Spider in a Tree

by Susan Stinson

  Ever since Mr. Whitefield had arrived in Boston, the papers had been full of accounts of his powers. He preached without notes, his hands stretching out over each congregation to work the air. Women fainted from sheer mellifluence when he said the word, “Mesopotamia.” The ruder newspapers called him Dr. Squintum because he had one crossed eye, but most found that this added to the intensity of his preaching. He had gathered a crowd of twenty thousand people on the Boston Common for his final sermon there, more than had ever gathered anywhere for anything in all of the colonies, even counting hangings. The governor himself, sobbing in his coach, had followed Mr. Whitefield as far west as Worcester.

  Mr. Edwards squeezed one eye shut, muttered, “Mesopotamia,” then stuck a blank scrap of paper to the bark with a pin. That felt satisfying, so he pulled another scrap from his pocket and did it again.

  Jerusha came from the house and ran to the tree, calling, “Father! Mr. Whitefield is on the ferry. He sent a messenger ahead.”

  A leaf dropped past her upturned face in a spin. “Yes,” he said, shifting on the limb, which shook loose more leaves. “I’ll come.”

  He slid down the trunk, long arms wrapped around the tree, tattering the notes pinned to the bark as he passed. Jerusha was brushing bark from his coat when the crowd parted as a pocked, squinting man who could only be Mr. Whitefield came riding in on a dusty horse, standing up in his stirrups and shouting, “Come, come to Christ! Two o’clock at the meeting house!” in a voice so strong that half of the people straggling behind him could have stayed at home and still have been able to hear.

  Mr. Edwards, who had planning on five o’clock for the meeting, sent Jerusha to alert her mother, which proved unnecessary; Sarah had heard the voice and was already putting the baby on a cushion in a basket so she could set ham and more peas on the table. They would have so little time to eat. With a scrap of paper clinging to his Geneva collar, bits of leaves in his wig, and his other daughters hard on his heels, he stepped forward to welcome Mr. Whitefield, who cried out, “Mr. Edwards! Brother! I admire your Faithful Narrative!” so loudly that his horse gave a pitch to gasps from the crowd. Mr. Whitefield, well-accustomed to spooking the livestock, gamely kept his seat, but his host had a headache for the rest of the afternoon.

  Mr. Whitefield preached in the parlor that evening after meeting, and to the children in the morning. He preached in the late morning in Hatfield, then back in Northampton in the afternoon. He filled the Northampton meeting house twice on the Sabbath.

  At the second Sabbath sermon, he swung his arms and cast his voice out so strongly that it seemed to shake the back wall of the gallery, which was already over packed with people. Leah felt the wall shake and remembered her injuries just long enough to offer them up to God as he moved again in the people of Northampton under Mr. Whitefield’s voice. Timothy Root and the other boys started stomping from their benches to the rhythms of the preaching. Mr. Whitefield, swinging his arms, embraced the noise and sent it back to them drenched in meaning. Seth Pomeroy beat on the back of the bench in front of him with his great fists. Mrs. Clapp pounded her walking stick. Bathsheba stomped like a boy.

  Mr. Edwards thought about the fact that Mr. Whitefield had read his story of the earlier awakening here in the Faithful Narrative across the ocean. The scenes of grace from that turbulent encounter with light was part of what had brought him so far to bring people in Northampton and across the colonies past their former heights in encounters with an extraordinary presence of God. He listened to Mrs. Hutchinson scream as if in travail with her Abigail again, and thought how word, voice, cry, and howl could answer and echo in ways no human might understand.

  Rebekah cried throughout that sermon. Elisha watched her weeping in silence amidst outbursts of repentance from the fractious, backsliding people around them. He had heard her cry many times, but this was the first time he had seen it. Rebekah felt herself to be held apart, bitter and not redeemed by her tears. It was not a feeling she would describe to her son, who, with a vague feeling of enacting a betrayal, joined in stomping with the other half-grown boys.

  Mr. Edwards saw four of his daughters gasping in what looked to be the first grip of awakening. Jerusha was bent double in her seat. Everywhere in the meeting house, people were giving up cries of anguish and replenishment such as he had not heard since the day before Uncle Hawley killed himself. Sarah, close beside him as she had been for so long, was vibrating like a tuning fork. It was when she gripped his hand that, with a great welling of tears and relief, Mr. Edwards himself let go.

  Saul spent his evening with a lantern in the barn, currying the horses. Leah had been unable to persuade him to respect the Sabbath and join her in the doorway of the parlor for more preaching, although he had heard the sermons.

  It was cold enough in the barn that he could see the breath of the horses as they snuffled and snorted, leaning against each other in affection or aggression, trying to get the best place at the feeding trough. Leah came to find him with a cup of chocolate as frothy and spicy sweet as any to be had in the parlor. She sat on a bale of hay near where he stood currying the bay. “Mr. Whitefield was singing new hymns before the fire in the parlor, and the shadow of his arms looked just like wings.”

  Saul gave the horse a pat and picked up a nail to clean hair from the comb. “Shadow and what really is are two different things.” Leah felt frustrated with him, so stubborn in the cold, so unwilling to make the jump to pleasures not of this earth. “You know that you’re not to work today. Twenty thousand in Boston turned to glory, but the one of you would rather sleep in the horse barn than listen to a famous preacher here for just a few nights.”

  Saul added the hair to a bagful that hung from a nail, waiting to be scalded and put to use. “There’s no few nights about it, not for us, living here. You know that’s the truth. I’m expected to go with them on their preaching trip in the morning. The horses have to be ready.”

  Leah kicked her heels back against the hay. “The fact that neither of us ever picked where we should live doesn’t mean that we can’t take the good we find here. Because we’ve got the bad, like it or not.”

  Saul smelled of horses as he sat down beside her and said, “Believe me, Mariama, I’m staying as close as I can get to the good.”

  It was cold, wet, and windy when Saul and Mr. Edwards rode away with Mr. Whitefield on Monday. They all had johnnycake and slabs of cold ham from Sarah in their satchels. Mr. Whitefield had bowed like a courtier and kissed her hand when she handed it to him. Sarah, in high spirits, did a moment of pantomime as an impressed lady making a show of offering him her other hand before she lifted her chin, drew both hands behind her back and gave him a blessing.

  Mr. Whitefield murmured to Mr. Edwards as they were mounting their horses, “I pray that God might soon provide me with such a spiritually-gifted helpmate as you have, sir.”

  Saul, holding their horses before getting on his own, knew that Mr. Edwards had no idea what to say to a thing like that. He didn’t even try. He and Mr. Whitefield did not seem easy in conversation in general, but, then, with Mr. Edwards, few were. Mr. Edwards forgot to tie his satchel and lost his cake to muddy King Street when they were barely out of the yard. Saul got his feet wet getting down to retrieve it, and they didn’t dry out for days.

  When they arrived at the bank on their horses, the ferryman, who had a rude shelter on both sides of the river, stood in the doorway of his dry hut, pointing at the waves. “I would not try to cross for anyone else today, Mr. Edwards. Mr. Whitefield. I wouldn’t advise you to try it, either. The river’s too whipped up. It’s not safe.”

  That seemed reasonable to Saul. He tried to get a wind block next to the hut while the two preachers rode to the edge of the bank to more closely consider the water. They all looked up at the sound of hooves coming along Bridge and Water, from the uplands and the meadows on the wet road. Ministers from t
owns up and down the river approached with water dripping from their hats, coming to join the Grand Itinerant, Mr. Whitefield, in his travels. Across the swollen river, Saul could see more figures on horseback gathering to wait for them on the far shore.

  Before the newcomers arrived, Mr. Whitefield reached into a pouch and pulled out a coin. He squinted at the ferryman in something close to a wink, and said, “Heads we go, tails we stay here.”

  Saul knew that Mr. Edwards had a weak stomach for rough water and didn’t approve of games of chance, but there was no missing the excitement in his eyes when Mr. Whitefield slapped the coin down on his wet sleeve.

  “Heads!” Mr. Whitefield cried. “We go.” He handed the coin to the ferryman. “Yours.”

  The group made it safely across the river thanks to the ferryman, who spoke of spending the night in his shack on the Hadley side. Then they rode south. At first they had to shout to be heard above the rain. When the weather relented, they drew their animals closer together. Saul dropped behind, but he listened. Clumping together on horseback seemed to open everything up for debate. They jostled and argued, riding their theology through ego and mystery while their horses engaged in snorting matches that led to the occasional bump. It was a kind of richness, to be in the presence of so many other minds and voices intent on the things of religion. Mr. Edwards raised up from his saddle and leaned into questions. The others kept answering. People came to their doorways to watch, then follow.

  The rain stopped, and they were soon on dry roads, with Mr. Whitefield preaching at every town along the way. He sent messengers ahead to let people know that he would be preaching in Suffield on Tuesday afternoon. They crossed the river again so that he could do it.

  As they approached the town, it was clear that word had spread. At the sight of them coming, farmers dropped their plows and ran for their horses. Old women left off harvesting dark greens from late gardens. Families came in on mules and donkeys, kicking up dust and spilling out of wagons. Many horses were heaving and lathered with sweat from being ridden so hard to get to town to hear the preaching. By the time they reached the common, the ministers were covering their faces with handkerchiefs to save their voices from the dust, and Saul was in the midst of the biggest crowd he had ever seen. He heard someone say that it numbered seven thousand.

  He kept to the back once the preaching started, tending the animals since Mr. Whitefield wanted to be able to move on quickly once the sermon was done. The famous voice carried as Mr. Whitefield railed against ministers who might, unconverted, be trying to teach the word of God without having experienced grace in their own hearts.

  Saul watched as the man crouched and acted out being struck by the light of God as if he himself were great Paul on the road to Damascus.

  As the horses drank from a trough, Saul understood Mr. Whitefield to be saying that people had to fight through the tangles of words to find their own sense of God and reject the guidance of anyone who didn’t show clear evidence of having been saved themselves. That people had the right to judge those above them.

  Saul had not heard anything like this in Mr. Edwards’s church or anywhere else. As he stood on the edge of the hard-praying throng on a trampled, muddy field, he put his hand on the back of his favorite roan, which Mr. Edwards had been riding, and thought that the things Mr. Whitefield was saying sounded right to him. A God who stood ready to take down those falsely laying claim to his authority was a God Saul wanted to know.

  The roan backed up closer, wanting to be scratched. Saul brushed through sweat-stiff hair with his fingers and let himself become one with the crowd panting after the presence of God. He felt as if a board between him and an unspoken world had been slid away. His thoughts were inexact, but the experience had precision. It was not partial. It was not abrupt, but had a slow sweep. He felt as if the most difficult parts of his life were being offered up, beautifully rendered, for his own witnessing. He could see so much. As he listened to the preacher’s magnificent voice, he measured the performance in it and set that aside as nothing he needed. But something there, something else, left him with his head knocked back, neck arched, open, opened, overcome.

  He added to the noise by beating on the side of the water trough until he had gathered himself enough to think of the skittish horses and lead them farther away.

  When he and Mr. Edwards left to return to Northampton, leading the spent horses of other ministers behind them, Saul said, “If you’ll have me, I’ve made up my mind to join the church.”

  Mr. Edwards, shaken by all he had received in his own soul, sat up straight on his horse and looked Saul in the eye, forgoing his usual questions. “Yes.”

  When Saul told Leah in the Edwardses’ kitchen, she slapped the table and kissed his neck.

  That afternoon, Mr. Edwards took himself out to the barn to try to embody Jonah cast overboard by heathen sailors in a storm and swallowed by a whale. He noted that, much like the sporting Mr. Whitefield flipping his coins, the sailors had decided who to throw overboard by casting lots. He shouted loud enough to set rats scurrying in the rafters, kicked up straw, and disturbed the horses. Saul passed by the door and looked in to see Mr. Edwards thrashing in the ocean of hay, but he kept right on going. He was halfway to the chicken coop before he started to laugh. Mr. Edwards ended with a coughing fit. He splashed his face with murky water from a bucket and resolved to try no more acting. He didn’t speak of it, not even to Sarah, but as she picked straw from his wig, she knew something had changed.

  Mr. Whitefield gave ninety-seven sermons in forty-five days. By the time he was done, some people were praying so much that dry sticks accused them of neglecting their chores. Ministers would jump on a horse and ride away from their own quarrelsome congregations to fan a conflagration of spirit down the road. They preached in barnyards if they weren’t welcome at the local church. Lay people, with no training, stood up to testify in the meadows. Old Light ministers—who thought God gave people religion through the brain, not through any organs involving sweat, moans, and tears—were against it, but they couldn’t stop it. Too many people were in the grip of a great awakening, bigger and wilder than any outpouring of religion that Christians living in the colonies had ever seen.

  Chapter 9: July 1741, Enfield

  Mr. Edwards, shocked to find himself so hungry, took two helpings of ginger beans at the midday meal at the parsonage in Enfield. He was dining on viands and fervor with the local preacher, one Mr. Reynolds, and a group of ministers who had been riding throughout the region. Mr. Edwards was relieved to be among the others, yet, as so often happened, felt himself holding back from the company. He wanted to be in the work with them so badly that, everywhere but the pulpit (and the occasional heated theological discussion on a horse), he became afraid of joining in, unsure of his welcome. It was like his student days in the buttery at Yale all over again. He bit into a tender bean, spraying juice onto his chin. He saw Mr. Reynolds glance at him and then away. Mr. Edwards took a moment of refuge behind his napkin.

  He knew that Mr. Reynolds had invited Mr. Eleazar Wheelock of the Crank to preach the sermon that afternoon. Mr. Wheelock had brought people to screeching in the streets across the river in Suffield the night before. Mr. Edwards himself had given communion to five hundred there three days ago. There had been more conversions than he could count, although, no doubt, someone would count them, and multitudes had joined the church. The next day he had preached at a private house to a crowd of two hundred, preached for three hours while people came unbraced as if they had no bones, and he himself had nearly fainted. He had had two days to rest, but little time to reflect on what it meant that people he didn’t know were sucking at his sermons like leeches at a vein, while his own congregation seemed more open to others than they were to him. Perhaps, if he found the right moment with young Mr. Wheelock, they might speak of it. He wished for Sarah, who would know how to frame the questi
on in a way that drew other people to answer back, and not act as if he expected them to say nothing but “Amen.”

  The Reynolds women, who had put aside gay and worldly white aprons for more solemn blues and greens, kept bringing more food to the table: salmon in cream sauce fresh from the great July run at Shelburne Falls, with clabboard beans, parsnips, and summer pears, which were particularly good in Enfield that year, as was the spruce beer. They handed bowls to the children who were eating on trunks and boxes around the table.

  Mr. Wheelock picked a fish bone from his teeth and said, “Did you hear how, this past winter, James Davenport of Long Island waded waist deep through snow impassable for horses to preach at a church that was not his own?”

  Most of the men gave admiring laughs. Mr. Edwards smiled, and thought, “That’s an opening, I could say something, but not about Davenport.” Mr. Davenport was one of the wildest of the itinerant preachers. The moment passed quickly, as between mouthfuls of beans and salmon, they started quoting scripture, thick and fast. Mr. Edwards spoke up then, his voice carrying strongly over the clattering dishes. Leaning forward with his cuff in the butter, he called out Psalm eighty-four, “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.”