The Shadow of Armageddon

by LeMay, Jim

  “They’ll be tired out going to work in the morning,” said Lou beside him.

  “Young kids don’t get tired like we do,” Matt answered. “Can’t remember that far back.” And as they turned toward the brewhouse, “We’re gonna owe Billy more than a few days work at harvest just for his booze.”

  “Especially Mitch and I,” said Matt. “We drink his whiskey instead of his beer.”

  “That saves him money. Whiskey’s cheaper to make than beer. You don’t need as many ingredients, and you don’t drink as much because of the higher alcohol content.”

  “Then why did whiskey always cost so much more than beer and wine?”

  “Taxes. Don’t you remember the Whiskey Rebellion from your high school history classes? It was fought over taxes. The rebels lost, and even though the government reduced whiskey taxes a little, America kept the most ridiculously high taxes on hard liquor in the world.” He hesitated in mock confusion. “Oh! That’s right. You taught history. In college. How dumb of me to...”

  Matt laughed. “Okay, enough already. I remember the Whiskey Rebellion, but I didn’t know taxes on whiskey were so high. How could you have let me live in total ignorance of this travesty of justice all the years we’ve known each other?”

  “I’m really sorry, Matt. I’ll tell you if they raise whiskey tax again.”

  * * * *

  They spent the next two days helping with cleaning and putting away the equipment used in the harvest. There wasn’t much to do; the gang’s work was mostly a symbolic gesture of thanks for the Kanes’ hospitality. John spent the evenings with the younger men and the young people of the settlement. Maybe, thought Matt, the camaraderie would help him become accustomed to life in the community.

  On the second evening after supper, Mitch called a confab. “This’ll be a short ’n,” he said. “We ain’t got much t’ blab about. We’ve already figgered out our next steps. Billy says by t’morra night he’ll be ready t’ head for market an’ wants t’ leave the next day. He’s got truck t’ take along an’ grain that the town’s Mayor has already spoke for. I reckon, like we decided, we’ll go with him. We’ll git up early, load the mules, an’ take off. After the market’s over we’ll plan our trip away from here. Anybody got anything t’ say? Any questions?”

  To the older men’s surprise, Leighton stood up. Though he spoke frequently in confabs, usually to disagree with one of the older men, he had never started a discussion. He had been uncharacteristically inoffensive since they started moving their truck out of Newcastle, almost cooperative. Matt thought that might be about to change.

  “We been thinkin’,” he started, “we boys here,” he indicated the other younger men who sat, as usual, together, “that we’d like t’ recommend another gang member.” Matt suddenly knew what was coming. “We think John Moore here has proved hisself t’ all a us. We think ...”

  “Wait a minute, Red.” Mitch stood up. “We agreed t’ let John come this far with us an’ no fu’ther. That’s what we promised Maude. It ain’t right t’ take John along while them cutthroats is chasin’ us. Even if they wasn’t after us, he needs t’ stay here with these settled folks, git his education. Scroungin’ ain’t no life for a kid, ’specially one as young as him.”

  While Mitch talked, Leighton’s face turned as bright a red as always when he was upset; the muscles in his jaw worked, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and his fists clenched and unclenched. Then he exploded.

  “Damn it, Mitch,” he said, “you let ever’body in the gang ’ceptin’ us young’ns have their say. No matter what they bring up, y’ let ’m finish. But us,” he again indicated his clique, “y’ treat us like shit. Y’ just interrupted me. Lots a times you old guys have confabs when we’re on guard duty so we can’t tell what’s goin’ on or vote. Boss Johnson never treated us like that. We git shot at for somethin’ you-all did, y’ work us like pack animals, an’ then we can’t have our say.”

  Matt noticed that Miller had stood up beside him, quietly glowering.

  Mitch put up his hands, palms toward Leighton in a placating gesture. “Whoa, Red. Settle down. Y’r absolutely right. I was wrong t’ interrupt y’. But one thing we gotta git straight. I don’t assign you boys t’ guard duty during confabs any more ’n I do anybody else. But have y’r say. You boys have as much right t’ talk as anybody else.” Then he sat down and prepared to listen. Sometimes, Matt realized, a good leader has to admit he’s wrong. Miller also sat down, still scowling.

  “We been thinkin’,” said Leighton, partially mollified though still red-faced, “that John has pulled his own weight an’ then some since he joined us. He done as well as this shrimp Jack – ” (Kincaid bristled somewhat at that) “ – when we hauled our truck down t’ the river and then again when we pushed the rafts up the Grange River. He got as cold an’ wet as the rest a us an’ never bitched oncet. He ain’t all that young, neither. Jackie was only a year or two older ’n him when he joined the gang, an’ my other two guys was only a year or two older ’n Jack. John’s big for his age too.

  “Also, we ain’t in as much trouble as we was, leastways for the time bein’. Billy said Chadwick ain’t been t’ this here Coleridge place lookin’ for us an’ that he’s likely t’ even quit lookin’ for awhile so he can he tend his own market in Columbia. By the time he’s through with his market an’ gits ’round t’ lookin’ for us, we’ll be half-way t’ Colorado.

  “An’ the school thing. John can already read an’ figger. He’s smarter than me an’ Miller an’ Rossi an’ Kincaid all put t’gether. Hell, he could teach school. Besides, we got our own teacher, Perfessor Matt Pringle. He can teach John ever’thing he needs t’ know better ’n these farmers can.

  “The kid’s a nacherl born scrounger, too. Billy said so hisself. He found the mirror, didn’t he? I’ll betcha anything that if we leave him here Billy’ll take him truckin’ next summer. He’ll have got hisself a nacherl born scrounger that we could a had, that we need right now.” He glanced at John, then said, “Oh, yeah. He’s a nacherl in the woods, too. He showed Stony where t’ find nuts an’ mushrooms an’ shit, an’ he kills rabbits. With a fuckin’ slingshot!

  “Boss Johnson said we need at least ten men, more ‘d be even better. John makes ten. He knows truck an’ can find his way ’round in the woods. An’ some day he’ll be as smart at tradin’ as Mitch or Wild Billy.” He glanced again at John and concluded. “Now all my guys agree with me an’ John’s willin’ t’ give up Billy’s place t’ go with us. We want him t’ go ’long t’ this Coleridge place with us.”

  Matt didn’t believe for a minute that the scatter-brained Leighton could ever have organized all his points so well, or even have thought of some of them. It was apparent that John had had a lot of input into his speech, the way Leighton had looked at him occasionally as though for guidance. He now knew why John had been spending so much time with the younger guys, to work out this scheme for gaining permission to accompany them. Leighton undoubtedly had an agenda of his own. If John joined the gang, the two factions would be equal in number, five to five, thereby increasing, Leighton probably believed, his power. So they talked about it. Doc remained strongly opposed to John joining them. He said they had too many kids to babysit now, which would have started an explosive argument between him and Leighton if Mitch hadn’t intervened.

  Matt’s reasons for keeping John out of the gang were quite different from Doc’s. He had been honest with John when he said he saw gang life as a corrupting influence. He had grown quite fond of the boy who he found to be intelligent, shy, and naive in ways of the world. In his kind lay whatever hope there was for the survival of some kind of civil society. His kind would counter the stupid brutality of the O’Conners and Chadwicks (and, yes, the Johnsons) and the ignorance of neglected kids like Leighton and his bunch with reason and fairness. To lose John to gang life was too terrible a waste to the world.

  When the discussion ebbed a little, Matt spoke. “I don’t agree with Doc
, that John is too immature to join the gang. He certainly doesn’t require any ‘babysitting’. But he is too young. He has lived in a tiny community, virtually closed off from the rest of society his whole life. Now he needs to join a regular family so he can experience how people are supposed to live and hear news from the rest of the world. Only after that will he be able to decide if he wants to traipse around the country with a bunch of hardened, cynical bums like us.

  “He needs to go to a real school too. Sure, I could teach John a lot, but I can’t give him the interaction with other kids his age and the environment that makes knowledge seem pertinent. Roaming around in the wild, in all kinds of conditions, dodging the bullets of looters or belligerent farmers, doesn’t make the study of history or literature or mathematics seem all that relevant.

  “John, I have an awful lot of respect for your intellect and abilities, and I think you ought to stay here to give them time to develop. Wait a few years. Then decide whether you want to join a gang like ours. Will you consider that?”

  John leveled a looked at him. “Buck was thirteen first time he went truckin’. Willard went with them the next year when he turned thirteen. I’ll be thirteen next year. If Billy asks me to go truckin’ with him next year, I’ll go. But I’d a lot rather go with you guys.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Stony said, “Maybe we oughta think ‘bout lettin’ the kid come along. He could help me find food in the woods; he already did in Newcastle. Maybe he’ll be our next cook!”

  “Ain’t no doubt,” said Doc, “that a break from your cookin’ wouldn’t hurt us none. But that don’t change the fact that the kid’s got a ways t’ go t’ grow up.”

  “We need him more than Billy does,” said Lou. “John’s right. If he doesn’t go with us, he’ll be truckin’ with Billy next year. Billy doesn’t need him. He’s got kids all over the place. And Colorado’s a great place for kids to grow up.”

  “You’re an example, right?” said Doc and shook his head.

  “One other thing,” said John, his normal timidity shoved aside for the moment by his determination. “Billy said Coleridge Gardens is a real town. With a school. I could go to school every winter and help you guys in the summer.”

  “That’s true,” said Lou. “That way he’d have the interaction with other kids in a scholarly environment – and I agree with Matt that he needs that – and give us the help we need in the summer.”

  Matt sensed defeat. The new society was about to lose a precious asset.

  Leighton leaped to his feet, a triumphant grin on his face, feeling the possibility of triumph within his grasp for the first time in a gang confab. His grin fixed on Matt as he said, “Let’s have a vote! Time for a vote.”

  Matt also stood up. “I have a suggestion. Let’s vote to take John as far as Coleridge Gardens and see what happens there. He may change his mind. The rest of you may change your minds.” I may have a chance to talk John out of this foolishness, he thought. He looked at John. “Fair enough, kid?”

  John shrugged, a gesture much like Matt’s, and grinned in his own rather lopsided fashion. “Why not?”

  The vote carried five to three in favor of John accompanying them at least as far as Coleridge Gardens. They would see what happened then. Mitch did not vote, Matt figured because he also thought John’s admittance into the gang a mistake.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As time to leave drew nearer, John found, a little to his surprise, that he would leave Kane’s Cove with mixed feelings. He had thought that departure from the noise and chaos would bring only relief, but he now found this tempered with a twinge of regret. Many of the new experiences had been fun. He had enjoyed the horseplay with Buck and

  Willard and the two boys their junior by a couple of years, Todd and Robert, after he got to know them. The soccer games had been fun even though he hadn’t understood the rules very well until the end. He also liked the boisterous and unpredictable Wild Billy.

  Of the lot he liked Ms. Kane the best. She was a little island of stability in a world that he had found otherwise dangerous and unpredictable. He would miss her serenity and constancy, which seemed so misplaced in the anarchic Kane household. Her peace and charity extended to every member of that household. The smallest child could count on comfort for his/her tiniest pain, real or imagined, as surely as Billy could a hug and a full mug of beer when he returned from ‘galivantin’.

  He hadn’t spent much time with the older guys in the brewhouse. Their conversations often covered arcane subjects that either didn’t interest him or that he didn’t understand. And after imbibing a certain amount of beer or whisky, especially along with a few pipes of weed, their frenetic and raucous cheer unnerved him. He had spent most nights with the younger gang members and the teenagers of Kane’s Cove.

  Not all the men spent every evening in the brewhouse, of course. Matt spent most evenings in the guesthouse reading, taking care of chores like laundry or talking with him when he was there or with Lou. A lot of the gang did, though, as well as Billy Kane’s men. The women of the community seldom joined them; John thought they seemed to have better sense. John didn’t see the point of drinking so much it caused arguments over subjects recognizable later as trivial or foolish and hangover pain the next day.

  But then, John was used to not understanding adults, starting with those of Newcastle, the only community he’d known until now. He assumed he would understand grown-up things when he became one. The only reason, he decided, that the adults of Kane’s Cove seemed more difficult to understand was that there were more of them. At times he could hardly wait to grow up so he could figure out the grown-ups’ world, and sometimes he dreaded that time.

  The night before Billy left for market was traditionally a night of celebration, for harvest was over and he would return with goods Kane’s Cove couldn’t or didn’t produce and nellies to add to their savings. What little harvest-related work remained stopped early, and the men and women from the fields took their turns in the bathhouse. The women preparing the food had already seen to their own baths and to those of the children. John had mentioned his surprise to Matt that the Kane people didn’t bathe on a daily basis, or at least wash up in a basin as he had done in the back room of the Newcastle apartment on days he didn’t take a full bath. They bathed only two or three times a week and on special occasions such as this. Matt had told him that most people didn’t find it as convenient to bathe frequently as they once had; most of them worked so hard making a living that they found carrying and heating water at the end of the day for bathing proved too onerous.

  Those not involved in cooking brought tables and benches out to the open raft and set a keg of beer and a couple jugs of whiskey on a table in the corner. As the field hands finished their baths, they joined those already around the keg, drew their first beer, and entered into the desultory conversation. Billy came out of the bathhouse with the last group of bathers. As he filled a mug from the keg, he looked around and saw all the gang members together.

  “Glad t’ see you boys all t’gether,” he said. “I figgered y’all ‘d start driftin’ apart durin’ the party an’ that I’d start gittin’ my nose too wet t’ talk. Afore that happened I wanted t’ talk some with y’ ’bout heronner, Eleanor Coleridege, the Mayor a Coleridge Gardens. The less y’ have t’ do with her the better, but y’ need t’ know how Coleridge Gardens operates t’ git along there.”

  “Sounds like you don’t have much use for her,” said Matt.

  “Oh, no,” said Billy. “I got a lot a respeck for that woman. In fact I like her. She knows how t’ git things done; I just don’t always approve a how she gits some of ’m done.

  “First of all, let me give you a little background on Ellie. By the way, don’t you boys call her Ellie; it’s always Ms. Coleridge, or Mayor Coleridge. She cottons t’ titles. When others is around, I’m always, Mr. Kane’. Me an’ her go back a long ways, all the way t’ high school in Trevelyan. She was Ellie in those days,
Ellie McInnes. Me an’ her run aroun’ t’gether some. Nothin’ serious, just havin’ fun. Then we went t’ different colleges. I went to a local one, come out a land surveyor an’ still a hick. She went to a back-east school, got a liberal arts degree, an’ quit bein’ a hick. Married herself a lawyer, stayed back east a long time. I lost track a her.

  “Then they moved back t’ Trevelyan, her an’ her lawyer. He put up his shingle an’ she went inta real estate. After a couple years they started doin’ purty good. Had a little girl. Turned out he was a land lawyer name a Adam Coleridge. Bein’ as how I was a land surveyor, we did quite a bit a business t’gether, an’ even though I never cared much for him person’ly, he was purty sharp.

  “What didn’t I like ’bout him? He never tol’ y’ the whole story, only what he wanted y’ t’ know. If y’ pumped him for information, he’d just look at y’ real steady like a snake looks at a mouse he’s ’bout t’ swaller, smile a secret kind a little smile, an’ then say somethin’ in that Boston accent t’ make y’ feel like a idiot. Still without tellin’ y’ what y’ needed t’ know. Even the other lawyers didn’t like workin’ with him none, ’specially my own attorney an’ drinkin’ buddy Stan Shapiro.

  “But him an’ Ellie, they was a perfeck match. She always was a cold bitch, even as a girl. When y’ was in the sack with her, y’ got the feelin’ she was plannin’ her next scheme. She was more calc’latin’ than ever after she come back. She started doin’ real good in real estate. She got wise t’ that ‘back-t’-the-simpler-life-in-the-country’ thing that was goin’ on in the cities an’ started advertisin’ in the city papers to attrac’ folks t’ live ’round here. Sold a bunch a houses. She sold a farm over by Columbia to a big developer from Kansas City. He built a lake in the middle of it and sold all the lots at a premium. Made a fortune. I did okay on the surveyin’ end of it; can’t complain ’bout that. But Ellie really cleaned up. She got a big commission off’n the sale a the farm an’ the sale a the lots after they was developed.