Halestorm

by Becky Akers

  He stepped outside before going to bed to knock the ash from his pipe and heard a bawl, seeming to rise from the earth itself. He hunted for a while, cursing as the minutes dragged and the calf or whatever was in such distress eluded him. By the time he did find it, he’d have to slaughter the thing anyway, to judge from its weakening cries.

  Guy was about to admit that the animal had outwitted him when a whimper sounded almost at his feet. He looked down at the old well. The boards that covered it showed dimly in the moonlight, enough to tell they were broken through. He dropped to his knees and peered down the shaft. Staring back at him was a calf’s white belly, one leg bent above it at a grotesque angle. With a sigh, he fetched his musket and lantern. How he would haul the carcass out of there was a problem he dared not contemplate. Better to hire it done.

  He primed and fired his gun, and the creature died with a final groan. He congratulated himself. Not even the celebrated Nathan Hale could have managed a cleaner shot, and under such trying circumstances, too.

  Guy slept poorly that night, tossing in panic over his impending bankruptcy. When he finally dozed, nightmares of the calf in the well plagued him. He bent to shine his lantern on it, saw the beast wore a human face, and started so violently that he woke. He lay panting, drenched with sweat, though frost traced the insides of the windows. The calf had been battered and bloodied beyond recognition. Still, with the peculiar logic of dreams, Guy knew the features for Elijah Ripley’s.

  Guy postponed his trip to New York until the afternoon. He had first to ride into town and hire Asher Wright, a dim-witted young man but an honest worker, to haul his kill from the ground and dress it for him. Then he was on his way south, despite a snowstorm that slowed him terribly, the worst of the winter thus far. At New London, he booked passage on a barge to New York—expensive but worth it in this weather and with such anxiety dogging him.

  His fears were confirmed when he saw Benson’s expression, that of a man about to drop a bucket of slops and praying none of the mess would splatter him. He motioned Guy to a split-back chair. “I see you got my letter.”

  “Yes, yes.” Guy waved his hand impatiently as Benson seated himself at his desk. “You got news for me?”

  “Yes, sir, though I’m afraid ’tis bad. Your ship’s been lost. Seems there was an informer among the crew who tipped off Customs. We’re pretty careful about hiring, but every once in awhile some damn Tory slips through. They was almost to port when they were challenged. Captain tells me they could have outrun it if a storm hadn’t come up and the king’s ship sitting there, cutting off their escape. They foundered on some rocks and broke up. Only survivors were the captain and three of the crew.” He smiled thinly. “The Tory wasn’t among them.”

  “But—but I’ve invested my whole savings in that ship!”

  “Yes, sir.” Benson sighed and tapped his quill against the polished walnut of his desk. “Next time, you might want to buy shares in several ships, hedge your losses. And I’m sorry, I truly am, but that’s the risk of doing business. Most times, ships come safe to port and everyone profits. Sometimes, they don’t. We have other opportunities if you’re interested.” The speech sounded as if he delivered it often. Benson, though sighing again, stood to usher Guy from his office.

  Guy struggled from his chair and settled his tricorn on his wig. Ruined! He was practically penniless now. He wiped his brow, dripping despite the chill of the office that left his breath hanging in a cloud. Into his head skittered a vision of the Hale farm, its acres of corn stretching to the horizon, its fat kine dotting the fields, its owner and his sons well-dressed, secure. If Alice should ever be free again, if Ripley should die, Guy had nothing to entice her. But the Hales, including Nathan, would be rich as always.

  He scarcely heard Benson’s adieus or noticed when he was back on the street. He was so distressed that he forgot about visiting the Holy Ground and its accommodating wenches to the north of the city. Instead, he rushed to the stable for his horse, then boarded the barge for New London, cursing the luck that would land him in the town where Nathan Hale lived. Still, he had come through there on his way to New York and avoided Hale, so he shouldn’t have to see him now.

  The snow had ceased falling to leave bitter cold in its wake. Angry clouds blackened the northern sky as Guy stepped ashore in New London. He hurried to a tavern and ordered a mug of flip, warming himself at the hearth while his host stirred molasses into rum and plunged a hot loggerhead into the mixture.

  The room’s most inviting spot was the settle in the chimney corner. “Mind if I join you, friend?” he asked of the farmer sitting there.

  “Always glad for some company.”

  The man made space for him, and Guy basked in the heat as the flip warmed his innards. The farmer spoke of crops and the storm threatening from the north. Guy scarcely listened until the word “schoolmaster” caught his ear. “What’s that?”

  “I said, this schoolhouse blows down like t’other one did, I wager that schoolmaster’ll get it raised up again right quick.”

  “Oh?” He steeled himself to hear the inevitable praise of Nathan Hale. His nemesis was damnably like that bird he forever prattled about, the one that rose from its own ashes to triumph over the fires vanquishing it. Hale surmounted every difficulty as brilliantly as the phoenix.

  “Yeah, he’s a real driver. That other school, the one blowed over in the blizzard last winter, that was just your average reading school. But this one he’s teaching’s supposed to be one of the best in the colonies. And that schoolmaster, he’s smart as a whip, knows all them Bible languages no one speaks anymore. Even been teaching them to the girls.” The farmer grinned and lowered his voice. “Now you tell me, mister, if that ain’t right smart of a young man, to go hold a class for the young ladies of the town and him being the only feller there.”

  Guy nodded sourly. “He’s a crafty one, all right.”

  “Yeah, he’s got all them girls hanging on his every word every day. Pretty nice-looking boy, my wife says. She’s gone foolish over him herself, truth to tell, and him young enough to be our son. But he talks with her after Meeting and doffs his hat to her when she comes to market, and she thinks there ain’t never been anyone like him. I’ll wager the girls in his class don’t study their books half as much as they do him.”

  “I don’t hold with educating girls.”

  The farmer snorted. “No, mister, I don’t neither, and that’s the truth. Gets them all puffed up over nothing. This schoolmaster’s already run into some trouble, too. ’Course, it’s blowed over now, but there was talk a couple of months back that he took a roll in the hay with one of them girl students.”

  This was richer than Guy had dreamed. He spluttered into his flip. “No! And they let him stay on?”

  “Oh, he didn’t do anything, not really. He’s a real pious sort when you get right down to it, though he’s so lively you wouldn’t think so. This girl, she’s in love with him like every other girl hereabouts, and she went and let some feller get friendly with her and then tried to say ’twas the schoolmaster so’s her daddy’d make him marry her. Well, her sweetheart didn’t like that any too much, and he come forward and confessed and they’s supposed to get married, except her daddy took a horsewhip to him, and ain’t nobody seen him since.” The farmer leaned forward and spit into the fire. “’Course, Hale landed on his feet.”

  “That kind always does.”

  “Ahyuh, her daddy paid his tavern bill for a month, he felt so bad about accusing him and all. Won’t hear a word again him to this day.”

  When Guy left the tavern, he was whistling a French air. So foul a rumor besmirching Nathan Hale! Surely this tidbit would help with the scheme brewing in his head, a scheme he must plan well and subtly handle lest he swing from a colonial rope.

  Guy set to work as soon as he reached his farm. He heaved rocks from the walls lining his fields into the old well. Then he laid in a supply of apple brandy. Two days after he had returned from Ne
w York and the loss of his investment, he rode to Elijah Ripley’s house. Sparing scarcely a glance at Alice, radiant as ever as she rocked her child, he requested that Ripley come see him on business at his earliest convenience.

  “No time like the present.” Elijah had been working on his ledgers, and he nodded coldly before sending the hired girl for his greatcoat. “This have something to do with your trip to New York?”

  “Well, there’s a very promising opportunity, but I can’t cover it myself. Thought you’d be interested in becoming my partner.”

  Elijah hesitated, opening the door and waiting for Guy to precede him onto the step. “What sort of opportunity?”

  “Firm I deal with in New York wants me to invest a couple of hundred in a stage line to run between there and Philadelphia.”

  “I’ve heard of that line,” Elijah said as they mounted their horses. “But your firm invests in shipping, don’t they?”

  “They like to make money. They don’t much care whether ’tis on land or sea.”

  “And you’re offering this opportunity to me, Mr. Daggett? I thought you hated me.”

  “Hate you? Whatever for?”

  “Why, my—my wife—I thought—”

  “Mr. Ripley, I courted your wife, sure, but why should that stand in the way of profit? I want to make money. I thought you would, too. I’d be a fool letting a woman get in the way of that, don’t you think?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Withal,” Guy ducked his head as though embarrassed, “I owe you one, Mr. Ripley, after all the money I took off you on the Connecticut. ’Twas wrong, I see that now, even if I did hold the king’s own commission. Man can’t live here too long without seeing things clearer. Mayhap this’ll help set things right between us.”

  Elijah questioned him all during the ride to Guy’s farm, and Guy continued to lie, superbly, flawlessly, so that his quarry swallowed the bait whole.

  At the house, Guy poured them generous measures of brandy and proposed a toast to their partnership. “May our purses be full as these glasses.” He pretended to quaff his. Elijah, not to be outdone, finished his in three gulps.

  “You’re a good man to hold your liquor.” Guy refilled Elijah’s glass. “Always say you can tell the true gentlemen by that.” He raised his glass again; again, Elijah drained his.

  “I do love good brandy, Mr. Daggett. ’Tis a better comfort than a wife.”

  “Oh? Even a young and beautiful wife?”

  Elijah wiped a hand across his chin. “She does me no good, sir, no good at all. She don’t care for me and never has.”

  “Long as she gives you your due in the bedchamber, what’s it matter?”

  Elijah smiled uncomfortably, not yet drunk enough to welcome such familiarity from the man who had kissed Alice passionately enough to catapult her into that chamber.

  Guy noticed and poured more brandy. “She still love that brother of hers?”

  Elijah blinked. “Didn’t think the whole world knew.”

  “The whole world doesn’t. Only you and me.”

  “Thing is, I always liked Nathan. Loved him like my own brother. Never been jealous of him, but Ally oughter love me. Know what I mean?” Elijah swallowed the liquor and heaved himself to his feet. “Be right back.”

  “Here, let me help you.”

  “You ain’t so bad after all. Kinder see why Ally likes you. You know, she don’t let me call her Ally, but I call her that to myself, and she don’t know.” He grinned foolishly as Guy hooked his arm around his shoulders. Elijah was a heavy man, outweighing Guy by a stone and a half, and he listed until Guy nearly toppled. He should have foreseen this. Could he drag Elijah all the way to the well? What else had he overlooked? He lurched across the kitchen toward the porch. It took an eternity to negotiate the doorway with Elijah splayed across him.

  At least he had timed it well, Guy thought when they emerged from the house. Night had fallen, with the moon not due to rise for hours, shrouding them from anyone who might be abroad. He stared into the menacing shadows of his yard, eyes bulging, throat constricting.

  I could hang for this.

  Then Elijah murmured, “Ally.” Guy drew a strangled breath and staggered off the porch with him.

  Elijah stumbled along willingly until they passed the dark and monstrous hulk of the necessary. “Wait, thas it. Thas what I want.”

  “No, you don’t. I filled it in, sir, and dug a new one over here. Just haven’t moved the walls over yet. But it’s dark, and there’s no women around anyway, so ’twon’t matter.”

  He gave another heave. Elijah’s resistance collapsed. He followed, drunk and docile, to the well.

  Elijah fumbled with his breeches, and Guy hefted the rock he had left on the ground there.

  He contemplated the back of Elijah’s wig. It was a fine one, of human, not horse, hair, pure white, with a starched bow holding the queue. A shame to ruin it.

  He brought the rock down with both hands on Elijah’s head.

  He expected Elijah to crumple into the well and was stupefied when his victim instead whirled around with a bellow. “Wha—?”

  Elijah was still making water, spotting the snow and destroying the story Guy planned to tell. He smashed the rock against Elijah’s temple. Blood splattered Guy, one warm stream spraying his face.

  “Ally?” Elijah called, and Guy hit him once more. This time, whimpering like the dying calf, Elijah slid into the hole.

  There was the crunch of bone on rock and a few moans before all was silent.

  Guy ran for a lantern.

  Shining it into the well, he spied Elijah’s legs at the bottom. But the lantern also picked out the dark stains on the snow. He had thought Ripley would subside after one tap on the head and leave no telltale blood. He started to kick crimson snow over the edge but stopped lest the cold revive Elijah.

  He put a hand to his jaw, a palsied hand and a trembling jaw, and both now sticky with blood. That snapped him from his terror. He hurried to fetch a kettle, scooped the dirty snow into it and dumped it down the necessary. Refilling the pan with clean snow, he hung it over his hearth. He stirred up the embers, stripped, threw his bloody clothes and wig on the fire. He scrubbed himself until the melted snow turned red and poured it down the necessary, too.

  Back at the house, a calm settled over him as he ate his supper. He would give Ripley another hour, be sure he had plenty of time to die, before he carried the news to the widow. He pictured Alice, luscious and inviting, in his bed on their wedding night, imagined her gratitude as he told how he had risked hanging to make her his.

  Guy arranged his features in a sorrowful mask when Jenny ushered him into the Ripleys’ sitting room a few hours later. He paused on the threshold to savor the vision of Alice sitting reading, her baby in a cradle at her feet. She had taken to powdering her hair, frizzing and curling it in the latest style, and the lamplight made a nimbus of it. A kerchief covered her décolletage, though the triangle of filmy stuff could not disguise the charms beneath.

  She glanced at him, then started up, a hand at her throat.

  “Mrs. Ripley, I’m afraid there’s bad news.”

  She said nothing, and he saw she was worried for Nathan, not Elijah. Indeed, when he told her that her husband lay at the bottom of his well, killed by the fall, no doubt, she looked relieved. Then she remembered herself and dabbed at her tearless eyes with a handkerchief.

  He sent Jenny to fetch the neighbors. Alone with Alice, he stroked her hand as she absorbed his story. “I told him not to drink so much,” he said, “but you know how he is about his brandy.”

  That was a stab in the dark, but a successful one, for Alice nodded. Yes, she knew how he was.

  He longed to put his arms around her, to console her with more intimate caresses, but given her windows opened to the street and the neighbors due any moment, he restrained himself. He must proceed slowly, carefully, lest anyone question Ripley’s death.

  Guy left the women to comfo
rt Alice while he went with their husbands to draw Elijah’s body from his well. He rode silently, rehearsing his tale and excusing his preoccupation by claiming Elijah’s last cry still sounded in his ears and always would. Rev. Huntington gripped his shoulder. The others shook their heads and abandoned him to his thoughts.

  No one challenged his report as they stood before the well. They could see the tracks corroborating it by the light of the moon. When the Deacon entered the yard, Guy was editing Elijah’s last moments for Rev. Huntington and didn’t realize Hale had arrived until his torch came bobbing toward them. Guy’s nerve failed, as did his voice. Why had they summoned Hale? The man had adjudicated Coventry’s disputes for the last twenty years and had also advised the Widow Thatcher when her horse disappeared (run off, some said; stolen, the Deacon ruled). It took Guy several minutes to understand that Hale was there as Elijah’s father-in-law, not as an officer of the peace. Meanwhile, Rev. Huntington stood perplexed as he called Guy’s name without response.

  The Deacon peered into the well before turning to Guy and the minister. “My condolences, sir,” Huntington said, “but we know he’s gone to a better place.”

  “Amen, brother.” The Deacon’s eyes glittered in the moonlight, but they were shrewd as they surveyed Guy. “You were with him when he died? Tell me, sir, what happened?”

  “We were concluding a deal with some brandy...drank too much...warned him to slow down...having trouble with Alice, he said...had to piss, could hardly stand, would I help him?...saw this old well, wouldn’t use the necessary, got nasty when I tried to persuade him...my shoe came unbuckled. I bent to fix it...he slipped while I wasn’t looking...tried to save him....”

  Rev. Huntington sighed. “Terrible thing for a man to have to watch another man die.”

  But the Deacon continued his scrutiny. It took all Guy’s self-possession to withstand that relentless glare. He clung to the thought of Alice as his wife, bringing him not only her inheritance but Ripley’s fortune as well. He saw himself undressing her, his hands exploring where he pleased, her face filling with awe at such pleasure, and he squared his shoulders and stood calm.