Читать книгу Kornwolf - Tristan Egolf - Страница 13

What felt to be three or four centuries back—in a time so gone it was hard to imagine it having existed in this day and age—the essence of compound filth had preceded The Crow’s arrival well in advance: ahead of the corn liquor rasping his palate, ahead of the musk of his perspiration, before his appearance—dragging one leg that had never recovered from gout in childhood—scowling sternly, his brow in a furrow of ruts, underscored by his graveyard eyes.

And so, now, after all this time …

Some things never changed.

They just ripened.

From two hundred yards in the distance, his arrival by carriage was heralded in on a plague wind. Twenty years later and no less rancid. In fact, the stench had only intensified.

He pulled to a stop alongside of the waterwheel. Slowly, the carriage door opened outward. A dung-crusted boot touched down on the platform and pivoted. Another boot dropped to the gravel. Rocking forward, the old man stood to position, slightly cocked to the left—in profile now, and, as might have been expected, of wider girth, having bloated with age. His beard was almost entirely white. His pitted nose had swollen and flattened. The passage of years had exacted a toll, to be sure. But his aura was undiminished. The rancor was deeply imbedded and festering—instantly, jarringly identifiable …

And still, he was dragging that gimpy leg.

The only significant, nonbiological change in his appearance was the hat on his head—a creaseless, wide-brimmed, black felt hat—which, at last, confirmed the nigh to implausible: he, Benedictus, was now a minister.

Certainly, stranger things had happened. But few, if any, less appropriate.

The idea of Old Man Bontrager reading the Book of Isaiah—or delivering the Es Schwer Deel—in the presence of an organized body of worship was so preposterous, so perverse, so obscene, it begged the question: what could have happened to District Seven? What in the world had become of the church?

Clearly disgusted, though, given his sour expression, equally unsurprised, the old man stared at the upended plow in the yard, and the hinny, gnawing its bit. Removing his hat, he spat in the dirt, then wiped his mouth with one dirty sleeve. Frowning, he pondered the image intently. Then he made for the summer kitchen.

He got to the door, unlocked it, went in. A pile of crockery fell from the windowsill—rattling, crashing. A moment of silence. He reappeared with a bottle of corn whiskey.

Nothing had changed.

Minister Bontrager. Lord deliver.

What came next?

Officer Rudolf Beaumont, of course …

Ludicrous though it may have sounded: Rudy “The Great White Chickenshit” Beaumont—fishtailing into the drive in what would’ve appeared to be his very own township cruiser—his yapping in bursts from the driver’s seat window discernible even at seventy yards. His nasal bleating, as unmistakable—down the lane it proceeded, approaching …

He slammed to a halt. He got out of the cruiser and yelled toward the house: “Get out here, Bennet! This motherfucking kid!”

He was heavier. Balding.

He looked like a swine in tights.

That much, too, hadn’t changed.

In early adulthood, Rudolf had been pronounced unfit for military service (the navy) due to acute asthma. In order to spare him disgrace in the family (three generations of low-ranking sailors) he’d been assigned to “domestic” service, stateside, overseeing “highway patrols.” The closest he’d come to “the shit” was an unpaved stretch of road outside of Philth Town. There, he had “monitored” thirty-man labor teams made up of conscientious objectors—most of them Orderly draftees working the pavement in lieu of active duty. In other words, he had stood guard over pacifists—mostly young Amish and Mennonite men—some of whom recognized him from Blue Ball, and none of whom knew how to take him seriously.

Back home, his father had been renowned as the laughingstock of the Amish Basin: by day, a scarcely respected mining executive and would-be community man, by night, a chauvinistic bigot who, after steadily hosing his mind with drink for the better part of a lifetime, had gone off the deep end, much to the shame and lasting disrepute of his family, by first becoming an honorary member of the Pennsyltucky Nazi party—Rudolf was named after Hitler’s deputy—second, shooting all five of his dogs for “chronic insubordination,” and third, coming out of the closet on a gin-blown, ass-naked yodeling public rampage—one that had led to a padded cell, leaving Rudolf behind as an angry young short man.

And Rudolf was most undoubtedly short. That much was clear in his one-to-one dealings, as had been the case with the Orderly COs—most of whom, once again, had known him for years, and who certainly bore him no personal favor. At first, his insistence on being addressed as “sir” had been greeted as vaguely hilarious. However, soon—after three or four tantrums—the whole thing had started to lose its charm. Soon, as the only non-Orderly present, he’d been shut out: the use of English had been dropped. He had wound up in conversational exile. His every command had gone unacknowledged. The only time anyone had paid him the first bit of mind was to crack a short-man joke. That much, he’d gotten without a translation. And it had driven him green with anger. When he’d threatened to call in the National Guard and have them all cited for insurrection, the Orderly COs had heard enough. All twenty-five of them had dropped their shovels and walked to the nearest service station. After lodging a formal complaint with the army by phone, they had gone on an all-night drunk.

The next they had heard, he’d been back in The Basin, working as a meter maid.

Eighteen years ago.

Now he defended the public trust.

“Get out here, Bennet!” he yelled at the house.

Benedictus stepped from the kitchen.

At the sight of him, Rudolf jerked a thumb toward his cruiser: “Stunk up my whole backseat!”

A motionless figure was sitting in the vehicle.

Beaumont opened the door and grabbed him. Headlong into the dirt he was tossed.

Stepping forward, The Crow looked down on him.

Already marked with cuts and bruises, the boy looked up in evident terror. The boy: the poor, unsightly wretch—as blighted to God-awkward, all out of sorts.

It hurt just to look at him.

He looked like his mother.

This was entirely too much to process …

Rudolf continued to blather hysterically: “—going upstate next time, so help me—”

In all likelihood, the boy had already outwitted The Chicken-shit once, if not many times. No doubt, there would have been multiple incidents—and more than spontaneous cow-tipping sprees. The kid would have proven a considerable nuisance. And gotten away with it, largely.

Till now.

Benedictus loomed over him, seething. The boy cowered. A moment went by. Then, as if signaled, he got up and slunk through the yard toward the house with his head hung low. Rudolf clouted his face in passing.

Class act(s). Benedictus and Beaumont. The Church and The State. The Crow and The Chickenshit.

Fighting again, they were—back and forth:

“This one’ll cost you!” Rudolf yelled.

Bontrager yelled back. “What do you want?”

Rudolf went into the summer kitchen. Gone for a moment, he reappeared with a jug of corn whiskey.

“And double the weekly,” he said on his way to the cruiser. “Move it.”

Benedictus climbed the stairs to the porch, went in, was gone, came back. Then—by stroke of outrageous fortune—he handed Beaumont an offerings box. Beaumont opened it, pulled out a wad of bills, and—incredibly—even counted them.

Score.

Long Live The Celluloid.

Perfect.

And just ahead of the rain, no less. From over the hill in a wall of gray—sweeping the fields with a pattering rumble.

Rudolf’s cruiser moved off down the lane. Benedictus was left on the porch, enraged, confused and in evident thirst.

Scowling, he turned and went into the house.