Slant of Light

by Steve Wiegenstein

Cabot kept his hat low, self-conscious. With his shaved head, he felt he looked like a convict. “Is this craft safe?” he asked a passing deckhand.

  “Only lost one passenger so far, and that was a lunatic,” the man said. “Couple of passages ago. Jumped off the stern down by Marthasville.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Cabot muttered. Charlotte chuckled at his discomfort and settled onto her trunk.

  “We must entertain each other,” she said. “I shall tell you my story, and you shall tell me yours, and in the meantimes—” she reached into her traveling satchel—“you may read my husband’s book.”

  Cabot turned the volume over in his hands. He had heard of Travels to Daybreak and the stir it had created. He flipped to the first page: It was a fine morning in June when I set out from New York harbor on my travels to Daybreak, although of course at the time I did not realize that Daybreak was to be my destination.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  For the next several hours they read aloud to each other, talked, and walked the deck, though Cabot was careful not to let their trunks out of his sight for long. With the current behind them, they flew downstream at ten miles an hour or better. Parkville, Randolph, Liberty Landing came and went, cargo and passengers loading and unloading at each stop; by the early afternoon they had reached Lexington.

  The book intrigued him with its innocent idealists and their beehive-like society; a beehive without a queen, he supposed, everyone laboring for the common good. He couldn’t tell whether its author seriously proposed such a community or was merely indulging in fantasies. As the steamboat continued south and east, away from the frontier and into the settled country, bottomlands thick with hemp, corn, and tobacco, the chasm between the Daybreak of Mr. Turner’s fiction and the America of the present day seemed unbridgeable. Slaves in the fields, slaves handling cargo, slaves just standing by, awaiting instructions from their owners. The locals barely acknowledged their existence—they were little more than the trees or cattle, just moving parts to the landscape who happened to have human faces and who could walk, speak, and think. He looked up from the page and took Charlotte’s hand.

  “I’m glad they tried to hang me,” he said. “I’m glad they failed, but now I know things I would never have known otherwise.”

  “Such as?”

  Cabot choked back the emotion that suddenly rose up, surprising him. His chest felt tight, and he struggled to keep his face still. He waited until the wave passed before trying to speak. “I know what it is like to have one’s very life subject to the whim of others. Few white men experience this sensation.” He looked out over the rail at the thick band of trees lining the bank. “It is our great evil, this thing. This abomination.”

  Charlotte tapped the book in his hand. “My husband would say that it is the system of property itself that is the evil. Once we accept the notion of human ownership of God’s creations, then it is a simple step to the human ownership of other humans.”

  “And do you believe this?”

  She frowned a little. “I don’t dabble in social theories. I stick to things I truly know and have studied.”

  “Mrs. Turner, you do more than dabble in a social theory. You commit your life to it.”

  “I commit my life to my husband. I devote myself to tangible things, not abstractions.”

  Cabot would have liked to debate further, but didn’t want to be impolite by placing her in disagreement with her husband. “I should like to ask him about this matter someday.”

  “Why not now?” she asked. “Once we assemble in St. Louis, we will charter wagons to bring supplies to the colony. Join us for a while. You can be present for the founding of the great experiment.”

  They were interrupted by a whistle blast as the gangplank was thrown off and the boat lurched once again into the current. Cabot hated that sensation of motion in all directions, outward, downcurrent, rotating, all at once. He took hold of the rail.

  She smiled at him, a little indulgently. “You don’t like to travel by boat?”

  “Only when I can’t tell where we’re going. I don’t like drifting.”

  “A good motto for life, I should think. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to tend to some ladies’ matters.”

  He tipped his hat at the remark as she strolled away.

  They tied up at Boonville as evening fell, the pilot far too fearful of snags in the low water to attempt night travel. Charlotte’s ticket had included a share of a bed in one of the rooms, while Cabot pushed their trunks apart and laid blankets between them to give himself a private space on the deck. As he settled himself onto the planks, he thought about her offer. Why not go to Daybreak? He couldn’t return to Kansas, and he’d just as soon not go back to Massachusetts yet. Perhaps this man Turner had an idea worth pursuing. Any direction was better than none.

  Chapter 5

  By the time Turner and the keelboat reached George Webb’s farm, the hills had closed in on them and the river was running clearer. There were bluffs a hundred feet high or more on the outside of the bends, limestone on top of granite, crested with a fringe of cedars and blackjack oaks. Then all at once the valley would open out into rich-looking bottomland dotted with cabins and an occasional village, islands of cultivation in a sea of forest.

  He thought of how he had met Webb in the first place. It had been in St. Louis, after a lecture in April. It had been a good lecture, one of his best, in the ballroom of the National Hotel. Remarkable how the slave-state Missourians took to his message of the rights of man and the evils of capital. Apparently they could appreciate in the abstract what they could not embrace in the particular. He had been exhausted but excited. Lecturing animated him, and it usually took an hour before the nervous energy subsided enough to let him sleep. He climbed the steps to the third floor, where he could look out the window and watch the omnibus load passengers for the Madison Street Ferry on its last run of the night.

  Turner regretted leaving Charlotte so soon after they had married, but a lecturer’s job was to lecture. With the success of Travels to Daybreak, more bookings came in every day; there would be time later for quiet evenings by the fire. From the window, he could see beyond the smokestacks of packet boats and steamships to Illinois in the distance across the river; or at least fires and movement on Bloody Island, which was sort-of Illinois. Cockfights, perhaps, or a boxing match; the island wasn’t the scene of many duels these days. But seeing even a dubious piece of Illinois made him think of his father and the old home, if you could call three rooms above a newspaper office a home.

  He had taken Charlotte’s tintype out of his pocket, opened the case, and tipped it so the lamplight would not reflect. For a moment he gazed at her features, dimly suggested by the silver and gray of the picture: her intelligent, bright blue eyes, and her light brown hair, “floating like a vapor,” as he loved to sing to her, making her blush. He started to hum the tune, but caught himself and looked around.

  A white-haired man stood a few feet away. He stepped closer when Turner left his reverie. “Sir,” he said, extending his hand. “George Webb.” His face was flushed with excitement but his voice was calm. He was stocky and solid, and he gripped hard with a calloused hand.

  They stepped from the hallway into a quiet alcove. George Webb was dressed in a worn black suit that had once been very fine. He did not look like a man who often dressed in suits.

  “I have read your book many times,” he said. He waved off Turner’s thanks. “I have a proposal for you.”

  There was a settee in the alcove, and they took it. “I am growing old and seek to make a difference in the world,” Webb said. “Since reading your book, I think I see my chance.”

  He had been pondering this decision, he said, for many weeks. He had a thousand acres of fine river bottom land in southern Missouri that he was ready to grant to a Daybreak Society for a real life, honest-to-God Daybreak. Ozark river bottom land, oak and hickory trees on the hillsides, sycamores and cottonwoods along th
e river, and a half mile or more of good flat ground between the river and the mountain, ideal for cultivation and settlement. Better land existed somewhere in the world, he was sure, but, by crack, he had never seen it. It could grow corn, wheat, tobacco, maybe cotton although he had never tried it, hemp, fruit trees, nut trees, anything a man might want to seed it with. But Webb was growing old, with only one son, who was nothing much of a farmer, and bit by bit the land had overgrown itself. Now it was down to a few acres of cultivated ground, and the rest sprangled briers and sprouts. It would be the perfect location for the great experiment Mr. Turner had spoken of, the true-life Daybreak so often mentioned in meetings of their Society and surely at meetings of other Daybreak Societies around the nation, and he was ready to grant the land.

  But only on condition that Mr. Turner here lead the group himself. He would trust no one else.

  And Turner, the man who sought to rise above his farm-country upbringing, the man who preferred to lecture before the crowds, to move on rather than plant roots in some isolated plot of dirt, and who was a newlywed to boot, had impulsively said yes.

  In the late afternoon they came to a cluster of houses at the base of an impossibly steep mountain, and for the first time they could see a wagon road running alongside the river. A man was fishing from the bank.

  “We’re looking for George Webb’s place,” Pettibone called out. “This it?”

  The man gawked at their heavily laden keelboat. “Well, ain’t this a sight,” he said. “Stay here, I want to show this to my brother.”

  “We don’t travel fast,” Pettibone said. “So this ain’t Webb’s?”

  “No, this is French Mills. Webb’s three or four miles upstream on the left. Who the hell are you people?”

  “Simple travelers,” Turner said.

  “Like hell.”

  Pettibone and Charley poled on. The river followed the base of the mountain, a long stretch of slow, deep water enveloped in shade. After a few minutes, they could see the man from French Mills following them up the wagon road, along with three or four others, clumsily trying to conceal themselves behind the brush.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Pettibone said. “We’re a curiosity, is all.”

  After an hour, the men dropped away. “Must be suppertime,” Turner said.

  “Whiskey time, more likely.”

  Ahead they could see the opening to a valley as the mountain curved off to the west and the river stayed straight. The land was level and open, but overgrown with saplings and briers. Through the brush they could see a whitewashed frame house sitting by the road.

  “Don’t see no landing,” Pettibone said. “Maybe there’s one farther up.”

  A mile upriver, at the head of the valley, the road came down to a shallow crossing. Pettibone steered the keelboat to the bank. “This is where I get paid,” he said.

  “All right,” said Turner. “I’ll find our man Webb and see about bringing a wagon for my goods.”

  He jumped ashore and started toward the house they had passed. The road was grassy in the center, not much of a thoroughfare. He paused in his walk and looked out across the valley.

  So this was to be the scene of his great experiment. Just as Webb had promised, it was half a mile to where the slope of the mountain bent upward, all tillable land. They would set themselves back from the river and the road a sensible distance, for protection from floods, of course, but also to create a proper vista—the water, the road, the fields, the town, the mountain. Travelers to Daybreak would see the human in harmony with the natural, same as in the book.

  Turner was elated but surprised. Who could have imagined that so many people would embrace his ideas? The last word he had gotten, fifty people were meeting in St. Louis to form a train for Daybreak—a few families, but mostly single men or husbands scouting ahead. Men across the country were uprooting themselves and their families, throwing off the burdens of their current lives, and heading here. Not in pursuit of wealth like the California or Oregon emigrants, but in fulfillment of an ideal.

  The mountain was tall and thickly wooded. It cast its shadow onto the valley early, good in the summer when the shade would cool them in the evening. They would set their houses close together for ease in visiting, and at the upper end of the valley they would build a great common building, a refectory in the evenings, a schoolhouse during the day, and a place of worship on Sundays. Then a double row of houses, leading to a stable, a barn and a granary, downwind from the houses, all of them large and grand since they would be serving the whole community. In time they would create their own manufactures—clothing, ironwork, who knows what else.

  He inhaled deeply, the smell of warm wet air filling his nostrils. Perhaps this was his calling after all, to be the founder of a city based on new principles. This was America, where thinking too big was less likely to bring a man down than not thinking big enough. The thick late-summer foliage of sassafras, wild rose, and briar vines obscured the immediate view, but he could sense the valley would be rich ground for planting.

  There was a halloo from down the valley—George Webb heading his way with a horse and wagon. Turner trotted to meet him, and soon they were shaking hands warmly in the road.

  “You found us,” Webb said. His barrel-chested body trembled with excitement, and he took in the entire valley with a wave of his arm. “Here it is, the beginning of the new world.”

  Turner laughed despite himself. “I’m supposed to be the man with the grand rhetoric, George.”

  Webb clapped his shoulder. “When I was a young man this was a garden, and I mean that in plain fact,” he said. “From the house to here, it was beans, squash, potatoes, turnips. A winter’s worth and more. Now look at it.”

  “It’s still a garden,” Turner said. “It’s just hidden.”

  They met Pettibone and Charley at the keelboat. Within a couple of hours they had ferried the goods a wagonload at a time to Webb’s barn, which like the rest of the farm was slowly reverting to the state of nature. They hoisted the foodstuffs into the rafters using squares of canvas gathered at the corners, and by the end of the labor they were all drenched in sweat.

  “I hope you men will spend the night before you head downstream,” Webb said to Pettibone and his son. “My son shot a possum to fry up.”

  “I’d be grateful,” Pettibone said. “A home-cooked meal is a rare thing out here.”

  “No claims for the home cooking,” Webb said. “It’s just my son and me.”

  They walked to Webb’s house, which was no mere cabin but a large, well-framed dwelling set back a dozen yards from the road, with a full front porch and plank siding that had once been whitewashed, now chalky and faded. The relative cheerfulness of the exterior was not matched by the inside, which was dark, smoky, and cluttered, clothes and tools scattered on the floor and a loose pile of cordwood next to the stove. There was a skinned possum in a pan on the table, cut into portions.

  Webb opened the woodbox of the stove and blew the coals to life. He tossed in a few small sticks and blew some more.

  “Company tonight,” he said.

  Turner had not noticed the man sitting in a chair near the fireplace. He was whittling something, blowing the shavings off his pale fingers from time to time. He did not look up for a minute.

  He was as skinny as a coyote, and as he bent over his carving a broad-brimmed felt hat covered his features. When he looked up Turner saw the pale face of a man in his late twenties, framed by thin strands of yellow hair, colorless lips, and expressionless blue eyes. He took in the group with a quick glance and returned to his whittling. “Hope you ain’t hungry,” he said. “That possum won’t divide far.”

  Webb stepped forward. “Gents, this is my son, Harper. We just call him Harp. This is Mr. Turner, and Mr. Pettibone and his boy.”

  “Yeah,” said Harp, not looking up.

  Webb spoke again to ease the awkwardness. “We’ll throw some potatoes in with that possum. That’ll stretch it.” Harp didn
’t answer, and Turner and Webb walked out onto the front porch.

  They stood in the gathering dusk, listening to the repetitive drone of katydids in the humid air. “I’m afraid my son’s not too sociable,” Webb said. “It’s just been the two of us for a while.”

  “No need to apologize,” Turner said. “It can’t be easy to see family land handed to strangers.”

  Webb snorted. “As if he had made anything of it. Two thousand acres here. I’m parceling out a thousand for our project—everything north of here—” he swept his left hand across the valley. “All the way to the ford and a little beyond. He’ll keep the house and a thousand acres south, down the valley and across the river. Harp’s got no complaint. What’s he done with the land so far? Twenty acres of corn to feed his whiskey-making, and the rest gone to cedar sprouts and broom sage.”

  He clapped Turner on the shoulder. “But enough of my teeth on edge. I have questions for you about the colony.”

  Inside, Harp and Pettibone had settled in the fireplace corner with a jug, and a grumbling Charley was slicing potatoes into the fry pan. “Don’t look so glum, boy,” Webb said. “Some of those are yours.”

  Pettibone waved the jug at them from the hearthstone. “This is a fine product,” he said. “I may take a load downriver for resale if I can get Mr. Harp here to settle on a price. Damn fine product.”

  “It’s none of my doing,” Webb said stiffly. “Your dealings with Harp are your own matter.”

  Across the room from the fireplace was a window, with a chair and a writing desk beneath it, and books and papers strewn around—the elder Webb’s corner of the room, Turner guessed. A copy of Travels to Daybreak, heavily marked in the margins, lay on the desk.

  Harp’s whittling project was on a table by the fireplace. Turner stopped and picked it up. It was a black walnut, carved into links of chain using the interstices of the walnut as the openings of the links. “Stars in heaven, this is quite a work,” Turner said. “A walnut is as hard as a rock.”