The Wanton Troopers (8 page)

“Yeah, I guess so. I guess I do.”

“They turn it into a living corpse. Almost everyone in Lock-hartville is a living corpse. Not only Zuriel and Reuben and I, but all of the farmers and all of the men in the mill, and all of their wives — living corpses, all of them! All!”

“Please, Miss Sarah, I wanta go home.”

He tried to pull away from her. Her fingers pinched his flesh like pliers. He knew that in another moment he would be weeping.

“Wait! One more thing! They'll come for you! Some night when you're asleep in bed, they'll come for you, and they'll make you a living corpse like all the rest of us! They will! You wait and see! They'll come with knives and ropes and they'll drag you out of bed and they'll . . .”

“No!”

He yanked himself free and ran to the door. She hid her face in her hands and made strange sounds. He did not know if she was laughing or crying.

He ran all the way to the pole gate at the foot of the lane. This time he did not see the sheep or the fields or the fences. He was blinded by the memory of an old woman sobbing or snickering in a dusky parlour.

He did not go to the Minard farm again. But, many times, during the remainder of that year, he awoke whimpering from nightmares of men with knives and ropes . . .

Eight

Three men strolled into the O'Brien dooryard. Kevin knew from the way in which they stopped in the yard, without coming to the door, and from the shy furtiveness of their gestures, that they were in search of liquor.

All the mill hands drank and all their wives hated liquor. The two sexes maintained an uneasy truce through a kind of tacit etiquette. It was in obedience to this etiquette that Judd went outdoors to greet the visitors, while Mary, eyeing them hatefully from the kitchen window, pretended not to have seen them.

The trio wore overalls and ragged cotton shirts, and their cloth caps were pushed far back on their heads. Todd Anthony had moist, reddish eyes and at the end of every sentence emitted a mirthless, cawing laugh. The mill hands called him the Crow behind his back. Eben Stingle, the ox teamster, came from another county, and spoke with a strange accent, slurring his
r
's. Angus Northrup sported a grey moustache stained yellow with tobacco juice. He was the sawyer, the best-paid man in the mill, and the other mill hands treated him with a touch of deference, a hint of respect.

“Mighty hot day, eh, Judd?” Angus Northrup said. Since he was the sawyer, the other men silently granted him the prerogative of beginning the conversation. “Don't look as if it's gonna git any cooler neither.”

“Yeah,” Judd agreed. “It sure is hot enough.”

Patiently, the others added their comments on the weather, on their work. The spruce logs sawn the previous week had been scrub stock. Hod Rankine had been a fool to buy them. They were foul things to handle and almost impossible to sell.

Then, casually, came the real point of their visit. “Wouldn't know where a man could git a drink would yuh, Judd?” Angus Northrup asked.

Judd scratched his head. Kevin detected something spiteful in the way his father delayed his answer.

“Don't know as I would,” he said, at last.

“We're kinda dry,” Todd Anthony laughed, rubbing one reddish eye with a dirty finger.

“Yeah,” Judd sympathized.

He pulled out his chewing tobacco and gnawed off a chew. Most of the mill hands chewed tobacco; there wasn't time to roll cigarettes in the mill.

“Fact is we're so damn dry we're crackin',” Angus Northrup quipped.

He cast a glance at the others. They laughed. The mill hands always laughed at the sawyer's jokes.

“Eh? Well, I don't know, boys. I don't know. I don't know,” Judd said thoughtfully.

The men made no move to leave. As yet they did not know if Judd's denial were genuine or merely formal. In Lockhartville, men took their time about giving away liquor. The men who had something to drink played with the thirsty ones, as Judd was playing now. Everyone accepted this without resentment.

“We been lookin' all over Lockhartville. Place is dry as a bone,” Eben put in.

“So dry a man gits dust in his throat jist talkin' about it,” the sawyer agreed.

He looked around again. Again the others laughed.

“Madge Harker ain't got nothin'?” Judd asked, his eyebrows raised in feigned disbelief.

“Nope. Sold ever'thin' out dance night,” Eben replied.

Judd spat juice the colour of cow's urine on the ground at his feet.

“Well, I'll tell yuh now . . .” he drawled.

“Yeah?” the visitors pressed eagerly.

“Jist happens I got a little brew on in the barn. Don't know if it's ready yet, tuh tell the truth. Don't imagine it is. But, well, mebbe — I said, mebbe, now — we'll jist try it.”

“Hot cripes!” Eben yelled.

“We won't fergit yuh, boy,” the sawyer grinned.

Kevin saw that his father rather resented their presumption. “I said
mebbe
we'd try it,” Judd reminded them gruffly.

“Sure, Juddie, sure.”

Together, the men started toward the barn. Kevin, screwing up his courage, followed them.

The day was hot. Nodules of sweat rolled down inside Kevin's shirt, tickling his chest. Sweat glistened like oil on his arms and legs.

The barn was divided into three sections: the cow stable, the hayloft, and the store room. It was the store room that they entered now.

The room was as hot as the inside of an oven. A tart, herbal aroma rose from the sacks containing hen feed and merged with the soporific odour of hay and straw. A shutter, held in place by three wooden buttons, ran half the length of the wall, facing the stable. Through this shutter, Judd could push great forkfuls of hay into the mangers. Today, since it was summer, the shutter would not be opened. The cows were grazing on the heath.

As they always did when he came into the store room, Kevin's eyes gravitated to the strap, hanging from its wooden peg. Hastily, he grimaced and looked away.

Judd went to the corner and kicked away a pile of jute sacks, uncovering the old barrel churn in which he had made his brew. The men jostled one another, edging closer.

The lid was lifted off, its underside clammy. The room filled with the gas of the brew. Kevin could not understand why the men liked this drink. The stink sickened him. But he watched curiously as they licked their lips and laughed nervously to conceal their impatience.

Kevin squatted by the door, where the air was freshest and cleanest, and studied them. Judd dipped a mug into the churn, took an experimental sip and grunted. “Guess mebbe, it'll do till somethin' better comes along,” he grinned. He was no longer playing with them. Now he seemed to take pleasure in extending his hospitality. “Drink up, boys,” he invited.

The mug passed from hand to hand. Each man bolted his drink and passed on the mug quickly. They gasped, grunted, sighed, and wiped their lips. The mug circulated almost continuously.

This brew had been made from yeast, oranges, and molasses. Spears of hay and straw had fallen into the churn. The men scooped these out of the mug with their thumbs before they drank.

Kevin kept as quiet as possible. The men knew he was there. But as long as he did nothing to attract their attention, they would pretend not to notice him. When he intruded into the affairs of men, his father called him “Mister Big Breeches.” And he did not want to be sent away.

Judd's cheeks reddened, his eyes became feverish.

“Damn good beer,” Todd Anthony said.

“A real life-saver,” Eben agreed.

“Allus said that Judd O'Brien was a Good Samaritan,” Angus laughed.

The others guffawed. They were relaxing now, shaking off their sobriety and their formal manners.

Their voices became louder. The words poured out of them in torrents. Each man fought for a chance to say his piece. They laughed boisterously, slapping their denim-clad thighs, jostling and interrupting one another. But Kevin detected the underlying malice in their fellowship. They told spiteful little jokes at one another's expense, and when one man was held up to ridicule he sat in glum silence while the others hooted. In every joke there was a suggestion of cruelty.

After the fourth round of drinks, Judd burst into song:

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

Here's a cuckaroo!

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

He always sang this song in the earliest, happiest phase of his drunkenness. His neck beet red, his breath coming in great gasps, he roared out the song, while his visitors tapped their toes against the floor and laughed.

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

Here's a cuckaroo!

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

Kevin had heard this song often. So far as he knew, no one but his father ever sang it, and these were the only words that it had.

“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whooo!” Eben Stingle yelled. “Gimme another shot of that cripeless stuff and I'll step dance, by cripes!”

They drank again, spilling the thick, muck-brown liquid down their necks. Eben catapulted into the centre of the floor and danced like a war-painted Indian. The others clapped their hands and roared encouragement.

“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whoooo!”

The ox teamster kicked up hay seeds and shreds of straw. The floor boards on which Kevin sat bounced in rhythm to Eben's gum-rubbered feet.

“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whooo!”

Eben's eyes were shut, his mouth open, his nostrils flaring like a stallion's. The frenzy of his dance rather frightened Kevin. It did not seem to be a dance at all. Kevin had endured nightmares in which he ran desperately without gaining an inch of ground. Eben's dance reminded him of such unpleasant dreams.

“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whoooo!”

Exhausted, Eben sank down on a block of straw. The mug was passed from hand to hand again.

“Who's man enough to wrist-wrestle with me?” Todd Anthony shouted.

“I guess I'm yer man,” Angus Northrup said, rising.

The pair knelt on either side of a block of straw, elbows pressed, right hands clasped, their arms forming an inverted V.

Ignoring the contest, Judd broke into song again:

As I was leaving old Ireland

All in that month of June,

The birds were singing merrily.

All nature seemed in tune —

“Too damn mournful!” Eben roared. “Sing somethin' cheerful, Juddie! Fer cripes' sake, sing somethin' cheerful!”

Judd quaffed beer, gasped and blinked.

Rhythmically, he clapped his hands.

Oh, saddle up my fastest horse,

My grey is not so speedy —

And I' ll ride all night,

And I' ll ride all day —

Till I overtake my lady,

Till I overtake my ladeee!

A stranger would not have believed that this ruddy, roaring singer was the taciturn, tight-lipped Judd O'Brien who worked at Hod Rankine's saw mill. But Kevin had seen the transformation so many times that it no longer surprised him.

Meanwhile, Todd Anthony was forcing down Angus Northrup's arm. Sure of victory, the red-eyed man leered into the sawyer's wet, contorted face. Angus grunted and cursed, the muscles in his freckled arm rippling like the great belt that drove the slab saw.

“Had enough?”

“Uhhhh.” The sound was part sigh, part groan.

“Had enough?”

“Uhhhh.”

“Had enough?”

“Uhhhh.”

“Damn it! I can break yer wrist, Angus. Had enough?”

“Uhhhh.”

“He ain't had enough till yuh can make him put his arm down,” Judd interjected.

“Had enough?”

“Uhhhh.”

With a thud, Angus's arm struck the wood-hard straw.

“Phewwww,” Todd whistled, shaking his head wryly.

Angus massaged his arm. “Go tuh hell,” he growled.

“Huh?”

“Go tuh hell,” the sawyer repeated dully.

“Listen, mister —”

“HERE!” Eben shouted. “HERE! Let's all have another cripeless beer, eh? Come over here and have a drink, Toddie!”

“Shut up fer a second!” Todd snapped.

His fists hung close to his hips, like the hands of a gunfighter. He turned back to Angus.

“What was it yuh said tuh me, mister?”

Eben seized Todd's arm and tugged him toward the churn. “Come on now, Toddie. Come on now, Toddie.” He might have been coaxing an obstinate puppy. “Come on now, Toddie.”

All the way back to the churn, Todd kept looking over his shoulder at the sawyer. Angus continued to kneel by the straw, and he was still rubbing his defeated arm.

Experience told Kevin that before the day ended, these men would fight. Fist fighting was one of the essential rituals in the world of men.

“Sing somethin', Juddie,” Eben begged.

My name is Howard Carey,

Near Grand Falls I was born,

In a cozy little cottage

On the banks of the St. John —

“Too cripeless sad!” Eben howled. “Sing somethin' cheerful, Juddie!”

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

Here's a cuckaroo!

Here's a cuckoo! There's a cuckoo!

There's a cuckaroo!

“Damn it, man, but yuh make a lot of noise.” Angus Northrup growled, masking his annoyance in a grin. Judd swung on him, glowering.

“A man can make as damn much noise as he damn well wants tuh when he's in his own damn barn drinkin' his own goddamn beer!”

“HERE NOW!” Eben yelled. “Let Juddie sing! Come on now, Juddie! Love tuh hear yuh sing. Jist love tuh hear yuh sing, Juddie, boy!”

“Yeah,” Judd growled. “Yeah.”

“Sure,” Angus agreed. “I didn't mean nothin' Judd. Allus did love tuh hear yuh, sing. Sing somethin' else, Juddie.”