A History of the Future by James Howard Kunstler Read Free Book Online Page B

asked.
    “Yes I do.”
    “Did you hear any quarreling tonight?”
    “Not a thing, until . . . this. There was yelling. I figure he killed the baby and she killed him?” Kimmel said in a low whisper.
    “That may or may not be,” Loren said. “I wouldn’t go spreading that story.”
    “I’m just saying,” Kimmel said.
    “Was there some other party around here tonight?” Robert said.
    “Party?” Kimmel said. “I don’t know. That tavern opened up today—”
    “No, some other person,” Robert said. “Someone who doesn’t belong down here that you might have noticed.”
    “Oh,” Kimmel said. “No. I didn’t see anyone.”
    “How about you others,” Loren asked the men with Kimmel: Ralph Horsley, a laborer on the Deaver farm, and Bob Bouchard, a woodcutter.
    “No, sir,” Bouchard said while Horsley shook his head.
    “I hope nobody touched anything,” Loren said. He knew next to nothing about the correct procedure. It occurred to him that forensics were now a thing of the past. There were no labs to send things to. The legal system of the old times was defunct: the courts, professional police, all of it. The truth of this tragedy would have to be determined by other means, and Loren was not sure it would be the truth.
    “We didn’t touch nothing,” Kimmel said. The other neighbor men nodded.
    “Thanks,” Robert said. “We’ll take it from here.”
    They didn’t seem to understand.
    “You guys can go now,” Loren said. Irritation was creeping into his voice.
    When they had left, footsteps resounded overhead, and soon a familiar boxy figure resolved out of the shadows where the stairway opened into the dim hall. Brother Jobe wore a knee-length gray blanket greatcoat with a wool muffler draped about his neck. He carried his broad-brimmed hat in his hands.
    “You fellows figure it out yet?” he asked Loren and Robert.
    “No,” Loren said. “How about you?”
    “Working on it.”
    “Did you find anything upstairs?”
    “Appears to me they don’t use it in the winter.”
    Loren held his candle stub aloft and poked around the kitchen. Part of a round skillet–made corn bread sat on a cutting board with crumbs all around. It struck Loren as odd in a time when food was dear and manufactured mousetraps and chemical poisons were hard to come by. Mice were everywhere. Most people were careful about food. They put leftover food away in tins, old plastic storage tubs, and cabinets. There was some odd dark thing next to the corn bread. Loren looked closer with the candle. It was a fish head, from a smoked trout, he surmised, all desiccated, with a fragment of spine still attached. It was very cold in the cottage. Loren carefully touched the cookstove surface. It was barely warm. He opened the firebox and looked in. A few embers glowed.
    “You better might have to take the girl into custody,” Brother Jobe said.
    Loren digested the idea. “She’s not a suspect yet.”
    “No?” Brother Jobe said. He stepped around Loren and gazed down at Rick’s body. “Got any other idears?”
    “An intruder, maybe,” Robert said. “Someone who did this and fled the scene. A secret boyfriend maybe. I dunno . . .”
    “You try to talk to her yet?” Brother Jobe said.
    Loren stepped carefully around the body and the splintered crib and went into the room where the women sat on the bed. The woman and her dead husband were among the few people in town who did not attend the Congregational Church or belong to any of its social organizations. Loren had never spoken to Mandy though he had seen her occasionally around town. He stood before her for a full minute. The neighbor woman on her right stroked Mandy’s arm. Everyone’s breath was visible in the dim light. Mandy did not look up at him so Loren squatted down on the rug before her.
    “Tell me your name?” he said.
    Mandy did not respond.
    “It’s Mandy,” said the neighbor woman on her right side, Anna Klum.
    “Mandy, I’m Loren Holder. I’m