by Sam Starbuck
"Ten masks will sell for a lot, though – what did they ask you for?"
He gave me a blank look. "Ten masks."
"You didn't haggle?"
"No...should I have?"
"Well, yes. It's expected."
"Ah," he said. "That explains why Gwen looked at me funny."
"Undoubtedly," I said, letting the coat fall back against the wall again.
"Doesn't matter. I feel like I got a fair price and it's not like the masks were doing me any good."
"Any news today?" the boy interrupted, leaning his elbows on my counter. I ducked back behind it.
"Nothing for your tender ears," I answered. "Unless you hadn't heard about Bertha."
"I heard she died," the boy said.
"And I've heard half-a-dozen rumors about it, but I'm not believing any of them yet," I said.
"I wouldn't take your job for the world, Christopher," Lucas told me.
"Well, it isn't for everyone," I allowed. "How can I help you today? Or are we just browsing?"
"We've just been visiting the Friendly," the boy said.
"Oh yes?" I asked.
"They want you to come have dinner. There's a big meal," he added. I glanced at Lucas, who coughed.
"Gwen said they'd like to see you at the camp," he said. "And their storyteller specifically asked about you. He wasn't happy he'd missed you when you visited earlier."
"Well, of course I'll come," I replied. "When did they say they were having it?"
Lucas and the boy exchanged a look.
"In about forty minutes," Lucas said. "Sorry about the short notice."
"Typical Friendly." I grinned. "You two keep an eye on the shop while I get my coat, all right?"
I ran up the stairs and fetched down a coat that I was given two years before – it had been pressed on me by one of Tommy's sisters, who insisted I should be paid for driving Kirchner out to save young Benjamin. Gwen said the blue brought out my eyes, but sometimes I felt it was almost too bright – like when I was walking out to The Pines with Lucas in his deep gray and the boy in a black store-bought parka. Still, the Friendly would be pleased to see me in it and it was excellent insulation against the cold.
By the time we reached the edge of town we could see thin columns of smoke rising from the cooking fires, smudging dark against an already gray sky. The trailers and cars had been arranged in a loose three-quarters circle, designed to block as much wind as possible, and it worked remarkably well: there was a moment when we passed into camp and actually felt the temperature change, the wall of warmer air enveloping us.
Gwen and Tommy greeted us with shouts, and ten-year-old Benjamin tackled me around the waist.
"You didn't say hi last time," he said. "Storyteller's mad with you."
"You big liar, no he isn't," I answered. "I had very important business to attend to. Hi, scrawny, you're growing up too fast."
"Welcome back," he grinned, before grabbing my hand to haul me over to one of the fires. Several chickens were roasting on spits over it, and a nearby flame had potatoes boiling in an enormous pot. With a wave for me, Benjamin ran off.
Seated in front of the many spit-handles was an older man with a hawk-like nose and bushy white eyebrows, a cane hung on the back of his folding chair. He was wrapped in a few layers of blankets and looked like a king surveying his lands.
"Christopher," I said, bending to shake his hand. "It's good to see you again."
"Likewise, Christopher," he replied with a grin. "Come sit with an old man. I didn't see you when we made camp."
"I snuck in," I said.
"And I was hiding from being put to work," he answered. "You, boys, you two, come here," he added to Lucas and the boy. "Can't have too much company when you're doing nothing. Keeps me from being interrupted."
"I don't believe a word of it," I said. "You're managing the whole family from your seat next to the chickens, storyteller."
"If only I had such power," he chuckled. "Come here, Lucas, sit by me if you please."
I dusted off a low wooden bench and sat down on it, the boy claiming the rest for himself in a sprawl. Lucas followed the other Christopher's gesture and sat next to him, perching unsteadily on a rickety folding chair.
"Unlike you, your friend is a very intent young scholar," Christopher said to me. "He comes every day to listen to me babble. He has, if nothing else, learned how to sit very still."
"I'm not surprised," I answered. "Lucas likes to listen. And I'd have come out sooner if I could get away, but the shop – "
"Oh, don't talk to me about shops!" Christopher laughed. "You should have come sooner, Saint."
"I'm here now," I pointed out.
"So you are. With many new stories to tell me, I imagine."
"A few," I said. "What about you?"
"Oh, lad," he said. "You should know by now all my stories are the same."
"Well, we'll see," I said. "Did Lucas tell you he played the Fire Man at Halloween this year?"
Christopher turned his shaggy head to Lucas. "He did not. Nor did you," he added to the boy. "Now, what's all this? You're not ashamed, Lucas? It's a sacred duty, you know."
"Never really came up," Lucas mumbled.
"Well, I suppose it's not to be taken or talked of lightly, but still. You should have told me," he said to the boy. "I wish we had come early enough to see it, but sometimes fate bars the way. I remember the Straw Bear from last year, though – and many years before that. We always like to come to Low Ferry for the celebration."
"We're your favorite," the boy suggested.
"Because of the Straw Bear? Well, there are other villages and even some with other festivals, but none so...potent as yours. It's good to drive out the evil before the winter starts."
"Drive out the evil," I repeated, laughing. He fixed me with a sober look.
"People are kept too closely together when the snow binds them up, especially land-owners. If there's poison, that's when you'll see it seep out. Disputes between neighbors, between a husband and wife – accusations of theft and ill intent. And in other times witchcraft, too."
"What does the Straw Bear do about it, though?" the boy asked.
"A Straw Bear," Christopher said, leaning forward, "is the spirit of evil, wrapped round a man's soul. That's why you burn the straw, you know – you take the evil away and purify it. And that's our young Fire Man there, taking joy in the purifying. And Saint Christopher too, I'd bet."
"I've never been Fire Man," I said. "It's just something fun to do on Halloween."
"Mmh, still the skeptic," he said, fixing me with a steady look. "But you had your part to play regardless."
"Oh? And what was that?" I asked.
"You carried the evil away yourself."
"Christopher!" I laughed again. "I see the boy's been telling you stories."
"But you did," the storyteller insisted. "There are times it goes into a person, deep in – "
"Are you saying I'm evil?" I cocked an eyebrow.
"No," he said, with the air of a patient parent trying to talk sense with a child. "The evils of a place. They can go into a person, but a good soul throws them off again. You have a good soul, Christopher. You carry your burdens, just like your namesake. Our namesake."
"The evil went into him?" the boy asked excitedly. He looked at me, apparently expecting my head to burst into flames.
"And out again. We're told your heart gave way," Christopher said, leaning in to examine my face.
"It's an old problem. Not worth a mention," I said.
Christopher eyed me for a while, but then he leaned back and looked at the boy.
"A long time ago," he said, with the skill and cadence that made him the caravan's storyteller, "winter was a frightening time. Not like your books say," he added to Lucas, "not because they were afraid the spring wouldn't come again. They weren't fools, and they understood the cycle of time and nature. They knew spring would come. How long the spring took in the coming, what their fo
rtunes would be when it came, whether they would survive the winter peacefully... that was frightening, eh? Uncertainty scares us. Makes us wary of each other, makes us selfish. People think they made sacrifices to please the gods, but I don't believe it. Farmers are pragmatists, like us – they have to be."
"Then why?" Lucas asked.
"Exorcism. Freedom from fear. I think a strong man took the whole of the burden of the people on himself and died to rid them of it." Christopher shook a finger at me when I opened my mouth. "I know what you think, Saint, that it's fairy tales from old men and superstitions for the gullible. We've had that argument. But you died all the same."
"The Friendly are mystics, Lucas," I said, grinning at Christopher's solemn expression. "They believe in things like curses and ghosts and the occasional god."
Lucas just gazed back at me gravely and nodded. It made me feel small, to have ridiculed an old man and expected Lucas to join in. Christopher, on the other hand, paid us no mind.
"We believe what we have reason to believe. You stay in one place for so long, you land-owners, but out in the world you might see things your books can't explain," he said. "It hurts no-one for me to believe, and helps no-one for you to be skeptical."
"No, perhaps not," I agreed. The boy's eyes were round as saucers, staring at him. Lucas looked intently thoughtful, as if an idea had just occurred to him.
"So there's no more evil to chase out this winter?" I asked indulgently.
"Not in Low Ferry," Christopher replied, smiling back. "Perhaps there will be, in time. We've heard things."
"You've heard about the twins," I said. "And Bertha."
"Two baby boys born hard when the roads were closed, the midwife dead not long after. I imagine such a thing frets at a mother."
"She'll get over it, she can't worry forever."
"Where children are concerned," Christopher said, "one can always worry. Still, things will sort themselves out," he added, standing with a grunt. "Come along. Dinner's ready."
We ate with the rest of the Friendly gathering around, elbow-to-elbow with us for the warmth the fires could give. They talked about the next village they were headed for when they broke camp at Low Ferry, and the likelihood of the roads being passable soon. Gwen mentioned that Lucas had fixed his roof himself -- I don't know when he told her that -- and that led to a debate about the best methods for insulating trailers and cars against the cold.
The Friendly are one of the few traveling clans that don't find a place to settle for the coldest winter months, but of course that gives them an advantage: they can sell their goods all summer and all winter too. And if sometimes the wind howled against the thin walls and the snow piled dangerously high against the wheels, that was only the way their life was. As charming as a road-bound existence might seem to land-owners, it takes a certain sort of mind to live the way they do.
That night there were fires and blankets to keep out the chill, stories told around the circle and plenty of good food – chicken and potatoes but also cheese and fresh bread, ginger cookies with jam, coffee and chocolate. Lucas seemed to enjoy himself, and I had no complaints. When we left, him for the cottage and me to walk the boy back to Low Ferry, he was as happy as I think I'd ever seen him.
***
Thanksgiving was not far off, and I wasn't surprised when the pastor of the Low Ferry congregation appeared in my shop the next day, with a handbill for the church's holiday dinner. What did surprise me was what else was on the program.
"Prayer meeting, Richard?" I said, looking down at it. "For the Harrisons?"
"I thought I'd tell you first," he confided. "I know you speak to everyone, Christopher, so I hope you'll spread the word about that, too."
"What, like an exorcism?" I asked, looking up at him. He looked uncomfortable.
"Well, no, just some praying, and maybe a few hymns. And the baptism, naturally."
"That's probably good," I said. "You're a nice guy and all but you don't strike me as someone who's very experienced at wrestling demons for the souls of men."
He laughed. "You've got me there. It wasn't my idea, actually – some of the elders thought it'd settle her mind, not to mention her husband's."
"Did you ask them about it first?"
"Steve thought it would be a good idea. She's too tired to think much of anything, I imagine."
"What do you think about it?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know, I'm sure. Doctrinally, of course, possessed babies are absurd. But there's a fine line between religion and sociology sometimes. Whether some malignant spirit has hold of them doesn't matter so much in the face of whether their parents believe it's true."
"You'd have made a good atheist," I said. He laughed.
"You'd have made a fine preacher. But I think we're both better where we are," he added. "Don't forget to spread the word."
"Got it all right here," I said, holding up the handbill. "See you on Thanksgiving."
Most of Low Ferry, if you ask them to remember that winter, will remember a few isolated incidents. My collapse on Halloween, unfortunately, is one of them. Another is the prayer meeting for the Harrisons, although a significant minority will remember that it was also the winter that Charles and Richard decided, in their infinite wisdom, to deep-fry the Thanksgiving turkeys for the church dinner.
"How bad do you suppose this is going to be?" Lucas whispered to me, as most of the village stood around the church parking lot in the cold, hands tucked in our armpits, stomping our feet to keep warm. In the middle of the throng stood two enormous metal drums with electric burners glowing bright red beneath them.
"Oh, no, there's no way this is going to be bad," I said. "Either we're going to be eating fried turkey for dinner or we're going to watch two grown men set themselves on fire. It's really win-win, if you ask me."
"I heard that if you try to fry a frozen turkey it can explode," the boy said placidly, standing next to Lucas. In front of us, Richard and Charles had each picked up their turkey by the thick bailing wire tied around their legs.
"Ready?" Charles said cheerfully. "On three!"
Several parents pulled their children further back, and the edges of the crowd withdrew slightly. Paula, standing behind me, grabbed the back of my shirt and tried to pull me away.
"Don't faint again!" she hissed.
"I'm not going to faint!" I retorted.
"One! Two! Three!"
They lowered the turkeys in unison into the oil, which immediately began to spit and hiss. There was an ungratifying lack of fire, however, and once both Charles and Richard had released the wire and stepped back from the frying drums we all decided that watching turkeys fry was a lot less entertaining than watching them explode. Nearly everyone wandered back into the church fairly quickly.
Fried turkey is actually very good.
We were in joyful spirits that evening, between the successful turkeys and the rest of the meal. Even Lucas smiled at the jokes running around our portion of the communal table, and actually spoke to Carmen long enough to ask for the mashed potatoes and agree that the gravy was good. Technically there shouldn't have been any alcohol, but several battered flasks circulated under the tables while the good Pastor Richard turned an indulgently blind eye.