Spider in a Tree

by Susan Stinson

  Leah felt spasms of mind and spasms of want. The twitchiness of some people’s bodies under awakening did not shake her, but what Mr. Edwards was preaching did. Exercises of sin and corruption were intermingled with the holy acts of the godly. Mr. Edwards had said this, and she knew it was true. She felt malefaction and defilement in her own works. He was still saying that word, over and over. She was haunted by work and sin every day of her life. She sinned. God knew, she worked. Mr. Edwards, who had sweat dripping from under his wig, was so possessed by work as to shut himself in the study, write until dawn, and then (like Jesus, who had been up very early when he rose from the grave), he would climb the elm in the morning to write more. He wanted her work so much it seemed that work was all he wished her life to be. That and this. She bent to one side, then the other, giving the baby a swooping ride in her arms. There were other things that she wanted for herself, but, just now, she felt blasted clean by the agony in so many faces below her as they readied to become vessels for joy. People were writhing on their benches because they knew, as she did with a certainty born of hard service, that they sinned.

  She felt Sarah’s eyes upon her, and sat up straight. Bathsheba was watching her, too. Little Esther was clasping and unclasping her hands. The baby’s grave expression quivered as if she were deciding whether to laugh, cry, or drop back to sleep.

  God don’t accept anything at our hands till he has accepted our persons.

  She felt Bathsheba grip her elbow beneath the baby’s head (sleep it was). Leah followed her friend’s gaze to three young English women sitting a few benches in front of them in the gallery, leaning against each other. Some of the most carnal frolickers in the town, they had recently been welcomed into the church. A month ago, all three had fainted as they had been talking about the things of religion at the town well. They had been hauled down King Street to the minister’s house in the back of a cart loaded with potatoes. While they revived and testified, Leah had scraped enough potatoes to feed the resulting crowd. They were from poor families, without even the right to use the common for grazing sheep, but lately had been bold enough to speak at women’s prayer meetings.

  The one in the plum-colored gown went rigid on the bench. Leah could see her dress darkening with sweat between her shoulder blades. As the woman rolled off her friends’ laps, Bathsheba glanced sideways at Leah and whispered, “Us, too?”

  Could they join the church? Could any slave? Not just make what they would of prayers from the worst benches, but be taken into the covenant? Leah didn’t know. It had never happened, but, then, she had never seen the sheriff cry in public before this awakening.

  She gazed down at Sarah Edwards, who looked away, as if she felt a little vulnerable with so many eyes passing over her to get to her husband. Leah had heard from the children, bragging as if about a foot race, that Sarah had felt stirrings of the spirit when she was only five years old. Sally, who was seven, tended to look a little worried for her own soul as she boasted about it, but Jerusha, just turned five, puffed up with as much pride as if they were talking about herself.

  As Mr. Edwards preached and people yielded up their dignity to God, Sarah shaded her eyes with her hand, looking into the gallery seats. Leah hugged the swaddled baby, then mouthed the word “sleeping.” As Sarah gave a nearly imperceptible nod, Leah answered Bathsheba. “I will ask.”

  On the following Saturday morning, Sarah Edwards pushed a strand of hair out of her face and looked at the web she needed. It stretched across the upper left corner of her kitchen door. There were a couple of dark lumps she took to be captured gnats, but no sign of the large spider she had seen there before. Feeling skittish, she reached out a finger to pull a single filament near where it touched the wood of the door frame. It resisted her touch, but when she pulled a second thread, the whole web curled up to the top of the door, almost out of reach. Bits of debris flew out of it, and a tiny spider, trailing new thread, landed on her arm.

  She gasped and took a step back. Just then, Leah came down the hall, carrying bedding, trailed by Sally and Jerusha with pillows. The girls stopped and gaped at their mother, who composed herself and, waving a bit of flannel, motioned them through the door. “Go on. Quickly. I’m gathering web and don’t need anyone getting bit.” She glanced at her own arm, but the spider was nowhere to be seen.

  Leah looked at Sarah’s flushed face, and thought, “Not the right moment to ask her. Not now. Not yet.” It had been a chorus in her head every time she had seen Sarah alone since the Sabbath. She had been thinking constantly about what it might mean to be a member of the church. Women didn’t vote in decisions facing the congregation, but perhaps Saul might. Hoisting the bedding higher to keep it from dragging the floor, she crossed into the kitchen and out the back door to the yard. Sally followed, moving swiftly and holding the pillow over her head against the possibility of falling spiders. Jerusha dawdled as much as she dared, looking back over her shoulder at her mother, the flannel, and the open air where a web had been that morning. She wanted to ask questions, but she and her pillow bumped into a chair.

  “Mind where you’re going,” Sarah said, a little pleased that her work so fascinated her second daughter. Perhaps Jerusha had inclinations toward healing. The girl blushed and followed the others out the back.

  Sarah took a deep breath, then stood on her toes to run her flannel along the ridge of the door frame, gathering web. She got more dust and milkweed than she wanted, but found corners where the web was concentrated, thick and spongy. She was stretching to get as much as she could when her husband came out of his study into the hall. He had been writing most of the night and into the morning. His mind was swallowed up with trying to give a good account of the revival which had the town in its grips, but the sight of Sarah on tiptoe framed by the doorway with web in her hair was enough to make him come toward her.

  “I think I’m starting to get it,” he said. “Mr. Colman in Boston will receive nothing from me but what is undeniable. That’s the only way that learned men will believe that three hundred people in our town of two hundred families have been saved.”

  Sarah, who had heard him fret about this same problem dozens of times, finished her own work. She folded the flannel into a soft packet with the web inside. “You must give this to Uncle Hawley when you see him. He is in the grips of melancholia. Rebekah’s concerned.”

  Her husband regarded her, blinking. The only thing more important than spreading the word about how his people had come to see more of God was the state of any one soul under his care. He rubbed his eyes. “He has many signs of being under awakening. Suffering with the knowledge of his sinful nature is one of them.”

  She tied the packet with a bit of string and offered it to him. “Tell Rebekah it should give him some relief. I will gather some to take to poor Abigail Hutchinson, too.”

  “Aunt Rebekah does worry,” he said, soberly. “She has spoken to me, as well.” He didn’t take the packet. “I’m going to pray in the woods.”

  As Sarah shook her head with exasperation, she was already pulling a straight pin from the hem of her sleeve to pin the flannel to his coat, so he couldn’t possibly forget it. As she leaned close, he lifted his hand and offered his finger to the tiny spider wandering the strands of her hair. It climbed on, and he held it before him.

  Sarah, scalp crawling, stared at her husband. He was regarding the spider almost tenderly, turning his finger as it tried to roam, with a look of affection like that of a boy scratching the nose of his first horse. He was dear to her, but so strange. “Out of my kitchen, sir,” she said. “And kindly rid us of the spider. People will be filling up the house again before you’re back.”

  He put on his hat with the other hand and carried the spider on his finger to the door. “I’ll finish the letter about the revival tonight.”

  “Good,” she said, reaching for the broom. “Don’t forget to g
ive Uncle Hawley the web.”

  Mr. Edwards nodded absently and stepped into the yard. Leah and the girls were beating bedding with sticks, raising clouds of dust to thicken the diffuse morning light. When she saw her father, Jerusha dropped the pillow that she had been walloping and hurried to greet him. “Is that a spider on your finger?”

  He bent down to her as, in the near distance, her sister picked up the fallen pillow and began whacking it against her own. “When I was a young man, I spent many hours trapping spiders on bushes and shaking them on sticks.”

  Jerusha stood, chubby and erect, gazing at the spider crouched on his knuckle. “Why?”

  He brought his finger closer to her face, just under her nose. “To know more intimately the wisdom of the Creator by observing how he provided for the necessities of his creatures. And also for their recreation.”

  She stayed very still, watching the spider through her lashes as the breeze lifted strands of her hair, which her father felt might be, like the thread the spider draws out through its bottle tail, lighter than air. He pulled his finger away from her face and let it hover above the stump they used for chopping wood. Both of them watched closely as the spider cast a shining line and floated to the stump. “Back to your duties,” he said to Jerusha, who was gazing at him as if he had just revealed more brilliance than was contained in all of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, where he had yet to be published. He turned to the barn to saddle his horse. “That pillow is not your sister’s burden, but yours.”

  “They shall lie down alike in the dust and the worms shall cover them.”

  Sarah was reading from the book of Job to gaunt young Abigail Hutchinson in her bed when her mother came in with an apple baked so soft that it puddled in the bowl, skin brown and loose, with Sarah’s cobweb stuffed inside. Abigail, who had had an awakening, listened with palpable intensity.

  Abigail was suffering from an illness seated in her throat, which had swollen inward and filled up the pipe so that she could swallow almost nothing. When Sarah had arrived, her chamber had been crowded with neighbors asking if she were prepared to die and marveling at the composure of her answers.

  Sarah had sent them away, and now Mrs. Hutchinson watched as Sarah sat on the bed, mashing the apple in the bowl with the back of the spoon and clearing away bits of skin with the edge. She took a scant spoonful and held it to Abigail’s cracked lips.

  “Must I eat?” murmured Abigail. “I want to pray.”

  “Eat,” said Sarah and Mrs. Hutchinson, both at the same time. “Then pray,” added Sarah.

  Spider web baked in apple was known to be good for ague, chills or fever, but as soon as Abigail had some in her mouth, she started retching and choking. She kicked off the blanket and struggled to swallow. Mrs. Hutchinson took her hand and watched her closely. Sarah reached to help the young woman sit up just as she lost her fight to take food into her body. Wet apple with strings of web sprayed from her mouth and nostrils as she gasped for breath.

  Sarah had a handkerchief. She wiped Abigail’s face soberly and tenderly before she saw to her own bodice and apron. Mrs. Hutchinson, well-practiced at this duty, brought towels and a basin of water warmed on the hearth. Sarah stayed with Abigail until the girl had enough composure to meet her eyes again, then she took up the spoon and offered it to her, empty. Abigail sucked on a bit of apple that had dried on the edge.

  Mrs. Hutchinson stood and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Edwards. She needs to rest now.” Her tone was sharp and protective. Abigail added, “Thank Mr. Edwards for coming, too. My spirit was much moved.”

  Sarah tied her horse to a tree on the way home, then got mud on her petticoat as she washed her face in the river. She suspected that Mrs. Hutchinson thought she had done her daughter harm. Abigail had not been able to get down enough web for it to be of any help, but Sarah was sure—or, at least, she hoped, and wished to seem sure, because her position demanded it—that the attempt had not worsened the girl’s suffering. She had done what she could.

  Uncle Hawley sought him out in his study in the late afternoon. Mr. Edwards had forgotten all about the web still pinned to his coat, but as he reached out to brush away a fly that had settled in a stiff curl of his uncle’s wig, he found himself thinking of spiders. He let his hand rest on the wig for a moment, touching powdered horsehair in an attempt to reach the man. “You have seen how a spider thrown in the midst of a fire exerts no strength to oppose the heat, or to fly from it, but immediately stretches forth itself and yields; and the fire takes possession of it at once.”

  Uncle Joseph Hawley pushed back his wig and ran his hand over his shaved head. “I am filthy and corrupt to the core. There is no way for me to be saved.”

  Worried that he had made a bad choice to speak of burning, Mr. Edwards answered quickly and clearly. “Trust in God.”

  Uncle Hawley turned suddenly and flicked his fingers at the fly buzzing behind him on the chair, muttering, “I am nothing but a dung hill.” He had been saying such things for two hours as they prayed together in the study. His voice seemed more stricken, somehow, with his wig knocked askew.

  Such a state was pious and necessary, perhaps, to prepare the heart to receive the Spirit, but, having been alerted by Sarah, it did make Mr. Edwards anxious. He drew his chair closer and tried again. “Your convictions of guilt and misery are hopeful signs.”

  Uncle Hawley had gone back to scratching his head in an awkward, detached way, as if his hand were not his own. “I am a hard-hearted, senseless, sottish creature sleeping on the brink of hell.”

  Mr. Edwards knew from Aunt Rebekah that Uncle Hawley had, in fact, slept very little for something like two months. His suffering was especially worrisome since melancholy was a distemper that the Hawley family was prone to. The preacher touched the older man’s shoulder. He spoke haltingly. “Sir, you need to rest.”

  Uncle Hawley closed his eyes and took a breath that sounded painful in his lungs.

  Mr. Edwards looked at him for a moment, taking in the strain in his face and the way he slumped in the chair. He resisted the impulse to straighten the man’s wig. Uncle Hawley had been kind to him when he had first arrived in Northampton nine years ago, and Aunt Rebekah was constantly sending the boys from their house on Pudding Lane to bring Sarah one of her four meal cheeses. Mr. Edwards felt another jab of worry as he thought of the boys, who worked with their father at the family store. Joseph was eleven and Elisha nearly three years younger. He wished that he could spare the boys’ father this suffering, but knew that this was a Godly man following a well-marked path to redemption. He saw that he had left a faint handprint of powder from Uncle Hawley’s wig on the shoulder of his coat. Trying to brush it off with dusty fingers would only make it worse. Aunt Rebekah would not be pleased.

  Empty, he told himself. Disobediently, his mind turned toward the account of the revival he had been working on for Mr. Colman, well-known cleric and publisher. Ambition stirred in his heart, but, equally strong, came a memory of standing beside one of Uncle Hawley’s gentle oxen, holding Joseph, barely old enough to wear breeches, on its back, while Uncle Hawley laughed from the porch of the store and Rebekah held on to Elisha—who had been yelling that he wanted to ride, too—for dear life. Then, like the unearned gift it was, there rose inside Mr. Edwards the words God used to announce himself to Moses in the bush. He said them aloud, that his uncle might hear. “I am that I am; I am.”

  Uncle Hawley dropped his head and moaned. His wig didn’t fall, but held crookedly to his scalp.

  Mr. Edwards looked at the wig and the fly circling it again. Perhaps horsehair smelled like home to a fly. He bent in his chair so that he was close to his uncle’s slack, red face, close enough to notice that the bristles in his ears had gone gray. “Courage, uncle.” He wanted to tell him to sit up straight and look his sins in the face, to think of his wife and children and shoulder
his life’s load with a little decent gratitude, as becomes a well-loved and well-fed man. He wanted to tell him to have some dignity and see to his wig, but Mr. Edwards knew that the temptation to say that came from Satan. A soul had to be prostrate and humbled to prepare it for grace. Uncle Hawley was still, not shaking, his face crumpled up with what looked like the most abject pain, but which might have been a physical manifestation of the holy spirit thickening and dispersing inside him.

  Mr. Edwards offered the encouragement he could. “God may sanctify your suffering by saving more souls than your own. Your boys can see that there is no duty more important than doing his will.”

  Uncle Hawley was pressing the backs of his hands through his breeches into his thighs. His wig had fallen off onto the floor. The fly had been joined by another to trouble the room, but when a series of loud steps passed in the hall, Uncle Hawley raised his naked head and the flies dispersed.

  “I must go home,” he said, standing up. “Rebekah is waiting for me.”

  Mr. Edwards sat in his chair and looked up at his uncle, wondering if he should try again to warn him about the fires of hell or quote more scripture. He felt drained by the persistence of his uncle’s despair, which had drawn all of their talk back to it in great buzzing loops. As Uncle Hawley began tapping his foot with something of his old impatience, Mr. Edwards stood, too. “No one but God can be certain, but I see signs of grace in you,” he said.

  Uncle Hawley didn’t reply, but Mr. Edwards felt his own spirit lightened by the fact that his uncle stooped down to retrieve his wig and position it (somewhat askew) on his head before he opened the door and they stood together in the hall, blinking in the noise that rose from the rest of the house. For months now, people had been coming every day and some nights, seeking counsel.