The Witch of Hebron by James Howard Kunstler Read Free Book Online

cheese, the leftover corn bread from supper—and some useful articles—a small steel saucepan, a fork and spoon, a plastic tumbler—and packed them up with his clothes. Then he exited the house through the back door and went to the old carriage house that constituted his father’s offices, lab, and the upstairs infirmary he had set up for patients too sick to be home.
    Willie’s body still lay on the examining table. Jasper was shocked all over again to see the dog and struggled to understand exactly what had gone out of him to reduce him to nothing more than a stiff, inert object. When he buried his face against the dog’s flank, he was horrified to realize how cold it was and that this was the last time they would ever be together. Though he knew could depend on his father to give Willie a proper burial, it was little consolation. He blubbered a while, then proceeded to his father’s lab behind the examination room.
    The doctor kept his supply of opium in an old cookie tin in a drawer under the counter where his microscope stood. Jasper knew exactly where to look. He easily pried off the top. Inside were several balls of raw opium gum. The doctor obtained them from farmers who grew poppies for him, more or less as a public service. The doctor prepared the tinctures of opium there in the lab, in order to have some idea of what he was dosing his patients with. In the absence of the manufactured wonder drugs of the old days, this laudanum was the only useful analgesic he had.
    Of the several balls of opium, Jasper selected one that was the size of a crabapple. He got out the rag that contained the oats mixed with sorghum syrup, pushed the opium into the center of the sticky mass, and molded it until he had something that resembled a popcorn ball. Then he rewrapped it in the rag, stuck the whole thing in his pocket, and put the tin back in the drawer. Last, he took three of his father’s beeswax candles—the ones with no tallow in them—and stashed them in his pack along with a dozen of the matches his father bought from Roger Hoad, who sold them in little bundles tied with hemp cord.
    He stroked the dog one last time on his way out of the building and took care to close the door so the latch didn’t so much as click. Then he was out under a yellow moon and a sky exploding with stars. The clouds of early evening had dissipated. The air was sharply colder now, and it boosted his confidence that he’d had the foresight to pack a wool cap and gloves. He did not know where he would be going, exactly, but he knew that the nights would only get colder in the days ahead.
    The streets of Union Grove lay perfectly still at this hour, which was just after three in the morning, though Jasper did not have a timepiece and knew only that it was very late. He passed the Allisons’ house on Van Buren Street and was sorry that Ned was not coming with him. Where Van Buren met Hill Street, Jasper made his way to the old water treatment plant, now defunct without electricity or manufactured chemicals to run it, and entered the margin of the woods there. It was both a shortcut and a way of keeping his movements concealed. The woods frightened him and he moved rapidly, at the edge of panic, until he saw the reassuring contours of the old high school ahead. The New Faith people were said to keep watchmen posted. He couldn’t see anyone at this distance, so he left the woods to traverse the same stubble field he’d run across so desperately hours earlier trying to save Willie. He felt exposed but he didn’t want to run now for fear of scaring the horses.
    He stopped at the split-rail fence, his lungs burning and his breath visible in the moonlight. The stallion, Jupiter, stood at the far end of his paddock, very still with one rear leg jacked back a little, resting on the edge of its hoof. His big head drooped. Jasper moved along the fence line until he was as close to the stallion as he could get without going inside the paddock. He