5 word challenge: Bastso

It had been a wonderfully mild beginning to winter, so Nathaniel Prustock set out from Bath in an open gig.  He had just arrived there a few nights earlier, after a long and choppy sail down the coast from New Jersey, followed by a two-day row up the Pamlico River.  With Christmas close at hand, Prustock had been forced to lodge in town until the locals felt sufficiently motivated by his purse to convey him into the hinterlands.  But he was a hunter, used to the privations of the trail.  And his sources led him to believe that he may finally have run Charles Read to ground.

Read had once been a prominent judge and businessman in New Jersey, born in Philadelphia, and active in New Jersey politics for nearly twenty-five years.  He boasted the best kind of friends, like Charles Morris, and Benjamin Franklin.  But Read had disappeared suddenly in the spring of 1773, and his respectable facade had collapsed, leaving only debts and acrimony behind.  Prustock was the agent of some of his more aggrieved creditors, charged to get their money, or barring that, to drag him back to spend his remaining days in debtors' prison.  So here Prustock was, far from the comforts of Philadelphia, perched precariously on a rickety carriage bouncing over rutted back-country roads.

It took all day, and late into the night, before the carriage pulled into Martinburg.  "Hardly a place worthy of a name", thought Prustock.  Just a cluster of oak-log houses, squatting like pigs next to the muddy waters of the Tar River.  Prustock stepped down, and handed a few coins to his driver.  The driver looked at the coins, grunted, and dropped Prustock's bags to the ground, coincidentally in the muddy spot left after his horses had vented their spleen after the long ride.  Prustock gingerly picked them up , and plodded over to the one building with strong light in the windows, and smoke coming out of the chimney. 

He opened the door to a dank and smelly room, filled with greasy faces illuminated by clay pipes.  "I seek lodging", Prustock ventured.  He was met with a stony silence.  Finally, one old man slowly detached himself from a chair by the fire, and stumbled over.  "So", the man said, "you've finally come."  "I have a spare room in my store, if you wish some rest before we conduct our business.  Yes," the old man nodded as Prustock gaped, "I am Charles Read."

Prustock was not prepared for the vision in front of him.  Read had been clever enough, when he left New Jersey, to have destroyed all paintings which showed his face.  But this ravaged shell of a human being hardly seemed to match the stories of a vigorous judge and burgher which had been related to Prustock.  Read's face seemed hollow, with grayish black stubble sewn over parchment-yellow skin.  His head, once likely covered by a powdered wig, was as bare as an egg's shell, soot-stained and leathery.  Read's clothing seemed to defy the law of gravity, his body being so skeletal as to provide small purchase.

The two men faced each other, seated on splintered chairs opposite each other in Read's small goods store.  "May I offer you some food?", ventured Read.  Prustock nodded without speaking.  It was his experience that, if left alone, his prey most often condemned themselves with his having said nary a word.  Read picked up a shiny wooden bowl, and ladled some stew out of an iron pot hung over the fireplace.  Pork stew, with some shriveled carrots and parsnips.  "Fitting", Prustock thought.  Read fetched a bowl for himself and they ate quietly, with just the sound of the river, the wind, and the fire.

"Let me tell you a story..."  Read looking quizzically at Prustock.  "Nathaniel Prustock."  "Of course.  I knew your father.  Young Nat.  I had you pegged for better things."  Prustock flushed, but said nothing.  "Well, Nat, there is nowhere to go tonight, and I am too old and feeble to run, were I even so inclined.  So allow me to fill your head with a mad tale."

"I had staved off the scandal of the ruin of my father by making a better match than I deserved.  My dear wife Alice was not the loveliest of creatures, with her Creole features and her indifferent temperment.  But her father's wealth matched my ambition to flee His Majesty's Navy and she was sufficiently agreeable.  The dowry was enough to quiet the whisperings left by my father's death, and the Antiguan rum which her father laid in our ship bound for Philadelphia made my fortune.  Unfortunatley, the lace curtains of Philadelphia were not ornate enough to hide the tedium of Quaker sensibilities.  So, we moved to New Jersey, and, with connections wrought by my charm and her money, I became an important man.

Alice had been raised in such a way that my dalliances were of little interest to her.  But she expected to have the best, which my best efforts soon failed to provide.  Until the day that Dorcas Leeds knocked on my door.  He was tall, with a long face, eyes like fire, and he moved so smoothly that one would have thought that he had snakeblood.  "I understand you have ambition, Charles.  I wish to help you."  It may seem odd to you, but I took him at his word.  Such is the desperation of a man of taste in a world of empty pots.  Leeds pulled out a small casket from beneath his cloak, and placed in on the table in front of me.  I ventured to open the lid; the glow of jewels and gold made my loins ache.  "I have a parcel of land I wish you to buy.  You will build a mill there, and will smelt bog iron.  I will purchase the products you make from the iron."  I agreed immediately, and Leeds pulled out a contract written, oddly enough, on sheepskin.  He handed me a pen with brown ink, and I signed without even reading.

Two months later, Alice and I stood on a barren hill, with a new house on it, surrounded by gloomy pines settled in sandy soil.  we were deep in the Pine Barrents, far from any taste of civilization.  But there was a fortune to be made, and Alice understood that.  We named the site Bastso.  Soon, we were settled down with a motley crew of Indians Quakers and freemen, and started our business.

For a few years, all went well.  We were turning soil into iron, and Dorcas Leeds paid us with treasure.  I spent some of it on jewelry and paintings and fine dresses for Alice.  I even brought in a few handsome men to "entertain" her while I tended to my governmental duties.

Then, late one night in the spring of 1772, Dorcas Leeds showed up at our house in the woods.  "It is time for first payment, Charles.", he said to me.  I asked what he wanted.  He looked at me; "Alice."  I began to stand, and suddenly Leeds seemed to grow taller.  Black batwings unfurled themselves from beneath his cape.  And I finally understood who he was.  Leeds.  That was the name of the poor woman of legend, whose thirteenth child was the stuff of nightmares.  The Jersey Devil.  The foul creature strode up the stairs to our bedroom, and flung open the door.  I stood, fixed, as dear Alice started screaming, and then was abruptly silent.  Leeds, his face covered in blood, came back down the steps and came to stand in front of me.  "I will expect payment again next year at this time."  I buried Alice in the woods that night, and told the world that malaria had taken her.  It was common enough, and nobody questioned me.

As April approached last year, I knew I could not stand to face him again.  So I left early one morning, and ran until I came to the end of the world.  So, here I am."  Read pulled out a pair of yellowed kaolin pipes, filled them with tobacco, and offered one to Prustock.  They smoked, looking at the flames.

Finally, Prustock turned to Read.  "That is an incredible confection of superstitious nonsense you have baked for me, Charles Read.  My employer, the same Dorcas Leeds you have named, will be most amused when you relay it while standing in the prisoner's dock in the courthouse in Burlington.  Unless, of course, you have his money."  It seemed impossible that so sickly a man could appear even more so, but Read accomplished the trick.  He nodded weakly.  "I have the casket still.  Allow me to give it to you for conveyance to Mr. Leeds."  Prustock rose, and Read shambled over, and pulled a small box from under his bed.  As Mr. Leeds had predicted it would, the box spilled over with jewels and gold.  Read handed the box to Prustock.

"I will, if you have no objection, take my leave of you, Mr. Read.  The boat I arranged to follow me here will have arrived by now.  Your debt to Dorcas Leeds is now satisfied."  Charles Read started to laugh as Prustock closed the door, and walked to the dock at the edge of the village.  The sound of his laughter rose higher and higher, until it seemed the screaming of lost souls.  The doors of the other buildings remained closed, and Prustock noticed a few lights which dully flickered behind their windows were suddenly extinguished.  It was of no account to him; the business was done.

The kind person who dispatched a letter the next day, which Charles's son Charles received a few weeks later, advising him of the demise of his missing father, did not mention that the condition of his body was such that, with prayers and imprecations to cover all possibilities for such horrors, the locals had simply thrown lit torches into the store, and watched it burn into the ground.

Bastso, as a forge for the Continental Army, supplied musket and cannon which helped remove the stain of British rule from the colonies.  It was ironic that Charles Read the son should have turned out to be a traitor to the cause.  But then, as people remarked to each other, it was a supremely unlucky family.