Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

It was for such complicated and barely understood reasons as these, then, that I found myself strangely and powerfully soothed by Lyman’s presence that night in the barn in Keene. It was the idea of an oppressed people’s flight to sanctuary in the impenetrable mountains that seduced me — that and the brief relief from the burden of race-consciousness that came over me as I lay in the dark beside Lyman Epps, a black man my own age who spoke to me as if I were not white, as if, in fact, I were black or he were white — as if we two were of the same race.

I lay there in the hay, astonished and full of wonder and delight. My usual high agitation, which I had come to think of as a permanent aspect of my mind, had ceased altogether. And for a few precious moments that night, I did not feel like a stranger to myself. A peculiar restfulness had come over me like a warm breeze — and I thought that all the years of my life so far, since the death of my mother long before, I had been traveling far from home, a child moving through the world disguised as an adult; and now, unexpectedly, on this May night in a barn in the Adirondack mountains, I had been allowed to remove my disguise and settle into my childhood bed, a boy again. I reached out in the dark and took Lyman’s hand in mine, and held it for a long time, with neither of us moving or saying anything, until, still holding his hand, I fell peacefully asleep.

The next day, on returning to my usual agitated state, I realized with horror that, for all its innocence, my simple, affectionate gesture might well have been regarded by Lyman as brazen or even wanton, and therefore despicable. To my immense relief, Lyman showed no sign of having misunderstood me, and we continued to engage one another for the rest of our journey to North Elba with the same easy familiarity of the evening before. When our little caravan finally arrived at our new home, Father paid him for his services with the sack of seed and supplies that he had promised, and Lyman waved a simple goodbye and walked on down the road. And I did not see him again until Father and I rode into the place called Timbuctoo.

A few miles south of the village of North Elba, we passed off the old Military Road onto a rutted, rocky lane and into the woods, with Father in the lead on Adelphi and me in the wagon behind him, driving the horse we had named Poke. From the condition of the trail, it was clear that not many wagons had passed this way before, and several times Father had to dismount and clear away fallen branches before I could proceed. Then suddenly we entered a cleared space marred by the charred stumps of trees, and before us were some eight or ten cabins, which were more like shanties than proper log cabins, little huts made of sticks and old cast-off boards and patches of canvas.

It was a camp, not a village, with no sign of the palisade and neat log houses set around a protected square as I had imagined. There was indeed a flagpole set in the middle of the clearing, just as Lyman had said, but the pole, stuck into a pile of rocks, was tilted at a pathetic angle, and dangling from the top was a tattered banner made from an old piece of red wool, a shirt or piece of a blanket, upon which I could make out a roughly cut five-pointed yellow star.

Except for a few undersized pigs rooting about in heaps of garbage and a half-dozen scrawny fowl picking at the wet, smelly ground that lay behind the privies, the place looked abandoned. Then I saw several small children with somber brown and black faces peering out from the doorways, and I noticed that here and there an adult’s dark hand had drawn back a rag from a window so that the owner of the hand could observe our approach unseen from the gloom of the cabin.

After a moment, a bearded Negro man of middle-age appeared at the door of one of the shacks and for a second regarded us with caution, when, apparently recognizing Father from his earlier visit, he smiled broadly and said, “Mis-ter Brown!” and stepped forward to greet us. Then several others, men and women with children trailing behind, emerged from their homes — which I must call hovels, for I do not know what else to call them, they were so poorly constructed and maintained. I could not imagine enduring the bitterly cold winter winds and snow with no more protection than those sad bits of shelter provided. I myself would have fled long since, I thought. Or else I would have built me a proper log cabin and fireplace. The lassitude and disarray of these people amazed and bewildered me. They seemed exhausted and demoralized.

Stepping from one of the huts came a man who, after a few seconds of thinking he was a stranger, I realized was my friend Lyman Epps. He looked oddly unlike himself here, smaller, thinner, flat-faced, as if all the force had gone out of him. Even his skin, which previously had been the color of anthracite, had lost its depth and glow and had turned flint gray. Father had commenced to speak with several of the men, in particular to the middle-aged fellow with the beard who had come forward before the others and appeared to be their spokesman. Ignoring me, or so it seemed, Lyman edged past the wagon and attempted to position himself at the front of the group of men speaking with Father — a nervous little colored man he was, uneasy and, as I had first regarded him down in Westport, not to be trusted.

He, of course, had not changed in the few days since I had last seen him. Sitting up on my wagon, the son of the great John Brown, a prosperous white man come with his father to assist and uplift these poor, benighted souls, I was the one who had changed. The other men did not defer to or even acknowledge Lyman’s attempts to gain Father’s attention; they shouldered him aside and blocked him out entirely, as Father spoke to the group of his intention to survey and stake their property lines and register them with the county clerk’s office over in Elizabethtown.

This would entail certain changes in how they did business, he explained, because it meant that they would now be liable for taxes on their land. “But you will own your land, my friends. No man, white or black, can encroach upon it, and you will therefore be free to use it as you please, even to sell it, if you wish, or to pass it on to your children.” But in order to pay taxes, he went on, they would have to raise more than just enough to survive on; they would have to raise a cash crop or produce a product which they could then sell in the nearby towns for cash money.

I didn’t believe Father was telling these people anything they didn’t already know. They weren’t European peasants or field hands straight off an Alabama cotton plantation. That was the problem, perhaps. Except for the fugitive slaves amongst them, who could not make themselves known and, of course, could not own land in the United States anyhow and probably would soon disappear into Canada, where they could freely settle, the residents of Timbuctoo were men and women with city skills — blacksmiths like Lyman, waiters, barbers, harnessmakers — people who had made pennies at a trade and had saved them and bought their freedom or, thanks to the kindness of their owners or because they were of no particular use as chattel, had been granted it.

At last, Lyman noticed my presence. Due to my innate shyness, but also because of the complexity and turbulence of my feelings, I hadn’t put myself forward and instead had waited for him to make the first gesture. Which he did, but only after finding himself unable to gain Father’s attention. He held the ears of the horse Poke and touched the animal’s forehead with his own, then looked up at me and smiled and asked, “How’s the Morgan horses holding up, Mister Brown?”

“Owen” I said, more a rebuke than a correction.

“They seems rested up,” he said. “Fine pair of animals, ain’t they? Got some age on ‘em, but they gonna give you plenty of service. They be plowing your fields long after you gone from here,” he said, repeating what he had said to Father back in Westport — an empty remark now, where before it had been a fresh recommendation and a promise. A slender young woman, round-faced and with slitted eyes, wearing a tattered yellow shift, a knitted shawl over her shoulders, had approached us and now stood behind Lyman, watching him. I raised my hat to acknowledge her, which caused her to look down at her bare feet. She was a pretty, tea-brown woman, with glistening, wiry hair cut short and worn like a tight black skullcap, and she stood with her hands at her sides, as if waiting for instructions.