Eddie felt his pulse quicken. “There were two of them?”
The hermit rose to his feet so he could douse the fire. For an instant, the world grew dark. “You want more information, you have to give me something in return,” he declared as he headed back to his porch, leaving his guest at the campfire to consider his offer. Eddie tried to figure out what the old man could possibly want of him while Beck pulled on a pair of old trousers. He wore high fishing boots that were caked with mud. The Dutchman grabbed a walking stick, then returned to the smoky fire pit. “We should get going, if you want to make it back tonight.”
“What kind of deal did you have in mind?” Eddie hoped the price would not be too high; after having given his father his savings, he’d have to sell some of his belongings in order to have any ready cash.
Beck nodded to his wolfish pet, sprawled out on the porch, head on his paws, watching their every move carefully. “You make sure he’s cared for if anything happens to me. Set him free.”
“And where will you be while I manage to accomplish this without him ripping me to pieces?”
“I’ll be dead. Otherwise I wouldn’t need you. I don’t want to be in my grave unable to rest because I’m fretting that the wolf is starving to death up in my cabin.”
“Does he have a name?” Eddie eyed the beast, which eyed him in return.
“You think a name means something? You are who you are, whatever you’re called. Call him No-name. Call him Mr. President. They’re the same to me. Just let me know where you stand. It’s a deal or it isn’t. Your choice.”
The wolf was nothing Eddie wanted, but he took it on faith that the hermit would live a long and miserable life. Therefore, he nodded and they shook hands on the bargain.
“And burn this place to the ground,” Beck said. “It’s good for nothing once I’m gone.”
Eddie agreed to this as well. He wished to hear more about the mermaid, but Beck signaled that it was best for them to move on.
Eddie tied fishing line through Mitts’s collar to ensure that the rambunctious pit bull would stay close. The hermit’s black boots stomped over ferns and low berry bushes as they headed for the river. Sparrows flitted by, dropping into the brambles to nest for the night. They went on for some time in silence, but when they reached a ridge, the hermit stopped. The moon was rising, already casting a white light across the long, sweeping view to the river.
“You know how I knew she wasn’t no mermaid? Because her feet were bare. I was always told mermaids have no feet.” Beck pointed to a hollow. “That’s where I first spied them.”
There was a bog to cross, and the earthy scent of mud rose up. Every step meant navigating the muck, which already reached their knees.
“You want to go on?” Beck said, poking fun at Eddie’s obvious discomfort as he batted away gnats. “All sorts of creatures get stuck in there. I found the bones of a baby elephant a trader told me was a woolly mammoth. I’ll probably die in there myself one of these days.”
Eddie gestured for his guide to go on. He hoisted Mitts and carried him through the deepest mud. The clay would dry up in the summer months, but during a damp spring, mud as thick as this could easily pull a man or a dog down as if it were quicksand.
“Walk steady,” the hermit called over his shoulder. “Stop moving and you’ll sink into the land of the mammoths, my friend. I saw a man here at the end of March, stuck in right good, calling for his mother before he pulled himself out with a stick.”
Clouds of gnats circled Eddie as he slogged along. On the other side of the bog there ran an old Indian trail followed by letter carriers before trains were used for mail delivery. Though mostly deserted now, recent wheel marks had been deeply driven into the mud by a horse-drawn cart.
“I came down from the cliff because I’d seen the mermaid pull the other girl out of the water.”
Eddie found himself spooked in this hollow. He wasn’t alone in that. Mitts set to whining, and Eddie ran a hand over the dog’s shivering flank to quiet him.
“She ran away, that’s how I knew she wasn’t a mermaid. I saw she had legs. But she swims in this river the way something human never could. I’d seen her before. When she’d gone, I climbed down to the hollow to watch over the drowned girl. If I hadn’t stayed, the raccoons would have been at her. They would have torn her apart.
“When I heard a carriage come near I took off. I figured the mermaid had gone to get help. But it wasn’t help she brought, just two men. One of them called the dead girl a treasure, so I knew he was a bad one. Death’s no one’s treasure, except for ghouls. The other fellow spoke up that they should leave her in peace, but the first one spat at that idea. Told him no, that wasn’t what they were about to do. So the one who drove loaded her onto the wagon. I should have shot them both before they took her.”
The hermit looked at Eddie closely. “Too much for you to hear?” The old man reached into his jacket to bring forth the bottle of rye, which he offered companionably.
Eddie gulped a bitter mouthful of the liquor. “Do you think they killed her?”
“She was already gone before they got here. I checked. No breath. No heart. But somebody killed her for certain.” The hermit brought something out of his pocket. A strand of blue thread. “Her mouth was sewn shut. I couldn’t let her stay that way, so I told myself it would be like untangling fishing wire, otherwise it would have been too terrible a deed to undertake.”
He gestured for his companion to take the thread, but Eddie recoiled.
“I figured this would happen,” Beck grumbled. “You’re scared by a thread.”
Eddie’s expression was dark; there was only so much insult he could take. “Thread doesn’t scare me. I used to be a tailor.”
“Well, I used to be a baby,” the hermit responded. “Doesn’t make me one now.”
Eddie reached out, and Beck deposited the thread in his outstretched hand.
“The carriage men were there to steal the body,” the hermit said with a sober expression. “The one in charge seemed happy to do so. Not your mermaid, though. She was crying.”
“My mermaid?”
“You almost crashed right into her one night. She and I were both watching you and your rabbit.” He patted Mitts, who panted happily at the attention, tongue lolling. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t burn down my land, so I stayed up on the ridge. She was hidden in the trees. She’s a good swimmer, and she’s got good eyes. But you weren’t much good at seeing what was right in front of you. That’s why I’m leading you out now.”
Eddie felt a burst of heat run through him. He must have glimpsed the girl. That was why he couldn’t rid her from his dreams.
“Who is she?”
Beck shrugged. “A girl that thinks she’s a fish. Maybe your trout brought her round. I told you that fish would lead you someplace.”
“I don’t suppose you recognized the men.” An impossible, hopeless question Eddie didn’t so much ask as think aloud.
“The first fella who almost drowned in the mud?”
“No,” Eddie said. “The two with the body.”
“Oh, I knew one of them, all right.”
This was the way it happened, a single question that could crack open the world, letting in a shaft of light that might allow him to glimpse the truth.
“I saw his picture in the paper years ago. He was a criminal.”
It was dark where they’d stopped, but through the trees the water shone a silvered, glittering gray.
“Do you remember his name?”
“Can’t read. I just use the paper to wrap my fish to soak in cold water. But I read his face just fine, and I remembered it. It was the same man I saw with your mermaid. He put the body under the seat. Then he stood behind the carriage and fed the blackbirds crumbs from his hand. Never seen anything like it.”
Eddie felt a chill along his neck and back. Beck was describing a scene Eddie knew well. The first thing he heard every morning was the sound of the horses breathing in the stalls below him and the liveryman crooning to his pigeons as he sang their praises. Birds are smarter than you think. They never forget a kind word or a face. He’d often witnessed the liveryman feeding the blackbirds out in the alleyway as they perched along his arms, each one waiting its turn, as if entranced.
“Now I’ve told you everything,” the hermit said, “and all that I have belongs to you when I’m gone.” They had reached the riverbank, the end of Beck’s territory and his world. “Don’t forget my wolf.”