Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Lyman and Susan, with a single sack of belongings and some shabby bedding and a corn mattress tied in a roll, accompanied us as passengers in the wagon. They sat in the box behind me, and I drove, silent and somber, and as before, the Old Man rode ahead on Adelphi. Every now and then he called back to Lyman and asked the name of a mountain or inquired as to the ownership of a particular stretch of roadside land, and Lyman always had a ready answer — whether it was the correct answer, I could not then say, but I did suspect that he was making them up to please and impress the Old Man. Later, to my ongoing chagrin, I learned, of course, that he had been accurate in every case. He knew the names of all the peaks in our sight, and he knew whose land was whose and the history and use of every landmark. I was behaving like a spurned lover, I knew, but could not help myself.

When we arrived back at the farm, Father presented Lyman and his wife to Mary, who still lay abed next to the stove, looking very ill, I finally realized. Her appearance frightened me — her skin was slack and chalky, her small, plain face was almost expressionless, and she moved and spoke slowly and with precision, as if she were in pain. Expressing pleasure to have Susan as a helpmate to Ruth, she welcomed the couple to the house. “There is not much room here, as you see, but the place is bright and airy,” she said to them in a weak voice.

“We will have to get along like Shakers,” Father declared. “Which means that Mister Epps will make his bed on the male side of the attic, and Missus Epps will sleep opposite with Ruth and the girls. I trust that won’t prove a difficult arrangement,” he said to Lyman, who glanced overhead towards the attic and smiled and said that it would be just fine. I do not know what his wife thought. They had given over their privacy, perhaps, but in exchange had received superior shelter. It was, as Father’s joke implied, more than a little like the exchange many people made in those days, when they gave up their houses and neighbors and moved in with the Shakers, whose roofs, like ours, did not leak and whose tables provided plenty of simple fare.

I touched Ruth’s arm and drew her with a signal to follow me outside. We passed around the corner of the house and made our way up the brushy slope in back, where we both sat on a broad, rough rock embedded in the hillside and looked out over the shake roof of the house to the forested plain and mountains beyond. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was sliding off to our right a ways, casting over us and the house and small barn long shadows from the pine trees that grew on the hillside behind us. In the meadow, in dappled sunlight, the Devon cattle were grazing, and the sheep were scattered up on the scrub-covered hillside beyond. In front of the house, where the boys were stacking firewood, Father’s horse and the other horse stood waiting to be watered and set loose to graze alongside the cattle.

It was a lovely scene, actually — a peaceful, orderly domicile and farm set down in the midst of splendid scenery, a kind of ideal farmstead. Yet, for all that, I saw it as a thrashing and violently upset scene, with its warring elements held in place almost against their nature, constrained and barely kept in check by a trembling willfulness. Father’s, I suppose, but, to a lesser degree, mine also.

Ruth seemed to sense the high degree of my agitation, and she stroked the back of my hand, as if to calm me. “What’s the trouble, Owen?” she asked. “Did something untoward happen today?”

“No, no, nothing. Although the place, Timbuctoo, was a disappointment to me,” I said and briefly described the sad state of the encampment.

She tried to comfort me by saying what I knew myself, that it could not be otherwise, for the poor folks who lived there owned few tools and no livestock to speak of, and, as Father had told us many times, they knew nothing of how to farm in this climate. I had always admired Ruth’s character and in some ways envied her, for she seemed to have no difficulty in making herself behave exactly as she should — the good daughter to Father, the loyal and loving stepdaughter to Mary, and, to me and all the others in our family, the perfect sister.

I, however, since earliest childhood, had struggled constantly with a rebellious spirit, my mind in a continuous state of disarray and brooding resentment, and so it seemed that I was forever being placed under the lash of self-chastizement and correction. Alone among my brothers and sisters, Ruth understood this about me and did not condemn me for it. I could never have confessed to John or Jason or even to poor Fred what I then confessed to her. “Oh, Ruth,” I blurted, “I want very much just to leave this place!”

“That’s a terrible wish,” she said in a hushed voice, as if I had blasphemed.

“It shouldn’t be.”

“But Father needs you, and Mother needs you.”

“She’s not our mother.”

“Yes, Owen, she is.”

“Not to me.”

“We have no other mother. And she’s ill and weak, and there’s so much to do here before we can call it a proper farm. And Father can’t do what he came here to do, unless he has your help.”

“I know all that. But I want to leave this place. I want to get away, that’s all. From everything. This farm, the Negroes, these mountains!” I said, waving my hand at the peaks in the distance, as if they were ugly to me. They weren’t ugly to me, but I was angry and confused — wrathful was what I was, for, uncertain as to the object of my anger, I was smearing it over everything in sight. “How can you do it, Ruth? Don’t you wish our life were different? Don’t you wish we could live normally someplace, like other people, in a town or even on a farm close to other farms? I want to live like the white people in Springfield, or even down there in Westport. This place is awilderness,”I said. “And there’s no one here for us to be with, except the Negroes. You should see their place, over in Timbuctoo!” I said, fairly spitting the name. “We’re not like them. And we’re not like the dumb, ignorant white farmers around here, either. We’re different than that fellow Mister Partridge back in Keene, or the squatters living around here trying to steal the land off the Negroes. We’re different. And alone.”

Ruth put her arm around me, and we were both silent, and after a moment, I managed to clear my mind somewhat and said to her, “I’m sorry, Ruth. I shouldn’t be like this with you.” She patted my hand sweetly, and we were silent for a moment more. “Tell me what’s wrong with Mary,”I said. “Is it something serious? She won’t die, will she?”

Ruth did not answer for a long time. Then she said, “No, I don’t think it’s serious. She has female problems, Owen. That’s all. From her lying-in last fall with the birth of Ellen, which hasn’t healed. She will heal, though, and be well again, but only if she keeps to her bed and rests. Father knows how she is and what’s wrong. He understands what she needs. By bringing in the colored woman, he’s protecting Mother against her own good nature and her need to be always at work. And with the woman to help, I’ll be able to do the rest. And with Mister Epps helping the boys run the farm, you’ll be free to work alongside Father and the Negroes. It’s only for a few months, Owen, and then our life will settle down again, I’m sure of it.”

“It’ll never settle down again!” I declared. “It’s never been settled! Not since our mother died have we been at peace in this family!”

“That’s not true, Owen.”

“Don’t you remember how it was before our mother died?”

“No,” she declared, and then abruptly she stood and said, “Come, I must get back to the house. I’ve got churning—”