by Van Reid
The horse ahead of him let out a blustery snort, and Lillie jerked her head up. Sundry’s heart raced, and he looked back the way they had come. A tall, amorphous figure occluded the pallid light from the far end of the lane, stopped after another step or two, and sat there, eerily silent. The horse before them stopped as well, and now there came the sound of someone, maybe two or three someones, walking.
“Hello?” he called into the dark of the lane.
“Hello,” answered Maven. “I’m right here.”
“We’re not alone, Maven,” said Sundry. “Hello?”
“Mr. Moss?” came the unexpected reply.
After a moment he said, “Yes, it is.”
“It’s good of you to come,” came the reply from that nebulous shape, but there was an edge to the voice that belied the friendly welcome. The other rider moved his horse closer, and Sundry had the impression of a younger person, tall and thin; then the mental echo of that voice came back to him, and he realized that he was speaking to a woman.
“Mr. Moss?” came another voice, but from further down the path. Several people were walking toward him, flanking a third rider and making no pretense of silence. The strangeness of it all had gathered enough force inside Sundry so that he was on the edge of telling Maven to ride up the lane and get away as best he could. Then he turned to speak and saw the blue metal gleam of moonlight on a gun barrel wrapped in the shadow of the mounted figure behind.
“Mr. Moss?” came the voice again.
“Yes,” said Sundry.
A broad shape flickered beneath the specks of moonlight, and Sundry had quick glimpses of a round, familiar sort of face. “You met my uncle Jeffrey earlier today,” said this person—a man of about Sundry’s years, and twice his thickness. There was a forced heartiness in the greeting that reminded Sundry of Jeffrey Normell and also gave him a sense of imminent hazard.
“I believe I did,” said Sundry.
“We’re glad you’ve come,” said this fellow as he laid a hand on Lillie’s bridle. “We’ve been expecting you.”
43. What Abner Saw at the Fair
“And then you’ve found it,” said the fellow. “Fiddler’s Green!”
“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Cook. She served Robin Oig another helping of beef brisket and potatoes, then ladled out half a pint of her county fair-winning green beans, canned last summer and cooked up this evening in pork scraps. Robin Oig smacked his lips. He was powerfully famished and had said so several times, even after he had put away enough to feed two or three rugged men.
Mr. Cook leaned back from the table and folded his arms before him. What he needed now was his pipe. Beetle, their black and white dog of uncertain parentage, shifted at the farmer’s feet. “Fiddler’s Green,” said Mr. Cook without much more than a little humor lighting his eyes. “I do believe that some farmers have reached the same spot from the other end.”
“Oh?” said the sailor. He was surprised to hear it.
“You take up a hoe, you see, or a pitchfork—”
“Abner!” said his wife.
“It’s true!”
“I never heard of it.”
Their son, Abijah, chuckled.
“I promise you,” said Abner, one hand up as a sign of his solemn honor.
Robin Oig looked ready to be convinced.
“Abner!” said Mrs. Cook again.
Abner laughed. “You remember old Curtis Hanke, over at Palermo.”
“No, I don’t, particularly.”
“He used to sing a song, you know. Let’s see. How did it go?” After mumbling to himself for a bit, he rendered the tune in a serviceable baritone.
“Abner!” said Helen, but her husband only laughed and sang some more.
He stumbled on this last verse, which gave his wife a place to put her foot down and look unpersuaded by his melodic endeavors. “All right, all right!” she said, but she was laughing underneath the grim expression.
“You see, I don’t have to look for Fiddler’s Green,” said the farmer. He was a little carried away with his own performance, and when he said, “I’ve got everything I need right here,” he gave his wife an affectionate swat on the backside and received, for his troubles, a portentous rendition of his name as well as a grim expression that concealed very little laughter at all. “Guess it’s my turn to milk the cow,” said Abner suddenly, and he leaped from his seat and grabbed his hat on his way out the door. Beetle sprang up and clattered after him.
“I never!” said Helen Cook again, and without thinking she patted that portion of herself that her husband had assailed. “Pay him never mind, Mr. Oig,” she told their guest, but the sailor was tucked back into his supper and caught little of what had just occurred.
It was Abijah who watched Robin Oig with the loudest appearance of doubt, although his interest in their guest was more amused than his sense of logic offended. The Cooks were straightforward people but could put up with a little nonsense if it was delivered with sincerity. They may have felt sorry for the man or perhaps had the capacity to admire windmill tilting. Ab had greeted Robin’s travel plans with doubt and a guffaw or two. His father had prodded the guest into explaining the intricacies of discovering his intended destination. Mrs. Cook simply fed him. She may have been fueling his fire or attempting to quiet it by stuffing him, but in the end she was more concerned that he was set on following the mysterious Mr. Moss (as she thought of this man, since she hadn’t met him) to Dutten and the Normells and Droones.
“I’ve had an accountability about that fellow since I first met him this morning,” Robin Oig replied. It did seem like a lot of miles and steps since he left Portland, and the roundabout nature of his wanderings had only managed to convince him that following Mr. Moss was the wise thing to do.
“He knew how to build a stone wall,” said Ab.
Robin Oig didn’t. He had helped the Cooks move a large piece of rock, but the sailor did not have Mr. Moss’s eye. Robin had lifted the boulder onto the stone wall and propped it up with some smaller rocks, then stepped back to survey his work. Even he saw that his contribution looked more like accident than art, and he had frowned and pouted till the Cook men muckled onto the boulder and set it right.
“You wouldn’t know there was a right way to set one stone atop another,” said the sailor at the dinner table.
“The right way, the wrong way, and my way,” said Ab.
Robin understood this; it might explain what he was doing in Vassalboro that evening. Helen Cook herself rarely followed a recipe to the letter.
“In the morning I’ll show you a shortcut for catching up with Mr. Moss,” promised Ab, who had felt his own accountability about the two wanderers.
The meal accomplished one thing, and that was to exhaust their guest’s remaining powers. He yawned at the table and never thought to excuse himself. “I’d better search out your hayloft,” he said. “I can’t tell you when I last ate like this,” he added without specifying whether he was referring to the quantity or the quality of the meal. “I am obliged,” he said as he rose from the table, and with a simple good night, retrieved his oar, which was laid out in the hall, and tromped outside.
Inside the barn, the smell of the cow, a calf, and Cram was a bit like too much spice in the air for Robin Oig, or at least like the sort of spice he was unaccustomed to. Salt and seaweed, fish and tar he wouldn’t take note of, but a horse clopping past, even in the open air, smelled of earth and greenery and labor. He sneezed first thing, and Beetle, lying near by, let out a startled woof. Abner Cook said, “Bless you,” and leaned down so that he could regard the man from under the cow while he milked her. “So, what’s driven you to it, Mr. Oig?” he inquired.
Robin frowned, listening to the rhythmic squirt of milk in the bucket. He said, “There does seem to be a lot of fussing about.”
“Oh?” The farmer didn’t catch his meaning.
“You see, on board they’re always fussing about with sheets and halyards and the like, and in
port they’re always fussing about with laws and regulation, and excuse me for saying so, but even out here there seems to be some fussing about with rocks and cows.”
Abner straightened his back with a crackle or two and laid his cheek against the Jersey’s side. “A man has to make his living,” said the farmer without having taken any offense.
“I suppose that’s generally the case,” said Robin Oig, but he had not thought about it very much before agreeing.
“There was a fellow, come to the fair last August,” said Abner, “had himself a perpetual motion machine. There was a wheel going round, and it pushed a gear here and a lever there that lifted a ball bearing a step at a time up a little ramp, and when that ball bearing reached the top of the ramp, it slipped onto a little dumbwaiter, you might call it, and turned the wheel, by pulley and lever, riding to the bottom of the ramp again, and the whole thing just kept up—wheel and ramp, wheel and ramp. Perpetual motion, he called it. I said I hoped it didn’t get away from him somehow as it didn’t appear to need him to start or stop.”
“What did he say?” asked the sailor.
“Oh, I said it to myself, really. Or to Helen perhaps.”
“Something had to keep it going.” Robin pulled on his beard.
“Yes, I thought so.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“Maybe there’ll be one where you’re heading,” said Abner without irony.
Robin only nodded and looked for the ladder that would reach him up to the hayloft. He sneezed again, and Beetle woofed.
“Beetle,” said the farmer, and “Bless you,” again to Robin Oig.
The sailor thanked him as he climbed. Settling himself in the hay above, he went into a fit of sneezing till the dust had settled. A whippoorwill called from the lilacs in front of the house. The rhythmic sound of milking altered subtly as the milk bucket filled.
A powerful snore rose up from the loft.
Abner Cook set the full bucket aside, then grained the animals and spent a few moments making of Cram in his stable. He listened to the resonant snores from above and hummed to himself the tune he had sung in the kitchen. Then he took up his lantern and the milk bucket and, with Beetle close upon his heels, went across to the house.
44. On the Cusp of Knowing
“We’re glad you’ve come,” said Jeffrey Normell when Sundry Moss and Maven Flyce came riding, under escort, out of the darkness and onto the lawn before the summerhouse at Dutten Pond. The round-faced fellow and his round-faced relatives had not been expecting anyone beside Sundry, but Jeffrey hid it well. “We’ve been expecting you,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” said Sundry flatly. Whatever he had expected, it had not been this solemn crowd—man and woman and all ages down to the youngest child still in her mother’s arms—standing about in their shirts and ties, their linen dresses and practical hats, as if they were Fourth of July picnickers at dark, waiting, though with apparent dread, for the fireworks display.
“Oh,” said Mr. Normell, “very good,” but was at a loss for further statement or deed. He appeared to infer something deeper from Sundry’s reply.
“I’m so surprised!” said Maven, looking about at the staring crowd.
The moon was not high enough to send its unhindered glow beyond the trees, but lamplight filled the yard and dotted the way past the shore to a separate group of people some distance away. Boats, half beached, swayed with the vague movement of the pond or the wind. Sundry looked for the Rings, and particularly for Melanie, pausing once or twice upon the face of a similarly sized child. Jeffrey Normell followed his gaze, looking abashed, but another man—wider and more red-faced than Jeffrey—approached Sundry’s horse and attempted a placid expression.
“Where are Mr. Ring and his child?” said Sundry, hoping to garner some advantage by the first demand. There was no guessing how much these people had learned about Melanie, but intuition favored keeping secrets.
“They are in—” began the larger Mr. Normell, “inside,” he finished, but with little conviction. “I am Charles Normell, Mr. Moss,” he said after gathering his thoughts with a nervous cough. He began to offer his hand, but hesitated, and Sundry did not encourage the familiarity by either gesture or expression. “There has been an unfortunate turn of affairs,” said the man.
“That is what brought me here,” said Sundry, making use of his height upon the horse to look down upon Charles Normell and the people behind him.
“The man is dead, Mr. Moss,” said a tall woman of indeterminate years and polar appearance to Charles Normell.
“Oh, my!” came Maven’s voice.
Expected news can yet startle a person, but Sundry’s face betrayed more anger than surprise. He left a hard gaze on the woman to study the crowd but received only blank or, at best, uncertain stares. He wondered if such tidings might merely be a means of keeping the man in question out of his sight, and he said quietly, “Where’s Mailon?”
“This is Mrs. Bridey Droone,” said Charles Normell, as if he hadn’t heard Sundry’s query. It was odd how no one else stirred or shifted.
“Where’s the boy?”
“He’s with his father,” said Jeffrey after a general look of inquiry proceeded from face to face.
“I am amazed!” said Maven.
“Mr. Moss,” said Charles Normell, after a brief and puzzled look at the man with the cowlick.
“Where are they?” said Sundry.
“Yes, in due time,” replied Charles, but several others glanced guiltily toward the house.
Sundry swung a leg up over Lillie’s saddle and dropped to the ground in front of the man. He kept Charles’s eyes locked in his own stare till he had passed the man. The crowd had been silent, but now a murmur followed him, as did several senior members of both the thin clan and the thick. Sundry walked to the house and mounted the front steps, but here he showed the first sign of hesitation; he couldn’t say if he would be doing Maven a disservice by leading him in with him or leaving him outside and to his own devices. When Sundry glanced back at his traveling companion, Maven was gaping with evident astonishment at the back of Topper’s head.
The house was informally arranged with a kitchen at its front, an open stairway, and a pair of rooms at the back. The door to the left-hand room was open, and the space beyond unlit; a pale line of light shone beneath the right-hand door, and Sundry rapped twice at this entrance before he heard a small voice. Shaking with complex doubt and emotion, he steadied his hand on the knob before looking over his shoulder at the small crowd.
Charles Normell was attempting to form a cogent remark, but Mrs. Droone simply said, “We must speak with you, Mr. Moss.”
“That much we do agree on,” replied Sundry, and he went inside, closing the door on a sudden uproar behind him.
Of the two of them the little girl had the most reason to look surprised and appeared least so. As it happens, there is a difference between faith and expectation. “I am sorry,” said Sundry, just loud enough to be heard above the ruckus on the other side of the door.
Melanie shook her head slowly, her eyes wide.
“I suppose that’s small comfort,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight.” Sundry stopped. He had the presentiment of seeing something beyond the realm of the natural and the canny. Stretched upon the bed was the form of Burne Ring. Melanie sat in a chair beside him, her shadow large against the wall. The little girl’s hand was rested in her father’s, and as Sundry watched, the larger fingers appeared to grip hers lightly.
The scene had been suggestive of every terror advertised by temperance preachers and every sharp pang of melancholy and suffering sought after by writers of cautionary tales. Now Sundry was not sure what he was seeing. Several thoughts went through him about the clutch of death and the rigors of the deceased. He heard that strange grunting noise—once, twice, three times—that Burne Ring sometimes accomplished when he took a breath, and he approached the bed to lean over the ashen face. “They s
aid ...” Sundry’s voice trailed off. It seemed indelicate, somehow, to finish the sentence while he was standing next to the man.
“They think he’s dead,” whispered Melanie.
“Not yet,” said Burne Ring quietly.
“Apparently not,” said Sundry.
“They think he’s dead,” Melanie said again.
“Where did you get to?” rumbled Burne Ring without opening his eyes.
“They said you’d be coming,” said Melanie. “Mr. Normell said so.”
There was, in this statement, a hint of the little girl’s odd faith in him, and Sundry was reinvested with the strangeness and possible danger of their circumstances. “Has anyone told you why Mr. Normell brought you here?”
“He just said you’d be coming.”
Sundry couldn’t imagine what he had stepped into. “What would they want with me?” he wondered. He looked back at the door and attempted to pry a single voice from the heated discussion beyond.
“There’s a lot of people out there,” she hushed. “They seem awfully worried about something.”
Sundry thought they seemed more frightened than worried.
“Where’s that bottle?” asked Burne. He was remembering that there had been a bottle in his coat pocket.
Sundry laid a finger aside of his nose and said quietly, “Let’s not disabuse them of the notion that you’ve left us.”
Burne Ring opened one eye and gave Sundry a doubtful glare.
Sundry leaned close to the man and said in a sharp whisper, “Do you know what we’re doing here?”
The man on the bed said nothing.
“Then for the sake of your daughter, if not for yours or mine, you had better play along.” Sundry looked at the wide-eyed, openmouthed face of Melanie Ring, and his heart went out of him. “What they don’t know can’t hurt us,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “You will be Mailon for a little while longer.”
