The Harrows of Spring (18 page)

T
HIRTY-SEVEN

Karen Grolsch got leave from Carl Weibel, a kind and understanding employer, to take a half day at the poultry barns for personal reasons. She had not taken a sick day all year and he considered her a good and valued worker. She had done such an excellent job as duck boss that Weibel was the chief supplier of cured duck sausage and preserved duck (bottled in its own fat) in Washington County. She walked back to town in lovely weather just after noon, changed into clean trousers and sturdy shoes, and set off on foot for Stephen Bullock's plantation, intent on talking to him about his quarrel with the town, the results to be published, she hoped, in the newspaper.

She had been to Bullock's place once before, at a levee a year ago to celebrate the rescue of his boatmen from Dan Curry's hostage racket in Albany. That had been a sultry summer evening of the purest festivity, unalloyed even by religious ceremony, and virtually everyone in town had been invited, though perhaps only a hundred or so actually came. Bullock himself was in fine form that night, such a striking figure with his splendid clothes, tall boots, long silver hair, and clean-shaven face, like a heroic figure in a fine painting from the nation's founding days. There was music and dancing and tables groaning with things to eat—old-times treats of meat and sausages in buns and little cornmeal crackers that the older people called taco chips and endless drafts of cider and beer—and swags of magical electric lights from tree to tree, and music amplified through loudspeakers, because Mr. Bullock was able to make his own electricity. Karen had gotten rather drunk herself and allowed a young man named Bruce (surname unknown to her), who worked on Bullock's orchard crew, to kiss her and fondle her breasts in the hayloft of the great barn while the band played the beautiful “Two Rivers Waltz”
for the dancers down below. So her memory of Bullock's world was, on the whole, tinged with enchantment and she marveled that so much had changed in relations between Bullock and the town since then.

She had plenty of time on the way there to rehearse her introduction and review the questions she had for him. She had no appointment—a bygone formality in a world without phones or mail—but hoped for perhaps a quarter hour of his time. The journey was about four miles on foot, an hour and half at her moderate pace. Karen was aware that she had hardly ever in her life traveled any distance alone, apart from her daily trip to the farm. She had gone to other levees, holiday festivals, and dances out of town, to Battenville, Salem, and the great farm estates around the county, but never alone, always with friends, and usually in a cart or wagon. She was aware also that possible danger lurked along the lonely road outside the safety of the village. Mountain lions, or catamounts, were so brazen now that they sometimes ventured into village streets in broad daylight. And then there were those human predators reputed to roam the countryside looking for opportunity. She had never met a bandit, though she did not doubt they existed in more than rumor. So this spring day, in perfect weather, she marched along in confidence enjoying the feel of her own healthy, young body and her happy aspiration to be become more than just the duck boss at Weibel's farm.

She rambled past the intersection where the car dealers had battled for supremacy of annual sales, their vacant parking lots now miniature forests of poplar and sumac, the showrooms empty shells. The sight of these ruins and the monumental waste they represented made her momentarily angry. She knew that the people running things in the old times understood that their way of life was a dead end, and she could even imagine that they were so locked into their systems and habits that they were more or less trapped. What she couldn't grasp was their utter failure even to imagine another plan. So they took it as far as it would go and then just let it all crash. She remembered riding in cars, but they were all gone by the time she was seven years old, and then incrementally so were all the other things that had made life so comfortable. Yet she didn't especially miss it. She was used to the new ways and the new times, and ordinarily she didn't suffer from how it was now.

Along the River Road, Karen came to a slow water eddy along the Hudson where five New Faith brothers under the direction of Shiloh, the engineer, were building crib docks in preparation for the arrival of the new town boat. Brother Shiloh, a broad man of sharp angles, recognized her from town and she said she was out gathering the news for the soon-to-be-published newspaper, and so he gave her a little tour of the works. Shiloh's men were building log cribs—six-foot-square boxes like little cabins, joined together with half-inch iron pipe through auger holes, each box then filled with rocks, laid out in a line from shore, to be decked over with cedar planks coming down from Hokely's sawmill. The men had gotten two parallel sets of cribs in so far and hoped to have four altogether in place before the boat arrived, creating a slot protected from the current and the wind on two sides.

Karen scribbled notes as Shiloh showed her around and explained everything in his lilting Carolina accent. The new sights and sounds excited her tremendously: the smell of the skinned logs and the fishy overtone of the river, the afternoon sunshine, the bright little breeze off the water, the men working in the sun, in and out of the water, with their shirts off and muscles rippling. Mostly what excited her was the change of scene. It was so refreshing to be somewhere other than Mr. Weibel's poultry barns, or even at home. She told Shiloh that she was going to interview Mr. Bullock.

“Well, I'm not versed in the politics of it all,” he said, “but as you get up the road you'll see that the squire has got a perfectly good boat docked there, not being used, along with a warehouse, and it's a dang shame that it's come to this. I had to pull these men off the hotel, which we are close to finishing. By-the-by, the boss is sending a wagon to fetch us back to town around five if you would like to hitch a ride.”

“Thank you,” Karen said. “I would appreciate that.”

“Yeah, it's all uphill going back,” Brother Shiloh said. “Mind if I ask: are you married?”

“No, I'm not.”

“Got any feel for Jesus?”

“Probably not the way you mean.”

“How is it you folks up here can't get that Jesus spirit?”

“We're not against him,” she said. “I guess we don't think about it as much as you do.”

“Well, you're a sturdy gal, anyways,” he said admiringly with a smile. “My wife passed with that Mexican flu. You come back later and ride home with us, hear? And enjoy your session with the squire. I hear he's quite a character.”

“Yes sir,” she said, and she continued on her way.

T
HIRTY-EIGHT

The Reverend Loren Holder turned up at the New Faith compound after breakfast and found Brother Jobe in his headquarters, the old principal's office just inside the old high school's lobby. The whole building smelled of corn bread.

“Morning, Rev,” Brother Jobe bellowed. “Glad you're here. I've sent a boy over to the mayor's house twice already, but he's not there, nor—”

“I have some bad news,” Loren interrupted him. “Robert's girl—you know he lives with the young widow—”

“'Course I do. What about her?”

“She's lost her daughter.”

“Lost?”

“Dead.”

“What?”

“Tetanus, apparently.”

“Oh, dear,” Brother Jobe groaned. He backed up stiff-leggedly and sat on the edge of his desk. “Just like that?”

“I was there. She was in convulsions. Her muscles just kind of seized up. It was terrible.”

“What'd the doc do?”

“He wasn't there.”

“Why didn't someone fetch him there?”

“He'd been drinking at the tavern. Hard. Some of the men took him home in a wheelbarrow. He was too far gone to work any miracles. As it happened, Jason LaBountie was with the girl—”

“The ding-dang veterinarian? A little girl ain't a goat.”

“Whatever you think of him, Jason's a science man.”

“Well, he didn't save her, did he?” Brother Jobe snapped back.

“There was nothing anyone could do at that point. He told me to ask Jeanette, the doctor's wife, for some particular medicine that might have helped and she said they just didn't have any, so . . .”

“Lord.”

The two men just remained silently in place, gazing into the linoleum, as though memorializing the dead. Eventually, Brother Jobe spoke: “You seeing about a funeral?”

“I don't know where any of them are. Robert, Britney. They're not at home, and the child's body is missing too.”

Brother Jobe sighed.

“You don't suppose they went and done themselves in, do you?”

“No, I really don't see that.”

“You know how people get in these times. Grief and all.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, then there ain't nothing to do but wait. Sooner or later they got to turn up.”

“There's something else,” Loren said.

“Huh?”

“There's seven dead cows in a pasture out on Coot Hill. All shot clean through their heads, one bullet each.”

After a stunned interval, Brother Jobe said, “Ain't that elegant?” His thoughts then naturally turned to the curious personage called Sonny Boy, and he thought how he would like to wring his neck like a pullet's. “When it rains, it pours, don't it?”

“They belonged to a farmer named Temple Merton,” Loren said.

“I've met Merton. Sold him a mule last September. Good man and a good farmer. He was on TV back in the day.”

“Yeah, well, he sent one of his hands over to Einhorn's store and the message came up to me a little while ago. Apparently, he had a visit at his place the last day or so with one of these out-of-towners.”

“You don't say? I wonder if it was the illustrious Mr. Greengrass himself, or his number two. Did you hear him address the multitudes from his hotel window last night?”

“I missed it,” Loren said.

“Oh, it was a dilly. Near as I can make out, the man's a raving maniac. They're trying to put the squeeze on us, you know.”

“I heard they asked for donations,” Loren said. “For what, I didn't get.”

“Subscriptions, they call it, for being part of their so-called federation, which ain't nothing that we would benefit from, far as I can see. In my opinion it's all a ding-dang smokescreen and a con. They think we're going to hand over good silver in exchange for their paper trash money. It's tribute, plain and simple. This Greengrass sumbitch is just a common grifter dressed up in socialist do-good glad rags. His troops don't amount to much. Buncha pimply-faced kumbaya-singing jackanapes. But I suppose he's got something up his sleeve, some kind of backup out there. What it's come to now with these dead cows is we really got to think about defending ourselves, and I mean start by running these birds out of the county ASAP. My next-in-charge man, Joseph, has been over to meet with the squire, to see if we can raise some strong-arm from his bunch. Well, Bullock flat-out refused to lend a hand. Now, if you can raise up mebbe twenty-five capable men from town, I can arm them. We've been laying in firearms and ammunition all year wherever we can scare it up—I hope this don't offend your sense of pastoral decorum.”

“No, you're right, we have to defend ourselves,” Loren said.

“I'm glad you see it that way,” Brother Jobe said. “I expect my two rangers to return from Albany in twenty-four hours. They have tactical training and can lead the men we pull together. I've got perhaps thirty in this outfit can handle a fight. Greengrass and his inner circle are put up at my hotel. I aim to let them stay there long as they please, keep them close to hand, so to speak, and under a watchful eye. Of course, we should have expected something like this sooner or later in a land that's gone both lawless and godless. By the way, I know I ain't the only bystander who's noticed the doc has crawled into a bottle. Have you spoken to him about this, I wonder, in your pastoral capacity?”

“Yes, I have,” Loren said. “Frankly, I think it's getting the better of him. I don't know what to do about it.”

“Mebbe I'll parley with him,” Brother Jobe said. “Put a different view of things on the table for him to chaw on. Oh, and let me know when you catch sight of our friend Mr. Robert Earle. It troubles me greatly that he and his girl have been touched by such tragedy.”

T
HIRTY-NINE

Karen Grolsch proceeded north on the River Road, passing by the nameless wretch nailed to a tree by Bullock. There was even less of him remaining than since Brother Joseph's recent encounter: just a skull with a few leathery patches of flesh and some sparse strands of hair. Beyond the initial shock of recognition, she quickly regained her composure and began to make a sketch of it in her notebook. Then she plodded on, coming at last to Bullock's driveway. Before she arrived at the gracious turnaround at the top, between the handsome old manse and the great barn, she was met by a sturdy, dark-haired man of middle years with an air of authority and a rifle, which he proceeded to sling over his shoulder when he discerned that the visitor was a woman.

“Good afternoon,” Karen said. “I've come from town to see Mr. Bullock.”

“Do you have an appointment?” the man asked. This was Michael Delson, a car salesman in the old times and now a household attaché and security aide to Mr. Bullock.

“No, I don't,” she answered.

When asked, and she stated what her business was—reporter for the
Union News Leader
, a newspaper starting up in town—Delson couldn't hide his amused interest.

“How can I get a copy?” he asked.

“You might have to wait a while,” she replied. “The first one hasn't come out yet. But it will.”

“We could use a newspaper around here,” he remarked.

He took her to the kitchen door of the manse and left her in the care of the cook, Lilah Jaffrey, who put her at a table and gave her some tea, an herb blend of rose hips, Roman chamomile, and lemon verbena, and some buttery oat cookies. Lilah did all of the talking, while she adroitly evaded answering any question put to her by Karen. She talked about the old times and the children she had lost, and the husband who abandoned her when the old times lost traction and slipped into the new because there was no more office work for a municipal employee in the Glens Falls city purchasing department, and the unusual weather in recent years, and what a fine gentleman Mr. Bullock was, and how fortunate she was to occupy her place in the household, and eventually both women retreated into globes of silence while Lilah went about larding a leg of lamb for the Bullocks' evening meal. An hour went by, then another. Karen considered leaving but she felt that she had already made a certain investment of time and effort, and after exactly two hours and twenty minutes Michael Delson reappeared and said, “Come with me.”

They passed through a center hall as wide and as well furnished as most people's parlors—or “living rooms,” as they used to be called—and came finally to the library, where the (to Karen) near mythical Bullock himself slouched in a padded leather executive chair behind a large old desk carved with spiral pilasters at the corners and other neoclassical decorations. His moleskin vest was open and he had a two-month-old gray tabby kitten on his lap enjoying having its cheeks massaged. Karen stepped forward, introduced herself, and extended her hand across the desk. Bullock took it and gave it a squeeze rather than a shake. He gestured at the empty chair off a corner of the desk and she took it. He did not offer any explanation as to why he'd kept her waiting for more than two hours.

“That's a sweet little kitten,” Karen said. “They're not so common in people's houses anymore.”

“We like to keep some of the old customs alive here,” he said. “Who doesn't love a kitten?”

“People have become superstitious about them,” she said. “We have cats in the barn where I work. To keep the rats down.”

“And where is that?”

“Mr. Weibel's farm. I'm the duck boss.”

“Oh, his ducks are famous for miles around. You're a busy girl. I was informed that you also work for a newspaper out of Union Grove that is launching at some unspecified future date.”

She told him about the forthcoming
Union News Leader
. And about the proprietor.

“I know his father very well. Years ago he built a Japanese teahouse for me. He brought his boy around then to help. A quiet, serious boy. Good worker.”

“He's a grown man now, sir.”

“Of course. I understand he left town a couple years ago and returned last Christmas. The minister's boy left with him. Didn't come back.”

“Evan Holder,” she said. “It's sad. He was a few years ahead of me at the big school, when it was still open. He was lively, full of fun.”

The kitten stretched, jumped off Bullock's lap, and trotted out of the room. Bullock swiveled around in his chair to a counter behind him where a tray with a decanter and some glasses stood. He poured himself a drink.

“Want one?” he said. “You look like a grown woman to me.”

“Thank you, I will. What is it?”

“My own whiskey. Made from my own barley. Distilled about three hundred feet from where we sit.” He swiveled back around and handed a fine crystal pony glass to her across the table. “How do you like being in the center of the universe?”

“Is that what this is?” she said.

“It is to me,” he said.

“Did you know there's a skull nailed to tree about a quarter mile south of here on the River Road?” she said.

Bullock recoiled slightly, then recomposed himself. “Yes,” he said.

“Look, I made a drawing of it.”

It was hardly what he expected. She opened her notebook and passed it across the desk. Examining it, Bullock took such a deep draught of his whiskey that he nearly drained the glass he'd just filled.

“That's quite good,” he said, wincing, and passed it back to her. “Why'd you do it?”

“Well, I don't have a camera,” she said.

“Point taken.”

“Who was he?”

Bullock made a face. “Some riffraff caught stealing a horse. His name is recorded in a file somewhere around here. Offhand I forget.”

“The people in town think that a feud exists between you and them,” she said, pencil poised above a fresh page in the notebook.

“Is that so?”

“You stopped sending your trade boat to Albany.”

“For now.”

“They're running out of things in town. Foodstuffs, other goods.”

“Oh?”

“Are you surprised, sir?”

Bullock's demeanor darkened. For a moment his mouth became a hard thin line.

“It became burdensome for me,” he said after some reflection. “You know my boatmen were detained at Albany a year ago and held hostage for ransom. It was very inconvenient. And they could have been killed.”

“They were brought safely home, though, by men of Union Grove.”

“That's true. But I lost all the cargo that went down with them, including many barrels of good jack cider, worth a small fortune. I had to eat the loss.”

“Eat it?”

“So to speak. Write it off. Kiss it good-bye. There's no such thing as insurance anymore, you know. In other words, the loss was all mine. So, you ask, why don't I want to keep at it? Well, because it's a very risky business. Those barrels of cider represented an entire apple crop.”

“Don't you need some things from elsewhere too?”

“We're pretty self-sufficient here. When the need arises I'll weigh the situation and decide what to do.”

“The town is having to get its own boat now.”

“Good. They can enjoy the benefits and shoulder the risks. I'm aware that the Jesus people are building a landing downstream of mine.”

“Isn't this all a duplication of effort, sir?”

“Redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing. It makes for resilience.”

“How do you mean?”

“A healthy ecosystem has more than one way to keep itself alive.”

Karen scribbled furiously in her notebook.

“You were elected magistrate last year,” she said, taking a fresh tack.

“Didn't run, though,” Bullock said. “Got elected despite my wishes. Served anyway. Was dragooned into it, really. Then was disrespected by the town during my term of service. So I handed in my resignation.” He swiveled around and poured himself another three fingers of whiskey, then turned back. “You know what I want to talk about? Baseball.”

“Huh? There is no more baseball.”

“Of course there is. We play here.”

“What does baseball have to do with anything?”

“Not so very long ago—last fall, I think—I had a conversation with your mayor, to whom we've already averred, Mr. Robert Earle, father of your newspaper editor, about getting a county baseball league together. Now I think that's an idea that deserves a bit of publicity in this so far alleged newspaper. What could be more entertaining on a summer evening! Get some friendly rivalries going! The equipment is easy enough to make. Why, the boys in my harness shop stitch up a damn good horsehide ball and fine fielder's gloves. Bats are easy to make and some of the old metal ones are still around. I don't know why we can't get started on this. It's May already! What else have you got going for yourselves over there?”

“I'll mention it if you want.”

“You bet I want you to. Someone should tell Robert to get off his duff and start organizing over there!”

“Sir, you might not believe this but there are some people in and around town who just aren't getting enough to eat right now.”

“Well, it's that time of year, the six weeks want.”

“They're even running short of cornmeal.”

Bullock rose out of his seat, came around the desk, and sat against the front edge of it, closer to Karen, looming. He seemed more than ever an imperial presence from a bygone age with his long white hair, tight riding pants going into fine boots, and broad shoulders thrust out of his moleskin vest. He gave off a tantalizing aroma of horse sweat mixed with whiskey.

“This is a new period of history, young lady,” he said. “There are no more guarantees, no social safety nets. People have to learn to shift for themselves. I grant you, they haven't had much time to get used to it, but it's the new reality. Has anyone actually died of starvation over there yet?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Their diet may be more restricted for a while, and they may slim down a bit, but they'll be eating better soon. Surely this is the historic norm for the human race, not the extravaganza of pizza and granola of my halcyon years. That was the exception. Funny, in the old times they would have been delighted to lose a few extra pounds before summer. By the way, you're healthy looking. In fact, you have a fine figure, if you don't mind me saying. What's your secret?”

“Mr. Weibel provides generous food shares. He plans well. And I get all the duck eggs I want.”

“I can do better than that. Want to work for me?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not? It's nice here. I've got everything Weibel has going and then some. Does Carl have baseball over there?”

She had to smile. “No . . .”

“You'd be surprised what it adds to a small, isolated society. Have you got a boyfriend back in town?”

“Now you're embarrassing me, sir.”

“Well, you put me on the spot. It's a simple question.”

“No,” she said.

“You're sweet on Robert's boy, though, aren't you?”

“I don't know him very well.”

“I've got some very fine unmarried young men over here. Big, strapping, healthy specimens.”

“I don't want to leave town, sir,” she said. “Splendid as the life here may be—”

Just then, Bullock's wife, Sophie, came into the library. She was radiant as ever, having been out in her gardens all day, supervising three women who actually did all the digging, grubbing, planting, chopping, and pruning. She wore a simple armless, straw-colored linen sundress with a lace-up bodice that afforded some décolletage.

“Oh . . . !” she said, stopping short at the sight of Karen. “Am I interrupting?”

“We were just playing
Meet the Press
,” Bullock said. “This young lady represents a newspaper starting up in town.”

Bullock made introductions. Sophie swept to her husband's side at the desk. He hooked an arm around her waist. Karen rose from her chair. Sophie held out her hand and Karen took it.

“A newspaper,” Sophie said. “How exciting. Did you reveal all our secrets, darling?”

“Ha! I'm an open book.”

“Will you stay for supper?” Sophie asked.

“Thank you. I must go back to town. I have to get up early for work.”

“Oh?” Sophie said. “You have another job?”

“She's Carl Weibel's duck boss,” Bullock said, full of amusement.

“Ah,” Sophie said. “Well, quack quack.”

“How are you getting back?” Bullock asked.

“I'll walk.”

“It's four miles!” Sophie said. “Mostly uphill. Oh, Stephen, have one of the men run her home in the gig.”

“No, please,” Karen said. “I'd prefer to walk. It's just an hour or so and there's plenty of daylight.”

“Don't say we didn't offer.”

The Bullocks, arm in arm, showed Karen to the door. As she walked back down the drive to the River Road, she was keenly aware of the bastion of solidarity the couple presented, and how skillfully she had been manipulated. Getting the news was not as simple and straightforward as she had imagined. People were subtle and more than the sum of their apparances, she mused.

It happened that Brother Shiloh was still waiting for her at the new landing when she got to it. The other men had already departed in a wagon. He had a big brown mule named Bunny with him and a simple stock saddle aboard. He wouldn't take no for an answer and they doubled up. She tried to avoid pressing her bosom against his back, but it was not really possible. He minded his manners, though, and rode her directly to the house she shared with her mother. All the way home she wondered about Bullock's world and its relation to hers, and how complicated it all actually was.