Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life Part 2

The barn doors opened. A small mob of farmers half pushed, half dragged two chained young men out. Their silver blond hair reminded Mac of the juggler, Whitey. But when they lifted their sullen, closed faces to look at the press, their resemblance to Mac's brother Arthur was shocking. There were no marks on their faces, but the way they hunched over and stumbled Mac guessed that the locals had been questioning them the hard way, gaining extra revenge in advance of the hanging. Two crates were pulled up and the murderers shoved onto them. The other reporters began shouting questions at the brothers. Why did they do it? Did they really think they'd get away with it? Where were they from? What did their mother think of them? Photographers ducked behind their cloths and bitter-smelling powder flashed as they shot their pictures.

Mac sketched the inquisition with shaking hands, scribbling the other correspondents' questions in the margins of his drawings. He knew, too well, the look on the outlaws' faces. The newsmen would get little more out of them than his family had ever gotten out of Arthur. These were men who had turned their backs on the world.

Asked why they'd begun a life of crime, one of them muttered, "no work." They gave their names as Jon and Lars. Asked why they'd killed Hezekiah and Jacob, Lars shrugged. Asked where they'd hidden the loot from all their robberies, they both just curled the edge of one lip. Since they were facing away from each other at the time, the effect was eerie, as if they were one person with two bodies.

Not much to build a story on. Mac knew how each of the other newsmen would write their copy. Several would call the brothers desperadoes and liken them to the James boys. Charlie would use the Vikings-run-amok theme.

The brothers looked distracted by physical pain, bored with the proceedings, uninterested in furthering anyone's fortunes or futures other than their own, and they obviously knew they had no future. Finally they stopped responding altogether. The farmers abruptly ended the interview and bundled the protesting newsmen back in the buckboards.

Returning to town took even longer than getting out. The farmers took a different, even more tortuous route. This time some of the reporters paid attention, undoubtedly with the idea of trying to make their way back on their own later. Mac appreciated the farmers' intelligence. It was harder to visualize a route coming backwards than forwards. The more experienced newsmen knew they'd been lazy and had been foxed. They looked off into s.p.a.ce, probably imagining a fancy narrative to cover the lack of facts, then scribbled busily against the lurching of the wagons.

The reporters went into high gear for a short while after unloading at Logan. The line at the telegraph office telescoped again, newsmen hunched protectively over their notes in the lobby. A few of the inexperienced and foolish disappeared, as expected. From the window in their room Charlie watched the novices sneak away. He winked at Mac before taking off to join the telegraph tarriers. "Those silly b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are going to come back miserable and cold and needing a good, hot drink. But probably too late for even that." In March the days were still short. Night was already falling.

Mac smiled vaguely from his cot and dove into his sketches, recopying them, fleshing them out. If he wanted to, if he felt it was worth it, if he felt up to the effort of bribing a local for some bony, swaybacked mule, he could find his way to the farm easily. He shivered. For what? To face twin pairs of blank, angry eyes, no words behind them, only muted rage? The brothers wouldn't share their lives and their secrets. Or worse, maybe they would. Mac felt suddenly nauseated. He hid from his thoughts in a savage flurry of drawing: the barn, already showing signs of neglect, the animal-silent meadows, the churlish, laconic brothers seated side by side.

The dinner bell startled him. With relief he walked down the stairs. The hotel had stretched for the occasion, setting up temporary tables of long boards on sawhorses in the small dining room. Mac and Charlie got to eat in the first shift. Dinner was a stew of pork mixed with root vegetables that tasted of being stored in the cellar since October. The fresh hot corn bread, thankfully, was as good as any from home.

Feeding done, they joined their compatriots in the lobby, which had already been turned into a dormitory of sorts. The scratchy dusty horsehair sofas were pulled close together, rented blankets tossed carelessly over them. Rickety chairs had been commandeered from local homes.

A poker game was already in play, cozily gathered around a case of whiskey. As Mac and Charlie settled into the game the saloon owner from down the street showed up with a few more bottles.

Later, in the fit of generosity that was his custom, Charlie would bring down some of his own booze to share with the crowd. All in all, the drinking would be moderate. The reporters were cagey enough to want to be alert for the lynching on the morrow. A photographer from Columbus piled the bottles in an elaborate arrangement designed to force them to retain sufficient soberness to extricate the whiskey safely.

"As my dear grandmother used to tell me, only drink enough to free the creative juices," another reporter from Dayton said as he picked up the cards dealt to him.

Mac wasn't much for drinking. His creative juices were already abundantly free a" he had more energy and imagination than any two men put together. He played a few hands to help get the game going. Once everyone had been processed through dinner and filtered into the lobby he settled down to draw caricatures of his fellow reporters.

"Round and round, round and round. Deal those cards. What goes around comes around again, time after time," Charlie muttered to his cards.

"What goes around better not come around again," the dealer, the photographer from Columbus, exclaimed. "Leastwise not till I shuffle the cards again."

"Some things that go around don't come around again. Like Jon and Lars," an onlooker snickered.

"Au contraire," Charlie said loftily. "They most a.s.suredly will. If ever I've seen two individuals in need of a repeat performance, it's those two. They get my vote for most likely to reincarnate."

The dealer twitched a card at him. Charlie shook his head and folded his hands on his cards, standing pat. "In fact, think about their appearance, their demeanor. I would say that they are actually simultaneous reincarnations of each other."

"You Masons!" the other reporter from Dayton scoffed. "Your usual mumbo jumbo is bad enough, but simultaneous reincarnations? Don't pour that man another gla.s.s. He's already had enough!"

Charlie raked in the change from the hand he'd just won, then he riffled the pack of cards. Mac sketched him fancy-shuffling the deck through a haze of cigar smoke. In the drawing his friend looked like a latter-day Mephistopheles.

"It's not such a far-fetched notion," Charlie said, slapping down cards around the circle. "Why should reincarnation be merely linear? You borrow a little from this person, they borrow a little from you, and none the wiser. It probably happens all the time. You wouldn't even know that you had done it or had it done to you, unless you had the sensitivity of special training."

A couple of other Masons grinned behind their cards, then nodded solemnly.

Mac felt uneasy. Is this what Arthur meant when he accused Mac of stealing his life from him? In the drawing the lines composing Charlie's face became sharp and dangerous.

"Our Erickson boys are a special case, however. I believe that due to the confused, intertwined state of their current incarnation that they have suffered an incomplete break with their past lives. Their wandering, marauding behavior of the last six months indicates they've confused themselves with their Viking ancestors. Either that, or they couldn't stand another Minnesota winter." Charlie winked at Mac.

The room laughed.

"That's a load of bull," the man said. "You ask me, those boys didn't look like nothing but stupid."

Charlie waggled a finger at his victim. "No, my good man, not stupid. Those two are like G.o.ds; unfeeling Elementals around whom anything might occur. What you think to be a lack of intelligence is in fact a lack of affect, the indifference of divinity, an ignorance of human emotions."

Mac decided not to say anything about the outlaws' big mistake with the cows.

The kibitzing onlooker jumped in. "If those two yahoos are G.o.ds, why did they get caught?"

One of the other Masons fielded that observation. "Because this is the machine age, the age of science and reason. Maybe their magic ran out."

Charlie cut back in. "Or maybe they got bored. Why should they care what happens? They know they'll get born and reborn again and again. Their hidden treasure, like a dragon's h.o.a.rd, will be waiting."

He looked at his cards, sighed and folded his hand. "I'll tell you boys this, though. You should be mighty glad the brothers Erickson were caught here. You saw the Injun turtle-barrows going out. Those are symbols of a peaceful, slow, long life, obviously contrary to our Vikings' nature. We were lucky the brothers weren't caught down by the Serpent Mound near Peebles. With it as a locus for power and regeneration, heaven only knows what could have happened." He shuddered dramatically.

"You can have folks show up as Thor himself. You can have them reincarnating simultaneously all over the place, as far I'm concerned," the Columbus photographer declared. "You just better not simultaneously reincarnate an extra ace from up your sleeve in the middle of a hand."

Several hours later the game wound down. Just as the whiskey ran out three of the stray journalists finally found their way back to town after a fruitless hunt for the barn. They were footsore, muddy, hungry and cold. They wailed until the cook managed to locate some stale cornbread and a thick wedge of cheese for them. They were far less grateful to the good woman than they were to Charlie, who went upstairs to fetch them a bottle from his own stock.

"You've saved our lives!" one young fellow exclaimed through chattering lips as he reached for the bottle.

"Don't say that, or you don't get any!" Charlie snapped, s.n.a.t.c.hing the flask away. "Don't you know that when you save someone's life that you're responsible for them from then on?" He looked the shivering unfortunate up and down. "No way I want to be held accountable for your sorry existence!"

"Don't consider that you've saved mine, then," said another of the prodigals, grabbing the bottle in turn from Charlie as the rest of the reporters laughed. "Many thanks all the same."

Mac's cot was right up against the window. Bright sunlight poured itself in on him the next morning. Too brightly a" there was a hot, bra.s.sy stillness to it that spoke not of spring but of trouble. By the time the journalists had been processed through a late breakfast of oatmeal, sausage, flapjacks and coffee, black clouds had boiled up to encircle the horizon.

The locals didn't conduct the newsmen out of town again till the early afternoon. Whether they were accommodating any straggling journalists who might be arriving in Logan late, or whether they were using the time for one last try at breaking down the brothers, or both, Mac didn't know.

The storm closed in all around as the wagons jounced them to the barn, intensifying the light, compressing it to gold until it seemed like they were traveling within the spotlight of some immense, darkening theater. The farmers didn't bother to disguise the route this time. They clicked their tongues at the mules to make them go faster.

"Twister weather," the reporter from Dayton muttered. Mac wished he were somewhere quiet and still with his paints, so that he could capture the savage bright color.

Once they arrived at the farm and set up, the locals moved fast. Two long ropes were already strung from the barn's yard arm. Two st.u.r.dy crates sat directly beneath them. Mac's heart sank. He'd been hoping they'd string the brothers up and toss them out the hay loft door. That would break their necks and finish it quickly.

Instead, they were going to stand the outlaws up on the crates, then kick the crates out from under them. The Ericksons would slowly strangle, jerking like demented puppets for the longest time, knowing that they were dying with their boots just inches from the ground.

Mac sighed and dutifully started sketching. Charlie already had his paper and clipboard balanced on his knees and was drawing like a madman.

The farmers brought Jon and Lars out. They were wrapped in so many chains and ropes that they looked like swaddled babes. There wasn't much they could do in the way of holding things up, but they did what they could a" wriggling like fish, then falling over like sacks of grain. It took five st.u.r.dy men to get the first of them propped up on one of the crates.

"Flop over now all you like," Jacob's father Samuel panted with satisfaction as he snugged the noose tight around the outlaw's neck. "The devil would just as soon see you a few minutes early."

The desperado reacted by standing up as straight and tall as any churchgoer.

When both brothers were readied a farmer acting as lay preacher opened a Bible and read a few brief and appropriate quotes from the Old Testament. Then he shut the Bible with a snap. "Bad enough you robbing hardworking, G.o.dfearing folk of the fruit of their labors. But when you rob good men like Hezekiah and Jacob of their lives a" and heaven knows who else a" you will make rest.i.tution not only with your lives, but with your very souls. You will find waiting for you a judgment and punishment befitting your sins."

Mac wondered if Arthur, believing as he did that Mac had stolen his life, thought Mac would someday pay with his soul.

The preacher nodded his head and burlap sacks were brought up to cover the outlaws' heads, out of consideration for the journalists' refined cityfolk sensibilities.

Lars looked up at the h.e.l.lish threatening sky and smiled just before they pulled the sack down over his eyes.

"To G.o.d, or more likely the devil, we commend you," the "preacher" said, and kicked the crates clear.

Mac looked down at his drawing pad and pretended to scribble busily, not looking up till all sounds of flapping and jerking had stopped. He had to pretend for a long time.

As if the Ericksons' deaths were a signal, the storm closed in. The bodies had stopped twitching barely long enough for the photographers to make their shots when the wind blew up, flapping the cloths up on the cameras, whipping the coattails of farmers and newsmen. The rope-trussed garments of the dead brothers didn't respond, but the bodies began to sway and swing again. Drops of rain, sharp and separate as drumbeats, started to strike the hardpacked earth of the farmyard.

The reporters packed and ran. As the wagons pitched and reeled getting away, Mac looked back to see the vigilantes cutting the bodies down.

The farmers tried to outrun the storm. That quickly became impossible: The first turn in the road took them straight into it. The reporters pulled down the edges of their hats, pulled up the collars of their coats, wrapped themselves around their notes and huddled together against the rain.

"Yow!" said the photographer from Columbus as the rain gave way briefly to a bullet-like flurry of hail. In the confusion of departure Charlie had landed in the next row of "seats" up. The photographer had jumped in next to Mac. His tripod and box of plates slammed into Mac's legs with every b.u.mp in the road.

"Hey, Wuest!" someone yelled at Charlie. "Looks like the G.o.ds have come to take your boys up to Valhalla in style." Everyone laughed at that, but when lightning began strafing nearby hills they fell silent.

The clouds lifted, gathering upward into a low ceiling. The rain slacked off. This didn't signal an improvement; it simply allowed them to see the funnel dropping down from the underbelly of that table-flat sky. The photographer crossed himself. "Hail Mary, full of grace, get me the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l out of this place," he whispered.

The buckboards jarred to a stop as the wagon drivers shouted to each other, trying to decide whether they should turn and outrun the tornado to a sideroad two miles back, cutting away from it. But there was no predicting its erratic course. They might find themselves fleeing directly into its path. And there was no real shelter any closer than Logan.

In the end they remained where they were, tying up the mules and wagons securely to trees by the side of the road. The farmers stood with the blindfolded and hobbled mules and tried to quiet them. The newsmen took shelter under the wagons. Even from that incredibly low perspective Mac could see the base of the funnel getting bigger and bigger, bearing down upon them. Branches and other debris were hurled against and into the wagons. The mules, constrained as they were, threw themselves against their traces in terror.

Then the black shape was gone, though the wind whipped at them for long moments. "It missed us!" a farmer yelled. The reporters crawled out and tried to brush some of the mud off. They looked nervously after the departing funnel cloud, which was picking up size and speed as it headed away east and north.

One of the mules had scratched itself badly. The rain turned to drizzle. The road soon transformed into thick sludge. The ride back was slow and cold, but weak with relief they laughed the whole way. Mac knew that many of the newsmen were already thinking of how they'd use the storm to liven up their copy. Charlie helped warm the other pa.s.sengers by pa.s.sing around his omnipresent flask.

They came to the fork in the road heading back into Logan. The tornado had paralleled the road, forming a broad new avenue twenty yards to the west. It should have come right on up after them, but at the turtle mound it had jumped the road and pa.s.sed to the other side of the barrow, heading off to the east. They cheered and thumped one another on the back at the sight.

But they stopped cheering and laughing when they got to town and stormed the railway station to wire their newspapers and get tickets for the next trains out of Logan.

"Telegraph lines went down with that twister," the clerk told them. "And just before they went we heard there's trees blown across the tracks past Nelsonville. All pa.s.senger trains east and west been cancelled till tomorrow, at the earliest, till the lines are working again and the tracks are clear."

The newspapermen howled but the clerk, one of those fresh-faced types still boyish at forty, just shrugged. "Nothing I can do about it. You'll have to take up your complaints with G.o.d."

Somewhat comforted by the notion that they were all trapped together, so that n.o.body would get a scoop on anybody else, the newsmen relaxed. The story would be just as fresh a day late.

"Might as well take advantage of the situation and have a h.e.l.l of a poker game tonight," a reporter from Youngstown said. They trudged back to the hotel to stand in yet another line a" this one for a hot bath.

Mac didn't care for gambling all that much, but he would have liked to bet that as soon as the town of Logan knew the train schedule had been cancelled the hotel manager had started stoking extra fire in the hotel's small bath house. And that he had taken pains to stockpile what remained of the town's booze.

After bathing and an early, mediocre supper, the gentlemen of the press started gathering in the lobby again. They didn't have to keep their wits keen for work the next day. If they were lucky and the tracks were cleared, the best they could expect would be to nurse hangovers on a slow train trip back to their respective cities in the morning.

As Mac pa.s.sed through on the way to the stairs up to his and Charlie's room the saloonkeeper from the bar down the street was dragging in yet another case of liquor. The rain and wind must have started up hard again a" the man was soaked and windblown.

And though it was still early, the photographer from Columbus was already piling up several empty bottles and laying the base for a fine edifice of filled ones. The journalists might not have to worry about the need to curtail their drinking tonight, but tradition was tradition. The photographer had done such a fine job the night before that he'd been elected to do it again.

Mac went upstairs and spent an hour or so working on his sketches, polishing them while they were fresh. Then he wrote his daily letter to Maude. With any luck he would hand deliver it to her himself tomorrow night. By the time he finally made his way downstairs again the poker game was in full swing.

"Where are you going?" One of the other ill.u.s.trators called out as Mac pulled his coat tightly about him.

"I want to check one more time at the station. See if there's been a break. Maybe they've got the telegraph lines working again."

"Are you out of your mind? Pull up a chair and play some cards."

Charlie laughed and waved Mac on. "You don't know Mac. He never sits still except when he works on his sketches. And even then he's not still. Have a pleasant stroll, Mac."

Mac tipped his hat to them and slid out into the night. The wind had abated but the rain still thrummed steadily on the hotel's porch roof. When he reached its sheltering edge he took a deep breath and trotted the length of the street to the station.

He shook himself sharply like a terrier before entering. Water snapped from his coat. The dispatcher looked up from behind the cage window when Mac opened the door. He must have been surprised to see one of the visitors out in this weather, but he didn't show it. With a poker face like that, Mac thought, he should be over at the hotel playing cards with the boys. He'd make a fortune.

"I'm one of the newsmen," Mac said. "Just wanted to see if there were any changes a" if maybe the telegraph lines were fixed?"

The clerk shook his head.

"Or if the train tracks were cleared?"

"No trains able to make it from here to Chillicothe or to Athens," the man said.

Mac started to thank him, then shot the clerk a sharp look. "No trains from here to Chillicothe or Athens?"

"Yup. Nope. Those there are the only pa.s.senger trains that go through here."

"Are there any other kinds of trains going through here to anywhere else?"

"Yup. Trunk line for freight comes by from Tor Hollows to the north. Transfers from here on over to Nelsonville. A load of cattle and seed grain coming through this evening, 'bout an hour. Those tracks are good, so there's no reason not to expect it."

"But you said earlier that after Nelsonville the tracks were closed again."

"The main line to Athens that those other fellows were asking after, yup. It's right past Nelsonville where the tracks are blocked. But in Nelsonville the Tor Hollow train switches to another trunk line going straight south to Jackson. There's a farm auction center there."

The name Jackson rang a bell. "Can I see a map?"

"Yup."

Thick red lines represented the main routes with pa.s.senger service. Thin blue lines traced the freight only routes. As the clerk had said, a thin blue line spidered its way south from Nelsonville to Jackson, where it hooked up with a thick red line. Which headed straight west to Cincinnati. Mac felt giddy with suppressed laughter. He tapped the lower red line with his finger. "Is this route open?"

The clerk reached through the cage to turn the map so that he could see it. "Last I heard before we lost the telegraph lines. Probably still is. That's south of the worst of the storm."

"Do you have a schedule for these lines? And how much are the tickets?"

"Tickets cost nothing because there are none. I told you, those trunk lines are for freight only. There aren't any pa.s.senger cars."

"That's all right," said Mac. "I just want to ship some art."

"You look like a drowned duck." Charlie said, liquor garbling the words to gravel tumbling over his tongue. "Are you ready to play and drink? I'll deal you a hand."

"Drowned duckling," a reporter from Columbus muttered. Charlie turned on the man angrily at this slight to Mac's stature.