Catskills -- New York

For years he wandered the Sunday streets past the white clapboard meeting house and climbed up the knoll to the cemetery. Today he visited Gertje's grave and picked out the weeds. Wind whipped at his long coat, unbuttoned even in winter. The Catskills were covered with tall pines and barren rock, anticipating the first snowfall. Nestled in one mountain valley the Dutch settled Barren Hill in 1644. A respectable town was established, Dutch poltroons described the order of religion, government, and village ways. They were hearty souls and battled amicably with nature, telling tales of mountain trolls and village witchcraft.

He wandered two-caned and crippled in the streets where widowed women and old timers barely gave him a second look. The young men and married couples ignored his mumbling. The young women strictly avoided his glance and purposely crossed to the other side of the village road. He held his out hands in a desperate grasp and rubbed his knuckles, whitened as some bleached crowbait bone, like well-worn rosary beads and rued her death.

"Damn, Gertje. Captain Smith told me of some ermine and mink, at Barren Creek, that will warm your backside this fall."

"A brick will do."

"Seven guilders per hide."

"Perhaps I'll need two."

Although they had slept in separate beds just near the end he had moved to a separate room, yet still his rum-drunk snoring assaulted her ears. Something was eating him inside and tearing her apart. Now he stood beside the headstone at Barren Hill, which was as wide as the headboard for a double bed, with whose side of the grave clearly marked by both names, but only with her dates.

"Gertje, old woman, seven guilders for beaver pelts to buy a barrel of rum to warm your innards this winter." He bent over to grab a cowslip and gave it a halfhearted tug when she made no reply. He never wondered when his parenthesis would be filled in and the uncrossed aisle between twin beds be bridged again as the

memory flashed deranged in his skull sockets.

The war whoops split the morning and cleaved the day. Gertje sat in the ladder back rocker. Rails creaked in conversation. She folded the darning and placed it in the oak-split basket. Her lips moved: "Job answered the Lord: What can I say? I am nothing!"

The screaming pierced the silence like ice cracking in a thaw. Old Labdem was startled from his stupor. Rubber-legged he stumbled fast enough to barricade the front door of the old cabin. Not much use for a fort, poor excuse for a house. The musket ports were rotted wind chinks in the walls. Mostly daylight and draft came through in winter and black flies in June.

"Ah, Gertje, they've come to lighten our load."

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," she replied, "he maketh me to lay down in green pastures."

"Shut yer yap old woman, where's the ermine?"

The red men charged the door. Their breaths, reeking of rum, assaulted the musket holes where only one old broom handle slept. The door started smoking. Labden reached out to touch it, singeing his hand. Bible clasped to breast, she waited her fate, unfocused eyes to the Lord:

"He leads me besides the still waters."

"Water, old woman!"

Gertje picked up the basket and covered the leather book with the darning, lips moving faster. Labden swallowed the last of the rum wiping his mouth with his sleeve. The flames ate the pine door and Labden fled out the back and gave up old Gertje. Hands grabbed at her robe and hair. He heard her pleas and prayers, but was long gone before the screams. Tied to the bent sycamore, the old swayback neighed. She shied when Labden reached for the reins. Her eyes rolled. She foamed at the bit. Nostrils flared. The burning smell attacked. Labden galloped towards town.

"Faster, harpy! The devils sucking our wind."

The swayback, though confused by screams, warwhoops, spears and arrows, veered off the trail. In deadly pursuit, they grew closer to Labden and pony, their cries curdling his marrow. Labden hell-bent on escape whipped the old nag something fearsome, cursing old Gertje all the while. Swerving through the trees, the horse sweating and the man swearing, they stopped sudden, just short of the edge to the gorge. Old Labden kicked his mount and they leapt over the edge and plunged down with the two wailing runners who'd overshot their marks. The horse screamed.

They landed, tangled limbs, men and beast, on the rocks. Townspeople found both runners dead and shot the horse to put it out of its misery. Labden suffered two broke legs and a cracked skull, but he lived. Some say they should have splintered up the horse and shot Labden.

**********

Captain Smith and Old Greefy were the first to notice the trail of grey smoke that tattooed the August sky. Greefy remarked that it was a mighty fine afternoon, a bit too warm for a fire.

"Ain't no cooking fire," Captain Smith replied, shielding his eyes as he gazed toward the sun, which sucked the smoke up backwards-like.

"Trouble, I 'spect, thought we was safe. Ain't Labdem traded his furs fairly?" Greefy replied.

The two men mounted their horses, a roan for the Captain and a swayback old mare for Greefy. They ambled along up Barren Hill reluctantly drawn by the signal in the sky. There wasn't much conversation, though Greefy tried, but Captain Smith made no replies. There wasn't a sound, all the chattering squirrels and squawking crows had abandoned the hill. All that remained on Barren Hill was Labden and Gertje's singed shelter. The actual burning had surrendered to the smell of dying embers. Captain Smith and Old Greefy tied their horses to the sycamore next to the

well.

They found Gertje in the smoke and soot and ashes of the gutted cabin that Labden himself had built. Gertje was scalped, topknot gone, strapped naked to a chair with smooth buckskin bindings. Her hands were chopped off; they never found them.

Captain Smith moaned but could not look the other way. Her head was cut off. Old Greefy cried out, the painful howl of a kicked dog. Her torso, headless and handless, was bound to a scorched chair. Stumps of wrists were bandaged by snakeskin bracelets smeared with war paint.

"Lord have mercy on her soul," Captain muttered. And old Greefy was speechless for once in his life. He closed his eyes but Gertje would not let go of his inner focus. Her head, halloed round her ears with grey and curly hair, rested in a skillet on the floor between her naked feet. Captain Smith said he'd never seen

such a bloody sight.

The blood, though dried, was ruddier and brighter than the red briquets that glowed in the smoldering cabin walls. It flowed from prim pools of her collarbones, poured down her body in rivulets into the basin of her lap, where it forked and streamed down her legs until it half filled that old iron skillet. Greefy searched the place for signs of Labden, fearing the worse and hoping Labden died a quicker death than his wife, Gertje.

"Check outside, look at the back garden patch," the Captain directed. But Greefy knew there wouldn't be any sign of hoeing.

"Captain, here on the bed is a jug of Labden's raw rum, half drunk." It was hidden under a fox pelt, abandoned with his flight.

"Most likely he was napping off some raw rum he'd served cheating the prices on some furs."

"Yes, the old man must have been napping, when they came," the Captain agreed, "and probably fled out the back trading old Gertje for his own worthless hide." **********

November wind and Catskill rains were harsh. Men met at the local tavern, hats doffed, heads bowed and backs bent. The work and weather destroyed the spirit quickly after harvest. Candles smoldered and the chimney smoke blew back into the room when the inn door opened. Labden stumbled in, footfalls echoed by two hickory canes. Drag, slap-tap, drag, slap-tap. No one looked up from his grog, eyes avoided what ears bespoke. Labden bullied up to the bar. The canes fell, the clatter cracked the silence. Conversations remumbled in the corners.

"Rum."

The barkeep wiped a pewter cup with a rag. He reached for a clay pipe and walked over to the hearth to steal a flame.

"Rum." The voice, though slurred, was a rude explosion. "Hell, man gimme rum.Ó But no gold coin appeared. Greefy came up to Labden and clapped his shoulder.

"Time to go home, old man."

"Gitch yer hands offa me!"

"Don�t make me call the captain. No one wants yer kind of trouble."

Labden tossed a gilder on the dark wood bar. It glimmered even in the firelight. The barkeep tested coin to teeth. A cup of rum slid toward the drunkard. Labden caressed the cup. Rum was better than a wife.

"There was weeding to be done, just doing some corn row hoeing. That old woman was worthless, but for bible preachin." He swallowed loud and cup banged the bar, a bullet shot. And Greefy�s tongue which usually ran races round the others, stood stock still.

"Sewing and praying, bitching and moaning." He started, his cup spilled. Red rimmed eyes starred at his own gnarled fingers, "They never found her hands." Greefy reached and took the rum cup from Labden. He gathered up the two canes and shuffled the drunkard out the door. The cold black night slapped their faces. Greefy shivered. An evening cloud half hid the moon that soon scutted on. The path twisted dusk-like. Labden stumbled caneless and half-leaned on Greefy.

� "Stand like a man, you old rum-soaked cripple!

"The hands?"

"Take these sticks, 'afore the Captain sees you."

"Rum? Got any swill to warm my belly?"

"Drink, old man? Shoulda bin you they gutted and scalped." Greefy shook old Labden and the two canes tangled in his legs. He couldn't gain his balance and fell. The moonshine reflected off his forehead, shined and fading-white. Greefy sucked in the nightair, shaking his head. He shoved his numbed hands into pockets making fists.

"Get yerself up, old man. I ain't got no use for you."

Greefy looked around, quick right, then left. The moon hid again as he disappeared into the night, face into the wind. __Á Labden crawled on skinned knees as cold hands and searched the scrabbled path for his walking sticks.

"Damn dark night, where them canes?" He found one and forgot there were two. Three legged, he hobbled up the hill. Drag, slap-slap. God knows how he found the cabin, several miles from the town that November night. No one else cared. It was cold as a witch's teat. The moon played tricks with its light, teasing old Labden on. The char burned his nostrils. He could almost smell the singeing hair of old Gertje. Hearing her screams he laughed and threw the wooden crutch at the burned-out fort.

"Even a squaw woulda bin betta! Weren't good for what a man needs, ole woman, quit yer bitchin." He crawled over to a blackened rocker and tried to pull himself upright. "So ermine t'weren't warm enough for you, ole gal? Is your gawd warming yer bones now?" He tripped on that old blood-rusty skillet that somehow was left in the yard next to the old sycamore. His head lay in it, a bruise on his forehead bleeding. The blood and his curses froze in the skillet as the night temperature dropped.

"Hey barkeep! Rum!" Lying on the ground not feeling the cold, he matched scream for scream with old Gertje way past moonset. Her pleas echoed in his head demands from the dead, hell bound.

The next morning, Captain called Greefy to report for duty. "Greefy, some complaints from the good people. Poltroons demanding answers, something strange happened."

"Spect it was just the full moon, and headless horseman, Captan.'

"Watch your backside for any Iriquois."

"Count on that," Greefy saluted smartly and pulled his coat tighter and headed for his grey mare. Checked his powderhorn. Hefted his musket so it leaned firing-ready against the pommel. The horse skittered on the path. The morning air breathed dragons scorching Greefy's lungs. Somehow horse and man knew the direction up Barren Hill. No smoke signal in the sky. No war whoops. A few squirrels argued over a last autumn chestnut. The mare shied as they got closer to the singed shelter. Greefy could still taste the metallic stench of blood that pooled around Gertje. He wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve. Couldn't get rid of the bad taste. The whinny pierced the morn. He patted the grey mare's neck, wishing he were back in his own bed.

"Hang on, Bessy, ain't no ghosts here. Gretje's sleeping up the graveyard and Labden's snoring off a drunk." Reached the crest of Barren Hill. Tied to the branch of the leaning sycamore, Greefy found old Labden. It wasn't injun work. Somehow the drunkard had climbed the tree and strangled on his own neckcloth. His eyes bulged sightless and a purple tongue protruded. The bump on his forehead was shiny. His legs swayed in the morning air. No canes to help him dance. Just a blackened skillet and scorched chair mourned nearby. No one else would