Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

The man then introduced himself as Mr. Richard Henry Dana, Esquire, of Boston. His companions, who had slouched to the ground next to the house in apparent exhaustion, were a Mr. Metcalf and a Mr. Aikens, also of Boston, and all three, he said, were lawyers out on a wilderness holiday. They had come up from Westport, had passed several days visiting the mining village of Tahawus, on the further side of Indian Pass, had ascended Mount Tahawus with a guide from the village, and then had struck out for North Elba on their own, anticipating a hike of some six or eight hours. But they had lost the blazes of the trail, he explained, and had wandered through the thick, tangled forests for two days with nothing for nourishment but a single trout caught with a bent pin and piece of red flannel by Mr. Aikens. “He thinks of himself as something of a woodsman,” Mr. Dana said with a winning smile. Their one fire had been doused by rain, and the black flies had plagued them throughout their ordeal.

“We ask you to spare us a little food, if you can,” Mr. Dana said to Father. “And allow us to sleep overnight here on the ground. And perhaps you’ll direct us on to North Elba and Osgood’s Tavern in the morning, where we’ve been expected for two days now.”

Calmly, Father directed Ruth to bring the men water and a pitcher of milk and some corn bread and to feed them slowly, so they wouldn’t vomit it up. “We’ll give you a proper meal later, when we all sit down for supper, but that should ease you somewhat now,” he said, and he escorted the men outside, led the three of them around to the shaded side of the house, and bade them lie down there, while Ruth brought them nourishment and a salve for their insect bites. He told Watson to bring the men a smutch against the flies and instructed the rest of us to attend to our labors — it was time to bring in the cattle and sheep. There was work to be done, putting up the livestock and milking the cows and building the cookfire in the stove, hauling water from the spring, bringing up a string of trout from the river below, brushing down the horses for the night — the daily round of work that we all fell to without a thought, as natural a part of our lives as breathing in and out.

The storm in my breast and mind had passed. But I knew that it would return. I knew also that it had weakened me so greatly that when it did return, I would be even more dangerously tossed about than I had been today. I did not know what would bring it on — a cross word from Lyman, a disappointment concerning the work with the Negroes, a further decline in Mary’s health, or an incomprehensible command from Father — but any one of these alone might be sufficient to set me off again. I was, during those first few weeks at North Elba, precariously balanced between opposing commitments which were set to create the shape of the rest of my life, and I knew that not to choose between them would lead me inescapably to a resolution that expressed, not my will, but Father’s.

Mr. Dana was, of course, the world-famous author, who, many years later, after Father’s execution had made him world-famous as well, published a detailed account of his fortunate meeting with us that day at the edge of the wilderness. He described Ruth very nicely as “a bonny, buxom young woman of some twenty summers, with fair skin and red hair,” and he praised her “good humor, hearty kindness, good sense, and helpfulness.” He was complimentary also to Mary. And even to me, whom he remembered as “a full-sized red-haired son, who seemed to be foreman of the farm.” Father he got right, and he even mentioned Lyman and his wife, Susan, exclaiming over the fact that they sat with us at table that night and were introduced by Father to Mr. Dana and his companions properly and formally, with the prefixes Mr. and Mrs. Naturally, at the time of his visit we did not know who he was. Nor did he know who we were. To us, he and his companions were merely a set of pathetic city folks lost three days in the woods. To him, we were a farm family settled in the wilderness, wholly admirable, exemplary even — an ideal American family of Christian yeomen. In his innocent eyes, we were bred to duty and principle, and held to them, he wrote, by a power recognized by all as coming directly from above.

Here, Miss Mayo, let me tell you a story, a true story, one of the very few ever told of the Underground Railroad, for, as you must know by now, as soon as the Civil War began, the Underground Railroad was seen strictly as a preamble, and a secret one at that. Its history, its true story, got lost, forgotten, dismissed, even by those whose lives were shaped by it, saved by it, sacrificed for it.

But that’s not what I’m intent on setting down here today, a lament or complaint. I merely want to tell you a small story, but one that will flower and grow large with meaning later on, when you see it in the context of the larger story, Father’s, not mine. Anyhow, let me commence. In the weeks that followed upon the events which I recently described to you, we Browns did indeed settle into a life at the farm that corresponded to the author Mr. Dana’s somewhat fantastical view of us as exemplary American yeomen.

Father and I divided the large attic into two chambers with sawn boards, and with rocks taken from the brooks below the house, we constructed a second fireplace, so that in short order we had a proper farmhouse with a kitchen and eating room, where Father and Mary slept, and a proper parlor downstairs, and two sleeping chambers upstairs for the rest of us. We rebuilt the old privy and repaired and enlarged the crumbling barn and sheds so that we could adequately shelter our animals and store the hay and corn when they came in and firewood for the winter. The boys spent most of their time clearing trees and extending our fields on both sides of the narrow road that passed by the house, cutting and burning the stumps and then planting vegetables in the burned-over ground, like Indians fertilizing the corn, potatoes, turnips, and other root crops with fish that they pulled in great numbers from the streams that churned in those early days with thick schools of silvery trout. Lyman, who was not especially skilled as a woodcutter or farmer, but who had clever hands nonetheless, took to manufacturing and repairing tools and harness for the farm: he constructed a fine chestnut harrow to follow the plow and an iron-railed sledge for hauling logs out of the deep woods, and he and the Old Man set up a small tannery in one of the sheds and commenced to tan the hides of the deer we shot and salted, and soon the women, Mary, Ruth, and Susan, were at work manufacturing shoes and leather aprons and other items of clothing to protect us against the elements.

Every morning, before beginning our day’s labor, we gathered together in the parlor for prayers and Father’s brief sermon, and even though I had grown long used to these solemn services, they nevertheless uplifted me, as I believe they did the others, and made the day’s work easier, for despite my unbelief, the services connected our labor to something larger than ourselves and our petty daily needs. Father’s intention, I am sure, was precisely that — to lead us to understand our woodcutting and plowing and constant care of animals, the day-long manufacture of our meals and the permanent ongoing repair of our tools and equipment, and our endless preparation for the long winter, such that we would believe that we were participating in a great cycle of life, as if we were tiny arcs of an enormous curve, a universal template that began with birth and ended with death and which, if participated in fully and without shirking, would lead us to a second and still larger cycle of rebirth and regeneration, to an infinite spiral, as it were. Thus, as the fields were prepared and sown, so too were our inner lives being prepared and sown, and as our land and our livestock grew fruitful and multiplied, so did our spirits blossom and bear fruit, and as we dried and salted and stored our food and supplies in sawdust and hay for winter, so would our spirits and minds be prepared to endure the inescapable suffering and deaths of our loved ones, which would come to us as inevitably as the freezing winds and the deep, drifting snows of winter.