“You can tell Brother Jobe that he and I should meet at the soonest convenient time and begin organizing the repair of the town water system.”
“Something else has come up, sir. Mr. Bullock from over the grand plantation has entreated us to form a party to search for his missing boatmen.”
“Entreated you?”
“Yessir.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Yessir. And he would like you to be along on it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you will know the men we are searching for by sight, he says. And because he trusts you, I gather.”
“Well, he doesn’t really know your bunch.”
“My point, sir.”
“Have you got their names?”
He reached into his vest and pulled out a piece of good vellum paper. It was penned in a decorative hand, official looking, though it didn’t pretend to have any legal standing as a warrant or a summons or a commission, as far as I could tell. Among the instructions were the names of the missing crew. Thomas Soukey once ran the video rental in town and played softball with a bunch of us in a weekly game before the flu hit and he lost his family and went over to Bullock. Jacob Silberman used to print promotional T-shirts and coffee mugs for companies. Skip Tarbay had been a landscaper, mowing lawns and bedding annuals. And Aaron Moyer taught art history over at Bennington College. All lines of work which were no more.
“How many will be in this search party?” I said.
“Five, including yourself.”
“How long.”
“As we have planned it, maybe two days down, two days search around the locks and port of Albany and such, and then two days back.”
“That’s most of a week, Joseph.”
“Yes it is, sir.”
“I just assumed new duties here in town.”
“We’re aware of that.”
“Can’t you find somebody else?”
“Nosir. The other townsmen that don’t have family, they’re mostly ne’er-do-wells, drinkers and such. Anyway, Mr. Bullock stipulated for you to go.”
“Is he lending us a boat?”
“No, we’re going on horseback. That way a couple of us can bring his boat back, if we find it.”
“If we don’t find the crew themselves?”
“I suppose that would be the size of it, sir.”
“Do you have to call me sir?”
“It’s New Faith manners, sir. Anyway, we hope to find the men too.”
“Of course.”
“Do you have a personal weapon, sir?”
“A weapon?”
“A firearm.”
“No. Well, sort of.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. A revolver.”
“What caliber?”
“I can’t really say.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve never actually used it. It’s a large pistol.”
“We have .38 wadcutters that’ll go into a .357. Some nine millimeter. Do you have it at hand, sir?”
“No.”
“Well, can you get it?”
“It would take me an hour or so.”
“I’d suggest you fetch it, sir,” he said. “We’re looking to depart by midday. We’ll come by for you at one o’clock, say, with a mount. We’d encourage you to bring along some of your own meal, bacon, what have you. We’ll have some company provisions too. The rest we’ll scrounge along the way. Okay, sir?”
“Okay. Are you in charge of this expedition?”
“I suppose I will be, sir.”
“Then I’ll have to call you sir.”
“No you don’t. You can call me Joseph, like everybody else does. It’s only the five of us.”
“Were you in the military, Joseph?”
“Yessir. I saw action at Damascus and Qiryat Shimona before the pullout,” he said.
“Did you shoot at people.”
“Yessir, and killed a fair number of the ones I shot at, I suppose.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Brother Joseph had not been gone ten minutes when another knock sounded on the front door. I was a little annoyed, what with being obliged on short notice to go on a possibly dangerous journey far from home that I was unprepared for, and because, at the moment, I was pouring cornmeal from a sack into one of the few decent plastic storage tubs I had left with a lid that closed tight, and I spilled some on the brick floor of the summer kitchen.
“Just a minute,” I said. The bandage on my left hand was driving me crazy. I took it off hurriedly. The blister on the meaty edge of my palm was the size of a half-dollar. I threw open the door.
It was Britney Watling. She had some visible scrapes and scratches on her face from the misadventure the night before last.
“Can I come in?” she said.
“Sure,” I said, remembering the sizzling sound of my palm frying on her doorknob. “Would you mind following me out back, though. I’m getting some things together out there.”
I wondered whether she had come to apologize for nearly getting both of us killed in her burning house. She followed me.
“That’s a very pretty garden,” she said. She looked on edge, as if she had been sleeping poorly. “What’s that thing in the center?”
“It’s a birdbath.”
“Oh? Looks like a pile of rocks.”
“It’s that too, I suppose. Are you feeling all right?”
“What do you mean? Am I okay in the head?”
“No, that’s not what I meant—”
“Because folks are acting like I’m a crazy person.”
“Well I don’t know whether you are or not,” I said, “and I wouldn’t try to judge.”
She glared at me a moment and then seemed to soften up. “Can I sit down?” she said.
“By all means.”
“Folks seem to think I started that fire.”
“Well did you?”
“No! A candle set it off. I couldn’t sleep in the heat. I was reading a book. I must have drowsed off and knocked the candle over. The bedclothes caught and then a curtain, and then it got up into the window sashes, I guess.”
“Can you tell me why you went back into the fire when I tried to pull you out?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sweeping the floor with her eyes, as if she might turn up an answer there. “I lost heart, I suppose. First Shawn. Then my home. I didn’t really want to die. I have a child to look after. It was moment of . . . selfish confusion.”
“I’m sorry so many bad things have happened to you.”
Looking down at her sitting there only emphasized her small size. Shawn must have been at least twice her weight. I seemed to remember them dancing together once at a levee in Battenville. Like a bear with a doe, each full of youth and life in its own way, but an odd pair.
“I know you’ve seen your share of heartache too,” she said.
“Life remains a precious blessing for us the living.”
“I hope I come around to feel that way.”
“I hope you do too.”
I hadn’t been away from home for a week in as long as I could remember, and it was hard to determine how much food I ought to bring for myself. I had a hunk of Terry Zucker’s smoked hard sausage, which I wrapped carefully in a piece of waxed canvas and tied with an old piece of string. I saved absolutely everything.
“Are you going somewhere?” Britney said.
“Yes.”
“Is it a secret?”
“I have to go to Albany. I’ll be gone most of a week.”
“Albany? What’s down there?”
I told her about Bullock’s missing boatmen.
“Tom Soukey used to babysit me when I was a little girl,” she said. “He was in high school. I beat him at checkers. I hope you can find them.”
“I don’t know what we’ll find down there,” I said. “I haven’t been out of the county in years. Anyway, they’re coming by to get me soon and I h
ave to go see about something before that.”
“Okay, then,” she said resolutely. “I came here for a reason. I have a proposal.”
“What’s that?”
“I thought you might need somebody to keep house.”
It took me a moment to absorb that.
“I can’t pay someone to keep house,” I said.
“That’s not what I had in mind.”
Now she was making me nervous. I put some corn bread, hard cheese, three onions, and a head of garlic into an oilcloth and tied it with more string into a compact package. Anything you cook will taste okay with onions and garlic. I figured we could get eggs along the way. Everybody had chickens nowadays.
“What did you have in mind?” I said.
“Like I said. Keep house for you.”
I just stared at my bundle.
“To be on the premises,” she said.
It took me a moment to get it.
“You want to live here?” I said.
“We don’t have any place to live.”
“You just lost your husband.”
“Thank you for reminding me.”
“I mean, how would it look?”
“You can say yes or no.”
“I hear you’re with the Allisons?”
“We can’t stay there. It’s not a comfortable situation.”
“There are quite a few vacant houses in town.”
“This isn’t a good time for a single woman with a child to live alone.”
“Mrs. Myles lives alone right next door. Maybe you could live with her.”
“She was my fifth grade teacher. I don’t want to live with her.”
“Well, why do you want to live with me?”
“I would feel safe here.”
I went over to search the shelves above the counter for my purple Lexan water bottle. I hadn’t seen it in a while and they sure weren’t making them anymore.
“It looks to me like you could use somebody to keep house around here,” she said.
“I’m not used to living with other people,” I said.
“You had a family once. Look at this place,” she said. “It’s like some old trapper dude lives here.”
“Thanks.”
The Lexan bottle was not where I thought I put it. Did I leave it over at Pragers’? It was making me upset.
“It wouldn’t look right,” I said. “You moving in here.”
“You have been alone for some years now, isn’t that right, Robert?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be alone to the end of your days?”
“I’m old enough to be your father, and I was present where your husband was murdered. People might get some strange ideas.”
“I’m well aware,” she said. “But I need a helping hand, and these are not normal times. I’m old enough to remember the difference. I once had my own television. My mom drove a pickup truck. We used to go to the Target in Glens Falls and buy stuff when she got paid. Those days are gone, and so is any idea of what’s normal or decent. I don’t want to put in with that New Faith crowd and pray three times a day and have some pack of busybodies raise my child. And I won’t put in with Bullock and be a damn serf. We can help each other, you and me. Just let me and Sarah stay here while you’re gone. We’ll weed your garden for you.”
I gave up looking for my water bottle.
“All right,” I said. “You can stay while I’m gone.”
“What about when you’re back?”
“I mean you can move in after I leave today, and we can see how it works out when I return.”
“I still have a big garden of my own behind where the house used to be, plus the cow, so you don’t have to worry about feeding us.”
“All right.”
She gave me an intense studying look. I worried now whether she would throw her arms around me and sob, and make me feel uncomfortable. But she just took my right hand in hers and shook, like a sales representative sealing a deal.
“You were kind to me when I was very low,” she said. “I’m grateful, and you won’t regret this.”
“There’s four bedrooms upstairs,” I said “It’ll be obvious which one’s mine. You and Sarah can have any two of the others. Please don’t go rearranging things too much, especially the kitchen setup. I’ve got everything where I know how to find it.”
“I will be very respectful of your stuff and your ways.”
She said she didn’t have much to bring over, that pretty much all she owned had been lost in the fire. I showed her around, how the outdoor shower worked and where I kept my store of meal and honey and things. Finally, I saw her to the door. She said they’d come back later in the day after I’d gone.
“Have a safe journey,” she said. “I hope you find Tom and the others.”
“Thank you. I’m a little nervous about it, to tell you the truth.”
“Think about coming home to a clean and orderly house.”
I watched her walk a ways back up Linden Street. She was a good walker, with a strong, purposeful stride.
Soon, I left to fetch that pistol I’d hidden under the bridge over Black Creek on North Road, and all the way up and back my mind reeled with terrible thoughts of what it would be like to not be alone anymore, and what Jane Ann would think when she found out.
TWENTY-SIX
Riding along in a band with four other mounted men in fine summer weather was so exhilarating that I cast aside my worries and apprehensions for the rest of the afternoon as we made our way south on the old county highway along the Hudson River. The other three besides Joseph were Brothers Elam, Seth, and Minor. Elam and Seth were large, broad-shouldered earnest men, like Joseph, but Brother Minor was skinny and smaller than me. He had a sharp, weasely face and a joking demeanor, and when he laughed at his own jokes, which was often, his eyes creased and seemed to close up tight, while his laughter was nearly silent, more like air huffing through a pipe. He joked incessantly.
“You hear about the farmer was milking and a fly went in one of the cow’s ear ’n out th’ udder?” was a typical Minorism, as the other men called his constant banter.
Joseph and Elam carried rifles, and Seth wore a sword, a saber, some kind of museum piece he had come across in their journeys. All had pistols. Brother Minor carried a sawed-off shotgun scabbarded off his saddle and two daggers in his belt, one long one he called a “pigsticker” and another he called “the last resort.”
I’d found that pistol where I had stashed it, all right, under the Black Creek Bridge, the one that killed Shawn Watling. It proved to be an old Ruger .41 Magnum, an odd “bastard caliber,” Brother Joseph said, and they didn’t have any ammunition for it. There were three rounds left in the cylinder. I brought it along thinking I could not possibly run into three situations in a few days that would require me to fire at another man. I carried the pistol tucked in my belt, and I must confess it was reassuring to feel its heft there as I rode along all afternoon and we ventured into what was, for me, unknown country—at least country I had not been to in years, since we stopped going places in cars. My mount was an eight-year-old bay gelding named Cadmus, a full sixteen hands high with white stockings and a blaze from lips to forehead. He was responsive and forgiving, considering my paltry experience, though we barely moved faster than a walk that day.
The first settlement we rode through was the town of Stark-ville, seven miles altogether from Union Grove and on the other side of the river. The old highway bridge there was in terrible condition. In places the cement roadway had rotted out and you could see daylight down to the water through twisted, rusty filaments of iron rebar and flaking girders. We dismounted and led the horses across with the utmost care. In a few years the thing would be completely shot and there would be no connection across the Hudson River for twenty miles in either direction, unless somebody started a ferry.
Then there was the town. It was hard to believe that as recently as 1971 Starkville had an industrial economy—a
wallpaper factory and a cardboard box mill, using wood out of the Adirondacks up river. They employed hundreds at decent wages a family could live on. Back in the 1950s, the town had its own movie theater and even a newspaper. Now, the little business section of Main Street was deserted in midafternoon on a weekday. The windows were broken in all but one shop front. The one remaining had a Sorry Closed sign in it. We stopped and peered through the dusty glass. The shelves and counters inside were bare, and Elam remarked that it was probably closed for good. The commercial buildings themselves along Main were in sorry condition. In some cases blue sky peeked through the ceilings in the upper stories, and scraggly shrubs had taken root in the decayed gunk along the parapets, so you knew the roofs were ruined.
I had heard Starkville was particularly hard hit by the Mexican flu. We didn’t know anyone from there, and I wasn’t aware of anyone from our town who carried on trade down there these days. Now I had to wonder if anything was left. Beyond the modest business district, Main Street reverted to old state Route 4. Some of the houses along there were occupied by gaunt, slovenly adults and a few half-naked children dressed in tatters hanging around the front porches doing nothing. Even the few pigs running in the street seemed mostly skin and bone. No dogs came out to greet us. They had probably succumbed to the roasting spit or the stewpot as life grew harder over the years. The yards were filled with weeds and shrubs. Only here and there had anyone made an attempt to grow potatoes or corn. The inhabitants regarded us suspiciously as we walked our horses by, probably frightened by the well-fed New Faith men in their imposing broad-brimmed hats and the weapons they carried. Brother Minor ventured to banter with these people in his joking way as we walked by, but they did not respond to his gags and most skulked indoors when he spoke at them.
“Sometimes I think I’m a chicken,” he said to one ill-looking old man with his face sunk into his beard, sitting on his porch on a broken-down sofa. “Felt this way ever since I was an egg.” The old fellow just stared hollowly. I was glad to leave the place behind.
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