Andrea Barrett - Servants of the Map

“You rescued me,” Caleb remembered protesting. “You took me into your home and brought me up as your son.”

“I acted toward you as toward a son,” Samuel said. “But when I took you from the wreck of your parents’ house and remade you in my own image, I acted out of pride. And in my heart — once Rosina was born and I had a living child of my own I could not conceal from God that I loved her more.”

The feeling that passed over Caleb then, that feeling — he had known that Samuel spoke the truth, confirming something he’d always sensed. Rosina shared with her father few habits of heart and mind; a fossil for her was a dusty rock. She shared his blood.

Beneath him the gelding walked easily, keeping pace with the mare. The wind blew, the sun glanced off the snow, and he chatted quietly with Miriam, the smallest part of his mind engaged and the rest lost in the past. Economy, when they finally reached it, stretched along the river like a picture of a village. So clean, so neat; empty of people at first. “They’re in church,” Miriam said. “They’ll be finished any minute.” And suddenly there were people everywhere, pouring from a door and moving purposefully in their neat plain clothes. Despite the cold, Miriam moved not toward but farther away from the central buildings and the crowds.

A few people nodded politely; no one approached them. Long ago, on a day when four of Caleb’s classmates had pummeled him, Samuel had wiped blood from his nose and told him about the Rappites, who strove to live in harmony with one another. Equal in their stations, possessing their property in common; their hard work in this world meant to prepare them for an easy transition to the kingdom of heaven. You might try to live a bit more harmoniously yourself, Samuel had said. The boys, Caleb might have replied, were mocking you. Years later, Stuart’s jest about the Rappites had made Caleb want to befriend him. It was a consolation to see this place at last.

Without warning, Grace flew to the three children playing along the river’s edge. Immediately their mittens were cast aside; their hands darted and leapt in the air, arms whirling, eyebrows moving, mouths open, laughing, frowning, set in every sort of grimace.

“The tall boy,” Miriam said, “with the shock of black hair — that’s Joseph, the one who’s taught us so much. When he was small, his father gave him into the care of some charlatan preacher who claimed he could teach him to talk. Joseph ran away and was found by one of Mr. Rapp’s flock in the woods; they took him in, and brought him here when they moved. At first he bit whoever touched him.”

She waved at Joseph and returned his elaborate bow. “I’ve been able to act as an interpreter for him,” she continued. “The things he’s told me — people have such remarkable ideas about the deaf. His preacher believed that since the deaf are without a voice, which is the breath of God, they must also be without souls. That their language of signs is no language at all, but the mimicry of trained animals. He tormented Joseph, trying to get him to speak. Tubes in his ears, hot stones in his mouth, a long probe and hot water down his nose …”

“Terrible,” Caleb said.

“It was a great thing for Joseph when this community took him in. Although they couldn’t understand him at first, they believed that his language of signs was itself a divine gift, permitting entry into his soul of the word of God.”

Listen, Caleb imagined the Rappites saying. To this.

Still the children were conversing intently. “I don’t know where Conrad and Duncan came from,” Miriam said. “They’re both so secretive. But I know Joseph taught them too. As he’s taught us.”

“You’ve been lucky,” Caleb said.

“Lucky we live on this river,” she said. “If nothing else. It gives me a chance. Boats stop here at Economy, and sometimes at the clearing where you’re tied up. A few of the boatmen take an interest in the children. They bring them presents, and gestures they’ve seen other deaf people make.”

Three crows soared up the river and settled into a bare box elder. Without any warning Miriam added, “Shall I tell you how Grace lost her hearing?”

Caleb, startled, turned his gaze from the crows to her flushed cheeks. “If you want.”

Moving her hands, she said, “We were at a neighbor’s wedding. Me, my parents, my brothers, and Grace. She was two and a half, and I was fifteen.”

As Miriam spoke, Grace ignored her gestures. This was a story she already knew — but here were Joseph and Conrad and Duncan, the four of them free, with so much to say. What had happened to each of them that day, that week, that hour. What they could remember of the time before they found each other; the ways the world appeared to them, then and now. I have learned to bake bread, I have read a book. On Wednesday I rode by the river and saw a snake. Rain falls down through holes in the sky, said Duncan; from clouds, Joseph said. From clouds. Then Duncan again, who had never heard: At night, when I could understand nothing, I learned that others saw in the darkness with their ears.

With her eyes cast down, and her voice so low that Caleb could hardly hear her, Miriam spoke of a hot August day, a heavy meal, pitchers of strong cider from which they all drank thirstily. Dancing, different games, her parents laughing with friends they seldom saw and Grace sitting in Miriam’s lap and then toddling next to her when she rose and, with a friend named Harriet, followed an older boy into a broad meadow. An enormous hickory stood all alone in the center of the grass. So safe, so sheltering. They ran for it when the thunderstorm flashed; the leaves kept them almost dry. Miriam held Grace in her arms and turned her head from Harriet and the boy, who were embracing.

Her hands, apparently without her knowledge, had continued to move as she spoke. Now she looked down at them and paused. Joseph, who’d been watching her, asked Grace a question.

I remember sounds, Grace told him. Then I fell in a big white light and when I woke someone carried me. At home there were people but I couldn’t hear them. The cat sat on my chest and miaowed but I heard nothing, the dog barked and I couldn’t hear her, a crow flew down beside my window and I saw her beak open and open again but everything was silent and has been since then and I didn’t know what that meant.

She dropped her hands to her sides as Joseph nodded. Once he’d told her about the shining instruments of pain. So little time they had to catch up with each other — what was life and what was death and who was God and who were they; when the wind blew, what did that mean? Why did the mare have spots, or the pike such teeth? Somewhere, far away, were there others like them? All these thoughts passed through her hands and face and it was blissful, pure bliss to know herself understood and to feel, pouring back into her, other stories in such swift and shapely forms. Miriam was her sister, her life; but she signed slowly. The man who’d come to them couldn’t sign yet at all. She flashed his name-sign at Joseph and explained that her family had taken him in, as they might a lost dog. Joseph laughed and beckoned toward the river.

“And then what happened?” Caleb said.

“And then a big bolt of lightning hit the tree.” Miriam grasped her right hand in her left and held it still. “Harriet and the boy she was kissing were killed, although I didn’t know that until later. I felt the lightning come up my legs, I felt it flow down my arm like fire, and I tried to drop Grace before it reached her but my hands wouldn’t work. When I woke there were people all around us. Harriet and her beau were gone, someone had covered their bodies with a blanket. I was unharmed except for one long burn.” She rolled back her sleeve and exposed to the cold air a forked scar branded between elbow and wrist. “Grace had a bruise on her cheek where she’d fallen, but she seemed fine. Then after a while we knew she wasn’t.”