on the gravel drive in front of the house, which looked even more forlorn and lost in the non-summer light. Charlie had brought an old two-wheeled golf cart and empty golf bag, which he got out of the back of the Bronco first. Then he loaded their collection of weapons into the bag and filled its side pockets with the various ammo they required. “Our gun boy,” he said, swinging the cart around by its handle and heading off. “This way, I suggest. Canada geese for a warm up.”

  It was not a bad afternoon of shooting. They did get some geese right away on the seaside lawn. Then they each took their weapon of choice and headed off on their own. State law required every hunter to wear so many square feet of bright orange vest and hat, but they were dressed just in their normal warm hiking clothes. There would be no other illegal hunters out there. They just had to take care not to shoot one another. Dominick was slightly troubled by this. Not that he thought they were in any danger of repeating Atticus’s uncle’s mistake, but because years before he had adopted a rule of only breaking one law at a time. If you were driving drunk, you did not speed. If the girl you were with was underage, you did not cross state lines. Breaking the hunter’s dress code was more of a superstitious worry.

  Atticus had luck with his Minuteman special and brought in two rabbits. Dominick had missed most of what he had shot at, but late in the day he had bagged an opossum, which kindly fell out of its tree when it died. What he was most proud of, however, was what he had not shot. Deep in the woods he had gotten an eight-point whitetail buck dead in his sights but had not pulled the trigger. It wasn’t a Bambi moment. He did like venison. It was just the thought of dressing the deer and dragging it out alone that put him off. Atticus and Dominick were back at the car with their trophies as dusk thickened. Atticus seemed happy and relaxed, no worse for wear from his ramble in the woods.

  It was almost dark when Charlie came hiking up the driveway, dragging something large behind him by the tail. It looked like Charlie had gotten himself his coyote.

  “You know there are good coyotes and bad coyotes,” Charlie said as he walked up to them. “The good ones you never see. They’re afraid of humans. The bad ones, the ones that cause trouble, are the ones you do see because they’ve lost all respect for us. This varmint was so ballsy it tried to stare me down. So I shot him.” Charlie pulled the dead animal up to the back of the Bronco where they could get a good look at it.

  “There’s only one problem,” Atticus said.

  “Right,” Charlie said. “It ain’t a coyote.”

  Dominick could see how Charlie in the wild could have mistaken the canine laying there bled out for a coyote. The size was right, and coyotes come in differe
nt shades of brown, especially this time of year when their winter coats were coming in. But this animal was plainly some sort of Alsatian mix. Its long nose gave it an almost wolfish look.

  “Wild dog,” Atticus said.

  “But someone’s pet once. Look.” Charlie reached down and pushed aside the matted fur on the animal’s neck to show the tattered remnants of a collar.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Dominick asked.

  “Take him home and bury him, I guess. Same as I would have done with a coyote.”

  The ride home was pretty quiet. At one point Charlie asked, out of nowhere, “Which one was it liked to eat dog? I forget. Lewis or Clark?”

  “Meriwether Lewis, I believe. He preferred it to venison,” Atticus answered.

  “Are you sure? Clark was the more, you know, rugged type.”

  “No, Lewis preferred dog over elk or horse even.”

  “I wonder how they fixed it?” Charlie said, ending the conversation. But Charlie did offer to skin, dress out, and freeze the meat of Atticus’s and Dominick’s kills for them. “I like the pelts. I cure them.”

  When Charlie dropped Dominick and Atticus off at Mt. Sinai it was well after dark. All they had to take from the back of the Bronco was their ammo and weapons—two shotguns, a .22 rifle, and Atticus’s musket. In the dark they had not noticed the black car parked across the street, but as they headed toward the house they heard two car doors open and shut and steps approach behind them.

  “Mr. Jameson, a word with you, please.” It was the duo from ICE, only this time they were in uniform—blue jeans and midnight-blue windbreakers with their badges plainly showing. The uniforms amplified their Mutt and Jeff vaudevillian possibilities. They met on the front steps in the light of the porch lamp.

  “Put down your weapons, please, gentlemen,” the short one said. The tall one already had his windbreaker pulled back and his hand on his holstered sidearm.

  “Who the heck are you?” Atticus asked. Dominick remembered that they had met only over the phone.

  The short one turned around to show them the bright white capital letters spelling out ICE POLICE on the back of his jacket.

  Dominick was already leaning his two guns up against the front of the house. “Here, I’ll take those, Atticus,” he said, gesturing for him to pass his guns over, which he reluctantly did.

  “Assembling an arsenal, gentlemen?”

  “No, just back from hunting,” Atticus answered.

  “No, you’re not. You’re not dressed for hunting, and you’ve brought back no game, and how many guns do you need to go hunting?”

  “What business is it of yours?” Atticus was getting some heat up.

  “We’d like to speak with Lord Witherspoon.”

  “I’ve already told you I don’t know any lords.”

  “We have reason to believe he is in the country illegally. Harboring an illegal alien is a federal offense.”

  “What’s so important about this Witherspoon guy?”

  “He is a person of interest in an ongoing investigation.”

  “An investigation into what?”

  “Seeing as the investigation is ongoing, I’m not at freedom to say, but it does come under the auspices of the Homeland Security laws.”

  “We don’t like terrorists,” the taller agent said.

  “Or even outside agitators,” the shorter one added. “Your cooperation now could preclude you from subsequent charges of conspiracy and obstruction.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Now Atticus was cooking.

  “We do not threaten, sir. We are only here looking for Lord Witherspoon. Is he in the house, sir?”

  “No, there is no Lord Witherspoon in the house.”

  “Have you seen or been in touch with Lord Witherspoon recently?”

  “I don’t even know if this Lord Witherspoon exists. Do you? Now get off my steps, get off my property. This is all about that goddamn LNG plant, isn’t it? Just hassling people with the common sense to oppose it. Hand me back my long gun, Dominick.” Dominick did no such thing.

  “Alright, Mr. Jameson, we’re leaving. But you should be aware that recent events, especially this morning’s occurrence, have raised this investigation to a level red. I would advise you to get a lawyer.”

  “Another goddamn threat,” Atticus said, and he turned and pushed Dominick aside to grab his Revolutionary War weapon from against the wall. By the time he returned to the top of the steps the two agents were almost to the street; the white sans serif capital letters on the backs of their dark windbreakers ICE POLICE seemed to glow in the dark.

  “That’s not loaded, is it?” Dominick asked.

  “I wouldn’t waste a rabbit slug on them.”

  For the first time, Dominick noticed that the gun was longer than Atticus was tall.

  The next morning’s New Jerusalem News informed them what the previous day’s “occurrence” had been. It was front-page, above-the-fold headline news: “Terrorist Attack in Old Grofton!” In the early morning hours a bomb had blown up the trailer offices of a construction company at a waterfront site up the bay. The site had been deserted at the time; there were no injuries. The Old Grofton Fire Department had extinguished the fire before it spread to any other structures. A sweep of the site by bomb-sniffing dogs discovered another, undetonated incendiary device attached to the gas tank of a large piece of earth-moving equipment nearby. The State Police bomb squad had safely inactivated and removed that device, described as quite sophisticated. A government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, speculated that the second explosive was meant to go off after the first had attracted emergency response and law enforcement officers to the area. He called it “a common terrorist tactic to maximize casualties.”

  The site on Darby Point was in the process of being cleared for the construction of a proposed new Hercules Corp liquid natural gas terminal and processing plant there. Sources close to the investigation said that while there were as yet no suspects in the case and no one had claimed responsibility for the act, authorities would be questioning leaders of the local groups opposed to the multibillion dollar project.

  “Someone is not playing well with others,” Dominick said as he put down the paper. Atticus and he were sitting at the kitchen table. There was a damp chill in the house, and Dominick was wearing a bathrobe over his clothes.

  “No one I know, no one from Bay Savers,” Atticus said. “You don’t peacefully demonstrate one week then go blow something up the next. Who knows how to make a bomb?” The phone in the hallway rang. They could just hear it through the closed doors. Atticus went to answer it.

  When Atticus came back he was shaking his head. “They’re making a federal case of it now. That was one of the ladies from our group. It was just on the local TV Eyewitness News. The FBI held a news conference to announce that the bomb they recovered and probably the one that blew up were both of a type never used in the States before, a type only used before by the IRA and other terrorist outfits in Great Britain.”

  There was silence for a while. Dominick raised the collar of his bathrobe against the chill. Would the house be like this all winter, he wondered.

  “They’re calling it an international terroristic attack on American soil against American industry.”

  “Atticus,” Dominick said, “do you think you could turn on the stove?”

  Chapter 5

  “Bullshit, Dominick. Burgoo is Kentucky. Ain’t nothing more Kentucky than burgoo.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not, Charlie. I only meant to suggest that the word for it is much older.”

  To say that Charlie grew up in Kentucky would be to drastically understate his Kentuckiness. There are some places that imprint upon their native sons a template so indelible that they are not just from there but are of there, never to be changed.

  “So do not sit there, eating my good Kentucky burgoo, and tell me it is some variety of rag-head
dish.”

  “I did not say that. All I said was that your native name for this wonderful hunter’s stew you have fixed us—burgoo—originally comes from the Persian term for a bruised-grain gruel that they fixed long before there was a Kentucky.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Why don’t you? It’s your dish. Look it up.”

  “What’s to look up? I grew up with it.”

  The burgoo was a thick and aromatic mixture of many tastes—mutton, pork, opossum, rabbit, potatoes, corn, lima beans, tomatoes, and okra at least, along with many spices. Charlie claimed it had been brewing over the fire for more than a day. It was the opossum gave him the idea, he said. He hadn’t had possum since he was home on the Ohio. He had called Atticus and Dominick and asked their permission to use their game in his old Kentucky home concoction; he’d share it. The next day, Atticus, Lydia, and Dominick got an invitation over to dinner. When Dominick asked what they could bring, Charlie said, “I find bourbon goes well with it.”

  On the drive over to Charlie’s, Atticus wondered if Charlie might not have come up with a recipe for serving them dog à la Meriwether.

  From the back seat Lydia asked, “Who’s that?” Since before they had left the house, she had been ignoring them, her earphones in, listening to something on her iPod. They had pretty much forgotten she was there. “Who is Allah Meriwether?”

  “A joke,” Atticus said.

  “You shouldn’t make religious jokes, Atticus. No one thinks they’re funny. Remember they wanted to kill that cartoonist.” Lydia put her earphones back in and looked out her backseat window.

  “She always has been fun to be around,” Atticus said.

  Charlie served up the burgoo in bowls with slices of French bread. He apologized for the bread. “Back home you’d get a side of potato salad and some barbeque mutton on a hamburger bun, but I don’t make those, so you got to settle. Of course, also back home, growing up, the burgoo wouldn’t have been quite so fancy, nothing store-bought, just what veggies you had and probably roadkill. Who had time to go hunting? You’d keep it going for days, adding stuff as you went along, cooking it till it all broke down. Brown dinner. I came to dislike squirrel and corn burgoo.”