James Kunstler - World Made by Hand

“You know me. I don’t think of the old days as much as you.”

“Well that stuff could really pick a guy up. I miss it. I really do.”

“Try some honey and sumac punch. That’ll work.”

“For what it’s worth, I never gave a shit about the chemicals or the fake coloring they put in it.”

“Give me an ice cold beer,” I said. “Straight out of a refrigerator. With dewdrops running down the side of the bottle.”

“Dream on,” Loren said.

Screen doors slapped and voices carried all over town as households prepared for levee, singing as they pulled clothes off the line, neighbors visiting among neighbors to borrow finery, harnessing their horses-the few who had one. Children caught the spirit and squealed as they were packed off for babysitting.

“We got the water back on again,” I said.

“Hooray for that,” Loren said. “I had to jump in the river last night or Jane Ann wouldn’t let me in the bedroom.” Loren looked momentarily uncomfortable, as though a passing cloud had brought on a chill. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “You’re quite the hero. First the fire, then you shove Dale off the plank, then the Big Breakout, and now the water system finally gets fixed.”

“Do you think I’m out for brownie points?”

“Gosh no.”

“We can’t not have running water,” I said. “That would be the last straw for civilized life around here.”

“It’s been a harsh week without it. I can tell you that.”

“Anyway, it was the New Faith and Bullock that solved the water problem, not me.”

“Remember that laundry idea of mine?” Loren said.

“Yeah?”

“This Brother Jobe seems interested in getting it going. We had a sit-down about it, him and me.”

“Did you?”

“He likes the idea.”

“They must have a lot of wash every week.”

“They’ve got manpower too. I believe he’s serious.”

“Kudos to you then.”

“Not out for any kudos. But I could still use your help.”

“Okay. Sure. I’ll help,” I said.

“Can you get someone to make sure the titles are clear on the Wayland-Union Mill property?”

“I’ll ask Sam Hutto.”

“And then maybe you and I can walk through the place and talk about what it would take constructionwise, where things might go.”

“Sure, I’ll do that.”

“Brother Jobe’s got a decent metalsmith over there.”

“I saw that they put a new copper fitting on the water line outflow.”

“I expect they could fabricate some big pot kettles.”

“I expect that’s so.”

“Things are happening again in this town, aren’t they?”

“Apparently.”

“It’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Loren said.

“I think so.”

“It’s like we’ve been living in… in Jell-O. Trapped. Immobilized. Watching everything around us slowly fall apart through this thick, gummy, transparent prison of Jell-O, and unable to do anything about it.”

“To me, it was like time had stopped.”

“So, what do you make of him?” Loren said.

“Jobe? He’s not so bad beneath all the bluster, if you can get beneath it,” I said. “Well, I really don’t know what they’re up to over there. I mean, underneath the trappings of brotherhood and fellowship, who knows what they do amongst themselves.”

“Like what? Orgies?” Loren said.

“That wasn’t what I was thinking.”

“Human sacrifice?”

“I don’t know. After all, it’s what we used to call a cult.”

“Then we better not drink the Kool-Aid. Have you been drinking the Kool-Aid, Robert?”

“No.”

“Because right now there’s our people, you know, us, the town, and our church, and there’s this New Faith bunch that has all of a sudden become a rather large presence in our world here. I’m hoping we can coexist, Robert, because they obviously have something to offer as long as we don’t drink that old Kool-Aid.”

“I’m not going over to them, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“Because it could be a kind of narrow line we’re walking.”

“We’ll walk it.”

“Not to mention we’ve got Mr. Bullock setting up like a Scottish laird with his own peasants and everything, and Wayne Karp and his maniacs up North Road on top of everything else. And sometimes lately I worry about us getting squished in the middle of it all.”

“I know. I think about it too.”

“I’ve heard there was gunplay down in Albany.”

“I think I killed a man there, Loren.”

He flinched slightly.

“Wow. Tell me about it.”

So I did. All of it. The Raynor farm. Brother Minor probably killing that donkey drover. What Joseph told me that night in Slavin’s hotel about their difficulties in Pennsylvania. Dan Curry. The guy with the red beard firing at me.

“I don’t know if I feel bad about taking somebody’s life or just afraid that I’ll be held responsible for it,” I said.

“By whom? God?”

“I keep on thinking about the legal system coming after me. And then I realize that there isn’t any. There’s nothing left. No real police, courts. No state government. Nothing. But I’m pretty sure I killed the man.”

“Your conscience is weighing on you,” Loren said.

“Yes. And now I’ve got Shawn Watling’s widow in my house.”

“I’ve heard. That kind of complicates things, doesn’t it?”

“I’m sure people will get the wrong idea,” I said. “They already have.”

“How’d she come to settle under your roof?”

“Well, her house burned down, you know.”

“I know. There are empty houses in town.”

“Do you think I should throw her out?”

“Not at all. Are you banging her?”

It was my turn to flinch.

“No,” I said.

“Because that could make you feel bad, given that her husband’s only been in the ground a few weeks, and you happened to be present when he got killed.”

“Do you think I did it, Loren?”

“No. But I understand why things are weighing on your mind.”

“It’s pretty straightforward,” I said.

“I’m sure it is.”

“These really aren’t normal times.”

“Quite so.”

“Plus, there’s the child.”

“God bless the child.”

“Are you being facetious, Loren?”

“I shouldn’t be even if I am. Forgive me.”

“All right. Are you going out to Bullock’s tonight?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Loren said. “I might even tie one on out there.”

The levee at Stephen Bullock’s farm was the greatest social event around Washington County in decades, even going back into the old days, when television and all the other bygone diversions held people hostage in their homes after the sun went down, and you could hardly pry people out of their living rooms-as we used to call the place where the TVs lived. In the new times, Bullock’s levee beat the Harvest Ball at Hebron, the Spring Frolic in Battenville, the Labor Day Picnic at Holyrood’s orchard, and even the Christmas levee we put on every year at the First Congregational. Bullock’s levee brought us out of ourselves, out of a dark wilderness of the spirit where we had sojourned for so long in anxiety and isolation.

As the afternoon merged into evening, everybody who could muster a wheeled vehicle and a horse or team began marshalling them in the vicinity of our church for the trip over. Bullock sent several wagons to town as promised, while the New Faith had its own too. Altogether they made a train of horse-drawn vehicles that stretched a quarter-mile long heading west into the sun, which still hung ten degrees above the treetops. Britney decided to stay behind, a relief to me, since it would have made an awkward public statement for us to appear as a couple at a festive event like this, apart from how things actually were between us. I didn’t try to talk her out of it.