The Road to Reckoning. Robert Lautner

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СКАЧАТЬ my boy … my boy.’ He chuckled and it was the nicest music.

      You may have had a father or you may have had a man who lived in your house. If he beat you or left you I will suffer you that and if you carry it with you then you can have some pity. But I saw my father’s shame and he passed it on to me. If he had hit me I could abide, I could overcome. The Lord does these things so we do not do it ourselves. This is how man changes his generations, the way birds move on from barren lands, and we abide.

      I told you when I started that my life began when I was twelve. It was there in that room. I did not exist before that night and I am still that boy.

      He held me away. ‘I was only loading the gun so I could learn. So I could show Mister Baker in the morning.’ Then, as if to avow to himself rather than settle me, ‘I am sure that man will not be there then. We will do our business and be gone with Jude Brown.’

      ‘We could go home,’ I said.

      ‘We could. But there is no need, Tom. We will be on the road tomorrow. Everything will be well. Here, let me show you how fast I can load this thing. It is a marvel, I swear.’

      I wiped my eyes and he rubbed his, lamenting his tiredness and concentration. I noticed he had only loaded one chamber.

      I watched him play the gun like that piano outside. The gun in its simplicity and pleasing mechanics coaxed confidence from his hands; it forgave the amateur. And there was the V cut into the hammer as a back sight, the blade at the end of the octagonal barrel, and if you lined them up, aimed your eye down that V, down that steel-barreled extension of your arm, you would shoot the thing in front of you. But the gun does not know how to pull the trigger.

      I did not ask him why he could not have practiced with the wooden gun. It separated and loaded just the same and even had wooden caps and balls. I never thought of it, or why the loaded gun did not go back to its green baize bed.

       SIX

      We packed and fetched the Brewster and Jude Brown first thing. Jude Brown was reluctant to leave either the food or the company of horses although as a gelding they should have smelled like dogs to him. We rode to Baker’s in silence. My father did not tip his head to anyone, which was not his custom and a bad habit for a salesman. His little gold glasses kept slipping down his nose with his sweat and he was forever confusing Jude Brown by lifting the reins to set them glasses right.

      Baker’s reached, my father jumped down. I had no will to follow but still he said, ‘Wait here.’

      He took two naked belt guns, whose barrels were about five inches, made for as they sounded, and he intimated such by tucking one in his belt.

      ‘I will not be long.’ He slapped the reins into my hand.

      I watched the door close and looked at the back of Jude Brown’s head so as not to meet the eye of anyone on the street. There was a black boy in cotton-duck overalls on the porch sweeping but with no intention on cleaning. He was moving the dust around with the strength of a marionette and studied me and Jude Brown. I played the reins through my fingers and looked up at the mountains covered in cloud, the endless trees on them in the early morning still blue-green like the sea. It was not yet ten. I would not think that a man like Thomas Heywood had got out of his filthy bed by now.

      I could not help but look at the door once or twice and each time the black boy grinned a gapped mouth. I chiseled my face like a man with fury in him. I did not truck with boys. I had a wagon and a horse. I had a sack full of guns. I dipped my hat to a milkmaid who instead of smiling or blushing looked at me scornfully. I pulled the brim down as if this was originally my intention.

      I do not know how long I sat but it seemed as if the whole world passed by, their clothes getting smarter with every minute as the work they traveled to shifted from strong back to desk and pen, for the earlier you have to get up the harder you have to work. My father was taking his time. I thought on the two guns he had taken in and then I could think of nothing else except Thomas Heywood’s white, wide eyes.

      The door and its bell exploded like a gunshot and I jumped, which made Jude Brown toss his head and curse me with a snort when nothing happened. My father was there and shaking mister Baker’s hand. He climbed up onto the seat and took the reins, adjusting them tighter where I had been running them through my hands.

      He snapped Jude Brown off and the black boy smiled good-bye and waved us away with a wide, pendulous swing as if hailing a raft from the shore to warn of white water ahead.

      We left Milton at the west end and there were more tents outside here than coming in and skinny dogs barked at us, danced at Jude Brown, bit at our wheels then wagged their tails back to their masters proud that they had seen us off.

      A great weight lifted off me that I did not know was there. Later we were talking again and pointing out jaybirds. My father had taken an order for six pistols and sold one for mister Baker’s own use. At dinner he put back the pistol from his belt to the wagon. He could not unload it, as is the way with guns (they only empty one way), but he said that would not be to any detriment.

      ‘It will be provident if we see us a rabbit.’ He smiled but it had no weight to it and my smile back was even lighter.

      We had a new plan for our journey. We would head south, follow the mountains, to make the Cumberland road. This was the national road, as you may recall, a redbrick toll road that would carry us safely through the mountains and west into Illinois. It closed in ’38, I believe, when the money ran out or the road ran out, whichever is truer. Over six hundred miles long, and the trail to get down there would add three or four days onto our month, Cumberland being near two hundred miles. But the thought of a good and busy road with civilized turnpikes was comforting. It was the sensible thing to do. Getting there, however, in the shadow of the mountains would be rough country.

      We crossed the Susquehanna at Lewis, where we took a cooked supper but did no business, keen as my father was to get on and leave Milton far behind. This was a pity as Lewis seemed like a bustling, money-heavy borough.

      With mister Baker’s eight dollars for a pistol and even with our expenses we now had us thirty-two dollars. My father was a good accountant. Already the trip had turned profit.

      We camped under the mountains and as it grew dark I looked up into the trees and saw the friendly glow of other travelers’ fires like the tips of cigars, a thousand feet above, separated by miles of forest. The mountains were alive and I did not feel lonely. And I was with my father and he was happier now.

      ‘If we are up with the sun I reckon we could make Huntingdon by tomorrow evening,’ he said. ‘I will do some business and get us a bed there. We shall need a good sleep. It will be another two days before we can get to Cumberland.’

      We spoke like we were mountain men, as if we followed the stars and that two hundred miles were just stepping-stones across a creek. If we were real foresters we would have followed the creeks and the mills and seen towns we did not know existed. But our Brewster would have been no good along a creek. These trails as they were did not do too much to improve its wooden springs.

      ‘Could we not sell the wagon?’ I inquired. ‘Get another horse? We might travel quicker.’

      He looked at me harshly and I blushed. This had been my mother’s wagon. ‘You are too young to ride. And I would be worried about bears if we did not have the cart to sleep on.’

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