Spider in a Tree Read online

  Joseph was off studying in the Edwardses’ parlor, which he did so often that Elisha, flicking the cork at the cat’s nose, suspected his brother of wishing to live there. While most of the town was falling away from religion, Joseph was digging deeper in. Both boys worked at the mill, the family store, and in the fields as needed, edging away from their mother, although they worried about her constantly. Elisha had overheard Mrs. Root outside the store saying that his mother had gone so sour with grief that she was surprised that it didn’t taint the milk. He always searched for a little mold or cracking in a cheese to sell her after that, but she or, more often, her comely daughter Martha, still came back for more.

  He wouldn’t have said that Rebekah had soured, but she had become bigger and louder since their father had died. She had given Joseph his books. Virgil. Cicero’s Oratio, a volume on military discipline, which had belonged to his grandfather, who had practiced law.

  “Before he was gored!” Elisha would yell to make Joseph stop bragging about his library. It never worked. Elisha was short and, according to Joseph, puny, although the younger boy already had a chest very like an ox, and, like their mother, was loud and stout. One afternoon when Joseph pressed the puny business after citing The Rules of Pleading once too often, Elisha charged with his head down and stiff-armed his older brother right in the stomach. “Gored!”

  Joseph fell over and, for once, shut up.

  As much as Joseph was obsessed with the subject of their grandfather’s practice of law, he had confided in Elisha that he wanted to go to Yale to study divinity. He rattled off the things he needed to know to be accepted. “The Four Evangelists in Greek. Latin, Hebrew, rhetoric, logic, math, and oratory. And a good word from Mr. Edwards might help.”

  Elisha hated that Joseph was so enthralled with Mr. Edwards. He no sooner would have set himself up to study in that house full of girls and preachers than he would have gone back to wearing a gown. Even during the awakening, the tavern had been almost as crowded of an evening as the minister’s house. He couldn’t think of anyone except Joseph and a few other mealy-faced scholars who relished dawdling in the Edwardses’ parlor now.

  Bernard Bartlett and the men at his table gave a great shout as Mr. Stebbins took the iron from the fire and thrust it into a flip mug to burn the rum. They were red-faced and arguing about why their town should go to the expense of building both a new meeting house and a courthouse when just a meeting house had been fine until now. Bernard Bartlett waved his stick and bellowed, “Just wait, they’ll be setting women from the fine families, your Stoddards and your Dwights, they’ll be putting them front and center in the best pews nestled up to their husbands, while good men are thrust to the back. It’s indecent. I won’t stand for it.”

  His sons were sprawled on benches on either side of him. The taller one cocked one eyebrow, looking up at his father towering over him, red-faced and swaying, and said mildly, “Won’t come to that, Father. There will be a seating committee.”

  Bernard Bartlett snorted, then shouted, “That’s them! That’ll be those in the front. It’s always the same.”

  Elisha, whose father had sat on a bench front and center, felt embarrassed but invisible, young and nondescript as he was. Not everyone in the room was listening to Bernard Bartlett, but the ones that were just nodded, laughed or shrugged. Mr. Stebbins, the innkeeper, started scrambling eggs in a long-handled pan over the fire, which Elisha had seen him do before when he wanted to sober up a messy drunk. Not even the most pious families balked at drinking, but a taverner was required to keep good rule.

  Elisha was fretting that Mr. Stebbins, who sometimes turned him into a serving boy, would have him bring the eggs rather than slipping them discreetly onto the Bartletts’ table himself. It was a tricky thing, not just because Bernard Bartlett might be offended—or recognize a Hawley if he thrust a plate under his nose—but also because Mr. Stebbins had no desire to feed eggs to the entire house.

  Elisha rolled the string around the cork and kicked it across the floor for the lazy cat, who fixed it with her eyes, but didn’t move. He was just pulling on his coat to slip out the door on the pretext of tending the horses when Bernard Bartlett erupted in a furious roar. “It’s the devil, I tell you. He’s listening to the devil, not to God.”

  This was a serious oath, actionable in court. Every other conver-sation stopped as people waited to hear if he would say a name.

  Bartlett’s sons had both risen. One was trying to get his father’s attention by jostling his shoulder; the other raised a hand to his own mouth, as if stopping speech. Bernard Bartlett fixed his eyes on this one and cried, “Oh, not say it, not say it, then you’re in league with the devil, too. Didn’t we see Mr. Edwards in the woods on his hands and knees like a beast, emitting matter as black as his heart?”

  Mr. Edwards. The minister. It was the worst case. Struggling with his sons, who were trying to restrain him, Bartlett railed on. “Hasn’t he roiled up all kinds of demons and haunts and bad airs? He’s speaking the word of the Devil, not of God, and that boy has got the worst of it.” He shook a thick finger in Elisha’s direction.

  The boy stopped in his tracks, no longer edging toward the door, and leaned with deliberate casualness on the back of a chair like an experienced sport, reaching to the floor to send the cork spinning, since the cat had finally bestirred herself to knock it about. He felt calm and strangely warm. Bartlett was pointing at him, babbling and cursing their minister in a drunken way because his father had killed himself. Elisha did not give a straw about the devil when there was such a braying ass right there in the flesh. His guts were burning, but he would be damned before he would react. He might blame Mr. Edwards in his own heart, but this public raving made him feel as if he were being stripped of his skin. He wished for Joseph. He wished for his mother.

  Mr. Stebbins pulled the pan from the fire, calling, “I’ll not have such talk against Mr. Edwards in my establishment. If you knew what was good for you, which you don’t, you’d hasten to the parsonage right now and ask pardon of Mr. Edwards after you prayed for God to forgive your sins. Or face the consequences.”

  That got through to Bernard Bartlett, who blinked and said, “Beg pardon.” His boys let go of his coat.

  Elisha sat down and picked up the cat, which was rubbing his legs. He stroked her with profound concentration, ignoring the dig of claws as she kneaded his arm. People stopped looking at him and went back to their drinking, some of them muttering to each other. It was blasphemy to say that they’d been listening to the word of the devil from their preacher. Mr. Stebbins brought the eggs to the table himself, setting the plates down in front of the Bartletts with a stern look and a few low words. Elisha kept his eyes on the rumpled black hair of the purring cat as Bernard Bartlett and his sons ate quickly, finished their flip, then stood and came toward the door. Elisha didn’t take the coin that Mr. Bartlett waved in his face, but grabbed the man’s chapped hand and pressed the cat’s cork in his palm, instead. Elisha whispered into the back of the cat’s neck. “To plug that great, gawping, ignorant mouth of yours.”

  The men didn’t make out what he said, and neither did they ask. Perhaps Elisha’s thoughts were visible on his face, though, because Bernard Bartlett opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again and staggered out with his sons into the winter night, the cork string straggling from his fingers. The cat stared after it as if ready to pounce, but did not stir from Elisha’s lap.

  “Stay out of the tavern,” said Joseph when Elisha told him what had happened. They were raking dung from Pudding Lane in front of the house. “That way you don’t have to listen to drunks.”

  Elisha, who had been feeling queasy at the smell of pipe smoke and burnt rum ever since Bernard Bartlett had waved a finger at him, gave no ground. “Listening to you is worse.” Then he dropped his rake and jerked Joseph by his knees into the dirt.

 
They wrestled in the empty road until Joseph, going for Elisha’s belly with his elbow, accidently bashed his eye. It swelled shut. Joseph made a compress for it out of one of his detachable cuffs and some week-old snow. Rebekah, who had been in the buttery in the grip of one of her bad spells, seemed not to notice. They had raked their marks from the dust after the fight.

  Elisha never held a grudge. He was actually relieved that Joseph hadn’t tried to make a theological point, for once. Joseph held grudges, but never toward Elisha. He loved the capacity for forgiveness in his brother and mourned the lack in himself. They didn’t speak of their father. They tried not to speak of Bernard Bartlett, either, until it became impossible to avoid the subject of what had happened in the tavern with anyone in town.

  On the day of Bernard Bartlett’s flogging, Joseph and Elisha rode into the center of Northampton on their father’s favorite horse. There was new snow on the icy, rutted road, which gave the big old bay good footing, and they let Eben Pomeroy swing up behind Elisha when he hallooed from the side of Pudding Lane. His family had taken their wagon, but he had been allowed to walk rather than squeeze in with the rest.

  Rebekah Hawley had stayed to mind the store. “I’ve spent enough afternoons with ghouls and gawkers to last me a lifetime,” she had said, handing each of her boys a packet of boiled potatoes and bacon, in case they got hungry. She didn’t have to say that the gawkers would be with her all day, buying nails and saws and telling every flogging story they knew, since everyone in Hampshire County saved up their errands for a trip to town when court was in session.

  Mr. Sheldon didn’t ring the bell to bring people in to witness the punishment, but many did come, since it was winter, with the snow deep enough for sleighs. It wasn’t a hanging, with a procession of judges and ministers riding in the cart to murmur in the condemned ears, making, other mutterers said, as fine a target for a ruined pear as any poor lout headed for the pillory. Those about to die gave speeches from the gallows, unless they could be reasonably predicted to blaspheme or spout heresy. Bernard Bartlett, even chastened, was a person much inclined to talk, but a flogging didn’t merit a speech by the criminal.

  Eben, whose grandfather was the high sheriff, had been hearing great billows of stories around his uncle Seth’s anvil in the blacksmith shop up the hill on Elm Street for days, and he managed to tell most of them to Elisha and Joseph on their short, slow ride to Pudding Lane to town. He swung his hat at a branch laden with snow, and said, “It could have been worse. My grandfather says that a law on the books provided for blasphemy to be punished by having the tongue bored through, the nose slit, the forehead branded, and being whipped in every town in the colony, for a first offense.”

  Elisha, who got snow down his collar when Eben hit the branch, reached back to grab the other boy’s arm, which was still waving the hat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, although he suspected that Eben did. He had been greatly relieved not to be called in to testify before the court against Bernard Bartlett, although everyone knew he had been at the tavern that night. “Slandering Mr. Edwards was what he did.”

  “Stop that,” said Joseph, swatting his brother without turning around. “You two want to spook the horse?” The bay was old and calm, very accustomed to having boys on his back, but he had been flattening his ears, a sure sign of annoyance. Joseph had gone to the meeting house for the trial. He had been fascinated by the proceedings, and by the court in general, especially by the lawyers with their tie-back wigs and roomy voices. Joseph had been there when Bernard Bartlett, looking haggard and scrubbed, had been condemned to be lashed on the town common. As the sentence had been read out, Joseph saw Mrs. Bartlett hold firm, but the tallest of the Bartlett boys had begun to cry.

  Eben stopped swinging his hat at the trees, put it back on his head, and talked faster. “I know a lot. Did you ever hear about Goody Parsons? Used to live right there on Bridge Street a long time ago before she was run out of town by Bridgmans and Bartletts calling her a witch. My grandfather remembers when Betty Negro was whipped ten lashes on her bare back for striking her grandson and saying that his grandmother was a killer and his mother was half a witch.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with this.” Elisha reached up with his bare hand and knocked snow off a branch onto Eben’s head, who, much shielded by his hat, brushed it off with a good-natured laugh, although the bay snorted and gave an awkward hop. Elisha laughed, too, but he didn’t want to hear any more stories. He half expected the flogging to change something or heal something about his father’s death. He had said this to his mother, who had answered flatly, “It won’t.”

  Joseph turned the bay off Pudding Lane and onto Bridge Street, which was too crowded with horses, carts and people walking toward the common for the boys to shake down any more snow. They had to wait a long time to cross the bridge, but although he wanted the bay to jump the frozen stream, he knew that the idea was too idiotic to try in front of all these people. They finally pushed in front of Martha and Simeon Root, who were on foot with their cousin Timothy. He brought the bay to a halt at the back of the crowd, closer to the well and the schoolhouse than to the spot next to the stocks in front of the meeting house, where the floggings took place. They were late, and had no sooner arrived than they heard the wagon with the prisoner coming up Pleasant Street from the jail. Mr. Pomeroy drove the wagon, looking neither left nor right, and boys who were strangers to Elisha and Joseph, probably in town from Hartford or Sunderland or Westfield for the session of the court, ran along beside it, throwing rotten squash, calling Bernard Bartlett Old Saucepot and accusing him of blubbering as he sat in the wagon holding on to its edge. He did look to Elisha as if he had been crying and might cry more, but he had long been a red-faced man.

  Mr. Root, sworn in as constable and assigned to do the flogging, walked behind the wagon, beating a steady pace on a drum. The snow had been cleared from the main section of road through heavy use, but the ground was rough and frozen. Walking was treacherous. Among sailors, a drummer often did the flogging for the discipline and skill of his arm, but Mr. Root had no claims on either count, although he farmed, of course, and was more than strong enough. He looked at the crowd and hunched his back.

  Eben whispered in Elisha’s ear. “Timothy Root told me that his dad didn’t want to do the whipping. Said Mr. Edwards should do it, with his precious slandered name. I told him he should know better than to repeat that. He said that all his dad could talk about was aiming the whip for the shoulders, not organs or the spine.”

  Elisha bent his neck as Joseph was leaning back to listen. Their heads touched. They left them together for a moment. Eben looked at the brims of their hats tilting awkwardly, then, as the boys started to draw apart, he rather gently knocked their heads together again.

  Sarah Edwards rarely attended punishments, which she hated for the suffering of the punished and the avidness of the crowds, but she stood at the front next to her husband, holding baby Mary and surrounded by the rest of their girls. She could barely stand to speak, but she wished blessings on everyone who approached her. When she noticed Mrs. Lyman looking offended at her terseness, she worked to express herself more warmly. The skins would be covered and soaking in their vats of lime at the tannery, but there was still a faint smell. Mr. Edwards spoke gravely with townspeople, as well. Leah, just behind them, had one hand on Jerusha’s shoulder to keep the child from sliding her feet back and forth on the ice without regard for balance or decorum.

  The wagon pulled up to the pillory, and the rude boys, out of things to hurl, stepped back into the crowd. Mr. Pomeroy climbed down from the front of the wagon and, spotting Eben on the back of the old bay, motioned him over to hold the horse. Eben touched his hat respectfully and did as he was told.

  They all listened to the old Reverend Mr. William Williams, husband to another daughter of the great Solomon Stoddard, like Rebekah and Mr. Edwards’s m
other. Mr. Williams had been brought in from Hatfield to let Mr. Edwards keep his peace in this matter that concerned him directly.

  As he listened to Mr. Williams’s exhortations to duty, Joseph started scratching a tuft of thick winter hair midway down the slope of the bay’s nose. The horse shifted his ears in appreciation. Joseph glanced over his shoulder to confirm that Elisha was giving the rump a quiet scratch, too. It was the witness of his brother’s inattention, not the experience of his own, that made him admonish himself to attend to the prayer. He turned his glance at Elisha into a stern look, but, as Mr. Williams droned on, he found his eyes drawn to Mr. Edwards, instead. They often were.

  Joseph searched out the kinship with his mother in the minister’s long jaw (his hands were once again scratching the horse, who snorted). He wondered why, when he was so giving in to his corruption as to let his mind wander from Mr. Williams, that he listened to everything Mr. Edwards said in sermon or prayer. He couldn’t escape the words if he wanted to. Part of that might have been because there was the blood between them, his mother’s, and in the other way, his father’s. Joseph’s mind flinched away from the memory, then arched back to his undeniable sense of their connection. He knew, because he had heard him preach it, that Mr. Edwards thought of his father’s suicide as God’s punishment of the town for its people’s sins. He had heard others before Bernard Bartlett come close to saying that the wave of suicides were the devil’s punishment of the whole valley for the awakening. Now Joseph, who knew that grace was worth any suffering, wondered if his cousin ever thought of his father’s death, as he did, as punishment for himself.