by William Bell
Elizabeth Maitland mentioned Jubal as well as Hannah. Although he was not allowed in the house — Nevil objected “on principle” to having a black man, but not a black woman, under his roof — he sometimes played his harmonica for Elizabeth, who suffered from “the sway of a dark mood” sometimes. I guessed that meant she was depressed.
Another thing Elizabeth hid from Nevil was Hannah’s skill in medicine. She gathered plants and made her own “decoctions” and had more than once helped cure the Maitland children’s illnesses. She also served as a midwife to some of the black women in the area and, Elizabeth hinted, a few of the whites as well.
I read on. It was 1830.
Poor Hannah, so lost since Jubal passed on, and so heart-broken that the African congregation insisted that he could not be buried in the Methodist cemetery, but only on the edge of the hallowed ground. She blames herself, poor woman, though she would not, at first, say why. It was only after no little coaxing on my part that she admitted to me, as a friend, for such we regarded one another, that Jubal was rejected because Hannah practiced what she obliquely called the “old religion.”
I stood up and stretched the kinks out of my back, and was surprised to find it was almost ten o’clock. I put the diary and my notes in an old leather satchel Dad kept in the office and, balancing the box of cold pizza in one hand, turned out the lights and locked the back door.
As I drove to Silverwood, I went over in my mind what I had learned. Raphaella and I had pegged the mystery — or part of it. But what was the “old religion,” and why was it so bad — in the eyes of others — that the congregation had rejected Jubal and Hannah?
Elizabeth was quite a character — educated, intelligent, tolerant when many in her area, like her husband, were not. It must have been tough to leave the civilized life at York and set up house in the bush, bring babies into the world, work from dawn till dusk. I wondered what she looked like. What color was her hair? Her eyes? Was she slender, stout, or tall like Hannah?
Like a rock falling on my head, a thought hit me. I had no idea what Elizabeth looked or sounded like. But I knew what Hannah Duvalier looked and sounded like, because I had seen her ghost.
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I almost called Raphaella to tell her what I’d found out, but remembered at the last minute that I couldn’t. So I took a shower that did little to wash the musty odor of the diary from my hands, then went to bed. I’d like to say that I felt brave, but I left lights burning in the kitchen and living room, as well as over the door. Surrounded by spirits and voices from the distant past, I felt that I was being set up for some kind of revelation, something I’d rather not know.
But along with fear came curiosity. Hannah and Elizabeth had become real to me. A long time ago they had been close. Why was Hannah haunting the maple bush? Why couldn’t she rest?
2
Hannah walked again that night, carrying the weight of her grief like an awful burden to Jubal’s grave. On her return, her cries for help seemed, if possible, more panic-stricken than before.
The men swept in just before dawn. When I heard the first muffled exclamation I got up, threw on my clothes and ran outside, hoping to catch sight of them, and hoping not to. I stood shivering in the dark, straining to hear, and then my heart stopped. The voices were moving, not along the path, but toward the trailer. I ran back inside and into the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed my eyes shut.
The hammering of my heart and my own rapid breathing filled my ears. The voices rose in intensity, the words indistinguishable but carried on the same current of horror and anger. The temperature in the trailer suddenly dropped.
Go back!
The exclamation struck me like a hurled rock.
No! No! A different voice.
I hid my face in my hands. The stormy roar of a small crowd invaded the bedroom, as if the men had surrounded me.
Eighty wish! Like a curse. Eighty wish!
The voices clamored and slammed against one another, energized by a violent purpose.
Stones!
Something crashed against the wall.
Get stones!
Another whack. Then another. Bam! Bam! Bam! A hail of vicious blows, each one like a hammer blow to my skull. I heard myself moaning.
Bam! Bam!
The pounding went on for what seemed like ten minutes but was probably more like two or three, then abruptly stopped.
Go back!
Fire!
No! The rain!
The arguing continued as the voices receded toward the trees.
I fell back on the bed. After a time, my breathing returned to normal and gradually the rigidity in my muscles eased as the room warmed up. I ached all over — jaws, neck, arms and legs — from the tension. I got up, stumbled to the kitchen, gulped a glass of water at the sink. I had to hold the glass in both hands.
“I can’t take another night of this,” I said to the empty air.
I threw myself down in a chair, pointed the remote at the TV, waited for the dawn. I barely noticed the figures in an old cowboy movie flickering across the screen. When the grey light of day filled the window I screwed up my courage and went outside.
The rear of the trailer looked as if a crazed mob had attacked it with baseball bats. The aluminum siding was pocked like the surface of the moon, and all over the patio lay stones, none smaller than a double fist.
When I went back inside, I heard music. The movie had ended and some breakfast TV show was on. A gospel group filled the screen, wearing sky-blue choir gowns and belting out a tune.
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
It’s good enough for me.
I laughed at the absurdity. Rocks on the patio. Ghosts in the trees. Television. I put on a pot of coffee, happy to see my hands had almost stopped trembling.
The group sang on. The words spun in my head. Elizabeth Maitland had written in her diary that the congregation wouldn’t bury Jubal in the churchyard because Hannah had practiced the “old religion.”
I poured a cup of coffee and stood sipping it in the kitchen. On the TV screen, the weather lady had replaced the choir. She stood before a satellite map with moving orange blobs on it.
The old religion. What was that? Raphaella had told me that most American slaves from Africa kept their religion for a generation or two, then gradually converted.
But Hannah had been born in Haiti.
The realization hit me like a train and the cup slipped from my hand, shattering across the floor.
I ran to the phone, jabbed the buttons. “Come on, come on!” I shouted as the ringing sounded.
“Hello.”
“Put Raphaella on.”
“Who is —?”
“Put Raphaella on the damn phone!”
The words rushed from my throat as soon as I heard her voice.
“It’s not eighty wish!“I blurted. “It’s Haiti witch! The men are cursing Hannah for a voodoo witch. They’re after her!”
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I had had enough of Silverwood and its quaint country setting, and I decided that if I spent another night there I’d go crazy. What was I doing, anyway, meddling in events that had happened more than a century and a half ago? What could I do about it? Why me? Was it some kind of sardonic joke that I had been chosen to witness the violent drama played out every night in the bush behind the trailer? What had I done to deserve that?
By ten o’clock I had packed up all my stuff and stowed it in the van. Then I set about cleaning the trailer and closing up all the windows. I arranged to have any calls to the trailer transferred to our house, and I wrote up a sign to tape on the door, telling anyone with problems to phone me at home and I’d take care of things from there.
When I had begun to “pull up stakes,” as my father would have put it, I had felt a sense of relief, but by the time I drove under the Silverwood sign and turned onto the concessi
on road, relief had given way to guilt. I had made a deal with Dad and I was welching on it. He would lose face with his friend, who had been kind enough to do Dad — and me — a favor, giving me a place to live in return for a job that really wasn’t a job. Not once had anyone in the park needed my help. What could I tell him in my defence? That I had been chased away by ghosts? The more I thought about it, the more I felt like a spoiled brat who leaves the party when things aren’t going his way. It was a lousy way to convince my parents that I was old enough to decide my own future.
When I got to the crossroads where the Third met the Old Barrie Road, the corner where the church stood, I made a U-turn and returned to the trailer. One of Dad’s favorite expressions was, Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Now I understood what it meant.
2
Raphaella found me on the deck, sitting in the sun and drinking a cup of coffee, when she drove up in her mother’s old beat-up compact. She had called ahead and told me she was coming. I was surprised she was driving but had said nothing.
“Boy, the you-know-what really hit the fan, Garnet,” she greeted me as she shut the car door.
“I’m sorry, Raphaella. I really lost it this morning. I shouldn’t have phoned. Your mom must be in a rage.”
She sat down. “No, no. It’s not your fault. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Your phone call was just the catalyst. She knew I sneaked in last night.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Exactly. We fought all morning, a running verbal battle that stormed from room to room. I’m exhausted. In a way it was good, though. A lot of issues came up to the surface. We didn’t resolve anything, but now we both know that we’ve got to work things out, and she won’t have her way in everything. I think she must have known this was coming.”
“You must feel awful.”
“I do and I don’t. Mostly I’m relieved. I got the impression she is, too. When you know what you have to face, it makes it easier than guessing.”
“How much does she know about us?”
“Only that I’m seeing you. But that alone is enough for her to cope with for now.”
“I wish we could tell her the whole thing,” I said.
“Be patient.” She smiled. “Patience is a virtue, you know.”
“Yeah, but the people who say that aren’t the ones that have to be patient.”
“Anyway, it sounds as if you had the worst night ever.”
“Yeah.”
“You look pale.”
“As if I’d seen a —”
“Don’t say it. You think the men are after her?”
It was strange how when we talked about Hannah sometimes we’d slip into the present tense, as if the events were happening here and now. In a way, I guess they were.
“It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”
“So we’ve got to dip into that diary some more.”
3
We didn’t want to work on the patio within sight of the damage to the back of the trailer, so I carried a chair and a little round table onto the deck and we went to work, occasionally fortified with juice and crackers and cheese. We’d take turns. One would read and, when something relevant came up, relate it out loud while the other took notes.
It was a frustrating search, and boring. The diary contained page after page of domestic narratives, anecdotes about the children as they grew, learned to walk, fell and bruised themselves. A pioneer homestead seemed to be full of opportunities for children to come to grief. And for back-breaking labor — chopping down trees, pulling stumps, hauling stones from the ground to clear more land, building split-rail fences. There were inventories of the output of Elizabeth’s kitchen garden, which she seemed very proud of, and lots of musings about Nevil. Elizabeth sometimes betrayed guilt that she didn’t love him much.
She also included a little bit of neighborhood gossip, though she often went for a week at a time without seeing anyone outside her family. Here and there was a reference to Hannah.
After Jubal died, Hannah was in a bad way. A pioneer widow with grown children could still run her farm, but one who was childless had three choices: marry again, find work off the land, or leave. Hannah began to work for Elizabeth at least three days a week, often more. She had her own garden, and she made a bit of money ministering to people’s illnesses or practising midwifery. She got by, but was very lonely.
Raphaella and I took a break and went for a walk — but not in the bush. Then we set to work again. This time, Raphaella was the reader and I the note-taker.
“Here we go,” she announced after a while.
“Find something?”
“Yeah, I think so. This section is badly damaged. There are five illegible pages, then this: ‘… second year in succession. The Spring, having been uncommonly dry and not a whit conducive to sowing; and the rain, when it did finally arrive, falling with such intensity and duration as to ruin the already endangered crop …’”
Raphaella flipped over a couple of wrinkled pages with nothing but smears and blurs on them.
“Then this: ‘… as it was last winter. Indeed, trouble comes ‘not single spies but in battalions.’ Already three children and two adults among the Knox congregation have been carried away by ague, along with at least four among the Methodists, and this added to the poor yields of the last two growing seasons has, for the fist time, caused Nevil to doubt the wisdom of our coming here. There is, among the less educated, much talk of God’s wrath and more dangerous speculation about what or whom to blame.’”
That spring, after a tornado had torn through the area and flattened a few cabins and outbuildings and damaged the African Methodist Church, Hannah was not seen again. She failed to come to the Maitland place to take up her duties on the appointed days.
“Listen,” Raphaella said. “I think this is 1833. ‘… so worried. Hannah has not been seen, or heard of, for more than a fortnight. I fear that, in her loneliness and desperation, she may have, as have more than a few of the Wilberforce Negroes, abandoned her homestead and gone south; or, worse still, that she may herself have succumbed to the illness that stalks the roads. I shall endeavour to visit her home tomorrow.’”
Elizabeth walked across the west field and through the bush to Hannah’s cabin. She described the place in detail. Bunches of herbs and dried flowers hung from the rafters, bottles of “various decoctions” were arranged on shelves. Those were Hannah’s medicines. There were no books, as Hannah, like Jubal, had been illiterate. A single chest by the homemade bed held a few articles of clothing. A heavy man’s coat hung on a peg by the door. The table and two chairs were neatly arranged under the waxed-paper-covered window, the dirt floor neatly swept.
The place, Elizabeth concluded, was “empty, but not abandoned.” Hannah hadn’t left. She had disappeared.
More page flipping. Raphaella read a moment, then groaned, “Oh, boy.”
“What?” I asked.
Raphaella looked directly into my eyes as tears welled in hers. She began to read once more.
“‘She appeared again last night. I heard her pitiful cries carried on the wind from the depths of the forest. Three times this month her soul had, at least so I imagine it, reached out to me. What has happened to the poor wretch? I now fear the worst.’”
Raphaella put the book down and wiped her eyes. “My god, Garnet. Do you know what this means?”
“Yeah,” I said, choking. “Hannah has been haunting this place for more than a hundred and fifty years.”
4
Raphaella and I decided to go out for dinner to cheer ourselves up. She drove to town in her mother’s car and I took the van. We sat in the Greek restaurant on Memorial Avenue, grimly pushing our souvlaki around on our plates, hardly speaking.
She had wanted to stay with me that night. She knew I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of spending another night at the trailer, haunted and scared. But things between her and her mother were bad enough, I argued. Spending the
night with the boyfriend would guarantee that she’d be thrown out of the house for good.
“Besides,” I explained as Raphaella got into her car in the parking lot, “I’d feel like a coward, running away.”
I didn’t add that earlier that day I’d almost done exactly that. “And you said that spirits can’t hurt me.”
“Not physically,” she corrected me. “But you don’t seem to realize what this is doing to you. You’re pale, you’re jumpy —”
“But still charming,” I joked.
“Leave your cell phone turned on,” she said. “All night.”
5
I didn’t bother undressing. Certain I would not sleep, I lay on the bed and closed my eyes.
The night deepened. The usual domestic noises of Silverwood — parents calling kids in to bed, car doors slamming shut, screen doors slapping, the scrape of chairs on patio stones — faded, and the crickets began their rhythmic song. In the distance, thunder rumbled weakly. My breathing slowed and I felt myself carried to another place.
This is what I saw.
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The moon was down when the eight men gathered at the church. In the faint starlight, their faces were planes and pockets of shadow, their whispers a swirl of brief, terse utterances, the words of men urging themselves and each other to action, the casting off of question and doubt. Six of the voices were tinged with the rhythms of the plantation, two with the lilt of Irish field and bog.
They began to move in a knot across the churchyard. Feet thumped on and around Jubal’s grave as they vaulted the fence and hurried along the path through the trees — Hannah’s path. Determined, driven by frustration and hate spawned by failed crops, empty larders and children burned up by fever, they splashed across the stream, scrambled uphill.