Soon enough, Isadore and Susanah could not open their door, walk down the street, or enjoy a stroll in the meadows near the town without neighbors coming up to them and mentioning rubber. The questions “When is it coming? Is it truly waterproof? How is rubber pliable for one use and hard as a rock for another?” rang in their ears everywhere they went. The two were proud to bursting of their son. In early April, the rubber arrived and flew off the store shelves. Everyone for miles about had to have at least one item made of the miracle stuff. Isadore placed an order with the factory in Boston for replacement rubber goods that doubled the original amount. At the end of the month, the Milner family prepared to make their way to Greensborough for the wedding, just as peddlers were trickling back to the camp town to restock for the late spring sales season. Rubber invoices bulged from every pocket. Abe could no longer hide the truth about Hannah’s lineage from his parents. One night as he’d come from the building site of his future home where the matters of paint and wallpaper were put off until his bride might choose them but where everything else was nearly done, he decided the moment had come to tell them their new daughter was born a Christian.
Isadore’s jaw dropped at the news. After a few painful seconds, he sputtered, “What barbarous news is this? I have the rabbi coming from Durham in two weeks’ time and now you tell me? Susanah, do you hear him?” His wife’s mouth worked, her eyes blinked back tears. Speaking quietly, oh, so quietly, she shocked them both. “It’s a new world, Isadore. What can we do? He will have whom he will have. She sounds a good girl and her parents have not complained that she wants a Jew. Did not similar unions take place on occasion in London? At least he’s not converting the way those London Jews would to cement a mixed alliance. In the meantime, he’s come a fine man, an honest steward of your business. We have much to be thankful for out of him. If our son wishes to marry a gentile, he will be no different from the patriarchs of old. Did not Abrahan make Hagar his wife? Did not Solomon have a princess of Egypt as his queen? When the children come, I’ll be there to make sure they know they spring from Abrahan, Yitzak, and Yacov.” After a long stretch of quiet, Isadore nodded his head from side to side. “You make a good argument, my love. Life in America undermines the old ways a thousand times a day. If she’s ok by you, she’s ok by me.” Abe embraced them both, overwhelmed with gratitude.
The night before the Milners were due to arrive in Greensborough, Abe went to his parents to thank them again for their support on the question of his choice of bride. It struck him that he was on the threshold of an eternal union with a young woman he much admired but barely knew and reminded himself there was nothing unusual about that aspect of their arrangement. Only second marriages like Isadore’s and Susanah’s were commonly matters of knowledgeable choice. For men his age, love began as an urge for family or an expansion of land or business. Whatever came next, people made the best of things. He had no desire to avoid his situation. Every fiber of his being told him this would be a good thing, that this marriage was the next best match to one with Marian, who was, in any case, dead, but why his mother had approved the idea remained a nagging mystery. So on the night before his bride and future in-laws arrived, he said to her at a moment when they were alone, “Mother, why do you sanction my union to a gentile girl? When you first came to America, I had the idea only a Jewish daughter would please you. In fact, I half expected last fall to return home and find Ariella Levy waiting for me.” His mother clucked her tongue and, reaching up, brushed the forelock away from his eyes. “My dear son. I confess I tried. But Ariella was already promised by the time word got to her family. No, my change of mind is based on my own heart’s adventures since I arrived here, events that taught me tolerance in these matters, although I’ll speak no more of them to you. Now that I’m married to your uncle, it would be shameful to do so. The whole megillah is not for a son’s ears.”
O’Hanlon! thought Abe. O’Hanlon was her route to comprehending Hannah. O’Hanlon! He wondered if the reason his mother refused the Irishman was out of loyalty to her people, or because she truly preferred Uncle Isadore. It was hardly a question he could ask. Without pretending to comprehend the marital decisions of others, he fell to examining his own. Once again, he decided there was no fault he could find in Hannah. None at all. But, ah, he thought, the stuff of Sassaporta marriages is complex!
The second of these unions went exceedingly well at first. The families were cordial, even warm from the first hello as if Christians had always loved Jews and vice versa. After the first family dinner before the wedding, Isadore announced that he would forgive all Abe’s debts, including those related to the purchase of land and the building of the marital home, as a wedding gift.
Abe’s jaw dropped at the news. Tears of gratitude sprang to his eyes. Until that moment, to be debt-free felt a whimsy, a dream, and a farfetched one at that. The only way he could envision himself free of obligation to his uncle and stepfather was to imagine him dead and his mother twice-over widowed. Fantasies of financial independence thus inspired tremendous guilt and he rarely entertained them. But in a single pronouncement, Isadore Sassaporta absolved him. Esther Milner’s eyes sparkled with grateful tears on her daughter’s behalf while she rushed to kiss the merchant on his bearded cheek. Susanah clapped her hands and kissed Tobias Milner’s shaven cheek in kind and they all laughed while a teary Abe raised his glass of tea and toasted, “God Bless America!”
The night before the nuptials, Abe took the portrait of Marian, which, true to his vow, he had not studied since his final visit to her cabin, and hid it under a floorboard of the new house. The Indian Removal Act had narrowly passed Congress days before. While the president might or might not be successful in his negotiations to have the tribes remove themselves from the Southeast voluntarily, he at least had authorization from the people to try. It was 1830, a date to remember. A new American era had begun. If things went according to Jackson’s plan, the United States would no longer be hindered by patches of Indian territory everywhere she wanted to spread her wings. Abe considered the pushing out of Cherokee a tragedy, queerly related to the tragedy of his lost first love. But the destiny of nations and the passions of a Dark Water could not be stopped by such as him. There, he thought, nailing the floorboard down, that’s it. The ultimate vestige of a great love gone. Buried. Past. The page is turned, the book closed. If the sun rises tomorrow, there’ll be a future for me and it will be good.
The next morning was particularly bright and clear. Abe and Hannah married in the town square under a trellis of dogwood and wisteria, which Isadore and Susanah viewed as nature’s most glorious chuppah. The mayor of Greensborough officiated. Farmers from here and there, Isadore’s peddlers, and the tradesmen of the town all attended. There was feasting and dancing. Even the Quakers among them deigned to take a step or two. The wedding night was extraordinary. Abe’s breath was stolen by the contrast of a virgin’s passion weighed against the caprice of a mature woman. Where Marian had been casual, if generous, Hannah was hungry for his sex and strove with every muscle and sinew to give him pleasure without knowing in the slightest what men might like or women deserve in kind. Her eagerness near overwhelmed him. More than once, he whispered to her, “Slow down, my love. Slow down.” She obeyed instantly for as long as she could stand and then she was at it again, grasping, straining, heaving against him. Later, when he collapsed against her breast, panting with exhaustion and release, he glanced up to see her smiling at him in the most gleeful manner, her mouth stretched wide, her eyes large and merry. He asked if she found him ridiculous and she answered, “Far from it, my husband. I’m only thinking how different love has been for me than for my sisters. Both instructed me to close my eyes and think only of Jesus when you came to me, that our union should be the worst five minutes of my life, but something I should get used to for the sake of family harmony. Oh, those poor silly geese!” Her body shook with laughter. He found her so adorable in her mirth that he kissed her de
eply again and again when their second exploit of love occurred without either expecting it. It was an event both agreed was a good omen of the highest degree. In fact, for the first month of their marriage, nothing transpired between them that was not delicious, ecstatic, and unworldly in its deepening layers of sweet emotion, until the happiness of those early days was broken by the stench of spoiled rubber, carried into the store one day by a party of disgruntled Cherokee.
From Greensborough to Cherokee Country
Melting rubber stinks in a particular way, and the open windows and doors of Sassaporta and Son caught a breeze that ushered that horrid stink into the store. Those on the floor coughed at its arrival or covered their nostrils and mouths with handkerchiefs. At first there was great confusion. Had the earth erupted and expelled the reek of hell? Had rotted corpses fallen from the skies into the street? Then the Cherokee in charge strode through the door, his men bearing baskets of ruined rubber, and the malodorous air suddenly had an undeniable source.
There were five of them in all. The Cherokee was a tall, imposing figure in a white man’s frock coat and trousers, but bare of chest in the heat of summer. He wore a beaded cross belt beneath the coat, one with a red background overlaid by designs of blue and white, in which a pipe and tomahawk were inserted. Another belt of similar configuration circled his waist. The butt of a pistol stuck out of it at one hip while a deerskin pouch dangled from the other. Around his neck, a silver medallion in the shape of a half moon threaded on a rope of rawhide hung level to his heart. He wore English boots with his trousers tucked into their tops, and under a broad-brimmed Quaker-style black hat, his hair was cut short. The other four men were black slaves dressed in worn hemp tunics, drawstring pants, and simple moccasins. Each held in arms bulging with effort a large basket filled with a heavy, stinking black substance. At a gesture from the Cherokee, they dropped the baskets on the floor and stepped back.
Abe had the misfortune to be behind the front desk that day, his stepfather having accompanied his mother on a social call. Hannah, who’d been in the back taking inventory, came out holding a perfumed cloth to her nose to see what repellent odor weighted the air. She arrived in time to hear the Cherokee’s complaint and witness the backs of customers fleeing the emporium floor as quickly as they could without appearing to panic.
“You have sold us demon’s spunk for coin and skins,” the man said. “Like every demon, it was beautiful when first we saw it, but now it melts and reveals its true nature. It despoils our homes, our fields, and our hunting grounds. You may have it back. But first your men must come to our homes in the mountains, to our fields and our hunting grounds and take it away as the rain will not wash it and the sun cannot burn it off. You will return our coin and skins as well.”
Having spoken, the Cherokee lifted his chin and folded his arms across his chest, his right hand very close to the butt of his pistol. Abe stood silent with his mouth open while his mind swarmed with the disastrous ramifications of what he’d just heard. Rubber melted. Once it melted, it adhered. It stank. Unbearably. Would all the rubber they’d sold, all those hundreds of pounds, suffer a similar fate? The sun in the mountains where many Cherokee lived was stronger during the day than it was in the middle towns and foothills, but the lower ground would soon catch up, within weeks, as summer took hold. If all that rubber melted too, Sassaporta and Son was ruined. No, he prayed, no, no, no, no, no. The Indians must have done something queer to it. How to find out? His wife, dear Hannah, whose parents had taken home dozens of rubber items after the wedding, stood behind him, poking his back to prompt him to speak. When he did not, she dropped the cloth from her face and took over.
“Sir,” she said, smiling sweetly, addressing him with uncommon respect. “Why don’t you and Mr. Sassaporta retire to the offices back there and discuss the matter in full? I am sure we can accommodate you, but this is all something of a shock and we need to understand exactly what’s happened, don’t we, dear?”
Abe awoke from his miserable stupor. He gestured to the back rooms and even bowed but very slightly. “Yes, yes sir. Follow me.” The Cherokee dropped his arms and prepared to do so. Hannah interrupted his movement. “But please, sir, might you have your men there remove the baskets? They can leave them behind the store, in the livery area, until we determine what to do.” An order was given, Hannah’s request accommodated. But for a round of disturbed whinnies coming from the livery once the spoiled product was deposited there, all was exceedingly quiet as the Cherokee and Abe settled into the office at the back.
Abe sat behind Isadore’s desk, the Cherokee sat in the red leather chair opposite. With the energies of a Joshua, Abe marshaled his resolve to appear in-charge, accommodating, and civil. He was well aware that the man sitting across from him was a generation older than him, by his demeanor, a leader of his people, accustomed to obedience as his birthright, and that his grievance against Sassaporta and Son was probably just. At the same time, this odiferous debacle had the capacity to spiral out of control, especially if the melting occurred to all the rubber they’d sold. He didn’t yet dare contemplate what difficulties he and Isadore would be in if the rubber they’d convinced the family franchises to purchase had also spoiled. For now, he was primarily concerned with his neighbors. If the local whites learned he’d been especially generous to the initial complainant, the Cherokee, they would expect, no, demand even more. While hope dimmed, he longed for there to be something wrong with the Indian’s story. All this would simply go away if only he could trap the Indian out in a lie or even a small exaggeration that somehow exonerated rubber. With these thoughts and a thousand offshoots of them running through his mind, it was all Abe could do to plant a pleasant look on his face and nod for the man to begin.
“It is as I tell you,” the Cherokee said. “The rubber first melted when we laid it upon flat rock in the high places. The traders told us this rubber comes from bleeding trees. Our gighua, our Beloved Woman, told us we must thank the tree spirits for giving their blood for our use. We spread out sheets of it, those tarpaulins your men sold at the trading posts, and on the sheets we laid the sacred crystals our priests use for divining that as Father Sun rose and set, they would capture a portion of His eternal light and this new thing might be blessed. Instead, as you can see, it melted and released its poisonous vapors into the air. It sticks to the rock and only by hardest labor can we scrape most of it off. There is a remnant that lingers like a scar upon the earth.”
Abe chose to display empathy. Apology felt dangerously entangled with compensation, which had yet to be determined. Empathy was safer. “It’s a terrible thing you tell me. Terrible,” he said. He opened his palms, pointing them upward as if entreating the heavens. “A most unfortunate event.”
“Hmph,” muttered the Cherokee. He continued. “It is a sacrilege. The stuff sticks not only to the rock but to our priests’ crystals. We put them in holy fire and still they are streaked with blackness. The light inside them is trapped. It cannot be seen, nor read for signs. We have had to find new crystals and to purify them. For a time, our priests could not read omens at all. Then there are the other things that melted.”
Baruch Ha-Shem. There were other things. Abe’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach and sizzled there as if fried in a vat of bile. His head felt light, almost dizzy. “And what are these other things, if I may ask?”
“Hmph,” muttered the Cherokee. “You may ask. Everything has melted. The pots, the spoons, the boots. Oh, yes, the boots. On one occasion, they melted on a fisherman’s feet while he slept in the heat of high noon by a riverbank. He was stuck there for some time. He could not get his feet out of the boots nor the boots out of the ground. When he did not come home as expected, his wife sent out his elder sons looking for him. When they found him, they cut his boots from the earth and then his flesh from the boots. Hopefully, he will walk again.”
There were other stories of the rubber disaster in the high plac
es of Cherokee country. None were as gruesome as the man who required cutting from his boots, although the rest were disturbing on their own. Yet no matter what the human cost in life or treasure, what seemed to bother the Cherokee most was the defilement of the crystals, an event he kept returning to, relentless as the chimes of a clock, and the defilement of the forest and mountainside. “Everywhere there are piles of it in the spots people have managed to leave it. Sometimes, it remains where the people put it in the hours before they were about to use it but then it melted at the last moment and became unwieldy. In other words, it is next to their house or in it. Wherever it sits, it contaminates either by scent or by its thickness and its ugliness. You have done this. You must clean it up.”
An Undisturbed Peace Page 15