by D. J. Butler
“Okay,” he said.
Hiram turned the knob of the front door with a heavy and conflicted heart. Making amends was the right thing to do, both because the Bible taught that he should, and because his defenses would only have power as long as he was worthy. Also, he didn’t want to have Gus Dollar interfering in his activities anymore. And short of burying the hatchet with the man, he worried he’d be constantly engaged in a running battle of hexes.
And Hiram didn’t know that Gus was working evil. He might have the German book for instruction’s sake, or to satisfy his curiosity, rather than for the purpose of summoning anything.
Hiram couldn’t let fear stop him from doing what was right.
The two Rottweilers saw Hiram, but rather than bark, they broke into a cowed whimper and slunk out of sight.
Gus Dollar stood behind the counter, frowning. “I gave your boy a free Coke.”
Hiram nodded. “That was kind. And I repaid it by stealing from you. I’m sorry.”
“And destroying my property.”
“I’ll pay the damages.”
“I don’t want you to pay the damages. I want you to explain yourself.”
Hiram sighed. “I’m trying to get the miners back to work. And I thought…maybe…you were involved in the closing of the mine.”
“And now you think it’s someone else instead?”
Hiram hesitated. “I think you know something about it. Something you don’t want to tell me.”
“Those idiots Ammon and Samuel Kimball can’t agree what to do with their mine. If they wreck it and the mine shuts permanently, you understand that I lose a third of my livelihood. Why in God’s name would I do that?”
“I guess that’s right,” Hiram said. “But what do you know about the closing? What is it that you aren’t telling me?”
Gus sighed. “The Kimball family is under a malign influence.”
Hiram wrapped his hand around the egg-shaped stone in his pocket. “A witch?”
“Something older. A demon that lives beneath the earth.”
Hiram thought of the crack in Gus’s basement room. “And you’re in league with it.”
“No!” Gus’s voice was firm. “No, I use my lore to protect myself against it!”
The bloodstone was inert.
“Do you know how to overcome the demon?” Hiram asked.
“I wanted to defeat it with a Book of the Spirits,” Gus said. “You destroyed that.”
“I’m sorry I did that.” Hiram didn’t offer to return the two lamens he had taken.
“I’m sorry I spooked you with my books,” Gus said.
Hiram was tired, and his thoughts meandered more than he would have liked. “I also got spooked by you charming me.”
“What, the customer lure? I diabolically seduced you into coming into my store, so I could give your son a free Coca-Cola?”
“That isn’t all. You also got me talking, made me share a lot of private things.”
Gus Dollar nodded. “I apologize. But consider it from my point of view. I am the only practicing cunning man up here in these hills. Yes, I sell Cokes and sewing needles and washing machines and canned beef, but you know what else I sell?”
“Cures,” Hiram guessed. “Scryings. Love charms.”
“And all the usual things. So when you showed up, and demonstrated you had some craft, I had to know more. Were you going to be a competitor? Were you going to reveal my secrets?”
“What charm did you use?” Hiram asked. “It was effective.”
“And also simple.” Gus held up his hand, revealing a silver ring with a sapphire.
Hiram didn’t need to see the sign that must inevitably be engraved on the ring, likely on the inside of the band, or its embedded signet, perhaps cupped in Gus’s palm. “Jupiter.”
“Cast by myself, with a stone I selected myself from the mine, all things done during the reign of the Jovial planet. You wear a Saturn ring. I see the signet: a man riding a dragon, with a sword in one hand and an egg in the other. Are you a dreamer?”
“Sometimes.” Hiram thought of his dreams of driving along the road, looking for Michael, and tried to dismiss them from his mind. Hadn’t his dream dictionary suggested that he was supposed to receive a letter today?
“The Picatrix warns any man who would wear the ring of Saturn to beware eating the flesh of ducks and entering into any shadowy place.”
“Duck isn’t a large part of my diet.” Hiram didn’t want to think about shadowy places, or about the fact that he hadn’t read the Picatrix. He knew the name, but it was an old book, such as you might find in Latin or Egyptian, and very rare. “Jupiter isn’t the only influence you channel in this place.”
Gus hesitated. “Yes, the seals in the windows.”
“Is that the demon influencing the Kimballs? Samael? Mahoun?”
Gus nodded. “But not by my doing. I put those seals into the windows to protect myself. To protect myself and…maybe to channel a little power.”
Hiram frowned. “That’s a dangerous way to operate, Mr. Dollar.”
Gus removed his glass eye and rubbed a knuckle into the empty socket. Then he sighed. “Look, this place. You’re from Utah Valley, aren’t you?”
“Lehi.”
“Big freshwater lake there. Good fishing, there’s the Provo River, all those fruit trees. It’s a nice place to farm. One of the best in the state.”
“I don’t understand your point.” Hiram put a hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the heliotropius. It was cool and inert.
Gus Dollar sighed. “This land, on this side of the mountains, is different. It’s dry and hot and hard. There is wealth under the rocks, but it only comes to the surface with a great sacrifice of sweat and blood. You’ve seen the strange stones, down by Moab?”
“The arches. Yes.”
“A geologist will have a neat explanation for those arches. Ancient inland sea, wind and water erode the stone into patterns that only look strange, but are completely comprehensible when you understand their true nature. A neat explanation, but nonsense.”
“I guess you favor a different view.”
“Strange complex patterns that are completely comprehensible when you understand their nature?” Gus’s eyes gleamed. “Of course, I do! This land was made by angels, my friend, and their signs are written upon its face.”
“I’ve heard people call it ‘God’s country.’”
Gus laughed bitterly. “Wrong angels. No, there are angels here, trapped beneath the stone, but they are outcasts, rebels, sinners, angels who have become devils. Theirs is the strongest influence that can be channeled here in the Wastes of Dudael. Yes, I take measures to protect myself, and yes, to feed my family, to make my business prosper, to bring me the kind of affluence that lets me give your son a free Coca-Cola, I dare to channel that power as well.”
Hiram thought he knew the name Dudael, too, but he let it lie. Was Gus insane? Likely not. Was he misled about the nature of the powers he sought to deal with? Maybe.
But the bloodstone lay still in his pocket.
“This is why you have the opening in your basement,” he said.
“Power comes up through the hole. As long as my signs were in place, the angel itself could not pass.” Gus leaned forward to look Hiram in the eye. “It would be very, very bad if the angel got out.”
Hiram wanted to kick himself. “I put your family at risk when I damaged your seals.” No wonder his charms had stopped working.
Gus shrugged. “And yourself.”
“A fallen angel,” Hiram said. “You think that’s what’s at the root of the trouble in the Kimball family.”
“Of course, it is.”
Hiram shook his head. “Look, I’ll be candid. I don’t like what you’re doing. I think it’s a mistake. I think you’re going to get yourself hurt really bad, and maybe some of that hurt will come down on your children and grandchildren.”
“Maybe,” Gus agreed. “And the hurt is
more likely, if you destroy my protective wards again.”
“I guess that’s a fair point. But I have to ask you some questions.”
“Do you wish to lay the tongue of a frog on my chest, to be certain my answers are true?”
In fact, Hiram very much liked the idea of doing just that. But he shook his head. “I’ve got other ways.”
“Your stone.”
Hiram gripped the heliotropius. “Are you causing Ammon and Samuel to fight?”
“No.”
The bloodstone lay still.
“Are you trying to close down the mine?”
“No.”
The stone gave Hiram no warning.
“Did you put a Sator Arepo charm on my truck, to stop it working?”
“Of course, I did. You burgled my shop. I wanted to stop you from coming back up the canyon.”
True. Hiram sighed and took his hand from his pocket. “I’ve brought your book and I’ll give it back to you.”
“You mean the one you stole, of course, and not the one you burned to ash.”
“I said I’d pay for the damages.”
“You couldn’t afford them, beet farmer. I forgive the debt.”
Hiram laid Gus’s German book on the counter. “I couldn’t read it, anyway.”
Gus nodded. “A little language skill goes a long way, in this trade. Do you know any Latin?”
“Just English,” Hiram admitted.
Gus left the book on the counter, untouched. “If you’re looking for a way to open the mine, have you considered divination? I assume you haven’t dreamed an answer, or you wouldn’t be accusing me.”
“You mean like sieve and shears? I’d need two people to work that charm, and I don’t have two people I can confide in.”
“We could do it now,” Gus said.
“You and I couldn’t. You need two people in addition to the charm-worker, two people who have no interest in the outcome.”
“You and I alone couldn’t,” Gus agreed. “But with my two grandchildren we could.”
Gus was right. The two tow-headed children he’d seen running around the shop would be perfect. But he had to be careful. Could he trust Gus fully? Gus was powerful, and at the very least was willing to channel the energy of dark powers.
But Gus had shown good will, admitting his sabotage of the truck and his use of the fallen angel’s sign, and also forgiving Hiram’s destruction of his Book of the Spirits. Gus might genuinely want to assist Hiram.
And in any case, Gus’s intentions were irrelevant, if he could help Hiram marshal the resources for sieve and shears.
Hiram would simply have to be certain he was the one doing the asking.
Hiram nodded. “I’d be grateful for your help in giving it a try.”
“Children!” Gus bellowed. “Greta! Dietrich! Come help your Opa Gus for a moment!” The two children scrambled into the store like beads of water on a hot skillet, hissing and bouncing off each other. Gus leaned in Hiram’s direction confidentially. “They’re twins. And there is magic in twins.”
Hiram nodded. Christ, some accounts said, was a twin, Thomas being his double. And James and John were known to be twins.
“Come over here, children,” Gus instructed Greta and Dietrich. “Come stand on these chairs, we’re going to play a funny little game. The game is to see how long you can hold a sieve without dropping it.”
“Hold a sieve?” The girl picked up the circle of tin with the mesh bottom.
“That’s easy!” The boy snatched the hoop from his sister.
“Hey!” the girl protested.
Gus smiled at the two. “We shall see. The great trick is that you must hold it with a pair of shears.”
Gus set up the divination and Hiram considered the questions he would ask. When investigating a theft, sieve and shears was used to ask who the guilty party was. Here, the parties all seemed guilty, so he must ask a different question. What he really wanted to know, as he thought of Teancum Kimball’s three children, was which one he needed to persuade.
Maybe then Gus would help him protect the mine and the Kimball family from Samael.
Gus wedged the blades of the shears around the rind of the sieve, the sieve hanging underneath the shears. “Now,” he instructed the children, “when I say begin, you must try to hold it. But you must hold it only by pressing just your middle fingers here…and here. Understood?” The children nodded. To Hiram, Gus said, “Will you do the speaking?”
Hiram took a deep breath and knelt. “Yes.”
The children put their fingers on opposite sides of the handle and pressed, holding the sieve suspended in the air. “Begin.” Gus stepped back.
“By St. Peter and by St. Paul, and by the sons of Zebedee, if it’s Ammon whose heart must soften all, turn about shears and let sieve fall.” The line about the sons of Zebedee was improvised, and aimed at capturing the magic that is inborn in twins. It ruined the rhyme, but Hiram felt that was a good trade.
The sieve didn’t budge.
“By St. Peter and by St. Paul, and by the sons of Zebedee, if it’s Samuel whose heart must soften all, turn about shears and let sieve fall.”
The sieve held. Greta and Dietrich smiled like cupids.
“By St. Peter and by St. Paul, and by the sons of Zebedee, if it’s Eliza whose heart must soften all, turn about shears and let sieve fall.”
Nothing happened. The children smiled.
Hiram looked at Gus and the German shrugged.
Hiram was at a loss. “By St. Peter and by St. Paul, and by the sons of Zebedee, if it’s all three Kimballs’ hearts that must soften all, turn about shears and let sieve fall.”
The sieve abruptly twisted, slipped sideways from the grip of the shears, and struck Hiram in the chest before falling to the floor. He stood.
Gus, who had been waiting and watching the shears intently, snatched them from the air before they could hit anything.
“I won,” Dietrich said.
“No, I won,” Greta said. “You slipped, I felt it.”
“You were both very good at this game,” Gus said. “So good, I believe I must award you each an animal cracker as a prize.”
“I want a monkey!” Greta clapped her tiny hands together. “The monkey is cute!”
“The hippo is biggest!” Dietrich snapped his mouth open and shut in imitation of a hippo. “I want a hippo.”
Gus gave his grandchildren animal crackers and Hiram stepped back, lost in thought.
All of them. All of the Kimballs needed to soften their hearts. With Ammon and Eliza, he’d accomplished nothing. Could Samuel be different? Could Samuel be the key?
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“Are you and I friends again?” Gus asked.
“I don’t think we’re enemies,” Hiram told him. “Maybe later you can help me protect the Kimballs.”
Gus nodded. “Or maybe the Kimballs are safer if they move away from this place.”
Feeling numb, Hiram headed for the truck.
Chapter Nineteen
Michael drove them past the Kimball Mine, and then up the winding road and the left fork. Before starting up the track that skirted the mountain to get to Apostate Canyon, they stopped at their previous campsite. The hobo stove was still there, cold and lying on its side.
Hiram and Michael loaded the stove into the bed of the Double-A and kept going. The truck bounced along the road, jostling over exposed tree roots, chugging up over shoulders of slickrock, and screaming down the other side. At one point, Hiram had to get out to soften the slope of a stone shelf by piling additional rocks to build a ramp for the truck.
For all that Hiram was sweating and his muscles beginning to ache, though, Michael grinned like a cat on the hunt.
“You can’t be enjoying this, son. If we break an axle or open our oil pan, it’s a long walk down.”
“Ease up, Pap, this truck is indestructible and I’m the best driver there ever was.”
Hiram sighed.
It took an hour to make the descent and by that time the sun was starting to sink behind them. The lengthening shadows brought an anxious itch between Hiram’s shoulder blades. He didn’t relish the idea of being out in the desert at night, exposed to another ambush.
The interview would just have to be to the point.
Hiram wanted to see Samuel’s paintings, try and suss out the strange lines of the ridge, and ask Samuel about the stone on the mantel. Also, Hiram wanted to know more about Samuel’s plan to drop a new shaft. Where had that come from? If Hiram was right, and the brown rock was a peep-stone, had the stone shown him the location for the new shaft? And why would a WPA painter care about the mine he’d run from so many years before?
He’d mention the D and RGW offer, though not until the very end.
Michael turned up and drove until he had to stop in front of two gargantuan rocks blocking the way. A narrow slit between them allowed access into the clearing beyond.
They got out of the truck; Hiram brought the revolver.
“Samuel Kimball?” Hiram hollered. “My name’s Hiram Woolley. My son and I have come to talk with you.”
A crow cawed in the distance. A breeze mussed a stand of pinyon pines.
“Come on.” Hiram went first.
He had to turn sideways to edge his way through the crack and he had memories of the trenches, when a shell would hit close enough to collapse the wall, and you’d have to wiggle your way through the debris and the bodies.
He remembered such a collapse, when Yas Yazzie had run out of ammunition for his rifle, and had seized a dead lieutenant’s Colt M1917. The six bullets in that revolver had been the difference between life and death that day, when Yas had shot the first three German soldiers over the wall and the others had turned back. He’d saved the platoon and kept the weapon, scratching his initials into it.
Of course, the Colt hadn’t saved Yas in his final battle, two months later.