Dalmas, John - Yngling 2 - The Bavarian Gate

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The Bavarian GateThe Bavarian Gate
By John Dalmas
ISBN: 0-671-87764-X
PART ONE
Growing to Fit
1
Washington County, Indiana
Curtis Macurdy gazed out the window of the truck at a field lowed and disked.
Near the far end, someone, presumably his father, was walking behind the
horse-drawn spike-tooth, readying the ground for drilling. Beyond stood the
house Curtis had grown up in, the barn nearby, sheds, corncrib, and the ancient
white oak that spread across the front yard.
"That's the place," he told the driver. "Just drop me off at the corner." He
felt uncomfortable about his homecoming; had since he'd gotten off the train at
Volinia.
The driver slowed, turning west on the township road. "Might as lief take you to
your door," he said. "Ain't no trouble." Along the roads, the maples,
tuliptrees, elms had all been tinged with the fresh pale green of opening buds,
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but the yard oak, bare as February, showed no sign yet of wakening. The driver
pulled into the driveway and stopped. "My thanks," Macurdy said, and taking the
coin purse from his pocket, removed a fifty-cent piece.
The man waved it off. "That's half a day's pay, and this ain't been more'n a
couple miles out of my way."
Macurdy nodded, put the coin back, and shook the man's hand. "Thanks," he said.
"I'm obliged to you. " Taking his suitcase from the seat, he got out, slammed
the door, and waved as the driver left. Then he walked to the house. Place needs
paint, he told himself. Hard times.
He opened the back door without knocking, took off his jacket and hung it on one
of the back hall hooks. "Charley?" his mother's voice called.
"Nope." He stepped into the kitchen. The rawboned woman had turned from the big
black kitchen stove. Seeing him, her eyes widened, her mouth half opening. For a
moment he thought she might fall down, or worse, weep, but she recovered
herself.
"Curtis!" she cried. "Blessed Jesus! It's you!" They embraced, then talked, she
asking how he was, how long he planned to stay, her questioning marked more by
what she didn't ask than what she did, as if fearing what he might tell her. His
answers were brief. He had no plans yet, he said. If needed, he might stay the
summer, and maybe through harvest.
His own questions were simply to catch up on the state of the family. Nothing
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had greatly changed, she told him, except that the price of everything had
fallen, both for what they sold and what they bought. Max and Julie were still
farming, and Frank had got promoted to shop foreman at Dellmon's Chevrolet,
though they paid him less than when he'd started there as a mechanic, four years
earlier.
And Charley had hired a man to help with the farming. "Your dad's not as young
as he was," she added.
After a few minutes, Curtis put his jacket back on and went out to the field.
Charley Macurdy saw him, and stopping the team, walked over, both his aura and
his face showing a difficult mix of emotions-mainly joy and uncertainty, Curtis
thought. And worry. Curtis was just now realizing what it was like for his
parents, this return of a youngest son, who'd left with his bride, bought a farm
in Illinois, then abruptly dropped out of sight, never writing for three years.
"Curtis!" Charley said, and reached out a hard-callused hand. "Good Godl It's so
good to see you again, son!" Then, startling Curtis, his father hugged him, hard
arms clasping him against a hard chest. Perhaps, Curtis thought, he didn't want
him to see the moisture in his eyes.
For a while they stood talking in the chill late-April breeze, his father as
careful in his questioning as his mother had been. Like Edna, Charley feared the
answers; most questions could wait till they'd got used to each other again.
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Curbs was welcome to stay as long as he'd like, Charley told him, but there
wouldn't be much money in it. "Especially not while I'm paying a hand," he said,
adding ruefully: "Not that I pay Ferris much; not what he's worth. He's been
with us three years now, and it wouldn't be right to just cut him loose all of a
sudden."
He looked questioningly at his son. "You are going to stay, aren't you? This
place can be yours when I can't keep up with it anymore. Maybe sooner, if you
want."
Initially Curtis had planned to stay, farm with his father, but the closer he'd
gotten to home, the less real it had seemed. After where he'd been, and the life
he'd lived there, it likely wouldn't work out. If nothing else, there'd be too
many questions without answers-and sooner or later the question of age. Best to
start new, someplace where he wasn't known.
"I'll stay till the spring work is done," he replied. "Harvest at the latest.
Then I'll need to move on."
Charley nodded, looking at the ground, then brightened a little. "A few weeks
ago, some folks stopped by and asked after you," he said. "A woman and two men.
Moneyed folks; drove up in a big Packard. The woman did the talking. Seemed real
disappointed you weren't here; thought you might have come back. Said they had a
job for you. Didn't say what."
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He paused, noting his son's frown. "She called herself Louise," he went on. "Kin
to Varia, all three of them; I'd bet on it. Same eyes, same build. Hair not so
red though. You know them?"
Louise? Not hardly, Curtis thought. No Christian name like that. Idri maybe,
with her long, unforgiving memory. "I'm not sure," he answered. "Varia's Et lots
of kin, but I never knew a Louise. Most that I did know, I didn't greatly care
for."
Both of his parents needed to hear something that made sense to them, which
meant lying. He'd foreseen the problem and knew what he had to say, but didn't
like it.
He'd been out of the country, he told them at supper. Varia's family was
foreigners; he didn't say where from. She'd gone back to the old country with
them; they'd insisted. He'd followed, had farmed there and even done some
soldiering. Then Varia had drowned, he went on, had fallen through the ice on
horseback, and the current had carried her beneath it. He'd recovered her body
at a rapids downstream.
He lied, of course-wrong wife-but Charley and Edna believed him. They felt bad
about it, but at least he hadn't abandoned her.
As the weeks passed, Curtis became more comfortable with the idea of leaving.
Ferris Gibbs, the hired man, was a good hand-a self-starter who noticed things
and knew what to do about them. He'd had a farm of his own, but lost it to the
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bank in '31, when he couldn't make the mortgage payments. "A casualty of the
Hard Times," Ferris called himself, without apparent rancor. On Saturdays he
left right after supper, and came back late Sunday. As Charley saw it, Ferris
would leave when times got better-he'd want a place of his own againbut Frank's
boy already liked to work with his Grampa Macurdy on the farm, when school let
out in Salem. Said he wanted to be a farmer.
The first Sunday, Curtis went to church with his parents. He'd have preferred
not to, but he knew it would please his mother. Folks looked askingly at him,
but after the service they simply shook his hand, commenting on how good he
looked. Pastor Fleming asked how old he was now, and told him he looked as young
and strong as he ever had. The young part was ridiculous, Curtis told himself,
considering the reverend had known him since he was fourteen.
As young as ever. A foretaste of problems to come.
Max and Julie and their kids came for dinner after church that day, and Julie,
being Julie, asked questions his parents never would have, like "what country
was it?", meaning where Varia came from. He thought of answering "Hungary"-that
would do it-but he was tired of lying. "Yuulith," he told her instead, adding
"that's their name for it." She'd look it up when she got home, he knew, and not
finding it, would probably let be. Macurdies, even Julie, were pretty good at
letting be.
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He got more and more settled in, and stayed longer than he'd thought he might
until one day Bob Hammond, who farmed Will's old place on shares, decided to
sell his sheep. Said he "couldn't face another week of Baaaah! Baaaah!
twentyfour hours a day." He hired Curtis to help him haul them to the railroad
in Salem, unfinished lambs and all, and load them onto a car. It took all
day-three trips-and when they'd finished, Hammond took his wallet out of his
overalls to pay him. Curtis knew the man couldn't afford the two dollars he'd
promised, so he said he'd just take one, and eat supper with them that evening:
likely boiled potatoes and stuff from the cellar-home-canned beef, green beans,
maybe fruit pie--a good twenty-five-cent meal.
On the way, they drove past Charley and Edna's, and there was a big expensive
Packard in the side yard. Curtis stared as they passed it. "Whose car is that?"
he asked.
"Darned if I know. Never saw it before." The tenant pursed his lips worriedly.
It looked like a banker's car, and more often than not, bankers meant trouble
these days. Though he didn't think Charley had any mortgage to worry about: The
Macurdy land had been in the family for generations.
It seemed to Curtis it would be one of Varia's Sisterhood: maybe Idri. He wasn't
afraid of Idri by herself, but she wouldn't be alone, and he wasn't altogether
sure he could handle the men she'd have with her. Besides, this wasn't Yuulith;
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they might carry guns. And if they killed him, they'd kill his parents as
witnesses.
He wasn't very good company for the Hammonds at supper. Half his attention
stayed on whoever might have driven up in the Packard. He'd come close on the
food: It was canned pig hocks and boiled potatoes, with pork gravy, canned green
beans, and peach pie for dessert. Seemed like Miz Hammond kept her family pretty
well fed. The coffee was weak of course, but coffee had to be bought.
When he'd finished, he paid his respects and left, walking east toward home. But
before he'd gone more than a few chains, he left the road along the old line
fence, screened by the growth of serviceberry and young sassafras in the fence
row, until the barn cut him off from view of the house. Then he hiked through
the potato field to the barn, skirting the manure pile. Trapjaw, Charley's old
redbone hound, peered from the barn door, then sauntered out, tail waving, to
greet Curtis. From inside, Curtis could hear the sound of milk on pail bottom as
his dad began on another cow.
He looked in. Charley was hunkered on the one-legged milking stool, head agamst
a fawn-colored flank, squeezing and pulling, the sound changing from metallic
singing to the rushing "shoosh-shoosh-shoosh" as milk jetted into milk, broken
just a beat as Charley squirted a stream into an expectant cat's face. With
quick tidy movements the animal wiped it off, licking the paw between wipes,
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then waited primly, hopefully, for her next serving.
"Howdy," Curtis said.
Charley answered without pausing, merely glancing back over his shoulder.
"You're back, eh? Your ma put your supper on the back of the stove. You've got
company." Ordinarily Curtis saw auras simply as an inconspicuous, layered cloud
of colors. Now, however, he focused on Charley's. It reflected distrust, a sense
of betrayal. When Curtis failed to respond, Charley added, "It's Varia. The wife
you said drowned."
The words struck Curtis like a fist in the gut, but he recovered quickly. "How
sure are you it's her? She's got a twin." He'd almost said clone, then caught
himself. "Named Liiset."
The barrier softened as Charley considered, and Curtis spoke again. "Did she say
anything, or ask anything, that didn't sound e Varia? Maybe something Varia
would have known but this one didn't?"
Charley grunted. "Now that you mention it ... A twin, you say."
"And Varia wouldn't have brought men with her."
"You saw them then?" Charley asked.
He hadn't needed to. He'd turned Sarkia down on the other side, but obviously
she wasn't taking no for an answer. With his reputation, she'd have sent men,
very likely tigers, as the clone's enforcers. And if it came to a fight, and he
succeeded in killing them, how would he explain to a judge, or even to his
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parents?
"No," he answered, "I just came from supper with Bob and Hattie. So he wouldn't
feel he had to pay me any two dollars. But I saw the Packard in the front yard
when we drove by. And there's stuff I didn't tell you. About Varia's family.
Stuff just about impossible to explain; stuff you wouldn't believe. Too foreign.
I-kind of rounded off the truth."
The strong farmer hands continued squeezing and pulling. As the milk had
deepened, the sound had changed to "choofchoof-choof." Charley said nothing, but
he was thinking, putting together snippets of observation accrued over more than
twenty-five years. The cat, ignored now, stalked off to wait with others by
their milk dish.
"Did the men have an accent?" Curtis asked.
"Neither one of them said anything in English. Varia, or whoever she is, did the
talking. I thin you're right though; she's not Varia. Not by what she said, but
what she didn't say. She didn't ask about Julie, or Max, or Frank ... none of
them. And didn't tell us anything about you, except they had a good job for you.
She excused the fellas with her, said they'd just come from the old country and
hadn't learned English yet. Said she's taking them around with her to learn
about America. When they talked, I kind of thought they might be Eye-tahan."
"Big hard-looking men?" Curtis asked. "Hair somewhere between carrot and bay?"
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file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Dalmas,\%20John%20-%202%20-%20The%20Bavarian%20Gate.htmlTheBavarianGateTheBavarianGateByJohnDalmasISBN:0-671-87764-XPARTONEGrowingtoFit1WashingtonCounty,IndianaCurtisMacurdygazedoutthewindowofthetruckatafieldlowedanddisked.Nearthefare...

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