Old Order
By Jonathan Janz
Copyright 2010 by Jonathan Janz and Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Copyright 2010 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright, and has granted permission to the publisher to enforce said copyright on their behalf.
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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Old Order
By Jonathan Janz
A man calling himself Horace Yoder lumbered up the road toward an old white farmhouse. His breathing was labored, his strides nearly a stagger. His big leather boots scuffed the dusty road almost as though he were drunk.
Horace paused, winced up at the sun, and thought, Lord, it’s sweltering out here.
It’s what he hated most about the country. Near a coast or a lake there was breeze. Here, nestled between cornfields and forests, he felt oppressed, enveloped by a suffocating canopy of heat.
His heart pounded, squeezed, pounded, squeezed. He could almost see it in there, a swollen red lump like a masticated wad of steak. Last time he’d visited a doctor—six years ago concerning a suspicious lump under his right testicle—he’d been told he needed to lose at least sixty pounds. The doctor rambled on about cholesterol, heart disease, several other looming calamities, but Horace had long since ceased worrying about things that could kill him twenty years from now. After all, he was still on the right side of forty, if only by a few months, and if he began to feel bad on a regular basis, well, he’d think about reforming then. For the time being he could cope with being winded on long walks and ride out the occasional heart palpitation.
Nearing the farmhouse he noted the numerous outbuildings beyond it. Not a prosperous farm, but not a dying one either. Here and there Horace spotted signs of inattention. The awning on the western side of the house canted slightly, the braces supporting it likely rusted through. A basement window was missing, replaced by a ragged scrap of tarpaper. The porch itself seemed to sink into the ground like a capsized raft. For a moment, Horace considered moving on to the next house. A place like this, they might want a man to work like hell to earn his keep, and that certainly wouldn’t do.
He rubbed the thin line of chin whiskers—ridiculous looking but absolutely necessary—and his fingers came away wet. He peered up the road but could only see a hundred yards of cornfield. Beyond that, more woods. More walking.
To hell with it, he thought. This house would have to do.
Checking to make sure his black hat was on straight, Horace stepped from the dusty road to the yard and saw how the grass here was browning. It crunched under his big leather boots. Horace climbed the sinking porch and took off his hat.
He knocked on the screen door and waited. As he stood, his shoulders slightly hunched, he noticed a hornets’ nest in one of the oak trees beside the house. Gray, a series of bloated loops, the nest looked like something from a children’s book. It did not appear dangerous at all, but Horace had seen what happened when one was disturbed. Scary things, hornets. Fatter than wasps and more persistent. You angered a wasp, it buzzed around and eventually lost interest.
Not hornets. They could be vindictive as angry women, pursuing a man for miles, their lazy, looping flight paths belying the danger contained in their stings.
The wooden inner door opened and a short, wiry man asked, “Car break down?”
Through the dark gray screen Horace studied the man’s face a moment—dark complexion, prominent cheekbones—and said, “I don’t own a car, sir. I’m just looking for a place to work for a meal and maybe a bed for the night.”
The man’s dark eyes—he had to be some kind of Indian or something—narrowed to slits.
“I’m a good worker,” Horace went on. “I can do odd jobs, fix things.”
The man continued staring at him, dark eyes baleful. Horace couldn’t tell if it was impatience or outright hostility baking out of the man, but either one meant it was probably time to go.
He’d begun to turn when the man asked, “What’s a big ox like you doing going door to door, especially on a day like this?”
Horace shrugged. “A man’s got to eat.”
“Don’t you have money?”
Horace caressed the brim of the hat held before him. “Not since I left my people.”
“Your people?” the man asked. “What are you, a Quaker?”
The man’s teeth were very white, very small.
Staring at them, Horace said, “No, sir. My people live up Camden way.”
“Camden,” the man said, his voice losing some of its hardness. “Don’t tell me you’re an Amish.”
Horace nodded humbly. “Old Order, sir.”
A change came over the man. “Old Order? Well, why the hell didn’t you say so?” Stepping aside. “Come on in and let me take that hat. You look like you should be giving the Gettysburg Address.”
Horace surrendered his hat and entered a handsome farmhouse, far nicer than the exterior indicated. He’d put the building at turn of the century, but looking around at the antique finery—the hand-hewn rafters, the wainscoting—he changed his estimate to the mid-1800s. The décor, too, was well preserved. Brocade chairs. A dining table polished so bright you could barely look at it. Near the back of the dining room he could see a grandfather clock with an ornate full bonnet. The clock, Horace estimated, would probably fetch over five grand at auction, but it was worth far more than that in an antique store.
Like Horace’s.
He did his best not to appear interested, but it took an effort.
“McCarrick.”
Horace blinked at the man, whose hand was now extended.
“Daniel McCarrick,” the wiry man repeated, “but most people just call me McCarrick.”
Horace shook, gave him his name. “This place yours?”
McCarrick was nearly a foot shorter than Horace, but when you topped out at well over six and a half feet, nearly everyone was.
“It’s the family’s,” McCarrick answered.
Horace nodded. “It’s nice.”
“It’s home,” McCarrick said and led Horace deeper into the house.
They passed a staircase and a parlor. What furnishings he glimpsed in the parlor were even more valuable than the ones in the dining room. His heart galloped but he kept a bland expression.
They made their way into a common room in the rear of the house where a mountainous spill of womanhood sat in a huge leather chair knitting a blanket. She had graying hair and a large bosom. Horace put her at sixty-five or seventy, but her movements were vigorous, assured.
“What do we have here?” she said.
McCarrick introduced the woman as Grandma Shirley.
She looked up from her knitting. “I suppose you’ll be wanting dinner.”
Horace folded his hands in front of him. “Mr. McCarrick and I were discussing that possibility.”
“My son’s name is Daniel,” the woman said, frowning. “Mister McCarrick died many years ago.”
Horace bowed his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
An appraising look softened her face. “As a matter of fact,”
she went on, “you favor him.”
“Come meet my wife,” McCarrick said.
They were passing the staircase on the way to the kitchen when Horace froze.
Poised at the top of the stairs was a goddess.
McCarrick said, “Come on down and meet our dinner guest, Susan.” Then, to Horace: “My daughter.”
Horace couldn’t speak. The girl descending the stairs was the answer to his prayers, if salivating over girlie magazines could be called praying. Long-legged, blonde, a simple light blue dress the only thing she wore—Christ, even her feet were bare, the tips of her toes pink as cotton candy. Susan McCarrick was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Swan-like neck, supple brown cleavage. The dress hugged her a little around the hips, but that was alright. She was curvy but nowhere near overweight. The long dark legs were smooth and shining, as though newly shaven.
Drawing himself up to his full height, Horace held out his hand. On the bottom step, eye level with him, Susan shook his hand, smiled through slightly parted lips.
“Welcome to Eleusis,” she said.
She stepped off the bottom stair and surprised him with her height. If she wasn’t six feet tall, she was just shy of it.
She turned to her father. “I’m going outside to wash up.”
“Make sure you dump that basin,” McCarrick said.
“I always do.”
Without another word, Susan departed down the hall.
Throat dry, Horace followed McCarrick into the kitchen where a woman was peeling potatoes. She turned when they entered and Horace saw where Susan got her looks. Daniel McCarrick’s wife was a large woman but lovely all the same. Horace took in her ample bosom, her stout legs.
Something glinted in his periphery.
On the windowsill above the sink he spotted a diamond ring. Not a huge rock, but bigger than he would have expected. It was worth eight thousand at least, perhaps ten.
“This is my wife Belinda,” McCarrick said.
Horace introduced himself and prepared to make conversation. It was nearing four o’clock, and if he played it right, there’d be no work before supper.
Belinda McCarrick wiped her hands on a blue apron and smiled. A warm smile, but not as exhilarating as Susan’s. “I’m glad you’ve come, Mr. Yoder.”
Horace glanced at a big black pot sitting on the stove. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Of course not,” she said.
McCarrick crossed the kitchen and lifted the lid of the black pot. “What’s this, some kind of stew?”
Belinda ignored her husband and said to Horace, “You look like my father.”
Horace said, “Your mother was say—”
“Deek’s outside,” McCarrick cut in. “He’s who you’ll be working with, Mr. Yoder. I suspect you’ll find him around the hog pens.”
Horace’s toes went numb. He remembered the way his daddy used to ride out the cows he butchered, the big man astraddle the dying beasts as the lifeblood spurted out of their slit throats. Daddy would just laugh, the weakening cow between his legs starting to crumple, its blood and breath spent in the viscid barnyard mud. And when it was over, his Daddy would look up at Horace and Horace’s brother Louis, the latter whooping and hollering atop the wooden fence planking, Horace himself half concealed in the shadows of the barn. The blood spray on Daddy’s face gave him a crazed look, so unlike his usual surly stoicism. Daddy would ignore Louis and pick out Horace with those cold blue eyes, daring Horace to scream, daring him to race for the safety of the adjacent woods. But Horace could only stand there, half-hidden by the splintery barn door, and pray that Daddy would take his inability to move for courage.
Belinda McCarrick was staring at him, her pretty face full of concern. “Is anything wrong, Mr. Yoder?”
With an effort, he kept his voice steady. “You have livestock?”
Sipping from a wooden spoon, McCarrick paused. “Course we have livestock, Yoder. What’d you think we do here, sell insurance?”
“Deek Flowers is our hired man,” Belinda went on. “He’ll show you what work’s to be done. Dinner won’t be ready for a while anyway, so you’ll have plenty of good daylight to work.”
Son of a bitch, Horace thought.
But he smiled and said, “Thank you, Mrs. McCarrick. I’m glad to help out.”
* * *
Horace found Deek Flowers just inside the ferring house door slopping the pigs. Despite a broad frame, the man was even skinnier than Daniel McCarrick; his flannel shirt and jeans hung loose from his knobby hips and elbows and gave him the look of an emaciated troll.
When he saw Horace approach, he put his slop-slicked hands on his hips. “You the next victim?” he asked in a voice that reminded Horace of a hinge that wanted oil.
“I’m here to assist you, I guess.”
“Lotta jobs to be done,” Deek said as he lowered a shovel into a huge bucket of flyblown swill. He carried the shovelful of food inside the ferring house, and a moment later Horace heard the grateful smacking of pigs.
He shivered, glad to be in the sunlight.
When the farmhand emerged, Horace asked, “Why are you slopping them in the ferring house, trying to spoil them?”
Deek grinned, his teeth crooked and spotted with yellow and brown. “That ain’t far from the truth. They don’t like eating outside when it’s this hot. McCarrick says to wait ’em out, but I know how stubborn they are. They’d rather starve than set foot out of doors in this heat.”
Horace listened to them eating. “Doesn’t sound like you have many.”
“Seven,” Deek acknowledged.
“Why so few?”
Deek shrugged. “They’re not for selling. Other farms around here got plenty more hogs than McCarrick.”
“What else you guys raise?” Horace asked. “Wheat?”
Deek nodded and produced a wrinkled bag of chewing tobacco. Stuffing a leafy wad into his cheek, he pointed toward the field beyond the barn. “That’s our first job today. The grain drain on the combine’s bent.”
Horace ran a forearm across his brow to keep the sweat out of his eyes, but accomplished the opposite. Blinking at the salt sting, he said, “How the hell did it get bent?”
Deek giggled. “McCarrick wasn’t watching where he was going and ran right into a fencerow.” He spat. “Too cheap to buy a new part, so we gotta unbend it.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“I sit on the drain, you crowbar it up.”
Horace sighed. “There’s got to be a better way.”
Deek spat, wiped his mouth. “You think of one, Professor, let me know.”
“Dinner’s going to be ready soon,” Horace said and glanced back at the house. “Maybe we shouldn’t tackle a job that big until tomorrow morning.”
“Oh no,” Deek said and shot him a crafty look. “I know how you guys operate.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ll be gone by first light, a meal in your belly and your hands as soft as when you came.”
Horace squared up to him. It really wasn’t hard to summon indignation, even if Deek had him pegged.
“It sounds to me,” Horace said, “like you’re calling me a liar.” He stepped close, letting the skinny man get a good view of his girth. “You want to keep up your bullshit, we can settle this now.”
The crafty expression lingered a moment before Deek looked away. “Ah, don’t get sore.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Come on, buddy. I got something that’ll help your mood.”
Deek led him past the big red barn to a smaller outbuilding. Opening a screen door, he led Horace into a primitive bunkroom with a dirt floor. There were single beds on either side of the room and a small television with rabbit ears sitting atop a beat-up dresser. On the southern wall there was a faded painting of a half-naked woman holding several wheat plants in one hand. The woman’s white robe had slipped down her torso to reveal a small but well-formed pair of breasts.
Horac
e approached for a closer look.
It looked old. Really old. Had the piece been in better shape it might have been worth something. Even so, it was incongruous here in Deek’s grubby bunkroom.
The farmhand nodded to one of the beds, which was just a mattress laying on a flimsy framework of wire coils. “That one’s yours. I got an extra blanket in my dresser.”
Horace stared at the bed. “I thought this was supposed to help my mood.”
“That ain’t what I was talking about,” the farmhand said. He spat on the dirt floor, crossed to the dresser.
Horace looked around. “Don’t tell me you stay here year round?”
Deek came out with a brown wool blanket. Tossing it on the bed, he said, “I got my wood burning stove. The place stays warm enough.”
Horace frowned at the bed. “I’d rather sleep in the ferring house.”
“Now hold on,” Deek said. “Just step over here a second before you get too anxious to go.”
Horace waited as the skinny farmhand went over and lifted the painting of the Greek woman off the wall. A thin shaft of daylight peeked through. Intrigued, he moved up next to the farmhand, who was peering through a small hole in the wall at whatever lay beyond. When Deek glanced up at him, his gray eyes were shining weirdly, his lips pulled back in a grin that showed how far his gums had receded.
“Take a gander, Hoss.”
Horace did and felt his insides go warm and queasy. Susan McCarrick, hauntingly, achingly beautiful Susan McCarrick was sitting fully nude on a wooden stool, her back to them. The southern exterior of the bunkhouse, apparently, was a lean-to used for equipment storage. There was a riding mower, an orange chainsaw perched on a pair of sawhorses, an ancient-looking snow blower, as well as several other small machines.
And, of course, there was Susan.
She was squeezing a yellow sponge over one shoulder, the sudsy water darkening her skin, little trickles of it crawling down her back and wetting the crack of her ass.
Horace found it difficult to breathe.
“Ain’t she a peach?” Deek said, too loud by half.
Horace shot the farmhand a fierce look. Then he turned back to Susan, who stood, her buttocks round and healthy and not at all fat.
Horace watched, a pleasant sick sensation squirming around his belly. She bent, dipped the sponge in the metal basin, and slowly washed her arms, her neck. She half-turned and ran the yellow sponge over each breast, the nipples hardening at the cool kiss of the water.
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