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Go ahead, I know you think I’m nutso. You think I’m making it up. That voice from a fusty-ass English past cannot be for real. I tell you he is. He is invading and pushing on through. There is one law I’ve learned in my whole short life—big fish always swallows little fish. Trouble is, I can’t decide which fish I am in this story.
Okay, settle down, hang tight, get yourselves comfortable. It’s going to be a long haul before I can draw a good bead on him. Here he comes again…
Spool One
Signs & Portents
Abbottskerswell, Devon 1878
Doctor Kaiser: Tell me about your Grandpa.
—Granfer went some way to heal the hurt. He had been both cobbler and shoemaker. I can see him now, doc. He patched the boots of the field hands and quarrymen and made new shoes for the children of the gentry and their servants. He made sure we had beautiful boots for school but he did little work himself in the last years as he was old and weak. His own feet were all swole up and he wore bootees made out of carpeting. He still liked to get his tools out in the front room, turning all those the nippers, punches, pattens and lasts in his hands and letting us hold them as he showed us how to work them. He liked to say that you can tell everything about a man by his shoes.
Granfer was the only one we could really ask about the doings of the world. We bothered him with all manner of things that were in our heads. We’d ask him if the Ladywell could really tell the future? Or would the White Witch come down from the moors and take us away if we were bad as Ma said? He found a way of answering us without harming the mystery of things. He would teach us in a way Pa never would, explaining the doings of the village, why the fields had their own names, things like that. Mainly he liked to talk about his craft. He would sit in his old chair holding his favorite tool, his number one hammer, an ’andsum thing with its oak handle, telling about how the face of the hammer is crowned and has a narrow throat which gives it power, just ezzackally zo, tapping at a make-believe boot on his lap. Sometimes he’d drift off to sleep holding that hammer.
He once tried to explain to us why Pa was the way he was. He told us how Pa went off to be a tinner on the moors. They were a wild crew and he learned his drinking up there. He explained how when the tin and lead ran out Pa took to farming but he’d suffered over the wet harvests they kept having then. Granfer didn’t know why but the weather had been wrong, only oats were good and wheat failed two years in three. He told how Pa went cap in hand to Farmer Maddicott and made an agreement to work for no wages but to take a share in profits. Turrible traited he were. He lost money and was cheated out of his expected rewards by that cunning, maister farmer. He got nort for six years of labor on the land and that was why he drank. Granfer said we must understand, whatever else happened, that he brought food to the table and there was nothing worse than want. He was to be respected for that. We listened but in our hearts we had condemned our Pa. Can you understand that, doc?
Doctor Kaiser: I can see how difficult it was for you. Now, how was your schooling?
—The new Board School stood along past Sunnybank. The youngsters went as a mob in winter but many were fetched out at harvest time. Eddikayshun took second place to the fields. I was a solitary young dog since I was a babby and found it hard to rub along together with the others. I particularly had it in for Sam Bartlet from Prospect Place. He came on the bully and thought ’ee was a cut above the others because his father had moved up in the world and gone to work in Henley’s Cider Works. We were all bunched together from the age of six to fourteen. We sang out the names of the seasons and the rivers and the tables of figures while Miss Cornish waved a cane above us. Sometimes she’d allow an older one to be in charge of the really small nappers while she saw to the others in a curtained-off part of the school room. Those monitors would lord it over us little ’uns and twist our arms later in the yard or worse, they could hang you by the feet in the woodshed. They had a little song when they did that. I can still remember it. It went, ‘and round and round the oaken beam a hempen cord they flung, and like a mighty pendulum all solemnly he swung’. Spooky, eh, doc? That little poem came to mind later in my life, I can tell you. The ones what did it, girls like Mary Venning and Katey Mogridge were quiet and shy when you saw them on the lanes outside but they became roit demons in the school play ground. They liked to surround us boys and weave around us with their evil little sayings—‘Nimmy nimmy not, yer name’s tom tit tot’ or ‘Mary Ann Cotton, she’s dead and she’s rotten’. I tried to keep away from them and clumped with those boys who were at least not enemies. Lads like John Chudleigh and Charlie Emmet. [long pause in the recording] Mary Ann Cotton, doc. Heard the name?
Doctor Kaiser: No, I don’t believe I have.
—Well, she was hanged she was. A poisoner, they said.
Doctor Kaiser: You certainly seem to have been raised in a grim atmosphere.
—Grim? [chuckling sound] Ha, maybe. Miss Emma Cornish wasn’t a bad ’umman though. She made a big impression. I’d never seen anyone like her. She wasn’t a local. She did not speak in Deb’m-talk. I suppose she must have been in middle-age. Quite young really compared to what I am now. She was always in a long black dress with white cuffs. She had kind eyes which often looked a little teary after tussling with those angry fathers wanting their boys for farm work. I sometimes looked out for her lamp still glowing late into the nights in her cottage rooms up on Buckpitts Lane. A lonely spinster woman but she was a godsend to us ignorant little varments.
I used to fight with the older boys all the time. I’d jump on them right quick even though there was only one of me. I knew that getting angry could carry you farther than strength alone. I was made hard as a stone from a babby. Just born ‘crabbit’ Pa had said. Anyhow, Miss Cornish caught us fighting once. The others ran for it but she took me back to the empty class room and sat me down and stared at me with her soft eyes. She spoke some words in a furrin tongue and asked me if I know what it meant. Well, of course I didn’t. She told me it was Latin. It meant, ‘Man is a wolf to man.’ Bet you know it also?
Doctor Kaiser: It does seem familiar, Mister Lee.
—Miss Cornish, she said that she was sick of us chillern clawing at each other. Her queenly face looked sad. I liked that ‘man is a wolf to man’ bit though. I ain’t never seen a wolf except in Milwaukee Zoo here and that was years later but still I knew somehow what she meant.
Miss Cornish woke me up to another world and I’m grateful to her for that. She was forever talking about how grand life was in Exeter and London and I could not hear enough of it. Life in that dirty old village seemed as empty as a drum. I must’ve been all worked up at the time because I began walking in my sleep. Millie would have to get me back to bed. One time Pa caught me wandering and set a bowl of water at the foot of the stairs. I woke up all covered in wet with Ma screaming for Pa to stop in case I was frit out of my senses. He sent me back to bed with a kick, yelling at me to stop wakin’ the vamlee up with traipsin’ around in the night. Every time he belted me he’d roar out that I was a bad lot, a dirty little tacker, half scat, not roit in the head. Do you still think I’m roit in the head?
Doctor Kaiser: You sound as if you are in your right mind, Mr Lee
—Well, I need to be with what’s facing me. That last summer in the village seemed special hot. The stream that ran through the village dried out for the first time ever the old folk said. Granfer was ailing. His feet were swelling and he gasped for breath. I seemed to be full of trouble. I never could be still, I was like a bag of fleas. I did not understand it then but I see it now. Growing hair in new places, having all sorts of strange and shaming thoughts. Millie had to lie with me sometimes. She let me rest my head on her belly while she stroked my hair. She’d ask me why I was so troubled and always atwitching and asighing. I didn’t know what was wrong with me I just knew my heart was like a shaken fist.
The travelling folk, the ditties, came drifting in at harvest time like always. They’d suddenly appear
one day on the fields below the convent on the north side of the village. They were wild ditty-guys, you know—gypsies. Come to think of that I’ve never seen gypsies here in America so maybe you don’t know. Anyway, we young ’uns couldn’t wait to spy on them. Charlie Emmett and John Chudleigh told me about them once while were sitting out by the rail line waiting for the Plymouth Express to come roaring past. It was racing to better worlds than ours, we thought. Charlie said we should peek on them ditties while they were washing in Aller Brook. He told us that one of the girls would lie with you for a penny, though she was fearful ugly.
Everything got swept up that summer by the news that Millie was soon to be taken from me. Ma told us she would begin service with a lady in Babbicam at Lammas before the harvest was finished. Lammas, that’s the beginning of August when servants got taken on in the old days, you see. Ma had been down to see the lady by the sea. I knew her later as Miss Keyse. It had all been fixed up. Perhaps she wanted to get Millie away from Pa. Things were made worse when Pa caught me lying with Millie in her bed. He gave me a pounding, shouting out that I was a bad lot with each meaty whack. I’d hide out in the back garden under the big old rhubarb leaves to heal my bruises. I’d pass the time by catching beetles and throwing them in to the bee skeps to watch the guard bees kill them. Granfer faded fast that summer. Even Pa stood over him looking uneasy. Ma tended to him all the day long, spooning gruel into him and fanning him when it was hot. It was horrible to see his purple feet all swollen up and squeezed into the bootees. Bit like mine are now. His breathing used to rasp through that little cottage like a corncrake’s cry. On and on all night. The villagers knew of many signs that foretold a death. It could be fire remaining alight through the night or if a dog howls at midnight. It could also be two spoons left in a cup or a clutch of pigeons gathered on a window sill. Ma looked for the signs each day. The hours crabbed along slow as winter treacle and Granfer’s sawing breath filled the house.
August the 15th was my birthday. I certainly remember that day. I was fourteen years old. Ma baked me a plum cake and Pa left thruppence on the table before he went to work. He didn’t usually do that. Maybe he felt bad about something or other he had done to me. Granfer seemed like a drowning soul that morning and Ma sent for Old Thirza, a healing woman, to look at him but she just shook her head when she saw him and left some poppy juice in a bottle to ease him. No one thought to fetch Dr Adams, the hard-handed local doctor. He wasn’t like your good self, oh no. Ma didn’t see no point in fetching a doctor, good or bad, for Granfer. A mouthful of earth would be Granfer’s only remedy soon enough, she said.
The harvest was at full whack and all were in the fields. I left Ma tending to Granfer and went up through the woods and headed for the ditty camp. I sat in the trees for a while before coming up to the tents and caravans. A young girl came out. She was wearing a long skirt, full of holes, and her feet were bare. I held out my thruppence. She was young, perhaps my own age. She drew her bright scarf across her face. A secret people I thought ’til she let the scarf fall. It was a shock to see her face all riven up by a split from nose to lip. Her teeth glaring out from the hole. Ma had told me that some people had gash mouths because they had been frit by a hare. I guess you think that’s stupid as a doctor? But we were just country folk. [no discernible reply from Kaiser]. I suppose that girl was waiting for me to turn her away but I still offered those coins to her and she led me to her bower made of canvas and hazel twigs. There was a smell of fresh hay inside there, I remember that so well and that thin little hare-lip ditty girl.
When I came home I thought I saw a white dove fluttering at the eaves of the cottage roof. Granfer’s eyes had gone all milky and he seemed to be smiling. Out in the fields the last stands were being cut down. I kept thinking that I was a man at last and I had taken a woman though she was a monster. I tried talking to Granfer, telling him how much I hated my dirty village life. He smiled and pointed to his old working apron. I dug about in there and fetched out his number one hammer. He held it in his purply fingers and that seemed to settle him. Sometime later Ma came into the room, and told me he was gone and we’d have to put him to bed with a shovel now. The custom in the village was for the sexton to ring three bells for the death of a man and two bells for the death of a woman. Ma turned the hives round and wrapped them in black crepe so the bees could mourn also. [pause, sound of rustling]You have a mourning band on your sleeve, doc?
Doctor Kaiser: Yes, a family member. Just proceed.
—Well, I’m sure sorry to hear that.
Doctor Kaiser: Thank you. Do go on.
—That three-fold tolling brought forth a fine gathering for the whole village wanted to see my Granfer off. With the body set in the grave and the priest leaving, Ma waved to a strange little man I did not know. He came forward and said a sort of prayer over the open grave. Everyone said ‘Amen’ and Ma gave him some ale and a piece of fresh-baked bread. The stranger ate and drank by the grave then I saw her give him a coin before he went away. I asked Ma who he was. She told me it was Emmanuel Burridge, a wheelwright from Wolborough. He was a sin eater, Ma explained. He had come because she’d asked him to. He took on the sins of those who have gone off quick like. Strange to talk of Granfer’s sins because I thought he had been a good man. Ma told me I didn’t know all that had happened in a life. She said that the old were peaceable because all the living has gone out of them but our past deeds live on with us. I guess that’s also true of me now. I asked Ma if Mister Burridge had be a bad man hisself to take on sins like that. She told me that no, it was a calling. You are chosen to be a sin eater. Something in your life draws you to it. Strange thought isn’t it?
Doctor Kaiser: Was this a common practice, this ‘sin eating’?
—Not ezzackerly common. But it went on around us secret-like in the villages. Maybe it still goes on in different ways. Maybe we could all do with someone to take our sins off us?
Doctor Kaiser: It’s an interesting notion. Okay, please continue. It was the day of the funeral?
—Ess, Millie had come back from Babbicam for the funeral and we all went ’ome. Pa went off to the Tradesman’s Arms. Men were buying him drinks to ease his loss. He came back to the cottage later that night and began to thud up the stairs moaning about his old feller being gone and where was his dear Millie. Well, I caught him on the stair and kept on hitting him until he backed down again yelling that I’d murdered him. He remained quiet for the rest of the night and Ma found him asleep in Granfer’s chair in the morning with a kitchen cloth wrapped around the bloody welts. No more was said of it and Pa stopped seeking out Millie in the night after that but I kept Granfer’s hammer under my pillow from then on. What do you think of that, sir?
Doctor Kaiser: You did what you thought was right at the time.
—Ha! I’ve got into a deal of trouble in my life doing things I thought were right at the time.
Doctor Kaiser: And the gypsy girl?
—I went back to the ditty camp quite a lot. I used to lie with the girl after throwing a bit of sacking over her head. After a while though I became used to her face. She told me her name was Amy. She stopped asking me for money and I began to call every night. I found it quite peaceable with her there, the blue smoke coming off the camp fires and the dogs all ranged about. Summer was ending though, the swifts were screaming about St Mary’s tower and then all of a sudden they were gone. Ma said that they had dived down into the mud at the bottom of Aller Ponds and would only hatch out when spring came again. Farmer Maddicott had marked the rams with red paint on their bellies so as to show which ewe had been tupped. He got me to count the sheep that bore the rodding stain. As the evenings cooled and harvest was over the gypsies were gone one night, only leaving cart tracks and the circles from their fires. I never said goodbye to Amy. I sometimes walked over their camping grounds afterwards and turned over the old fire logs with my boot. Millie had written that there was a place for me in her mistress’s house at Babbicam. I was to tend th
e grounds and to look after Miss Keyse’s old pony. The coming change eased the pain that I could not name. I was all hollow, like a well when you drop a stone down it and wait to hear the splash. Only with me you could never reach that bottom. [sound of clinking and water pouring] Ma used to collect the honey only by killing the bees. She explained to me that she let two skeps live to continue the bee tribe for the following year and the rest would die to give the harvest. She would light up sulphur rags and stick these into the skeps. The bees would come tumbling out. She then picked the skeps up and squeezed them until a brown mess of honey comb mixed up with dying bees began to slide out. Seeing her struggle with the weight of them, I’d help her, dragging and pummeling the skeps until they were flat. Ma said I was her strong, bigabout lad. Before I left she taught me how to kill the old hens who had gone past laying prime. Cutting off the heads, feeling their last life flutter out under my hands. Arms out straight to stop the blood getting on my sleeves. Hold on, I think that’s Addie coming up…
Automaton
You get used to the flavor of it. I’ve heard his voice for so long now I forget how weird- sounding it is when you first run into it. That voice has been my chance to reboot and start over. At first, I was fooled into thinking I had stuff in common with John Lee. I was brought up by my Grandpa after my parents died, and I was also lonesome as a kid—although I’m not as tough as Lee was. I guess I’m still lonesome now, especially after my girlfriend left me. I used to spend my nights sitting up in my truck watching the mayflies swarm around the lights on the River Walk in this little town. Going through all this John Lee history has filled up those empty hours and I don’t worry so much about being on my own. I‘ve found it hard to make friends. It’s not helped by this damn flickering and shaking I do. The doctors have done a deal of tests. They say it’s an ‘essential tremor’. It’s benign and maybe inherited. My head just does this involuntary movement. Mainly it’s a no- no shake but sometimes a nodding yes -yes. Whatever, it’s a social downer and it always gets worse when I’m stressed. When Kimmie was around it nearly disappeared. I grow my hair long nowadays and it hangs down in front of my face to disguise it. But it always seems to show when I look into the eyes of someone else, especially girls. I guess that’s why I’ve become an alpha nerd and an internet freak, always chasing after arcane knowledge. Maybe I’m looking for how to cure myself. And, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I am not, repeat not, a goddamn autistic. Not an aspie, not a neurotypal nor a high-functioning skid-brain or whatever other cliché you are groping for in your ready-made bag. Labels suck, so do labelers. Besides just about every literary guy gets the Asperger’s badge these days. My problems are altogether more slippery. You can dump anything you like on me but not that.