Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

  I explained that we had all been hard at work bringing in the hay, that it was hot and we were way down at the lower end of the field by then, trying to beat the rain. It had not rained after all, but had merely threatened to do so all afternoon long and into the evening. Now we heard distant thunder rumbling in the west, and flashes of heat lightning crackled across the darkening sky.

  “Bah!” he exclaimed, grabbing down our muskets and checking the powder and bullets. “What we need are swords” he muttered to himself. “Broadswords! So we can sweep down upon them like avenging angels!”

  But as the evening wore on, the Old Man calmed somewhat and seemed to settle upon a slightly more rational strategy for obtaining the release of our friends, which relieved me. I had not liked much the idea of the two of us riding out alone in the dark and recklessly falling upon the marshal, his deputies, and Mr. Wilkinson, and probably Partridge, too, with nothing but two small-bore muskets and a pair of hand-axes between us. On reflection, Father now believed that he might obtain the legal and financial help of Mr. Gerrit Smith, whose influence in these parts was great, and to this end the Old Man commenced to write a set of letters and pleas. He also proposed to ride over to Elizabethtown tomorrow morning himself, armed, in case of emergency, and accompanied by me—there to speak with the local authorities and try to get our friends released on their own recognizance pending a trial, which he firmly believed would never take place anyhow.

  “This whole thing is a dumbshow,” he now insisted. “A charade. It’s merely an attempt to intimidate the poor fellows,” he growled. He believed that Marshal Saunders was only interested in putting a feather in his cap for capturing the Cannons and thus was trying to frighten our friends into betraying the poor couple and had no intention of trying them in court. Father was sure that Lyman and Mr. Fleete had no more knowledge of the Cannons’ present whereabouts than we and were as ignorant as we of the Cannons’ true reasons for fleeing their master and the state of Virginia—if indeed it was true that they slew the man in the first place. And if they did, so be it. How could we blame them? Father almost wished they had slain their master. “Only in an evil and inhuman land, Owen, is it a crime to slay the man who enslaves you. Remember that,” he said.

  When morning came and Father and I were preparing to leave for Elizabethtown, who should arrive at our doorstep but dear John and sweet Jason—my beloved brothers. It was a great reunion for us all. They arrived on horseback with the sun rising behind them, spotted first by Salmon, who gave the cry that brought us all streaming from the house to greet them.

  They were gentle men, both alike in that way, and loving towards everyone in the family, especially towards our stepmother, Mary, and sister Ruth. With regard to Ruth they were probably no more devoted than I myself, but towards our stepmother they seemed as a pair to exhibit a greater affection and protectiveness than I could ever muster. This had always confused me somewhat, for their loss, when our mother died, had surely been as great as mine. Yet, apparently, it was not so, or at least for them the loss was not of a nature that restricted their ability to transfer deep affection and tenderness for our natural mother across to our stepmother. It sometimes seemed that the loss of our mother had actually enlarged my elder brothers’ capacity to love her replacement, for they were more careful of Mary’s feelings than were her natural sons even, Watson, Salmon, and Oliver. How strange it is, that brothers and sisters can share every important childhood experience and yet end up responding to those experiences in such dramatically different ways. What liberates and gives power to one child must often humiliate and weaken another, until it appears that our differences more than our sameness have come to bind us.

  My elder brothers and I did not greatly resemble each other in physical ways, either, although it was clear to most people that we were blood kin. Even at that young age, in his late twenties, John was a large and thick-bodied fellow, strong and muscular and athletic-looking, but in the manner of a budding banker, perhaps, or a politician. He had a high and noble forehead, symmetrical features, long, soft, dark brown hair that he combed straight back over his collar, giving him the look of a scholar, which, in a manner of speaking, he was, for he had learned accounting and was at that time deeply engaged in the study of several of the newer sciences, such as phrenology and hypnotism. His voice was deep and authoritative, and he had a great, loose laugh, which I had imitated when I was a boy but now merely admired.

  Jason was a shorter man than John, about the same height as Father, and more slender than I with my woodsman’s build, but although he gave the appearance of delicacy, he was in fact extremely hardy and tough, a gristly man who moved in a slow, measured way that suggested deep thought, for his brow was characteristically as furrowed as a field in May, and his lips he kept pursed, like a man auditioning his words in silence before speaking them. In another age, or if he had been born to high estate and privilege, Jason might have been a philosopher or poet, a man like Mr. Emerson of Concord, perhaps, whose life, whose every act, was determined by the shape and substance of his thought. Jason was a man of sweet reasoning, his gentleness driven not by sentiment so much as by the innocence of logic. Unlike John, he was a man whom no one would follow into battle; but then, unlike John, he had no desire to lead. By the same token, he was equally disinclined to follow any man, even Father. A poor soldier was Jason, he who would be neither private nor general.

  Yet, fully as much as John and all our younger brothers, and as much as I at my best, Jason was loyal to Father and to the rest of the family. He was not in the slightest selfish; he was merely one who thought freely for himself. Contrary to how he has sometimes been portrayed in the various accounts of our family, Jason was a man of great courage, too, and until the end, he stood alongside us; and when, before we went into Virginia, he left our side, he did so out of deep conviction, not cowardice or self-interest. I always admired, rather than criticized, Jason for his willingness to resist Father’s imperative.

  Father had a power over us that seemed almost to emanate from his very body, as if he were more of a purely male person than we. While I have in my lifetime met a few other such men, who, like Father, seemed to be more masculine than the general run of men, as a rule they were brutal and stupid, which he surely was not. Like him, their beards were coarser, the hair on their hands, arms, and chests denser, their musculature and their bones tougher, heavier, more massy, than those of other men. They smelled more male-like than the rest of us. Even bathed and suited up for church, they, like Father, gave off the aroma of well-oiled saddle leather. None of those men, however, was as morally sensitive and intelligent as the Old Man, traits that made his masculinity so much more formidable than theirs. In ancient times, figures like Father, characterized in their appearance and manner by an excess of masculinity, were probably singled out in youth and made chieftain, clan leader, warlord. It was difficult not to bow before such a man.

  Sometimes I thought this was how most women felt in the presence of men generally—like a small, hairless child, soft and vulnerable, before the large, hairy, tough, and impervious adult. It’s what we mean, perhaps, by “womanish.” Men like Father seem to evoke in all of us, male as well as female, long-abandoned, childlike responses which make us malleable to their wishes and will. Thus, when Father said, “Jump!” even though I was twenty-four, then thirty, then thirty-four years old, I jumped. I always jumped.

  I am not ashamed of that, however. For, truth to tell, it was his gentleness, not his huge, male ferocity, that gathered us in and kept us there. We came to him willingly, not out of fear. His pervasive gentleness was like a sweet liquor to us, an intoxicant that left us narcotized, inducing in us a morbid susceptibility to his will. My most vivid memories of this most manly of men are of his face streaming with tears after he had struggled vainly for long days and nights to save his dying child. I think of his holding a freezing lamb against his naked chest under his shirt and coat, warming the creature with his own body, until the tiny
lamb came slowly back to life and the Old Man could place it down beside its mother and step away and fairly laugh aloud with the pleasure of seeing it begin to nurse again. I remember Father tending to his wife and to each of his children when we were sick, hovering over us like a perfect physician, when he himself was ill and barely able to stand, tucking blankets around our shivering bodies, tending the fire, heating milk, manufacturing and administering remedies and medicinal specifics, long past exhaustion, until one or the other of us would begin at last to recover and was finally well enough to spell him, and then and only then would he allow himself to be treated. And though we often laughed and behind his back mocked Father for his long-windedness and certain other peculiarities of speech when he was trying to teach us a new skill—for he was one of those who teach as much by verbal instruction and repetition as example—withal, he was the most patient and tender teacher any of us ever had, who suffered our ignorance and ineptitude gladly, and never seemed to forget how mysterious and peculiar the world looked to a child and how even the simplest household or barnyard tasks seemed at first forbidding and complex.

  No, it was the remarkable, perhaps unique, combination of his extreme masculinity and his unabashedly feminine tenderness that brought us willingly under his control and kept us there, so that, even when one or two or three of us seemed to wander off from his teachings and desires—as in the matter of religion, or, later, when he determined to go down into Virginia—none of us ever departed from him altogether. We merely on those occasions took a few cautious steps to his right or left side and tried to aid him in his work from that position, instead of from a position directly behind him. Even when John married Wealthy Hotchkiss and Jason married Ellen Sherbondy, and they moved out of the family household and set up on their own, they did it in ways that merely established new orbits that allowed them to function as satellites circling Father, like moons around a planet, and thus they were held as powerfully as before by his larger orbit, while he himself circled the sun. At an age when most men our age were running off to see the elephant, as we called it then—heading out to search for gold in California, staking out land in the further reaches of the Western Reserve, or following the crowds of bright, ambitious men and boys to New York and Washington—I and my brothers kept ourselves bound to our father’s destiny.

  With the sudden arrival at the farm of John and Jason, a day that turned out to be tumultuous and, ultimately, tragic began as a celebration of familial warmth and union. Over breakfast, Father apprised his elder sons of the ongoing situation with regard to the Underground Railroad, Marshal Saunders’s pursuit of the Cannons, Mr. Wilkinson’s betrayal of Lyman Epps and Mr. Fleete, and their recent arrest and removal to the Elizabeth town jail. And when he informed them of his intention to ride over to Elizabethtown with me for the purpose of arranging the release of the Negro men—“Even if it must be done at gunpoint,” he said—John and Jason naturally chose to accompany and support us.

  Once again, it fell to me to drive the wagon, while Father and my elder brothers rode on horseback. “We’ll need the wagon to carry our friends back home,” Father said, and, of course, I agreed, although Father or one of the others could have driven it as well as I. Mary and Ruth and Susan Epps packed two days’ food for us, and the entire family stood by the door and waved cheerfully, as if we were setting out on a deer hunt, and we rode uphill back along the Cascade Road, east towards Keene and Elizabethtown.

  We had not planned to stop in Keene, which we reached by noon, but as we passed by the rundown farm owned by Mr. Partridge, Father suddenly determined to pull up. “I believe I have some business with that man,” he grimly announced, and pulled into the yard and dismounted. We followed, but did not get down from our horses, as he crossed the yard, strode across the porch, and rapped loudly on the door. There was a single, saddled horse at the porch rail, a bay that I thought I recognized but could not be sure until the door swung open and I saw Mr. Partridge’s long, dark, gloomy face and behind him glimpsed the grizzled face of the slave-catcher Mr. Billingsly.

  Billingsly darted out of our line of sight into the darkness of the room, but he surely knew that I and probably Father had spotted him when the door opened. This was a dangerous situation, and I jumped down from the wagon and signaled to John and Jason, who dismounted and joined me at the porch steps.

  “What do you want here, Brown?” Mr. Partridge said, his voice a bit shaky with fear, as the three of us came to stand behind Father, each with a musket in hand. Father, too, had his gun with him, slung under his right arm.

  “I’ve come to redeem my clock,” Father announced. He reached down into his left pocket and drew out some coins, which he held in front of him, until Mr. Partridge unthinkingly extended his own palm. Father let the coins trickle into the other man’s hand and said, “That, sir, is the cost of our food and lodging for one night, which you established back in May. You may count it, and then you will hand over my clock.”

  “You’re crazy, Brown,” he said, and he shoved the coins back at Father, groping at the Old Man’s snuff-colored frock coat until he found a loosely open pocket and dropped them in, whereupon he moved to shut the door in Father’s face. Father kicked the door back hard and shoved Mr. Partridge aside, and there stood revealed the slave-catcher Billingsly, who had drawn both his pistols.

  Everything that followed happened in less than two seconds. I saw Mr. Partridge’s dough-faced wife a ways behind Billingsly, her hands over her mouth, and beyond her was the old woman, her mother, calmly seated by the rear window, knitting, as if she were alone in the house. Mr. Partridge, his bearded face taut and drained white with fear, turned and grabbed Great-Grandfather’s clock from the fireplace mantel and extended it towards Father, a last-chance peace offering. At that instant, Billingsly fired one of his pistols, missing Father, who stood directly before him, missing everyone, although we did not know it yet, and simultaneously several of us fired our rifles, a reckless, wild thing to do at such close range with so many innocent people close by, but we were lucky, for no one was struck—except for the one man who deserved it, Billingsly the slave-catcher. He howled in pain and went down, rolling on the floor and clutching at his thigh, where blood spurted crimson onto the rug.

  I had fired my gun, I know that, and I later learned that John had fired his, but I do not know which of us shot Billingsly. Whichever, John or me, it was the first time one of us Browns had shot a man. I myself had meant not to hit anyone, intending merely to fire into the ceiling over everyone’s head, hoping, I suppose, to control the situation by striking terror into Billingsly, not a bullet. John later said that he had definitely meant to shoot the man dead but had not a clear shot, so merely had tried not to hit anyone else, especially the women.

  Who knew, then, which of us had shot him, and did it matter? One of John Brown’s sons had done the bloody deed, and the day would continue that way, with John Brown and his sons wreaking havoc and spilling blood in the Adirondack mountain villages of New York. Whatever one of us did, we all did.

  The man Billingsly was down, and his pistols were scattered across the floor. There was a loud battery of shouts, bellows, commands, and, from at least one of the women, high-pitched screams, and I do not know if I or my brothers or Mr. Partridge or even Billingsly was amongst the hounds who gave cry, although one of us Browns shouted, “He’s down! He’s down!” And another yelled at Partridge, “Don’t make a move, mister, or I swear it, I’ll kill you at once!” Several of us were calling to the rest, “Are you hit? Are you hit?” And, “No! Missed me! The coward missed me!” And, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire now!”

  Only Father remained calm. He waited for silence, and when it came, the Old Man, as cool and unruffled as a frozen lake, took the clock out of Mr. Partridge’s hands. Then he looked down at the bleeding slave-catcher, who squirmed and writhed on the floor in pain, and said in a clear, steady voice, “Mister Billingsly, this is the second time that you are lucky that we Browns have not ki
lled you. I advise you, sir, to consider another line of business than hunting down escaped slaves.”

  He turned, closed the door behind him, and placed the clock into the front of the wagon, below the driver’s bench. Then the Old Man and John and Jason mounted their horses. I jumped up into the wagon, and we rode quickly off, away from the valley, into the mountains and over the ridge to Elizabethtown, where, at around four o’clock in the afternoon, we drew up before the stately brick courthouse.

  The jail was behind and belowstairs, and we walked directly there. I did not know Father’s plan, or if he actually had one, beyond somehow convincing the Elizabethtown jailer to release Mr. Fleete and Lyman into our custody, which did not to me seem likely. But Father was adept at improvisation, so it was perhaps fortuitous, when we four Browns marched into the jail, armed and passably dangerous-looking, our faces flushed and hearts still beating rapidly from the shooting back in Keene, that we ran face-first into Mr. Wilkinson of Tahawus. He looked surprised and frightened to see us, naturally. He appeared to have just come in from a hard ride himself.

  “Mister Wilkinson” Father said, “tell me your business here.”

  The man backed off and turned to the jailer, a small, mustachioed man seated behind a cluttered desk, putting papers away. “This here’s John Brown!” Wilkinson exclaimed to the jailer, who did not appear to care. “He’s come to break the niggers out of jail!”

  At once, Father placed the mouth of the barrel of his musket next to the ear of Mr. Wilkinson. “You’re right about that;’ he said. “Jailer, you can march back to the cells with my sons here and uncage the two colored men and bring them forward, if you will be so kind. Otherwise, I will blow this man’s brains out.”