The Beastly Bride

THE COMEUPPANCE OF CREEGUS MAXIN Gregory Frost

A curious event happened this morning when I read the latest news from my brother, and it caused me to cast my mind back some twenty years to the spring of 1908. That was the spring when Mary had to sell off her father’s farm, and most of the folks in the _________ Valley had rode up for the auction of the farm tools and possessions and whatnot, and I suspect many of them were bidding high ’cause they felt kindly toward Mary.

The fall before, her daddy’d up and left her all by herself out there. Mary’s mama had died bringing her into the world, and there weren’t any brothers or sisters. Maybe that was just as well, because Creegus Maxin wasn’t much good as a farmer and was worse as a man.

A bunch of us boys was sitting there that day, talking about nothing in particular. We’d been dragged out to the farm by our parents, but we weren’t bidding and had no opinions anybody wanted to hear, so we’d been turned loose.

Even though the nights were near freezing lately, that day it was Hades hot, and we sat on some hay bales against the barn side. That hay had been baled by none other than Mary herself, and we took turns sneaking glances at her across the yard, not wanting to reveal how impressed we all were. I don’t believe there was a boy in fifty miles that wasn’t sweet on Mary. She was a year older than me, and a tomboy who could match all of us in any roughhousing we had in mind.

About the time the auction started in on the household furnishings — I remember them bidding on a piecrust table — Doc MacPhellimey wandered over to us. Doc was a tall, you might say spindly, man, much admired if not outright loved for his gentle ways and his healing gifts. Doc had “the sight,” as they say. He could look at someone who was sick and just know what was to be done, even when there was nothing could be done at all. Among the men, our fathers, he was also particularly popular for his loquaciousness over a pint or two of beer. Doc could take the simplest recounting of events and make it magical when he talked of it.

That afternoon he sat down with us on the hay and said, “So, you fellers, what’s the topic of the hour?”

Davy Crockett (I swear that was his name) answered, “Oh, Doc, you know. We’s feeling kind of bad about Mary, and wonderin’ ’bout what’s gonna happen to her.”

“And,” I added, because I wasn’t going to leave it with that joker Davy, “thinking that maybe she’s better off without that Creegus Maxin in her life.”

Doc took out his clay pipe and a small oilcloth pouch of tobacco, and he started packing the pipe while he spoke. “Well, now, she’s like kin to you all. You’ve grown up with her, and you know things about her and Creegus that your parents probably pretend you don’t, just like they pretend they don’t know ’em, neither.”

That right there was one of the things about Doc MacPhellimey and us — he could get inside the truth of something in a way you trusted, when you knew the rest of the grown-ups would hem and haw and change the subject.

“Also, you’re right,” he said, looking at me. “She’s had the devil of a winter, but she’s much better off without him.”

Johnny McClendon put in, “My da says he run off with a floozy. Run off to Chicago.”

“What’s a floozy?” asked Luke Willette, who was eight that year.

Doc didn’t answer Luke’s question, but he leaned in close, real conspiratorial like, and said, “I’ll tell you boys a secret. I know what happened to Creegus Maxin.” The way he said it, his eyes aglitter, made the hair prickle on my arms. He leaned back then for a moment and, producing a match, struck it against a barn door hinge. With Doc, this was an indication that he was going to launch into a story, and I saw a couple of men on the outskirts of the auction crowd nudge each other and turn in our direction while he was getting the pipe lit. A moment later he crushed the head of the match between his nicotine-brown fingers, then leaned forward again.

“Were any of you boys in town last October when Mary brought Creegus in to see me? She was driving the buckboard, looked to be alone, and I noticed as she pulled up outside my office that she was sitting kind of hunched and uncomfortable herself. I was all alone at the time, and I got up from my desk to see what it was about.

“Creegus, he’d been lying flat in the back of the wagon. He pushed himself up as I came out, and kind of skooched to the end of the buckboard. Before he got down he slid out a long-handled shovel that had been at his side. I looked to Mary as I passed her, but she just sat staring into her hands, as if the reins had burned the skin off ’em and she didn’t know what to do next.

“Her old man, now, he was hobbling around the wagon, all his weight on that shovel head, and his knee bent, his foot up behind him. I asked him, ‘What is it happened to you, Creegus? ’ When he came near, I could smell the whiskey coming out of his skin in the heat and see that his eyes were swimming with it — something I never want to see on you boys, ever.

“Creegus, he launched into his story so hard that I could tell he’d been worrying it the whole way in from his farm. ‘That damn dray did it,’ he said. ‘I thought he’d gone lame on me, but he’d just throwed a shoe off’n that hind leg of his, and I had took him in the barn and had ahold of him by the pastern, bent and trapped betwixt my knees and I guess I’d put one or two nails into him and was reaching for the next. They was on the sawn-off stump right beside me, and that damned horse pulls hisself right outten my grip and drops that hoof straight down to my foot. And that iron shoe come loose on the way down, so it hit me first and then his hoof ’bout drove it into the ground right through me. Doc, it was like my toes was being sliced off, and my whole head had like a sun explodin’ in it.’ And then he cursed and he spat. ‘When I could see clear again,’ he said, ‘I grabbed my birch switch and I flogged that damn dray within an inch. My foot was like fire itself but I wasn’t gonna let him off on account of that, nossir!’ And I shook my head and told him, ‘Yes, certain I am you taught that horse his lesson.’ ”

Luke had his face all screwed up. “But that horse didn’t do nothing,” he said. “Was the man dropped his foot.”

Doc nodded and said, “You’re right about that, young Luke.” Four or five of the men had come up by then. One of them set a Mason jar on the hay beside Doc and then moved off to listen with the others.

Doc paused to take a sip, and he smiled. “I helped Creegus inside. Mary hung back on the wagon. Now that boot was on him so tight that I wanted to cut it off, but he wouldn’t have it. Said he couldn’t afford boots and I wasn’t about to ruin that one. He said he’d wear the boot till he healed if he had to. But you know, I couldn’t have that or I’d be cutting his leg off by Christmas. I soaked a cloth in ether and held it to his face and put him out cold. Then I worked that boot off like he’d asked, even though it surely didn’t improve things for him. The foot was filthy, but even after I washed it clean, it looked like an eggplant with toes. That horseshoe had come down on what’s called the cuneiform, and I expect it had fractured right straight across his foot. If you break one bone in your foot, boys, you’re like to break a dozen. I bandaged it up tight so everything would line up all right, and left him sleeping on the table. He was going to have to be off that foot the whole of the winter, and that meant Mary would have to make do all by herself as well as tending to him. So I needed to talk to her.

“She was still sitting up behind the horse. I made her get down and come inside with me. She wouldn’t meet my eye, and about every step she took she winced. She didn’t want to go first through my gate, but I insisted, and when I got a look at her from the back I could see why. There were blotches on that gingham dress. I knew well enough it was blood. I took her into the back room, away from her old man. Turned up a lamp and said, ‘All right now, Mary, you need to take down your dress and let me have a look at that back of yours. You don’t have to say one word to me, because I’m going to know when I see it. So you can tell your daddy that you said nothing to Doctor MacPhellimey.’

“She had tears on her face, but she nodded and did as I told her. The camisole she had on was worse than the dress. Fairly striped with blood, it was. I saw clear enough that the plow horse wasn’t the only thing Creegus had beaten that morning. Mary, that brave girl, had gotten between the poor horse and her crazy father and Creegus had kept right on going. Terrible welts. The camisole was stuck to her, so I had to peel it off. She near fainted from that, and then she hugged herself to me and cried her heart out. Creegus’d whipped her all the way to her legs. I cannot imagine how she’d driven the buckboard into town. And you just imagine, you boys — she’d had to change clothes first, to hide what he’d done before she brought him in to me. Well, I dressed her wounds and let her rest awhile, but when I tell you she’s a strong young woman, I mean she’s stronger than most of the men hereabouts to take what she did.”

He didn’t have to convince any of us how tough she was, and I think in some way he was speaking more to the men.

“When her father woke up, I loaded him none too gently in the back of his wagon, helped her up onto the seat, and off they went. I gave it a full day, and then I went out there.

“I’d told him to stay off the foot, and he took to that as you would expect. Had himself propped up in the front room in the rocker with his foot up on a keg, like some grand old king. The place reeked on account of him using his chamber pot that she had to empty whenever he gave a holler. The foot was still ugly and dark, but the swelling had gone down. Since he couldn’t follow us anyhow, I had Mary take me out to the barn so I could look at her back once more. It was bruised all over, but the wounds had responded to the salve and were healing. I’m certain she has scars from it to this day. I applied more salve to her, and then I looked in on the horse. Poor old thing had done nothing to deserve the beating he’d taken — across his flanks, throat, even his muzzle. Insects crawled all over him, feeding off his open sores. They rose up like a cloud when I stepped into the stall. He was lucky he hadn’t lost an eye. I spent some time on cleaning his wounds, too, and I feared for him.

“I walked Mary back inside, where Creegus demanded to know what I was doing. ‘Fixing your damage,’ I told him, and he snarled back at me, ‘Who told you to fix anything?’ Now, you know, for an ailing patient to ask you that, they just aren’t right in the head.

“People do rarely appreciate hearing about their own shortcomings, but I couldn’t hold my tongue. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘for a man who can’t afford a pair of boots, you’ve maybe killed your plow horse. You going to strap that plow to yourself come spring?’ He laughed and said he’d strap it onto Mary if that horse died, and just maybe he’d nail some shoes onto her feet if he felt the urge. I told him then he had no business beating animals and children for his mistakes.

“He tried to shoot straight out of that rocker, but all he managed to do was knock over the keg. It rolled aside and his heel hit the floor so hard you could hear his teeth creak with the pain. ‘She’s my property, same as that dray. I got the right to treat her howsoever I like, and nothin’ wrong about it. I go to church same as you, Doc, same as any. I’m as God-fearing as the whole damned town put together.’

“‘Yes, you are,’ I replied, ‘on account of you have a lot more cause to fear Him than any of your neighbors do.’ We both knew what I knew then, and there was no reason pretending otherwise. He told me to leave and not return. He’d have his foot rot and kill him before he’d let me in his house again. I tell you, the thing I wonder most about Mary’s mother is that she survived with that bastard long enough to deliver a child.”

He paused then. His pipe had gone out. He’d been so intent, telling us boys this story, that now he took stock, as if surprised by the audience he’d acquired: maybe a dozen adults, and all of them solemn and a little shy, embarrassed by the things they knew about Maxin, things they’d let be. And all of them, I suspect, knew there were no secrets from Doc MacPhellimey.

He knocked his pipe and lit it again, then continued.

“I had Mary come by my house whenever she went to town, or my office if I wasn’t at home. She healed up fast, but the dray died and there was nothing to be done. She couldn’t drag him out of the stall, either, so she covered him up there and left him. Her daddy’s foot ought to have healed, but that fool just couldn’t stay off it. He’d get liquored, tell her what she cooked was no good, and throw the plate at the fireplace, and then try to grab her, so blind in his fury that he forgot he couldn’t stand. I told her to tell him we’d have to cut that foot off if he didn’t take better care. I should have known better, because when he learned that I’d spoken to her, he just got up on that foot again and tried to thrash her. There are some people, boys, who are just too stupid. Don’t ever be one of them.”

Doc smoked awhile in silence then. Finally, I had to ask. “Well, what happened?”

Doc pointed that pipe at me. “Well, Thomas, come November first, Creegus Maxin himself rolled up to my house on his buckboard. All alone he was. Had a shotgun next to him on the seat. He got down out of that wagon and he was truly what you’d call hopping mad. He’d cut himself a kind of crutch out of some branch, or maybe Mary had done it for him, and he limped about on that with his shotgun tucked up under his arm. I could see his toes, which were pinkish from the cold but otherwise down to normal size. He was healing in spite of himself. He glared at me with those bloodshot eyes, jerked that shotgun around, and told me I wasn’t caring for him properly. And he accused his daughter of trying to poison him.”

McClendon’s pa was the sheriff, and all steely-eyed he said, “You think she did, Doc? You think that young woman poisoned her father?”

Doc blinked, as if the idea astonished him. “Why, Rory,” he said, “that’s ridiculous. Not that I’d blame her if she’d put an ax through his skull, but fact is, I know what happened to him, as I was after telling these boys here. That’s where this story’s heading.”

The sheriff said, “Wait now. You’ve known all this time and you never said a thing? We’ve ridden the countryside this winter looking for him. He left debts he’s run away from. Why do you think she’s selling off most of the house?”

“I never said a thing because it has no bearing. The man is gone, the farm belongs to his daughter, and there’s no one going to dispute it. The debts were there no matter what, and she’s paying them off, after which she’ll own the farm free and clear if she wants it.”

McClendon huffed but said, “All right, what did happen to him?”

Doc said, “Well, I’m coming to it.” He picked up the Mason jar and had another sweet long pull on that clear liquor before setting it down. “I intended to tell these boys, but now you’re here, I guess you’ll hear it, too, and be remanding me over soon enough.”

The men exchanged startled glances, and we boys did likewise. Was our decent, kind Doc MacPhellimey confessing to a murder?

“I said to Creegus, ‘I want to show you something down in the stable.’ He demanded to know what it was. ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘you killed off your horse, and I’ve got a special one to take his place.’ He wanted me to bring the horse up to the house, but I refused, and he grumbled and cursed all the way down there. We reached the shadows of the stable and I asked him, ‘Do you know what day this is?’ Sure he did, it was November the first. ‘That’s so,’ I agreed. ‘And did you know, also, that my people come from Ireland?’ Well, sure, he thought he knew that and what difference did it make anyway? I said, ‘The thing of it is, in Ireland, there’s a fella called a poukha. He’s a fine feller all in all. And every year on November the first he receives the gift of prognostication. That is, he can look into the future and see how things will go, and if you catch the poukha in the mood, he’ll share what he knows with you.’

“Creegus blinks at me, finally says, ‘So what?’

“‘ So,’ I says, ‘do you want to hear it for yourself then?’

“‘ What, that you’re one of them poukha fellas?’ I nod, and he sneers and says, ‘Sure, you tell me my future.’ Then he trains that gun on me, like if I don’t give it up to his satisfaction he’ll shoot me right there.

“And so I did. I told him, ‘The most important thing is your line, and that’s good news, on account of your daughter’s going to do well for herself. She’s going to marry a fine young fella name of Thomas.’ ”

He stared straight at me when he said it, and Davy and Charlie and the others hooted and shoved at me till one of the men told them to settle down.

Doc said, “Creegus sneered at me, ‘Well, isn’t that fine? Why would I care a whit what happens to that girl? I want to know about me, Mr. Fortune-teller.’

“‘You?’ said I. ‘Ah, the truth of that is, you have no future at all.’ ”

Doc leaned back on the hay and smoked with an odd smile on his face. To no one in particular he added, “And wasn’t I right, too?”

McClendon spluttered, “But what happened to him, dammit? You keep putting that off.”

“I showed him that special horse I’d told him about. You’ll know this, McClendon, even if the others don’t.”

“I know what a poukha is, all right. It’s a nightmare horse that you never want to ride, so help ya God.”

“Just so. Well, right there in front of Creegus I changed so fast he couldn’t even find the trigger on that shotgun. I flipped the damnable fool up on my back and rode away with him, all the way out to Shandhill Butte. There I stamped the ground three times and the hillside split wide apart and I rode him right inside. He screamed the whole way till the earth closed up on him. And if anyone’s to ask, that’s where he is right now.”

Doc hoisted the jar and toasted the openmouthed crowd. I think I could have counted to ten before they all burst out laughing. McClendon slapped both thighs and doubled over. He waved his hand and said, “Doc, you old coot. First you’re avowing I have to lock you up for murder, and then you’re after telling me that you’re a poukha!”

“Jiminy Christmas,” Alan Petris guffawed. “Ever’body knows Creegus skedaddled to Chicago, where he’s got some cousins or something stashed away.”

“With a floozy!” cried Luke, and that set everybody off again. They slapped Doc on the back and clinked jars with him, and the conversation slowly turned into a round of stories about Mary’s father and where he’d gone, and even some reminiscences of things they’d seen him do. Doc, the mad storyteller, had got their goat, and now somehow it was all right to speak of things otherwise withheld.

One by one, we all went off to the auction or to the trestle table that had been set up and now brimmed with food. Slowly after that, folks headed home, most with a few items in their wagons; parents called their boys to come along. About half the people were gone by sunset.

Later, after dark, I was out strolling on my own, just killing time. Somebody’d stoked up a bonfire because the night had gotten cold. My family were one of the last to leave, as my mother was part of a committee at the church that were taking it upon themselves to help Mary settle things after the auction.

As I passed the barn someone said, “Thomas,” and I must have jumped halfway to the moon. There was Doc, still sitting on that hay bale like only a minute had gone by.

“Why, Doc,” I said, “you gave me a fright.”

“Oh, now, I couldn’t frighten you, lad.” He struck a match, and the flame caught and glimmered in his eyes as he lit his pipe. The fire seemed to be watching me. “Tell me something, Thomas. Shandhill Butte, that’d be on your property, wouldn’t it?”

My family owned the land, right enough, and I agreed with him.

“That’s good, because, you know, when I split that hillside open, I saw the richest vein of gold in there. Rich as the gold rush itself. I’m thinking you might be sure to keep that parcel of land in the family, as your young lady will be needing to live in style, and you’ll wish to provide for her.”

I looked at him, at his eyes that I knew to be gentle gleaming like hellfire in the glow of that clay pipe. “How can you know that about Mary? About me?”

“How?” he answered, and drew the pipe from between his lips. “How does anybody know about anybody?” That was all he would say on the matter.

I probably hadn’t thought about Doc MacPhellimey since his funeral. He was right about Mary. She’d had her eye on me for awhile, and with my mother taking her under her wing, we were thrown together, and something caught between us. In a year’s time we were engaged. The other boys telling everyone about Doc’s prediction probably helped things along considerably, too. When my father died in ’14, I took over the farm. Next year we sold off a piece of it, but I hung on to that seemingly worthless Shandhill Butte, and paid an assayer to take a look at it. Sure enough, just like Doc had sworn, there was gold in it. More gold than you’d know what to do with. With the money that brought us, I bought this ranch in Oregon, and Mary, the children, and I moved up here. My brother and his wife took over the farm. I guess it was two years after that he wrote to tell me Doc had passed. The entire town turned out for his wake. I’d have liked to have been there, too. They filled the whole of the day and night, my brother wrote, with stories about Doc, including how he claimed to have taken away Mary’s father in fair payment for his cruelty. Sometime in the night, a couple of the revelers came stumbling inside to announce they’d seen a black horse with flaming eyes run past the house. Nobody believed them, and a few of the more sober participants pointed out that you couldn’t see a black horse at night in the first place.

While I’d never quite forgot nor resolved that story of Doc’s, much less his forecast of my future, what brought him to mind today was another letter from my brother. He wrote:

My brother was right about that. Nobody’s likely to believe Davy, what with his reputation for pulling folks’ legs, but I know. I’ve known ever since that night at Mary’s farm when I took one last look back at Doc across the yard and saw instead that black horse just disappearing beyond the barn, silent as moonlight.

GREGORY FROST is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and supernatural thrillers. His latest work is the critically acclaimed Shadowbridge fantasy duology, Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet.

His previous novel was the historical thriller Fitcher’s Brides, a reimagining of the fairy tale “Bluebeard.” Recent short fiction includes contributions to Realms of Fantasymagazine, to Ellen Datlow’s Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, an anthology commemorating the bicentennial of Poe’s birth, and to the anthology Urban Werewolves, edited by Darrell Schweitzer. He is one of the Fiction Writing Workshop Directors at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. His Web site is www.gregoryfrost.com and his blog is at frostokovich.livejournal.com.

The first thing I should tell you is that I’ve no idea just where this story came from. My experience of poukhas involves Jimmy Stewart, taverns, and invisible rabbits. But I have a number of books on Celtic lore, and one of them mentioned in its description of the poukha (spelled one of at least ten different ways), that on November first it is gifted with the ability to see the future. That, and that it isn’t generally a giant rabbit, it’s a “nightmare” horse, black and terrifying, with fiery eyes, and it has a habit of taking hapless individuals for some serious rides. Somewhere out of that mix of research and a few days of contemplation — which for me is unusually quick — I came up with a rough outline of the story you’ve read. I thought I’d invented the name of the villain, but it turns out there are Creeguses in the world, too. Beyond that, I had enormous fun with the voices of it — the first a sort of Mark Twain or Garrison Keillor narrator’s voice, the second a bit more Irish on the part of the good doctor. His name, by the way, was lifted from a Flann O’Brien novel. It was the name of a poukha in his book, too. So you might say I had a bit more experience of the dark pranksters than I realized. Sneaky buggers.