World Made by Hand: A Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

  "Where'd you find these?"

  "The high school basement," he said. "You wouldn't believe what's down there. The barber chair we got up in Fort Edward. Five hundred bucks. Cheap. Have a seat. Brother Judah, come hither and attend!"

  A tall, funereal, wading bird of a young man with a beaklike nose leaned his broom against the wall and came over.

  "Shave?" he said.

  "Huh? No, I don't want to shave off my beard."

  "Why not?" Brother Jobe said.

  "I just don't. I'm used to it."

  "Well, at least let Brother Judah trim it up."

  "Okay. But just a trim."

  "Do you object if he trims your hair as well?"

  "He can trim my hair."

  "Go to, son," Brother Jobe said.

  Judah lit a double spirit lamp under a kind of oblong kettle on the shelf above the sink, apparently a small water heater. He tied a smock around my throat and began trimming my hair, which I admit had gotten shaggy. I watched him closely in the mirror. He had all the moves of an experienced barber.

  "Where'd you get your training?" I said.

  "New Faith," he said.

  Stupid question on my part, I guess. Once in a while, Jane Ann cut my hair, but otherwise it was not something I put a lot of effort into. Judah trimmed around my ears and down around the back of my neck. By the time he was done with my hair, steam was coming out of the kettle. He adjusted the chair into a reclining position, put a stopper in the sink, poured some of the boiling water in, and tempered it off with a splash of cold from the tap. Then he dropped in a small white towel, wrung it out, and draped it over my face. The steamy towel felt absolutely wonderful. I closed my eyes and let the heat penetrate. Judah banged around for a minute, and then I heard the whup, whup, whup of him stropping a razor. He took the towel off, dropped it back in the sink. He had whipped up some fresh lather in a bowl and stood with a shaving brush in his left hand and a straight razor in his right.

  "Can I trust you with that thing?" I said.

  "I never seen a man killed yet with a shaving brush," Brother Jobe said.

  "What are you aiming to do with that razor?" I said to Judah.

  "I'm just gon' clean up the whiskers on your throat and cheekbones," Judah said. His voice was almost comically high for such a tall, grave-looking fellow.

  "Oh, all right," I said.

  No one besides me had ever held a razor to my neck before. I didn't like the idea, but I let go of my petty fears and lay back. The warm lather felt comforting, and Judah had a sure hand with the razor. He scraped my neck clean and made a few passes along my upper cheeks. Then I heard him go to the beard itself with his scissors, clickity-click. Finally, he cleaned up the lather and whisker bits with another hot towel, jacked the chair back up, and stepped aside so I could admire myself in the mirror. I must say I looked polished up in a way I hadn't been for years. I saw a glimmer of the old corporate executive there. I couldn't help smiling.

  "You see," Brother Jobe said. "What a salubrious effect it has."

  "I feel improved, all right."

  "And improved for the better! That's what New Faith is all about. You town folks have come to be a scrufty-looking bunch. It's demoralizing. You know, I'm thinking of opening up a men's haberdash right next door."

  "Where would you get the goods?"

  "Why, we'd turn'em out ourself, just like we do now for our own."

  "You want us all to dress up like you?"

  "Well, what's wrong with that? The New Faith look is clean and upright."

  "So, none of us townies would have to sign on with your outfit officially. You just get us all looking the same and soon it's a fait accompli."

  "What kind of fate is that?"

  "Never mind."

  "It don't sound like a bad fate," Brother Jobe said. "Anyways, I want to present you with this. Brother Judah, gimme that there razor."

  Judah wiped it down and handed it to Brother Jobe.

  "Im'a give this to you so you can tidy yourself up at home on the days that we closed down here," Brother Jobe said. "The mayor of a town ought to set the tone for others, don't you think? Here. We got a half a gross of'em down in Pennsylvania. Good German steel. With my compliments."

  He slapped the razor into my hand.

  "Thanks."

  "And lookit, the blade locks up just so, and then you can't hurt yourself."

  "I always was a slow and careful shaver."

  "Sure, but in a fight you want it so's you don't cut your own goshdurn fingers off."

  "A fight! We don't have many razor fights up here."

  "No? It's common practice down home."

  "Can I have a word with you outside?" I said.

  We stepped outside. The heat was rising again. Buddy Haseltine was washing the dust off Terry Einhorn's store window with a rag in an unsteady hand. A couple of women carrying baskets lingered outside Russo's bakery.

  "Care for some instruction in the finer points of razor fighting, old son?"

  "Can you be serious for a moment?"

  "I'm always serious. Even my funnin' is serious. Don't you know that yet?"

  "Well, that's good because I have a serious problem. Do you know who Wayne Karp is?"

  "I haven't met the gentleman, but I'm aware of his, uh, position in the community."

  "It appears he was down here burglarizing houses last night when all the people were over at Bullock's."

  "You don't say. That ain't right."

  "Anything turn up missing at the school?"

  "Not so's I know. But we had five of the women watching all them kids and several brothers making reg'lar watch rounds."

  "I'm going to have to go see him."

  "I understand he's got some kind of village up there, near the old landfill."

  "An old trailer park."

  "Hmmph. Trailer trash. Ain't that old-timey! I gather you'd like some backup. You can have Joseph and them."

  "For the moment I would like you to send a courier over to Bullock to get some warrants."

  "Can do."

  "Then, tomorrow the Reverend Holder and I will figure out how to proceed with this."

  "Why him?"

  "He's our constable now."

  "He ain't exactly the rough and ready sort."

  "I'm not looking to start a war."

  There was no one at home in the rectory.

  Katie Zucker, Todd's wife, was next door at the church in her capacity as deacon, up on a stepladder hanging the hymn numbers for Sunday's service on the hymn board beside the pulpit. She told me that Loren and Jane Ann had gone out berry picking.

  "You've certainly come out of your shell lately, Robert."

  "It's just circumstances," I said.

  "I hear that Britney Watling has joined your household."

  "That's more or less the truth, Katie," I said.

  "Don't you think it looks funny?"

  "I'm sure it does," I said. "But so does an American town with no cars or electric lights and people like us who don't have regular jobs to go to anymore, and folks dying before their time from all kinds of things."

  Katie made a face up there on her ladder. At the University of Vermont in the old days, she was a nationally ranked speed skater who almost made the U.S. Olympic team. Afterward, before marrying Todd, she worked as a northeast regional sales rep for Nike, earning large commissions and bonuses. Now she was a farmer's wife and church caretaker. Her hair was turning silver though she still had an athlete's body, even after two children. We had a little bit of history. A year after Sandy passed away, Katie had too much to drink at the Harvest Ball up in Hebron and made a pass at me in a way that was a little too demonstrative. Todd was right across the room. It was embarrassing.

  "Hey, did you lose weight or something?" she said, conspicuously changing the subject.

  "I just got my hair cut."

  "Oh? You look like one of those Civil War generals."

  I knew where to find Loren and Jane Ann if the
y were picking wild blackberries. They'd be up on the railroad tracks along the Battenkill. A particular stretch where one side of the cut faced due south was especially rich with fruit, and I headed out that way. It was nice to be rambling out in the countryside by myself for a change, free of other people's demands. On the steel bridge where the tracks cross the river a half mile outside town, I stopped for a while to watch the river, knowing Loren and Jane Ann would have to come back that way. A few dun-colored caddis flies were coming off the water. I watched an osprey rise off the stream with a good twelve-inch trout in his talons. When he was gone with his prize, plenty more trout were visible finning in the feeding lanes in the shadow of the bridge's trusses and girders. I was sorry I hadn't brought a rod. I sat there with my legs dangling off the edge of the deck, feeling the guilty pleasure of letting my obligations slide for a while. I wasn't concerned about trains coming by, because they didn't run anymore. Perhaps a half hour later I heard human voices down the way and looked up to see Loren and Jane Ann at the far end of the bridge.

  "That you, Robert?" Loren said.

  "I'm looking for you," I said.

  When they came up on me sitting there, Loren gave me a slight shove like he wanted to push me over the edge into the river. Of course, he was just clowning around. But it was enough to give my heart a flutter. The stream was a good forty feet down from the deck of the bridge, and the water probably wasn't more than four feet deep, so if you fell, you'd probably break your neck. Then Loren put his arm under my chin and held my head as he rubbed his knuckles into my scalp: a noogie. I endured it stoically until he stopped. Then they sat down next to me, Jane Ann on my left and Loren on my right. Each had a plastic pail half full of blackberries.

  "Can I try some?" I said.

  "No," Loren said. "Jane Ann's making jam for me."

  "You can have some of mine," Jane Ann said.

  "Don't give him any of yours either," Loren said.

  "Here, just taste a couple," Jane Ann said.

  "Hey, what'd I say?" Loren said. "Go pick your own."

  "Okay, old Mr. Cranky Puss," Jane Ann said.

  "Fuck you," Loren said to her.

  "Nice talk-"

  "And fuck you too," Loren said to me.

  "-for a man of the cloth."

  "And fuck the cloth, as a matter of fact."

  We sat there, the three of us in a row, watching the swallows and the fish and the caddis flies and the yellow irises blooming along a sandbank below. Jane Ann said they had seen a bear up the tracks. It ran away when it saw them.

  "Did you ever eat bear?" Loren said.

  "No. You?" I said.

  "Sure."

  "What's it like?"

  "It's not like chicken," Loren said. "More like pork meets roadkill."

  "Don't see much roadkill anymore."

  "Amen to that," Jane Ann said.

  "Except for us," Loren said. "We're history's roadkill."

  We fell into silence for another while.

  "Looks like somebody gave you a haircut," Jane Ann said eventually. "Your new houseguest? Or should I say roommate?"

  I wondered if my discomfort was visible. I hastened to explain how the New Faithers had opened the barbershop on Main.

  "What's next?" Jane Ann said, "a salon for us ladies?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Maybe if they're really ambitious they'll get the railroad going again."

  "Don't hold your breath on that one," Loren said. "Did you come out here to show us your haircut? It's darn fetching. Don't you think Robert looks fetching, dear?"

  Jane Ann didn't go for the bait.

  "We've got a problem," I said and explained how Wayne Karp and his boys had been prowling around the night before while everyone was over at Bullock's, and how I wanted Loren, in his capacity as constable, to go around and help me ascertain if people discovered anything stolen from their houses and barns."

  "And what if they did steal stuff?"

  "Then we'll have to do something about it," I said. "If you want me to find another constable, I'd understand."

  "You don't think I have what it takes?" Loren said.

  "You're a clergyman."

  "So was Savonarola."

  "I don't see you leading a crusade."

  "He didn't lead a crusade. He cleaned up a town."

  "I don't see us cleaning up Karptown," I said.

  "Whatever it is you intend to do, don't you dare count me out of it," Loren said.

  "My hero," Jane Ann said. "This gives me goose bumps."

  For a moment, Loren looked like he wanted to throw Jane Ann off the bridge. I was beginning to worry what he was capable of, what he might do.

  We waited until evening, when the men who worked on the surrounding farms and elsewhere would have returned home. At the first house we went to, Peter Wedekind's at the top of Bayard Street, we encountered yet another problem. Peter had gone by Einhorn's store to buy a few things on his way home from Deaver's farm and was enticed across the street for a look at the new barbershop, whereupon a bunch of New Faith men tossed him into a chair and held him down while they shaved off his beard. He was naturally very annoyed, he said, though his wife, Alma, said she liked his new look.

  "But that's not right, is it?" Peter said. "Forced shaving?"

  "It's certainly not," I said.

  At the next house we went to, Bill and Aggie Schroeder's, they were missing a pair of sterling silver fluted candlesticks that were three hundred years old and glaringly absent from their dining room table when they returned from Bullock's levee, they said. Bill, who operated the creamery on the western edge of town, hadn't strayed downtown on his way home, and still had his beard. In all, six other men in the houses we visited had had their beards forcibly shaved off because they happened to pass by Main and Van Buren that afternoon. Some of these households also discovered valuables missing, once we'd inquired: silver, jewelry, tools. By now, the sun was going down. Loren and I split up, and went around town for another hour, and when we met up again at the rectory, the final tally was eleven men forcibly shaved (plus three voluntarily) and two substantial lists of items stolen from various homes. The townspeople were angry, confused, and puzzled about the connection between the burglaries and the forced shavings, even though it was obvious to me that two separate things were going on. Some of them apparently thought that New Faith had carried out the robberies.

  Jane Ann was cooking off her blackberry jam in their summer kitchen as Loren and I compared notes and came to the inevitable conclusion that we'd have to arrest both Brother Jobe and Wayne Karp.

  "How do you want to handle this?" Loren said.

  "Well, that's going to take some thought, now, isn't it?"

  Britney was still up with Sarah when I returned home. They were both in the big stuffed chair, reading a book together by the light of a candle. It was The Wind in the Willows, which I had read to Daniel and then Genna years ago, the wonderful friendships of Rat, Mole, Badger, and Mr. Toad of Toad Hall. I closed the front door and stood there awkwardly, in my own house.

  "Are you hungry?" Britney said.

  "Yes, I am."

  "Mr. Schmidt came by with a stewing hen. It's in the Dutch oven out there."

  "How did he know you were here?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, that was kind of him," I said. "I suppose you two have already eaten."

  "Well, yes."

  "Maybe I'll have a look, then."

  "There's some beer too."

  I went out to the summer kitchen and lit a candle. The beer was in a plastic gallon jug. We reused them endlessly. It was a pale ale, very hoppy and strong. I felt the glow in my stomach immediately. The Dutch oven still retained some warmth. I lifted the heavy cast-iron lid. Britney had deboned the meat. Plenty was left and it was swimming in a cream-thickened sauce with new onions and peas along with some cornmeal dumplings flecked with thyme. I spooned out a bowlful and brought it back inside the house along with a tumbler of beer.


  "I hope you didn't wait up for me," I said.

  "I feel safer if you're here."

  "You could lock the door."

  "But then you'd have to wake me up to get in," she said.

  "Is the beer from Mr. Schmidt too?"

  "Yes."

  "This is delicious," I said, holding up my bowl. "You're a very good cook."

  "Thank you."

  "Mr. Toad got arrested and they put him in the jail," Sarah said.

  "Don't worry," I said. "He'll get out before long."

  "Did you have a motorcar in the old days?"

  "I certainly did. We just called them cars, though."

  "Do you think we'll ever have them again?"

  I chewed for a minute and glugged down some beer.

  "No, I don't think we'll have them again, Sarah," I said.

  "Ever?"

  "Probably not."

  "Oh ..." She seemed hugely disappointed.

  "Do you know what happened to them?"

  "Not really," Sarah said.

  "Well, I'll try to explain. Here's what happened. Cars had engines, and the engines needed a certain kind of magic liquid to run on, and-"

  "What's an engine?"

  "It's a machine that makes things go. You put the magic liquid in it and then the engine can do work. It can turn wheels and make the car go."

  "What's the magic liquid?"

  "It's called fuel."

  "What's fuel?"

  "It's like ... Do you see this chicken stew that I'm eating?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, this is fuel for my body. It gives me energy, makes me strong, powers my muscles and my brain, makes it possible for me to do things like saw wood and carry stuff from one place to another."

  "Do you have an engine?"

  "My whole body is a kind of engine. A living engine. And yours is too. We all need food and water to run our bodies. That's what food is for."

  "It tastes good," Sarah said. "That's why I like food."