The Rogue's Redemption

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  Relieved to have something to do, the small group of men quickly set to work cutting a few spruce and balsam saplings and stripping them of their branches. These thin poles were lashed together and covered with the boughs. They laid a moaning Farraday upon it and four men carried it back to the camp.

  “All right, the rest of you back to work!” Bull called out. As Gerrit hesitated, the foreman pointed to him. “Lobster, you stay here and take Farraday’s place since we’re short a man.” They’d given him the nickname since the evening they’d discovered he’d been a British soldier.

  “I have to go back for my ax.”

  The man grabbed up Farraday’s by its helve and tossed it to Gerrit who managed to catch it in the upright position it was thrown. “Use his. He won’t be needing it for a while,” was all he said before turning and marching back to the tree he’d been working at before the accident.

  The few remaining men split into two groups, one with the foreman, the others following another man back into the forest.

  “Come with me.” Jamie motioned to Gerrit to go with him with the second group. They walked about a quarter of a mile deeper into the grove of pine. These trees grew higher than the other fir trees surrounding them.

  “We found a tree that’s gotta be a hundred and fifty feet high,” Jamie told him barely able to contain his excitement, the injured Farraday seemingly forgotten by the youth. “At least six feet across. We’ve been working at her for half an hour and hardly made a dent in its trunk.”

  Gerrit couldn’t get the picture of Farraday’s agony from his thoughts. He trudged through the snow alongside Jamie, remembering that once he’d been as carefree. He’d quickly block out the aftermath of each battle and remember only the excitement of victory. When had it gotten impossible to forget the agony of the dying?

  When they reached the three other men standing by the pine, Gerrit saw that Jamie hadn’t exaggerated. The tree was wider across than Gerrit was tall. He craned his neck and tried to see the end of it. Its first thick branches didn’t appear until the height of the younger trees around it, seventy or eighty feet up.

  “We each take an area and begin chopping. It’ll take at least another half hour before we feel the tree begin to move.”

  “What do we do then?”

  Jamie grinned. “Move to the opposite side from where it’s heading.”

  “All right then,” he said, hefting the ax in his hand and choosing a side of the trunk where no one was standing.

  “Don’t worry,” Jamie said. “Deke there’ll yell when it’s time. He’s aiming it to fall over yonder.” The boy indicated a swath slightly wider than the tree where other trees had been cut down and only a few stumps remained. “That’s why he’s put the felling wedge on the other side.”

  The wood chips went flying as the men settled in to chop in earnest. By now Gerrit’s body had become accustomed to the rhythm of chopping. He found working at an actual tree instead of logs on the ground a vast improvement. He wondered how old a tree so large could be. He’d never seen such girth in a pine, not even in some of the ancient oaks back home.

  What seemed like an hour later, the tree did indeed begin to move. Gerrit sensed the trembling around the widening wedge the men had made around its trunk.

  “Stand back, men!” Deke shouted. When they stood together some feet away, they watched silently as Deke peered up at the very summit of the tree. “Yes, just where we want her,” he said. “All right, back to chopping. It won’t be long now.”

  Hoping he wouldn’t end the day flattened under the towering tree above him, Gerrit went back to where he’d been chopping. He tried to ignore the occasional shaking of the tree until finally Deke called for them to stop and get away from the tree.

  Again they grouped themselves several feet away around Deke. In horrified fascination, Gerrit watched the monstrous tree begin to sway. After interminable seconds, the last fibers of its trunk gave way and it began its descent. As the lumberer had predicted, it began to fall away from where they stood.

  The thud was an enormous thunderclap against the ground, causing Gerrit to jump. The boom echoed in the forest. The silence afterwards seemed absolute by contrast.

  They were given only a few moments to absorb the victory of the fall.

  “Come on, let’s make some logs.”

  The next hours were spent cutting the great tree into five lengths. Gerrit was astounded to see the hollow space at the base of the trunk. The entire trunk was taller than he, and he was six feet tall.

  Soon the oxen were brought and one by one, the great sections of trunk were dragged through the forest to the landing by the river, where the logs were being kept until spring.

  That evening, when they returned to the camp, to another supper of baked beans and fried salt pork, Gerrit stripped off his damp garments like all the rest and sat on the deacon log to eat his dinner. His attention was drawn to the man lying on the bunk. Farraday’s leg was propped up on a mound made of folded blankets.

  The men stopped by and asked him how he was doing.

  “I’ll live, I guess,” he said, his face strained.

  The men were subdued that evening over the fire, whether to keep from disturbing their companion or sobered by the fact that it could easily have been any one of them, Gerrit wasn’t sure.

  As soon as he’d cleaned up the dishes, he retired to his pallet and took out his writing things. Although physically spent, his mind couldn’t rest.

  My dearest girl, How I hope you are safe and well.

  Today I witnessed an accident in the woods. Because of one man’s suffering, I have been promoted from swamper to chopper.

  He stopped writing and rubbed a hand over his eyes. How he wished he could run somewhere—far from pain and death. But there was nowhere.

  I think of your beautiful eyes, so full of light and life, and it is the only thing that gives me a reason to keep going.

  Knowing she would never read these words, Gerrit found himself able to write freely. At one point he heard the teamster begin a hymn. Although he sang softly, the deep timbre of his voice resonated through the cabin. As the last time, the words of the hymn arrested Gerrit.

  There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

  Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains…

  The quill sat idle in Gerrit’s fingertips as he pictured the words. Lose all their guilty stains. What would it feel like to lose all one’s guilty stains and feel as pure as the untouched snow surrounding these rough cabin walls?

  The man went on to sing another hymn and Gerrit returned to his letter. But he no longer felt like writing. He put away his things and stretched out on the bed of fir, listening to the soothing words of the hymns.

  That night, he kept waking to the soft moans and shifting of the wounded man. Gerrit was back on the battlefield, listening to the cries around him. He’d always visited his men in the surgeon’s tent after a battle, holding a hand, offering words of comfort even when he knew the man would never make it. He’d closed countless sightless eyes; he’d written letters of condolence to grieving mothers and widows, and he’d always felt he’d done his duty as a good commanding officer.

  Whom had he been fooling? What had made him feel so invincible against death?

  By the next evening, when the men returned to camp after another long day from sunup to sundown chopping down trees, they discovered Farraday had developed a fever. The cook shook his head, telling them they’d have to wait and see if the wound festered. The camp was even more subdued that evening.

  Gerrit once again noticed the teamster sitting in the shadows. Before he left the hut, he bent over the wounded man and laid a hand on his leg and closed his eyes. Gerrit watched him, realizing the man was praying for him.

  Each day the men trooped back to camp, their immediate
inquiry being after Farraday’s condition. By the third day he was delirious.

  Gerrit began his usual letter to Hester.

  I don’t know why this man’s condition shakes me so. I’ve seen so many bloodied faces, so many bodies blown up. Sometimes I find myself imagining it was these same woodsmen on the battlefield with me. What if it had been them there on the battlefield blown up by the cannonballs? Some of these men fought against the English here on their own shores.

  Who chooses who will live or die? I saw so many men suffer agonizing deaths, cut down in their youth. Why was I permitted to live? I was the least worthy to be chosen to live. I’ve done so many things I wish I could undo.

  Here I am stone-cold sober, with nothing available to me to mute the visions or silence the memories that hound me.

  I ask myself so often what I am doing in this godforsaken place. This man, on the verge of death, hasn’t even a simple surgeon to tend him, only the camp cook. You would doubtless say God is here, even here. But I don’t perceive Him. Am I so lost that I cannot perceive your God? I feel so utterly lost.

  It’s only my dreams of holding you in my arms that sustain me.

  That night he exited the cabin before retiring. He paused again outside the hovel. This time, before giving himself time to turn away, he pushed open the door.

  The interior smelled of cattle and hay. A large fire burned in a center pit, just as in the men’s cabin. A lantern, hung from a hook set in a ceiling log, cast a golden light over the interior. The six oxen lined one side of the interior, harness and smithing tools the other. The teamster was bent over an ox, examining his shoe. When he was satisfied, he set the leg down and looked up. Seeing Gerrit, he gave a brief nod before bending over the animal’s other front leg.

  Gerrit took a few more steps into the warm interior.

  When the teamster had finished, he turned to Gerrit, wiping his hands on his leather apron and approaching Gerrit. “What can I do for you?”

  Gerrit stood and held out his hand. “Gerrit Hawkes.”

  The man accepted his hand in his large calloused one. “Orin Barnes.”

  Gerrit stared into the man’s eyes. He’d never gotten such a sense of peace in a person. The man’s dark eyes—black in the dim light—looked at him in an acceptance so complete that for a moment, Gerrit felt overwhelmed.

  Barnes gestured to two thick tree trunks set on the log floor. Gerrit took a seat on one. They sat silent for a while by the fire. Gerrit wondered what it was about the man that had drawn him. Like most of the men at the camp, this one was big and brawny, and his face was covered with a bushy beard. This man’s was black, his hair long and straight, combed back and tied with a leather thong. He had a paunchy gut and his hands were thick and blunt.

  “Do you think Farraday’s going to make it?” Gerrit’s abrupt question broke the stillness.

  The man showed no surprise at the question. He took out a pipe from a pocket of his waistcoat and tapped it against the side of the trunk. “Could be.”

  Gerrit blew out a breath in frustration at the answer. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

  The man glanced sidelong at him, amusement evident in his deep-set eyes. “’Course it does. But whether now or later, is immaterial.”

  “I’ve seen too many young men die to remain as casual about it as you seem to be.”

  The man proceeded to fill his pipe from a small bag of tobacco he had in another pocket. The sweet aroma of the tobacco leaves filled Gerrit’s nostrils, reminding him of nights spent in tents under the Spanish sky, the aroma of pipe smoke carried on the air.

  “It’s not the hour of our departure that’s as important as where we’re headed,” he said, looking at him from under his shaggy black eyebrows. “And it’s not the length of our sojourn here, but how we use the time allotted us.”

  Gerrit fell silent, the words punctuated by the crackle of the fire. He could say nothing. How had he lived his life?

  Orin lit his pipe with a piece of straw he set afire in the burning blaze. Then he took a puff and sighed in satisfaction.

  “I’ve squandered most of mine,” Gerrit said softly.

  “Most of us do,” he replied, as if Gerrit’s confession held no surprise. “By the time we realize it, it’s too late.” His dark eyes measured Gerrit. “Be thankful if the Lord is pricking you now while you still have time.”

  Gerrit’s hands lay idle between his knees. “It doesn’t matter whether I realize it or not. There’s nothing I can do about changing my life. What’s done can’t be undone.”

  Orin puffed a few more times. When Gerrit thought he wouldn’t respond, the teamster said, “I killed a man once.”

  Gerrit stared at him. This man? What he’d observed of him at the camp was a man whom everyone respected, a quiet man, a man both strong and gentle at the same time.

  “You never forget the look in a man’s eyes as his spirit is leaving him,” he continued, as if his words were having no effect on Gerrit.

  Oh God, please forgive me! Things Gerrit had tried to contain for so long began spilling over. “I’ve killed hundreds,” he finally gasped, looking down at the rough-planked floor.

  After a moment, he continued in a broken whisper, “But the one I’ll never forget is one of the last…” He bowed his head into his hands and kneaded his skull. There. He’d said it aloud. He’d confessed his sin. In a voice hoarse and somewhat incoherent, he told this stranger about the young French cadet who wouldn’t leave his memory.

  The man let him talk without interruption.

  When he’d finished, Gerrit felt drained. He daren’t raise his head, too ashamed of his confession. As long as he’d kept it bottled inside him, he could almost pretend it hadn’t really happened.

  He started when a pocket of sap snapped in the fire.

  “What do you think it would take to make you feel clean again?” Orin asked him.

  Gerrit raised his head and looked at the man. He’d voiced what Gerrit had never dared articulate even to himself. He thought a moment. “A thousand baths wouldn’t make me feel clean.” He sighed, a sound deep from his soul. “Would that I had never been born.”

  Orin nodded with understanding. “To be reborn. That would take care of a lot of things in one’s past.” He shifted his girth on the makeshift stool. “You know, in ancient times, men took care of their sin by slaying goats and bulls and sprinkling the blood of these beasts upon themselves. Then they’d burn the carcasses and sprinkle the ashes over themselves and their altars to purify themselves.”

  He considered Gerrit. “But it was an outward cleansing. It didn’t clean their consciences.” He nodded, as if reading Gerrit’s deepest thoughts. “That’s your real problem, isn’t it? Your conscience. How to purify your conscience.”

  Funny, he hadn’t said to silence his conscience, which is what Gerrit had been desperately trying to do. He’d said purify your conscience.

  “A nasty thing, a conscience. Keeps a man from sleeping at night.”

  “It refuses to be still,” whispered Gerrit.

  “There is a cure.”

  Gerrit waited, feeling as if his entire existence depended on this man’s next words.

  “Only one thing will clean a conscience. It won’t just cover up your sin or forgive it. It will wash it completely away.” The man’s gaze penetrated him. “The blood of Jesus.”

  The words reverberated in the room. They echoed the words of the hymn. And sinners plunged beneath the flood lose all their guilty stains….

  “Jesus is able to wash away our sin because He doesn’t overlook what you’ve done. He acknowledges it then takes it from you and lays it on Himself. When He accepted His death on the cross, He accepted all the punishment and retribution you deserved. He’s lifted the sin from off your shoulders, so you never have to drag it around after you anymore.”

  He tapped the end of his pipe against Gerrit’s knee. “It’s called redemption. It’s more than absolution, which is what I think you
’ve been seeking. Absolution means being freed of the consequences of your sin. When you’re redeemed, on the other hand, you’re set completely free as if you’d never committed it. A priest can offer you absolution. Only the Son of God can redeem you. He takes the penalty for your sin. He pays the price you would have paid.”

  Orin nodded. “It’s simple really. A life for a life. A life free from sin. It’s that rebirth you were seeking. It’s yours for the asking.” His gaze twinkled with understanding. “But you have to ask for it.”

  A life free from sin. Gerrit could hardly imagine having the weight of his guilt removed. Freedom. He tasted the word that for the first time seemed within his grasp.

  It was the middle of February. To Hester, it felt longer than any winter she’d ever known. Gone was the time in her youth when winter had been a time to frolic and play in the snow, and she’d fail to understand why her elders would sigh over the length of cold days and the long stretch still remaining until spring.

  She put down her crewel work and gazed out at the snow-filled fields edged by dark fir trees. For weeks, nay, months, she’d tried her best to fill her days with worthy occupations, but she was weary of embroidery, sewing, cooking—tired of putting on a busy front before everyone, pretending to be her bright, cheery self when all the while she was dying inside.

  She tried to maintain her conviction that the Lord was at work. He had brought Gerrit this far and He would continue the good work He’d begun.

  But to have no word from the man she loved with all her heart—no sign that he was even alive—and to know it would still be weeks before she heard anything.

  Would he still love her when he returned from the wilderness? A love he’d never articulated but which shone warmly from his blue eyes? Could such a love which wasn’t nurtured endure over months of silence?

  She read her Bible and clung to the promises in it every day, but lately, it was getting harder and harder to fight the sense of defeat that threatened to engulf her.