A Slant of Light Read online

  “I believe I do.”

  “Now the first couple years—”

  “You’re speaking of sixty-one?”

  “Yes. That fall, the harvest made enough grain and hay to feed the stock, enough seed grain for the next year also. What surplus there was, I figured Wheeler and Missus Hopeton had been instructed to sell off. Also,” he paused.

  “Go on.”

  “That first year things was mostly normal. We all thought the war would be over quick. And it seemed to me she was happy I was there. For Wheeler, I was just a hand to put to work. For a good while I thought that was all there was to it.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  Harlan drank some of his tea. He took a cautious pause, glancing at the window to look upon the rain. Then finally he spoke. “This and that. Things I’d overhear. And on from there, if you take my meaning. That last year everything that could walk itself or be carried by others, left the farm. And Wheeler and Missus Hopeton was gone near as much as they was there.”

  Stone now paused. He rolled his tea cup and peered in, as if he’d read the leaves matted at the bottom.

  August asked, “More tea, Enoch?”

  He was rewarded with a broad smile. “No, August. Thank you. I feel I’ve taken up too much of your afternoon already. I’ll say, Malcolm Hopeton chose well when he hired this boy on. Sharp eyes and mind, also.” He turned to Harlan. “Can you stand a couple more questions?”

  “I’ll talk all day and night if it’ll help Mr. Hopeton.”

  Stone smiled.

  “You’ve been a great help,” he said. “And I’d caution that in the weeks ahead there may be others asking these questions of you. You’re an honorable young man, Harlan Davis, but you must understand that those other lawyers, it’s their job to prove Malcolm Hopeton murdered his wife and Amos Wheeler, and to see him hang.”

  Harlan was in a sudden red sweat. He said, “But he did!”

  Stone reached and laid his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. In a calming voice he said, “It’s my understanding you saw nothing. As to the murders, no one doubts he killed Amos Wheeler. In a blind rage is my thinking. As for Mrs. Hopeton, there’s evidence to suggest he didn’t intend her death, that it may have been accidental. The truth of this will come clear. That’s what’s important, in the end. Don’t you agree?”

  Harlan was quiet a long while, staring off again at the window over the sink, where the rain had fallen off to dripping eave streaks and where, beyond that, there was sunlight diffused among the treetops, the tip of the barn peak lit visible. He said, “I guess I do.”

  Stone said, “My work in this life is about Truth, not about what the law says, or can do. Because there is a higher law than we make as men. If truth is allowed to come out stark-faced, there is no one who can deny it. The laws of men can be turned upon themselves, as men can be. But truth is a light that streams over men, leaving laws but pebbles in the dirt we must step over.”

  He stood then, and looked at August first and then Becca. As if he’d forgotten they were in the room. He said, “The rain has quit?”

  August said, “Seems it has.”

  Stone nodded and turned back toward the table. “I have one last question today, Harlan. You can manage that, can’t you, son?”

  “Yes sir, I can.”

  “I know it.” He addressed August and Becca. “Perhaps, would you be so kind as to bring up my horse and buggy, hitched in your barn in the downpour? I’d be so grateful.”

  Becca said, “I’ll go.”

  “Thank you,” Stone said. “But I was thinking, the both of you? It’s a delicate question.”

  August watched Harlan’s face swing up as if tied to a wire pulled taut. He reached into his trouser pocket, found nothing, and walked to the shelf above the fireplace, opened the box, and lifted a fresh cheroot, turning it over in his fingers while eying it. While he did this he said, “Becca, give Mr. Stone his hat and cloak, please, then bring his horse up to the house.” He rolled the wrinkled black-leafed cylinder again, slowly, until she was gone. Then clamped it between his teeth, leaned down, and pressed a kindling splinter into the coals, then lifted it slowly and dabbed the end of the cheroot as he inhaled. Once it was going he turned and settled again into his chair.

  Stone said, “You should’ve gone with the girl.”

  “P’raps. What do you think, Harlan?”

  “I’m as glad you’re here.”

  August asked Enoch Stone, “Is that what you were after?”

  Stone said, “It’s how it has to be.” He swiveled on his boot heels and dropped to his haunches close to Harlan, one arm again over the boy’s shoulders. He said, “It’s concerning Mrs. Hopeton. You knew her first name, didn’t you? Bethany?” He paused, letting the word hang in the air. Then said, “It’s a pretty name. And she was a pretty woman. Most say more than pretty. Did she ever show herself to you? By accident, out of her bath? Or was there more? Did she come to you in the night? Tell the truth, Harlan. What happened in that house, all those years? Harlan?”

  Harlan jerked upright from his chair and Enoch Stone lost his balance and fell back onto his buttocks. Harlan grabbed his teacup by the rim and threw it down to splinter to fragments on the floorboards.

  “No!” he cried. “It was none of that, none at all.” Then was gone, running out the door and off into the muddy yard, where he slipped and fell and rose up again plastered brown and slopping, not seeing his sister as he dodged hard through the orchard and cut behind the barn and was running toward the woods and out of sight, his voice trailing high diminishing cries that rose and held as smoke rings drifting upward and then finally gone. Into the world freshly green and wet.

  Becca flew in just as August had helped Enoch Stone to his feet and brushed him off. He was in a quandary, needing to talk to Stone but not willing to send Becca after her brother, not wanting her to find him, to hear what he might say.

  Becca, a red fury, bit her words, “Where’s my brother run off to? What’d you do?”

  August took the moment. “Give me a second to send this lawyer on his way. Then we’ll find your brother. Listen to me: Down cellar, behind the crocks of pork there’s a corked quart bottle snugged down against the wall. Find that.”

  She paused. Stone was turning to leave. August said, “Becca, please.”

  “I know the one you mean.” Her voice hard as starch, a way he’d never heard her.

  He caught up with Stone in the yard. He said, “That was a terrible thing to do to a boy who was trusting you.”

  Stone shook off August’s hand from his arm and climbed into his buggy and took up the lines. For a moment August thought the man would just drive away. Instead, the lawyer looked down and said, “Do you doubt it? After how he reacted?”

  “I’m speaking of what he’s lived through the last week, the past almost four years. Not to mention his life before that. Do you know he only turns sixteen come November? He’s no child but he’s had more piled on him than many a man twice his age. Did you need that last, today? Couldn’t you’ve waited?”

  Stone said, “I spoke with David and Iris Schofield day before yesterday, then David took me aside. He gives an account of his daughter that’s most disturbing. I needed to answer what I suspected. And asking Harlan cold would not have worked. I’m sorry, August. I blindsided him and am leaving you with that to mend the best you can. And I pray you will. I need, we all need, Harlan Davis. For many reasons. First among them being to save Malcolm Hopeton from hanging. New York State law is barbaric, Old Testamential, the tribal laws of the ancient Jews. You know of what I speak?”

  “An eye for an eye.”

  “And Christ taught?”

  “I know well as you what Christ taught.”

  “Ah, August, you’re angry with me. And you don’t have the time this afternoon for me to salve that anger and explain. You’ll be distracted until you find the boy and calm him. Some days this is the best we can do. As you said, he’s lived through more th
an he should’ve. Which is not the same as what he can endure and rise above. I think he’s already shown that to be so, even if he doesn’t fully know it yet. You did know Bethany Schofield was buried quietly three days ago, with no meeting or gathering, in the pauper’s ground?”

  “I heard as much. I know some wanted a meeting to mark her passage. Better than most, I think I can understand why that didn’t happen.”

  Enoch Stone adjusted his hat and spread open his waxed coat against the sudden sunlight. He said, “Your devotion over grief serves as a steady reminder to us all, August. But you doubt me, you always have. I take it as a compliment. Now consider this: As soon as possible, prior to the arraignment, I’ll be calling upon Judge Gordon to ask for clemency in this case. David Schofield has made clear his desire to speak at the formal proceedings as well. I’m hoping to humbly demonstrate Christian virtue. If upsetting Harlan Davis provided me the assurance I need to follow this course I call it a small cost.”

  August had a headache clamping his mind. Past his left shoulder outside the entryway Becca stood, the bottle he’d asked for in one hand held away from her side, and Stone waited, paused. All of the moment put August in mind of swarming bees who’ve lost their queen. The rest of him ached toward wherever Harlan might be.

  He shook his head without knowing he was doing so and looked at Enoch Stone and said, “Explain yourself as you will. It means little at the moment.” He tugged the horse’s bridle and turned it sideways to him, causing Stone to switch sides to look down upon him, and August swatted the horse as Stone heard him and in a spurt they went up toward the road, the wheels sucking in the wet gravel and clay.

  He went to Becca and took the bottle from her hand.

  She said, “I know what that is.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then you don’t have to ask questions about it.”

  She said, “Where’s Harlan? What happened here?”

  He said, “I don’t know the half of it. But I’m going to find him. A day like this, might take a bit if he run far but won’t be that hard. Then he and I might sit and talk a bit. Or not. What I need from you is to get a good sturdy supper ready. Pull some pork or beef from the brine and get it going. Just have food ready. It might be a hour from now or three. I don’t know.”

  She said, “Just the hired girl, then? Now as always?”

  “By God, girl, you are! Can you do your job? While I track your brother and do the best I can?” He turned, stepping off in slow, boot-sucking steps. It was suddenly hot and sunlight beat down upon him as deerflies and green-backed flies rose out of the dooryard muck and swirled about him. He jammed the bottle down in his rear pocket and headed for the wet grass and firmer ground of the orchard.

  Behind him Becca called his name. He slogged on but lifted one hand and waved without looking back. If she thought he was angry the better chance she’d get done what he’d asked her to do, and nothing was gained by letting her know of his own uncertainty.

  He had an idea where Harlan might be. It wasn’t so hard. He circled the barn, saw the path through the wet grass toward the woods over the narrow ravine, also saw how the path looped out away and back. To and fro. He turned and went into the barn, entering the empty tie-up, the young calves in their gate-folds, and the pen where the mules were stabled and on through the connecting door where the horses stood in their stalls, big curious heads tipped back against shoulders to watch him, the bulks of muscle all craned and curious. Against the wall hung the harnesses slung from hooks, the workbench area where he made repairs, the bench and foot vise, leatherworking tools of all sorts. Beyond that, through another door, was the dung shed, with high arched openings to the south free of doors where in winter he wheelbarrowed horse and cow manure until the weather broke enough to haul it out by sledge or wagon and spread by forkfuls on his fields.

  From the horse barn he climbed the ladder through the floor of the high vaulted loft and stood there, between the tiers of hay, listening. He heard nothing. He thought to say a name, plain and calm, to rise around him but did not. There were ladders rising left and right, east and west; he must pick and hope he picked correctly.

  When the wheat died from blight, Narcissa had said, “You have to trust and if you’re wrong you must trust the failure will lead you closer to the answer. In Time we’re crushed by the gears or learn how to drive the machine. And the machine always breaks down, doesn’t it? Oh, how you worry.”

  Touched his forehead.

  He went up a ladder and found Harlan. The boy sat deep in on the hard-packed hay, knees up to his chin and arms wrapped around his knees, behind him the peaks of new hay, overhead the shingled roofing shot through with beads of light, mud-daubers and paper wasps drifting from their rafter nests.

  August stepped from the ladder and the boy didn’t seem to hear him, didn’t look back. August found his own perch in the tiers of hay and settled down. Harlan, in his canvas trousers and worn blue serge shirt, barefoot and hatless, a shrunken but muscled boy with ears like dried apples clumped back against his head, hair the color of the mules he loved, cut rough with sheep-shears or somesuch, perhaps only his pocketknife before a crackled mirror-glass. Ill-mended was what he was, shrunken, looking no more than twelve years old but for the weary old-man sag of his shoulders. And whatever clots of worry buzzed between his ears.

  So August sat hushed. The bottle wedged in his hip pocket felt a foolish thing. As did the words he carried, had imagined himself saying. He studied his hay and once deftly and silently swatted away a yellow jacket droning fast from the rafter nest. And waited.

  After a time Harlan did not turn but said, “Mr. Swartout?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “It’s near time to milk. If we did that, you reckon we could not talk about any of all this mess?”

  “I think that would be a good plan.”

  Six

  Malcolm Hopeton was seventeen years old in 1844 when he came west from Vermont and spent the summer and early autumn traipsing by foot the new county of Yates, quiet enough so most thought him a raw country boy with small prospects; but he was wise in the ways of men, cattle, horses, and mules, wisdom he held close. When he found the farm in Milo between the lakes, the land agents all but laughed at him until he drew his purse from his pocket and offered cash money less fifty dollars toward the asking price.

  He didn’t mention it but beyond the fertility of the farm the deal-clincher was the orchard of a dozen old peach trees, mere saplings not discovered when Sullivan’s army had swept through the Iroquois lands burning villages, fields and orchards with great thoroughness, missing only a handful of small outlying settlements, one of which had been here. Malcolm Hopeton had only once in his life eaten a fresh peach but had never forgotten it. And so with a mild face, he sharped the land agent into including every last tool and item, including the pruning saw and hooks, by withdrawing the offer three minutes later. He spent a week itemizing all of these goods and storing them in the root cellar that he then strapped with metal bands, a heavy clasp, chain and lock.

  He departed the country until the following spring, when he reappeared at the very end of March while the drifts from the blizzards were still rotting on northern slopes or lees of buildings, driving a team of big bay mules hauling a canvas-covered wagon of household goods, a string of three Jersey cows tied behind and one side of the wagon a cage strapped on holding a spotted sow heavy with young. On the seat beside him, his grandfather, Cyrus Hopeton, twisted sideways from a poorly healed hip shattered by a horse kick years before. Once they were settled the old man became as a shade, a spectral being, to the curious neighbors. He hobbled about using a pair of ash-wood livestock canes but mostly remained in the house, where evenings they ate the food he’d prepared and discussed the business of the day. In mild weather he’d make his way to the barn to sit on a stool during evening chores, and on certain days in the spring or fall there was a sheltered corner that faced south behind the barn where Malcolm fashioned a bench for
him, where he’d sit to let the sun soak heat into his old bones, the spot looking over the grove of now reclaimed peach trees. His mind was sharp as ever but he trusted his grandson to be their public face; he was done with the world of men, and for good reason: He’d lost his family to the apocalyptic teachings of William Miller. It was not only Miller’s extreme vision and calculations of the world coming to end, but his followers’ determination to ascend from their hilltop unencumbered by material goods on that golden morn, and so Cyrus had watched his son sell his farm outside of Poultney and take rooms with his wife and daughters in a cramped house with other Millerites; but when Cyrus’s own wife entreated him to do the same he’d taken pause, consulted with his grandson, and sent the boy west. When Malcolm returned with his news, Cyrus had summarily sold off his holdings and sent his wife to live with the Millerites, and had ridden west with a stony face that softened as they came down the west shore of Seneca Lake and he saw the land his grandson had described. Malcolm thought at the time that he knew very well what old Cyrus was leaving behind; but it would be many years before, standing alone with his own mind crumbling, he’d truly understand how he and his grandfather had been a team in harness, pulling their slow steps away from a world lost.

  Malcolm offered nothing of their past to the usual prodding queries, and such interest faded as it became clear he would prosper. A couple of years in and all anyone spoke of was his corn, his grain, the sleek hardy cattle that turned out butter like bejesus, and the mules. Not a few girls cast eyes his way but saw only a gritted determination toward his work and despite threshing bees and harvest suppers were unable to impress themselves upon him and so looked elsewhere. As the years rolled over, his neighbors decided he was a solitary man and forgot that he was still young. And so left him to his work and counted on him when he was a needed hand and returned the effort. They thought they knew him, and he was happy enough with that.