I ran my thumb over my cheek. Yes, I have anger.
“Haven’t Salisburys done enough killing?” Moreau asked.
“No,” I said.
“‘All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,’” said Moreau. “Matthew 26:52”
“This strong sword shall devour slavery,” I said.
“Christ said, ‘Love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you.’”
“Jesus knew how to be a man,” I said. “Look how He went to His death. He was no coward.”
“‘And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household,’” said Moreau. “Matthew 10:36.”
I scratched my beard. Words no longer sufficed.
Amen.
The rustling in the bushes broke the silence. The embodiment of my plan—Moreau’s future savior—could no longer keep still. It was time. My son was up first, gun in hand. Moreau was tense, alert, no preacherly posing. In this swift moment, he didn’t move like a preacher.
“You won’t need that,” I said, hoping the sight of a man who’d walked out of the house of bondage would touch my son to his soul.
Moreau, bent low and cautious, approached a clump of saplings, brush and willow trunks. He shouted what I might. “Come out, man! You’ll be covered in poison ivy!”
A man in rags came out of the bush, dirty and so thin it looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. His eyes darted between us like an animal expecting to be whipped.
Moreau took a quick half-step back, stood up, dropped the gun, and said, “By the Lord.” Reflexively, he took off his coat and draped it over the man’s shoulders. Another coat, another man’s shoulders, another emergency. The runaway flinched at the contact. Neither of us had ever seen a human being so thin or so dark, even I with my experience of runaways. The whites of his eyes were so bright they seemed to banish the rest of him into shadow. He was dreadfully thin and dreadfully dirty. I blinked. To be so wretched was to be naked. The man’s broad forehead looked stretched like the head of a drum. His mouth worked like he meant to speak, but fear or exhaustion got the better of him, and he was silent. He stared at us, then sat on the ground.
I told Moreau to run home and fetch the buggy, blankets and food. There wasn’t time to wait for dark. Moreau ran off, brimming with excitement, shirt open, holding his hat and hoping, I suspect, someone would see his urgency. I was thrilled. Finally the struggle had entered my son’s world. If a runaway couldn’t make Moreau a soldier, he was born to preach. I was testing him. If Moreau could look this shivering man in the eye and say, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” I would have no quarrel. I waited with the man, sure, absolutely sure, the kingdom of this world had laid hands on my son.
3
Our visitor, Mr. Gib Watkins, stayed with us for a week to recover. During that time, we watched a man emerge from the shaking skeleton we’d found by the creek. My wife said it was a miracle. I didn’t tell her I had arranged it. The miracle I wanted was two men finding new lives.
I let Moreau bring meals to the stable where Gib stayed day and night. Sandy Creekers might all be Abolitionists, but we still had to be careful. Moreau and I barely talked, but I watched him. If ever a man had earthly purpose put in his path, it was my son. Let him pray to God or dream of the heads, Moreau had another chore now. No more chapter and verse.
Two days after finding Gib, Moreau told me he would delay his return to seminary. I tried not to show my delight, but I would have been surprised if my son had not been moved by a human being so miserable in his earthly life that he would travel by night eating roots, berries, even dirt, and kneel in the freezing April lake, thanking God he’d found the northern border. Other runaways we had sheltered in the mill had been in the hands of the Underground Railroad. No one would say they were overfed, but they weren’t starving. Gib Watkins came to us close to death. This man was six feet tall and didn’t weigh a hundred pounds. He lay in the stable for a week, regaining strength. Moreau sat by him, waiting for him to talk.
After a few days Gib said he was from Stafford County, Virginia. He was twenty-four years old and not yet married. He could tend and shoe horses, and as soon as he could get up, insisted on grooming John Brown, the dappled gelding who drew the Salisbury buggy. Gib slept in the hayloft and said he felt “de water,” Lake Ontario, in the night wind.
One morning when Moreau and I brought cheese, eggs, coffee and sourdough bread to the stable, Gib was washing himself with a rag and bucket. I was about to apologize for not bringing hot water when we caught sight of Gib’s back in the dim light. Dark, raised scars crisscrossed his skin. Scars far worse than the one that graces my face. I had known about those too. Bob Chamberlain, who found him, had told me. Moreau almost dropped Gib’s breakfast.
“Thank you, friend,” said Gib. He took in our faces. “Seen my back?”
Moreau winced. I believe he felt he’d seen the man’s soul. Or perhaps his own.
“Ain’t as bad as gettin’ separated from my woman. She got sold, so I run. Some day I git her back.” Gib buttoned the shirt we’d given him and said, “It all done and gone. I ain’t never goin’ back.”
Moreau set the food down and took the curry brush to John Brown. Gib sat on a stool and put his plate and cup on the old steamer trunk. He ate and looked at a beam of morning sun coming through the loft doors, which caught dust in a single, gleaming stream of light.
“Mr. Salisbury, I only seen my mother but four times. She come after dark when I small. She live on a neighbor plantation and walk seven miles. She hold me and cry. I can’t have no family till we free.”
Moreau stared at the beam of light, perhaps thinking of his mother, who was in the house eating breakfast in the warmth of the dining room hearth. “Let’s pray,” he said, and my son and the ex-slave went to their knees. It seemed the most natural thing. I lowered my head. Moreau said The Lord’s Prayer, and Gib joined in. Then Moreau intoned: “Please God, give me the strength to be a soldier, and if I must kill, it is to free men like this Christian beside me and their wives and children. Please Lord, give me this strength. Amen.”
Moreau’s voice cracked on Amen.
Moreau
The Road to the Elephant
May 1861
4
The day before the Volunteers said goodbye to Sandy Creek, I left early with the buggy and John Brown to pick up Helen Warriner. Father excused me from the mill, saying every soldier needs a “girl I left behind me,” as the song put it. Father and I weren’t fighting anymore. The long, smoldering matter between us was gone. At least he thought so.
I was satisfied with my decision to enlist. I had come to love Gib Watkins. He was the most remarkable man I had ever met. Certainly he was the bravest. However, I despised Father’s delight in my decision to leave seminary to go to war. I didn’t make the decision for him. Father’s scar and Father’s anger were Father’s business.
I knew Miss Warriner only slightly. I knew she defied her parents by leaving the Methodist church to become a Congregationalist. The girl was a funny mixture of gentleness and fixedness. At seventeen, she wasn’t as easy to read as most girls her age. Two days before, she came into the mill twirling a pretty green parasol, but otherwise empty-handed. I blushed and asked what she wanted.
“A lesson.”
“I’m no professor, Miss.”
“But you studied to be a preacher, Mr. Salisbury. So did my father. He also went to seminary and chose not to follow the Lord.”
“I follow the Lord, Miss, as I can.”
“There’s nothing the Lord says about enjoying a spring picnic, is there?”
I answered slowly. “Not that I know.”
She twirled her parasol and smiled. “Tomorrow, then?”
I looked at her smooth brown hair and pert smile and said yes.
A young man and woman with a large basket covered by a blue blanket, a green parasol and familiar horse was an unusual sight for a Wednesday morning, even a fine morning in May. Tongues wo
uld have wagged if it were any Wednesday but this Wednesday. A man going to war was indulged, at least for a day.
Miss Warriner wore long black gloves and a violet Sunday dress carefully buttoned at the throat. Her hair was parted in the middle and two green ribbons that matched the parasol hung from the plaits. She had a broad face with a high forehead, prominent cheekbones, very brown eyes, and no apparent upper lip, like a cat. Her nose was her best feature—straight, prominent, well-shaped—a nose to meet the world on equal terms. I wore a black coat, white shirt and bow tie. I didn’t look as good as Helen. She was three years younger than I, and I regarded her as a girl. The Warriners went to a different church, and though my parents knew her parents, our families were polite rather than friendly, perhaps because of the emphasis Helen’s mother put on the Warriner who played the fife for Washington’s army when it besieged Boston. The Warriners were strict Methodists, so Helen’s defection to the Congregationalists at the tender age of thirteen, was, in my mother’s view, punishment for family pride. I thought it brave, and a bit amusing. Even then Helen showed spirit, a force which not even her formidable mother could subdue.
It was ten sunny miles to the south branch of Big Sandy Creek, where the War of 1812 battle took place. I knew a fair bit about it—like the fact the battle took place in 1814—and hoped to impress Helen with such spots of knowledge. When I mentioned the battle, she laughed.
“I know too much history. My mother never stops talking about the Revolution, though it’s my father’s grandfather who played the fife. But I’ve never seen the actual battle site.”
“I didn’t know girls liked history.”
“We just aren’t supposed to show it, unless it’s family history, which is supposed to help us get married.”
“How?” I was impressed and taken aback by her forthrightness.
“Who’s suitable and who’s not. The sort of thing mothers, or my mother at any rate, specialize in.”
“And who’s suitable in Sandy Creek?” I said, smiling and lifting an eyebrow. It was going to be a good day.
“Well, the mighty Salisburys, of course.” Helen burst out laughing and I couldn’t help laughing too. John Brown snorted. We looked at each other and laughed again.
I could understand why Miss Warriner, pretty as she was, wasn’t engaged. She scared boys silly. But I had recently come to think of myself as a man.
“You’re not horrified by me?” said Helen.
“Of course not.” I wasn’t horrified, just a little nervous.
“I’m not usually this bold,” Helen said. “But you’re going away…”
I nodded and pressed her arm. These weren’t ordinary times.
As the sun climbed higher, we drove west on bumpy roads past large farms, woods and open pastures. Men worked the fields and cows grazed and stared at whatever cows stare at while flocks of seagulls, loathed by farmers, traversed the freshly planted fields, and crows, big and night-black, circled or congregated in trees. The Canada geese had already gone north in their big V-shaped formations, traveling farther in a day than most men in a lifetime. My nervousness passed and I was happy. The morning was beautiful, and so was the girl beside me. Men waved straw hats as we passed. Plowing and planting—the backbreaking dance of men and earth, which, like war, sends men to the field.
In Woodville, we stopped to water John Brown by the McTavish place. The old man graduated Hamilton College and bred the best red cows in the state. Father says when men are in bondage, who has time to breed a finer shade of cow? McTavish’s barn was white instead of red and meticulously kept, maybe to a fault.
The creek was high and a hundred little waterfalls splashed over narrow limestone shelves. I was quiet, which Helen noticed. The horse drank and whinnied. I looked east up the creek at the willows and the tangled box alders and splashing, clear water and remembered I was leaving tomorrow and might not see the creek or fields or Woodville again. I must have shuddered because Helen touched my arm. I looked into her face. Her eyes were full of tears and I felt a sharp twinge in my belly. I wanted to say it will be all right, but didn’t. We stood by the creek while John Brown drank his fill.
“I’ll wait for you,” said Helen.
That’s when I leaned down and kissed her cheek.
In an hour, John Brown was tied to a box alder by an S in the creek less than a quarter-mile from Lake Ontario. To our right was marsh-land, brown and yellow, touched with green, where cows grazed at their own peril; to the left was the creek, no longer full of splashing clear water, but moving slowly between muddy banks and thick clumps of trees and bushes. Helen spread the blue blanket a few feet off the path. In a month the vines and sumac and ash and wild grass would be thick enough to ambush British ships, but today we saw the creek and wetland through a thick tracery of branches. Trees slanted out over the water for sunlight, oaks felled by lightning rotted on the ground, odd holes where mice had burrowed for winter marked the edge of the path. We ate pork sandwiches and pickles and preserves put up last summer in jars.
Helen squinted into the sunlight at the water.
“Is this where our boys fought?”
“I think so,” I said. “No one’s exactly sure.” The sandwiches were delicious, and the sarsaparilla too, still cool from being shaded in the buggy. If it weren’t for Helen, I would have been so lonely, so ready to miss the fields and cows and creek, even the damn crows. As it was, I felt only contentment and didn’t want it to end.
I lay back against the soft blue blanket, feeling the prickle of new grass poking through. “Father used to tell me, when you don’t know something, mill it. Mill that theory. Grind that supposition between facts. Well, Americans ambushed the British here, but where? Let’s mill the notion.” Helen’s eyes followed my finger as I pointed at spots along the creek bank. “Where could you hide and be protected? See the middle of that S? I think they waited right there. The British ships went slow. It was June, so the crick banks were solid with elms and tag alders and those vines that look like wood ropes. The Americans were commanded by Major Appling, a Georgian. His regulars were joined by local militia and two hundred Oneida Indians.”
“Was a Salisbury with them?” Helen tilted her head, and the green ribbon touched her shoulder. My stomach fluttered.
“No, my grandfather Reuben was a lieutenant, but not here. Salisburys weren’t here until 1823. They came from Vermont.”
“The Warriners came from Herkimer County,” said Helen. “I was born in Frankfort, New York. I’m glad we moved here.” She gave me a long, knowing look. My stomach moved again.
“There’s something I want to ask, if I might?” I looked into Helen’s fine brown eyes.
“Yes, Mr. Salisbury?”
“Why did you leave the Methodist church?” I wanted to hear Helen tell it. I wanted to know Helen.
“I went to a Congregational service, Mr. Salisbury. In Adams. Congregationalists believe in deeds, not merely prayer. And I believe that too, that a person can change the world. Not just by prayer, but through his actions. God gave us minds and hearts and two hands. It’s so simple to use them to make the world better. Christ won’t return to a world like this.”
I hadn’t considered His return so imminent. “Are God and Caesar’s things so similar?”
“Should religion be only mystical?” said Helen. “The Bible is more than poetry.”
“Father’s talked and reasoned his whole life. I don’t think it’s made him happy.” I was sorry I said it. I never spoke about the family, but felt such tenderness for Helen I wanted to share my thoughts, even rank ones, with her.
“Is that why you left seminary—so your life would be more than talk?”
I nodded.
Her eyes were shining. “I don’t know anyone like you.”
We didn’t kiss again. We held hands. We were proper and being proper made our feelings stronger. We were proper, as the sun slipped toward the lake and a chill breeze came over the marsh and rippled the creek. We wanted t
o be the best people we’d ever been.
“You do believe in deeds more than words,” Helen said.
I touched her cheek, silkier than the finest-ground flour. “I was lonely in Cazenovia. I missed Sandy Creek. It’s mixed up with Father. I went to try to talk to God, but wasn’t ready. My prayers were just talk.”
“You helped a runaway escape to Canada,” said Helen. “You fed and nursed him. You are more than talk.”
“I am now,” I said, and hugged her.
The sun got low and the creek got black, winding through high, dark banks, obscure trees and invisible flowers to Lake Ontario. The hourglass of our day was running out. Crickets and peepers, the little frogs that wake up in the evening, started up, and a sliver of moon already hung over the horizon. Helen squeezed me hard. It was getting cold.
“I feel like a child putting off bedtime,” she said.
I started to get up. I tried, but how could I take those warm arms from my shoulders? I looked at Helen. “I must tell you something that I’ve never told anyone before.” She remained sitting, looking closely at me. “My ancestor, William, the first Salisbury in America and his son killed an Indian. The killing started King Philip’s War, a terrible and bloody war. The populations of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies were decimated. Do you know the word?”
“Decimation means kill one in ten. The old Roman punishment.”
“You do know things,” I said. “Half the Indians were killed or sold into slavery in the West Indies. My ancestors, we, us, Salisburys started the war.”
“I didn’t know Indians were sold into slavery,” said Helen.
“New Englanders sold them.”
Helen shook her head.
“William and John Salisbury killed an unarmed man who asked Mistress Salisbury for whiskey. The father ordered his son to shoot.”
Helen looked at me carefully. “Is this your family secret or family fate?”
“By the Lord,” I took her hand and felt a closeness I’d never felt, “you understand deeply. Three days later, William and John were caught by Indians, killed, and mutilated. Their heads put on stakes.” I paused and looked into Helen’s questioning, sympathetic eyes. “When I was little, I thought the heads watched me. I was frightened and wet the bed. I thought the heads spoke. I thought they asked a question I couldn’t understand. A question I must answer or die before morning.”
No Common War Page 2
