A Stranger Here Below

by Charles Fergus

  My heart gave such a lurch, & my knees grew weak. I pushed aside a feeling of dread, & said that digging in one’s garden at night hardly constituted grounds for an accusation of murder: Do not farmers work their fields by moonlight & drovers push their cattle to market? I reminded Ad. Thompson of the Severity of his charges against the Rev. & advised him to retract them immediately. The ironmaster gave me a cold stare, & repeated his accusation that the Rev. had killed his brother, stating he would not be satisfied until the garden was dug up & we see what is found there. He added, & his words stung me: “Would you stand in the way of Justice, simply because you are engaged to marry the preacher’s daughter?”

  The sheriff and State’s Atty. wished to proceed directly to the parsonage. I rode in the waggon with them and several others, whilst the ironmaster followed on horseback. A drear day, & my tho’ts as Bleak as the Grey Clouds that pressed down upon us. I prayed that the Lord watch over us & keep us from all harm—a most futile wish, as I was soon to find out. I planned to be the first to the door, & prepare the Rev. & my beloved so they would understand that I in no way suspected the Rev. of this Crime. But when we were almost arrived, Thompson spurr’d his horse ahead, charging up to the door just as the Rev. opened it, & cried out that the Rev. had murdered his brother, & the Judge—in that, to my Horror, meaning I, Judge Biddle—had declar’d he would see to it that the Rev. paid for his Crime!

  I leap’d from the waggon, remonstrating that “This base Accusation has nothing to do with me!” & further asserting to the Rev. that I was sure he would want the investigation to proceed, so that the vile slandering of his name be stopped. Just then Rachel came to the door, & tho’ I told her to fear not, all the color drained from her face. I told her to return inside, saying, “I swear to you”—as I so, in retrospect, wish I had not—“I swear to you that this will all come to naught.”

  The Rev. professed he had nothing to hide & urged the sheriff to look in the garden, the barn, the house, wheresoever he wished. The sheriff had brought along men & spades. We all trooped around the parsonage & into the garden, to where a patch of earth appear’d to have been newly turned over. Sheriff Bathgate commenced digging, as did his deputies. A light rain fell, pattering on the dead leaves lying on the ground, causing me to shiver and clasp my coat around me; but when, after digging down some little ways, they came upon packed earth—soil that had never been disturbed—I felt my chill lift. I was about to Close these Horrendous Proceedings, when Ad. Thompson took Lingle by the arm & asked where he had seen the Rev. digging. The teamster pointed off to one side. The ironmaster seized a spade from one of the sheriff’s men. Pushing aside some branches & clots of dead grass, he commenced to dig.

  I turned to the Rev. & apologized for this Great Imposition & explained again how my hands were tied, procedures must be follow’d & Justice done. I assured him that all would be well, & tomorrow this would seem like nothing more than a bad dream. It was then, O Blessed God!, that one of the deputies recoiled and cried out.

  I rush’d to where they were digging, the Rev. stumbling forward beside me. His face had taken on a ghastly pallor. As the spades bit into the earth—No! I cannot describe the Horror that seized me at the sight of those chalk-white fingers, an ear filled with dirt, & mud-caked yellow hair! O Holy Savior, shield us from Satan’s pow’r! The Rev. sagged, & I took hold of his arm.

  The men lifted the body from the ground. The face was black with dirt, yet it could be seen that the nose was broken, crushed almost flat. The scalp was split on the side of the head, & the bone of the skull showed through the dirt encrusted rent. The ironmaster gave out an anguish’d Howl as he knelt and brushed at the muddy clothes. “My dear brother!” he wailed. He pointed out his brother’s initials sewn into his shirt. He lifted one of the corpse’s hands & scuffed away the dirt, revealing a copper ring. He said that as long as he could remember, his brother had worn such a ring on the last finger of his left hand. He shouted at the Rev., “Look what you have done!”

  The Rev. raised his face toward Heaven. He cried out to his God, who knew he had struck Nat down in his Wrath, but—& here he fix’d on me his wide & staring eyes—truly, he swore, “The man was still alive when last I saw him!” At this there came a shriek that near curdl’d my blood, & I turned to see my dear R. bent forward at the waist, her hands covering her face. Would that the Heavens had split open then & a Bolt of Lightning come crashing down to strike all of us dead. I held her, & she fainted away. Her father reached out, took his daughter from my arms, & bore her toward the parsonage.

  Sheriff Bathgate waited outside at the door, & the Rev., returning to the threshold, held out his hands. “The Lord will decide my fate,” he said. They put him in irons & led him away.

  But it is not God who will decide the fate of the Reverend Thomas McEwan. It is I, Judge Hiram Biddle.

  Heav’n, earth and hell draw near,

  Let all things come

  Seventeen

  So absorbed was Gideon by the account of the exhuming of Nat Thompson that only slowly did he become aware of his thumb digging painfully into his jaw. In the fading light, sitting at his desk in the jail, he squinted at the words on the page. Words written by a hand that had remained surprisingly controlled and legible even as it recorded a life-shattering event.

  To discover that someone you know has killed another human being. To realize that you must judge, and almost certainly condemn, the father of the woman you love. Gideon shook his head at the monstrousness of the situation.

  He put the journal in a canvas sack and set it by the door. He moved about the jail, checking that all was in order. The front room held a desk, several chairs, and a couch on which Alonzo slept on those nights when a prisoner was housed in one of the cells—Alonzo should be here soon with supper for Henry Peebles, a jovial enough chap, at least when he hadn’t been drinking. Opening off of the front room was the storage closet where Gideon had put the judge’s shotgun. He gave the heavy lock a tug to make sure it was secure. Inside the closet, in addition to firearms, were handcuffs and leg irons—including restraints that doubtless had been used on the Reverend Thomas McEwan.

  Alonzo arrived. Gideon said goodnight to him and left. Outside, the sky was gray. Tomorrow would be the first day of November, and the days were getting markedly shorter. The wind came hunting down the street, stripping leaves from the trees in town and forest alike. The land was closing down, tightening in on itself. Soon it would lie drab and lifeless.

  At home, he fed Old Nick—which was how he still thought of the dog, despite True’s dislike of the name. He sat on the rickety back steps as the dog polished off his meal, then came over for some attention. Gideon rubbed the setter behind his ears, in the sweet spot between his shoulder blades, and on his broad, white-blotched chest. He felt that the dog looked at him in a puzzled way. Could he be longing for his master, whom he would never see again?

  Inside, True gave him a sultry smile. “Your dear son is asleep,” she said, brushing her lips across his. “If you can manage to be quiet, he might stay that way.”

  Later, as they lay beneath the quilt, part of him wanted to tell her what he had read in the judge’s journal. Another part of him did not want to expose her to the calamity that had befallen Hiram Biddle and had, in the end, perhaps caused him to end his life. He thought, too, of the letter he had sent to the parents of Yost Kepler. He imagined them breaking the wax seal and unfolding the sheet, reading it or getting someone else to read it to them, and the cries of anguish and streams of tears it must cause, the scenes that would invade those poor people’s minds as they imagined—as they were incapable of not imagining—the murder of their son. The world would never be the same for them again.

  As it had never been the same for him. He peered back in time yet again and saw his mother lying on the kitchen floor. He had gone over in his mind so many times the way she’d been tormented and killed. He wished he could tell Kepler’s kin that they were not alone in their misery and t
heir grief.

  Someday he would tell True about his mother. And not simply that she’d been raped and murdered, but all that she had been to him. Not just a mother but a friend. She had shielded him, when she could, from his father’s anger. She encouraged him to attend to his schooling, to read books and learn English. She had talked to him about grand and important things, like families, and God’s love, and the beauty of a winter sunset or a single flower from her garden, and what he could make of himself if he worked hard and lived by God’s commandments and tried to become the best person he could be.

  He grieved at how the love given him by his mother so often got shoved aside by the fact that she’d been murdered. She would not want to be remembered for that, but rather for how she had loved and lived.

  In his letter to the Keplers, Gideon had promised to do all that he could to find the person or persons who had taken their son’s life. Yet even if he did track down this George England, or apprehend some other suspect, could he actually link that person to the young man’s slaying? Sheriff Payton had said that if a crime was not solved within a few days, if no witnesses came forth, no stolen articles were found, no confession obtained—then the thing might remain a mystery forever. Already five days had passed since the attack on Yost Kepler. And time was racing ahead.

  Time. He saw its thoughtless ravages in the rotting logs of a failed homestead, in the mossy stones that lay between fields, piled there by hands that no more would wield a scythe or steer a plow, embrace a wife or comfort a child. Hands that had belonged to a person now gone, perhaps already forgotten, here in a place where settlers had lived for not much longer than sixty years. Even as he felt soaring joy and deep love when he looked upon True and David, he also felt a numbing sadness.

  “What are you pondering? You look so sorrowful,” True said.

  He was unsure how to answer. “I am thinking about how we are punished for loving.”

  “How is that?”

  “We fall in love, with life, with other people, with our kin. We love the land, and galloping on a horse, or singing hymns, or watching the clouds pile up in the sky, we love our dear wives and children—” Tears welled up in his eyes, and he shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  She laid her hand on his chest.

  “We love these things so much,” he said, “that we can’t bear to think of being parted from them. When we see others torn away from life, by disease, or confusion of the mind, or the cruel actions of others …” He stopped, could not go on.

  “We must believe on God,” True said, “on his plan for us and the everlasting reward that he promises.” She caressed Gideon’s chest. “Is it the judge? Or the poor boy who was murdered?”

  “Both.” And his memmi. Always his memmi. He saw for the thousandth time her ravaged body lying in its own blood. He longed to tell True about her, but he was mute. He could not form words to get past the pain that had vexed him for so long. “I can’t be a sheriff,” he said.

  “Of course you can. You’re good at what you do.”

  “The things I see, they wound me.”

  “Part of why I love you,” she said.

  “I muddle along, I daydream, and my thoughts freeze me in place.”

  “But not too bad, for a dumb Dutchman.”

  He looked at her mischievous eyes.

  Her gaze became serious. “All of those thoughts prepare you for what you must do next.” She cupped his cheek in her hand. “Don’t let this wear you down. Don’t forget how much we have—our life together, our dear child. They are blessings from God. Of course the world can be cruel and sad. Of course we’re all born to die. But don’t let that take the joy out of those other things.”

  In time, they rose from the warm bed, put on sleeping gowns and wool stockings. True boiled potatoes and served them with salt pork.

  She nursed David while Gideon reread last week’s newspaper. This coming week there would be a new paper with new stories in it, including one about the murder of Yost Kepler. Might he have solved the crime by then?

  He and True returned to bed, taking David with them. True and David slept. Gideon lay there smelling the clean sweet scent of mother’s milk, listening to the quiet breathing of his wife and child. With every breath, he thought, we are brought closer to death. He closed his eyes, slowed his own breathing, and tried to imagine himself sinking down into the bed. But he could not sleep.

  He got up, went in to the other room, and added wood to the fire. He wrapped himself in a blanket and drew a chair close to the hearth. He opened the judge’s journal.

  Oct. 23. Sick at heart following events of yesterday & today. The State’s Atty. avers he will try the Rev. for Murder in the First Degree, opening the way to a sentence of Death. I believe Voluntary Manslaughter is more fitting, or at most Murder in the 2nd, yet this is Mr. Sewell’s decision to make & clearly he takes into account the alleged purposeful burying of the victim, & the statement of the Hendry women, who will testify that they heard the Rev. say to Nat “You will lie dead at my feet!”

  This morning the Rev. sent a message asking to see me. I had to force myself to climb down thro’ the trap-door into the dungeon. The cell was cold & dreary, with its low ceiling of hewn logs, dirt floor, & stone walls exuding dampness. I found the Rev. kneeling in prayer. Mercifully the sheriff has removed his irons, giv’n him candles, a rug, and a cot with warm bedding. I told him the trial is scheduled to begin in two weeks. He asked after R., & I told him she scarcely speaks, just stares at the floor as if she sees nothing. The Rev. groaned, & passed a hand across his face. “My poor child.”

  He told me again that he clearly remembers Nat jumping to his feet & running off after receiving the blow from the maul. The Rev. himself then tripped & fell and struck his head on the block. He states that R. found him lying on the ground & helped him to his feet & in to the house, where she gave him a tincture & put him to bed. But of this he retains no memory, nor of anything else between the time his head hit the block & the afternoon of the following day. He does not even remember going back out to the barn the next morning &, over R’s strenuous objections, finishing shingling the roof. He then wondered aloud whether Nat died somewhere in the woods, & he then found the corpse, bore it back to the garden, & buried it before his memory returned.

  I pointed out to him the discrepancy in the time. The teamster Saml. Lingle testified that he saw someone digging in the garden on the night of the day following the fight, & the Rev. said that his memory had returned by that afternoon. Nor did I believe he could do something so complicated & not recall it. To which he replied very glum that he must tell me of some other matters. He stated that he had always been of “a Wrathful Nature” & struggled mightily to control his temper for many years, that endeavor guiding him to the ministry to make amends for some of the things he had done. Twice he was expelled from schools for getting into fights in which he badly hurt another student—fights that he picked, following an argument or some insult or slight.

  A hot temper is one thing, I replied, & the Assault upon Nat Thompson is a most serious matter. But what he was now charged with is something premeditated & complex: locating a dead body, transporting it over some distance, & concealing it by burying it beneath the ground—all of which actions imply a Cogent & Calculating Mind.

  Here the Rev. sat trembling, staring down at his hands. He told me that once, while in seminary, he woke in the morning to find that he had broken his hand in the night. He held out his right hand for me, & spread its fingers, of which the middle & ring are visibly crooked; a doctor set them, he said, but they never healed proper. That night he had dreamt that someone was breaking into his room, & struck out with his fist. Believing he had driven the intruder off, he went back to sleep. In fact, he had hit the Door so hard that he broke one of its panels as well as his fingers. Another time, & this only a year ago, he went to bed troubled because he had not returned an Anvil that a member of the congregation had lent him, & which
he needed back to shoe his oxen. The next morning at Sunday service the man thanked him for returning the anvil; this puzzled the Rev. greatly, as he believed the anvil was still in the shed attached to the parsonage. He hurried home & found the anvil gone. Next to where it had stood was a sledge. The last he had seen the sledge, it was sitting outside the shed. When they transported the anvil to the parsonage, it had taken both the Rev. and his friend to lift the anvil on to the sledge, which was then drawn to the parsonage by an ox.

  His voice breaking, the Rev. stated that he must have got up out of bed, put the anvil on the sledge, & while still asleep dragged this great burthen down the road no less than 3 furlongs to his neighbor’s farm. There he set the anvil back on the block where it was kept, dragged the sledge home again, & got back in bed. Of this he remembered nothing! When the congregation found out, they laughed & teased him about being a great strongman & Walking in his Sleep.

  The Rev. look’d at me with a panick’d expression on his face. He lowered his face & wept, saying, “It is a terrible guilt that I bear. O Great Jehovah, have Mercy on my Soul!”

  But now I am distressed,