Stepping Stones (7 page)

“Lord Jesus, what is it?”

“It’s the work of the Devil!”

“Kill it!”

“Abomination!”

“Satan!”

I tried to crawl over to my brother.  I couldn’t get closer than a couple feet.  That “skin” was all around him again, glowing, with him twisting and shuddering inside it.

Someone got a lantern lit, then another.  Soon there was enough light to see the extent of the damage to the room.  The Bent Pig was a shambles, but there was a worse damage than that.  Caleb’s lifeless body lay crumpled at the foot of the bar, a section of the stool he’d swung at Georgie buried in his chest.

“Oh, God, my boy,” Abe sobbed, sinking down beside him.

“Jesus,” Pa
whispered
.

“Georgie didn’t mean it.  It wasn’t his fault,” I said, stumbling over.  Men shrank back as I approached.  “It wasn’t his fault,” I repeated.  “Tell them, Pa.”

Abe rose to his feet and grabbed Pa’s shirt.  “What do you know about this, Neuman?”

Pa glanced away.  “I . . . I don’t know anything.  You can’t—”

A hollow thump sounded in the center of the room.  Every man there turned.  Georgie had dropped to the wood planking.  The light around his body was gone.

With a snarl, McClintock released Pa and strode to the middle of the room.  He stood over Georgie.
“Get a rope,” he said.

Pa stepped forward.  “Now, hold on, Abe.  You can’t—”

Abe w
hirled, trembling with rage.  “You s
hut your mouth.  You got no right to speak.  My boy’s dead, and this . . . this
thing
you raised killed him.  You keep out of this, Neuman, or I swear by all that’s holy we’ll be getting two ropes instead of one.”

The wager money was still on the bar.  I scooped it up.  “Here,” I said, thrusting it at Abe.  “Take it.  It wasn’t Georgie’s fault.  Just take the money and leave us be.”

Jake was standing beside me.  He knocked the coins from my hand.  Then he swung his fist, putting
all
his weight behind the blow.  I went down.  Hard.  I wound up on the floor beside Caleb’s body, blood pouring from my mouth.

Jake spat on me.  “This ain’t about the money,” he said.  “This is about right and wrong.”

Someone
brought
a rope from the storeroom.  With a hollow feeling, I realized that the men in that bar were going to hang Georgie, and there was nothing Pa or I could do to stop it.  Rising to my knees, I looked up at my neighbors.  All I could see in their faces was cruelty and fear and hate. 
They had changed.  They had
turned into a mob.  Alone, each may have been fair and honest and moral; together,
they had
become an ugly mindless force bent on violence and revenge.

Rough hands jerked Georgie to his feet.  They bound his wrists behind his back with wire.  He was still dazed but starting to come out of it.

Abe dragged him to the bar, forcing him to look at Caleb’s body.  “You done this!” he hissed.  “And by God, you’re gonna pay.”

Confused, Georgie stared down at Caleb, then peered around the demolished room.  Slowly, he
understood
what had happened.  As he did, I saw despair fill his
eyes
.

“It wasn’t your fault, Georgie,” I said.

Georgie looked down.  “Yes, it was, Seth.  I should have kept my promise to Mama.”

I moved closer.  “Listen to me,” I said
softly so only he could hear
.  “They’re going to hur
t you, Georgie.  You have
to save yourself, like when the boulder rolled on you.”

“No, Seth,” he said sadly.  “I was wrong to do it.  I’m not gonna do it any more.”

“Please, Georgie,” I begged.

“No.”

I tried to think of something to convince him.  I failed.  And then the time for pleading was over.  For then the men in the bar, that mob of men—my neighbors, my townsfolk, my friends—dragged my brother outside and threw a rope over the old maple by the bridge and put Georgie on Phil Johnson’s mule and hung him.

I left Pa in the bar and stood in
the woods, deep in the shadows. 
I saw it happen.  All of it.  I wanted to look away, but
I
couldn’t.  I kept praying Georgie would save himself, use his power just one more time.  He didn’t, at least not till the very end.  And by then it was too late.

Nineteen men stood in the moonlight around the maple tree that night, laughing, watching Georgie kick.  Watching him die.

Nineteen men.

Hate grew within me, swelling
until it was all I could feel.  It flooded through me like a venom
, filling me till I thought I would burst.  I could taste it.  I wanted them
to die
.  And all at once I knew how to do it.  I wasn’t able to solve the puzzle of Ma’s cancer.  No, I couldn’t do it for love.  The hours
I’d
spent beside her searching
for
a key
to
unlock the secret of her disease had been fruitless.  But I did it for hate.  A few minutes of hate and I had the answer.

In a dim part of my mind I wondered what sort of
person
I was.  In another, I didn’t care.  I hungered for revenge.  It drove me down to that circle of men.  Unnoticed, I walked among them, pausing beside each.  I didn’t have to touch them; I just needed to be
close
.  It didn’t take long.  And it was easy.

I planted the seeds deep, sowing them in their spines, their ribs, the long hollow bones of their legs.  I placed
the seeds
where they would germinate slowly, then grow and mature and blossom into an agonizing death for each.

Afterward I returned to the woods, hot bitter tears running down my face.  I cried for Ma.  I cried for Georgie.  I guess I cried for myself, too.

Hours later, after the moon had set and the men were gone, I cut Georgie down.  Using a wheelbarrow from the livery stable, I wheeled him up to the north field.  Then I returned home, got a shovel, and buried
Georgie
beside the boulder—figuring that rock he’d moved was better than any headstone I could have
placed
.

Afterward I sat under the stars, leaning against Georgie’s boulder and thinking about what had happened.  I decided Ma had been telling the truth in that story of hers.  The men in the bar had been afraid of Georgie because he was different, and their fear had turned to hate, and their hate had destroyed him.  I suspected
that
Ma had changed the ending of her story, though.  I don’t believe there ever was any cleansing rain
for that monkey
.  I think that tribe of
his
tore apart their furry green brother and left him to die.  And as Ma had said, that’s just the way things were.

But if
that was the way of the world
, why would God burden my brother with a curse like that?  Why would God make Georgie different just so his fellow men would kill him?  What had my brother done to
deserve
such a
heartbreaking,
lonely end?

And what about me, an
d what I had done to the men who
hung him?
  They deserved the fate
I had
given them, and I was glad I’d done it.  But deep down I knew it was wrong.
If there is a Creator, what will His judgment be for me?
I wondered
.  Abruptly, I realized that He had
already
damned me, for I was different, too.  I was green, just like that monkey . . . at least on the inside.  Or was the color of my soul
actually
black?

Absently, I wondered if there were others like me—normal on the outside but different nonetheless.  If there were,
and they were still alive,
I knew
they would
be hiding.  I also knew
I would
never find them.  But for some reason, at that moment, I wanted very much to believe they were there.

I remained in the north field all
that
night,
sitting beside
Georgie’s boulder until the first light of dawn.  By then
it had turned bitter cold.  The
freezing air had stiffened my joints.  I was sore from the fight as well.  It took me a while just to stand.

The path lay in shadow as I followed it to the river.  St
anding on the bank in the early
morning light, I watched the dark waters flow by.
I stripped off my clothes and dived in.  The river was icy cold and running fast.  I swam
out
from shore, my arms slashing the surface, feeling the current trying to pull me down.  When I began to grow numb, I stopped and let myself sink, descending into the frigid darkness.  Shafts of sunlight streamed down from above, eerie fingers fanning through the depths.  I hung weightless, wondering how it would feel to
simply
fill my lung
s with one final watery breath.

Would I find peace?
I wondered
.

I doubted it.

When I burst gasping to the surface, I found that the current had carried me a considerable distance downstream.  I was shivering when I reached the bank, but
by then a
morning breeze
had come up
, and I was dry by the time I found my clothes.  I dressed and headed back to the cabin.

Pa was asleep when I arrived.  Quietly, I gathered my things.  There wasn’t much—some clothes, a buckskin wallet Georgie had made for me, a locket of Ma’s, my Grandpa’s watch.  They hardly filled my duffel bag.  When I was done, I stood at the foot of Pa’s bed.  It looked half empty without Ma in it.  Pa still slept on his side.

“Pa.  Wake up.”

“Huh?”

“Wake up, Pa.”

Pa opened his eyes.  I saw them cloud with shame as he remembered what had happened.  Slowly, he swung his feet to the floor, rubbing
a
hand across the rough white stubble covering his chin.  He still had on his clothes from the night before.  A jar of liquor sat on the night table.  He reached for it.

“Don’t, Pa.”

He peered over, seeming to notice me for the first time.  Again, he ran
a
hand over his chin, then glanced at the jar.

“Please don’t, Pa.”

“No, I don’t guess I will,” he sighed, cradling his head in his hands.

“I buried Georgie in the north field by that boulder.  I figure he’d have liked that.”

“I think maybe he would,” Pa said softly.  Painfully, he rose from the bed.  He looked old.  Funny,
I had
never noticed it before.  With a start, I realized
that
my
father
had
grown
old.

He stood unsteadily, trying to straighten.  Then he spotted my bag by the door.  “You’re leaving?”

I nodded.

Pa’s throat started working. 
I knew he had words to say.  “Seth, I
need
to tell you something,” he said quietly.  “Will you listen?”

I didn’t respond.

“Before your
mother
died, she made me promise to take care of you and Georgie after she was gone,” he went on.  “I told her of course I would; she didn’t need me to promise.  But she made me promise anyhow.  And she made me promise something else,” he added, his voice breaking.  “She made me promise to love you.”

I could see the torment in his face, but still I said nothing.

“Seth, I tried to do right by you both,” he continued, fighting for control.  “I swear I tried, but after Ma died, I . . . I don’t know what happened.  I know I failed you, just like I failed with everything—the plans I had for this farm, and how I was gonna send you and Georgie to school downriver, and . . .”

Pa’s words trailed off.  He swallowed hard, then pushed on.  “Seems like only yesterday your
mother
and I stood before the preacher, with little Georgie already on the way.  I was young then, not much older than you, full of plans and dreams.  Guess that’s all they were.  Dreams.  When Ma died, she took ’em with her.”

He stepped closer, his eyes brimming.  “I know you blame me for what happened.  I know you hate me, boy.  But Seth, I done the best I could.”

Outside, I
could hear
the wind moving through the trees.  The sun had crested the hill
in
back and was filtering through the window onto the worn planks at my feet.  It was time to go.  “I’ll be leaving now,” I said.

Pa’s shoulders sagged.  “I don’t reckon I’ll see you again.”

“No, Pa.  I reckon not.”

“Well, so long, son,” he
said softly
.