Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

In a somber voice, Father said his first words to us: “We’ve got to place a fire in here and set a kettle of water to steaming and clear his lungs. I don’t suppose you boys have any stovepipe handy, or you’d have already done that.”

I shook my head no, and Father stood up and passed by me without saying anything more. For a second, he paused over Fred and looked down at him with great sadness. In a thin, apologetic voice, almost a child’s, Fred said, “It’s John and Owen who are sick, Father. Not me so much.”

“Yes, I know. And I know about your injury, son. Owen wrote me of it. We’ll sit and have us a proper talk later,” was his response, and he went directly out. He said nothing to me then of my having disobeyed him, nor did he speak of it afterwards. It was as if his silence on the subject were my punishment, for it did, indeed, feel like one.

Things changed quickly then. Father set everyone to work at once — even me and Fred. Even, in a sense, John, who was obliged, with Wealthy’s help, to change out of his filthy, damp clothing, and after washing himself from a basin of water heated on the fire that Salmon had quickly got blazing outside, he put on some of Salmon’s and Oliver’s extra garments, which were his size and, more importantly, were dry and clean, and then Wealthy wrapped him in several of the fresh blankets that Father had brought and propped him up in his cot, so that his lungs could expand somewhat, Father said, and still following the Old Man’s instructions, she shaved her husband’s scruffy beard and combed out his matted hair.

Father gave few explanations; he merely gave orders, and then set to work himself. “Jason, you and Salmon pack in from yonder grove of cottonwoods as much deadwood as you can find in an hour. Then start a greenwood smokefire and cut and dry us a few of those old oaks.

“Ellen, you go on down to your stake there below and empty out your tent. Fumigate and scrub it clean, air out all your blankets, and tighten those slack ropes up a mite. And when you put your things back inside, leave the rear wall clear, as we’ll be setting a campstove there.

“Wealthy, when you’ve finished shaving John, you do the same as Ellen with these two tents up here. And why’n’t you put little Tonny to work right away at carrying out as much as he can lift by himself? The lad needs to know he’s useful.

“Oliver, here’s the money and a list of items to purchase in town. Start now and be back before midday, so we can have our stoves set up by nightfall. Unload the wagon first, my boy, we’ll be needing some of those goods and tools right off’

He helped Oliver wrestle down a barrel of salt, another of corn meal, many new gray woolen blankets, a large supply of dried Adirondack venison mixed with berries, Indian-style, and axes, spades, half a dozen unmarked wooden crates, and a pine box, carefully fitted and sanded smooth, which I thought might contain rifles, for it was the right size and Father himself lifted it from the wagon and carried it with considerable delicacy to a knoll a short ways off, where he set it down on the ground and then for a short time stood motionless over it, as if in prayer, before returning to the encampment.

To my surprise and pleasure, besides having recruited Salmon and Oliver, Father had brought out from North Elba our neighbor and brother-in-law Henry Thompson. Henry was the most fervent abolitionist of all the sixteen Thompson sons, a tall, strapping, young fellow who idolized Father. The Old Man instructed him to begin at once building a proper corral for the horses, and he told me and Fred to take ourselves off with him and give him what help we could. “A little movement and fresh air will improve you,” he said, and we instantly complied, and of course he was right — in a short while, quite as if we had been able-bodied all along but merely had not known it, both Fred and I were cutting and dragging poles from down by the river up to a narrow defile close to the camp where Father had determined was the best location for a corral. Later on, by midday, as ordered, Oliver returned from the town of Osawatomie with stovepipe and three tin campstoves, and Father promptly installed one in each tent, and when he and Oliver had them properly working, he sent Oliver off to commence digging a proper privy and then turned to educating Wealthy as to the best care and treatment of John, whose color, now that he was breathing more easily, had already begun returning to his face.

In half a day, Father had turned Browns Station from a place of desolation into a proper frontier settlement. The tents were tightened against the wind, and with sweet-smelling streams of woodsmoke flowing from their tin chimneys, they looked secure and warm, even cheerful, situated in the protective crook of a narrow, forested cut that switch-backed down a long, grassy decline to the meandering river below. Spade and crowbar scraped against dirt and stone, hammers pounded stakes and drove nails, and axes and handsaws bit into wood, sending blond chips and sawdust flying. The air was filled with the bright clatter of leafless trees falling, of brothers calling to one another through the cold afternoon as the light began to fade — the sound of men happily at work, eager to finish their tasks before dark. There were the startled neighs of horses suddenly released to pasture inside a temporary corral made with a rope strung between trees, the bang and scrape of pots and pans being washed, the snap of wet laundry hung to dry in the breeze, and someone down in the cottonwoods even began to sing — Salmon, I realized; of course, it would be Salmon, for he had the best-pitched, clearest voice of us all and the sharpest memory for the old hymns — and first Father joined in with him, and then one by one the others picked it up, even Fred, even me.

Who are these, like stars appearing,

These, before God’s throne who stand?

Each a golden crown is wearing;

Who are all this glorious hand?

Alleluia! Hark, they sing,

Praising loud their heavenly King!

Towards evening, Oliver came marching proudly into camp with his old Kentucky rifle in one hand and, in the other, four fat prairie chickens, low-flying ground birds somewhat like our partridges, which he delivered over to Wealthy and Ellen, two to each woman. After praising the lad in such a way as to goad the rest of us to go and do likewise every day from here on out—”For I have seen considerable game on our way here,” the Old Man said — he then bade us all to cease our labors now and follow him out to the knoll, where he had earlier laid the mysterious pine box. Even John, with Salmon and Oliver half-carrying him, was obliged to come out to the windy hilltop.

Now, I thought, now each of us will be given his own Sharps rifle! I had come to despise my old muzzle-loader: it didn’t suit my fantasies or my intentions in the least; it was a boy’s smooth-bore gun, suitable mainly for shooting birds and raccoons; I wanted a weapon that would let me slay men. I wanted one of the famous new-style, breech-loading Sharps rifles that fired with deadly accuracy ten times a minute. Manufactured in the armory at Harpers Ferry, they were the so-called Beecher’s Bibles which that winter had commenced appearing all over Kansas in the hands of the more radical Free-Soilers. First sent out in crates marked Bibles by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher’s congregation in Brooklyn, New York, they were being purchased and shipped to the Free-Soil settlers now by churches all over the East. I was sure Father would not have come out without at least one case of weapons from the Church of the Holy Rifles — he was not in Kansas, after all, to farm.

But when we had all gathered there on the knoll, I saw that, sometime during the day and without my having observed him, Father had dug a deep hole in the ground next to the box, and for the first time I began to see that it was perhaps not a crate of Sharps, but something else, for the box resembled nothing so much as a finely carpentered coffin. Father looked down the line of us and reached out and drew Jason and Ellen forward to the center, where he stood, so that the three of them were now standing before the box, and at that I understood finally what was inside the box and why we were gathered out here.