The Shadow of Armageddon

by LeMay, Jim

  When Marianne and Donny disappeared into the trees, giggling, promising to return soon, Clifford crawled closer to Alicia, ogling in what he believed to be a lascivious manner, which looked to Alicia more like an expression of gastric distress. Suddenly he lunged at her. She pushed at his chest with both hands, almost gagging at his alcoholic breath. Though a tall gamgrel youth hardened by rough field work, and ardent enough, adolescence and alcohol made him clumsy. That and her wrath enabled her to push, squirm and finally wriggle free. Cursing, he lurched to his feet and stalked toward her. She rolled onto her back, pulled her knees up to her chin and kicked as hard as she could. Her feet caught him in the stomach. He staggered backward, wild-eyed, arms wind-milling in vain to recover his balance. He splashed heavily into the river.

  She got up and stomped ferociously down the river, away from the sounds of Clifford’s yelling and splashing.

  Now, muddy, bramble-scratched, hair and clothes in disarray, she came in sight of the bridge over the Grange. She forced aside her rage. She had to clean up before anyone saw her, especially her fastidious mother. She crouched upstream of a thicket that hid her from the bridge, dipped her handkerchief into the muddy water and began to wash her face and hands. She would have to remove her shirt to wash the dirtiest spots and then see to her hair …

  She heard the crackle of brush and people speaking quietly part way between her and the bridge. She scooted her butt farther up the bank for concealment and, very quietly, parted branches of the thicket just enough to peek through. A middle-aged woman with long black hair and a young girl exited the forest and followed the river bank toward the bridge. Both carried filled net bags that seemed to be made from woven plant fibers. They spoke so quietly she couldn’t understand them but she recognized the girl’s voice. It was Jaclyn! What in the world was she doing here and who was the woman?

  They stopped on the bridge where it was lighter than under the trees. The woman spoke to Jaclyn, then leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. Jaclyn hugged her and they parted, Jaclyn going toward town and the woman in the other direction. Toward Haas House. Alicia recognized her as the woman who had helped Bernie Haas water the garden, the Gaian Carmella.

  What had Jaclyn and the Haas woman been doing together? – perhaps Carmella had been instructing her in heathen religious lore – but what was in their bags? Maybe herbs and other plants for weird religious rites. Alicia hadn’t paid much attention to what people said about Gaianism. It was probably harmless enough but it saddened her to think of Jaclyn participating in such foolishness. Between Gaian superstition and Gephardt’s Beast, Jesus was having a tough time of it.

  Then she thought of Marianne and the others. They would come back to town this way. Though she wasn’t eager to return home, which had all the charm of a tomb, she had to avoid them. She scooted back down to the river to finish cleaning up.

  Clifford must be really cold after his dunking in the river. She couldn’t help but smile. That alone kept this from being the worst day of her year so far.

  * * *

  The gang hung around the stall Saturday morning to avoid the boring opening ceremonies, awaiting the Mayor’s visit. Because of the Mayor’s beautiful blond daughter, Alicia, John would be glad when it was over. Last fall she had pretended to like him, then rebuffed him. They had sat together atop the west slope of the town listening to Reverend Gates and then his young acolyte, Paul Gephardt, preach at the harvest revival. She had asked him to walk her home after the service but when he started to do so she said he couldn’t. Her mother didn’t approve of his kind, a scrounger. The only good the Mayor found in scroungers, she said, was the goods they brought to town. He was still embarrassed and angry at her contempt for him.

  Finally the Mayor’s retinue arrived and there she was. Alicia acknowledged him with a brief smile. As he turned away, confused and embarrassed, he noticed her little sister Jaclyn making faces at him when she thought nobody was looking. The mayor seemed to take a long time selecting her “tribute” as Doc called it but at last they were gone.

  After the stall opened for business the boys’ chore of helping haul truck from Bernie’s warehouse was finished. John hung around for a little while though to visit with other scroungers and local merchants. The latter tended to be friendlier toward scroungers than most Coleridge Gardeners. Some of their gossip disturbed him though, particularly that against Gaians. He even heard Carmella’s name specifically. A local merchant said she danced in the woods with the so-called Little People, supernatural beings that had come back to live in the world now that so many people were gone. Another said it wouldn’t surprise him to hear she romped with Satan himself in those woods.

  * * *

  Two scrounger gangs and some itinerant traders that John remembered from last year, as well as a blacksmith and a horse doctor traveling together, had arrived at Haas House before Mitch’s gang. The next day, Sunday, the market was closed; good Christians eschewed doing business on the Lord’s Day. The Pike County Dykes arrived, so-called because some had come from Pike County, Missouri and all six were female, though only one pair was actually lesbian. After that John didn’t see much of Matt who resumed a relationship with their boss, Annie Austin, that had begun the previous winter. Most of the hotel and bunkhouse rooms were full now with scroungers and traders and a couple of farm families.

  Later in the week, John asked Bernie if he expected any other gangs.

  Bernie frowned before answering. “Another guy used to come but I didn’t see him last year so maybe he’s not around any more. Hopefully, someone shot him. He’s too cheap to rent a room. We just take care of his horse and truck. He eats and drinks in the bar, then he and his kids sleep under the bridge. He used to join the poker players till I caught him cheating.”

  The main job at the market stall for John and the younger guys was to keep it stocked, though occasionally Mitch let them take turns selling for training. Most people running the stalls, scroungers and locals alike, remembered John from last year and greeted him warmly, though this year they, especially the scroungers, treated him subtly different. They had seen him as an outsider and a child last year. Now that he had gone trucking he was one of them. Apart from the market though, most locals were suspicious of scroungers and other itinerants. Scroungers drew glares when they walked through town.

  Since John’s chores at the stall didn’t take much time he spent most of his time at brewing and other chores at the hotel. Brewing required skills previously unknown to John: careful measurements, precise timing and arcane terminology such as “the sparging of wort”. Most important of all though was cleanliness, at which Bernie had drilled him until he had become obsessive. No kitchen was as clean as the basement brewery and no surgical instruments more sterile than John Moore’s brewing utensils. He took great pride in the mastery of the complex tools and disciplines of his craft. He allowed no one into the brewery during brewing except Bernie and only then if his boss wore the gloves, cap and sterile cloth coverings over his shoes that John himself donned every morning before descending the basement stairs. His most content and satisfying times were the long hours alone, immersed in the heavy, mellifluous smells of boiling malt overlaid with the delicate herbal accents of hops.

  It rained a little on the second Wednesday of the market, too late for the already-harvested crops of course, though easing of the enervating heat was welcome. It stopped in mid-afternoon as John swept the front porch. Sounds across the clearing of grinding metal-shod wheels, shod hooves and creaking wagon and leather harness made him look up. A large cart with high wooden sides, covered with a ragged, tautly-drawn canvas, entered the graveled clearing. A large but scrawny palomino mare drew it. She was so thin her ribs showed. She plodded slowly with her head down as though agonizing over each step. A thin, stooped old man walking beside the poor beast screeched imprecations and swatted its side with a willow wand. He wore a tattered, filthy, much-patched raincoat but no hat. His bald pate seemed to taper upward, almost cone
-like. The fringe of long gray hair surrounding it hung in long greasy ropes resembled the fringe on a jacket. Smaller figures trooped alongside the cart, three boys who looked as underfed as the horse. The largest led the horse by a rope attached to its halter. Two smaller boys followed the old man. Man and boys alike were dressed in rags.

  “There’s the missing ‘guests’ I told you about,” said Bernie contemptuously. John had been so engrossed in watching the approaching group he hadn’t noticed his approach. “Charley Murdoch. He hasn’t been shot after all. He’s late, usually gets here before the weekend.”

  As they approached, Bernie said, “Help Joey with this group, John. Feed the horse a bigger measure than usual. Rub her down really good and give her a couple apples outta the root cellar.” That surprised John. Bernie seldom shared his apples with any of his guests let alone their livestock. “Her name’s Goldie; treat her well. And the kids too if you see ’m, though you prob’ly won’t. Then your work’s done for the day.”

  The squalid caravan stopped before the porch. Murdoch grinned up at Bernie through his tangled beard, head cocked to one side so he could look upward from his stooped position. He displayed a few yellow stubs of teeth and cold eyes of a disconcertingly similar color. The long strands of hair and beard hanging down over his shoulders and chest were also yellowish and streaked his colorless raincoat with dark greasy stains.

  “So, lan’lord,” he said in a raspy voice, “Y’ve got a place f’ mah wuthless nag an’ mah priceless cargo? As always I’ll find a place f’ mah wuthless awphans out unda the bridge.” He turned to the two boys behind him and said, “Git up heah, asswipes! Greet the lan’lord like y’ got some sense.” He turned back to Bernie and shook his head. “These kids nowadays.”

  “Didn’t think I’d see you this year, Murdoch,” said Bernie coldly. “Market’s half over.”

  “Didn’ make it las’ yeah with all the trouble in Columbia. Damn neah didn’ this yeah with this wuthless fuckin’ nag an’ these wuthless fuckin’ kids.” He turned to the three boys now standing beside him, though at a cautious distance from the willow wand. He gave them a look of disgust, turned toward Bernie, and shook his head. “Got me a new ’n, Bernie.” He switched the wand toward one. The boy was a little smaller than John but looked somewhat older. “A little nigguh boy. Had t’ replace that ’n what run away. This ’n come up t’ the house last winter starvin’ an’ freezin’. Just in time t’ go truckin’ this year. Lucky, hunh?”

  The cold smile, as though permanently affixed there, never left the old man’s face. John noticed the boy Murdoch had indicated with the switch glared at the old man with obvious hatred. Murdoch glared back at him, a peculiar expression since the grin never faded. The other boys never looked up from the ground.

  “He’s a little uppity yet,” said Murdoch, idly tapping the switch against his thigh. He’ll be in bettuh shape come next yeah.” His yellow gaze whipped suddenly toward John, giving him a start. A calculating look, as though he pondered adding John to his entourage. John shuddered inwardly. “See you got a new ’n too, lan’lord.”

  “Yep, and he’s working out great.” Bernie put a reassuring hand on John’s shoulder. “Ready for us to bed Goldie down, Murdoch, and put your truck away?”

  The old scoundrel nodded, then ordered the boys to stow the truck and head over to the bridge. He followed when Bernie went into the house. “Travelin’ makes a man’s throat pow’ful dry, Bernie. I might have a drop and a bite afore I turn in.”

  Joey had slipped onto the porch as unobtrusively as possible and hugged the wall as though hoping to become part of it. Murdoch’s boys stored the cart and its truck in one of the truck sheds while John and Joey fed and rubbed down the exhausted horse. Joey told John that Bernie wanted Goldie to have special attention because she was so young and sweet-tempered and Murdoch treated her so badly. Bernie figured she was bound to follow the fate of Murdoch’s two previous horses, death through starvation and mistreatment. Goldie rubbed her nose under John’s hand until he petted it.

  “She’s a sweet thing,” he said.

  “Yeah. If she uz a cat, she’d purr,” said Joey, bobbing his head up and down, grinning his customary vacuous grin. The differences and similarities between Joey’s and Murdoch’s grins struck John with a kind of horrible fascination.

  Bernie had found Joey wandering around in the woods as a little boy of about ten, mostly naked, cold and starving, and brought him home. At first he had been so terrified of Bernie and his household he wouldn’t eat or sleep. He lived in Haas House for two years before he spoke a word. Last year John had had difficulty engaging Joey in conversation. Only after patient persistence did he elicit simple responses from him. This year Joey was more eager to talk, at when they were alone; he even seemed to have missed John. He was still excruciatingly thin and ate little in spite of Bernie and the women’s encouragement. Sometimes he still woke John by crying out in his sleep. John talked him gently back to sleep. John wondered what had happened to him during the ten years before Bernie found him. Death by Chou’s Disease hadn’t been the worst thing that could happen to people during the Last Days.

  When they finished with Goldie, John started for the bar but hesitated when he saw Joey going to the bridge. “Where you going?” he asked.

  “T’ visit Murdoch’s boys,” said Joey, grinning, head bobbing. “Charley 5 an’ Charley 6 an’ that new ’n.”

  “What weird names! Charley 5, Charley 6?” John caught up with Joey.

  “Yup, yup.” Head bobbing frantically, habitual grin fading, Joey looked back toward the house uneasily. “C’mon, ’fore he comes.” Scurrying in his ungainly way, Joey explained in terse phrases how Murdoch had named the orphans he found (or, some claimed, bought!) after himself, Charley, with a number assigned to indicate the order in which they had been acquired. So he could keep track of them, Joey explained. He’d never met the first boys, Charleys 1 through 3, though he understood that some had died and some had run away. He had known the fourth that had run away last year while trucking. Every time he arrived at Bernie’s, Murdoch made his kids (they were always boys) camp under the bridge while he ate a big meal and downed a number of beers and whiskeys in Bernie’s. Joey always visited the boys while Murdoch was thus occupied.

  The two Charleys sat huddled together under the bridge, the new boy sat apart from them. Charley 5 was the big pale-faced boy who had led Goldie and Charley 6 was a smaller frightened looking kid who kept his eyes down even in the presence of Joey and John. The new boy regarded the newcomers with sullen suspicion. Joey squatted in front of them; John did likewise.

  “Hey, Joey,” said Charley 5 with a brief forlorn smile. He languidly raised a fist which Joey struck with his own. Charley 6 greeted Joey in the same way, barely raising his eyes. Joey said, “This ’ere’s John,” and John raised his fist as seemed indicated. The two Charleys tapped it and John held it before the third boy who, arms folded, pointedly ignored him.

  “’At’s the new kid,” said Charley 5 with a rather malicious grin. “Charley 7. He jus’ don’t know ’is name yit.”

  “I ain’t no fuckin’ Charley a no kind,” said the boy. “An’ I ain’t no nigger. I’se Eye-talian.”

  Charley 5 laughed loudly and raucously, and even Charley 6 allowed a grin. The fifth Charley said, “If’n Murdoch says you’re a nigger, why then, you’re a nigger.”

  John was surprised to hear the term “nigger.” He knew it from reading Mark Twain, but his teacher Maude had called it an anachronism that was no longer used. Nor did he know what “Eye-talian” meant. The boy had rather dark skin, hazel eyes, and curly dark brown hair. Not knowing what everyone else seemed to take for granted frustrated him. He had always believed he would know what adults knew when he became one, but here were kids who knew more than he did!

  “So what is your name?” John asked the boy. “My name’s John Moore.”

  He glared at John. “Why d’ you give a shit?”

  John
shrugged. “Everybody’s gotta have a name.”

  The boy relaxed a little. “Yeah, I reckon so. My name’s Wes.”

  Then John noticed Joey getting nervous and agitated. His head bobbed faster than usual, his eyes were distended and his grin had become a rictus. John had noticed before that Joey couldn’t bear even the slightest semblance of conflict. The kid named Wes seemed to be agitating him. He stood up and said gently, “Let’s go back, Joey.” He said good-by to the Charleys and Wes.

  Joey said, “Uh, uh,” got up, and followed John out from under the bridge. They passed the garden and chicken coops and went in the back door to the kitchen to wash up for supper. In the bar, John found that Murdoch had just left; they had left the bridge just in time.

  * * *

  When John helped pull a loaded cart to the stall the next morning he saw Murdoch and his boys stocking one a few stalls away. They had all bathed, presumably in the shallows of the river; John hadn’t seen them at Bernie’s bathhouse. Murdoch had shed the filthy raincoat and even wore fairly serviceable trousers and shirt, patched and faded but clean, and the same worn colorless shoes as yesterday. All three boys were there as well, their clothes relatively clean but incredibly ragged, some garments held together by twine. All wore twine sandals so full of holes he wondered how they stayed on their feet.