The Devil's Paintbox (2 page)

“Wasn't much to think up,” he said. That wasn't a lie.

“No. Guess not.” Jackson nodded. “You the only one living here, then?”

Aiden forced himself not to glance downstream. Maddy might have heard the man coming and thought to be quiet and hide.

“No,” Aiden said. “My brothers went over to the Tol-lorsen place.” He waved a hand toward the west. If Jackson had ridden in from Sweetwater, he wouldn't have passed the Tollorsen place and wouldn't know that they were long gone.

“My two
grown
brothers,” he added. “Pa too. Gone
hunting.
Probably on their way back by now.”

“So that must be the pack of men he was telling me about, eh?”

“Yes,” Aiden said. “That'd be right.”

If Jackson was intimidated by the idea of three armed men returning soon, he didn't show it.

“How old'r you, boy?”

“Sixteen. Nearly.” He wiped his clay-covered fingers on his pants. Then Maddy appeared out of the mist, silently, like an angel in a dream. She was startled to see the stranger on the horse.

“So like I said, I'm the only one here right now,” Aiden said loudly, praying she'd be quiet. “You must be tired, riding all this way,” he added quickly. “Why don't you come on up to the house and have some breakfast.” Jackson never turned his head even a bit.

“Who's behind me now, boy?” he said evenly. “I ain't looking for no trouble.”

“No one's behind you.” The grasshopper jumped under the tablecloth and Maddy made a little gasp. In an instant Jefferson J. Jackson drew his pistol, turned in his saddle, cocked and aimed. In half an instant more he raised the barrel and hissed a string of curses.

“Dammit, boy, I told you I ain't out here for trouble! I don't want to shoot no little girls or grandmas or cross-eyed
kitty cats! I'll ride off right now, but not with spooks hiding out in the grass. So tell me straight—anyone else out here?”

“No,” Aiden said.

“They're all dead,” Maddy added in a faint voice. Aiden flinched; so much for his story of father and brothers riding up any moment. But Jackson didn't appear surprised.

“All right, then.” He put the pistol back in his holster and got off his horse. Aiden grabbed his sister and pushed her behind him.

“Go to the house now,” he said to her, still looking at Jackson. “Point the shotgun out the window in this direction.”

“But, Aiden—”

“Go now!” he interrupted. “Shoot this man if he comes near the house. Don't be afraid, go.”

“Son.” Jackson took his hat off and wiped his brow. “Be easy. No one needs to shoot anybody.”

Maddy leaned out from behind Aiden; her dark blue eyes were wide in her thin face.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Jefferson J. Jackson.”

“What name does the
J
stand for?”

Jackson was taken aback. “Well, ah … nothing, exactly.” He shrugged, a bit sheepishly. “I just liked the symmetry of it. Who're you?”

“Madeline Lynch, called Maddy. This is my brother, Aiden. Pleased to meet you.”

“You two out here alone, then?” Jackson said.

“Pa died last springtime. He fell dead behind the plow.” Aiden squeezed her arm hard, but she went on. “Ma was left awhile, but passed in November just after the fire. The
flames were higher than any time before, and the wind so hard.” She talked in a rush, like she had almost forgotten how. “We had to widen the firebreak so not to burn, but the work of all that plowing did kill her. She bled from inside. It was too soon after the baby. That baby didn't live a day. Came early and was born blue. We rubbed it with vinegar and burned sage but it died anyway. Turned out a good thing.”

Aiden saw the smudges of clay at the corners of her mouth, the hard knot of elbows in her stick-thin arms, the dark watery eyes in her sunken face. He felt ashamed.

“The rest went before,” she went on, sweeping a thin arm toward the crosses on the hillside, “of various fevers and causes; one to the war and some just for being babies.”

There was a long, heavy silence.

“Will you come rest at the house?” Maddy went on. “The tea's just run out, I'm afraid,” she lied. “But we filter the muck out of the water through a cloth.”

“We don't want to delay Mr. Jackson,” Aiden said. “He's got business to tend to.”

“Reckon it's on my way back to town,” Jackson grunted. Damn nuisance children looked about two days from death. If he saw where they lived, he could send someone back to get them. No one might come, times being what they were, but at least his conscience would be clear. He took his horse by the reins and followed them.

he house was small, about twelve by twelve feet, and made of sod, like most of the houses out here where there was no wood for building. In front was the ring of plowed ground that made the firebreak. On the rise behind the house, the row of seven crosses was stark against the morning sky. Most families had a row of graves, but this one seemed especially unlucky.

Inside, the light was dim, even with the door wide open. The two small windows were covered with oiled paper. There was an iron stove in the middle of the room, but not a stick of furniture in the place. Two thin grass-stuffed mattresses lay on the ground, with a stack of folded quilts on top. In the rest of the room there was nothing but a couple of stoneware jars, a washtub and a tin pail with a piece of cloth over the top. An old shotgun was propped in one corner. Hanging on the wall were a bow and quiver of arrows.

“That's an Indian bow, ain't it?” Jackson said as he examined it more closely. “A nice one.” It wasn't a child's toy, but a true warrior's weapon made of smoothly polished ash.

“It's mine,” Aiden said, taking the bow out of the man's hand. “For hunting.” He flushed with embarrassment, for he knew that he probably lacked the strength now to even string it, let alone draw and shoot.

“Sioux used to come around,” Maddy explained, squeezing his hand as if she sensed his feelings. “Ma fixed one up
from a buffalo trampling on him. Aiden found him hurt and brought him home. He gave Aiden the bow and arrows.”

“I see.”

Jackson's eyes swept the rest of the room and rested on a small stack of books. They sat on a bed of stones to keep them off the dirt floor.

“Nice library you got there.”

“Oh, we once had a whole shelf full of books,” Maddy said. “Any time our pa ever saw a book, he traded for it somehow. He dug a well for
Gulliver's Travels.
We even bought some through the mail at the times we had a bit of money. We had Jane Austen and Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
and
The Swiss Family Robinson,
and
Aesop's Fables.
But most went for trade again, and the mice got to Aesop.”

She knelt down by the pail and poured the creek water over the cloth. “It won't take long to strain out.” She got up, went to the flour canister and took out a pair of spectacles.

“Don't do that now!” Aiden whispered fiercely.

“Why not?” Maddy whispered back. “I don't like grass hoppers raw!” She smiled at Jackson. “These were my grandma's,” she explained, holding up the thick lenses. “In Ireland. She died in the famine. You heard of the famine? When all the potatoes went bad?”

“I have.”

“Our ma and pa came over then so not to starve, and brought the glasses along. The print in some of the books is real small, especially the Shakespeare one.”

“You got a book of Shakespeare?” Jackson's face brightened.

“That big one.” She nodded at the pile. “Ma stole it.”

“She didn't steal it,” Aiden snapped. “Took it for wages
due. Before we came west.” He looked steadily at Jackson. “My parents were indentured servants in Virginia. They worked off their time.” It felt important to him that Jackson understood this. “Regular seven years, plus two extra for the children they brought over with them, though those boys worked from the first day. My parents had skills. The owner asked them to stay on but then cheated their wages.”

“Said more was owing for Ma having three more babies,” Maddy added. “So we took all of Shakespeare.”

“Sounds like a fair trade to me,” Jackson agreed easily.

“The people never had read it anyway, pages weren't even cut. We took the
Atlas of the World
too. That's our favorite.”

“Was a lot of wages,” Aiden said defiantly.

“No doubt.”

“We read from it every night,” Maddy went on. “It is ‘a complete survey of all the geographical divisions of the world and all the various peoples comprised therein,’ “ she said, easily quoting the subtitle from memory.

“Well, I guess that's nice to know,” Jackson said.

“There are illustrations, maps and exceptional rare photographs of native peoples. Would you like to see the curious custom of Chinese foot binding?”

“Maybe later,” he sighed.

Maddy led them back outside to a flat rock, where she squatted down, held the grasshopper in one hand, then neatly pinched off its head. She laid it out on the rock as if at some kind of pagan altar, then held the spectacles so the sun shone through the lens, focusing a white-hot beam of light on the insect. The ray first made a tiny scorch on the grasshopper's wing; then there was a sizzling sound, and
dark bubbles boiled up out of the headless body and around the leg joints. She picked up the roasted insect by a hind leg.

“Careful, it's hot,” she said as she offered it to Jackson.

“Thanks, but I ate my breakfast,” he replied.

Maddy broke the grasshopper in half and handed one piece to her brother. Jackson, who had seen all kinds of murder and mayhem in his life, shut his eyes.

“Look, you two're bad off,” he said. “That's clear. I'll take you into Sweetwater. There's missionaries there now will feed you, and a government man signing up relief. Half the state is bad off and starving.”

“We don't need relief,” Aiden said. “I mean to join the army.”

“War is over,” Jackson said.

“Over?” Aiden knew he should be glad, but it felt like the last step had been kicked out from under him.

“Who won?” Maddy asked excitedly.

“Union Army and General Grant,” Jackson said. “A couple of weeks ago, April ninth. They signed a treaty at a place called Appomattox.”

Aiden, unsure where the man's loyalties lay, just nodded, but Maddy clapped her hands and gave a cry of delight.

“That means all the slaves are free now?”

“Suppose so.”

“So they can go home?”

“Home?” Jackson frowned. Aiden kicked her ankle. There had been massacres in Kansas over the slavery issue.

“To Africa. To their homes,” Maddy went on, oblivious.

“Reckon so,” Jackson said slowly. “I suppose. Far way back to Africa, though.”

“But there must be some like you ready to take them.
Must be logging in Africa too. There's plenty of jungle. I can show you in the
Atlas of the World.”

This child could talk the bark off a tree, Jackson thought as he tipped his hat back to let the sweat cool on his brow. If he couldn't find some decent men, why couldn't they just be ordinary children?

“Look, I don't know about Africa, but I'll take you into town,” he said. “Missionaries or whoever, you can sort it out yourselves from there.”

“I'll go for the logging,” Aiden said.

“You?” Jackson laughed. “I don't recall making you that offer.”

“I can swing an axe.”

“Boy, you'll do good to swing a full spoon to your mouth.”

“Don't you mock me.” Aiden's hands curled into fists.

“I ain't, son,” Jackson said. “I don't mean no insult, and do say I apologize.” Jackson looked at Maddy almost kindly. “What's he look like when he ain't all starving? Strong?”

Maddy nodded. “He beat our grown brothers half the time they fought. I sewed them up, though Ma guided how I did. See there under his eye, that pretty scar? Was split this big”—she held her fingers an inch apart—”and deep to the bone. We sewed up all the fights, but Pa was surely mad that time—”

“That's enough!” Aiden said. “Man doesn't need to hear our business.”

“You aim to fight everyone you meet?” Jackson asked.

“Only those asking for it.”

“Well, I certainly ain't asking,” Jackson said. “Just offering
a ride into town. The horse will carry the two of you easy enough, and the walk will do me good.”