James Kunstler - World Made by Hand

“You can tell Brother Jobe that he and I should meet at the soonest convenient time and begin organizing the repair of the town water system.”

“Something else has come up, sir. Mr. Bullock from over the grand plantation has entreated us to form a party to search for his missing boatmen.”

“Entreated you?”

“Yessir.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“Yessir. And he would like you to be along on it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you will know the men we are searching for by sight, he says. And because he trusts you, I gather.”

“Well, he doesn’t really know your bunch.”

“My point, sir.”

“Have you got their names?”

He reached into his vest and pulled out a piece of good vellum paper. It was penned in a decorative hand, official looking, though it didn’t pretend to have any legal standing as a warrant or a sum mons or a commission, as far as I could tell. Among the instructions were the names of the missing crew. Thomas Soukey once ran the video rental in town and played softball with a bunch of us in a weekly game before the flu hit and he lost his family and went over to Bullock. Jacob Silberman used to print promotional T-shirts and coffee mugs for companies. Skip Tarbay had been a landscaper, mowing lawns and bedding annuals. And Aaron Moyer taught art history over at Bennington College. All lines of work which were no more.

“How many will be in this search party?” I said.

“Five, including yourself.”

“How long.”

“As we have planned it, maybe two days down, two days search around the locks and port of Albany and such, and then two days back.”

“That’s most of a week, Joseph.”

“Yes it is, sir.”

“I just assumed new duties here in town.”

“We’re aware of that.”

“Can’t you find somebody else?”

“Nosir. The other townsmen that don’t have family, they’re mostly ne’er-do-wells, drinkers and such. Anyway, Mr. Bullock stipulated for you to go.”

“Is he lending us a boat?”

“No, we’re going on horseback. That way a couple of us can bring his boat back, if we find it.”

“If we don’t find the crew themselves?”

“I suppose that would be the size of it, sir.”

“Do you have to call me sir?”

“It’s New Faith manners, sir. Anyway, we hope to find the men too.”

“Of course.”

“Do you have a personal weapon, sir?”

“A weapon?”

“A firearm.”

“No. Well, sort of.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. A revolver.”

“What caliber?”

“I can’t really say.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve never actually used it. It’s a large pistol.”

“We have .38 wadcutters that’ll go into a .357. Some nine millimeter. Do you have it at hand, sir?”

“No.”

“Well, can you get it?”

“It would take me an hour or so.”

“I’d suggest you fetch it, sir,” he said. “We’re looking to depart by midday. We’ll come by for you at one o’clock, say, with a mount. We’d encourage you to bring along some of your own meal, bacon, what have you. We’ll have some company provisions too. The rest we’ll scrounge along the way. Okay, sir?”

“Okay. Are you in charge of this expedition?”

“I suppose I will be, sir.”

“Then I’ll have to call you sir.”

“No you don’t. You can call me Joseph, like everybody else does. It’s only the five of us.”

“Were you in the military, Joseph?”

“Yessir. I saw action at Damascus and Qryat Shimona before the pullout,” he said.

“Did you shoot at people.”

“Yessir, and killed a fair number of the ones I shot at, I suppose.”

Brother Joseph had not been gone ten minutes when another knock sounded on the front door. I was a little annoyed, what with being obliged on short notice to go on a possibly dangerous journey far from home that I was unprepared for, and because, at the moment, I was pouring cornmeal from a sack into one of the few decent plastic storage tubs I had left with a lid that closed tight, and I spilled some on the brick floor of the summer kitchen.

“Just a minute,” I said. The bandage on my left hand was driving me crazy. I took it off hurriedly. The blister on the meaty edge of my palm was the size of a half-dollar. I threw open the door.

It was Britney Watling. She had some visible scrapes and scratches on her face from the misadventure the night before last.

“Can I come in?” she said.

“Sure,” I said, remembering the sizzling sound of my palm frying on her doorknob. “Would you mind following me out back, though. I’m getting some things together out there.”

I wondered whether she had come to apologize for nearly getting both of us killed in her burning house. She followed me.

“That’s a very pretty garden,” she said. She looked on edge, as if she had been sleeping poorly. “What’s that thing in the center?”

“It’s a birdbath.”

“Oh? Looks like a pile of rocks.”

“It’s that too, I suppose. Are you feeling all right?”

“What do you mean? Am I okay in the head?”

“No, that’s not what I meant—”

“Because folks are acting like I’m a crazy person.”

“Well I don’t know whether you are or not,” I said, “and I wouldn’t try to judge.”

She glared at me a moment and then seemed to soften up. “Can I sit down?” she said.

“By all means.”

“Folks seem to think I started that fire.”

“Well did you?”

“No! A candle set it off. I couldn’t sleep in the heat. I was reading a book. I must have drowsed off and knocked the candle over. The bedclothes caught and then a curtain, and then it got up into the window sashes, I guess.”

“Can you tell me why you went back into the fire when I tried to pull you out?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sweeping the floor with her eyes, as if she might turn up an answer there. “I lost heart, I suppose. First Shawn. Then my home. I didn’t really want to die. I have a child to look after. It was moment of… selfish confusion.”

“I’m sorry so many bad things have happened to you.”

Looking down at her sitting there only emphasized her small size. Shawn must have been at least twice her weight. I seemed to remember them dancing together once at a levee in Battenville. Like a bear with a doe, each full of youth and life in its own way, but an odd pair.

“I know you’ve seen your share of heartache too,” she said.

“Life remains a precious blessing for us the living.”

“I hope I come around to feel that way.”

“I hope you do too.”

I hadn’t been away from home for a week in as long as I could remember, and it was hard to determine how much food I ought to bring for myself. I had a hunk of Terry Zucker’s smoked hard sausage, which I wrapped carefully in a piece of waxed canvas and tied with an old piece of string. I saved absolutely everything.

“Are you going somewhere?” Britney said.

“Yes.”

“Is it a secret?”

“I have to go to Albany. I’ll be gone most of a week.”

“Albany? What’s down there?”

I told her about Bullock’s missing boatmen.

“Tom Soukey used to babysit me when I was a little girl,” she said. “He was in high school. I beat him at checkers. I hope you can find them.”

“I don’t know what we’ll find down there,” I said. “I haven’t been out of the county in years. Anyway, they’re coming by to get me soon and I have to go see about something before that.”

“Okay, then,” she said resolutely. “I came here for a reason. I have a proposal.”