A History of the Future (46 page)

F
IFTY-SIX

Earlier that same evening, the doctor had helped transport Jack Harron from his bed in the doctor’s infirmary back home to his room at Andrew Pendergast’s fine house on Cottage Street. Jack was recovering nicely from the wounds he had sustained in the attack by Donald Acker. He slept through the early evening and Andrew came in later to check on him before turning in himself. He brought in a painting he’d done in May of the Hudson Valley observed from Stark’s Knob, an ancient volcanic plug of rock that afforded a view north up the river clear up to Buck Mountain above Glens Falls and to the blue Adirondacks beyond.

“I thought I might hang this on the wall for you,” Andrew said, setting his candle holder down on the chest of drawers. “It’ll give you something to look at while you’re still in bed.”

“Yes, thank you,” Jack said. “It’s . . . beautiful. Is it around here?”

“Yes, just up past Mr. Bullock’s place on the river. We’ll go there in the spring. I like to paint it in all its moods.”

“I’d like that,” Jack said. “How long until I’m allowed to get up and around?”

“A few more days, I think. The doctor said he’ll be coming over to check on you.”

“I’d like to get back to work,” Jack said.

“That’s a good sign,” Andrew said and smiled. “Is there something else you need before I go upstairs? Are you hungry?”

“No,” Jack said. “But . . . oh, I dunno.”

“What?”

“You think you might read something to me?”

Andrew was a little surprised to hear that.

“Really?”

“Yes. Just a little while.”

“Well, sure,” he said. “Anything in particular?”

“You pick it,” Jack said. “You’ll know.”

“Okay.”

Andrew went to the big front parlor where he had encountered Jack Harron on Christmas Eve and thought he was about to be murdered. The memory stopped him for a few moments, but then he searched the bookshelves until he found what he wanted, one of the favorite books of his boyhood: Kenneth Grahame’s
The Wind in the Willows
. He went back through the kitchen with the book and a ladderback chair, which he set down beside the table where the candle burned.

“What’s it about?” Jack said when Andrew held up the cover.

“A rat and a mole and a badger and a toad who mess around in boats down by a little stream in the English countryside.”

“They all get along, all those different animals?” Jack said.

“They’re all friends,” Andrew said. “It’s a book about friendship.”

He cleared his throat. “The River Bank,” he began, reading the title of chapter one. “The Mole had been working very hard all morning, spring-cleaning his little home . . .”

F
IFTY-SEVEN

Brother Jobe and dozens of brothers and sisters from the New Faith compound, along with more than a hundred townspeople, stood mutely before the smoldering ruins of the Union Tavern on the corner of Van Buren and Main Streets. All that remained was the three-story brick shell with its marble lintels and decorations. The volunteers had tried to save it, but it was not the kind of thing that a bucket brigade could avail to stop, especially at this time of year with the temperature below freezing. The generous alley had prevented the fire from spreading catastrophically down the other buildings along Main Street. The heavy snow, which amounted to ten inches by morning, had helped to dampen the blaze once the wooden joists and floors had been consumed and the interior finally collapsed. The ruin gave off a powerful stink. The charred skeleton of Travis Berkey inside would not be discovered for a week, when work commenced to clear away the ashes and debris.

As people began to peel away from the crowd in the deep morning cold to return to their homes, Stephen Bullock and three of his men rode up Main Street and tied their horses to the hitching posts along the block north of Van Buren where the barbershop and the New Faith haberdash still stood unburnt. Bullock, swaddled in fur, eventually made his way to Brother Jobe’s side.

“We could smell it all the way over to the Hudson,” Bullock said. “I’m not responsible, in case you’re wondering.”

Brother Jobe cut him a venomous glance and said nothing in reply. They stood quietly a while longer until a last lingering second-floor beam dropped into the rubble with an impressive crash.

“I don’t suppose you have insurance,” Bullock said.

“I got forty-six highly motivated skilled men with good tools,” Brother Jobe eventually said, without looking at Bullock. “That’s my insurance. And by the way, if you thought that was funny, it ain’t.”

“What’s really not funny is you let your prisoner escape.”

“You’re right, squire. That wasn’t no joke neither.”

“She was in your charge.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“Are you going to search for her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I could press charges against you for this.”

“Try it.” This time Brother Jobe turned and looked over at Bullock with the full force of his withering gaze. In a matter of seconds Bullock developed a breathtaking headache. Robert Earle, mayor of Union Grove, had just come over to offer some words of commiseration to Brother Jobe and have a few words with Stephen Bullock when Bullock turned away, looking greenish, and elbowed his way back through the remaining crowd to rejoin his men and the horses.

“What’s wrong with him?” Robert said.

“Oh, he’s just broke up cuz he never got to set foot inside the place,” Brother Jobe said. “To enjoy all its comforts and marvels. Poor man just works too hard.”

“Well, this is sure an awful loss,” Robert said. “It was just starting to bring some life back into this town. I’m real sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, old son,” Brother Jobe said. “We gonna rebuild the sumbitch and I’m going to put up a proper hotel on the lot next to it where people can stay when they come here to buy my ding-dang mules.” The idea arrived full-blown in his awareness with a dispatch that impressed even Brother Jobe himself at the hidden synchronous powers of Providence. “Always think positive, my friend. And if it don’t come right away, just wait a little while.”

And that is how the holiday season ended in Union Grove, Washington County, New York, in the year that concerns us, which is yet to come in the history of the future.

[Itzy]