by Ralph Peters
“I do not take tobacco, sir.”
He nodded. As if he had expected as much. “Mind if I have a smoke?”
Twas his business. I gave my head a little shake and said:
“Mr. Seward did honor me with an interview.”
“He tell you anything about Yates County?” The sheriff applied a match to his filthy roll of weeds. Soon he was issuing smoke like the Lower Depths, filling the room with a noxious, wicked, unChristian stink. Twas vulgar and foul, and doubtless pleasing to Satan. But we must not judge the vices of others too severely, and I will say no more of it.
“We concentrated upon the matter of insurrection,” I said.
“Oh, insurrection, my backside. I don’t think Bill Seward knows a damned thing about insurrection. At least not up here in Yates County. Maybe down South there. And I’ll tell you honestly—I’m not going to pretend I have all that close an acquaintance with our distinguished secretary of state. But I’ve met him a few times, one political fellow to another, little fish to a bigger one. I know old Thurlow Weed a sight better. He’s the money man, he’s got the reins. But I do know this much, Abel. Bill Seward knows how every county in this state operates. Every last one. Best governor we ever had, and a politician to talk the drawers off a vestal virgin. He could have told you that Yates is a fine county. Most folks up here walk straight ahead and work hard.” His eyes shifted behind a veil of smoke. “But there’s this other thing. I’d explain it to you . . . if I could explain it to myself.”
He looked past me now, and took a fortifying draught of his tobacco. “These hills . . . they’re kind of a place people run to. Oh, I don’t mean criminals. No, sir. We keep a rein on that. But other sorts. Most of ’em just religious folks who didn’t get along back home and don’t want bothering. But some of ’em are full-moon crazy on a sunny afternoon.” He stroked his ear gently, coaxing out thoughts. I feared the nub of cigar between his fingers would set his hair alight. “There’s just something up there in those hills that don’t make sense to the rest of us. Maybe it’s that magnetism folks are always going on about. But we draw all kinds. Prophets—or so they call themselves. Queer sects and the like. Why, we even had two spiritualist conventions right here in Penn Yan! Don’t that make you wonder?” He touched the ends of his mustache with thumb and forefinger. As if connecting the current in a scientific experiment. “Sometimes . . . I wonder if there isn’t just some kind of madness up there above the lake. Something in the water or the wind. Ever hear of the Publick Universal Friend?”
“I have not.”
“You will. Before you leave. She started it all. Old Jemima Wilkinson. Going to build the New Jerusalem in the wilderness. That was on to seventy years ago. Now we’ve got everything from shouting Methodists to these Elsasser Lutherans up my way in Potter—good folks, mind you, but they don’t speak a word of English. I’m not sure they even know they’re living in the nineteenth century. Hard to give a stump speech to folks who don’t speak English, don’t I know it?” For just a moment, he fell into the pit of electoral memories.
After clearing his throat of a cough, he called the glow back to the tip of his cigar. “Point is, things are changing. Progress, Abel. Has folks confused, cranky. Don’t know what to make of all the newfangled goings-on. Can’t reconcile themselves to the old ways going. So they start dreaming of some Garden of Eden that never was—at least not up this way. Desperate for something to turn to. And this war now. It draws things out in people. Not all of ’em good things. Most folks are for it, more or less. Yates is a solid Republican county, and Whig before that. But not all folks see things right. Not by a long ways. And people up here always had strong opinions, right or wrong. Your Presbyterians over in Branchport, for instance. Presbyterians, mind you. Tighter with a penny than most men are with a twenty dollar gold piece. Few years back they went taking up collections to send Sharps rifles out to John Brown and those fellows in Kansas. And send ’em they did. ‘Free men, free soil, and free the slaves.’ Underground railway stations all over the county, both sides of the lake. But down county, toward Dundee, now that’s a whole different story. Pennsylvania folk settled down that way. My own people were Rhode Islanders, so they were right-thinking. But those Pennsy fellows, they’d catch ’em a nigger running through and ship the poor bugger right back south for the reward money. Trussed like a hog.” He paused to give me the fullness of the image while he enjoyed the last of his smoke.
“So,” he resumed, “we’ve got wild-haired abolitionists, other folks who don’t want anything to do with freeing any slaves, caterwauling Bible-whackers, mystic fellows and mesmerists, and now these Irish on top of everything.” He gave me an intense look. “You realize more than one in ten residents of this town is Irish nowadays? And near every one of ’em turned up within the last fifteen years.”
Yes. The Famine. My friend, Dr. Tyrone, had stories to tell. The blight on its praties had sent the Irish nation wandering. My regiment in India had teemed with the children of Erin.
The sheriff pushed his plate away, as if the sight of it suddenly offended him. “Now why am I telling you all this? What do you think? Well, first, you tell me something, Abel. How long have you been in this country yourself? And I mean no offense.”
“I am four years an American.”
“No offense intended now. The Welsh work hard, don’t I know it, and they’re always welcome. But what I want to get across is just this: The country—our country—runs on elections. No kings or queens, no dukes of this or that. Votes and voters, that’s what we’re all about. One man’s right to choose, and another man’s right to get himself elected. Now you just look at the scrambled-up mess of folks we have here in Yates County. And tell me a sheriff—or anybody else who stands for public office—doesn’t have to think about how he plants his boots.”
“And you believe Mr. Seward should have told me these things?”
“Hell, no. Not all of ’em, anyway. Don’t expect he’s got time for that. With this Mason and Slidell business and what not. But he should have told you about our Irish.”
“What about the Irish? Specifically.”
The waiter came to clear away our plates. The sheriff held back his words until we sat alone again.
“Well, think about it. More than one potential voter in ten here in Penn Yan’s an Irishman. That’s a lot of votes. And, of course, they’re contrary, your Irish. Democrats to a man. And plenty of people—I’m speaking of the people who count now—they figure we can just ignore the boggies. But I say we have to think of the future. We have to do what’s right for this country. And this country’s changing. Why, we even have Italians on the county rolls. No, I say we can bring the Irish over to Mr. Lincoln. If we give ’em a fair shake. And turn the screws just enough, when we have to. But there’s no need to antagonize ’em by sending the law down to their church. If you see what I mean.” He sat back again. “The Irish just like to make a noise. Then it blows over. What harm was done this morning?”
I thought of the widow and child, and the coffin broken open.
“You’ll see,” Sheriff Underwood went on. “The Irish are all talk and temper. But there’s no substance to ’em. They couldn’t organize an insurrection to save their souls—and, anyway, what do they have to rebel against? They have it good. All that business about dark-of-the-night plots—that’s nothing but spooks and haunts somebody in Albany dreamed up to put a scare into Bill Seward.”
He lowered his voice and leaned toward me again. “But I will tell you this. We have two Federal men dead now. Or one Federal man, plus a half-breed, you might say. And, frankly, I lay it to nothing but outsider meddling. Leave the Irish alone, and they’ll make no trouble that matters. They’ll just beat the daylights out of one another, or take a strap to their wives and children. But poke a stick at ’em, and you’ll find yourself in a nest of rattlesnakes.”
Gray eyes hard upon me, he said, “Now you tell me something. How the hell do you expect to run a secret operati
on when the first thing you do when you get off the train is march over to Father McCorkle’s den of thieves and let the whole world know what you’re after?”
“I don’t intend to run a secret operation,” I said. “I want the killers to know who I am.”
He looked at me in wonder. As if he could not decide whether any man could be the fool I seemed.
“Well . . .” he said, “ . . . if you didn’t come up to my county to run a secret operation and look for some fairy-story insurrection, what did you come for, Abel?”
“For the killers,” I told him. “For when we have them, we’ll have the truth of the rest of it.”
He snorted and scratched a great ear. “Oh, and I suppose you expect the killers to just walk up to you and give themselves away?”
“Yes,” I told him, “there is the trick of it. I know the Irish, see.” The fellow had finished his cigar, so I saw no fault in giving him a stir. “And now I would like to see where they hanged poor Reilly.”
TWO
I HAD MISJUDGED THE SHERIFF. SET AGAINST THE extravagance of the hotel, I feared the fellow had become a devotee of fine living and but a political creature—for I will tell you, though it shock, that the moral ingredients of political men are not always what they should be. But Underwood proved solid. He was as tough as the hills and glens that spawned him, and he proved it soon enough.
But I must not go too quickly.
The sheriff ordered a sleigh from the livery stable behind the hotel, and didn’t they jump to it? Waiting on the rig, we stood in the horse spew and trodden snow of an alley. The passage brisked with boys on commercial errands and men shortening the distance to their destinations. Every one of them tipped his hat respectfully to the sheriff, casting a curious glance at me. Underwood greeted each citizen by name.
Now I must tell you a thing: I do not love the horse. It is a beast infernal as the juggernaut, and my discomfort with the four-legged leviathan was compounded by the memory of the great fire in those Washington stables that climaxed the Fowler affair. Twas a nightmare, nothing less. I see and hear the burning creatures still. Their agony will haunt me to the grave. Oh, I would not slight the work done by the horse—I understand we could not do without him—and the Good Lord did see fit to breathe life into the beast, after all. But how I dread the aspect of the creature! I would sooner box a Bengal tiger than sit upon the back of such a brute. And yet such worries must not be revealed, lest others think us weak. It is a sadness of our human kind that we will sooner mock another’s fears than like his virtues.
I propped up manly on my cane, trying to ignore the slattering of hooves in the icy yard. I wished the sleigh well ready, and not only to confine said horse safely in harness. Twas blade cold in that alley, for all the steam of the droppings. The snow had stopped, but a freeze glassed the air. Greatcoat or no, I wanted myself under the travelling blanket.
“Fine town,” Sheriff Underwood cried out, his breath a gush of steam. “Growing by leaps and bounds. Industry’s the thing, Abel. Mills going up all along the outlet canal, and six trains through a day, two of ’em freights. It’s a boom, that’s what it is. Good afternoon, Donald, ’afternoon, George. Missus feeling better? And agriculture growing to beat the band. Orchards, timber. Sheepers up Italy Hill. Just got to keep folks patient and sensible, and no tomfoolery. ’Lo there, Jimmy. You tell your pa I said hello. So when they found your . . . predecessor . . . face down in the lake, and then that Reilly . . .”
He stood unbothered in that chapping cold, wearing naught but a light cape, hands bare of gloves and ears scarlet. Twas all I could do to keep from hopping about, for the winter come right up through my boots, despite the good greasing I had given them. But Underwood was a walrus at his polar revels.
“Fine town,” he recited, louder than required for the ears of Abel Jones, “fine county. Plenty of future up here. Plenty. Future to spare, bushel and a peck of it.” He turned his head of a sudden. “Bucky, what’s keeping that damned sleigh?”
At that, a sleek, black cutter left the barn, led on by a Negro. Rigged for two horses it was, not the customary one.
I was not pleased. A cutter is an open rig. And I saw no blankets. Only a shovel tucked beneath the cushion fall, as if for arctic snows.
“About time,” the sheriff said, catching the reins. “Let’s go, Abel,” he told me, “if you want to get there before dark.”
I clambered up beside him, wary of the beast harnessed to my side of the cutter. The sheriff took up more than half the seat, but I am not excessive in size, so it mattered not. He snapped the whip in the air, and I half expected chips of ice to fall from the heavens. The horses pulled away as though they longed to run.
“Bucky knows better than to set me a weak team,” the sheriff said. “And he knows I won’t have bells.” He steered the sleigh into a street ripe with business, then quickly turned us into an even more vivid thoroughfare.
“Main Street,” he said.
A farmer’s wagon crowded in between the snow banks, forcing us a-tilt to keep from worse. The sheriff let a curse I cannot set to paper, for profanity numbs the good as surely as cold numbs the flesh.
“Over there now,” he said, settled again, with the horses stepping as if they, too, were proud of their environs, “you’ll want to remember that shop there. Hamlin and Sons. Fellow trying to make a go of one of your ‘temperance’ stores. Won’t sell alcohol nor tobacco. I predict bankruptcy.”
We slid by handsome fronts with painted names: RAPLEE’S BANK; the FRANKLIN HOUSE HOTEL, of which I had heard critical report; GEORGE R. CORNWELL, BOOKSELLER AND STATIONER; ROBERTS AND CO., FANCY DRY GOODS. The snow-lined street harbored apothecaries, photographers and harness-dealers, dispatchers and brokers and readers in the law, barbers, a watchmaker and, up a flight of stairs, a school of music. The windows of an emporium of gaieties had been soaped with announcements of price reductions to greet the new year, and pink-cheeked women rushed in with their baskets. A little world of its own, this Penn Yan was.
Then we come to Egypt.
Saloons and glooming whisky bins clustered by the bridge. Deviltry and shame, a curse upon the land. Forlorn figures hunched inside the doorwells.
The sheriff pointed his whip. “Those shabs there? Mick boozers. Stick your head in any one of ’em and you’ll see familiar faces, that’s a fact. Dirty as the glass they pour your poison in. I guarantee you half the crowd that was out howling at St. Mike’s this morning are in there now. Glorying over their grand heroics and singing tearful laments about heroes and traitors and dying colleens. With their women home watering the last of the porridge and their brats dying like it’s a cholera year.”
A no-good in a hat with a chopped brim and a burlap scarf gave us the “go on, you” eyes. Fair daring the sheriff to stop. Underwood ignored the bravado, for he, too, understood the pride of broken men.
“On the other hand,” he said, “you might not want to step in there just now. They do hold a grudge, your Irish.” He laughed, get-upping the reins.
We skittered over a bridge dressed with ice and the sheriff insisted I look around. “Branch canal. Connects the lakes. You can go right up to the Erie Canal, all the way to Rochester, Buffalo—even New York City, way of the Hudson. Right from this spot. Miracle of modern engineering.” He tugged an ear. “Oh, our canal may not be the biggest in the state. But we’ve got twelve dams and locks, with a three-hundred-foot fall. Every last lock built of solid stone. Puts the other canals to shame, if you’re talking quality.”
The white bed of the canal lay frozen over. A throng of boys skated, and joy they had of the day, although we might have wished them at their lessons.
“You wait,” the sheriff told me. “Come March, she’ll be going again. Soon as the ice breaks. ‘Transporting our fair harvest to the sea,’ as Staf Cleveland likes to say. Or to Albany, anyway.”
“Deep, is it?” I asked, feigning an interest.
“Naw. Four foot most of the way. Got to deepen
it. Hoping to. Everything has to be bigger and bigger nowadays. Bigger boats, heavier loads. Only way to make a venture pay is to think big. ’Course, it’s going to take money. And Albany seems inclined to back the railroads nowadays. Then there’s this war, top of everything else. Maybe you could put a word in Bill Seward’s ear for us?”
He glanced at me, then did not press the matter. The horses trailed steam from their nostrils. Two gleeful boys ran after us.
“But your locks now,” the sheriff continued. “That’s a different story. They’re deep enough. Gush like Niagara Falls when they’re running. Power your mills, the way they set ’em in. That’s where you get your drownings. In the locks. Fool kids. Terrible accidents. Have to take you out and show you the mills, though. Dozens of ’em. All the way down to Dresden. Grist and flour. Plaster. Flax. Two spoke factories and a wool carding manufactory. Industries of tomorrow. Oh, the future’s going to be something up here, Abel.”
“I do hear the railroads are hard on the canals,” I offered. I had a personal interest there. “In Pennsylvania, where my wife and I—”
“Railroad’s a fine thing, too! Nothing against ’em. All for ’em. We’ve got business enough for both up here in Yates.”
We slid past the proofs of prosperity, from lesser houses set near the mills to fine gabled dwellings that climbed a slope. Turning right, we followed a main-travelled road.
“Lake’s just over there,” Underwood told me, pointing the whip across my chest. “Can’t see it now with the weather. But you could throw a stone and hit it. If there’s a lake more beautiful than Keuka on this continent, you’ll have to show it to me.”
I saw only gray, and a fall-off in the quality of the houses again, then open lots, and the lonesome look of gardens left till spring.
The road forked and we veered left up a hill. The sheriff touched the lead horse with the whip, just enough to keep him to his pace, and the sleigh rose into a crystaled fog. Black and shut, a farmhouse flanked the road. Twas a dark place of a sudden.
