Tucker’s Grove (4 page)

The second coffi
n lid cracked open. He thought he saw a shadow
moving inside it.

Clancy jumped into the back of the wagon and straddled one of
the coffins. He banged again with the mallet, trying to keep the lid
closed, but he hesitated, worried about injuring the hands a
nd fi
n
gers
that groped through the cracks. “
Help me, Mr. Deakin!”

A flash of lightning split the darkness. Rain poured down,
and the horses began to run. Mr. Deakin let the reins drop onto the
seat and he swung over the backboard into the wagon bed.

Clancy
knelt beside his mother
’
s coffin. “
Please stay put! Just stay
put! I
’
ll get you there,”
he was saying, but his words were lost in the wind and the thunder and the rumble of wagon wheels.

One of the pine boards snapped on the father
’
s coffin. An arm,
cloth
ed in the mildewed black of a Sunday suit, thrust out. The fingers had long, curved nails.

“
Don
’
t!”
Clancy said.

Mr. Deakin was much bigger than Clancy. In the back of the
wagon he planted his feet flat against the side of the first coffin and
pushed.

The
single rotting arm flailed and tried to grab at his boot, but
Mr. Deakin shoved hard. He closed his eyes and lay his head bac
k
ward
—
and the coffin slid off the wagon bed, tottering for an i
n
stant. As
the horses continued to gallop over the bumpy path, the c
offin tilted
over the edge onto the track.

“
No!”
Clancy screamed and grabbed at him, but Mr. Deakin
slapped him away. He pushed the second, lighter coffin just as its lid also began to give way. Thin fingers
crept out.

Desperate to get him to stop, Clancy yanked at Mr. Deakin
’
s jac
k
et, clawing at the throat and
cutting off his air, but Mr. Deakin gave a last push and knocked the second coffin out of the wagon.

“
We
’
ve got to turn around!”
Clancy cried. “
Go back for them!”

The second coffin crashed to the ground, tilted over, and the
wooden sides splintered. Just then, a sheet of lightning illum
i
nated the sky from horizon to horizon, like an enormous concu
s
sion of
flash powder used by a daguerreotype photographer.

In that i
nstant, Mr. Deakin saw the thin, twisted body rising
from the shards of the broken coffin. Lumbering behind, already free of the first coffin, stood a taller corpse, shambling toward his
wife. Then all fell black again as the lightning faded.

Mr. Deakin wa
nted to collapse and squeeze his eyes shut, but
the horses continued to gallop wildly. He scrambled back to the seat
and snatched up the reins.

“
This weather is going to ruin them!”
Clancy moaned. “
You have to go back, Mr. Deakin!”

Mr. Deakin knew full wel
l that he was abandoning a farm of his
own in Tucker
’
s Grove, but the consequences of breaking his
agreement with Clancy seemed more sane to him than staying here
any longer. He snapped the reins and shouted at the horses to urge them to greater speed.

Lig
htning sent another picture of the two scarecrow
corp
s
es
—
but they had their backs to the wagon. Walking side by
side, Clancy Tucker
’
s dead parents struck off in the other direction.
Back the way they had come.

With a sudden, resigned look on his face, Clan
cy Tucker swung
both of his legs over the side of the wagon. “
I
’
ll get them m
y
self.”

“
Clancy, wait!”
Mr. Deakin shouted. “
They
’
re going the other
way! They don
’
t
want
to come after all, can
’
t you see?”

But Clancy
’
s voice remained determined. “
It doesn
’
t ma
tter. I
’
ve
got to take them anyway.”
He ducked his head down and made
ready to jump. “
A promise is a promise.”

“
Sometimes breaking a promise is better than keeping it,”
Mr.
Deakin said.

But Clancy let go of the wagon, tucking and rolling as he fell onto t
he wet
grass. He clambered to his feet and ran toward where he had
last seen his parents.

Mr. Deakin did not look back, but kept the horses running into
the night.
As he listened to the majestic storm, as he smelled the wet,
fresh air with each breath he t
ook, he realized that he still
had more, much more, that he did not want to lose.

As his shouted prayer reached a crescendo, Jerome Tucker opened his eyes and watched the demon leave the young man.

Inside the canvas revival tent, the b
lasphemous thing emerged from the teenaged boy
’
s nostrils and throat like poisonous smoke mixed with a swarm of bees: crackling, buzzing, and writhing. Demonic whispers built to a scream. A trickle of blood followed the thing as it slid and tore its way o
u
t of the possessed boy.

The demon had no choice but to obey. Jerome had co
m
manded it with the compulsion of God Himself.

He had lost count over the weeks, but he had summoned and trapped at least a hundred demons on the slow wagon trek through the farmlan
ds of Illinois, across muddy and rutted roads to the wilderness and new homesteads of Wisconsin Territory. In this barely settled land, there were many secrets, many buried shadows of times past. So many demons had been cast out in Biblical times, the evi
l
had to have gone somewhere. What better place to seek refuge than among the heathen in the New World? It made perfect sense.

Inside the large tent crowded with farmers, their wives, their children, and a few shopkeepers from Bartonville (the closest thin
g that could have been called a town), Jerome raised his hands. His full, rusty red beard stood out like flames on his chin. “
Leave this boy, I command you!”

Even after the demon had fully emerged, the teenager conti
n
ued to spasm and moan, his jaws clenche
d, lips drawn back. The audience gasped; several women fainted, while others uttered their own prayers. Two lanky farmers swore with coarse la
n
guage that would not have pleased an eavesdropping God.

“
As Jesus Christ trapped the demon Legion in a group of p
igs, so I contain you here, Demon, where you can do no further harm.”
With an imperative gesture, he stuck out his hand, touched the ornate, pot-bellied clay jar covered with runes and designs
—
symbols now rusty with dried blood.

The demon struggled and wa
iled, shifting and convulsing like a tornado of flies, but the crackling black mist was sucked into the containment jar
—
the holy relic from ancient Egypt, or Ba
b
ylon, or Assyria (Jerome wasn
’
t exactly sure which). Like smoke swirling up a chimney in a hars
h draft, the indefinable thing va
n
ished into the clay vessel with a last alien howl, and when it was trapped in its new prison, the maddening sound stopped with the abruptness of a slammed door.

“
Glory to God on high!”
called out Jerome
’
s wife, Mollie. She
dutifully stood beside him at the pulpit, holding open the tattered Bible, knowing exactly which verses Jerome would need for the next step of the process.

The teenager
’
s weeping mother rushed forward, knocking over one of the thin wooden benches as she
came up to throw her arms around her limp son. “
Oh, he
’
s saved, he
’
s saved!”

Blood dribbled from the boy
’
s mouth as he groaned; he opened his eyes and stared around with a sparkling awareness, as though he
’
d been asleep for months. The audience applauded
wildly, called out choruses of “
Amen!”

Mollie read aloud from the 23rd Psalm, because it was her favorite passage, not because it was especially appropriate. Her high, musical voice gained strength as she read verse after verse.

Jerome was the forceful p
ersonality with a passion for his calling, but he couldn
’
t have achieved so much without Mollie
’
s help, without her faith. She had followed him from their home, after his fever, after his parents died, leaving everything behind to journey across untamed c
o
untry, staking her future on him.

Jerome Tucker had always wanted to be a preacher, but he needed a flock. And with so many homesteaders moving west to stake their claims in uncharted lands,
those
people needed to hear the Gospel. After a near-fatal bout
with scarlet fever, Jerome had known exactly what to do. So, he had gathered up whatever money his family had and bought a wagon and horses, a large tent and Bibles, everything he needed.

He went to the land surveyor
’
s office to study maps of Illinois and
Wisconsin all the way to the Mississippi River. The ow
l
ish-faced clerk had shown him available plots and claimed areas where farmland was being cleared by hardworking pioneers. J
e
rome did not want acreage for himself; he just needed to find a large enough
group of people who required his services.

He knew he would find the right place. He
’
d been so eager to grab the plat books that he
’
d cut his finger on the countertop
’
s ragged wooden edge. Sucking on the wound absentmindedly, he had turned pages, followin
g the geography up into south-central Wisconsin. By smeary light that passed through flyspecked wi
n
dows, he stopped to study farmland, roads, and neighboring towns.

A droplet of blood fell and splashed on one particular area, a bold crimson mark on the ma
p. Jerome considered it a sign, a position chosen by his blood.
That
was where he would go. A place he would call Tucker
’
s Grove.

As they made their way westward while his brother Clancy took care of details back home, he and Mollie preached to crowds, and
Jerome had cast out and captured many demons to purify the population along the way, doing God
’
s work. The cross-country journey had taken months, through falling snow and over slushy roads, heavy rainstorms and a miasma of humi
d
ity and mosquitoes. He fel
t as if he and his wife were required to pass through the very plagues of Egypt to reach this particular Promised Land.

Finally, on a low hill that overlooked recently claimed far
m
lands, sprawling fields of corn, and uncleared trees that marked land bound
aries, Jerome and Mollie erected their big tent for the last time. There, he held nightly services.

When the people began to understand that Jerome could truly cast out demons, that he could take away their sins and purify their thoughts, his flock began
to grow….

Now, seeing the teenaged boy get shakily to his feet and co
l
lapse in his mother
’
s arms, both crying, Jerome felt tears roll down his cheeks. He had saved at least thirty people in this area already, and they all owed him a great deal. He would fo
rge them into a community, a town, a new place.