World Made by Hand: A Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

  Joseph turned to Elam. "Send Brother Jonah to get the doc," he said. "You go get Minor, Seth, Caleb, and Lazarus to tack up all the horses that are fit to ride and harness a rig. I'll get the rest of the men up. Let's all meet out front in half an hour."

  Elam took off at a trot. I begged Joseph to take me to a shower and bring me some fresh clothes, including a pair of size-ten boots, if they could spare any. He showed me to the shower in the boys' locker room and then went to get the clothes. I'd last been in the locker room when Daniel was on the soccer team. Being there gave me another reason to rue and wonder at the strangeness of how our lives had gone in this century. The shower was warm but not hot. They had a wood-burning boiler up on the roof rigged up to the plumbing system. But they fired it only at breakfast and suppertime. Anyway, it was good enough. They had plenty of sharp lye soap on hand. I scrubbed my scalp raw. Joseph soon returned with some clothing and a towel. Also a bottle of whiskey.

  "I thought maybe you'd like to wash your mouth out," he said. "And knock some back to ease your mind."

  "Most considerate of you," I said and did exactly that. He'd brought me a good muslin shirt and dark linen pants, a pair of suspenders. They fit well enough. The boots were nicely broken-in.

  "They're Brother Jobe's boots," he said.

  "Imagine that."

  We talked over a plan as I dressed. The objective was simple: to extract Wayne Karp and bring him to jail. I described the layout of Karptown, the location of Wayne's place inside it, and so forth. I knew Joseph was capable of accomplishing this. But I was worried he might take things too far.

  "You are not to kill this man," I said. "Whatever he has done, he is going to answer in a court of law."

  "Eventually he'll answer to something higher."

  "I'm just asking you not to hasten that moment."

  "Okay, sir."

  "Nor kill anyone else up there if you can avoid it."

  "I'll take care."

  "This can't turn into an Indian war kind of thing where one raid leads back and forth to another and another."

  "I understand."

  "And don't burn the place down, either. Most of the people up there aren't guilty of anything."

  "Of course."

  "I'll be going with you as far as the Black Creek Bridge. We'll stop there and get Reverend Holder into Doc Copeland's rig. I'll accompany them back to the doctor's place while you and your men get Karp. I will meet you back at the jail, with your prisoner, somewhere between three and four in the morning."

  "Okay on that, sir."

  "How many men in all are you going to take?"

  "We have twenty horses all told. Minus the rig. Minus a horse for you. Minus any horses unfit to ride tonight. Maybe fifteen, seventeen men."

  "Is it enough?"

  "Any more than that, you just increase the chance for something to go wrong."

  I followed Joseph to what proved to be the men's quarters, along the far wing of the school, away from the gym wing. The brothers slept five or more to the classroom there, like a dormitory. We went through them with a lantern as Joseph handpicked the brothers best suited to this venture, the most experienced, boldest.

  In a little while, we all began to marshal out in front of the school. The moon was at its zenith and the clear sky blazed with stars. Minor, Elam, and the others led a string of horses down from the pasture, along with a utility cart. Minor seemed in especially high spirits.

  "Good to see you again, sir," Minor said. "Tell me: how do you stop a rooster from crowing on Sunday?"

  "I don't know. How?"

  "Fricassee him on Saturday."

  A moment later, Jerry Copeland pulled in the high school drive in his rig, a two-wheeled box cart behind a Morgan horse named Buddy, with Brother Jonah in the seat beside him. He trotted up past the gardens to the school's entrance. Jonah jumped out as I hurried over. In the box behind the seat was a stretcher on an old mattress.

  "What's this all about, Robert," Jerry said.

  I told him what happened to Loren up in Karptown. By the strenuous way Jerry rubbed his eyes I knew that he was extremely concerned.

  "What are you thinking?" I said.

  "I'm thinking I hope the bastards didn't rip anything up in the peritoneal cavity. I don't have any antibiotics, Robert. You get a bunch of shit in there it's not good news."

  Just then, Elam came to notify me they were ready to ride and had my old mount, Cadmus, saddled up for me. I went with Elam and climbed aboard.

  "I'm hereby deputizing all of you, limited to this operation tonight," I said and turned things over to Joseph to explain what I'd outlined previously to him about bringing Wayne Karp back alive and not harming any innocent people. Then we trotted off under the stars.

  Loren was on all fours in the cold, damp gravel beside Black Creek when we returned. He couldn't stand any longer, and he couldn't sit, he said, and it was too wet to lie down. He had been busy puking there on and off since I left. We brought the stretcher down for him and helped him aboard. Four of the strongest brothers hoisted him up the bank to Jerry's wagon and loaded him in the box. Jerry got him to lie on his stomach on the mattress and we backed the wagon around. Joseph and his men then continued on toward Karptown. I followed behind Jerry's wagon and we got back to town in half an hour.

  Jeanette Copeland had prepared the room that Jerry used sometimes as a lab and sometimes for surgery. It was a far cry from the hospital operating rooms of the old days, but it was what we had. Bobbie Deland, a registered nurse-in the days when nurses were registered-was on hand along with Bonnie Sweetland who, as a midwife, had competence to assist. They had fired the boiler upstairs and had the room blazing with candles, several with reflector mirrors on adjustable wooden stands that could be moved as needed. Jerry also had an autoclave fitted over a small alcohol stove for sterilizing his surgical instruments. Steam curled out of it. In contrast to this makeshift equipment, the operating table was a fully articulated model that had come out of the Glens Falls hospital, complete with fixtures for placing a surgical patient in what Jerry called the lithotomy position. Altogether, the setup was a retreat from the heyday of high-tech medicine, but a lot better than nothing. At least we still understood the role of microorganisms and the need for cleanliness. Jerry had done a few surgical rotations as an intern years ago, but beyond that he had no formal training. The surgeries he did now took place in a gray area of expertise somewhere between what he had managed to learn on his own and what circumstances forced him to do. Sometimes he simply found himself in uncharted territory and did what he could.

  As soon as we got there, Jerry gave Loren a morphine lozenge to place under his tongue. Jerry had been experimenting lately in refining cooked opium into a crude morphine alkaloid using slacked lime and sal ammoniac from soldering blocks to precipitate the morphine out of solution. It was a process not unlike what they used to do in the jungles of Indochina and the slums of Tijuana in the old days of the international drug trade, so it wasn't that difficult. He had managed to produce a few grams of the stuff so far. Loren began to feel relief from the pain in a little while, and not long after that he fell into a stuporous sleep. The five of us lifted him out of the cart on the stretcher, into the operating room, and into position on the table. Jerry scrubbed his hands, then drenched them and his arms clear up to the biceps in grain alcohol. Bobbie cut Loren's pants off with scissors. Bonnie swabbed the dried blood off his thighs. Jeanette laid a set of shiny steel surgical instruments on a clean towel on a rolling cart. They worked together with impressive efficiency. I searched Loren's pants pockets until I found what I was looking for: the key to the padlock on the other cell back at the jail. Otherwise, it was obvious that I was in the way. The room was barely large enough for the four of them and the patient, and besides I had other things to do, so I left and rode Cadmus over to the rectory.

  Jane Ann was up reading by candlelight when I came in.

  "Where is he?" she said with a strong note of accusati
on in her voice, as if she knew something bad had happened and I was naturally responsible.

  "He's over at Jerry Copeland's."

  "What happened?"

  "Wayne Karp ... did a job on him."

  "What kind of job?"

  "Jerry's checking him out right now."

  Jane Ann got up and put her sandals on.

  "If you go over there," I said, "you can't barge into the room. Jerry's got him on the table."

  "The table?"

  "The operating table."

  She went white.

  "I've got a horse outside," I said.

  I rode her back over to Jerry's. She knocked on the door to his lab and called through to them inside. Jerry said not to come in. Jeanette said, "Go in the house, Jane Ann, and make some tea. We'll come and get you when we're done."

  "Is he going to be all right?"

  "We're stitching him up," Jerry said.

  "Go in the house, Jane Ann," Jeanette said again.

  "Will you stay here with me?" Jane Ann said to me.

  "I can't. They're bringing Wayne to the jail. I have to be there."

  Jane Ann broke down in tears and fell into my arms. She cried there for a while, then pushed herself away. Then she went inside the Copeland's house where a candle was burning in the kitchen. I could hear that she was still sobbing when I rode off on Cadmus.

  I went to my own house next. It felt like a week since I had been there. The clock on the mantelpiece said it was three twenty in the morning. I found Britney upstairs in my bed. I had to wake her.

  "Where have you been so long?" she said.

  "We've had some trouble," I said.

  "I thought it was something I did. I thought you were mad at me."

  Moonlight streamed in the window. I was struck by how beautiful she looked in it, sitting there, naked from the waist up.

  "I'm not mad at you," I said. "But I have to get something here and go."

  "Go where?"

  "They're bringing Wayne Karp to the jail. Can you move over to the other side of the bed for the moment, please? I have to get something from under the mattress."

  Britney moved over. I reached down at the head of the bed to a place between the mattress and the box spring, where I felt around and pulled out the pistol that I took to Albany with me and killed a man with, the same pistol that had killed Shawn Watling.

  "What is that?"

  "Nothing," I said, as I tucked it behind my back in my waistband.

  "It looked like a gun."

  "Okay, it was a gun."

  "What's going on?"

  "Just a precaution."

  "Will you come back?"

  "Of course I'll come back."

  "I'm sorry if I made you feel bad."

  "You didn't make me feel bad," I said. "You made me feel whole."

  I left her there in the moonlight.

  I waited outside on the front steps of the old town hall, there being no reason to disturb Brother Jobe's sleep until the others showed up. Cadmus seemed comfortable in front of Einhorn's store, up the block, where there was a picket post and a water trough. I finished the slab of corn bread that I had snatched on my way out of the house and wished I had more, or better still a square of ham and cheese pudding, or best of all, one of Bullock's hamburgers. The street was utterly still. With no electric lights functioning, only the moon lit the town. All around, in the houses up Academy Street, Van Buren, and Jackson, my friends and neighbors slept innocently as the earth turned them toward another day of hard work and summer heat. I wondered: if someone sat out there on the town hall steps of Union Grove long enough, night after night, would they eventually see a mountain lion walk casually down Main Street. The air was still caressingly mild. Exhaustion was creeping through my veins, my joints, and my spinal fluxes. When I blinked, my eyes did not want to open again.

  I woke up sharply to the clip-clop of horses trotting down the street and the creak of harness leather. It was still fully dark, so I could have been asleep for only a few minutes. Brother Joseph had just rounded Van Buren onto Main at a trot on his big mount, Temperance. Behind him, Brother Jonah drove the utility cart. A hogtied figure occupied the box of the cart. Four other mounted New Faith men rode behind the cart. They slowed to a walk and then stopped in front of the town hall. Joseph dismounted. I went down to him. The whole group looked exceedingly grim.

  "How did it go?" I said.

  "We had some trouble."

  "Where are the rest of your men?"

  "They're back at the hermitage now."

  "Huh?"

  "What you call the old high school."

  "Oh. What about that trouble?"

  "There was some shooting."

  "Did you kill anyone?"

  "No."

  "Did any of your own men get hurt?"

  "We brought in your prisoner, sir."

  "I see," I said, wondering why Joseph avoided answering my question. "Well, I'm ready to receive him."

  "Yes, sir."

  Seth and Caleb dragged Wayne to the edge of the box and made sure that he landed on his feet on the pavement. The way they had him tied up, he couldn't stand up straight. I went over to him. He craned his neck to look up at me.

  "Hello there, Fiddler Joe," Wayne said.

  "You're under arrest, Wayne."

  "No shit. Hope your jail is fireproof?"

  "Why? Your people planning to burn it down with you in it?"

  "Now you're making me a little sorry that I didn't ram that fungo bat up your ass after all."

  "That may end up being the least of your regrets," I said and pointed to the front stairs. "Bring him along now."

  Inside the building, Jonah led the way up the stairway with a candle lamp. Brother Jobe was sitting up in his bed, wearing a nightshirt, when we entered the old jail room. He shaded his eyes against the lamp but didn't say anything. Wayne stopped a moment before Brother Jobe's cell, and the two stared at each other.

  "What are you in here for, little buddy," Wayne said to Brother Jobe.

  "I'm here to pray for your soul, old son," he replied.

  Wayne cackled. I had the brothers put him in the cell we'd prepared for him. I threw the length of chain around the bars and made sure the door was all snugged up with the padlock closed.

  "Can I see you alone for a moment," Joseph said, when I was done.

  I took him into the adjoining room, the old police office, and closed the door.

  "We lost Minor," Joseph said.

  "What!"

  "You know how he was. Headstrong. He had to go in with the first bunch."

  "In where?"

  "Mr. Karp's domicile. Like I said, there were shots fired. Minor wasn't so lucky."

  "Did Wayne shoot him?"

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Karp himself."

  "How come you didn't shoot Wayne?"

  "You said not to."

  I kicked one of the old stage flats from Guys and Dolls. My boot went clean through the canvas. "Goddammit all."

  "We took Minor over to the doctor's, but it was too late."

  "I'm very sorry. He was a fine young man."

  "We're going to miss him," Joseph said. Tears welled up in his eyes, but he didn't lose his composure. "Arc you going to let Brother Jobe out now?"

  "I can't let him out. He hasn't been in here overnight yet."

  "Don't tell him about Minor," Joseph said. "Not a word. We'll tell him about it in our own way when he's back with us. But don't you say anything."

  "All right."

  We returned to the jail room. Brother Jobe was now kneeling at his bed with his hands clasped on the mattress, his eyes closed, and his lips moving soundlessly, the way little children pray.

  Joseph told the others to come along, leaving me alone with Wayne and Brother Jobe.

  "Nice accommodations," Wayne said. "And real secure too." He rattled the door to his cell.

  I leaned against the wall beside his cell and drew the pistol out from the back of my waistband.


  "Remember this?" I said.

  Wayne sauntered over. I retreated a step.

  "Hey, I'm not going to bite you," he said. "Why, got-damn, that's one of our old pieces. Ruger .41, right? I'm surprised you didn't throw it in the crick or something."

  "I thought I might actually need it some day."

  "I bet it makes you feel real powerful."

  "It kind of does. I shot a man with it."

  "Really? That ain't like you."

  "Shit happens."

  "I'll say. Where'd you do that mighty deed?"

  "It's not important."

  "We didn't hear nothing about it up our way."

  "It happened quite a ways from there."

  "I suppose you'd like to kill me now."

  "Yes. I sort of would."

  "You going to think about it for a while or what?"

  "I'm going see if the Reverend Holder survives what you did to him."

  "And if he don't, you going to kill me?"

  "Pretty much, I'm thinking."

  "And then I s'pose you'd say I was trying to break out or some shit, right?"

  "Something like that."

  "And what if he pulls through?"

  "Then we'll try you in a court of law and probably hang you."

  "It don't look so good for me either way."

  "Nope."

  "Guess I'll just have to stand by then."

  "I guess so."

  "You think my people are going to sit still for this?"

  "I don't know what they'll do. But the frame of mind I'm in right now, I'd send the cavalry back up there and burn your whole village down if they tried something."

  "Union Grove would burn just as nice too?"

  "You're wrong about that. All those trailers and shanties packed in so close together up there. I'm surprised you haven't burned it down accidentally yourself. Anyway, make yourself comfortable here. We'll get some breakfast over for you by and by. There's water in the pitcher and a pot for you to piss in. I'll be next door in the office if you need anything."