Lee Klein - Jrzdvlz

“By emphasizing that the beast seen throughout the region and as far away as Philadelphia itself is the Leeds Devil, once the popular imagination ignites and the value of the land and all association with it plummets, we will convince everyone, particularly Wharton’s inheritors and current executors of his will, to focus on his many other concerns and pass his dream of pure water to us, who wish only to maximize the water’s good by bringing the people to it instead of it to the people.”

“But the land will still be haunted, so why would anyone occupy it?”

“We intend, quite simply, to display the captured and slain beast and proclaim the land free of devilish menace. It will be far easier to fake the capture of such a beast than it has been to craft the live examples now being released throughout the pines and neighboring cities.”

December had fallen for someone like her father, someone with an eye on only one prize. I was at the center of her father’s attention, and Wharton was the center of her husband’s attention. The latter obsessive seemed less mad, but remove his inherited wealth and transfer his upbringing so his primary early insult were not the loss of an otherworldly horse but the sight of his own father hanging dead, and their natures seemed similarly tweaked. It was a monstrous idea to parade some simulation of me through the streets, a false corpse, once Stearns and Daley and their associates claimed possession of Wharton’s land. After stamping down its value until all Wharton’s people understood his dream as squashed, they would roll through the streets a glass casket inhabited by a carefully rendered composite of real dead animal and plaster casts, signaling that the pines once haunted by Wharton and the Leeds Devil were ready to participate in the march of human progress.

Such an idea required an obsessive like Stearns to conceive and execute, a creative instinct unconcerned with distinctions between life and art. Why restrict oneself to painting or sculpture when the world at large could be one’s medium? Art itself was imitative, a repositioning of senses stored in memory and inaccessible areas of mind, all placed in imitation of other works and impressions of the world. But for one’s work to reposition the world, not imitating anything other than visions and expectations and hopes for what life could be, what could you call such an artist? He was more than a politician if he could do it. If he could modify reality to benefit everyone he was a genius. But unlike a traditional art form, when working in the medium of life, the natural world reacts. Legislative transformation rarely arrives unaccompanied by horror. Natural order resists imposition.

The arrogance of the plan angered me as Stearns carried on, with December attending to his performance as she may have once admired a magic trick. She seemed more swayed by Stearns than he seemed susceptible to her. This perception angered me more, such possession of a natural resource of the pines. He twisted reality but if one listened and remained upright, Stearns’s head revolved on an all-too-human neck.

I was a supernatural beast attempting to be human. Stearns was a human attempting to be supernatural. The former was a natural desire, albeit a difficult one. The latter has always received the harshest judgments from gods and men.

“You cannot force the people to the pines or even attempt to convince them,” I said. “If it is a feasible, attractive option, perhaps they will go there themselves, but not if forced. Force them and your plans will fail.”

I pictured Stearns and a dozen councilmen pushing huddled masses into ferry boats to Camden and carriages that hauled them into the woods. Who would ever trust Stearns that on the other side of the river to New Jersey eternal damnation did not await?

How long would we have finessed one another out of standstill, the loggerheads of what we thought was right? We could agree to disagree, and like well-developed humans I could wish him well and then return to Braddock and Vermeule ashamed that Stearns had not converted to reason, that his delusion was engrained in his every aspect, that I’d have had better luck transforming him into a beast like me than convincing him that the dream of pure water was necessary for all.

He kept on, now saying that one did not own these horses or lands but had dominion over them, cared for them. He clearly had no belief other than his goal, and all argument was malleable as long as it served his purpose. He agreed with me, always, but then twisted our agreement to mean something other than seeing eye to eye.

No nets dropped from the rafters. Barn cats entered and froze and then slinked along the walls. Why had I wanted to help Wharton? Was it an instinct to once again expose myself to more than the same circles of flight? Which of Franklin’s virtues were now in play? Which had I internalized well enough to know that Stearns was the enemy? Despite eloquent and impassioned arguments in favor of the poor, I began to reconsider industry and resolution and justice. I would perform what I ought, what I had resolved to do, I would lose no more time doing it. I would maybe “wrong one by doing injuries” as Franklin had put it but I would do so to ensure that so many others were disturbed by nothing more than falling snow.

“December,” I said. “It has been such a pleasure to see you again after so much time. I hope one day you will share with me your thoughts. For now, I ask you to allow us a moment alone.”

I didn’t want her to see any more horror, but then I thought of her children, and I could not allow myself this indulgence. Animal urge and human restraint battled it out as Stearns insisted that December need not leave us alone, that we three now had a bond that required her presence. I sensed that December had sensed that Stearns had sensed that the hunter was now the game. Stearns’s arguments were knots I could undo the moment he tied them, but the only way to end his artful tangles was to cut right through them. The tighter and more convoluted the knot, the more it needed definitive intervention.

I showed Stearns an extended finger of horn.

December recognized the gesture. Stearns stared at it and his voice, whatever he was saying then about his vision for the water, lost track.

Even the horses now were silent, their best eye trained on the stable entrance and my outstretched finger. My eyes, my mind, my heart were certainly human, but my larynx made me capable of language, and now by devolving into a silent creature, observing Franklin’s ninth commandment to avoid trifling conversation and honor Silence, I did my best impersonation of the ceiling of an Italian church Larner had shown me long ago. The outstretched fingers, the tips separated by an inch, of God and man, the gift of life, like an electric charge shot down from heaven into one of Franklin’s lightning rods.

Stearns focused on my fingertip. He had heard the story of December’s father’s troubles, how my unusual fingers had triggered Branley’s obsession. He may not have been familiar with the Michelangelo fresco, but December certainly was—an education of the sort Wharton had provided would have included a tour of the Sistine Chapel. And when she saw that famous covenant, that nearly unified arc of human flesh, her thoughts must have traveled to images conjured by her father’s contact with Larner and that mysterious Mr. Merriweather. At the time, I had thought nothing of extending a finger through assorted fabrics, had no notion that a generation later I would be confronted by that man’s daughter, eyes pink, rimmed with tears as she bridged the distance between us with her own finger. Pressed to the tip of my horned nail, that tiny, innocent pad absorbed the fury of the storm above them.