James Kunstler - World Made by Hand

There was no one at home in the rectory.

Katie Zucker, Todd’s wife, was next door at the church in her capacity as deacon, up on a stepladder hanging the hymn numbers for Sunday’s service on the hymn board beside the pulpit. She told me that Loren and Jane Ann had gone out berry picking.

“You’ve certainly come out of your shell lately, Robert.”

“It’s just circumstances,” I said.

“I hear that Britney Watling has joined your household.”

“That’s more or less the truth, Katie,” I said.

“Don’t you think it looks funny?”

“I’m sure it does,” I said. “But so does an American town with no cars or electric lights and people like us who don’t have regular jobs to go to anymore, and folks dying before their time from all kinds of things.”

Katie made a face up there on her ladder. At the University of Vermont in the old days, she was a nationally ranked speed skater who almost made the U.S. Olympic team. Afterward, before marrying Todd, she worked as a northeast regional sales rep for Nike, earning large commissions and bonuses. Now she was a farmer’s wife and church caretaker. Her hair was turning silver though she still had an athlete’s body, even after two children. We had a little bit of history. A year after Sandy passed away, Katie had too much to drink at the Harvest Ball up in Hebron and made a pass at me in a way that was a little too demonstrative. Todd was right across the room. It was embarrassing.

“Hey, did you lose weight or something?” she said, conspicuously changing the subject.

“I just got my hair cut.”

“Oh? You look like one of those Civil War generals.”

I knew where to find Loren and Jane Ann if they were picking wild blackberries. They’d be up on the railroad tracks along the Battenkill. A particular stretch where one side of the cut faced due south was especially rich with fruit, and I headed out that way. It was nice to be rambling out in the countryside by myself for a change, free of other people’s demands. On the steel bridge where the tracks cross the river a half mile outside town, I stopped for a while to watch the river, knowing Loren and Jane Ann would have to come back that way. A few dun-colored caddis flies were coming off the water. I watched an osprey rise off the stream with a good twelve-inch trout in his talons. When he was gone with his prize, plenty more trout were visible finning in the feeding lanes in the shadow of the bridge’s trusses and girders. I was sorry I hadn’t brought a rod. I sat there with my legs dangling off the edge of the deck, feeling the guilty pleasure of letting my obligations slide for a while. I wasn’t concerned about trains coming by, because they didn’t run anymore. Perhaps a half hour later I heard human voices down the way and looked up to see Loren and Jane Ann at the far end of the bridge.

“That you, Robert?” Loren said.

“I’m looking for you,” I said.

When they came up on me sitting there, Loren gave me a slight shove like he wanted to push me over the edge into the river. Of course, he was just clowning around. But it was enough to give my heart a flutter. The stream was a good forty feet down from the deck of the bridge, and the water probably wasn’t more than four feet deep, so if you fell, you’d probably break your neck. Then Loren put his arm under my chin and held my head as he rubbed his knuckles into my scalp: a noogie. I endured it stoically until he stopped. Then they sat down next to me, Jane Ann on my left and Loren on my right. Each had a plastic pail half full of blackberries.

“Can I try some?” I said.

“No,” Loren said. “Jane Ann’s making jam for me.”

“You can have some of mine,” Jane Ann said.

“Don’t give him any of yours either,” Loren said.

“Here, just taste a couple,” Jane Ann said.

“Hey, what’d I say?” Loren said. “Go pick your own.”

“Okay, old Mr. Cranky Puss,” Jane Ann said.

“Fuck you,” Loren said to her.

“Nice talk—”

“And fuck you too,” Loren said to me.

“-for a man of the cloth.”

“And fuck the cloth, as a matter of fact.”

We sat there, the three of us in a row, watching the swallows and the fish and the caddis flies and the yellow irises blooming along a sandbank below. Jane Ann said they had seen a bear up the tracks. It ran away when it saw them.

“Did you ever eat bear?” Loren said.

“No. You?” I said.

“Sure.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s not like chicken,” Loren said. “More like pork meets roadkill.”

“Don’t see much roadkill anymore.”

“Amen to that,” Jane Ann said.

“Except for us,” Loren said. “We’re history’s roadkill.”

We fell into silence for another while.

“Looks like somebody gave you a haircut,” Jane Ann said eventually. “Your new houseguest? Or should I say roommate?”

I wondered if my discomfort was visible. I hastened to explain how the New Faithers had opened the barbershop on Main.

“What’s next?” Jane Ann said, “a salon for us ladies?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe if they’re really ambitious they’ll get the railroad going again.”

“Don’t hold your breath on that one,” Loren said. “Did you come out here to show us your haircut? It’s darn fetching. Don’t you think Robert looks fetching, dear?”

Jane Ann didn’t go for the bait.

“We’ve got a problem,” I said and explained how Wayne Karp and his boys had been prowling around the night before while everyone was over at Bullock’s, and how I wanted Loren, in his capacity as constable, to go around and help me ascertain if people discovered anything stolen from their houses and barns.”

“And what if they did steal stuff?”

“Then we’ll have to do something about it,” I said. “If you want me to find another constable, I’d understand.”

“You don’t think I have what it takes?” Loren said.

“You’re a clergyman.”

“So was Savonarola.”

“I don’t see you leading a crusade.”

“He didn’t lead a crusade. He cleaned up a town.”

“I don’t see us cleaning up Karptown,” I said.

“Whatever it is you intend to do, don’t you dare count me out of it,” Loren said.

“My hero,” Jane Ann said. “This gives me goose bumps.”

For a moment, Loren looked like he wanted to throw Jane Ann off the bridge. I was beginning to worry what he was capable of, what he might do.

We waited until evening, when the men who worked on the surrounding farms and elsewhere would have returned home. At the first house we went to, Peter Wedekind’s at the top of Bayard Street, we encountered yet another problem. Peter had gone by Einhorn’s store to buy a few things on his way home from Deaver’s farm and was enticed across the street for a look at the new barbershop, whereupon a bunch of New Faith men tossed him into a chair and held him down while they shaved off his beard. He was naturally very annoyed, he said, though his wife, Alma, said she liked his new look.

“But that’s not right, is it?” Peter said. “Forced shaving?”

“It’s certainly not,” I said.

At the next house we went to, Bill and Aggie Schroeder’s, they were missing a pair of sterling silver fluted candlesticks that were three hundred years old and glaringly absent from their dining room table when they returned from Bullock’s levee, they said. Bill, who operated the creamery on the western edge of town, hadn’t strayed downtown on his way home, and still had his beard. In all, six other men in the houses we visited had had their beards forcibly shaved off because they happened to pass by Main and Van Buren that afternoon. Some of these households also discovered valuables missing, once we’d inquired: silver, jewelry, tools. By now, the sun was going down. Loren and I split up, and went around town for another hour, and when we met up again at the rectory, the final tally was eleven men forcibly shaved (plus three voluntarily) and two substantial lists of items stolen from various homes. The townspeople were angry, confused, and puzzled about the connection between the burglaries and the forced shavings, even though it was obvious to me that two separate things were going on. Some of them apparently thought that New Faith had carried out the robberies.