David Nickle - Eutopia

“You got them riled enough to forget their manners,” said Jason. “Long enough to string up Mister Juke at the same time.”

“Almost long enough.”

Jason made his move before he even thought about it—rolling back and kicking with both legs. He connected, but not as well as he needed to. One heel hit Bury in the jaw, just inches higher than his throat; the other, hard in the shoulder. It knocked Bury to his side; but he was able to roll, and twist—and like that, he had two hands at the base of Jason’s throat.

“Yeah,” said Bury, his fingers digging in under Jason’s collar bone, “we’re comin’ to my question now.” He pulled him close, and looked him in the eye as he hissed: “ How do you get him out of your head ?”

Jason cried out something that wasn’t a word and Bury held him tighter, if that were possible. “Don’t try to slip out of this one, boy. You see what I am capable of. Now you came here with something special. You got a gunfighter’s blood in you, and you are pretty clever but this thing—this thing talks like God in your head and you have seen it, and you have turned away from it. And stayed away. Somehow.

“Now, how ?”

Jason felt hot flecks of spit on his face. Bury’s eyes, no longer hidden beneath his craggy brows, were wide and blood-rimmed. He looked old all right—older than God-damned Zeus. His hands were closing around his neck. This old man was going to strangle him. Jason twisted, tried to get free but Bury held tight.

“Damn it, boy!” Bury lifted his hands higher, and clamped them tight around Jason’s throat. And at once, Jason felt his wind cut off.

“I do not have much God-damned time, boy,” he growled. “I’ll snap that neck if you don’t—”

“You will do no such thing,” came a voice from behind him.

Jason looked over his shoulder at the open door. Aunt Germaine stood there. She was holding the revolver she’d carried onto his homestead at Cracked Wheel. It was levelled at both of them.

“Now unhand my nephew,” she said. “And raise your hands, Mr. Bury. I will not hesitate.”

“You wouldn’t—”

Germaine drew the hammer back.

“Mad cunt,” he said. But he let go of Jason.

“Now,” she said, “James Bury: you are relieved.”

The old man, Bury, took the white cloak from the peg, and slung it over his back. He and Jason met eyes once more before he hurried out the door. This time, there was no challenge, no fight to it. The mad look was gone—he was looking at a place far away. He blinked, and hurried off like a man with an appointment; an appointment he had no choice but to keep.

Jason wondered if that were not truly the case. Bury wanted to know one thing from Jason: how to stop Mister Juke from talking to him. Jason would have told him if he knew; he thought the shock of being cut turned it off. Maybe if he’d let Aunt Germaine shoot him in the belly, that would be enough of a jolt to quiet the voice telling him what to do.

Aunt Germaine shut the door as Bury’s footfalls turned hollow on the stairs and began to diminish. The revolver fell to her side, although she did not let go of it.

“Aunty, you ought put the pistol down,” said Jason. “Your hand is shaking, and I fear…”

Germaine smiled wanly in the thin light and nodded. But she did not let go of the firearm.

“Did he hurt you, Nephew?”

“No, but he was fixing to. These cuts—” he motioned to his leg “—I got them outside.”

“Did you?” said Germaine. She was wearing her travelling skirts—long, deep blue swaths of wool that held stains of grass and muck gathered from countless miles of Montana track and they had a smell to them, of must and mildew that would not launder free. Unpacking here, she’d vowed to burn them, but had obviously not gotten ’round to it. With her empty hand she picked at them now, as though pulling off invisible burrs. She seemed to catch herself, smoothed the cloth and looked up at Jason.

“Who was that?”

Germaine shook her head. “A common thug,” she said.

“In a Klansman’s sheet,” said Jason. “And you knew his name. He work for the Eugenics Records Office too?”

Her eyeglasses caught a flash of sky-slate in reflection and lost it again as she tilted her head.

“What do you take me for?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were outside with the Harper girl,” she said. “In spite of everything that transpired at that picnic—in spite of all the things that Mr. Harper said—you were outside. Skulking about in the night. Weren’t you now? And you met with some things . Didn’t you, now?”

Germaine was waving the revolver around as she spoke, so strenuously Jason was sure it would go off sooner or later. His expression must have communicated that, because she stopped, looked at the gun in her hand as though she had only just realized it was there, nodded to herself and set it on the windowsill.

Then she turned back to Jason.

“Do you take me for a fool, Jason Thistledown?”

Jason stared at his Aunt Germaine Frost. He thought about the way her chin twisted as her thin and pale lips pursed, and he thought about his mama. He thought about how Aunt Germaine knew to call that fellow Mr. Bury—and how she worked so close with Nils Bergstrom. He thought about some of the very smart points that Ruth and Louise had raised, after listening respectfully to his tale of the tragedy and woe in Cracked Wheel.

And then, because he didn’t want to be a fool himself he thought some more before he decided what to say.

“No more a fool,” he said, “than Mama did, when your pa shot his own foot outside Boston back when she was a girl and I guess you were too.” And then he made himself smile a little.

She softened at that—smiled back, like she was remembering how it’d been, Jason’s grandpa cleaning his shotgun on the road outside Boston, only it’d gone off, and filled his boot full of shot that penetrated through some leather and gave him a funny limp until he was older.

“You remember that?” he asked. Aunt Germaine nodded and came over and sat down on the bed beside him. She squeezed his knee and Jason let her.

“Oh, Nephew, I am sorry for that. I know that you’re not being disrespect-ful.”

“I’m not,” he said. He stood up and walked over to the windowsill. “Just like Mama was nothing but respectful when Grandpa hurt himself like that.”

“I remember it well,” said Aunt Germaine.

He lifted the gun, turned to Aunt Germaine, and as surprise widened her eyes, he said: “No, you don’t.”

“What—?” she began, but Jason could see by her expression that she understood.

“Far as I know, my ma’s pa never shot himself in the foot. You were really her sister, I think you’d know that.”

Germaine Frost was without words. Her mouth worked in little oh’s , like a river trout on the rocks.

“You lied to me,” said Jason. “From our house to Cracked Wheel to here. You ain’t my aunt, but you went to a lot of trouble to make me think it were so.”

“Jason,” she finally managed, in a high, frightened voice, “I only wished to help you.”

Jason held the gun steady. A moment ago, he’d been ready to shoot her—put a bullet in this woman, who he ought to have figured sooner for an imposter. Hell, she didn’t look like his Mama or him or anybody in his family. She’d shown up in the middle of the winter just right after a terrible plague—like some sneaky old vulture, a hawk, swooping in and carrying him off to this place. And there was the thing she’d let Dr. Bergstrom do… And then there were those letters they’d left with Louise… .

“The Cave Germ,” he said.