Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

“You don’t know him as well as I.”

“Tell me, then. Tell me what you know about Mister Partridge that I don’t. Beyond his marrying a homely woman for her property.”

“Trust me, Owen.”

“Father, I’m trying to!”

We walked in silence for a while, and then Father said, “You remember when he came out to help me hitch the team to the wagon, while the rest of you were tending the beeves and sheep, and Ruth and Mary and the girls were inside the house?”

“I saw him out there, yes.”

“Well, the man came up to me and asked for payment for our food and lodging. He presented me with an itemized bill, written out.” It was an embarrassment to Father. Not because he had no money to give Mr. Partridge, he said, but because he had not expected it. If he had anticipated Mr. Partridge’s charges, he would have negotiated an acceptable arrangement beforehand, and failing that, we would have camped someplace alongside the river. Mr. Partridge had surprised Father, and he found himself painfully embarrassed by it.

We resumed walking uphill in silence, with the wagon and team of Morgans, in Mr. Epps’s capable hands, clambering along behind us, Mary and Ruth and the girls all together now on foot and cheerfully admiring the spectacular vistas opening up on either side of the track, and, at the rear, the boys and our small herd of livestock. The road made its circuitous, slowly ascending way along the back of a buttressing ridge. The morning sun was shining full upon our backs now, and it was as if yesterday’s brief snowstorm had never occurred.

“I must make a confession, Owen,” the Old Man went on. I said nothing, and he continued. “It concerns Mister Partridge. The man’s request for payment confused me. I told him that I could not pay him with money, because I had none. I’m ashamed to say that I gave him instead the clock.”

“The clock? Your grandfather’s clock?”

“Yes.”

I was astonished. Except for his chest of books, Great-Grandfather Brown’s mantel clock was Father’s most valued household possession. Made of cherrywood, it was a treasure that had been entrusted to Father’s care years earlier by his own father; it was perhaps his only family heirloom. It made no sense to me. How could he have handed it over to Mr. Partridge so easily? And in exchange for so little — a single night’s lodging.

“I simply retrieved the clock from the wagon, unwrapped it, and passed it over to him, and he accepted it as payment quite happily and at once carried it into his house. Where I hope Mary and Ruth did not see it.”

I looked back at the women. Ruth held her half-sister Sarah’s hand, and beside her Mary held Annie’s; the two women were themselves holding hands and chatting lightly to one another. “No, I’m sure they didn’t see Mister Partridge carrying off Great-Grandfather’s clock. They seem very happy,” I added uselessly.

“They will know it soon enough. Oh, I am a fool!” he pronounced. “A fool!”

I did not know what to say, so, as usual, said nothing. Most times, when I did not understand something that Father had done or said, it was because he had acted or spoken more wisely than I. At such times, for obvious reasons, my best course was to remain silent and await the arrival of understanding. In this case, however, the Old Man had indeed been foolish, and by comparison I was the wise one.

Still, I remained silent. I loved my father, and respected him, even when he did a foolish or wrong thing.

By mid-morning, we were well out of the valley, and for a while the track turned steeply uphill. Mr. Epps, or Lyman, as I had begun calling him, got down from the box and walked beside the struggling horses, coaxing them on, and Father and I fell back and got behind the wagon and put our shoulders to it. The dense, impenetrable forests up here had never been cut, even those trees that closed like a pale against the road, and the towering pines and spruces had begun to block off the sky from our view, covering us with thick, cooling day-long shadows.

Although we were now far above the greening valley, the air was still sufficiently warm that most of yesterday’s snowfall had melted early and had run off the sides into small rivulets and brooks that dropped away from the ridge, disappearing into the forest, where we could see dark gray remnants of the winter snows, which looked permanent, practically, and glacial. The only birds we saw up here were curious little chickadees and siskins and the occasional screaming blue jay — winter birds. None of the hardwood trees or low bushes had put out their buds yet, and the scattered thatches of grasses we saw lay in yellowed mats, still dead from last year’s frost.

Nothing in the natural world appeared ready for the resurrection of spring. Worse, it was as if we were steadily slipping backwards in time, with May and then April disappearing behind us and darkest winter rising into view just ahead. Soon we were struggling through yesterday’s unmelted, ankle-deep snow. It was cold and nearly dark here below the tall trees, as if earlier this morning, before crossing overhead, the sun, unbeknownst to us, had reversed its path and had descended and set behind us. Except for Father, we had shrouded ourselves with blankets again. A steady, high wind blew through the upper branches of the trees, raising a distant unbroken chorus of grieving voices to accompany our slow pilgrimage.

After a while, almost without my noticing it, the ground leveled off somewhat, and Father and I no longer had to stay close to the wagon to be ready to push it. Our little group had strung itself out practically in single file, as if we each of us wished to be alone with our morbid thoughts, with Father in his greatcoat up at the head of the column, and then the team and wagon driven by Lyman, and me trudging along in its tracks. Behind me came Mary, Ruth, Sarah, and Annie, picking their way through the snow in a ragged line, while stretching back for many rods walked the livestock, singly or sometimes two animals abreast, with Salmon and Oliver positioned among them to keep them moving, and back somewhere out of sight, Watson and the collie dogs brought up the rear.

The road by now had dwindled to a narrow, palisadoed trail barely the width of our wagon. It no longer switch-backed across the side of the mountain, and there were no longer the occasional breaks in the trees with views of the forested slopes and ridges below. Instead, plunging across slabs of rock and over snarls of thick roots, the trail ran straight into the still-darkening forest, as if down a tunnel, and had we met a wagon or coach coming out of the tunnel towards us, we could not have turned aside to let it rush past. It seemed that there was nothing ahead of us but slowly encroaching snow and darkness.

When, suddenly, as if struck by a blow, I realized that we had emerged from the forest. Light poured down from the skies, and the towering trees seemed to bow and back away. Dazzled by the abrupt abundance of light and space, I saw that we were passing along the shore of a long, narrow lake that lay like a steel scimitar below high, rocky escarpments and cliffs, beyond which there loomed still higher mountains, which curved away and disappeared in the distance. The enormous scale of open space, snow-covered mountains, precipices, and black, sheer cliffs diminished our size to that of tiny insects, as we made our slow way along the edge of the glistening lake. Wonderstruck, gaping, we traced the hilt of the sword-shaped body of water and crossed the long slant of its cutting edge to the point, where we exited from the gorge as if through an ancient stone gate.

We had passed through Cascade Notch, and below us lay the beautiful wide valley of North Elba. Off to our left, mighty Tahawus and Mclntyre rose from the plain, splitting the southeastern cloudbank. To our right, in the northwest, we could see Whiteface Mountain, aged and dignified by its wide scars and pale gray in the fading afternoon sun. And between the mountains, spreading out at our feet for miles, lay undulating forests scratched by the dark lines of rivers and the rich, dark tablelands, grassy meadows, and marshes that we would call the Plains of Abraham.