“And you don’t know what it is?” “It’s the Ravener,” as if that were all the explanation that was needed, as if no one should ask for more.
“We seen your fire,” said the first one. “We dropped by to say hello.”
“Come on in,” said Elmer.
They came on in and squatted by the fire, their gun butts rested on the ground, the barrels propped against their shoulders. The one who had been carrying something on his back threw his burden to the ground in front of him. “A coon,” said Elmer. “You had good hunting.” The dogs came in and flopped down on the ground panting. Their tails beat occasional polite tattoos.
The three sat in a row, grinning up at us. One of them said, “I am Luther and this is Zeke and the fellow at the end is Tom.” ‘
“I am pleased to know you all,” Elmer said, speaking as politely as he could. “My name is Elmer and the young lady is Cynthia and this gentleman is Fletcher.”
They bobbed their heads at us. “And what kind of animal is that you have?” asked Tom.
“His name is Bronco,” said Elmer. “He is an instrument.”
“I am glad,” said Bronco, “to meet up with you.” * They stared at him. “You must not mind any of us,” said Elmer. “We are all off-worlders.”
“Well, heck,” said Zeke, “it don’t make no difference. We just saw your fire and decided to come in.”
Luther reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a bottle. He flourished it in invitation.
Elmer shook his head. “I can’t drink,” he said. I stepped over and reached for the bottle. It was time I did my part; up till now Elmer had done all the talking.
“It’s right good stuff,” said Zeke. “Old Man Timothy, he was the one who made it. Great one with his squeezings.”
I pulled the cork and put the bottle to my lips. It damn near strangled me. I kept from coughing. The booze bounced when it hit my stomach. My legs felt rubbery.
They watched me closely, the grins held tightly in.
“It’s a man-size drink,” I told them. I took another slug and handed back the bottle.
“The lady?” Zeke asked.
“It is not for her,” I said.
They passed the bottle among themselves; I squatted down facing them. They passed the bottle back to me. I had another one. My head was getting a little-fuzzy from the three quick drinks, but it was, I told myself, for the common good. There had to be one of us who talked their kind of language.
“Another one?” asked Tom.
“Not right away,” I said. “Later on, perhaps. I don’t want to drink all your likker.”
“I got another in reserve,” said Luther, patting a pocket.
Zeke pulled a knife from his belt, reached out and pulled the coon toward him.
“Luther,” he said, “you get some green saplings for roasting. We got fresh meat and we got some booze and a good hot fire. Let’s make a night of it.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Cynthia. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes watching in horror as Zeke’s knife slit neatly down the coon’s spread-out belly.
“Easy there,” I said.
She flashed a sick smile at me.
“Come morning,” said Tom, “we’ll go home. Easier to get through the down trees when it’s light. Big hoedown tomorrow night. Glad to have you with us. I take it you will come.”
“Of course we will,” said Cynthia.
I glanced toward Bronco. He was standing rigid, with all his sensors out.
Chapter 8
He had shown me the fields, with the shocked corn and the pumpkins golden in the sun; the garden, with a few of the vegetables still there, but most of them harvested; the hogs brought in from the woods, fat on acorns and penned for butchering; the cattle and the sheep knee-deep in the meadow grass; the smokehouse ready for the hams and the slabs of bacon; the iron house, in which was stored neatly sorted stacks of different kinds of salvaged metals; the hen house, the tool house, the smithy, and the barns, and now we sat, the two of us, perched on the top rail of a weathered fence.
“How long,” I asked him, “have you been here-not you, of course, but the people in this hollow?”
He turned his wrinkled old patriarch face toward me, the mild blue eyes, the beard like so much white silk hanging on his chest. “That’s a foolish question to ask of one,” he said. “We always have been here. Little clusters of us living all up and down the valley. A few living alone, but not many of them; we mostly live together; a few families that have stuck together farther back than man can remember. Some move away, of course; find a better place, or what they think is a better place. There are not many of us; there never have been many of us. Some women do not bear; many of the youngsters do not live. It is said that there is an ancient sickness in us. I do not know. There are many things said, old tales from the past, but one cannot tell if they are true or not.”
He planted his heels more firmly on the second rail, rested his arms across his knees. His hands were twisted with age. The knuckles stood out like lumps, the fingers stiffly bent. The veins along the backs of his hands stood out in a blue prominence that was startling.
“You get along with the Cemetery people?” Tasked.
He considered for a moment before he answered; he was the kind of man, I thought, who always considered well before he answered. “Mostly,” he finally said. “Over the years they have crept closer to us, taking over land that, when I was a boy, was wild. Couple of times I’ve gone and talked to that there fellow .. .” He groped for the name.
“Bell,” I said, “Maxwell Peter Bell.”
“That’s the one,” he said. “I go and talk with him, for all the good it does. He is smooth as oil. He smiles,,but there is nothing behind the smile. He is sure; he is big and powerful and we are small and weak. You are crowding us again, I tell him, you are moving in on us and there is no need, there is a lot of other land that you can use, a lot of empty land that no one else is using. And he says but you aren’t using it and I tell him that we need it, we need it even if we put no plow or hoes to it, we need the land for elbowroom, we’ve always had a lot of elbowroom, we feel crowded if it isn’t there, we feel smothered. And then he says but you have no title to it and I ask him what is a title and he tries to tell me what title is and it all is foolishness. I ask him does he have title to it and he never answers. You come from out there somewhere, mister, maybe you can tell me does he have title to it.”
“I doubt it very much,” I said.
“We get along all right with them, I guess,” he said. “Some of us work for Cemetery every now and then, digging graves, mowing grass, pruning trees and bushes, trimming around the headstones. There’s a lot of work to keeping a burying ground looking trim and neat. They use us just now and then, extra hands when the work gets ahead of them. We could work a whole lot more, I guess, if we wanted to, but what’s the use of working? We got all we want; there’s not much they can offer for our work. Some fancy cloth, at times, but we have all the cloth we need from sheep, enough to cover nakedness, enough to keep us warm. Some fancy likker, but we got all the moonshine that we need and I’m not sure it isn’t better than Cemetery likker. Moonshine, if you know your business, has authority and it’s got a funny kind of taste a man gets partial to. Pots and pans, of course, but how many pots and pans does a woman need?
“It isn’t that we are lazy and no account,” he said. “We keep right busy. We farm and fish and hunt. We go out to mine old metal. There are a lot of places, most of them a right long piece from here, where there are mounds that have metal in them. We use it to make our tools and shooting irons. Traders come in from the west or south every now and then to trade their powder and lead for our meal and wool and moonshine-other things, of course, but mostly lead and powder.”