A History of the Future (22 page)

By now, we could see that the super’s office is in a state of alarm. Men are coming out the portico, pointing at us, shouting. I squeeze off another shot into the roof and they all dash back inside like bugs into a rotten log. Then we gallop off, ride up the slope, to the canal towpath on the plateau up there heading west toward Buffalo.

We rode like hell for a quarter of an hour, I guess, and found a quiet place to let the mules drink.

“This money is making my pants fall down it’s so heavy,” Evan says.

“Well give me some,” I say.

“Sure,” he goes, “but we’ll count it out later and split it even, right?”

It kind of dismays me that he’s talking like we were a couple of common thieves, but he had a point and I wanted to calm him down because he was obviously in a half-hysterical state. So I go, “Of course, we’ll split it even.”

“You shot that man,” Evan said, with something like admiration.

I go, “Evan, listen to me. We’re not going to talk about it anymore, never again. As far as you and me are concerned it never happened.”

“Well sure it happened—”

I grab him by the front of his shirt and pull him right up to my face. He’s slighter than me and the age difference matters, I guess, and he doesn’t resist. “You just forget about it and act like it never happened. Especially if we’re around other people.”

“Okay,” he says. “What are we going to do now?”

I let go of his shirt. This was the first time I’d actually thought about it in all the excitement. McCoy had told us about Buffalo. He’d been there. It had a lively waterfront district, he said, and received all kinds of trade goods from around the lakes. I told Evan we’d go there and figure something out.

He goes, “Won’t they be looking for us?”

“I expect they will be. Now give over some of that coin to me and let’s get moving.”

Evan pulls it out of his pockets and dumps handfuls into mine. I notice there’s some yellow coins mixed in with the silver.

“Goddammit,” I go, “there’s gold mixed in with this.”

“Huh?” Evan goes and he’s finally seeing it. “Goddammit, you’re right!”

We counted the gold. Fifteen half-ounce and three tenth-of-an-ounce coins. Plus all that silver.

“Goddammit,” Evan goes. “We’re rich.”

At that moment I knew exactly what we were going to do when we got to Buffalo.

“I’m awfully thirsty, and hungry, too,” Daniel said.

Loren flinched as though he had awakened from a trance. He had been leaning forward hanging on Daniel’s every word.

“The corn bread’s done,” Sara said. “And so’s the pudding.”

By pudding she meant what had, in the old times, been called scalloped potatoes au gratin with bacon. In the new times, just about everything baked in a casserole with cream and often cheese was called pudding.

T
HIRTY-TWO

Brother Jobe, the prosecutor appointed by the magistrate Bullock in the murder case of Rick and Julian Stokes, agreed to meet the defense attorney Sam Hutto that evening and suggested his Union Tavern as the place. Since the tavern had opened, the novelty had begun to wear off, but half a dozen men lingered at the bar enjoying their whiskey, cider, and tobacco, all of them townsmen, none of the New Faith. Brother Jobe sat alone in a booth in the back room, where the other tables were otherwise unoccupied at that hour, about half past eight. While he waited, he scribbled in a book of foolscap paper by candlelight with a pencil stub in an attempt to compose his sermon for the coming Sunday, always a chore. The pony glass of Coot Hill applejack on the table made the chore a little easier, as it filled him with a sense of gratitude for being, and his appreciation for the forces greater than himself responsible for it. This week’s message would be based on the use of the word “mystery” in the book of Ephesians, credited to Paul the Apostle. Faith is a mystery at its core, he mused, but mysteries are still for real.

Just as he wondered whether this was an original thought, he looked up upon hearing the front door open and close. Brother Micah, the tavern manager, had hung a set of sleigh bells on the door. Sam Hutto, lanky and long, a man people said was born sad-looking, dusted some snowflakes off his slouch hat, spotted Brother Jobe in the rear, and strode to the booth.

“Evening, counselor,” Brother Jobe said and waved a hand at Brother Micah. “You got some discovery for me?”

“I do.”

“Well, have a durned seat.”

“You did a nice job in here,” Sam said, looking all around the place. “I remember when it was a drugstore.”

“How come you ain’t been in till now.”

“I don’t drink,” Sam said. “Anymore.”

“Oh . . . ?” By now, Brother Micah had come over to the table.

“What can I get you gentlemen?”

“You can give me another,” Brother Jobe said. “Esteemed counsel here is teetotal. Think you can scare up a pot of tea for him?”

“Mint all right?” Brother Micah said. “It’s alls we got.”

“Sure.”

“And if sister is still in the kitchen,” Brother Jobe said, “ask her to send out a basket of tater tots.” Then, to Sam, “We make ’em ourself. Taste just like the real ones used to. Our ketchup brand’s coming along too. Before you know it, it’ll be just like old-timey times around here.”

Brother Micah scurried off back to the kitchen.

“What have you got for me?” Brother Jobe said, looking over his reading glasses, his voice returning to its lower business tone.

“It appears Mr. Einhorn’s chore boy saw Mrs. Stokes shaking her baby out on the street the night of the murders.”

“Yeah? What’s that mean?”

“Possibly that she shook him to death. Shaken baby syndrome. It’s well known. And consistent with Dr. Copeland’s autopsy report.”

Brother Jobe reflected while he sipped his jack.

“That ain’t good for your client.”

“Nope. But I’m bound by law to tell you in case you haven’t heard it yourself yet.”

“That boy’s a half-wit, ain’t he?”

“He’s Down syndrome, actually.”

“How’d this come to light?”

“A bunch was down at Einhorn’s store talking about the murders. The boy, Buddy, was around and he weighed in, so to speak, on something he saw out on the street that night. He lives in a room back of the store and he often sits outside at night, even in winter. You’re going to have to depose him.”

“Is he credible, this boy? I ain’t never deposed a half-wit.”

“He’s an adult. More or less functional. Reads and writes a little. Does some simple figures. I suppose the others would corroborate they heard what he said, though. It’s your call.”

“Well, I got some discovery for you too,” Brother Jobe said. Brother Micah came by the table with a pot of mint tea, a mug, a honey jar, and the basket of tidbits composed of deep-fried cornmeal and potato with a little dish of sweet red sauce to go with it. Brother Jobe took the first one, and several more. “I can’t get enough of these ding-danged things. This place was a pizza parlor for many a year, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Sam said, pouring his tea.

“’Course you would. Well, we’re working on a pizza recipe. You know how hard it is to get wheat flour. And Bullock’s so durned stingy with that spelt he grows. Let’s face it, corn bread just don’t make much of a pizza.”

“Yes, we all miss real pizza,” Sam said. “You say you got some discovery for me?”

“The Stokes gal was in here the night of the murders.”

“I think we know that already.”

“Yeah, well, I got a boy was working in the kitchen that night, young Brother Enos, says he was taking a bucket of swill out back in the alley and caught Miz Stokes in a carnal congress with a town man in the box of the horse truck, baby all bundled up there beside it on the ground, crying all the while. It don’t make her look too good.”

Sam sipped his tea, ruminating.

Brother Jobe continued. “Enos can identify the fellow. Says he’s in here most nights since we opened. Farmhand over to Larmon’s. I’ll find and depose the sumbitch.”

Sam tried a tater tot. He was surprised how good it tasted, how forcefully the taste projected him into the past. The two men both foraged in the basket silently for several minutes.

“Ain’t they tasty?” Brother Jobe said.

“They’re quite good,” Sam said. “I have every intention of pleading Mrs. Stokes insane.”

“The burden of proof is on you-all,” Brother Jobe said.

“She was very sick, you know. The brain fever.”

“I do know.”

“She’s probably not competent to stand trial.”

“I intend to have that conversation with our magistrate, for what it’s worth,” Brother Jobe said, then knocked back the rest of his applejack. “It seems to me that Mr. Bullock’s in a hanging mood these days. Much as I think we need to see justice done around here—and just between the two of us, off the record—I don’t think hanging this poor girl is the right way to go.”

T
HIRTY-THREE

Daniel finished eating and put his plate aside. The others—Loren, Jane Ann, Britney, and Robert—remained in their seats in the parlor, the warm air in the room fraught with dreadful expectation. Sarah sat at a remove in the inglenook across the room, practicing her handwriting with one of the manufactured pencils that had become increasingly scarce and valuable.

“Yeah, this part is hard,” Daniel said. “I apologize in advance.”

Jane Ann and Loren knew what that meant and shared a nervous glance.

Daniel’s Story: On Board the
Kerry McKinney

We got to Buffalo by midafternoon. I figured they’d be looking for Randall McCoy’s mules as much as for us, so we abandoned them in a plowed field in what I suppose was once a city park. There was a statue on a granite pedestal that the farmer had plowed around. Evan had to go over and see who it was of. Grover Cleveland, it turned out, a long ago president. The corn was about as high as your ankle. We walked on from there. We’d left our packs and all our stuff behind on McCoy’s canal boat, of course, so we weren’t burdened by anything.

Buffalo was the biggest city I’d ever been in, but there wasn’t much of it left alive even once you got well into it. Most of the streets of houses appeared to be long abandoned, weeds and shrub trees growing in the old front yards, things hanging off everywhere, shutters, rain gutters, plastic siding, a lot of broken windows, hardly anyone around except some pickers going for the last scraps. The old business district with the tall buildings was vacant too. But closer to the lake you started to see some activity and some streets of close-together new wooden buildings, shoulder to shoulder, and finally a broad street on the waterfront with all kinds of businesses going.

There was a kind of man-made harbor there with a stone jetty that hooked around out about a quarter mile, and a lot of docks and slips with boats, the biggest sailboats I ever saw, and tall wooden structures along the shore where corn and grain that came in from far away across the other lakes were stored. There were lots of people, too, working around the docks, moving cargo on hand trucks and horse trucks, and an open-air market under a big wooden shed roof with farmers selling the first early crops, radishes and greens and mushrooms and cheeses and fishes, whatever they brought in. Evan and I had a stupid argument about whether the big water out there beyond the jetty was Lake Ontario or Lake Erie. It was Erie, of course. One thing amazed me: you couldn’t see across it.

We’d talked along the way about what we might do when we got to Buffalo, being a couple of desperate characters on the run, and I came up with the idea to buy a boat and just get the hell out of that part of the country to somewhere they wouldn’t even be looking for us. Evan went along with it. I admit, it seemed a little sketchy until we saw what was going on at the Buffalo lakefront and all of a sudden I was sure we really could do it.

There were two big new wooden hotels on Front Street, the Niagara and the Eagle. We agreed it would not be smart for us to go around being seen together since they’d be looking for a pair of desperados, so we decided to split up and each stay the night at a separate hotel. We agreed to meet up the next morning at the restaurant on the same street called O’Brian’s Meals and then just sail away, nice and easy. It was my job to go search around the docks for a suitable boat to buy because I was a year and a half older than Evan and supposedly I knew more about such things, which I didn’t, really. Anyway, there was only one sticky problem. I had to ask Evan to give me his share of the gold because I didn’t know yet how much I’d have to pay for a boat, but I figured it could be a lot. I didn’t even know what kind of a boat we would get, except it had to be something the two of us could handle.