The Road to Reckoning Page 16

  ‘Well.’ I followed. ‘You had no right. And you have made a mess of that man’s business even if you have left him three horses and thieves’ coin. But I suppose the law can clear that up satisfactorily.’

  Henry Stands twisted on his heel and angled at me. I hoped in the dark he could see my smile.

  ‘I made a joke, Mister Stands,’ I said.

  ‘Good for you.’ He snorted. He flicked a finger at me. ‘You got blood on your face.’ He wiped his own to show me where. ‘Better that than you crying them tears all the time as you do.’

  He turned and walked on and I wiped my cheeks and pulled the horse after us.

  Behold – I have smitten my hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which has been in the midst of thee.

  Ezekiel 22: 12–13.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Shaws, McDowells, and Brodheads. God knows what else resides around here.’ Henry Stands was happy and fat next morning. He lolled on his new horse like a king and we had eaten the steak of his other for breakfast. He was already at his rum and singing his songs, the night before not apparent. I can only think back on Chet Baker’s words when describing the man:

  ‘He likes the sound of guns.’

  We were coming into Stroud, the road muddy and wide, and I recognized that I had come through here with my father but it had been almost night then and we rode on through and camped. I did not question at that time why we did not rest here but Henry Stands made sense of my late father’s reasoning.

  ‘Two Friends’ meetinghouses. Presbyterian church, Methodist, and the Free. They even have a temperance hotel. A man will die of thirst and sleep cold at night in such a place.’

  They would not have appreciated a salesman of guns. But I knew civilization when I saw it.

  Daniel Stroud had sold plots when his father, Jacob, who had founded this place, would not, but he sold them on condition that the houses were built away from the road with yards in front and behind and proper fences and planked walkways.

  Trees lined the streets, and families walked among them. Canes and stovepipes for the men, and bonnet hats with exotic feathers for the ladies. Henry Stands pointed at the ladies’ hats, for which vulgarity they shunned him with their parasols.

  ‘They wear Carolina parrakeet tails in their hatbands. That bird is almost dead for vanity. People are infinite, creatures are not.’ He tipped his hat at their scowls and their husbands’ frowns. I did the same and enjoyed their bluster. We did not have a carriage so we were low to them. They had forgotten that their town was built by lumber and sweat.

  There was no love for men and company in Henry Stands and I am sure the bricks and proper houses had already begun to stiffen his stance in the poor saddle he had inherited. He had left me with his more comfortable rigging on Jude Brown, which my hind was grateful for.

  There could have been no decency to us. We slept in the open and wore it on us. I did not care. My clothes were not me. I lived in a redbrick house on sett streets. These folks walked on planks like sailors.

  Stroud was the county seat since the year last. She had sawmills and a grist mill, a tannery, and along her river a large iron forge. She was prosperous even in those hard times and had sunk many a settlement around her to become the town after the Delaware. Where her academy stood had been a fort and she had once boasted two, and it was to Stroud where the settlers had fled after the Wyoming massacre. But I remembered Henry Stands’s pose on that. When settlers are victorious it is recorded as a battle. When Indians triumph it is a ‘massacre.’ And we do not write so much that there were four hundred loyalist Tory rangers at that killing, plugging at white folks. Some of those scowlers sneering at our hooves were descended from that ilk no doubt.

  We pulled up at Hollinshead’s tavern, opposite one of Jacob Stroud’s original houses in the center of the town. We both dismounted and stood still and looked at each other. You may think this ordinary but when you are on the road it is in single file. When you stand it is for food and discourse and important things.

  ‘There is law here,’ Henry said. He checked both our trappings. ‘What do you want to do?’

  This was the only time I remember this man asking my opinion. He stood over his horse, us both sullying the gaily lit afternoon with our weary coats.

  ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Did you not want the law?’ he said. ‘Tell your story?’ He rubbed his beard. ‘I could break. There are folks here that will see you home.’

  I watched carriages with padded seats and glass roll past, black broughams and landaus. I had not seen prosperity for a while.

  ‘Mister Stands? I must pay you for my trouble from my orders. There is Mister Colt’s monies owed through my father’s order book. Paterson is not so far for you to make your way to Philadelphia.’

  He stretched his back and stamped his boots, his eyes on the colorful tavern. ‘They have oysters and beer here. And seats. When was the last time you sat well?’

  ‘I thought we had no coin for refreshments? I do not think they will trade for guns?’ I had done for the Colts now. I would put them in the Delaware.

  ‘You have no coin,’ Henry said, and went to his purse among his folds and flashed me Mexican silver. ‘I have means, and you should know beer and oysters.’

  ‘I thought we had nothing? You sold powder to that Irishman?’

  ‘Trade is trade. You get less for coin. You will find this. Especially when the country is in hell.’ He had already mounted the porch of the hotel. ‘You should know what a beer tastes like after days on the road. All is to the good. You have nothing to fear now.’

  He was right. The road behind me was closed. A door bolted from my side. Only my own front door ahead of me. Oh, there would be a terrible day to tell to my aunt, but within my own walls I could stop to think, to rest, to judge. But still I wanted this man beside me. I had to confront mister Colt with my sorry platter and an order book with pages that had been strewn about the wilds and tucked back in. I would need a man of consequence.

  I tied the horses as he watched and then stamped up the plank steps to join him, then in a flash spun back to my folded blanket behind the saddle to retrieve the tea-stained wooden gun.

  Henry Stands waited in the doorway.

  ‘I thought you wanted to burn that thing?’

  I said nothing and tucked it behind my back beneath my coat and ran under his arm.

  As a boy I did not retain my Bible. I look through it now and see more and more of what was me then and much that is of me now. Any man’s whole life is there.

  When I meet a man who does not have faith in anything other than himself I would be as dumb as him to pity or try to change him. They have great pride, I will give them that. They congratulate themselves for when things go well but are the most likely ones you will find hanging in their barns when things go against. I find that these men do not understand the companionship of animals either. I think of words now. Words that fill me with memories and hope.

  I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.

  In this world you will have trouble.

  But take heart! I have overcome the world!

  There are those of us who in recent years have turned to look on the battlefield to see our hopes, our dearly loved children, swept away. We do not hang ourselves in our grief. We rise and bear, and you can mark us from those cowards and counterfeiters well enough:

  We have a Bible in our homes.

  And though our boughs can be cut by Heaven I never saw a tree that was ever completely destroyed by lightning.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The beer was a dark porter, with the yeast still on top, it seemed. Mrs Hollinshead herself made up our oysters, which I had to go and collect at the bar. We had to line up with the guests and the travelers and give our order and then wait to be called. It was a smart establishment and fitted out with a high ceiling and mahogany paneling all about. There was a post-table set against a wall even t
hough I had seen a post office and Stroud had a Posten stage that delivered passengers and mail from Easton twice daily. But the post-tables were what folks still expected. Here a lone traveler could pick up a letter that was going someplace on his road and take it with him. He could expect a small meal for his trouble and maybe make a friend or two. People got to hear news and changes from the road even if it was only about the cut of dresses in the east and the politics of the original colonies that made no difference to any of us. But the government was making no money out of that so we got post offices instead of friends. And no government ever did like to have no control over news or the exchange of opinions.

  When a man is on the road to power he buys everyone a drink. Once elected he tries to close the saloons.

  I had never had oysters before, what with them being a poor food, but baked they were not disagreeable. Beer I had drunk many a time but not as strong, and I understood the word heady after I was only halfway through my pewter.

  Henry Stands’s eyes twinkled at my foolish grin over my mug. He rubbed his nose and cleared his throat as he often did when he was about to say something I disliked.

  ‘Now, son, the way I see it, we can put you to a judge here and see what he has to say. Tell it as it is. Nothing to hide.’

  I put my head close to the table and whispered, ‘But did we not … kill men?’

  ‘Self-defense. We are not vigilantes or desperadoes.’ He glared at me ‘Do our acts concern you?’

  I sat back. I had slept on it, breakfasted over it, and now chewed on my dinner, and although my hands at the time had trembled I felt no God bearing down on me.

  ‘It happened very naturally,’ I said. ‘You gave them fair play.’

  ‘It was an even-break. They died in their boots,’ he said.

  You may misunderstand this phrase, think it noble. It is of fiction. Good men die in their bed with their boots off. There were times when ‘boots on’ has been enough to acquit a man of murder.

  ‘Can you not take me back, Mister Stands? Just to Paterson? I would not like to lose out on meeting with Mister Colt.’

  He looked around the room, measured the rest of our companions, and ended on Mrs Hollinshead behind the counter.

  ‘I hope she is not a widow,’ he said, and then scratched his head before putting his hat on. ‘I will take you home. There is the money from your man Colt to appraise. But an incident has occurred. That should be given up. There is your troubles and its resolution and I have some good reputation and standing for honesty.’

  ‘Will the law not take hold of me?’

  ‘I do not suppose. First we should remove my rigging from your horse and then see about it.’

  This was a giveaway!

  ‘You are planning to leave me again!’

  ‘Finish your beer. I am to no such thing,’ he said. ‘No, I am beginning to think that I will be at your wedding and funeral and wipe your behind for both.’ He stood. ‘I will ask that petulant ring-seeker at the bar where to find a judge.’

  He went to the bar, to the middle of it, and set his hands to look like he was holding it up and that he owned the place, as always he stood. He was talking to a man in a cap who had made room for him, a diminutive fellow with a bugle on a gold cord at his hip. They went back and forth for a while as I drank my beer. Henry Stands gave him his ‘much obliged’ nod when the fellow handed over a letter to him. He came back to me.

  ‘That man. Dean. He is the post-carrier here. He says that Stodgell Stokes is the post office, general store, and judge here. He has a letter for him so we should introduce ourselves.’ He walked, and our bright dinner of oysters and beer was solemnly over. I slouched out after him. The small man with the bugle saluted his cap at me. I saw that he had silver hair under that cap and something crawled through me. I did not smile back.

  We changed the rigging. The tavern had a livery attached but we had money only for hay. As the horses ate Henry spent a time smartening up his clothes with horse brushes. He was planning to ditch me to a judge, I was sure, but he ignored my sullen face. I knew that we had to make some word to the law but I would rather it had been in a letter or from a distance. I still had my father’s work to do.

  The tavern was at the end of the main street called Elizabeth, named after one of Stroud’s daughters, and with directions from the hostler we rode up to the post office and general store, which was also the judge’s trade.

  There were some fine manse houses on that street and these were old Stroud homes. That was for certain a family that had done well, but being among palaces is no assurance of good men.

  The jolly sound of the bell over the door brought the man in apron and pince-nez beaming toward us from around his counter.

  He wiped his hands on a cloth in his apron band, which he tied at his front. He had those cuff protectors the same as Chet Baker and I liked him right away.

  Henry Stands was leaning on the wrists of the Patersons and looking around as patriarchal as ever. He did not remove his hat, so I did for the both of us.

  This man, Stodgell Stokes, was about as old as my father and just as clean-shaven.

  ‘Can I assist you, sirs?’ He did not mind Henry’s guns and winked at me bashfully.

  ‘Are you the judge?’ Henry Stands dispensed with the man’s other hats.

  ‘I am Judge Stokes, sir.’

  ‘Then I have a letter for your post office, Judge.’ Henry put over the letter. ‘And I have circumstances. Regarding the boy here.’ He threw a shoulder at me. ‘Matters of the law.’

  Stodgell Stokes kept his office in his residence. He locked his store and we followed him up his narrow stairs.

  The paint on Stroud’s courthouse was still wet. It had not been the county seat for long. If Judge Stokes was also the post office and the general store I was sure that would not be the case much longer and he would have to make a full-time profession of the law. We were bringing him something weighty and others soon enough would do the same beyond the remit of horse-thieves and stolen toile. Once a town builds a courthouse all manner of evil descends. It is worse than building a brothel.

  He bid us to sit before him. Henry Stands flapped out his coat over the arms of his chair and still did not remove his hat.

  ‘Now what is it I can do for you, gentlemen?’ Stodgell Stokes was still the storekeeper.

  Henry cocked his thumb to me. ‘This here is Thomas Walker. He is a boy from New York city. Six nights ago his father was killed on the road. Near Milton.’

  ‘Outside Lewis,’ I said. ‘In the forest.’

  Henry continued for me. My word still a boy’s.

  ‘My name is Henry Stands. Orange county. I am a trader. Indiana ranger befores. I am on my way to Cherry Hill to reconnoiter escapees. I am taking the boy home.’

  Judge Stokes appeared before us, the nail-seller now put away to a drawer. ‘I am sorry to hear this, son. We shall make this a matter for the marshals. I assure you I will make it my strictest priority.’ He reached for stylus and paper hidden among cotton reels and a box of pins.

  I folded my arms. ‘There is no need for marshals, Your Honor. The matter has been settled.’

  ‘Settled?’ He blinked at us in turn. ‘I’m afraid I do not understand?’

  Henry Stands stared through him.

  ‘There were four men that killed the boy’s father. They sought to kill the boy. I … protected. They robbed him, and us both when they come found us again. I had to settle for them. In self-defense and in defense of the boy.’

  The judge sat back, still looking between us.

  ‘Well, of course you did.’ He pointed his writing hand to Henry’s belt. ‘Your pistols there, Mister Stands? With your scabbards as they are, the hilts out. Is that not what one might call a “cavalry draw” … sir?’

  Henry Stands had placed two of the Patersons in his old belt. Full-load. There was a pause and I could hear carriages strutting past from the street below.

  ‘It is good for shooting from
a horse,’ he said.

  ‘Do you shoot from a horse often, Mister Stands?’

  Henry offered nothing. Stodgell Stokes waved away the remark. ‘No matter. I was only curious. Now these men that killed the poor boy’s father. You know them?’

  I cut in. Spoke amid men.

  ‘Thomas Heywood!’ I declared. ‘It was him that did it all!’

  Henry Stands put his hand across my front to hush me.

  ‘These were road-agents,’ he said. ‘They may have been late of Murrell’s men traveling east or some such gang. I will not seek reward for doing what is right.’

  ‘You have killed these men?’

  Henry Stands held the judge’s eye.

  You did not ask actual badmen such.

  The counterfeit, the imitation, the ‘boot-black long-hair’ would boast, would tell all. Not in this room.

  A hard face from the actual was enough.

  Judge Stokes looked away to slice open the letter we had brought to distract himself from that cold look. I think Henry Stands was vying the man and measuring him by the store beneath our feet and I was getting to that opinion also. A man who fancied the law and sold tinware would not know what our road had been like. But then, this man was still a judge despite his apron.

  ‘What is it that you want of the law here, gentlemen?’ he said, his spectacles fixed to the page. Them frames were a good six dollars’ worth.

  Henry Stands shifted.

  ‘About ten miles west there is a tavern. Jackson way. They are there with three horses. The keep there will be reporting. I do the same. I am taking the boy back to his family. Self-defense is my statement. I took a horse because they killed my own and I had need to escort the boy.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘That is probably all.’

  I leaned to Henry to remind with a whisper about the ghoul Strother Gore but he whisted me back.

  A clock chimed off behind us and I jerked but Henry Stands did not stir. His head hung a little as he studied his hands. Stodgell Stokes was reading down his page; he had lost interest in our statement and his eyes flicked to me from over the letter.