For years Hellboy had been so busy fighting the infernal orders, the angry dead, the towering trolls, ogres, and dragons that he sometimes forgot there were simpler issues abounding. Like sick kids without bread. He had to stay hooked in to the world. It was easy to get too caught up in paranormal events and forget about the orphans.
Hellboy heard music in the distance. The children grew excited and rushed along faster toward the sound, Hellboy reached down and lifted Fishboy Lenny, hoping to put the kid up on his shoulder the way Lament had carried the girl, but the little fishy guy just slipped out of Hellboy's grasp and squirmed away.
So much for that.
Lament said, "Well, I think we're nearly there. Lord help us if Sarah and the girls ain't. I'm not sure where to search next."
"We'll find them, don't worry. You've been to this village before. What's it like?"
"They were glorious times. I was a young'n and still sang the gospel. Used to have all-night sings out this way. People'd come in from as far as three hundred miles to listen and bear witness."
"Listen to you and Jester."
His eyes clouding, Lament nodded. "Wasn't much of a town at the time, nor populated by so many people with special consideration under the Lord. But it was here." He watched the girl with no bones in her legs slither along in the cabbage leaves. "I seen my share of one-of-a-kind peoples in my travels, same as you have. Some good, some not so good. The more different we are from one another, the more the same I discover us to be. Sharing problems and fears and endeavors. Not any one of us is so strange as to not have the same hopes and heartaches, not even you, I reckon."
"How about Jester?"
"He's not all that different from the rest of us neither," Lament said, brushing his wet hair from his face. "Except he's dead and won't lay down."
"That could be considered a pretty big difference."
"I'm not so sure."
The pumpkin-headed kid let out a holler. Fishboy Lenny returned to Hellboy and went,"Fweep," and then scurried off again. Breaking clear of the brush now Hellboy saw clusters of paintless cabins and crescent rows of dark shanties lining the slopes of slough, vine-draped and overgrown with hanging orchids. The music grew louder. Fiddles, banjos, washboards, and squeezeboxes wheezed and rattled and twanged out.
It was a hell of a racket, and yet just as with Lament's tunes, Hellboy felt himself willing to go with it. A couple of screen doors clattered in the hot breeze. He thought they must've been having one of their swamp weddings or revivals out in the bog, despite the rain. Or maybe not. Maybe they were just enjoying life.
Chapter 19
People walked up and greeted them, making a fuss, calling for a doctor, and offering skins of clean water, wine, and whiskey.
Hellboy gulped down two bags of water, hardly taking a breath between them. Weird to think this place with so much marsh and quagmire and rain would make him as dry as if he'd crossed the Kara Kum desert. It wasn't an exaggeration. He'd crossed the Kara Kum desert once, and this was worse.
He was surprised at the size of the town. Someone mentions a swamp village you think maybe seven or eight shacks, a handful of folks carving out some kind of hardscrabble life. But as he looked about he saw more and more buildings in the distance, larger homes, a kind of main street with stores on it. The hum of gas-run generators thrummed beneath all the other noise.
The channels of swamp water ran between houses, and small bridges had been built to span them. There were stables, chicken coops, and barns. He saw goats and pigs in small corrals. Several skiffs sat at the sycamore-lined bank of a large creek that led back into the deeper bog.
Teens fished beside their fathers. He saw tots pushed along in baby carts. This was a true community, as real as any other town he'd been in, and he knew without asking that it had no name.
When he was sated he turned and saw people still scuttling around Lament, who was lying on a cushioned bench on a nearby veranda. An old white-haired man with a bushy silver mustache and thick glasses, who actually looked like a small-town doctor, turned out to be a small-town doctor. He even carried a black bag. His shirt was buttoned to the collar and he wore a string tie and walked through the crowd with an air of controlled annoyance. When he reached Lament the doc immediately began to examine him.
"Quit makin' such a bother over me," Lament said, "I tell you I'm all right."
"Hush now, we all got our chores to attend and jobs to do. So let me do mine."
"Forget that. Is Sarah here? Tell me she's here."
"She is, and she's fine, so now you just settle yourself."
"I need to see her!"
The old man cleaned his glasses with the ends of his tie. "If you want to see Sarah again you'll hold still. You've got a broken rib poised to enter your lung, and you must've dropped two or three pints of blood already."
"Oh, that ain't so much."
"It ain't much when you're drinking moonshine, but it's plenty to lose from your pulmonary system. You're a mass of lacerations, abrasions, contusions, acute edema, hairline fractures, and exhaustion."
"You just like haulin' out fancy words."
"Hush and lie back or I'm a'gonna conk you with a rock."
Lament lay down and allowed the doc to do his work. Hellboy wasn't sure what he'd been expecting the old man to pull from his bag, maybe leeches and mud packs, eyes of newt and a jar labeled Doc's Gallbladder, but he was impressed when he saw the doc filling a needle with antibiotics. Afterward, he used a staple gun to close Lament's gator scratches and other wounds, and bandaged the busted ribs.
The doc washed his hands in a metal bowl and pointed at Hell-boy. "You next, friend."
"I'm okay."
Doc sighed, threw back his head, and stared at the heavens. "Lord save me from such hardheaded, steely roughnecks." He glowered at Hellboy. "Son, my name's Doc Wayburn. I'm seventy-one years old and I can measure out with a yardstick the distance I've got left before I reach the Elysian Fields. You gonna make me waste my precious remaining days arguing with you too?"
Hellboy was more afraid of the old guy conking him with a rock. "Okay, I'll settle in and try to be a good patient."
He sat beside Lament on the bench and Doc Wayburn inspected his wounds, gingerly removing the torn strips of his coat and prodding here and there.
"You a veteran, son?" the doc asked.
"What makes you say that?"
"These are field dressings. Nicely done too. You been on the battleground."
"I've seen my share of scrapes."
"Of that I'm sure, son."
Doc Wayburn continued his ministrations, taking care of the wounds, dressing and suturing a few injuries Hellboy hadn't even been aware of, considering how battered he was. His left hoof had cracked at the edge, and the doc ran off to a nearby home and returned with a petroleum-based sealant. He said, "It'll take a few months for the split to grow out. Until then, you might consider shoeing it to keep the crack from getting worse. We got a good old boy blacksmith can fix that right up."
"Thanks for your help, I'll be fine."
"As you say, then. I got some more rounds to make." And with that he smoothed down his thick mustache and marched off through town.
The children brought plates of food and Lament and Hellboy sat side by side on the veranda, tired and neatly bandaged, eating and drinking wine. Hellboy didn't know what was on his plate and he was glad nobody told him. He wasn't about to ask.
"Doc Wayburn told me Sarah's fine," Lament said.
"I heard. That's good. Where is she?"
"I don't know, but if she don't show up in the next few minutes I'm a'gonna go lookin'."
A couple more people came up and said hello to Lament, treating him with some reverence, even celebrity. When they'd gone Hellboy said, "I thought you hadn't been here since you were a boy."