Russell Banks - Outer Banks

Self: I cannot of my own will free the dead from the care of the living, any more than I can of my own will free the living from the care of the dead. It is in the nature of things.

At which words His Honor Mister Dome was in a chafe, as it appeared, for he declared that he would snap the neck of these heresies.

Self: It may be so. But I am not able to aid you, for I am already bound over.

Dome: I find against you, Sir. But if you can locate sureties to be now set for you and thus guarantee that you will appear as ordered for trial at the next quarter-sessions, and also that you will cease and desist, pending the findings of said trial, all coffin-making and other such activities as have been declared illegal, I will set you over to return to your home and family until you are called to court.

Self: I understand that any sureties I obtain will be bound against my further coffin-making, and that if I do build a coffin, their bounds will be forfeited. But since I will not leave off the building of coffins, for I believe this is a work that has no hurt in it but is rather more worthy of commendation than blame, then any who will provide sureties for me will soon hate me. I do not believe that I will be able to uncover any friends willing to provide sureties for me who would also be willing to hate me.

Whereat he told me that if my friends would not be so bound, my mittimus must be made and I sent to the jail and there to lie to the quarter-sessions, some nine weeks off.

Thus have I in short declared the manner and occasion of my first being in prison, where I lie even now, calm in the knowledge that to suffer as a result of the errors and weakness of the living is to be all the more prepared for the demands made by the dead. Let the rage and malice of the living be never so great, they can go no further than the dead will permit them. Even when they have done their worst, I will yet love only that greater power over them, the everlasting dead.

AT THE VERY commencement of my imprisonment it was one of the chiefest pleasures of my days to converse at intermittent times in his rounds with my jailor, whose father had been a higgler from my own town and who often had spoken fondly of my own father to this said man when he was himself a child. It was his recognition of my surname, therefore, that brought him to present himself to me early on my first morning in confinement there. Thus my jailor seemed from the outset to rest in a certain sympathy toward me, for he could not understand how I was a dangerous man that had to be locked away from the company of my fellows, like some beast whose uncontrollable lust it was to tear at living flesh. Nor could it be shown to him that I had destroyed or stolen private or public property or that I had made any claims or abridgements against the lawful liberties of other men.

Yet despite this wondering of why it was that I had been imprisoned, my jailor all the same could not understand why I did not leave off my activities as a maker of coffins and apply my skills instead to some task that the majority of my fellow men wished to see promoted, such as the building of glass-fronted cabinets (he cited the same fashion among the newly wealthy as had my friend earlier, prior to my arrest).

But I have met my calling and the meaning it lends to my formlessness more sweetly here in this cell than in the world outside, I told him. To show it my back and numbly acquiesce to the demands of the majority of the living would sour the very air that fills my body.

Could you not do more good if you were set at liberty than you can while locked here in a cage? my jailor inquired. He was a decent fellow, and I did believe and believe especially now, many years after his passing away from me, that he was concerned that the most good be done. And what in particular offended him about my confinement was that it seemed to do no one any good. He was thus a man whose compassion was essentially an act of logic, and his view of mean and cruel men was that they were merely illogical. We could not agree on this, for my own view has been that such men are mean and cruel because they will not perform the rites and other acts of worship which would purge them of their meanness and cruelty, which purgation would thereby permit them to enact goodness in the world. Mercy, I explained to my jailor, is a quality of feeling toward others that must be obtained at some source outside the human heart. My brethren and I believe that it can only be obtained by devoting oneself fully to the worship and further contemplation of the power of the dead. For a man cannot see or hear or touch the world born and dying daily around him until he has first seen, heard and touched the infinite. ( Wal., v, 41.)

When I had lain in prison for along about twelve weeks, and not during that time knowing what they intended to do with me, upon the fifteenth of May there came to me a Mister Jones, clerk of the court, having been sent by the several justices of the parish to admonish me and demand of me submission to their regulation of my activities and the curtailment of any future making of coffins or of teaching others to do likewise or of recommending such activities and the wisdom and sweetness thereof to any others, especially to the youth. But since I knew that my case had not yet been publicly tried and that I was merely under indictment and had not yet confessed to any act of heresy but had merely argued as to the legitimacy and rightness of my calling, I knew the admonitions and demands put to me by Mister Jones were but part of a strategem designed to control me without having as well to defend in public the court’s interest in breaking the neck of the people’s growing love for the dead and their gradual awakening to acts of worship and contemplation of the dead. For, as all men knew, there was in those years a new spirit moving over the land which was compelling the people toward a deeper delight in life that was by necessity and grace derived from their growing knowledge and experience of the dead. The finite is but the flesh of the infinite, and the living the breath of the dead. ( Flor., ii, 14.) Here is how Mister Jones, clerk of the court, made his conversation with me:

When he was come into my chamber, which I had in various ways and through the aid of my young wife made as comfortable and cheerful as such a stony place could be made, he called heartily out to me, Neighbor! How do you do, neighbor?

I thank you, Sir, said I. Very well, blessed be the dead.

Said he, scratching at his nose, Well, Sir, I have come to tell you that it is desired that you would submit yourself unto the laws of the land, or else at the next quarter-sessions it will go far worse with you, even to be banished and sent away from out of the nation or else even worse than that.

I said with all seriousness, looking briefly onto the face of my jailor for confirmation, that I did desire only to demean myself in the world, as becometh a man and a worshipper of the dead. Whatever denied me that benefit could not be pursued, I explained.

Still he scratched his nose, as if there were situated there some devious growth or some question that by a steady scratching would get answered. You must leave off these unholy and illegal practices which you have long been wont to participate in and endorse among others, for the statute is now set up against them, and here am I now, sent by the justices to tell you that they do intend to prosecute the law against you if you will not submit.

Sir, I said modestly but with natural authority and a reasonable man’s knowledge of procedure and law, Sir, I conceive that the laws by which I am imprisoned at this time, the laws of indictment, do not reach or condemn either me or the practices of tendering mercy in various accepted, codified manners to the dead. I have come forward and made myself known unto the world, and now you and your justices must do the same. The dead will decide who is in the right.