The Visionist: A Novel (24 page)

The Path of the Devoted.
I knew it by another name: a dance called The Narrow Path. The journey along its thin line would be perilous, and I could not be certain as to when I would undertake it. I knew only that its completion would determine my fate as a believer.

Simon Pryor

C
YNICISM COMES AS
naturally to the sniffer as does wariness to the snitch. It preserves him from underestimating life’s capacity to disappoint. I had written to the Shaker sister, asking if I might be allowed to pass even five minutes speaking in private to Polly Kimball. Her reply was swift and short: I would be allowed to meet the girl so long as I brought May Kimball with me. The Shaker people did not permit encounters between men and women, never mind one without a chaperone, never mind one when the man in question was “of the World.” Though “of the World” had an appealingly dapper ring to it, I knew that the classification placed me in a caste of the lowest sort. May Kimball, I assumed, would be installed nearby to ensure nothing untoward took place. Now, my task was to find her before her daughter broke down and said anything to anyone but me.

Finding May without revealing her whereabouts to another soul became my mission. She alone would be allowed to speak to her daughter once I explained to her that I would be reporting the fire as an accident. No one except Peeles and the Shaker sister had mentioned the boy Ben to me. I do not understand how a family hides a child from the world—nor, for that matter, why—but clearly it was not as difficult as I had assumed. Of all the parties interested in the land, only Trask appeared the least bit gentlemanly, though his manner could, I suppose, be chalked up to inexperience. It takes practice to become a rogue.

Business, always business, kept me moving forward. James Hurlbut—of whom I’d been blessedly free since handing in my report—had requested a rendezvous, but he had refused to tell me why. I could not resist annoying the man and thus arranged to meet him in the foulest tavern I could find. It was early yet, and though I’d spent the morning writing and delivering an account of my meeting with “Sister” Agnes to Barnabas Trask—as promised, a letter divulging the whereabouts of both Kimball children—I suddenly felt that I had aged twenty years since the balmy days of summer. Dread and defeat beat upon my bones like the clapper in a church bell, for I worried over what I had to get done before Polly Kimball said anything about the fire to Elder Sister Agnes. The terror in the girl’s eyes when she saw me was a clear enough indication that she was hiding something. She knew that her tale, once told, would change everything.

I called for a tumbler of whiskey and then another, hoping to steel myself against the memories that rose up whenever I found myself in the presence of James Hurlbut. The January wind blew hard outside, and the air was so cold that it seemed to freeze one’s breath solid before it had a chance to fill the lungs. Still, as he threw open the door to the saloon, it was clear that Hurlbut had taken to heart none of the usual sartorial precautions of winter survival. He was dressed, ever the dandy, in colors gay as a hummingbird—rose satin cravat, blue velvet waistcoat, cream coat lined with a light-hued fur, emerald-green pantaloons, white gloves, and length enough of gold watch guard to have hanged himself. I was, I will admit, particularly intrigued by his hat—a veritable uproar of plumage. Why he should have thought to make such an effort in honor of so low a visit I cannot imagine. Such is the quirkiness of the very rich; they attend to all the wrong things.

“Pryor,” he said, stiffly. “Face-to-face for the first time in a long time.”

“Master Hurlbut,” I answered, raising my glass.

Though I had never minded the title myself, Hurlbut hated to be called “master,” for it made him sound like little more than the schoolboy he had once been, his father’s youngest son.

“This setting suits you, Pryor,” he replied, “however much it may disgust me.”

“Better in here than out there,” I said, watching him arrange his clothing about him, a florid shield against the smell of old smoke and alcohol. “Nothing like a warm tavern on an icy day now, is there?”

“The delights of your place of business interest me not at all. I am here simply to tell you that I require your services once again, relating to the Kimball matter.”

“Ah,” I said. “And what might you be
requiring
of me this time?”

“I would like you to find May Kimball and bring her to me.”

I signaled to the barkeep for another whiskey. Though I knew he wouldn’t take me up on it, I expressly did not ask if my employer wanted anything—he got more than enough out of me as far as I was concerned. “And if I refuse?” I asked.

Hurlbut stared at his well-groomed fingernails before moving to place his hands on the table and then thinking better of it. He was trying to figure out how best to get what he came for. Oily flattery would get him nowhere, as we knew each other far too well. Infantile rage would make it plain that I’d gotten his goat. He settled on humiliation.

“Never one to come through when it counts, eh Pryor?” His voice dropped low. “Oh, you laugh at me, but you know well enough how pathetic you are. My lapdog all these years. So long as there’s a purse in it, you’re a man who’d abandon his own family.”

He let his allusion hang in the air.

“Reminders of the past do nothing to change our present situation,” I said. “I won’t do it. Anything else?”

Hurlbut’s eyes blazed beneath his ridiculous headdress. “You forget how near to your mother and father I reside, Pryor. Do you no longer fear for their well-being?”

“If you make things difficult for anyone close to me,” I said, leaning forward, “I’ll open my little box of Hurlbut keepsakes. Lots in there that could cause you inconvenience.”

He paused, taking a moment to compose himself. “Strange, you’ve never threatened me before. It’s that May Kimball, isn’t it? I had a hunch you’d taken an interest in the woman. Perhaps a more personal one than I’d originally assumed, though she is a bit…
mature
for you, don’t you think? Then again, well within your class, Pryor. What an old goat you are,” he said, smiling lasciviously.

Dropping his grin, he barked: “Cramby!”

I hadn’t noticed the messenger’s dark, stooped figure, lurking in the corner.

“Ready the carriage! Apparently, Mister Pryor has more important things to pursue than his work as an investigator for the humble likes of us.”

The beleaguered messenger looked at me with an odd expression on his face. Hurlbut’s back was turned, so the miserable wretch knew he couldn’t be seen. Staring into my eyes, he asked loudly, “Will I be readying the horses for the auction tomorrow, sir?”

Hurlbut pushed back his chair roughly and swatted his gloves impatiently. “Whatever does that matter now, you cretin. Just do as I’ve asked and get me out of this…hogs’ sty.” He grunted as he stood. “The woman is easily found, Pryor. You just need to know where to look—apparently a talent that eludes you. We’ll speak again.”

“I won’t look forward to it,” I said, tipping back in my chair and staring him in the eye. Why had Cramby tried to help me just now?

Hurlbut smiled.

“You are not the only one I can turn to, Pryor. For if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s never to trust the word of a lone man. Gives him a bit too much control for my taste. The loose ends I may or may not have come across? Well, let us say that it is lucky I have men besides you who are capable of handling them.”

A cold blast filled the tavern as he swirled his cape and stamped out of sight.

Time had made shabby and mean the town of my earliest days, or so it seemed to one who had last walked its streets as a boy. Even on a winter morning such as this, I remember running through the bustle of the main street, calling out to the shopkeepers, the blacksmith, the town gossips and spinsters as though they were distant members of a large and jolly family. I felt that I knew Burns’ Hollow as well as it knew me and, in such reciprocal recognition, discovered the satisfaction of being certain where I belonged.

But I had not come to reminisce. As advertised on the poster Barnabas Trask and I had seen pinned up in the courthouse, today was the day of the town’s pauper auction and no doubt the streets were quiet because so many inhabitants had already settled in their places to watch the spectacle. I passed drawn shades and signs reading
CLOSED.
My horse shied as a mongrel leapt from an alleyway with its teeth bared, but I kept on steadily until the windows of my father’s print shop came into view. They were lit against the gloom of the winter day. As I had found him so many other times, he was at work. It didn’t surprise me: He was a man who would never participate in such a foul tradition. I pulled my mount up short and shifted the brim of my hat down low over my face. I’d snuck in like a bandit.

Do you think my heart leapt every time I saw my father in his ink-stained apron, older, stooped, standing alone at his worktable? Do you think that the warm lamplight glowing in the windows above the shop made me ache for the embrace of my mother? Do you think that I considered for a moment, knocking at the door and ending my years of exile? Of course. But I had a job to do and found it easier by far to turn sharply in the direction of the Town Hall, where already a line of men, women, and children had gathered, craning their necks towards the door, worried that the room was already too crowded to allow them entry.

There were men of all trades present, for when a son dies or runs away, the father is often left in need of cheap labor. But most of the congregants were spectators, the type to attend hangings on the village green as easily as they did church picnics. I remembered a back entrance to the hall, one my friends and I had used to sneak inside and drink cider under cover from the snow and rain, free of admonishing stares from our elders. Tying my horse to the empty rail, I slipped through the door. I had been wise not to wait with the others, for the room was indeed jammed, a loud burble of excitement filling the air. The smell of so many packed in so tight—their sweat, their breath, the manure on their boots—was enough to make my eyes run, but I found a place by the window and from that perch began to scour the crowd for anyone I might recognize.

No one threw so much as a glance my way, but how their faces blazed memories back at me! There was the winsome Hailey Grant, a clutch of sticky-faced children about her skirts. And by the far window, Jonas Canon, darkly clad and of somber disposition, just as an undertaker’s son ought to be. I was hardly surprised to see Zachary Sinclair—with his fine bones, neat habit, and carefully curled hair—accompanied by neither wife nor child but instead by an ethereal equal. And, had I wagered long ago that Solomon Hadley would grow up as porcine and walnut-nosed as his father, I would be pleased with my gamble.
What qualities of my youth could still be found in me?
I wondered.

I turned towards the makeshift platform to study the auction’s sad exhibits. If she had not found employment as a mill worker or domestic, May was as likely to be here as anywhere. Why? Because every community has its share of wastrels hiding in the shadows, occasionally risking a plaintive plea for coins or food or drink. Whether or not their begging goes heeded, they are watched and counted closely by more fortunate folk. And, once a year, the strongest of the lot are herded together and auctioned off—but not in a manner you are likely to have encountered before.

At an auction of paintings—or even cattle—men vie to outbid one another, thereby increasing the value of whatever happens to be on the block. But in small towns such as my own, paupers are contracted to the
lowest
bidders. The winner is the man whose bid reflects the size of the stipend he is willing to accept from the town coffers for taking a beggar off the streets. The less municipal money he takes to cover food, lodging, and clothing, the more of his own he has to put in. And, from the pauper’s point of view, the more the bidder has to spend out of his own pocket, the harder the work and the worse the conditions.

The practice—which, in the more free-thinking and sophisticated newspapers, I have seen referred to as the “New England Method”—filled me with shame. Now, to look round at neighbors I had once admired and watch them grin in expectation was to feel more wretched still. Is there no fixed bottom for us sinking men? Like mud in a quagmire, the ruthlessness of our behavior seems to suck ever harder.

I was thankful, finally, to hear the gavel come down three times sharply on the auctioneer’s block. A cheer went up. The games were to begin. First to go was the youngest of the bunch, a haggard girl who can’t have been more than sixteen. She seemed to accept what her fate would most likely be and remained expressionless as winking men fought one another for her services. Finally, a sweating, ruddy-faced brute—too ugly to have found a wife through more acceptable channels—won her, walking proudly to the stage to seize from the outstretched hand of Billy Fowles, town treasurer, the pittance he’d agreed to take in return for ownership of the girl. I was ashamed at my first thought: She was too young to be May Kimball. A hardy-looking woman was up next—far too robust for my purposes—and the expression she wore was fierce. She proved to be fine entertainment, for the assembled broke into hearty guffaws when a meek little farmer bought her for near nothing and was then himself led out the door by the woman he’d won.
Won
is perhaps the wrong way to put it, for it was clear he’d gotten more than he bargained for. Two sisters, indistinguishable in age and appearance, clung with such tenacity to each other that the auctioneer smiled greedily as he pledged to knock them both off the town’s dockets if someone in the crowd would venture a marginally low bid for the price of one. They, too, were taken eventually, and as the lot dwindled to the eldest and sickest of the pickings, the master of ceremonies began to bellow louder and more excitedly, hoping to generate enthusiasm. If May Kimball was here, then she was one of the unfortunate leftovers.