The Haweaters

by Vanessa Farnsworth

  Bill fixes his eyes on his son. “What do you think Amer will do when he discovers his precious horses are no longer in the field where he left them?”

  Charlie cocks his head. “We already know what he’ll do, Poppa. You said as much yourself, he’ll storm over here blustering about how he’s going to set the law on us, like Boyd is a dog that barks at his command.”

  Charlie stops and reconsiders. Excitement lights his face. “Hell, I’ll be surprised if we don’t see him sneaking across the field in the dead of night to steal back his horses while we sleep. Moon will be bright enough for it. Won’t need no lantern.”

  Bill stomps over to the table and rips a chunk of crust from the raisin pie. He stuffs it in his mouth and chews slowly. The boy is correct. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. And that’s what they’re going to have to prepare for. “Sure you don’t have that pistol?”

  Charlie’s face hardens. “Doesn’t matter how many times you ask me that, Poppa, the answer’s always going to come back the same.”

  Bill digs out another stretch of crust. He rams the rancid pastry into his mouth, then lowers his sticky hand to the handle of the hunting knife Eleanor had been using to prepare dinner. “Then we’ll have to do this the hard way. Fetch them horses quick as you can and rope them to the corral fence. They’ll be easy to spot there.” Bill nods to emphasize his words. “We’ll need more than our fists. Axe, clubs, knife. Maybe even chains. I’ll gather what I can while you snatch the horses. Time Amer learned a thing or two about bush justice. When we’re through with him, he won’t be in any shape to call in the law.”

  Charlie’s face is as bright as a moonbeam. Excitement ripples through the air. Only then a voice flattens it like a pancake on the floor. “Leave them horses where they are, you ignorant fool. It’s time you learned to recognize that while your poppa may have a head for destruction, he has no such thing for strategy.”

  Eleanor. That does it. Bill marches over to Charlie and jerks open the door, shoving the boy through it before Eleanor’s treachery has a chance to sink in. “Horses. Now. Meet me by the corral as soon as you can get there.”

  Bill slams the door and turns back to his wife. “Too late by far, woman. If you wanted to protect Amer from a gruesome fate, you should’ve answered me straight when you had the chance. Instead you took the beating. Your choice. And now, no thanks to you, I have the answer I was seeking. This whole despicable affair is going to be settled tonight in our favour, so you best find a way of living with it.”

  But Eleanor isn’t going down to defeat. Not without putting up a fight. “I’ve lived with worse, for I’ve lived with you these many years. There’s nothing on God’s green earth that could possibly be worse than that, as the Lord surely knows. But might I remind you, dear husband, that if you commit violence in the act of stealing a neighbour’s horses, the law will surely put you in jail so long the few teeth you have left will rot inside your mouth.”

  Bill uses his sleeve to wipe remnants of pie from his face. “Don’t need you to do my thinking for me. Never have. And I got no fear of the law. The way I’ve got it figured, the only authority Boyd has when it comes to my land is that which I give him. And I’m not about to give him any. Why would I? That no-good scoundrel has a selective way of applying the very laws he’s meant to uphold. A thing is either right or it isn’t. A man can either tell the difference or he can’t. Boyd can’t. Given him enough chances to prove the opposite.”

  Eleanor is nodding, although it’s clear from the expression on her face that it isn’t because she’s agreeing with him. “So now Boyd is the problem, is he? I seem to reckon him not pursuing you over that fire that burnt clear through Amer’s back field. That was never an accident, as any idiot could rightly see, husband, and yet your person is not now in jail. Nor, by some mercy, were you fined. Boyd’s selective application of the law has been more friend to you than enemy and not just on that occasion, neither. Would you like me to run through the list?”

  Bill grabs the hunting knife and stabs it into the table. He’s got no time for this. “Not much of a list when matched against Amer’s misdeeds.”

  “This would be the same George Amer who saw fit to pay Charlie’s fine on account of our boy being in the right for beating his worthless son.”

  “Fool woman. That’s not why the ingrate paid it. Paid it so he could hold it over us when it came to make good on the lease for our field. Charlie told you as much not but an hour past. Did you not listen?” Bill shakes his head and mutters. “No end to that man’s sins. Made a fortune from illegal lumbering and now it seems he’s going to get away with it. At least that’s what Boyd says. Claims the law’s been changed to Amer’s advantage. Could be lying, but I think not.” Bill yanks the knife out of the table and flicks his thumb across its blade. “You may have your list. No doubt it’s a long one. But nothing I’ve done comes close to matching Amer’s misdeeds. And Boyd has looked the other way too many times for me to believe he isn’t profiting from each and every one of them.”

  Bill watches as all this register on Eleanor’s face. Then he watches as it unregisters.

  “Enough with your nonsense. Boyd is not what you say he is, husband, nor is he doing what you claim he’s doing. Those are wicked fantasies brought forth by a wicked mind. It’s not Boyd’s job to make law, as you well know, only to enforce it when it needs enforcing and most of the time it needs no such thing. It’s the government who says what’s legal and what’s not. It’s them you best be pursuing for changing a law against your interests, if we’re telling the Lord’s truth.”

  “And who around here is in tight with the government?”

  Eleanor blinks up at her husband. “Lyon?”

  Okay, yes. That’s true. Lyon is known to make the government dance on the end of his string, but Eleanor knows full well that isn’t the answer he’s looking for. Let’s try this again. “Lyon doesn’t currently sit on a town council in a city not so far from here. Nor does he claim to be on speaking terms with the Governor General, unlike some I could name. Want to guess who does?”

  Eleanor looks weary. “What you want me to say is George Amer.”

  Will wonders never cease? “That’s right, Amer. No way the law changed on its own. It changed because Amer made whatever deal he had to for that to happen. And don’t kid yourself. Amer may have done the deed, but Boyd found a way to profit from it.”

  Bill reaches up and yanks a coil of rope from its nail on the wall. It takes Eleanor a moment to realize what he intends to do with it. When she does, she grabs the ladder. “No.”

  Yes. Eleanor won’t be getting away. Not this time. Bill binds her to the loft ladder. She wants to go anywhere, she’ll have to take it with her.

  Eleanor struggles against her fate for a good minute before going limp. Fortunately, Bill has learned from past battles that when Eleanor doesn’t fight back it’s because she’s settled on a plan. Bill doesn’t know what it is, but he can guess it has something to do with warning Amer of the tragedy that’s about to befall him. She can try. But her bindings are tight and by the time she works her way free – or races across the fields with a ladder strapped to her back – it’ll be too late. The deed will be done and there’ll be nothing she can do to undo it.

  8

  AN UNSOUND PHILOSOPHY

  Laban slouches into the kitchen as weary and aggravated and defeated as a boy can be. He tries not to notice the devilish grin lighting Ellen’s face or the butter crock she’s pushing towards him. He tries not to notice anything at all, but Ellen wouldn’t be Ellen if she didn’t pounce. “Butter needs setting back in the creek, young sir. Do me the favour and I’ll have a treat waiting for you upon your return.”

  Laban blinks the house girl into focus, then blinks her back out. The truth is he avoids Ellen whenever possible, owing to her sly grins and girlish giggles, which he finds childish and troubling. She can’t po
ssibly think Father would ever sanction a romance. Nor is he interested in one. He would’ve thought the unsubtle way he plunked the crock on the table not quite an hour past, then sped back outside like a whipped horse, would’ve clued Ellen in. But Ellen doesn’t clue in. She needs to be addressed bluntly and coldly and even then she only seems to half get a person’s meaning. It’s almost as bewildering as his banishment from the dinner table before dessert had been served. “What sort of treat?”

  Ellen snickers and waggles her finger. “Won’t be no surprise if I tell.”

  For pity’s sake. “You didn’t say anything about it being a surprise or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  Laban’s eyes flash around the room. He’s hoping to see his sister, but no, all he sees is Ellen, ensconced in her usual chair at the far end of the kitchen table, polishing Father’s boots. He’s pretty sure that’s not what she’s supposed to be doing. “Father wants you fetched to the dining table. He says he needs his dessert served along with his tea. He specifically mentioned the tea.”

  Ellen drops the boot in her lap. She examines Laban’s face and fails to find the answer to the question she hasn’t yet asked. “What’d you do to get yourself dismissed from the table this time?”

  Laban flushes. “I spoke the truth.”

  Ellen mock-sighs and shifts the boots from her lap to the table. “That’ll do it.”

  She rises and looks set to assault Laban with some unbidden advice when Annie comes crashing into the kitchen. Laban looks past his sister into the winter kitchen, half expecting to see who or what propelled her in his direction. Seeing nothing, he scowls. “Curse it, Annie. What could possibly have taken you so long to get in here? It’s not fifty paces from the dining table and yet I’ve had an entire conversation waiting for your grand entrance.”

  Annie picks herself up off the floor and dusts her skirt. “Two ants about the size of my middle finger. I was watching to see where they were going in case they were heading to a nest that needs killing.”

  Laban considers this. “And were they?”

  Annie jumps up and spins, landing with a triumphant grin. “I couldn’t rightly say, but I was watching one of them so closely I damn near had an epiphany.”

  Laban winces and again looks past his sister. Seeing no one, he swats the side of his sister’s head, knowing she’d get worse from Mother. “Don’t say damn.”

  “Silly goose, they can’t possibly hear me.”

  This is true. Annie has to raise her voice just to be heard above the sizzles and thumps of the kettle that Ellen has finally, belatedly, set on the stove. “That’s not the point. You shouldn’t be thinking a word like that, let alone saying it.”

  Annie drags a chair over to the buffet and stands on it as she reaches for the top shelf, then hands down a pair of china cups. “What about the concept? Can I think about that?”

  Laban takes the cups and sets them down gently on the table, then reaches up for the saucers. “God will strike you down if you do.”

  Annie’s fists are on her hips. “I’m absolutely certain there are several people in this house who are in line to be struck down long before me.”

  Laban is trying to decide whether his sister is in possession of some dark knowledge that’s somehow failed to find his ears. Probably, but now isn’t the time to be engaging in little-girl games. Laban reaches back and makes sure Father’s revolver is firmly secured to his waistband. “I’m not going to waste a thought guessing what that means.”

  As he gestures for his sister to climb down from the chair, he remembers the ants. “What kind of epiphany did you almost have that caused you to come flying in here like a spooked bird?”

  Annie jumps to the ground and immediately sets to work placing the cups on the saucers and the saucers on a serving tray. “Well, brother, I looked too closely at one of the ants and realized it had a personality.”

  Laban pivots and heads for the door, grabbing the butter crock from the table as he passes. “The best thing about you talking is the relief that comes when you stop.”

  Laban kicks open the door. At the sound of his master’s voice, Twist pops up from his favourite patch of grass, barking and bouncing and wagging his tail so energetically Laban wouldn’t be surprised to see it detach. He kneels down to calm the excited dog. He can’t have him racing around like a tornado when they approach the horses or he’ll spend half the night trying to coax them out of the bush.

  “Do you really think this will float?”

  Laban half-turns. Annie has followed him outside and is standing in the hollow Laban has laboriously chipped out of a basswood log in an effort to craft his own boat. He shifts the butter crock away from Twist’s curious tongue. “It’ll float when I’m done and not before, so don’t you even think of dragging it down to the creek.”

  Annie snorts. “Like I could.”

  Despite the snort, the look on his sister’s face suggests the thought had crossed her mind. Annie leaps from the boat and tries to lift one end. “Besides, I’m absolutely certain I’ll need Crispin if I’m to drag it any farther than the garden and I’m banished from leaving the yard until the sun sets on the British Empire, or so says Mother.”

  And Laban can imagine Mother saying it, too, but the only way to enforce such a punishment would be for someone to act as Annie’s jailer and no one in their right mind would volunteer for the frustration of that. “Two days of your yammering and Father will say different. There’s not one of us who doesn’t know that. Even the horse knows it and his brain is the size of an apple.”

  If that. Laban rises and approaches the half-finished vessel. He runs his fingers over what will one day be the gunwale. Working at his present pace, it’ll be winter before the boat is finished. “There’s no concern about this boat floating so long as I can chip out enough wood without poking a hole through the bottom or sides. That remains to be seen.” Laban nods to himself. “A lot of things remain to be seen.”

  Annie looks hard at her brother, then shrugs and skips towards the back fields. Laban considers shouting for her to hold up, but then decides it’s best to let her go. There’s not much trouble she can get into in the short time it’ll take him to jog down to the creek and stash the crock, which he does. Then he sprints for the back fields, Twist barking and jumping all around him.

  When Laban gets to the winter wheat, he slows. There’s not much point in catching up to Annie. He knows where she’s heading and he knows she’ll tire herself out soon enough. It happens every time and every time Laban carries her back home. Tonight will be the only exception he can think of and that’s because tonight he’ll be able to flop her on the back of one of the horses. This option isn’t usually available to him, since on every other night, the horses are left to pasture in the back field, making Laban’s only real task to ensure that none of Bryan’s cattle have crossed to their side of the property line. Rarely does Laban spot any bovine intruders and he suspects that’s because Charlie knows his routine and waits until Laban has returned home to set loose the oxen. It’d be just like that fool to believe Laban’s father too daft to notice the shortened stalks or the hoof prints or the piles of dung. Or maybe it’s just that Charlie doesn’t think those things will stand as proof before the law. Who can say?

  Surely not Laban. As he continues through the winter wheat, his inner voice nagging and nattering, mosquitoes start swarming in force. He waves away as many as he can and smacks dead the ones that don’t heed the warning, but it’s futile. The only way to get away from the evening mosquitoes is to hide under water or rub mud into his skin, neither of which are practical during his evening rounds.

  Laban spots the top of his sister’s head bouncing ahead of him as she crests the rise. If he doubles his pace, he’ll catch up to her in a few minutes or possibly even less than that, now that his sister has come to an abrupt stop.

  “What’s up?”

&nbs
p; No answer. Laban calls out a second time and again receives no response. He reaches back and checks for the revolver. It’s not until he’s pulled within a few steps of Annie that she announces what has brought her to a halt. “There’s no one here.”

  Laban crests the hill and looks out over the back pasture. The sun is low and the sky is streaked orange and pink and yellow, but he can still see the entirety of the field. And he can see that Annie’s right. The horses are nowhere to be seen. There’s nothing in front of them but a sea of stump-infested hay that eventually gives way to the tangle of untamed bush.

  No, no, no, no, no. This can’t be happening again. Laban scans the tree line, hoping the horses have, for some blessed reason, wandered into the bush of their own accord, but no. He doesn’t see any sign of them. However, he does hear a sound. It’s faint and it’s distant, but it’s definitely there.

  Annie spins to face her brother, snapping her hand out to the left. Twist immediately charges off, thinking Annie has thrown an invisible stick. Laban raises his finger to his lips, cautioning his sister not to say another word. Together they listen and together they hear the unmistakable sound of hoofbeats in Bryan’s back field.

  Laban hangs his head. He can feel the revolver pressing into his back. He doesn’t need to check for it. He never really needed to do that. He raises his eyes to heaven and says a silent prayer. Then he addresses his sister. “Go home, quick as you can, and take Twist with you.”

  Annie says and does nothing. She just looks at her brother with a quizzical expression and, after a few seconds, finds her words. “Laban, please. You know you can’t go over there. The Bryans hate us worse than God hates the devil. Remember what happened last time.”

  How could he ever forget? It was months before his ribs healed to the point where he could breathe with ease and still, to this day, he cannot swallow so much as his own spit without grimacing. But neither of those things erases the fact that the horses must be retrieved from the Bryans’ land and he’s the one who must do the retrieving. “I’ve got no real choice in the matter, Annie. And you’ve got no choice but to do as I tell you, so get on home and don’t let Father know what you’ve seen here tonight. I’ll have those horses fetched back to our field before anyone knows they went astray.”