Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

  “It’s this place. You’ll come back to yourself in Chicago.”

  “Have you eaten, Frankie?”

  “No. Nibbled.”

  “I’m starving.”

  “There’s still some of that smoked ham in the icebox. How do you feel otherwise?”

  “No, I finished the ham while you were sleeping. I don’t feel half bad. Foot’s a real pill and my head’s not clear, like we went to bed tight. But we didn’t touch a drop, did we?”

  I shook my head.

  She came and draped her arms around my neck.

  She spoke into my ear.

  “Music’s nice. I remember this one. What’s she saying now?”

  “That he will learn about sorrow. Someone else will take him to school the way he did her.”

  She moved against me so our embrace became a dance. I took her hips in my hands and swayed with her, bending my head down to her.

  “You with your shoes on,” she said. “I feel so short.”

  “It’s about to end.”

  “Start it over.”

  I did.

  We danced without speaking the second time through. Her strange smell in my nose. I held her tightly, but not as tightly as I wanted to.

  The next several days passed as that day did, full of dreams and whiskey and sleep, the sleepwalking of my wife, her hungry lovemaking, her greedy belly.

  And then I went back into the woods.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  IT WAS THE last day of October.

  Halloween, but nobody celebrated it here.

  Although Dora and I had never joined the people of town in their Sunday devotions at the church (covering ourselves with the tattered rags of my Catholicism), I could almost hear Pastor Lyndon intoning, “If God wanted you to have a false face, He’d have given you one.”

  Funny that flower-bedecked sacrificial pigs struck him as Christian, but only heathens made jack-o’-lanterns.

  We met at the cemetery just before dawn.

  Buster Simms handed bullets of silver out to each man in the requested caliber. The gunsmith in the mill town had gouged Buster terribly for the work because the metal was so much harder to melt and fashion than lead, with the result that most men could afford only a few rounds—although Saul had paid for twelve with his daddy’s money, enough to fill his rifle twice. He had insisted on fitting the bullets into the casings himself and had stayed up all night measuring and re-measuring the propellant, seeing to his father’s and brother’s .30-30 shells as well. They took five each.

  I requested seven, enough to fill the clip with one in the chamber. These slugs were solid silver; the ones I had gotten from the silversmith were lead with filings in the nose, capped with wax. I had no way of knowing if they would do more than hurt. I thought so, but I was glad to have the solid rounds. The four weaker slugs went last into the clip and in the chamber; the more potent ones, four of them loose in my jacket, would be the last rounds I shot. In case the first ones didn’t do it.

  I would have liked to have heard the conversation between Buster and the gunsmith; the silversmith had asked me if I was shooting at haints. Once he explained to me what a haint was, I said he wasn’t too far off.

  Buster looked at us, the men he had gathered. He had stood himself near the freshly turned earth beneath which Ursula Noble’s ashes rested in her mother’s jewelry box. This box sat atop the coffin containing what remained of her mother. Buster wasn’t good at talking to groups of men so he let that mound of black dirt do the talking for him. It would say the right things to make of us the vengeful men he wanted, men who would have the strength to go into the country of our enemy and act. Ursula’s father was the first one to speak. His eyes were dry and hard. He snugged his .38 into his waistband and said, “We goin?”

  “Yep,” Buster said.

  And that was how it started.

  Nine men went into the woods.

  Myself. Buster Simms. Saul, Lester and John “Old Man” Gordeau. Dr. Harlan McElroy. Arthur Noble. Lawton Butler. The young carpenter Charley Wade.

  Three dogs went also.

  Lester had these dogs leashed, dogs his father had seen whelped and sold, but had now bought back. Even though he had only worked with them for less than a month, Lester knew these dogs and they knew him. The female, Delilah, was the biggest and best behaved. The boys, Mustard and Shep, had long since tested her and found themselves lower on the rope, so what she did they did.

  The Gordeaus had taken these dogs to the Noble place to get their talented noses full of that smell. Their smell. It was strong to the dogs. They hated it and yet they pulled towards it, wanting their masters to extinguish its source. I was sure the dogs knew more about what was in the woods than we did; they had read libraries in the musk and saliva and hair left at the murder scene, and only Delilah’s faith in Lester’s divinity fortified her to drive the other two dogs towards those across the river.

  We kept a good pace on the first leg of the journey. We crossed the river pulling the raft across in groups of three. Nobody said it, but all of us sensed that this time was for keeps, and that our hunt would turn around on us if we had not come back across by sundown.

  As labyrinthine as those woods were, it was hard for me to see how we would.

  We stopped at Magi Rock long enough to drink and to let the animals drink, and then we kept on. Summer was over now and the cool air let us push long and hard without rest. We had left the trail hours ago. None of us knew exactly where we were, but I got the idea that the dogs had been chasing something in circles, or, since we always seemed to be on new terrain, in a sort of broad, lazy spiral.

  Looking up, I saw how yellow the trees were above us. Were we on higher ground? It was colder here than in town. Autumn was moving faster here.

  It was a little like the Argonne, but for once I was afraid of something besides nonexistent Germans. The fear was almost good this time. There was a reason.

  The dogs, who had been pulling us forward with purpose for many hours, were now becoming frantic. Lester had no gloves, so I’m sure even his callused hands were becoming raw from the strength in the leashes.

  “Somethin’s close,” he said.

  Time slowed down for me as it always did in the moments before some event. I looked down and saw my feet moving towards whatever was out there. One of my boots knocked the top from a mushroom. Sweat trickled in my shirt despite the chilly air. The air smelled clean and good. I opened my mouth to try to hear something besides the baying of the dogs, but I could not.

  I marched forward with the rest of them.

  Movement in the trees made Saul stop and raise his rifle, and the rest of us raised our weapons, too.

  Something in the trees off to the left.

  One of them.

  I felt a tremor in my hands but willed it to stop. I rested my thumb on the hammer of my pistol.

  One of them.

  The dogs knew.

  I knew, too. Which one of them it was. Knew it as surely as I had known my father was dead that night my telephone rang near midnight.

  Where are your pants, my friend?

  A flash of red in the trees.

  “Show yourself,” Old Man Gordeau croaked next to me, then Buster said it louder.

  The red flash again, faded cloth.

  Pale yellowish skin.

  “Hold your fire,” Buster said. “It’s a little girl.”

  I moved sideways to get a better look.

  I saw the dress, an old dress, faded nearly pink in places, hung on a small, thin figure standing in the brush fifty yards out.

  But it wasn’t a girl. It was a mulatto boy of about thirteen.

  The same boy.

  The boy with no pants.

  The dogs were losing their minds, barking with wide eyes, spittle flying from their mouths.

  “God,” I said.

  “Come over here to us,” Buster said.

  But it didn’t move.

  “Watch her,” Old Man G
ordeau said, shouting over the dogs.

  “I think that’s a boy,” said Charley Wade.

  “God,” I said again.

  It put its thumb in its mouth like a small child might, but there was no innocence to it.

  I found my voice.

  “That’s one of them. I’ve seen him.”

  Saul raised his rifle.

  “What do I do?” he said. “I don’t want to squeeze on no little boy.”

  He said this mostly to his father, but his father didn’t answer.

  Buster moved towards it, and it moved back. Coy like a little girl. The familiarity of the game raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  The whole party edged forward to catch up with Buster.

  When Buster moved forward again, it retreated, keeping its distance exactly.

  Calmly.

  “Shoot that thing,” Arthur Noble said.

  Buster said, “We won’t hurt you. It’s them we want.”

  “Didn’t you hear Mr. Nichols? It is one of them. Shoot it!”

  “No, Arthur. Not no kid.”

  It was at that moment that Delilah yanked her leash out of Lester’s hand, startling him so that the other dogs got free, too.

  “Hey!” Lester shouted after them, but it was too late. The three dogs charged hard at the boy. It ran farther into the woods. The dogs ran after it. We began to trot now, too, much slower than the dogs or what they were chasing. Just before the thing in the red dress fell completely out of sight, the dogs caught up with it and dropped it to the ground. I assumed from the thrashing in the ferns and leaves that the dogs were tearing the boy apart.

  Then one of the dogs made a sound between a yelp and a scream and ran back towards us. The thing in the red dress was up now and running, far away in the trees.

  I could see that it was chasing the other dogs.

  Away from the party.

  They vanished from sight.

  The remaining dog was running towards us, trailing its leash behind it and shivering and crying pathetically. While the rest of us just stared, Lester went to the dog.

  “Mustard?” he said, though how he recognized it I did not know.

  The dog’s face was covered with blood, its own blood. Its nose had been bitten off, and one eye was out. It sat on its haunches and scooted away from Lester, trying to wag its tail and crying, bobbing its ruined head. Lester knelt to the dog and moved his hands around impotently, wanting to help it but afraid to touch it, just saying “Goodmustardgoodmustardgoodmustard” in a hopeless paternoster.

  “Do it, boy,” the elder Gordeau said.

  But Lester knelt there, wringing his hands.

  So Old Man Gordeau shot the dog.

  “Just let me see that goddamned thing again,” Saul said, whiteknuckling his rifle. “Just let me see it.”

  He would get his wish.

  WE TRUDGED FORWARD, following the tracks of the boy and dogs as best we could. Blood showed on the lighter leaves near the boy’s bare footprint, but soon gave out. Odd drops of blood had fallen here and there, and Lester would have other men stand at them, then rotate forward so the line of travel could be established.

  Soon they came to a dip in the land with pooled blood and more torn and stamped-down grass and fallen leaves, and then the dog’s tracks stopped altogether.

  Lester found other human tracks, larger ones, in a patch of bare soil and on lichen-covered rock nearby.

  He groaned and tears formed at his eyes as he scouted the scene.

  “Them dogs is dead,” he said, “and someone come up and took em. They went off that way, but the boy kept on ahead. Which do we follow?”

  “That damn boy,” Saul said.

  Buster nodded, and we kept on.

  WE KEPT ON much too late.

  The first stone hit just after dusk.

  The sky was smoky purple above the canopy of trees, and then the canopy gave out as the posse entered a small clearing. The waxing moon was trying to shine behind thin clouds. I suspected Lester was wondering whether to tell everyone that he had lost the trail, and he pulled out a plug of tobacco, stirring his finger around in it to get the last crumbs.

  He was putting the pinch in his cheek when he saw something flash just in front of his nose, making him start and inhale.

  The stone caught Charley Wade hard and he went “Ah!” and bent over double, cupping his free hand over his ear and holding his revolver awkwardly in front of him. Lester spasmed and coughed while the rest of us crouched and shouted and pointed our guns in all directions. Still coughing, Lester pointed his rifle from the hip and shot blind into the trees.

  Another stone bounced off my shoulder and then Buster ducked a third one that hit the doctor square in the teeth. He jerked and shot his .32 at the trees even though his shot wasn’t clear. Buster shouted God-DAMNIT while more stones fell and more men shot.

  Saul broke right and scampered towards cover; I went with him, as did Buster and most of the rest. Arthur Noble ran off left, followed by Lawton Butler, who held on to the back of Arthur’s overalls.

  Saul got small behind a tree and sighted down his rifle, waiting. I crouched behind him, then realized Charley was still bent over in the clearing, getting hit again, saying “Ah!” I ran out and grabbed Charley’s hand, catching a rock that felt like it might have broken my collarbone, and I yanked Charley back into the trees. Charley lurched and fell, slinging his gun into the trees and out of sight. The doctor covered his head ineffectively with his hands and ran for the gun, but a stone hit him so hard in the cheek he turned right back around and took cover again.

  He shot his own gun dry and I shot once at what turned out to be a dead tree.

  Yelling and shooting off left.

  Panic.

  Buster said, “Red dress!” and shot, then slipped and fell against me. A stone had grazed his head.

  Buster’s hand on my white shirt left a bloody print.

  Lester, still coughing, was about to shoot another bullet, but his daddy grabbed the barrel and pointed it down, saying, “Stop shootin til you can see somethin.”

  I saw one, a Negro woman with wild hair, and I shot twice at her before she ducked behind a tree. Her stone just missed Saul’s head, and Saul turned his rifle towards where it had come from. When she broke cover, she ran so fast I barely saw her. Saul’s shot rang my better ear, and the woman fell.

  Everything got quiet after that.

  I put my gun away.

  “Goddamnit,” Buster said again.

  No more stones came.

  The woods seemed to exhale.

  Lawton Butler stumbled across the clearing, holding his head. Bleeding. “Arthur’s dead,” he said quietly.

  Then he said it again.

  DR. MCELROY WIPED his hands on his pants.

  “I’ve seen cancer as big as a catcher’s mitt. I’ve seen a woman with a fishhook in her eye. But I never thought I’d live to see a man stoned to death.”

  “Like in the Good Book,” Lester said.

  “Sometimes I wonder how good a book can be that’s full of such as this.”

  Arthur Noble lay where he had been trying to cover his head. He had run out of bullets just before Lawton had been hit hard enough to lose consciousness. The pile of stones lay all around him.

  “When I come to, it was all over,” Lawton said. “I ain’t made for this. I’m sorry.”

  But the doctor was still staring at Arthur, who might have looked like he was about to sing, except that his jaw was wrong.

  Buster said, “Doc McElroy.”

  He looked at Buster now where Buster was holding a handkerchief to his side, just above his belt.

  “I did that,” the doctor said.

  “No hard feelins. Just tell me if it’s bad.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it just hit fat.”

  Buster smiled a little at that.

  “Put whiskey to it if you got some. When we get back, I’ll go in looking for shirt.”

 
“You should put something on that face, too. You’re a mess.”

  Dr. McElroy pulled out his brass cigarette case and squinted at it, but it was too dark to see his reflection now.

  “When we get home,” he said. “If we get home.”

  SAUL HAD STAYED watching where he’d shot the woman, worried, perhaps, that she might get up again or that one of them might come back for her. Now Buster said, “Let’s have a look,” and we all went forward.

  She was a black woman of thirty-five or so with a shaggy, tangled mane of hair that was just going grey. She wore men’s dungarees and an old-fashioned ladies’ coat that had flapped up to show the bare skin of her back and her narrow waist. There appeared to be no fat on her, but abundant muscle.

  Saul had hit her squarely in the head, and her mouth was open and the blood under her could fill a sink. The doctor leaned over her and covered her back with her coat. Everyone kept his weapon on her just in case she grabbed the doctor’s wrist.

  She did not.

  She was dead.

  “WE CAIN’T LEAVE Arthur,” Charley Wade said.

  “What about her?”

  “The hell with her,” Old Man Gordeau said. “If they want her buried, they can do it. They got all the damn shovels.”

  Buster said, “We ain’t got time for buryin. We got to hunt or run. I say hunt, but we gonna vote.”

  “What do you mean, vote?” Lawton said, still holding his head, which was bleeding less, although his drunken slur and difficulty focusing suggested he had a concussion.

  I said, “Lester, can you find them?”

  “Not in the dark, not without dogs. But maybe with the light.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Saul said. “Hunt.”

  Old Man Gordeau said, “Hunt.”

  “Run,” the doctor said.

  “Run,” Charley said.

  “This isn’t even worth a vote. We’re beat,” Lawton said, quivering his lip like a child about to cry.

  Buster said, “I’ll take that as ‘run.’ Three each. Two left. Mr. Nichols?”

  I put my hands on my hips and looked down at my feet for a long moment before I spoke.