The Book of Murdock

by Loren D. Estleman

  SIX

  “Mrs. Blackthorne told me I’d find you here,” I said. “I thought you didn’t work on the Sabbath.”

  The Judge glared down at me. “I work every day. I’m not Pentecostal. It happens I report to chambers every other Sunday, when my parlor at home becomes the central headquarters of the Lewis and Clark County Book Club. Ostensibly they’re discussing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but I doubt three of those esteemed ladies have read a line of Twain’s. They gather to consume tea and thumping amounts of liverwurst and carve the ballocks off every married man in town.”

  Blackthorne stood on the top of a stepladder in the square, high-ceilinged room down the hall from his court where he retired to consider his rulings. He’d started with plenty of space, then crowded it with worktables, glazed book presses, books spread open to passages of current interest, leather portfolios stuffed with reports and depositions, and old numbers of the Montana Post and the Congressional Register, in which he kept track of freebooters locally and in the U.S. Capitol. The only vacant seat was his own embossed-leather chair behind the big American walnut desk. The strategy was to discourage lengthy digressions by requiring gouty defense lawyers with big bellies and bad backs to stand throughout meetings. It seemed to work; they rarely ran longer than fifteen minutes and his court disposed of more cases per month than any other in the federal system.

  He was in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, removing dust from hefty legal volumes on his shelves with a deerskin rag. He never allowed the cleaners employed by the United States District Court to touch his personal library, which he’d assembled a piece at a time as he could afford it while clerking in a St. Louis firm and studying for the bar at night. They’d seen him through private practice, accompanied him to Washington during his lone term in the House of Representatives, and ridden in baggage cars, stagecoach luggage racks, the holds of steamboats, and on his own back when he’d crossed the prairie with his wife to take up his present post, and he wasn’t about to trust them to any other hands.

  He asked me how my education was progressing.

  “You were right about Genesis,” I said. “I made short work of it and have a dally around Exodus. Turns out the Bible’s the easy part. Behaving as if I belonged in the same room with it’s the part I’m having trouble with.” I gave him an account of my morning.

  Lawrence Little’s chuckle and Blackthorne’s shouldn’t be referred to by the same term. The minister’s was deep and plummy, the Judge’s dry and sibilant, like a diamondback’s buzz. “I wish I’d known. I’d have foregone the Reverend Clay’s sermon on the destruction of Babylon and risked damnation just to see you tread water in a buffalo wallow in early spring.”

  “I’d respond to that, but I may need you to intercede for me with Griffin. If his door’s not barred to me tomorrow I haven’t got his measure.”

  “I doubt you have. No pleading on my part would improve your case. Griffin belongs to that stubborn cadre that’s convinced I’m bound for hell. Every time I sentence a prisoner to hang I trespass upon the province of God.”

  “You might have let me know that before I went to his house carrying a letter of introduction signed by you.”

  “I had nothing to lose by being straightforward, and with luck his cooperation to gain. He’d have known you came from me regardless. This way he’s assured that no chicanery is involved.”

  “That won’t help me now.”

  He twisted himself on the ladder, holding a tattered collection of Cicero’s orations. The points of his brows were at their diabolical peak. “I honestly believe you’re more self-obsessed than I. If he permitted you to cross his threshold on my behalf, condemned though I am, what makes you think he’ll turn you away merely because you questioned his integrity?”

  I saw there was no point in pursuing that line, so I chose another. “What made him break with the Church?”

  “Ask him.” He swept the rag across the untrimmed page edges and slid the book back into its slot.

  “I did. He refused to answer.”

  “Then it’s hardly my place to address the question.”

  “I didn’t know you had a place.”

  He blew a dead bug off the top of Principles Regarding the Division of Property in the State of Vermont, Vol. IX. What system he used to categorize his library mystified me. “I keep an unruly pack of dogs to patrol a savage territory, Deputy,” he said. “I hold the leash loose lest I break their spirit. Do not make the mistake of assuming I won’t jerk it tight when one tries to urinate on me.”

  “I think you just did.” I backed off. “He doesn’t have a crucifix or a picture of Jesus anywhere in his house. If he’s given up on faith, why do you suppose he’s so concerned with how I represent it?”

  “I wasn’t aware he displayed no religious symbols in his home. I’ve never been invited.” He sounded thoughtful.

  “I’m trying to understand the man. I’ll make an unconvincing minister if I don’t.”

  “You’ll make one regardless. But Ter Horst won’t budge from his pious stance and you’re the only other man available who can string ten words together without a spitoon handy. You’re in the way of being me.” The Vermont volume had a snug berth; he rammed it home with the heel of his hand and climbed down. Abusing books seemed to be a privilege of ownership, denied all others. He extended the same philosophy to the officers of his court.

  He got rid of the deerskin and spent a full minute brushing smears of dust from his waistcoat. “I daresay his complaint is not so much with belief as with the institution he served. No other concerns itself so completely with iconography. The absence of it from his own walls is a rebellion against Rome.”

  “What’s his difference with the pope?”

  “Chastity would be my guess. Celibacy. He opposes it.”

  “You’re saying he threw the Church over for—”

  “Hold your tongue on the Lord’s day. As I understand the situation, it was a matter of romantic attraction, not lust.”

  “He fell in love with a woman? Was it a woman? I’ve heard stories.”

  “A woman was the reason, yes; but you’ve spent time with Griffin, and surely you’ve observed that whatever passion he has is reserved for the ethereal. The woman fell in love with him, and committed the blunder of confessing her temptations to her mother superior, who told the bishop, who cast her from the order. Griffin resigned in protest.”

  “She was a nun? What happened to her after that?”

  “Her family disinherited her. Our society deals harshly with unmarried women of marked reputation with no one to support them and no skills with which to support themselves. A man like Eldred Griffin, having sacrificed his divine calling for the woman’s sake, had no choice but to volunteer for the duty.”

  “Esther Griffin.” I’d had it backwards, thinking she was the rock that kept him from collapsing under the weight of his own bitterness.

  “Naturally, their betrothal lent credence to the rumors that her affections were requited, and that they had both sinned in the eyes of the Church. God spare us all from men who have the courage of their convictions.”

  He was one to talk. More than a few of his decisions had made enemies of powerful men he’d have been better served to pacify; letters to Congress had led to calls for impeachment. I said, “You know a lot about him for someone he hates.”

  “We’ve not met, and I doubt he’d confide in me if we had. A scandal limits itself to no particular denomination. The Reverend Clay is a gossip. If he weren’t so useful as a source of intelligence, I might have converted to Lutheran years ago.”

  “It’s no wonder he took it badly when I cast him in with Dr. Little. I’d have avoided it if you were half as forthcoming as Clay.”

  “You’d have found some other way to give offense. I suggest you make your peace. Your train pulls out in eight days.”

  Esther Griffin answered my knock Monday morning. She wore the same severe brown dress or one like it. “Mr. Griffin
is ill. You must come back tomorrow.” She started to close the door.

  “Will it make a difference?”

  She paused. “No.”

  “I didn’t expect a lesson. I came to apologize.”

  “He said you would, after you spoke to your master. He won’t accept.”

  “I want to do it anyway. If not to him, then to you.”

  She seemed to consider it. She had a kind face for all its lack of distinction. At length she moved aside to let me in.

  The kitchen was her answer to her husband’s study. In addition to the usual facilities for preparing meals and washing up after, it contained a bentwood rocker and a large sewing basket brimming over with spools of colored thread in a windowlit corner. A fancy bit of embroidery on white linen draped one arm of the chair. She went that way and twitched it so that the needlework didn’t show, then moved a battered tea kettle from a trivet to the top of the wood range; apparently the silver set was for company, and I no longer qualified.

  We sat at an oilcloth-covered table, where I pictured the couple sharing most meals, saving the simple dining room for guests. It wore a look of well-used comfort as opposed to the other, where even the hosts had seemed stiff and ill at ease; I was sure I’d been their first visitor in many a day.

  She caught my glance straying toward the sewing corner. “I take in work sometimes. Eldred works hard, but there is only so much caretaking to be done in a small cemetery. We manage.”

  “I don’t know when I’ve been in a place that felt so much like home.”

  “You’re not married?”

  I shook my head, and shook it again when she asked if it was because of the nature of my work. “Most of the deputies have wives. Sometimes I think they fished out the stream. It means a lot of nights spent alone waiting for bad news.”

  “Men give up so easily. But then it’s always easy making the decision you’ve wanted to all along.”

  I wondered what was keeping that pot from coming to a boil.

  “You mentioned an apology.”

  “I spoke out of turn yesterday. My work doesn’t put me in contact with many honest men. You’re not at it long before you begin to think everyone has his hand out. At the time I wasn’t in possession of all the facts, but I knew by his reaction I’d made a huge mistake.”

  “The facts in regard to what?”

  Her eyes were the color of her dress, and faintly cowlike. That made what was behind them a concealed weapon. I braced my hands on the table and sat back. “In regard to how he came to leave the Church.”

  “Judge Blackthorne told you? How—no, never mind. The clergy is worse than a house filled with old women.” She got up to tend to the pot, which had come to a boil. She spooned tea from a square tin into two cups, poured in the steaming water, stirred, and returned to the table carrying a cup and saucer in each hand. When she was seated she said, “It’s been so many years, and still they’re talking about it. You’d think nothing else has ever happened in the Church.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it. I wasn’t asking.”

  “Who else is there to talk to? All our closest neighbors are dead. The Sisters of Mercy from Sacred Hearts pick up their habits and hurry past this house and cross themselves after. They won’t forgive us for leaving and the Protestants we meet won’t forgive us for having been in.”

  “That’s part of the reason I’ve gone this long without religion.”

  “No one is without religion; not the gambler who credits his winning streak to luck or the woman who blames her dark star because her husband beats her. Have you ever connected a good or bad experience with timing?”

  “I have, but I assumed the responsibility.”

  “I’m sure that’s what you told yourself, but let us say you’re right, and for whatever reason you’ve chosen to live without God. That’s not the same as saying that God has had no influence upon you. The steps you’ve taken to avoid Him have altered your journey.”

  I drank tea. I was beginning to aquire a taste for it, or at least for the way she brewed it. I’d had camp coffee that was less strong. “I can see why your husband doesn’t encourage these discussions.”

  “My mother superior shared the aversion. I was naïve. A convent is no place for a lively exchange of ideas. I believe now that if I had not made the mistake of confiding my inner feelings to her, she would have found some other way to dispose of me.”

  “Then you have no regrets?”

  She curled both hands around her cup and looked at her reflection on the surface. “I regret daily that I didn’t hold my tongue and let nature find another course, one that did not destroy Eldred’s life.”

  “Does he look at it that way?”

  She picked up her ears, motioning for silence. The residents of that house seemed superhumanly attuned to the sound of their names. The stairs creaked and in a moment Griffin entered the kitchen. When he saw me he stopped, although of course he had to have known I was there. The place was small and voices traveled, even if words didn’t.

  “Did you return his money?” he asked his wife.

  “I did not. We’ve spent some, and it would be weeks before we could save enough to return it. And you agreed to provide the instruction Mr. Murdock requested.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  I started my speech of apology, but she interrupted me. “You made a bargain; but we’ll overlook that. A partial education in the ways of the Lord is worse than none at all. He might take what he’s learned and not knowing the rest twist it to suit selfish purposes. I’ve heard you say that a hundred times about these traveling opportunists.”

  “He thinks I’m one of them.”

  “He’s spent most of his visit telling me he doesn’t. If you hadn’t fled into your burrow when he knocked at the door, he’d have told you.”

  “There’s been entirely too much telling going on. You’ve been doing most of the talking.”

  “Our story is known, but it’s been poorly told. Should our enemies’ version be the only one anyone hears?”

  I scraped my chair back and stood. “I should leave.”

  “You should come upstairs,” Griffin said. “A kitchen is for filling your belly, not your head.”

  SEVEN

  The programme accelerated from that hour. Griffin seemed suddenly conscious of the time constraint and sped through the less illuminating biblical passages, questioning me sharply on certain points without warning, a bushwhacking maneuver that caught me unprepared the first time, but not again. His Church was founded on the New Testament, and lest the apostles be slighted for the sake of catching a train, we studied them between First and Second Kings. Infrequently he elaborated on the text, providing extraneous but revealing detail on the structure of the Roman legions and farming methods under the pharaohs of Egypt. His ragtag library was as heavy on history as it was light on theology; his massive Bible was the only religious authority in the room apart from himself. Arguments in print appeared to put him off as much as dissent from his wife, whom experience had taught him to defer to early and avoid a long and pointless discussion with the same result. He would not defer to rival philosophers.

  One morning, near enough to date of departure to spoil my concentration with thoughts of linen and train changes, he marked his place in Deuteronomy with his bit of strop and shut the book with a thump. “How much experience have you had with speaking in public?”

  “I’ve given manhunting parties their charges in town squares from here to California,” I said.

  “Bawling like a master sergeant and preaching to the faithful do not belong to the same world, particularly in a proper house of worship. You must speak as if you were alone with one parishioner, yet be heard as clearly in the rear pew as in the front. That last is important. People who sit in front are already disposed to pay close attention. It’s the stragglers who perch near the door you must capture. They will fly at the first dry rustle.”

  “I’ll try to get in some practice
.”

  “What will you speak about?”

  “I don’t figure I can go wrong with ‘Love thy Neighbor’ and ‘Stay Out of Hell.’”

  He pulled his lips away from his teeth. I think they were false—no set ever grew so evenly or stayed so white—but the workmanship was superior to Judge Blackthorne’s, which fit him so uncomfortably he wore them only on public occasions. He must have gone to a Catholic dentist while still a priest. “Why do you suppose most people go to church?”

  The answer was too obvious for it to be anything but a trick question, but I’ve never learned anything by avoiding a trick. “To pray.”

  “They can do that at home. Some attend out of fear of damnation, or love of salvation, or because their friends and family expect them to, or to win public office, or to drum up business; back East, they would be the majority. Here on the frontier, most people surrender their one day of rest to be entertained. Be truthful. When you went in to hear Lawrence Little, did you expect to enjoy the experience?”

  “No. I expected to be bored to my boots, then get frostbite in a buffalo wallow.”

  “I’d suspected there was truth in the compliment you paid him. Preposterous and blatant as it is, his Sunday-school-simpleton picture of hell is what puts them on their feet and brings back return customers who know the text by heart. Some of those who were baptized with you had already been in ponds and springs and swollen streams where the Traveling Tabernacle has stopped in the past. The blessing does not wear out or expire; renewal is not necessary. They wanted to be part of the show. Very few seriously believe they’re in danger of being condemned perpetually. Those who do are not so simple as to accept Little’s parable of the torturous corset as punishment for vanity. It’s theater, and only a fool thinks Ophelia is going barking mad before his eyes. The rest do insist that the performer believes, or produces a reasonably convincing counterfeit, preferably with Roman candles or some substitute. If all they wanted was the Golden Rule, they would stay home and read Matthew.”