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Author's note: The sequel to World Made By Hand is titled The Witch of Hebron. It is set in the same year as the first installment, several months later, the week leading up to Halloween. The book is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Press.

Chapter Thirteen

         Brother Jobe enjoyed the gliding gait of his mount, a mule named Atlas. He was fond of telling people that a mule rode much more smoothly than a good saddle horse, and was smarter, and could stand up to heat better, and was not stubborn but rather sensible and disinclined to follow obviously foolish commands that might discommode or injure it.  A mule was a superior animal, and he felt positively superior riding a mule, despite what others might think. And once he got his mule breeding business up-and-going next spring, by gosh, he was confident that folks would begin to see the advantage in mules. Of course, people still wanted horses, and he aimed to keep breeding them, too, but now he was out a perfectly good stallion.
         Though it was a pleasant, crisp fall afternoon, and despite his enjoyment at being out on the road riding Atlas, Brother Jobe suffered in a personal globe of perturbation knowing, as he now did, that the doctor’s boy had poisoned his stud horse, Jupiter.  He was further vexed by the knowledge that the boy had eloped from Union Grove and was on the loose somewhere in the county.  He wanted to flog the boy within an inch of his life, or maybe beyond, but he hoped to avoid that.
         Brother Jobe was on a journey to Steven Bullock’s plantation – several thousand acres of fruitful bottomland and upland five miles outside town, tucked between the Hudson River and the place where its tributary, the Battenkill, joined the parent stream. He had business to discuss with Mr. Bullock, the grandee of the county, with his vast holdings, his many faithful servants, and his personal hydro-electric outfit.  To start with, there were certain urgent matters of the law that required Mr. Bullock’s attention as Union Grove’s elected magistrate.  But mostly, Brother Jobe wanted to inquire about getting a stallion to replace Jupiter.  Bullock was raising big German Hanoverians. America was painfully short of horseflesh, so rapid had been the descent out of the old times into the new.  Was it therefore odd, Brother Jobe mused to the soft rocking gait of Atlas the mule, that his Daddy had owned the leading Ford dealership in Scott County, Virginia back in the 20th century?  Wasn’t that a time, though...?
         Brother Jobe had come about exactly halfway to his destination when, lost in musing about back home, he saw a lone figure up ahead on the road.  As he drew closer to it, the figure began to wave its arms in a broad gesture that reminded Brother Jobe of a railroad grade-crossing signal from the old days when the trains still ran.  He instinctively reined in Atlas.  The lone figure strode forward confidently.  The closer he came, the more his appearance resolved from that of a grown man to something more like a gangly, overgrown boy, perhaps nineteen, with curly yellow hair and a scraggly blonde beard that, if he ever took to shaving regularly, would hardly require the razor twice a week. His cheeks were sunken as if he had not been getting regular meals. He had been carrying a bulging leather shoulder sack that he now took off and tossed aside to the edge of the road.
         “What’s up, stranger?” Brother Jobe said.
         “And good afternoon to you, too, sir.”
         “A fine day to be rambling.”
         “I’m a rambler and a gambler – you’ve got that right.”
         “That so?  Are you knowing the Lord, son?”
         The young man dipped his whole upper body guffawing.
         “Not yet,” he said.
         “Would you like to?”
          “I hope not to meet up with him for some while yet.  I like it here on earth, rambling and gambling as I do.”
         “You can be born again in this world and know the Lord.”
         “I’ve had enough of birthing, sir.  I’m enjoying my prime. Would you like to hear some of my song?”
         “Your song. . . ?”
         “Yessir, the Ballad of Billy Bones.”
         “That’d be you? Billy Bones?”
         “Yessir.  The very same.”
         “Well, I don’t have time for no song and dance, son.”
         “There ain’t any dance to this.  Not yet, anyway.”
         “Mind if I pass on the song, then?”
         The boy unbuttoned his brown leather coat and drew it open to reveal the butt of an automatic pistol tucked into the waistband of his striped trousers and something that looked like a two-foot long brush knife in a scabbard on his other hip.
         “Give it chance, sir.  You won’t regret it.”
         “The only thing I regret along about now is that I didn’t bring a firearm to entertain you with.”
         “So much the better then, because neither of us will get hurt. Are you ready for my song?”
         “Fire away.”
         “Here goes:

“When first I came to New York State
My fortune here to find
I followed reg’lar upright ways
Was always nice and kind

But as I rambled round the state
A bandit I became
I plied the roads with gun and sword
And plundered many a man. . . .”

         He sang these verses in the style of a mournful dirge. During the second verse, he drew the automatic pistol out of his waistband and held it aloft in an emphatic manner.
         “I think I get the picture,” Brother Jobe said.
         “I ain’t done.  There’s lots more verses.”
         “I heard enough. If you got yourself a ding-dang ukulele, folks might stand it better.”
         “You know where I might find such a thing?”
         Brother Jobe felt his patience melting away in big gobs.
         “Lookit here, son, I don’t carry no cash money,” he said. “This here’s a waste of your valuable banditry time.  Anyway, you are a durn sorry excuse for a minstrel and a worse robber.”
         “You think so? Well, maybe I’ll just have that horse of yours.  I’m sick of pounding this road.”
         “This here’s a mule, you dumb ass.”
         “Mind how you speak to me or someone might get hurt after all.”
         “Look right here, boy.”  Brother Jobe held an index finger to the outside corner of his right eye.
          “Huh. . . ?”
          “That’s right.  Look right in.”
          “Think you can run the snake eye on Billy Bones?"
          “I already done it. As we speak, I can see inside your mush-filled noggin at a throbbing vein within.  I’m surprised you can’t feel it.”
         “Ow!” the young man cried, visibly drooping within himself while his gun hand fell to his side. “Aw, sweet Jesus,” he moaned.
         “Well, look what you found after all.”
         The young man staggered to the side of the road and squatted into his haunches.
         “What you doing to me, Mister?”
         “I’m calling a halt to these monkeyshines and giving you something to reflect on.”
         “My head’s splitting open.”
         At that, the boy vomited between his own dusty shoes, a thin stream of yellow green puke, as if he had been eating grass for his breakfast.
         “You’ll be all right in a while, long as you quit the vicinity and don’t never show your sorry face around here again.”
         At that, Brother Jobe gave Atlas some heel and the big mule resumed his stately walk.  As he left Billy Bones on the roadside, the young man was weeping loudly in the sunshine.

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