“That’s true,” Jane Ann said. “What else?”
“To honor dead people who can’t be here among us anymore,” said Ned Allison.
“Yes. To acknowledge them. Our memory of them, at least.”
“I think that’s where the idea of ghosts comes from,” said Mary Moyer, twelve, a blossoming intellectual. “A mix of memory and imagination.”
“Very good,” Jane Ann said. “How many of you believe in ghosts?”
Several of the younger children raised their hands, a few tentatively, while checking around the room to see whether they had company in their belief.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” said David Martin, fifteen, a cynic through and through.
“Maybe the boundary between memory and imagination isn’t as firm as we like to think,” Jane Ann said.
“What is is and what ain’t ain’t,” David Martin said.
“Isn’t, not ain’t,” Jane Ann said.
“Whatever.”
“No, not whatever. Isn’t, not ain’t,” Jane Ann said.
“Well ghosts ain’t, as in there ain’t no such thing.”
“Isn’t!”
“That too.”
“I don’t want to hear ‘ain’t’ come out of your mouth anymore, David.”
He slumped in his seat, defeated, more cynical than ever.
“Any more ideas about why we celebrate Halloween?” Jane Ann asked.
“To get rid of rotten eggs,” said Darren McWhinnie, thirteen, the class wit, to a smattering of laughs.
“Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty for your house,” cracked Barry Hutto, fourteen, an instigator. “I’m saving ’em up, personally.”
“Like to see you try it—”
“All right, that’s enough of that, thank you,” Jane Ann said. “Who can tell us where the ‘tricks’ part of trick or treat comes from?”
“Tradition,” said Carey Allison, nine, Ned’s little brother.
“Last year we put Mr. Stimmel’s rooster up in the church tower,” said Albert Hoad, twelve.
“He didn’t stay there long,” said Billie Gasperry, twelve, a tomboy who followed along with Darren McWhinnie’s gang. “Its wings were clipped and it fell out and broke its neck.”
“You probably ate him, too,” said Barry.
“I wished I did,” said Billie. “I bet all you get is possum over at your house.”
Jane Ann stepped in. “Let’s cut out the quarreling and baiting, shall we?”
“He started it—”
“I don’t care who started it. I’m tired of it. Who has an idea for a costume this year?”
“I’m going around as a flu victim,” said Darren McWhinnie, who added some ghoulish sound effects.
“That’s not funny,” Jane Ann said. Hardly a family in town was untouched by the visit of the deadly flu three years earlier, and some of the children in the class had lost a sibling or a parent.
“I’m dressing up as Brother Jobe this year,” said Arthur Shroeder, ten.
“My mother says he’s the devil,” said Nina Pettie, thirteen.
“He’s like a big black bug,” said Darren McWhinnie. “If you dress up like him, we’ll squash you!”
Jane Ann allowed the general hilarity at that crack to subside on its own.
“Can anyone else tell me what we celebrate on Halloween?”
“It’s the harvest time of the year with all the pumpkins and cornstalks and giving out of treats and all,” said Sally LaBountie, fourteen, James’s sister, an inward-looking girl who loved books and animals equally and who often evinced impatience with the workings of the other childrens’ minds. “It’s a time of plenty.”
“Very true,” Jane Ann said. “Does anyone know where all these traditions come from?”
“The old times,” said Jason Schmidt, nine. “When it was the USA.”
“It’s still the USA,” Jane Ann said.
“My dad says the USA is finished,” said Jared Silberman, twelve.
“No, it’s still here,” Jane Ann said.
“Then why don’t the electric come back on anymore?” asked Ryan Arena, fourteen. “Where’s the army?”
“Why doesn’t it come on,” Jane Ann said.
“The army’s still bogged down in the Holy Land,” said Corey DeLong, twelve, who had heard the last bits of news on the radio before the electricity went out.
“We might’s well be on our own here in town now,” Ryan Arena said.
“We are on our own,” Sally LaBountie said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“My dad says it’s good riddance about the government—”
“I heard there’s Chinese now in California—”
“And Texas has gone with Mexico, or the other way around—”
“They landed a man on the moon, the Chinese did—”
“We already done that, America, ages ago—”
“Can we get back to Halloween, class?” Jane Ann said, asserting her dominion in the room. “Who can tell me the nation that had the biggest influence in bringing Halloween to America?”
After a lull, Sally LaBountie said, “England. The Salem witch trials happened after the pilgrims landed. They believed witches could take the form of an animal like a black cat.”
“Actually it was Ireland,” said Jane Ann, who occasionally lost patience with Sally LaBountie’s grandstanding. “The Irish came to America in waves, first in the late 1700s and again in the 1840s and 1850s, when the potato famine struck Ireland.”
“How can potatoes cause a famine?” said Albert Hoad. “It’s a food.”
“Maybe they didn’t know how to cook ’em,” said Ryan Arena.
“Nobody’s that stupid,” said Darren McWhinnie.
“That’s enough, Darren,” Jane Ann said. “The Irish were subject to very harsh living conditions. Many were tenant farmers on land owned by rich people who lived in England, some of whom never even set foot in Ireland. The poor Irish tenant farmers lived on just a few acres. It wasn’t enough land to grow corn or grain crops. So they grew potatoes as a subsistence crop.” Jane Ann wrote subsistence on the blackboard with a piece of chalk that was actually a fragment of salvaged gypsum board. “That means just enough to get by on.”
“Sounds like life here,” said Billie.
“Yes, these are hard times,” Jane Ann said. “But we’re not as poor as they were.”
“Not yet,” said Sally.
“What pushed Ireland over the edge,” Jane Ann continued, “was the potato blight, a plant disease that came into Ireland, possibly from seed potatoes grown here in America, and wiped out all the potato crops for several years in a row. Roughly a million people died, many from disease that accompanied the famine, when people’s resistance was lowered by starvation. Many of the survivors left Ireland and came to America. Do any of you have Irish ancestors?”
A number of hands went up around the room.
“The Irish had a very rich cultural heritage, which they brought with them to America,” Jane Ann continued. “Halloween is part of that heritage. It is a combination of the Celtic festival of Samhain”— she wrote the word on the blackboard—“which is an old Gaelic word meaning summer’s end—the harvesttime—and the Christian holy day devoted to all the saints, or all saints, which traditionally falls on November first.”
“Isn’t holy day where we get the word holiday from?” asked Kelly.
“Yes it is. Very good,” Jane Ann said. “All Saints’ Day came to include anyone who had died faithful to the church and its beliefs. Therefore, the night before November first, October thirty-first, is when departed souls come back and roam the earth, and we the living encounter them while we’re celebrating our harvest fest. Another term for the dead of the ages was all hallows, whose souls were hallowed by entrance to heaven.” She wrote hallows on the blackboard. “And the een part is a contraction of the word evening. So, you see we end up with this interesting combination of a harvest festival joined with a night of the d
ead returning to earth. And that is where Halloween comes from.”
A stillness fell over the class. The sounds of hammer blows were audible in the distance behind a closer cawing of crows.
“I’m gonna dress up as a potato,” said Barry Hutto, breaking the spell. His joke went over with all the children, from the oldest to the youngest.
“I’m sure that will be easy,” Jane Ann said, happy for the release of tension that the laughter represented. “Just put a burlap sack over your head.” More laughter. “Now I want to read you a wonderful story about Halloween written by a great American author, Washington Irving, who also happened to be the great bard of the Hudson Valley.”
“This is the Hudson Valley,” said little Sarah Watling, seven.
“Quite right, Sarah,” Jane Ann said, taking a seat at her desk and opening a very old edition of Irving’s collected works.
“In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson…,” she began reading aloud.
THIRTY-TWO
Around sunrise the day after his home was invaded, Stephen Bullock decided to hang the rest of the intruders. He drew up a warrant of execution for the nine men during his breakfast and determined, before hanging them, to interrogate whoever was next in command after the three he had killed in his bedroom.
A little after seven in the morning, he entered the old apple storage cooler where the men were held. He went in alone. Five of his own men, well armed, remained outside the cooler. The captives inside recoiled at the light of the candle lantern when Bullock entered. They all shivered visibly in one corner of the large chamber, where they huddled together in hobbles with their hands tied behind their backs. The room stank of animal waste and fear.
“Three of your men are dead,” Bullock told them. “I suppose you’ve figured out who they are by now. Who among you has the authority to speak for the rest of this gang?”
The men swapped glances.
“Don’t be shy,” Bullock added.
“We don’t have no official ranks, if that’s what you mean,” said one, a large man with a shaved head, perhaps thirty years old.
“It seems you speak for the rest.”
“Just for now,” the shaved-head man said.
“Okay, I nominate you spokesman. And second it. All in favor? Aye. See, you’re elected. Get up and come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’re going to have breakfast and we’re going to talk.”
The man got up off his haunches and glanced back at his companions. He was rangy, gaunt, and hollow-eyed but obviously very strong. The tendons in his neck stood out like wires.
“Come,” Bullock said.
The man shuffled in his hobbles, which only allowed him to take tiny steps. Bullock and his five men, armed with rifles and pistols, walked him to the manse. The clear morning was already blooming into a spectacularly warm Indian-summer day with many stimulating aromas in the air: fresh cut hay, burning brush, sorghum boiling down to syrup at Bullock’s new cane mill on the river, corn bread baking. Bullock led his prisoner into a sunny conservatory wing of the house and directed the man to have a seat at a glass-topped table. The cords that bound his hands behind his back were removed, though the hobbles on his ankles remained.
Bullock’s chore man, Roger Lippy, a Chrysler dealer in the old times, laid a stiff white cloth on the table and set it with silver tableware and damask napkins rolled into silver rings. Bullock held up a sterling silver fork and examined it in a shaft of sunlight.
“Too bad you didn’t get to rob the place,” Bullock said. “We have a lot of nice things here.”
The prisoner didn’t reply.
Roger Lippy stood by the table with a tray at his side.
“What would you like for breakfast?” Bullock asked the prisoner.
“You’re gonna give me breakfast?”
“Certainly.”
“Why?”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Not especially.”
“Okay, I’ll order for you. Roger, tell Lilah to make this fellow a four-egg omelet with some of that Duanesburg cheddar, bacon and sausage, hash browns, and corn bread with the blackberry preserves.”
“Yessir. Yourself?”
“I’ll just have tea,” Bullock said. “Tea for you?” he asked the prisoner, who just grunted. “It’s real black China tea,” Bullock added. “None of that fruity herbal crap. It’ll give you a real lift. Go on, give yourself a break.”
“Okay,” the prisoner said. Roger Lippy left them. Bullock’s other men took up positions sitting or standing outside the conservatory, on display but out of earshot. Sparrows flitted in and out of the room through the ventilation louvers.
“What’s your name?” Bullock asked.
“What’s it matter?”
“It should matter to you. It’s your name. You can’t defend your honor without defending your name, can you?”
“It’s Jason Hammerschield.”
“You couldn’t have made that up.”
“It’s my name.”
“Where’s this gang of yours from?”
“It’s not my gang.”
“I don’t mean you own it. But obviously you’re a member.”
Roger Lippy brought out a tray with a teapot and two matching cups and saucers. Bullock poured for both of them.
“The cream’s from our own dairy and the sugar’s made from our own beets, though we’re working up a sorghum operation now,” Bullock said. “So, Jason, where do you and your associates hail from?”
“Waterbury, Connecticut. We been on the road a while.”
“How are things back there in the Nutmeg State?”
“The what?”
“Connecticut.”
“They sucked. Which is how come we took to the road.”
“Have you had many adventures?”
“It’s a hard life.”
“You must not be very good at what you do.”
“We’re all right. But it’s slim pickings out there.”
“Then it’s extra sad that you messed up here. We’re living large. We’ve got full bellies, electric power, amber waves of grain, groaning orchards, a nice big house, first-rate furnishings.”
“I can see.”
“Oh, you only see a teensy-weensy bit of what we’ve got going. Want me to put on some recorded music? I’ve got it all—classical, Broadway musicals, old Bob Dylan—”
Roger Lippy reappeared with Jason Hammerschield’s breakfast, with a basket of corn bread, a ramekin of butter, and a dish of blackberry jam. The prisoner stared at the steaming plate that was set before him.
“Put on some Debussy, would you, Roger? The first preludes.”
“Sure thing, sir.”
“Go ahead, dig in,” Bullock said to his prisoner, who continued to stare darkly at his plate.
“How do I know it’s not poison?”
Bullock laughed sincerely. “You moron, if I wanted to kill you, I’d have one of my men shoot you in the head. Go ahead, eat.”
Jason Hammerschield looked up at Bullock, squinting with dull incomprehension.
“I’ll be very cross with you if you just let it sit there,” Bullock added.
The prisoner took a tentative forkful of his omelet, then ate more rapidly until he was fairly inhaling the contents of the plate in a fugue of deprivation. He reached into the basket for some corn bread, slathered it with butter, and spooned jam on top. “What I want to know,” Bullock continued, “is whether you are part of some larger horde.”
“Some what?” Jason Hammerschield said, spraying corn-bread crumbs as he spoke.
“You know, a larger unit of people like yourselves, an army of marauders, scavenging across the land like locusts.”
Jason Hammerschield chewed ruminatively.
“No,” he said eventually. “We’re just who we are. A bunch of guys.”
“What do you call your bunch?”
“
Nothing.”
“Really? I’d think you’d sit around the campfire at night memorializing your exploits.”
“What our what?”
“Making up stories about yourselves. For your own amusement. Creating a myth for posterity.”
“We just fall out and sleep. It’s hard living like we do.”
“All I can say is you boys are seriously lacking in imagination.”
Jason Hammerschield mopped up the last remaining specks of egg, hash browns, and crumbs of bacon with a triangle of corn bread.
“Allow me to suggest a name,” Bullock said. “The Nutmeg Boys. Or maybe just the Nutmeggers.”
Jason Hammerschield made a face and snorted. “What happens now?” he asked, tossing his napkin onto his plate.
“Just some legal rigmarole,” Bullock said. “Do you boys have a lawyer?”
“No.”
“Want me to represent you? I’m a member of the bar.”
“That don’t sound right.”
“These are rugged times, admittedly, for the machinery of justice. By a stroke of luck, though, there’s a magistrate on the premises.”
“Who would that be?”
“Yours truly,” Bullock said.
“I see,” Jason Hammerschield said. “You the jury, too?”
“Pretty much. I could appoint some of my people, but they’d just do what I tell them. So why bother?”
A green look came over the prisoner as the horizon of his future finally resolved into a featureless landscape of grievous futility. He puffed out his cheeks, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he vomited his breakfast back onto his plate.
“It’s been nice chatting with you, Jason, but I have an awful lot to look after here. We’re slaughtering some hogs today. It’s the season for it.”
Bullock left the prisoner staring blankly into the panes of the conservatory walls and went outside to where his men waited.
“Take all these fellows down to the River Road,” Bullock told the versatile Dick Lee, “and hang them there at twenty-yard intervals.”
THIRTY-THREE
Robert Earle took a seat in Walter McWhinnie’s cobbler shop in the former family room of Walter’s house on Salem Street. Robert had been savoring this moment since he came home from searching the hills with the doctor and found a note informing him that the winter boots he ordered in September were finished and ready to try on.
The Witch of Hebron Page 15
