A Slant of Light Read online

  He turned the horse up the drive and circled behind the building to the horse sheds that lay under the shade of maples old enough to have been left standing when the bricks were fired and the building made. As expected, with court not in session and a manhunt under way, the sheds were empty but for a pair of fancy blue-roan geldings with black manes and tails, working at a pile of hay, tails flagging flies. Next to them, in its own bay, sat a fancy carriage appointed with brass and silver fittings. August pulled up and considered this and then climbed down to tie his own horse in the shed, the horse left standing hitched to the cart. The owner of the fancy team was clearly there for the day. And August knew who that was and guessed he was the man to speak to.

  Judge Ansel Gordon wore his hair long, tucked behind his ears and spilling over his shoulders, a neat mustache and chin whiskers adding to his bearing while hiding his tight, thin lips. As with the buggy, he favored displays of his wealth. He indulged in lengthy written decisions and concurring opinions, and was most famous for his declamations when passing sentence.

  He was also pragmatic. He could cut a deal against long odds and appear to most all that he’d enacted wisdom and avoided prolonged suffering for the beleaguered. All in all, formidable but human.

  August pulled a final long draw on his cheroot and ground it into the gravel. The judge might see easy political hay to be made. Perhaps. But this was not August’s concern. For the moment, some questions about Harlan Davis, the plight of Malcolm Hopeton. The parents of the murdered girl were members of his community, not quite neighbors and, truth be told, not but glimpsed for years. But nevertheless.

  He walked the long way around to the broad front where a flight of ten granite steps led up to a deep porch fronted by four Doric columns and the high double entry doors. August climbed the steps and turned his eyes to the figure of a man seated in one of a pair of high-backed rocking chairs far down one side, almost hidden in the shade.

  Judge Gordon wore a crisp black suit over a boiled shirt and four-in-hand, the pants with knife-edge creases leading to black patent boots, and was bare-headed, his brushed-beaver felt bowler upon one knee. Between his legs rested a walking stick with a brass lion’s-head knobbed top, held in place by long, almost dainty fingers on the shaft below the knob, which he twirled in place. He watched August with the curious open stare of one who’d witnessed all manner of men, and the doings of men, and knew no surprises.

  Hat in hand, August introduced himself and waited.

  “Despite appearances,” the judge said, “I’m a busy man today. What’s your business?”

  “I’m here in the matter of Malcolm Hopeton.”

  He blinked but otherwise didn’t move. “How so?”

  “I have interests. And questions.”

  “Why don’t you inform me of your interests and then we’ll see if I have answers of any sort.”

  “The young woman murdered this morning was the daughter of neighbors of mine.”

  Ansel Gordon studied him a long moment. “Do you represent them in a legal sense?”

  “No.”

  “That’s probably best for them. But I have nothing to say about the matter, relevant to them, to you. And I’d guess Esquire Stone will assist them. Isn’t he also a friend and neighbor, as you put it?”

  “He is.”

  “There then. Let him see to this business. As for yourself and the Scovalls—”

  “The name is Schofield. David and Iris. She—Bethany was their only child.”

  “The Schofields. I suggest your wife cook them some food. You might organize a work party to attend to their farming duties. The usual fellowship, yes?”

  August offered no corrections but said, “The second issue is more complicated.”

  “Ah.” The judge left his hat perched on his knee and cupped both palms atop the walking stick. “Do tell.”

  “When Hopeton murdered his wife he also, or first, killed Amos Wheeler, who had been a hired man of his for some years. Also injured in the attack was a younger hired man, Harlan Davis.”

  “The precise chain of events has not been firmly established in the eyes of the law.”

  “Of course not, sir. But it’s commonly said that while Hopeton was off in the war, most or all of his livestock disappeared. I choose my words carefully, since Wheeler’s extended family has a certain reputation. There also are rumors that Wheeler, either acting alone or with Bethany’s assistance, ran through whatever fortune and other assets Malcolm Hopeton had amassed.”

  “Mr. Swartout, I’ve heard all these rumors and more. Where the truth lies is uncertain, which is now the purview of the court. I fail to understand your interest.”

  “I have a young woman in my employ who is the sister of Harlan Davis. Once he’s able to travel I’d bring him to my farm in Jerusalem, so she may nurse him and aid in his recovery. They are orphans; he has no other family.”

  “There may be a question of the young man’s liability, at the least, as the sole witness. However, if Doctor Ogden is satisfied with his condition, I see no reason not to release the boy to your custody. Until the sheriff might inform me otherwise. He makes those decisions; I merely sign warrants.”

  “I may attend to my affairs by other lights, but I’m not ignorant of the law. If the sheriff had reason or intention to arrest Harlan Davis he’d already have done so, regardless of his injuries. My questions are more practical.”

  “Would you get to them, then?”

  “I’m trying to determine if there are livestock of any sort on Hopeton’s farm. One such as Harlan Davis would feel obligation to care for them, regardless of the actions or consequences for his employer.”

  “The loyal worker.”

  August only looked at the man and waited. The judge took the gaze, shot his eyebrows and placed his hat upon his head and stood. Briefly he twirled the walking stick and said, “I’ve no idea of the conditions at Malcolm Hopeton’s farmstead. But I’d imagine the boy you seek to champion does. Why don’t you ask him? As for Hopeton, we first must find him. Then see if he’s brought in alive. I’d think he’d be a most desperate man at this point. By all accounts the story is complicated but the fact remains there are two people killed. I imagine livestock is the last thing on his mind just now. Wouldn’t you? Good day, sir.”

  The judge strolled down the floorboards of the porch and entered the courthouse. The doors boomed shut after him.

  Out on the gravel drive again August halted and considered the day: the sky still open but the light thinned by a skim of high cloud and the air about him more dense, hotter. Rain moving in. He stood a moment, blinking and feeling dulled, slightly abraded. He was not unaware of the doings of the world but his daily round of work and life occupied most of his mind and much of his spirit, save for such times when the world reminded him of the relentless turmoil of humanity. Such as the quarter hour just passed. He mounted his cart and wished he’d not squandered the half-cheroot earlier; its bracing and clarifying effect would be welcome. He pulled his hat snug on his forehead and chirped up the horse.

  He collected Becca. There seemed no change in her brother but Doctor Ogden assured them his pulse was strengthening. He gave August a questioning look, curious about what he’d learned; but when August looked away, Ogden didn’t pursue, believing the farmer held a mixture of anger and dismissal of his skills in an equation Ogden had no interest in discovering. Country people, farmers, and other unskilled laborers forgot all else when the doctor failed, however hopeless the situation.

  August interrupted this contemplation. “We’ll fetch him first thing in the morning. If he wakes please tell him so. And unless his pain is terrible hold back the opium; I’d as soon have him sensible.” August already had a hand on the girl’s shoulder, steering her toward the door.

  Ogden said, “It’s not opium.”

  August glanced back. “Is it not?” Then stepped out and was gone.

  The doctor stood a moment, the slap of the door high against his eardrums. T
hat was the problem with the war, and the newspaper hacks; all manner of things were written up but in half-measure, true but not truth, but allowing any skimmer of newsprint the sense they held knowledge. It was a sad world, to work and live in. He walked over and placed his own warm hand on the cool brow of Harlan Davis. Yes, the boy was stable. Ogden made a note in his mind to make sure his wife sent out to the hotel for a pot of chicken broth, then went to the glass shelves, plucked down the little brown stoppered bottle. Rolled it in his palm. Most people were idiots. He’d read parts of The Voyage of the Beagle. Now, there was a man.

  August lay awake, the night crashing, splintering, rending itself in slabs of swift blanching light. Water poured off the roof, too much for the downspouts to accommodate. At one point he must’ve slept as he lurched awake when balls of fire raced blue and sparking about his room. Or had in his dream; he could not say. Aware of the girl sleeping for the first time ever under his roof, two doors down and across the hall, he could calculate the cumulative inches of horsehair, blood and sand-plaster walls that lay between them. It had been his idea and now he wondered if the storm kept her awake in her room also. He’d felt none of this unease when, hours earlier, he’d stopped the cart at Malin’s store, where she’d collected those things she had to have, bringing them out in a cardboard suitcase strapped together with an old belt and butcher’s twine.

  The rain fell to constant patters that lulled him down. Beyond a sense of the storm he’d recall none of this in the morning. Except to know no hay would be cut that day.

  He was milking in the gray light of dawn when she came into the barn in her best dress of dark navy with white piping at the neck and wrists, hair arrayed atop her head, hooked boots with a high polish. She carried a platter of browned sausages and hunks of bread and a steaming metal can of coffee.

  He rested his head against the warm soft-haired flank, his hands pumping in slow alternation. Turned his face slightly to look up at her and the cow lifted one hind foot, then settled it.

  She took up a piece of sausage and one of bread, folded them together, and reached it toward him. She said, “I had dreams. Terrible dreams. We have to go soon as we’re able.”

  “I’ve had my share of those dreams. Not one came true. Mostly, they were after the fact.”

  “I’m telling you. We have to get going.”

  He understood and was about to tell her so, opened his mouth to speak and she stuffed in the food. She set the platter up on the open window ledge behind the cow and walked away as she said, “I already hauled a mattress to the wagon. I’ll harness the team while you finish up. Mr. Swartout, I’m sorry but I have a bad feeling about all this.”

  And she was gone. The cow slapped her urine-soaked tail against the side of his head. He resumed milking and started to chew the mouthful of food. It was just what he needed.

  With both big horses clipping smartly and the democrat wagon rolling light as air behind, they were approaching town less than an hour later. The sky shimmered like new-washed glass and it was already hot. She was quiet all the way but it was not the contained quiet of the day before. Her eyes roved over the land, not as if she was looking for something but as if she must keep her eyes in motion to avoid whatever thoughts were lying behind them. She kept her hands in her lap, holding a handkerchief she worked through her fingers like a rope, to one end and then back again. After setting out he’d remarked once upon the day but she’d only glanced at him, then away with no response. So he drove the team and waited. She looked fresh, not like someone who has been awake much of the night, so he guessed the dreams had come late and roused her from sleep, leaving a vivid imprint.

  As they crested the hill that led down into the town they heard the tolling of bells.

  “What’s that?” Her voice strung high as if any moment she might jump from the wagon and run on ahead. Or flee backward. “It’s not Sunday.”

  “No.”

  “They’ve caught Hopeton, is what it is,” she said. “Some fool announcing it by swinging on a rope.” The words were barely out before she swatted a hand against her mouth.

  “I expect we’ll see. But Becca, we’re here to fetch your brother home. That’s our job. The rest is beyond us.”

  They were headed into the downtown blocks, the horse’s shoes kicking up hard swats of mud drying from the rain. The street ahead was mostly empty. She said, “What’s beyond us depends a great deal upon what’s before us, isn’t that so, August.”

  Not a question. And she’d used his Christian name. He imagined it to be a slip of the tongue, a moment of excitement. He wondered if privately she thought of him so, or as Mr. Swartout. It wasn’t important to him either way, except there seemed no method to learn the truth. Time, he reminded himself.

  As they came into the center of town there was a flow of traffic, all headed up the street, and they merged with it and were carried along. A clot of people on foot, others in buggies, wagons, on horseback, all crowded the street and overflowed onto the boardwalks. Mostly men but a few women, many children, boys racing and weaving their way ahead. Together as a tide they made the turn and carried along past the opera house, August no longer driving so much as holding his reins tight and letting his horses pick the way.

  In the street before the courthouse the crowd milled, spreading wide and deep. August’s team, eyes walled and necks arched, had come well up and halted.

  A procession was advancing down the street. They waited and watched. There was a vanguard of mounted men, three abreast, then came a vehicle, then another, followed by an array of men on foot. From that group the steady clomp of horses and booted men walking. The waiting crowd went silent, ahush and atremble as they knew what was coming.

  Becca elbowed August, pointed toward the courthouse lawn. Where a raw-timbered gallows stood unsteady in appearance, the wood white as a skinned apple.

  “Will they kill him so easy?”

  “I’d think not. My guess is that contraption was built overnight without authority.”

  The horseback men spread as they advanced and so split the crowd back to a peeled opening. Into which the buggy and following wagon came. The judge rode in the buggy, the sheriff on horseback alongside him. The wagon was driven by a deputy, his hat pulled low. In the bed of the wagon Malcolm Hopeton lay propped against a heap of straw, wrapped in chains, his face bloodied, his arms and upper body mottled with bruises. Once the wagon was stopped, the group of men behind surrounded it, a protective guard. August saw all this and also waited.

  It was then he spotted the sorrel mule tied to the back of the wagon.

  The buggy had stopped and the judge stepped down, raised a hand and waited for the crowd to quiet for him to speak.

  When the hush was sufficient Judge Gordon waved toward the scaffolding. “Whatever that damned thing is supposed to be, it wouldn’t stand to gut rabbits from.” He pulled a watch from his vest pocket and announced, “It’s quarter past nine. It will be gone by ten. If a single nail or splinter remains I’ll have the sheriff find out who built it, and throw every law I can find at em. It’s an abomination to civilized society. If, time comes, there’s any hanging to be done, it will be at Auburn or Ossining. Am I clear?”

  He glowered about, not expecting an answer. Then he said, “As you can see we have Malcolm Hopeton in custody. You may go home and rest in peace, by which I mean I want all of you the hell out of here. This is not a circus or spectacle of amusement.”

  The crowd pushed back a bit, making a larger circle and clearing away from the courthouse steps but not more. No one was willing to miss the chance to see the murderer and none believed the judge had either the right or the authority to enforce his proclamation. Ansel Gordon seemed to expect this as he waved at the sheriff, Byron Taylor, and called, “Bring him in.”

  Taylor sat on a heavy bay, the horse antsying sideways though he paid it no mind. He said, “You six, get him out. Albright, you ride the other side of them from me.”

  The elect six moved
toward the rear of the wagon, as a man on a white mare made her sidestep closer to them, on the side opposite of the sheriff, who had not yet moved. Two of the six pulled the pins and let the tailgate of the wagon down and then all worked together to lift and drag Hopeton out, holding him upright on his shackled feet. Hopeton resisted, slumping backward and twisting in his chains. Hands were readjusted and then they had him firmly and began to walk him forward, Hopeton in an awkward duck-step. They moved passed the judge’s buggy, then came abreast of the judge himself, who stood planted on the courthouse lawn, having ceded authority to the sheriff but not willing to abandon overseeing the operation.

  As Hopeton came nearest the judge, he suddenly thrust his head between two of the men and cried, “Make judgment of me, will you? It’s a half a man does so and not walked in my boots. Fuck yourselves, all of you.”

  There was a suck of silence but for the blows the deputies pummeled upon Hopeton, and Becca said in a low voice, “That’s an awful thing.” Before August could respond, someone jeered, then others shouted curses, taunts and a sewage of obscenities, causing the sheriff to wheel his big horse about in a circle as he drew his pistol from his belt and discharged it in the air. Silence fell once more and the crowd began to fall away as the clump of men worked their charge up toward the courthouse.