Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories (28 page)

Doctor Andrews stood and Pastor Boone rose as well.

“Old men, William? Yes, I suppose we are,” Doctor Andrews mused, rubbing his back. “I’ve watched others become gray and decrepit yet somehow presumed it was not happening to me. Is it so with you?”

“Sometimes,” Pastor Boone answered.

“Perhaps it’s because we are always looking for imperfections in others, and not ourselves,” Doctor Andrews suggested.

“I’ve had cause to find plenty within myself,” Pastor Boone said.

“If you mean your neutrality during the war, you protest too much, William. You did what you thought best, as did I.”

“Best for the church or for myself?”

“Prudence was necessary,” Doctor Andrews said. “I made no show of Unionist sympathies once the war began.”

“But you did before. I did not even do that,” Pastor Boone said. “Perhaps if I had, and done so forcefully, Leland Davidson would not have joined the Confederacy.”

Doctor Andrews smiled.

“This present business should allay you of that vanity. Davidson is a man who values only his own opinion.”

“But even now I don’t understand his motivation to do so,” Pastor Boone said. “He had no slaves to fight for.”

Doctor Andrews set his pipe down.

“Perhaps I should not say this, William, but since you’ve broached the complexities of human motivation, might your involvement in this affair be of benefit to yourself as much as these young lovers?”

“In some ways, yes. I will admit that,” Pastor Boone said, “but, as will be obvious, not in all.”

“And you are certain he will sever his hand if I don’t assent?” Doctor Andrews asked. “Absolutely certain?”

“Yes.”

Doctor Andrews pressed his forehead with an open hand, as if to deflect some thought from breaking through.

“When would you have me do this?”

“Today,” Pastor Boone replied. “Ethan said he’d wait a week, but I fear he won’t wait that long.”

“This afternoon at five o’clock then,” Doctor Andrews said. “I visit my last patient at four, and I’ll need to fetch Emma Triplett to assist me. But know I shall yet attempt to stop this folly. I will tell Ethan your motives are not solely in his interest, and point out that what seems brave and chivalrous today may not seem so when he has to support a family with one hand.”

“No, not his hand,” Pastor Boone said. “You have misconstrued my meaning.”

The following afternoon the air still whitened each breath, but Pastor Boone and Ethan set out beneath a clear sky. The buggy passed slowly through town. Icicles dripped on posts and awnings, the thoroughfare a lather of mud and snow. Despite the cold, customers and storekeepers lined the boardwalks. Evelyn Norris, whose nephew had died in a Georgia prison camp, shook her head in dismay, but others tipped hats and nodded at Pastor Boone and Ethan. Several held out hands in the manner of a blessing. The bible and package lay on the buggy seat between them, the rings set deep in Ethan’s right pocket.

As they rode out of town, the slashes left by other wheels vanished. By the time they entered the woods, the only indentions were those of squirrels and rabbits. They passed over snapped limbs shackled with ice. A cardinal swung low and settled on a post oak branch.

“It always comes down to guilt, does it not, that and somebody’s blood,” Noah had said when he’d taken the ether from his cabinet. “Your religion, I mean.”

Pastor Boone had been sitting on the operating table, shirt off, his eyes on the pieces of steel Emma Triplett had boiled and then set on a white towel. The woman had left the room and they were alone.

“I suppose, though I would add that hope is also a factor.”

Doctor Andrews had grimaced.

“I can’t believe I’ve allowed you to talk me into this barbarism, and for no other reason than some bundles of papyrus written thousands of years ago. We may as well be living in mud huts, grinding rocks to make fire. Huxley and his X Club will soon end such nonsense in England, but in this country we still believe the recidivists, not the innovators bring advancement in human endeavors.”

“I would say our country’s military believe so,” Pastor Boone answered as Emma Triplett came back in the room, “as evidenced by the number of deaths in this last conflict.”

Emma Triplett handed a kerchief to the doctor, who nodded for Pastor Boone to lie down.

“Since a man of your advanced years may not rouse from this, I’ll allow you the last word,” Doctor Andrews said as he poured ether on the cloth, “although if you do pass on, and your metaphysics are correct, you shall quickly settle our debate once and for all.”

Pastor Boone was about to speak of Mrs. Newell’s similar doctrinal view, but the kerchief settled over his nose and mouth and the world wobbled a moment and then went black.

The woods thinned and the valley sprawled out before them. The Davidson farmhouse appeared and Ethan shook the reins to quicken the horse’s pace. Pastor Boone’s wrist throbbed, a vaguer ache where the hand had once been. The bottle of laudanum and a spoon were in his coat pocket, but if he took a dose, it would be just before the return to town. As the buggy jostled over the creek, Pastor Boone gasped.

“Sorry, Pastor,” Ethan said. “I should have slowed the horse more.”

“As long as you’ve waited,” Pastor Boone replied, “a bit of haste is understandable.”

A hound came off the porch, barked until it recognized Ethan. The buggy halted in front of the farmhouse and Ethan wrapped the check reins around the brake and jumped off. He helped Parson Boone from the buggy’s seat, being careful not to bump the bandaged wrist. The front door opened and Helen came out on the porch. Pastor Boone took the bible off the seat.

“Bring the package,” Pastor Boone said to Ethan, and stepped onto the porch.

“What happened, Pastor?” she asked, but then her face paled.

Ethan brought the package and Pastor Boone used his elbow and side to secure it.

“Stand behind me,” he told them. “I’ll call you when it’s time to come inside.”

Pastor Boone entered the parlor’s muted light, set the bible and package on the lamp stand. Mrs. Davidson offered to take the overcoat and he told her she’d have to help him. She held the overcoat in her hand, did not move to hang it up. Pastor Boone opened the bible with his hand and found what he searched for. He left the bible open and slipped two fingers between the pasteboard and the knot of twine. He lifted the package with the fingers in the manner of measuring its weight. He crossed the room to where the Colonel sat.

“I take you as a man of your word, Leland,” Pastor Boone said, and placed the package beside the Windsor chair. “Open it if you wish.”

Pastor Boone went to the door and motioned Ethan and Helen inside. He took up the bible and balanced it in his hand, positioned himself between the two young people.

“Mark 10, verse nine” Pastor Boone said. “
What therefore God hath joined together
.”

B
aroque wished he and Marlboro were back at the house watching medical shows with their sister, Susie. Instead, they were in a truck with Denton, their brother-in-law. Baroque wasn’t used to Denton being this close. Denton was an accountant, and Monday through Friday he was at work all day. When he came home, he usually disappeared into the back bedroom after dinner. Of course Saturdays and Sundays Denton was around more, and often in the front of the house, and it was starting to take just a little thing like opening the refrigerator door for their brother-in-law to give Baroque and Marlboro a look, a real unfriendly look. One night Denton had called him and Marlboro lard-asses and claimed they lacked ambition and would never amount to anything if that didn’t change.

He’d said it just the one time, but Baroque could tell Denton had thought it more than one time. He and Marlboro had even sat on the porch for a few minutes yesterday, just to get somewhere Denton wasn’t.

But they were with him now and they sure couldn’t get away from him in a truck cab, and the three of them were riding up a bumpy dirt road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, doing something that Baroque was pretty sure wasn’t just a little illegal, like smoking pot or running a stop sign, but a lot illegal, like getting sent to prison, regardless of Denton saying it was a public service. When Baroque asked why they had to go bear hunting this particular day, Denton said this cold spell would soon send the bears into hibernation. Marlboro had asked what hibernation was and Denton had answered that it was when dumb, lazy creatures laid around for months doing nothing.

The dirt road came to a dead end. Cinder blocks marked the parking lot, and there was a trail on the other side. Denton told them again everything they were supposed to do and handed Baroque the cell phone, then left with the pistol and knife strapped around his waist. Once up the trail a few yards, Denton was suddenly gone, like the woods had just swallowed him up. It made Baroque feel spooky, but everything about this bear business had been spooky. Like the way two weeks ago Denton had brought a big carton home after work and pulled out a steel trap, a pistol, a yellow box of bullets, and then a knife. A big knife, the kind Baroque had seen only in movies where maniacs hacked people to death, maniacs who always had some mask or hood covering everything except their eyes, which made it worse, because it could be anybody who was the maniac, even the person in the movie who seemed most normal. Like Marlboro, Baroque wore only a regular shirt and a sweatshirt. The warmth from the heater seemed to have whooshed right out the moment Denton opened the truck door. Baroque and Marlboro hadn’t been with Denton when he set the bear trap, but Baroque wished now that Denton had made them come then instead of now, because it had to have been a lot warmer that day. His breath clouded the windshield and Baroque felt his body start to shiver. He looked at the trail, then cranked the engine and put the heater on high.

“Denton said we shouldn’t do that unless we got real cold,” Marlboro said.

“Well, I am real cold,” Baroque said, “aren’t you?”

Marlboro nodded and clapped his hands together and rubbed them.

“How cold do you think it is?”

“Eighteen degrees,” Baroque said. “That was the number on the bank sign.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever been in weather like this,” Marlboro said.

“No,” Baroque agreed. “It’s probably never been this cold in Florida, except maybe during the Ice Age.”

“I wish Susie could have come down to Florida to help us get a job there instead of up here.”

“That would have been better,” Baroque said, “but there’s nothing we can do about that.”

“I guess this is our first job,” Marlboro said, “being here, I mean.”

“Yes, I guess it is.”

“You think we’ll lose our nose and fingers, like that guy on the medical show?”

“No,” Baroque said. “That guy was stuck on a mountaintop three days. We won’t be here that long.”

“I sure hope not,” Marlboro replied. “I don’t think I could eat if I couldn’t breathe through my nose.”

“You’d learn to get used to it,” Baroque said. They listened to the heater hiss against the cold.

“You think he’s really going to kill a bear?”

“That’s what he said,” Baroque answered.

As the cab warmed, the breath fogging the windshield evaporated, but all Baroque could see were woods, woods where someone or something could be watching him and Marlboro right now.

“It’s sort of spooky when there aren’t any streets or houses around,” Marlboro said, evidently feeling the same way.

“It wouldn’t hurt to lock our doors,” Baroque said, “just to be on the safe side.”

They pressed down the locks and for a few minutes didn’t speak. It was Marlboro who broke the silence.

“He wouldn’t just leave us out here, would he? I mean, he’s not acted very friendly lately.”

“No,” Baroque said. “He’d have made us get out of the truck and driven off if he was going to do that.”

Denton felt better as soon as he left the truck. Being that close to his brothers-in-law made him feel like a fungus was starting to grow on him. They both had a moldy sort of smell, like mushrooms. Which was no surprise, since Baroque and Marlboro moved about as much as mushrooms. They never left the house, and got up from the couch only to eat or go to the bathroom. Hell, mushrooms probably did more than that. They actually grew. They were finding nutrients, some kind of work was going on down there in the soil.

Baroque and Marlboro had been with him and Susie two months, up from Florida to find jobs, they claimed. Evidently they expected the jobs to haul themselves up to Denton’s front porch and wait for Marlboro and Baroque to step out the door and be whisked away. Denton blamed a lot of it on their being from Florida. He’d never met anyone from the place who didn’t get on his nerves, like all the Florida retirees who drove ten miles an hour on any road that wasn’t straight and wide as an airport runway. Admittedly, Denton hadn’t been around many younger Floridians, but his brothers-in-law were indictment enough.

Baroque, whose name sounded a lot like “a roach” to Denton, was the older of the two by eleven months. Their father was a self-proclaimed “free spirit” who’d drifted like a spore—that’s the way Denton always envisioned it, anyway—into Colorado and attached himself long enough to find Susie’s mother and have a baby with her. Then the three of them drifted on down to Florida, where Baroque and Marlboro were born. It was the father who’d named the two boys.

Susie didn’t know how the name Baroque had come about, but Marlboro had been named after the Marlboro Man, the cigarette cowboy. Susie said it was meant as a comment on society. Thank God that Susie, at thirty the oldest by six years, had been named by the mother. Susie wasn’t a Floridian, in Denton’s view. She’d been born in Colorado and had gotten out of Florida quick as she could, earning a scholarship to Gulf Coast College, in Alabama. She met her first husband there, a fifty-year-old admissions counselor.

As soon as Susie graduated, they married and moved to North Carolina, so mountains could blot out some sun. The first husband had problems with psoriasis. But he had at least gotten her to North Carolina, where she and Denton met.