Slant of Light

by Steve Wiegenstein

  Turner’s letters said the tour was going well, with hard money to get them through the winter and, strangely enough, a paying guest to bring back to Daybreak.

  “We ain’t a hotel,” George Webb sniffed when she read them the letter. “Don’t know what he’s thinking there.”

  “The Oneidans do it,” Charlotte said. “The curious come out to gawk, and they charge them for the privilege.”

  “We ain’t the Oneidans, thank God,” Webb retorted. But Turner’s letter had been posted from Quincy, and he was headed home. So there was no time to debate or ask for more information.

  The hay was dry, so all the men turned out to put it up, with Webb supervising the stacking in the barn. There was an art to it, he insisted; the men dutifully tossed their forkfuls in the places and direction he showed them. Shortly before lunchtime, the young German carpenter, Schnack, was brought in from the fields close to the river. Unskilled with the pitchfork, he had reached down with his hands to load some hay onto the wagon and picked up a copperhead along with it.

  Charlotte was still in the Temple cleaning up from lunch when they brought him in. Two men were holding him up. He seemed capable of walking, but occasionally his legs wobbled and he sank to his knees. He was groaning and mumbling, mostly in German. Sweat poured from his face and dripped off his chin. His right hand was bright red and swollen, with two clean puncture marks between the last two fingers.

  Everyone looked at Charlotte.

  “Put him on a table,” she said. She turned to the little Prentice girl who had been helping her clean up. “Missy, go fetch a bucket of cold water from the springhouse. And then go find Mrs. Wickman.”

  She turned to the two men who had brought him in. “Take his boots off, for heaven’s sake. We have to eat off these tables.” To the clean-shaven one, she said, “I’ll need your razor.”

  “Oh, Gott,” moaned Schnack. “That is my good hand.’

  “I’m not going to cut off your hand, Thomas,” Charlotte said, and that calmed him. She wiped the sweat from Schnack’s brow with the cleaning rag in her hand. His teeth chattered as she lifted his hand from the table to inspect it. Newton, unknowing, played at her feet.

  The puncture wounds were small and bright red. One was in the fleshy web between his fingers and the other was in the knuckle joint of the little finger. The hand reminded Charlotte of a cow’s pink udder.

  The girl returned with a bucket of water, breathless with importance. Charlotte lowered the man’s hand into the bucket. The cold water felt good as she held Schnack’s swollen hand down. Hayseeds and grime floated to the top. As she rubbed off the dirt, she could see a bright red streak running up Schnack’s forearm.

  The clean-shaven man arrived with his razor, and as Charlotte wiped it on her apron she signaled with her eyes for the two men to hold Schnack’s arm. She laid it on the table beside him, waited for a moment for the men to get their places, and then split the skin in a fine line across the puffy swelling of his hand, opening the vein.

  Schnack howled in misery. “Oh, Gott! Cut it off, just cut it off!”

  Charlotte rose from her work and looked him in the eye. He looked like a cow about to be slaughtered. “Don’t be such a baby. Didn’t you ever hit your hand with a hammer?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am. This one, I run clean through with a sixteen-penny nail one time.” He raised his other hand.

  “Then settle down.” Schnack clamped his lips with an embarrassed expression.

  She bent down, put her lips to the wound, and began to suck. Her mouth filled with blood, which she spat onto the floor. She sucked again. Was there venom? She couldn’t taste anything. It tasted just like blood, just like the taste when she bumped her lip against a tooth. She spat, sucked, spat, sucked, spat again, pressing her thumb against the back of Schack’s wrist where a vein protruded over the bone.

  George Webb arrived from the barn and examined Schnack’s arm, which was now swollen to the elbow. “How big was the snake?” he asked.

  “Two foot, three foot maybe,” Schnack said. “Three foot probably.” Webb gave the other men a look. They shrugged.

  “Kill it?”

  “Hell, no. I just drop my hay and run,” he said. “I never seen no snakes in the city.”

  “One of you boys ought to go tell the others,” Webb said. “We have a huffy copperhead out there someplace. On second thought, both of you might as well go. He’s in good hands here.”

  “Mr. Webb, am I going to make a die of it?”

  “I should think not. Well, I need to get back to work.” Webb turned and left.

  “We’ll have you back pounding nails within a week,” one of the young men said.

  “Yeah, we’ll fix a hammer to your stump,” said the other one.

  Schnack cried out in frustration and pain, and Charlotte glared at the men. “Before you go back to the fields, help me get this man to his bed,” she said. They lifted him from the table, still weak-kneed, and steadied him as he walked to his house. Charlotte brought Schnack’s boots and placed them at the end of his bed. She dragged a straight-backed chair over to the bed then laid his hand on it. “Keep it lower than your heart,” she said. She wrapped the wound in a towel, loosely, so that more blood could drain out. “Do you want some water?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I’ll bring you some. Thanks, boys, that’s all I need for now.”

  She decided to walk to the springhouse for another bucket of the cold spring water instead of fetching it from the nearest pump; somehow the spring water was more refreshing. She stopped by the Temple, where the Prentice girl was entertaining Newton, and poured out the first bucket onto the floor, sweeping the water and blood out the door.

  Mrs. Wickman had finally been located and appeared at the door. “How’s the boy?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “I did the best I could. You should look in on him.”

  “Land, I have never treated a snakebite. Wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Neither did I. Just went by guess.”

  Mrs. Wickman swept up Newton and nuzzled him. “What a big-uns we are getting to be!” She surveyed the wet floor. “Looks like everything’s under control here.”

  Charlotte’s mouth and lips felt strange. She couldn’t tell if it was venom or just her imagination, but she wanted to rinse out her mouth at the spring. “I’m going to fetch some water for Mr. Schnack,” she said. “Want to walk with me?”

  “No, I need to get to my sewing,” she said. “I’ll stop by his house on my way back. I’ll take the youngun so you don’t have to carry him to the spring with you.”

  They parted, and Charlotte hurried to the spring with her bucket. She knew her need was probably imaginary but felt urgent anyway. But she stopped short when she came near and found Harp Webb in the springhouse, kneeling at the spring, filling jugs.

  He heard her, though, and turned quickly. “Hey,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Water should be free to all, Mr. Webb,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

  He didn’t answer. “I would use the spring up closer to my house, but it’s got that sulfur taste. Don’t mind it myself, but you got to keep the customers in view.”

  Charlotte watched him immerse a jug in the split wooden barrel they used to catch the water.

  “Ever wonder why that is?” Harp went on. “Two springs, not fifty yards apart, and one of them is all sulfury and the other has nothing but sweet clear water?”

  “No, I have to say that I haven’t.”

  “I thought I told you about learning your land. Thing is, my spring comes out higher up the mountain. Runs out of different rocks and such.” He kicked at the rocks in the wall of the springhouse. “This here’s limestone of some sort. Your water gets all sweetened up by it. Mine is just a surface spring, dries up in the summer.”

  “Once again, I am put to shame by your knowledge. I mean that sincerely,” Charlotte said.

  “You never know when a piece of information
might come in handy.” Harp finished filling his jug and then stepped away from the spring. “You go ahead, I have a bunch more to do.”

  Charlotte dipped her gourd into the spring, rinsed and spit, then filled the bucket. She started to hurry away, impelled by the nervousness that Harp always evoked in her, but stopped at the door.

  “Mr. Webb, do you sell your whiskey in smaller amounts?” she said.

  “Sure. By the thimbleful if you want it that way. Dime a quart, two bits a gallon. Anything less than that, five cents maybe.”

  “I’d say just enough for a couple of glassfuls. One of our men was bitten by a copperhead this afternoon, and I am thinking this might help him.”

  Harp nodded. “Who got bit?”

  “Mr. Schnack, the young German.”

  “The barn-building fellow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad. Never been bit myself, but I’ve seen ‘em bit, and it’s no fun for sure.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “I’ll bring it by this evening.”

  “No, just take it directly to his house. I’ll ask your father to pay you out of the community funds.”

  Harp’s face was expressionless, but Charlotte knew he recognized that she didn’t want him coming by her house—especially with Turner gone. She turned to leave. Harp cleared his throat.

  “Them Indians from across the river is into your sweet corn,” he said.

  “Really? How do you know?”

  He gave her a sideways look from under his hair. “Like I said, you can learn a lot if you watch and wait.”

  Charlotte wondered with a shiver whether he had seen her out walking with Adam Cabot. Given his love of showing off knowledge, he surely would have said something, or made a hint. Still, it was an uncomfortable thought.

  The next morning Charlotte was in the cornfield before daylight to test Harp’s claim. In the predawn dimness she could barely see. She tried to move quietly down the rows, but their broad leaves rustled against her arms.

  When she got to the spot nearest the ford, she crouched down. The absurdity of her being out there struck her. What was she trying to prove? Did she think she could scare them away? Or even want to? Harp Webb probably laughed himself to sleep last night knowing she would be unable to resist the need to prove something to him, even though she couldn’t say what she had to prove.

  Crouched in the rows of corn, she listened for unusual sounds, watched for strange sights. She steadied herself with her hands pressed to the ground on each side. Perhaps she was becoming a farm woman after all; the ground felt good under her fingers. She felt a small, sharp rock underneath her right hand and picked it up. It was not a rock at all, but an arrowhead. The men were always bringing in arrowheads or bits of pottery from their plowing or hoeing, but this was the first one she had ever found. Surely this valley had once been home to a town or village.

  She looked at it closely. It was small and delicately crafted, the kind of point that might be used to hunt small game or birds, she imagined. For a moment she indulged herself in the picture of a village on this very spot. It was a perfect spot—the river close at hand, good springs, rich soil. There would have been canoes pulled onto the bank, huts and cooking fires, an industrious craftsman sitting in the shade, shaping a piece of flint, this very piece of flint, years ago. She would show this to Adam today—he would enjoy thinking about the earlier civilization that had once existed on this spot, now vanished, plowed under like so much compost.

  Then a young boy came up from behind and practically ran over her back, rushing down the row with an armful of corn.

  He hadn’t seen her in his haste and knocked them both off balance. Charlotte stood up in surprise and they faced each other.

  He was no more than twelve and thin as a cornstalk himself. He wore a pair of baggy trousers but was shirtless and barefoot. With one hand he clutched half a dozen ears of corn to his chest; the other was outstretched as if to ward off a blow.

  So Harp was right. Charlotte felt irritated at the boy, at them all. They could have just asked. But she also felt sorry for him, so thin. She wanted to show him she meant him no harm.

  She held the arrowhead out to him, gesturing for him to take it. He took it from her, cautiously, as if suspicious of a trick. For an instant he examined it in the dawnlight. Then with a look of disgust he threw it in the dirt at her feet and dashed off toward the river, breaking down several cornstalks as he crashed across the field but not dropping any ears of corn.

  Late in the day, Turner arrived home in a rented wagon from Arcadia, a slender young man beside him wearing a bowler and a loud vest. “We’ll put him up in Adam’s cabin,” he said cheerfully. “Two educated young men from the East, they’ll have plenty to talk about.”

  His story about encountering Lysander Smith in Quincy and accepting his request to use Daybreak as a home base for botanical studies didn’t ring true to Charlotte, and in the evening he told her the full story.

  “You aren’t going to ask the community?”

  “How can I? Word would get around, and Daybreak itself would come under suspicion.” He paced the floor of the front room. “And please, I must ask your complete confidence as well.”

  Charlotte considered. True, everyone in the area—and even some of the members of Daybreak—thought of abolitionists as dangerous fanatics. Acknowledging one in their midst, even one who promised not to do any agitating, would cause tension.

  Charlotte picked up the arrowhead and put it in her apron pocket. She walked back to her house in the quiet foggy morning and sat on the doorstone. A half hour later, Adam Cabot walked by on his way to his contemplation rock.

  He stopped and faced her in wordless invitation. Charlotte’s heart pounded as she fingered the arrowhead in her pocket. She could walk to him, show him what she had found, a conversation would start. She would walk with him to the river. There they would talk, they would touch. They would kiss. All she had to do was stand up and walk, walk with him down to the river, and her life would take a powerful turn. Something would happen. Something great, something terrible. Something both great and terrible. She felt herself poised on the edge of a bluff, peering over into the vastness beneath her feet. She took a deep breath.

  She was not ready to take that step. She stayed where she was and waved at Cabot. He waved back, hesitantly, and walked on.

  She told herself that it was the thought of Harp Webb’s prying eyes that had held her back, or concern for the sleeping Newton, but she knew it was her own lack of nerve. Perhaps someday she would gain that nerve, but not today.

  “He could just stay at a hotel somewhere,” she said.

  Turner held her shoulders. “One more year and we can sustain ourselves,” he said. “I truly believe that. The money this man brings will carry us through the winter and into that next year.”

  “At least, let’s tell Adam. He will be thrilled to have a fellow believer.”

  Turner snorted. “Him least of all. The man’s a true idealist. He’s already been tarred and feathered once, and with this man Smith as a confederate, who knows what he’d get himself into.”

  Another few minutes and he had won her over. He always did. Charlotte guessed that surely Adam would suss out the true nature of Smith’s stay.

  That night Turner was even more ardent than usual. At first, Charlotte did not quite feel the same level of response, but soon enough, his passion swept her away and she remembered how much she had missed him. She lay awake after they had finished, grateful for his return. Perhaps now her sense that life was out of order would go away.

  It did not. Lysander Smith annoyed her at every turn. He left tips at the dining tables, which no one knew what to do with, eventually deciding to turn them over to George Webb to avoid dissension. He stayed in bed until well past breakfast, reading, and then wandered around the community getting into everyone’s business. For a while he decided that he would adopt the Grahamite diet, inspiring Cabot to join him. Within a few
days he had abandoned it as boring, while Cabot stubbornly carried on with it, chewing steadily on his heavy bread and piling on ever more vegetables in his effort to purify his body and soul. Smith’s supposed botanical trips rarely lasted more than three days and tended to end with his returning hung over with tales of the nightlife of Memphis that only agitated the young men; Charlotte couldn’t imagine that he was fooling anyone outside with his story, but saw no sign that he had revealed his secret to Adam.

  Schnack’s hand turned blue near to the point of blackness, and his arm swelled up to the size of his calf; but the swelling stayed below his elbow and after five days returned to something like normal. He could not bend his hand properly but could manage a saw with his thumb and two forefingers, and soon he was back at work. And for whatever reason, the corn stopped disappearing.

  For about a week in the fall, Smith amused himself by guessing everyone’s weight and proved alarmingly good at it.

  “A hundred forty, forty-two at the most,” he said to Charlotte one evening, walking past as she sat in her doorway snapping beans. He clapped his hands in glee at her startled glare.

  “Mr. Smith, you do not amuse me.”

  “That’s all right. I’m only seeking to amuse myself.”

  Charlotte didn’t answer.

  “You’re a woman of the East,” he went on. “We have a lot in common, you know. We should ally against these rubes, bring a little life to this place.”

  “You forget I’m married to one of these rubes, Mr. Smith.”

  “Now how could I forget that? Doesn’t mean you and I couldn’t enhance our cultural life, sub rosa of course.”

  “You disappoint me.”

  “Only because you don’t know me well yet, Mrs. Turner. I grow less and less disappointing with acquaintance.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t?” He grinned at her. “Just as well. I have no idea what I’m talking about half the time myself.”

  Charlotte stood up and brushed the bean stems from her apron. “I cannot tolerate this pertness, Mr. Smith. Please go away.”