Sister Liberty

By Gregory Hill

Their American Dream was simply to survive. They managed considerably more than that.

With its cast of obedient romantics, mystical nutbags, and adorable cynics, Sister Liberty is the rollicking, thunderous introductory volume to The Stables Family Chronicles.

In 1885, murderous

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daisy Dog Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798218081706

Gregory Hill

Gregory Hill grew up on the eastern edge of the American west, on a wheat farm near a tiny Colorado town called Joes. His relationship with that anarchic, windswept region in the heart of America continues to this day; and his novels are saturated in the area's wildlife, language, and gleeful insanity. Relying extensively on desperate characters in barren landscapes, his work is a relentlessly adventurous, unapologeticaly literate antidote to the myth of the wholesome, God-fearing heartland.

Book preview

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But if you would laugh when others laugh and weep when they weep then you must be prepared to die as they die and live as they live.

Henry Miller Tropic of Capricorn

In 1885, at the age of fifty-three, Arthur Pascal Lestables drowned his neighbor Henri Deplouc in a pond. The pond was fed by a clear, stony brook that descended from the mountains just to the north. To the south lay a clearing dotted with chestnut trees, vineyards, stone houses, thatch-roofed barns, stacks of hay, and napping cats.

The pond was well-lit—it was midday, early May—and it was scaled with bright algae. Into this pond did Arthur Lestables throw Henri Deplouc, who made a large splash followed by numerous bubbles followed by silence interrupted by the occasional tweetle tweet of a nearby family of swallows.

Arthur remained at the edge of the pond until Deplouc and his water-ballooned tunic sank below the surface. Then he rolled a cigarette and walked to the nearby village of Sanvisa, where he turned himself in to the constable.

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Days later, after a brief trial, the Honorable Magistrate Eugène Fermenté sentenced Arthur to hang to death, as was the accepted fashion of dispatching murderers in the village of Sanvisa.

Arthur Lestables’ final act would arrive on the drizzling afternoon of May 14th, 1885 while he was standing atop the shoulders of Junior Deplouc, the aggrieved son of the deceased Henri Deplouc.

Arthur Lestables was standing atop the shoulders of Junior Deplouc because, in an attempt to forestall her husband’s death, Arthur’s wife Annie Lestables had burned down the village gallows the week before. The act had earned her a two-month sentence in the Sanvisa jail, the first week of which she’d served in the same cell as her condemned husband, Arthur.

That week had been bittersweet, made less sweet by the fact that the doomed couple shared the jail’s cell with a constant parade of the town’s tipplers, gamblers, and depressed symbolist poets.

In the rare moments when one of their cellmates was not weeping, vomiting, reciting, or otherwise rendering it impossible to converse, the couple collaborated to compose the Final Statement of Arthur Lestables. Speaking in his clusterbomb of a voice, Arthur would pace the cell’s hardpacked floor while Annie tidied his grammar and rendered sensible the overall rhetorical shape of what would be his last words. These were the happiest moments of a marriage that had endured twelve years of famine, had produced one child, and which was very nearly at its end.

Shortly before noon on the day of Arthur’s execution, a husky bailiff swung open the cell door. With breath that suggested a fondness for apple wine, and in a voice that teetered between apology and bravado, he said, Monsieur Lestables, it’s time.

Let us not dally, said Arthur, unaccountably cheerful. He smiled toward Annie. How do I look?

With maternal focus, Annie licked her fingers and flattened a cowlick that rose out of Arthur’s coif. Hands on his shoulders, she held him at arm’s length and tilted her head.

Reconsidering, she returned his hair into its earlier state, a state that befitted this man who had always looked as if he’d just awoken from a nap in the wilderness.

There, she said. Perfect.

She reached for her hat, which hung from a wooden post on the wall.

The bailiff said, You’ll stay here, Madame. Per local statues, ‘Anyone who attempts or succeeds at the desecration of the village gallows shall be forever banned from attending public executions.’

Yes, but—

It’s okay darling, said Arthur.

In a low voice, the bailiff said, Madame, Monsieur, between you and me, nobody will mourn the loss of the scoundrel Henri Deplouc. But Arthur has committed a crime, and so justice shall prevail. Come now, Arthur.

The bailiff led the condemned away.

Annie retreated to the wooden stool in the corner of the cell. There she remained, idly caressing the thin strands of Arthur’s hair that had become stuck to her fingers.

The entire county had gathered in the muddy field facing the charred remains of the gallows. These gallows, built of unnecessarily massive timbers, had been the tallest structure in the village, a designation that, thanks to Annie’s arson, had reverted back to the steeple atop the village chapel.

Directly behind the charred remains of the gallows stood a chestnut tree with a symmetrical, bellshaped canopy whose height far exceeded that of any man-made structure within two hundred miles. The tree was sufficiently ancient to have been used many hundreds of years prior as a meeting-place for sexually curious Roman adolescents.

Just beyond the tree lay the entrance to the village cemetery, seven hectares decorated with a variety of tombstones, crypts, wooden crosses, and one freshly dug grave.

Dangling from a branch that extended horizontally from the great tree’s trunk was a rope that ended in a noose, or, as the locals called it, la cravate infidèle. Below the noose was a stepladder. The bailiff led Arthur to the foot of this ladder.

Here, the widow of Henri Deplouc stepped from the crowd. A tall woman with poor posture, Euphémie Deplouc declared, I wish to exercise my right to bind the wrists of the man who drowned my husband.

The bailiff nodded his consent and Euphémie uncoiled a length of string and began wrapping it around Arthur’s wrists behind his back. Arthur could not see her, but he knew that three of Euphémie’s fingers were askew, having been snapped by her husband only hours before Arthur had chucked him into the pond. Euphémie grunted as she knotted the string. Arthur winced sympathetically.

Finished, the widow whispered, There is a place for you, Arthur, always. She retreated into the crowd.

The bailiff nodded to Arthur, who expertly ascended the ladder and balanced himself neatly upon the uppermost rung. He leaned forward, dipped his head, and slipped it into the dangling noose. Rain dripped from the chestnut tree’s leaves, droplets spiraled their way down the length of the rope and darkened Arthur’s tunic.

Another figure emerged from the crowd, Junior Deplouc, the adolescent son of the deceased. Junior stood straight upon the muddy ground directly before the stepladder, his back to Arthur.

Arthur carefully stepped off the ladder and onto the wet shoulders of this young man who had accepted his hereditary right to fulfill the role traditionally reserved for a horse, as was the regional custom when a proper gallows was not available.

Thus did the attending audience witness the scrawny adolescent shit Junior Deplouc quivering under the hulking weight of Arthur Lestables. Arthur was doing a remarkable job of maintaining his balance considering his hands were tied behind his back and a noose was dangling around his neck.

The town vicar, clad in a woolen robe and, in spite of the gloomy weather, sweating like a glass of lemonade, dragged the stepladder thru the mud so it now faced the uncertain totem formed by Junior and Arthur.

The vicar climbed the ladder, leaned forward, and offered Arthur the customary final cigarette, which was accepted by eager lips. Before the vicar could ignite the cigarette, a drop of rain slid from the tip of Arthur’s nose and landed upon the rolling paper. The water soaked thru and the cigarette broke in half, spilling tobacco into Arthur’s beard.

The vicar plunged his hands into his robe and skillfully rolled another cigarette. Upon producing it, he covered it with one hand so as to keep it dry and held it out to Arthur’s side-turned mouth. Here, the vicar ran out of hands, for, even with the cigarette secured in Arthur’s mouth, the vicar needed one hand to block the rain, one hand to hold the matchbox, and yet another hand to strike the match. Meanwhile, Junior Deplouc’s bare feet had begun to sink into the mud.

Sensing the precarious nature of the situation, the Honorable Magistrate Eugène Fermenté hustled forward, climbed the now-precarious ladder to stand just below the vicar, and withdrew a match from his own robe.

In this intimate formation, the vicar’s left hand shielded Arthur’s cigarette and his right hand shielded the Honorable Magistrate Fermenté’s match. After several attempts, the Magistrate successfully ignited a flame and held it to the tip of the cigarette.

Arthur took one deep drag and then spat the cigarette toward the earth, shouting, I beseech you and your murderous sticks of fire!

The spitting of the cigarette had been pre-planned, a part of the performance as rehearsed in the jail with Annie. The performance, even in spite of the rain, was going swimmingly. It would have continued to go swimmingly had a gust of wind not redirected the falling cigarette’s trajectory in such a way that it curved back toward the young man upon whose straining shoulders Arthur was perched.

Junior shifted his hips in an attempt to dodge the incoming cigarette, which dropped neatly thru the collar of his shirt where it came to a smoldering rest in his navel. He performed several quick hops while batting at his belly. For a moment, and only a moment, Arthur rode the shoulders of the hot-bellied youth.

Meanwhile, the ladder began to tilt into the mud and so the Honorable Magistrate dove off and landed in a splat. This sent the ladder to tip over altogether, sending the vicar mudbound as well.

Junior, in a voice that was at once aggrieved and agonized, shouted, Accursed fuckmeister! and lurched out from under the boots of the man whose life he had been temporarily preserving.

As the vicar and the Honorable Magistrate pressed themselves upward, Junior hastened to pluck the cigarette from his smoldering belly button and Arthur commenced to strangling.

He would have died there and then but for the broken fingers of Henri Deplouc’s widow Euphémie. As has been mentioned, it was Henri who had crushed those fingers. Immediately before Arthur had pushed him into the pond, Henri had claimed the injuries had occurred while he was demonstrating to Euphémie how to churn butter. As with most things Henri Deplouc has said during his life, this had been a lie.

In any case, Euphémie had been unable to cinch the string securely with her damaged fingers. And so, as Arthur dangled on the noose with his legs flailing, he was able to liberate his hands from their bondage and, using his legendary upper body strength, reach to the rope above his head and haul himself upward until the noose slacked against his neck. Here, with a face as red as a pustule, Arthur gasped several times and twisted hypnotic circles on the wet, creaking rope.

The townsfolk accepted his stare in mute idiocy, vaguely aware of the injustice that was playing out before their rheumy eyes. Everyone knew Henri Deplouc had been a lousy salaud, but everyone—except Arthur Lestables—had been entirely uninspired to do a goddamned thing about it.

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Junior, with his shirt rolled up over his scrawny, smoldering gut, held the remains of Arthur’s discarded cigarette between two fingers.

The Honorable Magistrate Eugène Fermenté had endured quite enough of this horseplay. Junior, he said, Get yourself back underneath that son of an ox or I’ll see that you hang with him. In a slightly less contemptuous tone, he added, If this execution is not conducted with the grace it deserves, these people—he gestured to the assembled crowd—will be mightily dissatisfied.

As Junior took a reluctant step toward the dangling feet, Arthur said, hoarsely, This guppy will not serve as my final toehold on this world. He kicked Junior in the ear, sending the youth to splat upon the mud and sending Arthur spinning round and round.

Compelled now to prove his manhood, as was the custom in those parts after one had been publicly humiliated, Junior pushed himself upright, shook the water out of his lengthy hair, and took a swing at one of Arthur’s spinning ankles. He missed. But trying is half the battle, and having won that half, Junior retreated safely out of kicking range, where he raised his chin and feigned dignity.

The townsfolk had begun to mutter amongst themselves.

Here, Arthur began to hand-over-hand his way up the rope until he was grasping a stubby branch that grew out of the great limb above. He dangled this way for several moments, the branch bending perilously. His eyes darted here and there as he considered his future.

The Honorable Magistrate Eugène Fermenté reached into his mudded robe and withdrew a revolver. He aimed it at the condemned man’s torso.

Arthur’s meticulous plan had been going haywire ever since the cigarette had blown down Junior’s shirt. Nevertheless, he remained alive, and, with the noose slackened, he had a voice.

Dangling from the limb of the ancient chestnut tree, he looked into the face of every person in attendance, twisting himself left and right. None held his gaze except the Honorable Magistrate Eugène Fermenté, who pulled back the hammer on his revolver and offered forth, This execution shall conclude with no further nincompoopery. Arthur Lestables, for the drowning murder of Henri Deplouc Senior, and, furthermore, for being a troublesome pain in the groin at this very moment, you shall die by whatever goddamned means is most convenient to me. But first, as a man of honor, I recognize your right to a final proclamation. I suggest you curtail your proclivity for longwindedness. The annual Festival of Strawberries shall commence in one hour and nobody here wants to miss the crowning of this year’s Strawberry Queen. He gestured to the onlookers. These folks came here to see a man die, not to see him climbing ropes like some sort of a nitwit.

The townsfolk murmured their approval. Indeed, the opening ceremony of the Strawberry Festival was a thing not to be missed.

Arthur, whose face was returning to its normal shade of sun-battered beige, declared, wheezily, Fellow townsfolk, remember and reflect upon these words, though they represent a truth beyond the capacity of your tiny minds.

The Magistrate said, Say the damned words, Arthur.

Arthur nodded gravely. Do any of you understand human goodness?

The Magistrate said, I’ll have no rhetorical questions out of you, Lestables.

Arthur continued. "Human goodness is a concept for which I, today, will die gladly. I, Arthur Pascal Lestables, represent only the tip of the eagle’s beak in the army of positive progression. I assure you that the wisdom engendered by scientific progress will bring a day—not distant, but soon—whenupon your faulty morals and misguided religions will be replaced by decency and well-measured wisdom. As my mentor, Monsieur Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte, was wont to say, ‘Science, d’où prévoyance; prévoyance, d’où action.’ As I say, you can stop me, but you cannot erase me. Nor can you hinder the inevitable mechanisms that will render your laws and superstitions into relics of a shameful and savage past."

The audience was making no sense of this.

Penultimately, to my loving wife, who cannot hear me because she languishes in a cell, I say, love is the principle, order is the foundation, and progress is the goal. Ever onward!

The Magistrate removed a fob watch from his pocket. Wrap it up.

With his neck tendons taught as cello strings, Arthur Lestables bellowed, "Henri Deplouc was a reprehensible creature. Cruel to his wife, a devil to his livestock, and a stain upon the very concept of table manners. We all know this, and yet only I, Arthur Lestables, was willing to intervene. I bear no ill will. But I ask that you remember, honorable townsfolk, ’twas not I that killed the deceased. ’Twas his inability to swim."

This elicited much laughter.

Satisfied that he’d landed his punch line, Arthur Lestables released his hands from the branch. His fall was arrested by the noose, which snapped his neck and clamped his teeth against his tongue, the tip of which landed with a moist thwap upon the muddy ground at the feet of Junior Deplouc.

Arthur Pascal Lestables swung for several minutes, chest pumping, arms twitching, legs dancing a frantic jig accompanied stage left by the customary accordionist. This continued in a diminishing fashion for a full quarter of an hour, until Arthur arched backward grotesquely so his heels touched the back of his head. After a moment, the muscles released and his body hung limp, urine mingling with the rain that ran from his pantlegs. By this point, the townsfolk had grown weary, and, led by the sweating, soiled vicar, had begun the uphill trek to the village square for the coronation of the Strawberry Queen.

The Magistrate and Junior Deplouc were the second- and third-to-last people ever to see Arthur Lestables’ body.

Junior wiped his hands on the front of his trousers and said, I’d say his murdersome days are concluded.

The Magistrate put his arm on Junior’s shoulder. Son, if justice wasn’t blind when you woke up this morning, it surely is now, for that was a damned ugly spectacle. He slid his pistol back into his robe. Come along. I must attend to the judging of preserves.

The very last person to see Arthur Lestables was his eleven-year-old son, Auguste, who earlier that year had taken employment as the village gravedigger.

And so it was that young Auguste Lestables had the privilege of cutting down his father’s corpse, dragging it a hundred yards thru the cemetery to the Lestables family plot, and rolling him into the muddy hole he’d dug that morning for that very purpose.

It had been a miserable, sweltering, shitty rainy day, and so it would remain.

Auguste pressed his spade into the drenched earth and scooped a dripping viscera of mudlump. He attempted to heave the mass into his father’s grave, but the mud stuck to the blade, and it made the spade heavy and so he tossed it aside. He settled upon his knees and, with two hands and numerous sighs, he started shoving the less-than-firmament over the grave’s edge.

The sky had by now darkened, casting the grave into opaque shadow. This shadow would be one of the day’s few mercies upon the boy; it obscured the mud as it dripped chocolate-like onto his father’s swollen face. The shadow did not muffle the splattering.

Little Auguste, the miniature golem filling the hole where his father would decay.

The grave would have no stone. The Lestables family plot was in the budget section of the cemetery, where a body’s only monument was the sprinkling of yellow mustard flowers that, next spring, would grow from the soil disturbed by the gravedigger’s shovel.

When Auguste had filled the grave, he reclined upon the mound of his work. He stretched himself long, hands crossed on his chest, and watched the rain strike his eyeballs.

Arthur Lestables had never been much for putting food on the table—the slender frames of both Auguste and his mother attested to that. But Arthur did excel at expounding on the subject of positivistic philosophy. Throughout his life, twice a day, breakfast and bedtime, Auguste had been forced to endure the latest revisions to Arthur’s work-in-perpetual-progress, The Theory of Human Development: Past and Future: Complete With Amendments, Tangents, Redundancies, Post Scripta, and Citations, as Buttressed by—and Based Upon—Plutidinous and Heretofore Unpublicized Observations of the Sage Philosopher, Monsieur Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte, Son of Montpellier, Resident of Paris, as Witnessed Firsthand by The Humble Author Arthur Lestables of Sanvisa.

Reason above all things, boy.

Cold mush pushed thru the threads of Auguste’s handed-down linen shirt. Tiny bugs fled under his collar to escape the rain. A beetle the size of a sesame seed climbed over his sternum and perched upon one of the tendons of his neck. It was struck by a raindrop, which encapsulated it and then slid down Auguste’s throat to mingle with the mud.

Arthur Lestables had been a harmless, thick-headed man who, although he’d had no formal education, desired nothing more than to be a celebrated intellectual. To achieve this, he had engaged in laborious activities as infrequently as possible. He preferred, rather, to strike a thoughtful pose under a shade tree and await the sort of inspirational lightning that he believed was the foundation of genius.

His auto-didactical postures had eventually earned him a degree of respect from his fellow villagers; Sanvisa had never produced a celebrated intellectual, and so the inhabitants were curious to see how it might be accomplished, and so they had tolerated Arthur’s muddle-headed passions.

Auguste fell asleep atop his father’s grave in this sweatshop of the dead.

By the time Auguste quivered awake, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. The evening was now a gloom-clouded sky and humming frogs. To the south, the Strawberry Festival seeped afterhours glimmers of laughter and wheezing accordions.

Auguste pressed himself upward and used the edges of his hands to squeegee mud from his britches. With his shovel as a walking stick, he strode toward the cemetery’s blackironed exit, passing countless vaults, crypts, mausolea, and haphazardly erected stones along the way. He hadn’t brought a lantern, and now the night was complete and empty. The rain recommenced, followed shortly by the distant groans of disappointed Strawberry Festival-goers.

Auguste slowed his walk as he came to an ancient collection of primitive mausolea. Shaped of thick igneous plates, they resembled pup tents constructed in stone, nine feet tall at the peak, each with a triangular wooden door. Crosses and names carved, flowers and notes tucked into the seams between the stones.

At one of these structures, Auguste stopped. The cracks in its masonry leaked flickering light. A candle was burning within. He leaned his shovel against the outer wall, then pulled open the wooden door and entered. This was the resting place of Henri Deplouc, whom Auguste’s father had thrown into a pond.

Auguste had dragged Deplouc’s body to this place and installed it in the marble sarcophagus within. The sarcophagus, roughly waist-high, contained a historical assortment of Deplouc corpses, each of them wrapped in cheesecloth and lain softly upon those who had come before.

As long as there was a sufficient interval between new additions, decay would reduce the volume of the ancestral Deploucs such that there was always room for another. In this case, the interval had not been sufficient; the Deplouc family had suffered multiple tragedies in recent years, and so, before he could place Henri Deplouc into the box, Auguste had had to first smash flat the stack of corpses with a lead-headed hammer invented by some earlier gravedigger for just that purpose.

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Auguste warmed his hands over the candle that was burning atop the sarcophagus’ lid. So typical of the Deplouc family, wasting money on unattended candles. Auguste held the thick column of beeswax before himself, tipping it sideways so the flame melted the upper rim and dripped wax upon his hand.

From the outside came the careless barking of couples drunk on strawberry wine. Cemeteries attract lovers. One pair of voices grew louder, soppy footsteps grew closer. And then the door to the mausoleum began to swing open. Quickly, Auguste returned the candle to where he’d found it and scurried behind the sarcophagus.

The couple entered, whispering and giggling. Auguste recognized their voices. The male was Junior Deplouc. The girl, Fanny Potiron, was a belle demoiselle, aged sixteen-years. She had once made eye contact with Auguste as he and his father had driven their wagon past her family farm.

Drunk and virile, Junior slurred, You saw the dog die. Now watch the puppy play.

Fanny, imperiously, Bow to your queen.

Bow to your king.

You promised a cigarette.

And I will give you a cigar.

Haughty unbuttoning. The sound of exposure.

Well? said Junior, seeking an opinion.

You’re only fourteen. It still has time to grow.

You’ve seen others, have you?

Seen...and experienced.

Turning heel, "Is this experience how you earned your crown, Strawberry Queen?"

I prefer to think that it were my crocheting skills what put me over the top. Do you have a cigarette or not?

Would you like to see a dead man?

I’ve no desire to watch worms wriggle in meat.

Striking of a match. This is my father’s meat you speak of.

Seriously? The hem of a dress rotating. Fanny’s finger sliding over letters carved into the lid. Put your cock away, Junior. In front of your father’s tomb. Have some couth.

Junior leered, I will gladly put it away...inside your lady-pocket.

The Strawberry Queen took this as her cue to exit.

Wench! cried Junior. He lurched after her out of the tomb. From the outside, shouts, slaps, oof! Then silence, but for rain.

The Strawberry Queen was a half-foot taller than Junior and, having handled swine for her entire life, perfectly capable of breaking him in two. Auguste did not worry on her behalf. He edged out from his hiding spot and crept outside.

On the ground lit by the blurred glow of the moon thru a low-hanging nimbus cloud, sat Junior Deplouc in celibate defeat. The splattering rain had wetted his hair against a fresh lump on his forehead—presumably as rendered by the shovel which was now impaled into the ground between his splayed legs. The slender boy might have been beautiful were it not for his bloodied nose, or his lips which writhed as if they were trying to tear their own teeth off.

No sign of Fanny.

Junior was not pleased to see the son of his father’s murderer emerge from the same tomb in which he, Junior, had recently exposed his penis to the salope Strawberry Queen. Eager for revenge, and perfectly happy to exact it from the nearest possible victim, Junior sprang from the ground and tackled Auguste, sending them both to topple backward into the tomb.

With loathsome hate in his puckered eyes, Junior straddled Auguste’s thin frame. He gathered an entire life of cruelty, self-loathing, and violence into his fist and punched downward with the intention of breaking the smaller boy’s jaw.

The fist glanced off Auguste’s forehead and