Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

I sat by the stove on a three-legged stool, wondering how long it would take us to arrange properly for our departure from this place… if we would have to hang around until Mr. Perkins hired himself another shepherd… if it would be adviseable for me to go on down to Hudson for a few days to visit with Grandfather and our other relatives… if John and Jason had left any of their possessions with Fred, or did they take everything to Kansas with them, and how did one do that, transport so much so far… just letting my mind drift idly, when suddenly Fred shut his Bible and in a loud voice announced, “Owen, it’d be best if I didn’t go with you.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, the fact is, I carry within me a great many lusts. And so long as that is true, I do not care to place myself amongst other people,” he explained in his slow, careful way. “Especially amongst girls and women. Here in my cabin and out there in the fields alone, I ain’t so tempted as when I’m with other people. Particularly those of the feminine persuasion.” He opened his Bible again and read aloud: Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. He leafed ahead to another passage, obviously much-read, and recited, Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. “You see, it’s because of my lust, Owen, that my seed doth not remaineth in me. I can’t keep it inside me. I am not yet born of God;’ he pronounced.

I did not know what to say then. We both remained silent awhile, until finally I asked him, “Do you pray, Fred? Doesn’t that help some? You know, with keeping the seed inside and all.”

“Yes, I pray a heap. But it don’t do any good. It’s been better since the others left, though. John and Jason and their families. Since then I’ve been able to move out here and be by myself and have mostly holy thoughts. No, I ought to stay right here where I am, Owen. It’s for the best. I know that.”

“Father won’t permit it” I said firmly. “C’m’on, Fred, you know if I go back without you, the Old Man’ll come hopping all the way out here to fetch you himself. And he’ll be mad at us both then. Up there in the mountains, you’ll be fine. The Adirondacks is still a wilderness. You can build yourself a hut there as well as here,” I told him, and gave him to understand that he’d be even more alone in North Elba than he was here in Akron.

“No, Owen, that ain’t true. All the whole family’d be around me. It’s the way we are. Remember, ‘Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’“

“Come on, Fred, you’re sounding like the Old Man;’ I said. “Thumping yourself on the head with the Bible. Ease up on yourself, brother. You’re the best of all of us.” Then I repeated Father’s charge to me and declared forcefully that we’d speak to Mr. Perkins in the morning and make our arrangements to leave here as quickly as possible. “They need us back at the farm,” I said, lying a little. “Not out here tending Mister Perkins’s flocks and arguing theology and sin all night.”

I asked him if he had a blanket I could sleep in. Silently, he rummaged through his few possessions and drew out an old gray woolen blanket, and when I saw the thing, I recognized it at once from our childhood — one of the blankets spun and woven in the New Richmond house by our mother long years ago. He tossed it over to me, and I clutched it close to my face and inhaled deeply and grew dizzy with nostalgia. For a long moment, I kept it against my face, traveling back years in time, whole decades, to the long, cold winter nights in the house in the western Pennsylvania settlement, with me and my brothers and sister Ruth, all of us still innocent little children, huddled under our blankets in the big rope-bed in the loft, while below us, Mother tended the fire and cooked tomorrow’s meals, and Father sat on his chair by the whale oil lamp and read from his books, and all the future was still as inviting to me as it was unknown.

Finally, I stirred from my reverie and asked Fred, “How’d you come still to own one of these blankets?”

He didn’t answer. He just looked down at the packed dirt floor. “I’d have thought they were all lost or worn out by now. Did John give it to you?”

In stony silence, he blew out the candle and lay down on his pallet, his back to me, as if gone to sleep.

“Shall we take it with us?” I asked him.

“You can keep it, if you want” he murmured.

I couldn’t accept it from him; it was too precious a gift. But deciding it best now to leave him to his thoughts and, in fact, eager to be immersed in my own, I lay down on the packed dirt floor close to the stove, where I wrapped myself in the sweet-smelling blanket, and swooning with freshened memories of Mother and our childhood home, I was soon asleep.

While I slept, the terrible thing that Fred did to himself took place. Or, rather, he determined then to do it and had actually commenced, so that even though I was awake when it was done, I could not stop him. I thought it was the sound of an owl or a ground dove that had wakened me, a low, cooing noise coming from outside the hut, but when it persisted and brought me wholly out of sleep, I realized that it was something else, some night creature that I could not name. Lifting myself on my elbows, I saw that the door to the hut lay half-open, letting in long planks of moonlight. Fred’s cot was empty.

The cooing sound, Whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo, I realized, was being made by Fred outside. But I couldn’t imagine what it signified, so I unraveled myself from my mother’s blanket and stood in stockinged feet and peered carefully out the door, as if afraid of what I would see there.

He had his back to me and stood some five or six paces from the hut, and from his head-down posture, legs spread, both hands in front of him, I thought at first that he was making water. His trousers were loosened and pulled down a ways. Whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo, he sang in a light voice, as if chanting a single pair of notes broken from a tune that he could not get out of his mind. Then I saw the knifeblade flash in the moonlight, a cold, silver glint that he held like an icicle in his right hand, saw it disappear and then re-appear streaked red, as he made a quick swipe across the front of him, as if he were facing the exposed belly of a ram lamb held from behind by a second shepherd, the way we had done so many hundreds of times for Father, who with that same swift, efficient stroke of a knife castrated the poor animal, severing the scrotum and releasing the testicles into his cupped hand.

I shouted Fred’s name, but it was too late. As if to answer me, he made a chilling little bleat, his only cry, and he turned and showed me the terrible breach he had made in himself. Blood spilled from the grisly wound and flowed in a thin skein down his bare legs onto the wet grass.

He hurled his testicles away into the willow thicket with great force, as if violently casting out a demon. On his face he had an expression of wild pride, as if he had come to the end of a long, exhausting day and night of mortal combat and had triumphed over an ancient enemy and had castrated the corpse and now stood over it all bloodied. He seemed dazed, stunned by the totality of his victory. It was as if, for a few seconds at least, the terrible pain of his wound had been erased by its very extremity and by the significance of its meaning.

Then his wild, proud expression disappeared, and he was possessed by a sudden placidity — a great calm. I rushed forward and embraced him and bloodied myself in doing it. I never felt such a sadness as I felt then, for it was in both of us. He relaxed in my embrace, and all the force seemed suddenly to go out of him. The insidious little pocketknife, for that is all it was, fell to the ground, and his knees buckled, and he began to collapse. I lifted him in my arms as if he were a bale of wool and carried him back inside his hut, where I laid him down on his cot and at once set about washing and dressing his wound.