The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  “Yay, beet farm. Two yays for the tractor.” Michael wrapped his guitar up in a wool blanket and cinched it tight with ropes tied into iron rings. “Three yays, you mixing up patent medicine with your bare fingers in an aspirin tin. You know, they can send you to jail for impersonating a doctor.”

  “Glad to hear you like the tractor.” Hiram slid into the passenger seat as Michael got behind the wheel. “I picked it out special. And I’m surprised to hear you so down on patent medicine. What do you think Coca-Cola is, anyway?”

  “Ambrosia, sweet nectar, drunk by the gods.” Michael switched on the lights. The faint orange glow showed them the white line of the road but little else. The dark claws of trees groped toward them. Boulders piled up to squelch the light, and beyond the rocks, less distinct shapes scurried about.

  Hunger gnawed at Hiram’s belly. Usually, he’d be asleep by this hour on a fasting day, and he wouldn’t notice the pangs.

  Michael didn’t take the turn left into the mining camp, but kept going and took the right, up the driveway to the red house on the hill. It was a stygian corner of the valley; the cliffs were solid midnight. No stars above; just unforgiving darkness.

  A greasy yellow glow came the windows of a single back room.

  Michael pulled up to the front door. “Should I give him a bit of the horn, Pap?”

  “Just stay in the car,” Hiram said. “I’ll knock.”

  Michael cut the engine. “Will do. I get it. The last thing in the world you want is me shooting my mouth off with Ammon Kimball.”

  “The thought had occurred to me.” Should he warn Michael to tone down his sarcasm? He’d never been that kind of father, but maybe he was failing Michael by being too lax.

  “Okay, then, Pap. I’m right here, if you need me. I’m your muscle.”

  Hiram pushed open the door and winced at the cold. “Good. I’m getting too old to be the muscle. Keep the lights on.”

  He put the aspirin tin and Rettig’s manila envelope into a coat pocket. He grabbed the blood-stained flour sack and the shovel from the back of the Double-A. The dark night and the blinding effect of the headlights would hide the shovel and sack from Michael.

  Hiram approached the house. No garden, no trees, no brush to entangle him. The chill perfume of the desert night came to him, sage, the rocks sleeping, a slight moisture; maybe a bit of snow would fall.

  He set the shovel and the sack next to the door, and then turned to look across the canyon at the camp. Firelight twinkled across the canvas of the tents and lights glowed in the tar-paper homes. The camp was a small city, nearly as big as Helper. The barking of dogs, the mournful scrape of a violin, and a medley of human voices drifted to Hiram’s ear.

  Kimball must have three hundred men desperate for work, sitting idle. And at least as many women and children.

  Two days of food. If that. The Greek girl, Callista, had probably already speared the cat, and if not, the creature’s doom was coming. How would a cat stew taste?

  Hiram went to the door and knocked, loudly.

  Ammon Kimball ripped open the door. He wore sturdy work pants and a white shirt. Deep frown lines cut down from his nose and red boils spangled his throat and neck—they had been covered by plasters earlier, but now they lay bare, all swollen and shining and a few oozing pus. Ammon’s breath came in snorts with a slight wheeze at the end.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  A rough kerosene lantern dangled from his left hand. His right hand gripped something out of sight in the shadow. A shotgun? A steel bar?

  Hiram took off his hat and smoothed his wisps of hair. “I’m Hiram Woolley, a farmer out of Lehi. I brought groceries to the men today, before the trouble.”

  “What’s a Lehi man doing up here?” Ammon’s eyes narrowed and shifted from side to side.

  “John Wells asked me to come,” Hiram said. “I don’t know if you know the name, but he’s in Salt Lake. Your father had friends in the leadership who remember him fondly, I guess.”

  Ammon’s head trembled slightly, and he didn’t say a word.

  “But I came up here tonight to see you.” Hiram reached into his pocket and brought out the aspirin tin. “I heard you suffer from boils. That’s a terrible plague, and I have a remedy here, something my grandma taught me. And I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Kimball, about…about the current situation.”

  “A farmer? What then, beets?” Ammon laughed. “A beet farmer shows up on my doorstep to try and talk some sense into me. And to cure my boils. Well, don’t that just beat all?”

  Hiram nodded. “It’s peculiar. But then, I come from peculiar people.”

  “Come in, then.” Ammon stepped back.

  Hiram put the aspirin tin back in his pocket. Beside the door stood a single-shot shotgun, break-action. The house smelled of sweat, unwashed laundry, and pine wood smoke.

  The sitting room was full of handmade wooden furniture: rough-hewn chairs without cushions, a long low table with uneven legs, and a couch of bare wood. A grand hutch of finer workmanship, heavy with dust, towered against the far wall. Glass doors displayed some silver and some china, but none of the finery looked recently used. A few portraits were framed on the wall, people in grainy photographs. His eyes came to rest on an old man with a beard and deep-set, piercing eyes, glaring at him from a daguerreotype. It had to be Teancum Kimball, crouched next to the entrance of the mine, angry at something. Above the fireplace hung a painting, gray in shadow.

  Ammon moved to the fireplace and stooped to throw in a few sticks of split pine. The wood was dry enough to catch promptly and a fire cackled into life. The new yellow light gave Hiram a better look at the painting. It depicted a canyon, bristling with cliffs and crags, and it was done in pastel pinks, oranges, and off-white colors. On one bit of cliff were some pictographs, the markings of ancient Indians found on cliffs in southern and eastern Utah. These were black in the painting; in real life, all the pictographs Hiram had seen were white.

  “Is this a real place?” Hiram asked.

  “Yeah. Apostate Canyon. It’s just over the ridge. You can walk it from camp, or mule it. There’s a bad road that takes you there in an automobile, but you have to keep on going around the mountain and it’s pretty rough. That’s where my corn-for-brains brother has been camping, when he’s not whipping up the Greeks into a frenzy.” Ammon gazed up at the painting. “When I think maybe I shouldn’t be so stubborn, I look up at that picture and I remember my brother is a smoke-addled fool. What kind of man paints a cliff wall pink, when it’s really orange?”

  Hiram stepped closer to the fireplace and then he saw it: a rock lying on the mantel. It was a plain stone, about the size of a baby’s shoe, brown with a line of white down the middle. Firelight gleamed off the mineral—quartz?—making it prettier than it would be in daylight.

  It was a pretty rock, but an ordinary one such as you might find in a streambed, while hiking. What was it doing in a place of honor, on the mantel?

  Could this be a peep-stone? Hiram had never seen one, though Grandma Hettie had spoken of them often. Gus Dollar had asked whether Hiram had a peep-stone, and now that question seemed suspicious.

  Something about the rock unsettled Hiram. The painting, now that he stood closer, also felt wrong. The lines of the cliff edges at the top were…distorted and strange. They seemed familiar.

  One of the black dots of the pictographs moved.

  Hiram’s mouth went dry. Another of the signs moved and then another. They crawled across the painting, little black dots. Flies were on the painting. One took off in a long buzzing saunter across the sitting room, followed by another, and then a third. The flies were big, lazy, black things, a quarter inch long, big as small bees. They buzzed away from the painting and then settled back among the pictographs.

  Hiram’s hand drifted to his chi-rho amulet. The ringing started in his ears. He didn’t smell anything yet, but it was coming, that sweet, spicy odor.

  “Mr. Woolley? You okay?”


  He turned. The weak light coalesced on Ammon’s boils. The yellow pus glowed and the circles around the wounds darkened from red to black.

  “Yeah.” Hiram took in a deep breath to steady himself and focused on the other man’s eyes. The ringing diminished. “I’m fine. It’s been a long day, and I’m not as young as I used to be.” He didn’t mention his hunger; Matthew six said it wasn’t a real fast if you told people you were fasting. The Lord Divine only rewarded secret fasting with grants of his power. “I’ll take beet farming over mining. Fresher air.”

  Ammon nodded. “Goddamn mine. You spend a dollar to make a dime. Sorry, I shouldn’t curse. I don’t want you to think…”

  “I’m not as sensitive as all that.” Hiram had the offer to pass on, but he had also made a promise to Mary McGill. “Mr. Kimball, the men are desperate. I only brought enough food for a couple days, and the railroad won’t bring in any more. After that, I’m not sure what will happen. There’s only so many deer in these hills for the men to shoot. The miners are looking for a break, maybe you could extend some store credit to them, or maybe you could forgive them rent until your trouble with Samuel is over?”

  “There’s no food in the store because I can’t buy any more food.” Ammon frowned. “You think I want people to starve? You think I want my family business to fail?”

  “I only wonder…is there something you could do?”

  Ammon’s mouth dove into a frown and his brown eyes ignited in a livid rage. “Look around, Woolley! I ain’t living in style, I ain’t got a wife, and I ain’t got no family. All I got is a mine I’m trying to run as best I can. You want to help? Get that idiot Samuel to stand down!”

  “Samuel wants to dig a new shaft.” Maybe Hiram could help Ammon resolve his feelings toward his brother. Or maybe, if Ammon got worked up enough at the thought of Samuel’s meddling, he’d be more receptive to an offer that got him out of the situation entirely. “Could he be right?”

  A fly lit off the painting and floated through the room with a loud buzzing thrum.

  Where were these flies coming from?

  The skin on the back of Hiram’s neck prickled.

  “He thinks we should sink another shaft down valley,” Ammon grumbled. “He don’t understand the cost, not a bit. Also, he’s taking a shot in the dark and might miss the coal entirely.” Ammon fingered a boil on his neck. “We just need to follow the eastern seam, there’s still coal there, and a lot of it. The Germans get it, and Sorenson does too, but Samuel and the Greeks are bent on this new hole. Damn, and then there’s Eliza.”

  Hiram nodded. The two flies left the painting, swirled around the brown rock on the mantle, before buzzing off.

  “What does Eliza want?” Hiram asked.

  “Well, I would imagine you’ll get around to asking her. And you’ll talk to Samuel, and God bless you, Mr. Woolley if you can break up the log jam and get the Greeks to give in. And if you can’t do it, I’ll have to wait until they’ve eaten all the deer in the county and are hungry enough to give up. So no, no more food in the store, no more credit, and no breaks on the rent.” Ammon coughed out a brusque laugh.

  “The hauntings your brother talks about,” Hiram said slowly. “Might they be connected to your father’s death?”

  “Hauntings.” Ammon snorted. “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah,” Hiram said. “Most likely. I’ll go and talk with your brother and your sister, and see what they say. But I have one other piece of business.” He took the envelope out of his pocket, feeling his heart beat a little faster. “I can’t promise you’ll like what’s in this envelope.”

  Ammon stretched out a callused palm. “Every day a new bird shits in my hand. Why should today be any different?”

  Hiram held the letter. “You know Naaman Rettig, with the D and RGW?”

  Ammon snorted, turned away, and took a big log from the fire in one hand. He bashed the coals off a half-burned log, cracking the wood repeatedly against the stone of the fireplace. He then flung the log into the fireplace; it slammed against the wall at the back before falling onto the embers. “And does the D and RGW pay for your work, Mr. Woolley?”

  Hiram sighed. “No. But Rettig asked me to bring you his offer. I was coming up the canyon anyway.” He hesitated. “Would it matter to you how much money the railroad offered?”

  “No!” Ammon grabbed his lantern and stomped from the room.

  There wasn’t any more to be said; Hiram might as well leave. He’d failed to convince Ammon to cut his miners a break, and the mere mention of the railroad had sent Ammon into a frenzy.

  He had learned where to find Samuel, camped out in Apostate Canyon.

  With Ammon gone, Hiram couldn’t resist approaching the mantel. The plain brown stone rested in shadow between two candlesticks, devoid of candles, and a music box. A blurry picture of a woman holding a baby sat in an ornate picture frame. Family knick-knacks, things of sentimental value.

  Why the stone?

  Unconsciously, Hiram reached between the Zippo and the clasp knife to grip his heliotropius.

  That stone on the mantel must also have properties.

  Ammon called to him as he reappeared in the doorway. “Mr. Woolley. You tell Naaman Rettig I’d rather dynamite every shaft of my mine than let him have it.”

  “I doubt he’ll be surprised.” Hiram moved to the front door.

  “Ain’t you forgetting something?” Ammon asked.

  “Ah, the remedy.” Hiram reached into his pocket and tossed Ammon the tin. “Put a little on each boil.”

  Ammon cracked open the tin and sniffed. “Rosemary and what else?”

  “Rosemary, some Vaseline, a little bit of this and that.” Rosemary, like bay and peppermint, warded off hostile magic. Hiram had included it in his compound to cover the possibility that Ammon’s boils were caused by witchcraft.

  “Why’s it red?”

  “This and that was red.” Hiram turned the knob to let himself out.

  “Why didn’t you give me the letter?” Ammon asked.

  Hiram turned. “You’re not going to sell. Why waste time opening the envelope?”

  “You’re going to show the letter to my brother.” Ammon’s glare was dull and brutish.

  “I expect he won’t sign. Might not even look at it, either. Similar reasons. But then I’ll have kept my promise.”

  Ammon stood in the doorway, not moving. His eyes went to the painting on the mantel. Or was he looking at the stone? “Look, Mr. Woolley, if you can talk some sense into my brother, I’d appreciate it. Or even my sister. If even two of us could agree, we might be able to get the mine working again. And once we get some cash flowing in, I’ll be fair with the men who stayed. I’ll pay back wages, as much as I’m able. But you can’t get blood from a turnip. You get me?”

  “I do,” Hiram said. “Good evening, Mr. Kimball.” He closed the door behind him and picked up the shovel. He took it and the bloodstained flour sack into the night.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hiram crept to the far side of the Kimball house, avoiding the windows of the sitting room where Ammon Kimball’s lantern and low fire burned.

  He grimaced at the chill air on his skin. He should have brought gloves.

  Hiram put the spade into the loose sandy soil, too dry to be hardened by frost. After two minutes of vigorous work, he achieved the required depth: twelve inches. He knew the measurements, from the tips of his middle finger to mid-forearm. You couldn’t carry a yardstick around with you on the farm, and it was often necessary to measure off a foot. From the flour sack, he pulled the head of a rattlesnake.

  He’d killed the snake months earlier, when he’d come across it on the farm. Usually, rattlers stayed higher up in the mountains; Lehi was too marshy for their taste, but this one had gotten lost and was lurking in the weeds behind Hiram’s porch. As long as you knew where it was, a rattlesnake wasn’t much danger to humans, but it posed a threat to his dogs, and might harm livestock, so Hiram had duly fetched a sho
vel from the barn and hacked off the snake’s head.

  Then he had scooped the snake’s head into this flour sack with the shovel, not using his hands because a severed snake’s head could still bite. He’d thrown the sack into the icebox, and squeezed all the blood he could from the snake’s body into a little glass medicine bottle. Before starting for Helper, he’d put both the blood and the head into his toolbox.

  Snakes were useful for injuries and illness. A snake regrew its skin, it was a natural healer.

  That was why the tincture was red; he’d mixed snake’s blood into it. The next step, the one he was undertaking now, was key. He had to bury the snake’s head near the person who was suffering from boils. As the snake’s head rotted, the boils would disappear.

  The serpent’s flesh was still a little firm from being chilled; Hiram wanted it to thaw and then rot, quickly. Fortunately, he had a Bible verse for that. He knelt to push snake’s head into the sandy soil—and his fingers struck something hard.

  To be certain he wasn’t placing the snake’s head near something that would prevent it from decaying, he brushed aside the sand. He fished his Zippo out of his pocket and flicked it on.

  And saw the grin of a human skull.

  Hiram took a deep breath. The skull was fleshless, which likely meant it had been there a long time. It wasn’t big, so probably not a man’s. He didn’t think it was Teancum’s.

  Nor was this a bad omen. Like attracted like, that was one of the basic hidden laws of the universe that Grandma Hettie had taught him; it was one of the great secrets a person with the right knowledge could use to get things done. So when Hiram walked out into the garden with a rattlesnake skull in his hand, intent on burying it, the skull already buried in the garden had naturally and invisibly drawn him to it.

  He shut his lighter and took several more deep breaths, smelling the Zippo’s lighter fluid. The skull wouldn’t impede his healing charm. He lay the snake’s head atop the human skull, covered both again with loose soil, and then squatted. He touched the ground and whispered a verse from Job, chapter nineteen: “And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” In Sunday School, that verse was about the resurrection of the flesh. In the field, it was about rot and decay.