Frederick Busch - The Night Inspector

I said, once more, “Oh, please.”

I was watching as she called again, and watching still as she came closer, and because I had not fired again, the men at the house — I could tell from the sound of their shooting — had at last emerged. I put another shot into the earth near her and decided that it was time, at last, to go. I had stayed there far too long, enchanted by this wonderful woman I would have given much to greet, and to shake by the hand. I did not consider her as a partner in bed, I think, because she was more of a man than any of us men on her farm.

She walked closer and at last I could hear what she said: “All you can do is kill me, serpent. This is my home.”

She was not a silent soldier, I thought, but she was as gallant a foe as a man could have. I stood, in violation of my central tactic, as if we fought in a duel. She knew to react at once, lifting the rifle to her small shoulder and taking aim. I cut her down and loaded behind the rock, then stood to watch her through the sight. A number of shots from the house went no place near me. She was missing most of her throat and all of her chest: I had not wanted to damage her face. I kept the sight there, and I looked at her cheeks and nose and lips, but they were part now of a corpse; she was only meat now and her heroism would be kept, from here on, inside the man who had killed her.

I covered the house. One of them scuttled back, but the other paused, and I shot him on the spot. There were only a Rebel and a whore left to contend with, and I decided to risk open movement. I walked at a good marching pace up the low hill the way I had come. Every now and again, I stopped and turned to face the sheds and scrutinized the land with my telescope. If they were lucky, they’d be fucking each other, I thought, because there was nothing left to do in the face of so much slaughter except, of course, wail at the skies — where the vulture, I remembered, was poised.

“I love when you do that,” Jessie said.

“You must tell no one.”

“We are our secret,” she said, wiping the tears at my eyes. “We are our good secret. No one knows about us except that you prefer me and will pay most dearly, and that I am pleased to be preferred.” She lay against me now, her head on my chest. I could feel her breath against my breast as she spoke. “And within that secret,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“The other one. About the poor children,” she said.

“Of course. I have our man, and I am laying the ground.”

“While doing a lay. A double lay, then, and one of them not for profit.”

“But he has latterly had a death in the family, and I must be tentative. But I have not forgotten the children. And I wonder if the recent death will not be powerful motive for him to lend us a hand.”

She moved her own hand and cradled me in it, cock and balls at rest. It was as if she held the whole of me.

Uncle Sidney Cowper, I came to realize, had admirably demonstrated the kind of discipline and restraint about which he had preached. This came to me of a wet, cold afternoon in my fourteenth year when I was out and at my chores — weather was no obstacle to the performance of duty, Uncle Sidney preached, and besides, we did need the wood to warm the house. I was splitting some limbs of birch to use as kindling in our kitchen stove and was concentrating on the blade of the axe in the greasy, chilly rain. I brought in an armful and was about to go out for another, pausing to filch a carrot from the simmering kettle of soup on the stove, when I heard a kind of snuffling from the pantry. It occurred to me that something large, say a raccoon, had got into our stores. At the door, just slightly ajar, I paused, for the snuffling had been joined by a lighter sound, as of panting, and it sounded more like a person, and less like a raccoon. I went to one knee at the door and listened, pressing my ear to the space between the door and the jamb.

The lighter sound became “He … will … hear,” whispered in my mother’s voice.

The deeper snuffling was, of course, the energetic gasping for breath as he grasped for my mother of Uncle Sidney Cowper.

I do not know what caused me to stand and kick the door shut, but I did, still dripping in my soaked canvas coat, before I went outside and set to splitting thick, heavy sections of birch. It was pleasing that no thoughts came into my head or, if they did, were instantly banished by my care with the heavy axe and my concentration on meeting the top of each section with the wet, sharp blade. When I heard the door from the mudroom off the kitchen slam to, I knew to stand and catch my breath. I held the axe across my body with both hands, and I was uncertain about my intentions with it.

This thought seemed to catch Uncle Sidney, for he stopped in his progress toward me and studied his nephew, but then, to his credit, he came up within inches of me and looked into my eyes. He wrapped the skirts of his long coat beneath his legs, and he sat on the chopping block. I stepped back a pace, whether for the easier placement of a blow or for safety’s sake, I do not know.

Water poured off the shakes of the roof and into a couple of barrels, while the wind blew rain upon us and the spruces about the house nodded under the onslaught. My uncle said, “So what do you say, Billy? Was the slamming necessary? A gentleman doesn’t slam doors. Nor does he invade the privacy of others. Don’t pout, son.”

“Uncle, would you not call me ‘son’?”

“It’s your dear father’s prerogative, eh?”

I didn’t know what prerogative was, but I nodded.

“Understood. Next?”

“Pardon, sir?”

“What’s on your mind, Billy? Come along.”

“Why … my mother , Uncle Sidney.”

“Yes. We were conferring, she and I.” He stared hard into my eyes, defying me to comment. “On matters of great moment.”

“I don’t think my father would approve, Uncle Sidney. I — may I speak frankly, sir?”

“As I’ve taught you, son — ah: lad. As you know to do. With courtesy.”

“Sir, I don’t think it’s right, you making the beast with my mother.”

I waited for the blow. None came. He smiled. He reached out his hand and cupped my thigh from behind. He kneaded gently and most intimately. He said, “I don’t actually care very much which one of you it is,” he said. “It could be you. It could be her. I’m pleased to let you choose which one.” His hand came around to the front of my thigh and began to climb. I stepped back and raised the axe to my shoulder. “There are virtues to each,” he said, smiling as if she had just set down his evening meal.

I said the only thought I had: “Do you mean, sir, that my mother is … with you because she’s keeping you off me?”

His smile went wider, his eyes disappeared between the folds of skin beneath and around them, and then the smile faded and his eyes returned. He studied me, and I knew he knew me very well. He was certain, I thought, that I would permit her to sacrifice the wholeness of her intimate being to preserve the wholeness of mine.

I lifted the axe from my shoulder and my body tensed. So did his. He stood as I raised the axe above my head, and he moved backward, straddling the block, as I brought it down. He skipped backward, nimbly for such a large man, and I missed by him little. The blade was buried deep in the chopping block.

“You might have hurt me!” he said, his feelings apparently damaged though his body was sadly unscarred.

“I regret that I did not, Uncle Sidney.”

“I suppose you do. I’m going back inside, Billy. Your mother and I must … talk. Why don’t you stay out here and split more wood. Say for another half an hour? You won’t get too wet, I pray.”