A Stranger in the Kingdom (7 page)

“Imagine our wayfarer's astonishment,” Pliny writes, “when he crept up a steep wooded hillside and emerged on a jagged clearing in the wilderness only to behold a towering lean raw-boned man hacking away at a heap of freshly felled spruce logs, attempting to raise a cabin before snowfall in a mountainous fastness where Sabattis had never before seen any sign of another man within fifty miles.”

“How is the trout fishing in these parts?” my ancestor is said to have asked Sabattis, who, according to Pliny, was so impressed by his singlemindedness that he stayed on for the rest of the fall to help him complete his cabin and learn his story.

Charles Macphearson Kinneson had been born in the Outer Hebrides Islands, off the western coast of Scotland, in 1730, the eldest son of a Highland salmon poacher and implacable Jacobite put to the sword by the British during the abortive Uprising of '45. After his father's death, young Charles fled to France, where he dedicated himself to a single objective: to fight the British wherever and whenever possible, though never in formal affiliation with another government since as a Reformed Presbyterian bound by the Oath of the Covenant, he was forbidden to swear allegiance to any secular authority whatsoever.

Soon after he arrived in France, Charles took passage on a Marseilles privateer bound for the West Indies to harass the English rum, molasses, and slave trade. In 1766, with the proceeds of his pirate's booty, he established the first printing press in Guadeloupe, on which he composed hundreds of anti-British broadsides and which, a decade later, he moved lock, stock, and barrel to Bath, Maine, to assist the rebelling American colonists with his literary efforts. After the war Charles successfully petitioned President Washington for a pitch of one hundred and sixty acres on the northern slope of the New Hampshire Land Grants (subsequently to become part of Vermont) along the Canadian border. Here in 1786 he wed Sabattis' youngest daughter, the sixteen-year-old Memphremagog (Abenaki for “Beautiful Waters”). The following year he established
The Kingdom Monitor
, which he used chiefly as a vehicle for his undiminished Anglophobia. In 1793 he built the first of six potato-whisky distilleries that would eventually grace the banks of the Lower Kingdom, whose proceeds this strict Scottish teetotaler reserved exclusively for the construction of his crowning accomplishment—the First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Kingdom Common.

On Easter Sunday morning of 1952, as my father and mother and I headed up the slate flagstone walk of the church during the bell's final call to worship for the day, the wind was gusting straight up out of the south, bringing with it a tantalizing intimation of earlier and gentler springs farther downcountry. Everyone lingering in the unseasonably mild sunshine on the church steps that morning knew that despite the advent of mud season and trout season there would be more sudden snow squalls and gray subfreezing Kingdom days and frigid Kingdom nights before warm weather set in to stay. But everyone seemed grateful for the temporary break in the cold and eager to discuss the unusually good weather, the banner early runs of maple sap, the Red Sox' promising start, the upcoming Republican presidential primary, and Charlie's town team's sweep of the Memphremagog Basketball Tournament.

Everyone, that is, but my father, who, besides loathing all small talk, attended church and served on the board of trustees strictly from a sense of community responsibility. “Let's get this show on the road, Ruth,” he said as we headed up the steps.

Just inside the door, Cousin Elijah Kinneson, now demoted to usher from his former Sunday morning incarnation as lay preacher, handed my father and mother a program. My father took another one and gave it to me. “Can't tell the players without one,” he said.

My mother smiled. I laughed out loud. Cousin Elijah, however, scowled like a constipated parody of his Biblical namesake. Even this morning Elijah emitted a faint sulphurous odor compounded of the hot lead he worked with, stale sweat, and some ineffable but to me quite real essence of universal disapprobation. Yet his unabated disapproval of all boys in general and me in particular was nothing compared to the absolute hatred he bore for his ex-brothers Resolvèd and Welcome, whom he had publicly disowned some years ago with a paid notice in the
Monitor
to the effect that he would no longer acknowledge blood ties with these unregenerate men. Shortly after this unusual announcement, in one of the practical jokes for which he was renowned, Charlie had sneaked into the
Monitor
while Cousin E was enthroned at his linotype and taped to the back of his seat a large placard, visible from the street, which said:
RESOLVÈD AND WELCOME KINNESON ARE MY OWN BLOOD BROTHERS AND I'M DAMN PROUD OF IT.

Thinking of Charlie, who at that very moment was fishing the rainbow trout run and maybe already onto a big one, the throbbing tip of his bamboo rod bowed to the river's surface, I trudged morosely up the uncarpeted central aisle of the church behind my folks and turned into the pew five rows back on the left where Kinnesons had planked down for the past century and a half to have their spiritual needs ministered to.

Except for the addition of an organ, the interior of the church had changed very little since the days of Charles I. The windows were plain glass, wavy now and lavendered from time, but without any trace of ornamentation and purposely set too high for the seated congregation to see out of. The wainscoting below them, the pews, the pulpit, and the wooden ceiling were all painted a flat white. On the walls there hung no pictures of any kind. Even the likenesses of Jesus and the disciples had been deemed to smack vaguely of the idolatrous by Charles I and the six other original member families of the church, whose descendants had insisted that this happy tradition be continued to the present day. And although the Presbyterian Church had been a United Protestant Church for sixteen years, with the stipulation that the minister must be an ordained Presbyterian clergyman, not so much as a single small blue crocus brightened its alter this Easter morning as the worshipers trooped in and sat down to the lugubrious strains of Julia “Hefty” Hefner's organ prelude.

The church was by no means full. Still, there were easily one hundred people in attendance today, half again as many as Cousin Elijah had ever drawn in his capacity as lay preacher. Some, no doubt, were there simply because it was Easter. But many must have come to view the curiosity of a minister who was not only the first full-time incumbent in two years but black as well, since no black family had lived in Kingdom County within recent memory.

Anyone who expected Reverend Andrews to say or do much that was out of the ordinary must have been disappointed. He began by thanking the congregation for welcoming him and his son so warmly. (Nathan had slipped in alone and slouched down at the end of the pew across from ours just before the service began.) Reverend Andrews added that if he received one more hot covered dish he'd be able to open a restaurant at the parsonage, this got him a ripple of laughter and broke the ice. I glanced over at Nathan and grinned, but if he noticed me he didn't acknowledge it. He looked as bored now as he had at the Ridge Runner Diner, and as uncomfortable in his jacket and tie as I felt in mine.

Reverend Andrews' sermon was blissfully brief. I can't remember much of what he said, except that he talked about hope and concluded by saying that he personally expected, on this most hopeful of all days, to resurrect the tradition of a minister who would do more than show up in church for an hour on Sunday morning and drink tea in the afternoon with his lady parishioners, which got him another general laugh. Speaking easily in that pleasant and resonant tone that had fascinated me in the diner and again in front of the parsonage during the snowstorm, he enumerated a couple of the goals he hoped to achieve: reestablishing an active youth group and a Bible study class for adults, mounting an organized fundraising drive. Finally, he did one small unexpected thing by inquiring whether anyone in church that morning wished to add to these objectives.

This was many years before young activist Protestant clergymen routinely solicited impromptu participation from their congregations during Sunday services, and there was a brief awkward silence. But before anyone had time to be more than slightly surprised, my father was on his feet. “I think you've covered all the bases yourself, Reverend Andrews,” he said in that harsh voice of his that sounded displeased even on those occasions when it wasn't. “Welcome to the Kingdom.”

What happened next was totally unprecedented, so far as I know, in the entire history of the church. Spontaneously, the entire congregation stood up as though for a hymn and gave Reverend Andrews a rousing welcoming round of applause. Looking back, I suppose this demonstration of support was meant in part to show both him and ourselves that we had no reservations about having a black man for a minister. Even so, it was a sincere gesture, and I believe that he was genuinely pleased by it, though all he did was smile and nod at Julia, who launched into a gallumphing rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Five minutes later and no more than fifty minutes after the service had begun, we were back outside in the warm sunshine on the top step of the church, shaking hands with the minister.

“I enjoyed your talk, Reverend,” my father said after introducing himself. “As a matter of fact, this is the first time in fifty years that I haven't been bored silly in church.”

Reverend Andrews laughed. “That's good. I've always regarded boredom as the eighth deadly sin. By the by, editor, thanks for bailing me out in there. I thought I'd be bombarded by a list of chores as long as my arm.”

“Don't be impatient,” Dad said. “The bombardment's coming.”

My father stayed to visit with Reverend Andrews a minute longer while my mother and I continued down the steps. “Well,” Mom said when he caught up with us on the flagstones, “what's your opinion of the new minister, Charles?”

“There are two things I liked about him right off the bat,” Dad said as we crossed the street and headed along the heaved slate sidewalk in front of the courthouse. “He isn't afraid to stand up on his two hind feet and say what needs to be done around this place. And he can speak good plain English and get his point across without taking all day about it.”

“It sounds as though you might actually go brook trout fishing with him,” my mother said mischievously.

“We'll see,” my father said. “I just might.”

“I wonder what his son's like,” I said.

“You can ask him yourself in an hour,” Dad said casually. “I've invited the Andrews out to eat Easter dinner with us this afternoon. Afterwards, he's agreed to let me interview him for the paper.”

 

To this day it is a widespread tradition in the Kingdom to have freshly caught baked rainbow trout instead of ham for Easter dinner. Charlie had caught two big ones that morning, and Mom, who had a wonderful recipe for garnishing baked trout with onions and bacon strips that removed every trace of the fishy taste, was humming snatches of that morning's hymns and happily flitting here, there, and everywhere over the prospect of having guests for dinner.

One of the trout had been a female bursting with orange eggs, which made excellent bait. Charlie sat at the big round bird's-eye maple kitchen table tying up the bright spawn in inch-square packets cut out of a discarded pair of mom's nylons. I perched on the lid of the woodbox, inhaling the delicious fragrances of the upcoming feast. I was excited about having the Andrews for dinner, but also a little apprehensive. I had never sat down and talked with a Negro before; above all, I didn't want to make some terrible social blunder.

Since they weren't due to show up for a half an hour, I had some time to compose myself, and there was no better place to do that than right there in our kitchen, where I had spent many of the best hours of my boyhood. There, under Mom's vigilant eye, I did my homework at the table after the dishes were cleared, or read and eavesdropped on the woodbox while Dad held forth on family history or talked politics from his Morris chair. Depending on the season and time of day, the kitchen also served as greenhouse, sugar house, dining room, and parlor, as well as command post for important domestic decisions.

Like most old farmhouse kitchens in northern Vermont, it was easily the biggest room in the house, though the low ceiling gave it a coziness many large rooms lack. It was light, too, with two big windows in the south wall overlooking the dooryard, and two matching windows in the opposite wall looking north up the maple ridge toward our cousins' place. At the windows were bright yellow curtains that caught even the thinnest February sunshine. The walls were papered with a paler yellow wallpaper that invariably started to peel when my mother boiled maple sap on top of the combination wood and oil Home Comfort (wood for winter, oil for summer). The floor was made from the broadest spruce boards I'd ever seen, which Mom kept as polished as the deck of my great-great-great-grandfather's pirate ship.

But the most interesting feature of our kitchen was its doors—all nine of them!

Entering the kitchen from the dooryard, you came through the main door, off the southeast corner of the porch. To your immediate left sat Dad's Morris chair. Moving clockwise, past the chair and the two south windows (now flourishing with tomato sets Mom had started back on Town Meeting Day, the first Tuesday in March), was a second, little-used door giving onto the southwest end of the porch. In the short west wall of the kitchen were two more doors, flanking an oak china cabinet that had belonged to my grandmother Kinneson. As you faced the cabinet, the door to your left led to the woodshed—the first in the straggling train of connected outbuildings linking the house, north-country style, to the barn. Beyond the woodshed were Mom's chicken house, a tool and machinery shed, a horse stable, a grain room, the milking parlor, and the milkhouse. Above the milking parlor rose the shaky old three-story hayloft.