The Harrows of Spring (26 page)

S
IXTY-THREE

Joseph left the injured and dead children at the doctor's with four New Faith brothers and several townsmen to assist the doctor in moving them in and out of his surgery and the springhouse that served as his morgue. Then he hurried to the old high school and dispatched some of the sisters who had experience nursing the invalid Mary Beth Ivanhoe when she was ill down to the doctor's place as well. The fifty-nine Berkshire children and teens arrested but not injured were taken to the sanctuary, formerly the school assembly hall, where blankets were found for them, and guards posted to watch over them sleeping on the proscenium stage until it could be decided what further to do. Joseph took Flame Aurora Greengrass to a special solitary cell, a small chapel that had been a teachers' lounge in the old times, and placed her under guard there. Finally, he faced the awful task of informing Brother Jobe what had happened.

The pastor and honcho of the New Faith Covenant Brotherhood Church of Jesus was in his quarters, the old principal's suite on the first floor, where he'd been waiting anxiously all evening for the return of the defense force. He sat behind his desk, where he'd been trying without much success to compose a sermon for the coming Sunday service titled: “Getting in the Glory Land Way for Dummies.” Joseph entered without knocking. Brother Jobe shot out of his seat.

“You're still up, then,” Joseph said.

“'Course I'm up,” Brother Jobe retorted. “Did you find them birds?”

“Yessir,” Joseph said, fingering his hat.

“You round 'em up and bring 'em back?”

“Yessir, we did.”

Brother Jobe waited for more.

“Well, don't just stand there like a seegar store injun.”

“It didn't go down so smooth, sir.”

“Let's have the details, then.”

When he learned that the stalwart Elam was dead Brother Jobe's legs wobbled. He lunged for the back of his desk chair and lowered himself gingerly into the seat as if he might fall down on the floor and shatter like a porcelain statuette. Then, when Joseph went on to say that they had killed and wounded over a dozen children in the skirmish, Brother Jobe cradled his forehead in his hands, leaned forward on his elbows, and struggled to keep from hyperventilating. Joseph gave him the rest of it briefly and gently: Seth remained at the site of the fray and would bring back the bodies of Elam and his murderer at daylight. The wounded were at the doctor's. The rest of the children were in custody on the premises and the woman known as Flame was sequestered from the rest under guard in the little chapel.

Brother Jobe remained humped over at his desk.

“Git Boaz, Zuriel, Shiloh, and Eben down here,” he muttered, without raising his head, referring to four of the most mature and reliable brothers. “Fit 'em out with sidearms. We got to see about something right away.”

“What's that, sir?”

“That'd be Mr. Glen Ethan Greengrass, the author of all this mischief and tragedy.”

S
IXTY-FOUR

Daniel was cleaning up the dishes, half dead on his feet, half drunk, when he heard somebody else at the door, rapping timidly. He considered pretending he was not there but nobody in these new times would leave a home or a workplace without extinguishing any live flames and a candle still burned on the table. So, with his heart in his gut, he went to see who was at his door. It was Karen Grolsch. A smile ignited on her face at seeing him.

“I heard you were back,” she said.

Daniel was shocked to realize he'd all but forgotten about her in the rush of events and was startled to see how radiant she was.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Uh, yes, I'm okay,” he said.

“Can I come in for a moment.”

“Uh, yes, please come in.”

He threw the door all the way open. She smelled of soap and lilac as she stepped past him. She was tall, only a few inches shorter than him, but lithe, sprightly in a light blue summer frock and a thin cardigan sweater, her movements like music in their liquidity. He watched her eyes take in the big room with all its printing equipment and the contrasting domestic areas, the sitting area, the kitchen, the bed—two worlds in one place.

“I've been drinking some,” he said. “Forgive me.”

“That's okay,” she said.

“We were on the river for two days. Out in the sun. Long days.”

“Yes, I heard. You got that boat.”

“We did,” he said. “We brought back a nice boat.”

“I've been busy while you were away,” she said. She carried a canvas tote and pulled out bundled sheafs of papers covered with handwriting. She began laying them out on his kitchen table. “This is my interview with Mr. Bullock—”

“How did you manage to do that?”

“I just went over there and asked to see him.”

“You're brave.”

“He was gracious. He talked to me for an hour in his study and gave me whiskey. This other report is about the speech that the visiting Mr. Greengrass, founder of the Berkshire Republic, made from the window of his hotel room while you were gone. I transcribed it the best I could, but it didn't make much sense. I got a lot of comments from the villagers. They didn't get it, either, so it wasn't just me. This other one is a report on the robbery that took place today at Einhorn's store.”

“I heard about it.”

“Yes. It's all here.”

“You have been busy,” he said. “Are you still the duck boss at Weibel's?”

“Quack quack,” she said. “That means yes.”

“I'm impressed,” he said.

“I told you I would take this seriously. Maybe now we can put out a newspaper.”

He looked down at the packets of papers neatly arrayed on the table before him, then back at Karen, and said, “Yes, yes, I believe we can.”

She saw something darken his features. He rocked on his heels. He put his hand to his mouth as if his insides were rebelling.

“What is it?” she asked. “Are you sick?”

He tried to look away.

“Tell me,” she said.

Gasping for air, he told her.

S
IXTY-FIVE

Loren had been sitting beside his son Evan in the room behind the doctor's surgery when the men from the village defense team brought in the wounded and the dead. The place had been exceptionally quiet up to that point, just a sweet spring evening with the sounds of new life bourgeoning outside the window: night birds, insects. Loren had been reading
Huckleberry Finn
to Evan by candlelight. The young man remained unconscious but did not show any gross signs of infection or fever. His brow was dry. From time to time he sighed or shifted slightly in bed. Then the others came from the battlefield about an hour or so after nightfall and the old carriage house turned clinic erupted in a commotion of cries, weeping, prayer, groans, and shouted orders, as the dead were laid out, the wounded were sorted, and the laboratory prepared once again for surgery. Loren left Evan and offered his assistance. Three New Faith women arrived claiming to have nursing experience and set to tasks at once. The doctor and his wife and son donned their scrubs, arrayed their instruments, and fired the autoclave. The candle stands and mirrors were deployed along with fresh linens, grain alcohol antiseptic, opium suppositories, cloth dressings, and bottles of intravenous fluids. And then the surgeries commenced.

They would be at it until sunrise. In the event, the doctor was able to save three of the seven wounded, including a seven-year-old girl who survived the amputation below the knee of her shattered leg. A teen with a head wound died as soon they brought him to the table. Others did not survive their blood loss, trauma, and shock during arduous ordeals under the knife. Loren, who was physically large and strong, was given the task of holding down the patients on the table, as the opium anesthetic did not render the patients completely unconscious, lest the dose kill them outright. Their agonies could be heard over much of the east side of the village, and people began to venture from their homes and collect on the street before the doctor's establishment to see what was going on. Among those who had ventured down from the Congregational Church's parish house was Jane Ann Holder, who was enlisted at once in helping to care for the surviving children in a new postoperative ward set up in the infirmary on the second floor above the surgery, unaware that her own son lay in the ground-floor back room recuperating from his own ordeal.

S
IXTY-SIX

Brother Jobe and four of his men marched across town from the New Faith headquarters directly to the new hotel in the center of Main Street. Even downtown they could hear the commotion up at the doctor's, a sound cloud of anguish. Inside, Brother Jonah sat behind the desk, as usual. The bar was closed this night, because Brother Micah, the tavern manager, had turned out for the village defense force. Jonah had been trying to read another Clive Cussler adventure novel,
Valhalla Rising
, but was unable to concentrate owing to the distant screams and howls abroad on the night air, even after he'd closed the windows in the front room.

“What all's going on out there, sir?” he asked when Brother Jobe and the men marched in. “Sounds like banshees and goblins on the loose.”

“It's just some people got hurt in a skirmish,” Brother Jobe said. “Is that Mr. Greengrass yet up in his room?”

“His boys come down now and then,” Jonah said, “but I ain't seen the man himself since he come in. I think he might be ill, sir.”

“Yeah, so they say. We gonna personally examine the sumbitch. Come on, let's go.”

The New Faith men lit a candle and followed Brother Jobe upstairs to the door of the Greengrass room. Their polite knock on the door was answered by a surly retort, “What do you want?”

“We want to speak to Mr. Greengrass.”

“He's very sick.”

“That's what you said before.”

“Nothing's changed.”

“No, things
have
changed. Open the door or we gonna bust it down.”

Brother Jobe and his men waited. Eben and Zuriel hoisted their pistols from their waistbands. Brother Jobe nodded to Shiloh and Boaz, who threw themselves against the door and shattered the jamb. The door flew open. Inside, two hulking young men saw the brandished pistols in the mix of candlelight and the moonlight streaming through the window. Every surface of the room was occupied by empty plates and glasses from the meals they'd ordered up. A hand of playing cards lay on a tea table arrayed in the gin rummy way, with the wheelchair as one of the seats there.

“Git over in that corner by that chiffonier,” Brother Jobe told them. They shuffled past the card table to the designated spot. “This place stinks like a hog pen.”

“What's all that screaming out there?” one of the young men asked timidly. In the old times, he might have been a linebacker on the high school team but he had the soft, unformed face of a child and the voice of a choirboy.

“That's the sound of you-all's youngsters all shot up,” Brother Jobe said.

“Who shot them?” the other young man asked.

“Just shut up,” Brother Jobe said, then called across the room: “Mr. Greengrass, can you hear me?”

“He's sick—”

“You keep saying. And didn't I tell you to shut up?”

“Leave him alone!”

Shiloh smacked the boy upside the head with the flat of his hand.

Brother Jobe approached the bed warily. Glen Ethan Greengrass lay inert on the bed. He was not tucked within the bedsheets but rather lay on top of the undisturbed blankets with a thin white-tufted bedspread pulled up to his shoulders. He appeared to be wearing clothing under the bedspread. Brother Jobe leaned closer with his candle. Greengrass's face was sunken and shriveled. In the meager light the concavities beneath his cheekbones were so deep they looked like excavations. The skin was like old parchment. His hair was unnaturally dark and full and carefully combed. The lips were shrunken back to such an extreme that the face appeared to be deviously grinning.

“Don't touch him!”

Shiloh smacked the boy again.

“Didn't he tell you shut up?”

“What are you?” Brother Jobe muttered, reaching out to draw down the bedspread, which he then flung aside, revealing the full shrunken figure in a tattered old business suit several sizes too large, the tips of bony fingers like claws on a bird of prey, and shiny black shoes on its feet that looked several sizes too large. An odor as of rot overlaid with disinfectant spirits rose off the figure. Brother Jobe turned to look back at its two young guardians. “What is this? Some kind of puppet?”

One of them gaped with his mouth open. The other tried to look away as if frightened or ashamed. Neither replied.

Brother Jobe slid his left hand under Glen Ethan Greengrass's head. As he attempted to lift it, the full, dark hair fell away all of a piece, revealing an incision that circumscribed the skull. Brother Jobe slid his left hand farther down under the figure's shoulders and his right hand under its hips and lifted it up in both hands. The figure was as stiff as a four-foot length of two-by-six lumber and didn't weigh as much as that. Brother Jobe looked down on the thing in his hands with disgust and amazement. He turned so that his men could behold it. As he did, its head drooped backward and, with a slight tearing sound, came loose and fell off the body and onto the floor, where it bounced once. Grains of sawdust and wood chips fell from the aperature that had been his neck.

“I be dog,” Brother Jobe said, “if Glen Ethan Greengrass ain't a ding-dang mummy!”

His two young guardians let out howls that drowned the screams of the dying children emanating from four blocks to the east. One fell to his knees and began to throw up.

Brother Jobe turned to gaze down at the shrunken remnant of a former person in his hands and said, “My thoughts exactly.” Then he heaved the body clean out the open window in a forceful arc that made it appear, for a moment, as if it might take flight. But gravity intervened and it landed in the street with a faint thud. Finally, Brother Jobe picked the head and the wig up off the floor and stuffed them in a pillowcase.

“Take these two gomers back and put 'em in with the others,” he told Shiloh and the men.