A Stranger in the Kingdom (63 page)

“Don't be so sure,” Dad said. “It was here all the time, I think, waiting to happen. It's everyplace.”

I had wandered over to the edge of the clearing and was looking off down at the gool. “What's that down there?” I said.

“Down where, buddy?” Charlie said.

“There. Welcome's silo. It looks like smoke.”

Charlie and Dad walked over and peered down where I was pointing. There was no question about it. An ominous twist of coal-black smoke was rising up from the tilted silo beside my cousins' place.

“Jesum Crow!” I shouted. “Cousin W's silo is on fire!”

Under ordinary circumstances, it was a half-hour walk up the road through the gore to Russia and a fifteen-minute walk back down. But I'm sure that I made it to Welcome's that November afternoon in under ten minutes. As I pounded into his cluttered dooryard, flames were shooting out of the top of the silo. Welcome was standing near the watering trough, rubbing his hands like a man warming himself at a campfire. Resolvèd was leaning against the shell of the old Model A nearby, sipping on a bottle of Old Duke.

“Hello, Jimmy,” Welcome said. “How's high school going?”

“Jesus!” I shouted. “Jesus, Welcome! Your silo's on fire!”

“We know that,” he said. “Quite a little blaze, isn't she? I imagine,” he continued, looking up at the leaden sky and tipping me a cunning wink, “that she's visible to those on high.”

“On high?”

“Saucering over the firmament.”

“Aren't you afraid your house'll catch on fire?”

“No, goddamn it!” Resolvèd said angrily. “We're afraid she won't!”

I was flabbergasted, but far greater surprises were yet to come. For just as my brother and father came into the dooryard, the entire wooden framework of the silo collapsed. Inside, enveloped in flames, stood the tallest automobile totem of Welcome's illustrious career. It was a good thirty cars in height, nearly as tall as the silo itself had been. On the tiptop, spouting flames from its crushed roof, was the white armored Brink's vehicle used as the getaway vehicle in last summer's bank robbery!

“‘Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,'” Welcome began to recite. “Do you know that one, Jimmy?”

“Mister,” said my father. He shook his head. “Mister Baby Johnson!”

“Stand away, boys,” Welcome said cheerily.

“TIM-BER!” roared Resolvèd.

No sooner was the warning out of his mouth than the fiery column of cars toppled over, the Brink's car first, crashing through the roof of my cousins' house and burying itself in the cellar where Resolvèd had held his cockfights and Welcome had kept his homemade wine, where Mad Charlie had hidden runaway slaves and his father James had stored arms and powder for the Fenian invasions of Canada.

“What the frig you crazy outlaws doing now?” said a familiar voice behind us.

Spinning around, I found myself staring at Frenchy LaMott.

“Pay attention, Frenchy,” Welcome said sternly. “You're witnessing the end of an era.”

“End of something, all right,” Frenchy agreed.

To me he said, “Say, Kin'son, who you think I see out front of Christly minister's house short while ago? Your color friend from Montreal and his father, that who, packing stuff in trailer. You want to see 'em before they go, best shag you ass right down. Look like they in pretty big hurry to get going, by Christ!”

 

“‘I traveled mainly by night, guiding myself by the stars and by some instinct that told me where north and sanctuary lay. I kept mainly to the thick woods, leaving just enough of a trail to lure the murderer Satan Smithfield to his just fate at the hands of the man who would turn out to be my great friend and mentor, Charles Kinneson. . . .'”

Reverend Andrews paused, but his resonant voice still seemed to hang on the frigid air of the parsonage study, like his breath, which I could see with each word. The house seemed even colder than the outdoors. Nat and I stood by the window where, in midsummer, Resolvèd had looked in and seen my friend and Claire on the couch where Charlie sat now. My father stood near the desk. Except for the couch, a chair, the desk and Pliny's great
Ecclesiastical History
open on it, the room was bare.

“So,” Reverend Andrews said to us, “even then as a young man, he was never anything but a survivor. Pliny, I mean. Then and always. I felt it the first time I heard his story. And I simply couldn't comprehend why a man so positive in everything he did, so affirmative about life, a man who had educated himself in the classics, escaped out of slavery, built a wonderful school and written a wonderful book, and served with distinction in your state legislature—how such a man could possibly succumb to despair over a piano and a small-town dispute between two local religious factions and take his life with his own hands. It ran counter to everything I knew about him.”

“But it was exactly that schism you referred to that caused Pliny's suicide,” my father said. “Because the schism caused the falling-out between best friends. As for my grandfather, with the help of his gypsy wife, he was already more than half-crazy. Hell, he'd been half-crazy most of his life. Pliny's suicide just drove him the rest of the way over the brink.”

“No,” Reverend Andrews said.

“No? Pliny's suicide didn't push him over the brink?”

“No.”

“Then what did?”

“Pliny's murder.”

“Pliny's
murder
?”

“Pliny never committed suicide,” Reverend Andrews said quietly. “He was murdered.”

My father thumped his hand down on the parsonage desk. “Mister Baby Johnson!”

Reverend Andrews shook his head. “I've always felt that Pliny Templeton did not and never would and never could commit suicide. The man was committed to
life
, Charles. Every word in this book affirms that premise. It's true that he introduced the use of a piano in the Academy. It's true that your grandfather and the session objected to that piano and to the singing and to his proposal to introduce dancing lessons as well. It's true that the session met and that the United Presbyterians, led by Pliny, voted to withdraw from the church. But it is
not
true that Pliny Templeton borrowed your grandfather's horse pistol and committed suicide with it.”

“How do you know?” My father's voice was strained, but excited.

“Because of this.” From his inside jacket pocket Reverend Andrews took out a folded piece of paper. “I know because of this document, which Elijah Kinneson did not find when he went through my desk on the afternoon of August sixth last summer for the simple reason that it wasn't there.”

“What is that?” Dad said.

“The court committal of your grandfather to the Waterbury State Lunatic Asylum.”

My father shook his head. “I've looked for that document over in the courthouse a dozen times, Walt. That can't be authentic. The court-ordered committal was washed away in the Flood of '27, along with ninety-nine percent of the other pre-1927 county legal documents.”

“I didn't find this in the courthouse,” Reverend Andrews said. “This is an exact copy of the lost committal papers, which I found in the records room of the Vermont State Hospital, formerly the state lunatic asylum, earlier this afternoon. Read it, Charles. And read the statement, in your grandfather's handwriting, that's attached.”

By now Charlie was standing up, and so were Nat and I. But my father moved a little ways apart from us and, characteristically, he read the papers without expression. He handed them back to Reverend Andrews. Then he nodded.

“I should have guessed,” he said. “It was under my nose the whole time. I should have figured it out.”

“Figured
what
out?” Charlie said. “What the hell is going on here?”

“I shall tell you what. This document is nothing more or less than the last window into that sealed globe I've been talking about. It explains everything. Why Elijah killed the girl to frame Reverend Andrews, why he was so adamant that Reverend Andrews not look further into Mad Charlie's committal. Everything! Because these committal papers include the signed confession of my grandfather, Mad Charlie Kinneson, written at Waterbury State Lunatic Asylum a week before his death in the fall of 1903.”

“Confession for
what?
”

“For the murder of Pliny Templeton,” my father said, and he took the papers back again and read:

“‘I, Charles Kinneson, to clear my conscience, do hereby swear upon my immortal soul that on August fourth, in the Year of Our Lord 1900, I entered the study of my beloved friend Pliny Templeton and shot him twice in the back of the head with my pistol whilst he sat writing at his desk, murdering him in cold blood. And with my own hand I hereby clear him from the charge of committing suicide or any other crime against himself or God or mankind.'”

“But
why?
” Charlie said. “This is incredible, I don't believe it. So Mad Charlie and Pliny Templeton quarreled? So what? People quarrel all the time. You mean to tell me that my great-grandfather shot his best friend dead in this room fifty years ago because of a disagreement over a
piano?
”

“It was fifty-two years ago,” my father said. “And it wasn't over a piano. What was really at stake was the survival of a religion. And not just a religion, either, but a way of life as encompassing as Quakerism or Islam or what have you. Because that's exactly what Reformed Presbyterianism was. A way of life. Music was the least of the devil's work as far as your ancestors were concerned. They couldn't vote, they couldn't take an oath to hold office, they couldn't formally enlist in any army—which is why your great-great-great-grandfather had to resort to piracy to fight the British during the Revolution and why James I fought along the Canadian border with the Fenians and Mad Charlie fought with John Brown at Harper's Ferry but never enlisted in the Union Army, despite his hatred of slavery. When Pliny and his faction voted to secede from the church and affiliate themselves with United Presbyterianism, your great-grandfather's entire
way of life
was threatened. Reformed Presbyterianism was the main reason his grandfather had come here in the first place, remember. And I'll tell you something else, mister. What Reformed Presbyterianism, for all its strictures,
really
represented to Charles I and James I and most of all to Mad Charlie, was personal independence—independence from the British, from the Americans, from the rest of Vermont, including the legislature. And that independence is a legacy you and I and every Kinneson have inherited and pride ourselves on practicing to this day. So
of course
Mad Charlie, who knew all this and was crazy besides, couldn't just stand by and watch everything he believed in, and everything his father and his father's father believed in, just disintegrate.”

“
So he shot his best friend?
” Charlie said. “He murdered his friend in cold blood? Just the way he gunned down Satan Smithfield in the pulpit of the church? And with the same horse pistol, no less?”

“Yes,” Reverend Andrews said. “He felt he had to kill Pliny for all the reasons your father's just enumerated. But afterwards, the rational part of his mind couldn't accept what he'd done. He was faced with the consequences of an impossible choice. It wasn't really like the Smithfield episode at all.”

“My God!” Charlie said. “And Elijah knew this? Elijah knew that Mad Charlie shot Pliny Templeton?”

“I'm sure he did,” Reverend Andrews said. “That accounts for his determination that I cease my inquiries into the matter, he was afraid I'd discover the truth and change his father's reputation to that of murderer.”

“It accounts for everything,” Dad said. “But when did
you
first suspect all of this?”

Reverend Andrews smiled. “Have you ever taken a good close look at the skull of Pliny's skeleton?”

My father shrugged. “Not in years. Why?”

“Because there are
two
holes in the back of it. At first glance, it looks like one large hole, but if you look closely—I checked with Dr. Harrison, and he agreed with me—it's obvious that he was shot twice. Now, in a weak moment a man who's disturbed enough might shoot himself in the back of the head once, even an affirmative, positive man like Pliny Templeton. But not twice. Elijah must have figured that out too. Also it's very possible that your grandfather, Mad Charlie, told the truth to Replacement Mari before he died, and she told Elijah. At any rate, I'm positive that Elijah knew about the murder, and not only did he know, he was willing to go to any lengths to keep me or anyone else from finding out about it. He thought I might figure out what happened from the account your father wrote in the newspaper, Charles, which is why he wanted those articles back. But Elijah overlooked one thing. He overlooked your grandfather's records at the state hospital.”

“And these records never came to light before?” Charlie said. “That's hard to believe.”

“Why should they have? Somebody just stuck this in his file with the court committal and left it there.”

“How did you get access to the hospital documents?”

Reverend Andrews grinned. “Ask and ye shall receive. I just asked the hospital superintendent. He didn't see any reason why I shouldn't see them. After all, Mad Charlie died fifty years ago.”

“And now?” Dad said. “What do you intend to do with the information?”

“I've already done it,” Reverend Andrews said. “I've passed it on to you. What do
you
intend to do with it?”

“Print it. All of it. In the Monitor.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil, eh?” Reverend Andrews said, chuckling. “Well, you always said, Charles, that up here in God's Kingdom the past is still as much a part of the present as ever. All this tends to bear that statement out, I fancy.”