The Witch of Hebron (21 page)

“I thought you were the mighty horse killer,” Billy said when Jasper was done. “What do you care whether these two live or die?”

“They didn’t hurt anybody,” Jasper said.

“I guess that’s so,” Billy agreed. “All right, let’s get away from here now.”

They hadn’t gone a quarter mile when Billy noticed a certain irritation about his face and arms, and ran his hand on his cheek and realized he was bleeding. He peeled off his leather coat and discovered a constellation of seven blood spots going from his shoulder to his biceps, with a couple of extras just under his left cheekbone.

“Will you look at this?” he said. “I’m shot! The son of a bitch got me after all.”

He dropped his shoulder sack and sat on a bank of weeds on the side of the road.

Jasper followed him.

“Take your shirt off,” Jasper said. “Let me have a look.”

Billy complied and Jasper examined him.

“You’ve got some birdshot in there.”

“Son of a bitch shot me.”

“I can get them out, but it’ll probably hurt.”

“Goddamn,” Billy said. “Well, do what you have to.”

“Too bad you drank up all that liquor.”

“I can take it.”

“I mean for an antiseptic.”

“I heal up good. Get her done, Johnny.”

Jasper cut Billy a green length of birch branch to bite on, knowing the layer under the bark had a pleasant mint-tasting sap, and picked the lead BBs out of Billy’s flesh with the tip of his hunting knife while Billy groaned.

“Okay,” Jasper said. “I think I got them all out.”

Putting his shirt back on, Billy said, “How come you didn’t stab me in the heart just now when you had the chance?”

“I guess you don’t know the most sacred rule of medicine, do you?” Jasper said.

“I guess not. What is it?”

“First, do no harm.”

“What rubbage,” Billy said. “Doctors do all kinds of harm. Everybody knows that. Do you know the most sacred rule of banditry?

“I don’t want to know.”

“Well, I’m gonna tell you anyways, you little smart mouth: It’s live to do your deeds another day. No gomer is ever gonna get the drop on Billy Bones, if I can help it.”

THIRTY-SIX

Perry Talisker heard a gunshot as he made his way along the elevations of the range of hills known as the Gavottes. He jogged through the woods in the direction it came from and soon reached a place of observation among the rocks of a granite promontory a hundred yards from the scene. Below he watched a wiry towheaded man fight with a darker-haired man in the driver’s box of a freight wagon. He retrieved his field glasses from a side pocket of his pack and focused the objectives. A week earlier the foliage would have been too thick to observe the scene from this lair, but the previous night’s rain alone had stripped off many leaves and the visual path was clear.

He watched the beaten man’s head seem to explode in a cloud of red mist and the ensuing argument between his attacker and a boy at the scene. Without consciously framing what he was witnessing as a crime, Perry Talisker sensed wickedness and carefully swung his Marlin .30-30 off his shoulder with the dim notion to bring down the man who had battered the wagon driver to a bloody pulp. But he hesitated, realizing that no one had appointed him executioner, and by then, the wicked man and his young companion had vanished over the crown of the road that ran steeply down to the valley.

Talisker slung the rifle back over his shoulder and waited in the sunny stillness of the morning. After a while, the two figures appeared as distant specks where the road curled back into view, way out of range now. Eventually, Talisker clambered down the boulder-studded slope to the road and the wagon. The beaten man’s eyes stared up unblinkingly into the sky and Talisker stood watching him long enough to determine that he was dead. His pants pockets were turned out, empty. Talisker did not want to touch him. The horses continued to graze contentedly in the ditch up the road. He supposed that they would eventually find their way back home. He felt helpless. There was no aid he could render to the dead man. Though he had as little to do with society as possible these days, he knew that its wheels of justice were hardly turning, that there was little in the way of real law to go to even if one was inclined to seek it. But he also knew that all-seeing God had witnessed the same act he had, and that his counterpart, the Dark One, was no doubt present at this scene, too—and perhaps both were sufficiently distracted to allow Perry Talisker, the hermit of Union Grove, to slip back into the woods unnoticed in pursuit of his quarry.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The doctor did not know his way around the New Faith headquarters. The town had closed down the high school before his oldest child was ready for kindergarten. The very hum and bustle of the place made him uneasy, as though he were too close to the dangerous machinery of a sinister enterprise. But he made a few inquiries among the men and women coming and going down the hallway, neatly attired in their costumes of earnest piety, the men clean-shaven and the women smelling of soap, and he was eventually directed out to the mule barn in one of the former ball fields, where Brother Jobe had gone to oversee the shoeing of his favorite mount, Atlas, by the group’s farrier, one Brother Zuriel. A third brother, barely a grown man, stood watching.

“Morning there, Doc,” Brother Jobe said in greeting, not even turning his head to see who was there.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Brother Enos here said it was you coming across’t the pasture a moment ago. You always think we’re up to something, don’t you?”

“Sorry,” the doctor said, swallowing his pride.

“Honey of a day, though, ain’t it? I got a mind to go for a ride.”

The farrier politely asked the doctor to step aside so he could attend to the mule’s left front hoof.

“You know my boy’s missing, right?” the doctor said.

“I heard.”

“The Reverend Holder speak to you about it?”

“I guess he did.”

The doctor told him about riding up and down the county for two days with Robert Earle, and how his horse went lame, forcing them to return.

“Mebbe you should let us shoe your horse next time.”

“Anyway, we didn’t come across the slightest sign of him,” the doctor said. “Nothing.”

“It’s a big county,” Brother Jobe said.

“I know you have some men who were rangers in the Holy Land, men who know how to conduct a proper search.”

“Indeed I do.”

“I’d be very grateful if you could put them out to search for my boy.”

“I expect you would.”

“And it’s not necessary to play games about this.”

Brother Jobe gave the doctor his full attention. “You’re pretty quick to anger, Doc,” he said. “It’s not good for your blood pressure. I’m not playing no games with you.”

“I’m asking you to search for my boy.”

“I know you are,” Brother Jobe said with a penetrating look, “and I will.”

The doctor flinched slightly.

“I can pay you in gold or silver or medical services,” he said.

“It won’t cost you but a pound of flesh.”

“That’s not funny.”

“What makes you think it was a joke?”

The doctor sighed in anxiety and frustration but decided not to continue dueling verbally with Brother Jobe.

“Don’t be such a gloomy Gus, Doc. We’ll find him. A boy can’t stray too far in this day and age, now can he? He ain’t gonna hitch a ride to Altoona on no beer truck.”

“I thought maybe I’d ride with the search party.”

“Think again,” Brother Jobe said. “In the first place, it would wear me out dealing with all your ding-dang suspicions. In the second place, you’ll only get in the way. In the third place, your folks need you here, so I say you stay.”

“He’s my boy,” the doctor said, and his mouth began to quiver.

“I know what it’s like to lose a child,” said Brother Jobe. “Me and my men’ll stop by your place on the way out, get some particulars. I don’t suppose you have any pictures of the boy.”

“I have a drawing made by Mr. Pendergast, the librarian.” Andrew Pendergast, man of many talents, now filled the void once occupied by photography. “It’s maybe two years old.”

“Can we take it along?”

“I suppose so.”

“All right, then.”

“There’s something else,” the doctor said, moving closer and speaking with quiet urgency. “We’ve got this fellow in town people call the hermit. Antisocial type. Probably not all there, mentally. Lives alone in a shack by the river.” He explained how Jasper and Ned Allison had snooped on the hermit and what Ned had told Jane Ann Holder, his teacher. “I don’t know if there’s anything to it, but there’s an outside chance of some connection there.”

“Some sort of foul play?”

“I don’t know. The Reverend Holder went to the hermit’s place this morning and there’s no sign of him.”

“I’ll bear all this in mind, Doc.”

He also told Brother Jobe about what had happened in Argyle, the storekeeper who appeared to be offering boys for labor or sport.”

“What the heck did he mean by that?” Brother Jobe asked.

“I sure wondered.”

“Sport? Sounds like some kind of wickedness.”

“I took it that way.”

“Argyle, huh? Maybe we’ll have a look-see that way,” Brother Jobe said. “Sometimes the vexations of running this outfit put me out of sorts. I need to get away into sunlight and fresh air. You couldn’t ask for finer weather to ride around in, now, could you?”

“The fall is longer here than it used to be.”

“Maybe the old-timey times weren’t so great as they’re cracked up to be, Doc. We’ll come by your place in an hour or so before we head out.”

“I’m grateful for your help,” the doctor said. Then he left the barn, neglecting to offer a handshake.

Not a minute later, Brother Joseph, the second in command to Brother Jobe among the New Faith order, came by the mule barn to consult on a few things prior to the search party’s departure.

“I see the doctor finally humbled himself to come over in person,” Brother Joseph said.

“He don’t see the world like we do, but he’s all right,” Brother Jobe told his trusted adjutant, who would be left in charge of things. “It wasn’t necessary for him to grovel or nothing.”

“Did you tell him it was his boy who killed our stallion?”

“I certainly did not. And don’t you breathe a word of that to nobody else. Not even amongst our own.”

“I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

“I like to think so,” Brother Jobe said, his stomach still aching vaguely despite the fresh air and sunshine.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Tom Allison rented the Reverend Loren Holder his most trustworthy mount, a nineteen-year-old half Percheron named Lucky. It was a massive gelding, sixteen and a quarter hands high, all black, with a broad seat and a gentle disposition, perfectly suited to Loren, who was a large man and an inexperienced rider. He rode Lucky from Allison’s barn over to the rectory to say good-bye to Jane Ann, who had come home at noon, when the school day ended during harvest season. He’d told her that he was taking advantage of the fine weather to make ministerial calls at the more isolated farms scattered out in the county, which was at least partially true. He had a map hand-drawn by Dr. Jerry Copeland, who had used his U.S. Geological Survey topo map as a reference. The topo map was too tattered and valuable to lend out, now that they weren’t printing them anymore, but the handmade map was a good one. Loren had panniers filled with corn bread, smoked trout, dried fruit, nut cakes, two bottles of Jane Ann’s wine, a waxed linen poncho, two woolen sweaters, and a Bible. He had a leather drawstring purse containing nine ounces of old silver dimes and quarters in his trouser pocket.

Jane Ann came out the rectory kitchen door and stepped lightly through the fallen leaves and purple asters in the yard to where Loren sat on Lucky in the Unitarian church’s old circular driveway. A patch of sunlight fell on her white muslin shirt so that she seemed illuminated from within for a moment.

“Aren’t you high and handsome up there,” she said, hands on her hips. “My hero.”

“You thought so once.”

“I still do,” she said.

Loren shifted awkwardly in his saddle. The leather creaked. The burden of his secret objective weighed on him, while the sight of Jane Ann filled him with both longing and anxiety. He felt as if he were embarking on a journey to some terrible self-knowledge that would alter him, that he was saying good-bye to things comforting and familiar without any promise of consolation. The thought made him shudder.

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“A day or two, I should think.”

“I’ll worry.”

“There’s nothing out there to worry about.”

“James LaBountie said his father saw a panther on the road to Shushan.”

“This is a mighty big horse,” Loren said. “If I was a panther, I’d steer clear of him.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I carry you right here,” he said, pointing to the center of his chest.

Jane Ann reached up for his hand and kissed it. He kissed hers back, then reined out Lucky, and clip-clopped up Salem Street toward Hebron.

THIRTY-NINE

Brother Jobe stopped in on Mary Beth Ivanhoe in her queenly quarters before he and his men departed. She lay propped up on a pile of satin pillows in her ornate bed with a baby in each arm, watching them nurse noisily, beads of sweat making trails from her forehead down the complex topography of her face. The pale flesh of her upper body fell in so many fatty folds that it was difficult to discern which was a breast.

“Somebody come and git these runts off of me!” she said. Brother Jobe wheeled around in the rush of Mary Beth’s swarming handmaidens, who swooped away the squalling infants, helped the mother with her gusseted silk pajama top, and proffered a tray of fried chicken and cornmeal tidbits along with a tumbler of sweetened sumac and vinegar tea.

When the infants were out of the way, Mary Beth reclined with an arduous sigh and stared at the food in her lap.

“My titties are killing me,” she said. “I got to run split sessions with these critters, there’s so many of’em.”