The Harrows of Spring by Kunstler James Howard

Author:Kunstler, James Howard [Kunstler, James Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Adult
ISBN: 9780802124920
Amazon: 0802124925
Goodreads: 26893711
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Published: 2016-07-05T07:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FOUR

The four horsemen of Union Grove, traveling south on the Route 40 ridge along the Hudson Valley, reached the town of Harts Falls across the Rensselaer County line at midday. The town’s favorable location on a fourteen-foot drop of the Hoosick River made it the site of two water-powered mills, one for grains, the other for lumber, both constructed in recent years. The Hoosick River then continued below the falls two miles farther to the Hudson River where commodities could be loaded on barges and shipped to Albany or other points. The mills together employed forty men in season, but at this time of the year there was no Rensselaer County grain to grind. An establishment calling itself Guff’s Lunch Room operated in an old foursquare house between the two mills. There, the four travelers were able to buy a meal of hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and sturgeon chowder. The great prehistoric fish had made a comeback in recent years, along with the teeming shad. The chowder was made of five simple ingredients: milk, butter, onions, potatoes, and fish. It lacked salt and, when asked, the serving boy said they had none lately. The cheese had an off flavor and a greenish tint, as if it had been made by amateurs. A crude sign above the pass-through to the kitchen told diners, “Sorry no bread today.” The dozen or so workmen in the front room seemed to be making up for the shortcomings of the fare with beer. The men of Union Grove ate quickly and didn’t linger at Guff’s.

By late afternoon the temperature had climbed into the seventies, the warmest day so far that year. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the horsemen decided to sleep out for the night, the empty houses along the way being full of mold, vile odors, or intimations of lives that ended badly. Fourteen miles north of Albany, they made a camp in a grove of black locust trees off the old Irish Road, close by a clear-running rill that afforded them drinking and wash water. They picketed the horses on a high line so they wouldn’t step on their leads, with enough slack so they could touch their noses to the ground. The horses had stopped to graze in fields of clover more than once during the afternoon ride, and Brother Eben had supplied them with feedbags and enough oats for the journey down.

With their ground cloths spread and saddles for backrests, the men swapped around various food items all had brought along, expecting to spend a night or two out of doors in this way. The rangers had slabs of rich corn bread pudding, larded thickly with crumbled bacon and a mellow jack cheese made by the New Faith sisters. They also had a jar of pickled peppers, links of dry-cured sausage, and a sack of honey and oat cookies. Teddy Einhorn had an especially fine array of traveling treats: a plastic box of spicy smoked jerked-mutton strips (a

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