The Mercy Seat

by Rilla Askew

  It was highly unusual for a man to live in one community and work in another in that time, but John Lodi did. That was another characteristic from the outset that was strange. Every morning for I guess it must’ve been close to nine years he walked the whole way from Big Waddy to Cedar and then, turn around, walked back home by coal-oil light after dark. That is a distance of seven and three-quarter miles, people, and it could be plenty rough in the winter, I can tell you, but that’s not even it. In those days, see, a man worked for himself. You didn’t go out and do public work, you just were something, sometimes several somethings—farmer, sawmiller, blacksmith—just whatever it was you knew how to do. In the time I’m telling about, that was so. Oh, you might have to go off from your family, say, and locate your sawmill-set off up in the mountains till you’d logged all the timber out, and then you’d come home. If it did happen you worked for somebody—it wasn’t common but it wasn’t entirely unheard of, these coal miners did it around here for years, but coal miners is a different breed altogether to what I’m speaking of, and anyhow, back in that time, they was foreigners or colored nearly to the last man—but if you was a white man and you did go to work for another man, why, you worked close to home. You didn’t go traipsing seven and three-quarter miles to work like a hoehand from daylight to dark for day wages. And if through some mismanagement or misfortune you did have to go seven and three-quarter miles to work for a fellow, well, you about moved your family over yonder and built them a house. That’s just how folks did. Plus, too, John Lodi was bound to have a saddlehorse or some kind of old mule—well, come to think of it, I know they had a mule or an old plowhorse or something because folks talked about how awful it was him putting that little girl to plowing and all he had her doing up there—but you’d never see him on one. I never seen him anything but afoot, and a man in that time just didn’t do like that. And now what compounds that little mystery to my mind is what the man did for a living, because what John Lodi knew how to do—I don’t care if I am telling it on my daddy—John Lodi was the best blacksmith this part of the country’s ever seen.

  My dad was a pretty fair hand with a tong and hammer, but he couldn’t hold John Lodi a light to go by. Nobody could, not in that time, not to this day. I ain’t seen anybody yet who could meet him. You’d just have to watch him work a forge to believe it. He’d take that piece of iron out perfect, I mean, just the right minute—he could tell by the color, had it down to the very iota—and, mister, he’d go to work on it, mold it like riverclay, just practically smooth it around with his hands. Didn’t use his hands, of course, used regular smithing tools like any man would, it just appeared nearly like he was using his bare hands. That’s how smooth a hammer and tongs’d fit ’em. That’s how easy they’d beat and clang—bang! bang! bang! there’s your shoe fitted perfect, he wouldn’t have to measure but once. My dad had plenty of tools—he started fooling with iron early, maybe age eleven or twelve —but he just didn’t have the touch for it like Lodi did. Dad was skilled, see, but he wasn’t an artist. He didn’t have that knack. Mostly he just liked to shoe horses—he was always a good hand with livestock, now that was one of my daddy’s main skills—but he just turned all the other ironwork over to Lodi quick as he got him hired on. But my dad had garnered tools over a lifetime and he owned about any size hammer, ballpeen, crosspeen, sledge, or whatever, had any size chisel you’d want, and if he didn’t have the right size for what was wanted, why, Lodi’d just take an hour or so and make it, but the man never would own a single tool he made. He just never would. Well, that was another thing that was strange.

  See, now, John Lodi could’ve pretty near had the run of this country as far as blacksmithing’s concerned. He never did have to work for my dad. I don’t reckon he could’ve afforded to buy a forge and anvil when he first come in here, but a man as skilled as he was, I believe he could have made what he wanted if he could’ve got ahold of the iron. I know he could. He could make any tool you’d want, from froe blade to swage block, just anything, and he worked at day wages for my dad. Well, that’s plumb daft. Now, Daddy wasn’t daft, he kept him on because folks’d come clear from Bokoshe or Bug Scuffle for John Lodi to make them a plow point or bang out a wheelrim or shoe some ornery old mule. And he was fair with him, Dad was, paid him honorable wage for all that, but it wasn’t nothing to what Lodi could’ve made on his own if he’d had half a mind to, and he knew it and we knew it, and nobody said a word.

  Well, we didn’t worry too much about all that business—I didn’t, I wasn’t but twelve when the killing happened and I’d been around John Lodi all my life—but even Daddy and Granddaddy, I don’t think they thought too much about it except to mark it and chalk it up to Daddy’s good fortune. There was plenty odd men with odd stories all around in these parts. Still are. But after the killing, people started in talking about how odd it was, him living at Big Waddy and working at Cedar—you know how every little thing’ll take on a new light after a killing—odd him never marrying, odd how he treated that girl. That’d be his oldest girl, I mean to say. Now, that is probably the most peculiar fact. I can’t swear to it personally—I never seen her but once, that morning at the hearing, and the girl looked just normal to me—but they tell me she took spells. I don’t know what it was, if she layed down on the floor and went to frothing or what. I never heard anybody describe it, they just told it like this: she took spells. And she dressed like a man, the girl did, wore pants and a slouch hat and a man’s shirt and everything, but I’ve got my own speculation about that. She wasn’t no prize to look at, see, and she had to know it, and I believe that’s how come her to take after Belle Starr. We all of us youngsters were pretty taken with Belle Starr in those days. She’d been dead, I don’t know, five or six years maybe, shot in the back—now, that’s another killing got told around plenty—but that didn’t stop us admiring her, and we played Belle Starr and Cole Younger, or Cherokee Bill or Bill Doolin or the Daltons, or just any other of our famous citizenry, me no less than the rest of them—I pretended myself into a bank robbery and shootout more than a few times—so to my mind that’s as reasonable an explanation as you need for it. Everybody knew Belle Starr was ugly as a saddlesore and did her outlawing in britches, dressed like a man.

  But anyhow, they didn’t talk so much about the idea the girl was strange—though plenty of them said that too, after the killing they tsked over that like they’d watched it all along—but what they did the most headshaking over was how her daddy treated her. He treated her just like—well, I don’t know how to say it. About like a son. But that’s not even right either, because he didn’t go around teaching her or bossing her, he treated her more like she was a partner to him. You’d almost want to say like a wife, but that wasn’t it neither, because he took her hunting, had her plowing and whatnot, about all you’d expect out of a son, but they tell me he’d be as like to ask her advice on something as tell her what to do. Treated her maybe about like a brother, I want to say, or something like. She could even do a little farrier work, some of them said, though I don’t know if I believe it. That girl wasn’t as big as a minute when I seen her at the hearing, and she was fullgrown by then. I can’t picture her shoeing a plowhorse or something, but they tell me she could. But anyhow, Lodi kindly kept her with him, they said, when he wasn’t working, especially after some of them died and the rest of them just went to rot and ruin, about like you’d expect.

  They come in here with the fever, you know, that entire little mess of children—well, I don’t know what kind of fever, we had every kind of fever known to man burning our children up back then—but this Lodi bunch carried it in with them, Dad said, liked to worried that community to death. Had reason for it, Dad said; said you’d hear about the fever in one family, next thing you know it’d be spread all through the community, just hopping from housetop to housetop like a wildfire, and before you knew what hit you, you’d have a dozen little graves out back of the house. But look at that now. I’ve studied this some, see,
put my mind to it a little bit on account of my dad was so close to the situation, and I’ve got my theories on that too.

  Now, folks say that family was strange, and they were, maybe, but you look at this a minute. All right, say you was to come into a new part of the country and first thing happens, your children take sick—not one thing you can do to help it, they just take sick, that’s all, and pretty much like to die, and one or two of them do die—well, now, that wasn’t so uncommon, we didn’t have no doctors to speak of nor medicine nor nothing. Children died a lot back then. Everybody did. But, now, say the result of your children taking sick and dying on you is the entire community shuns you, just won’t have one thing to do with you nor your young’uns—now, how’s that going to make you feel? How’re you going to act?

  I don’t want y’all to get the mistaken impression here. In general folks are good to help each other out in this part of the country, they’ll show up for any sort of tragedy, take food to the house, and they did better back then even than they do now. Had to. You just couldn’t survive hardly without you helped one another, and you didn’t begrudge it neither because you never knew when it’d be you or yours was going to be the ones needed the help—so I don’t have a precise explanation for how come the community of Big Waddy Crossing to shun these Lodis so bad, at least not after the fever’d passed and there wasn’t no danger, but they did so, my dad told me that. But, now, here’s the odd thing: they didn’t shun but one half the family, and that’d be John Lodi and his. They tell me Fate Lodi was well thought of in that community, folks traded with him and all. It was just the one fevered family folks acted like that about. I wouldn’t know, I never went up to Big Waddy in those days, but, you know, stories get started, no rhyme nor reason to it, might be just one of these chicken and egg deals—did Big Waddy shun them because they’s strange, or did they get strange on account of everybody shunned them? You’ll have to answer that question for yourself, but me, for my part, I like to think it’s that little dead town’s notions, whatever they was, made these Lodis turn in on theirselves.

  I liked him. John Lodi. I admired him, I guess. He was good to me, for one thing. I never did know those young’uns, and they wouldn’t’ve been young’uns to me if I had known them, they was every one I believe older than myself. But we didn’t go school-hopping over to Waddy at no time back yonder—wasn’t any need to: Cedar was already bigger than Waddy even then—and I never did see a one of them young Lodis, all but that day and the morning of the hearing, wouldn’t know them on the street this minute, if any of them’s even still living. Don’t know what become of them neither; they all kindly disappeared from this country after that. Wasn’t many boys anyhow— I believe the brother had a couple or three, but that Lodi name just died out, the way some of them do around here. Some families, like these Tannehills, they grow up a bunch of boys and spread the name all over creation, but there’s other families used to belong around here, the names have all died out. You’ll see them marking a tombstone at the Cedar cemetery, maybe a whole fencerow of tombstones, but you won’t meet a Grange coming or going, nor a Lodi nor a Phelps.

  But here’s the kind of man John Lodi was.

  All right, I’d’ve been maybe—what? Ten or so, I reckon. It was pretty well before the killing but I was big enough to know a few things and not forget. Not that I ever forgot much, let me say. My memory hadn’t ever been a weak part of my brain. Well, all right, I’ll tell you just exactly. I was ten years and eleven months old when this happened, now how’s that? Here’s how come me to recollect: I turned eleven years old on the twenty-fourth day of December, Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-four. That’s right, Christmas Eve. I was my mama’s last and best Christmas present, she always said that. All right now, the killing took place March the third, Eighteen Ninety-six, your history’ll tell you that. You can go look it up in the Woolerton Eagle— my, yes, they had a newspaper in Woolerton at that time; this country was getting plumb settled by then. All right, so this is how I calculate it: the little event I’m fixing to tell you happened along about Thanks-giving, and I know I had to be at least ten because my dad said he wasn’t getting me no rifle till I got big enough to justify, and if I’d ask him what that meant, he’d say, When you can load it singlehanded, and I’d say, I can do that now, Dad! (I probably started that when I wasn’t over five or six), and he’d say, Not till you can see over the muzzle with it standing on its end, and if I’d ask him when that would be, he’d say, I reckon when you’re ten. He told me that all my life, from ever since I got to wanting one, which is from before I can remember, so there’s no doubt in my mind I was ten. I’d been ten a good little while and I hadn’t got no rifle yet and I was just chafing at the bit.

  All right, I’ll just tell you the truth over it. I didn’t care two beans about a rifle at that time. What I wanted was a pistol. I wanted me one of these Colt double-action revolvers because I reckoned myself an outlaw—that’s how I played, see—and everybody knew these outlaws had to have their sixshooters when they went to rob a bank. But I never even pestered my dad about a pistol because it was just out of the question; he aimed for me to have a squirrel gun. Now, I’d be turning something in December, I was going to have a birthday in one month, and I know the killing didn’t happen that next spring because I used that gun all through the summer and I know Lodi was still working for my dad then because him and me went coon hunting the next fall. So this here happened November, Ninety-four, I was ten, going on eleven, and I come into the livery one evening after I’d finished my chores.

  Might’ve been four o’clock or so, because it was already starting to frown up and get dark. What I mean, evenings was short. It was one of these overcast November gray spells, you knew it was going to be black as midnight under a iron skillet in about an hour, and the wind was fixing to whip up a little storm. Lodi was sitting there at the cold forge, working a piece of wood. He didn’t have no ironwork to do, there wasn’t nobody sitting around the shop waiting for him to finish up their go-devils or whatever they’d brought in for him to fix for them—now, this was highly unusual. They was always somebody in that shop. A blacksmith shop back in those days, it was pretty near like your barbershop would be in this time, or your cafe. Men just liked to gather around there, I don’t know why. Well, you always had a few folks waiting for their ox team to get shod or something, but there’d be other men just happen by and set a spell around the stove where it was warm, or squat over yonder in the straw, gossiping and whatnot. They just gathered like that.

  All right, see, now I’m going to have to sidetrack on this a little bit, I reckon. Y’all don’t remember my dad’s livery, but it was right down here yonder across the tracks—well, they was more Cedar south of the railroad in that time than north here on Main Street. The hotel and everything was down yonder, and my dad’s livery was there. Well, now, when he built that place he built it for the stage stop. He didn’t care to do more than shoe a few horses, and he’d stable your mule or your horse for you if you was to need to hole up at Cedar—started that for the outlaws some, though he told it he did it for the men laying the tracks—so what he put up mostly was more stable than blacksmith shop, though, sure, he had him a little handmade forge. When Lodi hired on to him, Dad had to knock out that whole north wall, and what he done, he built a new stable over yonder and opened the whole of the old part up for Lodi to have him a shop. Look here, John Lodi was about as good a woodworker as he was a ironworker —a good smith was in those days, because if you was working wagons, you was working wood—so he needed plenty room to drive them wagons in. Needed room for the big forge Daddy had hauled in from Saint Louis.

  Oh, a good blacksmith was a well-respected man back in those times, he had as high a outlook as a doctor maybe, or a judge would right now. Well, you just had to have ’em, you couldn’t get by without one, everything depended on him, your farming and livelihood and getting around. So, you look here at this irony a minute. John Lodi was maybe the most respected blac
ksmith in this whole part of the country, and they’d come from all over to have him do their work for them, wood or iron either one, they’d set around here same as they would at Hartshorne or Poteau, any good blacksmith and livery. But they never did warm to him one bit. They respected him, don’t get me wrong—and the men flocked here, they hung around my dad’s livery as good as any stable around, but they would settle theirselves mostly over in the barn part and watch Lodi work from there. They didn’t try to pass the time of day with him nor nothing, they’d just lay out over yonder and watch. Now, Dad, he was a friendly man, always was, and they’d jaw with him and he was always glad to set a spell and talk. But it was nearly like there was a line drawn where that old barn wall used to’ve been. Them men wouldn’t come over it hardly but just to tell Lodi what was needed, and then they’d back off. And then they called the man strange.