IT WAS MAY DAY in Kingdom County. Ethan was headed up Allen Mountain to collect wildflowers for a May basket for Gypsy. He hiked along the Canada Post Road past brushy, overgrown fields and cut-over woodlots. Near the edges of old clearings in the woods were spring beauties, hepaticas, deep purple violets, tiny yellow woods violets, and white violets with blue centers. Gypsy loved wildflowers of all kinds and had written many songs about them.
As part of E.A.’s homeschooling, Gypsy had taught him all about the history of the Canada Post Road. It was built shortly after the American Revolution by the Colonel and his brother, General Ira Allen, principally to smuggle cattle back and forth over the Canadian border. In the 1840s and ’50s the road was traveled by fugitive slaves en route to Canada from the Allen homestead, Vermont’s northernmost station on the Underground Railroad, run by Ethan’s great-great-grandpa, Emancipator Allen, until he was hanged with John Brown at Harpers Ferry. This setback did not prevent Emancipator’s son, Patrick, from leading the Irish Fenians on their ill-fated raid in 1872 to annex Quebec. Later, during Prohibition, Outlaw Allen ran whiskey down the Post Road from Quebec in large Packards, Buicks, and Cadillacs. The night before the Volstead Act was repealed, Outlaw had been killed at a fork in the road high on the mountain by federal revenuers lying in wait for him.
As E.A. approached the scene of Outlaw Allen’s demise, he noted that the right fork, which led due north to the Canadian border, had been flooded by a new beaver dam across a small tributary of Allen Mountain Brook. He took the left fork, toward the mountaintop and Long Tom.
To the degree that it resembled anything at all, Long Tom resembled a culvert pipe the length of a football field and large enough to drive a small car through. In fact, Tom was the world’s biggest cannon, capable of firing a rocket-assisted shell halfway around the earth. This invention was the masterwork and crowning life achievement of Dr. Budweiser “Buddy” Allen, Gran’s scientist brother. Perched on the mountaintop above a sheer drop of more than a thousand feet to Lake Memphremagog, Long Tom had a spooky, derelict look. The cannon was pointed almost due south toward its last target, the White House, which Dr. Budweiser had been preparing to shell “to wake up the president,” just before being assassinated (Gran claimed) by the CIA. The epitaph on his stone in the family graveyard read: DR. BUDWEISER ALLEN. THOUGH IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER HE WAS MAD AS A HATTER BUT HE HAD A SMART BRAIN. Gypsy had composed it when she was in junior high school.
E.A. set down his May basket and climbed up inside Long Tom, where he lay back in the dim coolness and looked out at the sky. Inside Tom, E.A. could close his eyes and imagine being shot out of the mouth of the cannon—not like one of Great-Uncle Buddy’s gigantic shells with a smiley face and the message “Hello Mr. President, from the Green Mountain State” embossed on its fin, but like a clown he’d seen shot out of a pretend cannon at the Cole Bros. Circus. He imagined that it was night and he was zooming high above New England, and that he’d never learned what he found out in the Academy library, that none of it had ever happened. On he flew. Far below was Fenway Park, with the looming Green Monster, over which he would someday hit another shot heard round the world. He sped over Yankee Stadium, the dny pinstriped players racing perpetually around the bases like mechanical players in an old-fashioned toy baseball game. West to Comiskey Park and to Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, on to the Kingdome in Seattle. Someday he’d play in all of them.
E.A. started up so fast he bumped his head. He crawdadded out of the cannon and dropped to the ground. There was the drifter, in his usual garb, standing near the edge of the cliff above the lake.
“Who you hiding from?” Teddy said. Then, “Whoa. Whoa, there, Ethan. What the—”
E.A.’s feet had scarcely hit the ground before he started charging. Teddy held him off at arm’s length as E.A. windmilled his fists, trying to reach him, pound him, silently socking the big man in the side, the shoulder, with short punches, the way Teddy had taught him, the way he’d fought Orton and Norton, as though he meant to drive the drifter right over the edge of the cliff.
“Ethan, hold on. Hold up here. What’s wrong?”
Teddy was too big for him. Too powerful. E.A. didn’t know a man could be that strong, even as Teddy was trying to be gentle, move him back from the dropoff.
“It’s you, you son of a bitch,” the boy said, not loud, still trying to swing. Teddy had him by the wrists.
“What’d I do?” Teddy said. “What you think I’ve done?”
“You know what you did,” E.A. said, struggling. “You killed my father.”
They stood facing each other, Teddy ready to grab him again if necessary.
“Going to college,” E.A. said through his tears. “Wanting to teach me baseball because we were friends. Lies! You were never in college. You were in prison, that’s where you were. For killing my pa.”
“Whoa, Ethan. Who put that idea in your head?”
“Tell me you weren’t in prison. Let me hear you say it.”
“I can’t tell you I wasn’t in prison. I was. But I never killed your father.”
“I read it. Right in the Monitor.”
“You lied to me,” E.A. said. “You lied to me about everything. Probably lying when you said I could do something with my baseball. Get somewhere with it.”
“Ethan, I didn’t ever go to college a day in my life. And you’re right, I was in prison. Eight years, and I’m still on parole. But I’ll tell you two things straight out. No matter what you heard, I never killed your father. And I’ll never lie to you again about anything.”
“That’s the truth,” E.A. said. “Because I’m going home now. And I don’t want to see you around the place. Ever.”
“Ethan. Did you ever pretend something was so when it wasn’t? That’s what I did about going to college. I shouldn’t have. But I’m not lying about your father.”
Teddy started down the Canada Post Road.
“How do I know whether to believe you or not?” Ethan called after him.
Teddy said something E.A. didn’t catch.
“What?” E.A. called. “What’s that?”
Teddy stopped and turned back. “I said, ask Gypsy Lee.” Then he continued down the mountain, leaving E.A. standing beside Long Tom, more confused than ever.