The Road to Reckoning

by Robert Lautner

  EIGHT

  The rifle clattered on the counter. Mister Baker was back at his trade, Henry Stands complaining that he had overestimated what he could carry and separating random goods with a swipe of his arm.

  ‘I have a wagon,’ I said. ‘If you take me to Paterson, New Jersey, you may have use of it.’

  ‘I carry what I need. I am not a snail to carry my house with me. How much do I owe, Chet? Less the sack of tobacco I will give.’

  Mister Baker began to tally up. I did not wish to harry his pencil but at the bottom of his page was the hope of my leaving.

  ‘Mister Stands?’ I brought out from my coat the order book. ‘I have a responsibility to return to Mister Samuel Colt the orders my father took. Including six pistols for your friend, good Mister Baker here. Mister Colt will pay on receipt of those orders.’

  Mister Baker looked to me to quiet, but I carried on. ‘After my father’s deposit and Mister Colt’s commission, that will be seventy-five dollars owed to me. That is no awful sum for a few days’ work and you are going east anyways.’ I offered over the book but he did not move.

  ‘This Colt will pay in specie? I ain’t no use for shinplaster.’

  I did not know how mister Colt would pay, but that lack of knowledge would not help me. ‘We have a contract.’

  ‘Is that signed by Jackson too?’ He snorted and pulled out a drawstring bag. ‘How much, Chet?’

  Mister Baker looked sorry at me. ‘You can have it gratis if you take the boy, Henry.’

  ‘You telling me what to do, Chet?’

  ‘No, Henry. I’m trading. The boy’s no good to me here.’

  Henry slammed down three coins. Mexican silver. ‘I’ll get your tobacco.’ He took up his scant goods and his rifle. ‘Open the door, boy.’

  I hesitated and he also. Mister Baker indicated the door with a serious glare and I dashed and opened it. The sight of Henry Stands’s big horse gave me an idea about my own. I followed down the porch.

  ‘I am east and you are east. I could follow you. I’m sure once you split for Cherry Hill I could make my way on my own. I will be no burden.’

  He began to load up. ‘You are burdening me now.’

  ‘You cannot stop me from following you.’

  He gave a mean look from over the saddle. ‘I can stop you.’

  I needed to change my reasoning. ‘How is it that your gun works?’

  He continued tying and tightening the straps and bags of his horse. ‘It is a wind-rifle. It uses air.’

  ‘I have never seen anything like it.’

  ‘And you never shall.’ He had stopped looking at me as he spoke.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I took it from a man.’

  ‘Mister Baker says you were an Indiana ranger.’

  He swung up on his black horse. ‘I was.’

  ‘What is the name of your horse?’

  ‘He has none. Would be wrong to be forced to eat something that had a name.’ He reached behind and swung a sack to me. ‘Here. Give that to Chet. Good luck to you, boy.’ He set off slow.

  I called to his back, ‘I only want to go home!’

  He rolled his head back to me. He was already past the porch. ‘You sure about that?’

  I grabbed the stinking bag and ran back inside. I dropped it on the counter, suddenly breathless. ‘Mister Baker, I thank you for your kindness. Is Jude Brown at the hostler?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘I will deduct from your order his bill if you will give me one of those Mexican coins for him now.’

  ‘Hold on, son. What now …?’

  I ran for my sack. I would leave my clothes. ‘Mister Stands is going to wait for me there. He has seen the value in escorting me.’

  Mister Baker wanted to speak some more. I could tell I was not to get my coin. ‘Never mind.’ I ran but stopped at the door. ‘I will see that you get your guns, Mister Baker.’

  ‘No mind. I ain’t in a hurry to settle bills.’

  He called out after me but I did not hear what his concern was. I ran to the hostler with the sack banging at my knees. Henry Stands was shrinking along the road. The white bedroll at his back gleamed in the sun. I could follow that.

  Jude Brown was pleased to see me and was still hitched to the Brewster. Thank God! The hostler was a bald free black man in a leather apron and wicker hat. I thought of lying to him that mister Baker would pay him later but I did not know what powers black men have to tell when boys are lying. I went into my sack. I had the wooden gun and the one real and my father’s spectacles. They were gold-rimmed, worth four dollars anywhere. They still had his finger smudges.

  The hostler was happy enough to take the real gun and so he should! A pistol for some green grain and water!

  I cracked Jude Brown out of there and rattled up the road. I could not see Henry Stands but that would change. I was defenseless without that gun but considered I would not have been able to use it anyways bar to hurt myself; besides, leaving it had reason. I would now need company to be secure on the trail home. If I had sold the spectacles for the grain I might have been mistaken that the gun could protect, eased a little with its counterfeit confidence, and not chased Henry Stands so ardent.

  As it was I had no money, no habiliments, some food, and a wooden gun to the good when I came across some wooden Indians.

  I left that part of the Appalachians having never crossed them. The west still a mystery and you can keep it. Jude Brown and I were leaving.

  NINE

  I rolled past the tents of the poor folks waiting for something better to come. They studied me like pale memorials, the dogs nipping at Jude Brown’s heels. I had lost sight of Henry Stands but knew there was little road between here and Berwick for him to eat up without me. Yet I came to a meadow and saw no sight.

  I pulled Jude Brown up slower as if walking a cemetery but I knew what was coming. Henry Stands was waiting at a defile in the trail with his horse as a shield. He did not have a loosed gun, which I took as politeness and deferment to our previous encounter, but he hailed me like a common roadman all the same.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ he hollered.

  ‘It is me, Mister Stands!’ I called. ‘Thomas Walker!’

  ‘You are to desist following me!’

  I was not for turning. ‘I am not following. I am walking the road.’ I grew bolder. ‘You do not own it.’

  ‘The hell you know I don’t!’ He came out from behind his big horse. ‘Go home, boy!’

  ‘I am trying to!’ I moved Jude Brown on.

  He mumbled some grievance and lumbered toward and I braked up. I thought about getting down from my seat to meet him but then I would be conversing into his chest. Here we would be eye to eye. He came alongside.

  ‘Are we to do this?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Round and round like whatever this is! You to discommode me again and again!’

  ‘I am merely going home.’

  ‘Then go! I will not stop you. Let me see you go!’

  I looked up the road. ‘Are you not going along?’

  ‘No.’ He smiled at me and it was ugly. ‘No. I am to stay here a smart piece! This is my favorite set in the whole world!’

  ‘I am feeling tired myself, Mister Stands. I will go about the side of the road and rest awhile.’

  He glared and wished to side-winder me, I am sure. ‘Then I will go so you may rest the easier!’ He stormed back to his horse and almost pulled it over with his weight as he went up. He looked back at me once and set off.

  He would strain his neck the way he kept turning it on me. I let him go and then cracked on. We came against each other again down the road. The same as before. Him waiting for me.

  ‘I can hear you coming like a railroad. That cart of yours squawks louder than you do! I thought you were to rest?’

  ‘A moment’s respite is like a winter to me.’

  He came at me again. ‘I will tie you to a tree!’

 
‘You will not!’ But he grabbed me and hoisted me off like a sack of flour. ‘You will not leave me to starve!’

  He dragged me. ‘Someone will be along soon enough.’

  ‘And I will tell them to take me back to Milton. And I will tell Mister Baker that Henry Stands tied me to a tree and left me to nature!’

  He stalled. ‘What manner of boy are you?’

  ‘A good one if you would but know it!’

  He shook me free and paced around, looking at the jury of the trees and mumbling curses. He had unhappily decided.

  ‘If I am damned to be with company it will be on my terms and you will stand up to it.’

  He did not give me the grace of concede or question but went straight for my wagon.

  ‘I will work on how far and how long I am to take you, but it will not be with this carryall of yours.’ He clumsily worked out the way that Jude Brown was hitched and I guessed that such sophistication was new to him. I protested but he would have none of it. He bounced the body up and down and the springs complained all around the trees.

  ‘It is slow,’ he declared. ‘It has wood for iron. It will break and you will cry for your mother.’

  He did not know what he said, I am sure. This wagon was bought when my mother gained color. It was true it was more to promenade than transport and was sprung for city streets, but it had been hers. She had ridden in it.

  ‘I cannot leave it here!’ My voice went high and I hated myself for it.

  ‘Can you ride and will he ride?’ He jerked a thumb at Jude Brown.

  ‘Father used to ride him on his business sometimes.’

  ‘Good. You will have no saddle and I know that will not suit you.’

  ‘I do not mind.’

  ‘You will tomorrow.’ He had freed Jude Brown, who was happy for it and trotted over to the big black stud and nuzzled him as cats do. The stud ignored him.

  He pulled out my sack from the wagon. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It is my food.’

  ‘Well, that’s a blessing. It figures you would not have any means to cook it up.’

  ‘Thomas Heywood took our pot.’

  ‘What a grand rogue this man must be.’ He pulled the wooden Paterson out. ‘And what the hell is this?’

  ‘It is what it is. It is a model of the gun.’

  He cocked and fired it. ‘This gets better and better. Do you have wooden shot for it also?’

  ‘As it happens there were but—’

  ‘The great and terrible Thomas Heywood took thems as well?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Let us hope he thinks them ball-candy.’ He dropped it back into the bag and walked to the horses, shoving the sack to me. He had done with the wagon. ‘Pick up them reins. I’ll tie you a blanket at least.’

  I did and followed. He made a surcingle with the wagon’s leather and with skill he tied the blanket to Jude Brown and cut a short rein with a huge knife hilted with antler bone.

  ‘Get up,’ he commanded.

  I surmised the situation without trying. ‘I cannot. I will need a stump.’

  He hauled me up by my pants. ‘Gets better and better,’ he growled, and set me on Jude Brown. He led off and I traipsed after. I looked back at the Brewster.

  One of the most melancholy sights in the world is a forlorn wagon. I am told that they litter the plains. The skeletons of settlers’ hopes and dreams. Piece by piece I was losing what little I had and getting closer to the little I had in front of me.

  I imagined a carnival tent with a man in a red coat and top hat lording over my wares.

  ‘See here! These are Thomas Walker’s father’s bones. Left out in the wild by an ungrateful son with blankets to keep him warm! These are his clothes and this pile of iron is the guns, kettle, and pot he let be taken from him, and the last pistol entrusted he gave away in his selfishness. And finally, this sad, sorrowful object is the wagon that his mother loved. Left on the side of the road like carrion.’ After a pause to let the crowd shake their heads he would raise his arms. ‘But, folks, that is not the worse of it. Behind this curtain is Thomas Walker’s greatest villainy, the final insult and his greatest shame.’ But he would not reveal it for free and I did not have the extra ten cents to see it yet.

  We went on in silence with me behind, watching Henry Stands’s and his horse’s haunches roll lazily side to side. It would now be close to dinnertime, judged by my belly-growl, and I knew that the next settlement along our path would be Bloom’s. I asked if we would be stopping to eat.

  ‘You will eat in the saddle. We will stop before dark.’

  Like most civilized folks’, my belly was used to a large dinner and a simple supper. All this dry-food nonsense of sea-tack and jerky was for crows. Besides, the movement on the road did not play well with my water.

  ‘I will have to stop for a moment,’ I called.

  ‘I will not,’ he called back without moving his head, but I think he slowed anyways.

  I got down for my business and with difficulty held Jude Brown’s reins in my hand while he looked and huffed at me and did his business just where he stood to show how foolish I was to not be able to do the same. After I was done I went through my bag for some dodgers to chew on the road and stuffed my pockets, now envious of Henry Stands’s jerky.

  It was at this moment that I realized I could not get back on Jude Brown! With no saddle horn or stirrups for purchase I was like a mouse to a lion. I tried but every time I scrambled Jude Brown tripped forward and I brushed off. Mister Stands had gone from sight now for the road was hilly. I settled down quickly and led Jude Brown on. I would look for a log or a stump and if I walked quickly I could probably catch up. For the most part of the morning out of Milton we had gone across wide-open land, the blue mountains like another country on our right, but now we were in woodlands and had been climbing all the while. The ghost trees of winter had gone and everything was green but high up. You could see quite a way left and right through the narrow trunks but I kept my eye keen for a step so I could mount again. This was a very pretty time and even with all my woes I felt a peace about the nature of it all that you do not get in the city. To my surprise I came upon mister Stands as if waiting for me, a spyglass to his eye. He saw me approach and folded it and a leather packet of paper into his bags. Perhaps he had been pretending to look at a map and landmarks instead of holding for me!

  He wheeled away before I could ask for a hand but soon enough I spied a dead log and pulled Jude Brown into the wood to jump on it. I was sure that mister Stands had accepted a level of responsibility to me, however reluctantly. I felt safe for the first time in a while and he let me catch up.

  ‘I had almost forgotten about you,’ he said over his shoulder, and I smiled because he could not see it.

  TEN

  The road climbed, the wind took up our coats, and the clouds fell about the hills, and I understood why Henry Stands wore a greatcoat in April. I did not recognize any of this country although this would have been the way I had come. I ached for conversation and for rest. My rear had become raw bone and I wondered when Bloom Town would show and reconcile me.

  Eventually mister Stands raised his hand and turned off the trail. Without ask or tell I dismounted and went off for wood and stones. The unfortunate was that although I had my sofkee I had no means to cook it and I did not know how to word this comfortably with a man who hardly talked; anyhow, mister Stands did not like my wood.

  ‘This is dead. And you are a deadhead traveling free as you are. It will smoke and blind us both all night. Did your father not have an ax to cut?’

  ‘We did just fine with fallen wood.’

  He harrumphed, as he would, but made up the fire anyways. ‘Go downhill until you find water.’ He handed me his canteen after filling up his boiler, which was not much bigger than a can, and I missed my Dutch pot. I was thinking of my hunger, and that small boiler would have to cook twice to feed us both. I took our canteens and wandered down and down until I found a stream,
which was full of leaf trash that sucked into the canteens more than the water and I picked them out constantly, which they seemed to find game as they did it again and again.

  It was getting to twilight when I came back. I had fallen once and now had a little finger that I had landed on that hurt like I had broken my hand, but I would not tell it. Mister Stands had made his camp with the horses tethered and had boiled tea. He had a mug at least but I did not expect him to have another. He handed it to me to share and I took it with my shirt cuff pulled over my hand for it was boiling and he chuckled at this. It was strong as ever I had it and went all around me like a blanket and I forgot about the walk to the stream and back. I went to hand it over and said thanks.

  ‘You drink it. I will have rum. Fill it up again and we will empty the boiler for your Indian meal.’

  I was happy to do so. If he would eat my sofkee I would no longer be his deadhead. We would be partners.

  He had laid out his oilcloth with bedroll on top and sat on a log in a faded red capote shirt and braces and replaced his hat with a wool cap. He laid his belt with its guns and pockets beside him, his knife and ax on his blanket. He now looked like a riverman instead of the marauder previous. He had a great belly and broad limbs that looked like they could carry anything he cared to. I had never seen a bigger man, not one of older age anyways. He looked larger with his coat off. The length of it slimmed him down.

  ‘Do you take rum?’ he asked. He pulled the cork and offered it to me first. I gathered this is what he took as society.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘For your tea. It will keep you warm.’

  I accepted because these were the kindest words he had yet said. I tasted my new tea and did not regret it and he saw and nodded approval. He had dragged us two logs to sit on but I had no bed. I would sleep in my coat, I figured, or if that did not suit I could be a standee across the horses’ rope. You had to pay for that privilege at a hostler if you could not afford a bed.

  The tea gone, I filled the boiler again to make the sofkee and mister Stands filled a pipe. This was the first time I had seen anyone smoke. In the woods we were sheltered from the wind and as the lid on the boiler flapped with the heat I decided I would know more about Henry Stands.