Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Father sat on the ground beside Fred and said to him, “God will forgive thee, son. I have prayed and listened with all my mind and heart to the Lord, and I know that we have done His will in this business. You can let your conscience rest, son” he said, and stroked poor Fred and comforted him tenderly, while I went to the other boys and made my rough attempt to do the same, although they were not inclined to be comforted by me or Father and in a listless way said for us to just leave them be, they were tired and wished only to sleep.

So while the others slept or sulked or read, Father and I busied ourselves throughout the afternoon into the evening, constructing a crude lean-to of brush and a corral for the horses; and after dark, when we dared finally to set a small fire, we made a little wicker weir and caught and cooked us some small fish from the creek and ate and talked in low voices until late. Father was worried, I remember, about the women and Tonny, his only grandson, and when I volunteered to go into town to be sure they were safe, he at first said no, it was too dangerous, but I persisted, and finally he relented and gave the order. He said he would write some letters and send them with me and that I should try to get them to Uncle Sam Adair, his brother-in-law, for posting. “I want to have my own say-so on this business,” he said. “To get the truth out, before folks hear erroneous reports of it first. I don’t want the family at home fearing for our lives. Or for our souls, either;’ he added.

I agreed and said that I would also try to speak with John and Jason, to see if they would now change their minds and come in with us, for we would be much stronger with them than we were without. “True. True enough,” Father said. “But remember, son, it’s we who have made the blood sacrifice. They haven’t. This war’s no longer the same for us as it is for them.”

I asked if he thought they might betray us, for Jason was at bottom pacifistic and John a political man, but he assured me they would not: he had asked the Lord how he should treat with them, and the Lord had told him to trust all his sons equally. “The Lord saith, ‘Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.’” He often spoke of the Lord in this familiar way, for it was around this time that Father had begun his practice, later much commented upon, of withdrawing from camp to commune alone with God, more or less in the manner of Jesus, for long hours at a time, returning to us clear-eyed and energetic, full of intention and understanding. I can’t say what that was like for him, whether he was during those hours an actual mystic or was merely deep in solitary prayer, but the practice brought him a piercing clarity and a regularly freshened sense of purpose, which suited my private desires ideally, so I did not question it.

“You may ask them if they wish to join us here under my command,” he told me. “But don’t press them on it, Owen. I don’t want to force them into choosing against us. A time will come,” he said, “when events and the cruelties of men will bring them over on their own, and when that happens, John and Jason will prove our strongest allies.”

He drew out his writing kit and for an hour or so was absorbed in writing several letters, one to Mary and the children in North Elba, I later saw, and others to Frederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith, and hurried me out of camp then, instructing me to return quickly, for we would now be obliged to return to action at once, so that the other boys could get the Pottawatomie killings behind them, he explained.

“They’ll need to stare some of these slavers in the face again and relearn what sort of beast we’re dealing with here.”

It turned out that, for the moment, at least, all was calm in Osawatomie: Ellen and Wealthy and Tonny had on their own fled our decrepit tents and half-built cabins at Browns Station for the town, evidently on the advice of friends who had heard about the Pottawatomie killings. I spoke briefly there with Wealthy at the door of the little house owned by the Days, distant relatives of hers from Ohio. It was close to dawn, still dark, and I had come in stealthily on foot, with my mount left hidden in a grove of trees by the west ford of the river, and had knocked quietly at the door, waking the dog, which someone inside quickly shushed.

Then I heard Wealthy’s voice on the other side of the door: “No one’s here but women and children,” she announced.

“It’s me, Owen. Are you all right?”

“I can’t let you in. The Days are very afraid.”

“I understand. Father just wants to know that you’re safe.” Opening the door a crack, she showed me in a slat of candlelight her worried, pale face and said, “We’re safe, so long as we keep from you boys and Father Brown.”

I asked her then if John and Jason were out with Uncle at his cabin, but she said that she could not tell me. I knew then that they were with Uncle. They were safe, she said, but in hiding. The Ruffians burned Browns Station to the ground this very night, she said, and stole all they could carry. Among the Free-State people, John’s and Jason’s innocence was well-known, she told me, but no one was eager to risk protecting them. “Please stay away from them, Owen, until this thing calms down,” she pleaded.

I said that I understood her fears and that my report back to Father would comfort him, and, bidding her good night, slipped out of town and reached my horse without being seen. All that day, I hid in the tall grasses atop a rise out by the road to Lawrence, with my horse grazing well out of sight in a nearby ravine, and watched riders in the distance heading back and forth between Osawatomie and Lawrence — hectic armed men of both sides gathering in bands to search for us: one side, the Free-Staters, to capture us and no doubt turn us over at once to the federal authorities as a peace gesture; the others, pro-slave marauders, to shoot us on the spot. And I knew that there would soon be a third side: federal troops from Forts Leavenworth and Scott, sent on orders from the President himself to capture us and march us up to Lecompton for trial or else to turn a blind eye, as they had done so many times before, and hand us over to the Ruffians and let them avenge themselves on us.

When darkness had fallen, I rode down to the Lawrence Road and turned east towards town and sometime after midnight pulled up before the Adair cabin. I was frightened, certainly, but I was unattached and free, and all manner of men were trying to kill me: I was like a hawk or a lone wolf or a cougar. No one had a claim on me but Father, and though he did not know it, his claim had been given him by me, so that, in a crucial sense, the claim was reversed and was mine, not his at all.

The cabin, a two-room log structure that had been serving as Uncle’s parsonage until he could get a proper house finished in town next to his church, was dark and appeared abandoned, for there was no smoke rising from the chimney. I knocked on the door, but no one answered, so I knocked again, but still no one answered. There were no horses about and no dog. Maybe the Adairs have fled, too, I thought, and knocked again, loudly, and called, “Uncle! It’s Owen here! I’m alone, Uncle!”

“Get away!” my uncle shouted back from inside the cabin, startling me. “Get away as quick as you can!”

“I just want to talk some with John and Jason.”

“No! You endanger our lives! They won’t speak with you. You and your father have made them into madmen.”

I told him then to unbar the door and let me see for myself how mad they were, but he said he would not and told me again to leave at once. “You are a vile murderer, Owen, a marked man!” he said.