Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

  Dora and I sat down and looked at each other, and then laughed at how sloppy with sweat we were. Her hair was pasted to her head at the temples and my shirt was darkening and clinging unbecomingly to my chest.

  “They need shade here,” she said, “a great big shade tree.”

  “Yes, but then people might actually sit on the benches, which would block the view of this fine English garden.”

  “Oh.”

  “Soda?”

  “God, yes.”

  HARVEY’S DRUG EMPORIUM sat at the southeast corner off the square, next to the decrepit town hall. It was not until the door shut behind us that the counterman noticed us, so we got to enjoy the slice of opinion he was serving up to his passive customer, bending over the poor man with his arms extended like he expected to fly soon.

  “. . . And it’s a good thing that once they got electric lines through here I put the machine in or I’d be boarded up same as the jeweler. Folks hit hard times, they go back to they grandmama’s poultice, cain’t be spendin on Vicks VapoRub, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if they don’t find change for a cold soda when the weather turns . . . ’Scuze me, Mike. Afternoon! Hep you folks?”

  I ordered two vanilla sodas.

  “Say, you must be that pretty new teacher takin Dottie’s place over at the school.”

  She allowed that she was, then quickly introduced me as her husband in the hopes that he might temper his unsubtle gaze. He did.

  “So that makes you the nephew. Yeah, I guess I see that in the eyes. Pleased to meet you folks. I’m Harvey, but you probably guessed that already if you looked above the door afore you come in. This here’s Mike. He’s lazy.”

  The man at the counter, who I now noticed was missing his closer arm, nodded hard once and went back to spooning ice cream into his mouth. I remembered him now, standing over the checker game.

  “You folks goin to the Social tonight?” Harvey asked.

  “What time does it begin?” Dora said.

  “Soon as the swineherds get back.”

  Swineherds? Did I hear that right?

  “And what time is that?” I said.

  “Looks like nobody’s told you two about the Chase. Sort of a Whitbrow spectacle. They leave at two from the church and by the time they get home and cleaned up, it’s right about eight.”

  “No, nobody’s told us about this.”

  “Well, you might want to watch this one. There’s talk that this might be the last one til times get better. Or til never.”

  Harvey set the sodas down in front of us.

  “Do you know if Mr. Gordeau will be at the Social tonight?”

  “Which Gordeau?”

  “Lester.”

  “Well, I sure hope he’s gonna be there. He’s one a the swineherds.”

  THE CHURCH, WHICH also served as schoolhouse for elementary and middle school students, sat beaming and white on a tract of well-kept land on the far side of the square. A crowd of forty or so had gathered to see the Chase begin, and Ursula Noble was one of these.

  “There you are!” she shouted when she spotted Eudora, and she walked bouncily away from the gathering towing a two-year-old by one chicken-poxed arm. Ursula was a young-looking fourteen, still more girl than woman, wearing a faded floral print dress and boots that were too big on her. Her hair was so black it had bluish highlights. I thought of the Cherokee, how we dismantled their nation and shipped it west to die, but not before it pumped a gout of blood into the veins of the conquerors.

  “I’m Ursie, the one that left the basket. And this is Sadie. Sadie, say hello.”

  Sadie looked at Eudora and me as if she were considering us for some post, but then became more interested in her finger and began biting the end of it. I noticed Sadie’s eyes then. She was simple.

  “So you’re Ursula,” Dora said.

  “Ursie, ma’am. Ursula sounds like a bear.”

  “It is a bear.”

  “I know. You can call me that if you like, but I just sign that on letters cause letters is formal. Mama calls me Ursula just afore Daddy gives me a whippin.”

  “And this is Mr. Nichols. Orville Francis Nichols when he’s bad, which is pretty often. I thought I would bring him out to see the Chase.”

  “Well, come on then,” Ursie said, taking Dora’s hand with her free one. Dora took mine in turn, and Ursie led us all to the yard of the church in a sort of lopsided wedge. It was just at this moment that a smallish man in black stood up on the front step facing the crowd.

  “That’s Pastor Lyndon,” Ursie said. “Don’t let him see you slouch. You’re not slouching now, but he says the Devil knows you ain’t got the Spirit in you if he sees you hang-doggin around.”

  If good posture was the measure, Pastor Lyndon had Spirit all right. He held himself painfully erect like a proper little soldier for the Holy Host. As he prepared to speak, he brushed back a forelock that was just beginning to grey. He looked around at the congregation for a moment, giving them all time to stop talking to one another as his gaze lit on each of them. The gaze reminded the young ones he had married them and the old ones that he would speak over their caskets soon. It was a good trick. When they were ready to receive him, he spoke.

  “Brethren and friends. We gather here as we do each month to give thanks to the Lord for His infinite bounty, and to show Him that we, as dutiful sons and daughters, know how to thank our Father. Even as it was of old that Jehovah commanded Abraham and his sons to make burnt offering to Him, so are we called, in our way, to keep covenant with Him, offering to Him the best fruits of our fields.”

  With that, Lester Gordeau approached one side of the steps, leading a massive, hairy-eared hog on a rope. Another young man led a slightly smaller sow to the other side of the pastor. I had to wonder if they were going to slaughter and burn the animals right there on the lawn of the church. Then of course husbands could bed their wives’ handmaidens while widows lay with their brothers-in-law.

  “Hold Sadie. I have to go do my part now,” Ursie said, passing the toddler’s small hand into mine. I felt a very unchristian distaste noticing how cool and wet it was. Eudora noticed this and laughed at me. Ursie trotted around to one side of the church to join other young girls who were readying something.

  Pastor Lyndon went on.

  “Let us remember this Sunday of the waxing moon that our food does not come to us of our own hand. No one of us can make the corn to stand high, nor the grain for our bread to flourish, nor can any man here call the chick forth from the egg until the good Lord shall say Let it be so. If any man before me can do these things, then let him take these pigs for his own and carve them shoulder and leg for his own plate. But if he cannot, then let him bow his head before the power of our Lord; let him take up flowers to throw before these blessed swine; and let him give thanks as a child gives thanks, humbly, and in the sure knowledge that, but for the kindness of his Father, he should have neither meat for his belly, nor door to bar against the beasts of the night.”

  Ursie came back into view with the other girls, and they tied wreaths of wildflowers, mostly daisies and black-eyed Susans, around the necks of the pigs.

  “Now we know where she got the wildflowers,” Dora whispered.

  Pastor Lyndon spoke.

  “Before we take these fine animals, let us remember that they have come from the pens of Miles Falmouth and his family, as is scheduled in the registry; and let us remember that Miles suffers a weakness of the back and hips that makes his work on the land very hard for him. And that his son is not yet at the fullness of his strength. Where we might lay down one coin to relieve a whole man’s sacrifice in giving of his herd, let us lay down two for our brother Miles Falmouth. If you cannot give today, we will be passing the plate at regular service on Miles’ behalf all month.”

  With this said, Lester and the other swineherd took up an earthenware dish and a heavy silver collection plate and passed them among those in the crowd, who began, with some reluctance, to search their
pockets for coins. I put in a silver dollar for both of us. Dora gave me a look balking at the amount.

  “It’s worth it,” I said. “You don’t get a show like this every day. Pigs and flowers? Oh they’re Jesus Christing it up, all right, but this looks more like some pagan-rooted festival from the south of France. And like the man said, this might be the end of it.”

  Pastor Lyndon spoke.

  “Now let us send these beasts into the wilderness and give no more thought to their flesh, which belongeth now to the Lord, and which, though it might nourish the body of whichsoever of us should eat it, would surely damn his soul.”

  The swineherds took the ropes from the necks of the pigs and took up long branches twined in green ribbon, using these branches now as crooks or goads. They herded the pigs across the square, taking care to keep them away from the tea roses, and then turned them left onto the small road that went past several dozen houses and then dwindled to become the path Lester and I had followed, the path the Federals took on their way to fight Savoyard, the path that led to the river.

  The townsfolk followed them, singing hymns that neither Dora nor I had ever heard, stopping at the last house as the two pigs and two men headed into the woods. Only when they were out of view did the gathering begin to disband.

  Ursie Noble, shining with sweat, discreetly fanned the top of her dress and then took her sister up in her arms, heading for home.

  “See you tonight! At the Social!”

  Sadie looked back over her shoulder at us for a long while.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN THE LAST minutes of daylight, Dora and I drove the Model A into town and parked it not far from where the main road had been closed off by tables. We kicked up a little dust as we went by, and people stared at us, but more because cars were such a rare species out here than because we put grit in the lemonade. Tables had also been set up on the patchy lawn in front of the courthouse, and, as the last of the sunlight bled away, I noticed an eclectic mix of lanterns hung from lines strung between trees. As soon as it was fully dark, musicians started in with fiddle, guitar and triangle. Teenagers and younger marrieds took to a wooden dancing platform I hadn’t even noticed on the lawn and danced, but soon couples of all ages crowded on.

  I watched the dancing long enough to see that they favored a sort of two-step, then I pulled Eudora up and we danced until we were soaked. We made a good impression, and soon we were off the floor and talking with groups of our new neighbors, who were mostly interested in telling us about our other new neighbors.

  I excused myself from one such group, wiping my brow with a handkerchief and dabbing ineffectually at my shirtfront. I walked past empty plates that had briefly held sandwiches and fried tomatoes, past a plate of grey-looking sausages with a quartet of flies buzzing around them, and then I wandered near a plate of salted fish. I inspected them to see if any one of them looked better than its fellows. None did. A small boy walked over, looking first at the fish and then up at me.

  “No, you go ahead,” I said. The boy took them all. A woman marched into view and glared at the boy until he replaced all but one.

  “That one, too,” she said. He put it back. Then she grabbed a hank of his hair and led him off into the darkness from which they had both emerged, saying “Ain’t no Jesus here to make more of em. You better learn that sometimes people’s jest bein polite. Don’t you think that man was about to get him a fish afore he saw you lookin at em like a underfed dog?”

  “No, Mama, he was makin a face.”

  “I don’t care. You take more’n one a anything off a plate again an I’ll . . .”

  I turned away so my worst ear was towards them, cutting off the rest. When I turned, I found that a man had come up quite close to me.

  “Looks like one little brave’s getting summoned off to powwow,” the man said, adding, “Have a drink, Mr. Nichols.”

  I recognized him; someone had pointed him out to me as the town’s taxidermist.

  He held out a glass of what looked like watered-down lemonade, and I took it. When it got near my face, however, the smell of grain alcohol rushed at me like something that had been too long in a cage. I drank gratefully, taking a good look now at the short, tough-looking man in front of me.

  “My name’s Cranmer, Martin Cranmer, taxidermist, but you already know that. I saw some of the old chickens pointing and whispering. Doubtless you’ve also learned about my cannibalism and ties to the communist party.”

  Young John Brown, I thought suddenly, struck less by the man’s hooked nose than by the drilling grey eyes that hinted at some denomination of madness. A lush but forbidding dark beard mostly hid Cranmer’s mouth and stood out in contrast to his suit, which was cream-colored, short at the wrists and crotch, and so ill-fitting generally that it might have been sent mail-order two sizes small and not returned out of indifference. It also looked innocent of professional attempts to clean it; stains on the sleeves were subtle but numerous, some of them likely dating back to Hoover.

  “Thanks for the drink,” I said, wiping my mouth with the heel of my hand. “Brother, you don’t know how long it’s been. Alright, only about ten days, but it feels like ten months.”

  “I have a still. It’s a big secret I like to tell everybody.” Cranmer didn’t have the drawl everybody else in town had. He actually said I like, not Ah lahk. What was that accent? Midwestern?

  “Did you get some squirrel?” Martin asked, indicating a plate with several small, roasted carcasses on them.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, it might not look like much, but I peppered the little sons of bitches into a stupor, and it’s a damn sight fresher than what the butcher brought. It would kill him to give away something he could sell. I think he’s part Jew. Nothing against the Jews, except they like their money and they killed Jesus, but if they hadn’t we wouldn’t have anything to sing about on Sundays.”

  I laughed.

  Martin continued.

  “I wanted to say hello earlier but you and the young lady were having a fine old time dancing. I was sure the fiddle player would wear out before you two did. Of course, Sully only has one testicle, and it’s natural to assume a fellow in that condition would have diminished stamina, although that’s not necessarily true. Sully’s still burning up that fiddle. They say he cut one off to stay out of the war. He should have done what I did and hid in the woods. Anyway, that’s immaterial. All I meant to say is, it’s good to see people really enjoy each other.”

  “Have you met my wife?” I said.

  Did Cranmer raise his left eyebrow just a little?

  “Later,” he said. “It looks like she’s occupied.”

  Eudora was standing with Ursie and her parents, moving her hands as she spoke. She sensed my gaze and smiled brightly at me without interrupting her speech.

  “Quite a bond between you two,” Martin said. “Shines, it really does. I like that.”

  “Are you a married man?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think a wife wouldn’t let you keep that beard.”

  “Good! An honest man. Me, too. Honesty’s why I like hookers. Have to ride a fuck-all long way on my bicycle for that, though.”

  “I haven’t done that since the war,” I said.

  “What, ride a bicycle?”

  “That either.”

  Martin chuckled, then took a tin of cigarettes out of his coat pocket, lighting two of them and passing one to me as if it were sacred. He had rolled them himself, and the tobacco was so strong my throat would hurt all night from it.

  “Thank God some new meat showed up in town. Not your lady. I mean you. I mean conversation. Quite honestly, you’re the only reason I put on this ape suit and pedaled out here.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “They say you’re educated. A professor of history. Me, I’m self-educated. I like books. I like to talk about books. No offense, but most of the God-fearing folk around here have trouble reading a can of soup. I
mean, they’ll whip your biscuits in a game of checkers at the general store, and most of them can quote Genesis and Exodus alright, but chess is right out. The most political they ever got was when half of them wrote letters to Sears and Roebuck when they switched the catalog to glossy paper.”

  “Why did they care?”

  “Because they had to go back to wiping their asses with corn.”

  I laughed.

  “So does a self-educated man find satisfaction in the preservation of dead animals?”

  “Satisfaction? Not exactly. But when I make a good mount I feel like I beat God in a small way. As though the Almighty said, Let thus and such critter be dead, and I said, ‘Fuck You, he can still play the banjo.’ Are you a devout man, Mr. Nichols?”

  “I can’t say that I am.”

  “Excellent. We might be friends. But we won’t hunt together.”

  “I don’t hunt.”

  “I know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You make a lot of noise and you don’t see or hear too well. Don’t be offended. You’re a fine dancer. I dance like you hunt.”

  “You figured all this out tonight?”

  “Not tonight. Yesterday. I was setting a trap near the Wheeler house, you know, the place that burned down. There’s a rabbit warren nearby. Anyway, there you came with Lester, stepping on every twig and dried leaf you could find like the whole world was your friend, taking pictures with that little camera. Look close when you bring those pictures out; I’m probably in one of them.”

  Cranmer told me how to get to his cabin and left me with a standing invitation to play chess. He did not speak to anybody else, although he nodded at Lester Gordeau and made a troll face at a towheaded boy who stared at him too long. And then he clambered onto a bicycle and pedaled off into the night. I pictured Martin walking the bike through the rough terrain of the forest in his mismeasured suit, but the image did not make me laugh. No image of Martin Cranmer in the woods seemed improbable. He looked like he had been carved from the hardest tree in them.