The Last Crossing (33 page)

“To save the American Jews.”

The Reverend Witherspoon emptied his glass. “If you would be so good, dear boy,” he said to Simon. “Just another drop of that
excellent port.” Simon served him, very much the eager disciple. Returning to his seat, my brother mouthed something to me. I could not read his lips.

Witherspoon lifted the glass to the light, tasted, smacked his appreciation. “You think the existence of American Jews is a fancy. Even though you have not investigated the question.” And with that Obadiah Witherspoon launched into what I can only describe as a speech, words so often repeated that they rolled out of him by rote. His shield against doubters. A chant of defiance in a harsh, stentorian voice. Once he was truly under way, he could not contain his energy, rose to his feet and began to pace. He said it was a scientific fact the Indians were Jews. In 1587, the Jesuit Nicholas Delttsu discovered a tribe in Argentina who bore Hebrew names, Abraham, David, Moshe. They were circumcised. The trader Isaac Nasic, a Jew, encountered tribes in Surinam whose language was clearly derived from Hebrew and who employed the Hebrew name for God. In 1642, a Jewish convert to Christianity, Antonio de Montezinos, reported to the learned scholar and holy Amsterdam rabbi, Manasseh Ben Israel, that when exploring the mountains of Ecuador, he had met with Indians who greeted him with the Jewish declaration of faith, the Shema Israel, and who claimed descent from the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Several times I tried to interject some reason into this hectoring oration, but each time he flung another “fact” at me. The Mohawks were the lawgivers of the Iroquois just as the tribe of Levi was for the Hebrews. Mohawk was the corruption of the Hebrew word,
Meichokek
. The physiognomy of the Indians testified to their Semitic ancestry. Many had remarked it. It so startled William Penn that he wrote to a friend that the natives bore so lively a resemblance to Jews that Penn could have believed himself in Duke’s Place or Berry Street in London.

It was an extraordinary performance. I was not sure whether I was witnessing the well-honed deceptions of Witherspoon’s “prating” days or the earnest sincerity of a madman.

I looked over at Simon. He shook his head, as if to warn me not to interrupt the preacher.

“Scripture,” Witherspoon said abruptly, shifting the field of battle. “ ‘Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Christ’s specific charge to His church. Forsake the conversion of the European Jews who derive their name from the House of Judah. Go instead to the Ten Lost Tribes who inherited the name Israel. ‘And the backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah.’ The Israelites who lost their faith in exile are not tainted with the blood guilt of the House of Judah, those who renounced, reviled, and slew Christ. The House of Israel is acceptable in the eyes of the Lord. And when Israel is gathered into the fold, then and only then shall we see the Second Coming of Christ, the establishment of his Seat of Mercy in the New Jerusalem across the waters.”

Perhaps Witherspoon was a little drunk on my port. Suddenly, he had to stop and steady himself on the fireplace mantel. I said, “And what makes you think you will succeed in converting the Indians where so many have failed?”

He looked at me intently for a moment. “I wish to learn before I teach. I shall fall and kiss the feet of the Elder Brothers of Christ because in their salvation is ours. Among the Indian shamans, knowledge of the powers of the Ark of the Covenant and other mysteries of the ancient Hebrew priesthood may exist.” He paused momentously. “But above all, what I wish to learn from them is why they share both want and plenty, keep goods in common, live like the early Christians while we cannot.”

“Ah yes,” I observed, “you are a great proponent of goods held in common. Particularly my brother’s.”

“That is enough, Charles! What I do with my money is no concern of yours!” Simon shouted at me.

“It is of concern to me when you disrupt the household by pilfering Mrs. Murchison’s housekeeping money. It concerns me when the money I lend you goes to line the pockets of the likes of him.”

The Reverend Witherspoon sprang to his own defence. “My portion of the love offering is no greater than any other member of the church.”

I parried. “Except for the double tithe for mission work. By now that must be a tidy sum.”

“I know the suspicions my past excites. It is Simon who collects, counts, and deposits the double tithe. Only he has the right to make withdrawals. It awaits the day when your brother and I set off to begin the long-delayed work. Happily, that day draws very near.”

I cried out in disbelief. “Simon, tell me this is not true!”

“It is true, Charles.”

“The both of you – why, you are mad as hatters!”

At this, Witherspoon bowed deeply to me, almost to his knees. Then he went to Simon, kissed him on both cheeks. “Thank you for the wine,” he said before departing with a monumental gravity, leaving Simon and me to continue the dispute. It was heated and very bitter. I attacked Witherspoon’s honesty; I attacked his sanity. Simon would hear nothing of it. I put it to him bluntly, Did he really, for an instant, believe that the Red Indians were the Lost Tribes of Israel. He said he did not. Then why, I wanted to know, was he willing to put himself in Witherspoon’s hands?

“Because the Reverend Witherspoon, believing the Indians are the Elder Brothers of Christ, will take the message of Jesus to them with the utmost respect. That is all I ask.”

I remembered Simon’s Red Indian, how my brother had treated him, as if he were an equal. I believed I knew why. “You pine for more Oronhyatekhas,” I said, “because they cannot see you for what you are – preposterous.”

The next day Simon moved out of our house in Grosvenor Square and into the Reverend’s quarters. It was my cruel words which drove him there and sealed his fate.

CUSTIS
We finally worked ourselves clear of the Sand Hills a couple of hours back. Travel is more comfortable, the land rolls easy. Low benches dropping away in comfortable dips, slowly climbing to a new view. But now we face a nasty, hot wind whistling down from the north.

All of a sudden, Barker stiffens on the wagon seat beside me, jerks the reins, hollers, “Whoa!” Aloysius’s in back, hiding from the scorching wind. The wagon braking so sudden, he sings out, “What is it, Custis?”

Neither Barker nor I answer, we’re too busy squinting, facing the blast, eyes smarting and teary-eyed. It’s dead quiet except for the wagon canvas, popping in the wind like one of the Captain’s champagne corks.

A half-mile off, in the lee of a ridge, stands an Indian camp. I feel Aloysius’s shoulders pressing up against my back, wriggling to catch sight of what’s stayed us here.

“Indian village directly ahead,” I tell Aloysius. He blinks into the wind.

“We oughter turn back,” Barker says. “Maybe they ain’t seen us yet.”

The Captain bustles up on horseback. “Why have you men halted! Move on!”

Barker points. “Indians.”

This braces the Captain. He turns ramrod straight in the saddle. “Potts!” he shouts. “I want you!”

Jerry Potts answers the summons, trots up to the Englishman’s side, followed by Grunewald’s wagon and the rest of the party. One glimpse of the village and Grunewald, Lucy, Charles, and Ayto all fasten their eyes on the Captain and Potts.

“Can you identify those natives for me, Potts?”

Potts sits slumped on his pony, fingers twisting and twining the mane. He wears a godawful unhappy look. “Blackfoot,” he answers softly. “Ghost camp. Everybody dead.”

It hadn’t struck me right off, but nothing is moving down there. No dogs raising Cain. No sign of horses. No fires. No women cooking meat or chipping robes. No children playing. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Ridiculous,” says the Captain. “How can they possibly be all dead?”

Then, as if to support the Captain’s assertion, a man stumbles into the middle of the ring of teepees, madly hailing us. The wind blots out most of what he shouts, but one or two words reach us, faint and forlorn. One of them I catch is an English word. Help.

The scene below screws the Captain’s mouth tight as a boy winds his first pocket watch. “I smell a trick. Perhaps those Indians intend to draw us down and spring an ambuscade.”

“No,” says Potts. “Everybody dead.”

“That one isn’t dead,” the Captain says sharply.

“That’s a white man. All the Blackfoot are dead. Maybe he brought it to them, the white scabs.”

At the mention of white scabs, the Captain gives Potts a blank stare.

“What the Indians call smallpox,” I explain.

The Captain pulls a glass out of his saddlebags and aims it at the fellow calling to us. The man’s growing more desperate with every second we delay heeding his appeal. Now he’s flapping his arms, hopping up and down like a crow tethered to a string.

Gaunt lowers the telescope. “That fellow indeed appears to be a white man. A white man in a most dreadful state. What can it mean?”

I say the obvious. “We aren’t going to know unless we go and see.”

Barker is having none of it. “Count me out. I don’t like the looks of it. I’m hired to drive. Not poke my nose into no Indian business.”

The Captain puts the glass back to his eye. Like the generals say, he’s studying the ground.

“Well, get yourself off this wagon and I’ll take her down,” I say to Barker.

Barker gladly resigns the reins. I turn to Aloysius. “You coming, or are you bailing out too?”

Aloysius hoists himself out of the back and on to the wagon seat. “Good man,” I say.

Gaunt, the pompous ass, hands out orders. “Potts, stay with the others to protect Mrs. Stoveall. My brother and I shall escort Mr. Straw in case of a ruse. Charles, arm yourself with a weapon from Barker’s wagon.” His brother hustles over to us and begins ransacking the armoury. He’s making a lot of dangerous-sounding noise behind me. I glance back and see him holding an English fowling piece out in front of him like a pikestaff, muzzle directed at my and Aloysius’s backs. “Maybe you better point that bird gun over the tailgate,” I suggest.

Away we go, Charles riding shotgun in our wagon, the Captain providing cavalry support. The woebegone castaway goes silent and still at the sight of succour approaching, doesn’t make so much as a step towards us as we pull up to the outskirts of the village. I notice three lodges blown over by the wind. From under one of them a pair of legs is sticking out. Dogs or coyotes have chewed the meat off them down to the bone. The half-roasted corpse of a warrior is laying in the ashes of a long dead fire. The top of his skull is gone, blown to kingdom come. A musket lies slanted across his chest. No doubt he sat down beside the fire and ended his misery by applying a gun barrel to his mouth. I’ve heard tell that even Indians who survive the smallpox sometimes turn to suicide when they see their disfigurement.

I don’t spot another of the bodies until it’s too late to steer clear of it. The wheels clunk over it with a stomach-turning bump, the horses shy at the rankness squashed out of it. It’s all I can to do to get the team stopped before they bolt right over the miserable figure patiently waiting on us, so far gone he doesn’t have the presence of mind to avoid getting trampled.

He starts to blubber, arms wrapped tight around his chest. “Lord,” he croaks, trying to trap his sobs from escaping, “ain’t I glad to see you, pards! Have pity on Matt Chisholm, carry him out of this place! Old Matt’s run out of rope.” Chisholm’s a bearded old-timer with a sun-burned bald pate and a fringe of lank, stringy grey hair that straggles down to his shoulders. A hide hunter, or wolfer from the look of him, buckskins stiff with old blood, rancid and shiny with grease. He’s bootless, feet cut to pieces, swollen and black. It makes you wonder how he’d been able to spring about so spry signalling us, but the prospect of rescue must have danced the pain right out of his feet.

The Captain fires a question at him. “What has occurred here, sir?”

The old man seems to be collecting himself some, but he’s still babbling. “I ran from them, mister. Washed up here when I couldn’t go one step further. Mister, don’t you let them lay hands on me again.”

“Whom do you refer to, Mr. Chisholm? Do you mean Indians? Were you the captive of these Indians?”

Chisholm shakes his head so hard his circlet of filthy hair whips from side to side. “Never was. No sir. Not held by Indians, no. I’d of had a deal kinder treatment from Indians. White devils was the ones that took me captive. Yes, sir, white fiends was what they was.”

There comes a lull in the wind, and the stench from the tents suddenly breaks full force in the noonday heat. Rotting flesh, juices stewing in the human gut. I hear Charles Gaunt retch in the back of the wagon and see the Captain go greenish, stop his nostrils with a handkerchief. It turns me just as queasy and makes Aloysius’s throat give a jump. The only one the reek doesn’t affect is Matt Chisholm, who’s been smelling it so long it must have cauterized his nose.