After inquiring at the mansion, Robert was directed to Bullock’s landing across the road on the Hudson River. The landing consisted of a U-shaped wooden crib wharf and a small-goods warehouse in unpainted board and batten. Bullock had come down to dispatch his new trade vessel for Albany, thirty-seven miles downstream, with a cargo of new cider in barrels and several tons of grain: barley, corn, and oats. The boat was a sloop with the name Sophie painted on the transom in yellow and black. It carried a crew of six. Bullock was giving the manifest a last look before handing it back to his captain, Tom Soukey, one of four men who had been held in a hostage-and-ransom racket in Albany the previous summer before being rescued by Robert and a company of New Faith men.
“Tom,” Robert said in greeting. “You’re looking fit.”
“I’m back at it,” Tom said. “That’s how much I love this river.”
“Nice boat.”
“It’s a great improvement over the old girl,” Tom said, referring to the Elizabeth, a much smaller catboat that had been their former trading vessel.
“Did you build her right here?” Robert asked Bullock.
“We found a man who used to run the boatyard up at Essex on Lake Champlain. Or rather, he found us.”
“How fortunate.”
“For us or for him?”
“Both, I guess.”
A mate called down from halfway up the main mast saying that the halyard was clear. Tom Soukey said they were ready to go. “If we’re not back in four days, send the boys down to fetch us home again,” he added.
Tom hopped aboard. Two of his crew pushed off the wharf with gaffs while one raised a jib. Once they got clear of the landing, the mainsail went up with a great flapping of canvas. Robert and Bullock watched as the stately, tall-masted boat heaved downriver against the brilliant ochre of the foliage on the far shore.
“Tom and I played on a softball team in town years ago,” Robert said, admiring the progress of the Sophie.
“Is that so?” Bullock said. “Why, that gives me an idea. How about you get a team of the townsmen together and play a team of my people? We could make it a regular thing. Maybe even get the farmers to put up a team, and the men up in Battenville. Pretty soon we’ll have a league. Everyone would like it.”
“I still have my old glove,” Robert said. “I’m sure there are some aluminum bats kicking around town. But what do we do for a ball?”
“I’ll have the ladies here stitch one up,” Bullock said.
“I bet those New Faith boys could field a pretty good team, too.”
Bullock made a face. “I don’t know. Those Southern rednecks have a special gene for baseball. They might wipe up the floor with us.”
“It’d force us to raise the caliber of our play.”
Bullock sighed. “There’s something about them I just don’t like,” he said. “But I suppose you’re right. Is that what you came over to see me about? Softball?”
“No, that was your idea, Stephen. I came to see you about those bodies hanging along River Road.”
“Quite a spectacle, isn’t it?”
“I’ve had some complaints about it.”
“I suppose you heard we were invaded the other night.”
“I did.”
“We came very close to being murdered. In our own bedroom.”
“I heard.”
“I killed three of them myself. Kind of amazed I still had it in me.”
“Would you consider cutting them down now?”
“Absolutely not. They’re just getting ripe.”
“Stephen, this isn’t the fourteenth century.”
“It’s not our mom and dad’s America, either. I intend to keep them strung up until they rot out of their nooses.”
“That’s just plain morbid.”
“If there are any more out there like them, looking to rape and pillage, I want them to see how things work around here.”
“It looks like lynch law. You’re supposed to be the magistrate.”
“Believe me, justice has been served.”
“What do I tell the folks back in town?”
“Tell them to steer clear of River Road for a month or so,” Bullock said.
“I doubt they’ll want to come down here and play softball with all these bodies rotting.”
“Well, it’s getting late in the year anyway,” Bullock said. “There’s no point in rushing anything. Let’s aim for next spring on this softball league idea. But I suggest you start organizing it now. Talk it up. See if the farmers and the others want to get in on it.”
FIFTY-FIVE
At midafternoon, Perry Talisker hunkered behind an ancient stone wall at the margin of the woods and caught sight of the big cat pronking for mice in a blueberry flat behind an abandoned farm below Todd Hill. The farmhouse, in the distance, was a roofless charred ruin. The barns lay fallen in heaps covered with brambles and Virginia creeper. Poplars dotted the old cornfields and pastures. It thrilled Perry to see nature triumph over the residues of man, even while it quickened his desire to strike back at God and his creations. He put down his field glasses and swung the Marlin rifle off his shoulder. He could get the cat in his sights, but at more than three hundred yards, lacking telescopics, and with the wind gusting, he decided to hold back the shot. The cat probably had a feeding range of ten square miles or more, and a missed shot might send him to another part of the county.
Perry felt lightheaded, having not taken a meal in two days. He was content with the notion that his duties in this life were winding down, and except for this final obligation, he felt the weightless delight of being untethered at last from the things of the world. Yet as his existence worked toward merging with the ethers of time and space, he felt the beauty of the earth ever more keenly. Watching the big panther pounce playfully in the blueberry scrub, Perry imagined the joy it felt in its muscles and nerves. The way its flesh rippled under its reddish brown coat, it looked well-fed, as though it had enjoyed a summer of kills and feasts. More than once, he wished he were the big cat.
The cat kept at it for a good half hour, stopping twice to eat something less than a mouthful. The North American mountain lion was known to like crickets and grasshoppers, too, though its regular fare was the white-tailed deer. Then something Perry Talisker could not hear caused the big cat to stop pouncing and hold its head high at attention. It blinked ostentatiously, then slunk away in high grass the same color as its fur. Perry slung his rifle back over his shoulder and left his rocky lair in pursuit.
FIFTY-SIX
Brother Jobe and his comrades entered the city of Glens Falls from the south along old Route 9, a desolate highway strip of plundered building shells, broken signs, and empty parking lots, across the sagging bridge over the famous falls itself into the city center. They left the mule, the wagon, and its blanket-shrouded contents in front of a three-story building that advertised itself as HOTEL AND MEALS. The sun had just set behind the rooftops, casting the deserted sidewalks into dispiriting shadow.
“This here’s a hurtin’ burg,” Seth muttered, looking up and down Glen Street, as they entered the building. A single candle burned in a glass chimney at the registration counter. It failed to make the lobby, with its cast-off sofas and threadbare easy chairs, more cheerful. Behind the counter stood a half wall of wooden checkerboard fretwork with an opening to what looked like an empty dining room. No cooking aromas were perceptible at this hour. On the counter stood a miniature reproduction of the Liberty Bell, complete with crack, and a toy brass hammer for striking it. Elam hit it three times.
“To think that I spent my honeymoon in the Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas,” Seth remarked. “Lord have mercy. Must have been ten pretty gals at the front desk. Bellmen everywhere.”
“I guess the excitement is over there now,” Brother Jobe said.
“Except for the tarantulas and the Gila monsters,” Elam added.
“It was doggone nice,” Seth said.
Distant footsteps caught their atte
ntion. They seemed to go on forever. Eventually, a potato-faced man about forty emerged from the gloom of the dining room and bustled behind the counter. His white shirt had been washed so many times the collar was almost frayed off.
“If you got yourself a halfway pretty gal to sit this here desk, I bet your business would pick up smartly,” Seth said.
“Nothing we do here will pick up business,” the desk clerk said matter-of-factly.
“That’s not exactly forward-looking,” Seth said.
“No, but it’s the nature of these times. Nice to have you with us all the same. How can I help you?”
Brother Jobe engaged two rooms, one for himself, and one for Seth and Elam.
“You serving meals these days?” Brother Jobe inquired.
“We could fix your party some supper. Eggs and potatoes okay?”
“Got any meat?”
“Not that I know of. Got a nice cabbage soup.”
“Is there any other place to eat in this town?”
“Nothing like a proper restaurant of the old-time sort.”
“You got any cheese to go in them eggs?”
“We’re a little shy of cheese just now. Business has been slow.”
“We got some of our own you could put in,” Elam said.
“We can do that,” the clerk said.
“Let’s do that, then,” Brother Jobe said. “Just don’t go charging us extra for it.”
“This is an upright establishment,” the clerk said. “I detect that you’re not from around here.”
“We’re from Virginia.”
“Really? How’s things down there?”
“I couldn’t tell you. We ain’t been there for several years.”
“Oh? What brings you up our way, then?”
“Couple of matters. Can you tell me who the law is hereabouts?”
“The law here got killed last night.”
“How’s that?”
“Murdered in a card game by a young bandit, name of Billy Bones.”
“You don’t say? The one who styles himself the ‘singing bandit’?”
“That’d be Billy. You know of him?”
“I heard about him.”
“Well, he’s an infamous character, I’ll tell you, and hardly twenty years old. When he isn’t out robbing people on the roads, he hangs his hat at a certain house in town where ladies ply an ancient trade, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s a pretty way to put it,” Seth said.
“Billy, he had quite a time last night,” the clerk continued. “Killed our town manager, name of Luke Bliss, and two of his men. Then he went back to the house and killed one of the ladies—only it wasn’t a lady.”
“Is that some kind of riddle?”
“It was one of those men that like to dress up like a lady. This fellow was Billy’s, uh, consort, I’m told. Billy was drunk, of course, and hot-blooded from having just killed three men—by hand with a long knife, I’m told. There was another quarrel and another left dead, I’m told.”
“You’re an oft-told fellow,” Brother Jobe observed.
“And correctly informed, I think you’ll find,” the clerk said, bristling visibly. “News does come our way, being at the center of things. Anyway, I don’t think Billy will be hanging his hat around here anymore.”
“That’s an awful lot of excitement for such a quiet town,” Seth said.
“It’s just extra heartache and hardship for us,” the clerk said. “We can’t stand much more.”
“Do you know if this bandit had a boy with him?”
“Why, yes. I heard he had a little traveling companion, a protégé, he called him.”
The three New Faith men swapped glances all around.
“Do you know what happened to this child?” Brother Jobe asked. “Is he still over at that house?”
“No, Billy snatched him out of there and they left town together, I’m told.”
“Do you know when they skipped town?”
“Crack of dawn, I heard. They’re long gone.”
“Lord,” Elam said.
“Good riddance, I say. You men have horses, I presume.”
“Yes.”
“You can put them away up the block at Efraim’s. What was it you wanted the law for, anyway?”
“You see that wagon yonder?” Brother Jobe said, pointing.
“Yessir.”
“There’s a body under that blanket. We found it along the road up in the highlands. I have a suspicion that it was killed by this selfsame Billy Bones.”
“Goodness gracious. How do you figure that?”
“We’ve been tracking him for some days now.”
“Are you fellows some kind of policemen yourselves?”
“No, we’re Jesus men.”
The desk clerk cocked his head.
“Do you know the Lord?” Brother Jobe asked.
“I tried it,” the clerk said. “Didn’t work for me.”
“Do you want to try again?”
“Not really. What do you plan to do with that body in the wagon?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Brother Jobe said. “I did want to inquire if anyone hereabouts had made a complaint about a missing person, but I see now there’s no real law here.”
“Was there anything on this poor soul with a name on it?”
“His pockets were turned out. Alls we know, he was just the humble driver of that there rig, toting a load of onions.”
“You going to just leave him out there overnight?”
“Why? You think somebody might steal him?”
“No. It’s just nasty, is all.”
“There ain’t much we can do about him now,” Elam said, “unless you want us to bring him inside with us.”
“Don’t do that,” the clerk said. “It’s almost Halloween.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?” Brother Jobe asked.
“It’s when the dead walk, they say.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
The Reverend Loren Holder made a series of pastoral calls on his way back to Union Grove—the Galloway farm in South Hebron, the Callie Farm in Adamsville, and Temple Merton’s orchard on Coot Hill—some of the more far-flung members of his congregation, who showed up in church on Christmas, and rarely otherwise. Among other things, none of them had seen any sign of Dr. Copeland’s son, Jasper, over the week past.
“Why did he run away?” Temple Merton asked.
“He was despondent because his dog got killed by a horse.”
“Children take that hard.”
Temple Merton gave Loren a pint of a fine apple brandy he called Goose Island Lightning, and Loren enjoyed some of it on the next leg of his afternoon ride. It amplified his revived sense of well-being in a world of wonder. The beauty of the twilight sky almost brought tears of gratitude to his eyes, and he began to reflect on his recent relations with the Deity. A few red streaks remained in the sky when Loren came upon the hamlet of Argyle and saw a light burning in the old brick store that constituted all that remained of the little settlement’s business district. At least two hours of his journey home remained and he was hungry. He tied Lucky to a post, hung a feedbag with a handful of oats off his mount’s ears, and went inside.
The long room was dim in front. Articles of crude tinware hung from the ceiling. Shelves containing jars of sauerkraut, preserved fruit, and other common comestibles lined one side of the store, wooden bins of grain and dried beans the other. Baskets displaying fresh fruits and vegetables were deployed in a row on the floor. In the center was a display of small sheet-metal woodstoves assembled from scrap and also various articles of salvaged furniture from every period up to the last gasp of chain-store bargain shopping. Behind all the clutter, Loren saw Miles English seated behind a rear counter with his feet up and his chair balanced on two legs. He was cleaning his fingernails with a drop-point blade knife that seemed rather awkwardly oversize for the task.
“Help you?” he asked in a way that sugg
ested he was more interested in keeping Loren at bay than actually helping him.
“Evening.”
“I’m about to close. What do you want?”
“I won’t bother you long.”
“I won’t be bothered period.”
By this time Loren had completed the journey down the deep room from the front door to the counter. It did not escape him that the man behind the counter had a head that looked conspicuously small for his body, like a chicken’s. He was sure the man had never set foot in his church.
“Are you upset about something?” Loren asked.
“If I am, it’s none of your goddamn business.”
Loren shifted his weight, attempting to measure exactly how hungry he was in relation to his distaste for the storekeeper’s effrontery. He decided to proceed in the interest of his hunger rather than his pride.
“Have you got any baked goods?” he asked.
“There ain’t a whole lot to bake with these days. Unless you like cornmeal.”
“Corn bread would be fine.”
“Don’t have any.”
“What have you got?”
“What you see down there,” English said, pointing his knife at the baskets on the floor. “There’s turnips, potatoes, butternut squash, onions, apples, pears, and black walnuts.”
“Those black walnuts are in the shell,” Loren said.
“So they are.”
“Got any unshelled?”
“I guess I don’t.”
“It’s a messy job shelling them.”
“That’s why I don’t do it.”
“Got any sausage or jerked meat?”
English shook his head, looking at Loren as if he were a mental defective.
“Okay,” Loren said, “you can just give me two pounds each of apples and pears and I’ll be on my way.”
English grudgingly set down his chair, grabbed a tin pail, and sauntered around the counter past Loren. He brought the pailful of apples and pears back to the counter, weighed out both, and dumped them back onto the counter.
“I don’t have any sacks,” he told Loren.
The Witch of Hebron Page 24
