Mr. Shivers (22 page)

They looked at the two tents. Neither Pike nor Roosevelt stirred. Then Hammond and Peachy went to bed and Connelly slept beneath
the tree.

They went north again the next day. Roosevelt had to be led, like an old man.

“We know he went this way, Mr. Connelly,” said Pike, striding along with his walking stick. He did not seem nearly so tired
or beaten as all the rest. “You are right, he is weakening. Slowing. We will prevail, don’t you worry.”

“Let’s hope,” said Hammond, more to himself than anyone. He limped slightly but his face did not show any pain, or at least
what remained of it.

Connelly dropped back to speak to Peachy. “You don’t have to come with us, you know.”

Peachy smiled. “I know.”

“This is dangerous stuff.”

“Know that, too.”

“I appreciate you keeping me up and going in jail but, hell, that isn’t worth this. You don’t have to do this.”

Peachy laughed. “It ain’t about worth. We’re not bargaining, keeping a ledger or nothing. I just figure, well, you folks need
help. Seems like you all have a rough road ahead, but… Well, these fellas believe in what they’re doing. They believe it’s
right. And I think it may be, though it scares me. Besides,” he said, and lifted his face to the sun, “you got to keep to
those who keep to you. If I’m not good, then who will be?”

“Well,” said Connelly. “Okay, then.”

“There used to be a town close to here,” said Rosie, and he sounded more lucid than normal.

“Did there, Mr. Roosevelt?” Pike said.

“Yeah. Real nice town. Everyone there was nice and if you were coming through they’d give you a bed and coffee and a nice
warm bit of sup. I was there when I was a boy. Real churchy town. Everyone there was nice.”

“I didn’t know you were out here as a boy, Rosie,” Hammond said.

Roosevelt looked briefly confused, like he forgot where he was. Then his face went slack and he said, “Father traveled through
there with me. Before we went up to Chicago. I think we should go there. I think we should go up to that nice little town.”

“It would be nice to get some rest and some real food,” admitted Hammond.

“Yeah,” said Connelly. “What do you say, Pike?”

“Where is it, Roosevelt?” Pike asked.

“Oh,” he said faintly. “Oh, it’s a bit northwest of here, I think. I think. I remember it had a nice white steeple and big
old oaks. Mountains rising up behind it. Yes, it’s just a little northwest of here, an old dirt road running beside the mountains,
big white steeple. I remember.”

“What’s its name?” said Hammond.

“Gurry,” said Roosevelt quietly. “Gurry.”

“Hm. Well. It’s along our way, a little. And we are hurting, hurting something fierce.” He twirled his walking stick absentmindedly.
“Certainly. A little rest and Christian aid for our ills could be what we need before the final run.”

Evening fell softly. The gently clouded sky swam past the mountains, dappling the hillsides with violet spots and streaks.
As they followed the road they came by a dance taking place in a field. Lanterns and torches bobbed up and down and sousaphones
and trombones played a civilized waltz. They listened and followed the music.

They crested a small knoll and looked out on the field and saw young men and women laughing and dancing, the women in ghostly
white, the men in dour brown. They wheeled and waltzed and held one another while their friends clapped and looked on. Small
children aped them with an air far more serious than their elders, bowing like dignitaries at a ball. Then the waltz slowed
and couples drew close and swayed back and forth in the freshly mown grass.

Connelly’s stomach rumbled. He swigged water to dull it. Someone whooped in the night and a young man hefted a woman up and
spun her around and brought her back down, laughing. Drew her hips close to his and kissed her deeply and placed her head
on his shoulder.

Pike watched them, still as stone. He said, “It must be a very easy life indeed where love is your only concern.”

They walked back down to the road and continued on. The sounds of the band died soon enough and they were glad of it.

They found a small abandoned church and stayed the night there. Its short white steeple stabbed the sky, and inside the broken
windows let light fall on the lacquered pews so they gleamed like guns on the rack. Pike made bed up at the pulpit. He sat
before the big white cross and muttered to himself for hours before falling silent. He might have fallen asleep but none wanted
to check.

Peachy and Hammond sat in the corner, sipping whisky and talking of women. They ate cured squirrel meat they had prepared
along the road, no more than a handful. As the temperature dropped Connelly wound a dusty blanket around himself and kicked
a pile of leaves from underneath the pews and lay down between them.

When his eyes shut he saw the desert once more.

Still the wild blue sky, still the bleached-bone sands. He was standing in the middle of the basin from before, barefoot and
nude, and when he looked at himself he saw scars crisscrossing his body like a roadmap. Some he knew—the blow from the man
on the train, the beatings from the sheriff, the gouges from all the fences and ditches and forests he had crawled through.
Others he did not know. A white puckered scar from what was surely a gunshot shone at him from his shoulder.

He looked up. On the lip of the basin he saw the pale young man sitting cross-legged. Connelly called to him but he did not
answer. It may have been the distance but to Connelly’s eye the young man was weeping.

Mr. Shivers

They found the town the next morning. They were nearing the mountains now. Roosevelt led them without watching where he was
going, his head bowed like a cripple. He became distracted by many things in the road. He spent minutes staring at a dead
field mouse, his gaze fixed on its stiff little body, and with childish glee he began grinding its skull beneath the heel
of his shoe. Pike reprimanded him severely and Rosie laughed gently, like he had done no more than strike the head of a daisy
from its stem.

“Boy ain’t right,” said Peachy.

“No,” said Connelly.

Then they wound about a group of tall firs and before them they saw a small, quaint little village nestled in the hills, and
all the surrounding area was the greenest and healthiest any of them had seen in months. Dry scrub washed against verdant
green like two different oceans crashing together. A little white church sat at the center, small cottages radiating outward.
Cheery smoke tumbled up from their chimneys. Connelly felt he had never seen a happier place in his life.

“This is it,” said Roosevelt faintly. “This is my little safe haven.”

They came into the little village and made for the church. A festival of some kind was going on. Green and yellow streamers
hung from the streetlights and somewhere someone was playing a flute. They walked through the streets until they came to the
front of the church where a large crowd was arrayed on the city block. They could not see much of what was going on but at
the center was a dead gray tree, yellow and green streamers hanging from its limbs. At the tips of the limbs green boughs
from other trees had been tied on.

They stayed at the fringes until they were spotted by a churchman. Though they expected him to be wary and distrustful like
all other folk they had seen he instead walked over and politely asked, “May I help you?”

Before they could speak Roosevelt said, “I see you make the dead tree live. May it live long and lasting, should you water
its earth well.”

The churchman’s eyebrows rose and he looked at Connelly and the others with surprise.

“You’ll have to excuse our friend,” said Pike. “He is a little addled. He has recently had an accident so at times he is not
unlike a child.”

“You all have been traveling long?” asked the churchman.

“Yes. Very long. Very long indeed. Our friend stayed here once as a child and… and we thought it would do him some good if
he came back.”

The churchman looked at Rosie a long while and he seemed to find something in his face. “Ah, yes. I-I do recognize him here.
It’s in his eyes, yes. I see him there.” He beamed at Connelly and the others. “Here. Here, you all look hungry and troubled.”

“Yes,” said Hammond. “Don’t mean to cause any commotion, but it’s been a while since our last meal.”

“Oh, well then, we’re just about to have a dinner of our own, and we’d be more than happy to serve you as well. It’s a holiday
for us, and I’d be ashamed to turn away hungry guests,” he said. “I’m Pastor Leo.”

They walked through the crowd of people. Connelly noticed that all who turned and looked at them smiled widely and waved.

“What celebration is this?” asked Connelly.

“We celebrate the close of the fall months,” said the churchman. “Winter comes. Harvest. We have a lot to harvest and lot
to be thankful for.”

“I notice this land seems healthier than most,” said Pike.

“It’s because of the way the rain catches on the hill,” said the churchman. “We manage to get just enough to keep ourselves
growing no matter what state the rest of the nation is in.”

Peachy looked at the slopes about them. “That don’t seem right,” he said to Connelly. “This seems to be the dry side, ’less
I’m mistaken.”

Connelly shrugged and they continued on. The pastor said his hellos to those he walked by and each time the people would greet
Pike and the others as well, welcoming them to their town and touching them upon the shoulders. They had not been so warmly
greeted by anyone in weeks, months, perhaps years. Hammond was so overwhelmed he stopped and turned away and rubbed the mist
from his eyes.

“Dear boy, are you all right?” said Leo. “Oh, I can’t imagine what you’ve seen out upon the road.”

“I’m fine,” mumbled Hammond.

“Don’t you worry. Don’t you fret any at all. All that’s over now, now you just come on with me and I’ll see you right.”

The pastor led them toward the church and down into the back where there was a small gathering room. Long tables lined each
of the walls, all of them laden with crock pots and dishes and platters, all steaming. People in church clothes moved from
dish to dish, chatting and drinking before moving out into the courtyard. The rich scent of butter and cheese and baked bread
filled the air. Roast pork and casserole and steamed vegetables and soups. The room was so laden with the promise of succor
that it was nearly painful.

The pastor sensed their discomfort with the crowd and filled a basket and led them to the corner of the courtyard where they
could sit alone in the shade. They undid the cloth covering and took rolls and cheese and ate. The very taste of each was
so strong it hurt. Hammond began weeping again.

“This is so nice,” he said. “This is so nice.”

Connelly did not say anything. He was watching a small girl in a green dress dancing across the courtyard. She carried a short
stick with a little toy blade at the end. It resembled an axe or perhaps a scythe of some sort. More streamers ran from its
top, and she twirled it like a baton and sang, “Reap day, reap day.” Then she saw Connelly and the others. She grinned but
there was no mirth in it, no joy. Her eyes shone like black buttons and she laughed and Connelly was reminded of Roosevelt
grinding the mouse’s head into the road.

“They all got long sleeves,” said Peachy.

“What?” said Pike.

“They all got long sleeves on,” he said again. “It’s hot out. Just seems odd.”

“These are formal people. Might I also remind you that we wear long sleeves as well?”

“Yeah. But the clothes we got is all we got, so the more the better, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Hammond.

Roosevelt said, “Water the earth. Water it deep. Wake the roots that sleep in sunless places. And eaters all up their strange
fruits that are growings. All the dead that slept before, the roots eatings them up good and plenties and growings them up
again.”

“Jesus, Rosie,” said Hammond. “Knock it off.”

“Waterings it deepenings,” murmured Roosevelt. He became enraptured by a fly and caught it in his hat. Then he buried his
face in his hat and giggled.

The pastor came to them again when the afternoon wore on and led them to a small room in the church where other men in suits
waited. Other churchmen, deacons of this little parish, perhaps. This little slice of paradise buried in the toes of the mountains.

“These are men of my church,” said the pastor. “They noticed you and were moved by your state and wished to see you.”

“We don’t get many drifters here,” explained one of them. “Nor do we hear much news.”

“We don’t know much news,” said Pike.

They laughed. “You know more than us, I bet. We don’t even get telegraph out here. Used to, once. Line broke down a whiles
back.”

“What news I know isn’t the type I’d like to share,” said Pike. “I’d no more infect a man with typhoid. You are happy here,
I’d not spoil that.”

“Please, sir,” said the pastor. “We just want to know.”

Pike shook his head. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I could try.”

Pike told them the best he could. He spoke of the desperation that ran wild just beyond the borders of this town. Of Hoovers
bigger than even this village, stretched along fresh water or whatever resource could be found. Rumblings of war in strange
places. Children with arms and legs like twigs and stomachs swollen with hunger. States that had not seen rain in months and
so were half blown away by now, dissolved by the furious winds. A broken world of wandering and refuse.

He spoke of the now. Of this moment which they all now felt was penultimate. They lived in a dead and dying age. Already they
were but memories for the future.

The pastor and his men became very grave. He nodded. “Change is here,” he said.

“Well, I hope it’s change,” said Pike.

“We all do,” Hammond said.

The pastor considered something. He said, “I suppose in times like these a man must do whatever he can to survive. To keep
his family and those he loves going.”

“No one could disagree with that,” said Pike.

“They could. Somewhere someone out there is robbing another man for a day’s survival. That man who is robbed, that victim,
he would disagree.”

“He would take if he could. Rob and steal. If he could get away with it.”

The pastor nodded. “I believe so. It makes me feel better to hear you say that. It makes me feel better.”

“Why?” said Connelly. “Do you know someone who has stolen to survive?”

Leo blinked, startled. “Me? No. No, not at all. We are blessed here. Whatever sickness that has taken this nation has passed
us by. We live in peace. I would do whatever was necessary to… to keep it that way, yes, but… but that time is not now.” His
eye twitched and he glanced out the window up into the mountains. “I hope Christ and God almighty will forgive all of us in
the future for what we do in the present.”

“I am sure He will,” Pike said. “I once taught the Word myself. I have seen the most desperate places of this blessed nation
and there the Word still lives.”

“Yes,” said the pastor. “Lives.”

He and Pike continued conversing. Connelly and the others soon tired of it and asked for a washroom. There was one in the
church and they cleaned themselves, the first soap and combs they had seen in months. A wife of one of the men offered them
fresh clothes but they could not accept, already unnerved by the hospitality. Then they went back out to the town square to
enjoy the rest of the day, accompanied by two of the other churchmen.

They looked up at the gray peaks rising up into the sky before them.

“I have never seen the mountains,” Hammond said. “Not really. Just plains and plains and plains. I never knew the earth could
be so tall.”

“Tall and dangerous,” said one of the churchmen. “I don’t know where you boys are going next, but it shouldn’t be up there.”

“Why?” asked Connelly.

“Wolves. We’ve had lots of trouble with them. They rove in packs up there. Makes hell for the livestock.”

“Wolves?” said Peachy. “There are wolves around here?”

“Yes.”

Connelly peered up at the slopes. He stood and shaded his eyes. “There’s something up there,” he said.

“What?” said one of the men. He sounded startled.

“I see a little roof up there. Just a little higher than here. See?” he pointed.

“Oh. That’s the old farm. It’s abandoned. It was abandoned because of the wolves.”

“Oh,” said Connelly.

The two other men scratched their arms awkwardly, then bid Connelly good day and walked off to the other celebrations. He
watched them go. Two little boys ran by carrying the toy axes or scythes, twirling them about and singing about the harvest.
The two men shushed them. The little boys halted, abashed, then glanced at Connelly and the others and scampered off.

As evening came the pastor and the other churchmen took them to a small barn at the edge of town where they sat on stools
and drank cool ale in the shade. Connelly and the others smiled and were happy but the churchmen stayed somber. They sipped
from their dusty glasses and stared at their feet and spoke little. Soon Hammond and Peachy were talking of women yet again
and Pike was pounding his fist into his palm and speaking of God and righteousness, all of them red-faced and laughing. Only
Roosevelt did not drink. He sat in the corner and stared at his fingers and traced lines on his face. Connelly approached,
stumbling.

“What you doing, Rosie?” he asked.

Roosevelt looked up at him. “A green day. A water day.”

“What?”

“What would you give for a water day?”

“A water day?”

“Yes. For home?”

“Home. Shit. I don’t know. A lot. Everything.”

“Everything you have?”

“Yeah.”

“What about everything someone else has?”

Connelly could not think to answer.

Roosevelt nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

When night fell they were roaring drunk and wild-eyed. The churchmen laughed but it sounded flat and anxious. They led Connelly
and the others into the hay to sleep and they tossed themselves down and were soon snoring.

Connelly awoke deep in the night. His head still throbbed with drink but his stomach would not quiet. It was not nausea, but
some anxiety he could not name. Again, the animal thing. That strange, wheedling sense that something was not right.

He stood up and walked outside. The moon was just cresting the peaks, like a pearl mounted on an immense black stand. He looked
back at the cottages of the town. They were dead and quiet, almost abandoned. The odd window glowed among their ranks, a drop
of honey among jet. He rubbed his belly and walked away toward an old tree to piss. While there he looked and saw the tallest
copse of trees he had ever seen in his life rising at the foot of the hills, less than a quarter mile away. He studied them
and looked back at the town. He could not say why but certain things seemed to line up between the two. Rocks and stones and
some shrubberies, the gentle rise and swirl of the landscape—they all aligned themselves like some path leading from one to
the other.

He buttoned up and walked to the copse. The trees were enormous, all firs at least a hundred feet tall, each of them a green
so dark they were nearly purple. There had to be at least a dozen of them. He walked into their center. Stones and lumps of
earth lay scattered in the little clearing. He stood in the center and looked about and noticed there was a gap in the trees
that opened on the side of the mountain, and through it he could just make out the roof of the abandoned farm.