Cloudsplitter

by Russell Banks

  There was a long silence as he pondered this. Finally, “Why?”

  “To fight slavery there.”

  More silence. Then, “Doing the Lord’s work?”

  “Right.”

  “Good. That’s real good.”

  “Yep.”

  A little further down the road, he said, “But what about Father? He won’t like this, Owen.”

  “Maybe not, at least at first. But don’t worry, he’ll come along soon to Kansas himself. He won’t let you and me and the boys do the Lord’s work, while he stays out east doing Mister Perkins’s. Anyhow, John says there’s going to be shooting in Kansas before long. That’ll bring the Old Man on. He hates it when he can’t give us the order to fine,”I said, and laughed, and he laughed with me.

  So on we went, walking and sometimes hitching rides on wagons, barges, canal boats, moving slowly west and south into the territory of Kansas—a one-armed man and a gelded man, two wounded, penniless, motherless brothers marching off to do the Lord’s work in the war against slavery. In this wide world there was nothing better for us to do. There was nothing useful that anyone wanted us to do, except to stay home and take care of the place and the women, which neither of us wanted to do and neither could do properly, either. We had to be good for something, though: we were sons of John Brown, and we had learned early in our lives that we did not deserve to live otherwise. So we were going off to Kansas to be good at killing. Our specialty would be killing men who wished to own other men.

  Chapter 17

  At first in Kansas was the waiting—waiting for the Old Man to bring us the new-style, breech-loading Sharps rifles and horses and winter gear for waging war against the Border Ruffians, waiting for Father to raise abundant funds and supplies in Syracuse and Akron and decide to come out to Kansas after all—the same as when, after Kansas, we waited out the winter in Iowa; and then, still later, as when we huddled together in the cold, unlit upstairs room of the Kennedy farmhouse outside Harpers Ferry and waited for Father to return empty-handed from his final, fateful meeting with Frederick Douglass, so that the assault on the Ferry could begin at last. We were always waiting for Father in those days; and it was every time in the same, humiliating way—quarrelsome, disgruntled, in confusion and disarray, incompetent, undisciplined, often physically ill, and all our best intentions and his careful instructions gone somehow weirdly awry, as if we secretly meant to sabotage him, we the loyal, dependent sons and followers of John Brown lying in our cots, cold and damp, scowling up at the ceiling or into the walls, filled with dread at the thought of the Old Man’s arrival, and yet at the same time nearly giddy with impatience for him to come and darken the portal with his familiar shape and lower his head and walk into the tent, there to kneel down by one of us, the sickest, always the sickest, whom Father could identify at a glance, and which was John at that time when the Old Man first arrived out there in Kansas at the pathetic encampment we called Browns Station. My waiting, of course, was more colored by dread and impatience even than that of my brothers, for, in coming out here with Fred, I had disobeyed the Old Man and needed to know how he viewed me now.

  John had gone down with the ague, but it had gotten worse, and soon he was taking short, shallow breaths, as if his lungs had gotten enflamed. Feverish and shivering, subject to visions and spurts of wild, incoherent speech, he had been sick for a month by the time Fred and I got there from Akron. We had taken the old river-route down the Ohio and up to St. Louis by the Missouri, and when we got to Browns Station, we found John unable to eat and barely able to sip water, despite the tireless, silent care of his wife, Wealthy. And it was not long before Fred and I, too, lay wrapped in all our clothes and blankets in the cots on either side of John, whom we followed close behind in the degree of our sickness, I, like him, with the ague, and Fred, weakened from our travels and still healing from his terrible wound, unable to act without being led by one of his brothers. Neither of us could provide leadership for him. Or perhaps, in our chilled despondency, neither of us wished to. So he had simply imitated me, as if I were imitating John. And perhaps I was.

  It was not yet the dead of winter, it was, in fact and by the calendar, still autumn, and the snow was not so bad as it would have been by now in North Elba. Yet I had never felt so cold up there in the eastern mountains as out here on the western plain. It was as if in Kansas the sun had gone out permanently. The icy, relentless wind off the flat expanse of land blew day and night and froze our clothes and hair and the beards of the men and stiffened our faces and rubbed our hands raw and made our bones feel like iron and never ceased blowing against the tents, snapping them like sails in a hurricane, threatening all night and day to tear the canvas from the poles and rip the guy-lines and stakes from the hardened ground and expose our poor, blanketed bodies to the low, gray western sky, as if they had been put out there by the Indians for the coyotes and vultures to devour and for the old Indian gods to receive into paradise.

  Was it true that I had not seen Jason and his wife, Ellen, for weeks? They seemed to have withdrawn permanently to their own tent, on their adjacent claim, not physically ill, as we were, but demoralized, withdrawn, selfish, and still stunned with seemingly endless grief over the death of their little boy, Austin, whose body they had been forced to bury and abandon back in Missouri. They had crossed the river en route from Ohio in late summer, and during the brief trespass upon a corner of the slaveholders’ evil land, as if under a curse, they had lost their only child to cholera. The disease had slain half the passengers of the boat, and with the exception of poor Austin, all the victims were Missouri Border Ruffians and their families coming across to Kansas to claim the territory for slavery. Jason’s and Ellen’s beloved little boy had been snagged by that rough justice and died, a compensatory price too high for them yet to comprehend.

  When John and Jason and their matched families decided to come out from Ohio, after their farms had been ruined by the terrible drought of the previous year, it was in search of new, cheap land, so as to start their lives over. But they also came to wage war against the slavers and to capture the Kansas Territory for the North. Thus it was both a rational, opportunistic thing to do—and there were thousands like them from all over the North, doing it for no other reason—and one that glowed with abolitionist righteousness as well. This was the sort of venture that had always appealed to John, but it had the added benefit of allowing him, by emphasizing the moral aspects of the venture, to advertise it effectively to Jason, who had not been as quick to leave the dried remnants of his Ohio orchards as was John to abandon his scorched, hardcake fields. So while Jason and Ellen had gone out willingly, they had not gone eagerly, and perhaps for that reason, the death of their son, Austin, and the need to abandon his body in a shallow grave on a bluff overlooking the river in slaveholding Missouri had made the couple quickly bitter. And there was the painful, ever-present fact that John and Wealthy had their little son, John, whom they called Tonny, still with them. John’s and Wealthy’s good luck, then, might have contributed, too, to the sourish relations that prevailed between the brothers and their wives when Fred and I first arrived at Browns Station, bedraggled, like a couple of tramps, many months later.

  In a flurry of letters to Father in North Elba and then to him in Pittsburgh and to me in Ohio while I was watching over Fred, John had written that, to survive the surprisingly violent Kansas weather and the rapid influx of Border Ruffians from Missouri, he needed soldiers, cohorts, reinforcements; he wanted up-to-date weapons and cows and swine, blankets, grain, dried beef and salt fish: he was awaiting the arrival of the makings of an invading army. What he had got instead was a pair of scrawny, exhausted refugees carrying no more than their blanket-rolls and their twenty-year-old muzzle-loaders. We must have been a disappointing sight, Fred and I, that morning when we arrived at the camp, one of us blank-eyed and struck dumb by the enormity of his self-mutilation, still hitching himself along with a rough crutch, and the other, me, a nervy man with a cr
ippled arm glancing back over his shoulder with the wariness and guilt of a criminal, our clothes shabby and dirty from our arduous journey, bringing to our brothers in their place of brave settlement, this desolate place where they had chosen to make their permanent homes and take their self-defining stand against slavery, nothing but our craven needs for comfort and love.

  But if we were disappointing to them, they and their settlement were just as much a let-down to us, for we saw, not the neat log cabins and lean-tos amongst the cottonwood groves and broad, fresh streams and high, grassy meadows of Kansas that we expected and that John had described to us in his letters. We saw instead a pair of tattered, flapping tents, a single, broken-wheeled wagon, cold firestoves outside, four bony horses nibbling at the frozen turf. And over all, a pervasive gloom and lassitude—an atmosphere worsened by John’s illness and by Jason’s and Ellen’s withdrawal to the privacy of their own tent, which they had pitched on their land claim several hundred yards down the draw from John’s and Wealthy’s towards the Osawatomie River.

  On our arrival, Fred and I had visited and greeted them separately, as if they were John’s jealous and unhappy neighbors, instead of his beloved younger brother and sister-in-law sharing a calamity; afterwards, we had encamped up on the ridge in John’s second tent, and that made Jason and Ellen think that we had chosen John and Wealthy over them. And when, in a few days, I fell sick myself, it was simpler for me to move in with John, where Wealthy could the more easily tend us both, and then Fred followed, perhaps because he knew not what else to do and now hated being alone with his thoughts. He came into the tent and placed his bedroll on the other side of John, so that there were three of us lying there, crowded into a single small, dark space, whilst poor Wealthy tried to keep the fire going outside, despite the wind and the snow and the lack of good, dry firewood, caring for us as if we had been shot and wounded in battle instead of having declined spiritually into a muck of despondency and sloth and after a while had weakened and got physically sick as well.

  Wealthy had her poor, confused son, Tonny, beside her at every step, clinging to the folds of her dress and whimpering all day and night about the cold and from constant hunger and showing even then the first signs of slowness that would later grow into retardation and cause her and John so much sadness and worry. But if she had not had him there, I believe that Wealthy would have walked on one of those long winter nights straight into the darkness that surrounded us then and disappeared, only to be found days later, frozen to death in some gully. For she was as angry then as any woman I have ever seen in my life. She was silent, and she fumed. And with every good reason. John, Jason, Fred, and I, we were all of us pitiful, shameful specimens of manhood. We were not worthy of her; nor of Jason’s wife, either. Here we were, the four eldest sons of the great John Brown, four sickly, miserable fools, foundering in gloom, gone all weak and cowardly. I confess it, it was the women who were strong and they who, to all intents and purposes, kept us alive, until the winter morning when the Old Man finally arrived and began to set everything straight.

  And it happened just as I imagined it would. Just as I hoped and dreaded it would. The tent flap was drawn suddenly away, and against a milk-white sky loomed the dark, familiar shape of Father in his broad-brimmed black hat and his greatcoat. He entered the tent, glanced quickly around in that expressionless way of his when he has come upon something complicated and unfamiliar, surveying the scene with as little emotion as possible, until he has acquired from it all the information necessary for a proper response, which in this case was to go straight to John, who in his delirium and fever had neither seen nor heard the Old Man enter, whereas both Fred and I, like startled rabbits, had sat up at once.

  In silence, the Old Man felt John’s forehead and then bent his head to his eldest son’s chest and listened to his clotted lungs and his heart. Behind him I saw shades flitting beyond the thin canvas, rough profiles of other people moving about outside, and heard the creak and clank of saddles and harness and the low voices of my brothers Salmon and Oliver, which surprised me, for I had thought Father was coming out alone, and I heard a male voice that I did not at first recognize, then the voices of the women, Wealthy and Ellen, and Jason, too, as if a crowd had gathered out there.

  In a somber voice, Father said his first words to us: “We’ve got to place a fire in here and set a kettle of water to steaming and clear his lungs. I don’t suppose you boys have any stovepipe handy, or you’d have already done that.”

  I shook my head no, and Father stood up and passed by me without saying anything more. For a second, he paused over Fred and looked down at him with great sadness. In a thin, apologetic voice, almost a child’s, Fred said, “It’s John and Owen who are sick, Father. Not me so much.”

  “Yes, I know. And I know about your injury, son. Owen wrote me of it. We’ll sit and have us a proper talk later,” was his response, and he went directly out. He said nothing to me then of my having disobeyed him, nor did he speak of it afterwards. It was as if his silence on the subject were my punishment, for it did, indeed, feel like one.

  Things changed quickly then. Father set everyone to work at once—even me and Fred. Even, in a sense, John, who was obliged, with Wealthy’s help, to change out of his filthy, damp clothing, and after washing himself from a basin of water heated on the fire that Salmon had quickly got blazing outside, he put on some of Salmon’s and Oliver’s extra garments, which were his size and, more importantly, were dry and clean, and then Wealthy wrapped him in several of the fresh blankets that Father had brought and propped him up in his cot, so that his lungs could expand somewhat, Father said, and still following the Old Man’s instructions, she shaved her husband’s scruffy beard and combed out his matted hair.

  Father gave few explanations; he merely gave orders, and then set to work himself. “Jason, you and Salmon pack in from yonder grove of cottonwoods as much deadwood as you can find in an hour. Then start a greenwood smokefire and cut and dry us a few of those old oaks.

  “Ellen, you go on down to your stake there below and empty out your tent. Fumigate and scrub it clean, air out all your blankets, and tighten those slack ropes up a mite. And when you put your things back inside, leave the rear wall clear, as we’ll be setting a campstove there.

  “Wealthy, when you’ve finished shaving John, you do the same as Ellen with these two tents up here. And why’n’t you put little Tonny to work right away at carrying out as much as he can lift by himself? The lad needs to know he’s useful.

  “Oliver, here’s the money and a list of items to purchase in town. Start now and be back before midday, so we can have our stoves set up by nightfall. Unload the wagon first, my boy, we’ll be needing some of those goods and tools right off’

  He helped Oliver wrestle down a barrel of salt, another of corn meal, many new gray woolen blankets, a large supply of dried Adirondack venison mixed with berries, Indian-style, and axes, spades, half a dozen unmarked wooden crates, and a pine box, carefully fitted and sanded smooth, which I thought might contain rifles, for it was the right size and Father himself lifted it from the wagon and carried it with considerable delicacy to a knoll a short ways off, where he set it down on the ground and then for a short time stood motionless over it, as if in prayer, before returning to the encampment.

  To my surprise and pleasure, besides having recruited Salmon and Oliver, Father had brought out from North Elba our neighbor and brother-in-law Henry Thompson. Henry was the most fervent abolitionist of all the sixteen Thompson sons, a tall, strapping, young fellow who idolized Father. The Old Man instructed him to begin at once building a proper corral for the horses, and he told me and Fred to take ourselves off with him and give him what help we could. “A little movement and fresh air will improve you,” he said, and we instantly complied, and of course he was right—in a short while, quite as if we had been able-bodied all along but merely had not known it, both Fred and I were cutting and dragging poles from down by the river up to a narrow de
file close to the camp where Father had determined was the best location for a corral. Later on, by midday, as ordered, Oliver returned from the town of Osawatomie with stovepipe and three tin campstoves, and Father promptly installed one in each tent, and when he and Oliver had them properly working, he sent Oliver off to commence digging a proper privy and then turned to educating Wealthy as to the best care and treatment of John, whose color, now that he was breathing more easily, had already begun returning to his face.

  In half a day, Father had turned Browns Station from a place of desolation into a proper frontier settlement. The tents were tightened against the wind, and with sweet-smelling streams of woodsmoke flowing from their tin chimneys, they looked secure and warm, even cheerful, situated in the protective crook of a narrow, forested cut that switch-backed down a long, grassy decline to the meandering river below. Spade and crowbar scraped against dirt and stone, hammers pounded stakes and drove nails, and axes and handsaws bit into wood, sending blond chips and sawdust flying. The air was filled with the bright clatter of leafless trees falling, of brothers calling to one another through the cold afternoon as the light began to fade—the sound of men happily at work, eager to finish their tasks before dark. There were the startled neighs of horses suddenly released to pasture inside a temporary corral made with a rope strung between trees, the bang and scrape of pots and pans being washed, the snap of wet laundry hung to dry in the breeze, and someone down in the cottonwoods even began to sing—Salmon, I realized; of course, it would be Salmon, for he had the best-pitched, clearest voice of us all and the sharpest memory for the old hymns—and first Father joined in with him, and then one by one the others picked it up, even Fred, even me.

  Who are these, like stars appearing,

  These, before God’s throne who stand?

  Each a golden crown is wearing;