WHEN SPRING CAME, I contrived to continue my work in town. By then, Sheriff Evans and I got along pretty good. I liked when people stopped in and passed the news or played checkers with the sheriff. Sometimes, when he wasn’t there, they’d ask questions of me. When would the sheriff be back? Had the mail come in from Oneonta? Laugh if you care to, but each of these was evidence that I was, indeed, a living person. And to have it be a true test, I waited to be spoken to. I don’t know what they said about me when I wasn’t there, though I did hear that some people teased the sheriff by referring to me as the deputy. But in my presence, nobody went out of their way to be mean about my clothes or short hair, an unexpected acceptance that I wanted to keep.
When the men played checkers, I would usually find a way to watch from a polite distance. I liked the game and hadn’t forgotten the tricks I had learned in Minnesota. I would see things that others didn’t and often had to hold my tongue. But one slow day I didn’t hold my tongue but instead challenged the sheriff to a game. I had overstepped my bounds—I was not his equal. But there was no one around, and the sheriff agreed to play. I beat him that first time, and from then on, it wasn’t hard to get a game out of him. He was eager to get back at me, and he did, often enough. One afternoon he caught me daydreaming and jumped me twice.
“What were you starin’ at?” he asked, taking my pieces.
“The cells in the back,” I said with a yawn.
“They’re the same ones that were there last week.”
“I thought they might be,” I said, taking the bait, “but are they the ones where they kept the Calico Indians?”
The sheriff dropped one of the checkers and looked at me like I might be a ghost. “What would you know about that?”
I paused, because I knew a lot of it. The struggle between the farmers and the fancy-name landlords—Van-this and Von-somethingelse—had gone on for most of my girlhood. “Back then,” I said, “we lived a little east of here—out near Schoharie. Men were called to help the farmers. My father went out. Were you here then?”
“Oh, I was,” said Evans with a smile that meant more than he was saying.
“You were on the other side?”
“It weren’t no other side,” he said. “It was the law.”
It all came rushing back. My father going out in the night. My uncle Tom getting arrested and losing his land. Land on which he’d built a barn. “The farms should belong to the people who clear the land,” I said, repeating what I had heard many times when I was a girl.
The sheriff shook his head. “The land belongs to the person who holds the deed!”
“Deed?” I said, unable to let it be. “A deed that came from some duke or earl? We had a war to end all that if I remember my lessons.”
I wasn’t saying anything new. Neither was he. This was an old argument—we both knew how it went. So I was surprised when I saw Evans getting worked up. “They had no damn right to break the law!” he shouted. His knee hit the checkerboard and the pieces went flying.
I wasn’t going to say anything back to that. I just ducked down and tried to pick up the checkers, but the sheriff told me to get out.
I didn’t tell Mrs. McNee about my argument with Sheriff Evans. I was afraid. There I was, once again, making a mess of things. And what would happen now? After all, if I were not good enough to work at the jail, would I be allowed to stay at the almshouse? Perhaps the sheriff would make up some story that had nothing to do with the farmers’ uprising. He could say almost anything. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Mrs. McNee—even for her to know my side of things. Like every child in trouble, I hoped it would go away on its own. I wasn’t due at the jail for another four days, and I was certain by then I would hear not to come. When that didn’t happen, I expected the sheriff wanted to tell me himself. But he wasn’t at the office when I arrived, so I started cleaning in the back. Evans came in soon enough, didn’t say a word and went about looking through the mail.
So that was how it was going to be—back to us hardly talking. I regretted it, but I was relieved and kept on with the work, making my way into the front with the broom. A little later the sheriff put down his reading. “Listen,” he said, “I was an up-renter because my Pa was an up-renter, and that was the way it was. It mostly depended on if you owned your land and who your friends were.”
“I think it was hard on everybody,” I said, looking for common ground. “Whoever was on the other side, well, I guess it was natural to think the worst of them. Did you hate the Calicos?”
“Oh, I hated them all right,” he said, showing a little color.
“Why? They were just farmers.”
“Not after dark, they weren’t. One night they caught me on the Bovina road. Tied me up and told me they were gonna to hang me. I was eighteen. Near pissed my pants.”
“And?”
“They had their fun and let me go. Then three of them got arrested for tarring the land agent and were locked up, right back there, just as you said. Their friends decided to get ’em back and put out the call. They had three hundred men on horseback right outside of Delhi, blowing those horns all night and promising to burn the town and turn it into a cabbage patch. You remember that?”
“No,” I said, a little put off. “I was just a girl on a farm. All I remember is the coming and going—Mother pleading with Father, begging him not to go out.”
Evans glanced over his shoulder, as though to make sure no one else was in the room. “You ever see those costumes?”
I smiled to myself. “I found my father’s in the attic,” I said, having spoken of that to no one.
The sheriff’s eyes grew wide. “Did he have the mask?”
I looked at Evans. For a wicked moment I wondered if my father had been one of those who had caught him and scared him near to death. “You pissed your pants, didn’t you?”
“Well,” he said, not denying it, “you find yourself alone at night surrounded by men in painted sheepskin and see how well you hold your water. People were frightened out of their wits. Some of the old folks thought it was the real Indians come back. Matrons hid toasting forks about the house, determined to defend their honor. We sent riders to Albany, but for all we knew, they’d been caught and hanged from some tree.”
I picked up the broom. “I see Delhi is still here.”
“Yeah, well, we had guns too, and more to eat than they did—them riding around like that. But then Sheriff Steele got shot over at the Earle farm. Caught a bullet in the gut—took two days for him to die. Then all hell broke loose. Soldiers came and over two hundred men got arrested. If you so much as gave a glass of water to a farmer who wasn’t payin’ his rent, you were guilty of Steele’s murder—that’s how Judge Parker saw it.”
“I know,” I said. “My Uncle Tom was one of them. He was in church that morning, thirty miles from the Earle farm. Spent twelve months in jail just waiting for a trial.”
“But not your father?”
“He wasn’t arrested.”
That much was true, but my father might have been, having been accused by people whom he had thought of as friends. This I learned from my mother later on. Most of the bad things had happened west of us, but something inside father got broke back then. Neighbor testifying against neighbor. Who would be arrested next? Some men were waiting to hang. Finally, Father sold our farm and moved us all to a new place along the Delaware. At the time, I saw it all as a big adventure and not a flight from ugly memories.
“Are people here still angry?” I asked.
“You bet they are,” said the sheriff. “And you’d best know where they stand on that one before you scratch the scab.”
I stopped my sweeping. “So I’ve learned.”
* * *
By my second winter in Delhi, my duties expanded, and I was sent to work two days a week for Mrs. Elizabeth Caldwell, a widow who lived in a large house west of the square. By then, I was a common sight in town. A spinster in pants.
I had learned from Mrs. McNee that Mrs. Caldwell had a sister in New York, a daughter in Buffalo, and a husband in the grave in Tennessee. But Mrs. Caldwell didn’t share a word of this with me. She gave instructions and, after that, nothing that could be thought of as conversation.
She walked with her hands clasped, back straight, as she moved about the house without a sound. From what I could see, she might have been born into this world with a gray head of hair and a hooped petticoat. Her face, stern and still beautiful, seemed like a doorway to a dark room. The house shared her mood. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a staircase to an attic that Mrs. Caldwell visited on occasion. I was never given any duties there. On the first floor was a dining room with an oak table that seated six. There Mrs. Caldwell would take her tea and look out over the empty places to a window and a meadow beyond.
While dusting in Mrs. Caldwell’s library one afternoon, I paused by the fireplace and looked at the books. One caught my eye, and without thinking, I took it down. I opened it and began to read, just to remember the feeling, having not read a book in ten years. The words tumbled off the page as though they were musical notes that formed not a sentence but a song.
“What are you doing?”
I turned and saw Mrs. Caldwell by the door, standing there like the queen of Prussia. Almost weekly, Mrs. McNee had told us never to touch a personal possession of our employers. Now I had one in my hand.
“I know I shouldn’t have taken it down,” I stammered. “I just did.”
Mrs. Caldwell was not moved. “What book is it?”
“One by Mr. Dickens,” I said, taking a quick glance to be sure. “The Pickwick Papers.”
Hearing this, her face softened. “Joseph, have you read any books by Mr. Dickens?”
“Yes. When I was young. I read this very book, but I couldn’t tell you much about it now.”
“And were you Joseph then?”
“No. I was Lucy then.”
“Why did you change your name?”
I looked at the floor. This was a story too long to tell, but neither could I lie. “I gave up my name when I gave up my daughter. Anyone who gives up her daughter cannot be a woman, surely not a mother.” I stopped, certain that I had said too much. Mrs. Caldwell wanted to know more.
“Where is your daughter now?”
“In Pennsylvania. But until two years ago, she lived here in Delhi. At the almshouse.”
Why had I told her that? I hadn’t told anyone, and now Mrs. Caldwell knew and was more curious than before.
“What’s her name?”
It was my fault. I had brought her to the secret, and now I couldn’t put another name on my daughter. “Helen. Helen Slater.”
The woman seemed to lose her balance. “Helen Slater is your daughter?”
“Only by birth, I’m ashamed to say. Did you know her?”
“Helen? Yes. She worked in this house.”
Now the floor seemed to move under me. Had Mrs. Caldwell also been a mother to my little girl? Was I in some strange station of hell? I gathered my courage. “Did she work here long?”
“Not long enough. Someone stole her from me.” Mrs. Caldwell appeared distressed. “Joseph, I must tell you that she said her mother was dead.”
“And well she might say that. In any case, God has told me that He wants me to have no more to do with her.”
Mrs. Caldwell gave a disbelieving look. “How did He tell you that?”
“By taking her from here a month before I came. I am to leave her alone. He is watching her now.”
Mrs. Caldwell nodded as though to say she understood. I couldn’t tell what she was really thinking.
The following week Mrs. Caldwell again found me dusting in the library—this time, no book in hand. I waited to hear her instructions, but there weren’t any. Instead she asked if I had read anyone besides Mr. Dickens.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, trying to remember things from a long time ago. “I’ve read William Thackeray and Mr. Hawthorne and some of Mr. Emerson.”
“You read, then, The Scarlet Letter?”
“I did.”
“And what do you suppose Mr. Hawthorne was trying to say?”
I think this was Mrs. Caldwell’s test to see if we were talking about the same Mr. Hawthorne. I hesitated but a moment, for I remembered the book. “I think he was saying that there are things we know about and things we don’t.”
“Indeed,” she said with an approving nod. “Joseph, would you like to borrow a book now and then?”
Had Mrs. Caldwell offered me a gold coin, I could not have felt more excitement.
I said I would, and Mrs. Caldwell went over to the bookshelves and started running her finger over the books, looking for something. “Here,” she said, pulling out a book and handing it to me. “You might like this.” On the cover in gold letters was the title, Adam Bede, and the author, George Eliot.
“I don’t think I’ve read anything by Mr. Eliot,” I said.
Mrs. Caldwell let out a sound that I had not heard from her before, something like a chuckle. “Well, I’m sure you will like it. More so when you know that Mr. Eliot is really a woman.” She paused to measure my surprise. “And I have a few other books by women who first wrote as men. You might like this.”
She took down a book titled Jane Eyre. I hadn’t heard of it, but Mrs. Caldwell said it was now very famous and that the author, Miss Brontë, had first published it under a man’s name. She handed me the book, and I brought it back to the almshouse where I read it in my room at night. I took delight in Miss Eyre’s adventures and more delight in the news that women were now writing books of their own, and that they had begun by disguising themselves as men. When I finished Jane Eyre, there was another book to replace it, and thus my world began to grow.
But the books that I borrowed changed little between me and Mrs. Caldwell. It was not like years earlier when I would talk about books with Burton in the dining room of the Hotel Wayne. They didn’t lead to conversations. Mrs. Caldwell might ask me a question about the book I was returning. I would reply, and she would nod her head and say, “Yes.” That I had read it seemed enough for her. And in this way and others like it, Mrs. Caldwell remained to me more a spirit than a body of flesh. On some days, she seemed only half there, part woman, part shade, come back to this world to watch over needy souls like myself, as though it were she, and not Captain Caldwell, who had fallen at Shiloh.