Scribe

by Alyson Hagy

  Above them, Billy Kingery gave two impatient cracks with his whip. The pony was almost too tired to respond, but it tried. The cart rolled forward half a turn. The torches tilted and spewed. The sacks inside the cart contracted and curled as if they were alive. “There ain’t a scheme in this world that’ll save her,” he said, wearily. “You’d best quit your whispering. My man Blankenship will be here soon. Conklin and Cundiff are with him. They got a whole passel of stalking dogs out looking for this woman. I’d hate to ask them to wade into this situation when all I’m trying to do is spare some suffering. It’s meant to be painless, Hendricks. A clean cut below the ears.”

  “I know how to slit a throat,” Hendricks said.

  “I reckon you do.” Billy slipped off one of his tight and shining gloves. “You’ll need this.”

  Before he stood to take the knife, Hendricks dropped a small disk from his sleeve, a tiny, glittering lens. It fell close to the trembling curl of her left hand. As she reached to touch it, he brushed her face briefly with his fingers, in perfect memory of a moth’s gentle wings. There was almost a smile on his face as he did so, a final slanting shard.

  “From your daddy’s scope,” he murmured. “I watched the stars all night after you left me. I seen wonders and beauties and never forgot you for a minute, I swear. Things is not what they seem. Your letter made it through to me. Do you hear? There is no fortress for the man who puts himself above the sanctity of others. Do you hear me? The letter got through. I have brung help. Things is not what they seem right now.”

  And he stood to face Billy.

  They would later tell many versions of his escape, the man who came to the brick house above the creek for a letter or some kind of queer service and was drawn into fighting with the large brood of Altices who lived nearby and then fell to battling the migrant people, wanted or unwanted, who camped in those fields and maintained a worship of the healing they believed came from the brick house and the strange sisters who lived there. They told all manner of tale about how he got away, none of them verified, each bloodier than the last. They blamed him for the fire that burned to cinder all but the stone-lined kitchen of the sisters’ house. They blamed him for the drought that dried up their springs and wells, as if the trespasses he committed had the power to redirect water. They blamed him for the violent feuding that led to the murder of Alton Altice by his brother Willem. They blamed him for the poor corn crop and the ice that remained thick on their ponds until March and the unseasonal attacks of owls. They blamed him for the disrespect of their children, each and every antagonism they had to endure from the sons and daughters who were inspired by the exploits of young Bofrane Altice and his fearless cousin Tul. They blamed him for every habit they couldn’t change, and for the ones they chose not to, and they didn’t stop talking about him, liquor in hand, pipes lit and burning, wives and husbands hitched against their hips, for more years than any of them could count.

  It’s said he didn’t use the tunnel that ran from the cellar of the house. He chose, instead, that silvery moment on the cusp of night when even the finest hunters question the ghostly, untethered movements of their prey. He slipped away like a gust of wind. The Altices were drunk, every last son and bitch of them. They maintained themselves that way. The Uninvited were the ones he watched for. They would skewer a man bloodless.

  Yet he was no stealthier than the two boys. They were waiting for him beneath the cascading tresses of a willow tree—one tall, the other not. As if he were a comet destined to flare across their sky.

  “We knowed you’d come,” Bofrane said, leaning against a sharpened gig that was nearly as long as he was. “Tul had the sense of it. He’s got the gift.”

  “Let me pass.”

  “This ain’t about stopping you,” Bofrane said. “This is about crossing the river and finding that woman, which is something me and Tul can do better than you. We know the country.”

  The smaller boy tilted his head, mouth a half-stitched seam. His hair was braided with duckweed and mud.

  “You gonna turn me over to your daddy?”

  “We hate my daddy. Uncle Willem’s the one we aim to join with. You and your pistol can help us. And we like the woman. It ain’t no more than that.”

  They agreed to travel together. The man Hendricks knew the cousins might be useful, especially given his wounded leg.

  They crossed the river at a place that did not require swimming. The waters bowed toward them beneath the black cowl of night, cold and deep and quiet, the current so smooth it didn’t even hiss. Bofrane claimed any man who entered the river with a true heart would be carried safely across. “I ain’t much for water,” he said. “Tul likes to sass me for it.” Young Tul, for his part, slipped from the bank as smoothly as a mink.

  As the water grappled the man known as Hendricks in its icy, uncaring arms, he thought of the woman. The journey he had conspired to send her on was a perilous one. He didn’t believe she was dead, not yet. But she was in danger—danger he had practically forged with his own hands. He hoped she had laid claim to some of her sister’s power. Memory of the alluring voice that had come from the woman’s unwilling mouth hitched knots in the flow of his mercenary blood. The sister was like no conjurer he’d ever encountered. Nevertheless, he had successfully lured the woman from her home as ordered by Billy Kingery. Now he was pursuing her, against orders, against the tide of Billy’s plans. Things had gone topsy-turvy. He had been transformed. Because the woman had become something to him, something he dared not name. As he recalled her face, he was reminded of a portrait he’d once stolen from the wall of a great house, the brooding eyes that could not be dissuaded by riot or greed. He clamored to see eyes like those again.

  The boys trotted confidently through the tangled brush on the other side of the river. “This is the easy part,” Bofrane said, wiping his snotty child’s nose. “Ain’t nobody organized over here. Billy don’t allow it.”

  Silent Tul made as if to spit between Hendricks’s sopping boots as they paused. It was his way of asking if Hendricks knew who Billy Kingery was.

  “I know him. I’ve wore his chains. But I ain’t wearing them now.”

  Tul assessed him, shirtsleeves dripping. Then he nudged his cousin with an elbow.

  “Tul needs to know you got good intentions toward that woman,” Bofrane said.

  “I aim to show my good intentions—and more—when I find her. I aim to tell her the truth about how she’s changed me. The rest will be what it’ll be.”

  This time, Tul spit for real.

  “I ain’t asking you to believe me yet,” he said to the boy. “I got plenty to prove. But not everything a man does with other men is pegged to trust. Some nights you hunt with the pack you find.”

  When Tul stopped at a creek that was tiled with smooth stone, Bofrane declared it was time for them to rest. The younger cousin climbed a nearby tree without a word.

  “He’ll hang up there like a bat,” Bofrane said. “Watching. We can get our sleep.”

  He opened his eyes some hours later to find Bofrane standing over him, breath stenchy with wild onion. “It’s time,” the boy declared. “I hope you ain’t hungry cause we don’t have nothing we want to share.”

  “How far?”

  “You ain’t seen how Tul makes a path, have you? He does it with a piece of mirror he keeps around his neck. He stares at the damn thing and marks it with his fingers until he’s ready. He ain’t never done us wrong.”

  They skirted homesteads and the remnants of farms. They smelled the sheep-stink of boiled blankets and heard the clucking of hungry hens, but Tul knew who had dogs and burros, and who did not, so they passed unmolested. After a long passage of silence, Bofrane asked Hendricks if he believed what the woman did with the writing of letters was a real power.

  Hendricks said he did.

  “My daddy says her sister could raise the dead. He hates them both. I’d like to have the power of taming animals myself. I’d tame a bear or a eagle, or
maybe a ocean whale. You ever hear about the girl from the Knott’s Island who coughs up pearls? They say she was born that way. I don’t know how a thing like that happens, but I do like a pearl.”

  “Riches ain’t always what they seem,” Hendricks said.

  “Maybe not. I could tell you a story on that score if you wanted. It’s one our granny tells, a hunting story that features cousins such as Tul and me.”

  And so he began to tell it, as if he couldn’t help himself. How a batch of cousins took their batch of good dogs and went way up into the hills to hunt coons. They went to a place they’d never been before, and they turned the dogs loose, and the dogs caught a scent and set to running and baying their tunes. They ran like nobody had ever heard them run before, crazed with the idea of catching whatever they were after. And caught it they did. Caught it and killed it and mangled it until it wasn’t recognizable as a coon or anything else.

  “A stunt like that gets dogs shot,” Bofrane said. “But nobody shot a dog that night. They set up camp and waited to see if the dogs would run again.”

  But the dogs didn’t run. They seemed barely inclined to try. When the cousins got hungry, one of them decided to take the tender bits that remained from the creature the dogs had killed and roast them over the fire. They ate and drank more whiskey, until one of the meaner cousins decided to get even with the dogs. When one of them slunk close to the fire, he threw it into the flames.

  Cussing and wrestling transpired because the mean cousin was not loved by any of them, but a dog had value. They only stopped their wrestling when they saw the dog at the bottom of the cliff looking as good as new.

  “You can guess what happened next,” Bofrane said. “That mean cousin bellered out a claim or two, then walked hisself right into the fire.”

  “And lived to tell about it?”

  “He ended up at the bottom of the cliff too. The rest of them was so amazed, they—”

  The boy stopped. They both heard it. The sound of something scampering through the woods, fast.

  “I hope it’s Tul,” Bofrane whispered. “Cause there ain’t no caution to its passage.”

  It was Tul, looking devious and triumphant. He waved his prize proudly, an ear of corn still steaming in its husk.

  “Oh, hell,” Bofrane said. “I should’ve knowed he was up to something. The boy’s got a weakness for roasted corn.”

  “He been robbing a washerwoman?” Hendricks asked.

  “Tul ain’t attracted to easy crime,” Bofrane said. “I expect there’s more than one of them. But Tul’s in the mood for a raid.”

  “We have a choice?”

  “Not really,” Bofrane replied. “I’ve tried walking off when he wants something. It don’t turn out so good.”

  The men were camped at a tumbledown sawmill. There were three of them lounging around a slow-burning fire. They had a pack of hounds with them, lean, sweat-crusted wraiths they’d locked in a shed. Hendricks knew who they had to be: a trio of Billy Kingery’s acquisitive bargain men. They were hunting something or someone.

  “This ain’t a good idea,” Hendricks said to Bofrane.

  “It ain’t.”

  “Why so reckless?”

  “Tul’s hungry. And it’s in our blood. Nobody ever pinned a medal on a Altice for being smart.”

  It’s said the plan was for Tul to steal the corn while the men were looking another way. He would create a distraction. And sure enough, the high-pitched screams of what sounded like a dying rabbit soon rang out from the edge of the clearing, drawing the attention of the men and their hounds. The men were tempted by the prospect of roasting rabbit with their corn, especially if they could steal it from the hawk or fox that had gotten to it first.

  Rabbit-voiced Tul appeared next to the fire quick as a snap. All he had to do was scoop up the corn and be gone. But one of the men ambled around a whipsaw platform when he was least expected. He sent up the alarm straightaway.

  It’s said Bofrane Altice revealed his hiding place out of desperation. He aimed to save his cousin. Tul had been collared by the bargain man. He was wriggling like a mudpuppy in a gill net when Hendricks also stepped into the clearing and fired his pistol. The bargain man went down, gut shot. Tul rolled clear, and Hendricks was looking for a way he and the boys could beat a retreat when he heard a sound behind him. Turning, he saw Bofrane impaled on his own sharpened gig, the victim of a second bargain man. The older cousin had flung himself into the path of the ambusher, a snake-eyed fellow as thin as fence wire, only to find himself skewered with his own weapon. Bofrane had covered Hendricks’s back, and it had cost him.

  Hendricks flushed the snake-eyed bargain man from his position behind a tree and shot him dead. He grabbed the man’s hanks of hair and cut his throat for good measure.

  There was also the third bargain man. Hendricks dared not tend to Bofrane until he was accounted for. He needn’t have worried. Tul was waiting when the third man hauled himself back into the clearing. With one stroke, Tul split the man’s skull with his wicked little hatchet. Then he returned to the first fellow, who was rooting like a pig in the dirt, blind with agony from the wound in his gut. The smaller cousin measured the man’s neck for a final blow. Behind him, the skeletal hounds flung themselves at the walls of the shed and bayed with futility into the afternoon.

  It’s said Hendricks tore at his own shirt to make some kind of bandage, but Bofrane, rigid with pain, shook his head, and Tul, lungs heaving from the ordeal of it all, shook his head also. There was nothing to be done for Bofrane. Except a swift act of mercy.

  The man Hendricks was distraught. They had risked everything for damned roasted corn. They had exposed themselves, and made a mortal enemy of Billy Kingery, and gotten Bofrane killed all at once. “You know who they was?” he shouted. “You know who’ll be coming for us now?” But his anger didn’t distract Tul Boitnott, nor move him one inch from his cousin’s side.

  Hendricks tried to steady himself. “You expect me to do it, you impulsive pup? All right then. I’ll end your cousin’s pain because he protected me when he weren’t sworn to do so. But I won’t have nothing more to do with you. You’ll get to your uncle on your own.”

  It’s said the man Hendricks then swallowed a whole string of sobs as he bent over Bofrane Altice. The boy gave permission. By the time the knife blade was placed at an angle beneath the beardless chin, the light in those amiable blue eyes was nearly gone.

  In the end, Hendricks wasn’t able to rid himself of Tul Boitnott. The boy helped loot the sawmill for weapons and supplies, although he didn’t touch the corn. He found a resting place for Bofrane in the fork of an alder tree that allowed for honorable views of sky and valley alike, and he released the confused hounds from the shed. He also declined to leave Hendricks’s side, even when he was cuffed and kicked. He didn’t have to speak. His intentions were clear. Bargain men had killed Bofrane Altice. Bargain men worked for Billy Kingery. It was time to get even with Billy Kingery.

  “You got any idea what we’re in for?” Hendricks asked. “I’m following that woman. I bet you every string on your mandolin them men was doing the same. Billy didn’t get where he’s at by making hisself vulnerable. He counts on others to make the mistakes. I’ll have to lie and sneak and playact right up to the edge of destruction to get close to him again. I’ll have to convince him he’s master. I can’t go into a fight like that with a boy—a child—who makes fool choices like the one you just made.”

  Tul observed him as if he were an empty anthill. Or a paw print pressed into dry soil. Then he faced the alder where Bofrane rested, and he looked at it for a long while, fingering the pouch he wore strapped around his neck, the one that contained the bit of mirror he used to select his paths.

  “What’s it gonna be?” asked soldier Hendricks. “Can you be a man of caution? Or are you destined to act the fool?”

  It’s said Tul Boitnott slipped his chunk of mirror from its pouch. He fixed his eyes upon his trusted coin of glass as if i
t were the deepest of deep mountain lakes. He stared into the mirror before he raised it to Hendricks’s face and bade him look at the smeared and shrunken portrait of himself reflected there. This was Tul Boitnott’s response, a question of his own: Was fickle Hendricks prepared to assess the mask of his brutality? Could he, once and for all, be true?

  He could.

  So Tul Boitnott squeezed the mirror tight between his small, capable hands until it caught no light at all. Then he looked at his partner Hendricks, and spit.

  Billy Kingery was done with delays. Irritated by Hendricks’s moony talk with the woman who lay bleeding beside the road, he raised his whip once more. He would lash Hendricks. Harshly. As many times as it took. But he was interrupted by what sounded like a loud trumpet call. The brassy, wavering notes seemed to come from all around him—from the right and the left, from the east and the west, from above and below. Then, as quickly as it had started, the trumpet stopped.

  “That’s my men,” Billy said, standing high and confident in the seat of the pony cart, the whip gripped tightly in his hands. “About damn time they got here.”

  “It ain’t your men,” Hendricks said. He was off-kilter himself. The trumpet call surprised him. He had been planning what he imagined would be a flagrant duel between himself and Billy, a reckoning staged with weapons fair and unfair where he, given his many pirate skills, might have a small chance to prevail. He felt ready, and strengthened, because the woman had learned the truth of him. He was on her side and would remain there. If he died, he died unburdened. He also knew sly Tul Boitnott was waiting in the woods in case he failed with Billy. But their plan did not involve a signal from a trumpet.

  “Blankenship is coming,” Billy declared. “With Cundiff and Conklin and the dogs. I set it up.”

  “The bugle call ain’t from them,” Hendricks said, smiling grimly. “They been delayed.”

  “Not possible.” Billy readied his whip again. “Blankenship follows my orders. You don’t know—”