by Alden Nowlan
He tiptoed down a dark, carpeted hallway, turned a dark-shining brass knob, and entered the parlour.
He was rereading A History of the United States. The final chapter said that the Spanish-American War had been one of the most crucial conflicts in the history of the world. William McKinley, the nation’s war leader, would be remembered as one of the greatest of presidents, fit to be numbered with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Grant, the book said. Kevin was not sure that he agreed with this. He had a soft spot for William Jennings Bryan. There was something fine about that speech of his. “You shall not press down upon the head of labour, this crown of thorns! You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!” He studied the pictures . . . pictures of the battles of San Juan Hill and Manila Bay. He wished that generals still rode horseback. He would like to be General Kevin O’Brien, on a grey charger like Traveller, the war horse of General Lee. Flipping pages, he turned back to the picture of the battles of Gettysburg and Antietam and Bull Run. He looked at General Pickett, on foot, hat in hand, reporting to a mounted General Lee. “General, my noble divisions are swept away,” the caption read. A cold shiver of joy rippled up Kevin’s spine and into his scalp. He closed his eyes and saw General Kevin O’Brien in a grey tunic and an orange sash. “Now, gentlemen, give them the bayonet!” “Don’t cheer, boys, the poor devils are dying!” “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” “We have met the enemy and they are ours!” “Have lost a cheek and ear but can lick all hell yet!”
From his shirt pocket he extracted a pencil stub and a scrap of paper. Shaping the letters with care and tenderness, he wrote:
Kevin Kaye O’Brien, born Atlanta, Georgia, January 25, 1833, the son of Colonel and Mrs. Judd O’Brien. Graduated from West Point Military Academy, 1851. Lieutenant, United States Army, 1851. Served with great distinction against Plains Indians. Captain, United States Cavalry at outbreak of Civil War. Major, Confederate States Cavalry, 1861. Colonel, 1862. Brigadier-General, 1863. Major General, 1864. Fled to Mexico at close of war. Became Field Marshal in Mexican Army. Returned to United States, 1880. Elected Senator from Georgia, 1882. Democratic candidate for president of the United States in
He stopped to reread what he had written. He decided that it sounded almost as good as the brief biographies of presidents printed in the book.
Suddenly, a hand touched his shoulder. For an instant, he froze in fear. Then he turned. Miss Sarah was bending over him.
“Hi,” he said, rolling over and sitting up. She stared at him and he was bewildered by the morbid, fixed interest he saw in her face.
She ran her hands through his rum-coloured hair. Her fingers were as dry and rough as dead twigs. And she was trembling.
“Been having a good time with the books, laddie?”
The words came with an effort. He wondered if she were sick, if perhaps she might topple over, sprawl on the floor beside him and die.
“Yeah. I been readin’,” he stammered.
She sat down in one of the cushioned, throne-like, black-shining chairs, her chickeny hands clasped in her lap.
“Come here for a moment, I want to see you, Kevin.”
He got to his feet and went over to her chair. In the semidarkness, she looked a little like Queen Victoria, as shown in a picture hanging behind the teacher’s desk at school. But, no, she was too sad and thin. The Witch of Endor would have looked like this, had she been pictured in the Bible. He wished the parlour were not so musty and dark.
“You’re a very pretty boy,” she said.
Only his mother ever said such things to him. He did not know how to answer. “Mebbe, I better be goin’ now,” he mumbled.
She reached out quickly and held him. “No, please! Just stay a moment. I want to look at you.”
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his shorts. Miss Sarah held him at arm’s length, staring at him. He had never seen such starvation and loss as he saw now in her eyes.
“A long time ago I dreamt of having a boy like you, Kevin.” She paused, then repeated his name, “Kevin,” her lips shaping it like an endearment. “A boy with a fine, slim body and proud, dreaming eyes. When I was young — oh, almost as young as you! — I dreamt that the boy would come and take me away and we would go hand-in-hand over the fields until we came to the sea, and then we would board a ship with white sails and we would sail across the ocean until we came to a country where the sun shone twelve months of the year and where the air always smelled of flowers . . .” She stopped. Then in a different voice, she said, “Oh, I’m talking foolishness, laddie!”
“Mebbe, I better go now.”
He felt as if he had blundered into a room and surprised her there, naked.
“No, don’t go! Don’t go!”
She touched his hair again, and his face and throat. Her flesh felt dead. It was as though a corpse had reached out and touched him. “You’re so pretty,” she crooned. “So pretty, Kevin.” Her hands slid down his body. “You’re so pretty! You’re trembling, Kevin. Are you afraid?”
“No,” he lied. “No, I’m not afraid.”
“Do you know who I am, Kevin?”
Her voice had been soft, caressing. Now it became shrill and cruel.
“Huh? Sure, you’re Miss Sarah. You’re . . .”
“No, Kevin. I am death.”
Her leer was so horrible that for one insane moment he imagined that she was telling the literal truth. Sarah Minard’s body had been stolen by the Angel of Death! Then he shook himself and giggled.
“You’re teasin’ me,” he said.
Her voice was hateful, brutal, grating. “No, it is true. I am death. I was born dead. I was dead when I grew up. I am dead now. Zuriel and Reuben are dead also. We are entombed here together, three living corpses. Do you understand that?”
“No, Miss Sarah.”
Her fingers were in his hair again, this time her nails raked his scalp.
“Do you know how men make an ox?”
She leapt from one weird subject to another. He could not follow her.
“Do you know how men make an ox?” she repeated harshly.
“Yeah, I guess so. I guess I do.”
“They turn it into a living corpse. Almost everyone in Lock-hartville is a living corpse. Not only Zuriel and Reuben and I, but all of the farmers and all of the men in the mill, and all of their wives — living corpses, all of them! All!”
“Please, Miss Sarah, I wanta go home.”
He tried to pull away from her. Her fingers pinched his flesh like pliers. He knew that in another moment he would be weeping.
“Wait! One more thing! They’ll come for you! Some night when you’re asleep in bed, they’ll come for you, and they’ll make you a living corpse like all the rest of us! They will! You wait and see! They’ll come with knives and ropes and they’ll drag you out of bed and they’ll . . .”
“No!”
He yanked himself free and ran to the door. She hid her face in her hands and made strange sounds. He did not know if she was laughing or crying.
He ran all the way to the pole gate at the foot of the lane. This time he did not see the sheep or the fields or the fences. He was blinded by the memory of an old woman sobbing or snickering in a dusky parlour.
He did not go to the Minard farm again. But, many times, during the remainder of that year, he awoke whimpering from nightmares of men with knives and ropes . . .
Eight
Three men strolled into the O’Brien dooryard. Kevin knew from the way in which they stopped in the yard, without coming to the door, and from the shy furtiveness of their gestures, that they were in search of liquor.
All the mill hands drank and all their wives hated liquor. The two sexes maintained an uneasy truce through a kind of tacit etiquette. It was in obedience to this etiquette that Judd went outdoors to greet the visitors, while Mary, eyeing them hatefully from the kitchen window, pretended not to have seen them.
The trio wore overalls and ragged cotton shirts, and their
cloth caps were pushed far back on their heads. Todd Anthony had moist, reddish eyes and at the end of every sentence emitted a mirthless, cawing laugh. The mill hands called him the Crow behind his back. Eben Stingle, the ox teamster, came from another county, and spoke with a strange accent, slurring his r’s. Angus Northrup sported a grey moustache stained yellow with tobacco juice. He was the sawyer, the best-paid man in the mill, and the other mill hands treated him with a touch of deference, a hint of respect.
“Mighty hot day, eh, Judd?” Angus Northrup said. Since he was the sawyer, the other men silently granted him the prerogative of beginning the conversation. “Don’t look as if it’s gonna git any cooler neither.”
“Yeah,” Judd agreed. “It sure is hot enough.”
Patiently, the others added their comments on the weather, on their work. The spruce logs sawn the previous week had been scrub stock. Hod Rankine had been a fool to buy them. They were foul things to handle and almost impossible to sell.
Then, casually, came the real point of their visit. “Wouldn’t know where a man could git a drink would yuh, Judd?” Angus Northrup asked.
Judd scratched his head. Kevin detected something spiteful in the way his father delayed his answer.
“Don’t know as I would,” he said, at last.
“We’re kinda dry,” Todd Anthony laughed, rubbing one reddish eye with a dirty finger.
“Yeah,” Judd sympathized.
He pulled out his chewing tobacco and gnawed off a chew. Most of the mill hands chewed tobacco; there wasn’t time to roll cigarettes in the mill.
“Fact is we’re so damn dry we’re crackin’,” Angus Northrup quipped.
He cast a glance at the others. They laughed. The mill hands always laughed at the sawyer’s jokes.
“Eh? Well, I don’t know, boys. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Judd said thoughtfully.
The men made no move to leave. As yet they did not know if Judd’s denial were genuine or merely formal. In Lockhartville, men took their time about giving away liquor. The men who had something to drink played with the thirsty ones, as Judd was playing now. Everyone accepted this without resentment.
“We been lookin’ all over Lockhartville. Place is dry as a bone,” Eben put in.
“So dry a man gits dust in his throat jist talkin’ about it,” the sawyer agreed.
He looked around again. Again the others laughed.
“Madge Harker ain’t got nothin’?” Judd asked, his eyebrows raised in feigned disbelief.
“Nope. Sold ever’thin’ out dance night,” Eben replied.
Judd spat juice the colour of cow’s urine on the ground at his feet.
“Well, I’ll tell yuh now . . .” he drawled.
“Yeah?” the visitors pressed eagerly.
“Jist happens I got a little brew on in the barn. Don’t know if it’s ready yet, tuh tell the truth. Don’t imagine it is. But, well, mebbe — I said, mebbe, now — we’ll jist try it.”
“Hot cripes!” Eben yelled.
“We won’t fergit yuh, boy,” the sawyer grinned.
Kevin saw that his father rather resented their presumption. “I said mebbe we’d try it,” Judd reminded them gruffly.
“Sure, Juddie, sure.”
Together, the men started toward the barn. Kevin, screwing up his courage, followed them.
The day was hot. Nodules of sweat rolled down inside Kevin’s shirt, tickling his chest. Sweat glistened like oil on his arms and legs.
The barn was divided into three sections: the cow stable, the hayloft, and the store room. It was the store room that they entered now.
The room was as hot as the inside of an oven. A tart, herbal aroma rose from the sacks containing hen feed and merged with the soporific odour of hay and straw. A shutter, held in place by three wooden buttons, ran half the length of the wall, facing the stable. Through this shutter, Judd could push great forkfuls of hay into the mangers. Today, since it was summer, the shutter would not be opened. The cows were grazing on the heath.
As they always did when he came into the store room, Kevin’s eyes gravitated to the strap, hanging from its wooden peg. Hastily, he grimaced and looked away.
Judd went to the corner and kicked away a pile of jute sacks, uncovering the old barrel churn in which he had made his brew. The men jostled one another, edging closer.
The lid was lifted off, its underside clammy. The room filled with the gas of the brew. Kevin could not understand why the men liked this drink. The stink sickened him. But he watched curiously as they licked their lips and laughed nervously to conceal their impatience.
Kevin squatted by the door, where the air was freshest and cleanest, and studied them. Judd dipped a mug into the churn, took an experimental sip and grunted. “Guess mebbe, it’ll do till somethin’ better comes along,” he grinned. He was no longer playing with them. Now he seemed to take pleasure in extending his hospitality. “Drink up, boys,” he invited.
The mug passed from hand to hand. Each man bolted his drink and passed on the mug quickly. They gasped, grunted, sighed, and wiped their lips. The mug circulated almost continuously.
This brew had been made from yeast, oranges, and molasses. Spears of hay and straw had fallen into the churn. The men scooped these out of the mug with their thumbs before they drank.
Kevin kept as quiet as possible. The men knew he was there. But as long as he did nothing to attract their attention, they would pretend not to notice him. When he intruded into the affairs of men, his father called him “Mister Big Breeches.” And he did not want to be sent away.
Judd’s cheeks reddened, his eyes became feverish.
“Damn good beer,” Todd Anthony said.
“A real life-saver,” Eben agreed.
“Allus said that Judd O’Brien was a Good Samaritan,” Angus laughed.
The others guffawed. They were relaxing now, shaking off their sobriety and their formal manners.
Their voices became louder. The words poured out of them in torrents. Each man fought for a chance to say his piece. They laughed boisterously, slapping their denim-clad thighs, jostling and interrupting one another. But Kevin detected the underlying malice in their fellowship. They told spiteful little jokes at one another’s expense, and when one man was held up to ridicule he sat in glum silence while the others hooted. In every joke there was a suggestion of cruelty.
After the fourth round of drinks, Judd burst into song:
Here’s a cuckoo! There’s a cuckoo!
Here’s a cuckaroo!
Here’s a cuckoo! There’s a cuckoo!
There’s a cuckaroo!
He always sang this song in the earliest, happiest phase of his drunkenness. His neck beet red, his breath coming in great gasps, he roared out the song, while his visitors tapped their toes against the floor and laughed.
Here’s a cuckoo! There’s a cuckoo!
Here’s a cuckaroo!
Here’s a cuckoo! There’s a cuckoo!
There’s a cuckaroo!
Kevin had heard this song often. So far as he knew, no one but his father ever sang it, and these were the only words that it had.
“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whooo!” Eben Stingle yelled. “Gimme another shot of that cripeless stuff and I’ll step dance, by cripes!”
They drank again, spilling the thick, muck-brown liquid down their necks. Eben catapulted into the centre of the floor and danced like a war-painted Indian. The others clapped their hands and roared encouragement.
“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whoooo!”
The ox teamster kicked up hay seeds and shreds of straw. The floor boards on which Kevin sat bounced in rhythm to Eben’s gum-rubbered feet.
“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whooo!”
Eben’s eyes were shut, his mouth open, his nostrils flaring like a stallion’s. The frenzy of his dance rather frightened Kevin. It did not seem to be a dance at all. Kevin had endured nightmares in which he ran desperately without gaining an inch of ground. Eben’s dance reminded him of such unpleasant dreams.
“Ya-ha-ha-ha-whoooo!”
Exhausted, Eben sank down on a block of straw. The mug was passed from hand to hand again.
“Who’s man enough to wrist-wrestle with me?” Todd Anthony shouted.
“I guess I’m yer man,” Angus Northrup said, rising.
The pair knelt on either side of a block of straw, elbows pressed, right hands clasped, their arms forming an inverted V.
Ignoring the contest, Judd broke into song again:
As I was leaving old Ireland
All in that month of June,
The birds were singing merrily.
All nature seemed in tune —
“Too damn mournful!” Eben roared. “Sing somethin’ cheerful, Juddie! Fer cripes’ sake, sing somethin’ cheerful!”
Judd quaffed beer, gasped and blinked.
Rhythmically, he clapped his hands.
Oh, saddle up my fastest horse,
My grey is not so speedy —
And I’ ll ride all night,
And I’ ll ride all day —
Till I overtake my lady,
Till I overtake my ladeee!
A stranger would not have believed that this ruddy, roaring singer was the taciturn, tight-lipped Judd O’Brien who worked at Hod Rankine’s saw mill. But Kevin had seen the transformation so many times that it no longer surprised him.
Meanwhile, Todd Anthony was forcing down Angus Northrup’s arm. Sure of victory, the red-eyed man leered into the sawyer’s wet, contorted face. Angus grunted and cursed, the muscles in his freckled arm rippling like the great belt that drove the slab saw.
“Had enough?”
“Uhhhh.” The sound was part sigh, part groan.
“Had enough?”
“Uhhhh.”
“Had enough?”
“Uhhhh.”
“Damn it! I can break yer wrist, Angus. Had enough?”
“Uhhhh.”