by Noah Gordon
Rob J. found gone-by lilies along the river and planted their roots at the foot of Makwa’s grave. It wasn’t Sauk custom to mark graves with stone, but he asked Alden to plane a slab of black locust, which wouldn’t rot. It didn’t seem fitting to memorialize her with English words, but he had Alden carve into the wood the runelike symbols she had worn on her body, to mark it as her place. He had a single unsatisfactory conference with Mort London in an attempt to get the sheriff to investigate both her death and Comes Singing’s, but London said he was satisfied her killer had been shot dead, probably by other Indians.
In November, all over the United States, male citizens over twenty-one went to the polls. Country-wide, workingmen reacted to the competition of immigrants for their jobs. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Kentucky elected Know Nothing governors. Know Nothing legislatures were elected in eight states. In Wisconsin, Know Nothings helped elect Republican lawyers who proceeded to abolish the state immigration agencies. Know Nothings carried Texas, Tennessee, California, and Maryland, and ran strongly in most of the Southern states.
In Illinois they won a majority of the votes in Chicago and in the southern portion of the state. In Rock Island County, incumbent U.S. Congressman Stephen Hume lost his seat by 183 votes to the Indian fighter Nicholas Holden, who left almost immediately after the election to represent his district in Washington, D.C.
PART FOUR
THE DEAF BOY
October 12, 1851
30
LESSONS
The railroad began in Chicago. Recent arrivals from Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia found employment pushing the shining rails across the mostly flat land, finally reaching the east bank of the Mississippi at Rock Island. At the same time, on the other side of the river the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company was building a railroad across Iowa from Davenport to Council Bluffs, and the Mississippi River Bridge Company had been formed to connect the two railroads via a bridge across the great river.
In the deep mysteries of the flowing waters shortly after dusk on a mild evening, millions of wriggling aquatic larvae were transformed into caddis flies. Each of the dragonfly like insects fluttered out of the river on four silver wings, crowding and jostling, falling on Davenport in a blizzard of shimmering snowflakes that coated windows, got into the eyes and ears and mouths of people and animals, and were a terrible nuisance to anyone who ventured out-of-doors.
The caddis flies lived only one night. Their short onslaught was a phenomenon that occurred once or twice a year, and folks along the Mississippi took them in stride. By dawn the invasion was over, the flies were dead. At eight A.M. four men sat on benches along the waterfront in the thin fall sunlight, smoking and watching work crews sweep the insect corpses into drifts that were shoveled into wagons, from which they were dumped back into the river. Soon another man came on horseback, leading four other horses, and the men left the benches and mounted up.
It was a Thursday morning. Payday. On Second Street, in the office of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, the paymaster and two clerks were making up the payroll of the crew constructing the new bridge.
At 8:19 the five men rode up to the office. Four of them dismounted and went inside, leaving one man with the horses. They weren’t masked, and they looked like ordinary farmers except that each of them was armed. When they stated their purpose quietly and politely, one of the clerks was foolish enough to try to get a pistol from a nearby shelf and he was shot as dead as the caddis flies, a single pistol bullet to the head. No further resistance was shown, and the four holdup men calmly collected the entire payroll of $1,106.37 into a soiled linen sack before leaving. The paymaster later told authorities he was certain the bandit giving the orders was a man named Frank Mosby, who for several years had farmed land on the other side of the river to the south, beyond Holden’s Crossing.
Sarah’s timing was unfortunate. That Sunday morning she waited in church until Reverend Perkins asked worshipers to bear witness. Then, gathering her courage, she rose and went forward. In a low voice she told her minister and the congregation that after she had been widowed as a young woman she had had congress outside the bounds of holy matrimony, resulting in the birth of a child. Now, she told them, she sought through public confession to rid herself of sin through the cleansing grace of Jesus Christ.
When she was through, she lifted her white face and gazed into Reverend Perkins’ brimming eyes. “Praise the Lord,” he whispered. His long narrow fingers gripped her head and forced her to her knees. “God!” he ordered sternly. “Absolve this good woman of her transgression, for she has unburdened herself here in your house this day, has washed the scarlet from her soul, made it white as the rose, pure as first snow.”
The murmurings of the congregation swelled into shouts and ejaculations.
“Praise God!”
“Amen!”
“Hallelujah!”
“Amen, amen.”
Sarah actually felt her soul lighten. She thought she could float to Paradise right at this moment, as the Lord’s strength coursed into her body through Mr. Perkins’ five digging fingertips.
The congregation was abrim with excitement. Every person was aware of the holdup in the railroad office, and that the outlaw leader had been identified as Frank Mosby, whose deceased brother, Will, it was widely whispered, had sired Sarah Cole’s first son. So the people in church were caught up in the drama of the confession, studying Sarah Cole’s face and body and imagining a variety of lascivious scenes they would pass on in shocked whispers to their friends and neighbors as probable history.
When finally Mr. Perkins allowed Sarah to return to her pew, eager hands reached out to hers, and many voices murmured words of joy and congratulation. It was the glowing realization of a dream that had tormented her for years. It was proof that God was good, that Christian forgiveness made new hope possible, and that she had been accepted into a world where love and charity ruled. It was the happiest moment of her life.
Next morning was the opening of the academy, first day of school. Shaman enjoyed the company of eighteen children of varying sizes, the sharp new-wood smell of the building and furniture, his slate and slate pencils, and his copy of McGuffey’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, battered and used because the school in Rock Island had purchased the newer McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader for its pupils and the Holden’s Crossing Academy had bought their old books. But almost immediately he was beset by problems.
Mr. Byers seated his pupils alphabetically, in four groups according to age, so Shaman sat at one end of the long communal desk-shelf and Alex sat too far away to help him with anything. The teacher spoke with nervous swiftness, and Shaman had trouble reading his lips. The pupils were ordered to draw pictures of their homes on their slates and then write their names, their ages, and their fathers’ names and occupations. With the enthusiasm of first-day scholars, they turned to the shelf and soon were busily at work.
Shaman’s first clue that something was wrong was when the wooden pointer rapped his shoulder.
Mr. Byers had ordered his class to stop work and face him again. All had obeyed except the deaf boy, who hadn’t heard. When Shaman wheeled in fright, he saw that the other children were laughing at him.
“We shall now read aloud the words on our slates when called upon, and show our pictures to the class. We’ll begin with you,” and the pointer rapped him again.
Shaman read, stammering over some of the words. When he had shown his picture and was finished, Mr. Byers called on Rachel Geiger, at the other end of the room. Though Shaman leaned as far forward in his seat as he was able, he couldn’t see her face or read her lips. He raised his hand.
“What?”
“Please,” he said, addressing the teacher as his mother had sternly instructed. “I can’t see their faces from here. Couldn’t I stand in front of them?”
At his last appointment Marshall Byers had had disciplinary problems, sometimes so severe he had dread
ed entering the classroom. This new school was a fresh chance, and he was determined to keep a tight rein on the young savages. He had decided that one of the ways to do this was by controlling the seating. Alphabetically. In four small groups, according to age. Everyone in his or her place.
He knew it wouldn’t do to have this boy standing in front of the pupils as they recited, gazing at their mouths, perhaps making faces behind his back, inspiring them to laugh and play rowdy tricks. “No, you may not.”
Much of that morning Shaman simply sat, unable to comprehend what was going on. At lunchtime the children went outside and played tag. He enjoyed that until the biggest boy in the school, Lucas Stebbins, slammed Alex to make him “it,” sending him sprawling. When Alex scrambled to his feet, fists clenched, Stebbins went close to him. “Wanna fight, yuh shit? We shouldn’t let you play with us. You’re a bastid. My paw says.”
“What’s a bastid?” Davey Geiger asked.
“Don’t you know?” Luke Stebbins said. “It means somebody besides his paw, some dirty outlaw crook named Will Mosby, put his dingus up Mrs. Cole’s pee-hole.”
When Alex threw himself at the bigger boy, he received a stinging blow to his nose that brought blood dripping forth and sent him to the ground. Shaman ran at his brother’s tormentor and received such a boxing about the ears that some of the other children, thoroughly frightened of Luke, turned away.
“You stop that. You’ll hurt him,” Rachel Geiger shouted, glowering.
Ordinarily, Luke listened to her, dazzled by the fact that at twelve she already had breasts, but this time he just grinned. “He’s already deef. Can’t do his ears any more harm. Dummies sure do talk funny,” he said cheerfully, giving Shaman a final whack before walking away. If Shaman had allowed it, Rachel would have put her arms around him and comforted him. He and Alex, to their subsequent horror, sat on the ground and wept together while their schoolmates watched.
After lunch, there was music. This consisted of the pupils learning the tunes and words of hymns and anthems, a popular lesson because it was a relief from book-learning. During music, Mr. Byers assigned the deaf boy to empty the pail of yesterday’s ashes that stood next to the wood stove, and to fill the woodbox by carrying in heavy chunks. Shaman decided he hated school.
It was Alma Schroeder who made admiring reference to Rob J. about the confession in church, believing he knew of it. Once he possessed the details, he and Sarah quarreled. He had felt her torment and now felt her release, but he was stunned and distressed that she would offer to strangers intimate details of her life, painful or otherwise.
Not strangers, she corrected him. “Brethren in grace, sisters in Christ, who shared my shriving.” Mr. Perkins had told them that anyone wishing to be baptized this coming spring must be shriven, she explained. It baffled her that Rob J. had trouble understanding; it was so clear to her.
When the boys began to come home from school with signs they’d been fighting, Rob J. suspected that at least some of her brethren in grace and sisters in Christ weren’t above sharing with others the shrivings they observed in church. His sons were closemouthed about their bruises. He was unable to discuss their mother with them, other than to speak of her with admiration and love whenever it was possible. But he talked to them about fighting. “It just isn’t worth it to hit someone when you’re mad. Things can get out of hand fast, even lead to death. Nothing justifies killing.”
The boys were puzzled. They were talking about schoolyard fistfights, not killing. “How can you help hitting back when somebody hits you first, Pa?” Shaman asked.
Rob J. nodded in sympathy. “I know it’s a problem. You have to use your brain instead of your fists.”
Alden Kimball had overheard. A while later, he looked at the brothers and spat in horror. “Drat! Drat! Your paw has to be one of the smartest men ever drew breath, but I guess he can be wrong. I tell you, somebody hits you, you gotta nail the sumbitch, else he’s just gonna keep hittin.”
“Luke’s awful big, Alden,” Shaman said. It was what his big brother was thinking.
“Luke? Is it that ox of a Stebbins kid? Luke Stebbins?” Alden said, and spat again when they nodded miserably.
“When I was a young feller, I was a fair fighter. Know what that is?”
“A fighter who’s pretty good?” Alex said.
“Pretty good! I was better than pretty good. Used to box at fairs. Carnivals and such? Fought three minutes with anybody’d come up with four bits. If they whupped me, they’d get three dollars. And don’t you think a lot of strong men didn’t try for that three dollars, neither.”
“Did you make a lot of money, Alden?” Alex asked.
Alden’s face darkened. “Naw. There was a manager, he made a lot of money. I did it for two years, summer and fall. Then I got beat. Manager paid three dollars to the feller beat me, and hired him to take my place.” He faced them. “Point is, I can teach you how to fight, you want me to.”
Two young faces looked up at him. Then two heads were nodding.
“Stop that. Just say yes, can’t you?” Alden said irritably. “Look like a couple of damn sheep.”
“Little fear’s a good thing,” he told them. “Gets your blood to flowin. But you let yourself be too scared, you can’t do anythin but lose. And you don’t want to let yourself get too angry, neither. A fighter who’s mad starts swingin wild, leaves himself open to be hit.”
Shaman and Alex grinned self-consciously, but Alden was very serious when he showed them how to hold their hands, left one at eye level to protect the head, right one lower to protect the trunk. He was fussy about the way they made a fist, insisting they clench their curled fingers tight, hardening their knuckles so it would be like hitting their opponents with a rock in each hand.
“Fightin’s just four blows,” Alden said, “left jab, left hook, right cross, straight right. Jab bites like a snake. Gotta sting a little, but it don’t hurt the other fella much, just keeps him off-balance, opens him up for something more serious. Left hook don’t travel far, but it does a job—you turn left, put your weight on your right leg, swing hard at his head. Right cross, now, you put your weight on the other leg, get your power from a quick turn at the waist, like this. My favorite, straight right to the body, I call it the Stick. You turn low to the left, put your weight over your left leg, and drive that right fist straight into his belly as if your whole arm was a spear.”
He gave the punches to them again one at a time, so as not to confuse. The first day he had them jab the air for two hours, getting the strangeness out of throwing a punch, becoming familiar with the muscular rhythm. Next afternoon they were back in the little clearing behind Alden’s cabin, where they were unlikely to be disturbed, and every afternoon after that. They practiced each punch over and over again before he let them box with one another. Alex was three and one-half years older, but because Shaman was so large, it was as if the difference was a single year. They were very careful of one another. Finally Alden had each boy take turns facing him and urged them to hit as hard as they would in a real fight. To their amazement, he twisted and sideslipped, or he blocked each blow with a forearm or parried it with his fist. “See, what I’m teachin you ain’t no big secret. Others are goin to know how to throw a punch. You gotta learn to defend.” He insisted that each of them drop his chin until it was guarded tightly against his breastbone. He showed them how to tie up an opponent in a clinch, but he cautioned Alex to avoid a clinch against Luke at all costs. “Fella that much bigger than you, stay away from him, don’t let him rassle you to the ground.”
It was unlikely Alex could whip a boy that big, Alden thought privately, but maybe Alex could punish Luke enough to make him leave them alone. He didn’t try to make fair fighters out of the two Cole boys. He just wanted them able to protect themselves, and he taught them only the basics because he knew just enough to teach kids how to fistfight. He didn’t try to tell them what to do with their feet. Years later he’d tell Shaman that if he himself had
known a little something about what to do with his feet, probably he never would have been beaten by that three-dollar fighter.
Half a dozen times Alex thought he was ready to try Luke, but Alden said he would tell them when Alex was ready, and it wasn’t now. So each day Shaman and Alex went to school and knew that the recess period would be a very bad time. Luke had become accustomed to the Cole brothers as game. He punched and insulted them at will, calling them only Dummy and Bastid. He struck them viciously at tag, and when he wrestled them he pushed their faces into the ground.
For Shaman, Luke wasn’t his only problem at the academy. He could see only a small portion of what was said during the schoolday, and from the start he was hopelessly behind. Marshall Byers wasn’t dissatisfied to see that happen; he’d tried to tell the boy’s father that a regular school wasn’t anyplace for a deaf boy. But the teacher played it cautiously, knowing that when the subject came up again, he had best have his evidence ready. He maintained a careful list of Robert J. Cole’s failing marks, and he kept the boy after school regularly for extra work assignments that didn’t appear to raise his grades any.
Sometimes Mr. Byers also kept Rachel Geiger after school, to Shaman’s surprise, since Rachel was regarded as the smartest pupil in the school. When this happened, they trudged home together. On one of these afternoons, a gray day when the first snow of the year had just begun to fall, she frightened him by bursting into tears as they walked.
He could only stare at her in dismay.
She stopped and looked at him, so he could see her lips. “That Mr. Byers! Whenever he can, he stands … too close. And he’s always touching me.”