T. Boyle - World's End

The day was half gone, and the patroon in a rage approaching apoplectic closure, when finally the Van Wart wagon, drawn by a pair of gaunt, toothless and half-lame oxen, appeared around the bend and made for the work crew at a somnolent pace. Joost Cats, leading his nag and listing so far forward it looked as if he were about to plunge face down in the dirt, limped beside it. The patroon glanced up angrily, then turned to the first farmer at hand — young Oothouse — and began an earnest chat about manure or dried shad or some such nonsense; he wasn’t about to give Van Brunt the satisfaction of thinking that he, Stephanus Oloffe Rombout Van Wart, landowner, patroon, shipping magnate and member of the Governor’s Council, could experience even the slightest anxiety over the whereabouts of so insignificant a creature as he.

The crew — men and women both, including a revived Mistress Sturdivant — had cleared and graded the outside lane in front of the patroon’s house, and were now taking their de noen break. They lounged in the shade, appropriating a round from one of the felled trees for a table, chewing hard black bread, cold bacon and cheese. One of them — Robideau, from the look of his stockings and shoes — was snoring blissfully beneath a blackberry bush, a soiled white handkerchief spread over his face. As the patroon listened to young Oothouse apotheosize dung, he was aware of every creaking revolution of the wagon wheels behind him, of every snort and wheeze of the winded old oxen. Finally, with an excruciating shriek of the axles, the wagon ground to a halt at his back.

Lifting his nose, and turning around with all the imperious dignity he could muster, the patroon was prepared to be mollified, Van Brunt’s very presence — however reluctant, however tardy — proof positive that yes, he did own him, just as he owned all the rest of these sorry soil grubbers, his word the law, eviction and banishment his prerogatives. He turned, but what he saw wasn’t at all what he expected. This wasn’t Van Brunt hunched over the reins — this was a boy, a half-breed, with the soupy staring eyes of the mentally deficient. And beside him another boy, younger, weaker, thinner, the sort of boy you’d send out to gather nuts, not build roads.

“I’m — I’m—” Cats was trying to say something. The patroon speared him with a savage glance. “—I’m sorry, but my son-in-law, I mean, Farmer Van Brunt, is, uh, indisposed, and he, uh, sent, his, uh—”

“Silence!” the patroon exploded. “I ordered you,” he roared, advancing on the shrinking schout in the great boatlike mules he wore over his pumps to protect them from the dirt of the road, “to bring him here, did I not!?”

“Yes, Mijnheer,” the schout said, whipping off his hat and working it in his hands. He was staring at his feet. “But instead because he, he was ill—”

It was then that the boy spoke up — the smaller one, the white boy. His voice was as high and shrill and discordant as a badly played piccolo. “That’s not it at all, grootvader,” he said, working himself up. He turned to face the patroon, as bold as a thief. “He won’t come, that’s all. Said he’s busy. Said he’s paid his rent. Said he’s as good a man as you.”

The patroon said nothing. He turned his back on them, shuffled over to the pacer, kicked off the mules and swung himself into the saddle. Then he motioned to young Oothouse. “You,” he growled, “go fetch Heer van den Post.” Everyone — even Mistress Sturdivant, who’d been addressing herself to a shepherd’s pie the size of a football — turned to watch him go. No one moved, and no one said a word, till he returned.

Young Oothouse, an indolent young man given to fat and a measured pace, jogged all the way, and he was red-faced and running with sweat when he appeared around the bend in the road, van den Post loping easily at his side. In the next moment, van den Post stood before the patroon, gazing up steadily at him from beneath the brim of his steeple hat. “Yes, Mijnheer?” he said, barely winded.

From his eminence atop the horse, the patroon spoke, his voice cold and brittle. “Aelbregt, you will remove from Heer Cats the plumed hat and silver-plated rapier that are the perquisites of his office — they now belong to you.” And then, addressing Joost, who stood there in a daze as van den Post took the rapier from him, “Heer Cats, you will oversee the roadwork this afternoon, and then return to your farm.”

Still, no one said a word, but shock was written on every face. Why, Joost Cats had been schout as long as anyone could remember, and to have him removed just like that — it was unheard of, impossible.

A moment later, grinning like a shark, van den Post stood before his patroon in silver-plumed hat and rapier, awaiting his further instructions.

“Heer schout,” Stephanus said, raising his voice so that all could hear him, “you will take these two young renegades,” indicating Wouter and Jeremy Mohonk, “and confine them in the root cellar at the house on a charge of impertinence and sedition.”

This brought a murmur of protest from the farmers, particularly from Staats van der Meulen, who stood up angrily amidst the crumbs of his lunch. Someone sneezed and one of the oxen broke wind. Robideau’s snores sawed away at the motionless air. No one dared to speak up.

“And when that’s done, I want you to ride out to Nysen’s Roost and inform the tenant there, one Jeremias Van Brunt”—here the patroon paused to look menacingly on the faces gathered beneath the trees—“that his lease is hereby terminated. You understand?”

Van den Post practically writhed with delight. “Ja,” he said, licking his lips. “Do we evict him tonight?”

In his anger, in his wrath and resentment, Stephanus very nearly said yes. But then his pragmatic side spoke to him and he relented, thinking of the crops in the field. “November,” he said finally. “After he’s paid his rent.”

Half an inch taller, ten pounds gaunter, his sunken cheeks buried beneath the weedy untamed beard of the prophet or madman, Tom Crane, self-proclaimed hero of the people and saint of the forest, made his way down the cool umbrageous aisles of the Peterskill Grand Union, blithely pushing a shopping cart before him. It was high summer, and he was dressed for the season in huaraches, a pair of striped bell-bottoms big enough to picnic on, a tie-dyed T-shirt that featured a series of dilating archery targets in three shades of magenta, and various scarves and headbands and dangling superfluous strips of leather, the whole of it overlaid with a gypsy jangle of beads, rings, Cocopah god’s eyes, pewter peace signs, Black Power buttons and feathers. In contrast, the cart itself appeared almost spartan. It was wonderfully free of the specious glittering boxes of the newest improved wonder product shoved down the throat of the consumer by those running dogs of the profit mongers, the ad execs of Madison Avenue. The saint of the forest wasn’t about to be taken in by frills and false promises; he went only for the basics — the unrefrigerated, plain-wrapped, vegetarian basics, that is.

Back at the shack, where rodents whispered in the eaves and delicate iridescent flies settled on unwashed plates, the larder was bare; though his vegetable garden was producing all the kohlrabi, bok choy and beet tops he could want, he was out of staples — out of pinto beans, brown rice, yeast powder and soy grits. He was out of soap and Sterno, hyssop and teriyaki. He’d awakened that morning to marmiteless toast, watery thrice-used tea leaves, to gruel bereft of condensed milk, and felt he’d procrastinated long enough. And so here he was, shopping. Whistling along with a peppy version of “Seventy-six Trombones” rendered on glockenspiel and cowbell, startling watery-eyed widows in the meat department, squeezing grapefruit, trotting up and down the aisles jingling like a turnstile and exuding the peculiar odor of rotting leaves that seemed to follow him everywhere, as happy a soul as you could find between Peterskill and Verplanck.