Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Father then moved in close to both men, who were considerably taller than he and younger but who backed off from him, for he bore forward with singular purpose and barely contained fury. “I do not want to kill you in front of my wife and children,” Father said. “But by God, I will! Leave here at once!”

Partridge stepped quickly away and made for his horse. The slave-catcher followed behind with as much leisure as he dared show, and the two mounted their horses and backed them off towards the road.

“Aim your muskets, boys,” the Old Man said, and we raised our guns. I looked down the barrel at the head of the slave-catcher. It felt wonderfully clarifying.

“We’re leaving, Brown!” Partridge cried, and he put his horse on the road and kicked it into a gallop and disappeared around the bend.

For a few seconds, the other man remained and stared hard at Father, as if memorizing his face. “Brown,” he said, “if you try to move the two niggers I’m looking for, I’ll have to take them from you.” Then he turned his horse’s head and rode it slowly from the yard and down the road towards North Elba, passing within twenty feet of the man and woman he wished to capture and return to slavery.

We lowered our guns, and the family, including Susan, came and surrounded us, fearful, but relieved, and also proud of us. My ears were buzzing, and my heart pounded heavily, and I barely knew where I was or who was with me. Mary was telling Father that the men had arrived the previous evening and had interrogated Susan and had poked through all the outbuildings and rooms of the house. Mary had expected them to leave then, which was her reason for allowing them to examine the place so thoroughly. She said, “I’d have turned them away at once, but they insisted on waiting for your return and asked to sleep in the barn. We felt like prisoners, but I couldn’t very well refuse them. I’d have sent one of the boys to warn you if we’d known where you were likeliest to come out of the forest to the road. I’m sure they believed you’d come walking in all unawares with the very couple they were seeking,” she said.

“And we would have,” said Father. “But for their horses, which I spotted in time.”

“That was my doing!” Watson piped. “They had their horses in the barn, so’s to hide them from you. But when we went out at sunup to put out the stock, we first brought their horses out, as if doing them a kindness, which they couldn’t very well object to.”

Father complimented Watson for his cleverness, and then he declared that we must give thanks to the Lord. Following his example, we all lowered our heads there in the bright, sun-filled yard before the open door of our house, and Father commenced to pray with more than his usual fervor. I felt a noticeable relief and, momentarily, a genuine uplifting of my spirit from the experience — not so much from Father’s address to the Lord, however, as from standing in the sunlight in a closed circle with my beloved family and our friends Lyman and Susan. There were yellow butterflies all around, a cloud of them in the sunlight, swirling in a spiral, like a beneficent whirlwind.

A few moments later, Watson and I walked back down the road, past the gully where we had hidden Mr. and Mrs. Cannon, to examine the tracks of Partridge and the slave-catcher Billingsly, so as to be certain they had indeed gone. Then we returned and went into the thicket and retrieved the frightened young couple from their hiding place and brought them to the house, where they were fed and hidden for the day in our attic, and as soon as the morning chores were finished, Father, Lyman, and I planned on joining them there, to sleep until dark.

Thanks to our encounter with Mr. Billingsly and his threats, Father had changed his mind and had decided to allow Lyman to accompany us to Port Kent. “I was glad to have him standing with us this morning,” he said to me, as we moved through the flock of sheep, separating the first of our pregnant ewes from the others. “At times, I admit, the man seems light-headed, but when it counts, he’s firm. I believe he has the courage to shoot a man.”

I asked Father, “What do you think about what Mister Partridge said? About the Virginia couple. That they killed a man. He meant their owner, I suppose.”

“Perhaps they did kill the man. Their owner. I certainly hope so,” he said, his mouth like a crack in a rock. Gently holding one of the pregnant ewes, he examined it for disease, poking through the fleece, comforting the animal while he expertly parted the fleece with his fingertips. “Billingsly is a bounty-hunter, not a marshal. And as soon as Partridge shows him the way to Timbuctoo, he’ll be cut loose, so as not to get any share in the reward. And I don’t think Billingsly will dare go up against us alone,” he said. Then he added, “Even so, just in case, we’ll be better armed with Lyman along than we would without him.”

When I awoke, it was not yet dark, but then, peering out the small attic window, I saw that Father and Lyman were outside, hitching the team to the wagon. Even in his fifties, the Old Man had physical energy exceeding mine and that of most young men; he required little more than four or five hours’ sleep for a long day’s or night’s work, and when he worked, day or night, he seldom stopped to rest. To my surprise, Lyman, from his first arrival at our house, seemed naturally to keep pace with the Old Man, which I admired and somewhat envied, for it made me feel lazy by contrast and ashamed, although neither of them was thoughtless enough to comment on my need for a normal portion of sleep or to upbraid me for slothfulness, except as a light, affectionate tease.

I hurried down the ladder to the kitchen, where our cargo, Mr. and Mrs. Cannon, freshly washed and for the first time looking unfrightened, were seated at the table with Mary, Ruth, Susan, and several of the children, cheerfully at play with a string game apparently taught them by Mrs. Cannon. I cut myself a large slice of bread and ate and silently watched, until Father came inside and gave us the order to depart. We escorted Mr. and Mrs. Cannon outside and placed them and their bundles and a basket of food for our journey into the back of the wagon, where the couple arranged themselves atop the several fleeces and tanned deerhides and pelts that Father had packed there. These he planned to sell in Port Kent, our ostensible reason for traveling to the town. Then, rifle in hand, Lyman climbed into the box, and Father covered the box and all its contents with a canvas sheet, which he drew tight and tied with the children’s cord. I climbed up and took the reins. Father, holding both our rifles, joined me there, and with a somber wave goodbye to the family gathered by the doorway, we departed.

We saw no one along the road to North Elba until we reached the Thompson farm, where Mr. Thompson and several of his sons were crossing the road with their cows, bringing them into the barn for milking, and we were forced to stop. Mr. Thompson hailed us and walked over, while his boys moved the cattle. Of all the white people in the region, he was probably our closest friend and associate. A fervent anti-slavery man, father of a brood of sons more numerous than our own, and a skilled farmer and carpenter, he was the only local man towards whom Father’s admiration went without serious provisos attached. He was tall and bulky, built like a cider barrel, and, although red-faced and high-spirited, was deeply religious and, like Father, a temperance man. I liked him for his humorous ways and the ease with which he commanded his phalanx of sons, whose ages corresponded fairly closely to ours. Although the eldest, Henry, was nearly my age, there were still babies being born annually in the Thompson house, one male child after another, numbering now sixteen. Mr. Thompson’s wife, the woman who had produced this brood, was large and cheerful, not unlike her husband, and it was perhaps only in hopes of at last bearing a daughter that she continued to allow herself to become pregnant, for she was nearing middle-age and the natural end of her child-bearing years.