Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Slowly, I lowered my gun and stepped forward beside John, as Father came up, still holding the sack with our breakfast. I remember smelling the corn bread, stronger even than the smell of the sweating horses and men grouped before us.

“H’lo, Brown,” the sheriff said, and he cleared his throat and spat a stream of tobacco. He was a tall, mustachioed man with a paunch the size of a wicker basket. “I guess you know why we’re here. We don’t need to have no trouble. This can all go peacefully.”

“There’ll be no peace in this place, so long as that man insists on taking my house and land!” Father said, pointing fiercely at Mr. Chamberlain, who puffed his considerable size up and chewed his thick lips in fury.

The sheriff went on calmly, as if Father had said nothing. “You got to give it over, Brown. Otherwise, I’m going to have to place you under arrest. The law is clear here, Brown. Any further quarrels about deeds or title you got with Mister Chamberlain here you can settle in court on your own later. Right now, though, the place and its contents is legally his. You and your family, you got to clear out.”

“We will not leave our land!”

“It’s not your land anymore, Brown!” Mr. Chamberlain shouted down.

“You won’t pack up your family and personal household articles and go peacefully?” the sheriff said.

“He can’t take no household articles!” Mr. Chamberlain cried. “They’re all going to be auctioned off, soon’s he clears out. He knows all this! He’s just stalling till he can sneak off with property that isn’t legally his no more.”

“Be quiet, Amos,” the sheriff said. “One more time, Brown. Make it easy on yourself and your family.”

“In order to take my land,” Father declared, lapsing, as he often did when his feelings were high, into Quaker speech, “thou must first squash me and mine beneath thy foot! I will not help thee in this heinous act!”

“Oh, dammit, then. You’re under arrest, Mister Brown,” the sheriff said, and he ordered Father to step up peacefully into the trap. “Don’t make me put irons on you, Brown. This is a tough enough business as it is, putting folks off their land, without you making it any tougher.”

Then, to my shock and sharp disappointment, Father’s shoulders sagged. He meekly asked if he could first retrieve his shirt and coat and his Bible from the house.

“You let him back inside that house’ Mr. Chamberlain warned, “he might decide to make a stand. There’s no telling what he’ll do to it. You’ve got him now, so take him in.”

Father looked plaintive and hurt. “But I must have my coat and shirt. I am not properly dressed, sir. And my Bible. I need it.”

The sheriff hesitated a few seconds, but then said, “No, c’mon, Brown. One of your boys here can bring your coat and so on, they can bring it to you later. I got to lock you up.”

“A-hab.” Father said the word slowly and gave it the shading of a curse. But all the force seemed to have gone out of him. He handed me the sack with our breakfast and slowly stepped up into the trap and took a seat behind the driver.

We stood there by our ramshackle wall, John and I, and watched the men ride off with their sad, slumped prisoner. He sat in the wagon in his red undershirt, miserable, humiliated, gazing back at us. I waved goodbye to him, but he made no sign.

Finally, when they had gone from sight, Jason stepped cautiously around the side of the cabin and came and joined us.

“Jason, you’re a bloody coward!” I shouted at him.

“Sure. You bet I am.”

John said, “Let it go, Owen. Jason did right. The Old Man had to lose this one. And he knew it. He was just blustering. He lost it way back. No sense making a fight over it now. They’ll let him out by tomorrow morning, if not before.”

“What’s in the bag? Breakfast, I hope. I’m hungry as a hogl’ Jason said, and reached for the sack in my hand.

I jerked it away and then swung it at him, smacking him on the forehead.

“Hey, hey, hey!” John said. He took the bag from me, and the two of them walked slowly away, up the lane towards the house, dividing the johnnycake and boiled eggs between them, while I hung back, standing alone by the side of the road, fighting off a boy’s angry tears.

But by the same afternoon, Father was back. He walked down the road and up the lane to the house, where, with as much dignity as he could muster in his undershirt, he somberly greeted us all around. Then he marched straight to the tannery, where he had hung his shirt and coat on a peg, and when he had decorously dressed himself in his accustomed clothing, as if preparing to go to church, he told us, in a somber, measured way, what had happened. The sheriff had delivered Father to the Akron jail, had even locked him inside a cell, but then had released him at once on his own recognizance, pledged to appear at trial later in the month. Mr. Chamberlain had agreed not to prosecute, so there would be no trial, as long as by that time we had departed from the farm with no more personal property than we were permitted under the bankruptcy proceedings. “We must obey the law, children. Hard as it is,” he said.

“But we were supposed to take a stand!” I declared. “You said we’d stand and fight. I was willing to shoot the man down, Father. I was! I was all ready and had the man in my sights. Jason, he took off like a coward, but John and I—”

“Enough!” Father said. “I am a fool. That’s all. It’s my fault that we’ve come to this terrible a pass. If you want to shoot someone, Owen, shoot me.” He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, then removed it and walked ahead of us to the house, to sort and separate and inventory all our farm and household goods for the auction.

Even today, so many years later, more than a whole lifetime later, I can recall every one of the items exempted from public auction. They were the articles that we carefully separated from the house and barn and put out onto the porch and yard and then packed into our wagon one by one, and later unpacked and packed again, over and over, hauling them through the next nine years by cart, canal boat, and on our own backs, from one temporary domicile to another, all the way to Springfield, Massachusetts, and eventually to the cold, hard hills of North Elba, where, at last, we set them down and they stayed put.

There at the Haymaker farm, I followed Father like a scribe from one end of the crowded porch to the other and across the front yard, writing in a tablet, while he strictly enumerated each of the articles and goods that the law permitted us to own and carry off. I made two copies of the list, one to be delivered to Mr. Chamberlain, signed by John Brown and notarized, and one for ourselves, which, for a long time, wherever we lived, Father kept posted on the kitchen wall, as if it were a reminder of his wealth, instead of his poverty.

For years, every morning, afternoon, and evening, we passed by this list, until it was engraved in our memories, like the books of the Bible or the names of the English kings. We older boys, especially Jason, could recite them like an alphabet, and often did, to the amusement of Mary and the younger children and to Father’s slight consternation — although he surely saw the joke, for he could have removed the list from the wall at once, if hed wanted.

10 Dining Plates

1 set of Cups & Saucers

1 set Teaspoons

2 Earthen Crocks

1 Pepper Mill

1 Cider Barrel

4 Wooden Tails

6 Bedsteads

1 Writing Desk

4 Blankets

1 Wash Tub

1 pr. Flat Irons

Also, these provisions:

1 bushel Dried Apples

20 bushels Corn

15 gals. Vinegar

8 bushels Potatoes

1 bushel Beans