Slant of Light

by Steve Wiegenstein

  “You the leader of this bunch?” he said, indicating the colony with a toss of his head.

  “Yes. James Turner.”

  “Heard about you. Name’s Harley Willingham. I’m county sheriff. You know anything about this bunch?” He tossed his head behind him.

  “No.”

  “Buncha Irish, out of St. Louis.” He flashed a sudden smile of stubby yellow teeth. “I’m helping ‘em find the county line.”

  The lead wagon had caught up to them now, and everyone halted. The Daybreak villagers gathered around. George Webb walked up from his house and shook hands with Willingham.

  “Well?” said the wagon’s driver impatiently. “What place is this?”

  He was a tall man in priest’s robes and a wide-brimmed black hat, and he alternated his glare between Willingham and Turner.

  “Good morning,” Turner repeated. “Will you—”

  “They et already,” Willingham said.

  They shook hands, and Turner introduced himself.

  “The Fourierist or whatnot. I’ve seen your pamphlets,” he said in an unimpressed tone. The priest swept his gaze over the buildings and the colonists. “I’m Father John Hogan. Good progress. They tell me you just got here this summer.”

  “That’s right.”

  He raised his voice. “Any Catholics here who would like to make a confession? I can hear it before we move on.”

  No one answered. Willingham rubbed his nose. “They’s a Catholic church up in Fredericktown. I reckon anybody wants to go, goes up there.”

  “Germans and Bohunks,” Hogan said. “Probably wouldn’t let an Irish in.”

  “You’re from St. Louis?” Turner asked.

  “That’s right. It’s a fine old city for the old-timers, I suppose, but a stinking hell for the working man.” He gestured to the line of wagons behind him. “Camps along the tracks, that’s all they get.”

  “I hear there’s a new panic.”

  “Right again. Worse back East, bad enough here. Started with the banks, now it’s the factories. Beggary and starvation.” Hogan reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled out a packet of papers. “We’ve purchased land,” he said. “Know where this is?”

  Turner took the packet and looked it over. George Webb stepped forward to see it as well.

  “Ripley County,” Webb said. “You’ve got a couple of more days to travel.”

  “That’s what this man said,” replied Hogan.

  “Don’t know why you took them this way,” Webb said to the sheriff. “They’ve got three rivers to cross. Should have took them down to Greenville to cross the St. Francis there, catch the road to Williamsville and cross the Black there, then over to Doniphan to cross the Current.”

  “I thought maybe they was some of your bunch,” said Willingham.

  “Anyway,” said Webb, handing back the packet, “too far to retrace now. This track’ll take you through to Logan’s Creek, but it’s a rough trace. You’ll be good to get across the Black by nightfall.”

  “We’re used to rough,” said Hogan. He returned his attention to Turner. “This river is the St. Francis, eh? You plan to live like St. Francis?”

  “I’ll take the harmony and peaceableness, but skip the talking to the birds.”

  Hogan snorted derisively. “As if a bunch of heathen would know anything about it. You made any spiritual provision for this lot?”

  “They can take care of that on their own, I should hope,” said Turner.

  “I read that pamphlet of yours. You think this is ‘True Christianity?’“

  “We’re finding our way, Mr. Hogan. I hope you find yours.”

  The sheriff interrupted them. “Well, like the man said, you’ve got a ways to go. Better pull foot.”

  “Good luck to you,” Turner said. Hogan tipped his hat and gave his reins a twitch, and the wagons started up again. Willingham stayed on his horse and watched them pass.

  “Been meaning to come out here and pay you a call,” he said as they went by. “I heard you all were building a new town.”

  “Getting there,” Turner said.

  “You all Mormons or something?”

  “I’m not, but I don’t inquire as to the religious persuasions of my companions.”

  “More’s the pity. Mormons got run out of Missouri once already. No niggers or such, I take it.”

  “No.”

  Willingham looked out over the fields. “This is good ground for corn, but you’ll have to put a watch out for the coons.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “You got your regular coons, and then you got them copper-colored coons up on the ridge. Both of ‘em sneaky as hell.” He seemed to be working his way around to something. “Nice place, nice place. So—”

  Everyone waited. Finally he spoke again.

  “I’d ask you about your politics. Election next year, by then you all will be eligible to vote.”

  “I don’t—”

  “—inquire about the politics of your companions, eh, Mr. Turner? Well, may I inquire about your own politics, then.”

  “I have generally voted Democratic.”

  “Northern Democrat or Southern?”

  “Last time I voted, there was no such thing.”

  Willingham stopped surveying the distance and fixed his attention on Turner.

  “Let me spell it out for you,” he said. “Missouri is a slave state. Always has been, always will be. They can do what they want out in Kansas, vote this way and that, agitate every direction. But this ain’t Kansas.”

  “You have slaves, Mr. Willingham?”

  He snorted. “Hell, no. You think I could afford to feed and clothe a bunch of niggers just to polish my boots and fix my supper? But that ain’t the point.” He straightened up in the saddle. The last wagon of the Irish train had disappeared around the Webbs’ house. “The story is, if your bunch of people has come here to upset everybody and agitate for something nobody wants, then you are like to find yourselves the object of a lot of ill feeling. And I am the law and I live a half day’s ride away.”

  “We’re not here to agitate or upset anyone, Mr. Willingham. We are here to live our own lives and no one else’s.”

  “All right, then.” He stirred his horse. “That bunch there, they looked like trouble to me. So I am wanting to make sure they don’t stop short of the county line. You ain’t one of them free love type outfits, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well then. Appreciate your vote next year.”

  A sudden rush of anger swept over Turner. He reached up to take the horse’s reins, but seeing the suspicious expression on the sheriff’s face, patted its nose instead. “Before you go.”

  “Before I go.”

  “Let me spell it out for you now. We are here of our own choosing and breaking no laws. We let alone and ask to be let alone. Our ideas about property and competition may differ from yours, but we plan to practice them in peace. In any event—”

  Willingham urged his horse forward and waved over his shoulder. “All right, don’t overheat yourself. Hell, you all are lucky to be up here. Go down where them Irish are headed, there’s lots of pukes who’ll burn down your barn just for talking funny. Up here—” he flashed his yellow grin again—“we got ‘em down to a precious handful. George, your boy at home?” he called behind him.

  “Don’t know. He was when I got up this morning,” Webb said. “Any trouble?”

  “No trouble, just want to visit with him a minute.” He broke into a trot down the road.

  Cabot’s job for the day was cutting sprouts. He had been at it for about an hour after the Irish group passed through, his hands cramped and sore from the labor, when another wagon came into the valley. A stout, middle-aged man in a white collarless shirt was driving it, gripping the reins with an air of concentration as if he were receiving coded messages through his fingers. He wore tiny wire-rimmed spectacles. Beside him on the wagon seat sat a young woman, nineteen or twenty, with dark brown hair tucked under a man’s broa
d-brimmed hat. Her hands were folded primly in her lap.

  He walked to the road to meet them.

  “Your group is about an hour ahead of you. You’ll probably catch up to them at the next river crossing,” he said. “Just keep following this road.”

  The two put their heads together and spoke in murmurs. The girl looked back at Cabot.

  “We are not a group,” she said, with a distinct French accent. “We are seeking the Daybreak.”

  From the seat between them she produced a copy of The Eagle. “We are in St. Louis,” she said. “My father, he is great in his enthusiasm for this community.”

  They bent their heads together again, and then she spoke again. “We are seeking to live in here.”

  A few people had stopped their work to see the newcomers. Cabot extended his hand to the father.

  “This is Daybreak,” he said. “Welcome.”

  The man shook his hand and burst into a series of excited statements, all in French. It was too fast for Cabot to understand with his schoolboy knowledge of the language, but he continued to shake his hand while the young woman tried to translate.

  “He is very happy,” she said. “He is ready to be a farmer.” “Fermier” he said, making a muscle with his arm.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle” he said, embarrassed at how slowly he was speaking and how bad his pronunciation must be. “Je m’appelle Cabot. Et lui, c’est Monsieur Turner, notre directeur-general” He pointed toward Turner, who had left his pile of shingles and was walking to join them.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Cabot. Ce sont mon père, Émile Mercadier. Et je m’appelle Marie.”

  “Invite them in,” Turner called out. Cabot detached himself from the man’s handshake. He looked dubiously at the pudgy man, who was still smiling broadly. “Farmer, eh?”

  “Fermier” said Mercadier, making his muscle again. “Communiste”

  Over leftover biscuits and spring water in the Turners’ cabin, the Mercadiers told their story, the father rushing ahead in French, the daughter editing and simplifying in English. He had been forced to flee France in 1848 for his radical opinions; the family had first stopped at New Harmony, then found the Icarian group at Nauvoo and lived there until 1854. That was where Madame Mercadier had died of cholera. When the Icarians broke up, they relocated with some of the group to St. Louis, but that settlement was not doing well.

  “It is communist, but it is not a community,” Marie said. “The young men, they leave one by one.”

  As it turned out, Mercadier was no farmer, but a shoemaker, with a complete set of tools in his wagon, along with a fine-looking fiddle in a hardshell case.

  “Nothing against the farming life, but Mr. Mercadier here might well be of more use to this community as a shoemaker,” Cabot said. “Not just for our own needs, but this winter we will need to bring in cash or trade.”

  “First things first,” Turner replied. “The community has to vote them in. Until then they can stay in our front room.”

  Cabot went back to work, feeling unaccountably irritated at Turner’s peremptory dismissal of his suggestion. True, the community would have to vote. But why so quick to remind him of that? He was only making an observation, and an obvious one at that. He liked Turner—who wouldn’t? But his air of command, his attitude of knowing best, had the faint smell of arrogance about it. Cabot sensed he had been put in his place, whatever that place was.

  After lunch Turner went to the shed to set type for the next edition of The Eagle. Cabot was right, of course. The colony was not self-sufficient yet; for the winter they would need hard money or at least goods for trade. The Eagle would help—he had two hundred subscribers, more or less, at two dollars a year, and another hundred or so who had subscribed but not yet paid. Food should not be a serious problem; the hogs and biddies they had brought with them had multiplied prodigiously. Mrs. Wickman had showed Charlotte how to store eggs in lime water, and by now every home had buckets and canisters of eggs put away. But they would need cash money for yard goods, more and better tools for the men, seasonings, and at Christmastime a few treats for the children—

  Turner stopped in mid-word. He laid his job stick down carefully on the table, tilting it over a sliver of wood so that the type didn’t spill, and wiped the ink from his hands. He stepped out of the shed, closing the door carefully, and walked the forty feet to the cabin in a slow, meditative pace.

  Charlotte found herself drawn to this odd pair, the bespectacled shoemaker and his talkative daughter, and it was a pleasure to bring out her French, which she hadn’t spoken in—what? Nine or ten years? Fortunately, Cabot’s was just as bad, so she didn’t feel alone in her mangling. Marie Mercadier’s English was far better than their French, but Charlotte could tell that she appreciated the effort they were making and indulged their slow articulation. Charlotte thought of Miss de Vries, who ran the girls’ school in Highland Falls that she had attended, and her insistent cries of Repetez! Repetez! How she would flail her arms, and in moments of frustration would squeeze their cheeks together in an effort to get them to form the vowels. She could always manage better than Caroline—

  Caroline. Every time her thoughts turned to Caroline, her mind stopped and she shivered from a sudden interior chill. Poor Caroline. Poor, lost Caroline.

  Turner appeared at the door with a peculiar expression on his face, an expression as if he had just discovered something, which, she sensed, he had. She stopped her conversation and walked to meet him. They stepped outside and went over to the big sugar maple in front of the cabin, where he had made her a split-log bench, and sat down.

  “How far along?” Turner said.

  Charlotte looked at him quizzically, then gauging his expression better, smiled. “Four months, coming on five.”

  He placed his hand on her belly, not soft as it had been before, but hard and muscular, firmer than even a muscle should be. “Does everyone know but me?”

  “Of course not, silly. The women know. Women always see things like this. But the men? Heavens.”

  The baby moved under his palm. Charlotte was still not used to the feeling, this body inside a body, this living thing inside her, moving around according to its own whims and desires.

  “Are you well?”

  “As far as I can tell.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  She nodded.

  They held hands, listening to cicadas chir in the trees. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle. “You could go back East. You could have your mother go with you, to New York or Philadelphia.”

  “Women die back East same as they die here.”

  “But there are doctors.”

  “James.” She was almost stern. “We live here. This is where we are. Do I look like I was born to be an Eastern belle in a velvet dress and leg-of-mutton sleeves?”

  That made him smile.

  “Besides,” she went on. “If the worst should happen—” Her look was earnest and intent. “You could bear it better than my mother and father. If I should be with my mother and fail to deliver.…” She said no more, but simply shuddered.

  It was almost time for supper. They embraced and were back at the cabin, when they spotted someone running down the road toward them. It was Gus Roberts, one of the young single men who was still living in a tent at the far end of the settlement.

  “Luke Wornall’s bad sick,” he told them when he reached the cabin. “You better come see.”

  As they trotted back up the path between the cabins, Roberts told him the story. He and Luke, one of his mates in the tent, had been clearing ground in the morning when Luke said he felt unaccountably tired and thirsty. At noon they had found him lying on his pallet in the tent, feverish, complaining of a stomachache, but he had told them to leave him a jug of water and he would join them when he felt better.

  Mrs. Wickman had found him. The Wickmans’ cabin was next to the men’s tent, and the men were using the woods toward the river for their necessities. Wornall had apparently been
trying to make it there when he collapsed. When they arrived, Turner and Roberts first, with Charlotte and the Mercadiers close behind, Mrs. Wickman was kneeling over him, patting down his face with a wet cloth. Some of the other men came in from the fields.

  “Bring a blanket out here,” she told them. “We’ll put him on it and carry him back to the tent.”

  Wornall was conscious, but barely. “I’m sorry,” he moaned. His face was ashen, and his breeches were wet and stinking.

  “There, now,” said Mrs. Wickman. They slid him onto the blanket and dragged it toward the tent. “Gently,” she said. “You men better take your things out of here. I’ll need several buckets of water to clean him up with. Just leave a chamber pot. Here you go, son, let’s loosen up your gallowses and get you comfortable.”

  Roberts and the other men stared as Mrs. Wickman undid the man’s suspenders and pulled off his boots. She glanced up at them.

  “Well?” she said. “Ain’t you never seen a sick man before?” This spurred them into action, and they quickly carried everything out. “And don’t let the children down here.”

  When she pulled down Wornall’s breeches, a flood of watery, fishy-smelling diarrhea, flecked with white, came with them.

  “I’m sorry,” Wornall said again, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “Don’t worry, son, we’ll get you cleaned up. You ain’t the first man’s ever shit hisself,” Mrs. Wickman said. She threw the breeches out the back tent flap as Charlotte and Marie arrived with buckets of water. “Open up these flaps as much as you can, get a little air in here.”

  Charlotte put down her bucket and turned away. “I can’t—” She covered her face with her hand.

  Just then Wornall doubled over in agony. Mrs. Wickman managed to get the chamber pot underneath him. He moaned and then fell back onto the mattress, his eyelids fluttering.

  “Just relax, son, everything will be fine,” Mrs. Wickman said. She stood up and joined the others at the tent opening.