The Harrows of Spring (13 page)

T
WENTY-NINE

When Robert returned to his house Britney was gone and so was Sarah's body. He doubted that Britney had taken it to the doctor's, where the village dead were usually kept awaiting burial in his springhouse turned morgue. But he went over there to inquire nonetheless because he didn't know where else to look. He found the doctor alone in his office at his desk, hungover, slumped in despair. Robert slid into an oak chair on the far side of the desk. A life-size plastic skeleton hung from a stand in the corner like a figure out of a medieval parable about the brevity of existence. The room smelled of alcohol.

“Was Britney here?” Robert eventually asked.

“No,” the doctor said without looking up.

“Sarah died last night, you know.”

“I know. Jason sent his boy over to tell me.”

They sat silently for a while.

Eventually, the doctor said, “Maybe you're wondering, could I have done something to save her? For what it's worth, probably not. But forgive me for being too damn drunk to attend.”

“I'm not blaming you, Jerry. I wasn't there for her either.”

“Well, I'm blaming myself. I don't believe in God, so I can't blame him. We do what we can but it's not much. We're at the mercy of an indifferent universe. That's all. It wears me down. Sorry to burden you with my nonsense at a time like this.”

“Well, she's taken the body somewhere,” Robert said.

“Not here as far as I know,” the doctor said. “You can go look if you like.”

Robert did. It was ten degrees cooler inside the old springhouse with its clay floor, damp stone walls, and meager light. The table at center where the dead were laid was empty. Then he went home because he didn't know where else to look, and he was hoping that she might turn up there because, after all, it was her home too. But she was not there and Robert just sat quietly on the sofa in the parlor waiting for her to return, wondering how he might salvage their life together. After about an hour of painful rumination the door swung open and Loren entered.

Robert could not bear to hear himself say again that Britney and the child's body were not there and that he didn't know where to look. Just then, his eyes fastened on the German violin that he had found for Sarah the past fall. It was a lovely instrument with inlaid shell purfling along the edge of the top plate and an ebony crow inlaid on the back. It lay out on the table where she had left it upon realizing, days ago, that she felt too ill to practice, or even to put it back in its case. She had learned so well and so much in just a few months, it was an amazing testament to cognitive development in children. The recognition that the world was finished with Sarah and her development provoked such an upsurge of fury in Robert that he seized the instrument by its neck and brought it crashing down against the table with so much force that nothing remained in his hand but the peg box, the tailpiece, and the limp strings that connected them.

T
HIRTY

That afternoon, on a country crossroads 2.6 miles east of Union Grove, in the abandoned shell of a Sun Mart convenience store, with everything stripped out of it including the steel shelving and daylight visible through the disintegrating roof, Sylvester “Buddy” Goodfriend met with Duane Terrio, a one-sixteenth Pocumtuc Indian who, in the old times, had worked as assistant human resources manager of the SunEagle Casino and Resort outside Chicopee, Massachusetts, now defunct. A solid six-footer, forty-three years old, Terrio officially went by the name Wawanotewat, He Who Fools Others, in the Algonquin subdialect of his distant ancestors, but Goodfriend still called him Duane. In the performance of his duties, Terrio had adopted as well the costume of his ancestors. This mild spring day he wore a loincloth cut from an old blanket, leather leggings cinched above his knees, horsehide moccasins, and a red calico cotton blouse. Many coils of beads and bones hung from his neck and wrists, and his head was shaved except for a topknot gathered, bound, and slathered in a mixture of lanolin and blacking made from burnt wild grapevines, much as his people had done during their struggles with the English and the Mohawk back in the 1700s. His face was daubed with paint made of red iron oxide, with his eye sockets outlined in black. He carried a war club carved from a maple root and a short sword cinched into the belt that held up his loincloth.

“You look frightful enough,” Buddy said. “Are your men comfortable?”

“They're anxious to get it on. We traveled light getting here. My boys are hungry.”

“How many did you bring with you?”

“Eleven others. We'll have to take provisions soon.”

“Take what you can where you can, but don't make a show of it. Not yet, anyway. We're going to start working these landowners today. The people in town, I dunno whether they're hardheaded or just dumb. There's opportunity here, though. I can smell it. I'll send a message when we need you to begin operations.”

“Good luck, brother. Make it rain.”

“Thanks, Duane.”

T
HIRTY-ONE

Buddy Goodfriend left his pony, Che, hitched to his two-wheeled campaign cart in the shade of a white oak tree in Temple Merton's turnaround just after noon, expecting that the wealthy farmer would be present for lunch at the house, which, as it happened, was exactly correct. A servant girl answered the door and showed Goodfriend into the kitchen, where Merton and his girlfriend occupied a round table in a window bay that looked out on his fields, pastures, vineyard, orchards, and barns. Goodfriend introduced himself as the economic development director of the Berkshire People's Republic, on a diplomatic spring tour of neighboring states. He seemed clean, healthy, literate, and smartly attired in his old-times expeditionary casuals so, sharing a glance of mild incredulity, Temple and Lorraine invited him to the table.

“It's not often these days we get to meet new people from away,” Lorraine said.

“I've never heard of this Berkshire Republic,” Temple said. The servant girl brought a platter of fried smelts to the table. The delicate sardine-like minnows were running like crazy this time of year in the streams that fed the Hudson River and Adirondack lakes. In the Merton kitchen they were rolled in fine cornmeal, deep fried in lard, and eaten whole, bones, innards, and all, like french fries of yore. Lorraine had put up many jars of the smoky homemade ketchup that accompanied them to the table.

“Salt is scarce just now,” she said.

“We've had some trouble with our supply chains,” Temple elaborated. “We depended too heavily on certain Hudson River shipping arrangements that have been interrupted lately.”

“People think commerce is boring,” Goodfriend said, “but at the end of the day the people's well-being depends on it. We incorporated sixteen months ago. Communication is so poor these days, and that's one of the reasons for my journey. Obviously our part of the country and yours have many common interests and we're especially eager to improve trade and communication.” He went on to explain the vacuum of governance in western Massachusetts and the social crisis it produced, and how the Berkshire People's Republic intended to rectify all that.

“Our office of sustainable technology is making great strides,” he said.

“Strides toward what?” Temple asked.

“Reviving confidence, mainly,” Goodfriend said. “The belief that progress is still possible.”

“Ah, yes,” Temple said. “Progress.”

“We reject despair and resignation,” Goodfriend said.

“Did you come here all alone?” Lorraine asked, as the servant girl brought three more plates to the table, each a perfectly composed salad of lettuces grown in Merton's greenhouse, with pickled beets, quartered hard-boiled eggs, and bits of smoked trout fillet.

“Others in the delegation are at the new hotel in town,” Goodfriend said. “It must be exciting for you to see real estate development happen after these years of tribulation and decline.”

“Yes, it's heartening to see new business here,” Temple said. “We supply apple brandy to the tavern.”

“We have high hopes for our part of the country,” Goodfriend said, “with our heritage of civic engagement, our tolerance and progressivism, our wealth of water power.” He went on at some length about the return of cottage manufacturing in western Massachusetts and the need to expand the market for their goods to neighboring states that had been cut off from each other in recent years. There was even serious discussion, he said, of rebuilding the railroad line from Greenfield, Massachusetts, over to Bennington, Vermont . . .

Goodfriend's palaver had turned rote because he found his attention focused more on the signal charms of Lorraine Moncalvo, and a portion of his brain was spinning scenarios in which he might possibly acquaint himself more intimately with her.

“You sound like a politician,” Temple remarked good-naturedly, with a wink to Lorraine.

“Oh, but I am one,” Goodfriend replied with an equal effort at good humor. “And so much of politics is salesmanship, isn't it? This outreach we're on, for instance. The need to sell an idea to people. The idea of commonwealth! Funny,” his tone shifted perceptibly, “but I can't escape the odd feeling that I've met you somewhere before. There's even something about your voice.”

“Mr. Merton was in the movies, back in the day,” Lorraine said, because she knew Temple was averse to talking about that bygone phase of his life. “He was on TV too.”

“Wait a minute,” Goodfriend said and then snapped his fingers. “It's coming to me:
Boomtown
? On HBO?”

Lorraine nodded and beamed.

“Oh, that was such a great show! You played . . . whatsisname . . . ? Oh, God . . . help me out.”

“Lamont,” Lorraine said. “Lamont Circe—”

“The guy who poisons . . . whasisname?”

“Ferdinand Belasco, the mayor.”

“Right!”

“And about seventeen other characters before it was all over,” Temple added, popping a quartered egg in his mouth.

“Well, isn't this something?” Goodfriend exclaimed.

“Did you see
The Big Lebowski
?” Lorraine asked.

“Oh, of course. One of my favorites.”

“He was in that. He played Thug Number Two, you know, when those guys bust into the Dude's apartment and toss a ferret in his bathtub.”

“Oh, yes! That was hilarious. That was you?”

“I was a much younger man,” Temple said. “Plus the outfits and the hair—you'd never recognize me.”

“He was in quite a few of the Coen Brothers movies.
O Brother, Burn After Reading, No Country for Old Men.
”

“They were great artists,” Temple said. “I hope their art doesn't disappear like the stage plays of the Roman Empire did.”

“Oh, gosh, it's sickening to contemplate.” Goodfriend shook his head.

“You know, we have no idea what the music of classical Rome sounded like,” Temple said.

“Is that so? None?”

“There's no notation, no recordings, of course, nothing. Gone without a trace. And now we can see the stupidity in the old modern times of putting everything on digital media.”

“I hate to think about it,” Goodfriend said. “Believe me, I'll take this up with our people. We must do what we can to preserve the art of the cinema. But more to the point . . .” He then proceeded to lay out the actual business of his casual visit, just as the servant girl deposited a little dessert platter of honeyed nut cakes on the table and took the other lunch plates away. He told of the formation of the Berkshire People's Republic under their “foundational leader” Glen Ethan Greengrass, and their effort to build a greater New England federation under a central government, and of the need to raise subscriptions to support that effort. Temple grew visibly more uncomfortable the longer Goodfriend talked. Then Goodfriend took the paper money out of his coat and got to the heart of the matter.

Temple heard him out but replied as plainly as possible, “Are you out of your mind? I won't exchange silver coin for that stuff.”

“Sir,” Goodfriend replied. “You can't expect to operate a government with no revenue. We're determined to establish the federation and we are negotiating the terms of fiscal cooperation right now with your representatives in town. We're convinced that this subscription exchange is the fairest system anyone could come up with.”

“You propose to run our affairs from over in Massachusetts?”

“No, just to coordinate regional cooperation and redevelopment—”

“Thank you for your company at lunch,” Temple said, standing suddenly and dashing his cloth napkin on the table, “but I've got calves to attend to and fences to mend and a long list of routine chores to take care of. Thanks for stopping by and good luck with your scheme.”

“It's not a scheme, sir. It's a task of nation building.”

Temple Merton walked straight out through the pantry and the rear door.

“You see what Mr. Hamilton was up against in his day,” Goodfriend said to Lorraine.

“Frankly, I didn't understand your pitch at all, apart from your love of old movies,” she said cordially. “Come, I'll walk you to the door.”

On the front porch, Buddy Goodfriend turned to her one last time and said, “We're going to make this happen. And we'll do whatever's necessary to raise the requisite funds.”

“You know, there was so much about the crash that was tragic and terrible,” she said. “But now that it's over we find ourselves enjoying a remarkable degree of freedom. And having tasted it, I don't think we'll allow ourselves to be pushed around again. That must be your pony over there.”

“Yes.”

“He's a sweetie. Enjoy your trip back in this beautiful weather.”

T
HIRTY-TWO

Ainsley Perlew, also known as Sonny Boy, crept up behind a hedgerow on the north-facing slope of Coot Hill Road nine miles northeast of Union Grove. Seven cows grazed in a pasture there about two hundred yards from his position. The sight of them lit up the parietal lobe of his brain like a pine knot flaring in a fire. Ainsley had avoided the roads out of town and ranged through the woods and edges of the fields in a transport of sensation and anticipation as he sought the opportunity to do what he was best at. In the service of that endeavor, he carried a backpack containing a disassembled bolt action rifle chambered for the Springfield .30-06 cartridge with a 24-inch matte stainless steel barrel and a superlight detachable carbon fiber stock. The weapon was fitted for a Leupold scope, a lightweight Hechman carbon fiber bipod, and a T-8 cell moderator sound suppressor, or silencer, that had cost more originally than the rifle when new. These had all been a gift, Buddy Goodfriend said when he presented them to Ainsley, from the great man himself, Glen Ethan Greengrass.

As a child in the old times, Ainsley had been diagnosed as an Asperger's syndrome case, closer to the more extreme end of the spectrum that bordered on autism. His father, the forest biology research specialist of the Toth Arboretum outside Worcester, Massachusetts, had been similarly equipped for life but navigated successfully through the doctorate program at MIT and then found a position that allowed him to work alone. Ainsley grew up on the three-hundred-acre grounds of that establishment, where from the age of seven he was free to ramble the trails and dells, to stalk small game, and develop his particular skills. He felt freer and happier in his solitary pursuits there than anyplace, school in particular, which had been a special hell for him with its horrifying social pressures. He perceived people talking at him as a form of torture, while the world outside the arboretum, with its highway strips, cacophonous signage, bunker-like buildings, whirring color, and hostile movement, gave him migraines.

Now, with the automobiles all gone, and the economy reduced to a shadow of what it had been, and the human population winnowed steeply, the whole northeast region was turning into a kind of greater arboretum that Ainsley Perlew felt wonderfully at home in. His journey this day was a joyful symphony of sensation. The songs of birds and insects, the smell of growth and decay, the dappled sunlight in the tender new foliage transported him to a place of exultation where the perturbations of human society could not afflict him and he was free to be his essential self. The sensation of being in perfect unity with the world around him made his body seem to sing at the cellular level.

The temperature at two-thirty in the afternoon was a perfect sixty-nine degrees. From his perch along the old tumbledown stone wall, in the shade of the woods that followed the upland ridge of Coot Hill, he took a length of hard sausage from his coat pocket and gnawed on it as he surveyed the cows below. It amused him to the point of hilarity that cows had faces like people, like every other animal in the world, eyes, nose, a mouth. When the thought came to him that people's faces generally looked as dumb as cows, he almost choked on a chaw of sausage in the attempt to suppress his laughter.

When he finished his lunch, he took the various parts of his rifle out of the backpack, each piece lovingly wrapped in a little piece of blanket cloth and secured with a ribbon. He plugged the stock into the receiver body with the scope premounted, screwed in the barrel, attached the sound suppressor, fitted up the bipod, and locked in a ten-round magazine. He did it all in a leisurely manner, pausing to chuckle now and again over the cows' big round eyes, soft brown noses, and lolling tongues. Then, he found a nice flat rock along the tumbledown wall, positioned the rifle, flipped up the hinged lens caps, and had a look at the cows under magnification. The Leupold's lenses were so crisp he could count the flies orbiting the silly beasts.

Ainsley was intuitively very good at math. He made a series of calculations in his head in preparation for his shots: the distance, vertical drop between himself and his targets, wind direction and speed (negligible). He experienced math, especially calculus, as a matrix of flavors ranging from bitter to delicious the closer he got to putting the numbers in order properly. His first shot caught the nearest brown and white Guernsey directly in the left side of its head and dropped it in place like a big parcel on a doorstep. The others continued to graze. The silencer did not completely eliminate the report of the bullet, but toned it down considerably to about the level of, say, someone splitting stove billets with a kindling ax. It was only when the fourth cow dropped that the remaining three seemed to perceive some clue as to things not being right. They quit their grazing and began to stroll down the sloping pasture away from their fallen sisters, but did not make it very far before Ainsley managed to kill them all.