Slant of Light

by Steve Wiegenstein

  “George Webb was thinking along the right lines, but maybe he was too careful for his own good,” he told him. “It’s not a good idea for everybody to know where we keep our money, but one or two people, anyway.” That night, Wickman spread the word that he had decided it would be a good idea to put a fence around his yard. He spent the next day digging postholes. As Turner walked past on his way to the cornfields, Wickman gave him a significant look, and the next morning Turner noticed that all the posts had been set securely, with dirt packed tightly around each post. Wickman was up before breakfast interlacing the rails.

  “You must have worked late on that job,” Turner said to him.

  Wickman paused in his railsplitting. “They’re not set as deep as they look, if you know what I mean,” he said. “But they’ll hold.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Six posts,” Wickman said, pointing at them with his finger and giving Turner another look. “All six of them. Put ‘em in last night, after dark.”

  By June, Sheriff Willingham had paid a call on the community, explaining that he was responding to a complaint that Daybreak was harboring people of loose morals. Charlotte sent him off with the smiling, but uninviting, answer that the community had already performed its own investigation and was satisfied that the demands of morality were being met. Willingham, with the election drawing near, was not interested in stirring up a troublesome case, and rode away handing out campaign ribbons.

  Turner tried to get to work on the next edition of The Eagle but found himself unable. What could he write? Of course the change of leadership would have to be mentioned, but how to do it without raising more questions than he could answer? He puzzled for days, scribbling on loose sheets of paper, but nothing seemed to make sense without sounding mealymouthed or deceptive. He wished he had Marie with him—she had a good sense of expression, and could set the type faster besides. But Marie was still hiding away, avoiding them all for the most part, although he could hear the hungry squalls of the baby from time to time as he passed their cabin.

  Finally he decided just to make a virtue out of it and embrace the vote as a victory for forward-thinking principles. He played off his column in the edition from a year ago and declared that in the rich soil of Daybreak, the cause of woman had taken a great step forward, one for which the rest of the nation was not likely prepared yet, but which signaled the way ahead. Leaders could rise from anywhere, even from the ranks of the weaker sex. He knew this raised the thorny question of suffrage but decided to ignore it. Let that rest for another day.

  They hoed corn, planted wheat, waited for the hemp to complete its growth. The news from the rest of the country was not good, and the tension of waiting reached an almost unbearable point. It was Lincoln and Douglas all over again, only this time the tall man was a more experienced campaigner, and when Bell and Breckenridge entered the race the talk was that the whole issue might end up in the House of Representatives, where the Northern states had the advantage. But after the last ears of corn were binned, and the wheat reaped and milled, and the final parcels of hemp, brought loose or in bales by farmers from as far as two counties away, were finally run through the mill, the waiting came to an end.

  The candidates split the vote badly. Judge Douglas won Missouri—and nowhere else. But the Republican managed a clear majority in the Electoral College, and the talk ran to secession and war.

  And Harp Webb filed a quiet title suit in the courthouse, laying claim to Daybreak and the entire thousand acres.

  April 1861

  Chapter 20

  Adam Cabot drew his knees under his chin and waited for sunrise on his meditation rock. As with all his efforts at self-improvement, he had neglected his morning ritual, but lately he had been feeling more and more of a need to get his mind clear.

  The world was headed for hell. South Carolina had gone out, then six more states. Compromises were floating around Congress, but no one seemed in the mood for compromise. Most worrisome, word had just come north that militias in Arkansas had seized the federal arsenals at Little Rock and on the Mississippi. As long as the crisis was in South Carolina or Virginia, it seemed distant; but Arkansas was all too close.

  He no longer felt at home in Daybreak. Not just the mess with Turner, although that was part of it, of course; they avoided each other in the fields and at the table. The knowledge that if the tables had been turned, and Charlotte had been willing to break her vows and run away with him, he would have gladly taken on the reprehension, only doubled his discomfort. So why did he stay? He had spent many mornings in this spot, searching his heart like a good New Englander, and always came around to the same disquieting conclusion—he stayed because he would rather be near Charlotte Turner than anywhere else on earth even if all he drew from that nearness was the anguish of unattainability. It was foolish, it was corrosive, but it was his decision and he was going to live with it.

  But beyond that, the great troubles in the country made him restless. Daybreak had been his refuge when his life had been in danger, but now it felt more like a place of exile. Four years since he had fled Kansas, and what did he have to show for it? Had the common life moved him—any of them—any closer to perfection? It was hard to see it. Perhaps it was time to stop trying to perfect himself and leap back into the fray, a messy man in a messy world.

  And this business with Harp Webb. Harp had hired the old settlers’ lawyer in town, so they had gone to the other lawyer, a young man just down from St. Louis who could speak a little German and was getting most of his business from the recent immigrants. The three directors—Charlotte, Wickman, and himself—had visited his office in Fredericktown.

  “Well,” said the lawyer, whose name was Herrmann. “It’s an interesting case.”

  “Lord help us,” Wickman said.

  “No, I really mean interesting. The title to this property has some clouds on it, all right, but not between George and his son. George’s title was cloudy when he acquired it, and so was the man’s before him, and the man before that. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Your first settler comes in, grabs some ground, doesn’t really ask whose it is, just acquires it by adverse possession over time. Frankly, if there are any claimants to your land, they are more likely to be French or Spanish, way back from colonial times, than Harp Webb. Maybe even Osage, although I can’t imagine an Osage winning a court fight, or attempting one for that matter. So I’d say his suit has little merit.”

  “Yes, but—” Charlotte said.

  Herrmann smiled indulgently. “Don’t you fret, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll take care of you.”

  Cabot cleared his throat. “Mrs. Turner here is actually our community president.”

  Herrmann’s smile turned confused. “Ah. Well. Then.”

  “On the face it has little merit,” Charlotte went on. “But in court? How would it proceed?”

  “Well,” Herrmann said. “Let’s say it didn’t get thrown out in the first place. Mr. Webb would probably claim that there had been verbal promises, statements made by his father about inheriting the whole property, something like that. We would counter with the lack of written documentation of such promises, the fact that a careful man like George Webb would surely have written something down if he intended to leave your parcel to Harp. In real estate law, verbal promises are quite weightless.”

  “You don’t suppose he has something, some scrap of paper he’s been holding onto?” Wickman said.

  “Well, even if he does, it wasn’t recorded with the county,” the lawyer said. “To be a valid document, it would have to be filed with the recorder, or at least notarized and witnessed.”

  They left the meeting feeling uneasy. The law might be in their favor, but if Harp Webb got in front of twelve local folks, talking about a promise from his father, anything could happen. Especially since his opponents would be a group of outlanders with strange ideas.

  Charlotte stood at the washbasin scrubbing potatoes and looked out the window at the
children playing in the grass of the side yard.

  At least she would have one achievement in her term as president, she thought. A week after her election, the other women of the village approached her after the men had gone to the fields.

  “Every day they go out in the sun and the breezes, and we are here in the stale air and dark,” Frances Wickman said. “Nought for air or light but front door and back. It’s time we put windows in these houses.”

  Charlotte agreed immediately, and after a month of lobbying, the men voted to approve her proposal to order windows from the city and pull two workers out of the fields to install them. There was grumbling about the time it would take away from the field work, but the proposal passed easily. Charlotte suspected that some of the women had used the Lysistrata tactic to influence their husbands’ votes. Following the principle of equality, the same windows were ordered for each house, and everyone drew lots to see whose would be installed first. And no oiled paper, either. Real sash windows that could open and close.

  So now she could stand at her window and watch the children. Frances had brought out a chair and was sitting in the shade of a tree, while her twins played. Sarah staggered in a circle around her, hanging on to her legs or the chair legs, walking now but still unsteady on her feet. Penelope was not walking yet; her legs came out at a bad angle from her hips, and her knees didn’t bend quite right. When she pulled herself up, her feet stuck out to the side and she formed a tiny capital A. Then she would plop down, surprised. Her features were small and pretty, though, and her inability to keep up with her sister never seemed to bother her. Sarah was a determined explorer, wandering far from her mother, an intent expression pinching her face into a frown as she picked up sticks and grass, tasting each thing before moving on to the next object of interest.

  And Newton, almost four now, playing with the babies because there was no one else to play with. His face was a mass of freckles, and he had a shock of thick sandy blond hair that flopped over his eyes. He moved with aimless energy, bouncing from one imaginary adventure to another, talking to himself. He had found a broken wagon spoke somewhere and used it as a walking stick, magic wand, and poking rod wherever he went. Newton’s imagination and unfocused energy reminded her of his father, and she both smiled and grimaced at the thought.

  She knew it was time to do something about Turner. It had been a year. She supposed the right thing to do would be to forgive him and get on with life. He had been suitably repentant, and she knew he had not strayed again. But when she saw him, he did not move her the way he had before; there was a coldness in her feelings toward him that she could not shake. Forgiving, all right, she could do that in Christian charity; but getting on, that was the stumbler.

  Out the window she saw Marie Mercadier approach Mrs. Wickman, with little Josephine swaddled on her shoulder. She could feel her face harden again. How much charity was one person expected to show? Marie wouldn’t have been in Daybreak if Charlotte hadn’t insisted on it, but even so, seeing that girl and her daughter around was a pebble in her shoe every day. She still believed it had been the right thing to do; but “right” wasn’t the same as “pleasant.” Josephine made no effort to get down from her arms, although she was nearly as old as the Wickman girls, and Marie did not put her down. The two of them just stood apart and watched.

  The sun dropped a little farther behind the mountain, casting a shadow over the window; and in the darkened glass she glimpsed her reflection. It was a hard face, an angry face, a face she didn’t like. She looked away.

  Her father was walking up the road toward the house. From his posture she knew something had happened. He stopped and tousled Newton’s hair as the boy held up something and explained it to him, some new intricacy he had discovered in a walnut hull. Then he walked on.

  Charlotte met him at the door.

  “I’ve been recalled,” he said. “It seems old officers aren’t as useless as once imagined.”

  “Oh, Father.” She embraced him tightly. “Where do they want you?”

  “Back to West Point for now,” he said, limply returning her embrace. “God knows after that.” He sat down. “If fighting breaks out, and I think it will, we’re in for a mess. You never know where fighting will lead you. I’m too old for this. Mexico was bad enough, but the idea of Americans shooting at Americans—” He broke off.

  Charlotte watched the children. Josephine had finally gotten down and was squatting in the dirt beside Sarah, poking something with her finger. “I take it our money’s well hidden?” her father said.

  “Yes.”

  “I mean truly well hidden?”

  “Yes.” She looked over at him in surprise. “Why?”

  His face was drawn. “You would have to see war close up to understand. Once the law of the gun is in force, nothing is safe. You should start keeping the cattle in the woods. Have some of the young men watch them—whoever stays here, that is. I imagine most of them will want to go cover themselves with glory.”

  There was a knock at the door. It was young Schnack, breathless, his face and hands still dirty from plowing.

  “Come to the Temple,” he said. “Something’s happened.”

  They hurried out to see everyone in the community converging on the Temple. Horses had been left in the field, still tethered to their plows. Frances and Marie picked up their children and hastened ahead of them. No one spoke, but there was a strange air of urgency.

  When they got there, Turner was at the front of the meeting hall, talking in low tones with a man who soon left, got on his horse, and galloped down the road. Turner stepped onto the dais.

  “The South Carolina militia has begun bombardment of Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor,” he said. “It looks like war is upon us. That’s all the news at this time. We’ll have a community meeting tonight to talk things over. Perhaps more news will come our way by then.”

  “I’ll ride up to town and find out more,” Schnack said, excited.

  “Just finish your plowing,” Carr told him. “You’ve got a hot horse out there. She’ll need water and a cool down. News will come our way soon enough.”

  The crowd broke up, small groups talking intensely. Turner saw Charlotte at the edge of the crowd.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I overstepped.”

  “That’s all right. We do need to meet.”

  There was no more news that evening, but everyone wanted to talk over the few scraps they had. It was hard to imagine that the fort could hold out for long. “It was meant to guard the city from attack by sea,” Carr said. “I was there once. It was never meant to be defended from the land side.”

  Everyone was grateful at the governor’s announcement that the state would remain neutral in the conflict, but Carr just sniffed. “Everybody always wants to stay neutral until the hotheads take over,” he said. He was visibly glum. After the meeting was over, Charlotte took him to the side. “Most of my best cadets were Southern boys,” he said. “I don’t know how many of them will stick with the government.”

  A few days later he was packed and gone, but not before he took Charlotte out to the barn. He scratched aside some dirt in the floor of the hayloft to reveal a hole he had dug. “Old George had the right idea,” he said. But Carr’s hole was larger, and he only pulled away enough dirt to reveal one end of a canvas bag. “The rifles and ammunition are in there,” he said. “If this spreads, guns are the first things people will look for.”

  “You really think this is going to get bad?”

  “Who can say? But I wouldn’t be surprised. Homo homini lupus. Protect the children.”

  By the time Carr had loaded his belongings on the wagon to catch the train to St. Louis, more news had come. The fort in South Carolina had indeed fallen quickly, the president had called for all states to send troops to help put down the rebellion, and the governor had refused. “We’re in for it now,” Carr said as he mounted the wagon. “Pray for a quick victory, one side or the other.”

  And
then it was Charley’s turn to go, a few days later. Except he was heading south.

  “I can’t say I know nothing about this whole deal,” he said. “But I’m an Arkansas boy, and they say Arkansas has went out, so I guess I’ll go down and see what’s what.”

  “The country needs farmers a lot more than it needs soldiers, Charley,” Charlotte told him.

  “Well ma’am, that’s the truth,” he said. “I ain’t been much of a farmer either, but I done what I could. And you know what they say about the ladies and a man in uniform.” He grinned.

  “That’s only true for the live ones.”

  “Oh ma’am, I plan to stay alive. Little fellow like me, they may just make me the drummer boy or message carrier or something.”

  “You know how to play the drum?”

  “Can’t be no harder than poling a boat.”

  And then he was gone, a twenty-dollar gold piece placed in his pocket by Turner. “God bless you, Charley,” he told him. “Stay safe, and come back to us when this is all over.”

  Harp Webb never spoke to them as he rode by; he would look straight ahead, grim-faced, without stopping. His trips to town grew more frequent and less predictable; Charlotte did not know what he was up to, but figured it could be nothing good. In early May they heard from Herrmann that Harp had asked for a jury trial. “Unusual for a civil suit, especially a real estate matter,” he said. “I’d be surprised if the judge grants his request.”

  But Charlotte was not surprised when the judge granted the request, setting a trial date for September. That was the one good thing about it—a jury trial would take longer to put together. If they were lucky, some criminal cases might come up, and their dispute would be put off even further.

  In the evenings she found herself sitting outside with Turner, two chairs parked in the shade, just as in earlier days, letting Newton play until dark and waiting for the summer evening to cool down. She noticed that whenever they were outside, Marie stayed indoors with Josephine. Small comforts.