T. Boyle - World's End

It was then that Rombout struck him — once only — a vicious swipe of the riding crop aimed at those chilly, hateful, incongruous green eyes. The sound of it, like a single burst of brutal applause, faded quickly on the antiseptic air, till in an instant only the memory of it remained.

For his part, the Indian seemed almost to welcome the blow. He barely flinched, though Rombout had put everything he had into it. Which admittedly wasn’t much, considering the fact that he was in his mid-forties and given to a sedentary life relieved only by the occasional round of golf or canter across the property. By contrast, the Indian appeared to be in his early twenties; he was tall and fine-whittled, hardened by work and indigence. Dew drops of blood began to appear in a band that rimmed his eyes and traced the bridge of his nose like the blueprint for a pair of spectacles.

“Damn you,” Rombout cursed, trembling with the chemical emissions his anger had released in his blood. He didn’t have a chance to say more, because the Indian bent to snatch up a stick of firewood the length and breadth of a baseball bat and laid into the side of his head like the immortal Bambino going for the stands. It later came out — at the Indian’s trial — that the attacker landed several other blows as well, including kicks, punches and knee drops, but Rombout was aware only of the first and of the blackness that followed precipitately on its heels.

He wasn’t dead — no, he would live to recover his health and vigor, only to fatally inhale a raw oyster at Delmonico’s some ten years later — but he might as well have been. He never stirred. For three hours he lay there, bleeding and clotting, clotting and bleeding.’ He came to briefly once or twice, saw a world that looked as if it were ten fathoms beneath the ocean, tasted his own blood and descended again into the penumbral depths of unconsciousness. In all that time the Indian did nothing — he didn’t renew his attack, didn’t attempt to aid his victim, lift his wallet or abscond with Pierre, the magnificent bay gelding. He merely sat there at the doorway of his shanty, rolling and smoking cigarettes, a self-righteous look on his face.

It was Herbert Pompey — chauffeur, stable hand, gardener, factotum, jack-of-all-trades, major domo and son of Ismailia the nurse — who ultimately rescued the lord of the manor. When after several hours Rombout hadn’t returned, Herbert went to his mother to ask her advice. “He drunk is what he is,” she opined. “Pass out against some tree, or maybe he just fell off that animal and broke his head.” Then she told him to put one foot in front of the other and go have a look for him.

Pompey tried the dairy farm first. Rombout would sometimes ride out there to drink black coffee and grappa with Enzo Fagnoli, whose family had been milking cows for the Van Warts for eighty years. (The Fagnolis had taken over for the van der Mules or Meulens, tenants at Van Wart Manor since the world began. Apprised that the state legislature was about to put an end to the manorial system in the Hudson Valley, giving leaseholders title to the farms they’d worked for generations, Rombout’s great grandfather, Oloffe III, had evicted the Dutchmen in favor of the intrepid Italians, who converted the farm to dairy production and worked for an annual wage. It was hard on Oloffe, having to adjust to paying his tenants rather than vice versa, but the unquenchable hordes of New York City clamored for his milk, butter and cheese, his herds multiplied till they darkened the hills and in time he was able to admit that it was all for the best.) Enzo, in overalls and porkpie hat, greeted Pompey with enthusiasm and offered him a swig of apple wine from a green jug, but regretted to say that he hadn’t seen Rombout in nearly a week.

Next it was the Blue Rock Inn, where the lord of the manor was wont to take a hiatus from the rigors of equestrian exercise in order to share a cup of bootleg bourbon with the proprietor, Charlie Outhouse, who more typically regaled his guests with soda water and orange pekoe tea. Pompey retraced his steps, passing within hailing distance of the manor house — still no Rombout — and hiked down to where the inn perched over Van Wart Creek as it debouched in the Hudson. Charlie was out back, plucking hens for dinner. He hadn’t seen Rombout either. Pompey kept walking, skirting Acquasinnick Ridge and following the bank of the creek until finally he swung north for Nysen’s Roost.

He struck the stony path that traversed Blood Creek (so named because Wolf Nysen had incarnadined its waters in trying to wash the blood of his daughters from his hands), his legs heavy with fatigue as he pumped up the steep hill. His mother, a gossipy, superstitious woman, repository of local legend and guardian of the Van Wart family history, had told him tales of Wolf Nysen, the mad murdering Swede. And of the loup-garou, the pukwidjinnies and the wailing woman of the Blue Rock, who’d perished in a snowstorm and whose voice could still be heard on nights when the snow fell thick. The woods were dense here — never lumbered — and the shadows gathered in clots around the bones of fallen trees. It was an unlucky place, strangely silent even in summer, and as boy and man, Pompey had avoided it. But now, though the leaves were ankle deep on the trail, he could see that a horse had passed this way recently, and he felt nothing but relief.

When he emerged from the woods at the top of the rise, he was as surprised as his employer had been to find a crude habitation of notched saplings and tar paper huddled beneath the big old white oak that stood sentinel over the place. The next thing he noticed was Pierre, still saddled, grazing quietly beneath the tree. Then, as he drew closer, he became aware of a stranger sitting in the doorway of the shack — a bum, from the look of him — and beyond him, something like a heap of rags cast off in the stiff high grass. But where was Rombout?

Never hesitating, though his gut was clenched with foreboding, Pompey strode right on up to the shack to confront this stranger. He halted five feet from him, hands on hips. Who the devil are you? — the words were on his lips when he glanced down at that heap of rags. Rombout looked as if he were sleeping, but there was blood on the side of his head. His riding boots — Pompey had put a shine on them that very morning — glinted in the pale autumn light.

“What happen here?” Pompey demanded of the Indian, who’d barely raised his head to watch him stride up to the shack. A great lowering ancestral fear gripped Pompey as he looked down at the white man sprawled in the grass.

The Indian said nothing.

“You do this?” Pompey was scared. Scared and angry. “Huh?”

Still the Indian held his silence.

“Who you, anyway? What you want?” Pompey was glancing distractedly from the Indian to the horse and from the horse to the terrible inert bundle of clothing on the ground.

“Me?” the Indian said finally, raising his head slowly to pin him with those fanatic’s eyes. “I’m the last of the Kitchawanks.”

The trial didn’t last an hour. The Indian was accused of criminal trespass, assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder. His attorney, appointed by the court, had gone to school with Rombout. The sheriff, the court recorder, the district attorney and the district attorney’s assistant had also gone to school with Rombout. The judge had gone to school with Rombout’s father.

“Clearly, your honor,” the Indian’s attorney pleaded, “my client is not in possession of his faculties.”

“Yes?” returned the judge, who was a big, harsh, reactionary man, known for his impatience with hoboes, panhandlers, gypsies and the like. “And just how is that?”

“He claims to be an Indian, your honor.”