Low, In The Valley, page 20
I heard shuffling behind me.
Thump.
I turned and saw Folks and Connor squaring up in the yard of the camp. Connor was dumb. Dumb enough to try to squeeze his arms around Folks to contain him.
Now, it goes without saying that even someone like Connor couldn’t hold onto a man like Folks Emery for very long. A fraction of a second in fact, before he was flipped over the bare-knuckler’s shoulder and slammed into the ground. But, what came next astonished even a seasoned viewer of complete bullshit as myself.
Connor stood up and held his fists before him, ready to bare-knuckle box the bare-knuckle boxing champion of Charleston and maybe beyond. He had to. He had no weapons other than his fists and unfortunately the fear of seeing his Deluge patrol broken before him left his mind in a state of unreasonable thinking. Connor was about to box a killer.
He actually held his own longer than I thought he would, trading punches with Folks, who actually seemed to ease up on the smaller fellow. Connor laughed, almost like he was enjoying it. Who knows, maybe he was. I know that not having an outlet for your depravity can cause you to unleash in a wicked way when offered the chance. I’ve seen it a thousand times with these Deluge assholes. Given the chance, they’d fight you or kill you as long as they thought it would put them in a better eye of Low the Kind. Convenient their morality was only as strong as what fit into their own individual narratives. And narratives told outside the Parish were a little more loose than within the city. There was a reason Deluge lads like Connor and Denne were out patrolling the wilds and it wasn’t to spread the kind word of Low. It was to enforce it. Spread chaos. Violently.
Connor connected a left hook into Folks jowls, stunning him backward a moment. Connor forced the attack, pushing Folks back, but Folks wagged his finger at the Deluge to scold him.
Connor threw a right cross, but missed and was gifted a succession of quick low jabs to his side. He doubled over and went to his knees, then looked back up at Folks moments before the boxer hammered him right in the middle of the eyes. Connor fell backward in the hay and mud, but for what it’s worth, he gave a good fight.
Folks grabbed Connor by the collar of his surcoat and lifted him back to his knees. He punched him again, sending him back down. Then Folks was on the Deluge, hammering blow after blow into Connor’s ruined face. His jawbone popped out of its socket. The sound from him made me gag. You don’t forget a man gurgling for his life under the relentless assault of bloodied fists.
Connor turned his head to the side, no longer able to watch the assault coming to him. His head jerked with each blow, oblivious. He was becoming a bystander in his own death. I turned my eyes down. But nothing else came. It stopped.
Folks held his fist up, ready to keep striking, but something held him. He slouched.
Thump.
“Go back home,” Folks whispered.
Connor could barely roll after Folks moved away from him. He reached for a Winchester close to him. His hand was shaking.
I walked over to the scene, Keefie was behind me, emerging from the safety of the cabin. Knots and Samyel were already there, looking down at Connor. I didn’t have to say anything. Nor did they. I think all of our thoughts were on Skinny Oleerh and his silent grave under the silent tree.
“’uck ‘ou,” Connor moaned from his broken jaw. “’ow ‘or’ive ‘e…” Connor asked Low for forgiveness, as if he failed him. My heart felt broken. Even with a ruined jaw, broken and teasing death, this depleted soul still had grit. A dedication to Low even when he was failed. I would never understand that. I couldn’t. I’ve never loved anything like that.
“Go home,” Folks repeated. He bent to pick Connor up by his chain mail coif and held the Deluge before him. “Go home.”
The skirmish in the logging camp was over as quick as it began, everyone that needed dying was lying on the earth dead, soaking up mud and giving back its blood.
Connor tried to kick at Folks.
“Look around you. It’s over,” Folks begged. “It’s over.”
Lost in the middle of a logging camp far north in a forest in New Hampshire, where he swore to spread the love of Low, Connor wept alone. The sound would haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Everything that Connor was had been taken by the gentlest man I knew.
I sat alone watching the fire fade into glowing embers.
“The stars are different out here,” Samyel said from behind me.
I moved a bit over on my log to allow Samyel to sit next to me. His closeness felt off. Unnatural. Awkward. It wasn’t him. Place anyone next to me and I’d say the same this night.
He looked back over the log at a small travel pack I’d tried to push hidden.
“You’re leaving?” he asked.
“You don’t need me anymore.”
“That’s hardly for you to decide, what I need.” Samyel wasn’t smiling. Only watching the fire.
“You’ve killed, Samyel. You don’t go home from that the same as you were.”
“No, I don’t reckon you do. But that’s my walk, not yours. I’ve killed before.”
“Cairnborn. It’s different when it’s a man. How many now? Three?”
“Reckon. That old gray Confederate at the bridge, Greggorty if I recall, probably didn’t deserve what he got. The others did.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’m not sure that Confederate was…well, doesn’t matter now I guess. Still feels the same don’t it?” I tried to smile.
I looked up at the sky. “Folks won’t understand me going.”
“He’ll be okay.” he said, then asked, “Will you be okay?”
I shook my head. “Get them home.”
I left the logging camp.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Thump
THUMP.
“-OWE ME a coin!” I felt myself bark. My own gravelly voice snapped me awake.
Thump.
That bloody, Burrow-damned sound. I’d hardly noticed it missing until it recently started again, sounding more often than when I’d first arrived in these woods with the lads. I was ill-prepared for its tenacity with nothing to distract me from it.
I rose from my hay bed, kicking my feet out from my pile of furs and straw. I didn’t worry about getting dressed, or putting boots on, those things were long gone. Taken by the forest. I would tell people later it was a Dunnie that stole them.
It was early morning. The sun was rising over the trees casting a haze through the mist that covered the valley where my cabin nested. This was a nice valley. The way a valley should be, with birds chirping, deer peaking in on me as I rose, squirrels chasing one another around trees, chipmunks running under bush. Water trickled around the camp from last nights rain running down from the mountains in veiny streams. Peaceful.
Thump.
Except that.
Again, the sound. I stood up and glanced out across the valley, trying to pinpoint the sound echoing out over the trees.
It would be a while before breakfast, not because I was feeling lazy, but because I had lost my only way to catch fish in the streams around the woods and the thought of eating a knuckle of random forest berries didn’t seem all to appealing at the moment, so I chose to finally follow that damned sound instead.
Thump.
I wrapped a raccoon fur around my waist and tied it paw to paw, concealing Sparrow at my dimples and about half of my rump and called it clothing. It was all I had. Didn’t know a damned thing about turning dead critters into clothing, other than gut them and use their skin and fur as it was. I didn’t even kill the poor bastard, just found him in a stream drowned. Plus he was a big boy and thinking back on him bouncing at my ass, paws tied together around my waist as I trod through the woods, my hair all in braided tangles and covered in dirt had to be a sight. No one out here but me and the moon.
I walked for several hours following a muddy path through the woods before the trail began to transform into rocky moss-covered terrain. The tree canopy above was thick here, blocking most of the sun from the forest floor. The air felt old to breathe, dank and the trees leaned crooked over, bending into one another in a gnarled embrace. I found a trail overgrown enough with crossing branches and snapping weeds I struggled to break through, finally through I crawled for the last few yards until I came to an archway of large, olden stones, which the trail lead under. Ahead of me was a clearing of felled tree stumps.
Thump.
The sound was louder.
I looked across the clearing past a stack of felled logs, where there stood a man swinging an ax into the nearest tree.
Thump.
I slowly approached, feeling my heartbeat thumping heavy under my breast. I tried to slow my breathing.
I whispered. Not a name or anything like that. Just a whimper of sound. What could you actually say with any meaning at a time like this?
The man made no attempt to turn toward me. He swung his ax, sticking it into the tree one more time. Thump. And stopped.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Pynes?”
I turned him gently with my hand.
“Oh-” the only sound I could make.
“I…” I started. “Everett…”
Everett’s eyes were far-staring, long with the distance of lonely night. His face held no weight to it. His cheeks sunken in, but not in a starving kind, but the way that happens when tragedy works its ugly hand over on you. Long, wavy hair stood straight up like a tree fighting for sun and his beard fell down his chest like turning, searching roots.
His face let up no emotion of any recollection on my part or even the sight that I was standing before him, nude save for a raccoon embracing me. A stick tumbled its way from my hair and fell to the ground.
“No, no, no.”
He was unresponsive and turned to continued to chop ax into the tree.
My knees gave out and I dropped to the ground, feeling my fingers slip back behind me searching for Sparrow. Why wasn’t it Pynes? All this. For nothing. Lost. Alone. For Everett Thayne. I let my hand drop down to my side, then slammed my fist into the ground. A small rock bit into my knuckle.
Thump.
I stood and held my hand out toward him, afraid it may pass through, then stopped. Grabbing the back of his hair I tugged back hard, then put Sparrow under Everett’s chin. I buried my face into the man’s back and kept it there. I wanted my hand to glide the blade across this impostor’s neck, to spill out the blood that walked me across the long hills and black woods and through the dead lands of Vermont, that caused me the death of Skinny and the lose of my friends.
I felt a portending heat rising up from Everett’s body, pressing into mine. Warning me. Let go.
“What is wrong with you? Do you not care?” I whispered into his ear. He only stood, letting me hold the blade to his neck. “Fuck!” I yelled, dropping Sparrow and releasing Everett’s hair. “Fuck…”
I reached back out and took the ax as gently as I could, like a mother taking a dangerous knife from her babe. Careful not to cut them, or more importantly get myself cut.
I rested my hand on his cheek and guided his eyes to mine. I could see in his eyes this man had been to the edge and seen things worth forgetting. Seen things a man had to travel far and forget everything he knows about himself to move on. I hardly knew Everett, not like I knew Pynes, but then I didn’t know anyone like that. This man was not much more to me than an associate, someone you meet in passing one night and never really think on again. He’d been there that night I was with Pynes, before they all disappeared, but no words were passed between us, if any. I didn’t really owe him, but I’d come all this way, I didn’t want it to be for nothing. All this way for a man that wasn’t Pynes, for a man that was Everett Thayne.
I took his hand in mine. Gnarled hands and roughed with calluses, not the hands I wanted though. Definitely not the hands that glided smooth across my body on a night so fierce I could hardly breath. Not the hands I begged to hold me after. Not the hands I held onto constantly in the back of my mind.
Unfamiliar hands on an unfamiliar man.
I pulled Everett away from the tree, lightly at first, until he took a few small steps backward with me.
“You’re not who I was expecting, but I will take you home,” I said. “I’m glad I arrived. It’s an end of sorts.”
I him led out of the felled woods. I never let go of his hand.
I’d had enough of this forest.
That night I’d found out the devil in these woods was holding my hand as I guide him through.
I didn’t know truly how dangerous Everett was, but I’d known how scared of him Yasper was and I trusted that fear. I tied his hands to keep him safe. And me. I was soon to find out that the pull of whatever awful thing held Everett’s mind came out at night. Sometimes he would remain calm, but anything could upset him, and then hell came.
We traveled this way through the woods for days, finally arriving at the Crossroads Inn and instead of going inside to politely ask for a couple of ponies like last time, I outright stole one, convinced Everett it wouldn’t bite him, then rode off into the night, plus one horse. I didn’t name the pair of them.
We continued traveling west toward home, eventually coming across a farm that had clothes hanging outside drying on a line that seemed about my size, so I took em’, finally abandoning my raccoon fur attire. Felt good to have normal clothes again and I was glad for it, glad that I wouldn’t have to wander into Charleston looking like a feral wood child.
We made quick haste across the last dying sunlit hills of the Virginia’s, past the scattered mining villages and farms and arrived at the gates of Charleston late the following day.
I’d been away for over a year.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Familiar With Low
“WHY IS THERE a queue to enter the city?” I asked, glancing at Everett knowing damned well he wouldn’t answer, other than a blank stare. I dressed him in a cloak with a hood, which was pulled up over his head to keep his profile low. I feared any moment someone might recognize him and soon find out what he’d become, mucking up my plan.
“What are they checking?” I pointed to a pair of Deluge, fully armed, speaking to people as they took turns approaching the Miner’s Bridge into Charleston. Another patrol of Deluge lingered a knuckle of yards away with a group of Rinmnir, searching their wheeled caravans, tossing things out into piles along the dirt road further from the city.
Approaching Charleston felt wrong. Something was changed. The mood floating around the air was sour. Held breath and scowling faces greeted us as we approached the Deluge guarding the bridge into Charleston.
Horses roamed without owners, nibbling on the overgrown weeds poking from the unkempt brick streets all while dropping shit where ever they pleased. Green and rotting breads, mushy vegetables and spoiled barrels of briny water were pushed off to the side of the roads, while people stick-thin picked over them looking for anything to eat. There was a foul smell in the air, like over-worked, pressed in bodies standing in line for a bathhouse. The bridge into Charleston was a damned mess, much more so than before I left.
“Conley,” a nervous voice cracked from behind me. I turned to see Samyel sitting on an overturned wooden crate of horseshoes not far from the Rinmnir commotion. His hair had grown ragged, longer and he was unshaven. There was a wildness in his eyes and he no longer had the Deluge demeanor about him. The overalls he wore were stained soot and black with coal dust. In his hand hanged the Enfield Musket he’d taken from Sir Greggorty outside New Hampshire. The bayonet was replaced by a longer spearhead and was permanently fixed to the end, secured by leather wrappings and bolts. On the butt of the Enfield Samyel had whittled figures from the forest: bears, wolves, even some sort of beasts I’d not recognized. His old Deluge Winchester was sheathed at his side, the only reminder of who he once had been.
I tugged Everett with me and approached Samyel. Things felt shaky, like seeing a jilted lover in the streets when you least expected it years after you broke their heart. What was I to say to him that I hadn’t already gone over in my mind thousands of time on my journey back to Charleston. I would have a conversation with all my companions, I was sure of it. Awkward ones. Ones that would explain why I’d left them in the forest after having gone through so much. Ones that would get us all on equal standing again, they would forgive me and they would embrace me back home.
The broken look on Samyel’s face told me enough. He began to cough which then turned into a full fit and spat out a thick wad of phlegm on the street.
“Samyel, I…” My rehearsed speech tore apart as I watched thick, soot-black drool slide down Samyel’s lip and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“Me and the lads were waiting out here for you a while back. They didn’t want to keep waiting, said you were not coming back, said we shouldn’t go inside,” Samyel explained. “They talked about leaving for the coast for a while to dodge the Deluge. I didn’t want to leave just yet,” he grinned, almost child like. “I think it’s because I knew you’d come back. Eventually.”
“Yeah…about that,” I started, but he shook his head. I tossed a glare toward the Deluge at the gate. “You should have gone in. You shouldn’t have waited out here.”
“I can’t,” he whispered.
“Why Samyel?” I asked.
“I’m a murderer.” Samyel walked behind me, looking over my shoulder at the Deluge we were slowly approaching. “We left Connor alive, I shouldn’t have allowed that as much as I regret. Sure as a holy shit he would have come running back with exacting revenge on my likes, and the lads. You too, if you’re asking.” He was sounding less and less like Samyel and more like Folks and his crew. Those lads had a way of rubbing off on you right quick. Can’t say that’s a bad thing, especially for someone like Samyel. Open up a lads views to the world a little, open his eyes and he’ll stop sounding so damned contained and proper all the time.
