Russell Banks: Cloudsplitter

About an hour before daylight, when the rain let up, we went outside and walked through the woods a short ways to the edge of a cliff high above the Potomac, and stood together there, looking down in the hazy, pre-dawn light. Behind us, still hitched to the empty wagon, the horse browsed peacefully on a blond patch of grass. The sky was smeared gray beyond the far, dark bluffs, and in the town below, a few lights dully shone from the windows of the hotel and firehouse. We could see the train where it had stopped on the siding next to the railroad station and a few dark figures standing on the platform. Coppoc said he could make out some of our boys and a couple of Negroes posted inside the armory walls by the firehouse, where the hostages were supposed to be kept, but I couldn’t distinguish them from this distance.

Suddenly, Meriam, who had been strangely silent, blurted in his nervous, high-pitched voice, “Owen, where are the slaves? There should be hundreds of escaped slaves coming to us by now, right? Isn’t that right, Owen? We’ve got all these damned pikes and guns and no one to give them to!” He laughed edgily.

“Shut up, Frank,” Coppoc said. “They’ll come in. And it’s all right if they don’t. Or if only a few make it here tonight. They’ll catch up with us later in the mountains. We’ll arm them then.”

“No, Barclay,” I said. “They won’t.”

“How’s that?”

“They’re not coming. Not now. Not ever.”

The two looked at me angrily. ’Course they’re coming in,” Coppoc said. “Good Lord, Owen, this is way beyond arguing now. We’ve got options anyhow.”

“Yes, and we got of Fred Douglass a-waiting in the wings,” said Meriam.

“No, we don’t.”

“Now, come on, Owen, what’re you talking about?” Meriam demanded, his voice rising. “We got options. Plenty of’em. You heard the Old Man, same as us.”

“Say it, Owen.”

And so I said it. “Boys, Frederick Douglass is in Rochester, New York, tonight, asleep in his bed. I know that, and Shields Green knows it, and Father knows it. We lied to you,” I said. “At least, I did. Father and Shields, I think, lied to themselves and each other and believed their lies, and so they told you only what they thought was the truth.” Then in a few sentences I revealed to Meriam and Coppoc what had happened at the quarry in Chambersburg and how later, riding back down to Virginia, Father had insisted that, once Mr. Douglass realized we were deadly serious, he would change his mind. Maybe he would wait until the raid had actually begun, but in the end Mr. Douglass would fly to our side, for he was a man of deep principle and great personal courage. Father was sure of it. And Shields had agreed, in a way that made it seem that his friend Mr. Douglass had given him some private assurances.

Father instructed us not to report to the other men what had been said at the quarry. “It will only make them unnecessarily fearful and will sow disunity amongst them,” he said.

And we obeyed — Shields because he believed that my father knew things that no other man knew, and I because I was his son. “Shields thinks Osawatomie Brown is a prophet,” I said.

“And I take it you don’t,” Coppoc said, disgusted.

“No.”

“For God’s sake, none of that matters now! What’re we going to do?” Meriam cried.

“My brother Ed’s down there!’ said Coppoc.

“And two of mine. And two brothers-in-law. And a father.”

“Owen Brown, what kind of man are you?” Coppoc said, and turned away from me.

We heard more gunshots then, rifle shots, coming from the vicinity of the church a short ways above the armory and overlooking it. Some townspeople were running and ducking behind walls, and it looked like they were taking potshots at our men in the armory yard below. Then our men returned fire, and one of the townspeople went down. The others quickly grabbed up his body and pulled it behind a shed, and the guns went silent for a while.

Meriam was frantic by now, confused by the war between his mortal fear, which made him want to flee, and his long-held desire to become the man whose sacrificial death would save the others, and he careened amongst the trees like a blind man, while Coppoc stared coldly from the cliff to the town. “You should have kept them from going in,” he said finally. “You should have told us the truth.”

“That wouldn’t have kept Father out. Nothing would. He’d have gone alone, if necessary. You know that. And there’d always have been some of the men to follow him. Maybe not Kagi, maybe not Cook or you. But your brother would. And mine, Watson and Oliver, and the Thompsons, some of the others. Those boys would follow the Old Man straight through the gates of hell. You know it as well as I. No, it’s better they all went in together, not just five or six of them. Even me, if Father had not posted me on this side of the river, I’d have gone in, too. Twenty men have a better chance of getting out than five or six.”

“Maybe. But only if they leave that place now!’ Coppoc replied, and then he declared that he was going over. He would tell them the truth of the matter himself. “To let them know their real situation,” he said. He called Meriarn to him, calmed him somewhat, and asked him to go down into the town with him. Coppoc explained that they could get across the bridge all right, as it was still evidently under Father’s control, and if they hurried and got across before full daylight, they could sneak unseen into the armory yard and help the Old Man and the boys fight their way out.

Meriam agreed at once. Coppoc had resolved his dilemma. “It’s how I knew it would happen,” he said. “I foresaw it, and now it’s the Lord’s will running things, not mine. It’s how it has to be. So I must go with you, Barclay.”

“What about you, Owen?”

“Father said to wait here for the Negroes. You two ought to do the same. He ordered us to arm the slaves when they came here and to meet up with him and the others later in Cumberland.”

“Well, now, that’s done with, isn’t it? Countermand the Old Man’s order, for heaven’s sake! You got the right. You’re in command up here.”

“My father does not want me to save him,” I said.

“Seems to me that’s the only order you’re following. Back at the house there, when we loaded the wagon, I never smelled chimney smoke. You didn’t burn those papers like he said to, did you, Owen?”

“I needed more time. There was more material than I thought, books and so on. I’ll go back and destroy them later. Or carry them away,” I added.

“So, Owen Brown, it’s over. And you’ve single-handedly done the whole thing in. Amazing.” Coppoc shook his head in weary resignation. “Well, what about it, are you coming with me and Frank?”

“No.”

“You don’t intend to try stopping us, do you?” he said, and he leveled his rifle at me.

“My orders are to stand fast, unless he sends for us. And if you go down there with what I’ve told you, Barclay, all you’ll do is sow disunity amongst the men,” I said. “Father was right about that much. One by one, they’ll sneak off and run, and not a one will come out of that place alive unless every one of them believes he’s fighting for more than just to save his own life. Those are brave men, Barclay, and they still have a chance, but this news will make cowards of them all.”

“You sound like the Old Man. All theory. You ready, Frank?” Meriam nodded solemnly, and they slowly backed away from me, with Coppoc still keeping me under his gun, although I had no intentions of trying to force them to stay. It was too late. They were already doing exactly what I feared the others would do, cutting away from Father and running for their lives. I knew that Coppoc and Meriam would never make it into town, that before they reached the bridge they would realize the extremity of their situation and would disappear into the Virginia woods, and that eventually they would be hunted down out there and shot dead or else hog-tied and brought in to be hung.