Gale Hamilton should never have been a mother, or the reverend, a father. It didn’t seem right that a person had to get a license to hunt or fish, but anybody, no matter how godawful or crazy, could have children. Jewel might not have been everybody’s first choice, but when I considered the Hamilton boys, I always felt myself real fortunate.
Maybe it was because of Reverend Hamilton’s constant pressure to be so good—or at least to appear so—that Aaron and Seth turned out so bad. There’s some kind of scientific law that if a thing’s pushed too far one way, it’ll eventually swing back the other way, with all the more force for having been pushed.
Aaron Hamilton was a little older than Caroline, and his brother, Seth, was born the same year as Jolene. Their house was just a mile down the road from the inn, but their father had issued strict orders that they were never to play with us, which probably made the prospect all the more tempting.
As I said before, even as a child, I did not play, preferring to keep my dignity and authority intact. Seth was content to fool around with Jolene and Caroline, but Aaron was forever begging me to join in with their games. When I steadfastedly refused, he’d sit out the game with me and try to make conversation.
I never liked Aaron Hamilton and instinctively tried to avoid him. Even young as he was, there was something unnatural about him. Jewel realized it, too, after the funeral parlor incident. Most people in Galen held funerals in their own homes and thought that those who availed themselves of funeral parlors for this purpose demonstrated a lack of respect for the dead. Jewel worked briefly for a funeral director fixing dead people’s hair. She often said that dead people made the best customers because they never complained. (Of course, on the other hand, she said, they never tipped either.) Sometimes, when the reverend was called on to comfort the bereaved, he’d bring his boys with him. Once, Jewel left a body to get a comb from upstairs; when she came back down, she found Aaron doing something terrible with the body. She never would say what he was doing exactly, just that we were to stay away from the Hamilton boys and to promise that when she died we’d lay her out at home and bury her near the Inn. And not to worry about her hair. She said once she was dead, she didn’t much care how her hair looked.
I tried to avoid both boys, but Aaron was not to be discouraged, despite my ignoring him and yelling at him to leave me alone. Aaron always came back for more abuse, and eventually I came to understand why.
One afternoon, while the girls and Seth were playing hide and seek and Aaron was leaning back against a tree, watching me read, the reverend appeared. Usually he was too busy off ministering to poor unfortunates to keep track of what his boys were up to. But that day, furious that his sons had defied his orders never to play with us, he made Aaron take his shirt off and hug an apple tree. Then he made a cat ’onine tails and whipped Aaron until great red welts rose on his bare back. Then he did the same to Seth, who screamed each time the whip cut him, though he dared not run. But Aaron had never made a sound. That was the difference between them. Somewhere inside Aaron Hamilton was a scream, and many years would pass before Galen heard it.
Next day, both boys were back, and curiosity made me break my silence. “After the beating you took yesterday,” I said, “how can you take the chance coming back here?”
Suddenly, Aaron looked very serious, without his usual smirk. “Nothing will keep me away from you, Darcy,” he said gravely. “Not flood. Not pestilence. Not famine. Not hell nor high water. Nothing.” And the way he said it made me shudder. This was not the idle pledge of a smitten school boy but the first stirrings of obsession, an omen of things to come. The oak is always in the acorn.
To say I became childhood friends with Aaron would be exaggerating, but sometimes he wore me down to the point where I would answer him when he asked me something, if all it took was a yes or no, and I might listen halfheartedly when he talked. The year I turned thirteen, Aaron started confessing things to me, telling me things I’d have slept better not knowing.
“Know that fire in old man Zook’s barn?” he asked, grinning.
I nodded yes. Old man Zook was a Mennonite with queer ways and Aaron for some reason had always hated him.
“I did it,” he said proudly. “Whooosh, that barn went up like human hair.”
A few minutes passed before I gathered myself enough to say, “Why?”
He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I love watching fires. They’re so pretty. All orange and gold.”
“Two of his horses got killed,” I said dully, feeling sick to my stomach. “And the old man nearly got killed himself trying to free them.”
“Ain’t my fault,” he said, and I didn’t argue with him.
Seth was almost as bad as his brother, but stupidity and clumsiness kept him from being as dangerous. Lacking Aaron’s cunning and imagination, Seth would willingly tag along with his brother’s schemes.
I never told Jewel about what Aaron had said about old man Zook’s barn. She’d have called the sheriff and he wouldn’t have believed me; even if he had, there was no proof, and Jewel would likely bring trouble down on our heads once again. So I kept my mouth shut and watched
