A Reckoning

by Linda Spalding

  But his father hollered: You take my wife and daughters in your hands and remain a fool. How should I trust such intemperance?

  Martin hung a tar bucket under the wagon so the slats could be caulked before a river crossing. Over the ribs, Lavina had stretched two layers of muslin, one dark and one light. These she had coated with hot beeswax and linseed oil and Martin touched them reverently. The wagon was a family effort, although Reuben was responsible for its balance. In what way am I intemperate? Martin queried boldly, praying that the bear would stay hushed, although at this hour she often grew impatient in her stall. Martin’s boldness was unusual, but he was working as a man with Reuben now. He was thirteen years old and useful. He said: How in this family is intemperance possible? He was not sure he knew the definition of the word but he thought it meant drinking spirits like whiskey. A forged iron rod was attached along the length of the wagon tongues to strengthen them. The wheels had been soaked to tighten the wood to the rims. He touched one of them proudly.

  Do not take that tone with me, boy. Not for an instant! I can show you what I mean.

  Rather than dropping his eyes, the boy stared. Winter had fallen hard on his father, whose face showed new lines. Sometimes there was no explanation to his strange orders. Along the sides of the wagon he had demanded closed boxes. Empty, they looked as ominous as coffins.

  Should I not speak as a man, Father? The words came to him as he remembered the scene in the barn with Emly. He could, if he chose to, let his father know that he had heard him in the mule stall. He had practiced some sentences that could broach the subject and show what he knew but now all he said was: I’m not in charge of anything. He could see the moon rising through the open door of the barn and he wanted to take Cuff out for her evening romp. A warm breeze blew in, lifting the sweet smell that rises in the spring as the earth exhales. He could see his uncle’s house in the distance, a place to be looked at by passing travelers. On the bleakest day the sight of that house was worth the three-mile trek from town but Martin took no joy in his gaze of it now that they were forced by his father to live in it. Everyone around knew that it went to Aunt Matilda and now they had nowhere to live because she’d sold it to another family. He had a feeling about all this that he had no name for, but it was a feeling that sat on his skin.

  Martin, you will drive your mother and sisters to Missouri. You will do exactly as you are told and if one crack or crease renders this cart of yours even remotely vulnerable, I will seal it with your hide and I will do it personally if I have to dig you out of a river in the middle of May. John’s voice was a dangerous blast fast growing to rage. You will do as you are told! he repeated, as if he had forgotten what else to say.

  But where will you be? The boy quickly added sir to his question. Where will you be, sir?

  My plans are none of your concern. His father’s arm went up straight as if it held a blade or a staff.

  At this, Martin crouched down on the far side of the wagon. Tongues, spokes, axles were liable to break, but not sons. A beating would be next.

  See that this wagon is worthy or you will have nowhere to live; you will all be stuck in the wilderness, the whole lot of you, your mother and the girls. Rivers are up and roads will be mud. When the wagon train leaves…

  Martin stayed in his crouch.

  …mud will be preferable to homelessness…

  Martin watched his father stride off through the wide door, wondering who would tell his mother that her husband planned to stay behind in the shambles of his life. He stood up. He had made a black walnut table for the road, low to the ground. He was proud of his table, which was more of a bench, a place to put pans and food out in the open while traveling. He had painted Dickinson Partner Ship across the back of the wagon in red script for when Patton met them. Martin began now to think of the coming trip as a nightmare to be endured. Out in the lean-to Lavina had put by more beans. Bacon. Cornmeal. Not destitute, Martin had told a friend who had enrolled with him at Emory and Henry College, but I will not attend classes this coming year.

  His friend had said knowingly: If I was to go out west, I’d go the whole way up the Platte to Oregon. Or California for gold. But no, sir, I’ll finish my schooling and get a certificate, then a wife for company on the trail.

  A wife would be a bother, Martin had said knowingly, although he had no such actual knowledge. In Louisville they might decide to board a boat, and Electa said the riverboats were gay with music, stopping at towns along the way to invite local people aboard. There’ll be dancing, she’d warned, because Electa had been to a school in Asheville and didn’t think dancing was a cardinal sin.

  He compared her with his little sister, who was unbearable. Unbearable, he said to himself, since any bear in the world is easier than Gina, who was never fun to play with and that was because she was spoiled to death. Martin could remember when Lavina had made biblical jokes about her pregnancy because, at forty-three, her condition confused her. Consider Sarah, she said once, trying to make light of her predicament. She had kept it a secret, wearing fuller aprons and staying in the house. Now it was hard to know whether Gina’s slowness was the result of too much cosseting or whether she’d been born with a disadvantage. Mama should let her walk and run out of doors, Electa always said. Spoilt, Gina was, when she kept crying to her mother or climbed into her parents’ bed after a dose of syrup, which they gave her almost every night. But Martin had more serious things to worry about. He let Cuff out of her stall and led her outside. How are we going to get the females to Missouri, bear? He put his face against her fur. You have to help. You know the ways of trees and rivers and creeks. The order of the forest. As usual, he forgot his fears when he ran alongside the bear.

  —

  In his half-brother’s house, John was sitting with Gina on his lap, stroking her hair because this comforted him in much the same way Cuff’s fur calmed Martin. Gina liked to hold on to her papa and listen to his made-up stories, so it was a mutual comfort they found, father and daughter. Tonight John was in a state very near collapse. His eyes were closed and his head was resting on the back of his chair and he was clinging to his child as she clung to him, telling her about a horse named Pete who could fly from pasture to pasture and who one day flew into town and bought a red jacket. A real boughten jacket with brass buttons.

  How did my horse find some money? Gina wondered.

  Her father slowly shook his head. Now where would you get such an idea? It wasn’t your Judy who was flying up and down the streets but that rascally nag named Pete who lives in an onion field and never has a dime to his name. I’ve told you about him, haven’t I?

  Horses don’t care for onions.

  Which is precisely why Pete learned to fly.

  Martin had come in from the barn in time to hear this story. His mother sat at the table with her mending and seemed not to notice his entrance or his walking or his sitting down next to Electa. The room was missing a large, stuffed chair and a patterned carpet. Some things were just the same as they had always been and some things would never be the same again. It all felt tilted. A portrait of Uncle Benjamin’s best horse, about the size of a baking pan, was hanging over the mantel where it had always hung. The horse was dead, but the portrait endured and nobody looked at it as it leaned to the left on its nail. Pete should come with Judy on our wagon trip, Gina mumbled, and Martin stood up and said: Father. Am I taking Judy? There was an edge to his voice, a slight warning. Gina was pulling her fingers through John’s thick beard. Electa rose from her chair and took herself to the door. She lifted the latch very softly and stepped into the evening air. The sun was setting later now. Oblivion. Erasure. Good for her, thought Martin. Good for her but there will be the wagon trip and she’ll have to face it like the rest of us. Again, Martin said: Father, what animals will I take?

  Four cows, John said. Plus Judy.

  Lavina looked up from her mending. Her eyes searched the back of her husband’s head, all she could see of him from wher
e she sat. Mister Dickinson, please turn to face me. She had spent the morning grinding flour at the mill. Middlings. The finest grade was too expensive and they would need a hundred pounds for each of them. Her afternoon had been given to sacking the flour in cotton bags, then in leather pouches.

  John turned his chair into the gaze of the room. I shall not accompany you, Mother. I am too old now for such a trip.

  You are not much older than you were last month when you planned it and only six months older than you were when you sent your son to Missouri to look out for land, which must have been part of your plan. Her voice was vexed. Then she said: And what of your followers, all those believers who want to go with you? Will you just forget about everyone who depends on you? Now she muttered something under her breath. Her hands were shaking and she put down the shirt she was mending. His shirt. Fully aware of herself at that moment in time, she meant to shame him for the thought he had uttered out loud and she set down, as well, the needle, the spool of linen thread. People joined the train on your recommendation, she hissed angrily, because now she was letting it sink in, what he had said. He had not been making idle conversation. People who need your leadership. And faith. She studied her husband’s face. Faith! Lavina seemed to hold the word in contempt.

  He said: I am no leader. Look at me.

  Lavina brushed both hands over the fabric that covered her knees and looked straight at her husband. She said fiercely: Then I shall go myself.

  Who, after all, was Lavina? Daughter of an innkeeper, she had married John Dickinson shortly after her childhood or while still in the margins of it and she had never, for a moment, looked back. John swore that God was embedded in every stick and stone and footpath. He trod those paths without a shred of fear, gone for days at a time and yet she trusted his return as surely as she trusted the Christians who gave him shelter along the way. But now his unexpected announcement shook Lavina to the heart and bones and deeper than that, all the way to her soul. John had lost his shirt, as he had once put it. Lost pockets and cuffs, lost pride and livelihood to his half-brother and to a faraway bank. As she rose to climb the stairs, Lavina considered that her future would have a whole new set of hurdles to be faced. Alone. She stood without any support and wondered how she would manage without a husband, without John, who was all and everything. But how could she stay? How could she bear the public shame of losing all they had? Where would they live? What was he thinking with nothing left? Stunned and bereft, she let each foot fall firmly on the boards that led to a bed that had once belonged to other women and would soon belong to someone else.

  In bed, this couple usually slept on separate edges of a narrow mattress, facing away from each other as if seeking fresher air. Rarely did his feet brush against hers, or her arm reach out for him. Always, she put his slippers by his side of the bed and pulled the quilt up to her chin and if she moved it was only to rearrange her legs although recently she had taken to using the chamber pot once during the night. There had never been an argument between them. It was not consensus but simply an aversion to disagreement of any kind. She had considered that they were allies, and that seemed right to her. Fine. John consulted her about matters of the church or farm. She consulted him about relations with the town or with Benjamin’s troublesome new wife. The children were shared between them. Lavina was a tall woman with upswept graying hair. Her face, once plump, had sharpened. Her long legs would define future generations. Clothed in the garb of a farmwife, she kept her apron clean. Was she ever ecstatic during the long camp meetings over which her husband presided? She professed to having been saved at the age of sixteen, that being enough for one lifetime, saying: What is the point of being saved all over again? And she would never allow herself to roll or grovel on the ground at anyone’s feet, most especially John’s, who had too much of that sort of homage for his own good.

  The night of John’s surprising announcement, she lay on her back looking up at nothing and wondering what had become of her marriage. The words she had spoken amazed her and certainly she would not take them back. That much of her future was settled, although God’s commandment was that husband come first and wife abide. She turned onto her side with an arm firm against the quilt and felt a ringing right through her that took a minute to recognize. So then, I am furious, she thought. I am furious.

  28

  The next day she was scrubbing at a spot on the floor of her former home, but she lifted her head in order to see what wasn’t there over the mantel, the pretty painting of a girl in a long, gray dress. Electa had taken the picture off the wall and given it to her father, who kept it out in the cabin where no one else would see his daughter’s vanity. A portrait of Electa’s face above a dress that had soft green highlights created by the brush. Now the picture must be gathering dust. Like John, who was also gathering dust.

  The sitting had come about one day when Electa met a man in the village of Rosehill. He had his equipment in a two-wheeled cart that was pulled by a horse so dappled it looked like he’d painted it, and when he leaned forward, he lifted his hat.

  Electa did not ask her parents for permission to sit for the portrait. It was an act of vanity her father would not have permitted. She made an arrangement with the traveling man and kept it to herself, going off to meet him in the front room of a Jonesville house where he had set up his easel. For this she had taken the buggy, on the pretext of selling fresh eggs. In the painter’s borrowed room there was the reek of turpentine, Electa told her mother. And yet she had enjoyed her hour there because the oil painting would be eternal, existing years and years after its subject was old and withered. Clever daughter! She knew that her father would never destroy the picture if it sat in a log cabin on the mantel with a shamble of other useless objects – old saucers and forgotten keys – while in the house where Lavina had raised her children, she was scrubbing at a spot on the floor, a stain that had been there for years, as eternal as a portrait only this one was hers. It was no good turning over an imperfect house to an unseen bill collector. And no one would see her crying for all the spilled milk in the life she’d lived there. A girl knows nothing of love and its shallows. How could she have measured John’s guarantee when she met him at the age of eighteen? She had looked at a pair of blue eyes. She had trusted the eyes and allowed the hands. She had accepted the embrace because a preacher can sound very full of care and concern; it’s his stock and trade. A preacher does not show doubt and that is gratifying, except that intruders would now move into her house and God would no doubt look the other way and bless the fields for him. All that fertility, thought Lavina, who knew herself to be done with birthing, done with anything pertaining to her marriage bed.

  29

  When John called the remaining workers to the barn, it was a Saturday and the courthouse was locked. Tight as a fist. Still, the sheriff would arrive come hell or high water, the sheriff or some agent of the law, and John was bedeviled by a sense of oncoming doom. He had misread the signs. His brother had betrayed all of them. How could such tenderness as he felt for Emly be blamed? Or was it something worse? His own failure to see that he and Benjamin had betrayed their father’s dearest belief and in so doing had betrayed the best part of themselves?

  Habituated to sermonizing, John made a gesture that instructed the men to come up close. Rakel and Clotilde stood back, stuck to the shadows, as was their habit, while John climbed onto a feed box, thinking sight was more impressive than sound to such as surrounded him. He knew each one of them, knew each history, however uneventful, and now he must send them off in a rush without succor or preparation. Many of you have known no other home than this farm, he began rhythmically, closing his eyes and swaying so that his words carried the weight of a pendulum. Back and forth, round and round. This farm built by my father and given to my brother for the upkeep of us all…He opened his eyes. Jule was jumpy, as if caught in a crime. John commenced speaking again, licking his lips to encourage sound. Now that we are to be overtaken…he flung out his
arms and raised his voice to a fever pitch, gulping back sorrow and consternation at all that had plagued them to this final point…well then, now you are to have your unsought freedom! This Very Day. Herein! Knowing that I thank you for your abiding loyalty, you are, he continued, to be manumitted this morning by my hand, never to return here again. (He felt tears spring to his eyes at that, and shook them away.) I tell you that I am giving you each a letter to prove you are free. But you will be thrown upon your own resources from this day forward! From this day forth, you will be held responsible for your conduct, which is overseen by God, your heavenly father. See that you dress yourselves decently, and always be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the Devil, is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Do not think that your trials are ended when I place this letter in your hands, for in truth your troubles are just beginning. He felt the sharp edge of sentiment cut at his heart and paused. He had lived with his father’s disappointment in Benjamin’s decision to purchase human beings and here was the awful result of that lust for wealth. He chewed on the thought of his brother’s greed and the duty he owed to these servants. The woman Rakel had been there for years, cosseted and protected when she had unaccountably lost her reason. That was the system, give and take. Her manumission paper would reside in some pocket until called upon by a roadside bully. What if that person ripped it to pieces or snatched it away? Who would protect these people who had never had to fend for themselves, who had lived under the care of a man who fed and clothed them day after day? He thought of Emly’s attempt to save herself and her children by whispering his Christian name. He surveyed the faces below him. Young Jim, Abe, Tom, healthy fellows. They’ll be all right, he assured himself. But, the others? John raised his voice: I beseech you to make haste, as there stand in your way those who will try to bring you back! He looked at them sadly, shaking his head to make the point. Those who will try to claim you! Yes. Go straight for the Northern states, even if you must follow the stars to do it. Do not tarry. Consider this letter your ticket. Avoid the cities. Stay with farming, which is all you know. The man who hires you will know your worth. Be honest in your labor and the Lord God prosper you until He shall call you home.