The Harrows of Spring (17 page)

“The world is going to hell,” Teddy observed.

“Everything changes, everything passes,” Daniel said.

A gentle twilight descended over the back garden like a pleasant dream when Daniel spied a familiar face inside at the bar, about fifty feet away. It startled him and set his insides churning. This figure was the rough, brawny, moody boatman Daniel had journeyed west with on the Erie Canal almost three years ago on the barge
Glory
, Randall McCoy, the man who had tried to sell Daniel and his traveling companion, Evan Holder, into an indenture at the Lockport flight of locks, then under reconstruction by gangs of laborers. Daniel and Evan had barely escaped that fate, in the course of which Daniel discharged a pistol into the gut of one Bryan Farnum, superintendent of the works. They never learned the fate of Mr. Farnum, though they knew that a gang of mounted regulators was sent out after them. In the event, Daniel and Evan made it to Buffalo, and then slipped their pursuers on a boat out of Buffalo harbor. A week later that boat, a cargo scow not unlike the Germantown tub they'd just purchased, foundered in a storm on Lake Erie off the shoals of Sandusky, where Evan was lost.

“How about we go back to the boat, settle in for night?” Teddy said, quaffing the last of his beer. “It's been quite a day and I'd like to try her out for sleeping. Daniel . . . ?”

“Huh?”

Daniel's attention was riveted to the scene inside the barroom. It was McCoy, all right, no doubt, right down to the braids in his beard. He was in conversation with two other men at the bar and it did not seem an especially friendly confab. He looked physically slighter than Daniel remembered him, his hair a little thinner on top, and his once raffish clothing shabby. McCoy's face seemed ruddier, too, and Daniel watched him knock back two whiskeys in a span of a few minutes. One of the other two men placed a hand on McCoy's arm and McCoy brusquely batted it away.

“What do you say, Daniel? Get on back to the boat?” Teddy asked. “I found some honey nougats at Aulk's. We can share. Watch the moon rise.”

“You go on,” Daniel said, his gaze still fastened on McCoy.

“What's in there?” Teddy asked.

“Someone I thought I knew from when I was away,” Daniel said.

“Are you going to have a glass with him?”

“No,” Daniel said. He did not say that he was going to kill him, which was exactly the objective that had spun itself out in his mind as he sat and watched. “Do me a favor. Fetch my bedroll and things at the livery and bring them to the boat. I'll be back by-and-by.”

“Well, all right,” Teddy said a little diffidently and made to leave the table.

When Teddy was gone, Daniel rooted in his pockets and found an envelope of the machine-made guitar strings, one of several sets he'd purchased, and took out the third or G-string, sturdy brass-wound steel wire. He made loops at each end and formed rolling hitches around two metal spoons that remained on the table from the meal. He thrust the apparatus into a jacket pocket, keeping his eye on the scene within the barroom. The boy waiter returned and asked if he wanted a cigar, the Red Hook Monarch being the house specialty, he said. Daniel said maybe next time. Meanwhile, the two men palavering with Randall McCoy left him abruptly at the bar, apparently not on the friendliest terms. McCoy remained there slumped on his elbows and calling for two more whiskeys while Daniel watched. The sky above the outdoor dining terrace was filling with stars. McCoy demonstrably slapped some coin on the bar, as if he were angry, and walked toward the front entrance, unsteady on his feet. Daniel waited ten seconds and followed. Mentally, he was back on Channel Island, incandescent with the deadly training he'd received there.

At this hour, Commercial Row was quiet but not deserted. The merchants were just closing up, sweeping the plank sidewalks in front of their establishments. A few stragglers of the day's business lingered palavering in the feeble lantern light. Here and there a cart boy made his way with a late load, men rolled barrels inside a warehouse, a few wagons plied the carriageway, some loaded and some empty. Daniel caught sight of McCoy, listing from side to side, heading south on the sidewalk. He followed at a respectful distance. Soon the street life petered out altogether, the sidewalk ended, and a darkened zone began where the empty stalls of the farmers' day market stood between the heart of the waterfront and Slaven's Hotel at the other end, under a tangle of decrepitating freeway ramps. He and McCoy were the only pedestrians there. Up ahead, a candle lantern hung from Slaven's disorderly barroom, the type known among boatmen as a gully den. More lights burned within and the chords of a concertina playing a reel in a minor key carried up the street. A pig furtively crossed the street and disappeared in a lot filled with weeds, rubble, and trash. Daniel quickened his step and moved lightly until he was virtually on McCoy's heels, then spoke his name to the back of his head, which brought McCoy to a lurching stop. He wheeled around almost losing his balance.

“You following me?” McCoy said, peering intently into Daniel's face. His breath was sour and Daniel noticed that his lower front teeth were missing.

“I guess I am.”

“Whaddaya want?” Then a little flare of recognition. “Say, I know you!”

“Yes you do.”

“Help me out.”

“Springtime, three years ago.”

“Yeah, she comes around every year,” McCoy said. “Look, here she is back again. Thank Gawd for that . . .”

McCoy cackled and wobbled in place, drunker even than Daniel had first supposed.

“The Lockport flight,” Daniel said.

McCoy's features scrunched together at the center of his face. He canted his head sideways, one way and then the other, peering harder.

“Boil me for a shad,” he muttered. “You! You rascal! Didn't you make a fine escape, though?”

“I did.”

“That was some trick, you slippery sonofabitch. You know I lost my boat over that business?”

“Is that so?” Daniel said.

“Oh, it ruined me.”

“You deserved it. You were going to sell us into slavery for twenty-five dollars.”

“Wait just a minute,” McCoy protested. “The indenture ain't slavery.”

“It might as well be. How is it different?”

“Well, if you live through your term, you're free to go.”

“In other words, you were going to let them try to work us to death.”

“You two looked pretty sturdy,” McCoy retorted and giggled. “Hey, it wasn't personal. Just business.”

“I see,” Daniel said. “And what business are you up to now?”

“I do a li'l this, a li'l that. I miss the canal. The lovely, easy life.”

“It was a lovely,” Daniel agreed. “Who were those men you were bickering with at the Oyster House?”

“Them? Oh, I work for them sometimes.”

“Doing what?”

“You don't want to know,” McCoy said darkly. “You had a friend along. Younger. What was he called?”

“Evan.”

“Yes! Evan! A lively boy! Oh, we got on well, him and me. What happened to him?”

“Dead.”

“Oh? How's that?”

“Lost in a storm on Lake Erie. Washed overboard.”

“Sorry to hear that. She's bad when she's angry, Lake Erie is. Shallow, you know. That wind whips her right up, quick and fierce. Come on, le's have a drink—”

“What happened to Farnum?”

“Huh?”

“The super at Lockport.”

“What happened!” McCoy echoed, with an edge of manic hilarity. “Well, you shot him, didn't you?”

“Yes I did. Did he live?”

“'Course not. He was dead before sundown. I forgot your name.”

“Daniel.”

McCoy's rheumy eyes opened wide. The concertina music emanating from Slaven's barroom segued into a merry, frenetic jig, “The Stool of Repentance.”

“Daniel,” he said. “Hold on now. You were in the paper a while ago. I saw the item. Why, there's a pretty price on you. Am I right?”

“That's correct,” Daniel said, reaching into his pocket.

“And not just for shooting whatsisface. What else was it you done? I forget.”

“It doesn't matter now.”

“It was big as I recall. 'Course it matters.”

“Not for our purposes.”

“What purpose is that?” McCoy said.

“To answer one question.”

“Being what?”

“How would you sum up your life.”

“Sum up my life?”

“Yes. In a few sentences,” Daniel said.

“Hmph. You really wanna know?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, here goes.” McCoy burped. “Grew up rough. Survived the troubles. Prospered on the Erie. Was beloved by my mules. Lost it all. Drank too much. And here we are. Why do you ask?”

“Because it's over now,” Daniel said, and in a swift, deft motion he whipped the guitar string garrote over Randall McCoy's head and, pulling the spoon handles, tightened the apparatus around McCoy's throat, at the same time dragging McCoy on his boot heels by main force into a darkened empty market vendor's stall a few yards away.

“This is personal,” Daniel whispered in his ear.

McCoy bucked and thrashed violently, but he was not as strong as he once was, and in a few minutes it was over. Daniel left him there under a plank table, knowing that the hogs would be back.

He left the scene at once, the frenetic jig from Slaven's gully den gaining in speed and violence as he departed. Walking casually toward the heart of Commercial Row, he felt the peculiar sensation of returning to himself after being not entirely present for an interval. The training still resided inside him like a sinister tenant dwelling in the attic of the house that was his psyche.

T
HIRTY-SIX

Beginning at sunrise, frantic with worry, Robert searched for Britney in the obvious places, though he was mystified as to how or why she would remove Sarah's body, or where she might take it, or what she might do with it wherever she took it. He had a look, first, in the family barn around the corner, where he discovered that Cinnamon the cow was in distress from not being milked for more than two days. He took care of her, dumping two whole pails of warm milk in the sand and leaving a third steaming in the chicken run. Anyway, Britney was not there, nor had anyone seen her at the New Faith compound, nor anyone along Main Street, including at Einhorn's store. He hiked a little way out of town to the rusted steel railroad bridge that crossed the Battenkill at the place along the river where Britney liked to gather wilds and there was no sign of her there. He peeked inside the ruins of the Kmart on his way back to town. Weeds were growing in there in places where sunshine came through the partially caved-in roof. He went to Daniel's print shop, knowing that his son was out of town, and knocked on the padlocked door there. Nothing. He tried the Congregational church. Nobody there, not even Loren. He trudged over to the Schmidt farm, then the Deaver farm on Pumpkin Hill, and then across town to the Weibel farm on the back side of Schoolhouse Hill. No one had seen Britney. It occurred to him that she might have just walked away from Union Grove altogether in a fog of despair, with no particular destination in mind, just walked away in torment and misery until she dropped, or got sick, or met roughnecks on the road, or encountered a dangerous animal, a catamount, a bear, a pack of wolves—of which, he was cognizant, there were plenty around these days. Or, he began to wonder, perhaps she had lit out with some destination in mind—Glens Falls? Bennington?—to deliberately start life over once again. But what about Sarah?

By midafternoon Robert himself had entered a fog of exhausted despair, partially induced by walking more than twelve miles all day without eating anything. He returned home to rest for a little while, found a pot of bean and potato soup in the meat safe, where the mice could not get at it, and devoured all of it cold. He couldn't help himself after that but fell asleep on the living room sofa amid the splinters of Sarah's shattered violin. And when he woke up it was with a vivid intuition, the residue of a dream, that he had missed looking in the most obvious place he should have gone to first: the childhood home up the North Road out of town where Britney had told him more than a few times she'd spent the happiest years of her life. So he pulled himself together and left the house again and hiked past the New Faith compound on the North Road out of town. Sure enough in a little while he came upon the handsome old white farmhouse all crowded around by sumacs, lilacs, box elders, and climbing vines, with its scorched addition and the yard filled with early spring wildflowers, the mustard cress, pink cranesbill, and subtle wild red columbine. The afternoon was windless, the temperature a perfect 70 degrees, and the landscape utterly silent except for the chatter of songbirds. As he stood in the empty road before the house, he noticed his chore wagon parked in the weeds and it was as if a great weight slid off his shoulders.

He stole in through the broken kitchen door, off all but one of its hinges, and entered. He paused to listen, hearing nothing, then crept stealthily toward the front rooms and it did not take him long to find Britney lying in the window seat wrapped in a blanket with her daughter's corpse. Britney was spooned up against the body with her long pale hair falling over the edge of the seat. She did not acknowledge Robert's presence. He was not altogether sure for a few moments that she was alive, but the room was filled with light and watching closely he soon observed the blanket rise and fall with her breathing.

“Brit,” he said gently.

She did not reply. He stepped closer carefully. He wanted to lie down next to her and spoon against her in grief, but there was no room left in the window seat, so he squatted beside her and then slid his legs out so he could sit on the floor right next to her. He ventured to reach up and touch her and she allowed him to, and soon he was stroking the side of her neck by her ear, and rubbing the warm hollow between her neck and her shoulder, and after a little while Britney started to shudder soundlessly in tears, and Robert rose to his knees and buried his face in that familiar soft, warm, fragrant hollow between her neck and shoulder, saying, “Oh, Britney, I love you so much.” He didn't repeat himself, but eventually her small hand swung out from under the blanket seeming to search and reach, and he took it and squeezed it and said, “I'm here. We're all here. Together.”