by M J Engh
The budget was a piece of work I would have been glad to get rid of. It was complicated and laborious, and I could have used the time for the duties I’d been elected to. Hunt would have done a good job of it—better than anybody else in the county—and I had been tempted more than once to trust him with it. But I’d made up my mind long since that nobody but myself would ever see that budget. Now I thanked God for that.
The board met on a muggy July afternoon. I left Arslan and Hunt deep in private discussion upstairs, while Sanjar stirred up their dinner, as carefree as a meadowlark. When I got back, the three of them were over in the schoolyard. Arslan, with his head thrown back and his good arm clamped on Sanjar’s young shoulders, was limping laboriously around the ruined west wing.
“Surveying?”
Hunt, a few feet behind the others, smiled humorlessly at me. “When I leave your house, sir,” Arslan said, “I propose to come here.”
“It’s city property.”
“Yes. Who will stop me?”
“Probably a lynch mob.”
He laughed happily. “Haven’t I been lynched?”
“Well, not entirely.” I was looking at Sanjar’s grave little face.
“Let them try. It will be good. But I am more interested in what you will do, sir.”
“I’ll do exactly nothing, unless you give me a specific reason to. I told you you’re not a prisoner. But as long as you stay in Kraft County, you’re subject to Kraft County laws. And outside of my house and yard I can’t offer you any personal protection. I suggest you stay put till you’re ready to leave.”
The black eyebrows, broken now with scars, went up. “To leave?”
“You aren’t staying in Kraftsville indefinitely, are you?”
“Sir,” he said, “I have come back to Kraftsville.” Maybe it was really that straightforward to him, or maybe he was explaining it in simple terms for simple minds.
“You’re crazy. Don’t forget that a crippled general without an army is just a man with a limp.”
He gave me a luminous smile, turning a little to share it with Hunt. “I am not a general, sir. There are no longer generals. Do you understand?”
“I understand that. I don’t think you do.”
“Ah,” he said, and he turned back to the school. “It is still the most defensible site in Kraftsville, and it is unused.” He gave me a sidelong look of amusement. “I am aware that Arslan would not survive long in Kraftsville without—fortification. I propose to fortify your school and to live there. That is all.”
“And what do you propose to live on?”
He shrugged. “We will hunt.”
“Well, you know where I stand. What you do from here on is your business—as long as it isn’t public business.”
“And if I appropriate city property?”
“A lot of other people have been doing it. I won’t interfere on that ground alone. But I’ll use it if I want to interfere for other reasons.”
He nodded soberly. He took a breath and squeezed Sanjar’s shoulder, and they moved on. Hunt gave me a studying look as he trailed past. “I brought the ham in,” he said.
That night Arslan shivered again in his bed. But the next morning he was out behind the house, watching sharply while Sanjar saddled Hunt’s colt. Hunt eyed me—ready to say, if I looked like objecting, “It’s my horse.”
“Where to?” I asked.
Sanjar shot a look at his father before he answered, “It’s for Arslan.”
“Going somewhere, General?” He didn’t look in any shape to ride, but I’d learned not to make bets on what Arslan couldn’t do.
“I need exercise,” he said cheerfully. “Also I wish to see the district.”
“The district’s going to see you, too.”
“It is good for the district to see me.”
“Well, it’s your neck, and Hunt’s horse. But I’m going to wish you luck.”
He laughed. “Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to see you back in good health before they kill you.”
“Good,” he said warmly, but he was talking to Sanjar, who had just finished his job. Arslan took the bridle and began to walk the horse away from the house. It was the first time I’d seen him take more than two steps without help. He went slowly, talking to the horse, his face lined with concentration. Presently they stopped, and Arslan bunched the reins in his hand, and, after several false starts, got his foot into the stirrup. Even from where we stood by the shed, I could see how he gathered himself for a major effort. He swung himself up, but didn’t quite make it into the saddle: hung awkwardly for a moment, half lying on the horse’s neck, and then slipped back down.
The horse stepped nervously. He quieted it, hopping a little and twisting his foot on the grass for better purchase. For a moment horse and man stood waiting. Then in one sweeping chain of motion he swung himself astride, the horse moved, they were turning towards us, and Arslan swayed and toppled and caught himself on the startled horse’s neck, straightened and dug in his heels, rounded us in a tight circle, and drew up, laughing in harsh gasps.
Hunt seized the bridle. They gazed at each other, immobile. Then Arslan struck with his open left hand and shouted. The horse leaped away. Hunt staggered against me and recovered. He was cursing quietly, nursing his right wrist. Arslan was headed down the Morrisville road at a ragged trot, getting the horse and himself under control by fits and starts.
Hunt was looking at Sanjar so intently that I looked, too. The boy’s face was stricken. “Why don’t you saddle up and go with him?” I said.
“I’m under orders!” he flashed at me.
Arslan was already out of sight. Sanjar scuffed the dirt and shuffled sullenly into the shed. The horse would be his consolation. Hunt turned towards me—past me—a face so blank and tired that I was shaken. Arslan’s family.
It didn’t matter much now what Hunt had done. Nizam was dead, and Arslan was back under my roof, and nothing any of us could do would make the past any better. Forgiving people their trespasses wasn’t just Christian charity, it was common sense. There might be imitation Nizams still to come, and double-dealing was part of Hunt Morgan’s nature, or at least of his education; but I couldn’t see him as a threat to Kraftsville. Hunt had found his orbit again, his old orbit around Arslan. It was from Arslan the next move was bound to come.
He was back within an hour, and he was exhausted. Hunt caught him as he slipped clumsily down from the saddle—the closest thing to an embrace I’d ever seen between them. Arslan’s drawn face was radiant. Sanjar capered beside him, aglow too and all little boy again. Arslan caught my look and advanced between them towards the back door, the horse neglected for once. “So, sir; today it was only a small part of the district. Tomorrow, perhaps, more.”
As a matter of fact, it was two days before he went out again. Arslan, in his own way, was a cautious man. It had always struck me that most people’s approach to a risk was to open their eyes to the eighty percent chance, or whatever it happened to be, of safety, and close their eyes to the other twenty percent. But Arslan never staked anything he wasn’t fully prepared to lose. And if he pushed himself, it was never quite to the limit—except maybe that day when his knife had clattered on my floor.
He did ride out again, and come back again, and twice more after that, before he settled down to the business he’d laid out for himself. By that time it was well enough publicized.
CHAPTER 26
From the first day of their remodeling operations they attracted observers. All of the immediate neighbors who were home had a good look from their windows or gardens, and the Munseys stood out in the street for a better view. The next day, and every day from then on, a few people drifted over from other parts of town. They would stand in idle groups of two or three or four, smoking, passing a few words, mostly just watching. After half an hour or so, a man would knock out his pipe, hitch up his pants, and move on about his business; but in a little while somebody else was l
ikely to come along, so that while the groups shrank and grew, broke and re-formed, there was seldom a time when Arslan was without his spectators.
He gave them a pretty good show. What with his scars and scrawniness and lameness, and the too-loose hang of the ragged uniform, he made a nicely heroic laborer himself; and Sanjar as the picture of innocent devotion and Hunt as the fallen aristocrat didn’t hurt any, either.
At first, people stayed in the street or the neighboring yards. But after a few days, some of them started drifting up the east slope or into the parking lot for a closer look. They didn’t speak to the workers, and vice versa. Not for a while.
He ignored them just the right amount. Whenever he turned, whenever he spoke, he was ready to include them; you could almost see the blanks he left for their responses. Every time he hammered a nail or lifted a plank or laid a brick, every time he sang out an order or paused for a drink of water, he played it for all it was worth, reaching hard for his audience. And getting them. First their interest, then their admiration for a job well done under difficulties, then—with some of them—a little more than that.
Pretty soon people started making comments on the work, near enough and loud enough for Arslan to hear. He made no pretense of not hearing. If a remark pleased him, he smiled; if it didn’t, he made a little comic grimace that did a lot more for him than the smile could. Still there was a gap, a little something lacking to make the connection complete. He looked at them, they looked at him—but never quite at the same moment. They spoke, he spoke—but never directly to each other.
It wasn’t what you could call a relaxed situation, but in a way it was peaceful. As long as that connection remained uncompleted, nothing was going to happen, and that meant nobody had to make any inconvenient decisions. Kraftsville was uncommitted. Arslan and his ménage and his project had been granted, by popular will or by default, a kind of diplomatic immunity.
It was Ward Munsey who finally completed the connection. He had left the group of four that had settled that particular morning on the ruins of one of the parking-lot dividers and strolled up close to the workers, getting himself between Hunt on the one hand and Arslan and Sanjar on the other. He watched a little while longer, with his fingers flat in his hip pockets and his elbows stuck out behind. Then he asked conversationally, “You trying to make a fort out of it?”
Arslan turned to him with a sociable smile, as if it was an everyday exchange between old friends, up-ended the board he was carrying, and wiped his face with the back of his wrist. “Just a place to live.” He leaned on his board and gazed at the school, giving his handiwork a fond appraisal.
Ward gestured. “How come all the fortifications?”
Arslan shot him a confidential grin. “To prevent insomnia.”
It took Ward a minute to get that, but when he did, he answered it by spitting appreciatively into the grass and turning away with a one-sided smile. Nobody was about to forget that Arslan’s bullets had cut down Ward’s brother, or that Ward had risked his neck every night for weeks to give Arslan another little floral stab in the only place where it hurt. Whatever relationship was going to emerge now, it had to be built on that.
It was a new variation on Arslan’s old theme: first the rape, then the seduction. He was wooing Kraftsville now. The difference was that this time the strength was on the side of the victim.
But for good or ill the connection had been made, and Kraftsville was committed to the extent of accepting Arslan into fairly polite conversation. After that, people talked to him. It wasn’t that they were friendly; they were curious. And Arslan was always happy to explain his project.
“Yes, permanently. Later we can demolish what is left of the west wing. For the present, it is enough to seal the fire door.”
“You figure you got to seal it like that?”
“I would prefer a solid wall; I settle for a door that no one can open.”
In fact, the great fire door was probably the solidest part of the west wall. With the state of its tracks and bearings, welded with rust, there wasn’t much likelihood of anybody being able to open it, but Arslan wasn’t satisfied with that. What he was doing was literally bolting it in place. For lumber and hardware they were pillaging the railroad line. Hunt and Sanjar used the horses to drag the soundest rails and ties, travois-fashion, across town and into the school parking lot. They did it piecemeal, fetching another section whenever Arslan was ready for it. “We have no time to guard a supply depot,” he told me. “Sleep is more important.”
When they got through with that door, it would have taken a platoon of men with blowtorches to get it open. By that time, people were getting right up close, talking to all three of them, offering advice and argument—everything short of actually lending a hand.
“Come in and take a look.” Arslan’s English, like his manners, was mellowing. That invitation was made more and more often, and usually it was to the youngsters—the teenage boys who were taking more and more to hanging around the schoolground. Those kids were growing up pretty wild, in some ways. All that saved Kraftsville from a mass outbreak of juvenile delinquency was the amount of necessary work there was for everybody to do and the shortage of opportunities for getting into real mischief. We didn’t have to worry about drugs and peace politics any more, but the young people didn’t have much to hold them down or give them direction—except the ones who had joined the Last Days movement.
What had happened in religion was funny. The regular churches had just faded away without much fuss during Arslan’s first occupation—oh, some of them had shown signs of life longer than others—as if the ban on meetings had been the excuse they were waiting for. Most people had either lost their religion or preferred to exercise it privately. Even when meetings were possible again, the churches hadn’t come back to life, in spite of all the attempted revivals. But the Last Days was different. It started out as just another revival, but people were swept up by it. It had one main doctrine: that Jesus Christ would come to judge the quick and the dead pretty darn soon, while there were still some quick left. Which made as much sense, when you came to think about it, as a lot of other doctrines I’d heard in my life.
“What’s he telling those boys?” I asked Hunt, and he answered dryly, “Whatever they want to hear.” Hunt didn’t like the way the boys had started to flock to Arslan like flies to honey. For a little while Arslan had been all his—profoundly and poignantly his. “Isn’t it obvious?” he added. “He’s collecting a gang.”
No, after all, maybe the strength was on Arslan’s side again. At least he had certain advantages. He offered those restless kids a freedom that amounted to riot and the discipline of the wolf pack. I couldn’t match that.
Sanjar was finding Arslan’s new role a little hard to take, too. He was doggedly adoring—whenever he had a chance to be—but the betrayed look in his eyes told it better. Arslan’s new playmates were a far cry from the troopers who had made Sanjar their mascot. These boys were boys; that was the long and the short of it. They didn’t have enough years on Sanjar (and, God knows, not enough security) to see him as anything but a competitor. The fact that he could do practically anything as well as any of them—anything that didn’t demand weight or sexual development—just made it worse. And Arslan was no help. I’d used to think, when Sanjar was a three-year-old with a talent for finding trouble, that Arslan was trying to toughen him up. Now I was beginning to wonder if he just didn’t give a damn.
By the end of September they were moving in. Arslan had finished his fortifications and fixed up enough of the interior to make a little livable spot. It was like moving into a half-built house, but he knew what he was doing. The boys he was wooing had to have work to do—otherwise the whole setup would have fallen apart in a hurry—and this was the only work he had to offer them. So far, at least.
I wasn’t surprised when Hunt silently packed up his belongings and plodded across the street. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d stayed put, either; but s
ince he’d made up his mind to go, it behooved him to go early and get himself established on Arslan’s right hand.
Once Arslan, Hunt, and Sanjar were well bedded down in what had been the A-V room on the second floor, the boys started moving in, two or three at a time. A few of the parents came to me, either threatening or appealing, to try to get their sons home again, but Arslan was ready for that, too. If the boys were eighteen, they had a legal right to live anyplace they chose; and if they were younger, he didn’t let them actually move in unless they got their parents’ consent in writing. He wasn’t prepared to fight Kraftsville.
“People ask me why the dickens we didn’t shoot him when we had the chance.” Leland Kitchener was too tactful to put his question more directly. “Looks like we could have had a trial to make it legal.”
“We could have.”
“Had to hang him then, I guess,” Leland added thoughtfully. “But I reckon he’d find his way home either way—sniff his way along by the smell of the brimstone.”
“Leland, when I accept a man into my house, he’s entitled to all the protection I can give him.”
He rubbed his jawbone pensively. “We might of had somebody waiting for him when he come out.”
“Well, the thing is this, Leland. Arslan hasn’t committed any crimes as a private citizen, and we don’t have the authority to try him for war crimes. And even if we did, what good would it do? From here on in, he is a private citizen, and nothing more than a private citizen. He’s entitled to the same rights as anybody else.”
He thought that over and then grinned his sly, sweet grin. “You mean when he’s got a army we can’t get him, and when he don’t, we ain’t supposed to?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Of course Arslan would never be exactly a private citizen. But he’d come a long way down since the day he drove me out on the Morrisville road.