A History of the Future (45 page)

“What! I had the same dang dream,” Elam said.

“Oh yeah?” Seth said. “I didn’t see you around.”

“You wasn’t there,” Elam said. “Not in my dream. I wouldn’t have you in it.”

“Well, don’t you be coming around mine, neither, hear.”

“If you see me there, blame your own dang self.”

“I could say the same of you—”

“Boys,” Brother Jobe said. “You ought to know by now: that there is a house of dreams and powers of a certain kind. Nobody goes in there ever comes out quite the same.”

F
IFTY-THREE

At midday, Stephen Bullock, once reluctant and now avid magistrate of Union Grove, with three of his men, rode over from his plantation to the headquarters of the New Faith Brotherhood Covenant Church of Jesus on the north edge of town looking for Brother Jobe, who was not there. Instead, he was directed to wait for Brother Joseph, second in command, a six-foot-four veteran U.S. Army ranger of the War in the Holy Land, who was called in from the barns to attend to the visitors. The wait itself annoyed Bullock hugely.

“I sent for the prisoner first thing today and now I’m informed that she has somehow escaped,” Bullock said.

“That does appear to be the case,” Joseph said.

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Her room was empty this morning, sir.”

“That doesn’t exactly explain how it came to be.”

“It’s all we know, sir.”

Bullock rolled his eyes.

“Was she under lock and key?” he asked.

“The door was barred with a two-by-six.”

“What about the windows?”

“Just little rectangular slots clear up by the ceiling. A child couldn’t squeeze through ’em. Anyway, they don’t open or close and they weren’t broken. No, sir, I don’t think she got out thataway.”

“So she just disappeared like a little bunny rabbit.”

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

“Like in a magic act? Presto!
Pffffft!
Gone.”

“Frankly, we’re stumped, too, sir.”

“You’re stumped . . .”

“It might have been the Lord took some kind of decisive action on her behalf.”

“What? You mean as in some sort of miracle?”

“Every now and then unusual things do happen, sir. Our knowledge of this world is imperfect.”

“Oh, please. I was born at night but not last night,” Bullock said. He didn’t like the look that was radiating off Brother Joseph’s face. It made him feel like a fly about to be swatted. “Does it disturb you a little that you have let loose a killer upon this jurisdiction?”

“I’m told that she acted under the influence of a brain sickness,” Joseph said.

“Yes, well, my court was going to determine that,” Bullock said. He glared at Joseph, who paid it back in intensity, and then some.

“Well, are you going to do something about this?” Bullock said.

“I expect we will, sir.”

“In the way of what.”

“In the way of establishing her whereabouts.”

“And when do you expect to commence that? She could be halfway to Lake George by now.”

“When the boss returns from where he’s at.”

“And where’s that?”

“He went to look at a jackass for sale over to White Creek. We’re going all out for mules this year, you know. Do you have mules over at your place, squire?”

Bullock didn’t relish that appellation but he didn’t move to register his objection either.

“We prefer horses and oxen out our way,” he said.

“You ought to give mules a chance, sir,” Brother Joseph said. “Some folks look down on them as a lesser animal, but they can’t be forced to do something stupid that would only harm them. They can take the heat better than most horses. And—I don’t know if you’re aware of all this—they actually ride much smoother than even your fancier saddlebreds. I’d say, a few years from now, this county is going to be crazy for mules.”

“You tell your boss I want to see him posthaste as soon as he gets back.”

“Sure, sir. You want to make an appointment now? When would it be convenient for you to come back here?”

F
IFTY-FOUR

Daniel slept until the early afternoon and got up feeling as if some tremendous cargo had been lifted off him. He was the only one in the house at that hour. Britney had left a big crock of bean and ham soup warming on a trivet on the woodstove and Daniel found corn bread and cheese in the usual places in the kitchen. When he was fortified, he bundled up and sallied forth from the house into a town that was finally settling down to its regular business after the holidays. He had a particular destination in mind.

The last publisher of the
Union News Leader
, Paul Easterling, froze to death in his car years earlier trying to make it back from a Christmas visit to his daughter’s home in Medford, Massachusetts, during one of the serial gasoline crises that paralyzed the nation before the Washington, DC, bombing put an end to the old times for good. By then the publication had devolved to the level of a “pennysaver”—a vehicle for paid legal notices, bake sale listings, and puff pieces about the activities of senior citizens, used mostly for lining cat litter boxes. Nobody had been in the building since the disappearance of Paul Easterling—for his fate was never learned back in town, so chaotic were those months. The little newspaper’s headquarters was originally a temperance hall built in 1883 on Elbow Street off Main near Mill Hollow. Daniel entered through a broken window in the rear of the building. Easterling had not been a particularly tidy fellow, and every sort of animal from wasps to raccoons had brought organic debris into the place since he went away and never returned, but the equipment was all there and at least the roof had not failed, so no water had gotten in. Daniel spent hours poking around in it with a sense of rising excitement. There were several generations of letterpress machines, all requiring electricity to operate. But off in a corner, covered with dust, cobwebs, soda pop bottles, and wooden crates of metal odds and ends, stood a handsome 1891 Albion hand-operated flatbed proof press, and Daniel very quickly saw its potential value as he removed the junk on and around it. In his rising excitement, he also discovered cabinets of metal type, composing stones, paper cutters, and all the other equipment he might need to begin figuring out how to produce a simple broadsheet newspaper of the type he had encountered on his journeys out into the country.

Seized by this transport of ambition and inspiration, he hurried over to his father’s workshop in the purple twilight. There he found his father with Tom Allison seated beside the woodstove enjoying whiskeys to celebrate their decision to form a partnership to build a coach and begin a service for passengers, freight, and mail around Washington County. Tom stood up at the sight of Daniel, whom he had watched grow up during all these years of change, hardship, and loss, and was stunned to see him suddenly as a full-grown man.

“Is that really you?” Tom asked.

The question quite stunned Daniel as he apprehended for the first time in more than a year that he had managed to come home not just to his town and his people but to himself.

“Yes, Tom,” he said. “It’s me.”

F
IFTY-FIVE

Some time after darkness fell, Travis Berkey ventured into the new Union Tavern in the center of town. He had spent the whole day freezing on his way to one farm after another, seeking a position, and nobody would have him. He began to wonder if Mr. Bullock had put out some kind of bad word on him, and when he got to the Schmidt farm late in the day and was told there were no positions, he asked straight out whether Mr. Bullock had sent any notice around to put a curse on him.

“You didn’t tell me you worked for Bullock,” Mr. Schmidt’s crew chief Orrie Carrol said.

“Well, I did,” Berkey said.

“When was that?”

“Uh, some time ago.”

“There’s no word on you from Bullock that I know of. But why didn’t you say you worked for him?”

“We didn’t get along so well, the squire and me.”

Carrol regarded Berkey just slightly askance for a moment, taking in all the crookedness of his wiry body.

“I’m not sure you’re an honest fellow,” Carrol said, “and that’s why we have nothing for you here.”

Berkey trudged back to town in the gathering gloom and saw the lights of the tavern aglow through the falling snow. He had three silver dimes in his pocket, all the money that he had left. He thought about his predicament in the world, toted up the pluses and minuses, and decided to go inside and take whatever little last pleasures he could find in this life before throwing himself in the river.

There were a dozen men at the bar, some with wives and girls, all of them farm laborers on light winter duty. The place was still cheerfully decorated with leftover balsam sprigs and holiday swags. Most of all, it was warm inside. Berkey had to stand for ten minutes by the woodstove in the front of the establishment before his lips could move freely enough to order a drink at the bar.

“What’s the strongest beer or cider you got?”

“We’ve got a Buskirk Crosseye porter that kicks like a horse,” said Brother Micah.

“I’ll take it,” Berkey said. He sat at the bar and took in all the fine furnishings of the place, the carved wood back bar with its arrayed bottles of distilled spirits and cider barrels, the glowing candles in their stands and the six-light chandelier overhead, the thrum of conversation and laughter. At first he regarded it all with the suspicion and disdain of the perennial outsider, but before long the active ingredient of the smoky-sweet porter made it into his bloodstream and he began to take a more charitable view of his surroundings. He recognized some of the people at the bar from around town over the years, but he was not acquainted enough with any of them to call them friends. So he sat at the corner of the bar drinking quietly and slowly, at two pints to the silver dime, for some time. By and by he asked Brother Micah if he could run a tab and the bartender, with a slight hesitation, said okay. He ordered a plate of meatballs with gravy sauce, cheese toast, and the special dessert, which was apple fritters with whipped cream, and ceased to feel painfully hungry for the first time in days.

After seven o’clock more people came into the tavern, townsmen and tradesmen. Eric Laudermilk, Dan Mullinex, and Charles Pettie came by with their instruments (guitar, clarinet, bass fiddle) and set up to play some old-times-style jazz music. Berkey was working on his ninth pint when he overheard a conversation down the bar between Doug Sweetland and Robbie Furnival in which the latter happened to remark favorably on Stephen Bullock’s methods for organizing agricultural production in the new times, and Travis Berkey took exception to any complimentary talk about his old boss and his methods and started arguing loudly, and rather incoherently, back at the other two, who regarded the obviously drunken Berkey with increasing amazement, until Berkey started actually shrieking, cursing, and throwing swings at them. Robbie, who worked hard in the woods at lumbering and was very strong, was about to disassemble Berkey when the front door to the tavern opened and in walked Brother Jobe and his rangers.

They had made a wrong turn on the east side of Cossayuna Lake, where the snow was falling especially hard and deep, which had delayed their return to town. They barely shook the snow off their hats when the altercation at the bar broke out. Seth and Elam rushed over to restrain Berkey before Robbie could take him apart. Brother Jobe limped over on his half-frostbitten feet. Brother Micah put a glass of Tiplady rye whiskey in his hand as he swung around to see who the rangers were grappling with.

“You again!” Brother Jobe said.

“Well, goddamn you too,” Travis Berkey sputtered, before throwing up a gutfull of meatballs, cheese toast, apple fritters, and Buskirk Crosseye porter all over the front of Brother Jobe’s blanket coat.

“Get him out of here,” Brother Jobe told the other brothers as he looked up from the stinking mess that dripped off his chest.

Seth and Elam trundled Berkey to the door and heaved him out of it in an impressive arcing flight that ended with a sickening thud as his body met the concrete underlying the accumulated snow. He lay on the sidewalk for a while before the cold got to him and then he got up, staggered back to the tavern entrance, and banged on the front door hollering for his coat. It was shortly tossed out the door at his feet. Berkey walked the streets of Union Grove for hours after that, sobering up and trying to work up the nerve to go throw himself into the Battenkill. But as the effects of alcohol wore off, his feelings shifted more and more from the loathing of himself and his hopeless lot in life to an aggressive fury at Brother Jobe and the New Faith brotherhood.

He returned to the Union Tavern via the alley off Main Street that led to the rear of the establishment and snuck into the kitchen after it had closed down at nine o’clock and the sisters who worked in it were all gone. He hid there, munching on sausages, ham, pickles, corn bread, and other items he found in the cabinets and the meat safe. When the last customers left the front room around eleven, and Brother Micah closed up for the night, and he heard the key turn in the front door lock with a clunk, Berkey ventured out of the kitchen to the delightful situation of having the whole place to himself. He found some matches and lit a candle and commenced sampling all the various whiskeys arrayed on the back bar—the Battenville blend, the Eagle Bridge corn, the Shushan what-have-you, the Tiplady rye, the Rupert Road tawny double malt, the Mount Tom silver lightning, the Duell Hollow fare-thee-well sour mash, the Ashgrove three-grain blend—until he was quite drunk again. Under the influence of all that, he arrived at the splendid idea of burning the place down. He fetched a generous scoop of embers from the woodstove in the little tending shovel and heaped them onto the shelf of the back bar. Then he tossed some kindling splints and stove billets on that until, by and by, the beautiful carved cabinetry of the back bar was well engaged and fingers of flame reached higher and higher up the shelves and bottles started exploding, which only intensified the fire. He kept pounding down the whiskey, wielding a bottle in each hand, while he admired the progress of his work, and then his brain chemistry crossed a boundary, the room started spinning, and Travis Berkey went down onto the hard floor. The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness forever was the beautiful filigree of smoke twisting and curling beneath the pressed tin ceiling in the hot barroom air.