Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Forbes, though, was a cat with a different coat. And I’m reminded by that figure that he wore a green velvet jacket and fringed doeskin boots and affected a cane with a silver knob. He even sported an ostrich feather in his hatband. All of which made him look ridiculous out there in Iowa, especially when he pulled a face and moaned about the fate of his poor wife and babes, who were supposedly living in abject poverty back in Paris, France. He claimed that their sacrifice was made so that he could continue with his noble mission of assisting and guiding Osawatomie Brown in the great attempt to liberate the American slaves. He declared that he was personally re-writing American history.

He actually said this to me himself. It was out in Tabor, in April of ’59, when we were holed up at the farm of a Quaker supporter of Father’s, a man originally from Indiana who believed that we were preparing, not for war, but for a massive flight of Negro refugees out of the South — which was essentially true, although our intended means to foment that flight were unlikely to have met with any Quaker’s approval. Perhaps, like so many self-proclaimed pacifists gone bone-weary of battling the pro-slavers’ endless stratagems and violence, he had intuited our true plans and welcomed them, but did not wish to be told of them in any detail. Regardless, all that winter and into the spring, he had allowed our shabby troop of sometimes twenty, sometimes fewer than ten, to ensconce itself secretly in his barn by night and train in his fields by day. There Forbes had us marching up and down like toy soldiers, mainly it seemed for the pleasure he got from hearing his own British gentleman’s voice bark orders at American country-boys.

I remember the April afternoon when, all sweaty and covered with dirt and seeds and thistles from the fields and gullies that we had spent the day conquering for our colonel, I left the other men and, approaching Forbes, asked if I could speak with him privately. He was seated in the shade of a cottonwood tree on a stool he had borrowed from the Quaker’s kitchen and, without looking up from the papers on his lap, said to me, “It’s appropriate, Lieutenant, when requesting permission to speak, to salute your superior officer and address him by rank.”

He had been with us only a week by then, but already I was sick of him, and the other men downright despised him and were starting to blame Father for his presence among us. John Kagi had declared the night before that he was ready to shoot the fellow dead, and only my loyalty to Father had kept me from running him straight off the place myself. That and my fear that, if he were overtly resisted by us, he would at once turn on us and reveal Father’s plans to the federal authorities — which, as is now well-known, he eventually did. It is true: months before it took place, Forbes came close to ending the raid on Harpers Ferry. Luckily — or, as it turned out, perhaps unluckily — no one in the government or the press believed then that any man, not even the notorious terrorist Osawatomie Brown, would contemplate mounting a privately financed armed raid on a federal weapons manufactory and depot in the fortified heart of the South. Thus, after Forbes turned on us and until the raid itself finally occurred, his words bore no credence with anyone on either side, which is what saved us for another day. By then, of course, he was seen as a fellow conspirator himself and was pursued by the government and fled into England, where he may indeed be living today, an old dandy in doeskin boots, dining out on stories of his early involvement with the famous American anti-slavery guerilla leader and martyr, Osawatomie Brown. I suppose it’s on that possibility that I criticize him now.

Out there in Iowa, despite his constant admonitions, I neither saluted Forbes nor addressed him by rank. I said straight out that the men and I were faithful to Father and to our common cause, but I could no longer assure him that one or more of the men would not shoot him. I emphasized, so as to make my own position clear, that his murder would be a betrayal of Father’s wishes and detrimental to our common cause. His murder by one of us could undo us altogether. I wanted him to know who and what were keeping him alive.

“You’re quite serious, Brown.”

“Quite, Forbes.”

He still had not looked up at me. “You know what I’m writing here, Brown?”

I knew very well: he had held forth on the virtues of his tract numerous times. “A military manual,” I said.

“Yes. But more than that, Brown. It’s a manual, all right, but one composed specifically for the use of men fighting to end slavery in America. And like all such manuals, it’s a history of the time and place of its own composition. D’ you understand that, Brown?”

“You mean it’s about us. And about you.”

“Precisely. And the chapter I’m presently engaged in writing is called ‘The American Garibaldi,’ which is concerned with nothing less than the necessity and means of transforming ordinary citizens into soldiers. Of transforming peasants — ignorant farmers, laborers, woodcutters, and the like — into disciplined soldiers. Now, what do you suppose General Garibaldi would have done if one of his Italian lieutenants had come up and spoken to him as you have just spoken to me?”

“Well, Forbes, I don’t rightly know.”

“No. No, you don’t. That’s the point. Y’see, I know things that you don’t. Which is precisely why your father hired me on and commissioned me with the rank of colonel.” Here he digressed awhile to complain of Father’s not having paid him as he had promised, along with some sorrowful reminders of poor Mrs. Forbes and his hungry babes in Paris, France, until at last he returned to the subject at hand — mutiny. “General Garibaldi,” he said, “would have instructed his Lieutenant, as I am you, that it was the lieutenant’s responsibility, not the general’s, to put down any potential mutiny. And if the lieutenant could not do it, then the lieutenant himself would be regarded as mutinous and would be peremptorily shot by firing squad.”

I looked back at the boys lounging in the field behind me and could scarcely keep a straight lace at the thought of Forbes ordering them to stand in formation for my execution. “Hed have said that, eh? The general.”

‘Yes, Brown. And then, just as I myself am about to do, he would have stood and left his lieutenant to ponder that statement, and he would have brooked no further discussion on the subject of mutiny.” Forbes closed his writing book and, as predicted by himself, stood and walked off towards the barn, leaving me, like General Garibaldi’s lieutenant, to ponder his statement.

Forbes surprised me, though, for that was the last I ever saw of him. I said nothing to the men of my strange conversation with our colonel, and after a while we all wandered back to the barn and washed and, as usual, prepared our frugal evening meal of hoecakes and stew, until finally someone noticed that Forbes was nowhere about. His horse was gone, and all his gear. “Good riddance,” Kagi muttered, and all concurred. Without meaning to, I had scared the fellow off. He took himself so seriously that I had taken him a bit seriously myself, or perhaps I might have humored and endured him longer and spared us much risk afterwards.

Later, I learned where he had gone — east to New York City, thence to Washington, where he had commenced his vain campaign to betray Father to our enemies. In time, Father learned of Forbes’s failed attempts to convince the Secretary of War and the various newspapers of our plan — thanks to a flurry of frightened letters from friendly abolitionists in the War Department and the journalist Mr. Redpath, who at once told Messrs. Smith and Higginson and Dr. Howe. Typically, they panicked, but to the Old Man, Forbes’s attempted betrayal was a positive development, as it had created amongst our supporters a greater urgency for the battle to begin at once. And, further, the peculiarly deaf ears of the War Secretary and the others to whom Forbes had spoken only confirmed in Father’s mind that God was still his protector, and by winnowing Forbes out, the Lord had merely been correcting Father’s error in having judged the man useful years earlier when they first met.