A Slant of Light

by Jeffrey Lent

  The Fourth of July they traveled to the Four Corners in the high wheeled cart drawn by one of the silver-dappled Percherons, the tail tied up in a bob, fly-netting over the harness against the several hours the horse would stand while they listened to the oratory and the brass band, ate freshly cranked ice cream flavored with crushed vanilla beans and studded with pitted halves of oxheart cherries. It was their sole secular holiday, but for them it had a spiritual side: Otherwise only Christmas Day and Easter were observed as having signal significance. And while the Fourth did not match those two solemn days, August each year pointed out, as if the thought came fresh to him, it was only after the new nation had formed that those such as themselves gained freedom to worship, to gather in praise and contemplation of the Lord and his Given Son, each as they chose.

  She had charted her date as falling in the third week of July. Beside their bed was a cradle he’d built from cherrywood in February, long hours in the barn sawing pieces, cutting the fine joints, assembling, and then with hand planes smoothing it to a satin finish, rubbing oil into the wood, then hiding it in the corner of the workshop where he stored odds and ends. In the second week of May she’d been folding washed squares of newly made swaddling cloths when she’d turned to him and said, “You’ll have to go to Mother and ask to borrow my old cradle. Unless you’d rather find yours.” He’d only nodded and agreed, his manner when facing any minor crisis, but that evening brought the beautiful thing in from the barn. Narcissa had smiled, not surprised although she hadn’t guessed, only knowing this was the man she loved, and this forethought of his but a small part of the whole.

  The corn was high, pressing toward the roadsides, the oats nearly ripe, the slender stalks with their fragile seed casings bending with the slightest of breezes, the fields the color and tone of doeskin, the wheat sturdier, a sharper yellow, the tight hard bundles of seed topping the stalks like many-sided arrowheads. The fear now was a thunderstorm with winds and hard rain, perhaps hail, that could flatten entire sections of the grain fields. The McCormick Reaper had been oiled and greased, the threshing mill readied on the floor of the barn between the twin tiered stacks of rising hay. Except for all daily chores, there came a small pause.

  At breakfast she was pale, a little moist, but it had been a warm night with no breeze pushing through the open windows, where she’d turned in no more discomfort than other recent nights. But he came in for noon-dinner and found her in bed and insensible with skin alarmingly hot to his touch. Both mothers were summoned, other women with age and experience, finally Doctor Ogden was brought out from town. She was bathed with cool water, regained consciousness long enough to swallow tonics of infused herbs, cried out for August then slipped away again, her body convulsing with both labor and wracking spasms of fever. Two days later in a great wash of blood she delivered stillborn conjoined twins and was dead herself by nightfall.

  August Swartout did not speak a word for three months. At Christmas of that year when he resumed attending meeting, and most Sundays after that, he sat silently, his face a dark inward-turned study as if he was asking a question over and over and listening hard for some distant answer to come.

  Becca Davis had been keeping house for August Swartout four years when she received word that her brother Harlan had been bludgeoned by the murderer Malcolm Hopeton. August brought the news back from the Four Corners, where, after delivering his butter, he’d posted a notice seeking a man of reliable character to work through the fall with all aspects of the harvest. Wages paid weekly. He always found help this way, more than once young men who’d worked for him years previous, but he preferred keeping his obligations short. The board was the three meals she served up and the bed a small platform with a sleeping pallet above his woodshed, separate from both the house and the barns. Narrow stairs led down for the outhouse, the yard pump. It was six days a week with no certain promise of Sunday off, conditions and needs determining.

  The exception was herself, who each day walked up from her room above Malin’s store at first light and back down at dusk, in winter the trip both ways made in darkness. Every day except Christmas and Easter, but each of those days she labored beforehand to ensure he’d have whatever might please him. He liked fruit pies but ate whatever she prepared with diligence, thanking her for the food after each meal. Christmas and Easter he ate simply, bread, cheese, a bit of smoked sausage or ham, dried fruit. At threshing time, summer and again in winter, he expected her to feed the crews, and travel with him the following days to neighboring farms with her baskets of breads, stewed meats, pies, jars of pickle and relish. She beat rugs and did laundry. Used a slurry of ash and water to polish the four silver candlesticks, and kept the lamps filled with oil, wicks trimmed, chimneys clean. He called her Becca and she addressed him as Mr. Swartout. And on the last Friday of each month an envelope with her name in neat but crabbed script waited on the cold breakfast table with a sheaf of bills inside, not so few that she felt taken for granted; nor so many as to pop ideas into her head.

  Of course like every other person in the county she’d heard the story of what the wife and senior hired man had got up to after Mr. Hopeton had gone off to war. She figured Harlan could hold his own and also assumed the tales were embellished and overwrought. Her own life had informed her so.

  So when August Swartout swept into the yard calling her name, causing her to drop a washbasin of water which splashed up onto her skirts, stubbing a toe as she ran outside, she was stunned by his news but more so how he followed it.

  He said, “Climb up in here. I’ll drive you to town to see your brother.”

  “You will?”

  “There’s no one else to look after him, is there?”

  “There’s not.”

  “Climb up here,” he said again. He extended a hand to help her and said, “And I might stop in at the sheriff or a lawyer to see what I can learn. I know your brother held what was left of that farm together after Bethany Schofield ran off with that other feller. So it might be I’d carry him back there, perhaps leave you with him for a few days—”

  She interrupted. “I won’t abandon you to fend for yourself.”

  “Will you get in or shall we discuss the possibilities here, and arrive after decisions have been made?” He gripped her hand and she steadied herself and came up into the cart. She realized they’d never touched, hand to hand. August clicked the horse up and started out of the yard and said, “I can take care of myself for a week or two, if that’s what’s needed.”

  The horse moved in a limber downhill trot, holding the cart back, wheels rolling smoothly on the baked road. Corn and grain fields lined the road, stretched away over the curving bowl of land and the glimpse of Crooked Lake south of the Four Corners, the Bluff rising across the water. They passed fields where men they knew were haying. Some looked after them, puzzled by their passing, raising hands in greeting before returning to work. Some few faces here and there followed them long and August knew the word of the tragedy was spreading.

  Becca said, “What did he do to Harlan? And how were the others killed?”

  “I don’t know,” he lied. “We’ll learn more once we get there.”

  They passed through the wooded shade onto the bridge over Kedron Brook. Red-winged blackbirds rose from cattails along the brook, mothers above nests in loud alarm. Then turned onto the valley road, not south toward the Corners and the long road around the base of the Bluff but north toward the County House road that was a more direct route to town. They rode without speaking. August Swartout admired Becca Davis and guessed she had no idea he did so. Another girl in her place would’ve chattered with worry, or pestered him with questions he could not or would not answer. Becca merely watched the day around her, her concern only betrayed by the firm clench of her jaw. The summer after Narcissa died, he’d realized he might make do with part-time help around the farm, but he couldn’t do so and keep house for himself without falling into a mild degeneracy, and once he recognized this he knew his w
ife would not want him to live so. Although after his long silence—which was a meditation not about God, as he knew some believed, but rather how he might live out his span without her, that woman at once forever beside him and yet also a ghost of his blood, an ever more distant sound perhaps but the peal within his ear, always, and knew he would live in the company of others but never not alone. This, he understood, was part and parcel of what The Friend had taught: We exist but briefly in the human form of Time, and then throughout eternity with Christ, and, it followed, he and Narcissa had entered Time together and she would be his bride forever, merely waiting what for her would be a blink, before he joined her. So he brought Becca Davis home, wondering if she might find it odd to be back in the distant memory that was the house she’d left, and that he’d replaced. If so, she never showed it, never spoke of it, never did anything but what he expected of her, not as if she’d been humbled by life but as if walking one foot before the other and doing this well was all life required of her. After her mother died, Becca and Harlan had attended Meeting with Albert Ruddle; but once she came to work for August her attendance was more sporadic. He suspected what mattered for himself also held for Becca Davis. Which was living life by the simple guidelines The Friend offered. That Christ offered. Quietly then he admired Becca Davis. And was grateful for her. This he hoped she knew.

  They rose up the eastern side of the Jerusalem Valley and proceeded over the height of land the few miles to town. Here were farms of later settlers out of New England, Pennsylvania, some youngest sons of old Dutch families from the Hudson Valley. There remained the massive home of a sort not otherwise known in the country, three stories high with wide veranda porches and Greek columns rising to the roof overhang, ornate porticoes and huge windows built by a man from South Carolina who had ventured north with a wagonload of slaves to make a new empire in the early decades of the century, an effort short-lived as the slaves melted away to the fastness of nearby Canada. It now stood empty, a reliquary of dreams broken, of other dreams realized. Another southerner of more recent years, a family man from the Tidewater of North Carolina, who’d lost three children to malaria in those swamps, had removed to the town with the remains of his family and built a fine home from the same yellow stone August had used for his own new house those short endless years ago—his inspiration. No small matter that the builder of that house had hired local men, had brought no slaves into the country but for an elderly pair who kept kitchen and grounds and were soon manumitted, resettled to a property along the Outlet Canal with deed in hand, a lifetime annuity administered through the bank. That builder’s oldest son fought for the Union until he was discharged after losing a leg from the knee down at Vicksburg and now was reported to spend his days in a backroom of the Elmwood Hotel, playing cards and nipping from flasks with other veterans.

  Briefly they could see far down the eastern branch of Crooked Lake, as well as the smudge of Seneca to the east, the land plaited with the green rectangles of fields bordered by darker hedgerows, farm buildings, the barns red and the houses mostly white, then they dropped down into the town at the head of the lake. They passed through a shade-dappled residential section, stopping short as a pair of boys worked head and tail to move a reluctant cow across the street, then onward into the intersecting four commercial blocks. The upper two stories held offices or warrens of cheap boardinghouses, while boardwalks stood between the storefronts and the churned dust and offal of the street, littered with hawking bills, sheets of newsprint, a stove-in derby hat. Storefront windows held dresses on wooden forms, layers of dry goods, a rack of shoe lasts and a pair of finished boots, hanging carcasses of beef, swine, fowl of all sorts. Placards in restaurant windows held scrawled offerings, one had a chalkboard on an easel before the open door. Smells braided throughout the air: leather, sawdust, roasting meats, raw fish, tobacco smoke, stale beer, horse sweat and piss, the sweetness of new hay from a loaded wagon moving along ahead of them. And throughout the movement of people, men in suits or rough clothes, workmen with leather aprons, a printer’s devil rushing by clutching a ream of freshly inked advertisement bills, boys with hoops and whips, leather balls, idlers in straw hats, women and girls plucking their way with their shopping bundles wrapped in brown paper. Overhead the nest of telegraph wires, the gaslight lamp posts, swallows cutting the air, pigeons fluttering up from a rooftop to settle again.

  “Do you hanker after it?”

  “After what?”

  “The wonders of town.”

  “I see all I need of it, visiting the shops, the mercantile. Upon my errands.”

  They’d come upon the main intersection and he threaded the horse carefully through the knot of traffic, then headed up Elm Street. He said, “Look there. That’s the new opera house. Have you heard? Thirty rows of seating, a balcony and boxes around the sides.”

  She said, “Perhaps. But there are more pressing matters at hand, aren’t there?”

  “I’ve not forgotten your brother.”

  They passed the fire station with the two wagons out front, rigged with ladders, water tanks, pumps and coiled canvas hoses with brass nozzles, the teams in harness but unbridled, bored and switching tails against flies, hot in the sun, the men within the opened doors, sitting in the shade of stifled hot air, smoking, playing cards, reading a newspaper, all passing time. Ahead was the yellow stone mansion set back on a broad lawn; beyond it and over a high privet hedge rose the steeple of the Baptist church, lofty elms hugging the street sides, casting cooling shade, slight air moving, while on the other side ran the iron-railed fence and deep lot surrounding the red-brick two-story courthouse.

  He reached to tip down the brim of his hat against the slant of sun in his eyes when she spoke, her voice pitched up. “What’s this?”

  Around the courthouse was a large cluster of men and horses, a rock-thrown bee’s nest of activity about the scene. Farmers and townsmen and a handful of men in dark suits with brass badges on their lapels rushing back and forth in the throng. Off to one side beside a farm wagon stood two men restraining three large dogs on short leashes. From under the large maples surrounding the courthouse and the spread of sparse lawn and gravel that led to the iron fence there drifted a babble of angry voices, demanding and seething.

  “What’s all this?” Becca asked again

  “Hush,” August said, and flicked the reins against the Percheron’s back. The horse surged into a high trot and they went up the street. Becca remained silent but leaned around to peer back as the courthouse fell from sight. She stayed that way until he made the turn onto a cross street and then slowly righted herself, face forward. Her shoulder brushed his as she did so.

  She said, “That was about the business with Harlan, wasn’t it?”

  He turned the horse once again and the street narrowed, all houses here, with carriage sheds or small barns, gardens behind.

  “I’d guess so. Look, there.” He held the reins in one hand and pointed ahead.

  “What?”

  “That white house. That’s Doctor Ogden’s.”

  Harlan was resting on a daybed, his head wrapped in white bandages, one eye puffed and bruised the color of old ham. The doctor remembered August and, once satisfied that Becca was Harlan’s sister, he offered a short version of events: Malcolm Hopeton bringing Harlan here, the trembling distress of the man and his abrupt departure. While the doctor was still treating Harlan, the sheriff had arrived accompanied by Judge Gordon and they set to questioning Harlan until the doctor put a stop to it.

  “They’d learned what they needed. The young man was greatly disturbed by his recollections. I administered drops of laudanum and he’s been sleeping ever since. I’d keep him here for the night, though. It was a mighty blow to the head; his brain was rattled and I’d want to see how he is when he wakes, not only later this afternoon or evening, but again in the morning. Then you may take him home with you, if he appears able.”

  Becca said, “What if they were to come back and arrest him
?”

  “Dear girl, he was clearly a victim and nothing more. By his own account he sustained his injuries attempting to restrain Hopeton from further violence.”

  “What did happen?”

  The doctor glanced at August, then said, “I suspect the story, truth or not, will be fully out and about the town soon. If it’s not already.”

  August spoke up. “Might it be all right if I were to leave the young woman to sit with her brother an hour or so? If he were to waken it would hearten him to see her, and I doubt she’d interfere with your duties.”

  Becca quickly said, “I’d be a fly on the wall, it comes to that.”

  Ogden smiled briefly. “I’m sure, my dear. Of course, August. You have other business to attend to?”

  “I do.”

  “If all were as tight-lipped as you.”

  August nodded but turned his attention to Becca. “It’s best this way. I wasn’t thinking, bringing the cart. In the morning we can bring the democrat wagon, with a mattress in the bed for him to rest upon.”

  She studied him. “But the haying.”

  He nodded. “It’s only getting under way. This evening I’ll see if one of my cousins can be spared tomorrow. He could start my mowing, or drive you himself. I’ll know better which by afternoon’s end. Now, sit and hold your brother’s hand. Speak to him. Even with the brain battered, no one can know what the soul can hear and know.” Glancing once at Ogden as he said this, and then placing his hat back upon his head, August bid them farewell and went back out into the day.

  In the cart he kept the horse to a walk, digging into his coat’s inner pocket and drawing out a half cheroot and a kitchen match. He struck the match off the metal strap around the whip socket and drew fire. He smoked and went along. The group surrounding the courthouse had clearly been setting out, not returning. Hopeton could be anywhere, at least by muleback. A four- or five-hour lead was a great distance in all directions, unless someone else had spotted him and come forward with the news. August guessed he’d find the courthouse empty, at least the sheriff’s office that occupied the first floor; no doubt all the able-bodied men would be out on the manhunt but perhaps there would be someone about, a janitor or the county clerk. August knew little of the workings of the court other than what he read of court cases in the weekly newspaper. He’d been within the building exactly twice, for the transfer of the deed to his farm and for his marriage license from the state. And what he read of court cases in the weekly newspaper. Yet it seemed the place to start. His instinct of men informed him that Doctor Ogden had divulged all he would. Perhaps it was not within his office to do more.