The Blood of the Soul of this poor Negro here lies upon you, Sam said, not deigning to speak directly to his dark companion, and the guilt of his Barbarous Impieties, and superstitions, and his neglect of God, if you are willing to have nothing done toward the salvation of his soul. Despite what you think, to convert one Soul unto God is more than to pour out Ten Thousand Talents into the Baskets of the Poor.
You listen to me, you cracker spook, Wilkie said, I’m not going to be taken in by your love-thy-servant nonsense. If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can’t come to him with peace. Why good night, he’ll break you in two, as he has been doing all along. You have to learn how to speak his language and then he’ll get the point. Then there’ll be some dialogue. There’ll be some communication. There’ll be some understanding.
Oh, who can tell, Sam called out, his indignation rising, but that this Poor Creature may belong to the Election of God! Who can tell, but that God may have sent this Poor Creature into your hands, Charlotte, that so One of the Elect may by your means be Called and by your Instruction be made Wise unto Salvation! The Blackest Instances of Blindness and Baseness are admirable Candidates of Eternal Blessedness. Though it be caviled, by some, that it is questionable Whether the Negroes have Rational Souls, or no, let that Brutish insinuation be never Whispered any more. They are men not beasts. Withhold knowledge of the Almighty from them and they will be destroyed.
At her heels they raged, traipsing after her down the hallway, down the back stairs, and into the kitchen, to the window above the sink full now of dishes.
Over the grass a morning mist hung. Its tendrils stretched under the maples and down the hill. Ten minutes or more she stood there waiting, until at last she saw Fanning come out of his front door, dressed not in a suit today, as he usually was, but in jeans and a sweatshirt. She watched with relief as he got in his car and drove up to the road. She was not, after all, in the business of killing.
Yesterday, after saying her goodbyes to Henry, she had seen in her mind’s eye the mansion burning, and felt, in anticipation, its heat on her skin, the heat she remembered from the bonfires they used to have in the back field when they came up for Thanksgiving and dragged the fallen branches out of the woods and burned all the raked leaves, only how much greater would the heat be when it was an entire house consumed, wood and nails and glass and a thousand substances besides? Again now, she saw the fire, and then the charred frame and then that, too, crumbling, and from the blackened earth saplings rising, drinking sun and rain, thickening in nature’s time to the testaments of endurance that trees became, shading again the river and the trout, the cardinals and the blue jays and the orange-winged butterflies flitting through a summer dusk, when she and Henry had played by the riverbank before being packed in the car and driven back to Rye, only years later to discover, at night in her dorm room, Milton’s pentameter describing what the two of them had lost:
… whereat
In either hand the hastning Angel caught
Our lingering Parents, and to th’ Eastern Gate
Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer’d.
She let the tap water run until it chilled the bones of her fingers and then she filled a glass for herself and the dogs’ bowls. They lapped them quickly dry and were back at her side in no time.
They say overcome your enemies with your capacity to love. What kind of an idea is that? Wilkie asked. He’s not going to be overcome by your love. I’ve never called on anybody to be violent without a cause.
There is a court somewhere kept, where your pride shall be judged, Sam warned. And it is not here in the False Church of this earth.
“I have not for one day believed in your God.”
No, sure. And so in Great Folly you shall one day wander down to the Congregation of the Dead.
She took a box of matches from the ledge of the stove and beneath the sink found a canvas bag.