CHAPTER 45
Keyes and Deliverance spent most of the rest of the day togetherâbut not just the two of them alone.
They went back to the church site where the building activity was going nonstop and the construction itself, more evident.
Joseph, Bryant, and the rest, all working at a feverish pace, all except Caleb Hobbs, still in the shaded chair puffing contentedly on his pipe and casually issuing suggestions, which actually were commands.
As Keyes and Deliverance approached Caleb, Keyes looked around and noticed an absence.
“Good afternoon, Reverend, Deliverance.”
Good afternoons were returned by both Keyes and Deliverance.
“I see you're still captain of the ship,” Keyes smiled.
“Someone has to set the course and keep this vessel on schedule, m'boy.”
“Well, Captain, it looks like you're even ahead of schedule . . .”
“That's due to superior seamanship and a steady hand at the wheel,” Caleb held up his pipe.
“But I don't see Seaman Sam Hawkins around,” Keyes said.
“I gave him shore leave to work on that wagon of yours, mate.”
“Thank you, Caleb,” Keyes grew serious, “I do appreciate that.”
“Anything we can do to help, m'boy.”
“Well, speaking of help, Bethia said she'd look in on Lorna, so why don't I pitch in here for a couple of hours or so? Permission to come aboard, Captain?”
Caleb inhaled from the pipe and nodded.
“Permission granted.”
It was more than just a couple of hours later when Lorna managed to wobble to her feet, walk to the open window just before sundown, and breathe in the prenight breeze just in time to see her husband and Deliverance walking slowly toward the shed.
They stopped at the entrance . . . Deliverance opened the door.
Lorna could not hear what was being said, but it was obvious Deliverance was extending an invitation.
Keyes declined.
But he did reach up, touch her shoulder, smile, then reluctantly turn away and move toward the Hobbses' house.
Deliverance stood watching for a long time.
So did Lorna.
Lorna was back in bed when Keyes did enter carrying a tray full of food and drink.
“Well, Lorna, you and I are going to have breakfast.”
“At sundown?” she said through thin lips.
“Bethia said that you haven't eaten all day . . . so we're going to have breakfast together . . . now!”
“Oh, Jonathon, I've felt worse today, weaker . . . and somehow even more despondent, even though we've decided to leave here.”
“Well, cheer up, Lorna.”
He set the tray on the bed, pulled up a chair, and sat.
“Remember the old saying . . . âdarkest before the dawn' . . . remember Custer and me at the White Horse Tavern in Monroe?
“I couldn't remember seeing Custer more despondent. . . even on the battlefield,” Keyes recalled. “He was out of uniform and certainly out of patience.”
“Jon, I don't know which of us fired the shot that killed Jeb Stuart, but sometimes I wish that it was I, not Stuart who died at Yellow Tavern.”
“Autie . . .”
“At least I would have died a general in battle, not some forgotten colonel dying of dry rot without a command, without a cause to fight for . . . a forgotten footnote in some musty history book . . .”
Over Custer's lament we hadn't noticed, but a bulky man in a disheveled lieutenant's uniform and beetled eyebrows came into the White Horse, ordered a bottle of whiskey, took it and a glass over to the piano, drank a couple of stalwart drinks, and began banging on the piano and bellowing in a slightly off-key baritone:
Let Bacchus' sons be not dismayed,
but join with me each jovial blade,
come booze and sing and lend your aid,
to help me with the chorus . . .
It became impossible to carry on a conversation . . . but we tried.
“Autie, there's Libbie . . .”
“I've said it before, a hundred, a thousand times, if it weren't for Libbie, I'd blow my brains out, but I'm so rusty I'd probably miss. But there's one thing I'd like you to do, my friend . . .” And he sang:
Instead of spa we'll drink down ale
and pay the reckoning on the nail,
for debt no man shall go to jail;
from Garry Owen in glory . . .
“Just a minute, General, I can hardly hear you. I'll be right back.”
I tapped the singing lieutenant on the shoulder.
“Excuse me . . .”
“You're excused, mate.”
“No, lieutenant, I mean do you mind putting a mute on that singing so my friend and I can carry on a conversation?”
“I do mind, and you and your friend can go outside and talk. I'm just mustered out of the army, and I intend to celebrate.”
“Could you kindly celebrate softer? I can't hear what my friend is saying.”
“Is what he's saying more important than my song?”
“I can't judge that if I can't hear what he's saying. Can I?”
“Judge this!”
He whirled and threw a punch.
I ducked.
He started to swing again but Custer was in between us and shoved him hard against the piano.
“What's the matter? Can't your friend do his own fighting? I have.”
“So has he . . . so have we all . . .”
“General Custer! I didn't recognize you without that uniform . . .”
“Colonel Custer now, and this is former Captain Jon Keyes, currently Reverend Keyes.”
“Reverend! Sorry, Reverend. I'm Willie Cook, former lieutenant, United States and other armies. Glad to meet you both.”
“Then sing that song some moreâit's got a beat to it, like a cavalry charge.”
“Sure, it's sung by the Queen's own regimentsâthe Irish from Limerick.”
Lieutenant Cook took a sizable swallow directly from the bottle.
“It goes like this, sing along mates. Just follow me.”
First Custer, then the rest of us did.
Our hearts so stout have got us fame,
for soon 'tis known from whence we came,
where're we go they dread the name,
of Garry Owen in glory.
Well, Lorna, you know just as we were finishing, Libbie and you rushed into the tavern. Libbie had one hand behind her back.
Custer was not surprised. He was astounded, and so was I, but Custer moved in close and asked just above a whisper . . .
“Libbie, what the devil are you doing here?”
“Well, I . . .”
“And you too, Lorna,” I interrupted.
“I guess we thought that there's safety in numbers.”
“What's wrong, Libbie?” Custer demanded.
“Wrong! You're wrong, Colonel Custer. I'm not Libbie! I'm a mail carrier . . . with an official dispatch.”
That's when she brought a letter from her back and thrust it toward her husband.
“It's from the War Department, and I took the liberty of opening it. Read it, George, read it out loud.”
We three, General Grant, General Sherman, and I, Philip Sheridan, and nearly all the officers of your regiment, have asked for you. Can you report at once? Eleven companies of your regiment, the Seventh Cavalry, will move soon against the hostile Indians.
General Ulysses S. Grant
General William Tecumseh Sherman
General Philip H. Sheridan
“Can I report? Can I report! Well, Libbie, my sweet, can we report?!”
“You bet your spurs we can. We're practically packed.”
Then Custer turned to me and grinned.
“Jon, Reverend, what I wanted to talk to you about . . .”
He held up the letter.
“That won't be necessary anymore.”
“Hold on mates, I suddenly feel like reenlisting, if you'll have me, sir.”
“Have you ? Why Queen's own, I want you and that song, both. It's our good luck tune, âGarry Owen'!”
“Remember, Lorna?”
“How could I forget?”
“That was Custer at the darkest, just before the dawn. And now he's once again, in pursuit of glory.”
“Yes, Jon, and now, what are we in pursuit of ?”
“What else?” he smiled, “Saguaro, and a new life together.”
Near the vibrating light of the candle, Deliverance's hand moved forward. Her thumb and forefinger squeezed into the lock of hair on the wax image of Lorna, as the cat leaped on the table and watched.
Deliverance's manipulation soon began to work on Lorna's mind . . . and on her husband's.
But in different ways.
Jonathon Keyes had fallen into a deep, but serene, sleep. An untroubled slumber.
Lorna was asleep, too, or was she?
She certainly was not awake or even semiconscious. She didn't know where she was, but she had to be someplace else. Without thinking more about it, she rose and something compelled her to go to the window and look out onto the dark yard.
This time there was no light emanating out of the window of Deliverance's shed.
But the yard was not completely dark. On the stump of the tree there was a large candle fashioned in the form of a hunched cat, with the flame wavering in the whispering wind of the night.
But more than that, even from that distance there wafted the aromatic fragrance of the candle reaching up to Lorna through the open window . . . a beckoning fragrance to which she must respond.
Still in a trancelike state, the next thing she realized was that she was outside walking on the ground in the backyard against a tree silhouetted semilumi-nous night sky, once again compelled to continue, until once again she heard the voices.
Young voices chanting . . . delivering that same strange incantation in an alien language:
Go blat . . . som blat . . . carradon . . .
go loos. Com blat . . . go blat . . .
go loos . . . carradon . . .
Lorna took one step after another until the four figures once again came into focus.
Varied in size . . . three to five feet in height . . . dressed in white robes and their faces covered by masks of animals . . . a wolfâan owlâa goatâa sheep.
Each figure held a candle before it, transmitting an eerie light upward toward the mask.
The chanting was repeated.
Go blat . . . som blat . . . carradon . . .
go loos. Com blat . . . go blat . . .
go loos . . . carradon . . .
Suddenly, as if on command, the chanting stopped. The flames from the candles disappearedâand so did the figures themselves.
It seemed the same as before, but somehow different.
And it was different.
On the tree stump. The same stump alongside the candle . . .
An owl.
But this time a living owl.
One eye open, the other hooded,
The wings fluttered slightly,
Then suddenly,
A screech.
From nowhere, Deliverance's cat leaped up and across, toward the stump, claws outstretched.
But the owl flew away leaving only a few fluttering feathers behind.
The cat screeched again, or was it the owl, or Lorna's soul-searing shriek that rent the night.
Just as before, once again she collapsed.
There remained no wax cat candle on the stump. No owl, nor Deliverance's cat.
Only Lorna's crumpled form on the ground near the empty stump.
CHAPTER 46
It was the same as last time.
Only it was different.
Lorna was on the same ground, on the same spot.
Keyes was bent over her, propping her head.
Caleb, Joseph, Bethia . . . and Deliverance holding her cat.
The same empty stump.
“Lorna. Lorna, can you hear me? It's Jon.”
“Yes . . . Jonathon . . . I . . . can . . .” Her eyes opened slowly, “I can see you . . . but it's dark . . . Jonathon, where are we?”
“Don't talk, darling. We'll . . .”
“No . . . I want to know . . . where?”
“We're outside in the backyard. With Caleb, Joseph, Bethia, Deliverance.”
“How did . . . I get here?”
“We don't know . . . but like the last time . . .”
“Yes, the same as the last time . . . only different . . .”
“The same? Different? How?”
“Same young voices . . . children . . . candles . . . masks . . . but different.”
“How different, Lorna?”
She half-rose and looked around.
“On the stump a candle . . . a cat candle, and an . . . owl this time, alive . . .” She looked at Deliverance and the cat in her arms, “this time Deliverance's shed was dark but the cat . . .”
“What about the cat, Lorna?”
“Jumped . . . owl flew away . . . but this time I'm not sure.”
“Of what?”
“Of . . . anything . . .”
“Mrs. Keyes,” Caleb stood next to the stump, “the candle you saw on the stump . . . was it lit?”
“Yes . . . that's what drew . . . me here.”
“Mrs. Keyes, there's no trace of wax on this stump.”
“My cat was upstairs with me,” Deliverance said.
“Last time,” Joseph nodded, “the owl was dead . . . this time . . .”
“Yes, I know . . . and this time I'm not really sure of anything I saw . . . or heard . . . it's all a cloudy mist in my mind . . . a dusky dream . . . this time maybe I was walking in my . . . but it seems something was pulling me . . .”
“Well, dream or no,” Keyes said, “we're not doing any good out here in the dead of night. Lorna, I'm going to carry you upstairs.”
“No, Jon, just let me lean on you a little. I can walk.”
“Shall I warm some milk for you ma'am?” Bethia volunteered.
“Or a snifter of brandy?” Caleb added.
“No, thank you. Jonathon, just put your arm around me.”
As Keyes helped his wife walk toward the house, Caleb, Joseph, Bethia, and Deliverance, with the cat in her arms, stood watching, and from above, perched on the limb of a tree, with one hooded lid, an owl looked down on them.
In bed he kissed her good night.
“Lorna, from now on whenever you wake up at night, you know what's the first thing I want you to do?”
“What, Jon?”
“Wake me up, too. At night,” he smiled, “we walk in double harness.”
“I will, Jon, if I can help myself, but something drove me to do what I did. This time I'm not sure of anything. I don't know what's real and what isn't anymore. But I know that this place is . . . it's like an infection of some kind . . . and the only cure is to leave . . . or it'll get worse.”
“We won't let it, Lorna, we just won't let it. We'll be far away, you and I together.”