Better Angels (eBook)

Prologue

Outside Tiffin, Ohio, 1850

The house stood on a small rise amidst a rolling landscape. Oaks and maples were allowed to grow on three sides of the house, offering shade and some protection from wind. With a pitched, shingled roof and clapboard siding, the house had always been painted white with black shutters. It overlooked a bend in the river that marked one boundary of the farm. That river fed and watered the family. A path of smoothed stones led away from the covered porch to a small, orderly farmyard.

The house had been in the family for three generations. Like thousands of veterans of the Revolutionary War, the great grandfather received the land as bounty for service in the Revolution. He built the house during his first years on the land, long before Ohio became a state. In his haste to establish his claim his farm and his family, he rushed the construction: Using wood instead of stone, stone instead of bricks and mortar instead of cement.

On one end of the original house was a large fireplace, suitable for cooking. Two rooms provided a starting place for the first, growing family. Years later, when the old soldier’s son took over the house, the younger man added three rooms across the back, converting the large, open fireplace into several “Rumford” fireplaces, moving the cooking fire to an outbuilding. When original builder’s grandson took the house, he installed a cast iron cook stove and used the old kitchen as a smokehouse. Although the farm matured, none of its inheritors amended the foundation.

Changes to the heating and cooking places were compromises between necessity and resources. Over the years and slowly at first, the house settled; then shifted. Mortar decomposed. Gaps opened. The flue cracked. Despite knowing there were problems, the inheritors delayed necessary repairs. Discussions devolved into arguments. Lately and because they believed there was time, the grandson and his wife simply avoided conversations about repairing the foundation.

One night, the house made its claim. The structure could no longer control the fires that had once made it livable.

In those silent hours, thin wisps of smoke escaped from a gap between the plastered wall and the old chimney. The sound of raindrops spattering across shingles punctuated the sluice of water sheeting from roof. Rain was welcome after the dry autumn but the fire that crept between the wall and the rafters didn’t care about rain.

The couple awoke to their own coughing, eyes burning from smoke and panic immediate. Crackling flames danced madly through the kitchen, silencing doubts and questions. Billows of hot, black smoke rolled from windows heralding a holocaust.

On his feet in an instant, the grandson had the presence of mind to wrap his wife and baby in a quilt as he turned to dash the few steps to their children’s room. His wife seized the infant with both arms, head down, following her husband out of the bedroom. “The children!” she howled over the roaring flames, even as he dashed through their door.

He turned only his head, coughing and shouting back to her, “Take the baby! I’ll meet you at the front!”

He said nothing more, but grabbed-up the two half-asleep children. Taking one under each arm like sacks of wet grain, he clambered through the side door only a step behind his choking wife, stumbling on the last step and catching himself as he pressed the children roughly to their mother. In the first flush of relief, they sagged. Hearing the rising bellow of the fire, dread engulfed them.

Both knew they had waited too long to repair the ancient foundation. Now it was too late. Fire claimed the house and consumed it.

Raging and mindless, it devoured everything it reached, and it reached for everything. Telling the oldest child to keep hold of the other children and to stay under the quilt, the couple ran to the hopeless errand of drawing water.

The wife worked the pump with every bit of her strength as he attacked the flames with two, pitifully half-filled buckets. Facing the wall of flames and stepping first to his right, then looking to his left, he could find no place to launch his meager assault. Finally, in rage and despair, he heaved the buckets at the middle of the monster.

Even as he ran back to the pump, he realized the home had yielded absolutely. Beams groaned and cried out in submission. The roof, and then the walls lost shape: first transformed into flames, belching great roars of thunder and cascading embers.

Only when the monster had consumed everything that might support life, and died, did the couple turn their backs, leaving the remains of the house to fall unobserved, like so many heaps of charred bone. The couple surrendered to the inevitable, accepting the solace of neighbors who took them in.

Throughout the night, and long after the family went to the safety of their neighbors’ home, the gentle rain continued. As if nothing had happened. A fog-streaked dawn revealed heaps of steaming ash and charred timber. Only the smooth stone path, the small orderly farmyard and the river remained.

Later that morning, the rain ended, and couple returned silently, with their children and their friends. The family was not hopeless nor without resources, but they could only gaze at the remains of their home.

Low clouds and occasional light rain persisted for two days after the fire. Sunday morning was gray. Walking side-by-side, two eleven-year-olds followed their shortcut through an overgrown woodlot between their homes and the recently burned place.

There were strong scents of fallen leaves and wet soil. The boys didn’t mind the mud accumulating on their work boots as they followed the packed-down wagon track. It was Sunday after supper, and they had a few hours to explore before sundown. They wanted to see what remained of the old house and whether they could salvage a few boards for their raft.

A low hill and the woods obscured their view of the farmstead. Breaking out of the shrubs, Mathan and his friend followed a narrow trail rising between the neighbor’s cornfields. The boys exited the cornfield and confronted the sodden remains of Mathan’s neighbors’ farmhouse.

Except for a light breeze rustling a few leaves, it was silent as they stood at the foot of the front path. The taller boy, Peter, glanced at Mathan. The magnitude of the destruction shocked them both and temporarily sapped their enthusiasm for adventure. A cow mooed from the barn. Chickens pecked on the side of the hill. No people seemed to be about.

“They’re probably with his brother’s family,” suggested Peter as he took a slow step forward and scanned the farmstead for its owners.

Rivulets of rainwater drew black veins down the hillside. Mathan murmured almost to himself, “Let’s go see.” The scent of wet, burned wood grew stronger with each step toward the heaps.

Reaching the spot where the front steps once stood, a sound froze them. It was a rustling sound, issuing from somewhere in the pile. The boys froze, looked at each other, then back at the heaps of ashes.

On the far side of the foundation, a man’s head and shoulders rose slowly up from the largest part of the pile, one that wasn’t completely disintegrated. The man saw the boys and froze. He looked at each boy in turn, then beyond them, scanning for the presence of others. No one moved.

They couldn’t tell whether the man was Black, soot-covered or both. Emerging slowly while keeping his eyes on the boys, the slightly built man took three tentative steps backward. His clothes were tattered. He appeared to have been in the pile for some time. A partially filled, darkly smudged, cloth bag hung across his chest.

The boys sensed the gleaner’s fear and uncertainty. Their eyes locked for a final moment before the young man made an abrupt turn and jogged away.

In his turning, the boys saw that he clutched forged nails in each hand, these having been carefully prized from the remains of the house. The man’s silent, bare feet bore him quickly away from the two boys.

Mathan spoke first, “I wonder if he’s on the run or from that black town they built past Tiffin.”

“Don’t know,” answered Peter softly. “He sure left in a hurry.”

“Wouldn’t you?” asked Mathan in a low tone, not moving but surveying the scene. “He doesn’t know us, and he doesn’t know if we’re trouble.” After a pause he added, “Probably going to use those nails on his own place. Stepping toward the pile his visage brightened and he smiled up at Peter adding, “Maybe we can find some too!”

With that, the boys began to pick through the charred boards on the edges of the pile. Their hands were quickly chilled and sooty. About to give up their search, Peter came across a long piece of what may have been a shutter or door frame.

Peter was holding one end of the charred wood as Mathan picked up the other end and looked at it admiringly. It revealed six, ancient, drawn nails forged decades before from iron bars. After a minute or two of banging the board with stones, each boy had three heavy, rectangular nails. Stuffing their treasures into their pockets they hunted for another source like the one they’d uncovered. “He must have got the rest of them,” suggested Peter.

“Yeah,” replied Mathan softly. “I don’t see any more.” He stood up and looked at the remains of the Wilsons’ home. Softly he said, “It’s sad.”

Peter looked at Mathan...