Mad Boy

by Nick Arvin

  Franklin says, “He’ll kill you.”

  “Indeed,” Morley says. “I’ll send a ball through her brains.”

  “Keep those coins for our child, or I swear I’ll kill you,” Mary says.

  “I’m going to throw them,” Franklin says to Morley.

  “I’m going to kill you!” Mary shouts.

  Franklin throws the sacks, one after the other.

  Mary hangs her head. Morley grabs the sacks and ogles the contents.

  Henry has been gaping, but now he yells with frustration, pounds his feet in the river, punches himself on the top of the head. “You can’t do this, Morley! It’s not fair!” He comes out of the water and starts up the bluff, but the muddy loose earth crumbles under him.

  Morley unties Libro, swings up, jams his heels into Libro’s flanks. Libro snorts and kicks before he starts forward.

  “Libro!” Mary calls. She’s standing where Morley left her. She whistles sharply.

  Morley has the pistol in one hand while with the other he strains to balance the two sacks of coins atop the horse. He kicks and bellows, “God damn it!” But Libro wheels round toward Mary.

  Libro doesn’t move any closer, however. He only stands trembling while Morley works him with his knees. “Shake him off, Libro!” Mary calls. “Throw him!” Libro bends his knees and vibrates like a frightened rabbit. Morley looks down fearfully. Mary shouts, “Throw him! Throw him!”

  Morley glances around wildly and his gaze falls to the pistol in his hand, as if he had forgotten it. Scowling, he aims at Mary, and fires.

  Mary falls, making no sound. The discharge startles Libro: he shrieks and rears while Morley bends over the sacks and clings desperately. Libro comes to ground, leaps, and races into the woods with Morley riding almost sideways, his head narrowly missing the first tree that goes by.

  Franklin finally reaches the top of the bluff and runs to Mary, bellowing like a wounded bull. Henry follows.

  As they near, Mary pushes herself to sitting. “I don’t think it hit bone.” Her left leg bleeds from the thigh. “Libro was always a stupid one,” she says. She grimaces at Franklin and Henry. “You have to go.”

  Franklin stares aghast. “We must bind it.”

  “I’ll do that. You can catch him.”

  “He has Libro,” Henry says.

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ll take the river to the bridge and catch him there. He has to follow the road around the swamp, which will take him much longer, and he has to wrestle Libro back first. He’s going the wrong way just now.”

  “We have no boat,” Franklin says. “And I’m a bad swimmer.”

  Mary says, “The barrel.”

  “The barrel?” Henry says. “Mother’s in the barrel.”

  Mary pushes to her feet, hobbles two paces, then screams with pain and frustration, grabs her leg. She glares at Henry. “Don’t act the ninny. Go!”

  After opening the latches, Henry takes a breath. “I’m sorry,” he says. Mother says nothing, which worries him. But he topples the barrel onto its side on the ground. The body doesn’t come out. Franklin takes the barrel from him, lifts it upside down, shakes it.

  Still Mother stays inside.

  “She’s swollen a bit,” Henry says.

  Franklin jolts the barrel again, and Mother slides out.

  She lies on the ground, lips pulled from leering teeth, neck swollen like a goiter, skin of her hands limp around the bones, eyeballs low in the sockets.

  “Mother?” Henry says. When he found her spilled out at Bladensburg, he had somehow set her back into the barrel without really examining her condition.

  She stares, hideous and silent.

  Franklin starts to close the barrel, but Henry stops him, puts Mother’s dress inside, then seals it. “Mother,” Henry says, “do you mind if you are left here, a little while?”

  She says nothing.

  Henry cringes, but turns away. “She wants us to get the coins and her grandson,” he says.

  Franklin rips a board off the cart for an oar. They roll the barrel into the river, and Henry climbs atop with the board while Franklin hangs off the side by one arm.

  The water runs narrow and swift here. There’s little use paddling, and Henry watches the land slide past. Franklin asks, “Do you hear Mother now?”

  Henry shakes his head. “I don’t know why, but she’s quiet.”

  After a while Franklin says, “Do you think you really have gone mad?”

  Henry says, “No.”

  Franklin considers. “Isn’t that what a madman would say?”

  “No,” Henry says. “If you ask a madman if he’s mad, he’ll say, ‘Handsaw!’ or yip like a fox or blow his nose on your foot.”

  The stream discharges into slow water, spreading into a wide area of reeds and cattails on either side. Henry pushes with the board. Franklin kicks his feet. For more than an hour they work grimly onward. Henry streams with sweat, and he finds mosquitoes in his nose and ears. At times the water is shallow, and Franklin puts his feet down and pushes the barrel. They climb over a beaver dam, Franklin carrying the barrel. Here the stream narrows again. Soon they see the log bridge that they passed over in the morning.

  Franklin lifts the barrel onto shore. They climb dripping to the road. “He may have already gone by,” Franklin says. “He may go a different way.”

  “He doesn’t know this territory well. He’ll stay to the road.”

  “I don’t know what to do about his pistol,” Franklin says.

  “All you have to do is hide in some bushes and jump on him.”

  “I can’t jump on a man on a horse.”

  “He’ll climb down.”

  “Why would he?”

  Henry opens the barrel, takes out Mother’s gingham dress. “He was cursed with a poverty of will against the tender sex.”

  Henry plucks a raspberry with his right hand, eats it. His left hand is full of berries. “It’s difficult to pick these berries,” he complains. “If I pick all the berries there won’t be any berries to pick, and he’ll be suspicious. But if I don’t pick berries, he’ll be suspicious.”

  “Hush,” Franklin says.

  A hay wagon dragged by a mule trundles up the road. Henry slowly picks a berry. The wagon driver, a shirtless man smoking a clay pipe, stares at Henry, but says nothing. In a moment he vanishes down the road.

  With a finger Henry pokes berries, this one, that one, this one again.

  A jay disputes with smaller birds overhead. Two squirrels chase each other round a tree, scrambling, chattering. Henry looks at the road.

  “Don’t!” Franklin whispers.

  Hooves thud on the log bridge. Henry bends to the berries, picks one. The hoof falls continue at an easy gait, muffled by the moss between the two tracks of the road.

  Just behind Henry, the rider stops.

  “A long way out from anywhere, aren’t you?” Morley calls. “Quite lonesome here. Not safe, for a girl like yourself. Perhaps I can offer assistance?”

  Henry says nothing, works at the berries. Morley’s horse—Libro—snorts.

  Morley dismounts. “Come. Let’s not be uncouth.” Henry hears him step nearer. “What are you playing at, dear? I do like games, of course.” He comes closer. “No reason to be fearful.” Henry fumbles a berry. “No reason,” Morley says, “to be fearful.” The steps come very close. “Lady, you are rude. Quit your picking and lift your dress to receive your punishment.”

  Franklin bursts out with a bear roar that startles Henry so that he nearly falls onto his face.

  Morley shrieks with surprise. Franklin grips him from behind in a hug that pins Morley’s arms, squeezes his chest, pulls him off his feet, purples his face.

  Morley makes little piping baby bird sounds.

  Henry looks Morley over. He sighs, scuffles h
is feet, grimaces. “Franklin,” he says, “let him down.”

  Franklin says, “He shot Mary.” He continues to squeeze.

  Something in Morley’s back or chest makes a little wet pop. Morley twitches, drops his pistol.

  “I know,” Henry says, “but think of honor and such.”

  Morley’s ugly face shades to green.

  “He shot Mary,” Franklin repeats. “A defenseless woman.”

  “He was a friend to me,” Henry says, “when I had no friends.” He is looking Franklin in the eye.

  Franklin winces. He jerks up, then slams Morley down.

  Morley collapses onto hands and knees, gasping.

  Franklin picks up the pistol and examines the priming. Henry goes to Libro and takes hold of the rope round his neck. The bags of coins are tied across Libro’s back.

  “Should we put him into the barrel,” Franklin says, “and into the water?”

  “Somehow,” Morley wheezes, “things always turn against me in the end.” He tries to stand, but groans and drops to his hands again. “I think you’ve broken one of my ribs.”

  Franklin kicks him in the ass.

  Henry says, “I thought you were a friend.”

  “I am,” Morley says. He sits, and, groaning, stretches one leg in front of himself, bends the other. “But a man must also strive.”

  “That doesn’t make sense!” Henry cries.

  But Morley is looking past Henry. “The horse,” Morley says.

  “Libro?” Henry turns. Libro is working peaceably at the grass. Henry has the rope. “What of him?”

  He turns back, and Morley is drawing the flashing metal of a small knife from his boot.

  Henry shouts as Morley turns on Franklin. Franklin begins to raise the pistol, but Morley strikes first, driving the knife into Franklin’s stomach.

  Franklin says, “Oh!”

  He drops the pistol, sits in the grass. He looks at the knife, his hands spread around it.

  Henry twists Libro’s rope reins in his hands, the sight of the knife in Franklin like a fragment of dream, everything quiet around it.

  Morley bends for the pistol.

  The silence in Henry’s mind bursts, and he rushes forward. He is sure that the pistol’s priming has been ruined by being dropped.

  But Morley swings up the pistol, cocks, fires—it discharges, to Henry’s immense surprise. It feels like hot sand thrown in his face, with a bright flash and a blast and a quick sharp whistle.

  He staggers. But there’s nothing more, no pain, no lifting away from life. It comes to him that Morley has missed, that the whistle was the ball whining past. He sets his feet and bares his teeth, feeling made of rage.

  Morley lifts the pistol like a hatchet, and as Henry springs, he brings the pistol down onto the crown of Henry’s head.

  Henry crumples.

  Then, on the operation of some reflex, he rises up again. He sways on his feet, black shapes swirling before him like ash over a fire. Amid these black fragments stand three Morleys, left, right, and center. Behind the three Morleys sit three Franklins. The three Franklins set three big hands to the three knives in their three stomachs.

  They pull out the knives.

  “Morley!” Henry cries. “Please!”

  “I think I’d best to leave you both dead.” The left, right, and center Morleys look regretful as they raise the three pistols to club Henry again. Behind the three Morleys, the three Franklins stand up. “Sorry for this,” Morley says, “but I can’t have you arranging for highway robbers to jump at me from the bushes all the rest of my life.”

  The Franklins turn their knives around. Henry stands wavering as the three pistols pause high, then start down toward him, while at the same time the three Franklins press the three knives into the three Morleys.

  The pistol bounces off the side of Henry’s head, driving him to the ground and filling the world with swarming darkness.

  When it slowly parts, before Henry, only a foot away, sits Morley, twisting his arm to grope for the knife in his back. Dizziness makes the world spin and expand and contract in stutter steps. Henry’s anger has vanished, leaving the scrapings of grief. Morley gives up on reaching the knife in his back and sags.

  Henry pushes forward and takes Morley’s hand.

  Franklin stands alone, wavering over them.

  “You might have let me have the coins,” Morley says.

  “You stole them. It made me angry.”

  “I suppose you mined the metal from the earth with your own hands.”

  “That doesn’t make it yours!” Henry says. He begins to weep.

  “It’s all right, my boy,” Morley says. All the strain falls from his face. He looks remote and kindly and almost not ugly. “Find good use for those coins.” He peers skyward, and he’s quiet, and then, as he sits there, he’s dead.

  Franklin settles to the ground, and the three are in a circle, so that it is as if they sit in parley with the dead man.

  Libro, with the coins tied to his saddle, browses the grass beside the road.

  When Henry recovers a little he is flat on his back, and when he looks at the world it pulses. Morley has toppled onto his side. Franklin sits gazing blankly. He’s pale, sweating, shivering. While struggling they have ended up a distance from the road, in the tall grasses and brush.

  “We need to get to the roadway,” Henry says, “where a passerby will find us.”

  He makes an effort to rise, but nausea pushes him straight down again. Darkness cuts into the limits of his vision, and he struggles to fight it away. When he tries again to stand, the darkness nearly closes out everything. He settles to the ground and yells with frustration.

  Franklin stands slowly, sways over Henry. “I’ll lift you.”

  “You can’t. Look at you.”

  Franklin ponders. He says, “I won’t leave you.”

  “Just go into the road.”

  “If I die there,” Franklin says, “how will they know you’re here?”

  He lifts Henry by the armpits, and, staggering, carries him to the road. Then he settles to his knees, puts Henry down, falls onto his side.

  Henry sits with legs before him on the moss of the road while the sun moves overhead. “Stay close,” he says to Libro. “Don’t go wandering.” Libro lifts his ears and looks at him, then goes back to grazing. Henry cannot hear Mother at all. Darkness creeps a little into vision, then more, then yet further, and Henry knows he cannot keep it away.

  The scratch of a rough mattress wakes him.

  He resists waking for a long time. Waking seems to pull him from a feeling of wonderful ease and peace, a feeling that his mind and spirit are fully his own, that everything is strange but not evil, and there are voices—Mother’s, but also Morley’s, and many others, a world of voices, and he feels no obligation to name them, or understand them, or reply to them, and he has only to listen to them, as if listening from another room to a conversation of many, many happy voices.

  But finally this feeling recedes, turning unreal, and he wakes in a little structure, some sort of pig shelter, smelling of stale manure and musty hay, with slatted walls pierced all over by white lines of sunlight. Poking and scratching his back is a straw tick mattress. He watches motes of dust make desultory explorations of one shaft of light then another.

  Turning his head, he finds the bulky shape of Franklin, a white bandage wrapped around the middle of him. Franklin’s eyes are closed, and his chest moves shallowly, with a quiver in each breath.

  On Henry’s other side is a low doorway. A woman steps through. She kneels beside Henry, looks into his eyes. “Do you recognize me?”

  Presently, he does. “You’re the peddler’s wife. Dosia.”

  Dosia tells Henry that Mary limped along the river until she found a leaking canoe hidden on the bank, rode it dow
nstream, found Henry and Franklin in the road, mounted Libro. She had come into Hy and Dosia’s camp to ask for help.

  Mary paid a farmer from the coins to let them use this shelter. She paid a doctor to look at them. She has been hobbling all about, Dosia says, although the doctor said she oughtn’t on her injured leg. Henry and Franklin have been lying here for two days.

  “Will Franklin live?” Henry asks.

  “He felt the brush of the wing,” Dosia says, cheerily, “but he’s not dead. As for the future, it’s outside our knowing.”

  Mary puts her head in the doorway, measures Henry with a cold look. “Can you get up?”

  He pushes onto his elbows, and the nausea rushes on him again, though it isn’t so terrible as he remembers in the road. “I’m not sure,” he says. “What must we do?”

  “My son, you idiot,” Mary says. “We must regain my son who you gave away.”

  Attempting to stand makes Henry violently ill, and he collapses.

  As he lies in the pig shelter, the hours move curiously, light and dark swallowing each other. At moments when he grows angry and raises himself, nausea like churning water pushes him back down.

  He worries he may never be able to stand upright again.

  He listens for Mother’s voice. Only once, for a moment, is there a sibilance at the limit of perception. But then he wakes and realizes: a dream.

  Franklin occasionally opens his eyes, looks around, says a few words, smiles. He will swallow a little broth. Mostly he sleeps, or anyway lies resting with his eyes closed. Sometimes Henry thinks he seems to be improving a little; at other times he thinks not.

  One morning he sits up and his head swims, but the feeling subsides. He crawls from the shelter, stands, wavers a moment, walks a circle watching his feet, raises his head. The peddler’s wagon stands nearby. They are encamped beside a stone chimney that stands naked in the grass, the final remnant of some vanished homestead.

  Mary comes and looks at him, then goes away. A few minutes later she returns, leading Libro, the bags of coins tied across his saddle.“I’ve waited for you; I don’t know why. It’s five days since you gave away my son.” She mounts. “We have to hurry to strike a deal with my father.”