McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [229]
The bolt was thrown back and the door to C Ward swung open. The brothers’ gazes remained fixed on the tall windows opposite the younger boy’s bunk. These windows overlooked the rector’s garden but years of salt breeze and soot and some inherent light-denying property of the glass precluded a view of anything but an ashy residue of the morning. Frank sat perfectly still; Jeff swung his skinny legs back and forth, making a swishing sound with the tips of his boots against the rough canvas top of the duffel.
—Franklin, Jefferson, said the rector. Sir Thomas is here.
Jeff started to look toward the doorway but felt or rather struck against his brother’s inertness, the inflexibility of his gaze on that impenetrable gray window. He stopped kicking at the duffel and just sat.
—He has come all the way from England to fetch you. That is far more than either of you deserves.
One of the boys snickered and Jeff could feel the steady hard examining stares of the others. The two men came down between the ranks of cots and stood before them. The black bulk of the uncle eclipsed the gray windows. His watch chain dangled before Jeff’s eyes. Frank had met the uncle a few times before, at Tir-Na-Nog, but Jeff only once, and that when Jeff was an infant in a dress. Frank said that their father and the uncle had quarreled, then, over the murder of John Brown by the Kansas Separatists. They had come to blows, and parted with rancor and finality.
—Nephews. It is hard to be so ill-met after so long a separation. Jeff’s right hand crept across the blanket of the bunk and sought the fingers of his brother’s left. They felt rough and cool and dry.
—Well, the rector demanded, have you nothing to say?
Have you? Jeff worked the words with his fingers against Frank’s.
Not to a Tory bastard like him.
—Well? said the rector again.
Jeff looked up into the bony florid face of his mother’s brother. The eyes were grave and held pity and fatigue. The lower lip of the mouth was like their mother’s, full and sorrowing. The sight of it, the memory of her, of his failure to kiss her that night in the coach, filled Jeff with an obscure anger.
—God save the Ohio Rebellion! he cried.
The boys of C Ward whistled and hooted and crowed. There was the whiz of a hornet at Jeff’s ear and then its sting. Jeff pitched forward and the hand he slapped to his temple came away shining with blood.
—Good heavens, the rector said.
The uncle caught hold of Jeff with his left hand, by the shoulder, and set him back upright on the bed, keeping a tight grip on him. He held out his big right hand, closed in a fist. The pale eyes were pink-rimmed, their whites stained yellow as if from exposure to some poisonous reagent or fumes.
—God save you, my boy, he said.
He opened the great white anemone of his hand, palm upward, revealing a smooth red stone.
—I assure you, Sir Thomas, the boy who threw that shall be punished, the rector said. None of them will eat today until he comes forward or is named.
There was a groan from the boys, and then silence. The rector worked at the silence with his glare and the twitching of his jaw. It would not give.
A damp cloth and a wad of bandage were found and applied to the jutting bone behind Jeff’s ear, and then the uncle applied a plaster. His ministrations were brusque but patient and in the care he took Jeff sensed or perhaps even remembered a vein of tenderness.
—On your feet, the uncle said, both of you.
They went out of C Ward for the last time, followed by the rector, and stood in the great echoing central stair. It seemed dark for this hour. Jeff looked up to the ceiling of the stairwell, where an iron-ribbed skylight generally let in a portion