Sophie Bullock greeted us at the side door. I had not seen her in a while. Coming along into her fifties, she was still commandingly beautiful. Her wheat straw hair had more of a silvery glint in it now. Her face was a little more lined. She was dressed in a simple white cotton gown puffed at the shoulders with roses embroidered at the bodice, a costume of leisure. She gave the instant impression of a person effortlessly enjoying her position in the world, and I sensed that Brother Jobe was awed by her.
“How nice to meet you,” she said. She seemed to regard Brother Jobe with the amusement that a kindhearted but essentially superior being would show to an obvious primitive, with a dash of bewilderment as to why such a curious creature had turned up at her house this day.
Bullock led us into his dining room. The walls were filled with pictures, including a portrait of a Bullock ancestor, a landscape of the upper Hudson River Valley, two colorful abstract blobish compositions done by Bullock’s mother in the 1960s, and some large old engraved maps of the area. But what really caught Brother Jobe’s eye was the ceiling fan, which was revolving.
“How’s that work?” he said, pointing.
“Electric,” Bullock said.
“You got electric?”
“We run a small hydro outfit.”
“I’ll be dog.”
Next Bullock opened a cabinet under the sideboard and turned on recorded music. Mozart. A piano concerto. Brother Jobe was now speechless.
Mrs. Bullock asked us to sit down and pretty soon an older servant woman brought in our plates through a swinging door from the adjacent kitchen. On each plate sat a grilled hamburger on a round bun with fat golden slivers of fried potatoes along with a mound of cabbage slaw. The servant woman returned with a pitcher of sumac punch and a little serving bowl of ketchup, made on the premises, Mrs. Bullock said.
“My goodness,” Brother Jobe said pointing at his bun. “This wheat?”
“It is,” Bullock said.
“Where’d it come from?”
“Originally? I don’t know. Ohio maybe. I send things to Albany and get stuff back in trade. We got a store of wheat in April, but we’ve seen a sharp falling off.”
“You run boats down there?”
“I lost a crew ten days ago.”
“What do you mean lost?”
“They didn’t return.”
“Oh my…”
We addressed our hamburgers. Mrs. Bullock cut hers in quarters daintily.
’Why, this is better than what we used to get at the Sonic drivein,” Brother Jobe said, “and it didn’t get much better than that. My compliments.”
“A hamburger amuses me,” Bullock said.
“Just like old-timey times.”
“Pickle?” Mrs. Bullock said, proffering a dish.
We ate silently for an awkward interval.
“What do you aim to do about that boat crew?” Brother Jobe said.
“Right now I’m waiting to see if they’ll return,” Bullock said.
“What if they don’t?”
“I’ll most likely have to organize another bunch to go down and search for them. But I’ll need some outside men. I can’t spare many more from here.”
“Maybe I can spare some of my men,” Brother Jobe said.
“How many have you got?”
“I have thirty-eight men in all.”
Bullock seemed impressed, but didn’t take him up on it right then and there. Instead, he just said, “From now on I’ll have to arm my crews.
“Did you pass through Albany on your way here, Brother Jobe?” Mrs. Bullock said. “I understand you’ve come a long way.”
“No, ma’am. We avoided the cities.”
“Probably a wise thing,” she said.
“You say your trade has fell off?” Brother Jobe said.
“Things have gotten more disorderly down there,” Bullock said. “We were already paying excise taxes, as they called them, that amounted to extortion. I expect it will get worse, not better. But we are doing everything we can here to become as self-sufficient as possible.”
“Yes, well, that unfortunate bit of news about your boat crew sort of brings me to the purpose of my visit,” Brother Jobe said. “There’s been a killing over in town and no law brought into the picture, and you being the only law in the jurisdiction I want to persuade you to come in on this here business and establish a little authority.”
“I declined the honor of the election,” Bullock said.
“I heard. You can’t do that,” Brother Jobe said.
“Of course I can.”
“Where’s your community spirit.”
“It’s here on the farm.”
“Surely you have a little left over for your neighbors?”
“I’m not going to start a feud with Wayne Karp.”
“So you must already know about this business,” Brother Jobe said.
Bullock pushed his plate forward with the half-eaten sandwich on it.
“Yes, I heard about it,” Bullock said.
“How’s that, you being so disconnected from things over here?”
“I send a man to Einhorn’s store at least once a week, and I have to get things from Mr. Karp like everybody else.”
“Then you know that Robert here was the chief witness to the crime?”
Bullock sighed. “I heard the bare bones of the story.” He shifted his gaze to me. “You were up there with this young man who was shot.”
“I was in the store with Wayne,” I said. “I didn’t see what happened.”
“Something about a mad dog, I was told,” Bullock said.
“There wasn’t anything wrong with the dog. It was hot. It was a big dog, some kind of Newfoundland. You know how they drool. But I don’t know what the dog did, if it did anything, or what Shawn Watling might have done to get shot.”
“My feeling, Mr. Bullock, sir,” Brother Jobe said, “is that what you do might never lead to any prosecution in this matter, but it would be a moral support to the town for you to at least authorize an investigation, reestablish some rule of law. I tell you, sir, I have been around this country some in recent years, and once the law goes altogether, the center don’t hold.”
“Why don’t you set up to govern things over there yourself, Brother Jobe? You seem to have a substantial organization in place. I assume you have some reliable people with you.”
“We only just come. It wouldn’t look right. The people in town might not stand for it.”
“You think? Did the people mount any effort to look into this crime, if it was a crime?”
“Exactly what I’m saying—”
“Why would they object if you took over matters that they’re too busy, or lazy, or too disorganized to take on?”
“If I set up as judge or sheriff or whatever you want to call it, why, I’d have to rule over you then too, wouldn’t l?” Brother Jobe said.
Bullock smiled. “I don’t know that we would require your attention over here,” he said.
“I’m just laying it out, to be frank. Arc you comfortable knowing you send a trade boat down to the state capital and the goldurn thing don’t come back? And there ain’t no one to look into the matter?”
“I’ll find out what happened. Don’t you worry about that,” Bullock said and turned to me again. “Robert, you’re a capable fellow. There are things that need to be done in town. I hear from Einhorn that the town water system is about shot.”
“Is that so?” Brother Jobe said.
“There’s something wrong with the outflow up at the collect pond,” I said. “And the main coming down from it leaks in more than a few places.”
“Now that you mention it, we’ve noticed the pressure is low as heck over our way,” Brother Jobe said. “We’re at the high school.”
“I’ve heard,” Bullock said.
“Goldurn roof was falling in.”
“You fixed it, I suppose.”
“You’re well told, we did, sir.”