Cloudsplitter (38 page)

Sometimes I thought this was how most women felt in the presence of men generally—like a small, hairless child, soft and vulnerable, before the large, hairy, tough, and impervious adult. It’s what we mean, perhaps, by “womanish.” Men like Father seem to evoke in all of us, male as well as female, long-abandoned, childlike responses which make us malleable to their wishes and will. Thus, when Father said, “Jump!” even though I was twenty-four, then thirty, then thirty-four years old, I jumped. I always jumped.

I am not ashamed of that, however. For, truth to tell, it was his gentleness, not his huge, male ferocity, that gathered us in and kept us there. We came to him willingly, not out of fear. His pervasive gentleness was like a sweet liquor to us, an intoxicant that left us narcotized, inducing in us a morbid susceptibility to his will. My most vivid memories of this most manly of men are of his face streaming with tears after he had struggled vainly for long days and nights to save his dying child. I think of his holding a freezing lamb against his naked chest under his shirt and coat, warming the creature with his own body, until the tiny lamb came slowly back to life and the Old Man could place it down beside its mother and step away and fairly laugh aloud with the pleasure of seeing it begin to nurse again. I remember Father tending to his wife and to each of his children when we were sick, hovering over us like a perfect physician, when he himself was ill and barely able to stand, tucking blankets around our shivering bodies, tending the fire, heating milk, manufacturing and administering remedies and medicinal specifics, long past exhaustion, until one or the other of us would begin at last to recover and was finally well enough to spell him, and then and only then would he allow himself to be treated. And though we often laughed and behind his back mocked Father for his long-windedness and certain other peculiarities of speech when he was trying to teach us a new skill—for he was one of those who teach as much by verbal instruction and repetition as example—withal, he was the most patient and tender teacher any of us ever had, who suffered our ignorance and ineptitude gladly, and never seemed to forget how mysterious and peculiar the world looked to a child and how even the simplest household or barnyard tasks seemed at first forbidding and complex.

No, it was the remarkable, perhaps unique, combination of his extreme masculinity and his unabashedly feminine tenderness that brought us willingly under his control and kept us there, so that, even when one or two or three of us seemed to wander off from his teachings and desires—as in the matter of religion, or, later, when he determined to go down into Virginia—none of us ever departed from him altogether. We merely on those occasions took a few cautious steps to his right or left side and tried to aid him in his work from that position, instead of from a position directly behind him. Even when John married Wealthy Hotchkiss and Jason married Ellen Sherbondy, and they moved out of the family household and set up on their own, they did it in ways that merely established new orbits that allowed them to function as satellites circling Father, like moons around a planet, and thus they were held as powerfully as before by his larger orbit, while he himself circled the sun. At an age when most men our age were running off to see the elephant, as we called it then—heading out to search for gold in California, staking out land in the further reaches of the Western Reserve, or following the crowds of bright, ambitious men and boys to New York and Washington—I and my brothers kept ourselves bound to our father’s destiny.

With the sudden arrival at the farm of John and Jason, a day that turned out to be tumultuous and, ultimately, tragic began as a celebration of familial warmth and union. Over breakfast, Father apprised his elder sons of the ongoing situation with regard to the Underground Railroad, Marshal Saunders’s pursuit of the Cannons, Mr. Wilkinson’s betrayal of Lyman Epps and Mr. Fleete, and their recent arrest and removal to the Elizabeth town jail. And when he informed them of his intention to ride over to Elizabethtown with me for the purpose of arranging the release of the Negro men—“Even if it must be done at gunpoint,” he said—John and Jason naturally chose to accompany and support us.

Once again, it fell to me to drive the wagon, while Father and my elder brothers rode on horseback. “We’ll need the wagon to carry our friends back home,” Father said, and, of course, I agreed, although Father or one of the others could have driven it as well as I. Mary and Ruth and Susan Epps packed two days’ food for us, and the entire family stood by the door and waved cheerfully, as if we were setting out on a deer hunt, and we rode uphill back along the Cascade Road, east towards Keene and Elizabethtown.

We had not planned to stop in Keene, which we reached by noon, but as we passed by the rundown farm owned by Mr. Partridge, Father suddenly determined to pull up. “I believe I have some business with that man,” he grimly announced, and pulled into the yard and dismounted. We followed, but did not get down from our horses, as he crossed the yard, strode across the porch, and rapped loudly on the door. There was a single, saddled horse at the porch rail, a bay that I thought I recognized but could not be sure until the door swung open and I saw Mr. Partridge’s long, dark, gloomy face and behind him glimpsed the grizzled face of the slave-catcher Mr. Billingsly.

Billingsly darted out of our line of sight into the darkness of the room, but he surely knew that I and probably Father had spotted him when the door opened. This was a dangerous situation, and I jumped down from the wagon and signaled to John and Jason, who dismounted and joined me at the porch steps.

“What do you want here, Brown?” Mr. Partridge said, his voice a bit shaky with fear, as the three of us came to stand behind Father, each with a musket in hand. Father, too, had his gun with him, slung under his right arm.

“I’ve come to redeem my clock,” Father announced. He reached down into his left pocket and drew out some coins, which he held in front of him, until Mr. Partridge unthinkingly extended his own palm. Father let the coins trickle into the other man’s hand and said, “That, sir, is the cost of our food and lodging for one night, which you established back in May. You may count it, and then you will hand over my clock.”

“You’re crazy, Brown,” he said, and he shoved the coins back at Father, groping at the Old Man’s snuff-colored frock coat until he found a loosely open pocket and dropped them in, whereupon he moved to shut the door in Father’s face. Father kicked the door back hard and shoved Mr. Partridge aside, and there stood revealed the slave-catcher Billingsly, who had drawn both his pistols.

Everything that followed happened in less than two seconds. I saw Mr. Partridge’s dough-faced wife a ways behind Billingsly, her hands over her mouth, and beyond her was the old woman, her mother, calmly seated by the rear window, knitting, as if she were alone in the house. Mr. Partridge, his bearded face taut and drained white with fear, turned and grabbed Great-Grandfather’s clock from the fireplace mantel and extended it towards Father, a last-chance peace offering. At that instant, Billingsly fired one of his pistols, missing Father, who stood directly before him, missing everyone, although we did not know it yet, and simultaneously several of us fired our rifles, a reckless, wild thing to do at such close range with so many innocent people close by, but we were lucky, for no one was struck—except for the one man who deserved it, Billingsly the slave-catcher. He howled in pain and went down, rolling on the floor and clutching at his thigh, where blood spurted crimson onto the rug.

I had fired my gun, I know that, and I later learned that John had fired his, but I do not know which of us shot Billingsly. Whichever, John or me, it was the first time one of us Browns had shot a man. I myself had meant not to hit anyone, intending merely to fire into the ceiling over everyone’s head, hoping, I suppose, to control the situation by striking terror into Billingsly, not a bullet. John later said that he had definitely meant to shoot the man dead but had not a clear shot, so merely had tried not to hit anyone else, especially the women.

Who knew, then, which of us had shot him, and did it matter? One of John Brown’s sons had done the bloody deed, and the day would continue that way, with John Brown and his sons wreaking havoc and spilling blood in the Adirondack mountain villages of New York. Whatever one of us did, we all did.

The man Billingsly was down, and his pistols were scattered across the floor. There was a loud battery of shouts, bellows, commands, and, from at least one of the women, high-pitched screams, and I do not know if I or my brothers or Mr. Partridge or even Billingsly was amongst the hounds who gave cry, although one of us Browns shouted, “He’s down! He’s down!” And another yelled at Partridge, “Don’t make a move, mister, or I swear it, I’ll kill you at once!” Several of us were calling to the rest, “Are you hit? Are you hit?” And, “No! Missed me! The coward missed me!” And, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire now!”

Only Father remained calm. He waited for silence, and when it came, the Old Man, as cool and unruffled as a frozen lake, took the clock out of Mr. Partridge’s hands. Then he looked down at the bleeding slave-catcher, who squirmed and writhed on the floor in pain, and said in a clear, steady voice, “Mister Billingsly, this is the second time that you are lucky that we Browns have not killed you. I advise you, sir, to consider another line of business than hunting down escaped slaves.”

He turned, closed the door behind him, and placed the clock into the front of the wagon, below the driver’s bench. Then the Old Man and John and Jason mounted their horses. I jumped up into the wagon, and we rode quickly off, away from the valley, into the mountains and over the ridge to Elizabethtown, where, at around four o’clock in the afternoon, we drew up before the stately brick courthouse.

The jail was behind and belowstairs, and we walked directly there. I did not know Father’s plan, or if he actually had one, beyond somehow convincing the Elizabethtown jailer to release Mr. Fleete and Lyman into our custody, which did not to me seem likely. But Father was adept at improvisation, so it was perhaps fortuitous, when we four Browns marched into the jail, armed and passably dangerous-looking, our faces flushed and hearts still beating rapidly from the shooting back in Keene, that we ran face-first into Mr. Wilkinson of Tahawus. He looked surprised and frightened to see us, naturally. He appeared to have just come in from a hard ride himself.

“Mister Wilkinson” Father said, “tell me your business here.”

The man backed off and turned to the jailer, a small, mustachioed man seated behind a cluttered desk, putting papers away. “This here’s John Brown!” Wilkinson exclaimed to the jailer, who did not appear to care. “He’s come to break the niggers out of jail!”

At once, Father placed the mouth of the barrel of his musket next to the ear of Mr. Wilkinson. “You’re right about that;’ he said. “Jailer, you can march back to the cells with my sons here and uncage the two colored men and bring them forward, if you will be so kind. Otherwise, I will blow this man’s brains out.”

Mr. Wilkinson whimpered and said that he had nothing to do with their being jailed, that it was all the fault of Marshal Saunders.

“Then what are you here for?”

“I came for my own business,”he said.

“You lie, Wilkinson. Jailer,” Father said, “tell me this maris business here. Now!” He cocked the hammer of his gun. Mr. Wilkinson shut his eyes tightly, as if he expected to hear the gun go off that instant.

Slowly, carefully, the jailer stood. John, Jason, and I all had our guns trained on him. “Wal, he come in to identify the niggers back there and sign some papers to it. Marshal said he was to do that. Hey, listen, Mister Brown,” he said, “I don’t know nothin’ about these here niggers. You can do with them whatever the hell you want.”

“Has Mister Wilkinson so sworn, that the men you have locked up for the marshal are indeed the fellows he says they are? Because I’m here to tell you they are not,” Father said.

“Wal, no, not yet he ain’t. They’s just a couple of coloreds, far’s I’m concerned, and I’m holdin’ ’em for the marshal, like he asked, till he comes back from Port Kent.”

“With no arrest warrant.”

“Wal... yes, sir. Yes. That’s so.”

Grabbing Mr. Wilkinson by his shirt collar, Father drew him to the steel door that led to the cells and said to the jailer, “Come along, and bring your keys. Mister Wilkinson here is going to tell you that the men you have locked up are not the men the marshal is seeking.”

“Wal, sir, y’ know I can’t release them without the marshal’s say-so,” the man said, although he was already unlocking the door to the jail.

“You will do as I say,”said Father.

“Yes, sir, I b’lieve I will,” he said, and he swung open the door, and we all walked into the cell block and went straightway back to where Mr. Fleete and Lyman awaited us. They both grinned broadly when they saw us and came to the front of their shared cell and grasped the bars, watching as the jailer unlocked the cell door and swung it wide.

“Mister Brown, we are mightly relieved to see you,” said Mr. Fleete. “That there fellow, he’s the one told the marshal we run the Cannons off to Canada,” said Lyman, pointing sternly at Mr. Wilkinson. “They come up on us over in Timbuctoo yesterday evening. Said we knew where the Cannons was hiding. Said they killed their master down in Virginia. We don’t know nothing about that, now, do we, Mister Brown?”

“No, Lyman, we don’t,”said Father.

“This ain’t legal, you know” the jailer said to Father, as we all marched back out to his office. Father still held Mr. Wilkinson by his shirt collar and had his gun tight against the man’s ear.

“Just don’t try to stop us,” said Father, “and no harm will come to either of you. We’ll all worry about what’s legal and what isn’t later on. Right now, however, these men have not been charged and therefore are free.” He let go of Mr. Wilkinson and lowered his gun, and we did like wise with ours and, with Mr. Fleete and Lyman in the lead, made to leave the jader’s office. John was the last to depart from the building, and when he turned to draw the door closed behind him, as he told us later, he saw the jailer extract a handgun from his desk, and he shot the man. It happened so quickly and unexpectedly that we barely knew of it, except for the loud gunshot and the sulphurous smell of the powder, for we were already outside and crossing the grass towards the horses and wagon.