CHAPTER 5
Looking Alive
LLOYD WAS PRODDED AWAKE BY HIS FATHER, HIS HEAD FILLED TO bursting with ideas and afterimages from his dreams. The awkwardness of extricating themselves from the coffins, the dreary atmosphere of the Clutters’ business, and the necessity of packing away what belongings they still retained in a safe place so as not to disrupt the activities of the older couple made all three of the Zanesvilleans concur that they would be wise to get organized and on their way to Texas as fast as possible. For Lloyd, of course, the incentive was all the sharper, given that there could be some backlash from the friends and families of the vigilantes.
There were also the claws of the Vardogers to consider. The presence of the insidious music box under the very same roof was a potent reminder of their ingenuity and long reach. It was hard to believe that it was just chance. Not knowing only increased the threat. He thought it essential to keep his prized possessions with him at all times until they found some reliable haven, and so, with great care, he nestled Hattie’s skull and the fearsome Eye into the box of the Martian Ambassadors and tucked it inside his coat, along with the mystery letter from Micah.
As much as the fugitives from Ohio craved company, normalcy, and being settled, it was obvious that they were not going to find such things in Independence. Their hosts provided still greater, albeit inadvertent, encouragement to get on the trail, as both seemed even more dithery than they had been the day before, to the point where boiling a kettle for coffee was quite beyond Egalantine and the completion of a sentence even with the other’s assistance was out of the question for them both. Rapture took over in what passed for the Clutters’ kitchen, which was still a tad too redolent of the previous night’s supper to promote much of an appetite in anyone but Hephaestus (who had started to regain some healthy color and to put a bit of meat back on his pickled bones). After several false starts, she managed to make them all flapjacks and strong black coffee, as Hephaestus commenced working out a list of the supplies they would need, and Lloyd kept a surreptitious eye on the undertaker-coffinmaker and his wife.
He had a suspicion that there was some dispute that the couple was trying to stifle. Then he noticed Othimiel return one of the music boxes to its place on one of the shelves. It was the Vardogers’ box. Perhaps the Clutters had had another listen unbeknownst to his parents. It occurred to Lloyd that their disorientation and woolgathering might have something to do with further exposure to the beguiling music, and he recalled a remark from the night before that had struck him as queer at the time but which he had dismissed as just another example of their eccentricity. Egalantine had commented on the “choir” she had heard in the music. Lloyd was certain he had heard no voices, and at this point unclear how the impression of human voices could be mechanically achieved (at least with requisite precision).
Everyone had been so taken and distracted by the music, there had been no actual discussion of what they had heard—and the assumption had been that they had all heard the same piece. Now, in his sleepy, wondering post-Quist way, Lloyd asked himself the question What if they had each heard different music? How would that be possible, and what would it mean?
It was too big a puzzle to resolve without further study (and, ostensibly, more risky investigation of the music box, which he was reluctant to do), but in any case one would have thought that both of the Clutters were suffering the aftereffects of a laudanum binge or some kind of neurological trauma. And the matter worsened over breakfast, with Egalantine dribbling from her chin and making what passed for lewd gestures at her husband, while Othimiel rose from the table and returned a moment later wearing what was, fortunately, an empty chamber pot on his head.
Hephaestus, having done plenty of questionable things himself when soused, tried to be as tolerant and respectful as possible. (His hope was that the Clutters were showing themselves to be habitual tipplers and had been hitting the jug hard and early.) It helped explain their disjointed way of communicating, and the sorry, haphazard state of their business. However, he was stumped as to why they did not smell of alcohol.
Rapture, once she had convinced herself that they were not playing a perverse joke, became concerned for them, and earnestly wished that, whatever the affliction, it was not contagious. “Like the rapid onset of senility,” Lloyd remarked to himself, as his mother helped put the couple back to bed after cleaning up the breakfast dishes. Maybe a bit more rest would bring them back to themselves, as fuzzy and intermittent as that had been.
“I think we need to look alive this morning,” Hephaestus proclaimed as the Sitturds made their way past the coffins and out into the street. “Another couple of nights with those folks—and in this place—I may not get out of the box!”
“Time egen ta tek ’e foot een ’e han,” Rapture agreed. “Firss, we grub nuts an’ prospah liken a squirrel.”
“I think we need to look alive this morning,” Hephaestus repeated, and began whistling.
Lloyd did not like that his mother had dropped her plain white diction and was intermixing more Gullah phrases than he thought prudent, even with the Clutters. What was worse, his father seemed befuddled, and the discordant tune he began to whistle got on the boy’s nerves. Lloyd now had no doubt that the Vardogers were real—and therefore the Spirosians, too. Even though the Sitturds had escaped from St. Louis, he could see that they were in the midst of a broader, deeper, and darker mystery than even the one Mother Tongue had intimated back in the grotto. The Martian Ambassadors, whoever they were, were somehow involved. Amazing technologies. Deviant desires. He longed to rise above the details even for just a moment—to get some coherent view—but the thought of ascending, even metaphorically, brought back memories of the courthouse, the black man crying for the Angel of the Lord … and the lost brothers blown over the water and into the wall of Illinois timber.
“I think we need to look alive this morning!” Hephaestus announced.
“Farruh, stop saying that,” Lloyd pleaded. “You sound like the Clutters. Where’s our list?”
Hephaestus froze in his tracks and slapped his forehead. “Jimminy!” he barked. “I left it back at the bone tailor’s. After all that!”
“Well, we’re not going back,” Lloyd insisted. “C’mon. We’ll all try to think of things as we go. It’ll clear our—your heads.”
The last remark conjured a new specter of doubt in his mind. What if he had also been affected by the music box? And why would he not have been? The reasoning was inescapable, which raised the issue of how much of what had happened the night before had been influenced by whatever it was he had heard. His thoughts seemed sharp and clear to him, but perhaps the Clutters’ did to them, too. He had had nightmares in the past, but they had always had the aura of an external experience enveloping him for a time and then disintegrating when he awoke. This new unease was more intimate and, if less fanciful in its effects, far more disquieting. “I am going to have to keep my eyes wide, wide open,” Lloyd told himself. “For anything—anything that might suggest that what I am perceiving is not right, not real.”
He half wished they would run into some of the Quists. Then he could confirm, at least intuitively, the events of last night. But this, of course, was folly. He would give himself away in front of his parents and perhaps to others who might be watching. And the Quists would just put themselves more in danger’s path. If his memory was at all correct, he could only wonder at the impact of the night crisis on their future plans. And he would have to stay wondering—and watching.
The stark open sky of sunup had begun to show signs of clouding over, and the hint of more rain later in the day invigorated the flow of traffic along the streets and boardwalks. Even the stragglers appeared to be loafing and straggling with vehemence. Horses and carts clattered and squished through the mud, saws ripped and shimmied, hammers pounded nails and clanging horseshoes, stick fires brought cauldrons of laundry to a dirty boil. But in between the heat of cooking and cleaning, and the clash of metal and wood, there was a noticeable edge to the air, as if the softness of the Indian summer had turned overnight, reminding the Sitturds of perhaps the biggest and most pressing problem they faced: the lateness of the season.
All of the westbound settlers who had any chance of surviving and reaching their intended destination had long since headed out—most at the first signs of spring growth on the prairie, the vital food source for their oxen and horses. As the Sitturds plunked across the planks or dodged the mud puddles, hundreds of other families who had arrived out West marveled at the Columbia River, the austere forests, or the clashing of the waves of the Pacific. Some people had died along the way, and many had left precious belongings behind when the going got tough. Many other groups had paused out in the desert or on semi-fertile mesas and made provisional camps, with the goal of hunting and foraging, and making it through the winter, to assault the fortress of giant mountains come the next spring. Some had run afoul of bandits or Indian war parties, or drowned in streams. Others had buried children and grandparents owing to influenza or grievous injury. The Sitturds were out of step with all of them, running late and not headed west at all but south, into the brewing turmoil of the conflict with Mexico over the fate of Texas, the forced migration of angry displaced Indian tribes, and the persistent rumors of unheard-of diseases and rum occurrences. Spirits. Unknown beasts. No wonder we feel unsettled, Lloyd thought. We are.
“I think we better look—why do I keep saying that?” Hephaestus groused.
His son’s face brightened somewhat at this. Whatever it was that had fogged his father’s mind, it appeared to be lifting. It either had a trigger release or a set duration of influence. His mother, too, seemed to be recovering her wits and usual good sense, which was a profound relief to him, given all the wagging tongues and peering faces.
All the local news seemed to be ominous. A farming family outside town had been found dead of unknown causes (a poisoned well, the word went). Another cholera scare had been reported, and the “moaning frenzy” somewhere upriver. But as the Sitturds puttered about the town the hottest gossip concerned the divine retribution meted out to Deacon Bushrod and the loose confederacy of standover men and bedroom raiders that had become known as Bushrod’s Rangers. Naturally, Lloyd’s mind lit up at the first hint of this intelligence, but it took several stops and inquiries before the matter could be laid out sufficiently to fully comprehend.
The men in question were without doubt his assailants from the night before, and the boy had been correct in identifying the rogue in the beekeeper’s hat as a man of some substance and education. Called the Deacon, the fiend had had some affiliation of his own creation with the local religious communities and had at one time been what passed for a circuit judge. His true orientation, however, was as a rabid anti-Mason and Mormon hater. (Lloyd supposed it was only a logical extension for such a figure to despise a group such as the Quists.) The word on the streets of Independence was that Bushrod and his gang had either crossed paths and swords with one of the powerful Masonic militias who operated in semi-secret across America or with a Mormon guard. Alternatively, God Almighty himself had struck them down because of their wickedness. Most of the understandable information on the subject came from a porcine butcher with fingers like his own sausages, and a drab pinch-faced woman in the dry-goods “emporium,” who referred to herself in the third person, as in “Well, what Dot Cribbage thinks …”
Hephaestus and Rapture, with their now clearing heads, thought Lloyd’s fascination with the incident was unhealthy if not scandalous, but the boy was intent on ferreting out whatever facts or received fictions he could. Those “in the know,” as Dot Cribbage put it, seemed to be divided on the possible parties responsible: independent Masonic reprisal, some dirty deed done by them on behalf of the Quists (recall the curious hermetic connection between the Masons and the Mormons), a Quist or Mormon strong-arm brigade acting in self-defense … or an “answer by fire” from on high.
What was not in dispute was that eight men had lost their sight, as if hot pokers had been thrust into their eyeballs, and Deacon Bushrod’s body had turned to dust and ashes, as if cursed. Those leaning toward a Masonic, Mormon, or Quist death squad as the culprit posited the application of acid or lye to the corpse, which explained its quick deterioration. (It looked as though Othimiel’s handiwork would once again not be required.)
The theistically inclined felt their explanation was even stronger because of the accelerated decomposition, and were busy hoisting Bibles and even bottles, early in the day though it was. The upshot was that eight local men had suddenly and simultaneously lost their sight and were not talking, and a civic leader of dubious reputation had inexplicably disintegrated. Lloyd, of course, thought of the ravenous little black dog of the day before.
The awful miracle set the town alight with accusations, speculations, prayer-saying, and rosary-clutching. To Lloyd, it seemed he could hear all the private fears that underlay the public mood more truly than the banging of tools or the snorting of the horseflesh. Then out of the ruckus there rose another sound, cool and pure and out of place, a new church bell giving forth its first trial toll—not in honor of the dead and blinded, it was true, but perhaps as some kind of fumbling community lament for all the terrors and wonders growing wild on people’s doorsteps.
Not knowing anything about his nocturnal exploits, Lloyd’s parents tried to dismiss the gossip and tall tales as just another symptom of life in this crossroads town. They had a wagon and oxen to locate, food to buy, little money to bargain with relative to their needs, and any number of miscellaneous supplies to source. So it was not surprising that they took little notice of the man with the wooden leg hobbling down the plankings tacking up posters. But Lloyd did.
He had a bad feeling about the posters even at a distance, and when they passed one up close his heart leaped into his throat. In big, brash letters were the words:
RUNAWAY NEGRO GIRL—$500 REWARD
Beneath the lettering was a hand drawn picture that captured the unmistakable likeness of Hattie in a rebellious mood. There were more details in finer print underneath, but he did not need to read these, although he caught a glimpse of the phrase “Answers to the names of …,” as if she were a dog missing from a farm.
It sickened and infuriated him, and he recalled the numinous fever that had overcome him during the Bushrod ambush. This place was even worse than Zanesville. Even with all the people about, he was sorely tempted to reach for the Eye and set the crippled money-grubber alight—to see if he could again strike his enemy down. That he would offer money, or be the means of that offer, to hunt Hattie down! Captain of dark loving. The memory of the blistering current of power rushed through Lloyd’s veins and nerves, so that he thought that he could smell his own hair singeing, but no one else seemed to take any notice. Had he wielded the Eye, or had it acted on its own authority and impulses?
He wondered if Hattie’s orb had the same power, and wished for her sake that it did and that he could tell her about it—that he could hold her, help her—glad though he was that she was away. Hopefully, far enough now so that no bounty hunter would pursue her.
If only the Eye were like an eye that he could see her through. But then he would convulse to see her in danger—to witness her sufferings at a distance and not be able to come to her aid. Or for her to observe his predicaments when she had so many more crises of her own. It was a silly notion, he thought. And yet he recalled that moment in the dark, with Soames and Drucker waiting for him outside—the trance he had fallen into briefly, staring into the sphere. There was no denying that he had felt watched then—seen by something or someone—but by what or by whom he could not say. Mother Tongue, that refined hag hiding from the world on her moss-festooned steamboat? Perhaps. Maybe that was her reason for giving him the Eyes—to keep a watch on him, by whatever witch-crazed science she had at her disposal. Then again, there was always the possibility that the Eyes held powers that were beyond her knowledge and understanding, too—like the spook lights in the cavern, a lost technology or magic for which she was seeking the key, or an engineer of subtlety to master its secrets.
Lloyd made a note of where the wooden-legged goblin put up the posters, vowing that he would sneak out that night, follow the route, and take them down. Every last one. He would scour the stinking village if he had to. If only Hattie were safe …
His thoughts were interrupted by a cry of chagrin from his father.
“By God!” Hephaestus shouted. “I’m supposed to be at work at the smithy’s!”
Rapture’s face sank at this recollection, as did Lloyd’s. With all that had been going on, the matter of casual employment for Hephaestus and some much needed extra money for their provisioning had completely slipped their minds. His parents were quick to explain the oversight in terms of the incredible news and the distress that permeated the town. Lloyd could not accept this. This disruption of their memories and concentration had a dark association with the Vardogers’ music box. He had no doubt that it had done something unwholesome to the Clutters.
Hephaestus limped off to Petrie’s blacksmith shed at the other end of town, leaving Rapture and Lloyd to try to make what arrangements they could. He honestly believed Lloyd might be more capable than himself when it came to locating, selecting, and negotiating for the proper equipment, plus there was always a chance that Petrie might know where to find what they needed—that is, if he was not too angry to speak.
Although Rapture had got used to doing many things for herself and her son since the breakdown in St. Louis, she did not feel the slightest bit comfortable scrounging around Independence without her husband. She did not like the looks they received, and Lloyd’s cocky, protective attitude, instead of cheering her up, upset her further, for it brought back memories of what was to her the still obscure disaster that had forced their hasty and, to her, frightening departure from the river city.
As it turned out, the crisis had been a good thing in certain ways, getting them back on their way to Micah’s property and back together again as a family. They had ended up with means they had not had before, and a new focus on their goal, just when everything was coming apart at the seams. Yet the thought of the man with the humped back and his associates spooked her. She wanted to believe that any threat they posed, or the veiled threats they had referred to, had been left behind down the Missouri River, but she could not bring herself to query her son any more than she had in those first few desperate hours when Hephaestus slept like the dead from the drug the humped dandy had administered, and then thrashed in delirium when he came to. Lloyd had slipped off into a cloud of blank indifference and denial at the first hint of her interrogation then, and she did not want to risk another psychic retreat now. If she had known that the boy carried with him the device that had laid the Bushrod Rangers down, she would have been horrified. And if she suspected, as he did, that they had all been exposed to an equally potent and puzzling kind of weapon in the mechanical music, she might well have lost her bearings entirely. But she did not have this information or trepidation to hand and so turned her attention to the task that she and Lloyd had been assigned.