Chapter Twenty-Four Frankie
TWENTY-FOUR FRANKIE
The sun was coming up behind the mountains to the east, making the gunmetal-gray sky glow a watery orange. I followed Uncle Thomas, Benjamin Stoddard, and Luther St. James along the narrow road up Saw Meadow Hill leading to the knackerman’s place. Luther had been before and knew the way.
Though I’d lived in Boone’s Ferry all my life, I’d never ventured up Saw Meadow Hill.
I knew the knackerman lived up there alone on the outskirts of town for a reason.
There was talk that he had metal traps set out in the woods around his cabin, that he would greet visitors with a shotgun blast. Some said he’d trained the crows to watch from high up in the trees, to sound the alarm if anyone came up the hill.
Few people, other than the determined Reverend Davies and his flock, ever dared to pay him a visit.
As I slogged uphill through the snow following the men, the thought occurred to me that perhaps the knackerman and I were not so different. Neither of us fit into the world we inhabited.
The knackerman and I were tolerated, and I suppose that was enough, the best we could hope for; we were bound by the invisible strings of our otherness.
We each knew what it was to feel distrustful eyes on us, to hear the questioning and even cruel remarks as we left the room.
The children didn’t run and hide when they saw me coming, but they did sometimes stare and whisper, skip away tittering.
And now here I was, part of the hunting party.
I knew full well that even with Uncle Thomas and myself there to try to stop them, the other men would shoot the knackerman on sight if we found him at home.
Benjamin had ordered the factory closed so that the men could help search for Clarice, Emile, and the knackerman.
Michael Knapp had led a group of men to search the north side of town and the woods behind the St. James farm.
Another group was searching out by Chickering Pond.
Other men stayed in the village, armed and patrolling, keeping the women and children safe.
Chauncey had wanted to come up the hill with us, but Benjamin said no.
“Do me a favor, son,” he’d asked. “Go back to my house. Pearl is there alone. Stay with her. Keep her safe.”
As Chauncey shouldered his rifle and turned to leave, he glanced my way with a quick smirk. I bit the now-ragged inside of my cheek, the metallic tang of blood mixing with saliva.
I envisioned doing terrible things to Chauncey. Unspeakably terrible things that involved sharp scalpels and suture needles.
Now I trudged up the hill, feet slipping in the slushy snow.
The air was cold and my breath came out in moist clouds.
A low fog hung in the valley, keeping the cold trapped in.
During the spring, it usually did not burn off until midday, if then.
Sometimes, like now, I felt as if the fog were a living thing, pressing down on us, creeping in through cracks in doors and windows, slipping through gaps in coats and sleeves, shrouding the whole town in cold and damp, a quiet hush that wasn’t truly quiet; if you listened hard enough, there were whispers in the fog.
Spirits, some of the older women in town said. I remember when I was young, Charlotte Albone looking at the thick fog outside and saying it was a good day for the dead to come prowling.
And what of the knackerman? Was he a spirit of a sort? A dead man walking through the fog?
I shivered at the thought of it, pulled my hat down over my ears, and wrapped my scarf around them so I would not hear any whispers.
The knackerman could not have been truly dead, I told myself. His heartbeat must have been too faint for Uncle Thomas and me to hear.
I thought of the frogs and toads that burrowed deep into the mud each winter, barely alive, in a sort of suspended animation until the warmth of spring. Perhaps it was the same with the knackerman, with Clarice and Emile too.
Part of the sickness, I told myself.
But what sort of sickness mimicked death so closely, made people attack each other, run naked through the snow?
I longed to turn back; every fiber of my being was telling me to run back down the hill, go home and lock the door.
I reached for the charm around my neck, realizing how foolish it was: How was a little silver eye going to protect me from whatever was waiting at the top of the hill?
We were following two sets of prints, both barefoot. One of the sets was smaller.
“Clarice,” Benjamin said as he looked down at them with his one good eye. “He’s taken her.” He pointed to the much larger footprints beside them.
I peered down at the footprints in the snow, and though I am no expert tracker, I saw no sign of a struggle, no sign of Clarice being dragged. I did, however, see drops of red blood in the snow, like frozen flowers blooming.
Luther led the way up the hill, through trees draped in a blanket of heavy wet snow, bent down, forming a dense canopy over the road. It was like walking through a tunnel. The snow and fog muffled everything.
I tried to imagine walking barefoot through the snow, how it would be so cold, then your feet would grow numb.
Then frostbite would set in. I remembered when Gerard Pipp got lost in the woods last winter—by the time he found his way back, his fingers and toes were frostbitten.
Despite my uncle’s attempt to save them, the tissue turned black and he had to have four fingers and three toes amputated.
I’d disposed of the blackened fingers and toes in the burn pile, tossing them into the hot fire, where they popped and sputtered.
The tunnel of trees seemed to get closer, darker, as we climbed the hill.
The path was just wide enough for a wagon to get down. I doubted an automobile could ever make it up even on the finest summer day. Whoever ventured here would need to be on foot or horse.
I thought of the knackerman, of his trips down the hill into town with his horses and cart, pulling a load of dead animals back up on his return.
I’d once seen him load his cart with a draft horse from the Prichard place.
It had taken five men to get the beast onto the wagon.
How, I wondered, did the knackerman unload him once he got home?
The answer dawned on me as I recalled the rattling knives, cleavers, and saws that adorned his cart.
I couldn’t help but imagine how the knackerman might butcher a horse: sawing off each limb, beheading the animal at the lowest point of the neck.
Opening its rib cage and abdomen, removing the organs and entrails, perhaps saving the heart for last, still warm in his hands.
I held still, listening, sure I could hear voices far off that drifted down the hill like whispers, like wind through the trees.
The whispers turning into a rasping caw, caw, caw.
A crow sounding the alarm.
“He knows we’re coming,” I said aloud, surprising myself, not sure where this thought had come from.
The woods opened up at last and we found ourselves in a large clearing.
“This is it,” said Luther.
We stood out in the open and I could feel it: eyes watching us. I spun around, searching for some sign of life, of movement. My skin tingled, every hair raised: danger, my body warned, danger.
The men walked in circles, aiming their rifles at nothing. They felt it too.
“They’re here somewhere,” Luther whispered.
The fog moved in swirling drifts around us, muffling sound.
There was a simple cabin built from hand-hewn logs with an outhouse behind it.
On the west side was a small stable, on the east side a large, three-sided pole barn.
Just in front of the barn, a massive cast-iron vat hung by chains from a rough frame made of heavy wooden posts. Beneath it, the remnants of a fire.
I followed the men into the open barn, Luther leading, his rifle up, ready to shoot.
Benjamin followed, moving with the slow and rigid gait of a man in pain.
In the middle of the barn was a large, heavy table stained brown from years of blood, splatters of newer, crimson blood on top.
Flies gathered there, bodies thick and shimmering green, feeding on the fresh gore.
A cowhide was stretched across the back wall, several raccoon and fox pelts nailed beside it; another pile of skins lay in a corner.
On the left wall hung a row of tools—terrible-looking things: long knives and scrapers, saws for bone.
The place smelled of rotten flesh, blood, of suffering.
Bile rose in my throat and I pulled my scarf up over my nose to stifle the smell.
There was a heap of bones on the floor: femurs and skulls, bits of gristle still clinging to them.
To the left of this, flies buzzed around an iron kettle.
I made the mistake of peering down into it: a pile of putrid flesh, mostly stringy bits of white fat, seemed to wiggle and writhe as though alive.
But it wasn’t the flesh moving on its own: it was teeming with plump white maggots, feeding on the rancid meat.
The footprints in the snow led into the open barn, then out again and over to the horse stable.
We all followed the tracks. The doors to the stable were open, the stalls empty of livestock.
The knackerman’s cart was still in town.
The stable was dark, windowless. Luther found a lantern hanging and got it down, lit it, and carried it toward the back.
The stable was surprisingly tidy, hay bedding covering the dirt floor. Leather harnesses and brushes hung on the wall.
“Here!” Luther called. He was in the farthest stall at the end of the stable. There were sheepskins laid over the hay, a tangle of blankets on top. Still clutching the lantern, Luther leaned down, laid his open palm upon it.