T. Boyle - World's End

How the patroon got wind of it was a mystery to Staats (old Van Wart was afflicted in knuckle and toe by a virulent eruption of the gout, and hadn’t been up from Croton in six months or more), but get wind of it he did. The patroon was incensed. He was being taken advantage of while he lay on his sickbed. There were squatters at Nysen’s Roost, freeloaders, vagrants who’d moved in like skulking savages and laid claim to his land without bothering to acknowledge his sovereignty or make arrangements to pay him rent. It was intolerable. An outrage to the laws of man and God, and a thumbing of the nose at the very lineaments of a just society. He sent the schout to investigate.

Joost didn’t relish the job. And he didn’t want to bring Neeltje along either. He really didn’t. It wasn’t that he expected trouble — not at this stage, at any rate — but that he was afraid she might see something she shouldn’t. Who knew who these people were? They could be drunk and depraved, living in sin, eating offal and sucking oyster shells; they could be half-breeds or Yankees or runaway slaves. All he knew was that a family — man, woman and child — had taken up residence on the Nysen place and that it was his job either to settle them in properly as tenants of the patroon or evict them. No, he definitely didn’t want to bring his daughter along. But then Neeltje had other ideas. “Vader,” she pleaded, giving him a look that would have stripped the feathers from an angel’s wing, “won’t you take me along with you? Please?” It would be so easy, she argued. He could leave her at Jan Pieterse’s while he saw to his business and then come for her afterward. Moeder had a whole list of things she needed, and why shouldn’t he save himself some time and let her get them? She could pick up little presents for the younkers too. “Oh, please, please?” she begged, and Ans and Trijintje, nine and ten respectively, looked on with hopeful faces. “There’s so much we need.”

So he’d saddled the one-eyed nag and gone up to the patroon’s stable for the mare, and they set out for the upper manor house for the first time since spring and the Crane/Oothouse dispute. Joost was miserable. The day was hot, the deerflies were a plague and a menace, the baldric tugged at his shoulder and the silver plume hung in his eyes, and with each lurching step the nag took he swore he’d rather be out on the bay dipping for crabs, but he went on anyway, ever responsive to the call of duty. Neeltje, on the other hand, didn’t mind the heat a bit. Or the deerflies either. She was going to Jan Pieterse’s, and her sisters weren’t. That was enough for her.

They stopped in at the upper manor house for a bite to eat, and the place was as cool as a cellar with its great three-foot-thick walls. Vrouw van Bilevelt, who, along with Cubit the slave and his wife, looked after the place, served them a cold cream soup and crabcakes. They paid their respects to Gerrit Jacobzoon de Vries and his family, who’d managed the upper farm and overseen the mill since the death of the patroon’s brother, and then made their way down to the Blue Rock so that Neeltje could do her shopping while Joost saw to the interlopers at Nysen’s Roost. But when they got there, they found the trading post deserted and the door barred. Neeltje, biting her lip in frustration, tried the latch sixteen times and.knocked at the door till Joost thought her knuckles would crack open. Then she discovered Jan Pieterse’s note. In the dirt. Dipping crabs, she read aloud. Back at six. Joost shook his head. It was barely two-thirty. There was nothing to do but take Neeltje along with him.

On the way up the hill from Acquasinnick Creek, through the woods that were haunted by the phantoms of murdered Kitchawanks and the unhappy daughters of Wolf Nysen, he told her that he didn’t expect any trouble, but that for her own safety she should come no nearer than the edge of the clearing and under no circumstances should she attempt to interfere or to speak with these people. Was that clear? Neeltje looked glumly at the splintered rock and rotting trunks that lay around her, at the shadows that were like pools in the belly of a cave, and nodded her head. She had no interest in this place or these people, no interest in her father’s affairs, for that matter. All she cared about was Jan Pieterse’s, and Jan Pieterse’s, of all days of the year, had to be closed today. She was so frustrated she felt like shrieking till her lungs turned inside out. And she would have done it too if her father weren’t there — and if the place weren’t quite so hushed and gloomy.

Before long they’d reached the top of the rise and emerged on a clearing dominated by a single high-crowned tree. On the left was a tumbledown wall and to the right a crude cabin of notched green logs. There was no barn, no pond, no orchard and no animals but for a sickly cow tethered beneath the tree. The place seemed deserted. “Stay here,” her father said, and he straightened up in his saddle and jogged forward into the dooryard. “Hello!” he called. “Anybody home?”

Not a sound.

Her father called out again, and the cow gave him a baleful look before dropping its head to crop a tuft of grass at the perimeter of its tether. It was then that a woman appeared from around the corner of the house, a bucket in her hand. The first thing Neeltje noticed was her feet. They were shoeless and filthy, gleaming with fresh muck as if she’d just waded out of a bog or something. And her dress — it was an obvious hand-me-down, patched, faded and stained, and so worn the flesh showed through. But that wasn’t the worst of it. As the woman drew closer to her father, Neeltje saw with a jolt that what she’d taken to be a cap was no cap at all — this wasn’t linen, but flesh. The woman was bald! Scalped, plucked, denuded, her head as smooth and pale and barren as Dominie Van Schaik’s. Neeltje felt something tighten in her stomach. How could a woman do that to herself? she wondered. It was so … so ugly. Was it lice, was that it? Was she a harlot cast out of Connecticut? A Roman nun? Had the Indians got hold of her and … and violated her?

“I’m the sheriff here,” she heard her father say, “Joost Cats. I’ve been sent by the lawful owner and proprietor of these lands to inquire as to your presence here.”

The woman looked bewildered, lost, as if it were she who’d arrived at this place for the first time in her life and not Neeltje. Did she speak Dutch even?

“You have no right here,” Joost said. “Who are you and where have you come from?”

“Katrinchee,” the woman said finally, setting down the bucket. “I’m Katrinchee.”

But then two more figures appeared around the corner of the house — a child, pale eyes in a dark face — and a man swaying awkwardly over a muddy wooden peg. It took her a moment — everything so different, the place so strange — before she recognized him. Jeremias. The name had been on her lips before. In the spring. For a month or so after the last trip it had been with her at the oddest moments — in the early hours of the morning, at prayers, as she sat at the loom or butterchurn. Jeremias. But what was he doing here?

She was no more surprised than her father. The schout jerked his head back as if he’d been snatched by the collar, springing up out of his customary slouch like a jack-in-the-box. “Van Brunt?” he gasped, his voice breaking with incredulity. “Jeremias Van Brunt?”

Jeremias crossed the yard to where the schout perched atop the one-eyed nag. He stopped directly in front of him, no more than a yard away, measuring him with a steady gaze. “That’s right,” he said. “I’ve come back home.”