Valhalla

by Newton Thornburg

  “Have they started yet?” Stone asked.

  The old man nodded. “Some is downstairs gittin’ the food already. Goddang, them Mau Mau would jist ruin this place.”

  Stone considered that an understatement, but he said nothing. They entered the lodge through the back door and went on into the candlelit kitchen, where Dawson, Ruby, and Mr. Goff were busy loading canned goods and other food items into cardboard boxes and pillowcases.

  “I thought we were gonna have a meeting,” Stone said.

  Dawson shrugged. “I don’t think so. Not now. Everyone agrees—we gotta get out of here.”

  “That’s my food you’re takin’!” Baggs bawled at him. “It’s all mine. You jist cain’t up and take it like this.”

  Going on into the main room, Stone saw Jagger standing possessively over a pile of food and other supplies near the front door. And because the guns had been kept in the same place as the food—inside the locked root cellar, now obviously broken into—Stone was not surprised to see that Jagger had rearmed himself, this time with a rifle. Some of the group were coming in the front door with clothing and other items that they had just gathered up in their cabins. Others were busily running up and down the basement stairs, adding to the mound of food on the floor. A few were standing around, looking anxious and scared, ready to leave.

  Stone walked over to Jagger. “I take it this is your idea,” he said.

  “Why not? You got a better one—like staying here and getting slaughtered?”

  Stone looked at the others, hoping to find some doubts among them. “It’s nighttime, for God’s sake. You won’t be able to see where you’re going. And what will you find when you get across? It could be more Mau Mau—you thought of that? Only over there you won’t have any building for protection, no place to hold them off. You’ll be sitting ducks.”

  Jagger sneered. “The Mau Mau are here, not there.”

  “One gang of them, sure. But there are more. And they’re just as likely to be over there as anywhere.”

  Tracy Kelleher and little Cynthia Dawson had begun to cry.

  John Kelleher pounded his fist on a table. “Then what do we do, goddamn it? Just what do we do?”

  Others obviously had the same question. And though they might not have been looking to Stone for an answer, he gave them one anyway.

  “The only thing we can do. We’ve got almost as many people as they have. And we’re probably better armed, with more ammunition—rampaging ghetto kids aren’t likely to conserve ammo. So we just stay right where we are, with walls to protect us and a gun at every window. And we wait. If they try an attack, we beat if off. And they move on.”

  “And how do you know they move on?” Jagger demanded. “Can you guarantee it?”

  Stone shook his head. “No guarantees. But I can tell you this—leaving here now would be like swimming away from a capsized boat. You’re safer staying with it.”

  Now, timidly, other voices began to join his.

  “A sinking boat,” Flossie said. “That’s what scares me about crossing in the dark. That water is so cold.”

  Edna Goff concurred. “And we don’t really know what we’d find on the other side.”

  “But we do here, don’t we?” Jagger put in. “The Mau Mau. In a few hours we’ll be rats in a trap.”

  “Why?” Stone asked him, gesturing with his gun. “Our weapons any different from theirs? Won’t they shoot? Won’t they kill?”

  And so it went. Smiley Baggs, wanting only to save his lodge, had been with Stone from the beginning. Then gradually, in addition to Flossie and Edna Goff, others began to cross over—Rich Kelleher, Pam and Kim, Tocco and Annabelle. And finally even Newman changed his mind.

  “Yeah, I guess maybe you’re right,” he conceded to Stone. “It could get pretty dangerous out there on the water in the dark, with a bunch of jam-packed boats. But that doesn’t mean we do this thing your way, just taking up positions at the windows like John Wayne and shooting our way out. What we’ve got to do is finesse them. We’ve got brains and experience—so let’s act like it.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Jagger said. Then he added, “Any way but his.”

  But Stone had his defenders too. “Well, I like his way,” Edna Goff asserted. “And I say he’s in charge, whatever we do.”

  Since no one raised any objections—Jagger and Newman merely looked at each other—Stone once again tried to get things moving.

  “All right, then—first things first. Before we get into any finesse, we’ve got work to do. Pam and Kim, you take up positions at the two corner back windows, in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Raise them, so you can hear as well as see anything going on out there.” He turned to Rich Kelleher. “In fact, Rich, you go around and raise all the windows.”

  He then told Smiley to douse the fires in the fireplace and in the wood stove in the bedroom. Everyone else, he said, was to get all the buckets they could—in the cabins as well as in the lodge—and fill them at the lake and bring them back into the lodge. He, Tocco, and Annabelle would stand guard over them until the job was finished.

  Only Jagger and Newman failed to go along, evidently preferring to stay behind and discuss strategy. Stone let them. He had enough hands as it was. And within ten minutes everyone except the O’Briens was back in the lodge, with buckets of water situated in every room, for fighting any fires as well as for drinking and flushing the two toilets. Stone kept Pam and Kim at the corner windows and positioned some of the men at the windows in the main room and the dining room. As soon as the “finesse” discussion was over, he planned to station more in the kitchen and in the two bedrooms as well as out on the front porch. But for now, maddeningly, he had to wait.

  In the dimness Stone could barely make out the faces in front of him. With the fire out, the only source of light once again was Valhalla and its solitary file of outdoor sodium lamps. Everyone as usual had winter outdoor clothing on, but it obviously was not working very well: many in the group were shivering, and Stone even heard the chattering of teeth.

  “Okay, Newman,” he said, “let’s hear about this finesse of yours. But keep it short. We need every window covered as soon as we can.”

  Even in the darkness Newman somehow managed to achieve the air of an academic as he rose to address the others.

  “First, let me say I agree that we give them a show of force, with a gun at every window. We let them see how many we are and how well armed—and then we offer them peace. We say we’re sorry about the accident and that we’ll pay for it. We offer reparations, a payment of some kind.”

  Tocco exploded. “Jesus Christ, wouldn’t you know it! First thing out of his mouth is appeasement! Our little Chamberlain! Our Carter!”

  Jagger snarled for Tocco to shut up. “Let him continue.”

  Newman calmly did so. “Some food ought to do it, plus a few of our guns that are already low on ammunition.”

  “Just food and guns, that’s all he wants to give up.” Tocco struck his right forearm in the Italian gesture of sexual scorn. “I say we do what Stone says, just line up at the windows and when we see the whites of their eyes—which in this case ain’t gonna be that hard—we cut ’em down.”

  Newman and Jagger did not have to argue the point, for suddenly almost everyone was moving to their side. The prospect of peace was so much more appealing than that of war. Mister Goff spat at Tocco and Mama Dawson blasted him with sarcasm, saying that they all hated to frustrate his natural desire to “kill niggers,” but he’d just have to put up with it.

  Tocco dismissed their objections with a sneer. “All I know is I ain’t gonna hold out no goddamn olive branch to no kiddie Mau Mau. I’m gonna take a bunch of ’em with me.”

  “You’ll have that chance,” Newman said. “—If diplomacy fails.”

  “Diplomacy!” Tocco laughed at the word, spurned it. But he seemed resigned now, giving in.

  Newman went on. “Then we’re agreed. We present them with a show of force—but then we
offer friendship and reparations.”

  Everyone was nodding, agreeing. But Awesome Dawson had a question.

  “How do we get this across to them, though? How do we communicate?”

  It was a problem Newman had anticipated. “How about this? We make up a couple of signs and put them where they’re sure to see them. We could put one on the windshield of Tocco’s Cadillac—anybody coming up the drive would be bound to see it. And the other—and I know this sounds gruesome, but we want to make sure they don’t miss it—the other we could put on the dead man. We could drape him over the board fence near the barn and pin the note on his back.”

  Flossie sighed and Mr. Goff began to weep. Over to the side, near the windows, Stone saw Eve close her eyes, as though she hoped thereby to shut out the picture Newman had just drawn for them.

  “What would we put on the signs?” Awesome asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Newman said. “We’d have to work it out. Something like we regret the shooting, and that it was an accident. We say we’ll pay for our mistake with food and guns. And if they’re interested, they could just hold up the sign. We’ll meet them halfway.”

  Dawson was grinning. “Something like that, huh?”

  “Unless someone’s got a better idea.”

  “What bugs me,” Tocco broke in, “is that when they do come at us, it’ll be with our own guns.”

  “Not if we give them a better target,” Jagger said, his voice subtly charged with importance.

  “What better target?” Tocco asked.

  “Valhalla.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Jagger looked smugly over at Newman. “You tell him, Kevin,” he said.

  Newman obliged. “It’s simple—we tell the Mau Mau that there’s more of everything up there—more even than we’ve heard about and dreamed about. And we tell them we know all about its defenses—we make that part up, of course. We tell them we know how many are defending it and right where every gun is. Every gate.”

  “Then why ain’t we taking it ourselves?” Tocco laughed. “That’s what they’ll ask, genius.”

  Newman almost purred. “And of course we’ll tell them—because we’re scared. Because we’re chicken.”

  “You can say that again.”

  But Tocco was about the only one not to seize upon the idea. Most of the others were nodding, saying yes, draw the Mau Mau away from us, draw them anywhere. It was so popular in fact that Jagger decided everyone should know whose idea it was.

  “It’s not just a great idea, it’s our salvation,” he announced. “That’s what Kevin said—when I suggested it to him.”

  For his troubles, Jagger got only an embarrassed silence. Finally Dawson spoke up.

  “But what happens when they’re finished up there? Thirty kids can go through an awful lot of stuff in a very short time. Then they’ll just come back down again and we’ll be right where we are now.”

  Newman was shaking his head, already a step ahead of the objection. “When they attack Valhalla, we clear out of here. We load the boats with everything we need and row across the lake. And we find another haven.”

  It was exactly what everyone wanted to hear: reprieve and escape. The nodding was more vigorous now, the voices more certain. Annabelle, the Kellehers, even the Dawsons, all spoke up, giving their eager approval. In fact, as far as Stone could tell, besides himself, only Eve seemed unmoved by the idea, even apathetic, as though it were a matter of small importance whether they all lived or died. Tocco seemed more confused than anything else, probably not disliking the idea so much as its source. And that left Stone, evidently he alone who saw the thing for what it was, a proposal for murder.

  “Aren’t we forgetting something?” he asked. “There are two young girls up there and a little boy.”

  But Newman had an answer for that too. “Plus three men, a woman, and more damn firepower than a Marine division.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Well, let me ask you—if you lived there would you keep the lights on and the music turned up so loud unless you had the firepower? No way.” Newman looked confident, unconcerned. “No, they’ll be fine, the junkman and his family. It’s the Mau Mau who are gonna get bloodied, and then they’re gonna come back down here—and find us gone.”

  “Right on!” Kelleher cheered, joined by others.

  Stone looked at Dawson. “You’d be a party to this?”

  Awesome looked uneasily at his wife and daughter, then down at the floor. “It’d be up to them,” he shrugged. “Your dreaded Mau Mau. It’d be their choice. They wouldn’t have to go up there. And anyway—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Stone broke in, feeling angry now, angry and alone. “I know—those women and children will just chew up the Mau Mau.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Kelleher said. “We’d better get ready.”

  Dawson raised his hand for silence. “I got one more question. To tell them about Valhalla, we’re gonna have to parley, right? So who’s it gonna be? Who’s going out there to talk with them?”

  Newman looked over at Jagger, who promptly fixed his gaze on the floor. Newman smiled weakly and turned back to Dawson.

  “Well—me, I guess. Since it was our idea.”

  Dawson was staring at him. “And who else?”

  “You, I would think,” Newman told him. “I think you’d be best.”

  Awesome nodded. “I was afraid of that.”

  Ruby objected, begging that someone else be chosen, someone without a wife and child. But Newman said nothing. Nor did Dawson, or anyone else.

  Ten

  Over the next hour the group continued to make preparations for the Mau Mau. Stone and Tocco went out and got the O’Briens, who then were briefed on the group’s plans. Both brothers seemed puzzled by the change in direction again, but in the end they went along with Newman. The group next settled on which food items and weapons would be given up. The food chosen was mostly canned goods, sugary items like applesauce and candied sweet potatoes and jellies, which Dawson said the youths would find more to their liking than such vegetables as corn and green beans. As for the guns, a couple of twenty-two caliber pistols were selected, along with some single-shot and double-barrel shotguns and the twenty-five-aught-six rifle, for which there were only six bullets remaining anyway. That left the colony with all the better weapons, the larger pistols and pump shotguns and semiautomatic rifles, including Spider’s omnipresent Sten submachine gun, which Stone carried now.

  Though Stone knew that he was not in charge of anything anymore, he was not about to put his own life in the hands of Newman or Jagger, so he stepped forward and tried to organize the defenses. And no one objected. He posted the individuals he wanted at the various windows throughout the lodge, first making sure that the younger women smeared their faces with ashes and stuffed their hair up into stocking caps. He did not want the Mau Mau looking through binoculars and spotting any young and attractive females. He knew from experience that there were sharper hungers than that caused by an empty belly.

  While Flossie and Ruby Dawson assembled the food to be given up, Newman found a large cardboard box and cut the sides off it for use as signboards. Then he employed a crayon to print out his message, the same for each sign:

  ATTENTION

  WE REGRET SHOOTING. IT WAS ACCIDENT.

  WILL PAY FOR IT WITH FOOD AND GUNS.

  IF INTERESTED, HOLD UP THIS SIGN.

  WE’LL MEET YOU HALF WAY. TRUST US.

  It had been decided that no mention would be made of Valhalla until the parley itself. And Stone imagined that it was this thought—the harrowing anticipation of ultimately having to walk out from the lodge toward the guns of the Mau Mau—that began to work on Newman. He started to shiver uncontrollably and soon was vomiting, over and over, until there was nothing left in him—nothing, Stone imagined, except the cold clot of fear that had congealed in his gut and which he could not bring up, no matter how hard he tried. He shook and ret
ched and wept. Jagger and Baggs and the older women fretted over him, trying one thing and then another. Tocco laughed at him. But most of the others suddenly looked as if they had lost everything, as if they believed that Newman’s failure meant the failure of his plan as well. And though Stone still wanted no part of that plan, he wanted even less to see everyone’s morale sinking out of sight. So he kept saying that they would all carry on just as before. Nothing had changed.

  He got Tocco and Jagger—Jagger because he wanted to keep an eye on him—and took the signs out to the barnyard. Stone watched as the other two dug the shooting victim out from under the corn and carried him back to the corral fence next to the barn, where they draped him over the top rail. Using an old roll of plastic tape, Stone affixed the cardboard sign to the youth’s back. He and Jagger got some firewood and then he rekindled the blaze in the steel barrel, reasoning that it would draw the attention of the Mau Mau to the sign.

  When the three men were finished there, they went to the other end of the Point and put the second sign on the windshield of Tocco’s Cadillac. In the driveway next to the Cadillac, they built another fire, and then they returned to the lodge.

  The hours that followed, from around midnight to dawn, were the longest in Stone’s life. There were stars and a half moon to aid Valhalla in lighting the night, so the defenders stationed at the windows fortunately were able to see out into the darkness far enough to distinguish the cabins and the gray snow-flecked ground around them, leading back through the trees. At the same time, the clear sky made for a relentless, teeth-chattering cold, a cold that numbed the spirit just as it froze the water standing in the buckets. Mr. Goff kept breaking into tears and his wife kept silencing him, finally by scolding him like a child. But little Cynthia Dawson cried too, as did Tracy Kelleher and even Flossie, and no one silenced them.

  Stone kept moving from one person to the next, trying to keep up their spirits as well as check on their stations, gaze with them out into the moonlit darkness, always expecting suddenly to see movement there, shapes gliding like phantoms from tree to tree. When he would come to Jagger and Spider, who were stationed at the kitchen windows, they inevitably kicked up a fuss, complaining about the cold and the food, the bread-and-jam sandwiches that Flossie and Mama Dawson had made and passed around. And Jagger promised that if they came through “this goddamn thing” alive, he was going to settle with Stone. He was going to “pull his chain.” Then he was going to give Rich Kelleher “a dose of his own medicine—say, a shotgun blast right in his belly.”