by John Babb
By late afternoon, they were satisfied with their cleaning job and hoped Abbie would be too. She had roused up enough to drink some water but had a throbbing headache and was terrifically dizzy, so they decided to leave her where she was for the night. Little Sue finally went to sleep, while Ben and Mr. Finnerty sat up watching Abbie.
The candle flickered and finally went out some time after midnight, yet there seemed to be quite a bit of light coming through the window. When Ben walked outside, the full moon appeared to be bigger and closer than he could ever remember. His aunt had told him of the special power that was afoot on such a night, so Ben stepped away from the cabin and the two cottonwood trees in the yard to allow the moon to shine full upon him. When he knew he was completely illuminated, he turned his back on it and gazed at his full shadow displayed in the dew-covered grass. Abbie had told him that a wish on your moon shadow would generally be granted, unless of course it was a selfish wish. Ben whispered a plea from his heart for his aunt to be made whole again. With this accomplished, he knew he had done all he could for Abbie, but he still had one more thing to do.
Orion was barely visible because of the bright moonlight, but when he found it, he had a hard question to ask. “Ma, you probably know that Abbie was attacked today by two men from the docks. When I saw one of them hurting her, all I could think of was to try and kill him. I wasn’t just trying to hurt him. I truly wanted to kill him. Ma, is there something wrong inside me? Do I have a murderer’s heart? I don’t want to be that way, but is that just who I am?” He stood there for a long time with his questions, then tossed and turned in his sleeping pallet for at least a couple of hours before he was finally able to get to sleep.
Ben quickly remembered he had missed supper the night before when he awoke to the smell of biscuits, beans, and coffee. Mr. Finnerty was conflicted between keeping an eye on Abbie and tending his fire. She had also wakened, and Ben moved to her side. She had no memory of the day before and listened intently when Ben explained to her what had happened during and since the attack.
When Mr. Finnerty came over to the pallet, Ben almost didn’t recognize him. Gone was his scruffy, sparse beard. He had two good cuts on his chin, so Ben suspected it was a fresh shave by a seldom-used razor. He even had on sort of a clean shirt. But the shave really only served to accentuate his most noticeable feature. His eyes appeared to be set too low on his face. Although he had an extremely high forehead, it seemed as though he had no cheekbones at all, because his big eyeballs sat where his cheeks ought to be.
Abbie was quick to tell him how grateful they were for his help. He placed a hand on Ben and Sue’s shoulders and told Abbie how brave they were, and that he had just been neighborly. Ben noticed he called her “Miss Abigail” and put his arm around her shoulders as he helped her to the only chair in the cabin. His aunt self-consciously covered her damaged nose with her hand and replied with a wavering smile, “Thank you, Sean.”
Things began returning to some degree of normal. Abbie insisted on going back to her own house. Ben stayed home for a couple of days but soon went back to work with his soup. Apparently, the story had been spread all over the dock and in town as well, because almost every customer patted Ben on the back and asked how his aunt was doing. Jeremiah came by and told him he was a “young man of real courage.” Ben didn’t feel that way at all. Frankly, he’d been scared to death when he ran into the cabin with that axe. He hoped no one would find out just how full of fear he had been.
Three
The Boy In The Cage
Jeffersonville, Indiana 1848
In late October, most of the crimson leaves of the Indian Paint Brush had fallen, and Ben was still going to the dock every day to sell soup. It was on one of those frosty fall days when he was hurrying to get his fire started and his soup heated up that he saw a familiar figure walk down the gangway of a steamboat and saunter up the dock. With a big grin on his face, Ben waved as hard as he could.
His father had returned from Pittsburg and certainly was surprised to see his son situated there on Front Street, but he was even more taken aback to witness Ben’s sales operation and the way the boy easily interacted with the dock workers and other people from the town. He leaned against a big white oak tree to watch his son for a minute.
Daniel Windes was not a tall man, but the way he carried himself—straight as a ramrod, hands swinging at the sides, and sort of a side-to-side swagger in his walk—gave the impression that he was bigger than he really was. His clothes were worn thin with a half dozen places that had been crudely sewn back together. His skin was browner than Ben had ever seen it. His hair and beard were a good deal longer than Ben remembered, almost the color of sand rather than the usual brown. He obviously had been in the sun almost constantly these past months, but for the first time, Ben noticed flecks of gray in his pa’s hair. Could it be that he was getting to be old? Ben felt his pa’s hands on his shoulders—they reminded him of rough pig iron they were so calloused and hard.
“Who might you be workin’ for here on the dock?”
“Abbie makes this soup every day, and I come down here to sell it.”
His father suggested that he needed to come live at his house again so he could give up his soup job and then he could go to school full time, “After all Ben, you never even been to school before.” As much as he cared for his pa, living in a house with his stepmother was the last thing Ben wanted to do.
“This soup business is the only way Abbie has to make any money. I don’t know what she’ll say when I tell her I have to start school.” Besides, he really enjoyed what he was doing. He loved hearing the rivermen tell stories about what they had seen and done on the river. Many had been to St. Louis, others all the way down the Mississippi past Memphis to New Orleans. One told of a huge catfish he had caught (almost as long as a man and as big around) from a keelboat. In fact, the man claimed that the fish had actually towed the boat a couple of miles before he could land it. Several spoke of the wild Indians they had seen at trading posts in Missouri. With all the strange places to see and the tales of adventure shared by the rivermen, it was easy to begin to think of himself working on the river too, right along with his pa.
In the autumn of 1848, Ben’s father had been remarried for five years. His new wife brought two girls to the marriage, both a few years older than Ben, as well as her younger brother, Arthur, who she had inherited after her mother died of apoplexy when the boy was just fourteen.
It must have been a terrible experience for Arthur to see his mother die so suddenly. One minute she was alive, and the next blood was pouring out of her nose and mouth as she lay on the floor, staring intently at her son, saying nary a word for some half an hour, until she finally quit breathing. So the boy moved in with the newly married Sarah and Daniel. He was quiet and kept to himself, but Sarah explained to her husband, “The boy seen too much for his own good. He’ll be alright one of these days.”
Daniel didn’t think much about the boy’s strange actions at first, but it was hard not to notice Arthur talking to himself all the time. Over the next several months, he quit communicating with the family all together but always seemed interested in his private conversations with himself. Sometimes Daniel had caught him staring in his direction with what appeared to be dark, threatening looks. He thought about punishing the boy, but realized he really had not done or said anything to be punished for.
When Arthur was sixteen, he went out to the barn one night and killed their three milk goats with a butcher knife. At least this was the only rational conclusion when Daniel discovered his goats in the morning and found Arthur’s nightshirt saturated with blood. Although Ben was only five years old at the time, he remembered the confrontation well.
Daniel’s voice was filled with rage. “What have ye done to my nannies?” And he was further infuriated when Arthur did not answer him but simply offered a blank look. “Did ye not know we’ll have no milk in the house? Explain yourself!” Again, there was no answer
, and he had no choice but to whip him as punishment and threatened to throw him out of the house if he did anything like that again.
At this, Sarah pleaded for her brother. “He’s just a boy. He cain’t make it on his own.”
“The boy ain’t right, I tell ye.” But he relented. Even so, Daniel was more uneasy than ever around the boy.
A week later, he awoke to a noise, followed Arthur out of the house in the middle of the night, and just barely was in time to stop the boy from killing his bull calf. Knowing they could not continue to live this way, Daniel was ready to send the boy away, but Sarah again begged for leniency. Daniel left the cabin and returned at mid-morning with thirty stout oak poles he had cut.
“What are ye doin’ with them staves?”
“If he’s gonna act like an animal, he’s gonna live like an animal.” And Daniel spent the remainder of the day constructing a cage six feet long and four feet wide in a back corner of the cabin. “He’s gonna stay in there ’til he can behave like a normal human.”
Arthur’s cell had no furnishings save a pallet to sleep on. His meals were passed to him through a narrow slot, and twice a day the slop jar in his cell was emptied. The hoped-for signs of improvement had not come, and the boy was now nineteen. He had not been allowed outside the cage except when he was attached to Daniel with a stout rope and taken out to the well for a bucket bath. He had only spoken to himself during the past three years, and the language he had begun to use was unintelligible to all of them.
Ben knew, beyond any doubting, that it was wrong to keep a boy in a cage. Certainly, nobody in the household had spoken out against the situation. Arthur himself had not spoken at all for the entire time he had been confined, except to the unseen beings he now communicated with. But to look in his eyes, it was not difficult to translate his quiet into pain and betrayal, compounded by what seemed to Ben to be a plea for understanding.
Ben understood his pa’s side of the problem. He had simply reacted in the only way he knew to the unpredictable threat that Arthur posed to his farm and his family. Surely there was another way, but it escaped Ben, no matter how often he thought on it.
That evening, Ben told Abbie about his conversation with his pa. She looked at him and then turned her face away. Ben had a premonition that this conversation wasn’t going to go where he wanted it to.
“Ben, you know my Albert disappeared three years ago, and nobody in this town believes he’s coming back home. I’ve prayed over him so many times I’ve lost count. In the last couple of months, I’ve come to realize that a good man lives right across the road.” Ben tried not to look shocked, but was astute enough not to remind his Aunt how she had described her neighbor just a few months earlier.
“Sean Finnerty asked me to marry him three times this month. Just yesterday, I finally decided to say yes. We’ll live here in this house, as I couldn’t stand to live in his. That’ll mean Sue will have to move out of my bedroom and sleep in the loft. Both Sean and I care about you, and he said he would be willing to build a lean-to on the side of the cabin so you can live here. But if your pa wants you at home, I doubt you should defy him.”
“What about our soup business?”
“Your pa is right that you should be in school. Sean can take over the soup selling now. Maybe you can help during the summer.”
So there it was. His stomach felt like he had a rock in it. He realized he was about to cry, but knowing he was too big to give into that, he bit his lip to keep from it. Despite his best effort, his eyes seemed to be watering. Abbie found something to do on the other side of the kitchen. Ben gathered his few belongings, thanked Abbie for letting him stay there, and hugged Sue for a long time.
It was dark when he left. When he stepped inside the chicken house, the birds were all on their roosts and set up a stir when he entered. Needing no light to uncover his bank, he found what he was seeking within a couple of shovels of dirt. Shaking the tin box, he was reassured to hear the coins rattling. He didn’t need to count it, knowing very well there was forty-seven dollars and twenty cents in the can—all in dimes. He’d counted it in his head every night before he went to sleep, but now he decided to find a hiding place tonight, before he went to his pa’s cabin. He just couldn’t take a chance on Mr. Finnerty accidently finding his cache.
He walked into the woods, heading northeasterly rather than taking the road. Every now and then people got robbed on the thoroughfare, and he was determined that was not going to happen to him, particularly tonight. Although the moon was only a couple of days past the first quarter, he knew the woods well enough that he was not particularly worried he might get lost. He made his way downhill to the creek but did not even consider a hiding place near the water, as there was always traffic up and down the stream. He crossed at a shallow gravel bar and stopped about fifty steps beyond the creek, listening for a good five minutes to be sure nobody crossed the stream behind him. His pa had taught him how to use water when they were hunting deer—listening for the sound of them crossing a creek as an indicator of their approach. He began to carefully pick up his feet with each stride rather than taking a normal step and dragging his heel. His pa had shown him a few things about tracking too, and he knew any good woodsman could follow the trail of someone who wasn’t being careful.
There was almost a total absence of wind—all the more reason to be watchful. Stepping on a dead twig could sound awfully loud in those circumstances, and anyone following from a distance could easily figure out where he was if he moved too quickly. Hearing a hoot owl off on the next ridge and a coyote answer, he moved forward slowly, feeling a bit panicky when he failed to identify the landmark he was looking for at the place he reckoned it might be. But just about fifty steps further, he saw the outline of what he was seeking silhouetted against the night sky.
The old tulip poplar had broken about thirty feet above the ground. The bottom half of the tree was hollow and stood in a thicket of briars. He chose not to put the box inside the trunk but wanted to be sure it was in the briars, which should prevent anyone just happening on his spot. The dirt at the base of the tree-top was gouged out and loose where the jagged end of the poplar had hit the ground when it fell. He silently dug a shallow hole to the side of the downed tree, covered his box with the loose dirt, then carefully added leaves and a few dead branches on top. As a final touch, he pushed briars over the top of his spot in what seemed a natural fashion.
He heard what sounded like a foot on a stick and froze against the ground. It could have been his imagination, maybe a deer, a coyote—anything. The tin box not only contained an entire five months of work, but it represented his hopes for a chance at a better day—particularly now that his future was less than certain. He laid there for fifteen minutes, briars sticking him from every direction. Finally, he moved away fifty steps, watching and listening. Satisfied, he walked toward his pa’s cabin, crossing the edge of the Negro cemetery before he reached the new Plank Road that ran between Jeffersonville and Port Fulton.
He figured most people would avoid the route he had just taken in order to stay clear of the cemetery. He’d heard stories about ghosts coming out of the grave during a full moon to torment people who had done them wrong. In fact, there was no doubt that his stepmother was one who was convinced those stories were true. He turned right on the road and reached his Pa’s cabin in another five minutes, deciding he would go back in the woods early the next morning to be sure the location gave no hint of his hiding place.
Four
A Surprising Talent
Jeffersonville, Indiana 1848
There was still a light in the cabin, so he hollered from the front yard. People had been known to get shot at if somebody thought they were sneaking up on a house at night. His pa came to the door, wearing his union suit. “I’m surprised to see you this evenin’ Ben. Come in here and we’ll make you a pallet in the house. And whilst yer at it, tell me about that fight over at Abbie’s place. Soon as I walked in Riley’s store toda
y, people was tellin’ me my son had been in a big shootout.”
His stepmother was already in bed, and when she saw Ben, she said nothing but rolled over to face the wall. His stepsisters were probably already asleep, as he heard no sound from their direction. And Arthur—well Arthur hardly ever slept as near as he could tell. It seemed like he even stood in one place, leaning against the inside of his cage both day and night.
After hearing the short version of the fight, his stepmother spoke from her bed. “Pastor Swinson done started a prayer chain for us, what with Abbie and that hermit across the road killin’ them two men,” she raised up from the bedding to point at Ben, “and you bein’ right in the middle of it all.”
Ben remembered his first run-in with Red and Butter and how Jeremiah and his whip had come to his aid. He also would never forget what he had seen them do to Abbie and Sue through the window of the cabin. He was tempted to say he didn’t need their prayer chain but bit his lip.
He didn’t have much of anything of his very own at either house. It seemed like he was always visiting no matter where he slept—that he really didn’t have a place to call home. And when he stayed with his father and stepmother, the woman always seemed to find a way to make it clear that he was eating more than his share—“takin’ food from the mouths of my girls”—as she put it. He was suddenly so bone-tired he just wanted to sleep.
Like most mornings, he awoke to the sound of his stepsisters’ voices, picking at each other and arguing over the few chores they had to perform. He rose, waved a hello at Arthur, and went out to the well and the necessary.
The girls were out in the yard feeding the chickens when he re-entered the cabin, but he was almost sure that his small bag of belongings had been rearranged. His stepmother was at the fire—had she rummaged through his clothes, already looking for something worth taking? She noticed the attention he was giving his bag and said, “Oh, I moved yer kit out of the way so’s I could git to the fire without trippin’ over yer clothes.” She went on, “Yer pa and I was talkin’ yestidy. He’s gone to town to see if he can find work over the winter. If yer gonna live here, you can earn yer keep by doin’ some things I couldn’t do this summer. That firewood rack needs to be filled up. They’s lots of downed trees in them woods west of the house. You can get busy and cut our wood then see that rack stays filled this winter.”