by Noah Gordon
On another occasion a large man with very black skin stayed in the secret room for three days, more than long enough for Rob to observe that he was nervous and suffered from abdominal discomfort. Sometimes his face was gray and sick-looking, and his appetite was irregular. Rob was certain he had a tapeworm. He gave him a bottle of specific but told him not to take it until he arrived wherever he was going. “Otherwise you’ll be too weak to travel, and you’ll leave a trail of loose stool that every sheriff in the country can follow!”
He would remember each of them as long as he lived. He felt an immediate sympathy for their fears and their feelings, and it was more than the fact that once he’d been a fugitive himself; he realized that an important ingredient of his concern was his familiarity with their plight, because he had witnessed the afflictions of the Sauks.
He had long since ignored Cliburne’s orders that they weren’t to be questioned. Some were loquacious and some tight-lipped. At the very least, he tried to get their names. Although the youth with the glasses had been named Nero, most of the names were Judeo-Christian: Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Aaron, Peter, Paul, Joseph. He heard the same names again and again, reminding him of the stories Makwa had told him about the biblical names at the Christian school for Indian girls.
He spent as much time with the talkative ones as safety would allow. One man from Kentucky had escaped once before and had been caught. He showed Rob J. the scarred stripes on his back. Another, from Tennessee, said he hadn’t been treated badly by his master. Rob J. asked why he had run in that case, and the man pursed his lips and squinted, as if searching for the answer.
“Cudden wait for Jubilee,” he said.
Rob asked Jay about Jubilee. In ancient Palestine, every seventh year agricultural land was allowed to lie fallow and replenish itself, in accordance with the dictates of the Bible. After seven sabbatical years, the fiftieth year was declared a year of jubilee, and slaves were given a gift and set free.
Rob J. suggested Jubilee was better than keeping humans in perpetual servitude but hardly the ultimate kindness, since in most cases fifty years of slavery was more than a lifetime.
He and Jay circled each other warily on the topic, having learned long ago the depth of their differences.
“Do you know how many slaves there are in the Southern states? Four million. That’s one black skin for every two white skins. Free them, and the farms and plantations that feed a lot of abolitionists up North will have to close. And then what would we do with those four million black folks? How would they live? What would they become?”
“Eventually they’d live same as anybody. If they got some education, they could become anything. Pharmacists, for instance,” he said, unable to resist.
Jay shook his head. “You simply don’t understand. The South’s very existence depends on slavery. That’s why even nonslave states make it a crime to aid runaways.”
Jay had struck a nerve. “Don’t talk to me about crime! The African slave trade’s been outlawed since 1808, but African people are still being taken at gunpoint and stuffed into ships and carried to every Southern state and sold on the block.”
“Well, that’s national law you’re talking about. Each state makes its own laws. Those are the laws that count.”
Rob J. snorted, and that was the end of that conversation.
He and Jay remained close and mutually supportive in all other things, but the slavery question raised a barrier between them that they both regretted. Rob was a man who valued a quiet talk with a friend, and he began to turn Trude into the path leading to the Convent of St. Francis whenever he was in that neighborhood.
It was hard for him to pinpoint just when he became Mother Miriam Ferocia’s friend. Sarah gave him physical passion that was unwavering and as important to him as meat and drink, but she spent more time talking with her pastor than with her husband. Rob had discovered in his relationship with Makwa that it was possible for him to be close to a woman without sexuality. Now he proved it again with this sister of the Order of Saint Francis, a female fifteen years older than he, with stern eyes in a strong cowlframed face.
He’d seen her only infrequently until that spring. The winter had been mild and strange, with heavy rains. The water table rose unnoticed until the streams and creeks suddenly were hard to cross, and by March the township paid for being on land between two rivers, because the situation already had become the Flood of ’57. Rob watched the river come over the banks on the Cole place. It swirled inland, washing away Makwa’s sweat lodge and her woman’s lodge. Her hedonoso-te was spared because she had built it cleverly on a knoll. The Cole house was higher than the flood reached too. But soon after the waters receded, Rob was summoned to treat the first case of virulent fever. And then another person came down sick. And another.
Sarah was pressed into service as a nurse, but she and Rob and Tom Beckermann were swiftly overwhelmed. Then one morning Rob came to the Haskell farm and found a feverish Ben Haskell already sponge-bathed and comforted by two Sisters of Saint Francis. All of “the brown beetles” were out and nursing. He saw at once and with a great thankfulness that they were excellent nurses. Each time he met them they were in pairs. Even their prioress nursed with a partner. When Rob protested to her, thinking it was a quirk in their training, Miriam Ferocia responded with cold vehemence, making it clear his objections were useless.
It came to him that they worked in pairs so they could guard one another from lapses of faith and flesh. A few evenings later, ending the day with a cup of coffee at the convent, he put it to her that she was afraid to allow her sisters to be alone in a Protestant house. He confessed it was a puzzle to him. “Is your faith weak, then?”
“Our faith is strong! But we like warmth and comfort as well as the next. The life we’ve chosen is bleak. And cruel enough without the added curse of temptations.”
He understood. He was happy to accept the sisters under Miriam Ferocia’s terms, and their nursing made all the difference.
The prioress’s typical comment to him dripped with scorn. “Have you no other medical bag, Dr. Cole, than that shabby leather thing decorated with porky quills?”
“It’s my Mee-shome, my Sauk medicine bundle. The straps are made of Izze cloths. When I wear them, no bullets can harm me.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. “You don’t have the faith in Our Savior, but you accept protection from Sauk Indian heathenry?”
“Ah, but it works.” He told her of the shot that had been fired at him outside his barn.
“You must use extreme caution,” she admonished, pouring him coffee. The nanny goat he’d donated had dropped kids twice, supplying two males. Miriam Ferocia had traded one of the bucks and somehow had acquired three more does, dreaming of a cheese industry; but still whenever Rob J. came to the convent he had no milk for his coffee, because every nanny always seemed to be pregnant or nursing. He did without, like the nuns, and learned to love his coffee black.
Their talk turned sober. He was disappointed that her churchly inquiry had thrown no light on Ellwood Patterson. He had been considering a plan, he confided. “What if we were able to place a man within the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner? It might be possible to learn of their mischief early enough to stop it.”
“How would you do that?”
He had given it a good deal of thought. It required a native-born American who was both completely trustworthy and close to Rob J. Jay Geiger wouldn’t do, because SSSB probably would reject a Jew. “There’s my hired man, Alden Kimball. Born in Vermont. A very good person.”
She shook her head in concern. “That he’s a good person would make it worse, because you might very well sacrifice him, and yourself, with such a scheme. These are extremely dangerous men.”
He had to face the wisdom of what she said. And the fact that Alden had been showing his age. Not failing yet, but showing his age.
And he drank a lot.
“You must be patient,” she said gently. “I shall m
ake my inquiries again. Meanwhile, you must wait.”
She removed his cup and he knew it was time to rise from the bishop’s chair and leave, so she could prepare for Night Song. He collected his quilled bullet shield and smiled at the competitive glare she directed at the Mee-shome. “Thank you, Reverend Mother,” he said.
38
HEARING THE MUSIC
The educational pattern in Holden’s Crossing was for a family to send children to the academy for a semester or two of schooling, so they could read a little and do simple sums and write a painstaking hand. Then the schooling was over, and the children began their lives as full-fledged farm workers. When Alex was sixteen he said he’d had enough school. Despite Rob J.’s offer to finance higher education, he went to work with Alden full-time on the sheep farm, and Shaman and Rachel were left as the oldest pupils in the academy.
Shaman was willing to keep on learning, and Rachel was thankful to drift along in the even flow of her days, clutching her unchanging existence as if it were a lifeline. Dorothy Burnham was aware of her good fortune in having even one such pupil come into a teacher’s life. She treated the pair like treasures, lavishing everything she knew on them and pushing herself to keep them challenged. The girl was older than Shaman by three years and had more schooling, but soon Miss Burnham was teaching them as a class of two. It was natural for them to spend a good deal of time studying together.
Whenever their schoolwork was done, Rachel went directly to Shaman’s speech training. Twice a month the two young people met with Miss Burnham and Shaman ran through his routine for the teacher. Sometimes Miss Burnham suggested a change or a new exercise. She was delighted with his progress, and happy that Rachel Geiger had been able to do him so much good.
As their friendship ripened, sometimes Rachel or Shaman would allow the other some small inner glimpse. Rachel told him how she dreaded having to go to Peoria every year for the Jewish High Holidays. He awoke her tenderness by revealing to her, without putting it into so many words, his anguish that his mother treated him coldly. (“Makwa was more of a mother to me than she is, and she knows it. It gripes her, but it’s plain truth.”) Rachel had noticed that Mrs. Cole never referred to her son as Shaman, the way everyone else did; Sarah called him Robert—almost formally, the way Miss Burnham did in school. Rachel wondered if it was because Mrs. Cole didn’t like Indian words. She’d heard Sarah telling her mother that she was glad the Sauks were gone forever.
Shaman and Rachel worked on his vocal exercises anywhere they happened to be, floating in Alden’s flatboat or sitting on the riverbank while fishing, picking watercress, hiking across the prairie, or peeling fruit or vegetables for Lillian on the Geigers’ Southern-style veranda. Several times a week they found their way to Lillian’s piano. He could experience her vocal tonality if he touched her head or her back, but he especially liked to place his hand on the smooth warm flesh of her throat while she talked. He knew she must be able to feel his fingers trembling.
“I wish I could remember the sound of your voice.”
“Do you remember music?”
“I don’t really remember it … I heard music the day after Christmas, last year.”
She stared at him, puzzled.
“Dreamed it.”
“And you heard the music in the dream?”
He nodded. “All I could see was a man’s feet and legs. I think they must have belonged to my father. You remember how sometimes our parents would put us to sleep on the floor while they played? I didn’t see your mother and father, but I heard their violin and piano. I don’t remember what they played. I just remember the … music!”
She had trouble speaking. “They like Mozart, maybe it was this,” she said, and played something on the piano.
But after a while he shook his head. “It’s just vibrations, to me. The other was real music. I’ve been trying ever since to dream of it again, but I can’t.”
He noticed that her eyes glittered, and to his amazement she leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth. He kissed her back, something new, very much like a different kind of music, he thought. Somehow his hand held her breast, and when they stopped kissing, it stayed there. Perhaps everything would have been all right if he’d taken his hand away at once. But, like the vibration of a musical note, he was able to sense the firming, and the small movement of her hardened bud. He pressed, and she drew back her hand and smashed him on the mouth.
Her second blow landed below his right eye. He sat dumbly and made no attempt to defend himself. She could have killed him if she’d wanted to, but she only hit him once more. She’d grown up doing farmwork and was strong, and she struck out with her closed fist. His upper lip was mashed and blood was trickling from his nose. He saw her crying raggedly as she sprang away.
He trailed after her into the front hall; it was fortunate no one was home. “Rachel,” he called once, but he couldn’t tell if she answered, and he didn’t dare follow her upstairs.
He let himself out of her door and walked to the sheep farm, snuffling to keep the blood out of his handkerchief. As he moved toward the house he met Alden coming out of the barn.
“Weeping Christ. Who happened to you?”
“… In a fight.”
“Well, I can see. What a relief. I’se beginning to think Alex is the onliest Cole boy has any spunk. What’s t’other scoundrel look like?”
“Terrible. Much worse than this.”
“Oh. That’s good, then,” Alden said cheerfully, and departed.
At supper Shaman had to endure several long lectures against brawling.
In the morning the younger children studied his battle wounds with respect, while they were pointedly ignored by Miss Burnham. He and Rachel barely spoke to one another during the day, but to his surprise when school let out she waited for him outside as usual, and they walked together in glum silence toward her house.
“You tell your father I touched you?”
“No!” she said sharply.
“That’s good. I wouldn’t want him to horsewhip me,” he said, and meant it. He had to watch her to talk with her, so he was able to observe how she looked with color rising, but to his confusion he also saw that she was laughing.
“Oh, Shaman! Your poor face. I’m really sorry,” she said, and squeezed his hand.
“Me too,” he said, although he wasn’t quite certain what he was apologizing for.
At her house, her mother gave them ginger cake. When they’d eaten it, they sat across the table from one another and did their school work. Then they went into the parlor again. He shared the piano bench with her but took care not to sit too close. What had happened the previous day had changed things, as he’d feared, but to his surprise, it wasn’t a bad feeling. It simply rested warmly between them as something private to them alone, like a shared cup.
A legal paper summoned Rob J. to the courthouse in Rock Island “on the twenty-first day of June, in the year of Our Lord one thousand, eight hundred, fifty and seven, for the purpose of naturalization.”
The day was clear and warm, but the windows in the courtroom were closed because the Honorable Daniel P. Allan was on the bench and didn’t appreciate flies. The legal traffic was light, and Rob J. had every reason to believe he’d be out of there swiftly, until Judge Allan started to administer the oath.
“Now, then. Do you pledge that you hereby renounce all foreign titles and allegiances to any other country?”
“I do,” Rob J. said.
“And do you pledge to support and defend the Constitution, and to bear arms on behalf of the United States of America?”
“Well, no sir, your Honor, I do not,” Rob J. said firmly.
Startled out of his torpor, Judge Allan stared.
“I don’t believe in killing, your Honor, so I won’t ever practice war.”
Judge Allan appeared annoyed. At the clerk’s table next to the bench, Roger Murray cleared his throat. “Law says, Judge, cases like this, candidate has to prove he�
�s a conscientious objector whose beliefs prevent him from bearing arms. Means he has to belong to some group like the Quakers, that make it generally known they won’t fight.”
“I know the law and what it means,” the judge said acidly, furious that Murray couldn’t ever seem to find a less public way to instruct him. He peered over his spectacles. “You Quaker, Dr. Cole?”
“No, your Honor.”
“Well, what the hell are you, then?”
“Not affiliated with any religion,” Rob J. said, and saw that the judge looked as if he’d been personally insulted.
“Your Honor, may I approach the bench?” someone said from the back of the court. Rob J. saw it was Stephen Hume, who’d been a railroad lawyer ever since Nick Holden had won his seat in the Congress. Judge Allan signaled him to approach. “Congressman.”
“Judge,” Hume said with a smile. “Like to personally vouch for Dr. Cole? One of the most distinguished gentlemen in Illinois, serves the people night and day as a physician? Everybody knows his word is gold. If he says he can’t fight in a war because of his beliefs, that’s all the proof a reasonable man should need.”
Judge Allan frowned, uncertain whether or not a politically connected lawyer before his bench had just called him unreasonable, and decided the safest thing was to glare at Roger Murray. “We’ll proceed with the naturalization,” he said, and without any more fuss, Rob J. became a citizen.
On the ride back to Holden’s Crossing he had a few strange, regretful memories of the Scots homeland he’d just renounced, but it felt good to be an American. Except that the country had more than its share of troubles. The U.S. Supreme Court had just decided for good and all that Dred Scott was a slave because it wasn’t legal for Congress to exclude slavery from the territories. At first Southerners rejoiced, but already they were furious again, because the Republican party leaders said they wouldn’t accept the court decision as binding.
Neither would Rob J., even though his wife and his elder son had become hot-blooded Southern sympathizers. He’d sent dozens of runaway slaves through the secret room to Canada, and in the process had had several close calls. Alex told him one day that he’d met George Cliburne the night before on the road about a mile from the sheep farm. “There he was, sitting on top of a wagonload of hay at three o’clock in the morning! Now, what do you make of that?”