On a particularly cold Sunday afternoon, Trenchmouth sat at the kitchen table in silence with Clarissa and the Widow. They hardly spoke in these days of awkward adolescence. Brother and sister went so far as to avert contact of the eye. But all hands touched when the Widow said the blessing.
We give thanks O Lord for the food before us and the family beside us. They all said Amen. They all ate. Wet wood cracked and hissed at them from the heating stove, alongside small chips of coal and coke stolen from slag heaps and found on railroad tracks. The sheet steel pipe hadnt stayed air tight. The Widow coughed. The windows fogged over thick and milky.
We give thanks O Lord for the food before us and the family beside us. They all said Amen. They all ate. Wet wood cracked and hissed at them from the heating stove, alongside small chips of coal and coke stolen from slag heaps and found on railroad tracks. The sheet steel pipe hadnt stayed air tight. The Widow coughed. The windows fogged over thick and milky.
Clarissa knew that her mother knew that Fred Dallara was after her cherry. Trenchmouth knew that his mother knew he was taking up serpents and making a fool of himself at a temple of blaspheme. But, she believed that adolescents would make their mistakes, with or without her warnings against them, so she kept quiet.
On that Sunday, the quiet got to be too much. In this life, the Widow said to them, theres folks that will force your hand. She picked at the chicken back on her plate, fingers shiny with grease. She did not look up at them. What you need to ask yourself is why you let em. Whats your cut? Theres bamboozlers among us, and if you get dusted enough times by one of em, you forget how it is to be alive, to be free and easy. She was deliberate with the words then. You get used to the notion that life isnt but two things: gettin bamboozled or bamboozlin somebody yourself. And there isnt no real living in either. She brought her food to her mouth with both hands, rolled the chicken back circular like a corn cob, toothing every bit of meat from the bone.
Clarissa excused herself and went up the ladder to the loft where shed pen another letter she never planned on delivering. Shed hide it where she hid all the others.
Trenchmouth sat with the Widow and ate and looked occasionally at his pocketwatch.
You got somewhere to be? she asked him.
No maam, he said. A woman more than twice his age would be waiting at the meeting spot for him in an hour. It would be her second time, so shed know to expect him early, to not worry when he blindfolded her and led her to his hideout somewhere on Sulfur Creek Mountain. This was how it was done, the other women had told her, so we dont know where it is exactly. The second-timer would wait and shiver and know that soon her shivers would be of a different variety, and that warmth would rise, toes to head, like a fire flood, all because a poor, malformed boy who took up serpents could do something no grown man ever could or would. But on this day, shed wait forever. Her shivers would be of one variety only. Trenchmouth was not coming.
Instead he sat in silence with his mother, then helped her with the dishes. And he looked out the fogged window glass at the woods, the tree limbs angular and black and without leaf. The branches against the sky, thin and searching, like the blood vessels hed looked at in the medical almanac. The Widows words had gotten to him. Hed heard when most folks only listened. His cut in this game hed created wasnt worth it. Hed thought himself the bamboozler, but hed become the bamboozled, and it was time to end it.
Frank Dallaras death had brought him to the dry rituals of the Methodists, and there he was used, and hed only gotten out by chopping down Hob Tibbs. The want of Ewart Smith had brought him to the Church of God with Signs Following, brought him to the snake-handlers and the tongue-talkers and the holiest parts of a woman. But again, he was used, and hed only get out by heeding the Widows words.
He stood and stared out the window, out beyond where the tomato garden had flared in spring. At the edge of the woods stood a figure. A boy, or maybe a small man. He was gone as quick as hed appeared.
After a while, when the dishes were washed and dried and put away, the boy and the Widow sat again at the table, and she poured them a little kitchen whiskey. Then she pulled a newspaper from her apron pocket and slid it toward him, a particular passage marked with a star. Bruin are Plentiful it read. The story was out of Huntington. With the big game season open, the lovers of the sport are flocking to the mountain region to hunt bear, which are reported very plentiful this season. The article described how folks ran bears to their caves with packs of hounds and killed them. The theory was that the mother bears returned to their caves to protect their cubs, that this accounted for the hard fight the bruin put up. It concluded, While the sport is dangerous, it is very thrilling. Trenchmouth looked up at her. She almost smiled, then spoke. I reckon between the two of us, we dont need no hound dogs.
I reckon not, he said.
His fourteenth birthday was a week off. Shed already been to Williamson for his present. It was under her mattress, wrapped in butchers paper. A Winchester Model 1907 shed procured from a police officer turned pawnbroker, a man whod give up a testicle for a drop of white lightning. It was a.351 caliber, self-loading. Five round magazine, pistol-grip walnut stock. Until that Sunday, shed not decided whether to keep it for herself or to give it to the boy. Not until that moment at the table over moonshine and the written word and the shared love of tracking and facing down the most beastly of beasts. Boys his age could take righteous paths or wicked ones, and the Widow had steered her boy back from wander.
A week later, the boy and the Widow found themselves subjects of the newspaper. When word spread of the slain black bear, the photographer for the Williamson Daily News had arranged to meet them in town. Outside the bank, he set up his folding Eastman Kodak and depressed the small button. The result was published the next day: Local Fourteen Year Old, His Caretaker Bag Prize Bruin. The scales had weighed the black bear in at 460 pounds, and hed measured over three feet tall. These were both local records as far back as anyone could remember. In the photograph, new Winchester in one hand, the bears mighty claw in the other, Trenchmouth had actually smiled. Had actually opened up for all who wanted news to see.
One of those who saw was a fellow from Washington, D.C. by the name of Arthur H. Estabrook. He and his partner, Ivan E. McDougle, had been traveling through the area on their way home from the Blue Ridge foothills of Virginia. There, they were conducting ongoing experiments on the regions people, poking and prodding them in hopes of explaining why such downtrodden folks continued to exist and threaten the quickwitted, racially-pure American well-bred. They had labeled these mixed-ancestry hill people The WIN Tribe. This stood for White, Indian, and Negro. The head circumferences of the WINs, the foot and Achilles lengths, the slope of brows and propensity to dysentery and bad grammar and poor diet and interbreeding and mixed breeding especially, all these would help them figure out how such hill people came to be, and how we might all avoid becoming like them.
Eugenics was the movement of these men, and Mr Estabrook, over his morning coffee, had trained his magnifying lens on the newsprint mouth of the dark white boy whod slain a prize-winning bear. Weve got to find this boy and analyze him, he told his partner.
The goddess Liberty on the Two Dollar Silver Certificate spread her arms wide in protection. The bill was old, wrinkled, and it was not more money than Trenchmouth had seen in a sitting. Before quitting, hed accumulated a treasury from the women who needed his touch. But this currency caught his eye for three reasons. First, it was held out to him in offering as soon as he answered a knock at the door. Second, the man doing the holding was dressed more proper than anyone Trenchmouth had encountered, and so was his sidekick. Their cashmere Mackintoshes and tailored trousers commanded respect. The third reason the boy accepted the money and invited them in was that behind them, uncomfortable and bespectacled, stood a young woman who you simply didnt turn away if she came calling. She was a city girl. Black velvetta hat, double-breasted jacket with fancy buttons. Under her satin-folded skirt she surely wore a winter corset, but her shape, with or without it, was something that would raise any country boys pup tent.
He was home alone.
They took a minute to acclimate, but had seen much worse. They chose to stand, turned down Trenchmouths offer of coffee. As I said before, were in the employ of Dr Charles B. Davenport of the Eugenics Record Office, Mr Estabrook said, wiping at his nose with a handkerchief.
You want to measure my head? Trenchmouth said.
Mr McDougle stopped gawking at the patchwork walls, wondering about the contents of the loft. You know what eugenics is?
I read the papers. Trenchmouth winked at the young woman. She looked away, wrote in her opened book.
I must say Im impressed, Mr McDougle said.
Tell me, were you born in this area? Mr Estabrook asked.
I didnt hear the ladys name.
This is our senior student assistant, Miss Margie Avon. Shes the first young lady to study sociology at William and Mary. Estabrook didnt motion to her or look her direction when he spoke her name. Neither did McDougle. She wrote in her book some more.
Trenchmouth got the impression they ignored the girl in public, did the opposite in private. William and who?
William and Mary, the oldest
Tell me, Trenchmouth said, employing the introductory statements of his guests, does Miss Avon bed up in a separate room at the hotel, or do you all share a real big one?
I beg your pardon? McDougle pretended to be insulted.
Trenchmouth kept his eyes on her. She didnt look up from the book, but her face went red as ripe crabapple. I said, do you camp out on your study trips when there aint room at the inn?