Hell With the Lid Blown Off (14 page)

That plan went down with the Tucker girls all right, so me and Streeter loaded up and walked over to the livery to saddle him a horse. While he was busy getting ready, I stopped in at Scott's house. I reckon him and his wife Hattie didn't know where I was until I showed up at their door, so Hattie fussed over me and Scott acted put out until I told them what I had been up to. Scott had already walked around town to look at the damage and had sent a couple volunteers out north and west of town to check on the farms. I told him what we were planning and left to meet Streeter in front of Mr. Turner's livery.

The streetlights were out and a steady rain was falling when we set out. We could barely see five feet in front of ourselves.

“This is a fool's errand. You know we're not going to get out there tonight,” I said after taking fifteen minutes to get a hundred yards. We still couldn't find the junction for the road to the Tucker farm. “It'd be a whole lot smarter to wait until daylight.”

I couldn't even see Streeter's face when he spoke up. “Why'd you come, then?” I figured he was chiding me for my faintheartedness, but he didn't sound angry.

“Well, if I hadn't made the effort, Ruth would have gone haring off in the dark by herself.”

He chuckled at that. “She'd have had to knock Martha out of the way. We may not get anywhere till morning, but at least if we try, the ladies will stay put for a while.”

Alafair Tucker

Shaw and his sons managed to rig a stretcher out of coats and boards and they carried John Lee the half mile over the bare field and across the road to the Lukenbach farm. Mary had already brought her mother and sisters back to her barely damaged house, where the children were piled together like puppies, sound asleep on a heap of blankets in one corner of the extra bedroom. Alafair and Mary were fussing over Phoebe with hot bricks wrapped in flannel, salve and bandages for ravaged feet and hands, and cups of warming tea. But the kitchen table was cleared in a trice when the rescuers arrived with the wounded man. John Lee was in and out of consciousness. He roused himself when Phoebe bent over him.

“Zeltha…” he managed.

“She's fine, darlin',” Phoebe said. “And so am I. And you're going to be fine, too.”

Shaw drew Alafair and Mary aside. “His right leg is broken,” he murmured. “He might have a broken jaw. I know he's got some busted teeth. Y'all can see to his cuts, and I can set that leg. It looks like a clean break. But I can't tell about his innards. Or worse, his head. He needs a doctor.”

“Kurt can fetch one.” Mary volunteered her husband.

But Gee Dub was close enough to hear the conversation. “I'll go, Dad. Kurt and Charlie can come with me back home and check on the livestock. They can take care of the animals while I ride in for Doc Addison. ”

Shaw and Alafair glanced at one another. The likelihood was that at least a few animals had been killed or wounded by the storm. It was cruel to let them suffer any longer than need be.

Shaw nodded. “All right. Kurt, you have some firearms handy?”

“I do, sir.” Kurt looked grim, and Charlie, uncharacteristically, had nothing to say.

“Mary and me will help Daddy with John Lee,” Alafair said, “so you fellows get on. Judging by the direction of the wind, the worst of the storm probably missed Boynton, but Gee Dub, you be sure to check on the other girls while you're in town.”

The boys had barely walked out of the house when a commotion in the yard caused Alafair's heart to jump into her mouth. What fresh disaster could possibly have befallen them now? She hurried out the back door with Shaw and Mary, leaving Phoebe to tend John Lee.

In the dark it was hard to see what the dust-up was, at least until Alafair raised her kerosene lamp high enough to cast some light into the yard.

Kurt, Gee Dub, and Charlie were trying to catch a horse.

The horse was fully saddled, a tall roan with a light-colored mane and tail. He was probably a handsome animal, though it was hard to tell, what with the dark night and the coat of mud on him. How he had managed to survive the storm all in one piece was a wonder. All four of his limbs were certainly in working order, the front two currently flailing at his would-be rescuers, his eyes white-rimmed with panic. The men had encircled the terrified animal and were trying to calm him with soft words and soothing noises, but he was having none of it. His agenda consisted of nothing more than escape, and he reared and whirled himself in a counterclockwise circle, looking for a gap between the outstretched arms of his tormenters big enough to bolt through.

Once he reared and whirled, and twice, and three times, before Shaw managed to catch the whipping reins and expertly calm him into a standstill. As Shaw stroked the heaving horse's muzzle and murmured into his ear, Charlie checked him quickly for injuries.

“He's full of splinters and he's got a bad-looking puncture wound on his thigh,” Charlie exclaimed, “but nothing's broken that I can find. Looks like somebody was riding him when the storm hit, Daddy.” Charlie was running his hand over the tooled leather saddle. “Maybe we'd better go out and see if we can find the rider. He might be off in a ditch hurt.”

“I'm afraid whoever was riding that horse is dead.”

Shaw turned his head to look at Alafair, who was still standing in the door with Mary. Her comment surprised him. “What makes you say that, hon?”

A flash of lightning in the distance illuminated her face just enough for Shaw to see her grim expression. “Yonder beast just turned three times widdershins. Someone has died, sure enough.”

He handed the reins to Kurt. “Take this animal to shelter, son, then you and the boys set to your task.”

The young man's wide blue eyes regarded his father-in-law with confusion. “What does she mean, sir,
widdershins
?” Having been born and raised in Germany, Kurt often required an explanation for some term or another.

Shaw glanced at Alafair, and when he answered, he kept his voice low. “The horse circled three times to the left, contrary to the path of the sun. It's the sign of the unnatural. Alafair's likely right about the rider. Women know these things, Kurt, that's been my observation. Now, get on.”

Gee Dub Tucker

The horse was docile enough as Kurt led him to the barn, but when the boys tried to get him into a stall, all bets were off. He shied and skittered, reared and tried to bite. Kurt was barely able to keep hold of the reins and avoid having his head staved in by a hoof, but it wasn't until Gee Dub managed to throw a feed sack over the animal's eyes that they were able to get him into a stall and unsaddled. Charlie pumped a measured amount of water into a bucket and threw some oats into the feed box, and the horse drank thirstily while Kurt examined the wound on his hip.

Odd. It was a narrow puncture wound, maybe an inch wide. It wasn't bleeding and the edges were clean, but swollen. Whatever had pierced him wasn't still in the wound. Kurt hastily washed the wound and covered it with a clean cloth. That was all he had time for at the moment.

They left the unlucky beast blindfolded and tied in the stall and the three young men set out down the path back to the Tucker farm. The stable where Shaw kept his riding stock had lost a corner of its tin roof, but was otherwise intact. The horses in their stalls were restless but unhurt, so Kurt and Charlie took lanterns and headed for the pasture where the mules and draft horses had ridden out the storm. They left Gee Dub to saddle his own chestnut mare, Penny, for his trek into Boynton.

Penny had been Gee Dub's mount since she was a long-legged filly and he was a scrawny lad, and they had grown into one another comfortably. He had never found another horse he liked better. She was curious and oddly playful, for a horse, which had always appealed to Gee Dub's wry sense of humor.

He hung an unlit lantern on the saddle horn and swung himself up onto her back. The lightning was sporadic now as the storm receded into the distance, and the night was black as a bucket of pitch. A light, gritty snow was blowing about, a strange phenomenon that sometimes happened in the wake of a twister, even in the middle of summer. Gee Dub was sure it wouldn't last long, but it added to the general misery of the situation. He buttoned the top button of his coat and pulled his hat down low on his forehead as he made the turn out of the drive and onto the road that led to town.

He let the mare pick her own way through the rubble strewn across the road, and he could tell by her gait that the normally well-packed dirt road had become a sucking, muddy bog. The trip to Boynton from the farm normally took no more than twenty or thirty minutes on horseback, but forty minutes after he left, Gee Dub didn't seem to be any closer to town than when he started.

In fact, he didn't rightly know where he was. Was he even still on the road? He didn't think so. There was vegetation on the ground, and it was rutted, as though it had once been plowed. A fallow field. He couldn't see worth a darn. It was so black that he couldn't get his night eyes, and he wondered if the horse was as blind as he was. He swallowed a momentary pang of unreasonable fear. Even if he got hopelessly lost, the sun would come up eventually and he'd find his way home.

Something was moving ahead of him. He tugged on the reins and squinted at the apparition, not sure he had actually seen anything. But there it was—a pale, man-shaped figure weaving toward him through the darkness. His first thought was that someone had been killed by the storm and his haint hadn't yet figured out that he was dead. Gee Dub smiled, amused at himself, and felt oddly better.

“Is somebody there?” he called.

The figure stopped, but no reply was forthcoming. He clucked at Penny and she walked a few steps forward. He was near enough now to see it was a man, strangely white from tip to toe. He unhooked the lantern from his saddle horn, fished a match out of his breast pocket, struck it on his thigh, and lit the wick. He held the lamp up and its weak yellow light illuminated the figure of a man standing exactly in front of him, bruised eyes staring at him out of a white face, stark naked, his bare skin tattooed with dirt and splinters.

Gee Dub nearly dropped the lantern. “Mr. Eichelberger? What in the name of Pete…are you all right?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt like a fool. Mr. Eichelberger obviously was not all right. Gee Dub flung down out of the saddle and seized the man by the arm.

Eichelberger stared and blinked at him. He slowly lifted one skinny arm and pointed off in the direction from which he had come. “There's a dead man over there.”

Gee Dub was removing his coat to cover the man's nakedness, barely aware of what he had said. “Mr. Eichelberger, you're hurt! Get up behind me, now, and I'll take you to Doc Addison.”

The suggestion roused Eichelberger to action, and he shook Gee Dub off. “No! I can't go! I'm all right! I found him over there.” He dropped Gee Dub's coat into the mud and ran off into the darkness, bare as the day he was born.

Gee Dub didn't call after him. It was just one more bizarre incident in a night full of them. With the lantern in one hand and Penny's reins in the other, he walked ahead slowly, gingerly casting his eyes about for a body. He had only walked a few steps when Penny snorted and shied, and his heart jumped into his mouth. Mr. Eichelberger wasn't delusional after all.

He said a few soothing words to the horse before he wrapped her reins around the stubby stick of a ravaged sapling and made his way forward through the weedy ruts, lantern high.

At first he thought he was seeing a dismembered leg, and he paused, nauseated by the idea. When he took a step closer he saw the shape of the rest of the man, half-buried in mud. He put the lantern on the ground, fell to his knees, and proceeded to dig the body out of the muck with his bare hands. He moved quickly at first but slowed when it became obvious that the man was quite dead. He scooped mud off the face, out of the hollows of the eyes, and reached for his lamp in hopes of identifying whomever it was he had just disinterred.

The eyes were wide open. The mouth was open, too, and full of mud, as were the nostrils. Gee Dub stood up. Something about him was familiar, but he couldn't put a name to him. The skin on the face had been practically flayed off, and the cheek and jaw on the right side were crushed in. The man had either been flung face-first into something hard, or skinned by the shrapnel of dirt and rocks and exploded buildings.

Somebody has died, sure enough
, his mother had said. Was this the lost horse's rider? Gee Dub lost track of how long he stood and looked down at the body. He had seen death before. He had even seen violent death before. Though death had always horrified him, it had never seemed personal to him, even when the one who had died was known to him, even loved.

Gee Dub gazed down at the dead stranger and wondered why this was different. The possibility of war, probably. Would he grow inured to sights like this? A tornado, a bomb, what was the difference? Something comes out of the sky and you're dead in the blink of an eye.

The corpse had been a man. That was all Gee Dub could tell for sure. Only a few sprigs of hair remained on the scoured scalp. They looked dark. The man was oddly unreal, like he had never been alive at all. The odd, staring eyes might as well have been painted marbles. Whatever it was that animated a man was long gone.

Early this morning
, Gee Dub thought,
this fellow got up out of bed, put on his clothes, ate breakfast, and it never crossed his mind that he'd never do any of those things ever again. A storm came and killed him without so much as a by-your-leave.

Gee Dub felt bad. The guy was all skint and muddy, with his mouth hanging open. It was undignified, and Gee Dub felt bad for him. Whoever he had been, he wouldn't have liked to be seen this way. Gee Dub was seized by an urge to re-bury him, just to give the man a little privacy. He closed the corpse's staring eyes.