The Witch of Hebron (25 page)

“Just a thought we had.”

Einhorn drank up the rest of his cider and said good night.

Robert carried a candle in a tin saucer upstairs, where Britney waited for him in bed, sitting up with a candle burning on her nightstand, wearing an old plaid cotton bathrobe. He told her what was going on while he undressed.

“Halloween is all the kids talk about now,” she said. “They’ll be very disappointed.”

“I know.”

“These times are hard enough.”

“I’ll have to decide what’s right.”

“I’m glad Mr. Bullock hanged those men,” Britney said. “If it was up to me, I’d leave them hanging until the crows picked their bones clean, just to make sure that people who have no business around here get a good look.”

“That’s what they did in the Dark Ages,” Robert said.

“Maybe they had the right idea.”

FORTY-SIX

Jasper Copeland followed Billy Bones as they entered Madam Amber’s Fancy House, as the owner styled it, through the kitchen door into a scene of busy festivity. Candles blazed in a six-light chandelier over a long work table, around the stove, and in wall sconces. The big room was warm and alive with savory aromas of a meal being prepared. Guitar music and laughter resounded distantly from the front parlor. Several of the girls who happened to be in the kitchen squealed at the sight of Billy and swarmed around him as he swung down his shoulder bag.

“Look at you! You’re hurt!” cried Hannah, who was fair-haired, big-boned, and sturdy. She’d been icing a cake moments before.

“Some damn gomer got me with a load of birdshot.”

“How’d that happen?” asked Cheyenne, who was petite, with sad eyes and a turned-down mouth.

“Poker game,” Billy said. “The bastard was dealing aces from the bottom and I called him on it.”

“Poor thing!” said Christine, who was half Korean and wore a kimono loosely, affording glimpses within.

“Who’s this?” asked Cheyenne, pointing at Jasper.

“That’s my protégé, Johnny-on-the-spot Hopkins,” Billy said. “I rescued him from a burning house down by Durkeetown.”

“Did not,” Jasper said.

“Aw, shut up. Let me do the talking.”

“I’m a doctor,” Jasper said.

“You! A doctor!” Hannah said, and all the girls laughed.

Just then, Jasper noticed another of the girls, Megan, seated at the far end of the long kitchen table. Her robe was off one shoulder and she was nursing a yellow puppy dog at her breast. She had lost a baby of her own five days before. The others noticed Jasper staring at her with his mouth open.

“Someone killed the mother,” Cheyenne said. “People will eat a dog around here.”

“How could you know anything about doctoring?” Hannah said.

“I swear, he doctored me up when I got shot,” Billy said. “Picked the lead pellets right out of my flesh with a dagger. His daddy’s the doc down in Union Grove. Any of you girls know him?”

“My father doesn’t come here,” Jasper said. He was still staring at Megan, as fascinated by her big bare breast as with the dog suckling at it.

“So you say,” Billy said. “Maybe he’s upstairs right now.”

They all laughed at that, even Katie Savage the cook, who was wrangling a large pan of roast rabbit and barley pilaf, redolent of rosemary and butter, out of the oven. The sight and smell of the food diverted Jasper’s attention.

“Do any of you gals ever get down Union Grove way?” Billy said.

“We don’t make house calls,” Cheyenne said, and they all laughed again.

“How’d you happen to hook up with this rascal?” Hannah asked Jasper.

“Only just to get here,” he said.

“Liar!” Billy said. “He already done crimes with me.”

“No, I didn’t. I was just there.”

“He was just there,” Billy said, making a wry face.

“Why’d a kid like you want to come here, to a house of pleasure?” Christine asked.

“I didn’t know what this was,” Jasper said.

“Do you know now?” Hannah asked.

“I guess I didn’t spell it out for the little doctor boy,” Billy said.

“It used to be a ladies’ academy,” Cheyenne said.

“It ain’t changed,” Billy said.

“I was looking to set up working for a doctor here in Glens Falls,” Jasper said. “Till I’m ready to go out on my own.”

For a moment the women stared at him in the utmost curiosity, as if he were some oddity from the depths of the sea dredged up in a net.

“Why not just work with your papa?” Hannah asked.

“Did you run away from home?” Christine asked.

Jasper didn’t answer.

“Oh, he’s a desperado of the first degree,” Billy said. “Don’t let his looks and his stature fool you”

Then a voice from the hallway said, “Who let this donkey in out of the pasture?” Madam Amber swept into the room and around the table and swaggered up to Billy. “I hope you came back with some money in your pocket this time.”

The owner of the establishment was forty-six, fine-boned and full-figured. She wore a bead-stitched gown that draped shimmeringly down her pronounced curves. Her face was powdered. A silver streak curled out of her brown hair from the part at the center. She wore a large white flower behind her ear, made of silk and wire.

“Do I have money? Mama, I’m goddamn rich. Lookit here!” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of coins, and from these he extracted the shiny yellow gold coin he’d taken at the Lovejoy farm. “Do you see this?”

“Looks like a half eagle,” Madam said, squinting closely.

“You’re goddamned right it’s a half eagle. And there’s plenty of silver on top of that. So get ready for me, Mama. Billy’s coming at you. And everybody else line up in size order outside the door.”

The girls all laughed again.

“You want to give me that half eagle in advance, in case you get careless?” Madam said.

“Hell, no. I got plans. Tell me, is the duke still running his game?”

“I imagine he still is.”

“Then those boys have a date with Billy Bones, too, is all I can say.”

“You’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

“Think they can cheat me again? I learnt all their goddamn tricks. Just watch if the tables don’t turn now. I spit on those gomer sons of bitches.”

“When did I hear that before?” Madam said. “And by the way, you stink like a carp. You’re not staying in my house another five minutes without a bath.”

“What can I say? I’ve been out rambling and gambling.”

“Hannah, take Mr. Bones upstairs right now and scrub him down. And burn those rags he came in with. Who’s this kid?”

“That’s my protégé, Johnny Hopkins. His daddy’s the doc down in Union Grove. He trained for doctoring at his daddy’s knee.”

“You run away from home?” Madam asked, stooping down to meet Jasper eye to eye.

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“I couldn’t stay there anymore.”

“He killed someone’s horse,” Billy said.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What’d you do that for?”

“It stomped my dog to death.”

“How’d you kill the horse?”

“I poisoned it.”

“That’s some doctoring. You know about poisons?”

“Not so much.”

“He done crimes with me since then, though,” Billy said.

“Don’t do any around here and we’ll get along just fine,” Madam said. She turned to the girls. “He stinks, too. Someone make sure he gets a bath when Billy’s done.”

“And somebody send a bottle of that sparkling cider upstairs to me, pronto,” said Billy as Hannah tugged at the sleeve of his tattered, bloody shirt.

Before she could drag him out of the room, another voice resounded from the hallway: “Is that who I think it is?”

A tall figure with a shadow of a beard entered the kitchen, slinking and swaying in an exaggerated manner. She wore very abbreviated denim shorts and a puffy pink sweater. Her legs were strikingly muscular, her breasts unnaturally pointed, her eye sockets darkened with blacking, and the lids painted in lead white for emphasis. Her mouth was florid red, like a wound. “Look what the cat dragged in,” said Angel, the transvestite. When she spoke, her jaw muscles rippled.

“You’d eat what the cat dragged in,” Billy said. “In fact, you’d eat the cat itself.”

“I’d eat you,” Angel retorted. “But you’d have to pay me double.”

“I’d pay you to move to Rutland if you promised to never come back here,” Billy said.

“I live in a Rutland of the mind,” Angel said.

“Except you’re so far out of your mind you can’t even see it from here.”

“Oooooo,” Angel vamped. “She’s making me feel bad.”

“I can make you feel a whole lot worse—”

“Both of you shut up right now!” Madam shouted in an impressively shrill register.

“Come on, Billy,” Hannah said, tugging his arm.

“And send up something for me to eat, too,” Billy said as Hannah led him away.

“Katie, you keep account of what he eats, hear?” Madam said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You must be hungry, kid,” Madam said to Jasper. He nodded. “Give him a nice meal, too.” She then swept out of the room as grandly as she had entered.

Christine told Jasper to take a seat at the end of the long table. Katie slid a plate full of the rabbit and barley in front of him with a side dish of carrots cooked in honey and butter and two large buttered slices of bread.

“What kind of bread is this?” Jasper asked.

“Canadian wheat,” Katie said. Cheyenne slid a tall glass of milk beside the bread.

“All we ever get is corn,” Jasper said.

“All most people get around here is corn,” Katie said. “We get this special.”

“Do I have to pay you?” Jasper asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Katie said. “It’s on Billy Bones’s account. You can carry in some stove splints for me when you’re done.”

At the other end of the table, while Jasper ate ravenously, Christine and Cheyenne carved a couple of pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns. Megan had put the puppy on the floor. It was now exploring the nether regions of the big room, which contained shelves full of food stored in glass jars and tins.

Jasper mopped his plate with the bread and thought of asking for seconds, even though he was quite full.

“Here, try these,” Katie said, setting a dish with two golden apple fritters dusted with powdered sugar in front of him. Meanwhile the puppy came over to him and began tugging playfully on his bootlaces. Jasper put down a fritter and picked up the puppy. As he held it against his chest and buried his nose into its soft fragrant fur, his eyes filled with tears. He tried to conceal his face, but the puppy squirmed so intensely Jasper had to put it back down on the floor. He rubbed his tears away on his sleeve and quietly finished his fritters, watching Christine and Cheyenne carve the pumpkins while Megan took over icing the cake. When she was finished, she shoved the bowl and the spatula down the table to Jasper.

“Go ahead. Lick them clean.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you sad?”

“I guess.”

“Do you miss your home?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does.”

“I’m a lost soul,” he said.

“All of us here are lost souls,” Megan said. “But we’re happy together. I wouldn’t hang around with that Billy Bones anymore if I were you.”

“I’m not going to. I only came along with him to get to Glens Falls.”

“He’s not right in the head.”

“I know,” Jasper said, recalling Billy’s assault on the driver of the onion cart, the blood flying. “Who’s the cake for?”

“Margaret. She’s upstairs with a date. Maybe we can save a piece for you.”

“I wish you would.”

After the fritters, though, Jasper was content. He felt himself growing sleepy sitting upright in the chair. The next thing he knew, somebody was shaking his shoulder. It was a young girl in the vicinity of his own age. She wore a long skirt and a purple jersey that read
G.F.H.S. LIONS
with the number 69 below that. Her big owlish eyes radiated intelligence while her small mouth suggested a prankish nature. A pile of caramel-colored hair was held on top of her head with a plastic tortoiseshell clip, though sprigs and wisps had escaped around her face and neck.

“You’re supposed to come with me,” she said as Jasper looked up, blinking.

“Where?”

“The bathroom.”

“I don’t need to go to the bathroom.”

“You need a bath. You smell like something that died.”

“I can wash myself.”

“I hope so,” the girl said. “If you couldn’t do that by now you’d be too dumb to live. Come on.”

Jasper grabbed his backpack and followed. Of all the others, only Megan remained at the table, enjoying a glass of blackberry brandy. She winked at Jasper on his way past. From the hallway, he could glimpse a little slice of the parlor and the front entrance. It was alive with candles and music and conversation. Someone came in the door, a large man with a handsome gray beard, a broad-brimmed hat, and a riding cloak. His entrance provoked a commotion among the others in the parlor and when he took off his cloak, the lining was shiny scarlet.

“Who’s that man?” Jasper asked.

“He runs the town,” the girl said.

The girl grabbed Jasper’s hand and pulled him roughly toward a back stairway. In the rear of the second floor was a spacious bathroom. They entered and the girl put her candle in its saucer on a dressing table. On the other side of the room stood a long cast-iron claw-footed tub with two water pumps at the drain end. The girl worked them with each arm. One pumped cold water into the tub. The other was connected to a boiler in the basement, stoked morning and night by a man-of-all-jobs named Ernie who had been on the maintenance crew at the paper mill in the old times and now worked in the house for meals and a warm place to sleep in a room over the woodshed. Steam rose off the bath as it filled.

“See how I’m doing this?” the girl said.

“Yes.”

“You take over and do like I’m doing until you get enough water in the tub. Then take your clothes off and get to scrubbing. There’s plenty of soap and brushes and washrags in the brass basket. You don’t have bugs, do you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You been itchy at all?”

“No.”

“Wash good. I’ll be back for you.”