World Made by Hand: A Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

  "I'm well aware," she said. "But I need a helping hand, and these are not normal times. I'm old enough to remember the difference. I once had my own television. My mom drove a pickup truck. We used to go to the Target in Glens Falls and buy stuff when she got paid. Those days are gone, and so is any idea of what's normal or decent. I don't want to put in with that New Faith crowd and pray three times a day and have some pack of busybodies raise my child. And I won't put in with Bullock and be a damn serf. We can help each other, you and me. Just let me and Sarah stay here while you're gone. We'll weed your garden for you."

  I gave up looking for my water bottle.

  "All right," I said. "You can stay while I'm gone."

  "What about when you're back?"

  "I mean you can move in after I leave today, and we can see how it works out when I return."

  "I still have a big garden of my own behind where the house used to be, plus the cow, so you don't have to worry about feeding us."

  "All right."

  She gave me an intense studying look. I worried now whether she would throw her arms around me and sob, and make me feel uncomfortable. But she just took my right hand in hers and shook, like a sales representative sealing a deal.

  "You were kind to me when I was very low," she said. "I'm grateful, and you won't regret this."

  "There's four bedrooms upstairs," I said "It'll be obvious which one's mine. You and Sarah can have any two of the others. Please don't go rearranging things too much, especially the kitchen setup. I've got everything where I know how to find it."

  "I will be very respectful of your stuff and your ways."

  She said she didn't have much to bring over, that pretty much all she owned had been lost in the fire. I showed her around, how the outdoor shower worked and where I kept my store of meal and honey and things. Finally, I saw her to the door. She said they'd come back later in the day after I'd gone.

  "Have a safe journey," she said. "I hope you find Tom and the others."

  "Thank you. I'm a little nervous about it, to tell you the truth."

  "Think about coming home to a clean and orderly house."

  I watched her walk a ways back up Linden Street. She was a good walker, with a strong, purposeful stride.

  Soon, I left to fetch that pistol I'd hidden under the bridge over Black Creek on North Road, and all the way up and back my mind reeled with terrible thoughts of what it would be like to not be alone anymore, and what Jane Ann would think when she found out.

  Riding along in a band with four other mounted men in fine summer weather was so exhilarating that I cast aside my worries and apprehensions for the rest of the afternoon as we made our way south on the old county highway along the Hudson River. The other three besides Joseph were Brothers Elam, Seth, and Minor. Elam and Seth were large, broad-shouldered earnest men, like Joseph, but Brother Minor was skinny and smaller than me. He had a sharp, weasely face and a joking demeanor, and when he laughed at his own jokes, which was often, his eyes creased and seemed to close up tight, while his laughter was nearly silent, more like air huffing through a pipe. He joked incessantly.

  "You hear about the farmer was milking and a fly went in one of the cow's ear 'n out th' udder?" was a typical Minorism, as the other men called his constant banter.

  Joseph and Elam carried rifles, and Seth wore a sword, a saber, some kind of museum piece he had come across in their journeys. All had pistols. Brother Minor carried a sawed-off shotgun scabbarded off his saddle and two daggers in his belt, one long one he called a "pigsticker" and another he called "the last resort."

  I'd found that pistol where I had stashed it, all right, under the Black Creek Bridge, the one that killed Shawn Watling. It proved to be an old Ruger.41 Magnum, an odd "bastard caliber," Brother Joseph said, and they didn't have any ammunition for it. There were three rounds left in the cylinder. I brought it along thinking I could not possibly run into three situations in a few days that would require me to fire at another man. I carried the pistol tucked in my belt, and I must confess it was reassuring to feel its heft there as I rode along all afternoon and we ventured into what was, for me, unknown country-at least country I had not been to in years, since we stopped going places in cars. My mount was an eight-year-old bay gelding named Cadmus, a full sixteen hands high with white stockings and a blaze from lips to forehead. He was responsive and forgiving, considering my paltry experience, though we barely moved faster than a walk that day.

  The first settlement we rode through was the town of Starkville, seven miles altogether from Union Grove and on the other side of the river. The old highway bridge there was in terrible condition. In places the cement roadway had rotted out and you could see daylight down to the water through twisted, rusty filaments of iron rebar and flaking girders. We dismounted and led the horses across with the utmost care. In a few years the thing would be completely shot and there would be no connection across the Hudson River for twenty miles in either direction, unless somebody started a ferry.

  Then there was the town. It was hard to believe that as recently as 1971 Starkville had an industrial economy-a wallpaper factory and a cardboard box mill, using wood out of the Adirondacks up river. They employed hundreds at decent wages a family could live on. Back in the 1950s, the town had its own movie theater and even a newspaper. Now, the little business section of Main Street was deserted in midafternoon on a weekday. The windows were broken in all but one shop front. The one remaining had a Sorry Closed sign in it. We stopped and peered through the dusty glass. The shelves and counters inside were bare, and Elam remarked that it was probably closed for good. The commercial buildings themselves along Main were in sorry condition. In some cases blue sky peeked through the ceilings in the upper stories, and scraggly shrubs had taken root in the decayed gunk along the parapets, so you knew the roofs were ruined.

  I had heard Starkville was particularly hard hit by the Mexican flu. We didn't know anyone from there, and I wasn't aware of anyone from our town who carried on trade down there these days. Now I had to wonder if anything was left. Beyond the modest business district, Main Street reverted to old state Route 4. Some of the houses along there were occupied by gaunt, slovenly adults and a few halfnaked children dressed in tatters hanging around the front porches doing nothing. Even the few pigs running in the street seemed mostly skin and bone. No dogs came out to greet us. They had probably succumbed to the roasting spit or the stewpot as life grew harder over the years. The yards were filled with weeds and shrubs. Only here and there had anyone made an attempt to grow potatoes or corn. The inhabitants regarded us suspiciously as we walked our horses by, probably frightened by the well-fed New Faith men in their imposing broad-brimmed hats and the weapons they carried. Brother Minor ventured to banter with these people in his joking way as we walked by, but they did not respond to his gags and most skulked indoors when he spoke at them.

  "Sometimes I think I'm a chicken," he said to one ill-looking old man with his face sunk into his beard, sitting on his porch on a broken-down sofa. "Felt this way ever since I was an egg." The old fellow just stared hollowly. I was glad to leave the place behind.

  South of Starkville, we passed some individual farms that looked like going concerns, not exactly prosperous, but at least as though the owners had not given up. The corn was in and their gardens were laid. But you had to wonder what held them together as a community. Whenever we approached, if there was anybody outside, we'd see them head into their houses at a distance. Possibly they took us for marauders or scavengers, and for all I know they went inside in order to train rifles on us. Along in that stretch we came upon one particular young man, perhaps sixteen, leading a swayback horse pulling a hay wagon. He did not seem afraid of us.

  "Are you militia or pickers?" he said.

  "Neither," Brother Joseph said and explained as how we were on a search to Albany.

  "They's all thieves down there," the boy said. "Got any sugar? You can have a flake of hay each if you spare a little
sugar."

  "We don't have no sugar," Brother Minor said.

  "I've got some honey," I said.

  "I don't have no vessel to carry no honey. I'll give you all a flake for a spoonful."

  "All right," I said.

  We stopped and made a little trade. The hay was good, sweet timothy grass.

  Brother Minor sang to himself as he fed his flake to his mount.

  The pavements on Route 4 were badly broken, and we walked in line along the shoulder, where the asphalt had worn away altogether and the dirt was beaten soft by hooves. Black-eyed Susans, blue bugloss, chicory, and Queen Anne's lace bloomed there. Here and there, carcasses of the odd truck and automobile that had not been collected years before in the great drive for metal sat rusting in the flowers. Now and then the road came very close to the river, and we could see through the trees along the bank. We did not see a single sail or an oar craft on the water wherever we were afforded a look.

  By the early evening we had gone about twenty miles since leaving home. My hips and rear end hurt from rocking in the saddle. In vivid evening light we came upon a house sited on a barren sweep of scrubby fields on a hill overlooking the river. Thinking it deserted, like many other dwellings along the way, we dismounted to see if we might stay there for the night and make ourselves a meal. Joseph knocked firmly on the door. To our surprise, a woman answered. It was hard to tell her age because she was extremely thin, but I guessed about sixty. I imagined she had been pretty when young. She seemed friendly, unlike the others we'd encountered that day, and welcomed us all inside warmly, and even volunteered right away to cook us supper. Her name was Gladys Raynor, she said, and she was waiting for her husband to return from a journey he had made out to Utica to see about some relatives there. The house was orderly but smelled funny, like rodents had got into the walls and maybe died there. In fact, one would surmise that the Raynors had once been well off. The furniture was good quality, and the paintings on the wall were above the grade of art fair kitsch.

  Joseph offered some of our provisions to help her with that supper she had offered to make us, some bacon, meal, butter, onions, but she declined, said she was all set, if we didn't mind lamb stew with new potatoes, fresh peas, and corn bread. As far as we were concerned, that was sumptuous fare. She said we could turn our horses out in her pasture, which was still well fenced and that we could pitch a camp on any level spot we pleased outside on her property. When we got all that going, we collected out on her spacious back porch, which was furnished with nice wicker and offered a broad view across the Hudson Valley. The sun was lowering in the opposite direction, behind the house, and the few thin clouds hanging in the eastern sky blazed in rosy-golden reflected light. Mrs. Raynor banged around in her kitchen and eventually she came out with a pitcher and some glasses on a tray.

  "How are you fellows doing?"

  We all said fine, thank you, and offered some vague pleasantries.

  "I thought you might want to try some of my strawberry wine."

  We all said thank you. She put the tray down on a round wicker table.

  "This used to be a sod farm," she said. "We had all the sod business between Albany and Glens Falls."

  "Is that so?" Brother Minor said. He managed to refrain from making a joke. Perhaps he sensed, as I did, that something was off.

  "Well, there's not much call for sod these days, as you might imagine," Mrs. Raynor said with an attempt at a plucky smile. The effort only made her face seem more skull-like. "I'll go back in and see to supper."

  Brother Seth, no shrinking violet, had a go at the pitcher as soon as she went back inside. The twilight had reached the purple stage where things were no longer very distinct. He filled the five glasses. One by one we all had our sips and soon enough we were all cutting looks about at each other.

  "This here's plain water," Brother Minor said in a low voice, "or I'm a durn mud turtle."

  "Well, it's nice clean water, at least," Elam said, "and sometimes I think you are a mud turtle."

  "Maybe she made a mistake," Seth said.

  "Any of you all see a garden about this place?" Minor said.

  "None that I noticed," Seth said.

  "Ssshhhhh," Joseph said.

  We didn't speculate about it further. We just sat along the porch there in a row watching the last glimmers of daylight dissolve in the shadows of the far hills, enjoying our water. Time went by. We watched a quarter moon swing above the treetops while glimmers of its reflection on the river played through. An owl hooted off in the distance. We slapped at mosquitoes. Our stomachs growled. I didn't notice any cooking aromas emanating through the screen door.

  Finally, Mrs. Raynor called for us to come inside. She had no candles going in there, not even further back in the kitchen. The moon cast a pallid glow through the windows. She directed us into the old formal dining room. It contained a large oval table and padded chairs. I had a candle stub in my pocket and lit it. Elam found a tall crystal candlestick on the sideboard to put it in, while Joseph went out to get more candles from his pannier. The table was set for six with cloth napkins and nice cutlery.

  "Sure smells good, don't it," Brother Minor said. Banter was his way of allaying nervousness.

  We all sat down. Joseph returned with more candles and soon the big table, at least, was lighted.

  "Can we help you with anything in there, ma'am?" Seth said.

  "No, you fellows just get comfortable."

  She soon appeared with a heaping dinner plate in each hand, put them down in front of me and Minor, went back for two more for Joseph and Elam, and then two additional for Seth and herself. We all swapped glances around at each other in the candlelight.

  "Potatoes and peas coming right up," Mrs. Raynor said and she came back in with two serving bowls. I took the one full of potatoes. It was not the least bit warm. I took one and put it on my plate. It was a rock. I passed the bowl left to Seth and he took his and so on. When the peas came around I took a helping. It was grass. The lamb stew on our plates was watered up dirt: mud. Mrs. Raynor told us to dig in. I pantomimed eating and the rest did as I did, except Brother Minor, who could barely conceal his mirth. Of course, I did not regard this as a mirthful situation, and I doubt the others did either.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," Brother Minor said. "I don't have much appetite tonight." He got up from the table gingerly and left the room.

  The rest of us went through the motions long enough to be polite. Brother Joseph volunteered our services to help with the dishes, but Mrs. Raynor wouldn't hear of it and the four of us remaining retired to our camp. Minor had a fire started down there and a big fry pan of bacon working. I opened up my oilskin larder and got some corn bread and the hunk of sausage I brought along. The others got out their provisions. Joseph produced a jug of that Pennsylvania whiskey the New Faithers seemed well supplied with, and it felt good going down with river water. They also had a sack of little oatmeal "sticky cakes," as they called them, that their women made with dried currents, honey, and plenty of butter, and gladly gave me as many as I wanted. Joseph laid aside a rasher of bacon, a square of bread, and a hunk of sausage and a sticky cake on a plate, and when he was done eating, he ventured back up to the house. Mrs. Raynor came to the door and in the moonlight we watched him go in. In a while we heard shouting. Mrs. Raynor was letting Brother Joseph have it. We couldn't make out what she was saying, but she was loud for such a frail person. Then the door opened and she shoved him out on the front portico, and that was that. She began to wail and continued up there in her darkened house the whole way Joseph was coming back to us.

  "She sounded right grateful," Brother Minor said when Joseph returned to the firelight.

  "I guess I insulted her."

  "Well, clearly she is off her rocker," Seth said.

  "What'll we do about her?" I said.

  "I'd say her man run off," Elam said. "She's liable to starve here."

  "We should stop on the way back and take her with us," Joseph said, a
nd without much discussion it was pretty much agreed that we should do that. Then it was a final dram, and we tucked ourselves into our bedrolls in nice cool sleeping weather, for a change, and all fell out rather quickly from our day's exertions.

  Brother Minor might have been an irritating little fellow, but he was diligent, regular, and capable. He was awake before anybody else, had the fire going again, had watered our horses, and was boiling up a pot of cornmeal samp for our breakfast when the rest of us stirred from our bedrolls. The weather had a fractious look. The sky to the east was red and an ominous breeze was already making the weeds dip and sway. I sensed it would get hot again. We did not linger at the sod farm. On our way out, we paused in front of the house. I accompanied Joseph to the door to say thank you and farewell, so as not to leave on unfriendly terms. The others stayed on their horses.

  Mrs. Raynor did not answer our knocks. Joseph said we'd better go inside. In daylight, the house was drearier than it had appeared by candles and moonlight. A coat of dust lay over most surfaces. As we entered from out in the summer meadow, the bad smell inside made its impression again. We called out to the lady of the house but she did not answer. With the electricity off, and no appliances humming, the place was stone silent. Joseph and I started poking around by unspoken mutual consent. Nothing was out of order on the first floor, except the muddy dishes remained unwashed on the kitchen counter from the night before along with the bowls of rocks and grass. Of course, Mrs. Raynor's electric well pump was not functioning, along with everything else, and to get water she would have had to fetch buckets from the livestock pond on her property, or else walk all the way down to the river, a good quarter mile.

  "Well, let's have a look upstairs," Joseph said.

  In the second bedroom we looked in, we found the source of the odor that pervaded the house. The body of a man was laid out on a bed. In actual fact it was mostly the clothed skeleton of a man, since even the insects seemed to be mostly done with the flesh of him. We could only guess how long he'd been laid out there. A month or more. We recoiled from the sight and the stench and very quickly went through the three other bedrooms and back through the ground floor again, including the back porch, looking for the old woman.