Jarrettsville

by Cornelia Nixon

  Snow fell hard that winter, and I used it as an excuse to meet less often than before, while I tried to decide what her silence meant. She knew something was wrong but not what it was, and sometimes she looked at me fearfully, her face winter pale. In the harsh glare of snow-reflected light, I could see that she had begun to age, fine lines beneath her eyes.

  Out of petulance, wanting to punish her, I said no more about the wedding date. At night sometimes I would wake up in a sweat and wonder if I knew anything about her. Had she really been a virgin that night on the hill above church camp? She had been eager, not reticent, and gave little evidence of pain. What if she had lain with Tim when they were growing up, out in her barn? She had admitted once to kissing him, and I knew it was rare for anyone to tell the whole truth to a new lover. I certainly had not told her everything, and she would have had more reason to keep it to herself if she were unchaste. Most people overlooked a man who fell from grace, and they might even chuckle at it. But disgrace fell on ladies for much less, and for that reason I could not trust what she was willing to say.

  One gloomy night, trying to shake off thoughts like that, I stopped in at Smithson’s place to drink a pint, and he looked at me in a puzzled way as he set a glass of ale in front of me.

  “What?” I said and scrutinized him back.

  He wiped his hands on a towel and regarded me with his brows pulled down. “You’re a famous man these days. Did you know that?”

  I took a drink and smiled in anticipation of the joke. “That can’t be good news. Fools’ names and fools’ faces, often seen in public places, as my mother likes to say.”

  But he did not smile back. “It’s worse than that, man. I’m serious. You haven’t heard the word about yourself? What Richard Cairnes is saying about you?”

  Ordinarily I would have laughed, and it was galling that I had to care now what sort of impudence might be produced by my future brother-in-law. “I don’t think I want to know.”

  He nodded. “You don’t. But you better, for your own sake. Tell me first, is there anything you may have done, say, in regard to the Negroes living on your place?”

  I thought he was implying that I was the one who beat Tim, and it made me angry. “Nothing but good, I’ll tell you that. But go ahead and tell me if you think you must.”

  My voice was too loud, and he glanced toward the other men around the bar. Richard was not there, but his farm was right next door, and some of them were no doubt his associates.

  Smithson wiped the bar and leaned toward me, speaking low, for my ears alone. “He says you’ve got a child by the little girl, the one that was his slave. He says that’s why you moved them there, so you could have your way with her.”

  A white flash blinded me, and I set the pint down so hard half of it sloshed out. “That’s a damn lie. I’ll tell you who the father is. It’s him. She was already with child when they came to us. What is she, fifteen? Any man who did that is despicable.”

  Smithson’s face went bland and neutral, his voice even lower, as if to set an example and make me lower mine. “I wouldn’t know, never seen her. But it does look bad. The child was born on your property, and that makes people think you’re responsible. There you are, still young enough and no wife. Why wouldn’t they think that? I’ve heard it said every night this week, by all sorts of men. Some say the Rifles and Dragoons may take it up officially.”

  I had to laugh. “Officially? What sort of office do they have? Don’t let them get to you, man. You’re talking about a gang of ruffians and traitors. I’m not afraid of them.”

  His face closed, and he took another swift glance at the other men. His voice got very low. “I’ve told you what I heard. You know they’re full of beans again, like the old days. They come in and howl about the Honor Code, like they think they won the goddamn war. And as far as I can tell, they did, at least around here. So, word to the wise. The girl was Richard’s slave. So it doesn’t matter what the truth is. You better look out for yourself, that’s all.”

  I ignored what Smithson said and moved around as freely as before, though I stewed more than seemed sensible. Something had curdled in me, and I made excuses not to meet Martha. Was it possible for a woman to be truly different from her brother? He had found a way to get at me, with his foul tongue. Martha had a tongue on her, too, and you never knew who someone was until you lived with them. If she had even a particle of Richard in her, that would be too much. Surely she could not be entirely free of his views. They had the same parents, the same upbringing, the same influences, and she still lived in his house, under his puny sway, sat at his dinner table, washed his clothes. What if she turned into him, like a cuckoo in my nest, crowding out my rightful family? Could I take the chance that my children would resemble him? She might be hiding who she was, to capture me.

  But why would she do that? She knew that I was poor and not approved of by her family. She had no motive to fool me, except love, and love was what I wanted. Should I have married her straight off, when I first wanted to? Should I marry her now and put an end to the talk? I knew that she loved me, and I could not give her up. My senses required her now, if nothing else.

  But all through Christmas and into the New Year, I stewed, unable to act.

  ONE FRIGID NIGHT in deep winter, I dreamt that the barn was on fire, and I could not run to save Abe and Jack while they screamed in pain and terror. I woke up horrified and pulled on my boots and ran up in the snow to make sure it wasn’t true.

  The barn stood intact, and when I went inside and held the lantern up, both horses lay sleeping in their straw, curled up like cats for warmth. I gave them each a pat, stepped outside again, and caught a whiff of char, most likely from a neighbor’s hearth. For good measure, I checked the hearths in our house, both properly banked down, giving only a small glow, and I went back to bed.

  But in the morning, outside in the snow, the smell was stronger, and I followed it in dread. At the sheepfold, all seemed well, and I could see nothing out of place across snow-covered fields into the woods. But I saddled Jack and rode him out to look for the source.

  At the far end of the sheep meadow, the gate should have been closed, but it was open, horse tracks trampling snow. To get to Tim’s clearing quickly, I cut through the woods, where the smell was overpowering, with a menacing, low scent of death beneath the char.

  I almost didn’t notice something hanging from a tree—two trees. Startled, I stopped to stare. A white chicken had been strung up by its yellow claws, its belly slit and bloody entrails tied around its feathered neck. A headless rabbit dripped gore, its head stuck on a stick plunged in the ground. And there were more, all through the woods—chickens and rabbits quivering on sticks or twisting on strings. The last one I refused to see. It could not be a black puppy with soft ears and a long tail.

  “Go on, go on,” I said to Jack, digging in my heels.

  But he had seen them, too, and bolted from the woods into the clearing, where piles of charred logs smoldered. Tim stood where his porch had been, picking through black rubble. He looked thin and hunched, far older than he was, his body no more than bones inside his patched jacket. His face had healed flatter on one side and scarred from the fence-post beating, his nose smashed, lips permanently split, and one eye half-closed. He did not look at me as I rode close.

  “Tim, dear God. Who did this?”

  He seemed deaf, like a man in whose field of vision you had to stand before he knew you were there. His mouth slack, he pulled a burnt beam from the pile and dropped it back again. He shoved another with his foot.

  I didn’t see her coming, but Creolia rushed at me from somewhere, her face swollen and a tin ladle raised in one hand. “Go on!” she shouted as if to scare a snake. “Go on! Go on!”

  Lashing the ladle, she whacked my knee.

  With sudden energy Tim strode to her, twisted the spoon away, and glared at me. “You heard her now. Don’t none of us need messing round here. Y’all go on.”

  For
a moment I thought it must be a mistake. They must not have recognized me. They must have thought I was one of the men who did it, come back for more.

  “Tim, it’s me, Nick. Are you all right?” I realized that I had not seen Sophie. “Where’s your sister and her baby? Are they all right?”

  Tim seethed up at me, split lips peeled back to show his teeth, and did not speak.

  I tried again. “Listen. You’re not safe here. Bring your family and come to the house, I beg you to. Come today. We’ll make room for you.”

  He glared at me and his voice shook. “Not no white man’s house, no sir. Not ever again.”

  Creolia dashed at me and struck Jack with her bare hands. The horse whirled in fear, and I went with him as he galloped away.

  THAT EVENING WHEN I went out to try to bring them to the house again, they were gone.

  I took it harder than I would have thought, blind, ferocious rage making me shake. I wanted to kill the men who beat Tim and burned his house. For what, because he had a dog? Because he read a book? Because some villain said my Martha lay with him? I wanted to kill every man who thought such a thing.

  Of course I would not kill anyone. I was my father’s son, and I had to honor him. But at what point did you stop turning the other cheek? Even Jesus said, “I came not to bring peace but a sword.” I had to do something. I didn’t care if it was dangerous. No, dangerous was better. Dangerous was what I meant to be.

  A few days later the papers announced a meeting in Bel Air to discuss the next move of the state’s Republicans, how to counter the results of the new Rebel government. I knew the Rebels would turn up, too, so many that I would be badly outnumbered, and that was fine. It was the kind of frigid winter night when nothing seemed to move, no moon to light the snow, when I rode there in the dark and waited for my turn onstage.

  The others did not address the stated question for long. Instead they stood up to accuse their fellow Republicans of “unnumbered crimes.” They pointed fingers at each other for the shambles the party had become, Radicals blaming Conservatives and vice versa, each side shouting that the other had thrown away the victories in battle, Radicals by asking for too much, Conservatives for refusing to take what had been won—both sides drowned under the jeers and catcalls of the Democrats, who had come out in force to gloat.

  I had no desire to speak in public, and when it was my turn, I stood at the podium, trying to imagine that I was my father, that I stood that tall. The hall was dimly lit by torches, but I could feel a hundred eyes boring into me, most of them with hate, voices already shouting over me.

  “My fellow Republicans,” I said with irony, wondering how many were still there.

  “They’ve all gone home! Sit down! Give up!” voices howled with glee.

  Rage fired my voice. “Why are we so busy calling each other scoundrels? Haven’t you noticed we have lost the state? Let’s get together to defeat the Democrats next time!”

  Shouts of laughter from the hall.

  “You know they did it illegally. They stuffed ballot boxes in Baltimore. If you don’t believe me, read the Philadelphia Enquirer! Read the New York Times! The guys who did it bragged about it, and some people who tried to protest got chairs broken over their heads. No one was even arrested. That’s what we can look forward to with Swann in Congress and Hamilton in the Senate and Bowie for a governor. I never thought to see the day a man so ignorant would get hold of the state.”

  The howls of laughter now turned to outrage, rolling toward me like a wave. But I kept on shouting, mad as a rabid squirrel. “Right here in our own neighborhood, hoodlums have burnt cabins of law-abiding freedmen and beaten them almost to death. They have impregnated little black girls and blamed innocent men for it. I can tell you who did that!”

  Someone fired a round into the ceiling, and two men actually leapt onstage and took my arms. In short order I was railroaded out a side door into the black night, a crowd sweeping me forward so hard I fell face-first into the snow.

  I was astonished at their nerve, and as they yanked me up again, I tried to see their faces, but in the dark they all looked alike, white men, faces blurred. Two men lifted my legs, two took my shoulders, and they all broke into a run, headed for the stables behind the hall. Jack was in there, and if I could break free, I might get away.

  But the swarm of men around me was too dense, and a loft door rumbled back. They carried me inside, where it smelled of green hay and warm horse manure, smells I usually found comforting. Someone lit a lantern, making shadows leap up bales stacked on all sides and lighting each face eerily from below. Some of them I recognized from pictures in the newspapers and from Sam Cairnes’s funeral, prominent Secessionists involved in every plot to help the CSA.

  And now Richard Cairnes stepped from their midst, looking frail and pale surrounded by the sun-cracked faces of the older men. The code had specified a horsewhip, but someone handed him a thick black coil of bullwhip, capable of doing real damage. Hands behind me yanked my shirt and jacket open, popping buttons, peeled them down to expose my back, and held me flat over a bale, a man on each limb, straw stalks poking into my bare skin like a bed of nails.

  A sonorous voice pronounced over me, and it sounded like Henry Farnandis.

  “For crimes against the Honor Code, you will be punished by the man most aggrieved. Richard Cairnes accuses you of lying with a woman of his household and moving her to your domain, the better to enjoy her illicitly. We have all sat in judgment of this crime and found you guilty. Prepare to take your punishment.”

  Richard did not have the decency to say a word. But at least his first crack of the whip was tentative and hardly hurt.

  “Bring your arm back farther, son,” a deep voice said.

  “Put your back into it,” a gruff one put in. “That’s it. Harder, man!”

  The baby asp can be more venomous than the adult, I had read, and now the baby asp that held the whip gave it his all, lashing harder with each stroke as if to prove something, his breath a savage pant. When the whip cracked, I could not stop my body from trying to squirm away. After nine or ten such hits, my back was all stripes, and each stroke gored already broken skin. But after twenty hits I could not feel the cuts, only hear the whip. My cheek pressed to prickling straw, I sank until I felt nothing.

  I HAVE NO MEMORY of the remainder of that night, though I’m told my brothers came to look for me, took me home, and did the chores around the place. I remember waking up to searing pain and wishing I could sleep again. The ointment my mother made burned deep into the cuts but kept them clean. They did not fester.

  But I lay in bed far longer than was necessary, seeing no reason to rise. In a month the scars had healed to broad purple cicatrices, like fat worms across my back.

  When I finally got up, I had lost flesh, my clothes hanging on my frame. I had lost more than flesh, but I was not reckoning it up. I was a different man, I knew that much—if I was still a man at all. Where there had been heat and motion in my chest, there was now an icy stone.

  I had heard of such things happening to slaves. Maybe Tim had felt this way when he was beaten with a fence post. He had been born in slavery, but later he was free, and the army even let him use a gun, before someone tried to beat him back to slavery. The first slaves would have felt it worse, proud men of Africa chained and beaten until they forgot who they had been. Those men were my brothers now. I understood why some of them preferred to go on in defiance until they were killed or pretended to be broken as they waited for the chance to kill instead.

  I was well enough for light work, monitoring ewes at night out in the lambing shelter, waiting for the births, so long as I did not lift anything or make a move that might open the seams in my skin. The litter of border collie pups—all but the one I gave to Tim—were old enough to train, and I would have to teach them if they were to work for me, to respond to whistled signals telling them which way to turn the sheep, to divide the flock, to sort ewes from lambs, or to bunch them up. Bu
t I had no energy, and I felt sick to look at them, with the memory of their brother hanging from a tree.

  I saw no one outside my family and did not leave the place. I seemed to have become a very old man, prematurely aged. My mother went sometimes to pick up the post and would leave it on my desk, and I saw the envelopes Martha had folded carefully and addressed in her clear hand. They came every day at first, then tapered off. I did not open them. I didn’t even pick them up. They stayed where my mother had put them. They seemed not to have anything to do with me, and I was relieved when I realized they were no longer there. My mother must have taken them away.

  In my more lucid moments, I expected Martha Jane to sue for breach of promise, and I watched for a summons, though it did not come. I wondered if she knew what her brother had done to me, and if she understood. Sometimes the thought made my back clench and revived a stinging pain. Other times I felt great tenderness for her and wished I could explain.

  But it was clear to me that I would have nothing further to do with the kin of G. Richard Cairnes. As frozen, snowy days gave way to weeks and months, I ceased even to be curious about what was happening to her.

  MY SISTERS WERE TOO FRAIL to help with lambing, so I got it done myself, sleeping in the shelter, waking at the first bleat, and I lost no ewes or lambs. In exchange for teaching a neighbor the rudiments of working with sheepdogs, I arranged to use his high-sided wagon and draft horse, and one late winter morning I loaded a small flock of lambs inside and set off north toward Lancaster.

  The wide Susquehanna had been frozen hard but was now beginning to break up, a rivulet of shining blue-green at its middle, catching in smooth folds on the pilings of the long red covered bridge. A farmer in a black buggy was following a herd of brown Jersey cows as they clambered onto it, moos of protest echoing under the roof, and I waited for them to cross, not wanting to overtax the bridge. When the cows had lumbered off, I let the horse trot across, hoofbeats ringing on the boards.