The Manor (11 page)

Their hands went into the flames, merged, com-busted, and skin and bone were replaced by smoke and ash. There was no pain. How could there not be pain?

The next thing she knew, she was removing her coarse house-girl skirt and homespun blouse and they merged once more, this time on the floor in front of the fire, the spel lost from her lips, and only Ephram in her senses. Sylva looked down at her withered hands.

If only she had felt pain. The wounds without pain were the slowest in healing. The tin plate sat empty in her lap. The fire had gone out. She shivered and spat into the ashes, She wasn't sure which pain was greater, Ephram's loving or his leaving her.

She had known Ephram would come back. But then, he had never really left. He didn't die when she had pushed him off the widow's walk. He just went into the house. Because she'd killed him under the October blue moon.

As he had promised, wood and stone became his flesh, the smoke his breath and the mirrors his eyes, the shadows his restless spirit's blood. And his heart burned in the fires of forever. She shivered in the heat of the day and reached for the matches.

The house threw a sunrise shadow across the back-yard. Mason was tired, his face scratched from his midnight wanderings. He'd slept poorly, his brain in-vaded by feverish images of Anna, his mother, Ephram Korban, Lilith, a dozen others whose faces were lost in smoke. He shivered as he walked behind the manor, folowing the worn path that wound between two out-buildings. He climbed a row of creosote railroad ties that were terraced into the earth as steps leading into the forest.

The door on the smaller building was open. An old man in overalls emerged from the darkness within. Mason waved a greeting. The man rubbed his hands to-gether, his breath coming out in a mist.

"Brrr," he said, creasing his wrinkled jaws. "Cold as a woman's heart in there."

"What is it?" Mason asked. He'd assumed it was a tool storage shed or something similar. The shed, like its larger counterpart, was constructed of rough-cut logs and chinked with yellowish red cement. A smell of damp age and cedar spiled from the doorway.

" 'Frigeration," the man said. When his mouth opened on the "gee" sound, Mason saw that the old man had about enough teeth left to play a quick game of jacks. His overals threatened to swalow him, his back hunched from years of work. The man cocked his head back to-ward the door and went into the shed. "Take a look-see." Mason folowed. Cold air wafted over his face. A mound covered the center of the dirt floor. The old man stooped down and swept at the grainy mound with his hands, revealing streaks of shiny silver.

"Ice," said the man. "We bury it under sawdust so it wil keep through summer. You wouldn't think it would last that long, would you?"

"I wondered how you kept the food cold without power," Mason said. "What about the food safety po-lice, the health inspectors?"

"They's rules of the world and then they's rules of Korban Manor. Two different things." The old man pointed through the door to a western rise covered by tulip poplars. Wagon tracks crossed the meadow, curving up the slope like twin red snakes. "They's a little pond up yonder," he said. "A spring pops out 'twixt two rocks. The pond's fenced off from the animals so it stays clean. Come the third or fourth long freeze in January, when the water's good and hard, we go up and cut out big blocks of it."

"Sounds like a lot of work. I understand that heavy machinery isn't allowed on the grounds."

"Oh, we got machines. A wagon is a machine. So's a horse, in its way. And, of course, they got
us,
too." Mason went out into the sun and the man closed the door behind him. His gnarled hand fumbled in the front pocket of his overals as if he were looking for a cigarette. He pulled out something that looked like a knotted rag with a tip of feather protruding from one end. He waved the rag in the sign of the cross over the front of the icehouse door. The motion was practiced and fluid, appearing natural despite its oddness. Mason expected the man to comment on the ritual, but the knotted rag was quickly squirreled away. "What's in the other shed?" Mason asked after a mo-ment.

"That's the larder. Keep stuff in there that doesn't need to be so cold, such as squash and cucumbers and corn. A little spring runs through there, gets piped out into the gully yonder." Mason looked where the man had pointed and saw a trickle of water meandering through a bed of rich, black mud. Blackberry briars tangled along the creek banks, the scarlet vines bent in autumn's death. "Do you pick the berries, too?"

"Yep, and the apples. They's hels of apples around here. You gonna have something apple every meal. Pie, turnovers, stewed, fried apples with cinnamon and just a dash of brandy. We keep up a vegetable garden, too, and—"

"Ransom!"

They both turned at the sound of the shrill voice. Miss Mamie stood on the back porch, leaning over the railing.

"Yes, Miss Mamie," the man responded. The last bit of starch seemed to have gone out of him, and Mason was sure the old man was going to disappear inside his overalls.

"Now, Ransom, you know you're not to trouble the guests," Miss Mamie said in a high, artificially cheer-ful tone.

"I was just—" Ransom swelled momentarily, then seemed to think better of it. He studied the tips of his worn work boots. The sun lit the silver wires of hair that were combed back over his balding head. "Yes, Miss Mamie."

The hostess stood triumphantly at the porch rail and turned her attention to Mason. "Did you sleep well, Mr. Jackson?"

"Yes, ma'am," he lied. He sneaked a glance at Ran-som. The man looked as if he'd been beaten with a hickory rod. "Um... thanks for setting me up in the master bedroom. It's very comfortable."

"Lovely." She clasped her hands together. Her pearls shifted over her bosom. "Ephram Korban would be so pleased. You know our moto: 'The splendid isolation of Korban Manor wil fire the imagination and kindle the creative spirit.'"

"I read the brochure," Mason said. "And I've al-ready got a few ideas. I might need a litle help geting started, though. Is it okay if Ransom helps me collect some good sculpting wood?" Miss Mamie frowned and her thin eyebrows flat-tened. Her face wore the same expression that glared from the portraits of Korban. Mason realized he had challenged her authority, if only mildly. He was sud-denly sorry he had dragged Ransom into the spotlight of her stare. She folded her arms like a schoolmarm debating the punishment of unruly students.

After a moment, she said, "Of course it's okay. As long as his chores are finished. Are your chores fin-ished, Ransom?"

Ransom kept his eyes down. "Yes, ma'am. I'm done til dinner. Then I got to curry the horses and see to the produce." Miss Mamie smiled and adopted her cheerful voice again. "Lovely. And that sculpture better be perfect, Mr. Jackson. We're counting on you."

"I'm kindled and fired up," Mason said. "By the way, is there a space where I can work without bother-ing anybody? Sometimes I work late, and there's no way to beat up wood without making enough noise to wake the dead."

"There's a studio space in the basement. I'll have Lilith show you after lunch."

"No need to bother her. I'm sure she'l be busy with the other guests. Why not let Ransom show me?" A shadow passed across Miss Mamie's face and her voice grew cold. "Ransom doesn't go down there." Mason peeked at Ransom and saw the corner of the man's mouth twitch.
My God. He's scared to death of her.
Miss Mamie turned back toward the manor, her heels clatering across the wooden porch. Door chimes jingled as she went inside. Ransom exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for the last few minutes.

"What a wonderful boss," Mason said when Ransom finally looked him in the eye.

"Careful," he said out of the side of his mouth. "She's probably watching from one of the windows."

"You're kidding."

"Just follow me," he whispered, then said, more loudly, "Toolshed's right through them trees." After they had gone down a side trail far enough that the house was out of sight, Mason asked, "Is she always like that?"

Ransom's confidence grew as they moved farther from the house. "Oh, she don't mean nothing. That's just her way, is all. Everything's got to be just so. And she got worries of her own."

"How long have you worked here, Ransom? You don't mind if I call you 'Ransom,' do you?"

"Respect for elders. I like that, Mr. Jackson."

"Call me Mason, because I hope we're going to be friends."

Ransom looked back down the trail. "Only
outside
the house, son. Only outside."

"Got you."

"Anyways, you was asking how long I've been working here, and the answer to that is 'Always.' I was born here, in a litle cabin just over the orchards. Place called Beechy Gap. Same cabin my grandpaw was born in, and my daddy, too. Cabin's stil standing."

"They all worked here?"

"Yep. Grandpaw held deed to the north part, way back when Korban started buying up property around here. Grandpaw sold out and got a job thrown in as part of the deal. I guess us Streaters always been tied to the land, one way or another. Family history has it that my great-back-to-however-many-greats-grandpaw Jeremiah Streater was one of the first settlers in this part of the country. Came up with Daniel Boone, they say."

"Did Boone live here, too?"

"Wel, he tried to. Kept a hunting cabin down around the foot of the mountain. But they took his land. They always take your land, see?"

Ransom didn't sound bitter. He said it as if it were a universal truth, something you could count on no mat-ter what. The sun comes up, the rooster crows, the dew dries, they take your land.

"Toolshed's over yonder," Ransom said, heading for a clearing in a stand of poplars. He continued with his storytelling, the rhythm of his words matching the stride of his thin legs.

"Grandpaw went to work right away for Korban, clearing orchard land and cutting the roads. Him and two of my uncles. They leveled with shovels and stumped with iron bars and a team of mules. Korban was crazy about firewood right from the start. Had them saw up the trees with big old cross-saws and pile the logs up beside the road.

"And Korban had a landscape scheme all laid out. People thought he was a little touched in the head, wanting to turn this scrubby old mountain into some kind of king's place. But the money was green enough. Korban paid a dolar a day, which was unheard of at the time. He was big in textiles."

"I've worked in textiles myself," Mason said. "Can't say I ever got too big in it, though. I mostly just swapped out spindles for minimum wage."

"No need to be ashamed of honest work." Ransom paused and looked in the direction of a crow's cal. The smel of moist leaves and forest rot filed Mason's nos-trils. He noticed himself breathing harder than the old man, who was nearly three times his age. Ransom began walking again and continued with his story.

"When they got the road gouged out, they set to work on the bridge. In the old days, the only way to get up here was a trail that wound up the south face of those cliffs. You seen that drop-off driving up here."

"Yeah. Down to the bottom of the world." Mason's stomach flutered at the remembered majesty and ter-ror of the view. He was embarrassed by his shortness of breath and tried to hide
it.

"That trail was how the early pioneers, Boone and Jeremiah and a handful of others, made it up in the first place. They say the Cherokee and Catawba used it be-fore that, communal hunting grounds. The whites brought livestock up here, fighting and pushing the an-imals along the cliffs. But Korban wanted a bridge. And what Korban wanted, Korban always got."

"Kind of what I figured." A duck-planked building stood ahead of mem, tucked under the branches of a jack pine. Its shake roof was litered with brown pine needles. Ransom led Mason toward it.

"They was about eight families mat owned this piece of mountaintop. Korban bought mem al out and put mem to work building the house and garnering field stones for me foundation. He hired me women-folk to set out apple seedlings and weed me gardens. Even me kids helped out, at a quarter a day plus keep."

"Didn't anybody notice that they were doing the same work, only now they had a master?" The trail had widened out and wagon ruts led into the heart of the forest from the other side of the clear-ing. Ransom stepped onto the warped stairs leading into the shed and paused. Mason was glad that the up-hil walk had finaly tapped the old man's stamina.

"You ain't from money, are you?" Ransom asked, raising a white eyebrow.

"Well, not really. Both my parents had to work all week to get by." Mason didn't mention that his dad worked only two days a week and drank four and a half. Dad faithfuly took off every Sunday morning to give thanks for the evening's pint. No other prayers ever passed his lips that didn't reek of bourbon. Except maybe from his hospital bed, when cirrhosis escorted him to the self-destruction he'd spent a lifetime toast-ing.

"People around here, they fel al over themselves to get Korban's money. They was scrub poor, these peo-ple. The only cash they ever saw was once or twice a year when they loaded some handmade quilts or goods on the back of a mule and took down to Black Rock to trade. So when Korban come in with his offers, nobody blamed them for selling out."

"I guess I would sell out, too, if I got the chance," Mason said. He was thinking of
Diluvium,
his first commissioned piece and the worst thing he'd ever fab-ricated. Also the most successful. Ransom fumbled in his overals pocket and again pulled out the feathery rag ball. He waved it in the strange genuflection before lifting the cast-iron latch on the shed door.

"Um—what's that feather for?" Mason asked.