They angled south. They passed the remains of an industrial building. Parts of the roof and a wall were intact but there was no sign of habitation. Frost said “No one wants to live here, not even squatters.”
The brush thinned. They could see the raised approach to the bridge. “The dogs smell somethin’” said Tyrell. Indeed, the animals all pulled their handlers forward. Ahead a single crow flew up. King barked at it, once, then strained forward again.
Frost stopped his wagon and got down. The men and dogs stood looking at some bones. Almost all the flesh was gone but vegetation had not yet completely grown over the bones, which were wildly askew. A shin had come loose but rested nearby with its foot. The bones were human. Tyrell made a motion with his head and handed King’s leash to Frost, and Frost and the guards pulled the dogs back. Tyrell squatted down and bent his face close to the bones but did not touch them. Soon he stood. “Throat cut” he said.
They went on and came to an old road and crossed it and passed several more derelict structures and then crossed the approach to the bridge itself where it curved west at ground level. There was a trail beside the road. On this trail they stopped. Beyond was Langley’s poppy field.
It was only an odd-shaped few acres, merging at the edges into brown grass, fireweed, thistles and scrub. The poppy plants were short and sickly, the leaves browning. Three quarters of the field was only stems, with weeds between. At the far end a handful of men and women moved from plant to plant, breaking off the pods. They dropped the pods into plastic basins or black plastic bags on the ground. The workers were as thin as the stems they left behind. One of the women had a skirt of rags. One of the men had a torn poncho. The rest had nothing.
The wind picked up. There were spits of rain. Frost and his men stood looking at Langley’s poppy field, silent. The dogs sat at their feet.
Finally Tyrell spoke. “Second crop, must be.”
Beyond, there was brush, thinner at regular intervals where foundations and old basement floors restrained its growth. A few chimneys or fragments of chimneys rose above the desolation.
Frost shook his head. “Let’s get this done.” The guards lifted the dogs into their wagon and climbed up themselves. Tyrell climbed up beside Frost, and the wagons started along the trail toward Langley’s driveway.
Langley’s house was square, box-shaped, two storeys, with white vinyl siding. The roof had a shallow slope and was covered in asphalt shingles of pale green with a few irregular patches of darker green and some individual black shingles. All the windows had glass. At the top of some concrete steps was a warped and faded door of cedar panels.
But there were five or six sprawling one-storey additions. The tilting walls of these additions were covered mostly by crooked sheets of rotting fibreboard. There were glass windows but with dark skewed gaps around the window frames. On some of the walls strips of vinyl siding overlapped haphazardly or hung loose, twisting in the cold wind.
There was a carport. In the carport was a two-wheeled vehicle, a kind of rickshaw, with its shafts resting on the ground. Frost recognized other items stored in the carport: a white upright piano, on top of which sat a rusted toaster, a laptop computer and a black ceramic table lamp with no shade.
There was a zone of weedy gravel all around the house.
A path ran down the edge of the field to a second house. This was a single-storey structure, with walls of disintegrating corrugated fibreglass, concrete blocks, rotted fibreboard, some vinyl siding, some black asphalt shingles. The single window was clear polyethylene. The roof appeared to be boards covered with bits of poly held down with stones and broken concrete blocks.
Between that structure and Langley’s house was an open-ended A-frame of corrugated fibreglass and concrete block, six feet wide. Inside the A-frame was an ancient wood stove with two large aluminum pots on it. Steam and smoke from the stove blew out the far end of the A-frame. A man squatted near the stove. He had a carpenter’s hammer and with it was smashing poppy pods on a flat sheet of metal on the ground. He worked slowly, straining to raise the hammer, letting it fall. He was as skinny as the other workers. He wore a wool kilt. Stringy grey-brown hair lay against his back. Near the A-frame there was a soggy mound of poppy dross, and beside that a pile of split cordwood covered in plastic.
Marpole stopped his wagon, and he and the guards and dogs got out. They followed Frost’s wagon as he turned down the driveway. Tyrell said “Hold them dogs.” Frost felt for his sword. It was not there.
The workers in the field turned and stared.
A door on the house side of Langley’s carport opened. Five guards came out of the house. Two of them had spears and swords. Three had crossbows. The bowstrings had already been pulled back and fixed in place.
“Those are leafs from old car springs” said Frost.
“Longbows” said Tyrell. “We need longbows.”
The guards formed a line in front of the carport. Frost swung his wagon so that they had to step back out of his way. He turned Beauty again. The back of the wagon was now lined up with the concrete steps below the front door. Frost got off the wagon. Tyrell came around and stood beside him, with his spear gripped for throwing.
Marpole stopped his wagon on the trail. The dogs jumped down, with Frost’s guards holding their leashes. Marpole and Hastings and the guards — Boundary, Newton, Oak and Richmond — lined up facing Langley’s guards twenty feet away. Each held his spear upright in his right hand. Each took another wrap of his dog’s leash with his left.
At the top of the steps the cedar door opened. Langley’s big guard Freeway stepped out and stood there for a few seconds, looking puzzled. He had his poncho and his cut-down rubber boots and a drawn sword. Tyrell snickered loudly. Freeway came down the steps and stood at the back of the wagon, and started his eyeball battle with Tyrell, who only nodded and smiled benignly.
Frost looked over toward the dogs and shouted “Speak up.”
The dogs leapt forward snarling and roaring, but Frost’s guards held them back. Langley’s guards stumbled backward, cursing. One of them tripped over a shaft of the rickshaw and sat heavily. Another accidentally fired off his crossbow. The bolt sailed high over Frost’s guards and came down in distant scrub.
Frost shouted “Settle down.” and the dogs fell silent but remained ready. Frost’s guards and the dogs took a step forward.
“I hope that was an accident” said Hastings.
The guard who had fired his crossbow tried to say something but could not. He nodded. The guard who had fallen stood up.
Langley stepped out of the door at the top of the steps. He was wearing a leather jacket, mostly colourless but black around the shoulders.
Frost took off his glasses and held them up to the light and wiped the few specks of rain off with the hem of his shirt and put them on again.
“Frost” said Langley. “What the hell is all this?”
Frost walked to the back of the wagon. There was a tailgate from a pickup truck. It said, very faintly, Toyota. Frost undid a catch and lowered the tailgate. A dozen potatoes rolled off the wagon.
Langley said “Just have your men take the spuds in downstairs.”
On one side of the wagon was a car’s steering wheel. Frost started turning it. The front of the wagon bed rose slightly. Frost kept turning the wheel. The wagon bed creaked loudly and kept rising. Potatoes spilled out the back. Potatoes at the front of the load tumbled toward the rear. Frost turned the wheel more. With a roar the whole load of spuds slid from his wagon. Freeway had not moved. He stood there holding his sword, up to his knees in root vegetables.