A History of the Future (39 page)

“Yes. The apprenticeship model.”

“Precisely!” Bullock said, slapping the desk so hard that his fountain pen jumped. “Obviously we have to return to that method, right?”

“Well—”

“Otherwise there would be no new lawyers and after a while—a rather short while—there will be no law. In fact, that’s more or less our situation here today, wouldn’t you say?”

“Uh—”

“We’re back in the frontier all over again. Where are the courts? What have we got for law enforcement? Where are deeds and titles being filed? Where would one even find a notary? We’re adrift in history, Dick. As magistrate, I’m the only force standing between chaos and the orderly regulation of daily life around here. Now we’ve got a capital murder case that begs to be tried expeditiously in the name of due process and justice, lest the people get the idea that we exist in a state of savagery. Am I being clear?”

“But you didn’t even want to serve after they elected you, sir.”

“I was hoping that somebody else would step up to the plate, Dick,” Bullock said with his voice and his pulse rising again. “I don’t even live in the goddamned town of Union Grove! Don’t I have enough to look after right here?” This time, when he pounded the desk, his fountain pen bounced onto the floor. It was a Montblanc, a gift from his father on the occasion of his graduation from Duke University Law School. It cost nearly a thousand dollars at the time.

“Of course,” Dick Lee said. “But—”

“So back to my point. We’re going to accelerate your apprenticeship a little bit. I happen to be an attorney and you have been in my employ for, what, going on eleven years? You must have picked up a thing or two. Now, since it also happens that I am the only officer of the court in this district, I’m going to admit you to the bar right here and now.”

Bullock lifted a riding crop off his desk and waved it before Dick Lee as if it were a magic wand.

“There,” Bullock said. “You are hereby admitted to the bar to practice law in Washington County and the State of New York. Do you feel any different?”

“Uh, sir, I have no idea how to conduct a criminal prosecution.”

“Yes, I suspected as much,” Bullock said. “So I’m going to help you out. I will tell you exactly what to do, step by step, every inch along the way. I will make out all the paperwork for your signature. All you have to do is show up and follow the script. This is all just ritual anyway, you know. The evidence I’ve seen is overwhelming that this woman murdered her husband and child.”

“Okay, but what about this idea that she was out of her mind with the brain fever, sir?”

“Whoa. Wait a minute,” Bullock said. “Is there some confusion about what side you represent? I think I said you will prosecute. Leave the defense to Mr. Hutto.”

“Sir, why is it necessary to hang this poor girl?”

“Because there’s nothing else we can do with her. There’s no prison for the criminally insane. There’s no locked hospital ward. There’s no madhouse. We don’t even have a goddamn snake pit to put her in. The facts are going to show that she committed these acts. I’m quite sure of it. I’ve seen all the depositions. And, when it comes down to it, there really isn’t anything else we can do.”

“I’m not comfortable with it, sir.”

“What?” Bullock said. “You hanged that whole damn gang of nine pickers who busted into my house in October.”

“They were professional, hardened criminals, sir, caught in the act of armed robbery, brandishing weapons and all.”

“Dick, the people over in town just buried a young man and his baby boy, put into their cold graves before their time by this woman’s hand. The trial will confirm that, I assure you. I think it’s fair to say categorically that all murderers are insane in the commission of their crimes to some degree. It may be pitiable in her case, but these times don’t leave us much latitude. The institutional support just isn’t there like it used to be.”

“What if you just cast her out?” Dick Lee said. “Like we did with Berkey.”

“You mean ride her off somewhere and dump her on a snow-covered rural byway, like a dog that has bit somebody? I don’t think so. She’d almost certainly die and maybe by slow degrees after an awful struggle. Then there’s the question of precedent. We’re trying to reestablish a coherent legal system here with consistent procedures. What happens the next time? Plus, she’s potentially a great danger to others. How can you be so sure she won’t kill again?”

Dick Lee appeared to struggle internally. The lines of his forehead knitted together and he ground his teeth.

“Do I have to be prosecutor and executioner both, sir?” he said.

“Oh, gosh no. That wouldn’t be proper. I’m confident we can find a hangman. However, it might be necessary for you to instruct him.”

Dick Lee stared into the rug.

“I don’t relish what has to be done in this case,” Bullock said. “But I’m burdened to have to do it. It’s my duty. If I can’t depend on you, who else is there?”

Dick Lee sighed. “You can depend on me, sir,” he said.

Bullock nodded gravely. “Thank you, Dick,” he said. “Now what do you say we go castrate us some calves?”

When he stood up and came around his desk, his boot heel crushed the Montblanc pen on the floor.

F
ORTY-SIX

At midday, Daniel ventured out by himself to the center of town for the first time since his arrival on Christmas Eve. His father had gone over to Tom Allison’s livery earlier that morning to discuss the possibility of starting a regular mail and passenger carriage service between Union Grove and the other towns in the county, perhaps as far as Glens Falls, twenty miles to the north, where the Hudson River spills out of the Adirondack Mountains. Tom had purchased an antique Concord Coach from Esther Callie’s barn in Battenville. It was in poor condition. Tom wanted Robert’s opinion as to whether it might be fixed up or, if not, used as a model for Robert building a new one from scratch. To Robert, constructing a coach seemed an immense challenge. There was no surviving knowledge base in the county for constructing such a vehicle.

Daniel felt a little nervous on his own at first. The sheer cadence of walking by himself reminded him of those lonely months trudging back home from the west. But his feet had healed nicely since Christmas and his new boots were comfortable. They were a belated Christmas gift from his father, who had them made by Walter McWhinnie, the town saddler and bootmaker.

Like many people raised in the north country, Daniel could tell instinctively from the look of the sky that snow was coming. A New Year’s Eve levee was organized for that evening at Carl Weibel’s farm around the back of Schoolhouse Hill, and Daniel looked forward to being out in general society for the first time since his return, including among people he had grown up with and hadn’t seen in two years. He had decided to get the stubble on his face shaved and his hair properly trimmed at the barbershop run by the New Faith people on Main Street.

With the return of his physical strength and energy also came a return of his sense of having a future. But a gnawing anxiety that something inside of him might be damaged, that he had lost the capacity for any kind of love, was with him constantly. He paused in his footsteps at the corner of Linden and Salem Streets and watched Teddy Einhorn pass by in his delivery wagon. He waved, but Teddy appeared not to recognize him. If he found a girl, a wife, Daniel thought, there would always be a part of his history he could never explain to her. Had he been able to explain it to himself yet? he wondered. He leaned against the metal pole of the battered street sign and filled his lungs with cold air, bringing him back to refuge in the present. In a little while, he continued on his way.

His route meandered so he could take in some familiar, comforting sights. Farther along, Salem Street opened up to a steep prospect above a bend in the Battenkill that afforded a good view of the river and the two old bridges, road and railroad, that crossed it. Here the river had a natural fall of eight feet, one of several in its winding course through town. A cambric factory was established here in 1861 that produced a linen fabric renowned for its weight and luster, used to make officers’ dress uniforms for the Union army. Nothing remained of the mill except a revetment of gigantic granite blocks that stood up to every spring flood for almost two hundred years. He recalled the works at the five-step flight of locks, the cranes and ox-powered rotaries, and the marshaled manpower, and how the people of Union Grove might accomplish similar feats of reconstruction. Perhaps building a water-powered factory was something he could do in the future, he mused. Below the falls was a big pool, good for swimming, where the monster trout of his boyhood lurked.

Once he got to the barbershop on Main, he did not have to wait long to be attended by Brother Judah. Despite his gloomy demeanor, Judah initiated a conversation as he brushed the warm soapy lather on Daniel’s face. He was eager for snow, he said, because where he was born and raised it hardly ever snowed and didn’t stick long when it did.

“Where was that?” Daniel said.

“Memphis, Tennessee,” Brother Judah said at the very moment he brandished his straight razor at Daniel’s neck. “Ever been down to that part of the country?”

F
ORTY-SEVEN

When he returned to the old high school compound, Brother Jobe went straight to the winter quarters of Mary Beth Ivanhoe, the Queen Bee of the New Faith Brotherhood Covenant Church of Jesus. She lay, as usual, propped up in bed in her warm windowless chamber with its mingled odors of sweetness and rot and its luxurious furnishings. Daylight filtered dimly in from a cupola high above and beeswax candles scented with lavender burned on several tables and cabinets. Sister Zuruiah, chief of her attendents, had been folding clean linens. She didn’t have to be told to excuse herself. Brother Jobe drew a chair to the bedside.

“How you getting on, Precious Mother?”

“I’d get on better with a dish of banana pudding, truth be told.”

“Ain’t no bananas to be had these days.”

“Mebbe that’s why they don’t bring me none.”

“I expect that’s so, dear.”

“Ain’t anybody around here remembers how to make a red velvet cake, I wonder?”

“I’ll set someone to task on that directly.”

“Come closer, I can’t hardly see you.”

Brother Jobe moved the chair so close up against the bed frame so his legs hung over each side. He could hear her wheeze. She seemed, if anything, physically larger than ever. Her neck had disappeared completely into the folds and wattles of her many chins and Brother Jobe worried if, before long, her head might be subsumed in all that blubber, too, turban and all.

“Maybe you should ease up on them desserts,” he said.

“What else I got left in this earthly life?”

“Yes, well, okay,” Brother Jobe said. “The thing is, I just come from a confab with the magistrate—”

“I know all about it. I done tuned in. That sumbitch don’t like you.”

“I wish I knew why. I been as nice as pie.”

“I could stand some pie. You tell them that down below.”

“Keep your eye on the ball here, Mary Beth—”

“They can make a chess pie, I’m sure. It don’t take but mebbe three ingredients, and one of ’em is eggs. They still got chickens around. I made it myself years ago, before I come to be the sanctified monster you see before you. Can you believe that once upon a time I fit into a two-piece swimsuit, with two fair enough titties and all, and had more’n one man waiting on me? That was Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina, 2005. Look what I come to.”

“I’m sorry, Mary Beth. Some things can’t be undone.”

“You more right than you know. Food is my only comfort now.”

“I’ll order you up a chess pie.”

“Good,” she said, eyelids fluttering, as in prelude to one of her recurring seizures. “Now, I was you, I wouldn’t waste another minute with that Mr. Bullock.”

“I can’t get deep in enough amongst his mind to bend his will.”

“And you won’t, neither. He’s what you call a nemesis. You got to get that gal out of here, is all. She ain’t sick no more and all the wickedness that brung on her dire acts went out with it. Hanging her don’t make no sense, and I guarantee he aims to get it done.”

“I see it that way too. It’ll be dark in a matter of hours. And it’s fixing to snow. Where do I take her that’ll do for more than a temporary hideout? I’m stumped.”

“You listen up. I got a idear.”

F
ORTY-EIGHT

Travis Berkey had spent two nights in an unoccupied house on the Windy Hill Road. He had to burn half the furniture in the place to keep from freezing, and most of the heat went up the fireplace flue. He had killed a ewe and stolen the meat from the Zucker farm but had nothing to go with it, not a potato or a turnip, and the kitchen implements in the house had all been pilfered previously so he had to spit ragged chunks of mutton on a green stick and roast it on the open fire like a caveman. By the second day, he was sick to death of plain roasted mutton. The worst part, though, was that he had no duties, no activities to attend to, nothing to do all day long except stew about his bad luck and the injustice of the world. Much as he held Bullock and everything about the plantation in contempt, he saw clearly now how important a structured existence had been to his peace of mind. As the hours went by, he pondered the necessity of presenting himself to another farmer for labor. With all the sickness raging year on year, and the population drawn down, able workers with skills were valued, and he was sure to find a position, he reasoned. But he held back on trying because the other farmers all knew Bullock and did business with him, especially business involving livestock, and Travis figured that sooner or later his true story might be found out.