Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As my task herein is to present Mystery, and rarely to dwell upon ancillary factors (however rich in pathos and sentiment they may be), I shall very briefly record the events of August 9, which have been treated elsewhere at far greater length. Suffice it to know that, all unwisely, and under what duress no one was afterward to satisfactorily determine, Isaac Rosenwald at last confessed in full: not only to the abduction and murder of Eva Teal, but, most unexpectedly, to the abductions and murders of Euphemia Godwit, and Dulcinea Inman, and Tricia Furlow, and Florette Sparks, as well,—a considerable triumph for Mr. Munck and his police officers, indeed. The eleven-page confession was signed by Rosenwald shortly after noon of August 9, in the presence of numerous witnesses: signed, it was rumored, with some difficulty, as the guilty man’s hand badly shook, and his vision had greatly deteriorated: and he seemed sometimes so queerly dazed, as to have very little cognizance of his surroundings. After this, he was straightaway returned to his private cell, where he had languished these many months; and, within scant minutes, it seemed, word began to spread through the city that Rosenwald had confessed: that the police had had the right man all along: that the “Cruel Suitor” had acknowledged the murders of all five Christian girls, and one or two more beside: that he had done harm to youths as well, while living in another part of the State: that he was unrepentant in his crime: that he was gloating in his crime: that he expressed contempt of his Christian captors, and of Christian justice: that he had named with lubricious delight the divers horrors, insults, and obscenities he had perpetrated upon the innocent girls: that he was an agent of a secret international Jewish organization: that this organization had pledged to free him, by legal means or no, before Passover: that “Jewish money” was pouring into a defense fund, headed by an infamous New York attorney: that he had spat in Hiram Munck’s face: that he had boasted of two or three other local murders, believed by fools to be accidents: that he had feigned sickness, in order to be transferred to a hospital, to await his trial: that the hospital was in truth the property of a Jewish organization: that, yes, the police had had the right man, these many months, and naught had been done to him,—indeed, had he not had a holiday from all labor and responsibility, sleeping as late as he pleased, and idling about in the serenity of his jail cell, and gorging himself on food at the taxpayers’ expense? And now a lengthy trial must be trotted out, at yet greater expense, doubtless mounting to thousands of dollars: with the rigamarole of a judge, and a jury, and Hollingshead, and a defense attorney, and witnesses, and testimonies, and the like: the primary consequence being, an incalculable stretch of time would ensue before the Jew was hanged.

  Not since Lee’s surrender in April of 1865, it was afterward claimed, had word spread so swiftly through Winterthurn,—nor with more jubilation, and roused excitement. But, ah!—to think that they had had the right man all along, and had not done a thing about it!

  VIGILANTE EXECUTIONS, or, as they are sometimes vulgarly called, lynchings, were not so rare through the Northern states, in these bygone days, as certain citizens might wish to think; and it is doubtless to Winterthurn’s especial shame that, over the passage of years, despite some effort on the part of the county’s law enforcement officers, a number of these incidents occurred,—often, it must be acknowledged, beyond the city proper, in the hilly and but sparsely populated terrain surrounding Mt. Provenance, where eructations of lawlessness are not uncommon to this very day; and many a dispute between neighbors has been settled, with distinctly informal means. Indeed, it may yet be a joke of sorts, in Winterthurn City, that there are areas of the countryside the sheriff and his men are loath to visit,—no matter how desperately they are wanted.

  (Dr. Poindexter’s massive Pictorial History of Old Winterthurn might be faulted on this issue, I am obliged to say, as naught but three of the most infamous “executions” are named in his text, and these but glancingly: under pressure, doubtless, of the fact that they have been so long celebrated in ballad form, they could not conscionably be ignored. Nor are other historical records, documents, archives, et al., reliable, for self-evident reasons.)

  Earlier in this narrative, I had occasion to speak of the disagreeable case of the defrocked clergyman Elias Fenwick, who, fancying himself an actual bishop (doubtless of some more distinguished sect than his own), seems to have concocted out of deranged fancies a mysterious sacrificial rite,—with the unhappy result for a twelve-year-old neighbor boy, that he became the “Bishop’s” first known victim: and suffered a most appalling death. In those primitive times, before the Colonies had declared their proud independence of England, Justice was far more swiftly and summarily dealt out than it is now: for, within the space of naught but a few days, with no lawful trial on record, the madman was hanged, and a rudimentary autopsy performed, and certain parts of his body preserved for historical and sentimental purposes. (Since having assembled my introductory chapter, I have acquired, by way of a collector who makes his home in Rome, New York, a peculiar item of the size and shape of a bookmark, which, resembling agèd parchment, or leather, is in fact neither: but boasts to be, if the etched legend be trusted, An authorized strip of the tanned skin of “Bishop” Elias Fenwick of Winterthurn, taken from his left buttock 13 October 1759. May God Have Mercy On His Soul. A most curious memento of bygone years, is’t not?—and one which I shall certainly not use as a mere bookmark, but keep in my collector’s drawer, for safety’s sake!)

  Some decades later, in the area of Water Street near its intersection with the Old King’s Highway (or, as it is more commonly known these days, the Mt. Moriah Pike), there occurred a singularly repulsive crime, perpetrated by a former slave named Rufus Sayles (or Sales), who was said to have been taken up by an elderly Quaker couple out of pity for his condition; and given work in their dry goods store; and “treated with such Christian compassion, one might have thought the brute their son,”—as one account of the crime would have it. Rufus Sayles being mentally deficient, or by nature exceedingly wicked, he seems to have felt little gratitude for the Quaker couple’s largesse; and, so far from realizing himself in their debt, or, indeed, in the debt of the white race generally, he took to “strutting about town,” and “giving himself airs,” and even, upon occasion, staring most brazenly at white persons of the female sex, instead of humbly averting his eyes, as others of his race, or the redskin tribe, were accustomed to do. As the elderly Quakers were not half so ingenuous in their business methods as they were in their charitable acts, it was long rumored through town that they were secretly far more well-to-do than they wished to appear: that, in all likelihood, they were wealthy: their gold coins cleverly hidden about the house, or in one or another of their outbuildings. Thus it happened, not, alas, to everyone’s surprise, that, one wintry eve, the Negro crept from his pallet at the rear of the store, and most barbarously slashed the throats of his employers, before they could even rise from their beds: and gathered all the coins, silverware, candle-sticks, etc., he could locate: and fled along the Old King’s Highway toward Mt. Moriah, on a horse of but modest strength and speed, stolen from the Quakers’ stable. So foolish was Rufus Sayles, or so panicked at the unholy deed he had committed, he failed to secure his booty well enough to his saddle, and blundered so egregiously that an actual trail of evidence was dropped on the highway, leading directly to the cornfield in which he was discovered asleep, in a drunken and stuporous slumber!—with the consequence that, when a small posse of men found him, they did not even trouble to rouse him from his slumber, but hacked the fiend to death, and to pieces, with their knives. It was said that Rufus Sayles’s various organs, including the actual heart, were scattered through the cornfield; and that his dark blood liberally flowed, to enrich the parched soil; and that, on certain windless nights in autumn, his grieving spirit yet roams the acre, claiming that he was most unfairly treated by his white accomplices,—whose names were never known, if, indeed, such “accomplices” had ever existed.

  Not many years afterward, in the 1
830s, there occurred through the Valley a veritable plague of beatings, floggings, brandings, disappearances, and outright murders, perpetrated by the Anti-Masons: this semisecret organization, later to declare itself an actual political party, having come into existence after the ostensible “execution” of a brick-and-stone mason of Batavia, New York, who had meant to betray secret Masonic rituals by publishing them in a book. As the man had been a Royal Arch Mason, and as he had disappeared, it seemed to many persons self-evident that the Masons had disposed of him, most likely by throwing his body into the Niagara River; and leaving no trace behind. So it was, the Anti-Masons sprang into existence, to seek revenge for the murdered man; and more generally to seek suppression, and persecution, of the Masons, who were rumored to be blasphemers, immoralists, satanists, and the like. So many were the lynchings and attempted lynchings of the decade, and so confused the local accounts, it would be impossible to set them forth with any degree of historical accuracy: though it is of interest here, I think, to note that the Anti-Masons practiced a form of nocturnal rallies, raids, and terrorizings, not unlike that of the Brethren of Jericho; and that a clear line of descent most likely exists between these noisome bullies and the vigilantes who broke into Isaac Rosenwald’s cell and bore him away for execution, in Courthouse Green, not long past midnight of August 9. Indeed, to Winterthurn’s shame be it recorded, there were tales of law enforcement officers themselves pledging loyalty to the Anti-Masons; or, at the very least, neglecting to restrain them. And the like held true, I am afraid, when Isaac Rosenwald was abducted.

  As to more recent ancestry in the Winterthurn Valley, doubtless the First Invisible Empire of the Brethren of Jericho,—which, being staunchly nigger-hating, sprang to life following the end of the Civil War—was made up of traitorous “Copperheads,” these being the vociferous Southern sympathizers who had opposed President Lincoln at every turn, and argued that the War was being illegally waged, for the freeing of the blacks, and the enslavement of the whites. Through the Valley, as through New York State generally, the Copperheads wielded considerable power, at least for disruption and mischief: and it is but infrequently recalled that, in 1863, Clement Peregrine Armbruster, who was both a Congressman of the United States and Mayor of Winterthurn City, had stirred up an amazing controversy as to whether Winterthurn should straightaway expel all its blacks and secede from the Union!—as, in Armbruster’s words, “naught but Chaos and Night will follow when the tyrant Lincoln brings white Christian men to their knees.” So there can be little mystery about it, that both Republicans and Negroes were often terrorized, in those days: and that the latter suffered most grievously, in being chosen at random to be beaten, flogged, branded with white-hot irons, tarred and feathered, hanged, and burned, that all Negroes might be served a lesson.

  As the Second Invisible Empire of the Brethren of Jericho was a secret fraternal organization, naught but miscellaneous details are known of it, and these are highly suspect: for it was rumored that the Brethren would punish most severely any man who betrayed their secrets, and wreak vengeance even upon his family. It was generally known, however, that only white male citizens above the age of twenty-one might belong: that they must be sponsored by members who would swear to their loyalty, and courage, and “integrity”: that they took blood oaths to defend the Brethren against all opposition, no matter if it be legally constituted, or no: that they submitted to arduous initiation rites, involving considerable physical pain, in order to have the privilege of inflicting such pain upon others. Their high Christian ideals were freely reported in the newspapers: they were dedicated to the preservation of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family, and to Justice, and to White Supremacy, and to the Pursuit of Happiness, and to Morality, and to the Constitution, and to Liberty, and to Free Speech, amongst other pledges. Though their meetings were invariably held in secret, albeit out in the open (owing to their large numbers), so frequently did they rally or demonstrate in public, and even march in military procession, their curious garb came to be known by all: these ankle-length gowns, and swirling capes, and scalloped hoods, of tough cotton fabric, yellow brocaded in black; these crimson cummerbunds and gloves; these spurred leather boots, of high-polished black; these ritual swords, or daggers,—being held up to ridicule by most citizens, yet covertly admired, it must be confessed, by some. (Thus Valentine Westergaard, who visibly shuddered at any mention of the uncouth tribe, and who amused his circle of acquaintances by declaring how distressed he should be if a contingent burst into his townhouse, with the aim of “laying hands upon him, and making him be good,” yet admitted envy of the Brethren’s costume: for he dared not appear in public in a crimson velvet cape of his own, trimmed in sable; nor could he quite bring off spurred leather boots; nor dare to thrust a gilt-handled sword through his cummerbund! “Withal,” Valentine said sighingly, “I admire the brutes for their inspired synthesis of the military, the ecclesiastical, and the carnival: and for their tact, in shielding us from their brute faces.”)

  THE EXECUTION OF ISAAC ROSENWALD at approximately 12:40 A.M. was preceded by a mass rally of the Jericho Brethren in a field some two miles south of town: some of the Brethren disguised in their billowing costumes, and a surprising number in their everyday clothes, with no especial attempt at concealment. All were hotly aroused by the news of Rosenwald’s confession, which had, as the long day progressed, become embellished with divers fantastical details, of a kind not even the newspapers had anticipated; and long before Horace Godwit, the grieving father of the murdered Effie, made his drunken appeal to the crowd that vengeance be exacted with no further hesitation, the jubilant chant of Hang the Jew! Hang the Jew! was taken up on all sides. As to the nature of further speeches made to the gathering, and to which Winterthurn citizens, masked or no, climbed atop a hay wagon, to add their raised voices to the rest; whence came the dozens of kerosene-soaked torches, lit, with the coming of night, to striking effect; or where the law enforcement officers of the county and the city were while all the foregoing transpired,—none of this seems to be known with any certainty, as accounts of the night’s famed mischief vary greatly, and no official reports exist.

  Thus it was, some three or four hundred men marched into town, and then along lower Union Avenue, to Courthouse Green: their quivering torches held high: and a wondrous euphoria in their tramping, and stomping, and arm swinging, and chanting. Little is it to be marveled at that no one dared challenge them: that Hiram Munck was nowhere to be found,—not in his darkened house on the edge of Juniper Park, and not, certainly, at police headquarters; and that Frank Shearwater, confined to his bed since the afternoon, with pains in his chest and an alarming shortness of breath, could scarcely summon forth the necessary strength, to rise and take command.

  And where was young Xavier Kilgarvan, who had taken such an inordinate interest in the case?—why was he, of all persons, not present? Thus it was afterward asked by several parties, who were innocent, and sickened, spectators to the hanging: but no answer was forthcoming.

  THE DOOMED ROSENWALD, forcibly marched from his jail cell, was said to have evinced little surprise when the hooded members of the Jericho death squad burst in upon him: nor did he resist his fate: though, as a consequence of his weakened condition, and his bad eyes, he could not always bear himself along steadily enough to satisfy his five escorts.

  Apart from aiding him with nudges, and occasional rough thrusts from behind, however, these men demonstrated a remarkable restraint, amounting almost to timidity, in their handling of him; and (as it would be known some months later) actually began to doubt, as the minutes passed, that Rosenwald was their man after all. For he impressed them, despite his haggard and emaciated condition, as a gentleman, of a teacherly or a ministerial sort: and not a murderer: still less the fabled “Cruel Suitor,” of which so much had been said—! However, such misgivings were belated, indeed; for, as one masked man observed to another, in a muttered aside, their impatient comrades on the Green should be grievously dis
appointed, and confused, and angered, if they were now told that the Jew Rosenwald was not guilty, after so much effort on their part; and had it ever been known to have occurred that a man taken from his prison cell for execution was abashèdly returned, by the selfsame death squad that had taken him hither? (“Nay,—it is impossible—we should be laughed out of Winterthurn and whipped and branded by our brothers,” one of the men told the others; and so, I am afraid, it would have been.)

  Thus it came about, with no one interfering, Isaac Rosenwald was led blinking to Courthouse Green, where, by nightmare magic, a great unruly crowd had gathered; and a makeshift gallows had been fashioned, out of crude unfinished planks and boards. Ah, how hellish the sight must have looked to him, his glasses lost, his eyes reddened and dazed: his head ringing with a chant he had long been hearing in his sleep: Hang the Jew! Hang the Jew! Hang the Jew! And how hellish too the flames from high-held torches, that cast lurid reflections upward, to illuminate not human faces, but ghost-countenances with naught but blunt shadowed holes for eyes,—the demonic and the childlike here combined, in a way most perverse.

  Once the condemned man stood on the narrow gallows platform, however, the noises of the crowd began to abate; and it may have been, as, by torchlight, the Brethren could examine his face, an air of subtle disappointment communicated itself through the park,—for the pale, narrow, thin-cheeked face had very little about it of the Semitic, let alone the brute, or the simian; and it would have required an inflamed species of imagination to suppose that this slope-shouldered man, of less than moderate height, and delicate frame, was the long-sought murderer of the five “Damsels of the Half-Acre”—!