Two lives changed the afternoon Millicent died. Two youths were transformed—one choosing to walk the despot’s path and shun any notion of moral decency, the other accepting a life of servitude as punishment for a tragedy he failed to prevent. James’s telling of a single lie changed both of our destinies.
I can remember as if it were yesterday. I close my eyes and the frozen surface between us is slick and gray. Millicent’s coat is pale blue—so blue that it appears to be made of sky. She trembles on legs thin as my arm at its wrist, and the woolen stockings that bind those stems are the white cream of fresh-churned butter. She stands in tiny brown leather bootlets that have left imprints no larger than a deer’s hooves. And her mitten, crimson against the dull gloom, sears into memory, reaching towards me always, even now, in this very instant. She is six years old.
Calling out from a treacherous spot at the center of the pond—where underground springs make for thin, undependable ice—she begged for help. And how could I not heed her cry? How could I not spin in my boy’s agile mind through every possible plan and then watch the marble roll to a stop on the one I chose?
Perhaps I chose wrongly. Perhaps I could not judge the frailty of such a tricky, cold membrane as ice. I trusted the crust would hold, and even as it cracked beneath me, I did not believe it would disintegrate and merge forever the worlds of life and death it had kept so perfectly separate just moments before.
I am haunted by her like the ghost who beckons to village children from inside an empty house on a lonely cart path. Haunted like the farmer, one Ebenezer Goodson, who has come to me five times now to request my services in proving the existence of an aquatic creature that bursts from the depths of Lake Cullen and pulls his best cows to a watery death. Haunted as so many people are by the twisting of their short, small lives.
James was with me that day.
“It cannot be known that I was here,” he said, his eyes flitting back and forth between his sister and me. “My father…he will never forgive me for letting her out of my sight.”
It was true: He should have been looking out for the little girl. After all, he’d known that she’d followed him as he left home for an afternoon spent skating with me. Indeed, he’d seen her playing by herself at the pond’s edge and cursed her for it.
“That’s not important now,” I said, aghast at the fact that his father’s wrath was foremost in his mind. I grabbed his arm. “You cannot leave. You must help me save her.”
He glanced again at Millicent before looking down. He knew full well that what he was about to do was wrong.
“Leave off, Pryor,” he said, peering to see if the road was empty of witnesses.
“But she’ll die of cold, don’t you see?” I was practically begging. “It’s up to us. There’s no time to run for help.”
“So high and mighty. That’s always been you, hasn’t it?” he sniped. “Thinking you’re smarter than me. You, a printer’s son. You go and get her if you’re so brave. But not a word that I was here. Not ever, or I’ll see to it you pay.”
He shook off my grasp and looked away. Then, he ran.
His behavior disgusted me, but I had Millicent to worry about. Her whimpers were getting fainter, and I noticed that her legs had buckled as cold and desperation set in. I lowered myself onto my stomach as I reached the center of the pond. Inch by inch I crawled across the thinning ice. The front of my woolen coat was frosted and hard as it caught on the surface. My buttons scraped. How I wished I could be a serpent in that moment, just as slithery and undulating. How crude and boyish were my movements, the ice turning more and more transparent as I approached the child.
“Don’t move,” I whispered. “Please, stay still until I’m closer, until I can…”
Then, the crack. Millicent’s high child’s scream. The red gash of her woolen mitten as it raked across my sight and into the churn of gray water. Gone. She had vanished, and though I floundered to reach her, the brittle crust gave way and plunged me into the same frigid hole. I fought until I found her coat with my hand, pulling with all my might. Even if I made it out of the water and onto thicker ice, I was afraid that I would not be able to drag her to shore by myself. I could feel my blood thickening with cold, my movements becoming slower by the second.
The sight of James’s back as he disappeared into the trees will never leave me, but neither will my memory of Millicent as shards of ice slashed at her face and hands. I thrashed through the water—I could see that her eyes were open, but her lips had turned a deep blue that was beginning to spread beneath her skin, fluid as an ink stain. I headed for the shore, and when I felt my chest collide with ice strong enough not to give way as I threw myself upon it, I pulled Millicent next to me. I could not stand. My limbs were frozen and I was incapable of any movement save for a clumsy tumble, the girl passing under and over me as we rolled like a barrel towards the shore.
Only when we reached the frozen ground at the edge of the pond did I allow myself to realize that she was dead. Even so, when I saw a sleigh pulling past, I yelled and screamed—a sound so desperate and primitive I hope never to have to make it again. It brought the driver to a halt; whatever happened afterwards will always be a mystery to me.
Two days later, I awoke, my mother by my side, my father standing gray-faced at the end of my bed.
“They say in the town,” he said weakly, “you should never have crawled out on the ice by yourself. They say…” He could not finish and he did not ask me if any of it was true. Just handed me a sealed note. “This came for you the night you were brought in. A stable lad from the Hurlbut place delivered it.”
As my mother rose and began to weep quietly, he walked to her side, gently put his arm around her shoulders, and escorted her from the room. Numb of mind and shaking with fever, I opened the letter. It was a summons from Amos Hurlbut.
James had been busy after the accident, making sure everyone knew that I was to blame for Millicent’s death. He admitted to being at the pond that day, but said he’d left me in charge of his sister because, worried that she was cold and would need a warmer coat, he’d run home to get her one. He put it about that I’d been careless and that when I noticed she was in trouble, I had acted in an impulsive manner to cover up my failure to watch out for her. Instead of running to town for help, I sought to look the hero and attempted to save her myself, he said. He claimed that my hubris had ensured his young sister’s death, and far-fetched as his story may have sounded to anyone who knew me, no member of a town that lives by the thin strands of the Hurlbut family’s approval had the courage to question it. I was branded a prideful youth who should have known better, a bad seed, the boy who all but murdered poor Millicent.
As soon as I had the strength to leave my sickbed, I went to see Amos Hurlbut. The house was large and hot and filled with things that were either too bright or too fat. The burnished wood paneling gleamed in the white winter light. Overstuffed velvet armchairs sat solidly next to even larger settees. Gilt-framed portraits of corpulent Hurlbut ancestors crowded the silk-covered walls. I had never seen such a display of wealth and I felt ill at the sight and smell of it.
“You are too bright a boy to have behaved in such a tragically stupid manner,” Amos Hurlbut said, sitting behind a desk that put acres of fine leather covering between us. He gestured towards James, who was seated by the fire. “He used to speak well of you.”
I did not respond, did not much care what James used to think of me. Sitting stiffly in my high-backed wooden chair, I waited as an animal awaits slaughter: knowing something terrible is about to happen yet uncertain as to what it might be.
“Since the accident, however,” he continued, “James sings a different tune.”
Apparently, upon hearing his son’s version of what had happened on Biddle Pond, Amos saw—even through the haze of his grief—the opportunity to turn tragedy in his favor. He demanded, as penance for my sins, that I be indentured to him for an indefinite period of time. When James took over famil
y matters, I was to serve him with equal devotion. No doubt, having lost a measure of faith in me since the accident, my parents would have little trouble believing the following story: that I was throwing in my lot with the Hurlbuts in the hope of finding my fortune, that I was tired of working with my father in the shop and cared not a whit for the trade he had taught me, that my eye was on the future—not the past—and I could no longer afford to indulge my boyish affections and notions of familial allegiance. In short, I was to tell them that I was abandoning them forever.
Back in the warmth of my own humble abode, I found that once I had opened my mouth and allowed such hurtful lies to spill forth, there was no turning back. Though it pained them to reckon with a side of me they had never before encountered, I played the scoundrel convincingly enough that my parents came to believe the worst of me.
They knew nothing of the blackmail that prompted my callous behavior, for Amos Hurlbut promised to see my father ruined if ever I tried to wriggle free of his hold over me. My father, you see, made his wage as the printer of town penny sheets, many of which were owned by the Hurlbut family. The entirety of his meager living was drawn from that job, and if either Amos Hurlbut or his son ever took his business away, my family would lose everything. That was the chief curse of life in Burns’ Hollow: So intricately bound was the fate of the town to the Hurlbut fortune, it was as though the inhabitants were but marionettes, the movement of their every limb controlled at the will and whim of a malevolent puppeteer.
James Hurlbut’s lie about Millicent’s death stole from me the love I held most dear, for I have not, to this day, spoken again to either of my parents. By cover of darkness, I left my home, slinking into service to Hurlbut and his brigade of crooked lawyers, constables, speculators, even ministers. His reach was all-encompassing and to find myself entangled within it made me servile as a bird dog laying carcasses at his master’s feet.
It has been eight years since I left Burns’ Hollow, permitting myself no more than a weekly visit in secret that I might catch a glimpse of my parents. It is several hours’ ride, and as they are a quiet pair who keep to themselves, they do not know that we still live in the same county. Hurlbut ensures that my name never appears in any of the penny sheets my father might be called upon to print, so you see, I have become a ghost to them. He is bent over his box of type by the light of a single lamp, my mother knits in a chair by the window—this is how I usually find them. I can only press my nose to the glass like the boy I once was and assure myself that they are safe, that the Hurlbuts are still holding up their end of the bargain. But looking in from the outside convinces me of little else, save for the fact that my heart is broken.
The weeks passed quickly as I continued my search for May and Polly Kimball. There was little movement to auction off the Ashland farm—under the best of circumstances, things municipal in nature happen slowly. But something inside me had begun to change. No matter how hard I tried to deafen myself to its sound, a mysterious hand rapped persistently on the window of my conscience. The Kimballs’ misfortune called to me, a siren’s song of unhappiness that swelled with the reckless hope that I might be able to save them. Faced with such familiar bewitchment, I did not seek a mast to which I might, in the tradition of Odysseus, lash myself against temptation.
Instead, I have given in and devoted myself in earnest to finding and delivering them. I am unfamiliar with diligence that is anything but detached—even uncaring—and for the first time in my career as an oft-time wayward inspector, a case presents me with a deeper and more personal objective. Other than an unusually strong desire to see Hurlbut’s plan fail, I have yet to understand my response. I am certain only that my involvement is not without risk, for in tampering with the Kimball case, I am placing my faith in fire and I cannot be sure it is any more dependable an ally than ice.
Polly
SHE HAD ARRIVED in The City of Hope with the dawning of a crisp autumn day; now, it was early December and she had yet to have a second Vision in Meeting. This appeared to have little effect on the believers’ faith in her. In their minds, she had come to them and made of herself a vessel for Mother Ann’s word. Even if the miracle never happened again, she had been anointed a Visionist and would never be known as anything other. But why had her angels not come to her of late? Polly wondered. She did not miss the terror that preceded their visitations, but she wished she could feel the comfort of their presence. If only they could take away her doubts and fears. If only they could erase the evils of her past.
She worried, too, that Elder Sister Agnes continued to expect her to prove herself. The eldress’s suspicions weighed on her almost as heavily as the history she sought to hide. It was a battle of wills—the eldress’s scrutiny pitted against Polly’s determination to follow Mama’s warning and say nothing about the fire, to hide her father’s rapaciousness, to air neither the fear that she had killed him nor the terror that he was still alive and would come for her. She was not sure how much longer she could hold out.
The fact that she had begun to meet with a string of ministers from other communities gave her some reprieve. They were such an earnest lot, and though she found their attention strange, stranger still was the effect they seemed to have on the other believers in The City of Hope. The settlement was small and lay well off the beaten path, rarely catching special notice from the Central Ministry at Mount Lebanon. But since Polly’s Vision, everything had changed and pride seemed to have flooded the village, causing its believers to labor harder and worship more fully than ever before.
Even with dreary winter darkening the paths long before the sounding of the dinner bell, the sisters around Polly wove and cooked and mended with their faces aglow.
“By this time of year,” Charity told her, “when the very shortness of the day makes it appear to last forever, we are a dour lot. But you have brought us light worth the power of a thousand suns. That is why we laugh so readily, and step lightly over the slippery ground.”
Charity’s faith in her shone more brightly than did any light she might have delivered unto the believers, and though Polly had the sense that they would have been friends no matter what—for she knew Charity to have been the girl who had walked through the fields of her dreams—she could never have imagined such selfless love between two people. When Polly stroked Charity’s arm, tracing the curl of one of her markings, she cherished her friend all the more deeply for the beauty of her imperfection. She admired her strength of devotion, but it was Charity’s humanity that she treasured. It made her feel that, someday, her own invisible markings—the secrets she carried inside—might find acceptance, that she might someday be able to put the past behind her.
Even so, she was often loath to believe Charity’s unwavering convictions. It was true that the brethren bowed their heads when they passed, half in greeting and half to hide their shy smiles. And that the sisters, save for the few who envied the attention her gift had brought her, treated her with warmth and respect. She had nothing to which she could compare such appreciation. At home, she had been called a lazy whore-child, worth less than the dirt on which she stood. To acknowledge her influence here, to allow herself to accept that her Vision had affected others in such a profound way—oh, how happy she would be if only she could. But, unfamiliar with being at the center of things, she could not comprehend that she was the shaft around which the wheels spun.
“Sister,” Elder Caleb called to her one evening as she left the dairy, having returned to attend to some chores she had been unable to finish earlier in the day. She was late for the small nightly Meeting held in the North Family dwelling house. This was a time for learning new songs and dances, and Polly had come to enjoy the gatherings. Unlike Sabbath Day Meeting, they were light affairs—suffused with seriousness of purpose and respect for the operations to be mastered, yet leavened as well with moments of laughter between sister and brother. She worried she might miss the event if the elder kept her too long, but there was little she could do a
bout it. One did not give short shrift to the most revered believer in The City of Hope.
“Elder Brother Caleb,” she answered, lowering her gaze. “Good evening to you.”
He hurried towards her, his shoes squeaking on the new-fallen snow, his breath coming in rapid puffs that dissolved in the winter air. “I shan’t keep you, I promise. I have been meaning to speak to you for some time now, but you are either surrounded by sisters and ministers, or hard at work. Indeed, rarely have I known so busy a new believer!”
“I would have asked Elder Sister Agnes to bring me to you myself had I known your wishes,” Polly answered. Was it ruder to avert her gaze or to acknowledge him fully? She had learned that it was highly unusual for a sister to find herself alone with one of the brethren—even an elder—and she worried that a passerby might be shocked by the impropriety.
But Elder Brother Caleb seemed not the least bit concerned. “Visionist that you are, I would not expect you to predict my intentions,” he said, smiling. “I merely wanted to inquire as to how you are faring under the burden of so much attention. Elder Sister Agnes says that it affects you not a whit. Indeed, she notes that you appear to have stepped with surprising ease into your new role.”
He paused a moment as though he had arrived at a fork in the road of the conversation and was considering which turn to take. He chose the smoother path and looked all the more relieved to have done so. “Whatever my esteemed Elder Sister says, I wonder if there might be another side to finding oneself suddenly beholden to such expectation.”
The Visionist: A Novel Page 12