"Quiet!" Matt roared.
Hoggins' mouth snapped shut in mid-complaint.
"I am going to ask you again, and this time you will only give me the information I requested," Matt said. "Is that clear?"
Hoggins nodded.
"Did you kill the pig belonging to Ezekiel Vetch?"
"Yes," Hoggins said. "I did that. I killed her."
It was clear that there was an explanation trying to burst its way out of his mouth. Matt held up a hand and Hoggins fell silent.
"Ezekiel Vetch," Matt said. "Is it true that your pig broke into this man's henhouse and killed his chickens?"
"He can't prove anything," Vetch said. "He's just blaming me for his own problems."
"I see," Matt said. "I believe Alwyn Hoggins had a way to discover the truth of the matter." He hefted his axe, then leveled the head at the corpse of the pig. "Are you willing to undertake the experiment?"
"Who knows what that lying sack of shit has planted inside my poor Sweetpie's stomach," Vetch said. "He might have been cramming her full of feathers before I got here. In fact, I'm pretty sure that -"
"Enough!" Matt roared, and Vetch reared back as if the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz had just let out another blast of flame and smoke. Good thing they don't know who's really behind the curtain, Matt thought. "Alwyn Hoggins, how many chickens did you lose today?"
"The number's hard to say," Hoggins said, a smile of victory cracking the drying blood that covered his face. "There were the eight this monster killed and the three it ran off, of course. But my chickens are delicate creatures, they are. A trauma like this could leave them unfit for laying the rest of their lives and I'll be putting out for their feed and getting nothing in return."
"So you lost eleven, right?" Matt said.
For a moment Hoggins looked like he was going to continue his objection. But he cast a quick glance at the axe and swallowed hard. "As far as I can tell today, yes, eleven."
"And how many chickens was that pig worth?"
Both men started to talk at once. Matt raised his axe and they fell silent.
"Mary Elizabeth Gilhoolie, sister of Vern, leader of all the Gilhoolies and the Hogginses as well, tell me the truth on pain of punishment," Matt roared, doing his best to capture the cadences in all the barbarian movies he'd ever seen. "How many chickens are equal to the value of the pig this man called Sweetpie?"
"No more than twenty," Mouse said.
"The girl don't know what she's talking about," Vetch said. "The sow was in the prime of her life, could have turned out another three litters easy."
"She was older than I am," Mouse said.
"You're confusing her with my old sow, also named Sweetpie," Vetch said. "Named this one for her, since I've always been sentimental that way and -"
Matt didn't bother to speak this time. He raised the axe and Vetch fell silent.
"Twenty chickens," Mouse said again. This time there were no complaints.
"This is my judgment," Matt said. "Since Alwyn Hoggins killed a pig worth twenty chickens, and his loss from the pig's attack was only eleven chickens, then Ezekiel Vetch must pay him nine chickens, or the equivalent in whatever means of barter shall be mutually agreed upon by both parties. In return, Hoggins may keep the pig carcass to do with as he pleases. "
Both blood-drenched men stared at him silently. They seemed to be waiting for him to do or say something else. Matt considered throwing in an "amen," but it didn't seem appropriate for the occasion. Finally something popped into his head from an old movie he couldn't identify. "So it shall be written, so it shall be done."
He waved the axe in the air, then turned and walked away, trusting the two men would not go back to trying to kill each other.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Grange turned out to be a grand old barn nestled in the middle of a stand of pines. It seemed like a strange place for such a structure to Matt, but everything else had seemed so bizarre since he got to Heaven it barely even caught his notice. Especially once he'd stepped through the wide doors and discovered just how beautiful a barn could look. There were brightly colored tapestries hanging from the walls and rugs on the floor. The ceiling was open to the roof, revealing an exquisite structure of wooden beams, all painted in a pattern of birds and wildflowers. Oil lamps hung from these beams, casting the vast room in warm, golden light.
Mouse led Matt into the Grange a few minutes before six, and the room was already filled with people. It seemed as if everyone he'd met out on Main Street was here, along with quite a few others.
Three long tables were set up in a U-shape right in the middle of the floor. The two sides were long enough to easily seat a hundred people around each of them. The bottom of the U was much shorter, with only seven seats. Or, Matt thought as he took a second look, six seats and a throne. Unlike the rest of the bare wood chairs, the one in the middle was thickly padded and stood at least a foot higher than the others.
"What a surprise that Orfamay Vetch has got such a nice seat," Matt muttered to Mouse as they came in.
"It's her due as leader of the Vetch family," Mouse said. "Vern's is just as good as head of the Gilhoolies."
Matt looked around, but didn't see another throne anywhere in the room. Maybe they take turns, he thought.
"It's getting late," Mouse said. "We'd better sit down."
Matt hesitated, not sure which side to choose. Mouse grabbed his hand and led him to the short table.
"Can't we just find a quite spot on one side?" Matt said.
"You're funny," Mouse said. "I didn't expect that."
"I didn't expect any of this, so we're even," Matt said.
As they came around one side of the short table, Orfamay Vetch rounded the other. Matt stopped to let her get past him to the grand seat. But she stopped short and pulled out one of the wooden chairs next to the throne, then sat in it without ceremony. Matt turned back to Mouse, confused.
She gestured to the throne.
"That's not for me," he said.
"You set us free," Mouse said. "It's yours."
Like the rest of the town, apparently. Matt had tried to get Mouse to tell him how things had been while Joan was alive, how long she'd been there and what she'd done to them. But somehow the girl always managed to change the subject, telling him little anecdotes about the town and the people who lived in it. If he pressed, she started talking about how happy everyone was that he'd come. Finally she'd led him to Orfamay's house. It was another shack with no electricity and no running water, but he'd been able to use the pump outside to wash off the pig blood that had been splashed on him, and when he pulled his head out from under the water he could see Mouse disappearing down the road. He hadn't known how he was going to pass the hours until six that evening, but as soon as he sat down on Orfamay's soft sofa his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep, waking only when Mouse came back to take him to the Grange for the supper. When he did awake, he was pleased and only a little disturbed to discover that the damage he'd suffered when he lost his bike was almost all healed. In the months since his resurrection he'd noticed that his recuperative powers were much stronger than they had been before his death, but this was the first time he'd really put it to the test. So there were some benefits to dying, apparently.
Matt glanced up and saw that almost everyone in the room had taken their seats, and the tables were now filled. He couldn't be any more certain than he'd been when they'd all lined up to meet him on Main Street, but judging from the very strong gene pools that dominated here, it seemed that one side of the room was filled with Vetches and Runcibles, the other with Gilhoolies and Hogginses. They were all standing behind their chairs, like schoolchildren waiting for permission to be seated.