God's Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher Page B

with the gals hanging off him like young possums in pinafores and Mike tagging along behind made the front page of that week’s Monitor . A second photo of Moose driving his John Deere past the courthouse with Mrs. Moose in the seat beside him, the gals riding in the bucket, and Mike bringing up the rear appeared on the sports page with Jim’s account of the game.
    â€œUh-oh, boys,” Cousin Stub Kinneson, the team’s second baseman, said as Moose’s outfit, now including Mike, proceeded up the street. “Here comes trouble in a big hat.”
    Warden R. W. Kinneson came striding along the sidewalk from the courthouse. He cut off Moose’s entourage at the northeast corner of the Common. “Just where do you think you’re taking that animal?” Cousin R. W. said.
    â€œThe gals here have named him Mike,” Moose said to the warden. “Mike the Moose. I’m not taking him anywhere. He seems to have muckled onto me. I believe he thinks I’m his mother.”
    The warden jutted his hat up at Moose. Jim snapped a picture. A crowd was beginning to gather.
    â€œSee here, cousin,” R. W. said. “That beast never would have ventured into town if it didn’t have brain-worm disease. I’m going to have to destroy it.”
    Instantly all five of the large little gals burst into tears.
    â€œHear them, won’t you,” Moose said.
    R. W. took a step toward Mike and unbuckled his holster strap. Moose got down off the John Deere and stood between Mike and the warden.
    â€œJob Kinneson, I’m warning you. You’re preventing an officer of the law from carrying out his sworn duty.”
    â€œMike’s a good moose,” Moose said. “He’s taken a shine to us, is all. You gals quieten down now. Nobody’s going to shoot anybody.”
    â€œYou haven’t heard the last of this,” the warden said.
    Moose climbed back up on the John Deere and headed home with Mike trailing along behind.
    *   *   *
    â€œ State of Vermont vs. Job Kinneson ,” the county prosecutor, Zack Barrows, announced the following Wednesday at the weekly arraignments at the courthouse.
    Warden R. W. Kinneson stood beside Zack at the prosecutor’s table. Moose Kinneson and his attorney, Jim’s brother, Charlie, stood at the defense table across the aisle.
    Jim sat in the third row of benches behind the defense table, pencil and notebook at the ready. This was his first court assignment for the Monitor . Feeling proud but nervous, he jotted down some details to add atmosphere to his story. The light globes hanging on metal rods from the stamped-tin ceiling. The four tall windows in the west wall, overlooking the village common. The worn hardwood floor and benches.
    Most interesting of all to Jim was the mural covering the entire front wall of the courtroom. It was called The Seven Wonders of God’s Kingdom, and had been painted by Gramp’s older sister, Mary Queen of Scots Kinneson, at about the same time that she painted the life-size portrait of Pliny Templeton that hung in the foyer of the Academy. In the most vivacious colors, and with astonishing verisimilitude, Mary had depicted, from left to right across the wall, the High Falls behind the Common Hotel, Pliny’s great granite Academy, the Île d’Illusion in Lake Memphremagog, the baseball diamond on the village green, Pliny’s History of Kingdom County open to the narrative of Lake Runaway running away down the Lower Kingdom Valley, Jay Peak at the height of the fall foliage season, and the second-longest covered bridge in the world, at the southern gateway to the Kingdom, where Abolition Jim and his fellow secessionists had been wiped out by federal troops.
    Soon after completing the mural, Mary Kinneson, not yet seventeen, had dropped out of the Academy and run off to live with the descendants of the fugitive slaves who had founded New Canaan, on the Canadian