Outer Banks by Russell Banks
Dome: What is the work that you practice in the wooden structure attached to your dwelling place and facing the roadway? And how long have you been at that work?
Self: I am a builder of coffins for the express purpose of tendering mercy to the dead. And I have been such since boyhood, when it became imperfectly known to me that any skills I might obtain while among the living would be without meaning unless bent wholly to that purpose.
Dome: You admit, thereby, that you have all your adult life participated in an activity that the larger community has now declared illegal. Do you also admit that you have consistently and diligently enjoined others to do likewise?
Self: Only those others who give evidence of possessing such gifts as I possess and who, with long instruction and example, can acquire the necessary skills for coffin-building. To those who give no evidence of possessing these gifts, and who therefore ought not to be encouraged to acquire these skills, I merely encourage in a general way to know themselves, so that they may pursue a more truly characteristic way of tendering mercy to the dead. For while there are many paths homeward, there is but a single calling. (Trib., vii, 38.)
Dome: Do you admit that you meet together privately for the purposes of giving and receiving instruction?
Self: It has always been customary to do so in this land, and more efficient also.
Dome: You have before me this day confessed to acts which, though in the past have merely been heinous in the eyes of the community, are henceforth regarded as illegal and, therefore, punishable by law. As is my sworn duty, then, unless you first swear before me at this table that all such activities will no longer be tolerated by you or by those under your care, I will be compelled to indict you for persisting in heresy and to remand you to stand trial in the court of the chief of civil prosecution in the parish. Do you so swear?
Self: I cannot of my own will free the dead from the care of the living, any more than I can of my own will free the living from the care of the dead. It is in the nature of things.
At which words His Honor Mister Dome was in a chafe, as it appeared, for he declared that he would snap the neck of these heresies.
Self: It may be so. But I am not able to aid you, for I am already bound over.
Dome: I find against you, Sir. But if you can locate sureties to be now set for you and thus guarantee that you will appear as ordered for trial at the next quarter-sessions, and also that you will cease and desist, pending the findings of said trial, all coffin-making and other such activities as have been declared illegal, I will set you over to return to your home and family until you are called to court.
Self: I understand that any sureties I obtain will be bound against my further coffin-making, and that if I do build a coffin, their bounds will be forfeited. But since I will not leave off the building of coffins, for I believe this is a work that has no hurt in it but is rather more worthy of commendation than blame, then any who will provide sureties for me will soon hate me. I do not believe that I will be able to uncover any friends willing to provide sureties for me who would also be willing to hate me.
Whereat he told me that if my friends would not be so bound, my mittimus must be made and I sent to the jail and there to lie to the quarter-sessions, some nine weeks off.
Thus have I in short declared the manner and occasion of my first being in prison, where I lie even now, calm in the knowledge that to suffer as a result of the errors and weakness of the living is to be all the more prepared for the demands made by the dead. Let the rage and malice of the living be never so great, they can go no further than the dead will permit them. Even when they have done their worst, I will yet love only that greater power over them, the everlasting dead.
AT THE VERY commencement of my imprisonment it was one of the chiefest pleasures of my days to converse at intermittent times in his rounds with my jailor, whose father had been a higgler from my own town and who often had spoken fondly of my own father to this said man when he was himself a child. It was his recognition of my surname, therefore, that brought him to present himself to me early on my first morning in confinement there. Thus my jailor seemed from the outset to rest in a certain sympathy toward me, for he could not understand how I was a dangerous man that had to be locked away from the company of my fellows, like some beast whose uncontrollable lust it was to tear at living flesh. Nor could it be shown to him that I had destroyed or stolen private or public property or that I had made any claims or abridgements against the lawful liberties of other men.
Yet despite this wondering of why it was that I had been imprisoned, my jailor all the same could not understand why I did not leave off my activities as a maker of coffins and apply my skills instead to some task that the majority of my fellow men wished to see promoted, such as the building of glass-fronted cabinets (he cited the same fashion among the newly wealthy as had my friend earlier, prior to my arrest).
But I have met my calling and the meaning it lends to my formlessness more sweetly here in this cell than in the world outside, I told him. To show it my back and numbly acquiesce to the demands of the majority of the living would sour the very air that fills my body.
Could you not do more good if you were set at liberty than you can while locked here in a cage? my jailor inquired. He was a decent fellow, and I did believe and believe especially now, many years after his passing away from me, that he was concerned that the most good be done. And what in particular offended him about my confinement was that it seemed to do no one any good. He was thus a man whose compassion was essentially an act of logic, and his view of mean and cruel men was that they were merely illogical. We could not agree on this, for my own view has been that such men are mean and cruel because they will not perform the rites and other acts of worship which would purge them of their meanness and cruelty, which purgation would thereby permit them to enact goodness in the world. Mercy, I explained to my jailor, is a quality of feeling toward others that must be obtained at some source outside the human heart. My brethren and I believe that it can only be obtained by devoting oneself fully to the worship and further contemplation of the power of the dead. For a man cannot see or hear or touch the world born and dying daily around him until he has first seen, heard and touched the infinite. (Wal., v, 41.)
When I had lain in prison for along about twelve weeks, and not during that time knowing what they intended to do with me, upon the fifteenth of May there came to me a Mister Jones, clerk of the court, having been sent by the several justices of the parish to admonish me and demand of me submission to their regulation of my activities and the curtailment of any future making of coffins or of teaching others to do likewise or of recommending such activities and the wisdom and sweetness thereof to any others, especially to the youth. But since I knew that my case had not yet been publicly tried and that I was merely under indictment and had not yet confessed to any act of heresy but had merely argued as to the legitimacy and rightness of my calling, I knew the admonitions and demands put to me by Mister Jones were but part of a strategem designed to control me without having as well to defend in public the court’s interest in breaking the neck of the people’s growing love for the dead and their gradual awakening to acts of worship and contemplation of the dead. For, as all men knew, there was in those years a new spirit moving over the land which was compelling the people toward a deeper delight in life that was by necessity and grace derived from their growing knowledge and experience of the dead. The finite is but the flesh of the infinite, and the living the breath of the dead. (Flor., ii, 14.) Here is how Mister Jones, clerk of the court, made his conversation with me:
When he was come into my chamber, which I had in various ways and through the aid of my young wife made as comfortable and cheerful as such a stony place could be made, he called heartily out to me, Neighbor! How do you do, neighbor?
I thank you, Sir, said I. Very well, blessed be the dead.
Said he, scratching at his nose, Well, Sir, I have come to tell you that it is
I said with all seriousness, looking briefly onto the face of my jailor for confirmation, that I did desire only to demean myself in the world, as becometh a man and a worshipper of the dead. Whatever denied me that benefit could not be pursued, I explained.
Still he scratched his nose, as if there were situated there some devious growth or some question that by a steady scratching would get answered. You must leave off these unholy and illegal practices which you have long been wont to participate in and endorse among others, for the statute is now set up against them, and here am I now, sent by the justices to tell you that they do intend to prosecute the law against you if you will not submit.
Sir, I said modestly but with natural authority and a reasonable man’s knowledge of procedure and law, Sir, I conceive that the laws by which I am imprisoned at this time, the laws of indictment, do not reach or condemn either me or the practices of tendering mercy in various accepted, codified manners to the dead. I have come forward and made myself known unto the world, and now you and your justices must do the same. The dead will decide who is in the right.
I believe that the clerk of the court was a weak and easily frightened man, for at this he turned and stalked furiously from my presence. My jailor was at first moved to laughter, but after a moment, when he saw that mirth had not been my intent, he sombered and declared his affection for my methods, though he said he was repelled by my cause. This did not dismay or discourage me, for I had long ago undergone the type of self-scrutiny that weds method to cause; and therefore I knew my jailor’s lack of affection for my cause was only due to his ignorance of it, whereas his appreciation of what he called my methods could only be due to a clear readiness for conversion.
And indeed, before the next quarter-sessions came to term, my jailor, whose name was John Bethel, had begun to open his heart and understanding to the mystery of the dead and had commenced joining me in my cell for evening prayer and contemplation. He had not yet his own coffin and therefore was compelled to close himself in his arms where two walls meet, as is the custom for those among the brethren who, for reasons, have not their own coffins at ready access. But when he had frequently observed my emergence from prayer and had glimpsed indirectly thereby the grace and relief obtained, he thereupon had each time attempted to elicit from me the name of one by whom he himself might have a coffin built.
I greeted his repeated request with deeply troubled feelings. On the one hand, I took delight from what appeared to be a case of genuine conversion to the understanding that supercedes all understanding, and I knew that without his own coffin in which to closet himself for prayer and contemplation, my brother John Bethel would eventually see his questing fall back upon itself, like a vine with nothing to attach itself to, there to wither and die. This possibility, nay, this likelihood! grieved me, and I would determine at once to provide him with the name of one of those among us who would build him a coffin, when, as I paced my cell waiting for my jailor to make his evening round and appear to me, it would seem to me that his request for information, such as the name of one who would build him a coffin, was but a subtle ruse designed to induce me to expose and incriminate and thereby condemn one of my beloved brethren to the fate I now endured. And thus I would close my mind as if it were a fist, and I would swear never to reveal the names of my fellow worshippers of the dead, even if tortured and brought to the very gateway of death itself. I had no fear of torture in those years, any more than I do today, for I was filled with the knowledge that if one among the living were to bring me to the very gateway of death and there threaten to hurl me through, it would be as if he were threatening to hurl me into the arms of my dead parents and long-departed ancestors, and I would at such a moment urge him onward, not to confound him, as I am sure it would do, but so as to end this agony of separation.
While I was yet enduring this quandary with regard to the question of the conversion of my jailor John Bethel, as it was now some weeks beyond the second quarter-sessions of the meeting of the justices of the parish for the purposes of trying all those previously indicted and not yet tried in public court and still I had not yet been called forth so to be tried, though I continued to languish in jail fully as if I had indeed been tried and convicted of those crimes for which I had merely been indicted and had not confessed (except as to argue against the legitimacy of the laws which prohibit acts of worship of the dead such as my brethren are known to participate in), came the time of the solstice. Now at the solstice there is usually a general releasement of divers prisoners, by virtue since ancient days of the high feelings surrounding the event, in which privilege I also should have had my share. But they would not take me for a convicted person, unless I were willing to sue out a pardon (as they called it), by means of which I would recant all my previous statements and activities as had got me indicted in the first place. Therefore, since I was no more willing under these new circumstances to recant and deny than I had been when under more durable and oppressing circumstances twenty weeks before, I could have no benefit of the solstice. Whereupon, while I continued in prison, my good wife went unto the several justices, that I might be heard and that they would impartially take my case into public consideration.
There were three, and the first that my wife did plead unto was Judge Hale, who was celebrated for his learning and deep probity and who was known for his leniency towards dissenters of various sorts. He very mildly received her, telling her that he would do her and me the best good he could, but he feared, said he, that he could do none.
The following day, lest the judges should, by the multitude of their business, forget me, she did throw another petition onto the table of Judge Twisdom, who, when he saw it and had read it through, snapped her up and angrily informed her that I was a convicted person already and could not be released unless I would promise to make no more coffins and not to teach others, &c.
After this disappointment, she went unto Judge Bester, who, in the mild presence of Judge Hale, stood and declared loudly and angrily that I was convicted by the court and that I was a hot spirited fellow, whereat he waved the petition in the air above his head and shouted that he would not meddle therewith.
But yet my wife, being encouraged by the seeming kindly face and manner of Judge Hale, did persist, saying that I had been indicted merely and had confessed to no crime and had not been tried, yet I was both confined to prison and at the same time was not to receive the indulgences prompted by the solstice that all other prisoners were to be granted. The place where this interview took place was called the Lion’s Chamber, where there were then situated the two judges and also many gentry and officers of the several towns in the parish. My wife, coming into them with a bashed face and a trembling heart and voice, began her errand to them in this manner:
Woman: My Lord (directing herself to Judge Hale), I make bold to come once again to your Lordship to know what may be done with my husband.
Hale: Woman, I have told you that I can do you and your husband no good, because they have taken that for a conviction which your husband has already spoken at the indictment. And unless there be something done to un-do that, I can do you no good.
Woman: My Lord, he was clapped into prison…
One of the gentry in the room, interrupting her: My Lord, the man was lawfully convicted! Why waste your precious time?
Woman: False! False!
Whereupon Judge Bester answered very angrily, saying that my wife must think that judges could do whatever they wished, whereas it seemed instead that her husband, meaning me, was the one who at this very moment was standing at prison for attempting to do whatever he wished. Did she desire that they too, meaning the judges and various gentry in the room, should end standing in prison alongside her husband? He laughed loudly at this.
W
Bester: He was.
Woman: No, he was not.
Bester: Indeed he was!
Hale: He was.
One of the gentry: Get this woman from out the room! She is a disrupter!
Bester: He was convicted! It is recorded! It is recorded! he continued crying, as if it must be of necessity true because it was so recorded. With which words, he and the others in the chamber, for they had taken up the cry, attempted to stop up her mouth, having no other argument to convince her but, It is recorded! It is recorded!
Here Judge Hale, trying to restore order, but not so greatly interested in restoring justice, interrupted and declared that none should talk about this matter any further, for he (meaning me) cannot do whatever he wishes, and he (meaning me again) has proved himself a breaker of the peace if not a heretic.
Woman: He only desired to live peaceably and that he follow his calling, both that his life and his family’s be properly maintained, and moreover, my Lord, I have five small children that cannot help themselves, of which one is born blind, and they and I now have nothing to live upon but the charity of good people.
Hale: You have five children? You are but a young woman to have five children. And a slender woman to have five children. (He seemed to wish her proven a liar of some sort.)
Woman: I am, my Lord, but stepmother to them, having not been married to him yet two full years when he was first arrested. Indeed, I was with child when my husband was first apprehended, but being young and unaccustomed to such things then, I was smayed at the news and fell into labor and so continued for eight days, then was delivered, but my child died.
Whereat Judge Hale, looking very soberly on the matter, said, Alas, poor woman!
But Judge Bester declared that she made poverty and pain her cloak and its lining.