Angels of North County

by T. Owen O'Connor

  Doc Hennon looked on sullenly, offering weakly, “Matthew, you best come away from there or you’re liable to be next. C’mon, Matthew, think of the boys.”

  His father raised his head and saw Raif standing at the door; he muttered a soft “son” before returning his gaze to his dying wife. Matthew rose and led Doc Hennon to the door, not in any forceful manner, but in that way that says the next bit is for family. Hennon kept repeating softly that there was nothing that could be done, that at least the boys should keep clear. The doctor said it with soft earnestness. Raif knew that the Doc was all too familiar with his father’s temper, as he had stitched up some men in town who had faced the rage. Raif had seen it a few times and had even seen his father kill a man, but he had always been gentle around their mother. The killing had been done defending Jed from a crazed drunk, but the image of his father’s savagery and the swiftness in which he took to the knife haunted his dreams.

  As he left the room, Doc Hennon said in subdued tones, “Matthew, keep the boys in for only a moment. I’ll need to quarantine you and the boys for at least a month. It shouldn’t be too much longer than that. I’m sorry.” And with that Doc Hennon waited outside on his long wagon, his two attendants sitting in the shade on the far side of the house, waiting on the word to retrieve the mother’s corpse, so they could wrap it in a thick shroud and burn it with whale oil.

  Jed and Abner stood on the front porch. Their father saw them; he turned and said, “Come now, boys, say goodbye to your mother.”

  Abner obeyed, but Jed stood frozen, scared of what was inside, saying in broken words, “I can’t, Pa, I done stepped in shit, got it all over my foot, Ma would kill me if I tred inside.” At that Jed started sobbing, the tears streaming down his face.

  His father walked to Jed and Abner, dropped to his knees between them, and pulled them into an embrace with him. He rose slowly and placed one arm around each and led them inside, murmuring it was all right, it was gonna be all right.

  Raif slowly approached his mother’s bed. Her lips were blue and the blue was cracked with lines that ran a deeper azure; spittle dripped from her mouth. He croaked a hoarse “Ma” before he felt his father’s heavy hand rest on his shoulder.

  “Raphael, Jedediah, Abner, say goodbye to your mother.”

  Tears flowed in torrents down their cheeks and each in his way said goodbye to his mother. She lay there delirious and unresponsive, her eyes opaque shades. The dying light of day diffused in pale cream colors over the retinas of his mother’s eyes, creating a cloudy impenetrable mist. The father and boys stood in a half crescent around her, staring at her gaunt figure wrapped in blood and sweat-soaked sheets until their father sent them from the room.

  The mother lingered for hours, longer than expected, and his father remained by her side as she coughed out her life. The next day they buried her in the earth, Reverend Graham coming and giving a eulogy despite the fact there was a quarantine in place. The ranch families, Walker and McCallum, were the only folk to breach the quarantine. The three families formed a tight semicircle as the men lowered the mother’s ashes in a long hickory box into the earth. They sang gospel hymns, the songs rising into a cloudless blue sky on a perfect spring day.

  The night of the funeral, Raif lay awake in the loft, his head resting in the crook of his elbow. He allowed his mind to wander, staring unfocused at the ceiling. Occasionally he stared down at his father sitting in his worn leather chair on the floor below as he stared silently into the fireplace. The light from the flames illuminated his father’s face. Raif could see the lines of age running from his eyes and down his cheeks. In the firelight, the crow’s feet ran a deep black, as if they were rivers that flowed out from the pools of his father’s dark eyes.

  Raif laid his head back and stared up at the cathedral ceiling of the house. The great beam of wood, dark with pitch, ran the length of the house, giving it its high vaulted center. The light from the fireplace flames flicked in twisting shadows upon the sharp angles of the ceiling. Raif was drifting off when he heard his father cough. The sound came from the depths of his chest. He spit and Raif could hear the sizzle of the sputum as it hit the burning logs.

  Over the next two weeks, the brothers watched their father die the same slow, bloody death as their mother. Matthew Hanson passed on the same day Raif turned fifteen.

  His father’s last will and testament was like the man. As far as Raif could remember, it read something like: Raif, the land is yours and all on it because you’re my oldest, but goddamn your soul if you don’t take care of your brothers, or something or such like that. The Cuchalainn ranch was at its peak that May, with three studs that ranchers from far off sought. The grazing fields were lush, fed by a natural spring that was welled in half a dozen spots over the ten thousand acres, and the Criss River ran for a good mile and half inside the northern boundary, giving water the year round. Raif, Jed, and Abner were young, but they had been working the Cuchalainn since before they were housebroken and were experienced ranchers. The boys were holding the ranch together until the blight hit.

  It was a strange illness. It hit the cattle first and then wove its way into the horses. Reverend Graham called it a plague. It swept North County—the stock dropping in the fields with bloated tongues. The air filled with the rancid smell of death. Even before the stock dropped, the stench of dead flesh started weeks before. It was as if the disease hid in the belly of the beasts and killed slowly from the inside out. Many times, they found steers with beautiful, healthy looking hides being picked on by buzzards.

  The rain conspired with the pestilence and failed to fall on the fields that spring. The dry spring led into the driest of summers anyone could remember. The Criss’s and Cross’s banks caked and cracked under the relentless heat. The Cuchalainn’s natural spring ran dry. The stock that managed to survive lived off scrub bush and licks of morning dew. The brothers, caked in dust and sweat, tried to tap a new well on land that showed it could still keep its vegetation. Red, the only prize stud to live through the pestilence, got curious and came over to inspect the dig. He stepped into a rattlesnake den as he trotted over and twenty young serpents emptied their venom into his foreleg. Red broke into a run but crumpled to the earth after a few strides, his eyes lolling over in his head, his magnificent frame convulsing in violent spasms. Raif poured lamp oil into the den and ignited the fuel, sending the snakes slithering out, sizzling as they crawled. The boys watched in a bitter satisfaction as the snakes curled in a kaleidoscope of blackening twists a few feet from their hole.

  The fall brought clouds but no rain, and horses and men and every living thing except buzzards languished in North County. By December, the sky doused the land with sleet and snow. The cold winds blew hard and early. And the same as the pestilence had come, it went. The North County prayed for an early spring.

  In the bitter cold of a December morning, the tax collector, Leviticus Tickers, meandered his way along the fence line. The wind whipped across the fields and cut him bitterly as he went about his business collecting the year-end land taxes. He had been shot at only once and from a great distance at the Brinkley farm. Tickers thought, what did it matter? The Brinkleys were going under. He would wait a few weeks and go out again with a wagon, maybe a hired man or two. He’d seen it before. The Brinkleys would break. Tickers was sure they were already broken. The rifle shot was the last gasp of pride. Brinkley was a fool. There was no steady water on that property. The drought broke them. He would go back in a week or two after Brinkley had loaded up a wagon with whatever he could carry, including his brood. They would head somewhere else and probably starve to death on the way.

  Tickers would be the first one to the homestead after the Brinkleys’ exodus to see what he could salvage. It amazed him what these homesteaders could accumulate in a few years of farming even on shit land like the Brinkleys’. The Brinkleys were hard-luck people. They had it written on their faces—hard, determined people, yet ones that never got a break, always getting
the short end of it. Ah, what did it matter? The place would be empty soon and he’d take whatever was left and sell it in Tin City or at the spring market. The Brinkley girl was scarred by the pox, but maybe a deal could have been worked out—if heh, heh, heh, Tickers laughed to himself, if only Brinkley wasn’t so proud. Tickers fretted a little, remembering that the proud ones usually torched the farm as they were pulling out.

  Tickers cursed the cold once more and trotted his nag down toward the Hansons’ Cuchalainn ranch. He scanned the frozen fields and despondency gripped him. He asked himself how a man of his awesome promise could end up in such a forsaken place. But he knew. That pudgy little bitch, Trini Davis, had sent him from the East to this frozen hell. He remembered how she had batted her eyes at him like all the girls at the theatre when he wore his new green coat cut in the Continental style. They had all flitted about in his orbit, their perky nipples dancing beneath thin silky layers of fine cloth.

  Trini had been the most forward with her “Oh, Leviticus, you must come riding with me when the weather permits; father has some new wonderful Arabians.” Trini’s father was wealthy, but Tickers had questioned the true extent of his real worth at the time, and if he was going to saddle himself to that little porker, he had questioned whether there was enough money. Trini had youth, but it would fade and she’d grow to be like her mother with her hideous bulbous form and its folds upon folds of thick hide. But her flirtations intrigued him, the flash of her eyes as they stole over him. Tickers was titillated, and he had judged that Trini wanted more than to ride a horse.

  On the first warm spring day, Tickers and Trini rode through her father’s fields, and Tickers’s keen eyes evaluated the wealth. The house was splendid, the gardens near the home finely attended, but once past the façade and showpieces, the fields were shabby and ill-kept. The millhouse on the river was a ramshackle affair with no more than a half-dozen hard-looking Irish teagues to keep the wheel turning. Davis had money but not enough to interest Tickers; there was a thinner, richer breed he was hunting. He had asked Trini to join him boating with friends on the Potomac. She had agreed, but insisted he come riding first. As they rode the grounds, Tickers began to imagine Trini’s motives for being so insistent they ride together. She knew they would be alone on a ride. On a ride the corsets and layers of cloth were impractical, on a ride, they could . . . Tickers fantasized that she wanted to show him how much she really liked him. Why else the insistence to ride alone?

  Tickers suggested they dismount and rest under an elm that had sprouted early buds, giving generous shade. Trini had looked surprised at first, but agreed. Tickers sat down next to her on a fallen tree branch. He moved closer to her. As they sat, Tickers noticed her riding skirt had risen, exposing the flesh above the boot. She smiled her coy smile.

  He gripped her shoulders and awkwardly pulled her toward him. She struggled, but Tickers was lost and sensed the squirming to be rapture. He became aroused but a faint, insistent buzzing noise kept annoying him. What was that? Why doesn’t it stop? He opened his trousers to expose himself and it was only then he realized the annoying sound was Trini screaming.

  Tickers begged her to stop screaming. He let go of her. She bolted to her feet and staggered backward a step or two before tripping on a fallen tree branch. She fell on her bottom, sending a muddy splash up from the wet grass. She rose but slipped again and had to roll over, covering her hands and outfit in an additional layer of muck. Tickers was on his feet. He had forgotten his pants were still undone and he reached out for Trini. He used his hands to wipe the mud from her as his erect penis bounced about. She flailed to distance herself from his exposed member. Tickers looked down and realized his penis was out and looked up to see the millhouse goons making their way across the pasture shouting “Miss Trini! Miss Trini!”

  Tickers buttoned his trousers and turned to Trini. “Now, Trini, you must admit, you gave me the wrong impression.”

  At this she grew furious, and realizing that society had been restored, she became defiant: “I gave you what? How dare you, sir?”

  “Now, Trini, it was your idea to go riding, your idea.”

  “Wrong impression? I am an excellent rider, to think I wanted to impress you, you, you, you monster.”

  “Trini, you gave me every indication my advances were welcome, indeed invited.”

  Trini spun about toward her horse saying, “You are a scoundrel—I am going right to Father.”

  “Now, Trini . . .” he stammered.

  Tickers had grabbed the rein of her horse as the mill men came crashing through the brush, “Miss Trini, miss, we heard a cry—”

  “Let go of my horse, Mr. Tickers.” Despite the request, Tickers held the reins.

  An old workman thick about the shoulders and brandishing a nose flattened by scores of bare-knuckle matches in his youth said, “I think you heard my lady.”

  “Mr. Conway. Yes, it was me—this brute attempted, ugh, please escort him from the property—and if he gives you any trouble, forcibly remove him.” Trini wheeled the horse and galloped toward the main house.

  The millhouse gang never said a word; they beat him to a pulp and dragged his body to the property line where they dumped him. By the time he scuttled back to Washington his eyes were still puffy, but the bruising had faded.

  His father was waiting for him in the study. It was all so sordid. The usual disbelief followed by “Are you telling me, Leviticus, that Miss Davis concocted the whole story? To what end?” Despite Tickers’s protestations, the conversation ended with his father stating: “My God, Leviticus, what were you thinking? A good marriage will be impossible now. Your appointment to the ambassador’s staff at King James will be rescinded. You stupid, horny boy, Davis is Grant’s man. Oh, this is poor judgment, poor judgment. What this will do to your sister’s prospects, I do not know. I’m glad your mother’s not alive, this would have killed her.”

  From there it went to worse: Tickers’s peculiar proclivities at boarding school began to surface in polite society. By the end of the season, he was a pariah in Washington and all of Virginia.

  Months later in the steaming heat of August, he lay in a boarding room flophouse in Philadelphia. It was near noon when his boyhood friend, Jeeves, knocked and woke him from his stupor. The one-room rental still reeked of the perfume from the whore he had coerced with money and liquor the night before to engage in his deviant wants. Jeeves pulled a dirty footstool over to the bedside and placed his handkerchief over the cushion before sitting on it.

  “How are you, Leviticus?”

  “Jeeves, please, man, spare me. What brings you to Philadelphia in August: The waters?”

  “Ha, ha, Levi. Despite it all you haven’t lost it.”

  “Jeeves, please, do you have any of the hair?”

  Jeeves drew a small flask from his jacket pocket and handed it over. “Well, anyway, best to get on with it. Do you remember Braxton?”

  “Yes, John or Jake or something. Railroads, isn’t it? He was with us at school, a few years younger. Why?”

  “Yes, that’s him—it’s John, but he insists on the pedestrian Jake.”

  “Well, what about him?”

  “Well, Levi, this is no reflection on our friendship, but I come as his second.”

  “His second? What are you going on about? I don’t even know him. What slight? He doesn’t have a sister, does he?”

  “No, no. Braxton’s engaged to Trini Davis. He says there’s a point of honor to be settled.”

  Levi rose and took a pull from the flask and fell back down, his head spinning, “Jeeves, what are you going on about?”

  “Yes, yes, Levi, that’s why I agreed to be his second. Braxton doesn’t want to slay you. I told him you of all people are not disposed to violence—that if I spoke with you you’d agree to flee the East for a while. It was Braxton’s idea, he is really only interested in getting married to Trini as soon as possible and knows this is an inconvenience.”

  “Why is
he in such a rush to marry that pudgy tart?”

  “There’s a great fortune there for Braxton; it all fits with his family’s railroad business.”

  “What? The Braxtons have gads more money than Davis.”

  “Oh, Levi, you really are on the outs; you haven’t heard? Davis sunk his entire fortune into a silver mining operation out West. He’s hit it. Davis gambled every dime, and they are pulling silver out of his mines by the wagonload. The Davises are moving to an old plantation, Sommers . . . town, ville, something quaint-sounding—twenty thousand acres I hear. The old boy has a hundred men refinishing the old mansion of some driver of slaves moved off by the war, good riddance. It’s all so splendid for Jake.”

  “Oh, please stop. Jeeves, tell Braxton you couldn’t find me. Say I’d gone to New York. I need time to think. . . . Would I have any chance against Braxton?”

  “You wouldn’t have a chance against me. Braxton’s a brute. This isn’t his first, either. Two wounded, one dead—a Frenchman that insulted his sister, mentioned something about the sharpness of her teeth; Braxton shot him through the middle of the eyebrows at twenty paces. No, no, Braxton can split piano strings at ten paces, can you imagine being able to do that, what a monumental waste of time practicing that.”

  “Yes, yes, thank you for all of that. I’ve got to go to Father.”

  “I went to your father first. He’s mixed in with this whiskey ring business—Grant’s tossed the lot out. He’s going to Italy until it blows over.”

  “Italy! Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Your father said he’d send for you after they had established themselves. For now, he’s secured you a post in the West.”