Land of Unreason (16 page)

            He chuckled at the memory.
Barber experienced a sudden twinge of embarrassment at the thought of his own
ready acceptance of the authority of the "heathen" court, and was
glad he had not mentioned the incipient wings. "How did that happen?"
he asked, to keep the conversation on safe lines.

            "Passel of plaguey
whoop-te-tiddle about some logs. When I come here I made a deal, fair and
square, to farm this land and swap my produce. I built me that little sod house
you seen outside. Come fall, I went down to the river to get stun, and found a
hull batch of apple trees, so I grubbed up some of the littlest and planted 'em
round my house. They growed all right, but I had to get rid of 'em."
Fawcett paused dramatically to take a pinch of snuff, and held out the box to
Barber, who declined and asked the expected: "Why?"

            "The heathen. At night,
they'd come dancin' around, wavin' their arms and scowlin' suthin'
metaphorical. They was dressed up in bark like they was tryin' to give me a
chivaree. We Fawcetts don't scare easy. When I went out to give "em a
piece of my mind they all took after me. I pulled foot back into the house and
grabbed my ax. Right there I larnt that must of the heathen is tarnal 'fraid of
iron. Some superstition of theirn. Long as I had that ax they wouldn't come
nigh me ..." Fawcett bent to a bootjack. "Pull off your shoes and be
comfortable, mister."

            Barber was willing enough to
do so. The shoes given him by the King's tailor had been comfortable enough in
the beginning, but the unwonted amount of walking he had done lately seemed to
have spread his feet so much that they were tight; it was a relief to get rid
of them. "I thought you said it was something about logs," he said.

            "I'be comin' to that.
They kept comin' around at night. When I asked 'em why they couldn't let a
Christian sleep, they told me they was sperrits of the trees. Now I'be a
moderate man, but it says in hundred and first Psalms, 'He that telleth lies
shall not tarry in my sight,' and furthermore, 'Regard not them that have
familiar sperrits,' so that got my dander up. I cut down those trees and used
the logs to start my little log house that's a corncrib now. Well, I like to
had a heathen uprisin' on my hands."

            He made another dramatic
caesura, emphasized it by getting up to refill both mugs, and asked with
elaborate offhandedness: "Have much trouble with uprisin's out in the new
states?"

            "Not very," Barber
smiled. "But what happened? How did you put down the uprising?"

            "Well, the heathen came
round agin, yellin' notoriously, and makin' out I'd massacreed a mort of their
relations. They was goin' to tell the King and have the law on me. 'Law ahead,'
says I, knowin' I had the King's leave to farm this land, and the guv'-ment's
word has to be better'n the next man's or he'd be runnin' things. So I went
down to the river and got some more trees. I skided 'em out with
Federalist—"

            "Who?" interrupted
Barber.

            "Federalist. My hoss,
that the King guv me when we made the deal. I finished my house; but it just
goes to show what the Good Book says: 'Put not thy trust in princes.' Along
come that King, madder'n a nest of hornets and wanted to cancel the hull deal
and put me off my land. I told him I was a citizen of the U-nited States and
protected by its constitution, that says the obligations of contract shall not
be impaired, the way John Marshall told 'em in that there Georgia land case, a
few years back. Well, he hemmed and he hawed, and the heathen with him ripped
around till I got tired of hearin' 'em. I told him we Bay Staters fit a war to
get rid of one king, and if he was minded to see how we did it, I'd show him
right there.

            "That didn't take him
so good; he fizzed like a firin' pan, and I thought we was goin' to have real
troubu-lous times, till all of a sudden it come over me to say: "See here,
my hearty, there be more of us Fawcetts comin' this way, so you better not try
ary monkey-shines with the first one. I'be a moderate man. If those trees are
special pets of yourn, you could tell me so without a lot of cock-and-bull
about sperrits, for I'do not believe in vain boastin', as is related in the
first book of the Kings of Israel, twentieth chapter. 'I shall make you a hoss
trade,' I said to him. 'If your people'Il deliver me good sound timber for some
of my produce I shall leave your pet trees be.' By and by he ca'med down and
seen the sense of it, and that's how it's been ever since. But it seems agin
nater to have a farm without a wood lot. I guess now I've done enough talkin'.
Tell me about your trip here, mister. See ary Injuns? How'd you come by the
sword?"

            One sentence in the
narrative had caught Barber's attention. "Oh, I got that from the—kobolds
in the mountain," he parried. "But didn't you say something about
more of you Fawcetts?"

            The farmer sloshed the lees
of his drink around the bottom of the mug and tossed it off.
"Brothers," he answered briefly. "Obadiah and Lemuel—he married
one of the Whiting gals. They was goin' to leave Middlesex County the summer
arter me, and follow right along the Albany trail. But it's been a mighty long
time, and I sometimes consider mebbe they got caught by the Injuns or some of
those other heathen ..." He glanced at the clock. "Time to put the
victuals on," he said in a changed tone, and got up.

-

            Just before sunrise Barber
was wakened by a large hand on his shoulder. For a few sleepy moments he stared
uncomprehendingly upward at the side-whiskered face and the wall beyond, his
body savoring the comfort of bed after many nights on the ground.

            "Time to lay into the
chores, mister," said Fawcett cheerfully.

            Barber stretched, yawned,
and touched a prickly chin. The assumption that he had signed on as a farm hand
struck him as pretty cool, but he contemplated the prospect without resentment.
Perhaps Oberon had intended it that way. "Have you got an extra razor I
could borrow?" he asked.

            "Well, now that I
think," replied the farmer, "that's one thing there be'nt in this
hull place. They's a virtoo in the water or sutlrin' that makes a man's hair
stay put; mine ain't growed a mite since I'been here." He looked at
Barber, pulling on his clothes, with his face carefully turned to keep the
incipient wings at his back out of sight, and laughed. "Don't know's
I'blame you, though, with a brindle bush like that. Let's have suthin' to
'strengthen by the sperrit, the inner man' as the Apostle Paul wrote to the
Ephesians. I consider I'be lucky, without ary stock to feed before I'can have
my breakfast."

            Barber's eye caught the
foodbag, where he had hung it on the back of a chair the night before, and,
"I think I can help you out there," he offered brightly. "Is
there anything you'd specially like but haven't been able to get lately?"

            Fawcett's whiskers moved in
a grin. "Well, now you call it to mind, there is. I declare there's times
when I would give 'most all I own for a chunk of good Boston codfish. Ain't got
that, have you?"

            "Watch me." Barber
concentrated on the thought of codfish and reached into the bag. It yielded a
handful of crumbling leaves and the musty odor of decayed vegetation. Slightly
dismayed, but remembering how it had failed on beer during the journey, he
tried again, but made the request plain ham and eggs. Same result. Fawcett was
surveying the proceeding disappointedly.

            "What under the canopy
be you tryin' to do?" he demanded. "Bamboozle me?"

            "It worked
yesterday," Barber protested. "Probably the sun got at it. Oberon's
chamberlain warned me it might go wrong if that happened. I'm sorry; I wasn't
trying to fool you." He felt his face flushing; this was as bad as feeding
horse meat to a Congressman.

            The farmer emitted a snort
and clumped heavily toward the stairs. "No call to take on," he said.
"When you git to know the heathen 'swell as I do, you'll lam suthin' about
those conjurin' tricks of theirn. They talk about them till you would think
they could make the sun stand still, like Joshuar over Gibeon, but what's it
amount to? 'Profane and vain babbiin's' as the Good Book says in First Timothy.
I call to mind the time I'planted some cukes in that little gusset of land down
by the river. They come up measly little things with funny leaves. That upset
the mountain heathen suthin' scandalous. They're almighty fond of cukes."

            He was laying out the
breakfast with slouching efficiency. "What happened?" Barber
encouraged him.

            "Why, they come to me,
and they said: 'There has been a shapin' and your cukes have turned into ivy
plants. But never you mind,' they said, *we shall undertake to conjure 'em back
for you.' I told 'em to go right ahead, long's they didn't step on the plants.
Nathin' much tenderer'n a young cuke. Well, the hull kit-'n-boodle of 'em come
down from the mountain and pow-wowed round half one night, and sure enough, the
cukes growed all right arter that."

            Fawcett seated himself at
the table and began to eat, waving Barber to another chair. "Do you mean
the conjuring really helped the cucumbers?" asked Barber.

            The farmer chuckled through
a mouthful of food. "Don't you think I'be in my right senses? It wan't the
shapin' that like to spoiled the cukes or the conjurin' that saved 'em. Hoss
manure is just no good for cukes; I knowed that when I'put 'em in, but it was all
I had. But the day before the heathen did their fancy tricks I'found a salt
lick back in the woods a piece and got some good deer manure that did the business.
The heathen had the gall to ask for a reduction in the price of the crop ...
Well, the way seasons run here, I guess mebbe we could get in a little buckwheat
today."

            Barber was city-bred, and
had never before experienced the contentments that rise from watching and
producing the growth of the soil—seeing bare earth sprout delicate green hairs
one day, so fine they were almost invisible except as a sheen; three days later
returning to find them tiny but palpable plants, and in a week sturdily putting
forth leaf and branch. Their growth seemed so swift that everything else was
slowed to a timeless wheel of night and morning through which he moved in
occupations that varied only by the width of a finger from each other. His own
world and his Embassy job seemed too far away and long ago to be of more than
academic interest. For that matter so had the question of returning to them.

            During the day he worked in
the fields, sometimes hoeing little mounds of earth around the stalks of the
growing corn, sometimes picking early crops like peas and beans—for it was high
summer and these were coming on ripe—and helping Fawcett arrange them in drying
racks for preservation. He had tried to explain to the New Englander the better
process of canning. But there were neither cans nor Mason jars with which to
give a demonstration, and as always when he spoke of modern conveniences,
Fawcett guffawed, treating the idea as one might the performance of an
imaginative child. As early as the third day Barber had given up trying to tell
him about such modernities as electric light and skyscrapers. The farmer
received the informations with the same amused skepticism he gave to the
"heathen conjurin's" —making it all seem unimportant, as indeed it
was to the life of the place, and Barber lacked the information to beat down
his objections.

            "They was a professor
down to Harvard proved a steamboat couldn't hold enough wood to take it 'cross
the ocean," he would say with an air of finality, and getting out a very
homemade banjo, chanted rather than sang, in a raucous nasal tenor:

-

"It
was the brilliant autumn time

    
When the army of the north

With
its cannon and dragoons

    
And its riflemen came forth.

-

"Through
the country all abroad

    
There was spread a mighty fear

Of
the Indians in the van

    
And the Hessians in the rear ..."

-

           
Or they would
sit above a board through a long evening, drinking berry wine and playing
nine-man .morris. It was a game combining features of checkers and tit-tat-toe,
for which Fawcett had whittled out an elaborate set of pieces. Barber found
himself a hopeless dub at it, but this did not seem to matter to Fawcett, who
treated the game, and almost everything else, as a background for endless
conversations on Jacksonian politics or experiences with the heathen. Life
rolled smoothly; Oberon, the war, his former existence were lapped deep in the
wave of the past, and it might not be too bad to slide forever through this
region of perfect peace.