James Kunstler - World Made by Hand

Joseph told the others to come along, leaving me alone with Wayne and Brother Jobe.

“Nice accommodations,” Wayne said. “And real secure too.” He rattled the door to his cell.

I leaned against the wall beside his cell and drew the pistol out from the back of my waistband.

“Remember this?” I said.

Wayne sauntered over. I retreated a step.

“Hey, I’m not going to bite you,” he said. “Why, got-damn, that’s one of our old pieces. Ruger .41, right? I’m surprised you didn’t throw it in the crick or something.”

“I thought I might actually need it some day.”

“I bet it makes you feel real powerful.”

“It kind of does. I shot a man with it.”

“Really? That ain’t like you.”

“Shit happens.”

“I’ll say. Where’d you do that mighty deed?”

“It’s not important.”

“We didn’t hear nothing about it up our way.”

“It happened quite a ways from there.”

“I suppose you’d like to kill me now.”

“Yes. I sort of would.”

“You going to think about it for a while or what?”

“I’m going see if the Reverend Holder survives what you did to him.”

“And if he don’t, you going to kill me?”

“Pretty much, I’m thinking.”

“And then I s’pose you’d say I was trying to break out or some shit, right?”

“Something like that.”

“And what if he pulls through?”

“Then we’ll try you in a court of law and probably hang you.”

“It don’t look so good for me either way.”

“Nope.”

“Guess I’ll just have to stand by then.”

“I guess so.”

“You think my people are going to sit still for this?”

“I don’t know what they’ll do. But the frame of mind I’m in right now, I’d send the cavalry back up there and burn your whole village down if they tried something.”

“Union Grove would burn just as nice too?”

“You’re wrong about that. All those trailers and shanties packed in so close together up there. I’m surprised you haven’t burned it down accidentally yourself. Anyway, make yourself comfortable here. We’ll get some breakfast over for you by and by. There’s water in the pitcher and a pot for you to piss in. I’ll be next door in the office if you need anything.”

“Tell me one more thing, Fiddler Joe.”

“What?”

“Who all is this wing nut across the way?”

“I guess you’d say he’s another preacher man.”

“What’s he in for?”

“Cutting off beards without permission.”

“Who the hell you got to get permission from around here to cut off a got-damn beard?”

“The owner of the beard,” I said.

“Well, ain’t that some shit,” he said.

I left the two of them in the jail room and went next door where I was able to pile up a bunch of decrepit cushions, dusty stage drapes, and other material to sleep on. As I was doing that, the first pinkgray light of sunrise gathered in the grungy panes of the arched windows. It was sickening to realize I had been up all night long. I fell asleep immediately on becoming horizontal, despite the musty smell of all that rotting cloth.

When I woke up, the room was uncomfortably warm and sunlight streamed in the big window. My clothes were damp. It took a moment to remember what I was doing there. I had no idea what time it was. I felt hungover despite not having drunk anything, and I was hungry. I decided to go directly over to Einhorn’s store, bring back some corn bread, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and tea for the two prisoners and myself, and then go over to Jerry Copeland’s to see about Loren. But first I went next door to the jail to check on everybody.

Brother Jobe’s cell was empty. The combination lock was still in place, locked into the chain, but Brother Jobe was gone. He wasn’t hiding under his bed either-I checked. Wayne, on the other hand, was asleep on his bed, or so I thought. As I looked more closely into his cell, I saw a dark red puddle on the floor underneath the bed. His torso seemed inert, as though he were not breathing.

“Wayne!” I shouted.

He just lay there. I went back into the police office and broke apart a scenery flat to get a length of one-by-three lumber. Then I returned to the jail room and stuck the wood through the bars of Wayne’s cell to poke him. The end where I broke it was sharp. I poked his foot and called his name. He didn’t respond. I inserted the stick at the cleft of the seat of his jeans and poked the point around there some. Either he possessed remarkable powers of selfcontrol or he was unconscious.

I unlocked his cell and stepped in warily with the pistol drawn and the hammer on full cock. Wayne didn’t move a muscle. I poked the end of the stick in his ear. Nothing. I released the hammer on the gun and stuck it back in my trousers. Then I reached down and carefully rolled him over. He fell off the bed as dully as a sash weight and landed faceup. There was a big hole in his skull where his right eye had been and another messy wound in his mouth. It seemed impossible that gunshots would have failed to wake me up. It was bewildering. Wayne was already stiff with rigor mortis. His arms remained in the same position, sort of clinched up and defensive, when his body lay supine on the floor, as they had been when he lay on his stomach on the bed. I stooped down and watched him carefully for a good while, eventually convinced he was definitely not breathing. Finally, I tried to find a pulse on the carotid artery in his neck. He had no pulse. Wayne Karp was dead.

I locked the body back in the cell and left the old town hall. Cadmus was gone from the picket. No doubt the New Faith brothers had taken him back to the high school. Terry Einhorn was behind the counter of his store, emptying a sack into a bin.

“What time is it, Terry?”

“Just before noon, I’d say. Hey, here’s some good news: Mr. Bullock just got a boatload of trade goods up from Albany. I’ve got a hundred pounds of genuine whole wheat flour, three sacks of peanuts, and a half barrel of molasses. Also mouse traps—”

“I’ve got a dead body up in the jail, Terry.”

“Huh?”

“I could really use your help-you and your boy-getting it over to the cooler at Doctor Copeland’s.”

“Don’t tell me that Brother Whatsisname hung himself.”

“No. It’s Wayne Karp.”

“How in hell did he get in there?”

I gave Terry a bare bones account of how Wayne ended up in our jail. I couldn’t explain how he happened to turn up dead that morning, though, or account for how Brother Jobe got out, and I didn’t want to spend any more time puzzling on it there in the store. Terry and his boy Teddy helped me, of course. We wrapped Wayne’s body in theater drapes and took it to Jerry’s in the handcart that Buddy Haseltine used to make deliveries. When we got there, Jeanette was coming down the outside staircase to the second-floor infirmary above Jerry’s office carrying a bundle of cloth dressings stained with blood. Though the sight of all that blood was shocking, the fact that she was coming from up there suggested that Loren had made it through the surgery.

“How’s is he?” I said.

“He had a significant tear inside,” she said, “but it was at the rectum, which means less chance that anything got into the peritoneal cavity. You know, we don’t have a sigmoidoscope with fiber optics anymore, so it’s hard to see up in there. Anyway, we stitched him up. Now it’s a matter of hoping his bloodstream didn’t pick up anything.”

“Is he awake?” I asked.

“No, Jerry’s keeping him heavily sedated for now.”

“Where’s Jerry?”

“Asleep. He’s exhausted.”