Cloudsplitter

by Russell Banks

  “Against these enemies, and against the wolves and lions and bears, against the cold winds of winter and the drought of summer, against sickness and plague, old Job and his loving family and neighbors nonetheless prospered and thrived, and they and their livestock multiplied in their numbers, until they had become a community in that ancient wilderness, a community much like ours here in our modern, American wilderness.

  “And these good folks, old Job and his family and friends, they did everything right. They did it just so. In this they were perhaps superior even to us here in North Elba. For we are sometimes slack and slothful, are we not? And some of us keep not the usual observances in religion, and from time to time we mistreat one another in our families, or we fall to quarreling with each other, do we not? But Job and his family and friends, they were, one and all, a consistently upright people. Especially Job, the Bible tells us. Especially Job. He was a man who, even in that fine a community, was outstanding and much admired. Admired for his piety, his judgement, and his decorum, admired for his kindness and generosity, for his integrity, and for his willingness to keep all God’s commandments. Do you remember the story?

  “If we ourselves here today could be like any man in the Holy Bible, neighbors, we would be like Job. Am I right? Not for his wealth, naturally—although he had plenty of that, and we wouldn’t turn it away. And not simply for the respect and admiration that he obtained from his family and neighbors, although none of us would scorn those. And not for his wisdom and clarity of mind, either.

  “No, we would want to be like Job because of his simple goodness, his straightforward decency, and his charitableness. Recall the story. Job was a man who rested easy with himself, the Bible says. We have all known one or two men like that, and we might have envied them, but for the fact that in envying them we would have become less like them than before, for one of their main virtues was that they envied no man. And so we have tried strictly to love such men and to emulate them, have we not?

  “Well, old Job was an easy man to love. Even God, who loves all men equally, regarded Job as especially admirable, and thus, when Satan sat down on a rock to criticize these poor, forked creatures that were so beloved of God, the Lord singled out Job for special praise. In this story, friends, the key to Satan’s motives is that he did not comprehend God’s love of mankind, not even of Job, the best of mankind, the champion human being of us all back in those ancient Biblical days. And so Satan spoke to God of mankind as if we were not worthy of God’s love, and he said that, therefore, God should withdraw His love. ‘Take it off from them,’ Satan said.

  “You remember the story, neighbors. Satan argued with the Lord that the only reason we humans were in the slightest obedient to the Lord’s commandments was because we expected and often received large rewards for it. For it was true, and it remaineth so, that we are far more likely to prosper when we keep His commandments than when we do not keep them.

  “But Satan insinuated that we were a shrewdly calculating lot. That we were hypocrites. And thus we were not worthy of God’s love. And if we were not worthy of God’s love, Satan reasoned, then we were not worthy of the existence that He had granted us even without our asking.

  “A gift unimagined is the gift of God’s love. Our very existence is that unimagined gift. That, neighbors and friends, that is why there is something and, for us, not merely nothing! God’s love is the universe’s first and only cause, neighbors.

  “Well, no one ever called Satan a fool, did they? Throughout the Bible he is called many things, but never foolish. No, sir. He took a long look at this man called Job, this fine man living out there in the land of Uz with his seven sons and three daughters, his seven thousand sheep and his three thousand camels and his five hundred yoke of oxen—quite a plantation was Job’s place out there in Uz. And Satan said to the Lord, ‘You know that fellow Job, the one you’re always bragging about, the man you’re so high on? Well, he’s a hypocrite, too. Even he!’

  “The Lord saith, Ah, yes, my servant Job! But you’re wrong. Job is a perfect man. He’s the most upright of them all, and he fears me, and he eschews evil.’ Thus saith the Lord, neighbors.

  “Satan said, ‘Sure, of course, he fears you and eschews evil and makes all the proper observances and so on. But it’s not for nothing. Look at the hedge you’ve built around the man. Look how he’s rewarded for it. But just put forth thine hand against him, Lord, and the man will curse thee to thine face,’ said Satan. ‘Believe me, that fellow Job, he’s a hypocrite! declared Satan. The same as the rest. He may be the best amongst men, but even he is a hypocrite.’

  “And so the Lord gave Satan permission to do with Job as he wished, so long as he did not slay him. All that old Job hath is in thy power,’ saith the Lord to Satan. ‘Go ahead, take away everything, and you’ll see what sort of man we have here.’

  “You remember the story, neighbors. First came the Sabeans, who slew Job’s oxen and his asses and even put the servants attending them to the sword. And just as Job was absorbing the news of this loss, another messenger came in and told him that fire had fallen from the sky and burned up all his sheep. And then three bands of Chaldeans fell upon Job’s camels, slew the servants attending them, and stole the camels away to Chaldea. And then came the worst thing, friends. Remember? While Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine together in the house of the eldest son, a great wind howled out of the wilderness and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon them and killed them all!

  “And what did poor Job do in the face of these terrible events? Did he charge the Lord foolishly? Did he rail against God, as you or I might have done? No, Job rent his mantle and shaved his head, and he made a public showing of his sorrow by returning himself as if to his infancy, bald and naked as a babe. And then he fell down upon the ground, and, friends, he worshipped the Lord! ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb; he said, ‘and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!’

  “This, neighbors, was no hypocrite!

  “But Satan wasn’t satisfied yet. ‘He hath his life still! Satan pointed out to the Lord. ‘But just put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone, and touch his flesh, and Job will curse thee to thy face.’

  “The Lord said, ‘Go on, try him.’ So Satan went forth, and he smote old Job with sore boils from his foot to his crown. He smote him so badly that the poor man could only sit in agony among ashes, scraping his enflamed flesh with a potsherd. Such a figure of pathos and ruination was he that even his wife came out and said to him, ‘So, Job, dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die,’ she said to him. ‘Husband, curse God and die.’ Harsh words, neighbors, are they not?

  “But wise old Job, he said to his wife, ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil also? Foolish woman! he said to her, but she understood him not and left him alone there in the ashes.

  “You remember the story, neighbors. Then from the town came Job’s three friends to comfort and grieve with him. Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar were their names, and for seven days and seven nights they listened to Job recount his sorrows and curse, not God, never God, but his birth, his very birth.

  “Old Eliphaz the Temanite—a sensible man, we would say, if he came among us today in North Elba—Eliphaz argued that Job must have somehow offended God. ‘For who ever perished! he said to Job, ‘who was also innocent? Tell me, where were the righteous cut off? Happy is the man,’ reasoned the Temanite, ‘whom God correcteth. Cheer up,’ he told Job. ‘You are being chastized by the Father for your failings’

  “Have you not also been consoled like this, friends, in times of great suffering?

  “‘Oh, if only that were the case!’ was Job’s answer. ‘Oh, that my grief and my calamity were so evenly weighed in the balance together!’

  “And so Bildad the Shuhite spoke unto Job. ‘Surely, friend Job, surely God would not cast away a perfect man,’he said. And neither will
he keep an evil-doer. You cannot beone,’said Bildad to Job, ‘so you must perforce be the other.’

  “But Job cried, ‘No, no, no, a thousand times no! If I justify myself to the Lord, mine own mouth shall condemn me. If I say I am perfect, He shall prove me perverse. The Lord destroyeth the perfect and the wicked alike! Even if I were righteous,’ Job said to his friend and neighbor Bildad, ‘I would not answer with that. Instead, I would make supplication only to my Judge. For look ye, He breaketh me without cause! And you, Bildad, you do not understand any of this.’

  “But we understand, do we not, neighbors?

  “Then Job’s friend Zophar the Naamathite gave it a try. ‘You must be lying,’ he said as kindly as he could. ‘You say to us that thy doctrine is clean, and thou art clean in the Lord’s eyes. Well, Job, old friend, that cannot be, else you would not be in such a catastrophic condition. So confess, my brother. Prepare thine heart, and stretch out thy hands before thee towards Him. And then the Lord will reward thee!’

  “And Job said to Zophar, ‘No, no, no, no! Look around you, fool! Everywhere the tabernacles are full of robbers, and they prosper. Everywhere those who provoke God are secure. Therefore, you, my friends and neighbors,’saith Job to Zophar, Bildad, and Eliphaz, ‘you are all physicians of no value.’

  “Hear me, friends and neighbors of this village of North Elba. Hear me. Job said, ‘You speak wickedly for God and talk deceitfully for Him. You speak in your own interests only. Does not His excellency make you afraid? Does it not make you tremble?

  “As for me,’ Job said to his friends and neighbors—and here I come to the point of my preachment to you—Job said, As for me, though the Lord slay me, yet will I trust in Him and will maintain mine own ways before Him. Miserable comforters are ye all!’ Job said to them. ‘Ye believe that one might plead with God as a man pleadeth with his neighbor. I cannot find one wise man among you.’

  “Have ye not known such miserable comforters as these, friends? They are all around us, are they not? Why, we might even be them ourselves, might we not?

  “Where, then, neighbors, shall wisdom be found? And where lieth the place of understanding?

  “Behold. I, John Brown, I say to you that it is just as the Bible shows us. The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. And to depart from evil, that is understanding.

  “And you will remember, neighbors, from the old story, there came a whirlwind, and out of the whirlwind the Lord answered Job’s cry. ‘Of Job’s friends and neighbors,’ the Lord saith, ‘who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? And where was’t thou,’the Lord saith to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, ‘where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where wast thou when I placed the firmament between the firmaments?’

  “To them the Lord saith, ‘My wrath is kindled against thee! For you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.’ And the Lord took from them seven bullocks and seven rams each and gave them unto Job. And He blessed the latter end of Job’s life even more than at the beginning with sheep and camels and oxen and asses, and He gave him seven sons more and three daughters.

  “Well, neighbors, there you have it. My answer to your charges against me! Now, shall I tell thee the meaning of the story of Job? Shall I again compare us here in this sanctuary today to old Job out there in Uz, a man of principle?

  “Or shall I instead compare us to his friends and neighbors, to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, whose hypocrisy kindled the wrath of the Lord against them? Which of these ancients resembles us more?

  “For, look, ye have counseled me exactly as Job’s wife counseled him. Ye have told me to forsake my integrity and curse God.

  “Ye hath brayed at me like Eliphaz. Ye hath spoken out against me as if wisdom were thine and thy feet were set in the place of understanding.

  “Remember, neighbors, in the fear of the Lord, that is where wisdom lies. And to depart from evil, that is understanding. And that is all ye need to know.

  “I say to you, miserable comforters! physicians of no value! I tell thee here and now that I and my family shall continue as before—to fear the Lord and to depart from evil. We seek wisdom and understanding. Those are our principles. We shall live by our principles. You, my good neighbors, you may do as you wish.”

  Here the Old Man completed his remarks and stepped down and rejoined the congregation. When he had taken his seat, he lowered his head in prayer, and first Mary, next to him, and then the rest of us alongside in the pew did likewise, and as I myself, the last in our group to do so, lowered my head, I noticed that there were a good many other people amongst the congregation who were also following Father’s example, as if in this argument with Job they wished pointedly to separate themselves from the side of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.

  A moment later, the Reverend Hall walked up to the lectern, and although the service resumed in its usual manner, I was not aware of it, for my thoughts were turning around the meaning of Father’s talk. I felt myself surrounded by a buzzing light, as if by a swarm of golden bees, and I had to struggle to hear my thoughts. A terrible understanding had come over me in the midst of Father’s talk, and I did not want to lose it, in spite of its being fearsome and threatening to me.

  In Father’s words, the figure of Job was, of course, like no one so much as Father himself. As Job stood to God, Father did also. My terrible understanding was that I, too, was like no one so much as Job. Not, however, in my relation to God; but in my relation to Father.

  Who was Satan to me, then? Who would test my faithfulness to Father by afflicting me as Satan had afflicted Job? Would I, too, come to curse the day I was born? Would I beg for my own death, as Job had cried out for his and, as I knew, Father, in his periods of greatest despondency, had also? Would I, like Job, like Father, be able to resist the blandishments and sophistries of the hypocrites?

  In the Bible, Job is rewarded at the end for his faithfulness to the Lord, he receives from Him new cattle and new children, and Satan is sent packing, along with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. But, as Father showed, Job’s reward is given as evidence of God’s power, not His justice. This is what the hypocrites found beyond their understanding. The moral of the story would be the same even if God had not rewarded Job at the end, for it was done merely to punish the hypocrites and confound Satan, not to comfort Job.

  Who, then, in Father’s story of my life, plays the role of Satan? Who wishes to prove me a hypocrite?

  The terrible answer, the only possible answer, was that anyone who opposes Father as Satan opposes God, could, if I merely questioned Father, prove me a hypocrite. That answer turned me into a trapped animal, a fox with a paw clamped in an iron-toothed jaw. To escape it, I would be obliged to gnaw at my own flesh and separate my body from itself. Freed, I would be a crippled little beast unable to care for himself, unable even to flee. I would have obtained freedom, yes, but freedom for what? To huddle alone in the bushes nearby, there to die slowly of my self-inflicted wounds. No, I thought. Better the intimacy of iron against my wrist. Better the familiarity of my own teeth closed inside my mouth. Better boils, a potsherd, ashes. Better to curse ever having been born.

  Predictably, with a few changes made—none of them, however, designed to placate the wishes of our white neighbors—Father went straight back to work on the Underground Railroad. In his mind, all our white neighbors were now cowards and hypocrites, every one of them, and periodically he denounced them to any of us in the family who would listen. He denounced even his good friend Mr. Thompson, for, although the Old Man at first thought that he had successfully shamed our neighbors with his sermon, his message evidently hadn’t taken hold: no one in the village was willing anymore to aid him in his efforts to spirit fugitive slaves out of the country—except, of course, for the Negroes themselves. And except for the rest of us Browns. Meaning me, I suppose, although there was considerable sacrifice required as well of the others in the family, who had to accommodate themselves to Father’s and my and Lyman�
�s frequent and protracted absences from the farm.

  The most significant change in our modus operandi, however, was in cutting Mr. Wilkinson of the Tahawus mining camp out of the operation. In a flurry of letters to Mr. Frederick Douglass in Rochester, Father made it clear that he would not work with the man. Thenceforth, cargo from the South would have to be shipped to Father in North Elba via an agent named Reuben Shiloh, in care of a Mrs. Ebenezer Rankin, resident of the town of Long Lake, New York, a small, rough lumbering community in the southern Adirondack wilderness about forty miles from North Elba. Reuben Shiloh was in fact Father himself, a pseudonym. Mrs. Rankin, his point of contact in Long Lake, was the elderly widow of a veteran of the War of the Revolution. She lived alone in a cabin on the land her husband had homesteaded after the war, was regarded in the village as mildly eccentric and harmless, and, due to her deep religious feeling and independence of spirit, was sympathetic to the cause. Father first met her after a sermon he had made on the subject of abolitionism at the Congregational church there in Long Lake and, as was his wont, had trusted her instantly. Generally, the Old Man made decisions as to a person’s trustworthiness at once and without consulting others. When it had to do with business matters, of course, he was usually wrong, well off the mark, absurdly so; but when it concerned the question of slavery, he was almost always right.

  “It’s a thing you can tell in an instant. You know it from a person’s speech or the cast of his eyes, as soon as you begin to speak with him on the subject of race,” he said, trying to explain his procedure. “Early on, Owen, I conceived the idea of placing myself, when speaking of such matters with white people, in the position of a Negro.” Which is to say that he listened to whites and watched them as if his self-respect, his well-being, his very life, were always at stake, and consequently, as he claimed, he quickly saw things that most whites ignore or blind themselves to. For example, if he spoke of the horrors of slavery to a stranger and the man’s face went all slack and sad over it, as if he wished to be admired for the tenderness of his feelings, then Father knew not to trust him. But if the man reacted, not with sadness and regret, but with righteous wrathfulness, then he would brighten and feel secure in confiding in that person. Father said he loved seeing that old-time righteous anger fill up a white man’s face. It happened rarely, however. “No, Owen” he said, “when it comes to race and slavery, white people, try as they may, cannot hide their true feelings. Not to their fellow Americans who happen to be born black, that is. And not to me, either. Only to themselves.”