Trumpet of the Dead (Raven Trilogy Book 2)

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  The kid turned back and looked at the road and then the path up the mountain.

  The kid said, “Last thing I need t’ say...” His bottom lip started to tremble. “You been a most worthy and upright friend to this ol’ West Virginia boy. An’ I ain’t ashamed to tell you, son, I love you. I really do.”

  Tears streamed down the kid’s face as he threw his arms around Kamp, hugging him and then letting go. He straightened up and said, “Look at me, a grown man, cryin’ like a child.”

  Kamp waited for the kid to compose himself and said, “I decided not to build a new slaughterhouse after all.”

  “How come?”

  Kamp felt his own throat catch. “I don’t know.”

  “But it appears you’re fixin’ to build something anyhow.”

  Kamp surveyed the materials and the site he’d chosen. “Yah, another house. Once it’s ready, you’re welcome to live there.”

  The kid let out a thoughtful sigh and tilted his head. “That is most kind, though my business is settled, and it’s time for me to go.”

  “But what was the one thing you needed to know?”

  “You’s curious, son, and most tenacious. That’s another thing I’ll miss about you. You’ll get word soon enough, along with due recompense.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Goodbye, son.” The kid held out his hand and Kamp shook it. Then he walked past Kamp to the tree line and then to the trail up the mountain behind the house.

  He called over his shoulder, “First off, remember that he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And second, when you meet Onesimus Tucks, iff’n you ever do, tell ’im, they ain’t broke us an’ they never will.” And the kid was gone.

  THE NEXT DAY Kamp heard hooves on the road and then saw Margaret Hinsdale riding up the path to his house. She dismounted, tied up the horse and took a package from one of the saddle bags. Kamp walked to the front porch to meet her.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She said, “May I come in?” and went straight past him and into the house.

  Margaret Hinsdale set down her package on the wooden table in the front room. Then, she turned to face him. Her hair was pulled back, revealing all her features.

  She said, “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “My son.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When was he here last?”

  “May I offer you a drink, Mrs. Hinsdale?” Kamp started for the kitchen.

  “When!”

  He stopped. “Yesterday.”

  Margaret Hinsdale stood straight, arms crossed and shoulders stiff. “Where did he go when he left?”

  He gestured behind the house and said, “Up the trail.”

  “Did you try to stop him?”

  “No.”

  She stared at the floor, crossed her arms tighter and pursed her lips as if to hold back an explosion. “Then he’s gone.”

  “Mrs. Hinsdale, do you know who your son is? Did you ever consider that he might be—”

  “That he might be a ghost, or some kind of…goddamned freak?”

  “No, simply that it’s—”

  She gritted her teeth. “Shut up. Just shut up.” Margaret Hinsdale untied the red silk ribbon on the bundle and spread out the materials on the table. “I found all of this under his bed. Look. See for yourself.”

  It was a collection of books, magazines and newspapers. Kamp read the title of one of the books, a penny dreadful. It was entitled, West Virginia Tales: Life in the Holler. The next one, a newspaper, bore the headline, “Snakes Alive! Preacher Dies from Rattler Bite.” And the next was a novel, Runaway Slave: A Tale of Murderous Intrigue! The cover depicted a scene in a churchyard, apparently the failed rescue attempt of a runaway slave. In the picture the men accompanying the slave appeared to have shot the would-be rescuer. The last item Kamp saw, another penny dreadful, was called, Breaker Boys: The Low Life of Coal Kids.

  Margaret Hinsdale hissed, “That’s Abel Truax. Cut from whole cloth. Every detail he ever told you is there.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that he gathered this material because it reminded him—”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “It wasn’t just stories, Mrs. Hinsdale. He knew things, specific facts, details a boy his age couldn’t have known. The birthmarks on his wrist and on the back of his neck correspond with—”

  She shook her head slowly. “You’ve been duped by a child. Accept it. I have.”

  He rubbed his forehead with both hands and said, “Why would he create an elaborate and false version of himself?”

  Margaret Hinsdale let out a long sigh. “Why would a child reject his parents?”

  Kamp went to the kitchen, poured a glass of water and handed it to Margaret Hinsdale. She set it down without taking a sip and then lit a cigarette.

  He said, “Perhaps he was angry. Perhaps he felt as if he needed to escape.”

  Margaret Hinsdale took a long pull on the cigarette and then let the smoke cascade from her lips as she spoke. “What could have angered that child? We gave him everything. He wanted for nothing.”

  “Maybe he felt the tension, the frustration and the rage, your husband’s and your own.”

  “About what.”

  “Did your husband tell you that—”

  “That he killed a man? You can’t hurt me with your shocking revelations, Kamp. You’re disgusting.”

  “Carrying that kind of secret is a terrible burden.”

  “Well, you ought to know. How many people have you killed? How do you sleep at night?”

  “I suggest that you and your husband consider the implications of your actions.”

  “Well, that’s private business, isn’t it?” She took one more drag on the cigarette and then dropped it to the floor, crushing it with the heel of her black riding boot. She gestured once more to the items on the table and said, “You can keep all of this garbage. I certainly don’t need it.”

  KAMP TOOK A LONG WALK later that day to clear his mind, to try to quell the demons. He’d inspected the writings on the table and found that, indeed, all of them corresponded directly or indirectly to the stories the kid had told. He began to ask himself questions and then to ruminate. Soon, the war erupted in his mind anew. He’d told Shaw he’d be back soon, though he knew it would take hours of walking to settle down.

  He walked in the forest behind his house, taking the path which encircled the mountain. When he reached the far side, Kamp happened upon a pile of bear shit. In the center of the pile, he spied a glint of gold, and when he bent down to inspect it, he found a wedding band. He plucked it out and cleaned it with his handkerchief. Kamp looked at the inside of the band and found an inscription, “To My Love, 1861.” He pocketed the ring and smiled at the thought of going home and telling Autumn that her bear was still alive.

  Kamp walked home on the road, passing the stone mansion where Raymond and Margaret Hinsdale lived. He saw the fine carriage parked behind the house and all the horses in the stable. He kept walking, and just before he reached the path to his house, a police wagon flew past him in the opposite direction, horses going full gallop, officers in blue wool uniforms not even giving him a glance.

  After dinner and after Autumn had been put to bed, Shaw found Kamp sitting with his elbow on the kitchen table, chin in hand and staring out the back window. She rubbed his shoulders, working on the knots.

  She sang softly, “And will he not come again?”

  He let his shoulders relax. “That’s good. Right there.”

  She said, “I saw all those things on the table. I read some of them.”

  “And?”

  “He was a troubled boy. He wanted to get away, so he lived in his stories, and now he’s gone.”

  “Just like the missionary, Daniel Jezek. Just like me.”

  “Let him go. Let them all go.” She continued massaging his shoulders and neck and singing, “He is gone, he is gone
. And we cast away moan.”

  EPILOGUE

  KAMP DECIDED TO PUT THE NEW CABIN far back from the road, even farther than his own house, and he worked alone as much as possible. Throughout that spring and summer and into the fall, Kamp built the structure nail by nail, plank by plank. He intended the place to be a sanctuary, though for whom he didn’t know yet.

  The only visitor was Grigg, who told him that Raymond Hinsdale had died in the kitchen of his home. The cause of death, the prosecutor said, was head trauma, almost certainly caused by a cast iron skillet in the hand of his wife, Margaret Hinsdale. He added that despite the force and accuracy of the blow, it had been ruled an accident.

  One hazy morning in early fall, as Kamp finished the cabin roof, he saw a man walking on the road. The man paused, scanned the property and the mountain behind it and then started up the path. Kamp climbed down from the roof to meet him.

  The man was lanky, taller than Kamp, and thin. From a distance he looked at Kamp but didn’t call out. When the man came within a few steps, he stopped and produced a sheet of paper from the vest pocket of his plain coat. Kamp noticed the man wore a wool forager’s hat, and he saw gold hair like straw poking out at angles underneath it.

  The man unfolded the paper, cleared his throat and said, “I received this letter two weeks ago, dated one month before that. The letter is from my brother, Abel Thomas Truax.” The man looked down and read from the paper, “Dear Brother, first off, go ahead and find Kamp.”

  The man stopped reading and looked up. “That’s you, ain’t?”

  Kamp nodded.

  “Second, tell him you’ve come to collect my bones and take them back. Third, don’t forget to introduce yourself.” The man extended his hand. “My name is John Truax. Folks call me J.B.”

  Kamp shook Truax’s hand. “Where should we look?”

  “For what?”

  “For your brother’s bones. I don’t know where they are. Do you?”

  J.B. Truax squinted and then looked back down at the letter. He read, “An’ another thing, Kamp’s gonna say he don’t know where I’m buried. Tell him, yes, he does.”

  Kamp tilted his head back and looked at the sky. He thought back to his conversations with the kid and found his answer. “Follow me,” he said.

  They walked around the back of the house to the tool shed and Kamp removed a pick ax and a spade shovel.

  “Better let’s get us a winding sheet, too,” Truax said.

  Kamp went in the house and came back out carrying a bed sheet. He carried the ax as well, handed the spade to Truax and then the pair set off for the tree line. As he reached the trail that led up the mountain, Kamp called over his shoulder, “Does it seem strange to you that your brother would send you a letter after he’s dead?”

  After a long pause, Truax said, “You had to know Abel.”

  Kamp went to the oak tree at the top of the mountain. The ground at the base of the tree, the place the kid had called a kyarn, the dead place, was devoid of life no more. It was thickly covered with mushrooms.

  Kamp raised the pick ax high over his head for the first swing.

  “Hold on, hold on, son.”

  J.B. Truax stepped in front of him and bent down. He picked one of the mushrooms between his thumb and first finger. It was black with a funnel shape that expanded outward and curled at the top.

  “The French call this here ‘trompette de la mort.’ ”

  “What?”

  “Trumpet of the dead.”

  Kamp reached down, picked one and inspected it.

  Truax said, “Best eatin-est mushrooms you’ll find. Valuable, too.”

  He popped it in his mouth and savored it for a moment, then took off his jacket and harvested the rest of the mushrooms. He bundled them in the jacket, tied it with the sleeves and set it aside. “Okay, go ’head.”

  With a few hard swings, Kamp broke up the ground, and Truax shoveled the dirt. Soon, they were a few feet down. Truax sank the blade and stopped.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  The two men carefully, reverently scooped out the ground around the corpse, the stench of decay hitting them full in the nostrils. They unearthed the feet and legs and then the torso.

  “Threw ’im in head first,” Truax said to himself.

  Lastly, they found the head detached from the body, blonde hair matted with chunks of mud to the skull. Kamp lifted the head gently from the hole and set it on the ground.

  J.B. Truax gathered his brother’s remains on the winding sheet he’d spread out on the ground. He peeled the jacket from the torso of the corpse and felt along its seams.

  “What is it?”

  Truax’s fingers kept searching and then stopped. He produced a pocket knife and sliced open the fabric.

  “Legal tender. Tens and twenties.”

  Truax pulled out a thin stack of bills, then another. He counted the money, split it, and handed one half to Kamp. “It’s still good,” he said.

  “I can’t take his money, or yours.”

  “Shee-it, son, he don’t need it. Truth be told, I don’t neither. But he told me to give you due recompense. And that’s that.”

  Kamp pocketed the bills, while Truax climbed back in the hole.

  “Now what?” Kamp said.

  He sliced through the dirt at the bottom of the hole until he hit metal. He got on his knees, dug out the object, and held it up to Kamp.

  “My knife. Abel stole it from me right before he lit out.” He shook his head and said, “Little brothers.”

  Truax picked up the winding sheet and the bundle of mushrooms, slung them both over his shoulder and said, “One more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Abel told me to tell you your hat, that red felt number, you stuffed it in a notch in this here tree, part way up.”

  J.B. Truax started back down the trail and was gone. Kamp stared up into the tree at the spot he’d climbed to on the day he’d learned of his oldest brother’s death. He jumped, arms stretched above him, and caught the first low bough, then swung his left leg over it. He soon righted himself on the bough and stood up and ascended until he reached the large notch. He scraped away the years of detritus that had collected there and eventually touched felt. He took a handful and pulled out his beloved hat, misshapen and dyed dark brown by the disintegration of dead leaves.

  He climbed down from the tree, clutching the hat, tears filling his eyes. Kamp gathered up the ax and spade and walked down the mountain home.