Robert Lautner - The Road to Reckoning

Baker’s reached, my father jumped down. I had no will to follow but still he said, ‘Wait here.’

He took two naked belt guns, whose barrels were about five inches, made for as they sounded, and he intimated such by tucking one in his belt.

‘I will not be long.’ He slapped the reins into my hand.

I watched the door close and looked at the back of Jude Brown’s head so as not to meet the eye of anyone on the street. There was a black boy in cotton-duck overalls on the porch sweeping but with no intention on cleaning. He was moving the dust around with the strength of a marionette and studied me and Jude Brown. I played the reins through my fingers and looked up at the mountains covered in cloud, the endless trees on them in the early morning still blue-green like the sea. It was not yet ten. I would not think that a man like Thomas Heywood had got out of his filthy bed by now.

I could not help but look at the door once or twice and each time the black boy grinned a gapped mouth. I chiseled my face like a man with fury in him. I did not truck with boys. I had a wagon and a horse. I had a sack full of guns. I dipped my hat to a milkmaid who instead of smiling or blushing looked at me scornfully. I pulled the brim down as if this was originally my intention.

I do not know how long I sat but it seemed as if the whole world passed by, their clothes getting smarter with every minute as the work they traveled to shifted from strong back to desk and pen, for the earlier you have to get up the harder you have to work. My father was taking his time. I thought on the two guns he had taken in and then I could think of nothing else except Thomas Heywood’s white, wide eyes.

The door and its bell exploded like a gunshot and I jumped, which made Jude Brown toss his head and curse me with a snort when nothing happened. My father was there and shaking mister Baker’s hand. He climbed up onto the seat and took the reins, adjusting them tighter where I had been running them through my hands.

He snapped Jude Brown off and the black boy smiled good-bye and waved us away with a wide, pendulous swing as if hailing a raft from the shore to warn of white water ahead.

We left Milton at the west end and there were more tents outside here than coming in and skinny dogs barked at us, danced at Jude Brown, bit at our wheels then wagged their tails back to their masters proud that they had seen us off.

A great weight lifted off me that I did not know was there. Later we were talking again and pointing out jaybirds. My father had taken an order for six pistols and sold one for mister Baker’s own use. At dinner he put back the pistol from his belt to the wagon. He could not unload it, as is the way with guns (they only empty one way), but he said that would not be to any detriment.

‘It will be provident if we see us a rabbit.’ He smiled but it had no weight to it and my smile back was even lighter.

We had a new plan for our journey. We would head south, follow the mountains, to make the Cumberland road. This was the national road, as you may recall, a redbrick toll road that would carry us safely through the mountains and west into Illinois. It closed in ’38, I believe, when the money ran out or the road ran out, whichever is truer. Over six hundred miles long, and the trail to get down there would add three or four days onto our month, Cumberland being near two hundred miles. But the thought of a good and busy road with civilized turnpikes was comforting. It was the sensible thing to do. Getting there, however, in the shadow of the mountains would be rough country.

We crossed the Susquehanna at Lewis, where we took a cooked supper but did no business, keen as my father was to get on and leave Milton far behind. This was a pity as Lewis seemed like a bustling, money-heavy borough.

With mister Baker’s eight dollars for a pistol and even with our expenses we now had us thirty-two dollars. My father was a good accountant. Already the trip had turned profit.

We camped under the mountains and as it grew dark I looked up into the trees and saw the friendly glow of other travelers’ fires like the tips of cigars, a thousand feet above, separated by miles of forest. The mountains were alive and I did not feel lonely. And I was with my father and he was happier now.

‘If we are up with the sun I reckon we could make Huntingdon by tomorrow evening,’ he said. ‘I will do some business and get us a bed there. We shall need a good sleep. It will be another two days before we can get to Cumberland.’

We spoke like we were mountain men, as if we followed the stars and that two hundred miles were just stepping-stones across a creek. If we were real foresters we would have followed the creeks and the mills and seen towns we did not know existed. But our Brewster would have been no good along a creek. These trails as they were did not do too much to improve its wooden springs.

‘Could we not sell the wagon?’ I inquired. ‘Get another horse? We might travel quicker.’

He looked at me harshly and I blushed. This had been my mother’s wagon. ‘You are too young to ride. And I would be worried about bears if we did not have the cart to sleep on.’

I had not thought about bears and I looked about into the trees and made sure that I did not rattle the pot or my spoon as I ate the Indian meal.

Night, and the sparrows and tanagers had ceased nagging us to get out. We had only a middling fire left with white coals and chars of wood. I could see nothing except my father and the shape of Jude Brown standing like a statue in the dark. I was not tired and my father insisted on one more enamel mug of tea and he drove a stick through the coals and put our mugs directly on them.

The coals sparked and I watched them sparks drift up like angry wasps. My neck went back to follow them to the stars and I missed the men step out of the trees. When I came back to earth they were there like they had always been with us, as if they were the trees we had thought our walls.

Four of them. In surtout coats like old soldiers and wide wool hats. Each had a rifle in his hand and belt tied outside his coat with flap holsters or pistols tied by lanyards. They had made a circle around us. They were bearded and dark below their hats although I could see that one had shaved silver hair close about his ears and a fat mustache. I saw this because he was at my side like a giant. I was sat cross-legged, tailor-wise, and I looked down from his face to his boots. They did not match or one had been fished out of a river.

My father had rolled up and stood with his hands raised. No-one had asked him to do this.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

It was too dark to see clearly, as the voice that answered was in front of the dying fire to me, but I knew it at once.

‘All that you have, salesman.’ It was Thomas Heywood.

‘You can have it,’ my father said. ‘I do not want trouble.’

‘You give me trouble, salesman? Is that what you said?’ Thomas threw down again, only with a proper pistol this time, a good Ketland percussion. He punctuated his words with its terrible click.

There was the fat giggle again from near Thomas and I could just make out that this would be the man from Chet Baker’s store. He had an old face that should have known better, with a grizzled, rough shave like he plucked his beard with tweezers. He was short and threw down also. He had a hat with a beaded band like something of an Indian decoration. He grinned with teeth the whole time as if he were showing them to a surgeon. I could not see the fourth man at all other than his raised rifle. He was all in black with a high collar to hide him.

‘No. I will give no trouble,’ my father said, and took off his spectacles and folded them into his waistcoat. I do not know why he did this. It would blur them all. At my mother’s funeral he had also taken them off but I thought that for vanity.