Wrack and Rune

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Hey, Professor Shandy! Wait, we want to—”

  “Her name is Jessica Tate,” he roared back, and stamped on the gas pedal with all his might.

  Helen was standing looking out the window when he got home. From the relief on her face as she flung the door open and ran down the steps to greet him, he could see how worried she’d been.

  “What’s the matter?” he growled into her hair, knowing full well that their next-door neighbor Mirelle Feldster was lurking behind her living room curtains watching him embrace his wife right out in the open, and not giving a damn what Mirelle thought about this display of wanton conjugality. “Did you think Orm had got me?”

  “Well, after what I’ve been hearing about that poor Swope boy—arms and legs all over the road and practically at death’s door, they say—”

  “Who’s they?”

  “People who came into the library.”

  “Well, you can tell them that when last seen, to be exact about fifteen minutes ago, that poor Swope boy was infesting Henny Horsefall’s hen coop with a television crew.”

  “My stars! Hurry, let’s put on the news.”

  “I’m not sure I want to.”

  Peter’s protest availed him nothing. Helen had him into the den, settled in his armchair with his feet up and a gin and tonic in his hand, and the set turned on in front of him, all more or less in one movement.

  They’d missed the first part of the report, but were in time to see Henny Horsefall and Miss Hilda standing there like strays from a Grant Wood painting while the announcer panted, “So does the curse of the runestone actually exist? Was the bizarre death of Spurgeon Lumpkin due to some malignant force emanating from that eerie oak grove on the old logging road? Why did the young reporter who braved the Viking’s wrath have such a narrow escape from sudden death? Is the eminent Swedish archaeologist Dr. Sven Svenson yet another of the rune-stone’s victims? Stay tuned for the next thrilling—I mean, Channel 2½ will be following this story very carefully. Mr. Swope, do you have any final word for our viewers?”

  Cronkite, who was looking as white as his bandage and probably had sneaked out of the hospital while the doctor wasn’t looking, grabbed the microphone. “Yes. I want to beg everybody to stay the heck away from here. The Horsefalls have been through enough already and it was my fault for breaking the story and look where it got me. I don’t know what’s happening here, but all I can say is—”

  Whatever it was, Swope never got to say it. He folded neatly to the ground. As Miss Hilda bent over him, her words were carried distinctly to the vast listening public.

  “Vikin’ curse, my backside! I been livin’ next to that runestone for a hundred an’ five years an’ it never brung me nothin’ I didn’t go lookin’ for, did it? Haul ’is carcass in on the kitchen cot an’ I’ll ladle a swig o’ my homemade gin into ’im. If that don’t perk ’im up, he’s a goner for sure.”

  “Good God, you don’t give alcohol to a concussion victim!”

  Shandy leaped for the phone, but the Horsefalls’ line was already busy. Either Cronkite’s mother had beaten him to the draw or young Swope was in the hands of the Norse gods. He hoped Odin, Freya, and the rest of the Valhalla crowd were a match for Miss Hilda.

  “Sit down, Peter,” said Helen. “That boy looks like a pretty sturdy specimen to me. How went the battle today?”

  “Uncle Sven got levitated and Fergy has a real nice little lady from Florida cooking his turkey Tetrazzini.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I’m telling, drat it. Give me time to sort out my thoughts.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Helen sipped her own drink. After a while, Peter began his narrative. At last he said, “So that’s where we stand as of this moment, to the best of my knowledge. Does any of this make sense to you?”

  “No, dear. I’d say the surveyor did it.”

  “You mean a Balaclava student? That nice young Lewis chap who wants to grow apples?”

  “Why not? He’s the unlikeliest suspect, isn’t he?”

  “You forget the geese.”

  “So I do. Perhaps you should take a gander at them.”

  “Thank you for those words of sage counsel, my love. And how are things among the bookworms?”

  “Peter, you can’t imagine how exciting it is! I made another—no, Jane. Mustn’t sharpen those little claws on Mummy’s legs. Go to Daddy. As I was trying to say, I made another tremendous find today.”

  “A mint copy of Poe’s Tamerlane?”

  “Nothing so paltry. I was prowling through a boxful of old postcards and valentines, which could be worth a good deal to collectors, by the way, and came across Belial Buggins’s private diaries.”

  “Belial? You mean the Buggins who donated the library? I thought his name was Bedivere.”

  “It was. Belial was Bedivere’s brother the poet.”

  “Didn’t know he had one. Helen, this creature is eating the buttons off my shirt.”

  “Then stop her. They’ll make her sick. Come on, Jane, let’s have some milk and cookies.”

  She scooped the ball of striped fluff off her husband’s chest and carried it out to the kitchen. “That’s why this find is so important. To me, anyway. Wait a second. Jane dear, do take your paws out of the saucer. Nobody knows what a mother goes through.”

  Helen came back with a plate of cheese and crackers. “It’s only salad and cold meat tonight, so eat hearty. Peter, Belial was the most amazing man! He taught himself Finnish so that he could read the Kalevala in the original. Can you believe it? Right here in Balaclava County.”

  “And why not in Balaclava County? Every country schoolmaster spoke Greek and Latin in those days.”

  “That’s pure academic chauvinism and you know it. Half of them probably couldn’t have got through McGuffey’s fifth reader. Finnish is an incredibly difficult language. That’s why Finns tend to stand around looking handsome and not saying anything. I knew the most divinely stunning Finnish boy once. His name was Paali. I’d have followed him to the ends of the earth.”

  “Why didn’t you?” snarled Peter.

  “My mother wouldn’t have let me. Besides, I don’t recall his ever making the suggestion. All he ever uttered were things like ‘Shut up and go back to bed.’”

  “Good God! What for?”

  “Because my brothers were making a racket, no doubt. They usually did. He was our baby-sitter. I was about eight at the time.”

  “That, madam, is the anticlimax of the day. Unless of course you were about to tell me what Belial did after he’d read the Kalevala in the original Finnish.”

  “I was but I shan’t if you’re going to be nasty.”

  “It’s just my insane jealousy,” Peter replied through a mouthful of cracker. “Continue your narrative. Did he spend the rest of his life looking handsome and not saying anything?”

  “No, he wrote a saga, like Longfellow only not the same.”

  “How not the same?”

  “Well, I’m afraid a great deal less poetically, for one thing. He swiped from Hiawatha like mad and injected a sort of pseudo-mysticism that Grace and I couldn’t make much sense of.”

  “Such as what?” Peter had a passion for doggerel.

  “I knew you’d ask, so I copied down the first bit.” Helen fished a crumpled sheet of paper out of her skirt pocket. “He begins:

  “By the brook of Balaclava,

  By the spirit-stirring waters

  Stands the bearded bard Belial,

  Man of mettle, man of moonshine.

  Still he stands, yet still he runneth—

  “Peter, surely you don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense?”

  “Ah, but I do, my little lotus blossom.” Shandy rose to kiss his wife chastely on the forehead. “Belial was no mystic, just a bit of a card. Try connecting the words ‘spirit,’ ‘moonshine,’ and ‘still,’ and what do you get?”

  “A dreadful hangover, I suppose,” Helen replied, flushing a most beco
ming pink. “Is it Grace’s and my fault that we have such pure, innocent minds? He even spelled it ‘metal,’ referring, I suppose, to all those old washtubs and copper tubing or whatever that he made his distillery out of. I thought he meant bravery and was just mentally confused from reading all that Finnish.”

  “No Buggins was ever confused unless he chose to be. There’s been a legend around campus for eons, give or take a few decades, that it was a Buggins who invented the Balaclava Boomerang.* Your find may promote the Boomerang from myth to history. We must research this matter in depth, my love.”

  “You research it. I have to go research the dinner. You needn’t think you’re going to sit there swilling gin all evening.”

  “And who gave me the gin to swill, prithee? Did I ask for it, even?”

  “No, but you would have. Darling, you don’t have to go back to the Horsefall place again tonight, do you?”

  “I hope not. After that broadcast, I expect the state police will be out patrolling the area, since the Lumpkinton police don’t seem to be doing anything but—what’s that?”

  They hadn’t turned off the television set. A moment ago it had been emitting those commercials for laxatives and clogged sink drains that advertisers deem so eminently suitable for mealtime viewing. Halfway down a drain, a scared-looking announcer was suddenly back in front of the camera.

  “We interrupt this commercial to report that there’s been an alarming new development at the Horsefall farm. An explosion of undetermined origin has blown a huge crater behind the barn where Spurgeon Lumpkin’s recent horrible death occurred, killing several geese and injuring our television cameraman as well as an eminent scientist who was in the act of taking soil samples for—”

  “My God! It’s Tim.” Shandy leaped for the door.

  Helen tried to hold him back. “Peter, wait. At least eat something.”

  He grabbed another slice of cheese. “I did. Helen, I’ve got to go.”

  “Then I’m going with you. “

  “No you’re not. One of us has to stay alive, for Jane’s sake. Keep the home fires burning.”

  It was no use. He could run a great deal faster than she. Sighing, Helen went back to the kitchen wondering why men had to be heroes and why women loved those adorable knuckleheads so. She ate a little of the salad and cold meat, let Jane climb up into her lap, and sat pondering. As she stroked the kitten’s satin ears, an idea stirred. She moved Jane to a cushion, found her private set of keys to the college library, and went to do some more research.

  * The Balaclava Boomerang is a potion composed of locally hardened cider and locally produced cherry brandy. Please do not request the recipe, because you would not be able to obtain the proper ingredients outside Balaclava County and it wouldn’t come out right no matter how hard you tried.

  Chapter 18

  “BUT I’M PROFESSOR SHANDY.”

  “I don’t care if you’re the King of Norway. You can’t go in there.”

  For once the Lumpkinton chief of police was on the job and giving it all he had. The whole area from the logging road up to the Horsefalls’ was roped off and men were patrolling it in full riot gear, probably borrowed from the National Guard. Perhaps they were the National Guard. In any event, they formed what appeared to be an impregnable barrier until Laurie Ames happened to run down from the house.

  “Professor Shandy, we’ve been looking everywhere for you. Daddy Ames is frantic. He thinks you were killed in the explosion. Can you come quickly, before he frets himself into a heart attack?”

  Not even taking time to throw the vigilantes a triumphant look, Shandy broke through the barricade. “How bad is he?” he panted.

  “I can’t tell if he’s in shock or simply drunk as a skunk,” Laurie told him. “Miss Hilda’s been dosing him with that homemade white lightning of hers.”

  “Great Scott! Has he seen a doctor?”

  “They sent an ambulance unit with a couple of paramedics over from Hoddersville General to pick up the bodies, but they’re sitting around the kitchen table right now, eating Jolene’s layer cake and playing high-low-jack. The hospital keeps calling to see where they are, but they’re having too much fun to leave.”

  Shandy said “Great Scott!” again and ran into the house.

  Timothy Ames was, at any rate, not dead, He was bellowing like Bashan in a slightly slurred voice. “Where’s Pete? For Christ’s sake, haven’t they found him yet?”

  Following the roars, Shandy found his old friend stretched out on a bed upstairs, being held down by his son, Roy.

  “Dad, you’ve got to—oh, Professor Shandy! Thank God you’re here. Can you get him to quiet down?”

  Shandy grabbed his comrade’s horny, soil-dyed hand. “Tim,” he bellowed, “I’m fine. Are you hooked up?”

  Ames managed a grin. “I can hear you, Pete. I’m hooked up and stove up. Twisted my lumbago trying to get away. Whole damn manure pile whizzing at me. Hell of a way to go. Least Henny won’t have to spread any fertilizer for a while. Must be knee-deep all over hell and gone. Miss Hilda gave me a bath. I think she put one of her nightgowns on me. I’m afraid to look.”

  “I gave you a bath, Dad,” Roy said, looking as if he might have been crying a little. “And that’s Henny’s spare nightshirt you’re wearing. Miss Hilda only supervised. She wasn’t much impressed, I’m afraid. She says you young squirts don’t have enough of what it takes.”

  “Thank God for small favors. Speaking of squirts, what happened to the kid? Is he all right? Saved my life, I think. Reflexes faster than mine. Got between me and the flak.”

  “He’s okay, Dad. The last I saw of him, he was out under the hose and his mother was having fits.”

  “Don’t wonder. Knows a lot more about organic fertilizing now than he wishes he did, I’ll bet. Pete, we’ve got to wangle that kid a scholarship. I’ll foot the bills and you fix it with Svenson.”

  “You’re talking about young Ralphie Horsefall?”

  “Great-nephew’s kid. Skinny runt who comes to muck out for Henny. Got the makings of a farmer, Pete. Where the hell were you?”

  “I’m ashamed to say that I’d gone home without telling you. Helen and I were watching the news on television. That whelp Swope had a camera crew over here, as you no doubt know, and they broke in with a report on the explosion. When I heard you’d been …” Shandy’s voice, for some reason, deserted him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “What actually did happen?”

  “Told you. Manure pile blew up. I was showing the kid how the soil in that area was overrich because of the leaching of trace elements. Next thing we knew there was this sort of gurgling whoosh and the horse buns started flying. First time I’ve ever seen that happen and I’ve been around a hell of a lot of dung piles. Orm’s got a crude sense of humor, if you ask me.”

  “Good God! Are they laying this on the Viking curse, too?”

  “Why not? Think I’ll shut my eyes a minute if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, Tim.”

  Shandy gave the shoulder under Henny’s spare nightshirt a clumsy pat and tiptoed out of the room. Roy followed him and shut the door.

  “He’s going to be okay, Professor Shandy. It’s mostly shock. I’m a little shook up myself. Dad doesn’t realize what a narrow squeak he and Ralphie had. If they’d been a few feet nearer and Ralphie hadn’t kept his head, I—I guess I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Neither do I, Roy. What’s your opinion of the Orm theory?”

  “Orm, hell! We had to do a little blasting in the Antarctic when we got stuck in ice packs, and of course it had to be done carefully on account of the ecological balance, not to mention blowing a hole in our hull. I think I know the effect of a well-placed charge when I see it. Come around and have a look for yourself. I don’t know whether the state police bomb squad is there yet, but if they’re not they damn well ought to be. I’ve been raising a worse stink than the explosion did, and that’s going some, I can tell you.”

  Shandy
didn’t have to be told. Even up at the house, the aroma of ancient cow dung hung on the air stronger than that of sweat socks in the men’s gym after a track meet. As they moved down toward the barn it became, though Shandy would not have thought this possible, even more pronounced.

  “Watch where you step, Professor.”

  Roy’s caution was a waste of breath. The bare patches were too far between to be of any use. Veteran of the rutabaga fields though he was, Shandy found himself treading gingerly as a cat on a wet lawn.

  Now he could see the barn, looking oddly incomplete without that immense greasy brown sloping mass at the rear. A dark stain over most of the back wall provided visual evidence that the manure heap had in fact been there when he’d last looked, and Shandy was interested to notice that not one of the barnboards was so much as cracked or splintered by the explosion.

  The news report had grossly exaggerated the extent of the crater, but there was a depression a couple of feet deep and roughly fifteen feet in diameter. There were also a good many gray and white feathers around, testifying to the demise of the Lewises’ geese. Henny Horsefall was standing beside the hole looking like a gone gander himself.

  Of the bomb squad there was as yet no sign. Roy uttered an imprecation. Shandy stepped forward, his nostrils now so numb that he could take a breath without too much effort of will, and peered into the crater. There wasn’t actually anything to see except torn-up, nutrient-saturated earth and a few blown feathers. He turned his attention to the surrounding area.

  On the whole there appeared to be more mess than serious damage. Flying manure had more or less buried the hen house and knocked down some fence posts, but that situation could be remedied easily enough. He walked over to one of the tilted posts and tripped over a trailing wire that was all but buried in ordure. A disagreeable tingly sensation shot up his leg.

  “Horsefall,” he yelped, “did you know you have a charged wire here?”