American Craftsmen (23 page)

On the other side, we could both see what we had passed over: an old wooden covered bridge. We drove through the brush, which opened up into a rolling valley, a grassland spotted with conifer and deciduous woods. To our immediate left grew a patch of unseasonably ripe pumpkins, open to the picking, carving, and tossing. “Go left, just a few feet,” I said. “Good. Stop here.” Ghostly cars flickered: Edsels, DeLoreans, and a Tucker. I had forgotten that this was also the land of failures.

“This place doesn’t like cars,” I said, “except in this little corner. You’ll need to help me walk the rest of the way.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, there’s nothing here.”

“Everything’s here,” I said. “Nothing is lost.”

Inflicting agony and awkwardness, Scherie helped me out of the car and onto my feet. We walked on without supplies or weapons. Every few yards seemed to have a different climate. In one damp zone, a large bird flew right in front of our faces. “What the hell was that?” said Scherie.

“An ivory-billed woodpecker,” I said.

“Aren’t they extinct?”

“Soon enough will be.”

The farther we walked, the more the seemingly clear land revealed fuzzy details that resolved into structures. Ahead were small log cabins, sheltered by enormous oaks, maples, and chestnuts of virginal forest. All the trees were great, old, and healthy.

“Is this some kind of park?” asked Scherie.

“A park would have to be mapped and known,” I said. “Oh, oh. Here she comes. Let me do the talking, OK?”

A small woman strode purposefully toward us. She wore a homemade straw hat and homespun clothes, a corncob pipe in her mouth. In each generation, an odd craft loner found her or his way to the job of guardian of the Sanctuary, and the Appalachian had been more odd and loner than most. Without breaking her stride, she took out the pipe and put her other hand round her mouth. “Congratulations, Dale. In most universes you’re already dead. Now you can turn around and git the hell out.”

“Someone’s trying to kill me and the Families,” I said.

“I know,” said the Appalachian.

“That’s it?” I said. “‘I know’?”

“I don’t give a spit,” said the Appalachian, spitting. “When have the Families cared for this place? I don’t, we don’t, want you here.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s make it formal. I, Dale Morton, heir of Thomas Morton, claim the right of sanctuary under the compact. Do I need to remind you further?”

The Appalachian came to a stop right in front of us. Her shirt and pants were covered with patches: IWW, WPA, 54th Massachusetts. She shook her head. “We ain’t forgot. Thomas Morton tried to do things different, a union of the peoples through the craft. If he’d succeeded, would’ve been no King Philip’s War. Much would’ve not been lost. You’ll have sanctuary.” She pointed her pipe at Scherie. “And her?”

“She’s my guest,” I said.

The Appalachian laughed. “Our compact says squat about guests.”

My hands felt blasphemous and murderous. I’d get in her face and teach her about guests, I’d …

“Keep your pants on, Capt’n. Let me git a look at her.” The Appalachian put her pipe back in her mouth and peered closer at Scherie. She bent down to look at Scherie’s legs like she was buying a horse. Her eyebrow twitched. “In-te-resting. I’ll let her in.”

I felt my knees shaking under me. Scherie got under my good arm again. “He needs a doctor, or healer, or whatever you call it.”

“Healer will do,” said the Appalachian. “Let’s git him to my cabin, dear. I’ll make us some herb tea, and we’ll have a nice healing.”

I faded out for a moment. When I came to, I was looking up at a wooden ceiling, sprawled out on a table.

“So you see,” said the Appalachian, mid-conversation, “until now, the bullet’s damage has been held in a capsule of craft. But that’s giving way.”

“You’re going to magic out the bullet?” asked Scherie.

“Not exactly.” The Appalachian pulled out a tray of medical implements that were state of the art in 1789.

“Oh, come on!” said Scherie. “This has got to be a bad idea.”

“I’m working to rule,” said the Appalachian, pointing to her IWW patch with a particularly nasty iron probe.

“I’m getting the doctor’s bag,” said Scherie.

“Leave it,” I croaked. “She knows what she’s doing.”

*   *   *

I skimmed within and outside my ameliorative trauma, above and below consciousness. The Appalachian chewed a cud of tobacco (more craft bravado in the face of statistics) and flourished a terebellum with a bullet screwed onto the end. She spat, and the tobacco juice pinged against metal below her.

Scherie traced a finger along an unvarnished shelf, then held up a round bit of dull metal. She frowned at Howdy Doody’s beatific smile on the button, and bent down near my ear. “I’m going to get our weapons.”

*   *   *

In the late afternoon, I felt whole but tired. I sat on the porch with Scherie, staring out at the Appalachian’s camp.

A hundred yards away was the half-boarded entrance to an old coal mine shaft. Abandoned, the mine and its tailings should have poisoned the surrounding water and soil for generations. Instead, it had returned to nature with a vengeance. Large round trees had grown up around the pit entrance and over where the galleries likely ran. A craftsman could do serious work within such wounds in the earth.

In this place of lost things, many ghosts walked to and fro, flickering in and out of view. Some may have found their way to the valley in life: an occasional folklorist, an old WPA worker, a melody-hunting musician. Others had marched farther than the living—soldiers in faded blue and gray and khaki. And there were civilian ghosts without craft families, ghosts with no one else to talk to, who would not, could not fade yet.

Scherie gasped as one spirit vanished. “It’s real,” she said. She clutched at my arm.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“It was like playacting before, in the car, but now, with so many…”

“They won’t hurt you,” I said.

“Are you sure?” After all we had been through, her fear of these spirits surprised me.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“OK.” She let go of my arm and gripped my hand instead. “It’s very beautiful. Very sad.”

The shadows lengthened; the number of spirits abruptly increased. “What’s going on?” asked Scherie.

I didn’t answer. The Appalachian stepped out of the cabin. “I suppose you should see this.”

We walked out beyond the coal mine copse and into a long clearing of tall grass between two low rises, each with trees at their crests and beyond, standing as if in reserve. All around us, the dead stepped out of the void by the hundreds, flowing to the left and right of their living audience, avoiding us with the glass-eyed skittishness of herd creatures.

“Is this a meet and greet?” asked Scherie.

“What’s that you say?” said the Appalachian, yawning and scratching her braless chest as she followed Scherie’s gaze. “Oh, this is just the evening show.”

“It’s more than that,” I said.

“OK, Mr. West Point, what do you call it?” said the Appalachian.

I nodded toward Dad and Grandpa, who were walking quickly toward their dead fellows, fading a bit from my view into their world. “My dad called it the American Elysium, the United States of Valhalla.”

The Appalachian snorted. “It’s not all that. Like any American apotheosis, it’s not as pretty as it sounds.”

“But they look so, so…” Scherie stopped with a realization. “Hey, they’re taking sides.”

“Damned straight,” said the Appalachian. The dead had formed up into opposing lines, and were organizing into regiments.

“But they’re dead,” said Scherie.

The Appalachian ignored the non sequitur. “All of ’em are craft dead, the practitioners and the forgotten of America’s many craft battles. The sides they take have many names.”

“It’s free union versus oppression and dissolution,” I said.

“That sounds serious, for dead people,” said Scherie.

“It ain’t so simple,” said the Appalachian. “Watch long enough, you’ll see. Freed from chains of time and place, they switch sides. Some Rebel uniforms fight for free union, some Yankees fight against.”

“There’s right and wrong, good and evil,” I said.

“Not so clear here,” said the Appalachian. “Old left and right have slim meaning to the dead; Commies and Fascists sometimes fancy a big country and sometimes don’t. New dead arrive, maybe bringing new ideas and causes.” The Appalachian lowered her voice. “Field of fucking dreams this ain’t. Many on both sides hate this place.”

I viewed the ground with new appreciation. In this pastiche Valhalla, tokens of Civil War battlegrounds dotted the landscape, reminders in miniature of their bloody originals. I pointed out details to my companions. “That cornfield came from Antietam, that wheatfield from Gettysburg.” With a boyish glee I took in the inevitable low stone walls, the wooden fences, even a bit of sunken road, and a hodgepodge of more generic features from battlefields lost to development. Things lost, now found. But for the most part, these were just decorative reminders in a cleared arena. These soldiers had dealt with enough obstructions in life. Here, very little would keep them apart.

I nearly cried out as the matrilineal Hutchinsons paraded forward at the front of a squad of women in the drag of various wars—Revolutionary long coats, Union caps. In the old days, a little craft and a stuffed crotch could deceive anyone who needed to be deceived. But my Colonel Hutchinson wasn’t with them.

The Endicott ancestors on both sides kept apart and aloof with spotless spectral uniforms and martinets’ discipline. Old John walked between the forces, lining up the opposing Endicotts with his extended sword. They were legion, many more than all the living and dead Mortons, and too many on the dissolution side. Not the united front their living reps presented today. That gave me a feeling besides schadenfreude that I couldn’t quite grasp.

The air tasted bitter as I saw the jungle and desert camo of recent recruits, men and women with whom I had fought: Newsome, Eichorn, Strong, Martinez, Brown. On the side of the dissolution regiments, Sergeant Zanol stood in a relaxed posture I hadn’t seen in life: the stance of an officer.
I put him there.

Last came the orthodox Mortons, with Joshua at their head. He had moved up in rank to something like a corps commander in this dead free union army. The officer’s sword at his side gave him the disturbing aspect of an Endicott. Dad and Grandpa lined up behind him, not bothering with each other anymore. Hand over dead eyes, Joshua peered out from the tree-lined rise toward the horizon for someone on the other side, not there.

Whatever their history in life, all the Mortons were on the free union side tonight, even Joshua’s gray-clad brother Jeb.

Scherie pointed out to the horizon. “Look!” Beyond the far flank, too far to recognize their individual faces and many tribes, dusty and stoic Native Americans sat on their hard-ridden, stoic horses. Here, they could finally avoid fighting in the white men’s quarrels.

Some of the native horsemen were obscured by the opposing lines. The dead had enough substance here that, strain as I might, I couldn’t see through them. I stretched my hand out to feel the air; I stepped closer.

The surprisingly strong hand of the Appalachian gripped my arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” Her casual, bored demeanor was off like a cheap mask.

“Just wanted a closer look,” I said.

The Appalachian shook her head. “No trespass in the battle royal.”

“Come on,” I said, affecting a devil-may-care tone that I doubted even as I spoke. “What harm could we do?”

“They never break,” said the Appalachian, gripping my arm tighter. “I’ve watched them fight many, many times. Every night, the forces of free union hold the line. They may win the day, they may lose, and they always git pretty beat up. But they never break.”

“And if they do?” asked Scherie.

“Then these United States cease to be united,” said the Appalachian, taking a swig from her flask. “The nation dies.”

“Even if this reflects the real world, it can’t be causal,” I said.

“How long do you think a country can survive without a soul?” asked the Appalachian.

“I hate allegory,” I said.

“‘Craft doesn’t need metaphor,’ the motto of your house,” said the Appalachian. She spat. “This is no damned alley-gory. Some days it’s straight from the headlines, but some days it’s ahead of them.” She spat again. “And they know what’s at stake. Before my shift, during World War Two, these dead folks got really, really quiet, like dead folks should. I guess even our fascist secessionists don’t think much of foreign occupation. If they do, they must haint overseas.”

Both armies had settled, waiting for some silent order to advance. “Are we safe here?” asked Scherie, the fear in her voice again. A story in that fear that I needed to know.

“They won’t pay no nevermind to us,” said the Appalachian, “as long as we don’t git in the way. They don’t even talk, that you can see or hear.”

Spectral swords flashed in the fading light, a diachronic hedgehog of weapons swung forward in a charge. Joshua led from the front, cajoling with gestures. They moved in close formation, more like Civil War reenactors than any firefight I had seen. Their uniforms were anything but united, and the line carried almost as many unit colors as soldiers, names and eagles and mottoes all faded. Some had fought in foreign wars, some in domestic wars never declared. The Lincoln Brigade, reinforced by anachronistic writers from before and after the Spanish Civil War, faced off against the Pinkertons, similarly reinforced.

A flash of ectoplasmic fire, and big chunks of each side fell. Some souls vanished. “Where do they go?” asked Scherie.

“Don’t know,” said the Appalachian, looking at Scherie with renewed interest. “Most times they come back. Otherwise? Maybe they graduate to a gentler Elysium. Maybe they’re finally worn out, killed too many times.”

Some trampy-looking fellas in doughboy shirts or caps threw Molotov cocktails, which burst in gray and white flame.

The armies rushed together in a feral mess. No subtlety tonight. “They’re anxious to get to it,” said Scherie.