James Kunstler - World Made by Hand

“What’s that?”

“I thought you might need somebody to keep house.”

It took me a moment to absorb that.

“I can’t pay someone to keep house,” I said.

“That’s not what I had in mind.”

Now she was making me nervous. I put some corn bread, hard cheese, three onions, and a head of garlic into an oilcloth and tied it with more string into a compact package. Anything you cook will taste okay with onions and garlic. I figured we could get eggs along the way. Everybody had chickens nowadays.

“What did you have in mind?” I said.

“Like I said. Keep house for you.”

I just stared at my bundle.

“To be on the premises,” she said.

It took me a moment to get it.

“You want to live here?” I said.

“We don’t have any place to live.”

“You just lost your husband.”

“Thank you for reminding me.”

“I mean, how would it look?”

“You can say yes or no.”

“I hear you’re with the Allisons?”

“We can’t stay there. It’s not a comfortable situation.”

“There are quite a few vacant houses in town.”

“This isn’t a good time for a single woman with a child to live alone.”

“Mrs. Myles lives alone right next door. Maybe you could live with her.”

“She was my fifth grade teacher. I don’t want to live with her.”

“Well, why do you want to live with me?”

“I would feel safe here.”

I went over to search the shelves above the counter for my purple Lexan water bottle. I hadn’t seen it in a while and they sure weren’t making them anymore.

“It looks to me like you could use somebody to keep house around here,” she said.

“I’m not used to living with other people,” I said.

“You had a family once. Look at this place,” she said. “It’s like some old trapper dude lives here.”

“Thanks.”

The Lexan bottle was not where I thought I put it. Did I leave it over at Pragers’? It was making me upset.

“It wouldn’t look right,” I said. “You moving in here.”

“You have been alone for some years now, isn’t that right, Robert?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be alone to the end of your days?”

“I’m old enough to be your father, and I was present where your husband was murdered. People might get some strange ideas.”

“I’m well aware,” she said. “But I need a helping hand, and these are not normal times. I’m old enough to remember the difference. I once had my own television. My mom drove a pickup truck. We used to go to the Target in Glens Falls and buy stuff when she got paid. Those days are gone, and so is any idea of what’s normal or decent. I don’t want to put in with that New Faith crowd and pray three times a day and have some pack of busybodies raise my child. And I won’t put in with Bullock and be a damn serf. We can help each other, you and me. Just let me and Sarah stay here while you’re gone. We’ll weed your garden for you.”

I gave up looking for my water bottle.

“All right,” I said. “You can stay while I’m gone.”

“What about when you’re back?”

“I mean you can move in after I leave today, and we can see how it works out when I return.”

“I still have a big garden of my own behind where the house used to be, plus the cow, so you don’t have to worry about feeding us.”

“All right.”

She gave me an intense studying look. I worried now whether she would throw her arms around me and sob, and make me feel uncomfortable. But she just took my right hand in hers and shook, like a sales representative sealing a deal.

“You were kind to me when I was very low,” she said. “I’m grateful, and you won’t regret this.”

“There’s four bedrooms upstairs,” I said “It’ll be obvious which one’s mine. You and Sarah can have any two of the others. Please don’t go rearranging things too much, especially the kitchen setup. I’ve got everything where I know how to find it.”

“I will be very respectful of your stuff and your ways.”

She said she didn’t have much to bring over, that pretty much all she owned had been lost in the fire. I showed her around, how the outdoor shower worked and where I kept my store of meal and honey and things. Finally, I saw her to the door. She said they’d come back later in the day after I’d gone.

“Have a safe journey,” she said. “I hope you find Tom and the others.”

“Thank you. I’m a little nervous about it, to tell you the truth.”

“Think about coming home to a clean and orderly house.”

I watched her walk a ways back up Linden Street. She was a good walker, with a strong, purposeful stride.

Soon, I left to fetch that pistol I’d hidden under the bridge over Black Creek on North Road, and all the way up and back my mind reeled with terrible thoughts of what it would be like to not be alone anymore, and what Jane Ann would think when she found out.

Riding along in a band with four other mounted men in fine summer weather was so exhilarating that I cast aside my worries and apprehensions for the rest of the afternoon as we made our way south on the old county highway along the Hudson River. The other three besides Joseph were Brothers Elam, Seth, and Minor. Elam and Seth were large, broad-shouldered earnest men, like Joseph, but Brother Minor was skinny and smaller than me. He had a sharp, weasely face and a joking demeanor, and when he laughed at his own jokes, which was often, his eyes creased and seemed to close up tight, while his laughter was nearly silent, more like air huffing through a pipe. He joked incessantly.

“You hear about the farmer was milking and a fly went in one of the cow’s ear ’n out th’ udder?” was a typical Minorism, as the other men called his constant banter.

Joseph and Elam carried rifles, and Seth wore a sword, a saber, some kind of museum piece he had come across in their journeys. All had pistols. Brother Minor carried a sawed-off shotgun scabbarded off his saddle and two daggers in his belt, one long one he called a “pigsticker” and another he called “the last resort.”

I’d found that pistol where I had stashed it, all right, under the Black Creek Bridge, the one that killed Shawn Watling. It proved to be an old Ruger.41 Magnum, an odd “bastard caliber,” Brother Joseph said, and they didn’t have any ammunition for it. There were three rounds left in the cylinder. I brought it along thinking I could not possibly run into three situations in a few days that would require me to fire at another man. I carried the pistol tucked in my belt, and I must confess it was reassuring to feel its heft there as I rode along all afternoon and we ventured into what was, for me, unknown country-at least country I had not been to in years, since we stopped going places in cars. My mount was an eight-year-old bay gelding named Cadmus, a full sixteen hands high with white stockings and a blaze from lips to forehead. He was responsive and forgiving, considering my paltry experience, though we barely moved faster than a walk that day.

The first settlement we rode through was the town of Starkville, seven miles altogether from Union Grove and on the other side of the river. The old highway bridge there was in terrible condition. In places the cement roadway had rotted out and you could see daylight down to the water through twisted, rusty filaments of iron rebar and flaking girders. We dismounted and led the horses across with the utmost care. In a few years the thing would be completely shot and there would be no connection across the Hudson River for twenty miles in either direction, unless somebody started a ferry.

Then there was the town. It was hard to believe that as recently as 1971 Starkville had an industrial economy-a wallpaper factory and a cardboard box mill, using wood out of the Adirondacks up river. They employed hundreds at decent wages a family could live on. Back in the 1950s, the town had its own movie theater and even a newspaper. Now, the little business section of Main Street was deserted in midafternoon on a weekday. The windows were broken in all but one shop front. The one remaining had a Sorry Closed sign in it. We stopped and peered through the dusty glass. The shelves and counters inside were bare, and Elam remarked that it was probably closed for good. The commercial buildings themselves along Main were in sorry condition. In some cases blue sky peeked through the ceilings in the upper stories, and scraggly shrubs had taken root in the decayed gunk along the parapets, so you knew the roofs were ruined.