EQMM, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  6 March

  Near midday, I rode out to the Sutcliffe farm. A barking dog announced me, and by the time I had dismounted, a tall woman heavy with child had come out of the cabin. So unwelcoming was the look on her face, her eyes set in me like pins, that it was a moment before I managed to speak.

  "Is this the Sutcliffe farm?"

  She folded her arms for an answer and asked what I needed. Though she cannot be more than three and twenty, there is a harshness about her that proves life a weary enterprise. I gave her my name and calling and stated that I wished to say a blessing for that poor Indian. Only then did she unfold her arms and beckon to a child who had come out behind her.

  "I am Eliza Sutcliffe,” she said. She took the girl's hand. “My daughter, Jane."

  The girl, perhaps five years old, regarded me without expression.

  "Excuse our manners,” said the woman, “but it is two weeks now of folks coming out here and wanting nothing but to gawk at the poor thing."

  With that she took young Jane's hand and motioned for me to follow them inside.

  Their cabin is like all the other cabins in the region, of perhaps twelve by sixteen feet, with a stone hearth. It was near this hearth, on a simple bed, that the Indian woman lay sleeping. Her injuries, Eliza Sutcliffe explained, were quite desperate. Shot, though the ball passed cleanly through her, and bludgeoned repeatedly. None expected her to live, yet a fortnight has passed, and now she manages to sit up on her own and to eat a little at odd times. Eliza alone has treated the girl, dressing her wounds, helping her outside in the mornings.

  She said this to me by the door, as if afraid the woman would hear and wake. Only with the conclusion of her words did I venture to that corner. Mr. Corey had spoken of a woman, yet it was not a woman I saw at first, but a mere creature whose battered face recalled a memory of terror. I stood over her and wondered what I might do to reach the poor thing. Then she opened her eyes and I was struck by the gravity in her look, a fierceness that did not allow for pity. In that moment she was changed for me. All the violence inscribed there on her face could not betray the delicacy of her features. Eliza Sutcliffe had ventured to my side and now, in a low voice, said, “Let us pray.” I nodded foolishly, my reverie at an end, and from memory recited Psalm 14.

  "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."

  As I spoke I looked into her eyes, but she shut them against my stare. I judge my words seemed like nothing more than a distant lullaby. I asked Eliza if she knew whether the unfortunate soul had been baptized. Eliza said she could not say, but supposed she had not.

  "By what do you call her, then?"

  Eliza looked doleful and said, “By no name at all."

  I told her I would certainly baptize the girl when she was well enough to enter the water. “Until then,” I said, “we shall call her Priscilla."

  Eliza said, “A good, strong name."

  I nodded and said I believed that was so. Though how strong a name is it really, when Priscilla, my own dear wife, did not live through the birth of our child, and the child did not live at all?

  It was not long before Harold Sutcliffe came in. A thin, callused man, he walks with a limp and speaks only of work yet to be done—fallow fields to be readied for plowing, and new ground, all woods, still to be cleared. Their farm lies not much more than a mile from Floodwood and I remarked that with the widening of the town it will not be long before civilization claims them. He nodded as if to humor me, then noted that it is still twenty miles to the nearest mill and one must wait three or four days and nights for the meal.

  Hearing him speak like this, I wanted to congratulate him on this life he had made, for it seemed to me he has submitted to nothing and no one. There was a time I might have said the same of myself.

  We sat to a feast of cornbread and venison, and as we ate reflected kindly upon His grace. I spoke only of my travels, saying nothing of the settled life I left behind twelve months ago. Quick they were to marvel at the distance I have gone in a mere four seasons, more than fifteen hundred miles with a hundred and eighty-three sermons preached and sixty-three men and women and children baptized. Harold asked by what way had I come into the state. At length I described the Nashville Trace as it skirted the Cumberland plateau, the Ohio River crossing into Indiana at the Yellow Banks, and the trail running north from Rockport through Dale, Jasper, and Bloomington. With this he seemed satisfied and offered no more questions in the direction of my past.

  * * * *

  7 March

  The sales have begun in earnest and the town is crowded, nearly overwhelmed, by those here to purchase land. There is, to be sure, much backslapping and camaraderie, for many of these men have not enjoyed such company for months. As for the sales themselves, it is a mostly peaceful affair, the convention of bidding set aside by settlers—or squatters, as the speculators call them—for a more congenial practice. Should a pair find that they desire the same claim, it is up to one to broach a price that the other will take to leave off. As it happens, sometimes, that neither one can be convinced, lots are cast, with the winner claiming at Congress price the tract in question. It seems to me a very civilized way of approaching the matter, though it must be added that speculators are not thought of kindly and any attempt by one to challenge a settler for his tract will find the crowd souring against him.

  I afterwards preached a sermon with a large crowd attending. From my pulpit, a crate lent me by the innkeeper, I spoke for no more than a quarter-hour before the crowd's distracted shuffling bade me end my words. I stood down and soon learned the reason for their excitement. The circuit judge, long awaited, is finally come. I walked with some others to the jail where I spotted him in conversation with Sheriff Corey. Judge Dowd, as he is called, exudes something of the wearied, exuberant calm of a man who has seen battle and finds it to his taste. The trial, it is said, will occur the day after next. I rode out to the Sutcliffe farm to give them this news.

  Eliza still will not smile, though her manner is decidedly warmer. She took me in to see Priscilla without my asking. Awake and sitting up, the girl appeared fitter for this life than she had the day before. Taking a seat opposite her at the bed's end, I said her name and felt her brown eyes flicker through me as if I were but a ghost. I prayed for her then, entreated Him to guide her back to me.

  I could not ride off so soon, and when Eliza brought me back outside I offered to assist Harold in whatever work he needed done. “Down thereaways,” she said, and pointed. I made my way along one edge of the field and found him clearing brush. That these fields were once thick forest is surely testament to this man's will. But it was with gladness that he received my offer of help.

  We worked for a time in silence before Harold began to speak of Priscilla. Every night she wakes screeching the most ragged, unearthly sounds. He himself sleeps soundly, but Eliza is worried sick and cannot think what to do. Being five months pregnant, she must have her rest. It was a trader, he said, who came upon the bodies of the Indians and who found Priscilla alive. He got her into his cart and started to town. This farm was the first he passed and so it was that she came to rest here. How strange is the world.

  I stopped my chopping and looked at him, but he did not meet my gaze. I believe he did not mean to say so much to me.

  "Let me stay the night,” I said to him, “that I may see what you mean."

  He nodded, and said, “There is nothing you can do. She is in her own place."

  When we came in after dark, Eliza and Jane had supper waiting. Harold took her aside and explained the arrangement. We ate, and after dinner I rolled out my blankets by the hearth. I fear I am the last one now awake, the fire not much more than a dull glow. They think me mad for all I must write down, but I told them it is the Lord's calling to remember all that we can. At this, young Jane asked me, “Can you remember being born?” When I said I could not, she sai
d, “I can!” “What was it like?” I asked. “Very bright,” she said, and giggled, and Eliza told her to hush.

  * * * *

  8 March

  I awoke in near darkness to the sound of Priscilla's sharp-pitched cry and was up and by her side in a moment. I touched her shoulder and said her name. As if my presence were a kind of charm, her cries diminished. She whined and thrashed once more, then lay still.

  "Priscilla,” I said, “you must not be afraid."

  I found her hand and held it, and now there came into my mind a vision of my wife on that terrible night, her cries like a horrible incantation. I took Priscilla's hand and pressed it to my cheek. I cannot say how long we stayed like this, though at last she made a sound and pulled away. A stirring by the door bade me rise. By the last glow of the fire I made out Eliza, Jane cradled in her arms. I asked her to wake Harold, and when she had, I spoke in a whisper.

  "I can help her. It is counsel she needs, a blessed hand to guide her. Let me stay with you. He has called me that I might serve His own. I will help you clear your acres. I will be of aid in any way I can."

  Eliza nodded. “I only worry what will become of her,” she said.

  I touched her arm. “Do not let that bother you now. Let us try and sleep."

  I awoke at first light and helped with the chores. Then I sat with Priscilla and read to her for a time. I began, as before, with her name.

  "Priscilla,” I said, and touched her face. And though she met my stare, a vast distance lay between us. A distance of the thickest forest in want of clearing that she might absorb the light of His embrace. I read to her from Matthew.

  "Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house."

  This afternoon I rode to the inn and paid its keeper. The trial, I learned, will be held there tomorrow.

  * * * *

  9 March

  Mr. Corey served as prosecutor. Last night, he and Judge Dowd drew up a jury from those men gathered for drink at the inn. Twelve men from the surrounding area, and nearly all of them, I presume, had paid their pennies to see the jailed men claiming the murders as their own.

  Each of the accused took the stand, and when asked by the judge if they were innocent or guilty of murder all except Harry Stoddard answered in the same way, saying they killed some Indians, but whether that amounted to innocence or guilt they couldn't say. Though Harry Stoddard proclaimed his innocence, his story, begun in a quivering voice, was drowned out by the jeers of his fellow murderers. Judge Dowd called for silence and asked Harry to go on. We all waited to hear what more he would say, but he managed only to shake his head and stare blindly at the floor. Mr. Corey stood and gave his closing speech. He tallied the Indians murdered: two old men, four women, three children. He spoke of Priscilla, the youngest of the women, the only victim in the bloom of her youth.

  "Give thanks,” he said, “for those God-fearing folks who've taken her in.” With that he turned to me and said, “Perhaps the reverend will say something."

  I was not expecting this but stood anyway and braced myself against all the eyes in that room. I said, “There is fire in goodness as well as wickedness, and it is the flame of goodness we must watch over. Day by day that poor Indian girl struggles for life. The flame inside her does not sear or burn like wicked fire, but is a source of warmth and comfort."

  Here I paused, and, looking over at the jurymen, said, “As for the wicked sort of fire, we must stomp it out."

  We cleared the room and waited for the jury to deliberate. It was not long before they reached a verdict. “Guilty,” they said, but it was Judge Dowd who said the men would hang.

  "We aim to be civilized,” he said. “We must comport ourselves as civilized men."

  Hardly a moment passed before the murderers flew at him, upturning a table in their path and knocking him down before the jurymen could intervene. Only Harry Stoddard did not budge from his seat. I pity these souls, so certain were they that their crimes would go unpunished. I rode back and told Eliza and Harold of the rulings. At my urging we gathered around Priscilla and prayed and gave thanks.

  The remainder of the afternoon I spent clearing brush. Harold was elsewhere, preparing now fallow fields for the plow. Working at the edge of this forest, I cannot help but think of sailors lost at sea. These woods, after all, are His own, and contain multitudes.

  * * * *

  10 March

  Harry Stoddard has escaped. Sheriff Corey rode out this morning to tell us. I was reading to Priscilla when the dog began barking. Eliza rose and went outside, and I soon heard Mr. Corey's voice. I went out and shook his hand and received this grim news.

  "How did it happen?” I asked.

  He explained that as it was quite cold last night the sentinels made a small fire. They were lax in their duties. All had gathered round for warmth when all of a sudden there was shouting from Old Stoddard and the Kiles. Harry Stoddard had simply scaled the wall and gone over. Though a posse searched through the night and early morning no trace of him was found.

  "You have no idea where it is he might run to?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don't guess we'll see him again."

  The executions, he told us, would go on as planned. In early afternoon, Harold and I rode to town. A sizable crowd had gathered about the scaffold, built especially for these, the town's first hangings. It was not long before Old Stoddard was led out, followed by Walter and Perry Kile. A great roar went up from those nearest the platform. Old Stoddard nodded and made a face, and a man from the crowd yelled something. I did not catch the words. Save this, no filth was uttered or thrown. It was Mr. Corey who did the hanging, slipping the noose over each man's head. Good knots, all of them, their necks broke on the drop.

  * * * *

  11 March

  Her midnight screeching comes upon me like a dream of my own. I take her hand and pray aloud until the terror has passed. Yet despite these nightly disturbances, she grows stronger by the day. This morning she managed for the first time to stand on her own. We stood by and watched, ready to catch her in case she should fall. Not once did she look at us or in any way acknowledge her surroundings. Her devotion to silence I find maddening, as if, despite her appearance as one of the living, she inhabits another world altogether. One may only guess the dimensions of that place, of that house whose door remains always barred. How to reach her! To converse without words, I fear, is all but impossible, for a man's silence is no one's but his own.

  All afternoon I worked as before, felling trees and clearing underbrush near the edge of the woods. This evening over supper Harold broke his customary silence to ask what I knew of the Universalists, those religious folk who find no evidence of a heaven or hell. “It would not surprise me,” he said, “if such folks found murder acceptable.” The hangings, I could see, were yet fresh in his mind. I told them of the time in Kentucky I knocked on a door in want of a cup of water. A man obliged me and having met his folks, I asked if they required any Bibles or testaments. The man, who had showed such hospitality until then, said to me, “I'll bet you're one of those preachers with Eternal Damnation the first words you have to say, and hellfire and the Devil not so far behind. Well, be gone with you if you are. These parts is all Universalist and we won't spend a penny for one of your Bibles!"

  "And what did you say?” asked little Jane.

  "I said, simply, that if they did not have a Bible, I was bound to give them one. ‘Do you have a Bible?’ I asked, and they said as how they did, and so I tipped my hat and went on my way."

  Eliza said, in a spindly voice, “We do certainly have a Bible here.” She got up and retrieved it from the mantel and asked me to read. This I did, and afterwards sat down to write, though I see I have not much to say, surely a measure of my aches from the work at hand.

  * * * *

  13 March

  It is two days since I last wrote and I have much to put down. To convey a
ll that has happened will take pages, yet I can only begin with the moment, yesterday evening, when it all began. It was near dusk, I had been clearing land like before, when I heard a voice calling me.

  "Preacher!"

  It came from the woods, not any voice I recognized, so that I thought at first I had imagined it. “Who's there!” I called, and at that moment made out a figure, poised perhaps a hundred feet distant amidst the trees. It made no answer, stood motionless. Through silence alone it beckoned me. As if taking my last breath, I entered the woods. Only now did it come towards me, slowly, as if to be sure I was alone. Pure form gave way to man, to clothes torn and ragged. A man whose look was wild, whose face I recognized. It was Harry Stoddard.

  "You know me,” he said.

  I nodded. “May the Lord have mercy on you."

  "I didn't do nothing!” he cried. “It was Pa and them Kile boys. Devils, all of ‘em. Made me watch. I'd a turned them all in after but Pa kept me under watch and lock, he knew I'd run if the chance came round."

  His voice grew tremulous, pleading. “At the trial you called them wicked. A wicked flame you must stomp out. And you was right about that, about them. But I ain't that at all. I ain't anything like you think."

  He turned away, that I wouldn't see his face. He said, “You got to help us."

  He took a small parcel wrapped up in linen out of his pocket and held it out to me.

  "Take it. She gave it to me once. Give it to her and tell how you saw me."

  Truly, I did not want to touch what this boy offered me. Yet I was drawn to him there, gaunt and ancient as he looked with the day falling all around us. He laid it down by my feet and said, “You'll tell her. “Then he turned and disappeared into the woods. For a long moment I did nothing. I felt as if it was Lucifer I'd met and this parcel was nothing but a temptation, and if yielded to would topple all my hopes as they'd been toppled once before. But I could not leave it lying there and so I pocketed it, and having gone back to the field and gathered up my things, I started back. I must have burst in nearly mad because Eliza said I looked like a man barreled down by the Devil. She told me to wash and this I did, trying hard not to think of that boy in the woods, or what I would do now. At dinner I said nothing of my encounter and afterwards joined Priscilla by the fire. I needed to assuage my fears, and so I read the Creation. I read from the beginning, speaking each word as if each were my last.