The Visionist: A Novel Read Free Page A

like a little time on my own, sell this land— my land —set myself up pretty somewhere. Just like Mister Fancy Coat told me,” he says. “Rest up without you and your waste. It wouldn’t be so difficult to manage now, would it? Gettin’ so’s I could be alone, I mean. Things happen after all, am I wrong? Takin’ sick, disappearings—like they say, twist of Fate.” He pushes Mama towards the table and lays down the knife. Even in the thin light of the lamp—its wick running low—the gleaming blade catches Polly’s eye. Mister Fancy Coat.
    “I seen whole families go,” Silas continues. Kicking Mama’s feet out from under, he glares at her as she buckles to the floor and covers her head with her arms. “Death come easy here,” he says. “It’s livin’. That’s the struggle.”
    He walks away, taps his hand over the tops of the cupboards in hopes of finding a forgotten bottle of cider; with his back turned, he cannot see Polly as she rises and guides Ben gently into her chair. She moves quickly and reaches out, her fingers barely grazing the cooking knife’s handle before she pulls away and slips quickly back into her place. He has found his prize, uncorked it, and he guzzles the liquor as he turns back to face the room. “Problem is, can’t do much more than slap you up ’til I know what’s mine,” he slurs, yawns. “Tired now, that’s what I am. But tomorrow? Tomorrow, we sort this out. We make sure your daddy didn’t leave me out of his prayers. We make sure—just like Mister Fancy Coat said—that you tell me the truth ’bout any dealings between you. Give me a nod,” he orders, kneeling to grab Mama’s chin and shake her head up and down. “ Yes …that’s right,” he says, still pulling at her. “Yes, Silas.”
    Silas stands unsteadily and looks at Polly, a queer smile hooking up one side of his mouth. “Lucky for you I met up with this little friend,” he says, holding up the bottle, then pulling it to him like an infant as he shuffles across the kitchen floor. “Lucky, too, that I’m in need of a lie-down.” One boot then another falls as he makes his way towards the room where he lies with Mama every night. “There’s always a tomorrow, ain’t there? Can’t count on much, but that’s for certain.”
    Polly hears him tumble into bed.
      
    She knows the stories about her father’s kin. His parents had been born of a bad lot—just two of a hundred ruffians, townspeople said, all descended from one drunk Dutchman up by the New York Lakes. He was—would always be—Silas Kimball, the son of stoop-backed, black-toothed marginals. Smelling like smoke and animal fat, mongrel skins for warmth, teeth ground down to nubs: talk had it that the three of them appeared as savages when they walked the path to town in need of a trade. His mother made dolls tied from sticks and corn silk and tried to barter them for food and cider, but the figures scared people with their haunting look and she couldn’t raise much. When Silas came, she bound him to her with hemp cord and fed him in plain view, not a thought given that she was baring herself for all the town to see. Wild as skunk cabbage, living in a makeshift shack in the woods, stealing from the fields of nearby farms—in most people’s opinion, as Polly heard it, the Kimballs were barely human.
    Benjamin Briggs, Polly’s grandfather from Mama’s side, had been different. Wealthy, they said, an educated merchant and gentleman farmer come out from Hartford. But he couldn’t work alone the land he had tamed and there was no help to be found in town that wasn’t already at labor in the fields. So it came to pass that when young Silas showed up at his door—not long after the boy’s parents went missing—Polly’s grandfather gave him work and a roof over his head. Whether the vagrants were dead or just set to scrabbling in some other place, no one knew. But with them gone, Silas walked into a brighter future than ever he could