Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Since the day I left this house for Kansas and beyond, I have wanted to be back here again — but not for this. I never in my lifetime wanted it to be true that the mystery surrounding my father’s life and death, the questions concerning his character and motives, even the question of his sanity, lay here in this house on this hallowed plot of ground. Though I better than anyone alive knew the answer to all those questions, which tormented so many good men and women, tormented everyone who loved him for himself and for what he did, I still during my lifetime did not say aloud what was the truth, not to myself and not to anyone else. I loved him, too, and loved what he did. So I kept silent and hoped that the questions would end, or that they needed no answers. I hoped that a mystery was sufficient.

After Harpers Ferry, I went away; I ran as far as the continent ran, to where there was nothing further than the endless, blue Pacific; and climbed a mountain there and built a cabin; and said nothing: nothing to the journalists, who found out from my brothers and sisters where I had hidden myself and came clambering up my mountain in Altadena to interview me, nothing to the historians, who mailed me long detailed lists of questions, which I tossed into the fire in my iron stove; nothing to Father’s old abolitionist friends and supporters, who came to my cabin seeking answers and left feeling pity for what the war against slavery and the deaths of my beloved father and brothers had done to me. I did not even speak of those matters with my brothers and sisters themselves, those who survived into old age with me, when in later years they arranged to gather together now and again in one of the houses they had scattered to, on a Fourth of July, sometimes on a Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday, and I would trundle down from my hermit’s shack and travel the many hundreds of miles to their homes, where late in the evening they would share their memories of Kansas, of the work before Kansas, and of Harpers Ferry. At those gatherings they all thought me shy, inarticulate, perhaps not as intelligent as they, as they always had anyhow, and they were not wrong. But that did not mean that I did not know the truth about Father and why he did the great, good things and the bad, and why so much of what he did was, at bottom, horrendous, shocking, was wholly evil.

Within a few days of the swearing of the Gileadites in Springfield, our little army was dissolved. Or, more to the point, Father abruptly withdrew from its command and took me with him, leaving the Negro Gileadites to their own devices and stratagems, which, happily for them, turned out to be sufficient unto the day. But to be cast down from such a height of excitement and anticipation, as I was cast down by Father, was truly agonizing for me. In those days, my particular closeness to Father and the intensity and whole-heartedness with which I embraced his plans and dreams of carrying the battle straight to the slaveholders separated me from my brothers, and I could not pass it off the way John did when, within a few days of Father’s and my somberly and ceremoniously pledging ourselves to defend with our life’s blood the fugitive slaves, the Old Man, as was his wont, turned his attention suddenly elsewhere — to the sorry business of Brown & Perkins, as it happened. John simply shrugged his shoulders and set off on his own business, as he and Jason had so often done in the past. I, however, was crushed with disappointment and bitter frustration. And I was vexed with Father, more so than I had ever been before.

Looking back now, these many years later, I can see with some sympathy how Father was sorely conflicted then between what he saw as his obligations to his family and his creditors and to Mr. Perkins, who had stood by him for so long, and what he saw as his duty to oppose slavery. I was, of course, not so divided, but there was no place else I could go to wage war than with Father, no army in which to enlist but his, no one to follow into battle but him. When he decided once again to let the fight go, all I could do was gnash my teeth in rage and sharpen my long knife and clean my gun and dream of spilling blood.

I might have stayed on in Springfield, defying Father’s order to return to North Elba and run the farm there, marching instead and on my own with the Gileadites — who, as it turned out, because of the fear they aroused simply by virtue of rumor and the sight of armed Negro men at the Springfield railroad station and on the streets, never did have the opportunity for an actual, bloody confrontation with the slave-catchers. Wisely, the man-stealers and their cohorts sought their prey elsewhere. But without Father at my side, I knew that I was not especially wanted by the Negroes anyhow. To them, I was merely one of the sons of Captain Brown, as they sometimes called him. I was the big, shy, red-headed fellow who ran errands for his illustrious sire. Any light on my face was reflected light.

Nights, as I lay in my cot and fumed over what I regarded as Father’s dereliction, his defection even, I dreamed up bloody scenes to give vent to my wrath and my longing for battle. I aimed down the barrel of my gun and fired into the chest of the slave-catcher standing over the prostrate form of a fugitive. I sneaked up behind an auctioneer on his way to market with a bound gang of human chattel, and in full view of his victims reached around his neck and slashed his throat with my knife, retrieved his keys, and with my bloodied hands set the men and women loose from their fetters and led them into the woods and up into the hills. Visions of carnage and revenge filled my mind and strangely pleased me, easing me, calming my turbulent thoughts — so that I could eventually accede to Father’s wishes and return to North Elba.

“I very much oppose having to go back there,” I told him the night before I departed from Springfield. “I want to stay here and fight alongside the Gileadites.” We were in the office of Brown & Perkins, and I had taken to my cot, prepared for sleep, while he worked on at the desk by lamplight, dashing off more letters that begged for time, for patience and understanding, for merciful delays of prosecution, that promised eventual, full payment, complete clarification and accounting, justice and restitution. This sort of letter he wrote himself, and he pointedly did not want me as his scribe.

He put down his pen and looked at me with irritation. “Owen, the Negroes don’t need you here. They can protect themselves as well without you as with you. No one needs you here now. I don’t. I need you to be with your mother and the rest of the family. We’ve gone over this. The winter is bearing down on them, and they’re suffering because of the absence of a man who can run the place.”

“What about Lyman? He’s there, he’s a man.”

“It’s not the same, Owen. I can’t be there myself, because of these infernal court cases. You know that. The family needs one of us, and it’s you, or it’ll have to be me, to get them safely through the winter and put the place ready for spring. We don’t want next year to go so hard. Think of your poor brothers and sisters, Owen. The babies. Think of your mother.”

“She’s not my mother,” I shot back.

“We’ll not go into that;’ he said curtly. “You’re angry with me, I know, for having to go off like this, for my sending you north. But you should deliver it to me, who deserves it. Don’t ship it to someone who doesn’t deserve it.” He turned abruptly back to his work. Then, after a few moments, he paused and without looking at me seemed to be reversing himself, for he offered to let me stay on in Springfield, if I wished.

I sat up in my cot, not quite believing him. But then he added that I could also go to Ohio with John and Wealthy, or join Fred and Jason at Mr. Perkins’s place. I could go anyplace I chose. Accompany him to Boston to help prepare his lawyer. Follow him to Pittsburgh for more of the same. Even go off to California with all the other young fools and dig for gold, if I wanted. Follow the elephant. “It’s your choice,” he said. “But wherever you choose to go,” he reminded me, still without lifting his eyes from the paper before him, “if you don’t go to North Elba, you’ll be abandoning your duty.”