The Harrows of Spring (24 page)

F
IFTY-SIX

Brother Gabriel was provided a good map of the rural townships encompassing the village of Union Grove, and he made his way north along old County Route 62 toward Temple Merton's farm in a two-wheeled trap with its load of six rifles and a hundred fifty rounds of ammunition. He had reached the ruins of the old one-room schoolhouse at the intersection of Scotch Hill Road when he saw a figure hunkered by the roadside up ahead. He was alert without being especially alarmed at the sight of a lone stranger and kept his horse on pace on the level grade. As he drew closer, he began to apprehend that the figure was a woman, a young one at that. Her blond hair fell in frizzy ringlets on her shoulders. She wore mannish trousers but a loose button-front shirt and a sweater tied around her slender waist in the fair, warm weather. She rose off her haunches as he came near and he noticed that she was very comely indeed. She began to wave her hand, hailing him. He reined in his mare and the cart soon jostled to a halt nearly at her feet. From up on the driver's bench, he could see clear down the front of her shirt to a broad brown nipple at the end of a fleshy swell. His hormones reacted violently.

“Afternoon, mister,” Flame Aurora Greengrass said attempting to approximate a friendly smile. “Catch a ride?”

“Why, sure,” Brother Gabriel said, practically croaking like a frog. “How far you going?”

“Just up a ways.”

“Climb aboard.”

She scooched up onto the driver's bench. Brother Gabriel could feel her body radiate heat beside him while the vapors coming off her warm flesh and clothing made his head swim. He geed up his horse to a trot, stole a glance at her, then stole another. He could still see into her loose shirt at the creamy slot within. In an uproar of internal tension, he felt compelled to say something, and what came out was the default salutation of his people.

“Do you know Jesus, ma'am?”

He smiled strenuously but she only glared back in return. Next, she grasped the side rail on the driver's bench, turned toward Brother Gabriel, raised her long powerful left leg, and pushed him off the seat clear out of the trap onto the road, where he fell with a bright yelp. A little farther up the road a swarm of her comrades from the Berkshire People's Republic emerged from the woods on either side of the road and took control of the horse until they brought the rig to a halt again. Flame climbed down and uncovered the tarp behind the driver's bench, pleased to discover an assortment of rifles chambered for generic 5.56 x 45mm rounds and a wooden crate of the ammunition.

Back down the road, Brother Gabriel lay squalling in the dust unable to get up due to his shattered collarbone. The hijackers left him there despite his pleas and his prayers and took their prize to their bivouac in a hayfield down by the Battenkill.

F
IFTY-SEVEN

Brothers Levi, Oren, and Titus were down at the new crib dock at the Hudson River awaiting arrival of Daniel Earle, Teddy Einhorn, and the new boat. Their two horses were released from their wagon harness and picketed in a sunny glade down by the riverbank where clover, phlox, and mustard cress grew. The men had a good enough lunch of hard cheese and corn bread. Their rifles were stacked in a tripod down by the dock. The day was warm and peaceful and a refreshing breeze came off the river. They occupied themselves all afternoon working on the small goods-storage building beside the road. The building was a simple twenty-by-fourteen barn with the sills posted up on stone footings. It would get a big sliding door for moving cargoes inside and narrow clerestory windows up under the soffit on one side to admit light while making surreptitious entry difficult. They were still in the early stages of construction, however, spending the afternoon hours nailing cedar shingles on the roof over the still-open framed walls. Oren remained on the ground splitting shingles from sixteen-inch cedar logs with a froe and a black locust mallet while the other two crawled about the roof, nailing the shingles into place.

Around five o'clock the boat still had not arrived. But a stranger drove by in a smart little pony cart. It was Buddy Goodfriend on his way to Stephen Bullock's plantation, about which he had heard told many wonders and marvels—especially of the treasures Bullock had laid up in the years since the events that brought on the hard new times. Goodfriend, feeling particularly buoyant this fine, sunny May afternoon, saluted the three New Faith brothers as his pony trotted up the River Road but he did not stop to palaver. He was anxious to get to his destination.

Not a half hour later the three brothers were still at work, still waiting on the boat, when an even more unusual sight than a man driving a pony cart presented itself: a band of eleven Indian warriors jogging up the River Road in loincloths, feather and claw necklaces, ear wheels, and deerskin moccasins, their heads shaved but for topknots or spikey roaches stuck up in tallow. Their faces were painted in alarming motifs, red and black vertically and horizontally, ghostly white with blackened eyes and clown mouths, red bands, slashes, spots, handprints. They carried war clubs and hand axes, wore crude steel daggers in their loincloth waistbands, or carried bows and quivers over their bare shoulders. The three New Faith brothers stood stock-still in place as the Indians passed by in a kind of relaxed dogtrot. Only the Indian at the van of the party turned to look at them. His painted face evinced an utter absence of emotion, making him appear all the more sinister. The others of the party trotted by as if the dock and the barn and the brothers at work weren't even there. Nobody at either end of the transaction interrupted the bizarre moment, and then the Indians rounded a bend in the road and vanished.

The brothers remained frozen a good minute after the intruders were gone. Brother Titus, still up on the roof, murmured, “Now I seen everything.”

“I'm wondering did I really even seen that?” Oren said.

“I'm pretty sure I seen it, too, brother,” Levi said. “But I sure as heck don't know what to make of it.”

Then they nervously resumed their work.

Twenty minutes later it was as if the Indians were but a dimly recalled hallucination when Teddy Einhorn cried, “Hey, hello, and ahoy,” from the bow of the
Katterskill
a hundred yards out. The New Faith brothers dropped their tools, clambered down, and scrambled out to the end of the crib dock while Daniel brought the homely boat about in the breeze and Teddy reefed the mainsail, and they made a perfect landing between the two cribs. Daniel threw Oren a line and soon the craft was secure in its new landing.

“Isn't she a beauty?” Oren shouted.

The two boatmen jumped ashore.

“I wasn't sure this was the right place,” Daniel said. “It's good to be home. Nice job on the dock, by the way.”

Meanwhile, Levi and Titus got the horses and hitched them to their sturdy open hay wagon. Once the cargo was loaded on it, and tied down, Oren led the horses on foot with a lead line up the long hill and the other men followed the wagon, armed and alert for Indians or anything else untoward that might come their way.

F
IFTY-EIGHT

Sylvester “Buddy” Goodfriend hoisted his blown brandy snifter to admire its floral etching against the amber evening light that poured through the windows of Bullock's gorgeous dining room. He'd visited quite a few of the local wealthy farmers in the district over the past week, but Bullock's establishment dazzled him by an order of magnitude. He was only sorry to hear that Bullock's hydroelectric generator was on the fritz, perhaps permanently, since the lord of the manor had exhausted his backup supply of Pelton wheels. It had been a long time since Goodfriend enjoyed the luxury of electric lighting and recorded music. But the evening and the company and the meal had been nonetheless extraordinary.

Everything in Bullock's dining room was museum-quality: first-rate landscape paintings by Gifford and Kensett, a fine portrait of a male ancestor, Moses Bullock (1742–1819), in his Revolutionary War artillery officer's bottle green uniform, the inlaid Hepplewhite sideboard (Goodfriend, an antiques dealer for a few years before the collapse, supposed he could have sold the piece for a tidy thirty thousand back when money was money), not to mention the impressive trove of silver flatware on the table, the Georgian candelabra, condiment dishes, salvers, and so forth. It made his brain ring like an old-times cash register.

Goodfriend had stopped by at about six o'clock in the evening supposing, as he usually and so reliably did, that supper might be on its way to the table and that in the custom of the new times a sojourning stranger of apparent good bearing would be invited to share the meal—which is exactly what happened after he introduced himself to Sophie Bullock, who swept into the front hallway in a sleeveless, cream-colored, scoop-necked toile dress that reminded Goodfriend of his grandmother, a former Wilhelmina model (divorced from husband number three, convicted Wall Street fraudster Bucky Felsch), who used to take him to the Lenox, Massachusetts, country club for butterscotch sundaes.

Bullock himself followed, like an equestrian statue come to life. Costumed in his usual buff riding trousers, fine boots, and an old damask vest embroidered with violets, with his silvery hair down to his shoulders, Bullock looked like he could found a republic single-handedly before lunch. His outfit and bearing made Goodfriend self-conscious about his own showy old-times expeditionary raiment. But when Sophie explained that the visitor represented the Berkshire People's Republic, and its leader Glen Ethan Greengrass, Bullock's eyes truly blazed. He put an aperitif mint julep in Goodfriend's fist, clapped an arm around his shoulder, and ushered him into the dining room like a spider showing a fly to the web.

Goodfriend made his confederation pitch over the first course of fresh asparagus doused in morels, spring garlic, and a creamy sauce based on dandelion wine.

“And what would we have to do in exchange for all these awesome political blessings?” Bullock asked, filling Goodfriend's glass with a sparkling Riesling-type varietal produced on the premises. Goodfriend proceeded to sketch out the subscription procedure.

“How cunning,” Sophie observed. “We'd pay for government the way we used to pay for cable TV.”

“That's right,” Goodfriend said. “A small monthly charge that you hardly notice.”

“Can you pick and choose the services you get the way we used to?”

“Such as what, ma'am?”

“Oh, say, go with the free trade and dispense with the printed money?”

“Well, there's a certain core package—”

Just then, Lilah the cook brought in another course: pike que­nelles in a puddle of arugula puree. Bullock refilled Goodfriend's glass.

“You shouldn't,” Goodfriend said.

“Live large while you can,” Bullock rejoined. “Tell me about this leader of yours, this Glen Ethan Greengrass.”

Goodfriend was getting a bit high, a little sloppy, but he was always happy to lay out the colorful Greengrass story: child prodigy Northeast regional chess champion; batboy for the New York Mets (three seasons); PhD in statistical macroanalytics at age twenty from the City University of New York; leading Iraq War protester (member of the “Hadley Five,” who organized the May Day riot at the Portsmouth Naval Base and was then prosecuted unsuccessfully for destruction of federal property); director of the First Action Prison Diversity Network; twice Green Party U.S. Senate candidate (lost twice); tenured economics professor at Amherst College, where the “Greengrass Inequality Index” was developed; editor of the radical left political journal
The Fisted Glove;
beloved progressive radio personality, CEO, and station license holder of WBGB-FM and its thirteen affiliates; confidant of the late, great folksinger Pete Seeger; and finally founder of the Berkshire People's Republic when the old nation finally crumbled under the weight of its own political mendacity and economic crime. By the time Goodfriend finished the saga, the crickets were chirping outside the dining room windows and Bullock had lighted the tapers in the Georgian candelabra. Also, Lilah had brought in the entrée: medallions of lamb with a fresh mint and shallot salsa and gratinéed hominy. Bullock had also switched to a bright red Grenache wine made by the monks of North Hoosick and Goodfriend had put away two glasses of it before he concluded the well-rehearsed biography of his mentor.

When Lilah brought in dessert, a maple crème caramel with cornmeal madeleines, Bullock brought out some of his own quince eau-de-vie, with the fruit in the bottle, a neat trick that Buddy Goodfriend asked to have explained to him as he quaffed a double dram of the fine spirit. (The end of the branch with its developing fruitlet was inserted in the bottle, which was suspended in situ from the tree until the fruit finished growing in October.) But he was so drunk that he kept on interrupting, saying, “Tha's marv'lous, jus' marv'lous,” over and over, and finally ended the meal with his face planted squarely in what remained of the crème caramel before him.

Bullock rang for Lilah and told her to summon his subalterns Dick Lee and Michael Delson. Sophie excused herself from the table while Bullock waited and enjoyed his own dessert. The men appeared ten minutes later, coming, as they did, from their own cottages up the hill in Bullock's employee village. They were, at first, taken aback at the sight of Goodfriend, inert at his place.

“Evening, gentlemen,” Bullock greeted his trusted aides jauntily, dabbing his mouth with a fine linen napkin. He had a bit of a buzz on too.

“Is he okay?” Dick Lee said, tilting his head at the disposition of the guest's face in the dish.

“Still breathing, but I've seen better table manners,” Bullock said. “Take him to the blue room, will you, and freshen him up.”

F
IFTY-NINE

Seth and Elam stole over the landscape like a pair of panthers, keeping to the hedgerows and wooded ridges, searching for the new encampment of the Berkie bunch, as they called them. They had received the news of the brazen theft at Einhorn's store before leaving town. They were to reconnoiter a quadrant of the rural township where they thought the raiders were most likely to be, and meet up with Brother Joseph and his mixed band of fifty-three Union Grove and New Faith men at seven in the evening at the Center Falls bridge.

The late day was still and warm and the low sunlight cast every tree and rock in a stark chiaroscuro. They climbed the ancient folded ridge called Spook Hill only as high as necessary to survey the terrain to the west and north, an area that comprised about seven miles of the course of the Battenkill. They supposed that the Berkies would want to be near water if they intended to stick around for more than another day, for carrying water was the hardest chore of camping. From their position at elevation the rangers could discern columns of smoke here and there rising in the breezeless sky. Most of these were farms. But at one particular wooded place about two miles away in a straight line they counted thirteen thin columns of smoke and one greater one, which they took to be a likely bivouac of their quarry. Elam had just raised his binoculars to his eyes when the muffled thud of a pneumatically supressed rifle shot sounded, like a hand ax hitting a stove billet, and Seth watched Elam's head fairly explode in a cloud of red mist like one of the pomegranates they liked to use for target practice in the dull hours between battles back in the Holy Land. A moment later, the ranger's large and noble body crumpled in place like a puppet with its strings cut.

Seth knew instantly that his longtime comrade was dead before he hit the ground. He dodged to his left behind a tree as a second shot missed his own head. He wiped Elam's blood from his eyes, switching off his emotions as he had so many times in war when other friends dropped beside him. About a hundred yards farther up Spook Hill was an outcrop of pyritic slate where Seth saw a little cloud of gunsmoke hanging in the air, a result of the poorer quality propellant available in the new times for reloading cartridges.

Seth scrambled around to his right and crosswise, thinking that whoever fired on them facing downhill would instinctively move that way if he were right-handed. He climbed practically on all fours up and over the uneven terrain, careful not to disturb the brush and saplings, movement of which might betray his position to someone stalking him. Shortly, on a level shoulder of Spook Hill, he crossed a fresh trail of crushed bracken ferns, followed them awhile, and saw ahead a pileup of large glacial erratic boulders through a stand of hemlock. He stopped moving and could actually hear wheezing from there, as of someone with weak lungs attempting to catch a breath. He began to steal closer to the rocks a few footsteps at a time, until he was pressed against one as big as a cabin covered with pale green lichen. The heavy breathing had subsided but he could smell the odor of an unwashed human close by. He sat patiently for ten minutes, waiting for any other sounds that would betray the movement of his enemy. Seth remained as still and silent as if he had been deposited in place with the ancient glaciers.

By-and-by Ainsley Perlew left his hiding spot and ventured past the edge of the big rock where Seth waited. Ainsley held his rifle with both hands as if he expected momentarily to have to defend himself. But Seth easily seized him, spun him around, took away his weapon, and had him pinned on his back on the ground before the young man knew what was happening.

“Who are you?” Seth asked.

“What?”

“You with them Berkies?”

“What?”

Seth walked calmly three steps to his left and jerked a stout naked branch from a nearby fallen hemlock. In the meantime, Ainsley Perlew tried to scramble to his feet, but Seth caught him with a fierce blow to his left kidney. The young man shrieked and fell. Seth waited for him to stop squirming.

“What's your name?”

“Sonny Boy.”

“How old are you?”

“What?”

Seth jabbed the pointy end of his branch in Ainsley's armpit.

“Ow! Nineteen!” he yelled.

“You still somebody's sonny boy at nineteen? Looks like you got a man's job.”

Ainsley just glared back blankly, breathing through his mouth.

“Where are all them people parked?” Seth asked.

“What?”

Seth smacked him upside the head with the branch. “Them Berkshires.”

“Down by the river.”

They were only a few feet apart, but the distance between them might have been a million miles.

“What you think I oughta do with you?” Seth asked.

Ainsley shook his head.

“You just kilt as fine a man as they is. You know that?”

Ainsley began to cry rather stoically.

“Look at this weapon of yours,” Seth continued, holding up the rifle. “That's a high-class sniper scope on this thing. What are you? An assassin? I think so.”

Ainsley Perlew mutely blinked back at him through tears.

“'Course you ain't sayin'. Let me tell you something. They ain't no courts, no judges anymore. So I'm gon' have to judge this case myself. I can't turn the other cheek to what you done. Sorry. You kilt my best friend in cold blood. There ain't no shadow of a doubt about it in my mind. I would like to beat you to death with this here tree limb so you would die by degrees, mebbe regretting the wrong you done. But it would be less than Christian to do that. I will be merciful. I don't have no time to take you back to town where my people would judge you and hang you. Folks are waiting on me now and lives may depend on it. So I pronounce you guilty and sentence you to be gone from this world, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

Seth racked the bolt, then hesitated a moment. Their eyes met.

“I'm a good boy,” Ainsley said.

“No, by God, you are not.”

Without further ceremony, Seth tossed the branch aside, took aim, and lodged a bullet in Ainsley Perlew's heart. He flung the rifle at the slight figure now sprawled inertly on his back in the cedar duff with his unseeing eyes open to the dark treetops. Then he turned around, staggered to the cabin-size rock, and cried his own eyes out.