James Kunstler - World Made by Hand

“An ounce of gold is a tidy sum these days.”

“You’re right there,” Curry said. “But does it equal the pleasure I would get from hanging these four river rats? That’s what dogs me.”

“How much pleasure did you derive from hanging those two young fellows yonder just a while ago?”

“At least half as much,” Curry said and broke into a braving laugh. Birkenhaus, meanwhile, sprinkled some blotting sand on a document, waved it around to dry, and dangled it before Curry, who snatched it out of the air. “Ah, look, your paperwork’s ready. Now, you sir. Show me the goods.”

Joseph got the leather purse out of a pocket inside his coat. He untied the cinch and drew out a gold coin, placing it in the center of Curry’s desk. Curry hesitated a moment, then reached for it, emitting some little grunts of satisfaction.

“Is there anything prettier in this world than the shiny yellow metal that never tarnishes?” he said, admiring it in the sunlight from the big window behind him. “What’ve we got here? Hmm. Mexican gold peso. Oro puro. I like that.” He bit into it, then held it very close to examine it. “What do you think, Mr. B?” he said, passing it over to his secretary, who used a penknife to check for lead.

“Appears to be the real thing, Mr. C,” Birkenhaus said.

“By the way,” Curry said to Joseph, “how’d you come by this?”

“Earnest toil,” Joseph said. “May I ask you something, Mr. Curry?

“Sure, what?”

“Do you know the Lord?”

“What? You mean, like, Jesus Christ?”

“Yes.”

Curry stood, puffed out his cheeks, looked to the left and then to the right of himself and said, “Frankly, I don’t have time for that crap.

Just then, gunshots rang out down below. There were shouts and imprecations. Screams. More gunshots.

“What the hell?” Curry said.

“Don’t worry. You’re headed there directly,” Joseph said.

“Excuse—”

Before Curry could finish, Joseph had drawn a small pistol from his pocket and emptied the chamber in Curry’s forehead. A little red spot appeared there, just under Curry’s dark forelock, and his athletic body crumpled behind the desk like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Joseph then turned the pistol on Birkenhaus, who tried to dodge the line of fire only to be hit in the neck. Joseph must have gotten an artery because Birkenhaus spun around screaming as bright blood shot out between his fingers with such force that it literally splattered high up on the wall. The older woman who worked on the opposite side of the room watched all this agog.

“You shot my son!” she said, as Birkenhaus crashed to the floor.

“Which one was yours?”

She pointed where Curry lay.

“Him! You raised up a fiend!” Joseph said. “I ought to shoot you too, if I weren’t a Christian.”

“Oh, please, no,” she said, sobbing. “Don’t kill me!”

“Abominable wickedness the Lord hates,” Joseph screamed at her, with the tendons standing out in his neck and blue veins bulging in his forehead, while he waved his pistol at the terrified woman. “Then the just shall rejoice to see his vengeance and bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked…”

More gunshots resounded outside.

“For Christ’s sake,” I said, “let’s go!”

I had to drag him away. The woman collapsed in sheer fright. Joseph pulled himself together quickly. He remembered to retrieve his gold coin from Birkenhaus’s desk before we hurried out of the room.

“I thought our boys’d never make their move,” he said as we faced the stairs. “Good thing I actually had that dang peso.”

People seemed to be running in all directions outside. More gunshots rang out. But at the center of the human maelstrom, near the foot of the exterior grand stairway, Elam waited mounted on his horse, calm as a drover, holding the reins of three other horses as well as a rifle hitched up under his arm. Several bodies lay strewn in the weedy grass. Then Seth emerged from the mob with a smoking pistol, leading Mr. Bullock’s boatmen out into daylight for the first time in weeks. Tom and Skip struggled to assist Aaron Moyer, who was unsteady on his feet from sickness. A path cleared for them as Seth brandished his pistol and men scattered. Joseph launched himself onto his big gray, Temperance, while Tom and Skip helped get the weakened Aaron up behind him. Seth helped Tom aboard behind him. Skip mounted behind Elam. I followed on my bay gelding, Cadmus, giving Jake the stirrup to climb up behind me. Finally, all of us were double mounted.

More cracks of gunfire sounded. Gray puffs of smoke appeared up on the portico where they were shooting at us from behind the balustrade. Elam and Joseph answered these shots with several of their own. We wheeled our horses back around toward the elevated freeway. Seth raised his sword to hack at a man who attempted to grab his mount’s bridle, and I thought I saw the man’s hand separate from his sleeve in a gout of blood. I heard another shot much closer by and felt a bullet pass so near to my head it made a ripping noise in the air. Just ahead of me, perhaps twenty feet, a white cloud of gun smoke hung over a fat man with a red beard wearing dirty cream-colored pants held up with suspenders. I registered these details as I watched him level a pistol at me again and squeeze off another round. It was as if I was watching myself watching him, my amazement at being fired on was so great, and it all seemed to happen in slow motion. He was a poor shot and he missed the second time too. My wondrous detachment persisted as I reached behind, drew the big .41 out from my belt there, leveled it at the fat white target below the red smudge of beard and pulled the trigger. The report nearly knocked the gun out of my hand. My bullet took the red-bearded man off his feet and drove him backward like a rag doll against the dusty ground. His shirt and pants quickly turned red. I could hear him groan like a steer. Joseph yelled to follow him up the riverbank. We rounded the corner at Slavin’s Hotel under the freeway and galloped up Commercial Row where the traders gaped at us silently from their doorways while the last shots, cries, and screams from Curry’s headquarters faded into the distance.

We rode at a gallop for at least a mile, and then trotted for a long way until we crossed the Waterford bridge, where we had encountered the man beating his donkey on the way down. We dismounted there to rest the animals, which were foaming from exertion. Bullock’s men fell into swoons of gratitude, saying that Adcock the jailer had promised that morning it would be their last day on earth. Tom Soukey, the captain of the Elizabeth, made noises about going back to Albany under cover of darkness to get the boat, but Joseph quashed that idea. In a little while we resumed riding north, to meet up with Brother Minor, who was waiting for us at the Raynor farm in Stillwater.

Except for Aaron Moyer, who was very ill, the other boatmen were happy to walk freely along the pleasant country roads north of Waterford. I walked for much of the way too, giving them turns on Cadmus. They didn’t talk much, but they seemed keenly attuned to the sights and sounds along the way, as men would who had been locked up for weeks. We covered roughly fifteen miles, with ample rest stops, in five hours, making it over the last hill to the Raynor farm with the sun half lapped over the western horizon. Minor’s horse and the donkey stood hobbled peacefully in the shrubby field where we had passed such a strange night recently. Smoke from a campfire ribboned straight up in the soft breezeless air.

Minor was extremely glad to see us when we rode up. He could barely contain his high spirits.

“Listen up,” he said. “A momma n_ole, a daddy mole, and a baby mole lived in a hole in the ground up by yonder house. One day, the daddy mole poked his head out of the hole and said, `Mmmmmm, I smell bacon a’frying!’ The momma mole stuck her head outside and said, `Mmmmm, I smell pancakes!’ The baby mole tried to poke its head out of the hole but couldn’t get past the momma and the daddy. `Dang,’ he said, `all I can smell is mole-asses."’