Mason & Dixon (48 page)

"Child, child, 'twould be far more sensible to forgive your sister," murmurs Mistress Edgewise, taking the young woman's hand. "You must both pass beyond it, dear." Her husband huffs forward, intending a similar Courtesy toward the young Woman's knee, but is deflected by a wifely stare, that contrives to look amused, tho' indisposed to bantering.

Frau Redzinger gestures expansively with her coffee cup, which is luckily, for the moment, empty. "Oh, yes, I am a bad sister, a bad wife and Christian, I am the one who must be forgiven, somehow, but,— she regards us each for a moment, her chin atremble, "of whom here would I ask it? Of course I resent Liesele, I envy her life. She has her husband."

At which looseness of tongue the daughter, at last, protests. But too late, for her Mother has rush'd on, as we now go rushing along down the Communication, above us our Jehu son of Nimshi taking chances he would never have taken in the Daylight.

' 'Twas not the same as being struck by lightning,— we've lightning over Schuylkill that's every bit the equal of Mr. Franklin's famous city-lightning, folk who've been hit by ours, speak of being 'prison'd in a thunderous glory'...but Peter was only bringing hops in to the cooling-pit, the most ordinary of tasks,— slipped in the dust, fell in the Pit, with the dried hops nearly twenty feet deep, hot from the Kiln, you can squeeze them together almost forever, drowning in them is easy, last year it was a church person over at Kutztown, even the odor of the pollen is deadly, the man's wife said, that it took him into a poison'd sleep,— but neither of us was with her husband when it happened, it is not a place women go, I was in the fields, with the other women and the last of the harvest, the way it is, we work only with the living Plants, so we tend the

 
Bines all summer,— soon as the Cones are picked, and dead, it is then the Men take over, net?

"I don't know what I might have done— The hops buoy'd him up, but not so much,— when help arrived, they said they could see only his hand above the cones, releasing their dust and terrible fumes as his struggling broke them,— by the time Jürgen could anchor himself, there was only my husband's one finger, reaching back into this world, his poor finger. The force it took to pull him out...no physician anywhere could have put it back to what it was. Peter would call it his sacramental finger, his outward and bodily sign of the Other thing that had happened to him down in that miserable suffocation. He bore it without shame, rather.. .with bewilderment."

Certain herbal essences in massive influxion, as I feel it my duty to assure her, have long been known and commented upon, as occasions of God-revealing. She nods emphatically.—
 
As weeks passed, she tells us, Peter Redzinger's account chang'd, from a simple tale of witness, to one of rapture by beings from somewhere else, "long, long from Pennsylvania," as he expressed it,— and always at the center of the Relation, unwise to approach, an unbearable Luminosity.

As God has receded, as Deism has crept in to make the best of this progressive Absence, more and more do we witness extreme varieties of human character emergent,— Cagliostro, the Comte de St.-Germain, Adam Weishaupt,— Magicians with Munchausen tales and ever more extravagant effects,— Illuminati, Freemasons, Elect Cohens, many of whom, to my great curiosity, have found their way into Pennsylvania. They wander the town streets, they haunt the desert places, they are usually Germans. Woe betide the credulous countryman who falls under their influence,— or, as in the case of Peter Redzinger, is transform'd into one of them.

Another American Illumination, another sworn moment,— and where in England are any Epiphanies, bright as these? Bring anything like one,— any least Sail upon the Horizon of our Exile,— to the attention of an Established Clergyman, and 'twill elicit nought but gentle Reproofs and guarded Suggestions, which must sooner or later include the word "Physician.”

These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one. Royal Society members and French Encyclopaedists are in the Chariot, availing themselves whilst they may-of any occasion to preach the Gospels of Reason, denouncing all that once was Magic, though too often in smirking tropes upon the Church of Rome,— visitations, bleeding statues, medical impossibilities,— no, no, far too foreign. One may be allowed an occasional Cock Lane Ghost,— otherwise, for any more in that Article, one must turn to Gothick Fictions, folded acceptably between the covers of Books.

"They say Peter is seen now over Susquehanna, aus dem Kipp, wandering from one cabin to another, anywhere two or more Germans may be gathered together, with his Tales of the Pit. He calls it preaching,— so, to no one's surprize, do others. Some even follow him, Redzingerites, for whom his enlightenment by way of nearly drowning is the central event. Their view of Baptism does not, need I say, stop at Total Immersion. I imagine him by now a creature of the Forest. Perhaps I have mistaken my own destiny for his, and his Elevation," sighing, "has prov'd my Enearthment."

She speaks, it unfolds, of the Redzinger Farm, an hundred-acre Parcel close to, if not actually in, Maryland,— no one will know until the English Surveyors come through. The Proprietors of both Provinces have been offering lower Land prices, sometimes even exemption from the Quit-rent, to any who'll settle near Boundaries in dispute. Peter Redzinger has always known good land, he can look at it and tell you, if you ask, what it will bear in Abundance, what it will not tolerate. This place, as he recogniz'd from frequent visits to it in Dreams since he was young, would give him back anything he wished. "When he walk'd it, he discover'd he was dowsing it with his feet, and for more than Water, too, and had to keep his Shoes on, because upon his bare soles he could not withstand Die Krafte, the Forces? It whispers to him. He can almost make out the words."

Sometimes he tried to talk to Luise about this, but with such difficulty that she always ended up thinking about her sister in Bethlehem, and the Dancing she might be missing, after all. "...And it comes from the wind moving through the underbrush.. .it is inside of the Wind, and they are real

 
words, and if you listen..." She must have known quite early, that the Hop-pit, or something as decisive, was waiting for them. Meanwhile, maize and morning glories, tomatoes and cherry trees, every flower and Esculent known to Linna;us, thriv'd. The seasons swept through, Mitzi, and then the Boys, were born, Luise and Peter built a Bakery, Smokehouse, Stables, Milk-barn, Hen-coop, Hop-kiln, and Cooling-pit. His brothers, and their families, live nearby. Like many in Lancaster County, they all have Fields planted to Hops and Hemp. Each Crop, for its own reasons of Peace and War, is in rapidly growing demand, and fetching good prices.

Grodt, one of the farmers whose land adjoins the Redzingers', has long coveted their farm, and furthermore believes that both farms are located in Maryland. Under Maryland law, he knows he may get a warrant to resurvey his land, and in the process include any vacant land it happens to adjoin,— the property Line will be allow'd to stretch about and engross it,— by virtue of the Resurvey, it will become his. (Many were the elephantine tracts swallowed at one nibble, in those times, by the country Mice thereabouts.) Land defined as vacant includes land once settled but now "in escheat," meaning gone back to the Proprietor, usually for nonpayment of taxes,— Luise has been paying the Quit-rents to Pennsylvania, but Grodt, contending that she dwells in Maryland and owes more back taxes there than she can ever pay, believes the land is escheatable.

"I am no attorney," I try to console her, "but his case sounds doubtful."

"If he goes ahead," warns Mr. Edgewise, "obtains a warrant, pays the caution money, has title, then it's his, if no one can prove the land isn't escheatable." All now fall to arguing about Land-Jobbery, the discussion growing at times spirited and personal. Everyone in the Coach, it seems, has suddenly become a Philadelphia Lawyer.

"Why," Mrs. Edgewise demands to know, "must this subject rouse quite so much Passion?"

The Purveyor of Delusion confers upon his wife a certain expression or twist of Phiz I daresay as old as Holy Scripture,— a lengthy range of Sentiment, all comprest into a single melancholick swing of the eyes. From some personal stowage he produces another Flask, containing, not the Spruce Beer ubiquitous in these parts, but that favor'd stupefacient of the jump'd-up tradesman, French claret,— and without offering it to anyone else, including his Wife, begins to drink. "It goes back," he

 
might have begun, "to the second Day of Creation, when 'G-d made the Firmament, and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament, from the Waters which were above the Firmament,'— thus the first Boundary Line. All else after that, in all History, is but Sub-Division."

"What Machine is it," young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, "that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,— another Year,— as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight.. .we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop...gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver,...no Horses,...only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity....”

36

The driver, having observed through the gusting low clouds, candle-lit Windows in the Distance, now notifies those of us below, that we are approaching an Inn. The Ladies begin to stir and pat, lean together and discuss. Men re-light their Pipes and consult their watches,— and, more discreetly, their Pocket-books. The rush of the Weather past the smooth outer Shell, a surface lacquered as secretly as the finest Cremona Violin, smoothly abates, silences, to be replaced by the crisp shouts of Hostlers and Stable-boys. We observe Link-men waiting in a double line, as if at some ceremony of German Mysticks, their torches sparking intensely yellow at the edges as they illuminate the falling Snow-Flakes.

In the partial light, the immense log Structure seems to tower toward the clouds until no more can be seen,— tho' the clouds at the moment are low,— whilst horizontally sprawling away, into an Arrangement of courtyards and passageways, till likewise lost to the eye, such complexity recalling Holy Land Bazaars and Zouks, even in the wintry setting,— save that in this Quarter nothing is ancient, the logs are still beaded with clear drops of resin, with none of the walls inside attached directly to them, the building having not yet had even a season to settle. The pots in the kitchen are all still bright, the Edges yet upon the Cutlery, bed-linens folded away that haven't yet been romp'd, or even slept, among.

This new Inn is an overnight stop for everybody with business upon the Communication, quite near a rope ferry across Bloomery Creek, one of the thousand rivers and branches flowing into Chesapeake. Waggoners are as welcome as Coach parties, and both sorts of Traveler, for the time being, find this acceptable. There's a long front porch, and two entrances, one into the Bar-room, the other into the family Parlor, with Passage between them only after a complicated search within, among Doors and Stair-cases more and less evident.

Meanwhile, the Astronomers, returning from Lancaster, are attending the Day's cloudy Sky as closely as they might a starry one at Night. "Can't say I'm too easy with this weather," Mason remarks.

"Do tha mean those white flake-like objects blowing out of the northeast...?"

"Actually, I lost sight of the Trees about fifteen minutes ago."

"Another bonny gahn-on tha've got us into...? Are we even upon the Road?"

"Hold,— is that a Light?"

"Don't try to get out of it thah' way."

"I am making it snow? Is this what you mean to assert, here?— how on earth could I do that, Dixon, pray regard yourself, Sir!"

"Tha pre-dicted a fair passage back to the Tents, indeed we have wager'd a Pistole,—

"You would, of course, mention it."

Bickering energetickally, they make their way toward the lights and at length enter the very Inn where your Narrator, lately arriv'd, is already down a Pipe and a Pint,— only to be brought to dumbfounded silence at the Sight of one whom they've not seen since the Cape of Good Hope.

"Are we never to be rid of him, then...?" cries Dixon.

"An Hallucination," Mason assures him, "brought on by the Snow, the vanishing of detail, the Brain's Anxiety to fill the Vacuum at any Cost—"

"Well met, Sirs," I reply. "And it gets worse." I reach in my Pockets and find and unscroll my Commission, which, all but knocking Pates, they read hastily.

"Party Chaplain...?"

"Who ask'd for a Chaplain?"

"Certainly not I...?"

"You don't mean I,— "

' 'Twas part of a side-Letter to the Consent Decree in Chancery," I explain helpfully, "that there be a Chaplain."

"Most of 'm'll be Presbyterians, Rev...? When they're not German Sectarians, or Irish Catholics...?"

"The Royal Society, however, is solidly Anglican."

"Chaplain," says Mason.

"Eeh," says Dixon.

As torch- or taper-light takes over from the light of the sunset, what are those Faces, gather'd before some Window, raising Toasts, preparing for the Evening ahead, if not assur'd of life forever? as travelers come in by ones and twos, to smells of Tobacco and Chops, as Fiddle Players tune their strings and starv'd horses eat from the trough in the Courtyard, as young women flee to and fro dumb with fatigue, and small boys down in strata of their own go swarming upon ceaseless errands, skidding upon the Straw, as smoke begins to fill the smoking-room...how may Death come here?

Mr. Knockwood, the landlord, a sort of trans-Elemental Uncle Toby, spends hours every day not with Earth Fortifications, but studying rather the passage of Water across his land, and constructing elaborate works to divert its flow, not to mention his guests. "You don't smoak how it is," he argues, " - all that has to happen is some Beaver, miles upstream from here, moves a single Pebble,— suddenly, down here, everything's changed! The creek's a mile away, running through the Horse Barn! Acres of Forest no longer exist! And that Beaver don't even know what he's done!" and he stands glaring, as if this hypothetickal animal were the fault of the patient Listener.