Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

Now the woman was coughing once again. Her little hut was full of smoke, he’d noticed. And her lungs, no doubt, were heavy with pestilence, too. Dragging his tarps behind him, he crashed his way back through the clearing and undergrowth into the thickest of the trees, where the canopy would be his shelter. He had been cowardly, he knew. He had been sensible. Only a fool would socialize with death just to stay warm and dry for the night. He found a partly protected spot among the scrub oaks just at the top of Butter Hill, where he could erect a makeshift tent from his stretched tarps and protect himself a little. His decision to stay up in the hills to rest had clearly been a foolish one. Jackson had been right, as usual. A crazier, more reckless man would have faced the risks of pressing on, injury defied, and enjoyed the benefits of a warm bed, surely better for a limping emigrant than sharing a stormy night with bald disease, no matter how eye-catching it might be.

Franklin’s knee had worsened in the rain and during his latest stumbles through the sodden undergrowth. Its throbbing tormented him. It almost ached out loud, the nagging of a roosting dove: Can’t cook, cook, cook . Even when, in the early quarters of the night, the storm had passed and the moon, the stars, and the silver lake had reappeared, he could not sleep. Her face was haunting him, her face in candlelight (that celebrated flatterer) and the shorn scalp. He might have touched himself with her in mind, despite his pain, had not the valley raised its voice above the grumbling of his knee and the hastened beating of his newly captured heart. The dripping music of the woods was joined by lowland drums. There was the thud and clatter of slipping land, a sound he could not comprehend or recognize — he knew only that it was bad — and then the stony gust, the rumbling, the lesser set of sounds than thunder that agitated the younger horses and the ever-childish mules out in the safety of the tetherings.

On Butter Hill, above the river crossing where west was granted access to the east, Franklin Lopez sat alarmed, entirely unasleep, in his wet tarps, the only living witness when the silver pendant shook and blistered — a pot, a lake, coming to the boil.

Jackson had taken a liking to the modest town, with its smoke and smells and the clamor of voices, livestock and tools. Even though he had arrived at its boundary fences a little after dark, a few trading stalls were still set up, warmed and lit by braziers and lanterns, where he was greeted by dogs, his palms and tongue inspected for infection by gatekeepers, and told at once what the tariffs were — how much he’d have to pay to cross their land, the cost of food and shelter for the night, the onward ferry fee. He would be welcome as a guest if his face was free of rashes, if he wasn’t seeking charity, if he didn’t try to win the short-term favors of a local woman, and if he put any weapons — and any bad language — into their safekeeping until he traveled on. Weapons, rashes, charity, and short-term favors of any kind were “off the menu,” he was told. But otherwise, they had good beds, fresh bread, sweet water, and easy passage to the other bank “for anyone prepared to keep the peace and pay the price.” What had he to offer in return? He had only his coat to trade, he told them, and any labor that they might require of him during the few days that it would take his brother, Franklin, to recover from his exaggerated laming.

All the traders at the gates seemed interested in his piebald coat and gathered around him, admiring his mother’s stitching and marveling at the immodest pattern. But their interest was mostly an excuse to question their oversized visitor and stare at him. None would purchase the coat, no matter how little he wanted in exchange. It was too grand for them. Nobody they knew was tall or outlandish enough for such a garment, they explained, and there was little likelihood that another man of such height and in need of protection against the cold and rain would pass through their community. Nevertheless, the traders were careful and flattering in their dealings with Jackson Lopez, as strangers always were, he’d found. His height and strength earned him promises of work in exchange for lodging: there were sacks of grain to stack and store for winter in the dry lofts, and as ever, there was wood to cut and sewage to be carted out, all familiar tasks. They even promised him a single bed. For once he wouldn’t have to share his body space with Franklin.

Jackson need never sleep with his brother again. He was free to stop just one night in Ferrytown and then move on alone the next day, unencumbered. He was tempted to, or certainly he’d played out the idea as he’d come down the hill, still irritated by the unwelcome waste of time.

His brother had been a constraint even before his knee had let them down. Younger brothers often are. They’re the sneaks who tell your parents who broke the bowl or lamed the mare or stole the fruit. They’re the ones who hold you up, pleading caution, wanting home. They’re the ones who’d choose to go roundabout Robert to avoid danger rather than to smell it out and face up boldly — and unblushingly, as Jackson always would — to the argument, the snake, the bear, the cliff face, or the enemy. And older brothers have no privacy, unlike older sisters, for whom privacy is considered fundamental. No, the firstborn males are expected to share their blankets with all the younger ones, and share the work, and entertain the others in the evenings with the light of just the single candle, and travel — even migrate! — in a pack, as if no future were possible except in the others’ company. It certainly was dead right, that traditional warning to anyone with itchy feet, that there is no better way of getting to resent a friend, whether it’s a brother or a neighbor, than by traveling with him.

“You take good care of him,” his mother had instructed every time they’d left the farm buildings for a day of work, all the way through his childhood and adolescence. And those had been almost her final words to Jackson when her sons had set off toward the boats two months previously. “You take good care of him.” She still saw Franklin as a boy who needed to be tied by ropes to someone bigger and more trustworthy. She hadn’t said, “And you take good care of yourself.” Perhaps he ought to start. Walking down the hill alone, at his own pace, had been an unexpected pleasure that he might happily prolong, on this side of the water and beyond. He’d sleep on it. He’d make up his mind once he’d tested the local hospitality and found someone to trade with him. No matter what he decided — return to Franklin and that maddening laugh of his (as seemed dishearteningly inevitable) or hurry on (the thrilling fantasy) — he had to freshen his or their supplies of food.

As it happened, while Jackson was walking in past the tetherings toward the guesthouse, savoring his recent freedom and the prospect of his first good meal for many days, the boy called Nash was on his way to begin his night of caretaking with the local and passage animals. He was wheeling a smoking barrow with a cargo of glowing stove stones from the family grate bedded in earth to keep him warm. He had pushed some sheets of thin cloth up the back of his shirt as well, but he still expected to be cold, especially in the period just before sunup, and on that night, at least, he expected to be wet. He could smell the coming rain, and the bats, always trustworthy forecasters of a storm, were out unusually early in search of rain-shy insects.

So when the immense man in the surprising coat asked him to point out the roof of the guesthouse and where the clothing broker lived, an opportunity was spotted and a deal was soon struck. Jackson parted with the coat, and Nash set aside his wheelbarrow and hurried briefly to his family yard to provide the dried fruit, the pork, the leather water bag, and the apple juice that he had traded with this astounding visitor, who seemed less astounding, shorter even, as soon as he pulled off his outerwear, kissed it farewell as if it were a friend, and draped it around the boy’s narrow shoulders. Nash set off for the tetherings again, but slowly. The coat, twice too long, was a greater hindrance even than the heavy wheelbarrow full of earth and stones. Nevertheless, these were joyful moments for a ten-year-old — except that he felt anxious. He’d been overeager to win the good opinion of the giant and exchanged too many useful things for something inexplicable. Inexplicable to his parents and neighbors, at least. He’d been selfish, too. A coat serves only its owner (although in this rare instance, four small boys and their dogs could easily find shelter under it). Nash would have to spend the night perfecting his excuses. But for the moment he was glad of the opportunity, as the final strangers of the day passed by, to parade his new encumbrance.