Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why don’t you take up the back.”

  “I would do better near the front. Man in the back needs good ears.”

  “That’s fine, then. Buster, you shoot?”

  Buster shook his head.

  “Alright, you take the rear.”

  “I was afeared you was gonna say that.”

  It was only when Buster almost tripped over Saul’s rifle that they realized Saul Gordeau was missing.

  He had been the last man in the rear.

  WHEN HE SAW that the boy was gone, Estel began to fall apart. We all knew that’s what was happening, but nobody tried to usurp what was left of his command because nobody else knew what to do either. It was getting late enough so we had to leave soon if we wanted to make the river by dark. Everyone wanted to make the river by dark. So we abandoned all pretense of stealth and shouted the boy’s name until all of us were hoarse. We tried to retrace our steps. We saw no sign of him. He was gone utterly and did not answer his name. I think many in the party were quietly glad to be moving back towards the river, and as long as search and retreat were both served by the same heading, there was no contention in the group.

  When some of the men felt they were near the place of the shooting they slowed down and began to look more carefully. I proposed that we should walk in an ever-widening circle and keep a close eye out for blood or dropped items, and Estel nodded his assent. We called the boy’s name again and again until all the meaning washed out of it and it became like any other syllable, more related to salt or sod than to Lester or their father.

  Estel touched his face a lot while we searched. I had the impression he was remembering flies, fearing to find another boy walked on by flies.

  Nothing happened except that the light got weaker. One man suggested that the boy had gotten scared and headed back west. This made sense to other men who were eager to head home. A majority soon formed that professed to believe the boy had turned back, and would be waiting for them by the river or back in Whitbrow. Members of this same majority also pointed out that they had only one light, no food and very little water. By way of easing the general conscience, one suggested that if the boy wasn’t already home they could renew their search tomorrow. Lester nearly hit the man who said that. Buster came between them, but argued Lester’s part, saying if Saul was hurt they would be killing him to leave him out all night.

  Estel spoke up then, saying, “He’s probably crossed the river. I’m sure he’s crossed the river home.”

  And if he hasn’t, I can’t bear to find him, I could almost hear him thinking. My steps are heavy with the fear of bumping a foot into him; I will shake myself to pieces, Selah. Lord give me one night of rest before I see anything else that makes me see Thy throne empty and my own death close and final.

  Those who wished to leave grabbed at the sheriff’s weakness, tried to hide their own behind it. They were sure the boy was home. They promised to come back tomorrow.

  I was as scared as any of them, maybe more scared.

  I have seen something in these trees, and something worse in others.

  But still I spoke up and said,

  The woods have not yet forgotten how to gobble men up

  “Who volunteers to tell the boy’s father?

  that monsters got his youngest boy

  or do we let Lester do that?”

  “I ain’t leavin without my brother,” Lester said.

  “Now it seems we got to all go or all stay,” Buster said, “and I’m for all stayin.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “You damn fool, the boy’s gone home,” one man said. One of those who shot.

  “That’s right,” another said. “He’s waitin on us.”

  “Who’s goin to tell our wives if we stay?”

  “And if he ain’t home, you gonna look your wife in the eye and tell her you left a boy in the woods? Cuz I will.”

  The man wanted to say something back to Buster but didn’t.

  His friend said, “Now, I ain’t no coward, but I ain’t no fool neither. Seems to me if they ain’t nothin bad out here, the boy’s alright. But if they is, they’s goin to give us hell tonight an us with no light or nothin.”

  “I’d rather be a fool,” Buster said. “If we start now we can pick good ground and make a fire. Camp here and start first thing in the mornin stead a wastin all that time walkin home and back.”

  I said, “Whatever we do, I agree that we should do it together. We’ve got good enough numbers now to discourage an attack, but if we divide, the smaller party will be . . .”

  “Shit out a luck,” Buster finished.

  “Well, I ain’t leavin,” Lester said.

  “And I ain’t stayin,” one of those who shot said.

  I saw that the sheriff was gone to pieces and where a good leader might have kept the group together, there was none. God, I did not want to stay out if the group was going to split, but I saw that Lester would stay and I couldn’t leave the boy alone.

  The light was going.

  “Seems to me we should all stay,” Buster said again, but with less strength. I was suddenly sure that Buster would leave, too, and that’s what happened. Ten left for the river. Then the sheriff, looking beaten. Then Buster said, “Come on, you two. If these sons a bitches won’t stay.”

  Lester shook his head and I stood with him.

  Buster handed off Saul’s Enfield to me, saying, “Here, you might want somethin more than that piece on your hip.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it. I hadn’t held one since I was nineteen, but it felt heavy and wicked and only too familiar in my hand.

  “Hand down that light,” Buster said.

  “We gonna need it to cross the river,” one of those who shot said.

  “Hand down the light afore I break your head.”

  He did.

  Then Buster gave the light to Lester.

  And then he left, smaller than he had been.

  WE HEADED FOR Uphill Rock because it looked like a good place to have against our back. While we gathered wood by the last of the daylight Lester thought he heard something, so we got our rifles ready and Lester called “Saul!” but nothing happened. I thought of the boy with no pants and then I made myself stop thinking about it. We got a fire started just as night came on. We smoked, but didn’t talk more than we had to. We agreed to take turns sleeping but neither one of us could for the first part of the night, and then, near morning, both of us wanted to. Several times Lester heard walking and once he thought he heard voices and we pointed our guns, but we did not call out into that darkness. If the boy was out there, he’d see the fire and come to us. We were perfectly visible. I knew how easily we could both be shot with the fire going, but there was no question of staying in the dark. There were worse things than being shot.

  I let Lester sleep for two hours but then I could keep my eyes open no longer and I began to dream. In my dream, a naked woman walked to the edge of the firelight eating from a pig’s head. Blood was all down her front and the pig’s head was so fresh it jerked. I jerked, too, and woke startle-eyed. I shook Lester awake and reclined into the moss and earth, trying not to think of anything except pennies, which I counted in my head, seeing each one fall into a mason jar. I had seven dollars before I slept again and this time I didn’t remember any dream.

  Lester shook me. First light. The sky glowed dimly between the cane ash branches above us and the trees were alive with birdsong. The fire was out. We had both slept.

  Lester leaned down over my face.

  “They’s a bell. I hear a bell.”

  “Like a cowbell?”

  “Smaller. Tinkle-tinklin.”

  “Where?”

  We readied our rifles and walked crouching as Lester led me towards the sound. It would stop for a while and Lester would stop and wait, but then it would sound again. Soon we saw the bells.

  Three bells.

  Saul Gordeau stood shirtless, stumbl
ing in the brush, his skin very white against the dark foliage around him. He was blindfolded with what used to be a strip of his shirt, and gagged with a crab apple and another strip. His hands were bound behind him with rope. The most disturbing thing, however, was the cruel iron collar he wore, with three iron rods coming up from the neck, each ending in a small, tinkling bell. Had his hands been free, a padlock would have been necessary to secure the collar. As it was, only a braid from a hank of rope held the contraption in place. Every time he bumped into something, or even moved, the bells announced his location.

  The birds sang on with good cheer.

  Lester walked straight towards Saul but I stopped him and made him hang back with the rifles while I went to the boy. When I got close enough for Saul to hear my steps, the boy started shouting hoarsely through his gag and whipping his head around so hard I thought he might injure his neck.

  God forgive me, I was so tired and numb I didn’t want to take his gag off; I didn’t want to know what had happened to him.

  THE BOY WOULDN’T talk for a long time after they got his bell collar off. I lent him my coat. Saul just sobbed and walked with us towards the river, Lester’s arm around him. His tremors came in waves. When at last he spoke, he wanted to speak to me away from Lester because he didn’t want family to know what he had to say. But he had to tell so someone knew what they were.

  “THEY SO STRONG, the men and women. When they grab you it’s like you’s a little kid again. I saw a white woman with curly wild hair and a nigger woman and a white man. They was more, but they pulled my shirt up over my head quick, so I didn’t see em all, an I didn’t know where they was takin me. They carried me and they went fast, but it don’t seem like we went all that far. They smelled bad. Like animals that’s been out in the rain or down in a burrow. We went down to a kind of cave cause I felt us go downhill and there was a echo. Everythin they said had a echo.

  “They stripped me down and tied me down then and put their mouths to me. The men and the women. I didn’t want to, I promise I didn’t, but I came off and I never knew for who. One of them was the Devil. Had to a been. All them stories was true. He put my hand on his chest and changed hisself to a animal so I could feel the fur come in on my hand. I felt him drop to all fours and stand there pantin his stinkin breath on me and then he changed back. Said he could do that whenever he wanted cause he was old. But some of the others only did it when the moon came. That they had to then. That they liked eating pigs then, but they were gonna eat something, so why didn’t we just send the pigs?

  “They never let me alone all night. They was laughin when they carried me back. I don’t know if they can die, Mr. Nichols, but I hope so, cause I have to kill em. I think they took my soul outta me and I’m goin to hell no matter what I do. So I might as well kill em.”

  Saul got himself together after that, at least from the outside. He had regurgitated it and settled on a plan, and I knew that plan. Deciding to kill somebody or something can be strong medicine for a while, but it burns. And it doesn’t stop after it’s all over.

  I didn’t know what the boy had seen. Not believing him would have been best, but you can’t counterfeit reactions like his. It doesn’t mean he hadn’t hallucinated, but I wasn’t sure he had, either; my parameters of belief were becoming more and more negotiable, and they weren’t nearly done stretching.

  The three of us walked quietly to the river.

  When we got there we realized the raft was on the wrong side so Lester cursed and took his shoes off and waded in holding his rifle over his head. Then Saul went in, with me close behind him; I feared Saul might wilt and let the waters take him downriver.

  It was soon after that we saw the new posse coming towards us. Only six this time. Buster looked so ashamed I thought he might cry.

  The nine of us limped home and when we got to Whitbrow, nobody was waiting for us.

  AT THE CANARY House, I found Dora sleeping in her clothes on the couch. When she heard I was staying out all night she had tried to keep vigil, but hadn’t had enough sleep the night before. I leaned to her, and just when I was about to brush the hair at her temples with my fingertips, she woke and drilled her eyes through me. She had been prepared for something bad to enter the house, perhaps Estel Blake holding some item of mine and asking, “Did this belong to your husband?”

  She sat up and grabbed me. The force of her embrace pressed from me the paternal feeling I had watching her sleep. It was like an Old Testament widow clutching her dead husband’s brother. Her new husband.

  “You have to get me out of here, Frankie,” she said.

  “You want to go up to bed?”

  “No. Out of Whitbrow. We should go.”

  “Dora, I’m exhausted. You’re exhausted. I saw things that I don’t have the strength to talk about. Let’s get some sleep.”

  “No, Frank. This is the time to talk about it. We have to go. I feel it in my bones.”

  “Go to what? To Johnny’s house again? Do you want to stand in a soup line? It might come to that.”

  “Anything but this.”

  “What about school?”

  “There isn’t going to be any more school.”

  “What about my book?”

  “You aren’t going to write it. You would have already. Something in you, the part of you I love the most, knows the world doesn’t need it. Another bloody general. Another corrupt, petty feudal lord.”

  “That’s your opinion. You don’t like history. Most women don’t.”

  “There’s a reason for that.”

  “I will write it.”

  “You don’t mean it. You’re saying that because you think you have to. When are you going to write it?”

  “When this is over.”

  “This. What is this? When is this over?”

  “I have to see it through.”

  “You’re going to get killed.”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to get me killed.”

  “Never.”

  “Fine. Just you, then. Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are they going to put a statue of you up by the pump well? Orville Francis Nichols, Yankee, who died that we’uns may live.”

  “You’re being small.”

  “Is this your chance to die in the war like you should have?”

  “Stop.”

  “You don’t owe him that.”

  “I said let’s stop.”

  “He wouldn’t want it. Dan, right?”

  “I don’t like you talking about him. I don’t like you using him to get your way.”

  “My way?”

  “You want us to run out on these people. Something has to be done about them. The ones in the woods. They’re so vicious.”

  “I saw.”

  “I saw more. They’re so bad.”

  “We don’t really live here, Frankie. Have you noticed? We don’t go to church with them. You go to that store and play checkers and listen to their conversations like you were looking at them through a glass, the same way you would at a pub in London or a café in France. But you don’t live here any more than you lived in France. And things are just as bad here as they were there, aren’t they?”

  “Actually,” I said, genuinely surprised by my answer, “they’re not.”

  “Not yet.”

  “And what you said about not going to church with them. That’s not entirely true. We go to their funerals.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “And we go to their town hall. Have you forgotten that?”

  She was silent.

  “This is happening because of the pig ritual. We voted to stop it. We came into town and you stood in front of them and spoke your reasonable, logical words. And I believed that what you said was right. And together we put our finger on the scale, and the scale tipped. Maybe it would have anyway. But we own it now.”

  She nodded a little, looking dazed.

  “I suppose I see
that,” she said quietly. “But that’s a principle. I don’t care that much about principles. I don’t want to find dead people in schoolhouses and wait around on the sofa wondering if you’ll be carried home and laid out on the table for me so one of those good ole boys can tip his hat and say, ‘Sorry, ma’am.’ I want to have your babies, Frank. Big, healthy babies with your patient eyes and fine little wisps of hair just your chestnut brown, and I don’t even like babies.”

  “Dora . . .” I said softly, and reached out to stroke her hair. She pulled away a little.

  “I know I can’t have that. I don’t need you to tell me I can’t have that.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “But I want to make love to you as if I could. As if every time you put your seed in me it might just take anyway. I want to lay with you every night and every day I want to work a job where I feel I’m doing some good. To hell with principles. I do the best I can and if it isn’t enough I cut my losses. Sometimes you can’t win and you have to change your plan. That’s smart, isn’t it? Aren’t we smart people?”

  I chewed on this for a moment.

  “Alright,” I said.

  “Alright, what?”

  “We’ll go. I’ll ring the movers in Chicago and get them to come down. And I’ll ring Johnny and let him know he’s going to have guests again.”

  She sobbed and gripped me tight again, saying, “Frankie, thank you, thank you, my love, thank you.”

  I NAPPED BRIEFLY on the couch but did not fully sleep. Dreams like muddy fish drew close, then darted off, and I was glad to let them go.

  Where are your pants, my friend?

  I thought about how good the boy had been at throwing stones. Did he hunt birds that way? He threw the first stone when I had pointed the camera.

  But I did take that picture. It had been waiting in the guts of the camera for me to remember it and to have the courage to develop it.

  I quit trying to sleep now and went to the little darkroom I had made for myself in the closet under the stairs.