The Harrows of Spring (19 page)

F
ORTY

Seth and Elam had made twenty-five miles so far that day riding north up the old state highway 4 along the east side of the Hudson, with an excellent chance of making home before sunset, when they came upon a man in the ditch off the right shoulder of the road. There was no human settlement along this stretch of the road, midway between the depopulated villages of Stillwater and Starkville, just old farm fields going back to poplar scrub on the left side and third-growth forest running a quarter mile to the riverbank on the side where the man lay groaning in the weeds. The two rangers each had a riderless horse in train behind his own mount. The stranger lay in the tender spring wildflowers on his back looking up at a clear blue sky, the pink and yellow blossoms such a contrast to his grievous wounds. Only his lips moved but no sound came out. Seth dismounted right away and, panther-like, crept toward where the man lay.

“What happened, friend? Who done this to you?” he asked the man, who appeared to be no more than twenty-five years old, with neatly trimmed beard, brown hair made stringy with sweat, and well-made clothes that would have been elegant if not soaked with blood. His shoes or boots were missing and his pockets were turned out. By now, Elam had come over.

Seth took the man's hand. It was limp. He blinked his eyes strenuously as sweat poured into them. His breathing was shallow. Seth mopped his brow with his sleeve. Elam fetched a water bottle and tried to give the man a drink, but he appeared unable to swallow, or even comprehend that someone was trying to help him. The water just ran off his lips and down his neck.

“Let's have a look you,” Seth said. He'd done some informal medic duty in the Holy Land after his unit was shot up at Nir Banim and their corpsman took one in the occipital lobe. He unbuttoned the wounded man's shirt, ran some water over his chest and stomach to wash the blood away, made an assessment, then rose up, took Elam by the arm, and led him ten paces up the road.

“There's at least three entry wounds up above, maybe more below,” Seth said in a whisper, his words floating upwind, away from the wounded man's hearing, if he still had any. “Whoever done it shot him up more'n necessary and botched the job even at that.”

“Is he a goner then?”

“I dunno. What do you want to do?”

“Can he be moved like this?”

“Pretty high percentage it would kill him,” Seth said.

“I was thinking, maybe one-in-a-thousand shot, we could get him to the doctor.”

“It's about ten mile and two, three hours or more to get back.”

“We can't put him down like a dog,” Elam said. “It wouldn't be Christian.”

“'Course not,” Seth said. “Okay, we got to sit with him and wait for it.”

“He's a gentleman, from the looks of it,” Elam said. “Someone gonna be missing him. Maybe a wife.”

Seth used one of the man's socks as a sponge and dabbed cooling water on his forehead. Elam sat in the weeds behind him to shade his face from the bright afternoon sun and fanned him with his hat while he sang some hymns of the Appalachian gospel in a scratchy baritone: “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior,” “In the Garden,” “Blessed Assurance,” “Softly and Tenderly.” Seth joined in on harmony for some. After an hour and a half, the man's condition had hardly changed.

“I never seen nothing like it,” Seth said. “He flat-out refuses to die.”

“Well, that settles it,” Elam said. “We got to take him back, starting this minute.”

“All right then, let's get him aboard.”

They got him up over the empty saddle of Daniel's big black horse, Raven, in train behind Elam's mount, and trussed him to the tack so he wouldn't shift about.

“Kinda wish the sumbitches that robbed him might try the same with us,” Seth said, “so I could blow them to Gehenna.”

“That wouldn't be Christian, neither, old son.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

F
ORTY-ONE

Robert slept fitfully either sitting up beside the window seat where Britney lay with her dead child or curled on his side on the dusty floor just beneath them with his jacket up around his ears, falling in and out of febrile dreams of his shadow self battling with other shadows. The birds singing at first light woke him from his last ragged interval of slumber, in particular the sad, low, persistent coo of the mourning doves who nested in a dormer upstairs. The big parlor, shrouded in encroaching greenery, was still dim at this hour. As his head cleared, Robert detected a sour note of decay in the room, and knew at once where it came from, and felt impelled to finally take charge and do what was required.

He sat up, torqued his body around, and lay his hand on Britney, just above her hip, and squeezed it gently. She stirred.

“Can you hear me, Brit?” Robert said. The sound of his own voice reverberated painfully off the hard surfaces in the room.

She didn't respond vocally but he was pretty sure she heard him.

“We can't stay here like this forever, and now we're going to do what we have to do.”

She continued to lie there in stoic silence. Robert hoisted himself to his feet. Without any further talk he went back out the rear of the house. He had seen the shovel lying in his chore wagon on the way in. He got it and searched for a suitable place to dig. About fifty yards from the back door he found a semiclear patch surrounded by the barest remnants of what had once been a garden fence. Here, the saplings were sparsest and he was able to cut through their young roots into friable soil. He dug for a good hour, at the end of which he had a hole that left him shoulder deep. It also left him frantically thirsty. He searched around the property and found an old hubcap with about a quart of rainwater in it. It did not look very clean, but he thought for a moment and took a chance. The water almost gagged him it was so sour, but it stayed down. He went back and tidied the corners of the hole. Then he jammed the blade of the shovel in the pile of excavated dirt and went inside.

Britney hadn't moved.

He knelt down beside her again and pressed his cheek against the side of her head. “It's time, now,” he said, and kissed her behind her ear. She began shuddering again, but she allowed him to physically assist her getting up. It was difficult for her. She was stiff and terribly dehydrated. She wobbled on her feet but soon was able to stand on her own. She would not look at him but just stared into the floor, crying. He kissed her again on each cheek, and she allowed him to envelop her in his arms. At last, she responded instinctively by reaching around and squeezing herself into him. Then her crying turned vocal, a terrible keening wail, punctuated by hungry gulps of air and loud sobs. Robert didn't attempt to tell her to stop, or to say anything. He just allowed her to feel the full weight of her suffering. She continued until the sun crept over Moon Hill and sent beams of bright light streaming through the foliage into the room, and she let go of Robert and finally looked up into his face.

“I believe you came here because this is where you want to lay her to rest,” Robert said.

Britney nodded and wiped the moisture from her face. Then she moved back to the window seat, bundled Sarah into the blanket so she was fully covered, and stepped aside. Robert took up the limp bundle in both arms. The rigor mortis had abated. He carried Sarah out the back door and the contrast between the beauty of the day, with all its birdsong, flower scent, and insect buzz, and the inert bundle in his arms struck him with a force like a blow. Britney followed him, blinking and weeping again as she stepped back out into the world. Robert carefully set the bundle into the bottom of the hole and then stood over it. Britney came to his side. They stood silently at the grave for a long time. Finally, Robert felt compelled to speak.

“We commit the body of Sarah Watling to . . . your care,” Robert said, his mouth quavering. “Sarah was much loved and will be much mourned. We come into this world of struggle and we all depart for the same destination and we do the best we can in this beautiful mystery while we're here. We don't know why you took our Sarah —”

“And we'll try not to hold it against you, you twisted sonofabitch,” Britney growled.

Robert waited to be sure she was finished.

“Rest in peace, dear Sarah. You'll live in our hearts.”

Robert upbraided himself for speaking so unoriginally. They stood silently again for an interval. Then Britney went to the dirt pile, grabbed the shovel, and began heaving the earth back into the hole. Robert came around and she gave the shovel to him. She went to the rear of the house and sat on the steps there in a little patch of sunlight watching until Robert finished filling the hole. Then he took Britney home, pulling her the last half mile in the chore wagon because she was so weak with hunger and thirst.

F
ORTY-TWO

Having successfully received and loaded their cargoes early in the morning that day, tipped the cart boys, and acquainted themselves with the rigging, Daniel Earle and Teddy Einhorn trimmed their sails and heaved out of Weems's boatyard on a breeze blowing warmly from the southwest, perfect for tacking back and forth in a broad reach heading north up the Hudson River for home. Daniel took the tiller and Teddy, jumping gleefully about the deck in his bare feet, with his pants rolled up, worked the lines and the leeboards. They passed through the locks at Troy and again at Waterford, just above the junction with the Mohawk River, and finally at Mechanicville—each a silver dime toll to go through—and had good sailing thereafter the rest of the day, fighting a mild but steady current that kept their progress to about two miles an hour, about half the speed that a full-grown man might walk the same distance—the difference being that they carried a ton and a half of cargo.

After a long, bright, successful day of voyaging, watching the peaceful vistas of the countryside pass by, the sentinel forests and occasional bottomland fields, and the few little towns struggling to become a bit of something they once were before modernity dragged them down a cul-de-sac, Daniel and Teddy anchored while there was still some daylight in a little channel between narrow Splinter Island and the place where Mink Creek entered the river. There they ate a supper of delicacies, things purchased at Albany by Teddy for the store: pickled herring, smoked eel, salted ham, hard Duanesburg cheddar cheese, and a very dense sour loaf of dark groat bread made of rye, oats, and ground pumpkin seeds. Then, through a warm and spectacularly lingering twilight, they enjoyed the remaining nougats Teddy had bought the night before along with a sweet cider fortified with jack brandy, sold under the label Dickstein's Coxsackie Malmsey. It advertised itself on the label as a “reliable water purifier and vitality tonic.” Teddy took out his pipe and tamped a thumb of burley tobacco into it. Daniel took out one of four cigars he had stashed in his inside coat pocket and lit up. Tobacco had lost its bad repute now that many farmers in the Hudson Valley grew it for cash and there was no more government to stifle production. They had managed to find machine-made matches in Albany and were bringing back a six-gross lot of matchboxes, sure to be a big hit at Einhorn's store. As the curtain of night fell they observed a fire burning on a hillside distantly to the west, not knowing whether it was a brush pile or somebody's house or a camp of pickers. Behind them to the east coyotes periodically yipped. The moon was not quite up yet, but its corona glowed above the treetops. Overhead the familiar constellations took their age-old positions again.

“It's grand being on the river, isn't it?” Teddy said, blowing a smoke ring in the still air.

“It's a fine life,” Daniel agreed.

“You don't ever say much about what you saw when you were away,” Teddy said. “I know you were on the Erie Canal. What did you see?”

“I saw most the length of it from Amsterdam to Lockport,” Daniel said, dragging on his cigar, eyes squinting as he did. “It's lazy and sweet and slow and dreamy on the Erie Canal.”

“Doesn't it go all the way to Buffalo?”

“It used to,” Daniel said. “At the time, they were reconstructing the five-step flight of locks at Lockport, and that was as far as we went.”

He didn't mention the trouble they met there: the threatened indenture, the shooting of superintendent Farnum, the desperate escape on Randall McCoy's mules.

“How does the Erie compare to sailing the Hudson River?”

“Oh, it's just as pretty but easier work. There's no rush to anything. You just walk your mules up the towpath, the sun shining, flowers blooming, and it's level all the way. The mules are gentle and obedient as if they know it's a great life for them too. It takes hardly any effort to tow a barge on quiet water where there's barely any current.”

“What were the towns like?”

“Real nice,” Daniel said. “A pretty girl in every one. Friendly people. Usually a tavern with good, cheap meals, nice beds.”

“You got to Buffalo, though.”

“Oh yes, we walked it from Lockport. The weather was ideal. Like now.”

“Well, what happened there?”

“Nothing.”

“You traveled on, though. They say you saw a great deal of America.”

“Who says?”

“My pop,” Teddy said. “The store is the center of town chatter, as you know.”

“Of course.” Daniel dragged on his cigar some more and took a long pull on Dickstein's Malmsey.

“So what happened then?” Teddy said.

“We, uh, bought a boat in Buffalo,” Daniel said. “Something like this one. We thought we'd carry cargoes around the Great Lakes to make some money for a while, at least the summer, then figure out the next thing.”

“What was it like sailing the lakes?”

“The lakeshore down along Pennsylvania and Ohio is one fine farm after another, practically shoulder to shoulder, a solid line of them, prosperous as can be. They were kind to us. The towns are nice. Hotels with restaurants. Here and there a newspaper. Good food. Pretty girls.”

“Do they have the electric out there on the lakes?”

“No. It's like here that way.”

“But it's prosperous.”

“The land around the lakes is excellent.”

“Okay,” Teddy said, taking his turn on the bottle. “But then something happened to Evan.”

“Well, yes. We were in a bad storm on Lake Erie, near Sandusky, where there are many islands and rocky shoals. Our boat sank in the storm. We got separated.”

“You never saw him again.”

“He was swept away.”

“Did you search for him?”

“I was clinging to the capsized boat for dear life in a storm.”

“Do you think he might have made it to land?”

“It's not out of the question. I never knew how far off the shore we actually were.”

“But you were never able to find him.”

“No. I never did see him anymore after that.”

“I knew him slightly in school,” Teddy said. “He was two years ahead of me. A great jokester. Everybody liked him.”

“That he was,” Daniel agreed.

“So then what happened to you.”

“A ship came along, a schooner, a grand thing. I got rescued by it. It took me to Michigan. I stayed there all summer.”

“Doing what?”

“This and that.”

“Farm labor?”

“No.”

“You don't want to say?”

“It was a big outfit. I did all kinds of things. Learned a lot.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“I went south for a while.”

Teddy waited for Daniel to tell him what he did down south, but Daniel just puffed his cigar. The moon came up behind them. They watched bats flit over the river eating the night caddis flies that were emerging from the muddy bottom.

“They say you were in that place calls itself the Foxfire Republic,” Teddy ventured.

“Yes, I did get down there,” Daniel agreed.

“What was it like?”

“Friendly people. Pretty girls.”

“You say that about every place. What'd you do there.”

“Nothing.”

“You must have done something.”

“I hung around for a bit. Then I had enough of it and came home.”

“That's all, huh?”

“I met a girl there.”

“What was she like?”

“She was complicated.”

“But you left her there.”

“It happened that she died,” Daniel said.

“Oh, I'm sorry. What of?”

“She met with misfortune.”

“What sort?”

“Let's just leave it at that.”

“Oh . . . of course . . . pardon me.”

“But there was no reason to stick around after that, so I left, and eventually I managed to get home. It wasn't so easy.” He tossed the stub of his cigar over the side. It hissed when it hit the water.

“So many people dying before their time nowadays,” Teddy said.

“Oh, it was her time,” Daniel said. “I'm going below and turn in. Check the anchor lines before you come down, okay?”