A Stranger Here Below
Page 5
“Honey, your whole life you have lived here,” he said. “What can you tell me about Judge Biddle?”
“Nary a thing.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “I’m sure you realize that my kin are all law-abiding citizens who would never have dealings with a judge.”
Gideon smiled back. According to True, her people held no great regard for the law. The Burns family was linked by marriage to clans called Price, Ross, and Bainey—farmers and laborers who, True told him, might proudly proclaim: “Every man is sheriff of his own hearth.” Were that so, thought Gideon, there would be precious little work for a real sheriff to do, save patrolling the roads and traces that lay between.
They cleared the gap in the hills and entered Panther Valley.
“I’ve always liked this prospect,” True said. She turned her face to the east, toward a long, wooded ridge. “They call that the Muncy Mountain, for a town north of here along the Susquehanna where the ridge first rises. I’ve never been there, but my pa floated past Muncy on an ark, taking iron down to Port Deposit in Maryland.”
Across the valley from the mountain, and running perpendicular to it, lay a series of parallel hollows. From the floor of Panther Valley, each of those narrow vales rose toward the Allegheny Front, tall and haze blue, the long-reaching rim of a high plateau. The land on the plateau was rolling, mostly forested, and very wild. Gideon had been there twice, accompanying Sheriff Payton—once to hold a sheriff’s sale for a failed gristmill, once to arrest a man who had beaten his own brother half to death for making a lewd comment about the man’s wife.
Presently the road they followed changed from dirt to pale blue slag, refuse from the ironmaking process. The road lay before them like a pretty ribbon unspooled on the land.
At a small fenced-in graveyard, True handed David down to Gideon and, in her light and agile way, dropped down from the wagon. She went into the yard. The small stone marker read EMMA ROSS 1816–1834. True had brought a bouquet of fall asters bound together with yarn. She knelt and placed the purple flowers in the dirt, where the ground had already begun to settle.
***
The blue road took them past fields where corn stood in shocks, then past a big barn and a gristmill. They came to the furnace with its pyramidal stone base and tall brick stack. From the ironworks came a muffled roar accompanied by the creaking of a water wheel and the thump-thump-thump of the leather blowing tubs as they forced air through the tuyere into the hearth. The furnace stayed in blast around the clock, save during a mechanical breakdown or to repair a cracked hearth. It was allowed to go out only in the dead of winter when the stream froze, stilling the water that powered the blast.
The road skirted a grassy common with a roofed well at each end. Cabins built of squared logs clustered around the common. Ash from the furnace had grimed the cabins’ whitewashed walls. “Black snow,” True had called it, saying that the women of Panther forever complained about how hard it was to dry clothes on the line without them turning black.
“True Burns!” A heavyset woman set down a bucket whose contents she had just slung into her weedy yard. She came lumbering out through a creaking gate in a picket fence. “Ain’t seen you in a month of Sundays.”
“Hello, Mrs. Craigie,” True said.
“Call me Bet, you’re a growed woman now. I want to see that baby of yourn. Named after your pa, I heard.”
True handed David to the woman, and the child came awake, yawning and waving his arms, then smiling and cooing. Gideon grinned. David was such a pleasant, easy baby.
A small bowlegged man got up from a bench and hitched himself over to the fence. Leather braces held up the man’s broadfall trousers. The man’s face was a sun-baked brown crazed with painful-looking pink fissures.
He looked at Gideon. “Got us another Dutch gov’nor down in Harrisburg,” the man announced in a challenging tone. “Fifth in a row. It’s plain to see they are taking over the whole damned state.” He clasped a fence paling in each hand, lowered his head between his arms, and spat. He jerked his head up and looked hard at Gideon. “Now we even got us a Dutch sheriff upholding the law.”
“Don’t pay that cockerel any mind,” Bet Craigie said. “Sheriff Stoltz, being married to our True, you are as welcome here as anyone.”
Gideon smiled at Mrs. Craigie even though he doubted her.
***
“Iron,” Jim Burns said. He put his work-hardened fists on the table’s planks. The light from the window fell upon the table, around which sat the jaybirds, their father Davey Burns, and Gideon. “In the cities they take our bars and blooms and turn ’em into bolts and locks and horseshoes. Mr. Thompson says the nation is starved for iron.”
“We need the canal to come here,” Davey Burns said. “If we could get our iron to market cheaper, we’d make more money.”
“You mean Mr. Thompson would make more money,” Jesse Burns said. The rest of the jaybirds laughed, and Davey Burns cracked a rueful smile.
“The canal gets here, we’ll have all kinds of foreign trash showing up wanting our jobs,” Jackson Burns said.
“The Irish will come in, damn their papist eyes.” Jim Burns folded his arms. “The Dutch are here already, and more every year. They smell limestone soil, they’re on it like flies on shit.”
“They band together and pay top dollar for a farm,” Jackson Burns chimed in.
“No one’s got a nigger’s chance against ’em,” Jim said.
“Look what’s going on over in Sinking Valley,” Davey Burns blurted. “The Dutch swarming in, buying up all the best land. Bunch of dirt-grubbing krautheads …” He reached his big hand across the table and gave Gideon’s chest a push, causing his son-in-law to rock back on the bench.
Davey Burns winked and grinned. The jaybirds roared with laughter.
Gideon wasn’t sure whether this goading reflected real animosity or if it was just meant to rile him.
His father-in-law lifted his chin. “Vell, boys, I guess vee had better vatch vut vee say, in front of the Dutch Sheriff of Colerain Cawnty.”
Raucous laughter all around.
Not a bad imitation of a Dutch accent, Gideon had to admit: about like himself when he wasn’t working to tone it down. Without looking at her, he knew True had stopped whatever she was doing in the kitchen with her mother and sisters-in-law and was standing there listening. No doubt this ribbing was intended as much for her as it was for him.
“Brother Gideon,” Jesse Burns said. He was the youngest of True’s brothers and the sassiest. Unmarried, he was something of a rounder, according to True, who was not even sure where he lived these days. Like his father and his brothers, Jesse was employed by the ironworks, although Gideon had never learned what his job was. Now Jesse smiled maliciously at Gideon. His eyes were dark, almost black, and his forehead and cheeks had little divots left by the smallpox. He poked his chin at Gideon. “Say somethin’ for us in Dutch.”
Gideon thought for a moment. “All right. Here is a proverb, in pure, one hundred percent Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch.” He cleared his throat. “War fel shwetst, legt fel.”
“What’s it mean?” Jesse demanded.
“‘Whoever speaks much, lies much.’”
Silence. One of the jaybirds belched.
“Do you suppose Brother Gideon is saying we’re a bunch of liars?” Jesse said.
“Here’s another one,” Gideon said. “War ’m onara ein grub grawbt, flot selwar nei.” He paused. “‘Whoever digs a grave for others, falls in himself.’” That earned a few nods and chuckles. “Ah,” Gideon said. “The most important one: War de duchter heira wil, holt sich mit der mudder. ‘Whoever wishes to marry the daughter must keep on the good side of the mother.’”
“Well, that might make some sense,” Jesse said, “if you hadn’t already stole our sis. Because I don’t recall you courting her proper, or even meeting my ma and pa before you run off with her.”
“That’s enough.” True’s mother spoke from across the kitchen. “Gid
eon had durn well better stay on my good side if he wants anything to eat. You, too, Jesse Burns.”
“I know why she fell for him,” Jesse said. He looked at his brothers, then grinned at True and winked. “Lookit the size of his thumbs. Brother Gideon is all thumbs. You can tell a lot about the size of another part of a man’s body just by looking at his thumbs.”
“Must be why your thumbs are the size of thimbles,” True said, clapping down a platter of cornbread in front of Jesse.
In the uproarious laughter that followed, Gideon felt the tension leave his shoulders.
A special dinner had been prepared for the visitors from town: beans, carrots, potatoes, and chunks of ham cooked in broth. The women crowded into one end of the kitchen near the hearth, chattering gaily. True went back to work at a small table, while one of her sisters-in-law bounced David on her knee, playing a peekaboo game with him. The other children, nieces and nephews too many for Gideon to remember their names, had been shooed outside.
“Mr. Burns,” he said to his father-in-law, “can you tell me anything about Judge Biddle?”
“What about him?”
“I knew him from court,” Gideon said, “and he and I went haunting sometimes.” He purposely let slip the Dutch pronunciation, making the jaybirds snicker. Well, why act like someone you are not? Gideon decided he didn’t care what these narre thought of him. “I’m trying to figure out why the judge killed himself. I wonder if it was something from his past, something that finally became too much for him to bear.”
“Well, God rest his soul,” Davey Burns said. “I got hauled in front of old Hiram oncet. Back when I was young and tough, or at least I fancied I was tough. That time I went on quite a spree. Which it ended in a fight with somebody, can’t recall who it was, but I believe I broke his head.” He grinned and rubbed the knuckles of his big right hand. “The judge give me two weeks’ labor on the county roads. A fair enough punishment, I reckon.
“I can tell you one thing,” he continued. “The ironmaster has always hated the judge. The two of ’em got crosswise a long time ago when the judge ruled against Mr. Thompson in a lawsuit.”
“The lawsuit was one thing,” said True’s mother, stirring the contents of the big kettle suspended over the fire. “But it was a woman really set them at odds.”
“That’s so,” her husband said. “The judge and Mr. Thompson were both sweet on the same girl. Way I heard it, Mr. Thompson asked for her hand, but she turned him down and picked the judge instead—though they never did marry. She was the daughter of …” He arched an eyebrow. “Now there’s a story for you. She was daughter to a preacher name of McEwan, who got himself hanged for killing the ironmaster’s brother.”
“My deputy showed me the preacher’s grave,” Gideon said. “He didn’t say anything about the preacher having a daughter, or the judge being engaged to marry her.”
“I can’t remember all the particulars,” Davey Burns said. “Those days I was always off with a pack train or an ark, carrying iron to wherever the market was best. Now my ma, she knew all of them people. She worked for the ironmaster in the big house. She even watched the preacher hang. Judge Biddle, he had to watch, too. Imagine that, sending the father of the woman you love to stretch a rope.” He grunted. “Maybe that could finally persuade you to shoot yourself.”
“Let’s not talk any more about hangings,” True’s mother said, “or folks shooting themselves. It’s the Lord’s day. Davey, you offer the blessing. We will all thank the Lord for watching over us. And remember,” she said, ladling out a bowl of stew, “never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.”
True took the steaming bowl and set it in front of Gideon. She ruffled his hair. “My husband is the sheriff, as you well know,” she said. “Sheriffs are attracted to trouble.”
As usual, Jesse had to have the last word: “Tell him to keep his Dutch nose out of other people’s business.”
So death will soon disrobe us all
Of what we here possess
Seven
First thing Monday, Gideon went to the courthouse downhill from the jail.
The court clerk was one of those people who, when talking with another person, close their eyes. He heard Gideon’s request. When Gideon offered nothing further and just stood there waiting, the clerk finally replied: “The Reverend Thomas McEwan. I know of the case, though it was tried before I came to this place.” His eyes still kept shut, he held up his palm. “Don’t ask. No records for cases before 1810. A fire that year gutted the old courthouse. All of those old transcripts and documents went up in flames. We pretty much ignore anything before that date. Call it ancient history.
“On the subject of hangings,” the clerk continued, his eyes staying hidden behind their lids, “there was this fellow eight, ten years ago, name of Hicks. Gerald R. Hicks. Strangled his wife, on account of he suspected she was laying with another man, then burned the house down to make it look like an accident. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and bragged on what he’d done, which got him arrested and convicted. The sheriff threw a rope over a limb on the old oak, and Hicks danced the floorless jig.” The clerk snort-laughed, then fluttered his eyes open. They looked pensive. “You want my opinion, there’s plenty of other folks around here could benefit from hanging.”
Outside, Gideon strolled along the street. A hammer pinged in a wheelwright’s shop. People walked past, rode horses, parked wagons. He had lived in this town long enough that he recognized many of the faces, even if he didn’t know the names. Most of the residents were white, although a few Negroes called Adamant home. Strangers appeared with fair frequency: on foot, or riding horseback as he himself had done, or disembarking from the coach that jolted over the rough road through the Seven Mountains twice a week, except in winter. Singing masters and revival preachers included Adamant on their circuits. Phrenologists and homeopaths stayed in the hotel and put up handbills advertising their services. Temperance lecturers gave long-winded speeches. A religious pilgrim clad in motley robes once walked down High Street with seven grimy female disciples following behind him, one after another. You might meet a traveling abolitionist in Adamant—or slave catchers hunting runaways. Peddlers aplenty, carrying trunks on their backs or driving carts or wagons, hawking pots and pans and spices and fabrics, and bringing news from afar. But most of the newcomers were young men looking for work, finding it often enough at the mills, the brickyard, the tannery, the ironworks. Sheriff Payton had called them “wild cards” and didn’t trust them. Yet, thought Gideon, he had trusted one Dutch stranger enough to hire him as his deputy.
He wondered what Sheriff Payton would have done had the judge killed himself a year ago. Would he have investigated the death? It was clearly not a murder. Under early common law, suicide was a crime, in fact a felony—was that where the term felo-de-se came from? That didn’t make any sense, though, because you could hardly charge or punish someone who had already killed himself. To Gideon, selbstmord was more of an aberration, an event outside of predictable, understandable life. In this case, since it was his friend the judge who had taken his own life, it upset him deeply. But was it really his responsibility as sheriff to try to find out why Hiram Biddle had committed suicide?
He sat down on a bench and put his back against a store’s sun-warmed wall. He closed his eyes and straightaway saw the judge in his study, sprawled dead in his chair. Then the judge’s image faded, and he saw his mother lying on the kitchen floor. He forced his eyes open. Ever since that day, he had been unable to think of his mother without seeing her dead. Why couldn’t he recall her alive and happy? Something would make him remember her, and he would see her face, and then it would go from light into shadow as if a fast-moving cloud had covered the sun—and he would be a ten-year-old bub again, frozen in place, trembling, scarcely able to think or even breathe, staring at her as she lay with her dress hiked up, her chest covered with wounds, drenched in her own blood. In his mind, even her memory had been murdered.
***
At home that evening Gideon lay on the floor and dandled David above him. He held the baby around his middle and boosted him up and down so that his little feet danced on his father’s chest. Gideon sang a Dutch ditty that had to do with an eil, an owl, and every time he hooted like an owl he would boost David up high, the child bug-eyed and windmilling his arms, laughing and squealing with glee. “Careful he don’t puke on you,” True said.
For supper she served stew with grouse meat in it. “You should shoot a few more of these,” she said.
Gideon laid his spoon down. “I don’t have the heart for it. I don’t have the judge to go hunting with anymore. I just have his dog and gun.”
“Speaking of that dog, I can’t get used to his name,” True said. “Don’t you know that Old Nick is another name for the Evil One? Why’d the judge ever give that nice dog such a vile name?”
“I never asked,” Gideon said.
“If it’s a joke, it’s not a very good one.”
“Well, it’s his name now, we can’t very well change it.”
“Of course we can. A dog will answer to just about anything. How about Toby? Or Sam?”