A Far Piece to Canaan

by Sam Halpern

  The rest of the evening was spent lying on the ground and listening to the dogs bay. We ate our sandwiches while Mr. Langley and Mr. Rick drank. I was bored silly, but Fred loved it. I pretended like it was great because I wanted Fred to have a big time. The only real fun I had though was looking into the fire and watching the clouds light up from lightning in the direction of the Little Bend. It was far-off weather, but as the evening wore on, the lightning turned to small streaks and you could hear low thunder.

  “Looks like we’re gonna get that shower they predicted on th’ radio, Frank,” said Mr. Rick as the lightning got closer.

  “Yeah, sure could use a shower. Wish I had my rye sowed. Wouldn’t you know, I just finished discin’ that field. Now I’ll have t’ do it all over again.”

  “Right now, though, we better get outta here before that old truck of mine gets mired down on a muddy hillside,” said Mr. Rick.

  Mr. Rick got to his feet and stretched, then picked up his big horn, which was shaped just like the shofar Mr. Gollar blew at shul. Everybody stood around while he wet the end with spit and took a deep breath.

  “Burrrup . . . burrrup . . . burrrup,” then he listened to the dogs. “Burrrup . . . burrrup . . . burrrup,” and this time there was some quiet, then a few barks. “Burrrup . . . burrrup,” then quiet.

  Fred was still having a big time but I was wanting to go because the lightning was brighter and the rumbles deeper. You could tell that there were clouds gathering too because the stars had gone out in that direction. It was going to pour and I was going to get soaked.

  Soon, the dogs came running in, shaking and panting, their tongues hanging out and giving off heat and grass smell and pushing up against our legs, tired and happy.

  “Good girl, Maude,” said Mr. Langley, kneeling down and patting her.

  Maude flopped down on her back and lay panting while Mr. Langley scratched her belly and took out the pint again. “One for th’ road, Carl?” he asked after taking a big snort.

  Mr. Rick nodded. “Just enough t’ kill,” he said, looking at it through the firelight, then drained the bottle and put it behind the truck seat.

  Going back wudn’t nothing like as easy as coming down, and we were already tired. By the time we got to the Mulligans’, I was beat and the storm was closer.

  I rested a couple of minutes in front of the Mulligan house. I thought Fred wouldn’t ever stop thanking me. It was good to see him happy.

  The air was dead calm as we said good night, but the thunder and lightning was coming every few seconds. I started pedaling as fast as I could. About halfway to Cuyper Creek Pike the trees began moving, slow at first, then quick with rustling leaves as the wind rose. It was coming straight at my face and getting harder by the second. To make any headway at all, I had to stand on the pedals. I was giving out fast, gasping for breath, my legs aching so bad I thought they’d explode. Little flashes of lightning were coming between the big flashes now, and the road kept going from half dark to real bright like somebody turning a switch off and on. Finally, I could see the hill to the pike and knew the turn was a couple hundred feet up the grade. That seemed to give me new power. I reared up on the pedals, cramming them down with all my might, sometimes almost freezing straight up because I didn’t have enough weight to turn the wheels against the wind.

  Finally, I made the turn and stopped. My breath cut my lungs. A giant lightning bolt split the sky and hung there. I could see the thunderhead clear, boiling and coming straight my way, and I could smell the rain. The wind was to my left side now instead of my front and the road was flat at the start, then downhill, which really helped. I began pedaling like mad, my body stretched out over the handlebars.

  Then the rain hit. It came in mighty sheets, cold, like somebody throwing buckets of ice water at me and getting in my eyes. It got hard to see, and the old batteries in my headlamp didn’t help much. The wind kept gusting up and letting down, then got terrible hard in little short puffs and once I thought it was going to blow me off the road. The trees were going crazy. A limb as thick as my leg blew across the road just missing my back tire. I knew I had it made, though. I was going into the steepest part of the hill, which meant that the sweet apple tree was just ahead and beyond that our gate. I was giving it all I had when a lightning flash lit up what looked like a great, towering man staggering out of the brush, waving four arms and coming straight at me. I screamed and swerved. The bike skidded and I almost went down, then my foot bounced off the road and I got control.

  When I reached the house I was numb. I couldn’t remember opening the gate to the lane or yard. I just stood on the screened-in porch and shook and cried. Mom and Dad were waiting up. They’d been worried. They thought I was crying because I’d been scared by the storm and I didn’t tell them any different. Besides, the more I calmed down, the more sure I was I hadn’t seen anything but tree limbs. People didn’t have four arms. Not even crazy men.

  32

  The fox hunt was just like a tonic for Fred. Friday night was foxhunting night for a while. I didn’t look forward to it, but the Langleys were nice, so it wudn’t too bad.

  We had a cold snap the last week of October, and a lot of time that Sunday was spent inside the Mulligan house. It was bad, boy. The problem was Alfred. He was way down on himself and would sit and sigh and say how weak he felt and how the goddamn sugars was getting him just when he was about to have it made and how he never did have no luck and wished to hell he’d either get better or die and get it over with. Fred would be feeling good, then Alfred would start in and Fred would get big tears in his eyes. I felt sorry for the Mulligans, but I couldn’t wait to leave.

  The next Sunday I decided that I’d go see Ben. Like usual, I cut across Cummings Hill. It was Indian summer, but the prettiest part of fall was gone. A killing frost had stripped the trees, making them look like wood skeletons. It wudn’t cold, but I still wore my mackinaw.

  I walked out of the oaks into Ben’s clearing just as he stepped through the cabin door, carrying his .22. I cupped my hands and yelled, “Mr. Begley!” Cain and Abel, who had been jumping up on him, whirled in mid-air and started barking.

  Ben shushed the dogs, then waved to me. I walked up and we shook hands.

  “Howdy, stranger,” he said with a big grin. “Been a long time . . . missed you.”

  “Missed you too,” I said, sheepish. “I don’t know exactly how come I haven’t—”

  “You’re here now and that’s all that counts,” he said, cutting me off. “Let’s go get a couple squirrels for dinner.”

  We went back into the oak grove and sat down and waited. Pretty soon, two fox squirrels come out and started running down a limb maybe a hunnert foot off. Blam! Blam! And they both flew up in the air and come crashing down with their heads blown off.

  “Whooee,” I said. “That’s some shootin’.”

  “Hit’s nothin’,” he said, and grinned. “Let’s go back t’ the house and fix these two for dinner, then we’ll shoot up a box of shells and see how your eye’s comin’.”

  While Ben worked, I checked his carvings. In the corner, where the two big blocks and five little blocks of walnut had been, set a bobcat, mother coon, and five baby coons. The bobcat was reared slightly on its back legs for the attack and the mama coon had her teeth bared and was scooched down, ears laid back, ready to fight to the death for her cubs, which were huddled wide-eyed behind her. I run my hand over the brown oil-smoothed wood and said, “Wow.”

  “Like it?” said Ben, flouring up the squirrel parts.

  “Aw, yeah,” I said soft.

  Ben laughed. “Hit’s my masterpiece. Don’t reckon I’ll make a better one. Gonna set it in a spot in th’ corner I can see from anyplace in th’ room.” He warshed his hands and dried them, then picked up the .22, which was leaning against the table, and nodded toward the door. “Let’s you ’n’ me do some shootin’, then we’ll dig some worms and fish . . . after we make a pumpkin pie and eat some squirrel, a’course.
”

  I shot up two new boxes of shells after finishing off the one he had already started. Ben either stood or lay right beside me and after every shot told me what I had done right and how to make it better. I couldn’t believe how good I was. I could hit the circle in the box eight out of ten times from a hundred feet, and he made it smaller than usual.

  By two o’clock, we had dug our worms, eaten the squirrel, made the pie, put it in the oven, and started fishing. Man, did the catfish bite! Real beauties . . . channel cats and blues, a foot long, fatter than moles, maybe fifteen, twenty, almost as fast as you threw in. One cat would have gone ten pound for sure, but he got away.

  About four o’clock, we quit fishing and had pie and coffee. I ate half, and Ben ate the other. When we finished, I let out a big burp and we both laughed, then kind of melted into our chairs. We just sat like that, like we had so many times before, only this time we fell asleep. When Ben woke me up, it was twilight.

  “Time t’ go,” he said, and I jumped to my feet.

  When we got outside, I picked up the stringer of fish and wound them around my fingers. The fish were heavy even though I only took a few. “Well,” I said, “you take it easy.”

  “I’ll do that . . . Samuel,” he said soft, “come back sooner next time, huh.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Say, why don’t you come over to our house sometime?”

  His face went blank, then his arms went around my shoulders and hugged me up against him. He had the same smell as when we first met . . . warm, good, a little bit of stale hog meat thrown in. After he quit squeezing, he stood back with his hands on my shoulders, and said that, yeah, maybe he would, one of these times, when we had the tobacco stripped and sold, and before spring work started. Outside, I patted Abel for the first time. I tried to do the same thing with Cain, but he snarled and backed off.

  It was deep twilight now as I trudged along, the stringer of fish slapping against my leg. The moon was coming up and I stopped and watched as it turned from orange to pumpkin yellow, then walked on as it turned whiter and gave off more light. It was going to be later than I’d hoped when I got back and I thought about Mom. If I hurried, I could be there about thirty minutes late and since she was used to me being fifteen behind, she’d just raise a little hell.

  Halfway up the back side of Cummings Hill I could hear dogs barking from the direction of LD’s house. That was rotten luck because it meant I had to circle an extra quarter mile down toward the hollow to keep from being seen. It was going to cost me time. I began running and finally dropped into a low place that was shielded from view. It was harder going now because I was in the middle of an elm thicket and trees were closer together than the oaks and there was more brush in between. Finally, I come to a fence I knew. I smelled some kind of stink, real strange, and thought about going further down to cross but I was in a hurry. I unwrapped the fish from my hand, slung them over to the other side, then put my pole next to them. As my foot touched the bottom wire to start climbing, I raised my head. Standing uphill, ten foot in front of me, was a wild-headed giant. He looked half a foot taller than Ben and the stuff he was wearing was falling off. His eyes somehow glistened in the moonlight, and his chest billowed in and out. I froze. Slowly, he raised his arms, then I knew what it was. The four-armed man! His dangling rags looked like the two more arms I saw near the sweet apple tree, and there was this big knife in his right hand. I tried to scream, but couldn’t.

  “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord!” he roared, and staggered toward me until his whole body towered over my head. Then he must of tripped because he come crashing down across the fence and the knife blade buried to the hilt in the ground next to my foot.

  Screams come out of me I didn’t even try to yell, and my body turned to jerks, leaping this way and that way until my legs started running, just pumping away on their own and me screaming like I’d gone crazy. I didn’t know where I was going until suddenly there was a clearing and two dogs bounding toward me in the moonlight. I swerved as they come, trying to get out of their way. Then, all of a sudden, giant arms were around me and I was fighting, and kicking, and thrashing, but the arms had me tight. Then I smelled stale hog meat.

  “It’s okay, Samuel . . . it’s okay, Samuel . . . you’re all right . . . just relax . . .”

  Something hot and wet wiped across my face and the voice said, “Go way, Abel.”

  I was back at Ben’s. I opened my eyes and there he was, his long face just a few inches above my nose in the moonlight. We were about fifty feet from his cabin. Every part of me that could move had an arm or a leg wrapped around it. I wriggled and the coils relaxed.

  “You okay, son?” he whispered, and I turned my face into his chest, put arms around his body, and bawled. I must’ve cried five minutes, Ben just stroking my back. When I stopped we went to the cabin and I told what happened, much as I remembered anyhow, and drank coffee while he filled .30–30 clips.

  “Hit’s our ole buddy from th’ Little Bend,” he said. “Your gettin’ away was a miracle.”

  “Yeah,” and I shuddered when I thought what the crazy man done to the bucks.

  Ben laid the clips on the table and came over and gripped both my arms. His hands was so strong they hurt and his eyes were wide and scary and his voice was hoarse. “Samuel, you got t’ tell your pa. You got t’ tell him tonight! Understand?”

  Fear went through me. “What about Lonnie?”

  Ben rolled his head. I never seen him do that before, and he kind of shook my shoulders and his voice rose to almost a shout. “How long you figure hit’ll be before that maniac kills somebody! Hit could be Lonnie! His whole family! They’re only three, four mile from that cave!”

  Fear shot through me again. “Yeah, I . . . I know.”

  Ben turned away from me, picked up the .30–30, then turned back, put a clip into the rifle, threw a shell in the chamber, set the safety, then stuffed the other clips in his pockets. Then he stared for a few seconds like he wudn’t sure what to do and said: “Samuel, th’ next thing th’ crazy man kills could be your mom or dad or sister.”

  Suddenly, his face got real hard, and he shoved it only a few inches from mine. “You got t’ tell, Samuel!” he said real loud. “You gotta forget this thing about Lonnie and tell! T’night!”

  I was shaking when I nodded, and then I thought of something. “Suppose’n nobody believes me. Crazy man ain’t done nothin’ for a long time. They’d believe you. You’re a grown-up.”

  I was trying to get him to come in the house with me because I was too scared to tell by myself. I hated myself for being a coward. Still, there was some chance they might not believe me, and he was considering it. He run one hand through his hair and looked at the door, then at me, then reached over and picked up his big flashlight.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. “Come on before your folks go outta their heads.”

  We took the lane to where it turned to blacktop, then circled behind Pers Shanks’ house and crossed Rags Wallace’s place. About a hundred yards below Dillard’s, just about where Fred and me had set the deadfalls, we crossed the road into our field and headed for the stock barn. We’d noticed a glow in the sky, but it wudn’t until we come over a rise that we could see what it was. The MacWerters’ barn was on fire.

  We started trotting. I could see Ben’s eyes shift back and forth in the moonlight. His finger was on the trigger guard of the .30–30 and his thumb was lying on its safety. When we got to the hog lot we hugged the barn until we come to its gate, then scooched down and looked at the house. Three people were standing in the dim light of the kitchen porch. I could tell two of them were Naomi and Mom from their size, but the third was a man. It couldn’t be Dad because the man was too tall. There was something in his hand. Then he turned sideways and I could see a long-barreled pistol.

  “Mr. Mac,” I whispered.

  Ben put his hand on my shoulder and I jumped. “Listen,” he said soft but strong. “You go in there and you tell you
r folks what happened. Th’ whole thing! Don’t leave nothin’ out except about me. You got t’ do it, Samuel, and you got t’ do it now! People’s lives depend on this! No more stuff about Lonnie, y’ hear?”

  “You ain’t coming in with me?”

  “Not t’night. If they won’t believe you, come see me tomorra and bring your pa. Just your pa! Nobody else! Get him t’ promise he won’t tell about seein’ me, okay.”

  “But Ben, I thought you were goin’ t’—”

  “I can’t, Samuel. I just can’t.”

  “All right,” I said, disappointed.

  He knelt down and squeezed me ’til I was almost crushed, then leaned back and said: “When all this is over, we’ll get in some huntin’, do lots of stuff t’gether, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and started to reach for the gate.

  Ben’s hand grabbed my wrist. “Whoa! You don’t walk up on a guy in th’ dark when he’s holdin’ a gun and his barn’s just been fired. Start callin’, and as soon as your ma or sister recognize your voice, go. I’ll wait here until you’re inside th’ house.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. Somehow, I didn’t realize he meant for me to start calling right then and I kind of just stood there.

  “Go on and call!” he said, and his voice was a little mad.

  I yelled as hard as I could. “Mom . . . Mom . . . it’s me, Mom!”

  Everybody’s head turned toward the barn and Mom started to move. Mr. Mac grabbed her arm and his pistol pointed toward where he heard my voice.

  “Samuel!” Mom yelled.

  “Yeah, Mom . . . it’s me, Mom!”

  “Samuel . . . Samuel,” and it was Naomi’s voice.

  I could see Mr. Mac’s gun point down and I began climbing the hog lot gate.

  “Bye,” Ben whispered. “I . . . I love you, Samuel.”

  I started to say I loved him too, but somehow I just couldn’t. I ran. When I reached the yard, Mom’s arms wrapped around me squeezing so hard I almost smothered.