Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

  When Paul called the end of the meeting and those of us who were inside went out and mingled with those who were outside, we all got treated to one more spectacle.

  Martin Cranmer was on his bicycle. He rode around the town square fast like a little boy, and he howled. He did not howl loud enough for anyone to fuss at him about the noise, but he howled low so that when he circled near the town hall everyone heard plainly what he was doing. The ones nearest the road watched him as if he were a stuntman or an acrobat doing a trick, so he did a trick. He put one foot on the seat and stood with the other foot held up high behind him, steering shakily and grinning at them through his beard.

  “That man’s three sheets to the wind,” a woman said, and, as if he had been prompted, Martin hit a stone and fell, slowly and luxuriously, the way hard drinkers fall even in accidents involving machines.

  Lester Gordeau’s younger brother Saul ran to help the taxidermist up and the sheriff came over, too, and talked quietly to him so that he nodded his head and pedaled off gently.

  “He’s alright,” Sheriff Blake said. “Nothing hurt but his liver. Let’s all go home now.”

  And that was what they did, each to his own home.

  And I believe none slept well that night, and none remembered any good dream.

  THE ALDERMEN HELD their vote the next night, deciding six against three that no more pigs should be herded into the woods. This was the same margin by which the advocates of the Chase had won two years before when the same issue had come up following the slaughter of piglets for the Hog Reduction Program. The decision was read and entered into the minutes at 8:15. Lawton Butler, whose pigs were next on the registry and due for surrender in the coming weeks, reportedly got up out of his seat and raised his hands to the ceiling as if he were about to be baptized.

  Eudora went to this meeting without me.

  I had begged off so I could work, but what really happened was that I sat in front of the typewriter and nursed three glasses of Drambuie.

  Dora said not many came at all.

  ALL THE DRAMA and the most compelling speakers had gone the night before; besides which, it had been widely believed that the ceremony would not survive a second vote, so few were surprised when the decision was entered.

  What did surprise the community was the death of Paul Miller, alderman and owner of the general store.

  It surprised Paul, too.

  The pain hit him while he was standing on a stepladder to stack flour on a high shelf. It shocked him so that he stepped off the ladder wrong and cracked his head, dropping a sack of flour, which burst all over him and the floor. This happened early in the morning two days after the vote.

  Dr. McElroy, an old-time black-bag doctor who kept his office in the back of his house, was the only one who was not surprised.

  He filled us in at the general store.

  Why was I hanging around there? Why wasn’t I at the typewriter? Because I had to go into those woods next, that’s why.

  Where are your pants, my friend?

  “I told him his heart was not bad insofar as I heard no murmurs or irregular beats, but that his restin heart rate was high, and he didn’t need an MD to tell him he was carryin too much. I told him he had a clean bill of health so long as he’d promise to lay off the fat meat, cut his portions and start takin walks. He only heard what he wanted to hear. Like most of us, I reckon. Maggie Whaley found him all white with flour on his floor, an she came runnin for me. I told her he was dead when he hit the floor and she couldn’t of done a thing; truth is, he was probably still tickin, but that’s the kind a thing you say. Either way, he was all done when I listened to that big chest of his. No more prime rib for you, old man. It’s a sorry damn shame is what it is.”

  Paul Miller was buried in a very large box. His funeral was well attended despite the rains that came on the tail end of a hurricane that had given hell to the Florida Keys. People strained to hear the pastor’s words in the wind.

  Some of those hunching under newspapers or shared coats owed him money. Of these, I’ll bet some wondered if the list of debtors would be found by his wife, and struggled with whether or not to tell her. I was sorry that his big, generous face would no longer loom behind the pickle jar, and that he would be crushing no more hands with his aggressive handshakes. Many of the others were sorry, too, that his listless, rail-thin brother would likely take over the store, at least until he found out how much work it was.

  The rain was heavy and warm and made small lakes on the potted road that led back from the churchyard. What we all felt that day, even those of us who were new in town, was that something had changed in Whitbrow, something had given way, and what would follow would not be to our liking.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EUDORA STARTED TEACHING school the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend, in the simple building on the outskirts of town that served as a high school. It had a tin roof, a potbellied stove, dirty windows and a sextet of rough-hewn tables with a few benches and mismatched chairs. The boys and girls shared pencils since ink for the pens had run out.

  She saw right away that her biggest challenge was going to be keeping these grown-up-looking farmers’ kids in school. She expected to lose a few temporarily, maybe permanently, during the corn harvest that would follow soon. A girl like Ursie would pose little risk; she was not needed at her father’s businesses, nor in his peach or nut orchards where hired men worked the ladders. All she had to do was mind her younger sibling and do light chores at night while her mama cooked.

  Sarah Woodruff, on the other hand, wore her older brother’s cast-off pants cinched around her waist with a leather strap, and her shoes had the backs cut off and the tops slit because she had long since outgrown them. Sarah was fifteen and fighting a losing battle with her parents to stay in school instead of helping them full-time with the farm. What good would numbers and letters do her when she was a wife? What could she want besides that? Her good looks had already caught Saul Gordeau’s eye; more than his eye, his daddy seemed to think. This could have just been wishful thinking on the old man’s part; the girl was more than just beautiful. She was positively wholesome. Pinup girl material, with her bright eyes and her chestnut hair and just that little bit of freckle.

  Of course, Dora didn’t care about that. She loved Sarah because Sarah paid attention. She understood. None of the boys could keep up with her at reading or math, but one of them was going to be her lord and master soon; if not Saul, then maybe the squarish boy who sat up front and talked about going in the army. One of them would take her by her pretty hair and drag her into his house to make her peel things and wash things and mend things under his mother’s gaze. Eudora told me it would be her chief mission to keep that girl in school, whatever became of the rest of them.

  One of the ways in which Dora hoped to keep the class together was by engaging them in conversation, reasoning that if they did enough talking to her and to one another they would develop a sense of belonging and they would fight harder to stay together.

  So on the second day of school, Dora asked the class to talk about the pigs. She explained that since she was not from Whitbrow she needed to catch up on its stories. Did anyone know why people first started sending pigs out into the woods?

  Sarah was the first to raise her hand.

  “My daddy used to tell us scary stories about the woods east of town. Is that what you mean, Mrs. Nichols? Scary stories?”

  “Yes, Sarah, any kind of story. Scary, nice. Anything you’ve heard.”

  Then several of them had raised their hands, but she nodded at Sarah.

  “My daddy used to tell us how once upon a time there was a plantation out there, like when they used to keep slaves. He said that since the man who owned the plantation was so bad, God let the Devil come and take the man’s soul away without waiting for Judgment Day. But now the Devil knows how to get out of Hell by a door he made back then, and when the moon gets full he comes up looking for a new soul to take away. And i
f you met up with him, it wouldn’t matter if you were good or bad, he would just eat up your body and take your soul away with him. The Devil likes pigs, though, because they have feet like him. So when he finds a pig he takes that instead.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “It’s just a story. But I know I don’t like those woods and I’m not supposed to ever go out there.”

  Eudora called on Saul next.

  “Well, my brother likes to fish that river out where it gets deeper, and he’s took me with him before. But not across the river. He’s been, though. He says he ain’t never seen nothin bad out there but snakes and ground-wasps. But he don’t go much past the river, and he don’t go at night. I don’t neither. My daddy always held that sendin all them pigs was foolishness, but he did tell us some stories, too. To scare us, like, so we wouldn’t go off wanderin at night. I guess all daddies do that and I’m like to do it, too.”

  “What did he tell you, Saul?”

  “There’s this death-dog out there,” he said.

  Other heads nodded.

  “It’s called a Look-a-roo. And if you see this dog, you’s the next to die in town. They say it’s black, all black, and as big as two dogs, and if you see it, not all the prayin in the world’s gonna keep you from bein put in the ground real soon.”

  Saul started to sing then.

  One-two, one-two,

  Don’t look at me, Look-a-roo.

  Other voices joined in. They all knew this.

  Three-four, three-four,

  Who’sat scratchin at my door?

  Five-six, five-six,

  Getcha while you pickin sticks.

  Seven-eight, seven-eight,

  Getcha if you stay out late.

  If I say nine-ten,

  I’ ll-never-get-back-home-again.

  “We used to sing that skippin rope,” Saul said.

  “Yeah,” said another boy, “and whoever starts that last part ‘nine-ten’ gets a punch.”

  “We just go awwww at em,” offered a girl.

  The boy said, “Yeah, my daddy says Mr. Miller saw it on the way home from the store. Couple nights afore he died.”

  Eudora told me she was fed up with daddies and their ghosts, and I knew what she meant. Another way to keep the house in awe. It’s good to hear the strong snore of a daddy in the next room when something might be lurking in the hedge, waiting to test your window.

  The would-be army boy up front raised his hand.

  “Way I heard it was a nigger gave hisself up to the Devil back in slave days so the Devil would come and eat up his master. Used a witch doctor and everything. But I guess that’s like the other story,” he said, and flashed a look behind him at Sarah.

  But then Sarah raised her hand again, and what she said next was what made Dora fall sloppily in love with her.

  “I think there are stray dogs out there. Or maybe there used to be. Sometimes when dogs go stray they make a pack like wolves and hunt and they’re very dangerous. Might be someone got killed. Might be that’s why they told stories about a death-dog or the Devil eating somebody. Might be they got scared and started sending pigs out across the river to keep what they thought was out there from coming to town.”

  A boy in the back said, “Yeah, but ain’t nobody scared a no dogs. They’d a just laid poison or shot em. Don’t make sense to give no pigs up for dogs.”

  “Alright, smarty-pants,” Sarah said, “maybe it is the Devil. Why don’t you go out and see?”

  I MET DORA after school that day, the storytelling day, and walked her home. I pointed out the diurnal moon, which was more than half full, hiding like a shy spirit behind the branches of a maple tree. I got a kiss for this, a peck at first, but more after she checked to see that no kids were lingering nearby.

  Then we walked on.

  “Funny how they think the Devil would actually be interested in queer little Whitbrow,” she said. Her hand slid up to feel the muscle in my arm. “But I’m glad you’re here all the same. You won’t let the Devil get me, will you, Frankie?”

  “I’ll spit in his eye and tie a knot in his tail.”

  “That’s just capital. And when he wipes the spit out of his eye and shakes the knot out of his tail?”

  “We run like hell, of course.”

  “Quite sane,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder.

  Our lovemaking was sweet and slow that night. It seemed she kissed my whole body as if it were a newly minted gift she could not keep long. And afterwards, when she thought I was sleeping, I caught her talking to the moon through the lace curtains. I couldn’t hear her words, as low as they were, but I wasn’t half bad at reading her lips.

  “I don’t need rescuing,” she said. “I don’t.”

  THE DAY MARTIN Cranmer got himself arrested, Dora and I were having a soda at Harvey’s. I told her that Saul’s story about the death-dog reminded me of Black Shuck.

  “What’s a ‘Black Shuck’?” she asked.

  I took another drink of soda. We had come to the drugstore to get out of the heat even though both of us knew the town was stunned and the mood was unpleasant in the wake of Paul Miller’s death, and in the absence of a Social, which would have taken place that Sunday if anyone had the good will and energy to organize it. The town seemed lost without its heathen ritual. And without its affable grocer.

  “Black Shuck was a sort of big, black hound that lurked in the barrows and fens in England. When I was in London, not long before I came home, I met some fellows in a pub. They had been soldiers, too, like everybody, part of that ghastly tank business in Amiens. They were from the East. Norwich or Norfolk, I can’t recall. When the barman called ‘Time, gentlemen,’ one of them said, ‘Let’s go through Hyde Park and look for Black Shuck.’ ”

  Dora smiled at my put-on accent.

  “ ‘He’s a great fukkin black dog, big as a calf. Just watch out for his one red eye right in the middle of his forehead; if he looks at you, you’re shyte. You’re dead.’ ”

  My profanity caused Harvey to look up from his barely audible radio and from his endless wiping of clean things, though his expression was so flat I wasn’t sure at first if it was interest or reproach.

  Then he turned up his radio and went back to wiping. Huey Long was getting buried in Baton Rouge and some reverend was speaking, calling him an unfinished symphony. Harvey was rapt.

  “Anyway, we rolled out of the pub and went looking down dark alleys and under bridges and ended up passing out in Hyde Park. No Shuck. I always remembered that name. It sounds like a death-dog, doesn’t it? It sounds like little Gordeau has a piece of that same story. Funny how legends travel.”

  “Nothing about this business sounds funny to me. The moon should be full tonight. Like it was that night you came home from the woods and had your dreams. What did you see out there, Frankie?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Liar.”

  “Just the bogeyman.”

  “Now you’re a smart aleck. You always get wise when something’s bothering you. Can we just stay in tonight?”

  “Sure. A night in with my best girl.”

  “Wife.”

  “Not soon enough,” I said, brushing her bangs from her forehead.

  I noticed that Harvey had left off wiping again because he was staring out the window into the town square where the merciless midday light illuminated a lone, squatting figure.

  “Well, that man is a plum idiot if ever I saw one. What in hell does he think he’s doing?”

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing, Martin?” the big man said.

  I had walked out so I could eavesdrop. I might have felt ashamed if I had been the only one.

  The taxidermist looked up at Sheriff Blake, who had come out of the hardware store still buckling on the belt of his office, and who was now standing over him with the sun behind him. The big man looked more fatigued than angry, and he asked Martin again, “Now, just what are you doing?”

  Martin placed upon his own head th
e garland of tea roses he had just crafted. He went from a squat to a sitting position, sitting Indian-style with a cigarette in his mouth.

  “What I am doing,” Martin said, “is fashioning myself a moon crown, since I am high on moonshine. I am tired of looking at these goddamned flowers and they are tired of being looked at, so I am putting them out of everyone’s misery. If you like my headdress, I would be happy to make you one of your own. I am sure there are enough flowers even for your head, which is not small.”

  Estel hunkered down, removing his shadow from Martin Cranmer, and he said, “Now, how are we going to fix this?”

  Martin said nothing.

  “I’ll tell you how. I’m going to trust you to take yourself home and tuck yourself in like a good boy to sleep off your drunk.”

  “That’s not what’s going to happen,” Martin said slowly and jovially.

  “And when you wake up, you’re going to come back here and plant new flowers at your own expense.”

  Martin shook his head, grinning broadly so his yellowish teeth stood out against his beard. He stood up on legs that looked ready to buckle. The sheriff stood up, too.

  “I have destroyed public property,” Martin said.

  “Yes,” Estel said, “yes, you have. And if you don’t make it right, maybe I’ll come around to your house and destroy me some private property. Like some illegal property that turns mash into shine.”

  Martin, still smiling, noted that people, myself included, were standing under the awnings of the shops around the square now, and I believe it was mostly for our benefit that he undid his trousers and urinated on the remains of the rosebushes.

  The sheriff waited for him to finish and button up. When he had, Estel said, “Now would you please wipe your damn hands on your shirt?”

  Martin obliged, swaying gently.

  “Thank you,” the sheriff said, taking Martin’s wrists and cuffing them behind his back.