The Witch of Hebron (20 page)

“We’ve got a kind of situation in town.”

“You think? We got more situations around here than you can shake a stick at. It’s got me vexed all to blazes, I’ll tell you.”

“I’ll just get down to it then,” Loren said, and laid out the disappearance of Jasper Copeland, the suspicions that had been raised about Perry Talisker, and the unsuccessful search through the county by Robert Earle and the doctor.

“Sorry to hear all that,” Brother Jobe said. “But where do I fit in?”

“You’ve got some men who know what they’re doing in this sort of thing,” Loren said. “Trackers and rangers. We’d be grateful if you got up a proper search party. What do you say?”

“Why doesn’t the doctor come ask me himself?”

“I’m asking you, both as the Congregational minister and the duly appointed constable. Let’s call it official business.”

“That’s all well and good, but I’d be a whole lot more inspired if the doc would ask me himself.”

“We don’t have to stand on ceremony.”

“It ain’t ceremony,” Brother Jobe said with an irate edge to his voice. “It’s just common politeness. Anyway, if I was to mount a search, we’d need a detailed description of this boy and some notion about his habits of mind and such. I wouldn’t dream of setting out without talking to his father about it first.”

It did not seem unreasonable to Loren. “Well enough,” he said. “I’ll go talk to him.”

Brother Jobe made a pinched, jaundiced face as a cramp ran through his abdomen.

“Hell fire,” he muttered.

“You all right?” Loren asked.

“All this vexation is giving me a bellyache.”

“Maybe you ought to mention it to the doctor when he comes over.”

“Mebbe I will,” Brother Jobe said. “If he can lower himself to come see me.”

Loren excused himself and hiked another mile back across town to the doctor’s office in the carriage house behind his house. There was no one in the waiting room. Loren called out for the doctor, who replied from the back room, his inner sanctum and lab. He was sitting at his desk, which was cluttered with instruments, jars, a plastic model of the human abdomen, stoppered bottles of this and that, staring at a handwritten document. A pony glass with an inch of clear liquid sat close to his right hand.

“Look at this,” the doctor said. “From Bullock. He’s ordering me to dig up the body of Shawn Watling.”

Loren took the warrant and read it.

“Why did he wait all this time?” he asked.

“How should I know? You’re the constable. Did he inform you?”

“Well, no,” Loren said. “Maybe he was waiting until the weather cooled down.”

“It’s warming up again.”

“It’s just Indian summer,” Loren said. He handed the warrant to the doctor, who let it drop back on his desktop in disgust, reached for the pony glass, and knocked back the contents. “You drinking before noon, Jerry?”

“It’s not noon yet?” the doctor asked, apparently without irony.

“No.”

“I guess I am, then.”

Loren took a seat in the naugahyde chair the doctor kept on the other side of his desk.

“You’re not going to lecture me, are you, Reverend?”

Loren ignored the remark. “I went over to Perry Talisker’s place on the river,” he said. “No sign of him. I have no idea if he was gone for five minutes or two days. But he wasn’t there early this morning.”

“Hmmm,” the doctor said.

“Then I went and paid a call on Brother Jobe. I think he’ll put together a bunch of his boys to search for Jasper.”

“You think?”

“He wants you to go over and ask him.”

The doctor sighed and fondled the bottle beside his empty glass.

“Don’t pour another one, Jerry. Please. He wants some details about Jasper, how he thinks, stuff like that. Frankly, it makes sense.”

“All right,” the doctor said, without further debate or indecision. “I’ll go over directly.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Loren said. “I’m thinking of going up to Hebron to talk to that lady.”

“You should,” the doctor said, getting up from his swivel chair. “I think she can help you.”

“I want to ask you a couple of favors,” Loren said.

“Sure.”

“Can you draw me a map? And lend me a firearm?”

“Yes and yes,” the doctor said.

THIRTY-FIVE

Billy Bones woke up Jasper by jiggling the toe of his boot lightly into the boy’s rear end. Jasper wheeled around and squinted up at Billy, with sunshine pouring through the skylight beyond.

“Quit that!” Jasper barked.

“Rise and shine then, you damn slugabed! The lark is singing in the meadow! The cows are in the corn! Summer’s come back! And we’re bound for glory—or at least a fine supper with the ladies.”

“What time is it?”

“How the hell should I know? And what the hell does it matter? Pack your sack and let’s get gone.”

They were back on the road in a matter of minutes. Billy gnawed the shriveled remnants of his roast goat meat as they marched west up Goose Island Road. It was already a warm morning, and their way was mostly uphill, with woods and overgrown fields on each side. When they stopped to fill their water bottles in a little brook that trickled out of the Gavottes, Jasper said, “Do you have any idea where we’re going?”

“’Course I do,” Billy said. “Anyway, we ain’t in any hurry.”

“The sooner we get there the happier I’ll be.”

“Don’t you take no joy in life, Johnny? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Jasper didn’t reply.

“I never have seen such a fine October day. Look at the color in these hills! The blue of the sky! The smell of the woods! It’s a song of beauty in itself. How can a person not take some happiness from all that?”

“Nobody’s stopping you from feeling happy,” Jasper said.

“Ain’t there nothing that would make you happy?”

Jasper sat down on a rock beside the stream and reflected a moment.

“Having my dog, Willie, back, alive again,” he said and burst out weeping.

“Aw,” Billy said. “I guess you really loved him.”

“More than anything,” Jasper wailed.

“I’ll get you another pup. There’s lots of stray pups in this world that need love.”

“I don’t want another pup.” Jasper shrieked and beat his fists against his own ears. “I want Willie.”

Billy let Jasper wail until his torments subsided.

“Say, maybe another gallant act of banditry would perk you up.”

“There’s nothing gallant about robbing people,” Jasper said, getting up off his rock and swinging his pack on again.

“Sure there is. I’m setting matters to right. Do you know the ruin of this country of ours was brought about by the rich?”

“The folks you robbed yesterday were poor.”

“Compared to who? They had a farm, didn’t they? A big house. Goats. If they put more effort in it, they might get something out of that land. Fruits of the vine and whatnot. They’s what’s called slovenly farmers. Lazy good-for-nothing gomers.”

“What if that woman you tied up can’t get loose?”

“Quit wasting your worry on that old hag. I rigged her up with the Billy Bones special slipknot. It’s ancient Chinese magic, showed to me by a Chinaman himself. Once you give up the struggle, you discover you were free the whole time. Remind me to show you how to do it as part of your training.”

They resumed marching along the sun-dappled road, the maples so intensely red and orange that the color seemed to scream out loud. Presently they came to an elevation where they could see the road dipping and curling into a valley below, and in the distance, perhaps a mile away, they saw a wagon drawn by two horses climbing the road toward them.

“Looks like fortune has just fetched us up an opportunity,” Billy said. “And alls we have to do is wait here for it.”

Ten minutes later, the team of horses lurched over the last little rise ascending the road out of the valley. They were old swayback common quarter horses. The driver was a gaunt man of middle years with a concave face and a sparse beard that lent him a simian look. The wagon’s cargo box was filled with dusty onions that sent up little brown clouds with each jolt of the journey.

The driver halted his team some ten yards from where Billy stood, hand on hip, in the middle of the road.

“A good morning to you, sir,” Billy said. “Have ever you seen such a splendid autumn day?”

The driver replied only by leaning over and spitting down into the road.

“Was that a ‘yes’ spit or a ‘no’ spit?” Billy asked.

The driver smiled weakly.

“You have the honor of meeting up with Billy Bones, bandit of legend. Have you heard of me?”

The driver just glared.

Billy drew open his leather coat to display the weapons in his waistband. He cleared his throat and sang the two opening verses of his personal ballad. The horses shifted in their harnesses and the doubletree squeaked.

The driver’s glare turned into a sneer.

“It’s a shame the newspapers are no more,” Billy said. “They would have celebrated my renown far and wide. This young rogue here is my partner and protégé, Johnny-on-the-spot.”

“I’m just walking the same road with him,” Jasper said. “I’m no bandit.”

“Don’t confuse the man, Johnny—”

With Billy Bones momentarily distracted, the driver reached under his bench seat and drew out a sawed-off side-by-side double-barreled shotgun. But just as he leveled it at Billy Bones’s heart, the shadow of a passing bird caused the offside horse to shrink backward, which bumped the wagon shaft and caused the driver to jerk his shot off target. Immediately recognizing the danger he now faced, the driver dropped his empty weapon into the mudguard and attempted to gee up his team. But the old horses were exhausted from their climb up the steep road and, despite the loud gunshot, hesitated to start again, only milling nervously about in their harness. In the interval Billy Bones sprang up to the seat and commenced beating the driver about the head with his big blocky pistol, striking him this way and that way—on the temple, on the back of his head, squarely in the face, again and again—until the driver sat limply in his seat like an effigy with a red stump for a head. Finally, Billy Bones delivered a blow so extreme that a cloud of bright arterial blood exploded from the red stump and hung in the air as the driver’s inert body fell out the other side of the wagon.

Jasper goggled at the spectacle for another long moment before he turned and walked stiffly down the road, the whole of his body shuddering, and then broke into a desperate run toward the valley below. Billy jumped down from the wagon and sprinted after him. It did not take long for Billy to collar him and drag him to the ground like a roped calf. Then he was kneeling on Jasper’s chest.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he said.

“You… you… killed that man.”

“I did not. He’s just out of it.”

“No, he’s dead! You killed him!”

Billy seized Jasper’s hair. “Lookit here, Johnny. Didn’t you see that son of a bitch empty both barrels of a shotgun right at me? He tried to kill me!”

“You told him it was a robbery. What do you expect?”

“Jeezus Christ Almighty, it’s only money, robbery.”

“You’re a murderer!” Jasper screamed.

“It was self-defense!” Billy screamed back, yanking Jasper’s hair on each syllable.

Jasper howled in pain.

“He woulda killed me!” Billy said. “And maybe you, too!”

“Get offa me!”

Billy let go of Jasper’s hair and slowly lifted his knee off Jasper’s chest.

“Son of a bitch had to defend a load of goddamn onions?” Billy muttered to himself as Jasper sat up and coughed strenuously. “Stupid bastard. No wonder they put him to driving the damn onion wagon. Too goddamn dumb to do anything else. Go on. Get up now.”

Billy grabbed Jasper’s shoulders, hoisted him to his feet, and made as if to brush the dust off Jasper’s shirt and backpack, but Jasper slapped Billy’s hand away.

“Come on back there with me. I aim to take a few of them onions with us.”

“I don’t want any onions.”

“Well, I do, and I order you to stick by me. No more of this running off.”

Billy fairly dragged Jasper by the shirt back up the road to where the horse and wagon remained.

“Put some of them onions in your pack,” Billy said. He went around the far side of the wagon to check on the driver, who lay still, facedown in the weeds that grew up through the cracked pavement.

“I told you, I don’t want onions.”

“And I told you I do, goddamn it.”

“They’re heavy.”

“Just take three or four. We got to bring something up to the Madam tonight. They have a lot of mouths to feed in that house.”

Billy rummaged through the driver’s pockets. One contained a roll of five hundred paper dollars in fifties and three silver quarters.

“Stupid son of a bitch,” Billy muttered as he struggled to remove his hand from the driver’s left pocket, which contained a bone-handled barlow knife. “What’d you have to go and fire on me for? I don’t relish hurting nobody.”

With the takings now in his pocket, Billy came around the other side of the wagon.

“You pack up some onions, like I said?”

“Yes,” Jasper said.

“All right, let’s get gone.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I ain’t any doctor.”

“I can tell if somebody’s dead,” Jasper said. “Want me to look?”

“What does it matter one way or another? You sure ain’t gonna tend to him here if he ain’t, nor raise him back up if he is.”

“You going to leave the horses there, too?”

“I ain’t a horse thief, Johnny. Besides, if we ride off on them, somebody could connect us to this scene.”

“You can’t leave them harnessed up to two tons of deadweight with no driver.”

“They’ll be all right.”

“No they won’t,” Jasper said. “They’ll die a slow death of thirst, if the wolves don’t get them.” He pulled the six-inch knife from the sheath on his belt, marched a few steps up to the team, and began cutting their harness off—the traces, the girths, cruppers, the reins—and pushed the animals forward until he was satisfied that they were free. Billy stood by, allowing him to do it. The horses sauntered to the side of the road and began grazing where the weeds were thick and green from the night of rain.