The Third Hill North of Town

by Noah Bly

  Rufus was a mountain of a man. He wasn’t exceptionally tall—only six foot two—but he weighed 350 pounds, and most of that was muscle. When he was a little boy, though, he had a rough go of it with his older siblings, and endured years of cruelty and abuse at their hands. This all ended, however, when he outgrew his tormentors; the first thing he did once he came into his own was to break his brother Frank’s jaw and collarbone with a crowbar, and chase the other two boys from the house. Tilson didn’t escape his youngest son’s wrath, either; Rufus believed his dad was owed payback, as well, and came damn near to killing him one day when Tilson made the mistake of backhanding Rufus for mouthing off at the supper table.

  Regardless, the Tarwater farm eventually came into Rufus’s sole possession. Tilson left no will when he died (strangely enough, he went peacefully, in his sleep, with a sweet smile on his battle-scarred face), and since Rufus had driven his brothers clean out of the state by then and the law had no way of tracking them down, the family farm passed to him by default. Rufus felt no guilt about this; in his view, he’d fought for the place and he’d won, fair and square, and if his brothers were stupid enough to come back home and try to get their share, he’d have been more than happy to give each of them a six-foot plot of land in the cow pasture, and a pinewood box for a house.

  Anyway, prior to that Saturday in June, Eben and Rufus had only met twice to do tax business, as Eben had been the county collector for such a short time. Neither meeting had been a pleasant affair; it would be difficult to imagine two souls less alike, and each man loathed the other on general principle.

  The second meeting had been particularly confrontational. Rufus had been unable to make his payment, and so had consented—with no intention of doing any such thing—to pay double the next time. Yet when Eben forced him to sign an agreement to this effect, Rufus’s temper ignited. He flung the signed contract at Eben, knocked over a card table, and stormed from the premises, muttering threats.

  And the following morning Eben’s beloved dachshund, Cerberus, was found dead on the road, his neck snapped.

  Eben couldn’t prove this vile act was Rufus’s doing, but he was sure of it. He shared his suspicion with Emma and the boys, but he forbade them to speak about it with Julianna, instructing them to say instead that Cerberus, whom Julianna had adored, had been accidentally run over by a car. By doing this, Eben was not trying to coddle his daughter with a prettified version of events; far from it. Indeed, his only concern was keeping her alive, were she to discover the truth.

  Julianna was a sensitive, loving girl, but when she was provoked she also had what Eben called “an Old Testament temper,” and nothing in the world set her off more than cruelty to an animal or a small child.

  When she was eight, for instance, she had come across Sully Nixson, a teenaged boy, tormenting a tomcat behind the school, and she had picked up a stick and flown at Sully with a Sodom-annihilating fury that was worthy of Jehovah Himself. Sully Nixson was amused by this attack at first, but his laughter abruptly ended when he fell to the ground with a grape-sized knot over his right ear. Lars the blacksmith saw the finale of the skirmish, and had called Julianna by the nickname of “Amazon” ever since.

  But Rufus Tarwater was a far, far cry from Sully Nixson, and Eben was terrified of Julianna finding out what had really happened to poor old Cerberus. If she were to go after Rufus like she’d gone after Sully, it could well be the last thing she’d ever do. Rufus would have no compunction about killing someone who dared attack him, even if that person were a young girl.

  And especially if he thought she was guilty of being “uppity.”

  Julianna had been in school both times before when Rufus visited, but she was home on this occasion, washing dishes in the kitchen. Emma was working at the post office and the boys were in the fields, so Eben and Julianna were alone when Rufus banged on the front door.

  Eben’s office was right next to the entryway, and before Julianna could respond to the knock she heard her father’s uneven footsteps as he clumped his way to the door: taTUNK, taTUNK, taTUNK. He had been crippled for months, but it still saddened her to know he would never again walk without limping.

  “Hello, Rufus.”

  The living room and a swinging door separated Julianna from the men, but she could hear Eben’s words with no difficulty. His voice was courteous, but much colder than usual.

  Julianna frowned while drying the dishes. She knew Rufus, of course, and she didn’t care for him. She’d heard all the gossip about how mean-spirited he was, and she’d often seen his wife, Josephine, walking around town with multiple bruises and cuts on her face. What was most damning, though, was that her father clearly disliked the man. Julianna needed no other reason than this to dislike him, too.

  Rufus ignored Eben’s greeting. “I got no money for taxes, Larson.”

  There wasn’t a trace of civility in his manner, and Julianna felt her spine stiffen.

  Eben cleared his throat. “You said that the last time, too, Rufus.”

  The vexation in his tone was plain; Julianna could tell her father thought Rufus was lying. But he sounded nervous, as well, and it shocked her to realize her father feared the other man. There was a long pause, and she could picture the two of them standing in the doorway, glaring at each other.

  Eben Larson was as tall as Rufus, but nowhere near as muscular. He was a beanpole (as were all his children), and though he was strong from years of farm work, he was frail in comparison to Rufus. Rufus, in spite of his drinking, was easily the most powerful man in the county. Julianna herself had once seen him lift a quarter-ton calf in his arms as if it weighed no more than a parakeet.

  Eben finally broke the silence. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in and we’ll discuss your options.”

  Rufus didn’t seem to care for this suggestion.

  “There ain’t nothin’ to talk about,” he snapped. “If I ain’t got any money, the government can’t take any, right?” A porch board creaked under his weight. “It’s my money, anyway, goddammit.”

  “Nobody likes paying taxes, Rufus,” Eben shot back. “But if you don’t pay them, you’ll be arrested. I’ll have no choice but to report you to the sheriff.”

  Rufus’s voice dropped, and Julianna strained to hear what he said next.

  “You ain’t gonna say nothin’ to nobody,” he rumbled. There was a tense pause. “Not ’less you wanna lose another dog, that is.”

  Julianna clutched at the sink as the blood left her face.

  He killed Cerberus!

  As shocking as this ugly revelation was, she nonetheless understood intuitively, now, why her father had sounded fearful a few moments ago. He wasn’t afraid for himself; he was worried for her. He had no doubt assumed she was listening, and was apprehensive about the possibility of Rufus making just such a terrible comment in her hearing. She was also wise enough to grasp why her whole family had chosen to deceive her about the dog’s death three months ago.

  They knew her too well.

  She had loved the little dachshund with her whole heart. Ever since he was a puppy and she was a little girl, Cerberus had slept with her each night in her room at the top of the stairs. Had she been told right away what Rufus had done to him, there was no question what her reaction would have been: She would have gone after Rufus Tarwater with a meat cleaver. She would have torn his foul, evil eyes right out of his stinking sockets with her bare fingers. Her family knew this, and had tried to protect her.

  Oh, Cerberus.

  Her throat closed with grief as she imagined Cerberus—trusting and gentle—coming to say hello to Rufus on the road. She could picture his little body being lifted into the air, all the while wagging his thin, whiplike tail as fast as he could. He would have tried to lick Rufus’s fingers; she was sure of it.

  Oh, my sweet little dog.

  Her paralysis lifted, and her grief was subsumed by rage. A red haze filled her brain and she began to pant.

  So help her God,
she would make the man pay for what he had done.

  She snatched a brass candlestick from the kitchen table and charged straight at the living room door, murder in her heart.

  In the entryway, meanwhile, Eben’s face, too, had gone white with fury at Rufus’s words. But the response he’d intended to utter (“Get out of my house, you son of a bitch!”) died on his lips as he heard Julianna coming.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he muttered, paling.

  He spun away from Rufus and hobbled into the living room as quickly as he could. He was sure his bum foot wouldn’t allow him to intercept Julianna before she appeared, yet he had to try.

  Rufus stood in the doorway, perplexed, and watched Eben lurch away from him across the living room floor. He didn’t know what reaction he’d expected after telling the uppity cripple what had happened to his dog, but this wasn’t it. He took a hesitant step into the house, trying to decide if he should chase Eben down or just leave.

  He had no time to do either.

  Julianna burst through the living room door, brandishing the candlestick. Her face was deranged and her eyes were wet, and she didn’t even glance at Eben as he made a desperate attempt to grab and restrain her. She darted around his outstretched arms and flew directly at Rufus, screaming like a Pawnee warrior.

  Juliannna was tall for her age, and quite strong, and she had speed and courage to spare. She also had the element of surprise on her side, and was insane with anger and shock, and was wielding a heavy brass candlestick as if it were a mace. In addition to all this, her nickname was, appropriately, Amazon, and she was intent on meting out justice for what had been done to an innocent creature she had loved unreservedly.

  And had it been anybody else she was after besides Rufus Tarwater, these things might have mattered.

  Rufus was indeed caught off guard by Julianna’s wild assault, and it was a measure of her wrath that he took a step backward in concern as she flung herself at him. Rufus was not an easy man to frighten, and retreat was not in his vocabulary. But Rufus had been raised in a family that regularly employed unpredictable tactics of warfare, and his survival instinct kicked in just as she swung the candlestick at his head. He caught her wrist with his left hand, and with his right fist he struck her, full in the face.

  Eben Larson watched his daughter crumple to the floor, and he rushed to her defense, crying out her name. He knew he stood no chance against Rufus, but he hated the man and he loved the girl, so there was little else for him to do. Julianna’s nose and mouth were bleeding and she wasn’t moving, and Eben flung himself at Rufus with the same abandon his youngest child had just displayed.

  Had he been more agile, things would likely have gone much the same for him. At the last second, though, his limp caused him to stumble, and before he could engage Rufus in his own useless assault, the cavalry arrived: Julianna’s older brothers, Michael and Seth, materialized on the porch behind Rufus.

  Michael Larson was seventeen, his hero was Copernicus, and he wanted to be an astronomer. He didn’t really have the makings of an astronomer, however, because he couldn’t stay awake more than an hour or two after the sun went down. His “observatory”—a telescope on a tripod, beside an old crate he used for a seat—was in the hayloft of the barn, but each evening after supper when he went out to study the stars, he began yawning immediately, and soon would feel the need to stretch out in the hay until someone came to fetch him. Michael’s older brother, Seth, was nineteen, and though easily the most serious of the Larson children, he had a smile that could thaw an iceberg, and an appealing sense of whimsy to go with it. (Thanks to Seth, the scarecrow in the cornfield was dressed as Kaiser Wilhelm, with a spiked, Pickelhaube helmet constructed of a chamber pot and a chess-piece bishop.)

  Michael was six foot one and blond, Seth was slightly taller and dark haired, and both were sunburned and sweating as they came up behind Rufus Tarwater that Saturday morning in June. They had been working in the hayfield to the west of the house when Rufus rode by on his horse, and they had decided to come home, just in case Rufus took it into his head to cause their father trouble, as he had the last time. As they drew closer they’d heard Julianna screaming, and so had sprinted the rest of the way. They were not so fierce as Julianna, but they were tough, lean, and brave, and more than willing to defend their father and sister with their lives. Nor were they stupid. They knew it was Rufus Tarwater they had to deal with, so they had taken an extra moment to stop at the barn for weapons: Michael was carrying a pitchfork, and Seth had a metal fence post in his sturdy hands.

  Rufus’s fist was raised to strike Eben, but Michael’s voice stopped him cold.

  “Hey, Rufus!”

  Rufus hadn’t heard them coming, and he spun around, startled. His red face, which was full of glee at the prospect of beating up Eben Larson, became markedly less cheerful as he gawped at his new opponents. Unarmed, the Larson boys would have been no match for him, either, but with no weapon of his own, he was now at a serious disadvantage.

  He spat on the floor by Julianna’s feet and tried to bluster. “I’m gonna shove that pitchfork up your ass, boy.”

  He’d be damned if he was going to back down from a fight with a couple of scrawny kids and a cripple.

  The pitchfork shook a little in Michael’s hands. But after he shot a quick glance at his unconscious, bleeding sister on the floor, and another at his father, standing guard over her body, his hands steadied.

  “Come on and get it, then,” he answered. His green eyes, large and bright like Julianna’s, were unblinking. “I’ll be real happy to give it to you.”

  Seth raised the sharp end of the fence post so it pointed at Rufus’s forehead. “How’d you like to spend the rest of your life looking like a unicorn, Rufus?”

  Rufus wasn’t sure what this meant, but it sounded uppity, so it enraged him. He wanted nothing more than to grab the post and beat Seth to death with it, but there was no way he could do this without first being impaled by Michael’s pitchfork. He clenched and unclenched his fists and tried to think of what he might do to even the odds, but nothing sprang to mind.

  He swore in frustration, and the boys could smell the moonshine on his breath.

  “Why don’t you chickenshits put down them toys?” he growled. “Fight me fair and square.”

  Eben spoke from behind him. “Like how you just fought my fifteen-year-old daughter, Rufus?”

  His voice was quiet, but there was something in it Rufus didn’t care for at all. He flushed, but kept his eyes on the weapons pointed at his head and stomach.

  “I only hit her ’cause I had to, Larson,” he muttered. “The little bitch attacked me.”

  The pitchfork and the fence post darted nearer to his body.

  “Don’t call her that!” Michael ordered.

  Eben Larson was no hothead, yet he was perilously close to telling Michael and Seth to go ahead and stab Tarwater. Julianna was breathing, but her eyes were still closed and her nose appeared to be broken, and Eben badly wanted to punish the man who had done this to her. Besides that, Rufus had also admitted to killing Cerberus, and Eben feared what else the crazy son of a bitch might do if he were allowed to walk away from this confrontation unscathed. There was a strong possibility he’d feel that Michael or Seth needed a comeuppance of some sort for having had the temerity to threaten him today.

  We could say that Rufus went berserk, and the boys had no choice but to run him through, Eben thought. There’s not a soul in town who’d question that story.

  It was an appealing notion, and he went so far as to fantasize about it for a few seconds. But then Julianna began to stir on the floor, and his native decency resurfaced. He sighed, knowing he couldn’t go through with it. As much as Rufus deserved retribution for his actions, the problem was in this instance he had acted in self-defense. Julianna had been doing her level best to kill him when he struck her, and that was a fact. And though Rufus had been far too rough with her, she appeared to be mostly unhurt. Seeing this
cooled Eben’s temper, and allowed him to think straight again. The last thing any of them needed was for Julianna to wake up with Rufus still in the house: She’d just go after him again, and to save her the boys would end up with blood on their hands, losing their innocence forever.

  Eben took a deep breath, and then another.

  “Get the hell off my porch, Rufus,” he said, tiredly. “Just go on home.”

  Rufus blinked. In his experience, situations such as this were never resolved without a lot of bloodshed, and he had fully expected Eben to tell the boys to skewer him. It’s what he himself would have done, had their positions been reversed. To be sure, he was enormously pleased by Eben’s decision, but he smirked at Michael and Seth to conceal his relief.

  They saw his expression and their faces turned mutinous.

  “We can’t just let him go, Daddy,” Seth protested. “Let’s at least tie him up, okay? Mikey and I will guard him, and you can take Julianna to the doctor and call the sheriff.”

  Eben shook his head. The only phone within miles was the one at the telephone/telegraph office in town, and Sheriff Burns was in Hatfield. It would take forever for Burns to arrive, and once here, he could do nothing. Rufus couldn’t be arrested for defending himself against Julianna, nor given aught but a slap on the wrist for killing Cerberus. Aside from this, Eben wasn’t about to leave his boys alone with Rufus Tarwater, even if the man were hog-tied. He might find a way to get loose, and there was no telling what he’d do.

  “Just let him go, son,” he said, resigned. “It’s for the best.”

  Rufus barely even registered Eben’s words. Seth’s last suggestion was still churning through his brain, and he could focus on nothing else.

  Coincidence is fickle, and thrives on chaos.

  When Rufus was seven, his brother Frank had tied him to a post behind their barn and gagged him, then left him there for nearly five hours. Rufus had messed his pants and screamed himself hoarse through the gag, but no one had come to release him until his father at last stumbled across him while feeding the chickens. Tilson had set him free, but had laughed at him, and done nothing to Frank by way of punishment. Rufus had never felt more helpless, before or since, and he’d sworn to kill the next person who tried to tie him up like that.