World Made by Hand (23 page)

We made inquires up the road and eventually found the old man's people living a mile away in a miserable split-level house that sat alone on a hill, with two windows over a gaping garage door that gave it the look of a woeful human face. All around it lay a poorly kept garden composed of little more than squash vines, the garden of people who had lost the will to cultivate anything, as well as the knowledge to do so. Stumps around the house indicated that the shade trees had been cut down over the years, probably to heat the place. Now, with the temperature above ninety, the sun beat down remorselessly on the asphalt shingle roof. It was one of millions of such cheap houses erected in the last century in rural places on one-acre road frontage out-parcels cut from old farms when nobody cared whether they lived near a town or a job because they could always hop in the car and drive somewhere. If the place had a drilled well with a submersible electric pump, then it probably didn't have running water these days. It was exactly the kind of place that Wayne Karp's crew was disassembling for materials all around Washington County as the owners died or went crazy.

A living scarecrow answered the door looking enough like the dead man to have been his son. And so he proved to be. He barely registered any emotion when we told him what happened. The old man's body was slung facedown over Joseph's horse but the man said he recognized the clothes.

"We're sorry about it," Joseph said.

An equally scrawny woman stood behind the man in a pool of darkness, with her hand over her mouth. The inside of the house stank fiercely. You could smell it wafting out the door.

"Would you care to help us bury him?" the man said, adding, "We can't pay."

"Sure, we'll help you," Joseph said.

So we, the able-bodied, spent an hour digging another grave out beyond the squash vines, and Joseph conducted another funeral. Minor didn't speak a word, but he did more than his share of the digging. I noticed that Joseph did not give the couple the old man's gun, though he did hand over the car keys. Nor did he bother to proselytize them. We were anxious to return to the road, being within striking distance of home. Once we passed through Starkville proper, the landscape grew recognizable, and I felt tears of gratitude well up inside as the familiar contours of Willard Mountain and the little range of hills known as the Gavottes came into view.

At our journey's end another long day had spent itself. When our party entered the front drive of the Bullock farm, we'd marched twenty miles since breakfast, pausing to dig a six-foot hole in the ground. The sun was down, but plenty of purple afterglow remained and to the east a coppery quarter moon was rising in the warm haze. The antique foursquare manse never looked lovelier, with trumpet vine blossoming over the pergola outside the kitchen, roses in the arbors, two potted fig trees beside the door, swallows dipping around the eaves, and purposeful human activity evident everywhere your eye came to rest. Lights glowed warmly inside the big house and a Debussy recording played. It was the epitome of what you would want to return home to after a harrowing journey to a dark place.

I could see Stephen and Sophie Bullock at their dinner table through the French windows as we rode up. We must have made quite a commotion in the stillness of that hour. They put down their forks and bustled out of the house. The courtyard between the big house and the barns and workshops soon filled with Bullock's servants, and someone rang a bell that tolled out over the fields. The four boatmen seemed overcome with emotion. Tom was weeping again. Skip fell to his knees by the big oak tree. Even Jake uncharacteristically shook and blubbered. Bullock helped Aaron down from the horse and held him up in his arms until Aaron was steady on his feet. Roger Lippy hooked leads on and led Temperance and Cadmus to the soapstone water trough. Sophie helped Skip up off the ground, and he subsided in her arms, sobbing. Shouts rang out in the distance in the still evening air. Soon most of the inhabitants of Bullock's village swept down the lanes between the fields and the barns, answering what was generally construed to be an alarm bell, to find their friends, husbands, fathers returned from the dead. Sophie called for cider and soon pitchers of the potent brew went around.

Bullock steered Joseph and myself away from the celebrating throng to his office inside the house. It was a spacious, airy room, with walls of built-in bookshelves, a long trestle table laid with engineering drawings for his various projects, and a beautifully carved cherry wood desk that had been his grandfather's. I had tossed back a tumbler of cider and the warmth was flooding through my veins. Bullock now poured shots of his best whiskey from a cut glass decanter. He allowed as we were surely anxious to continue on home to Union Grove but wanted to know briefly how things had transpired in Albany. I told him about Dan Curry and how he was running an extortion and ransom racket there, and how we had found the boat and then the crew in his custody, and how he demanded payment outright for their release, calling it excise taxes and fines. Bullock said he could see it getting to this over the preceding year.

"What a bold sonofabitch he's become!" he said. "You didn't pay, did you."

"No, sir," Joseph said.

"Good. But then how could you? I didn't send you down there with that kind of money."

"You didn't?" I said.

"Of course not. Excise tax, my ass!" Bullock said, smacking the tabletop for emphasis. "This idiot could disrupt all the trade in the Hudson Valley. All right, then: how did you spring my men?"

"By other means," Joseph said.

"Such as ..."

"Such as was required in lieu of payment," Joseph said.

Bullock was clearly frustrated. "Did it require force?" he said.

"You could say that."

"To what extent?"

"To the extent that some people got hurt, sir."

"Who. This Curry?"

"Yes, I'd say Curry was among them," Joseph said.

Bullock took this in. "What do you mean by hurt, exactly?" he said.

"Do you really want to know?" Joseph said.

"Go on, tell me," Bullock said.

"I had to shoot him in the head, sir."

"You killed him?"

"I believe so. It's not the kind of injury that people get over."

"Was it necessary to kill him?"

"Yes, sir," Joseph said. "But it wasn't necessary to tell you."

Bullock flinched, then retrieved the whiskey decanter, and poured another round of shots.

"Were you there when this happened, Robert?" Bullock said.

"Yes."

"Was this necessary?"

"He was going to hang your men," I said.

"You sure he wasn't bluffing?"

"He said he would in so many words. And he hanged two boys earlier that day. When I say boys, I mean boys. Two teenagers from Greenport. He told us he enjoyed it."

"Believe me," Joseph said. "Stopping this fiend was the Lord's work."

Bullock brooded a while. "I suppose they'll hold me responsible," he said.

"I'm the one who shot him, sir," Joseph said. "Anyway, he wasn't the only one."

"How many more?"

"I don't know," Joseph said. "A good many."

"Like what? A baker's dozen?"

"Something like that," he said.

Bullock poured himself yet another shot. His hands trembled visibly. "Oh, Jesus ..." he muttered to himself.

"Curry was all the law there was down there," I said. "It began and ended with him. There won't be anybody coming up here after you. I'm pretty sure of that." I described my side trip to the capitol, the lieutenant governor rattling around the ruined building like a BB in a packing crate, the total absence of state authority.

Bullock reflected as I spoke, sipping more liquor.

"Hmm. I suppose the boat is a loss," he said.

"You could send another party down for it, sir," Joseph said. "But if it was me, I'd forget about it for now and build another boat until things settle out down there."

"I take the point," Bullock said. He seemed a little walleyed suddenly, as if the liquor was finally getting to him, and he ran his fingers down through his long white hair as if he were combing something out of it. "By the way, Robert, your man Jobe has kind of opened up a rat's nest over in town with that water project."

"Oh? Did he get started on that?"

'We can't make pipe fast enough. It's taking my men away from haying."

Most of the town was already asleep when we rode through in the moonlight. The few businesses on our little Main Street were closed. Here and there a candle glowed in a window on Salem Street and then down Linden. My own house was among the lighted ones. I swung off Cadmus for the last time and collected my gear from the panniers, a little sorry to be on my own again and wary of the uncertainties that awaited me. Elam retrieved my few parcels from the donkey cart. I thanked them all for their valiant efforts in our adventures, especially Brother Minor, for his caretaking of the animals, for the many meals he had cooked, and his attention to my injury. As I said goodnight to them, the front door swung open and there stood Britney. I had thought of her in only the most abstract terms since setting off, and now it was a shock to see her in the flesh. It was too difficult to imagine the changes she might represent in my living arrangements, not to mention my spirit. The others looked at her as though she were a perfectly roasted chicken.

"Welcome home," she said.

Joseph tipped his hat, then led the others and their mounts down the street toward their new home, the old high school. I stood in the dooryard watching them, afraid to enter my own house, as the horses clip-clopped into the moonlight.

"Are you hungry?" Britney said.

"I suppose I am," I said.

"You come in now."

She helped me take my stuff inside. Sarah, her seven-year-old daughter, sat by a lighted candle in a rocking chair in the living room, braiding reeds into fat coils. Several new baskets sat on the floor beside her chair.

"Welcome home, Mr. Robert," she said.

"Thank you, Sarah. Just plain Robert is okay, though."

"Mama told me to say that."

"Oh? Those are very nice baskets."

"Mama and me trade for them, you know."

"I expect you'll do real well with those."

I followed Britney out back, to the open summer kitchen. The house had obviously benefited from her being there. It smelled fresher, like strewn herbs. Yet nothing was really out of place.

"Thank you for cleaning up."

"You were kind to take us in," she said.

"I've been nervous about this. About how we would inhabit this house together."

"What are your thoughts?" she said.

"I've been trying not to have any."

"We'll stay out of your way."

"I don't know as I'd like that, exactly."

"What would you like?"

"I don't know. A normal household."

"This isn't a normal situation, and these aren't normal times."

"Don't I know it."

"And I'm a young woman."

"Yes, you are. And I'm what I am. Let's maybe start by not having to apologize for ourselves."

"All right," she said.

"Mostly I'm exhausted from riding and walking more than twenty miles today."

"I have a spinach pudding made earlier tonight with some of Carl Weibel's goat cheese. There's no meat on hand. I didn't know you'd be back tonight."

"Pudding's fine."

"We have fresh lettuce and the first little sweet onions-"

"I would love some kind of fresh greens-"

"And I can make you some eggs too."

"Please."

"How do you like them?"

"Scrambled. But not runny. Five or six if they're pullet eggs."

I rooted around a cupboard and found half a bottle of Jane Ann's wine.

"Here, sit down," Britney said, pulling out a chair for me. She lit a candle in a tin can holder on the table.

I watched her load some splints in the cookstove and blow on them until they caught from the embers left over from their supper earlier. It was hard not to admire the delicacy and economy of her movements.

She proceeded to fill me in on what had happened in my absence. Greg Meers, a farmer from nearby Battenville, had died in Larry Prager's dentistry chair. He was forty-seven and seemed to be in good health. He had received a substantial dose of laudanum for a root canal and his heart just stopped. He left a wife and two boys, nine and twelve.

"I knew him slightly," I said. "He dropped out of Wayne Karp's bunch some years ago to farm on his own. Sold snowmobiles back in the old days. Not a bad fellow."

"Dr. Prager is very upset."

"I expect he would be."

The main news, she said, was that the New Faith gang had commenced fixing the town water system.

"Bullock told me they were at it," I said.

"But some problem's developed and the water's been cut off altogether for three days now," she said. "People are coming around here looking for you, grousing, and demanding that something be done."

"I'll see about it first thing tomorrow."

"Those that stop by look shocked to find me here."

"What do you tell them?"

"I tell them I'm keeping house for you."

"Good. It's the truth. It's exactly what you're doing."

I very much enjoyed seeing somebody else bustling around in my kitchen. In a little while, she served me a big square of the spinach and cheese pudding and a mound of scrambled eggs.

"May I sit with you?" she asked.

"Sure. Would you like some of this wine? It seems to me you could use some."

"Thank you, I will."

She got another glass out of the cupboard while I ate. Her cooking was first-rate.

"I want you to know a few things," she said.

"All right."

"My husband, Shawn, was a troubled person. Our life together was not what other people might think."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was what it was. For some time before he died, more than a year, we didn't sleep in the same room. It was his choice as much as mine, in case you're wondering. I think he had something going with the dairy girl up at Mr. Schmidt's. A girl named Hannah Palfrey. Came down from Granville a couple of years ago. Lives out at the farm now. I don't know much else about her. She was at the funeral, of course."

"Was she?"

"Oh, yes. A big cushion of a girl, especially up in here." Britney pushed up her compact breasts. "Shawn liked that. What could I do? It was a little late to go get implants."

Luckily, my mouth was full and I couldn't comment.

"Do you think Doctor Copeland could fix me up that way?" she said.

"There's nothing wrong with you."

Suddenly the electric lights went on and someone was screaming about Jesus on the radio. The power could not have been running for more than five full seconds, and then it cut out again.

"Mama! Mama!" Sarah came dashing into the kitchen and practically leaped into her mother's lap.

"It's all right, darling. It's over."

"Who's that man shouting?"

"Just a crazy preacher."

"Why?"

"Shouting makes them feel important."

"If I shout, will I be important?"

"You're already important. You don't have to shout. Maybe Mr. Robert will fix it so it won't come on again like that."

I went and hit the power button on the old stereo. In doing it, I was conscious of putting something behind me: the expectation that things would ever be normal again. There was a kind of relief in it. I also turned off the electric lights so they wouldn't come on and scare anybody again. Britney was standing now, holding Sarah on her hip, the way one would hold a toddler, except Sarah was way beyond that stage.

"We're going to bed now," Britney said. "There are some buckets of clean water by the sink, in case you want to wash up."

"Thank you." I was quite desperate to bathe. "Where did you get it?"

"The river."

"That's a long way to carry water."

"I'm strong," she said. "I hope you sleep well, Robert. Goodnight."

I watched as she went inside with the sleepy child, picked up the candle from the table beside the rocking chair, and climbed the stairs. Years ago, I'd watched Sandy go up those same stairs with a child on her hip.

Of all the things that no longer worked, we'd never lost our water before, because the town system relied on nothing more complicated than gravity. We'd never not had water, even during the worst times. The system had been put in place long ago and it was a given condition of life, like the oxygen content of the air. We never thought of it until the pressure went down that summer.

I had that outdoor shower rigged up off the summer kitchen with a steel tank over a wood-burning firebox, all built from salvage. I had soldered a supply pipe going into the tank, and a shower nozzle coming off the bottom. It had a piece of old screen over the top to keep bugs out. I brought a chair over, poured half a bucket of water in the tank, and made a little fire in the box with some splints. Over the years, I'd developed a pretty good sense of how long it took to heat up. In the meantime, I went and fetched my fiddle from inside. I hadn't played in weeks. I was eager to put on the machine-made strings that I picked up in Albany. I switched them out with the old gut strings, one at a time, so as not to unseat the bridge. My bow was in fine condition because two things we had plenty of were horsehair and rosin. The wound steel wire strings were wonderfully even, with a clear, bright sound. I played a slow, sad favorite tune called "The Greenwood Tree" in the key of D. In a little while, the water in the shower tank was heated. I got wet enough to soap up, shut it off, and used the rest to rinse. It left me a changed man.