The Witch of Hebron (19 page)

“This is the Hudson Valley,” said little Sarah Watling, seven.

“Quite right, Sarah,” Jane Ann said, taking a seat at her desk and opening a very old edition of Irving’s collected works.

“
In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson
…,” she began reading aloud.

THIRTY-TWO

Around sunrise the day after his home was invaded, Stephen Bullock decided to hang the rest of the intruders. He drew up a warrant of execution for the nine men during his breakfast and determined, before hanging them, to interrogate whoever was next in command after the three he had killed in his bedroom.

A little after seven in the morning, he entered the old apple storage cooler where the men were held. He went in alone. Five of his own men, well armed, remained outside the cooler. The captives inside recoiled at the light of the candle lantern when Bullock entered. They all shivered visibly in one corner of the large chamber, where they huddled together in hobbles with their hands tied behind their backs. The room stank of animal waste and fear.

“Three of your men are dead,” Bullock told them. “I suppose you’ve figured out who they are by now. Who among you has the authority to speak for the rest of this gang?”

The men swapped glances.

“Don’t be shy,” Bullock added.

“We don’t have no official ranks, if that’s what you mean,” said one, a large man with a shaved head, perhaps thirty years old.

“It seems you speak for the rest.”

“Just for now,” the shaved-head man said.

“Okay, I nominate you spokesman. And second it. All in favor? Aye. See, you’re elected. Get up and come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’re going to have breakfast and we’re going to talk.”

The man got up off his haunches and glanced back at his companions. He was rangy, gaunt, and hollow-eyed but obviously very strong. The tendons in his neck stood out like wires.

“Come,” Bullock said.

The man shuffled in his hobbles, which only allowed him to take tiny steps. Bullock and his five men, armed with rifles and pistols, walked him to the manse. The clear morning was already blooming into a spectacularly warm Indian-summer day with many stimulating aromas in the air: fresh cut hay, burning brush, sorghum boiling down to syrup at Bullock’s new cane mill on the river, corn bread baking. Bullock led his prisoner into a sunny conservatory wing of the house and directed the man to have a seat at a glass-topped table. The cords that bound his hands behind his back were removed, though the hobbles on his ankles remained.

Bullock’s chore man, Roger Lippy, a Chrysler dealer in the old times, laid a stiff white cloth on the table and set it with silver tableware and damask napkins rolled into silver rings. Bullock held up a sterling silver fork and examined it in a shaft of sunlight.

“Too bad you didn’t get to rob the place,” Bullock said. “We have a lot of nice things here.”

The prisoner didn’t reply.

Roger Lippy stood by the table with a tray at his side.

“What would you like for breakfast?” Bullock asked the prisoner.

“You’re gonna give me breakfast?”

“Certainly.”

“Why?”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Not especially.”

“Okay, I’ll order for you. Roger, tell Lilah to make this fellow a four-egg omelet with some of that Duanesburg cheddar, bacon and sausage, hash browns, and corn bread with the blackberry preserves.”

“Yessir. Yourself?”

“I’ll just have tea,” Bullock said. “Tea for you?” he asked the prisoner, who just grunted. “It’s real black China tea,” Bullock added. “None of that fruity herbal crap. It’ll give you a real lift. Go on, give yourself a break.”

“Okay,” the prisoner said. Roger Lippy left them. Bullock’s other men took up positions sitting or standing outside the conservatory, on display but out of earshot. Sparrows flitted in and out of the room through the ventilation louvers.

“What’s your name?” Bullock asked.

“What’s it matter?”

“It should matter to you. It’s your name. You can’t defend your honor without defending your name, can you?”

“It’s Jason Hammerschield.”

“You couldn’t have made that up.”

“It’s my name.”

“Where’s this gang of yours from?”

“It’s not my gang.”

“I don’t mean you own it. But obviously you’re a member.”

Roger Lippy brought out a tray with a teapot and two matching cups and saucers. Bullock poured for both of them.

“The cream’s from our own dairy and the sugar’s made from our own beets, though we’re working up a sorghum operation now,” Bullock said. “So, Jason, where do you and your associates hail from?”

“Waterbury, Connecticut. We been on the road a while.”

“How are things back there in the Nutmeg State?”

“The what?”

“Connecticut.”

“They sucked. Which is how come we took to the road.”

“Have you had many adventures?”

“It’s a hard life.”

“You must not be very good at what you do.”

“We’re all right. But it’s slim pickings out there.”

“Then it’s extra sad that you messed up here. We’re living large. We’ve got full bellies, electric power, amber waves of grain, groaning orchards, a nice big house, first-rate furnishings.”

“I can see.”

“Oh, you only see a teensy-weensy bit of what we’ve got going. Want me to put on some recorded music? I’ve got it all—classical, Broadway musicals, old Bob Dylan—”

Roger Lippy reappeared with Jason Hammerschield’s breakfast, with a basket of corn bread, a ramekin of butter, and a dish of blackberry jam. The prisoner stared at the steaming plate that was set before him.

“Put on some Debussy, would you, Roger? The first preludes.”

“Sure thing, sir.”

“Go ahead, dig in,” Bullock said to his prisoner, who continued to stare darkly at his plate.

“How do I know it’s not poison?”

Bullock laughed sincerely. “You moron, if I wanted to kill you, I’d have one of my men shoot you in the head. Go ahead, eat.”

Jason Hammerschield looked up at Bullock, squinting with dull incomprehension.

“I’ll be very cross with you if you just let it sit there,” Bullock added.

The prisoner took a tentative forkful of his omelet, then ate more rapidly until he was fairly inhaling the contents of the plate in a fugue of deprivation. He reached into the basket for some corn bread, slathered it with butter, and spooned jam on top. “What I want to know,” Bullock continued, “is whether you are part of some larger horde.”

“Some what?” Jason Hammerschield said, spraying corn-bread crumbs as he spoke.

“You know, a larger unit of people like yourselves, an army of marauders, scavenging across the land like locusts.”

Jason Hammerschield chewed ruminatively.

“No,” he said eventually. “We’re just who we are. A bunch of guys.”

“What do you call your bunch?”

“Nothing.”

“Really? I’d think you’d sit around the campfire at night memorializing your exploits.”

“What our what?”

“Making up stories about yourselves. For your own amusement. Creating a myth for posterity.”

“We just fall out and sleep. It’s hard living like we do.”

“All I can say is you boys are seriously lacking in imagination.”

Jason Hammerschield mopped up the last remaining specks of egg, hash browns, and crumbs of bacon with a triangle of corn bread.

“Allow me to suggest a name,” Bullock said. “The Nutmeg Boys. Or maybe just the Nutmeggers.”

Jason Hammerschield made a face and snorted. “What happens now?” he asked, tossing his napkin onto his plate.

“Just some legal rigmarole,” Bullock said. “Do you boys have a lawyer?”

“No.”

“Want me to represent you? I’m a member of the bar.”

“That don’t sound right.”

“These are rugged times, admittedly, for the machinery of justice. By a stroke of luck, though, there’s a magistrate on the premises.”

“Who would that be?”

“Yours truly,” Bullock said.

“I see,” Jason Hammerschield said. “You the jury, too?”

“Pretty much. I could appoint some of my people, but they’d just do what I tell them. So why bother?”

A green look came over the prisoner as the horizon of his future finally resolved into a featureless landscape of grievous futility. He puffed out his cheeks, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he vomited his breakfast back onto his plate.

“It’s been nice chatting with you, Jason, but I have an awful lot to look after here. We’re slaughtering some hogs today. It’s the season for it.”

Bullock left the prisoner staring blankly into the panes of the conservatory walls and went outside to where his men waited.

“Take all these fellows down to the River Road,” Bullock told the versatile Dick Lee, “and hang them there at twenty-yard intervals.”

THIRTY-THREE

Robert Earle took a seat in Walter McWhinnie’s cobbler shop in the former family room of Walter’s house on Salem Street. Robert had been savoring this moment since he came home from searching the hills with the doctor and found a note informing him that the winter boots he ordered in September were finished and ready to try on.

Walter brought them out from the workroom behind the counter and gave one to Robert, who examined it lovingly. It was midcalf length and lined with lambskin, with a ring of fleece along the top. The double-stitched brown leather was waterproofed with beeswax, and the combination of new leather and wax gave off a luxurious, spicy aroma. A small pine-tree symbol was stamped on the vamp of each boot, the maker’s trademark.

“This is a beautiful piece of work, Walter,” Robert said, turning it over and over.

“Should last you a lifetime, with regular repairs,” he said. “Go ahead, try them on.”

Robert took off the moccasins that he wore most days when it was neither blazing hot nor snowy. They were also Walter’s work, four years old, on their second resoling, but otherwise sturdy. Walter took a stool before Robert’s chair and held the left boot out. Robert’s foot went in effortlessly. When both were on, he got up and strode tentatively around the room. The boots fit perfectly and the shearling foot beds were soft as pillows.

“It’s like they’re already broken in.”

“Glad they please you,” Walter said. “There’s nothing like good handwork.”

Robert admired the boots in a mirror that leaned against the wall while Walter stepped back behind the counter to get the bill of sale. Perfectly satisfied with the look and fit, Robert went over to the counter and pulled a fistful of silver coins out of his pocket— pre-1964 quarters and dimes. He made neat stacks of them until he’d laid out seven dollars.

“Those Virginians are keeping you busy, I see,” Walter said, alluding to the New Faithers.

“It’s been pretty regular work over there.”

“At least they pay real money. What are you doing for them, exactly?”

“Finish work. Wainscot. Inlay.”

“Fancy work.”

“Yeah. Pretty fancy.”

“I hear they got some big fat woman in there who they bow down to and worship. A real freak type.”

“Something like that.”

“You seen her?”

“Once. They brought me in to meet her.”

“You allowed to talk about it?”

“Sure. She’s plenty freaky, all right. Has fits and spells. Seems to have the ability to read minds. Whatever else she is, she has a lot of influence there. I’m not sure what to make of it. The room I’m outfitting is for her.”

“She must be special,” Walter said. “She give birth to quadruplets, the other day.”

“What? Where did you hear that?”

“That Sister Annabelle, runs the new clothing store they started over on Main.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“She says it wasn’t the first time, neither. This fat lady pops ’em out like a laying hen. That Annabelle, she’s a firecracker. I’m trying to get some footwear orders out of her. They got something like eighty people over to there, including little ones. You know if they have a bootmaker in the house?”

“Not as far as I know,” Robert said.

“I hear they have workshops galore where the classrooms used to be.”

“They do. But the craftsmen are a mixed bag, skill-wise. They’ve got me training some of their carpenters on finish work.”

“Well, ask around and find out how they’re fixed for cobblers.”

“I’ll do that.”

“You tell them where you got your boots. I could stand the business. By the way, somebody poisoned their stallion, Annabelle said. That Brother Jobe is hopping mad. He thinks it was one of us.”

THIRTY-FOUR

The Reverend Loren Holder poked around Perry Talisker’s shack on the river. He rapped on the locked door and salvaged windows, and peered inside, but didn’t see any sign that the hermit was around. He had trouble imagining the hermit as the sort who would abduct a child. In the artistry of the shack’s woodwork, and the dulcimer on the table, Loren saw evidence of a complicated personality. He wondered about the inner life of such a man, what had happened to him as the old times became these harder new times and what torments drove him into seclusion. He had no idea where else to look for him.

So, at nine o’clock that morning, in what was already becoming a beautifully warm Indian-summer day, Loren tramped the two miles back across town to the old high school where the New Faith order made its headquarters. He entered the building through the same front doors he had passed through so often as the parent of a school-age child in the old times and easily found his way to the former principal’s suite where Brother Jobe lived and worked. He found the Virginian in the hallway, dressing down one of the younger men of his tribe, Brother Malachi.

“That’s the last durned time I send you out for shoats, or any other kind of livestock trading!” he hollered at Malachi, who was just twenty-one. “Go on and git back down to the barn before I put you to cleaning stoves in the kitchen with the women!”

The young man hurried away, shoulders hunched in disgrace.

“Sumbitch bought a pig in a poke,” Brother Jobe muttered as much to himself as to Loren. “Durned mule-foot, wattle-faced, prick-eared throwback of a sow. Cost me five dollars, silver. What can I do for you this morning, Reverend?”