A Stranger Here Below

by Charles Fergus

  At the communal well Gideon winched up a bucketful of water. A dipper hung from a nail driven into one of the posts supporting the roof over the well. He rinsed the film of ash out of the dipper’s bowl, plunged it into the bucket, and brought it up brimful. As he drank, he observed that his hand was shaking.

  The coal wagon stopped near the furnace. The teamster hallooed, his voice carrying over the roar of the blast and the thumping of the blowing tubs. The teamster unhitched the lead pair of mules, led the mules around to the back of the wagon, backed them up, and attached the doubletree to hooks made out of old muleshoes projecting from planks beneath the load. The mules walked forward and drew the planks out, dumping the charcoal on the ground. The falling charcoal made a tinkling sound like broken glass. The teamster freed the planks and replaced them in the wagon. He hitched the mules back in front, and drove the empty wagon away. Workers began spreading out the lumps of charcoal. Other workers forked up charcoal from earlier wagon loads, dumped it into baskets, then lifted the baskets onto their shoulders and trudged up the ramp to the coal shed.

  Gideon didn’t see anyone who resembled the young man calling himself George England. He didn’t see an old man with a buck tail hat.

  He resumed walking.

  The porch of the big house was neatly swept. He twisted an ornate brass knob on the door, which caused a strident jangling within. The girl who answered wore a cream-colored smock over a blue dress. She was slim, with a budding figure. Her reddish-blonde hair was parted in the center and pulled back from a pretty face. Freckles dappled her cheeks and nose. She gave him a shy smile, and the little brown spots seemed to dance. Her welcoming expression made Gideon consider what True might have looked like when she was fifteen. Then he wondered with a cold distaste if the ironmaster had forced himself on this young woman.

  “Miss,” he said, “I am Gideon Stoltz, the county sheriff.”

  The girl’s face brightened. “Then we’re relations. You are husband to my cousin, True Burns.”

  “Yes, I am married to True. Well, I guess we are related then. I was just wondering, is Mr. Thompson at home?”

  “He’s at his office.” The girl stepped onto the porch and pointed back the way Gideon had come.

  Gideon nodded. “I left my mare tied up at the company store. Guess I’ll have to walk back there again.”

  The girl’s smile broadened, showing even white teeth. She was really very pretty. “I suppose you could set on that glider for a spell, or on the steps, if you cared to rest.”

  “Thank you,” he replied. “That’s a kind offer. May I ask your name?”

  “Ginny. I mean Virginia. Virginia Ross, sir.”

  “Miss Ross, do you live in the house here?”

  “I work here days. Nights, I go home. We live on the ironworks.”

  “Can you tell me, about two weeks ago, did an old man show up here? An old white-haired man with a weathered face? As old as your grandpap, maybe even older. Wearing beat-up clothes, with a walking stick and a pack on his back. His hat has a deer’s tail pinned to it.”

  She gave him that radiant smile again. “Yes, he …”

  “Virginia.” A tall, thick-waisted woman stood in the doorway.

  “Yes, Mrs. Glenny?”

  “I will take care of this gentleman. You can go back to work.”

  As the young woman withdrew, Gideon introduced himself.

  “Pleased to meet you, Sheriff,” the tall woman replied. “Drusilla Glenny. I have charge of the household here.”

  “May I ask you a few questions?”

  “We are rather occupied today,” the woman said.

  “It should only take a few minutes.”

  The woman had a doubtful look on her face. Before she could say no again, Gideon stepped past her.

  In the foyer a wide staircase commenced between a pair of carved newel posts. The newels, volutes, handrail, and balusters were of black walnut, polished to a high sheen.

  “Please come with me,” Mrs. Glenny said, pushing past Gideon.

  Pier glass panels lining the foyer threw Gideon’s reflection back and forth as he followed the tall woman down a hallway and into the kitchen at the rear of the house.

  She made him stand waiting as she cleared some dishes from a table and put them in the sink. Wiping her hands on her apron, she turned toward him. “What is it you want to ask?”

  In a casual tone, Gideon explained that he was looking for an old man, and went on to describe him—the pale blue eyes, the deeply tanned face, white beard, staff and pack, a pronounced limp, and the decorative white tail of a deer attached to his hat.

  “Two weeks ago, you say.” Mrs. Glenny chewed on her lower lip. “We do get tramps coming by now and then. We feed them here in the kitchen. But I can’t say I’ve seen one like that.”

  “Miss Ross seems to remember the man. May I speak with her again?”

  Mrs. Glenny cocked her head. “Let me think. You know, I believe I do recall an old tramp like that happening by.”

  “I wonder if this man may have lived here, in the ironmaster’s house, some time in the past.”

  “That’s quite unlikely. Tell me, sheriff, has this tramp caused any trouble? Is that why you’re looking for him?”

  Gideon thought quickly. “He asked for food at a house in Adamant, and afterward some silverware was missing.”

  “Well, nothing has gone missing here. I would certainly know it if something had been taken.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the old man? Anything he said?”

  “Quite honestly, I do not remember much about him. As I recall, we gave him a meal. He was properly grateful. After that, he left.”

  “Did he mention his name?”

  “No.”

  “Or where he was going?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did he ever come back?”

  She looked at him sharply for the briefest moment, then replied: “No. I imagine he is long gone from here.”

  Gideon could tell that this cautious, close-mouthed woman would give him nothing of value. He did not want to alarm her, make her think he suspected who, against all odds, the old man might be. He nodded politely, thanked the housekeeper for her time, and did not allow himself to feel slighted when she let him out the back door.

  ***

  The furnace bell clanged, calling workers to tap the crucible and cast the iron.

  Standing off to one side, Gideon watched as they came jogging from all directions. Tall men and short, thick and thin—mostly thin, as the ironworkers seemed on the whole to be a gaunt and sinewy lot. He did not see a red vest, although it seemed unlikely that anyone would wear such a dressy item to labor in. Nor did he see a face like the one belonging to the talkative young man he had met on the road near Gram Burns’s cabin. Some older men showed up, but the only one with a limp was Bet Craigie’s husband, the old cockerel who had jawed at him about the Dutch taking over the state’s government on the Sunday when he, True, and David had come to Panther to visit True’s family.

  ***

  Riding back to Adamant, he kept Maude at a quick amble—there was the Wednesday night sing at church this evening, and he knew True wouldn’t want to miss it. He hadn’t found George England at Panther. But perhaps he had discovered something of great and terrible significance.

  I’m a long time travelin’ here below

  To lay this body down

  Twenty-Two

  F aw and sol and law notes flew through the air before the voices launched into the quick staccato words:

  Farewell, vain world! I’m going home!

  My Savior smiles and bids me come,

  And I don’t care to stay here long!

  Gideon put his all into the singing. The music enraptured him, uplifted him.

  I’m glad that I am born to die,

  From grief and woe my soul shall fly,

  And I don’t care to stay here long!

  His soul took wing, his spirit rose higher
and higher, seeming to untether itself from the griefs and cares of the world. It flew up and up, and a soft light shone all around him, a light that grew steadily more beauteous and peaceful, and he was with his mother at last, she was smiling at him, and all would be well, all would be well.

  The song ended and the leader called out a different number in the tunebook, for a hymn called “Holy Manna,” whose poetry, as Gideon sang it, seemed to reach between his ribs and wrap cold fingers around his heart:

  Brethren, see poor sinners ’round you,

  Trembling on the brink of woe;

  Death is coming, Hell is moving,

  Can you bear to let them go?

  He couldn’t bear to let her go. He had never been able to let her go. He felt again the familiar tension flow and harden across his shoulders like a stream freezing up in a midwinter cold snap. His voice cracked, he stopped singing. He almost dropped the tunebook. He saw his memmi again, her broken body and her twisted lifeless face, the vision that had lived inside him for years like some loathsome disease that could flare up and lay him low at any moment.

  See our fathers, see our mothers,

  And our children sinking down;

  Brethren, pray and holy manna

  Will be showered all around.

  He looked at the rapt faces, the congregation whose members he didn’t really know. Had they taken him in? The outsider elevated above them?

  Is there here a trembling jailer,

  Seeking grace, and filled with fears?

  Is there here a weeping Mary,

  Pouring forth a flood of tears?

  He was the trembling jailer, the sheriff who had no business being a sheriff, the man stumbling about looking for answers to questions he barely knew enough to ask. All the troubling things he’d learned that day at the ironworks came flooding back. He thought of Hiram Biddle driven to kill himself just a day after the mysterious stranger, the old tramp, came to his door. He thought of the tramp walking into the ironmaster’s mansion like it was his own home. He thought of the ironmaster, cruel and powerful and dangerous.

  He stopped singing and sat there, trying to decide what to do next.

  ***

  At home, after nursing David and putting him in his cradle, True came over to where Gideon stood in front of the fire.

  She wrapped her arms around him from behind, kissing him on the back of the neck. “All right, what is it? What are you keeping from me?”

  He turned to face her. “I rode to Panther today. In the company store I put up one of the bills about the man who is a suspect in the murder of Yost Kepler, the man I met on the road to your grandmother’s house. The fellow who runs the store—”

  True laughed out loud. “Mr. Briggs. What a face! Like an ape’s. We used to go in there when we were little just to look at him. He’d bug his eyes out and jabber like a monkey to run us off.”

  “His face is very memorable. Though I thought he looked more like a dog than an ape—maybe a hound, with those big droopy ears.” He took a breath. “Your Mr. Briggs was no help at all. But I did learn from someone else—well, I guess I can tell you who, it was your mother. She told me that an old white-haired tramp came barging into Mr. Thompson’s house about two weeks ago. It appears that the same old man may have gone to see Judge Biddle, perhaps the next day, just before the judge killed himself.

  “You know that I have been reading the judge’s journals from the year when Nat Thompson was murdered,” he continued, “and when the preacher Thomas McEwan was tried and convicted and then hanged for killing Nat. With Judge Biddle passing sentence.” He took a deep breath. “True, I will tell you what I fear: Nat Thompson has come back.”

  True gasped. “It’s his shade,” she blurted.

  “No. This was a flesh-and-blood man who went first to the ironmaster’s mansion and then, I think, went on to the judge’s house.”

  True’s voice was awed and tremulous. “It’s a spirit, a wandering, troubled soul.”

  Suddenly David started crying.

  Gideon said, “I am telling you that a man has shown up in Colerain County, apparently after having been away from here for thirty years. If this really is Nat Thompson, then he was never murdered, and a terrible miscarriage of justice took place in 1805.” Putting the idea into words caused the force of what might have happened to finally hit him.

  “No,” True said, “this is a haunt, a spirit that will not rest easy in the grave. Nat Thompson was killed and buried, and his bones lie under the ground.”

  She went in to the bedroom and fetched David, now bawling.

  “Everyone has long believed that Nat Thompson lies dead and buried,” Gideon said when she came back. “But I wonder if that’s really the truth.”

  True sat down in a chair and began rocking David. The child would not quiet. “If the old man is not a shade,” she said, her voice catching in her throat, “if he really is Nat Thompson, then the ironmaster has something wicked to hide.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do not cross him,” she said.

  “I have to investigate.”

  She looked away from Gideon and rocked David faster. “Adonijah Thompson goes to church every Sunday. He appears to be a respectable man. But he is evil through and through.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He does not believe that God’s commandments or man’s laws apply to him.”

  Instantly Gideon wanted to know whether the ironmaster had ever forced himself on her. “Did he do something to you?”

  “The life I lived at the ironworks …” The firelight danced on True’s face. Her eyes were opened wide, her breathing rapid. “Why would you ask me that?”

  Gideon had never seen his wife look so upset. “Your grandmother told me that the ironmaster once laid hands on her. She fought him off. It seems he has a reputation for taking advantage of the girls and women who work for him.”

  “Am I not a good wife to you?”

  “You are my dear and precious wife. You are everything to me.”

  “Do you not love and respect me, as a husband should?”

  “Of course I love and respect you. But the ironmaster, you say he does not follow God’s commandments, that he thinks he is above man’s laws. I feel I need to know …”

  “You need to know nothing.” She opened her blouse and put David to her breast. The child stopped fussing and began to nurse. “Gideon, please, leave that man alone.”

  He knew he should break off this line of conversation. If he took the lid off this pot, everything could boil over and be ruined. But he couldn’t ignore his duty. He touched True’s cheek and gently turned her face toward his. “I love you, True. You’re the best woman I could have married. But when I became sheriff, I took an oath to uphold the laws of the commonwealth. And I owe it to Judge Biddle to try to find out what may have happened here thirty years ago. Maybe we’ve been visited by a crazy old man. Maybe he’s some kind of a sharp or blackmailer.” He paused. “Maybe he really is Nat Thompson.”

  True held David tight. She resumed rocking him forward and back, forward and back. David clutched at his mother’s breast and made discomfited mewling sounds. “It’s Nat Thompson’s shade,” she exclaimed, “his unquiet spirit that will not keep to the grave.”

  Gideon shook his head.

  “Swear to me you will not go to the ironworks again,” she said.

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Consider my wishes, for once!”

  “I do consider your wishes,” he snapped. “All the time. But I have a job to do.”

  “At least think of this baby.” She rocked David faster. “Would you leave him fatherless?”

  Gideon waved his hand. “If the old man is, as you put it, a shade—a shpook, as an ignorant Dutchman would say—then why would he do me any harm?”

  “I’m not feared of Nat Thompson’s shade, which you should not make light of, in any case. And you shouldn’t mock me. Ignorant! You’re the ignorant one. There are all s
orts of things you don’t understand.”

  “Then enlighten me, wife.”

  She glared at him.

  “Of course there are things I don’t understand,” he said. “There are many things I don’t understand.” I don’t understand you, he thought. He let out an exasperated sigh. He got up, went to the door, and grabbed his coat off the peg.

  David lost the nipple. He began to wail. True pressed the child against her breast. She jumped up out of the chair. Clutching the howling child, she followed Gideon to the door.

  “Gideon, please!” she said. “Leave the ironmaster be!”

  I am a stranger here below,

  And what I am is hard to know

  Twenty-Three

  His boots rang against the ground and his breath plumed white in the darkness as he climbed the hill.

  Slowly the jagged edges of his anger dulled. He had expected True to be intrigued and excited about what he’d found out. Instead she’d been upset, irrational, asked him to shun his responsibilities and turn away from the whole situation. He found that ridiculous and unreasonable but still wished they hadn’t argued. And he must not press her for details about her time in Adonijah Thompson’s house. It might offend him to think about the ironmaster molesting her, but his own sense of outrage must be as nothing compared to how she might feel. This evening he had seen a precariousness in his wife that he had never known existed. Perhaps she had buried something from her past, perhaps not. He must not pry. He must try to be more sensitive to her feelings.

  But the thing he would not do was to shirk his duty as sheriff. He would not walk away from the suicide of Hiram Biddle and the hanging of Thomas McEwan if any heretofore uncovered criminal acts could have triggered those events, even though they happened thirty years in the past.

  At the top of Academy Hill he stood in the frost-stiff grass and looked out over Adamant. The pale limestone school building reared up behind him. Below, in the town, lights glowed faintly from a few windows, but more light by far came down from the starry sky. Burying Hill loomed large across the way. Far off, through the gap in the hills penetrated by the creek, bloomed a red glow: the furnace at the ironworks, its fiery heart reflected from the smoke above it.