by J. S. Volpe
“Well, today you will learn the whole sad story.” He beckoned them on. They followed.
Not far beyond the throne-room painting two closed doors faced each other across the corridor. Mr. May led them through the door on the left and into a large parlor with burgundy carpeting and dark wood wainscoting. Most of the furniture looked antique, the only obvious exceptions being a green leather couch situated against the east wall to the right of the door, an entertainment center that took up most of the north wall, and a pair of metal file cabinets that flanked the floor-to-ceiling window in the south wall.
But what caught Cynthia’s attention more than anything else was a painting on the wall directly opposite the door. She stepped forward to examine it. Calvin joined her.
The painting showed an old wooden door set into a wall composed of large stone blocks. A door in a castle, perhaps. Or a cellar. The door stood open a crack, and through the crack streamed a line of bright white light that split the shadows of the dark stone room like an axe cleaving wood. The painting was so photorealistic it was like looking through a window into another room.
“Is this another painting by my, um…” Cynthia frowned. “My what was it?”
“Your great-great-uncle,” Mr. May said. “And yes. There are two more by him upstairs, actually.”
“How come they’re over here? How come we don’t have any in our house?”
“I couldn’t tell you. Maybe after what happened to him, your family saw them as a too-painful reminder of the tragedy and put them in storage or got rid of them.”
“What tragedy? What happened to him?”
“We’ll get to that. First things first, though.” He motioned at the green couch. “Have a seat. Would you like anything to eat or drink? This will take a little while. Or perhaps more than a little.”
“No, thank you,” said Cynthia as she and Calvin edged around a low, black coffee table to sit down.
“Yeah, I just had lunch, like, half an hour ago,” Calvin said. “So I’m good.”
Cynthia pretended to have trouble maneuvering around the table and thereby allowed Calvin to sit down first. She was afraid that if she sat down first, he would use the opportunity to sit close to her. Not invasively close, of course; he was a nice guy. But in this case, even a little close was a bad idea.
After he was settled, she sat down an arm’s length away. He glanced at her. He looked a little baffled and hurt that she hadn’t sat closer. She pretended she didn’t notice.
Mr. May carefully lowered himself into a claw-and-ball armchair across the coffee table from the couch. He propped his cane against the side of the chair, then settled back with a small sigh.
“Now, then,” he said. “What do you know about this area before the settlers arrived?”
In unison Calvin and Cynthia blurted out “Passenger pigeons!” They looked at each other in surprise, then laughed.
“Why passenger pigeons, of all things?” Mr. May asked.
“Mr. McCready was telling us about them in Biology last week,” Cynthia said.
“Yeah,” Calvin said. “He said there were flocks of them so big they’d blot out the sky for a couple of days straight.”
Mr. May nodded. “I believe I read somewhere that the passenger pigeon population exceeded that of any other animal at the time. There were literally billions of them in North America. There was nothing else like them in the world. So of course our noble forefathers killed them all, mainly for sport. By the time anyone realized what was happening, the birds were nearly extinct and it was too late to change the course of events. The last known specimen died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.”
“Sickening,” Cynthia said, shaking her head.
May grunted. “Yes, well, if you want an uplifting subject, avoid history at all costs. At any rate, it wasn’t just pigeons that made their home here in those days. This region was one vast, unbroken forest, teeming with all manner of life. There were elk, cougars, bears, even wolverines. But more importantly, there were the Mima.”
“Oh, yeah!” Calvin said. “The Indians. There’s a display about them at the library.”
“Native Americans,” Cynthia corrected him.
He shrugged. “Same thing.”
She tutted.
“Technically, neither term is accurate,” Mr. May said. “They thought of themselves only as the Mima. They occupied these lands as early as 1200 AD. It is estimated that when the Europeans arrived in North America, the Mima numbered well over a thousand. But the Europeans brought strange new diseases against which the indigenous peoples had no inborn resistance, and plagues spread far in advance of the white man. By the time the first settlers came rattling into the area in their wagons in 1799, barely two hundred Mima remained.”
“Yay progress,” Cynthia muttered.
“In most respects the Mima were similar to other tribes in this region. They hunted, fished, and farmed, built palisaded villages, had the occasional war with their neighbors, et cetera, et cetera. What is of interest to us are their curious beliefs regarding this area. They considered the land around the bend in the Kanseeka to be sacred, especially Indian Hill. They believed a mighty being called Wakansa dwelt inside the hill or in the tunnels underneath the hill. Wakansa was variously described as a god, a spirit, a great war chief, a giant winged serpent, and the child of a god. He (or it) was said to be sleeping, but would one day awaken during a time of great chaos and lead the remnants of the tribe to a new land of peace and plenty while the rest of the world fell into ruin.
“Spirit Cave was the entrance to Wakansa’s lair, but entering it was taboo. And frightening, at least to the superstitious. Back then, the cave had an unusual acoustical property. To anyone standing inside it, the hiss of the nearby waterfall was distorted into what sounded like dozens of softly whispering voices. The Mima believed that these voices belonged to the mysterious spirits who attended to Wakansa in his slumber. Hence, the cave of the spirits, or Spirit Cave. The phenomenon was so eerie and convincing that even the supposedly rational white men avoided the cave, and the land around it remained unsettled and undeveloped for decades.
“When the settlers began to arrive in this area, the Mima’s chief was a man named Firebird. At first he welcomed the settlers with open arms, but as the trees fell and the animals vanished, he came to recognize that the white men were a threat to the Mima’s way of life. Not sure what to do about it, he undertook a vision quest atop Indian Hill, hoping for enlightenment. For several days and nights, he sat alone atop the hill, eating no food and drinking only rainwater when it fell. When he descended, gaunt and half dead, he announced that he had been granted a great vision, which revealed that the prophesized time of chaos had come and that the tribe must awaken Wakansa so that he could whisk them away to the promised wonder-world of legend. To effect that awakening, a special ceremony had to be held atop Indian Hill, a ceremony unlike anything in Mima tradition. Under Firebird’s instructions, the tribe set to work getting it ready. A large bonfire was constructed atop the hill. Special clothes were made. New music, chants, and dances were learned. The ceremony would climax with a special sacrifice to Wakansa, the precise nature of which Firebird refused to divulge in advance.”
“Let me guess,” Calvin said: “It was one of the settlers.”
Mr. May chuckled. “Not quite. The ceremony was held one night in late October, 1804. The settlers knew nothing of it until they were awakened shortly before midnight by manic drumming and chanting. They peeked out of their cabins, saw the bonfire blazing atop the hill and the shadowy figures cavorting in its orange light, then promptly ducked back inside and barred the doors. They lay awake, listening in mounting alarm for over an hour as the music swelled to a wild crescendo and then crashed to an abrupt halt. In the silence that followed, the settlers found it impossible to sleep. The music had been so violent, so frenzied, that they imagined the Indians, stirred to bloodlust, stalking through the woods with knives between their teeth. But the res
t of the night passed quietly, and the next day they learned from the confused, saddened Mima what had actually happened.
“The whole tribe had gathered on the hill, and the ceremony was performed according to Firebird’s instructions. As the ceremony reached its climax, all eyes turned to Firebird, eager to see what the sacrifice would be. Firebird strode up to the edge of the bonfire and cried out a last plea for Wakansa to arise. Then he drew his knife, drove it into his heart, and plunged dead into the fire. The music stopped. The dancing stopped. Everyone stared in horror as the flames consumed Firebird’s corpse.”
“Holy crap!” Calvin said.
Cynthia shook her head, frowning. “I don’t get it. Why would he do that?”
“He thought he was doing what was best for his people,” Mr. May said. “If you believe in magic, the act is not without its logic. Magic is said to work best when it involves the arousal of psychic or emotional energy, and the quickest and easiest way to arouse such energy is via the breaking of a powerful taboo. That’s why human sacrifice and various forms of sexual debauchery figure into so many magical rituals. In this case the human sacrifice was the magician himself.”
“How do you know so much about this stuff?” Cynthia asked.
“I’m well-rounded.”
“Do you actually believe in magic?” Calvin asked.
Mr. May hesitated. “Let’s not get sidetracked at the moment. We have a lot of history to cover. Suffice to say, Firebird’s particular brand of magic won’t be winning any converts. As a glance out the window will show, the ceremony was an abject failure.”
“I’ll say,” Cynthia said.
“The final fate of the Mima isn’t really germane to what I have to tell you, but it’s briefly stated. After Firebird’s death, the Mima fell under the sway of Firebird’s eldest son Ten Bears. Ten Bears hated the whites, and on the eve of the War of 1812 he convinced most of the tribe to pack up their belongings and head west to join Tecumseh’s Confederacy against the Americans. The Mima made it only halfway through Phoenix Township before they were ambushed by a gang of settlers who had learned of the Mima’s plans. Trapped in a clearing with the settlers firing upon them from the surrounding woods, every last Mima was massacred in less time than it takes to tell.”
Cynthia’s upper lip drew back in disgust. “That’s awful.”
“To be fair, it was a time of conflict, and the Mima’s intentions were decidedly hostile.”
“You said he convinced ‘most of the tribe’ to go,” Calvin said. “What about the others?”
“The others consisted only of Firebird’s younger son Laughing Fox and his family. Unlike his belligerent brother, Laughing Fox was a quiet, thoughtful man who had always gravitated more to the invisible world of the shaman than the blood-and-guts world of the warrior. On the same day Ten Bears led the rest of the Mima on their ill-fated journey, Laughing Fox and his family visited a settler named Klaus Kirchener. Kirchener had always tried to maintain friendly relations with the Indians, and he and Laughing Fox had developed a peaceable, respectful relationship. Laughing Fox told Kirchener that he was taking his family to safer climes and had stopped by merely to thank Kirchener for his kindness over the years and to wish him farewell. Touched, Kirchener gave Laughing Fox and his family some extra provisions to help them on their journey, then bid them adieu and watched them ride away southward.
“And with that the Mima vanish from history.”
Chapter 10
Echoes (II)
“I’ll bet Laughing Fox and his family got massacred, too,” Cynthia said with a sigh.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. May. “But there’s no way to know.”
“Or maybe they went underground,” Calvin said. “And they’ve been, like, building up a secret society to overthrow white America and put the Indians back in charge.”
Cynthia smiled and shook her head. “You’ve been reading too many comic books.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“So what happened next?” Cynthia asked Mr. May.
“What happened was, the township (which was then known as Indian Hill) was overrun with settlers who cut down most of the trees, used the dead trees to build cabins and mills and stores, held elections, worked, drank, bred, and so on and so forth. Our ancestors”—he said this with a nod at Cynthia—“Nathaniel Crow and John May, arrived in 1829. There isn’t much to say about them, really. They were old friends and business associates from Maryland who came here because they thought there were heaps of money to be made along what was then the frontier. And there was. For them, anyway. They bought up vast swaths of local real estate, built a hemp mill—”
“Hemp?” Calvin exclaimed with a grin.
Cynthia clucked her tongue. “They didn’t smoke it. They made, like, clothes out of it. I think.” She looked at Mr. May. “Right?”
“They made all kinds of things out of it,” Mr. May said. “Clothes, rope, paper. Even early American flags were made from the stuff. It was—and is—a useful substance. Unfortunately, it wasn’t useful enough, at least not then and there, for the mill lost money, and John and Nathaniel were forced to close it down after a while.
“Being stolid, unimaginative fellows, John and Nathaniel didn’t give any credence to stories about whispering spirits, so they bought up all the land around Spirit Cave and built large houses there. There’s an old story handed down in my family that not long after settling here, John tried to tear up the Stone Pillar. He hitched a team of oxen to it but they couldn’t budge it. He dug around its base, hoping to unearth it, but it extended down and down into the earth with no end in sight. Finally he gave up and left the pillar where it was. I have no idea if this story is true. I never made any attempt to confirm it, though perhaps I should have. If he wanted it removed, though, one wonders why he didn’t simply smash the aboveground portion to bits with a sledgehammer and leave the rest in the ground like an old tree root.”
“It would’ve sucked if he had,” Calvin said. “I like the pillar.”
“As do I. Which is why I’m reluctant to start digging around it merely to check a probably apocryphal story.
“Anyway, lest this turn into some tedious blow-by-blow of family history, let’s fast forward to 1871. By this point Nathaniel and John were dead, and their sons, Hamilton Crow and Turner May, had assumed control of the family fortunes. And under their guidance, the fortunes had grown quite large. In 1853 Turner had had the idea to convert the hemp mill into a brewery, and the May-Crow Brewing Company was born. It proved a resounding success. Booze is always big business. The town and the two families grew fat and rich practically overnight. In an expression of gratitude the town officially changed its name to May in honor of Turner.
“But not everyone was fat and rich, and instead of gratitude some felt only envy and spite. One such man was Luther Jones, a down-on-his-luck drifter who had come to town in search of a job in the summer of 1870. He had, in fact, found many jobs, but hadn’t been able to hold any of them longer than a few weeks thanks to his chronic drinking and explosive temper. There are also references to his engaging in long, heartfelt conversations with people no one else could see or hear, which suggests he suffered from some form of mental illness. Jones had most recently been fired from a job as night watchman at the brewery because he spent the whole night drinking the very product he was meant to be guarding. It was Turner May himself who had caught Jones, and as a result Jones came to loathe Turner, not only for catching him but for being everything Jones was not and would never be: rich, powerful, respected.
“Tragedy struck on October 8, 1871. That night, after a dinner at home, Turner May and his oldest son James headed over to the Crow house to discuss business matters with Hamilton Crow. This was around seven-thirty p.m. They remained at the Crow house until nearly eleven, and then the three of them headed to the May house to round out their evening with a sample of an imported brandy Turner had recently bought. They planned to do so quietly, for they expecte
d Turner’s wife Abigail and the other three children to be in bed.
“When they entered the clearing in which the May house stood, they spotted Luther Jones darting into the woods on the north side. A moment later they saw firelight flickering in the house’s first floor windows. While Hamilton set off in pursuit of Luther Jones, Turner and James raced into the house to rescue their family. They found Abigail’s nude corpse laid out on the dining room table, the silver candlestick that had been used to bash in her skull lying on the carpet nearby. They tried searching for the children, but fires blazed everywhere on the first floor, and the stairs to the second floor, where the bedrooms were, were blocked behind a wall of flame. They shouted the children’s names, but received no reply before the choking black smoke forced them outside.
“Turner sent James to find help, then continued calling for his other children in hopes they were only asleep and he could awaken them in time. But the second floor was as still as a tomb except for thin wisps of smoke curling out from the bottoms of the windows. He grabbed a ladder from the shed out back, but by the time he had dragged it into position against the side of the house, flames were already licking the insides of the second-storey windowpanes. He clambered up the ladder anyway, hoping against hope. As he neared the top, the window above him burst, spraying him with glass and flames and sending him plummeting to the ground. Aside from a sprained wrist he was physically unhurt. But psychologically he was devastated, for he knew there was now no hope of saving his children. He sank to his knees, screaming, as his neighbors, roused by James, came rushing into the yard to help. It was, of course, too late for help, and all they could do was comfort Turner while his world turned to ash. As for young James, after hysterically awakening half the town, he was taken to the Crow house, where he remained all night, looked after by Hamilton’s wife Deborah.”
“Are they sure the other children were in the house?” Calvin asked. “I mean, did they actually find their bodies?”
Mr. May nodded. “The bodies were found in the wreckage later. Given that the house had collapsed by then and the bodies were burnt to cinders, it was impossible to tell whether the children had been alive or dead when the house burned, or even precisely where in the house they had been. The sad and awful truth is, the details of whatever happened in the May house that night—what Jones’s purpose was, why Abigail was positioned on the table like that, what if anything Jones had done to the children—all of that will remain forever unknown. Perhaps it’s best that way.”