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_Wilderness of Spring_
By EDGAR PANGBORN
... For if I am in sore plight, I would not therefore wish affliction to be the lot of all the world. No, indeed, no! since, besides, I am distressed by the fate of my brother Atlas, who, towards the west, stands bearing on his shoulders the pillar of heaven and earth, a burthen not easy for his arms to grasp.
--AESCHYLUS, _Prometheus Bound_.
_Rinehart & Company, Inc._ NEW YORK TORONTO
_Published simultaneously in Canada by Clarke, Irwin & Company, Ltd., Toronto_
Copyright _1958 by Edgar Pangborn
Printed in the United States of America
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-5139_
_To my Sister_, MARY C. PANGBORN
NOTE: Pastor John Williams of Deerfield is a historical figure; Belding,Stebbins, Hoyt, Wells and Hawks were actual names in the Deerfield of1704. With these minor exceptions, all characters in this novel arecompletely fictitious, not intended to suggest any actual person livingor dead.
The language of the dialogue is a compromise, an attempt to convey somequality of early eighteenth-century speech, but not to create a literalreproduction of it, since that might be tedious and obscure in someplaces to modern readers. For a literal reproduction the worst nuisancewould have been those words, such as "naughty," that have changed not inform but in meaning or emotional charge. I have tried to avoid all theseexcept where the context should make plain their archaic sense. I thinkthe use of "thee" and "thou" is substantially correct. At that time thesecond person singular could be used in English as in most Europeanlanguages today, for intimates and children, but the universal "you" wasalready displacing it. The third person singular verb ending wasobsolescent but still in some use; "hath" and "doth" seem to havesurvived long after the ending was abandoned in other verbs.
In the modern (_Everyman_) edition of Montaigne, the essay that Mr.Kenny asks for is entitled "Of Training" instead of "Use Makes Perfect."The copy from Mr. Kenny's library was the seventeenth-centurytranslation by Charles Cotton.
My special thanks to Mrs. Kelsey Flower of Deerfield, who gave mewelcome aid with the research; and to the personnel of the State Libraryat Albany, N.Y. for their unfailing helpfulness and courtesy.
E.P.
PART ONE
_Chapter One_
High clouds drove across the dark toward abiding calm. Ben Cory watchedthem rolling under west wind down a winter sky, until his father's voicedrew him back into the pool of firelight and candleshine. The moment'salarm of loneliness lingered, another occasion when the self disturbedby the not-self desires the assurance of boundaries. Where does the selfend and the universe begin? Ben knew the inquiry to be a corridor wheremany doors open on darkness but not all.
Most of the days of that February had been whitely brilliant, the nightsheavy with malignant doubts of wartime. Outside Deerfield's palisade,where one did not go alone, Ben at fourteen could never forget theenemy, the Others. Indians and French--or say danger itself, a thing ofthe mind harsh as an arrow in the flesh. In the cave of darkness thatwas the garret at bedtime, with Reuben's breath tickling his shoulder,the thought of the Others often entered behind Ben Cory's eyes. If sleeprefused him his parents' talk might be recalled, and that sense of theOthers, the quiet-footed, would become a commentary like secretlaughter. They could laugh, those bronze people of the wilderness; theycould laugh and cry, as wolves do.
On this evening of the twenty-ninth of February, 1704, snow was driftedmightily against Deerfield's palisade, crusted and frozen over. Allwinter the village had shivered to warnings: the French might try it.Governor Dudley sent reinforcements as generously as other commitmentsof a scared Massachusetts would allow; then the waiting, and the snow.
Ben's father had recently received a letter from Great-uncle John Kennyof Roxbury. As he discussed it that evening with Ben's mother, the boyscould listen. From an Englishman who escaped Port Royal and reachedBoston, Mr. Kenny had learned the French were friendlier than ever withthe Abenaki tribes of Acadia. Joseph Cory read aloud: "I am moved towonder whether we may ever know a time when the good works of men shallbe no longer set at naught by embroilments of faction and credo, or bymaneuvering of states and principalities. It is a sorry thing that a manshould refrain from speaking his mind, overborne by the righteous whoforget it was said: _Be not righteous overmuch: Ecclesiastes vii; 16_. Ihate no man for that he believeth in other fashion than I do, be heAnabaptist, Quaker, Papist, I care nothing. He hath his light, so let melive by mine own."
Ben's mother was sewing, in her favorite small chair by the fireplace,the day's work never quite ended, candlelight mild on her dark face andher fingers that hurried because she was troubled. "Truly, Joseph, hedisplayeth much pride."
"Is it wrong, Adna, a man should be proud? Brave too--nay, reckless,seeing the letter might have fallen in the wrong hands."
"But--to make himself, as it were, judge of all things...."
Ben glanced at the enigma of his younger brother's face, wondering whichview Reuben would share.
Hesitantly Adna Cory said: "You've spoke, times, of inviting Mr. Kennyhere. I'd be pleased of course. In the spring, perhaps, before such timeas you'll be too busied with the plowing and all?"
Joseph Cory sighed. Ben's parents often left much unsaid, the silences acommunication not always excluding himself and Reuben. Neither nowmentioned the smallness of the house, the cramping difficulties ofliving on a raw frontier. Even by frontier standards the house wasmeager--two rooms downstairs and the lean-to where old Jesse Plum dweltin frowsty security; upstairs the garret and that was all. Ben knew hismother's family was or had been wealthy; so was Grandmother Cory inSpringfield. But Joseph Cory was proud, with a sharp-cornered aversionto owing anyone anything.
The land spread generously fruitful here at the edge of wilderness; goodtimes ought to bloom in this village if ever an end came to the alarmsand imperatives of war. Under that stress it suffered the bleakness of aplace often forgotten, where a handful of garrison soldiers tried tohold themselves ready for disaster, nourishing scant patience forDeerfield and not loved there. They cleaned their dark tools and cursedthe weather, the Indians, the French, the pay or lack of it, above alltheir own foolishness in joining the militia.
Ben's mother and father were surely wondering in silence how the housecould provide for such a guest as John Kenny, Grandmother Cory's elderbrother, a fabulous merchant-importer, owner of ships and warehouses ofthe fat Boston trade. To Ben, Uncle John was a figure of learning,wealth and magnificence moving seven or eight feet tall in a haze oflegend, mythical as Dudley or the Mathers or Queen Anne. Ben had heardhis father call Uncle John slight and frail--a stiff breeze would blowhim away; Ben's mind noted the information, his heart not accepting itat all. Joseph Cory said at last: "Well, Adna, he's sixty-seven. Isuppose he seldom leaves Roxbury, especially now when all's uncertain. Ihear the Boston road is fair as far as Hadley, but they mean for goodriders, young men. Up from Hadley 'tis what you remember, love, muddy asdammit even when the spring's past. And he's not in the besthealth--says so here, further on."
Ben noticed Reuben's face drooping in resignation. Ru would know, as Bendid, that even if Uncle John were invited he probably could not come.The untamed roads were lonely; an old man on horseback could die swiftlyfrom an arrow or bullet out of the brush.... Ben supposed he ought totake up a candle and persuade Reuben to bed. At fourteen Ben wasexpected to assume many of a man's respon
sibilities, not least of themthe jumpy task of riding herd on his brother, who would be twelve inMay.
Ben stood tall for his age, his slimness toughened by farm and otherwork to wiry flexibility. He could split wood nearly as well as hisfather, mend shoes better than Jesse Plum, manage the big kettles forhis mother's candlemaking. But he could search his face in a mirror forsigns of maturity and find maddeningly few. It remained a mild,large-eyed boy's face, high at the forehead, the jaw square but roundedat the chin. Father's craggy nose had character; Father was said toresemble Great-grandfather Stephen Cory, the sailor.
Legend placed Stephen Cory aboard Lord Howard's flagship when the Armadacame against England in 1588. It just might have been true, for he waspast middle life when he gave up the wild universe of the sea and begatBen's grandfather Matthew Cory, and he was in his salt-encrustedseventies when he died in 1643 in the little new town of Boston. Whetherthe myth was true or false, Stephen Cory lived gaudily in Ben's fancy,strutting the quarterdeck, thrusting a beaky face like Joseph Cory's tothe leaping spray and the enormous winds.
But Ben Cory in these prosaic modern times had grown resigned to a nosethat stayed straight and small like his mother's, and his mouth was wideand full like hers--not a mouth for sternness, said the mirror. If Benglared commandingly at the glass, somebody inside him hooted withmerriment. His voice had changed but could still crack; the down on hisface did not yet need shaving, being light in color.
"I never heard," said Joseph Cory, "that the Abenaki had any betterstomach for winter campaigns than any other damned Inj'ans."
Adna Cory bit off a thread. "Septembers, Octobers, after they have theirown corn harvested, then they come." Adna Pownal Cory would have beenthinking of many past times when summer was fading but no dead leaveslay fallen to rustle warnings of approach. "A September, was it not,when they attacked the Beldings? Poor Sam! Thou wast six that year,Benjamin, and all warrior with no mind to be hustled out of theway--remember?"
"Yes, Mother, I do." A September Sabbath. The Beldings had gone to bringtheir corn from the outer fields before the service, when Indiansambushed the wagon, raging briefly into the village and away.
The Corys were not members of the church. Joseph Cory had been broughtup in the congregation at Springfield, but when he came to Deerfieldwith his bride in 1688 he had declined either to join or to explain hisfailure to do so. Adna Cory was a member of the Anglican communion,which had been permitted to exist in Massachusetts for several years. Onmany Sundays and Lecture Days, in defense against public opinion, thefamily went to the meeting-house, the boys rigidly enduring the rhymedPsalms and the tedium of Mr. John Williams, who tended to preach in asort of febrile blank verse.
They had stayed at home on the morning the Beldings were ruined. Benremembered the explosion of Sabbath quiet into screams and shots, Fathersnatching the flintlock from its deerhorn rack and Mother gone verywhite, hurrying himself and four-year-old Reuben up to the garret. Benwas no warrior then--Adna Cory's fantasy developed that later, maybefrom Ben's insistence on crowding in front of Reuben because he hoped tosee what was going on.
For the Beldings help came too late--the mother and three childrenkilled, the father and two other children taken captive to Canada,another child wounded and left for dead. Later Ben watched a soldiercarrying in nine-year-old Sam Belding, who had revived and hidden in theswamp. The thin legs dangled; Sam's head rolled against the soldier'sjacket, a bloody mess. Sam lived. Ben at six had understood itadequately: we, and the Others. The village could be furious but notastonished. Sam Belding's head became a commonplace, like any pitiablething seen long enough for the seeing mind to grow its own scar.
"Now I think of it," Joseph Cory said, "there may have been Abenaki withthe French who raided Schenectady fourteen years ago." He left the tableto sit near the fire, long-limbed and rangy, tired from a day at thewoodpile and at mending harness. He adjusted a log on the flames andyawned, smiling at his cavernous noise, rubbing his palms up over hisforehead; a clean and sober man, still young. Ben grew bemused with afancy that his father's face had become translucent to some other firebehind the hawk-nosed profile, untidy sandy hair, pointed chin, friendlythin mouth, speculative gray eyes. "Those poor fools at Schenectady!That you don't remember, Ben. The meeting voted our palisade as soon asword came from Schenectady--early March, you but a few weeks old. I wasan angry man that year as well as proud." His glance at his wifeinvited sharing of other memories; Adna Cory lifted a dark eyebrow andblushed a little, not quite smiling. "We all labored beyond ourselves tobuild that stockade, Ben, chopping frozen ground. Had cause--they werecaught asleep at Schenectady, those Dutchmen. Men at Albany warned 'emof danger, but they were carrying on some factional quarrel with thepeople at Albany, and to show how lightly they held any word from thatsource they put up snowman sentinels. Marry come up!--and went to bed,so the Inj'ans and French walked in through the open gates. Snowmen!They that were butchered in bed were the fortunate. I'll neverunderstand my fellow men. Babes and women cut open and burned alive...."
The Abenaki, Ben knew, had not changed. Climbing out there with Reubenthe other day, he had seen the snow, high and hard-crusted against thestockade walls. Beyond the window clouds would be still rushing in theirsilence. Ben heard his mother saying in distress: "So long ago, Joseph!Let it be."
"Oh, Adna, I do rattle on.... I hear Captain Wells is not content aboutour palisade. It will stand, so we have men behind it, not snowmen. AndI hear the common talk that Dudley should have done better by us. Ithink he did what he could. What's one minikin village in all theMassachusetts?--but you can't ask the village to see it so, it a'n'thuman. Dudley's politics and religion cause them to damn him for allelse. Should caterpillars ravage the corn again it will be Dudley'sfault, same as the poor man keepeth the butter from coming in the chumand is to blame if Goody What's-'er-name hath a flux."
"I pray our Father we never need the stockade." Adna Cory's voice held adrawling note of fatigue or drowsiness, not responding to her husband'slabored mirth. She studied Ben; the one long glance, he knew, would tellher whether he needed buttons sewn on or holes mended, whether his faceand hands wanted washing, whether his supper had been sufficient,whether he was likely to remember about hearing and prompting Reuben inprayers at bedtime. The glance gave Ben a passing mark and moved on toembrace Reuben. "Mm--sitting there like Mumchance that was hanged forsaying nothing! Sleep got thee, Ru? Eyes drawing sand?"
Reuben smiled angelically and stretched, his thin face reflecting herown--small nose, high forehead, pointed ears. He bore an even moreemphatic resemblance to Ben, his eyes a darker gray. The ocean must begray like that, Ben supposed, the gray Atlantic that his father had onceglimpsed and never forgotten--speaking of it sometimes like a man whohas promised himself to revisit a mystery if the demands of dailyexistence ever allow it.
Ben knew that a vulnerable quality in Reuben troubled their father. Itwas easy to wound Reuben. Ben had done it more than once, without intentand with regret in the same moment. No doubt Joseph Cory prayed the boywould grow stronger armor with increase of manhood.
* * * * *
Reuben Cory watched his tall brother lift a candle in its pewter sconceand trim a blob of wax with his thumbnail. Ben's hand, firm below theflame and golden, brought Reuben the amazement of a miracle, a thingnever seen before. A familiar knife-scar on the forefinger--even thatwas new, though Reuben recalled quite well how Ben had got it ignobly ayear ago by losing his patience when Jesse Plum was showing him how towhittle a maple stick. A text from the prescribed Scriptural readingsounded in Reuben's mind, as happened so often when he was startled,delighted or disturbed: _I will praise thee, for I am fearfully andwonderfully made_. But it seemed to the boy that something here wasfalse. The thought might be dutiful and correct, yet was he actuallypraising the Lord for having made Ben beautiful? Why, hardly. Rather heknew, as with Puritan skill and insistence he searched his heart, thathe was more of a mind to praise Ben for being hims
elf--which was heresy,and of course absurd. Uncle John's letter must be to blame.
The marvel of Ben's hand moved out of the concentrated light. Reubenrose, aware that Ben wished him to come along without a fuss. Theletter, lying open as his father had left it on the table, pulled athim. His mother would not be pleased to have him study it. In spite ofthat, in spite of his own uneasiness, his eyes probed swiftly at it, andhungrily. Mr. Kenny had used a brownish ink; light slanting from a newangle as Ben moved the candle transfigured the writing to iridescentgold: _It is a sorrie thing that a Man should refrayne from speaking hisMinde.... He hath his Light, so let mee live by mine owne._ Reuben'seyes snatched a few lines further on, words his father had not readaloud: _Nor no man, by threat of Damnation nor Promiss of Paradise,shall ever betray me into the Folly of hating my Naybor, whether in thename of Princes who are but Men or in the name of a God I knowe not._
Reuben turned away clumsily, shocked and confused. It was clear why hisfather had read no more aloud. His mother might have offered no commentat all; but.... Ben was regarding him kindly, perhaps puzzled, acrossthe hot flower of the candle. "Come on, Ru----" and Ben's voice crackedwoefully, baritone to treble and back to a rumble.
Looking then at none of them, Reuben could feel certain lines of force:their mother's tender amusement at the cracking of Ben's voice, andBen's helpless annoyance at that amusement, and from the other seat bythe fireplace a quiet contemplation neither amused nor much concernedwith judgment. And here at the center of the lines of force, here withinhimself, a wonder much like a pain just below the ribs, that anyone soadmired and respected as Uncle John could be such a tremendous heretic._A God I know not?_--that shook the ground. And Reuben was certain that,for the present at least, he could not speak to his father about thatfretful thing under the ribs.
Nor even to Ben.
* * * * *
Ben noticed that Reuben was making less snickering circumstance thanusual of diving under the covers in the chill of the garret. Both hadwriggled into dark security before Ben remembered that Ru had not saidprayers at all--for him almost unprecedented--nor had Ben himself doneso. Uneasily Ben decided to let it go this once. Reuben had lapsed intoheavy stillness and would certainly resent a jab in the back. As forhimself, he could pray silently in bed: Father and Mother both said so.
So far as Ben knew, Reuben was sleeping as well as ever these nights,starting dutifully on his own side buried to the nose, but latertwitching in sleep, flinging himself about--frequently plagued, Benknew, by terrifying dreams. Often, when he was well down in sleep, hisarm would arrive on Ben's chest with a hard impatient flop; then,usually, quiet. Ben could not remove the arm without waking him, whichmight bring on an hour's talking-spell. Ben enjoyed those, but on theseFebruary nights Ben wanted to sleep, and an unfamiliar difficulty in itwas annoying him like a sore tooth.
Was he a coward, that he should die a little whenever some obscure nightnoise resembled distant shouts or gunfire? What was bravery anyway, andwhy could you never be certain you possessed it?
Had he stumbled into sin without knowing it? He could uncover no kernelof serious iniquity. All winter he had been rigidly good, because(Father said, Mother said) his brother looked up to him and needed theexample of virtue. Yet they ought to know--Mother surely did--thatReuben was the nearer to grace.
No angel of course. Ru's normally loving temper could be submerged insullen withdrawal or red-faced wrath. The brothers had quarreled a fewtimes; only a few, since for Ben the experience was too shattering,turning the natural world upside down in loss and destruction. NowadaysBen thought he knew how to read the danger signs and head off anexplosion.
It could not be sin that held him wakeful. More likely fear--listeningfor the town watch to become a voice instead of a crunch of boots. Benhad fallen into the habit of noting that squeak of leather on snow, thenstraying into some waking dream in which a stern Ben Cory with a thinnermouth played a heroic part or died interestingly.
He could enter other waking dreams, the only region where a warmpersonification of desire is unfailingly obliging, never gigglessecretly with other girls, never snuffles from a cold in the head ortalks back. More than a year ago Ben had suffered a three months'obsession with a tangible human being named Judith. He saw it now as achildish aberration of the far past--the girl's father was thetithingman; one must draw the line somewhere. He had seen Judith hardlyat all this winter, being no longer obliged to attend the littleDeerfield school; when he did glimpse her he was heart-free. But noflesh-and-blood creature had superseded her, and often in the wakingdreams his lively collaborator looked like Judith, as she said and didthose shameless things which were saved (he hoped) from sinfulness bythe covering assumption: We'd be married, of course, before we didanything like that, or that. Ben had spoken to the tangible Judithperhaps a dozen times during his obsession, as the occasions of schoolmade it flat-out necessary; to Judith of the dreams he spoke at length,wittily, memorably, relishing her praise, her sharing of all his views,as she whispered under his ear in the dark and Ben could imagine he knewthe sliding of a silken thigh and searching fingers.
Dreams of sleep followed no such intelligent direction. Ben experiencedfew of them, for usually his sleep was profound. The wench who did oncerecently delight him in one of these bore no resemblance to Judith oranyone. Ben had managed to glimpse little more of her than a pertearlobe and tumbling hair. The agony of climax had not even ended whenhe woke with wet loins and the exasperation of not quite remembering.Better and worse than waking dreams; worse because waking demolishedthem as full sunshine kills a rainbow, and better because they left himin something like temporary peace as no waking fantasy ever did.
Aware of the near warmth of Reuben, of Father and Mother sleepingdownstairs, and beyond the snow-burdened roof the hard great glitter ofFebruary night, Ben could also discover aloneness, a cool splendor ofthought wide-ranging, since a mind free of daytime bounds need recognizefew others, sometimes none at all.
Did Heaven and Hell fill everything beyond the earth? Well, how couldthey? Something else must include them, if only emptiness.
At the ancient game of contemplating time, Ben found no great alarm instaring down either direction of forever, while the brain refused toconceive an end or a beginning, but too much of this wearied him likean effort to grasp air in the hand. He could not follow thosespeculations without coming to something like a blank wall. Possibly Godput it there; possibly if God put the wall there men should stay awayfrom it.
On such cold nights, while Ben wrestled not too urgently with eternity,the house might achieve a transitory perfection of silence. Then acontracting beam would set off a snap like gunshot. It could be realgunshot; after thin worry of listening Ben would know it was not. Hemight hear his father downstairs sigh and turn over in the four-posterthat would not quite accommodate his long legs. Down in the fireplace anember might pop in the banked-up ash--like a knocking, like floorboardsdisturbed by an otherwise noiseless footfall. Out in the shadows avillage dog might bark, and Ranger in the shed boom back at him.Sometimes the gray cat Bonny, who liked to come smokefooting in and curlon the boys' bed, would take to snoring lightly. If it was a night whenJesse Plum's narrow ruddy nose was troubling him, Jesse in his lean-tomight imitate anything from a waterfall to a hog-killing. Or Ben wouldhear the hollow baritone of an owl, the lamenting of a wolf, the nearlyhuman scream of a mountain cat. But true silence also might arrive, andit would seem to Ben that if he could himself be silent as the dark,permitting no least sound of breath, there might come to him anothermoment of revelation such as he had once known--he could not quiterecall the time--when he had dropped on his back in the grass, andlooking up, had discovered the brilliant life of new birch leavesbetween him and the immortal blue of spring.
* * * * *
Reuben was wakeful too, but sought to conceal it by lying motionlesseven after his back began to itch, since the desire for talk was atpresent not i
n him. For a while he was both hurt and relieved that Benhad not reminded him to pray. But terror was latent in this; his mindwinced away from it and sought the consolation of a decision: as soon asBen should fall asleep--and Ben usually snored a little--he would get upand stand by the window and atone for the omission by offering up abetter prayer than usual, one in fact that he preferred Ben not to hear,since he particularly intended to ask God's blessing on Ben himself.Once the decision was reached the comfort of it was genuine, allowinghis body to relax as fear dissolved away. Unaware of the surreptitiousapproach of sleep, he found himself recalling things far away, whereverit is that yesterdays go, and at the same time wondered why his mindshould so becloud itself with forgetting. He wanted--after a time quiteeagerly wanted to recreate a certain day, the day when Jesse Plum andthe Indian Meco brought in a lion. As he invited it the recollectionbrightened, yet remained under a nimbus of the not-remembered.
Reuben knew Jesse Plum's history in a general way. The old man hadarrived from England as an indentured servant some time in the early1670's, a long-jawed hulk with certain fixed ideas, one of which wasthat nobody loved him any more than you could put in your eye and seenever the worse. After his first term of servitude he had drifted toSpringfield and cemented himself to Grandfather Matthew Cory's familywith the suctorial power of the meek. Reuben knew that in the same yearwhen his father and mother were married and came to Deerfield,Grandfather Cory died, and after his death Grandmother Rachel Cory hadno place for a godless sot; her son at Deerfield casually inheritedJesse, and Jesse did nobly, working for his keep and a trifle over,aware that Goodman Joseph Cory could seldom be stern toward anyone buthimself.
Jesse's thin nose, wedged between gently wandering milky blue eyes,possessed an intuition for alcohol, as a good bloodhound's nose willhold him firm on the trail. Jesse never rebelled nor complained. Hismention of the Pain in his Back was simply a special kind of breathingwith words, his muscle the sort of unlovely boot-leather that can alwaysbeat out one more day's wear. He tended to be somewhere else atplowing-time, and Reuben had seen him approach overt emotion in thepresence of a woodpile, but he never failed at harvest--Jesse was doinghis best and said so himself. A neighbor, Benoni Stebbins, observingJesse's slowly receding back, once declared in Reuben's hearing thatsome men are born tired--the charitable heart can only hope they'll findtime for enough rest before Judgment.
Jesse talked most colorfully when resting; Jesse was a man of memories.In youth he had known the Great Plague of 1665 and the fire that laidLondon flat the following year; of these he almost never spoke, but heloved to croak on by the hour with less sorrowful recollections of themotherland.
The Indian Meco must have met inquiries about his true name with abubble and purr of Algonkian syllables inconvenient for English tongues.Reuben had almost forgotten him until tonight, and calculated in thedark: that was four years ago, the day they brought in a lion. Reubencould then find Meco's image--scrawnily tall, gnarled, bald, the softerwrinkles of his eroded face fallen in from a bulging forehead andstupendous hooked nose. Meco wore a cast-off English bodice as afavorite breechclout. A Pocumtuck, he was believed to have claimed inhis bruised English. If that was true he had reason for a desolate oldage: the Mohawks almost annihilated that nation in 1664, and the remnantwas further cut down in King Philip's War of 1675-'76 against theEnglish. Not too small a war--Joseph Cory remembered it as a backgroundthunder of his own childhood. The Indians burned Springfield; atDeerfield an innocent small stream earned the name of Bloody Brook andbore it still. The war ended when Sachem Metacomet of the Wampanoags,called King Philip, was betrayed by one of his own people and shot, andmost of the survivors of his tribe were sold by the irritated Saints ofMassachusetts into West Indian slavery.
Meco lived and foraged God knew where--somewhere in the highlands beyondthe Pocumtuck River. At least Reuben had always seen him appear fromthat direction, an undecipherable message out of the region of sundownand west wind.
The Day of the Lion--midsummer of four years past, so Ben had been tenand Reuben a little past eight: the year the century turned. Jesse Plumvanished before sunrise; by afternoon the household grew convinced hehad wandered off with Meco. The two satisfied each other inconversation, an affair of huge parturient silences, a drink, a furtherscanning of horizons--all this a genuine mental mining rewarded in theend by the substantial nugget of a grunt.
When the family sat at supper one of the Hoyt boys danced in, expandedwith joy, announcing: "They killed a catamount!" The youth was swoopingon when Joseph Cory asked: "Boy--who did? When, pray, and how, may a manarise to inquire?"
"Well, they killed a catamount," said the younger Hermes, and fled, notwishing to miss any more of the triumph which was entering the northgate of the stockade, collecting startled admirers. A progress of two,Jesse Plum and Meco, bearing on a pole between them the corpse of amountain cat. They were both drunk as David's sow. Respectfully theydumped the tawny ruin in the dooryard.
"In the hills," Jesse Plum declaimed. "Yah!" He waved (Goodman Cory's)gun approximately east, toward the Pocumtuck Range. "Now he'll slay nomore cattle." He set the gun down with care. "Why, he might've attacktedthe boys, then I couldn't never 've forgave myself, no never." Jesselifted knotty hands defying all powers that could threaten the Corychildren, and Meco began a stately shuffle, perhaps the tentative offerof a victory dance, but found himself in the wrong mood. Smiling ateveryone, Jesse explained: "'S the Lord's guidance."
Father asked: "There's been cattle killed?"
Jesse was immediately hurt and sulky. "Not never again by thisbeast--heart-shot he be." He nodded where he thought Meco was probablystanding. "Good man--whoreson good man there."
Reuben could remember seeing and hearing all that through a doorwaypartially filled by his mother's grace; he could remember squeezing inbeside her, her arm dropping on his shoulder, her finger twisting in hishair, which he still wore quite long in those days. He could rememberher bubbling with suppressed laughter. Ben was already outside, standingslim beside Father, contemplating Jesse's performance with adultgravity.
The carcass lay at some distance, and a damp east wind was blowingtoward the river, but even from the first that lion had not lookedright. Bloated and not bloody; flies were settling. "Oh!" Mothersaid--"thankful heart! It hath a--a little stink."
Meco was not as drunk as Jesse. He spread dark fingers in resignation."Big stink," he amended, and strode off into rainy twilight, leavingJesse to salvage what he might of glory.
So far as Reuben recalled, Meco never came back. After he had gone--butnow at twelve Reuben could not bring the rest easily to mind.
Father had not found it so amusing. Jesse must have been obliged to burythe carrion and spend sober hours longing for invisibility. In followingdays, no doubt, whenever Jesse joined a gathering, say at the ordinaryor leaning on a fence or discussing a bottle behind a shed, someonewould make a soft faraway mention of catamounts, and Jesse would besurrounded by that shattering New England laughter which is performedwithout moving a muscle of the face or emitting any sound of any kind.
Then, within the obscurity of this last night of February, Reuben didremember more. Shame had stirred within him for Jesse Plum, who hadalways owned the status of a friend, old but accessible and a spinner oftales. Jesse knew everything, Reuben had once supposed--wild secretthings, winds and weather signs, the enigma of women's flesh and one'sown, charms against disaster, skin-prickling histories of what witchesmight do to cause it, and endless gaudy tales of England in the days ofKing Charles. If you could believe Jesse Plum--Reuben had, once--hisyouth before the Plague would have terrified Marlborough and made astallion blush. Jesse could tell of monsters too--basilisk, mandrake,unicorn, sea serpent. Jesse liked to hint murkily that once during themiserable Atlantic passage to the colonies he had glimpsed a Somethingrising from the bowels of the deep, and never quite got around to sayingwhat it was. He could explain the simpler stories written by furred feetin the snow, by iron bear-claws high on
a tree trunk. From a blur and aspot of blood he could make you see a mouse becoming a midnight dinnerfor an owl, and then set your spine wriggling with a hint that maybe itwas not exactly an owl but like one. For a long time--long anyway toReuben Cory--the brothers had settled many private arguments by: "We canask Jesse."
Drunk or no, it had not been right that a tall grown man, an old man,should act the clown. It had not felt right to watch Jesse with the deadlion when his sweating grayish face turned lost and vague and crumpledin a stupid chuckle of apology.
And then as Meco stalked away, Ben had looked around, not smiling butstartled, awed--clearly aware, as Reuben was, of an astonished sharing.The Day of the Lion was perhaps the first day when Reuben understoodthat Ben was a person too. Before that, an image worshipped, slightlyfeared, not consciously loved. Afterward, a separate self, a brightlyvisible human being with gray eyes. On that rainy evening four yearsago, Reuben now remembered, he had soon looked away from Ben's warmstare, not quite able to bear it, and had resolved in secret: I'll neverquarrel with him again. The resolution had been broken of course, onceor twice....
* * * * *
Ben Cory dwelt in a natural multiplicity of worlds. He could be activein the world of Deerfield's daily occasions: the reasonable labors onhis father's farm grant; the school remembered from last year, whereRu's offhand brilliance at the piddling studies was now making himdisliked, and Ben no longer there to prevent the occasional bloody noseor comfort him after a pedagogic birching; the not-friendly church; theclumsy kindness of some boys and girls of the village, and the mindless,furtively obscene cruelty of others; nearer to him sometimes than any ofthese, the quiet land itself in the flowing of the seasons, the smellsof summer morning and of the milky breath of cattle, the open fields andmarshes, the frame of low hills and the all-surrounding presence ofmaple and beech and oak and pine, the wilderness.
Ben knew the unique world his mother's presence created, where withoutmuch discomfort he was on his good behavior. With another sort of goodbehavior he could enjoy the world of being-with-Father, one often litwith unexpected mirth and kindness.
He possessed a sense of the outer world: an important Massachusetts, ahalf-mythical Canada inhabited hatefully by the Others, a New York notvery real, an England thought of as Home--in a perfunctory way becauseof the ocean that made England, for a Deerfield boy, only slightlynearer than the moon. From his father Ben gained some clear perceptionof the war, the giants France and England raging over old hates and newadvantages under two sick and stubborn sovereigns, Queen Anne of Englandand the doddering Sun King Louis XIV of France--yet the ocean itself wasmore actual to Ben than England or the war, for Ben's own father hadseen it once on a boyhood visit to Dorchester. He said, if your ear layclose on the pillow at night, the murmuring you heard then was notunlike the moaning of breakers on sand, and why shouldn't a boy (saidJoseph Cory) send himself to sleep by listening? The sound was eternal,Joseph Cory said--somewhere, always, ocean was breaking on the sand.
North of Deerfield the greater wilderness was a world inviting no one, aforest too old for imagining: green rounded hills secret in distance,swamps, valleys obscure, streams of unknown sources. That belonged tothe bear and mountain lion, to the deer with midnight eyes and the comicgrandeur of moose; to the rabbit--bouncing bread and butter of thewilderness--and the fox and weasel who followed him; to the down-footedlynx and quiet-sliding rattlesnake. Hunters, trappers and fur-tradersknew something of that land, and had for nearly a hundred years.
The Abenaki knew everything about it--green depths of spring andbalsam-pungent air, ardent stillness of forest summer afternoon, autumnexplosions of gold and scarlet, and all the ways for men on an errand ofkilling to travel through it in silence when the ground was white andthe evergreens bowed down and the northern lights a wavering of madnessbetween them and the February moon.
Ben was welcome in yet another world as no one else was: a world thatexisted only when Reuben willed it.
Ru's talking-spells began when he was about six and able to find hiddenhens' nests in the shed, to the sharp-faced ladies' continuingindignation. At that time the Corys still maintained the yellow-neckedrooster brought as a youth from Springfield (senile and resembling LouisXIV in other ways but named Sir Pudden) who believed himself master ofthe shed and hated Jesse Plum's boots. He and Ranger and Bonny knew allabout the nests. Ranger avoided them from a rigid sense of honor, withonly a pensive lift of the white eyebrows in his black face. Sir Puddenstood about in glamorous attitudes--second nature if you have twelvewives, all of them cloth-heads. Bonny entered the shed in those days ona moral tiptoe, never certain whether the armed truce with Sir Puddenwas still in force. Sir Pudden, to Reuben's extreme sorrow, regretfullybecame soup in the year 1699. Even sorrow was grist for Ru's talk-mill.
Bemused by the chickens' personalities, Reuben elaborated names for allof them--Martha, Patience, Hoobah, Binega, many others. Every new batchof fluff-balls drove him to a dither of vicarious maternity. At night hekept Ben awake with flowing tales in which these names acquiredquasi-human characters who could range up and down in a special worldwith horizons of Reuben's choosing.
In the conventionally documented world nobody ever chopped WilliamStoughton into small red gobbets. That vinegar-blooded Saint, deputygovernor during the witchcraft frenzy of 1692 and again later, died in1701, but not in the small red gobbets Duchess Hoobah made of him in oneof Reuben's narratives. The conventionally documented Stoughton wouldnot have been interested to learn how an obscure Joseph Cory,remembering 1692, had loathed him out loud in the presence of wide-earedchildren. It didn't matter. The past of one, or two, or two thousandyears, the fluid present, the future that can exist only in myth, allcame to focus in Reuben's here-and-now, in the theme and variations of asmall clean mouth chirping in the dark.
Ben seldom suppressed the talk. He liked to offer details of adultwisdom, or new words that Reuben would roll with relish on the tongue.The stories gained in sophistication, especially during the last threeor four years, when the boy had developed a taste for listening to JessePlum. Princesses appeared; decapitations were limited to villains,wizards and Frenchmen. Allegory too: the tales no longer rambled butwere innervated by unifying purpose, and Ben knew rather plainly that hewas receiving gifts from a mind altogether separate and unlike his own.Ru also acquired some tact, and awareness of the times when Benpreferred to sleep.
If he itched with questions, though, and found Ben reluctant to answer,Ru might take advantage of his smaller size, punch and prod, try tosmother Ben with the covers or nag after the forbidden tickle-spot atthe edge of the ribs. He could hurt if he gripped a handful of hair, buthe generally managed to stop short of open war. Ben imagined, sometimeswith uneasiness, that his brother could study his mind, feel with hisnerves, control him as a small man controls a big horse with wit alone.After such assaults, secondary eruptions would demonstrate that thelittle wretch was still awake--pinches, pokes, muffled war whoops,prohibited words: original sin taking its own time to simmer down.
Nowadays Ru's stories would be delivered _sotto voce_, lest Father shoutup telling the boys to go to sleep. The hushed story-teller's voiceilluminated the inner world, making of the night a sheltering room. Benwould be more aware of his brother than if darkness had not hiddenhim--the warmth, the harmless small-boy smell of him, above all thevoice and its comic or startling or grandiose inventions....
Ben sighed in the exasperation of insomnia, and slid out of bed to standbarefoot in the cold, saying a proper prayer in an undertone. His motherpreferred to kneel, but admitted it was wise to conform to surroundingcustom lest one forget in a public place. Puritans did not kneel,regarding it as a mark of popery. Faintly relieved, Ben walked to thegarret window to glance into the winter night, wondering if a darkmoving thing he saw was that it ought to be. Yes--the watch, on hisrounds. Ben could make out the black stem line of a jutting flintlock.The shadowy important man marched along the northern limit of thestockad
e, passing out of sight to Ben's left behind the meeting-house.
"Ben, what ails thee?--can't sleep?"
"Restless." Ben stumbled back into bed shivering, squirming down awayfrom the cold. "Go back to sleep--sorry I disturbed thee." It must beafter midnight, Ben thought, and all well. But as he tried to settlehimself, inviting sleep with a better conscience, the snow outside thepalisade, pressed high against the logs, nagged at him like the thoughtof a broken lock on a back door.