The Harrows of Spring (21 page)

F
ORTY-SIX

When they returned to Union Grove just after sunset, Seth and Elam took the gunshot man directly to Dr. Copeland's house. The doctor had been teaching his son and medical assistant, Jasper, twelve, how to tie trout flies, specifically this evening a buff caddis fly imitation constructed solely of deer hair: wings, body, and tail. The deer hair was hollow and, when it was tied off on the hook, little air pockets were created that made the fly unsinkable. It was also nearly indestructible. You could use one fly all season long, he told the boy, and he had. The doctor knew that the delicate work required similar dexterity as surgery.

When the rangers came to the door and pointed to the figure hunched in the saddle, the doctor rushed outside with a candle lantern and asked his wife, Jeanette, to prepare the lab for surgery. He gave the lantern to his son to hold while the three men undid the lashings and carefully lowered the man off the big black horse. The doctor had obtained an articulated operating table from Glens Falls Hospital, his employer in the old times, before it closed permanently. They brought the man inside and put him on it. Jeanette set up a complex array of candles and mirrors on adjustable wooden stands and fired the alcohol burner of the autoclave. Then she cut the man's blood-stiffened clothes off with scissors while the doctor and his son changed into surgical gowns and scrubbed at the lab sink first with lye soap and then with full-strength ethyl alcohol. They cleaned off the patient with alcohol, put in a 110 millimeter plastic oral airway, inserted a rectal suppository of opium, the only anesthetic available, and proceeded to inventory his five wounds. The worst one had shattered his gallbladder, clipped part of his liver, and transited the pyloric canal of his stomach, finally exiting the right external oblique muscle. One lodged in the upper lobe of his right lung. One passed through his left upper trapezius muscle, missing the carotid artery and jugular vein by a few millimeters, and two had gone clear through the meaty part of his left thigh near the groin, apparently meant to unman him, but failing to.

“What a goddamned mess,” the doctor said, as he retracted an approach to the lung wound through the first and second ribs. His wife and son assisted as he dissected and entered each region, found the lodged bullet, sutured tissues and muscles, sponged out fluids, put in drain tubes, and sterilized the thoracic and abdominal cavities with alcohol as best he could. He had Jasper stitch up the outer layers, while he moved on to the next site. They finished in just over four hours. The patient's blood pressure had gone as low as 72 over 40 but he was alive. They left him in place on the table, knowing that they would need more help to move him to a bed, if he lived through the night. The rangers had gone home, of course. Jeanette, too, had staggered back to the house in a pall of exhaustion.

“How do you like performing modern surgery in medieval conditions?” the doctor asked Jasper as they wearily took off their scrubs.

“You still have the knowledge,” Jasper answered. “That's what matters.”

The doctor cranked his head and could not help smiling at the boy, despite his fatigue.

“You'll be a better doctor than me when your time comes,” he said. “Say a prayer for our patient before you tuck in. Go on now.” He kissed the boy on top of his head and shoved him toward the door.

When Jasper left, the doctor went into the front room office of the old carriage house, poured himself three fingers of pear brandy in a pony glass, and stuffed some loose marijuana in a pipe he had carved himself. When he felt the mingled buzz come on, he returned to the lab, checked the patient's saline and glucose lines, and took his blood pressure again. It had climbed a bit to 78 over 46. He sat on a stool beside the operating table sipping his brandy, only two of the twenty candles still burning, and calculated that the man had roughly a 15 percent chance of surviving his ordeal. Arduous as it was, the surgery itself wasn't heroic. The doctor had seen much more complicated cases come through the Glens Falls Hospital emergency room in the old times: car and especially motorcycle crash victims, industrial accidents, shotgun wounds that just shredded people. The trouble, of course, was that he had no antibiotic medicines. The patient would be extremely fortunate to escape infection, or overcome it when it developed. Hard as people tried, and despite the persistence of knowledge about sanitary practice, the new times were septic times.

F
ORTY-SEVEN

Somebody was rapping on Robert's front door very early the next morning. Given the low angle of the rising sun and the time of year, Robert figured it was not yet six o'clock. Britney woke up, too, and rolled over to watch him pull his pants up.

“It's all right,” Robert told her, though he suspected it was not.

Temple Merton was at the door. He'd left his farm when dawn was a barely visible gray glow above the treetops to the east. His bay gelding was hitched to the Japanese pear tree in Robert's dooryard.

“Sorry to bother you so early, Robert,” Temple said. “Have you got a bucket of water?”

“Of course.”

Temple brought it out to his horse. Meanwhile, Robert fired up the cookstove in the summer kitchen out back and put a kettle on. Temple came back and got right to the point: a gang of blue-eyed white men affecting to be Indians had burned his barns down and robbed his silver and gold. They were in the employ of the Berkshire People's Republic. He'd been visited two days earlier by one Buddy Goodfriend and had declined the offer of paying for a subscription toward their goal of forming a local political confederation. He assumed this was payback.

“Indians, for chrissake,” Robert said.

“At least they weren't zombies,” Temple said. He'd suffered through two decades of Hollywood's love affair with the various fabled undead. His cable TV series
Boomtown
was canceled in favor of the zombie-themed comedy
Death Comes Calling
, and two years later his sole directorial attempt, a sci-fi feature about time travel, was put into turnaround so the producers could pour their money into the would-be zombie blockbuster
BrainChild
, which went straight to video.

“We had a parley with this Goodfriend,” Robert said. “He gave us the song and dance about their federation and paying subscriptions. We were kind of waiting for their next move. But guys playing Indian . . . ?”

“They weren't playing,” Temple said.

“How do you know they work for that Berkshire bunch?”

“Their head guy said so. In so many words.”

“Frankly, it's the first I've heard of it.”

“Also, the day before yesterday somebody killed seven of my cows in a pasture on Coot Hill.”

“What? First I've heard of that too.”

“They were shot in the head. One clean shot for each cow.”

“These same guys?”

“I don't know. Could have been them.”

“What about your neighbors? Have they been robbed or harassed?”

“I don't know yet. We were busy keeping the fire off the house until the wee hours of the morning. But when I rode out at dawn my place was the only one where you could see a column of smoke rising.”

“Okay, I'll make the rounds and inquire,” Robert said.

“They're going to hurt somebody pretty soon, you know,” Temple said.

“I suppose you're right.”

“We're going to have to play rough like them.”

“We just haven't prepared for something like this.”

“Well we can't just let them burn down barns and rob people.”

“Of course not.”

Robert stared into some intermediate zone beyond Temple's head as if dazed.

“What's the matter with you, Robert?” Temple said. “I'm not sure you're taking this seriously.”

Robert recoiled, as though returning painfully to the present moment.

“We, uh, lost a child.”

“Lost?”

“Dead. Tetanus.”

“Oh, gosh . . . Just like that?”

“Yeah, night before last.”

“What child was this?”

“I live with a young woman whose husband died a year ago. Her daughter. Eight years old. Named Sarah. A wonderful little girl. It was a horrible death.”

“They couldn't do anything for her?”

“Nope.”

“Forgive me. I had no idea.”

“Of course.”

“I'm sorry to lay all this on you.”

“No, you were right to come here,” Robert said. “We have able-bodied men in town. They're just not organized. No police force or militia. That New Faith bunch has some ex-soldiers, Holy Land vets, capable guys. We have to protect this community.”

“I have nine men at my place,” Temple said. “Of course they're farmhands not soldiers.”

“Do you have any firearms?”

“Not enough to go around.”

“I'll see what I can do,” Robert said. “Did you lose any livestock in the fire?”

“Aside from those cows, my men got the rest of the animals out of the barns.”

“As soon as this is over we'll help you rebuild your barns. That's a promise. And it's going be over. We'll put a stop to it.”

“I guess I'll stand by, then.”

“I'll see if I can get some more firearms over to you.”

Temple offered his condolences again and departed. Robert made a pot of raspberry leaf tea with honey and brought a mug of it upstairs. Britney was actually sitting up in bed. She took the mug gratefully and held it close to her bosom.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Still here in the world,” she said without irony.

“You stay in it. Someday it'll seem like a better world than it does just now.”

“I want another child,” she said.

Robert did not know how to reply since he knew that she knew he had had a vasectomy when he was with Sandy, his wife, after they'd had the requisite two children.

“Of course,” he eventually said.

“Who was that down there?” she asked.

“There's some trouble I have to see about it. Will you be okay if I leave for a while?”

“I'll be okay when I get another child,” she said.

“We'll talk about it,” Robert said.

“It'll take more than talk.”

“Yes. But it won't hurt to talk.”

F
ORTY-EIGHT

At eight o'clock Robert met in the office of the community laundry in the old repurposed Union-Wayland mill building with Brother Jobe and Loren Holder, his partners in the venture.

“I heard about your little girl,” Brother Jobe said as he bustled in. “Terrible. Who can pretend to understand the mysterious workings of Providence. I suppose you and the rev here have made funeral arrangements.”

Loren shook his head and mouthed the word
no
.

“We buried her ourselves, out in the country,” Robert said.

“Huh?” Loren said.

“It's what Britney wanted,” Robert said. “On a property where she spent part of her own childhood.”

“Is she all right or what?” Loren asked.

Robert sighed. “I don't really know. She's fragile.”

“Does she have other women she can talk to?” Loren asked. “She's not the only one who's lost a child in this town.”

“She's kind of a loner,” Robert said.

“Maybe Jane Ann can help.”

Robert took it in and nodded his head, allowing an uncomfortable interval to pass, while Loren and Brother Jobe shared glances of concern.

“Thanks, sincerely,” he said, “but I didn't call this meeting to talk about my personal problems.” He told them about Temple Merton's visit and what had happened at his farm twelve hours earlier.

“White men dressed like Indians!” Brother Jobe said. “Ain't that just the last word in di-versity? We got to put an end to this monkey business. FYI, I caught up last night with that little freak Sonny Boy. He was enjoying a meal at the tavern like a grandee. I'm darn sure he's the one shot those seven cows belonging to farmer Merton. Told him to get packing forthwith. I'm kind of sorry I didn't take him into custody. He's a psycho case if I ever met one—and I met a fair share in my law practice back in the day. He's probably out there now somewheres, laying for new targets. Shooting livestock is one thing. If he shoots any people I'll burn the sumbitch on a ding-dang brush pile.”

“I've been around town talking to people,” Loren said, drawing a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. “I've got a list of twenty-three able-bodied men ready to take up arms.”

He handed it to Brother Jobe, who scanned it.

“You send them over to my headquarters and tell them to hunt up Brother Amos, and he will provide weapons, including instruction on loading and care,” Brother Jobe said. “And, by-the-by, my rangers are back from Albany.”

Robert flinched, realizing how out of it he'd been the past several days.

“I forgot all about that,” Robert said. “Is my boy back?”

“They say they purchased a fine boat and filled it with the requested cargo and your boy and Einhorn's are sailing it hither as I speak,” Brother Jobe said. “Mission accomplished. We have a crib dock prepared for them just downstream of Mr. Bullock's wharf. We expect them sometime today. I'm sending four of the brothers over there this morning with wagons to wait and off-load their cargo.”

“Make sure they can defend themselves,” Loren said. “Especially as they'll be transporting valuable goods back to town.”

“Roger that,” Brother Jobe said. “Elam tells me they run into an interesting bandit on the way south. Styled himself as a country doctor working with two female assistants. Almost had to blow this fellow's head off. Then on the return trip they come across a gunshot man, robbery victim, apparently, lying in a ditch bleeding to death. Whoever it was shot him up, they even stole his boots, probably his horse too. That was ten miles downriver. And now we got Indians torching barns and pillaging up here. I tell you, there's mayhem and mischief breaking out all over the county. I don't like it.”

“We've been lucky for years,” Robert said. “And we got complacent about living in peace.”

“People can be swept up by violence,” Loren said. “And quickly. It's a thin line.”

“My people walk the straight and narrow, Reverend,” Brother Jobe said. “We're going to find out exactly where these birds are roosting and flush 'em out, and I hope they will go back to where they come from without any bloodshed. You tell your town men after they fetch their firearms from Brother Amos to muster out on our hayfield behind the school and I'll have my rangers ready with a plan of action for them.”