David Nickle - Eutopia

Whatever had happened to him, he’d had a chance to shake it off. Now he just had to figure out how to take this fellow. That sheet on the wall made it clear that he was no friend.

The man took the pipe out of his mouth and examined it.

“You’re a smart boy,” he said, still not looking up, and Jason’s heart fell. There was no fooling this fellow.

Not with any simple ruse, anyhow.

“Don’t know how smart I am,” said Jason, swinging his feet around and sitting up. “I’m here, ain’t I?”

The fellow looked up. His eyes were deep-set under thick, silvered brows. He took a puff on that pipe of his as he looked Jason up and down. “Smart mouth on you too,” he said in a flat voice. The two front chair legs made a sound like a coffin lid closing when they hit the floor and he leaned forward.

“That’s all right, young Mr. Thistledown,” he said. “You can be just as smart as you like. Ain’t nobody going to hurt you.”

“Late for that.” Jason looked down at his trouser leg, which was torn and stained in blood and dirt, and at his arm, which was also cut from the attack out-of-doors.

The man shrugged and said, “You had worse, I expect.”

Jason looked at the fellow. He had a long face, with cheekbones sticking out far as those brows, like ledges on a cliff. Jason got to his feet and the fellow stood up as well. He was a tall man, six foot or more Jason guessed. He moved in an easy way that Jason knew should make him afraid.

“I don’t know you,” he said. “You sure seem to know me.”

The skin on those cheekbones wrinkled and the moustache rose up in a smile. “James Bury,” he said.

“James Bury.” Jason took a step to him, and Bury held his ground. It was ludicrous, the two of them facing off in this little room. Jason knew it and he could tell that Bury knew it too. But Jason wasn’t going to let this man stare him down… .

Bury lifted his pipe and sucked on it, and his smile vanished in smoke. “You won’t leave here right now,” he said, pipe-stem clenched in his teeth. “Looks like you’re fixing to, but you won’t.”

That was as much warning as James Bury gave, before he drove his fist into Jason’s gut.

Jason bent over, felt the air whooping out of him and then he was back on the cot, and on his side, curled around his stomach, and Bury was standing over him, fanning the fingers of the fist of his left hand open while in his right he held the pipe. His eyes were bright now, watching to see if Jason might cry or beg or whimper, or perhaps shit in his trousers or lose his lunch.

When Jason did none of those things, Bury bent over and sat back down in his chair. He leaned it back again, so the rear legs creaked and he resumed smoking. But he kept his eye on Jason, as the pain faded and Jason was able to get his legs straightened out again.

“Best stay abed, young man,” he said.

“You—” Jason didn’t like the whimper he heard in his voice, so he pushed it down. “You’re the one tried to murder Dr. Waggoner.”

The chair creaked like a question, and Bury followed it with one: “You say that… why, now? ’Cause I hit you, and you’re all fired up about it?”

Jason nodded to the sheet on the peg. Bury looked up at it, made a face like he was impressed with Jason’s keen mind, and nodded back at him.

“But you’re no Klansman,” said Jason.

“Oh, ain’t I?” He squinted at Jason. “If I ain’t a Klansman, then what am I?”

“I don’t know what you call yourself. But I saw you… or maybe someone like you… in the quarantine that night.”

“That night.” He snorted. “Must’ve missed each other, boy.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Had he and this James Bury fellow met up in the quarantine? The voice might’ve been the same—he might’ve been as tall. Or he mightn’t have been, of course.

But something in Bury’s stare said he wasn’t far from the mark. So Jason kept up.

“You were beggin’ forgiveness. Not for trying to kill a Negro doctor, I’m guessing.”

Bury looked at him hard, and Jason thought: I’m not the only one bluffing. He went on. “Because you tried to again, didn’t you? You were one of the ones who tried to kill Dr. Waggoner.”

Bury’s face hung still in the morning light. “In a minute,” he said, “I am going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer it truthful.”

“I ain’t tellin’ you who—”

“Not that.” James Bury set the chair straight and stood up and came over and sat down beside Jason, who could not help but flinch. Bury pretended as not to notice. “Before I ask you a question, I’ll tell you some things. That’ll help you give a better answer than this shit you’re speaking now.”

Jason didn’t say anything—just kept himself steady.

“I came to these parts before there was an Eliada. Why I came’s not your business in the particulars. There was some trouble up in Canada, put it that way. This was a good place to be; a quiet place. I learned my way around the hills, and the folk who lived here. And when Eliada came, with its hospital and its sawmill and its moneyed fucking fools… I learned to make myself useful. Know what’s most useful in Eliada?”

“Not woodcutting,” said Jason, and Bury laughed humourlessly.

“It’s tracking the folk that live here,” he said. “And I mean tracking. They live like animals, these folk, and they ain’t the kind of animals come running when you whistle.”

“You kill them too?”

“Be easier if we did,” said Bury, then corrected himself: “If the doctor did. No. He’s a scientist. Doesn’t kill folks if he can help it. So I and a couple other fellows’d climb up the mountain with him, and show ’em where the folks lived, and watch his back whilst he finished his business.”

Jason listened, and he watched too, and he saw that as the old man went on, it seemed more the old man was just that—a bent-over coot, telling stories over pipe smoke. Less a danger. Jason wondered if maybe he could take James Bury yet. And then did his best to hide that wondering.

“A year back, we climbed one of the mountains. There’s a clan living at the top of it. Folk call them Feeger. They don’t come down much, ever. And there were stories about them. The doctor—he got excited. There’s a book he’s got — The Jukes, it’s called. He started wondering if this family weren’t another of those…”

He went quiet at that, tucked his chin into his chest, and looked away. Jason might have been able to jump him then, but instead, he asked: “So is that Mister Juke out there… one of their children?”

Bury looked at him now. His eyes were wide and wet (almost, Jason thought, pleading).

“It was a child,” said Bury. “A beautiful child, full of light. I found it—me, James Bury… not the doctor—and I tell you, son. I could see the sky in its eyes. It went on forever.” And then, he made a fist, and Jason was sure he was going to strike… but he closed his eyes instead, and shook the fist in the air, and coughed.

“I got lost that night,” said Bury. “I been lost for most of the year. You said I tried to hang your nigger doctor, and you’re right. Because every so often—once every couple weeks, maybe—I could come up for air. And I figured, as things went on and got worse—that Mister Juke that Bergstrom was keeping, it wasn’t a beautiful child at all. So when it got out that night—when it went ranging… when that girl got sick with its seed…”

“Why’d you try to hang Waggoner?”

“Because, boy, no one in this town will hang Mister Juke. Hanging a nigger… I don’t care how many sermons Garrison Harper gives out about compassion and community and good fucking manners… .”