The Road to Reckoning (16 page)

I approached the curtain.

‘Hullo?’ I called, and the cats echoed me with their little voices.

A long drag of silence, then the rattle of pots and a crooked silhouette rose on the curtain and I saw arms bend to a head in a fright.

‘Who’s it there?’ a voice croaked. An old voice, and I relaxed but not knowing why. ‘Who’s it there? Them’s my cats.’

‘My name is Thomas Walker. I am no harm.’

The shape on the curtain grew larger. ‘What you want?’

‘Shelter. I should like to wait until dawn. I ask nothing else. I am a boy.’

The curtain whipped across and a bald head and face met mine. ‘Lost? Lost, you say?’

I had not used this word.

He was old. And thin. Big eyes like a catfish, too big for his head, which was concave at every bone and swayed on his neck as if too heavy to bear. He wore no shirt but a leather waistcoat that showed his skeletal chest and arms. I was satisfied that he was not stronger than me and very old to boot. His suspicion lightened when he saw I was a boy, and he smiled kindly and I could see the younger man within him then.

‘Son.’ He pitied. ‘You are drowned. Come in. My cats have found you. They must think you have bacon about!’

He took my arm and drew me under the curtain. I thanked him but looked around before proper introduction. His lodging was but nine feet wide, the width of a mine-car and track, and tall as a big man. This was the entrance, the adit, of a strip mine. A strip mine cuts from the mountain rather than being a shaft down into the earth. This old man lived in the slope that might have been the office in its past for it had cupboards and furniture. Another brattice down the slope testified to the mine proper. He had made a good job of it. There were shelves both cut out of the rock and hung, and a canvas cot and a proper stone oven with a rusty tin stack disappearing into a wall. He had food boiling that smelled salty and good and the blue smoke smarted but was welcoming. It reminded of civilization.

He had oddments and mess everywhere and I could not take much in before he began to straighten his home and be as hospitable as a man in a cave could be.

I have found that the more humble a man’s circumstance the more he will put himself out and offer comfort. I have sat in great halls and been offered not even a sip of water despite being invited to attend, and I have visited one-room shacks unannounced and been welcome to the first slice of everything and the last finger of whiskey and even a man’s bed. You know I am right about that because it has happened to you too. For the rich folks it usually starts with the words ‘Help yourself,’ but those words are the precursors to ‘but’ and ‘should not’ and ‘we do not usually’ and you get sent out into the wet night hungry and dry throated. There is a reason why they are rich.

‘Who you say you were?’ he asked, and I could look at him better now in the isinglass lantern light. He was not much bigger than me but he did stoop so it was hard to tell. He had proper trousers and braces and good boots and never stopped moving, tidying up the place of what seemed like trinkets and charms, stones and Indian-like things, even when he was listening to me.

‘Thomas Walker, sir. Thank you for letting me in.’

He scoffed at my thanks humbly like I was giving him a gift on Christmas Eve and offered me a seat, which was a half barrel upturned.

‘But you are soaked, boy!’ he declared. ‘Why you out on your own? Best get some dry clothes. I have plenty. Why out here on your ownsome?’

‘I am not alone,’ I lied. This was my defense. I have said before that I distrust anyone who does not have a key to my house and I see no reason no to do so until you see how another fellow travels and courts. It was the same for me with Henry Stands and so it would be with this old boy.

‘I went for a walk when it was dry and have become separated from my party. In the morning I shall be fine. I can find my own way.’

The two cats had become four, of different colors and, in the light, of different stages of missing fur and half-closed eyes or chewed ears. They rubbed against the old man and he stroked and kissed his lips at them as he spoke.

‘Well, you are welcome, Thomas Walker. I will get you clothes and dry yours on my coal. I am Strother Gore. Pleased to meet. I am want of company.’

I nodded, my shivering getting worse with the warmth of the cave, and I could not speak much further for the chattering of my teeth.

‘A blanket,’ he said. ‘Yes, a blanket.’ He scurried away and brought one to me. ‘Get undressed beneath, for your shame.’ He laughed and I noted his gapped teeth, which made his chortle like that of an infant and drowned the sound of rain outside the curtain. I thought of speaking of my troubles, a Christian warning. This old man did not deserve the retribution due to me. But my own preservation this night was a hill above my charity. Outside, behind that curtain and through the rain, I was sure I was sought, and if he was made aware Strother Gore might decide that he did not need the troubles of a small boy.

‘And clothes,’ he said. ‘I got lots of clothes.’ He laughed away again and carried back from a hidden corner britches and a blue capote shirt. They smelled musty and aged but fitted good, though why he would have such to fit me I did not ask.

Mister Gore paid me no mind as I changed. He tended to his late supper and shushed the cats away with giggles and admonishments until each knew how good or bad he was and closed their eyes and grinned or ducked and dashed accordingly.

I thought it late to be eating but I did not know how late. I had eaten hours ago and thought we were now in early morning, but Strother was not eating; he was stirring only and paying even that little mind. I put the Paterson on the barrel and he stared but he saw that its pattern matched the wooden seat.

‘That is quite a toy,’ he said. ‘Did your father make it?’

I looked at the gun. ‘Yes. No. He gave it to me.’

‘What is that round bit of it?’

‘It is a revolving cylinder of chambers,’ I quoted. ‘For five shots.’

‘I have never seen a gun like that.’ But he ended the conversation on that statement.

He took my clothes and hung them over a cord above his oven, talking to each of my garments in turn with tuts and whistles. I was still wet across my shoulders but the blanket, his stove, and the closeness of the cave had dried the rest of me. I was good again.

‘You hungry?’ He leaned over to me with one eye squinting.

‘No, sir.’

‘I have a stew?’

‘I have had supper. Thank you. With my family.’

‘How about some johnnycakes? Honey in them now there are bees again. And tea?’

‘That would be welcome, sir. I can bring you some tea tomorrow and some other goods for your kindness when I am back to my party.’ This was a lie, naturally, but what harm?

He smiled with what teeth he had and with a pot already boiling poured me a tea. I thought we had come along enough to ask questions, especially as I was drinking and eating into his stores. He told me as he passed me the johnnycake that he baked them on a shovel, which was why they were so big, and he was not misleading, for it filled my entire hand.

‘Do not worry,’ he said. ‘They are good. I am no clay-eater.’

I chewed and talked. His biscuit was good. ‘You live here, Mister Gore?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ he said, wide eyed and angry, and then smiled as apology for his snap. ‘This is as good a place as any,’ he said. He waved his spoon to his walls. ‘I am happy here. There is no charge and I have lost my interest in towns. This place was a strip mine, as was. It ran out more than ten years gone. I did work it in its prime. It holds enough fuel for my little uses. Not enough worth for anyone to dig further. I think the town has all gone by now.’

‘Have you been here long?’ He did not seem to like this question so I changed my line. ‘It is impressive what you have done with it, I mean. It is most comfortable. And, as you say, free of charge.’

He pointed his spoon at me. ‘You know what
mortgage
means? It is French. It means “dead pledge.” It means you are in debt and are not expected to pay it back except until after you die, when they will take your house and land and sell it again.’ He went back to his stirring. ‘You know how many people I have seen, families I have seen, run off their land by landlords.
Landlords!
Bah!
Banks,
you say? Bah! Landlords are but patient bailiffs. And do you know what bailiffs are? In the old countries they was the despised, the pardoned criminal, the foreigner. No decent man. But here? Here they have fine suits and hats, offices and brick houses. What befalls this country when we give respect and due to people who would take your arm and sell it back to you!’

This was angry talk, and fast, with spittle at his mouth, and the staring he gave me as he ranted unnerved me. He had said that he had worked this mine and I supposed there was an event in his past that had embittered him.

I knew nothing of mortgages and landlords and until I met Strother Gore I thought that everyone had a home. Those folks I had seen camped outside Milton were there from choice, I had thought. I would not chase to upset mister Gore further; he had become ugly and muttered into his stew and even his cats moved away. I ate on my biscuit and sipped my tea. My developing knack of upsetting folks was inclining me to return to my ways of sitting quietly and leaving adults to the world. A flash of my father at the dining table with his newspaper came to me. My mother’s shoes tapping on the tiled floor, my plate half-empty and me prattling on for water or talking about gas lamps or stars or anything.

My father flapped his newspaper down and glowered at me.

‘Less talking and more eating,’ he said, then shook it back up, satisfied that his point was made. My mother stroked my head as she put a glass of milk beside my hand and touched my father’s hair also as she went back to the kitchen. It may have been raining then, which is why I had so thought of it. I kept to my father’s order now and ate in silence.

‘You are very lucky.’ Strother Gore left his spoon to his pot and sat in front of me. ‘Terrible things have happened in these hills.’ He shook his head and looked to a corner as if remembering. ‘Terrible things.’

‘What things?’ I asked, and saw him grin. I would indulge him his stories and he seemed to squeeze himself in anticipation. I reckoned the world had long stopped listening to him. Besides, I could use distracting now that the little things of pain and cold had died away and I had begun to think about what I had left behind or carried with me. Both are the same.

I touched my head where Heywood had struck me. I had not seen my face since that morning at Mrs Carteret’s—Lord! That was only this very morning! My whole world had changed again before the moon had risen on the day.

I wondered if I was marked by the gun but Strother Gore had not mentioned. Then again, are not all boys bruised and cut most days, though they might have had more fun in the gaining of them?

‘Terrible things’, he said again, ‘happen to children in these parts.’ He looked to the curtain sucking in and out with the wind like a luffing sail. A brattice cloth is heavy, layers thick, they can hold back fire for a time; it would take a hurricane to bother it.

‘Indians!’
Strother Gore clapped his hands and giggled at my jump. ‘Indians have been taking children in Pennsylvania for hundred years and more. You are lucky I found you.’

I did not correct him about finding me, and I had seen something of Indians myself although it was more dreamlike than real.

‘But they are all away from here now,’ I said.

‘That’s what them governments want you to think. “All is well. All is safe
.
” Tell that to Frances Slocum and her brother and all of them. Hundreds of them.’

‘Why would they take children?’

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘They will take them to make up for their dead. If a warrior falls, someone’s son, they will take a child to replace. If a child dies and they chance upon a white family, they will take a child to replace.’ He rocked back and forth on these words, affirming them as absolutes.

‘All around these parts it happened. And no-one ever sees them again.’

‘Ever?’ I said.

He rolled his shoulders. ‘There was a girl,’ he said. ‘Must be nigh on fourteen years since she turned up. She’d been missing more than sixty years. Mary she was.’

I almost said again that this was my aunt’s name but the last time I had said that I had been with Henry Stands and I was trying not to think of it.

‘Girl taken just last year there was. In Texas. Nine she be.
Was
. How old are you?’

‘Twelve.’

‘And small.’ He looked me over. ‘I reckon an Indian could still pick you up and carry you away.’ He said again, ‘You lucky I found you.’

He began to rock more on his stool, hugging himself against the night air. I wondered why he did not dress more. He had given me a capote shirt. He must have had warmer clothes than the leather waistcoat he wore over his bones.

‘Do you think this rain will stop, Mister Gore?’ I said for want of anything else. I had heard adults talk of the weather to break silences between courses and coffee.

‘It always has,’ he said. ‘Do you like your tea?’

I brought the cup to my lips. ‘Very much so. Thank you, sir.’

He stopped rocking and waved to his bed against the stone wall. ‘You may take my cot if you wants to sleep. I did not mean to frighten you about the Indians.’ He hugged his knees. ‘I am want of talking to folks.’

‘I cannot take your bed, Mister Gore. I will prop this barrel to the wall and sleep with a blanket. I have slept on a wagon and on the ground for nights now.’

In truth I had no intention to stay the whole night. I would keep an ear open for the rain to stop. I knew the Lehigh was to the east. Towns and the Delaware scant miles away and I was chased, after all.

‘Do not let me keep you from your supper. I will rest.’

He cocked his head to me and I saw his wide eyes grow in the lantern light. ‘I will eat in the morning now,’ he said, and then pointed at my biscuit. ‘It is good, no?’