At the Far End of Nowhere

by Christine Davis Merriman

  “After we learned of Urchie’s death, my mammy, Lovenia, went to care for her sister—Urchie’s mother, Aunt Cealanne. I drove Mammy over there in the wooden oxcart I built myself. I had a team of oxen named Pilot and Lively—trained them myself to pull that cart. Pilot was the steady one. He kept the cart on track. Lively was the spirited one. He kept the cart moving at a good pace, even through the boggy stretches.

  “Pilot and Lively drew the cart, as far as its wheels would turn, deep into Fallen Angel Swamp, jouncing precariously along that dirt road’s narrow ruts. My mammy sat beside me, balancing a big wicker basket chock-full of covered dishes and clean linens for our stricken relatives.

  “About a hundred yards from our destination, a bog cut through the road. Oh, Lively made valiant efforts to keep that cart moving! But finally, he gave in to Pilot’s better judgment, and the cart came to a halt, up to its axles in mud.

  “Mammy and I were forced to abandon the wagon. I unhitched the team and tied them to a chestnut tree. I toted the basket of provisions and slogged alongside my mammy the rest of the way, through the murkiest water I’m ever likely to see, toward a careening slab-board house. As we got closer, I could see that the house was built on a finger of soil that pushed out just a few feet above the far edge of the bog. The closer we got, the more that house seemed to back away and cower in the shadows of a dark hardwood forest. A small chicken coop huddled near one side of the house. As we crossed the narrow front yard, we passed Urchie’s grave—newly dug and filled.

  “When we got inside the house, it smelled so bad I nearly passed out. But I followed my mammy up those steep, narrow stairs to the only bedroom in that house. It was right under the roof. The ceiling was so low I had to duck my head.

  “Come to find out, Urchie’s father, my Uncle Willie, was away on a shooting trip, and the rest of the family members were all there, sick in just one bed. Urchie was survived by a younger sister, a scrawny girl they called Tickintit. She was in that bed fretting, trying to sleep beside her mother underneath a vomit-soaked quilt.

  “Aunt Cealanne was in a family way, and she had herself propped up on one elbow, moaning and puking over the side of the bed. Excrement was smeared on the bedsheets. Chamber pots were poking out from under the bed and spilling over onto the floor. In one corner, a wooden commode was overflowing.

  “My Cousin Tickintit was thought be ‘tetched,’ that is, not quite right in the head. When she was just a little girl, no more than seven, she learned that the fried chicken drumstick she had just eaten for supper was none other than her favorite hen, Magnolia!

  “Well, now, Tickintit was overcome with sadness. Her father swore to her that Magnolia had been ailing, otherwise he would never have grabbed her off the eggs she was nesting.

  “So, on that stagnant spring evening, driven by a fierce, albeit somewhat unnatural, maternal instinct for those motherless eggs, Tickintit climbed the wooden ramp to the henhouse, gently removed Magnolia’s four eggs from the nest, and carried them in the skirt of her dress to the upstairs bedroom.

  “She took the eggs to bed with her, nestled in her underpants. Cousin Tickintit clucked like a mother hen, and vowed she would hatch those chicks herself. For weeks, she refused to leave the bed and abandon those eggs. Aunt Cealanne accommodated her daughter by bringing her food in bed.

  “When word of this behavior spread, some of the more self-important parishioners at St. Ignatius got together to beseech Father Martin to call on and counsel my dim-witted cousin and my weak-willed Aunt Cealanne.

  “Though Father Martin declined to set foot on what he called ‘the devil’s own doorstep,’ he did consent to hold an expiatory novena for the cursed family.

  “As for Tickintit, she stayed in that bed with those eggs until they had turned rotten and started to stink.

  “One muggy afternoon in late spring, Tickintit got up, went to the outhouse, and tossed those foul eggs into the pit latrine. Then she resumed her customary occupations as if nothing strange had happened. She came back to our one-room schoolhouse, where she sat next to me. And she whispered out loud, repeating voices that spoke to her in Latin, ‘Cave, cave, Deus videt.’ Beware, beware, God sees! ‘Ad maiorem Matris Glorium.’ For the great glory of the Mother.”

  There, side by side, in that one-room country schoolhouse, we heard the voices of angels and saints and prophets. But no one besides Tickintit and me seemed to hear them.”

  For some reason, hearing old-time stories from my daddy is comforting to me, grounding.

  “Tell me the story about Moses Queen, Daddy.”

  I’ve heard this story many times before, and Daddy tells it a little bit differently every time. But that’s what’s so beautiful about stories. They take you to a space somewhere beyond right or wrong, correct or incorrect, accurate or inaccurate. A place that’s free and clear and pure, somehow. That’s why I like words better than numbers. Words give you room to escape, to pretend, to imagine what if…

  “So, Lissa,” Daddy begins.

  “Once upon a very long time ago, I knew an old, old black man, a former slave by the name of Moses Queen. Some folks said he must be older than Methuselah. Said he was a young man in Civil War times.

  “Well, now, Moses Queen lived in a cabin deep in Fallen Angel Swamp. My Pappy’s tobacco farm at Tulip Hill butted right up onto the swamp near the mouth of the Loco Moco River, and sometimes, Moses Queen helped us crop tobacco.

  “I loved to listen to that old black man telling his stories. So sometimes, coming home from school, I would purposely take a detour over to Moses Queen’s place.

  “One afternoon, I came upon Moses splitting logs outside his cabin. Soon as he saw me, he dropped his axe, sat on the chopping block, and patted a spot on the ground next to him.

  “I took my customary place, sitting cross-legged on the dark, clammy earth.

  “Now, Moses Queen had the blackest, most wrinkled face I have ever seen. Deep creases and crevices etched across it like bottomless furrows plowed into fertile black soil. When he strained at his work, the skin on his cheekbones flushed a dusky purple, but the rest of his body was taut and shiny. His muscles, when he flexed them and worked up a sweat, rippled with hints of chestnut and gold. A dark, irregular weave—like grain running through the finest cocobolo heartwood—traced through his tendons, and glinted as if it had been polished to a sheen.

  “Moses picked up a stick of wood, began to whittle it, and embarked on his story about the fine white gentleman who had crossed his path.

  “‘You know, boy,’ says Moses, ‘it was just about this time of day, just before sunset, when I was making my way home through Fallen Angel Swamp. And what should I spy but a horse come galloping along like a bat out of Hades, carrying a handsome young gentleman, riding alongside another white man. Now, this gentleman in all his finery looked right bad, pale as a ghost and tormented-like. He pulled up sharp in front of me, leaned toward me from his saddle, and said in the most graceful of tones, “Boy, could you help me out. I’m lost in this godforsaken bog.”

  “‘I looked him up and down, and well, his leg looked like it was busted and had been patched up, and his face looked so pitiful and twisted, like his soul was in the deepest of turmoil.

  “‘Well, you know, the pathways through that swamp is laid out like a puzzle with false leads and cutoffs and undergrowth that blocks your way. Course, I know Fallen Angel like the back of my old black hand. So, I guided him and his companion, used my homemade machete to bushwhack through them laurel and rhododendron thickets.

  “‘Guided him and his friend safe and sound through that swamp, and delivered him to a Confederate safe house he knew of, just outside the swamp. The hurt man’s friend rapped on the door, and the fine gentleman made a case for himself. By and by, the owner came out on his front porch. I overheard them all talking, and it seemed like them two men was in need of help to get across the Potomac and into Virginia.

  “‘The handsome white gentleman gave me some money f
or my trouble, for which I thanked him very kindly. Then I bade them all farewell, and made my way back home in the moonlight.

  “‘Well, it turned out to be a right funny situation, after all. Come to find out, by and by, I had played a bit part in the chronicles of time.

  “‘The newspapers was reporting different stories about where this man was, and who it was helping him. And there was talk about how a black man—some said a former slave, some said a half-breed or a We-Sort, you know, we-sorts-of people (mixed black, Piscataway, white)—came to the aid of an actor named John Wilkes Booth who broke his leg escaping from the Ford Theater in Washington, D.C., after assassinating President Abraham Lincoln.

  “‘Seems this Mr. Booth was making his escape through our own Fallen Angel Swamp here in Charles County. In fact, it was a local doctor, one Samuel Mudd, who patched up that actor’s leg.

  “‘Turns out he had left Mudd’s place and was trying to outmaneuver the Union soldiers who were swarming like bloodhounds over the countryside, hunting him down. To elude them, he wound up having to cross through Fallen Angel Swamp, which was foreign territory to him.

  “‘That plantation I guided him to was home to a Confederate sympathizer, who helped that handsome play actor—the very man who felled our President Lincoln—make the rest of his way to safety—across the Potomac, in a hired flatboat, to Virginia.’

  “‘But why did you help that man, Mr. Moses?’

  “‘Well, first I must confess to you that I was downright enchanted by him. This Booth was the most beautiful white man I had ever seen—countenance like a porcelain doll baby, raven black hair, flowing mustache,’ Moses Queen replied.

  “‘And he spoke his words so fine and melodious. He was quite an actor! It was like he was puttin’ on the voice of the Angel Gabriel. Or maybe he could have been the devil, playacting his part in history.

  “‘But it seemed to me at the time,’ Moses added, smiling a most glorious smile, ‘that I was just helping one of God’s lost children. Now, you remember that, young Stouten. Always remember that we are all, after all, God’s own children.’”

  Daddy stops speaking and gives me a look to see how I’m reacting. Then he stands up and acts out the rest of the story.

  “Now remember, Lissa, Moses Queen was a tall, lean man with a powerful, sinewy build. And at this point in his narrative, Mr. Queen would always pause for effect. Then he would stand and draw himself up to his full height, expand his powerful chest, and hold forth like a preacher.

  “‘Besides,’ Moses Queen concluded, ‘I figure Mr. Booth has either gone to hell or is destined to spend quite some time a-struttin’ and a-frettin’ upon that fiery stage in purgatory.’

  “And with that, Moses would slap his thighs and bust out laughing so hard, it echoed as far as it could go before being swallowed up forever in the dark abysses of that infernal swamp.”

  Hearing Daddy’s tale about Moses Queen makes me wonder what Daddy really thinks about black people. When he uses the n-word, I think he must be prejudiced. But when he talks about Moses Queen, he seems to make Moses the hero of the story. I think this must be what my teacher Mrs. Comey means in English class when she talks about ambiguity in the stories we read. She says that, sometimes, words allow a writer to convey an “uncertainty of meaning.” It explains how my daddy can be prejudiced and not prejudiced at the same time. Mrs. Comey says that understanding human nature requires us to come to terms with contradiction, and creative language allows us to waltz with ambiguity. All of this helps me deal with my own struggle with maybe, maybe not.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS TREE

  THIS Christmas, when I am fourteen, is a sad one for Daddy and Spence and me. Thick snow begins to fall the day before Christmas Eve, slowing, impeding—and finally stopping—traffic. Northern Baltimore County succumbs to a profound silence, buried beneath a shroud of white. Snowdrifts form along fences; dirt and gravel driveways disappear. The county plows priority-one roadways and designated snow routes first. Our narrow, less-trafficked, country roads must wait. And we must clear—or pay to have cleared—our own driveway. By morning, we are snowbound at the farmhouse.

  As the snow tapers off, Spence borrows one of Daddy’s saws, and together, we trudge toward the narrow strip of trees that still stands beyond the new houses. These few remaining trees stand like weary sentinels along the steep ridge that used to divide our fields from those of George Clay’s neighboring farm. Now, like remnants of a defeated army, they stand watch between the eastern and southern sections of Cory’s Ridge.

  Spence and I tread cautiously now, fearful that we might be caught trespassing. Between mongrel evergreens and inbred deciduous specimens, we spy a small scraggly fir—short in stature, thin of branch, but definitely a Christmas tree. Spence cuts it down, and I follow as he drags it home across the snow.

  We call it our Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and decorate it with a few of the ornaments kept stored in the attic. A single string of lights is almost too much for the fragile tree to bear, and the larger Christmas balls bob and dangle precariously from the puny branches. The angel, whose feathers are molting, is too heavy for the little tree, so we prop her up on top of the old upright piano Daddy bought me a few years ago from his old German piano-tuner friend, Mr. Spiegel, for two hundred dollars.

  Mr. Spiegel comes to visit annually to tune the piano for free. He drives an ancient-looking car with running boards, and always wears the same old-school suit and wide tie, with a fresh rosebud set just so in one of its wide lapels. Invariably, Mr. Spiegel greets me with a courtly handshake, presents me with a two-pound box of chocolates, and presses a five-dollar bill into my palm.

  We try to carry on as usual and celebrate a normal Christmas, but for the first time in my life, no presents are waiting under the tree, and our Christmas stockings hang empty. The snow stops us from getting out to buy anything.

  I boil chestnuts and bake a ham for Christmas dinner. Then Spence and I try to amuse ourselves, and pass the afternoon playing board games—Monopoly and Clue—and card games like gin rummy and I Declare War. Daddy joins us in playing Authors, giving funny names to the famous writers depicted on the cards. He dubs Charles Dickens “Old Snaggly Puss.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow becomes “Old White Beard,” Robert Louis Stevenson is “Mr. Droopy Whiskers,” and Louisa May Alcott is christened “Miss Ruffles.” I end the day by playing a few carols on the piano and reading the Christmas story out loud to Daddy and Spence from the Book of Luke.

  On the day after Christmas, Spence retreats to his bedroom to sleep and read science fiction. Daddy and I occupy our usual spots in the dining/living room—me on the sofa, Daddy in his threadbare gray armchair. Daddy pulls out his worn leather wallet and shows me, for the umpteenth time, the blurry antique photo of a baby squirrel he carries with him, always, and begins a rambling story about cold winters and pets and Christmases on Tulip Hill.

  “One Christmas morning when I was about your age, Lissa, it was so cold that all the chamber pots were frozen solid. We children all ran downstairs to find the oranges and hard candy and chocolates and firecrackers that old Santa Claus had left in our Christmas stockings. After breakfast, I went out with my brothers to set off the firecrackers in the lane. John, my oldest brother, dared me to go out to the barn and lick a wagon wheel. Well, I did, but, of course, the saliva froze, leaving my tongue stuck fast to the wheel. When I pulled my tongue free, I could see a little piece of pink skin stuck to the cast-iron rim. After that, I learned that John was not a brother I should take a dare from.

  “Later that same day, I went walking through the woods. Found a baby red squirrel abandoned in a leaf nest, fallen to the ground at the foot of a big oak tree. I rescued that little fella, named him Chicoree. Carried him around in my pocket for days. Built him a little wooden cage and carved and glued some sticks to make a tiny wheel for him to play on.”

  Daddy leans over from his armchair and strokes my arm.

 
“You must always take care of your pets, Lissa. When you make an animal into a pet, it forgets how to take care of itself. I loved my little Chicoree. I loved him so much that the night before I went back to school, I fed him candy from my Christmas stocking.

  “In the morning, I found my little Chicoree dead in his cage. That goes to show you, Lissa, that the wrong kind of love, no matter how well-intended, can be poison.”

  I listen, nod in agreement, and hold Daddy’s hand. I have always made pets of orphaned animals—baby chicks, a baby duck dropped by a hawk on our property, a gray lamb whose mother wouldn’t nurse him, plenty of stray cats and dogs.

  “You know,” Daddy tells me, “my pappy loved animals. And it nearly broke his heart when he accidentally killed his favorite guinea keet. That little keet would eat cracked corn right out of my pappy’s hand, followed him everywhere. Then one day, when Pappy was working in his toolshed, he stepped back, not thinking, not knowing the keet was there. Stepped back hard and killed that innocent little creature. My pappy sat right down and cried.”

  I can see that Daddy is fighting back a few tears himself, and plucking at his hair.

  “Stop pulling the hair out of your head, Daddy!” I grab his wrist and pull his hand away from his scalp. “I love you, Daddy. Don’t do that.”

  Two days past Christmas, the snow plows make it through the drifts, and I help Spence shovel our driveway. Finally, we venture out to buy each other belated Christmas gifts. Daddy drives a 1964 maroon Corvair Monza, a replacement for the 1950 Olds that gave out not long after we lost Jimmie. This new car has its engine in the rear. The Corvair is much lighter than the Olds, and it skids easily on the icy roads. After a slow and treacherous eight-mile drive, we make it to the nearest local discount store. There’s not much money to spare for Christmas gifts this year.