was full and foul, as were the grim attempts at houses of worship. Everywhere one looked, there was more canvas than lumber and more people and animals than either.
While sawmills up and down the river had been busy, the rumor mills had been frantic. In addition to tales of the latest cholera scare, there were stories going around of far stranger outbreaks. Some Kansas Indians up from the South had appeared with bizarre deformities they insisted were due to bad medicine in the water. A small hamlet south of Kansas City had been struck overnight with what appeared to be some kind of religious mania. The Sitturds listened to an earnest mail rider recount scenes of communitywide speaking in tongues and nervous spasms. Children whispered about ghostly forms that were abroad in the night, and from the German that Lloyd understood he was able to pick up hushed mentions of a “monster” that had been sighted out on the prairie. He chose not to pass this intelligence on to his parents. There was enough to worry about as it was, and from the look of the sky and the smell in the air a weather change was coming on fast.
It was in the midst of these mounting anxieties that an incident occurred which punctuated the tension with special force. At first, it seemed to be a perfectly normal affair, given the surroundings. One of the Spaniards had a dog, a large, threatening thing with a mottled coat. Its ribs were visible, but it had a big, powerful head and shoulders, and what were obviously strong, bone-crushing jaws. The cur stood guard by one of the cooking ovens, drooling and sharp-eyed for any scraps it might be offered. Out of the crowd between the wagons there appeared a much smaller black dog, short-legged and ragged of coat.
The scent of the food wafted. The two dogs’ eyes locked. No one spoke up to claim ownership of the smaller mutt. The Spaniard’s dog gave a low warning growl. Then the two dogs were at each other’s throats. All the people in the vicinity stepped back, except a man who said that he was Australian. He stepped forward and proposed taking bets. Several of the men watching were about to take him up on this idea when the dust around the dogfight swirled up in a furious blast and a yelping rose out of the haze.
Everyone assumed the Spaniard’s dog had drawn blood, but then the beasts went silent. The dust settled, and to everyone’s surprise and horror the bigger dog had gone limp and hung from the teeth of the little one. Several of the men were about to express their regret at not having a wager down, when to their further amazement and disgust the small black dog began to eat the other. There was nothing rabid about it-the stunted canine acted with methodical, almost serene ferocity. The mouths of the onlookers, most of whom had seen and even bet on many dogfights in their time, dropped open.
The Spaniard leveled a hunting rifle at the mass of bloody fur and shining fangs. The victorious critter stared back at him with composed and utter disregard. Lloyd, along with several others, was in a position to see the expression in the creature’s eyes and he felt cold inside as a result. The Spaniard shot the dog in the head. He then took the rifle and walloped the mongrel’s rib cage and smashed its skull. When his temper had been vented, he wiped the rifle butt on the fur of what remained of his dead animal, then picked it up by its hind legs and took it off to bury it. The carcass of the murderous black thing was left in the dust for the flies. No one said a word, and it was a long minute before the crowd that had formed began to disperse. In the distance, down the dock road, Lloyd heard the whistle of the
While all this had been happening, a huge white cumulous blob of shaving lather had transformed into a darkening thunderhead just beyond the town. There was that heady, sweet, dangerous smell of heavy rain in the air, and within the half hour the sky opened up and bucketloads began falling. What a scrambling mess of jostling, lunging, scurrying labor followed. Cooking fires were extinguished, kids were swept into or under wagons, people hopped and hobbled for awnings and doorways, horses and mules bucked and snorted, poultry squawked and darted. All the hammering ceased and workmen hustled down ladders. The deluge struck with genesis force, shimmering over the roofs and canvases like a collapsed wall. Umbrellas and tents strained and tore. Wagons lurched. Oxen lumbered. Indians, Negroes, settlers, and vagabonds were all caught in the same storm, lashing down on dry timber and dust, livestock and hardware.
The downpour did not last long, but it turned the town into a slippery, squishy, tinkling bog of wagon wheel- sucking mud and overflowing gutters. Anyone who had managed to reach one of the protected plank boardwalks or covered porches braced himself there, ready to defend his refuge. The Sitturd clan had headed for the open door of one of the stables, but even so had got soaked. Like their place of residence back in St. Louis, the building was alive with mice. Water dripped down through holes in the shingled roof. The smell of damp hay, leather, and dung greeted them. Worse still, the shadows within showed signs that several other families had already had the same idea, and the stableman, a fellow with a barrel body and arms as thick as the rafters, did not look pleased.
The Zanesvilleans took the hint and inched back out into the mire of the streets. Lloyd could not help himself and went over to inspect the remains of the black dog. He found that the corpse was already badly decomposed. It was not the violence of the Spaniard’s desecration that was responsible, though; it was more like some accelerated internal process. Lloyd’s native curiosity gnawed at him, just as the black dog had ground down its teeth into the other. Despite all that they had to think of-all that lay behind and ahead of them, and the immediate difficulties they faced-he would very much have liked to save the remains of the dog to examine, but he had a feeling, which he could not explain or account for, that within but a short while there would be nothing left of the body to study, perhaps not even bones. Rapture kept the family moving.
At one of the many blacksmith sheds, Hephaestus introduced himself as a member of the trade. Although he had not regained his old strength, and it had been quite a while since he had swung a hammer or used a bellows, he showed himself adept enough to be offered employment starting the next morning. The shed owner and chief smithy was a blunt, compressed anvil of a man named Bevis Petrie. He and his wife and four children occupied the back quarters of the shed and so could not assist with the Sitturds’ accommodation needs, but he did feel charitably disposed enough toward them to recommend that they head to the other end of town and find a man named Othimiel Clutter, who happened to be his brother-in-law and one of the town’s numerous undertakers and coffinmakers.
Rapture, with a tradition of complicated relationships with the afterlife on both sides of her ancestors, was not pleased about this suggestion. But, with the autumn dark about to fall and with it the chance of more rain, she bit her lip and kept her peace. “De dead is jes like us,” she told herself. “Jes got to treat him wid rispect.”
So through the muck the family moved-or, rather, slithered. Several disputes if not outright brawls were in various stages of eruption in the streets and doorways. The saloons were busy, cooking fires had been relit, barn cats licked themselves on roof ledges, and everywhere the flow of runoff water gurgled and spilled, searching for the lowest point. The clouds cleared and a prairie-fire sky lit up the west, as if all the country that lay beyond were burning, which might have seemed menacing and more than a little apt, were it not that a red sky in the evening is a reliable omen of good weather the next day.
The Sitturds trudged through the mud, recalling the miseries of Zanesville. At last they came to a dripping, peeling storefront with a selection of crude pine caskets lined up against a covered porch like skiffs that had been washed up out of the river.
Othimiel Clutter and his wife, Egalantine, turned out to be one of those childless middle-aged couples who seem to have been middle-aged their entire lives and yet had grown alike during the course of their marriage, so that they were now hardly distinguishable, moving, speaking, and even thinking as one. Neither showed the slightest ability to express a complete sentiment without the assistance of the other-and, once voiced, every utterance needed to be echoed several times, just as the casket lids Othimiel sawed and nailed all needed sanding and a knock to be called done. He was forever tapping on the lids of the things in a way that made Rapture most uncomfortable (because she could not help thinking that soon they might be tapping back).
Nevertheless, the Clutters agreed to let the Sitturds “camp out” with them for a fee, once they were assured that the Ohioans were bound and determined to depart before the winter set in. Each member of the family was restless to get moving as soon as possible, a change of season or no.
Of course, it was obvious where the Sitturds were supposed to sleep-not just with the coffins but
