The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  Hiram was exhausted and now also saddle-sore. The ride down on the donkey’s back had been an endless trudging into a wet, invisible curtain of snow.

  The donkey had seemed considerably less bothered than Hiram, and once Hiram returned the sombrero, serape, and beast to the stable, had pushed its nose placidly into its feed trough.

  Hiram had put the bullwhip, coiled up, inside his toolbox. The whip had Gus Dollar’s blood on it now. Leaving that blood lying around carelessly might give some unknown third party a tool for influencing Gus, and if Hiram kept it, he thought he might find it useful.

  Too tired to carry his toolbox anymore, he set it in the snow at his feet. He wasn’t sure he could make his way back into the room at the boarding house. He needed to rest for a second.

  The trees on the river didn’t offer him any cover, but the thick bushes did, and Hiram hunkered down. He felt thwarted, baffled, and sad. He’d rarely been in more trouble in his life, and his failures troubled his heart. Evil was powerful. Had Hiram done a single thing to slow its progress here in Helper?

  An unexpected voice made him jump.

  “Pap!” Michael was crouched next to the thick stump of a dead cottonwood on a square of snow-covered riverbank. “I figured you’d come back to the boarding house.”

  Hiram stumbled through the undergrowth and squatted beside Michael. He took off his wet gloves, shoved them into a pocket, and squeezed his son’s hand. “Thank God you’re okay.”

  “Your fingers are cold, Pap.”

  “You should feel my toes.”

  “Mine, too.” Michael’s teeth chattered.

  They needed to get somewhere warm. Hiram eyed the backs of the houses fronting on Main Street, wishing the snow wasn’t blocking so much of his view. Maybe he should take Michael back to the donkey’s stable. “What happened?”

  Michael nodded. His face was dirty, the filth swirled into curious patterns by the flakes of falling snow. His coat and jeans were caked with mud. Thorny weeds clung to his coat, each sticker a tiny shelf catching snow now, and his hair was plastered to his skull. But Michael’s eyes were bright. “I took off after Mr. Sorenson…after Mrs. Sorenson.” Michael swallowed hard. “I didn’t hurt them. I got knocked out by something. And there were flies.”

  “Was it…” Hiram thought carefully about his question. How much had Michael seen? “Was the killer a man?”

  Michael hesitated. When he spoke, he sounded distant. “I’d have sworn it wasn’t, last night. It seemed…like a monster, Pap. But it was dark, wasn’t it? And I was tired. I’m not really sure what I saw.”

  Michael was talking himself out of his own eyewitness, and Hiram was inclined to let him do it. “How did you get down here?” he asked his son.

  “I walked,” Michael said. “It was easy. Just kept going downhill.”

  Hiram grunted his appreciation. “Quite a feat, still. You’re a regular Flash Gordon.”

  “Pap, please.”

  “What, can’t I be proud of my son?”

  “Yeah, but Buck Rogers is the real thing. Flash Gordon is a total knock-off.”

  “Buck Rogers, then.” Hiram dropped his son’s hand. “Maybe it’s time to go home, Buck. Admit failure and get out of town. I got a telegram from Brother Wells. Said as much.”

  Michael looked away into the wall of snow surrounding them and shivered. Then he looked back and met Hiram’s eyes. “What’s in my boot, Pap? It’s what saved me from the demon, wasn’t it? That was no man that killed the Sorensons.”

  Hiram retreated before his son’s stare.

  “We could get a taxi,” Hiram said. “The truck is up in Spring Canyon, and I bet we could get a taxi to drop us off there.” The plan might be totally insane, either for the slick state of the road or for the possibility of interception by police, but Hiram had to say something to change the subject. He also wanted to get Michael out of the storm.

  “Dad,” Michael said.

  The word stopped Hiram cold. “Yes?”

  Michael latched onto his arm. “No, Pap, we’re going to talk, really talk. I spent a whole night and then a whole day sleeping in bushes or wandering through the canyons. I hid in trees, I drank snow. All that time, I thought about every weird thing that’s happened over the years, and the strange things I’ve seen this in the last two days. I knew Hettie was a…well, she liked to say cunning woman. I didn’t think you were…but you are, aren’t you, Pap?”

  Hiram felt Michael’s hand like a weight on his arm. “You don’t believe in magic.”

  Hiram turned to walk away, but Michael tightened his grip. “I know I’ve teased you about Grandma Hettie, but last night, when that thing grabbed me, well, that was empirical evidence of something. I don’t know what. I bet you do. And I didn’t use the word magic.”

  Hiram forced himself to look into his son’s face. “Think about whether you really want answers to these questions. I wanted to keep you safe. I’ve always wanted to keep you safe and do the right thing. And I didn’t want you to…I don’t want you to…”

  “Don’t want me to what?” Michael’s eyes, shadowed pits in the thin light drifting from Main Street, bored into Hiram.

  Hiram couldn’t reveal his own fears and self-doubt. His heart was in his belly, and he’d broken into a cold sweat. Michael knew.

  “You don’t want an old-fashioned life, son. You want to go to college and do great things, become a scientist, or a lawyer, in some city somewhere. All I have to offer is farming and old folklore.”

  Michael shook his head. “You’re changing the subject. What don’t you want me to do?”

  “Leave,” Hiram admitted.

  Michael was silent.

  “You will someday, anyway. I mean, you’re old enough, and that’s the way of the world. But I don’t want you to run away, because you find me…ridiculous…wrong.”

  Michael took a deep breath. “I was nearly killed last night. The Sorensons were killed. The thing that killed them was big, like a bear, and it came in a swarm of insects. I believe it’s the same creature that attacked you and me up on the ridge. You fought that monster by lighting a fire and shouting the Bible at it. And you got the truck started. If I’m not mistaken, you did it with a Coke bottle. So what killed the Sorensons? What, Pap? You know, don’t you?”

  Hiram’s jaw trembled. “If we leave now, if we don’t talk about this, we can go back to our old, normal life. If you push me, if I tell you these things, your life will never be normal again.”

  Michael grinned. “Normal? We were never normal. Not when Mom and Grandma were alive, and less since they passed. I’ve got too much melanin for the girls of Lehi and I shoot my mouth off. And you, Pap, you were born at least a century late. What a pair we make.”

  “Buck Rogers and…who’s Buck’s pal? Ming the Merciless?”

  Michael coughed. “Pap, no. But maybe you can be Dr. Huer. That’s kind of a match, Dr. Huer knows stuff, like you know stuff. Only you have to say Heh! a whole lot more.”

  “Heh!” Hiram would always be an outsider, with men like Smith watching his every move. Having Michael for a son didn’t make him less of an outsider, because Michael, too, stood on the outside. But Michael knew his secrets—or at least, the headlines—and the world hadn’t ended.

  “I love you, Michael.”

  “I love you too, Pap. And…I respect you.”

  Hiram hugged his son.

  He then straightened out his arms and looked into Michael’s face. “The creature covered in flies is…I’m not sure. Best to think of it as a demon, maybe. But it’s old and it’s dangerous, and it’s behind everything…the murders, the mine closures, the Kimballs’ fighting. Ammon and Samuel both looked into their father’s seer stone, and that demon used it to manipulate them. Hand me your boot.”

  Michael did. In silence.

  Hiram pried the heel off with his clasp knife. He shook the secret compartment and a second chi-rho amulet fell into his palm. “That’s a talisman that is good for defense ag
ainst enemies. I wear one, too, around my neck. It’s not perfect, but it’s strong protection. Another one, or something similar, anyway, is nailed into the door of the truck. This sign is the chi-rho—its influence may be what saved you from the fly demon. And it’s why I always wanted you to wear your boots.”

  His son’s eyes widened. “Wow.”

  “I told you,” Hiram said.

  “Did you think I was in danger?”

  “Life is danger.” Hiram put the amulet back into the boot and hammered it into place by slamming the heel against an adjacent tree trunk. “At first, I figured I’d tell you about it when you were older. Then I kept putting it off, and I saw how you laughed at Grandma Hettie behind her back. Then, at some point…I figured if you didn’t know about the spirit realm, you might grow up to live a normal life. Somehow, in the big city, the need for lamens and bloodstones and amulets seems less pressing.”

  “Lamens? Amulets?”

  Hiram laughed and removed the bronze Oremus lamen from his pocket. He gave it to his son. “This is a lamen. Hold on to it. I’ll explain later.”

  Michael pushed his fists into his eyes. “I can’t believe this. Only I can. It’s why we drive around the state when we’re not planting or harvesting, isn’t it? You’re not just helping the poor, are you? You’re also demon hunting.”

  “The poor need more than one kind of help,” Hiram said.

  The wind picked up, and the branches that were already rattling began to sound like machine-gun chatter. Both he and Michael shivered.

  Michael thought in silence for a few moments. “Samuel must be behind the demon. His camp was right out of the scary part of Dante. And he was crackers. Is the shopkeeper at Dollar’s the witch?”

  Hiram nodded. “A powerful witch. He knows more than I do, and he has better tools. Samuel? I don’t know, I think Samuel’s a victim. But with everything going on, police after us, the evil of the demon, murders…I think we need to get out of town. I’ve been called home. It wasn’t just the Sorensons. The demon murdered Callista Markopoulos.”

  “Callista?” Anger and sorrow flashed across Michael’s face. “We can’t leave, Pap. I don’t care if I go to jail. And if this thing killed that girl, it could kill again.”

  “I will stay.” Hiram knew he had to. “You should go home.”

  Michael touched Hiram’s shoulder. “The Kimballs don’t stand a chance, not without you and your magic.” Michael rolled his eyes at the word. “Cripes, I can’t believe I just said that.”

  “Maybe don’t call it magic.”

  “Hexes. Charms. The occult. Lore. Wisdom. Special skills. The police are going to be useless against that thing, Pap. Unless someone calls in the Army, it’s up to you.”

  Hiram nodded. “But you can go home.”

  “I’ll stay.” Michael’s eyes blazed. “I owe it to Callista.”

  What had passed between the Greek girl and his son?

  A car crunched through the back alley, sliding slightly in the snow. It had driven around from Main Street and now pulled to a stop not far from Hiram and Michael. It was Mary McGill’s Model A, with Mary at the wheel, and no sign of anyone following her.

  She stepped out stood beside her car, smoking a long cigarette, and she looked right at the river where Hiram was.

  And then a second woman stepped out, from the other side of the car: Eliza Kimball. Eliza walked stiffly around the car to stand beside Mary.

  “Hiram!” Mary called. “Pretty sure I saw you down here! And if there’s someone in there who isn’t Hiram Woolley, come out slowly, with your hands up! I have a gun.”

  “Just in case,” Hiram told his son, “let’s put our hands up.” They stepped out of the bushes and into the headlights.

  “Mr. Woolley!” Eliza called. “I owe you an apology, and I need your help.”

  Hiram lowered his hands, feeling a little foolish, but Mary smiled at him. “You don’t need to apologize for anything.”

  “I did not behave well toward you when last we spoke,” Eliza said. “Please forgive me.”

  “Forgiven,” he said.

  Neither of them mentioned the seer stone.

  “I went to the big house,” Eliza continued, “to speak to Ammon. I found blood and crow’s feathers on the parlor carpet, and my brother gone. I fear Samuel has taken him or killed him or both!” Eliza was visibly trembling. “I don’t know to whom else to turn. The men at the mine don’t like me, for obvious reasons. As for the police,” she gestured at Hiram, “I have been warned they are in the pocket of Mr. Rettig and the D and RGW.”

  “They are,” Hiram said.

  “Remind me to tell you something else about Naaman Rettig,” Mary murmured.

  Hiram felt Michael’s arm around his shoulders. “Looks like we have work to do, Pap. Do we know a charm to deal with kidnapped brothers?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Snowflakes glistened in the headlights of the Model A. The wind shook the trees where they stood and made it hard for Hiram to think.

  “Did you find evidence that Samuel is mad?” Hiram asked Mary.

  “Not in the records,” she admitted. “Don’t you think the kidnapping is evidence enough?”

  Hiram wanted to believe that Samuel, distracted and dazed by the substances he smoked, was innocent, but he had seen the man’s art…including the animal corpses. More than that, he was under the influence of the seer stone’s demon. “If Samuel has taken Ammon, I believe I know where they are.”

  “Samuel’s camp?” Eliza looked distracted, her expression torn. Shattered by fatigue and trauma, much like Hiram, no doubt.

  “The mine.” Hiram looked at Michael. The boy had accepted that his father was a cunning man with surprisingly good grace. Could Hiram throw him into the presence of the demon…or Gus Dollar? But was it any safer to leave him behind? The monster had come out the mine to kill. It might not be in the mine now. “Or rather, the caves below the mines. We’re going to need help.”

  “Are you going to call out the National Guard to stop a crazy drug addict from hurting his brother?” Mary asked.

  “I wish I could get the National Guard.” Hiram laughed weakly. “Or even a halfway decent elders quorum. There are at least two exits out of the caves, and maybe more. I want them blocked off when I go in.”

  “In case Samuel gets away.” Eliza smiled ruefully.

  “Yes. Or Gus Dollar, if he shows up. And also, I’d rather that uninvited people not break in on us.”

  “Like the police.” Michael grinned. Was he enjoying the idea that his father was an outlaw? Hiram resolved to look more closely at the pulp magazines that Michael was always reading. And this Buck Rogers fellow.

  “Gus Dollar!” Mary didn’t shout, but the sudden energy in her voice felt like shouting to Hiram. “That reminds me, I want to show you this old daguerreotype. This is why I came looking for you. I found it in the files of the Helper Journal. They inherited a bunch of the city’s old documents, and you need to look at this one.”

  Hiram almost snapped at the organizer. He had no time, he was hunted, he was exhausted and cold. But he held his tongue. “Show me.”

  The storm had taken a break, no wind, no snow. The headlights of Mary’s car lit the yellowing image Mary pulled from her purse. It was of a row of men, and one of them was clearly Teancum Kimball; he matched the old daguerreotypes in the big house, and Samuel’s painting, and even the shrunken features of the corpse. Also, his sunken eyes were echoed in the features of all three children.

  “Is this your father?” he asked Eliza, to be sure.

  She nodded.

  Another looked just like Gus Dollar. At his present age, with his straight-up hair and his not-quite-symmetrical gaze.

  “Eighteen eighty-one,” Mary said.

  “Fifty-four years ago.” Hiram frowned. “Could this be Gus’s grandfather?”

  “As far as I can tell on short notice,” Mary told him, “there was no one named Dollar before about 1920 living in t
his valley. Not Gus, and not a father or an uncle or a cousin. I haven’t checked the city records, though, and of course even that may or may not record the presence of any given person. I mean, if he owned land, he would probably show up.”

  Gus had given his eye to the demon. Could this possibly be Gus? If Teancum Kimball had made a thirty-year deal with the demon that ended in 1933, then Gus’s deal would have had to have taken place earlier.

  Something niggled at the back of Hiram’s mind, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Something about Gus’s eye.

  “This is Gus Dollar,” Hiram said.

  Mary whistled. “But that would make him…mathematics was never my best subject…old.”

  “One million,” Michael said. “One million years old. That makes him a dinosaur. As I suspected from the start.”

  Hiram’s heart sank. So Gus had known Teancum, because Gus had been here in Spring Canyon, fifty-odd years ago. He’d made his deal with the demon then, and when his time was up, his place had been taken by Teancum Kimball. And now Gus was back, to master the demon once and for all.

  Hiram should have killed Gus when he had the chance.

  Mary took the picture back.

  “The miners will help us rescue Ammon,” Michael said.

  Hiram wasn’t sure. “What if they think I’m the murderer? Bill was good to them, he was their champion.”

  “You’re their champion now, Pap.” Michael shrugged. “Besides, you have the world’s most honest face. People believe you when you tell them things. Even, let’s face it, really weird things.”

  Mary McGill threw Hiram a surprised glance. “So…he knows now?”

  Hiram nodded.

  “Yeah, I know,” Michael said. “Not quite sure what I know.”

  “But you do have a good face,” Mary told Hiram.

  “You could have been the world’s most successful insurance salesman. Or banker.” Michael grinned. “Hey, it’s not too late, if this year’s beets are thin.”

  “It’s going to be a good harvest,” Hiram said.