James Kunstler - World Made by Hand

“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.”