Russell Banks - Relation of My Imprisonment

UPON the dawn this drear and soppy month just past, in a year now some twelve years past, it happened that as I began my daily work at the building of coffins, which is my calling, I was prevailed upon by certain superior officers of the town to cease and desist from this work. I had left my young wife’s kitchen and had arrived at my workshop at the side of the house and before the road, where, as had been my procedure since completing the apprenticeship of my youth and embarking singly upon the practice of this my calling, I had commenced to lay out the day’s labor and to organize that labor into precise allotments of time. Thus I was bent over my various plans and figures at my bench, when there appeared at the doorway a friend and neighbor, a man who must be nameless here but who was one of my chief supports in the early days of my tribulation. This man, all breathless and screw-faced with haste and concern, related to me that this very morning, while passing through the marketplace across the common from the courthouse, as he was on his way to cultivate his fields, which lay on the far side of the town from his dwelling place, he had learned that the chief of civil prosecution in the parish had sent an order to the chief of civil prosecution in the town, to the effect that from this date forward all those men and women residents of this town who engage in the manufacture and/or sale of coffins, or of gravestones or of other such markers of graves, or of vestments for the dead, or of floral or other memorializings of the dead, or who in any way embalm, decorate or otherwise handle and prepare the dead for burial, must henceforth cease and desist from their activities. If this order is not immediately obeyed by those residents of this town who heretofore have participated in such activities, they will be arrested and charged with the crime of heresy and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the various laws.

Because my friend loved me, he wished, however, to do more than merely to warn me of my impending arrest and trial and imprisonment. He attempted as well to persuade me to close the doors of my shop immediately and, upon the eventual arrival at my shop by the officers of the chief of civil prosecution in the town, to deny that I was engaged now in any such activity as had become so recently a heretical activity, for, as my friend pointed out to me, I was an esteemed member of the community, welcomed among them for my comportment and orderliness and the consistent charity of my mind, and therefore the officers of the community would be reluctant to scourge me from them. My skills as a maker of coffins, my friend showed me, could easily be applied to the manufacture of items which the community felt it needed, rather than items which it had deemed not only unnecessary but dangerous to the public weal. He then told me of a growing desire among the better-off families for high wooden cabinets with glass doors for the purpose of exhibiting fragile and expensive possessions.

Having delivered himself both of his warning, which I received with gratitude, and his suggestion regarding my future activities, which I received with the thought that my friend was perhaps putting his timorous self in my place (out of his love and fear for me, however, not of love or fear for himself), he began to gather up my drawings and figures and contracts for the several coffins I then had underway, wrinkling and folding them as if to toss them into the fire.

No, I said to him. This seems not to be our only recourse. Let us think a moment and look into our hearts before we decide what is the proper action. How would it seem to others of our persuasion, with regard to the matter of the dead, if their coffin-maker were to run and hide and, if found, lie outright? Come, I said to him, be of good cheer, let us not be so easily daunted, our case, to care for the dead, is good, so good that we will be well rewarded, finally, if we suffer for that cause. If, however, we deny our cause, and others like us, seeing our example, also deny the cause, then we will suffer ten hundred and infinitely more times over for the denial. For if we will not remember the dead, who among the living will remember us when we join the dead ourselves, as all men must? (I Craig., xiv, 12.)

My friend persisted and pleaded with me none the less, until I begged leave finally to closet myself briefly for prayer and guidance in this question and proceeded to close myself into the coffin that my father had employed his brother, the revered master to my apprenticeship many years ago, to build for me. And as so often has occurred in times of woe or quandary, the face of a beloved ancestor, in this case the wise face of my mother’s great aunt, passed before me and gave me these words: Your guide in life can proceed from no other source than the mercy you tender the dead. To suffer for such tenderness is to receive mercy back from the dead when no others will show it to you.

Whereupon I arose from my coffin and confronted my good friend with these words: Leave me, if you wish, and tend your fields, and turn your coffin into a sideboard, if fear is what determines your actions. But as your fellow man who loves you, I am compelled to go on as before. I further stated that since coming to know myself, I had showed myself hearty and courageous in my coffin-making and had made it my business to encourage and teach others the skills and the meanings of the skills I now possessed, and therefore, thought I, if I should now run and make an escape, it would be of a very ill savour in the land. For what would my weak and newly converted brethren think of it? Nothing but that I was not so strong in deed as I had been privately in word. Also I feared that if I should run now when there may well be a warrant out for my arrest, I might by so doing make them afraid to stand forth some time after when but great words only should be spoken to them. And still further, I thought the world thereby would take occasion at my cowardliness, to have thus blasphemed the dead, to have then some ground amongst themselves to suspect the worst of me and my profession.

Sadly, but with freshened understanding, my friend clasped me to his bosom and departed for his fields, and I retrieved my wrinkled and folded drawings and figures and continued as before to lay out the day’s work. And at a quarter past ten in the morning, while I was planing a mahogany headboard for the coffin of a young woman living in a village seven miles from ours, three officers of the chief of civil prosecution in our town entered my shop and read to me the orders issued by the chief of civil prosecution in the parish and by that perogative ordered me to cease and desist my activities as a maker of coffins. I carefully restated all the arguments above, and I continued with my planing as before. The officer in charge, a decent man I have known since we were schoolmates together, then placed me under arrest, and after having released me into my own custody on my own recognizance, wrote out a summons, that I was to appear the following morning at the court of the chief of civil prosecution in the town, there to be heard for indictment and if indicted to be remanded to the parish jail to stand trial at some future date for the crime of heresy. He escorted me outside my shop to where my wife anxiously awaited me and closed and sealed the door to my shop and posted the summons thereon. He was a peaceable and methodical man, as were the junior officers with him, and I believe that they persecuted me only with grave reluctance. May they be remembered, therefore, at least for their inclinations to mercy, even if it happened that they were too weak to enact said mercy. (II Vis. , xxx, 4.)