Graphic below: Escape, acrylic on glass by jH

The Serpent Handler's Daughter -- Part 3

by Wilson Roberts

(Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2 in ACR Archives.)

Tinnell said, “Harry’s a refugee now, like all the men on the Keg. Goddamn Yankees drove us all out of Missouri. Some of the boys is just waiting to rise up and get even.”

“That’s Miz Smith,” Smith said, indicating with a nod of his head a woman lying in bed, pale and wan, struggling for breath. It was clear she very ill. Her eyes turned slowly towards me red and wet, but she was too weak to speak. When he had seated me in a hide-bottomed chair, Smith asked, “So, you can read.”

“Yes sir,” I said.

Handing me a Bible he said, “Miz Smith and I surely would appreciate it if you would read a chapter of the good book to her.”

“I’d be pleased to, “ I said and drew my chair to the bedside. By the feeble light of strip of woolen rag burning in a cup of grease I opened the book at random. As I read from “Matthew,” Mrs. Smith raised her head partly from the pillow, gave a little gasping cry, and sank back lifeless.

Smith stood looking down at her for a second and with a moan sank upon his knees beside the bed and buried his face in the covering. At the sound of his sobs his three children crowded about, the smallest of them too young to realize the loss that had befallen them.

“I’ll tell the neighbors,” Tinnell said. “There are things that need to be done. You see to the children.”

I took children out into the open, leaving Smith alone with his dead. The neighbors soon came, a dozen, or more, nearly the entire population of the Island, Turner later told me. The women took charge.

The next morning, while two men dug a grave nearby, Smith built a coffin of warped cottonwood planks. Soon there was a loud commotion and a tall, cadaverously thin man with a wild beard and even wilder eyes rode up on a mule, followed by three boys who looked like him and two women, one near his age, the other not more than fifteen or sixteen. Smith put down his tools and hastened over to shake the man’s hand.

“I appreciate you coming, Preacher,” he said.

“I couldn’t let Miz Smith be buried without the Word,” he said.

Smith gestured toward me. “This is George. He was reading to Sarah from the Bible last night when she died. George, this is Preacher Willis Ives, his wife Zerelda, his sons, Willard, Wilbur and Wilfred and his daughter Miranda.”

Ives reached over and grabbed my hand, pumping my arm up and down. His palms were dry and hardened by manual labor. “Read scripture to her, did you boy?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Are you married, George,” he asked, glancing toward his daughter.

“No sir,” I said. At eighteen, aside from my fantasies of living in a log cabin with Catherine Terrell, the idea of marriage had never occurred to me. As I aged into my middle and late years it remained a remote and unappealing option, with one surprising exception.

He shut his eyes and quoted scripture. “The Lord God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply. You familiar with that passage?”

“I’ve heard it,” I said, looking sideways at his daughter. She was a small girl, bony thin, the skin on her arms mottled with scars and sores. Her hair was stringy, and she had a sallow face with rheumy eyes that seemed to be constantly staring toward the ground as he spoke. Standing as though she wished to curl in upon herself, she snuffled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

Preacher Ives nodded. “We can talk more about Scripture later. Right now we need to attend to Miz Smith’s funeral.” He looked over at Miranda. “There’s many things we need to talk about.”

“I’ve yet to finish the coffin,” Smith said before I could answer.

Ives put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help you.”

As they went to work, Turner Tinnell spoke softly in my ear. “Preacher Ives can kill a man equally well with a gun or a knife. He was an assassin for the Cause, going behind enemy lines and killing Yankee officers and renegade Southerners. They say he gutted a Yankee colonel while he was sleeping in his tent surrounded by guards and soldiers and that he did it just as quick as you or I would filet a bass. He slipped right into the enemy camp, killed him and slipped out and didn’t anybody know the colonel was dead until they went to fetch him the next morning.”

“Strange work for a man of God,” I said.

“There is no accounting for the Lord’s ways,” he said. “Or for a preacher’s ways, and Willis Ives has some strange ones. He’s got a little church on the north end of the Island, nothing more than a shanty notched up from driftwood and the like, and a congregation of his family and maybe three or four other people. Folks who live over on that side say that during their services they handle snakes and talk in tongues and burn themselves with fiery coals.” “I don’t know much about religion,” I said.

“Nor do I, George, but I know that some folks have trouble knowing if they’re worshipping God or if they are worshipping something else.”

“Are you saying Preacher Ives is a devil worshipper?”

He shook his head. “He’s too versed in scripture for that. I just think he’s a hard, strange man, and it surely sounded like he’s already thinking of you as a suitor for his Miranda. He’s tried matching her up with every unattached man and boy on the Island.”

“She’s none too pretty with that pasty face and runny eyes.”

“They say she’s none too bright either.”

“I’m not looking to get married,” I said. “And if I was, I wouldn’t be thinking of someone like her.”

“He won’t press the matter much if he sees you aren’t interested, but if you give him any reason for encouragement he’ll be asking you over for dinner every day.”

As I looked again at Miranda, her eyes raised and met mine. She stared with an empty longing and hunger that unsettled me and I turned quickly away, filling my mind with images of Catherine Terrell’s golden curls as she waited behind the curtain to enter the stage in the role of Little Eva. Miranda coughed and sniffled and when I looked her way again she was still staring at me. I dropped my gaze and looked toward the gravesite where the men were still digging.

“You need a hand,” I asked.

One of them, an elderly man with a humped back smiled and nodded at me. “Sure would like it if you’d spell me.”

He climbed from the grave and passed me his shovel. I began digging. It was slow going. The Island’s soil was wet and heavy. When at last the burial ground was prepared, the women lined the rude coffin with such material as each could spare, and covered with wild flowers and ferns it was borne to the grave. Preacher Ives opened his Bible looked over the small group of ragged mourners.

“There being on this godforsaken piece of mud no book of prayer with the proper formulations for the internment of the dead, I’ll read a chapter from the good book to lay Miz Smith to rest.” He from “Ecclesiastes,” the verses about there being a time for everything as Mrs. Smith’s body was lowered by rough ropes into the grave.

Two days later Smith left for Missouri with his children and another family. “With Lizzie gone, it’s time have it out with my enemies,” he declared. “I’ll join back up with the James boys and the Youngers. We’ll get all the bastards that done us wrong during the war.”

Turner Tinnell and I saw him off, standing on the riverbank as Jimmy Jones rowed him across to Missouri. He looked back and waved at us, then mimicked firing a rifle into the air. Standing on the stern of the skiff waving, the children wept.

“Unless the bastards see him first, I’m willing to wager that he’ll make it lively for them,” Tinnell said, watching the skiff bouncing on the waters as it headed for the Missouri shore.

Keg Island was small. I walked it several times from end to end in less than an hour and from one side to the other in half that time. It may no longer exist. The river washed away quite a number of acres during the June rise while I lived there and doubtless the same thing happened year after year. It was separated from the mainland by Wabaunsee Slough, named after a chief of the Pottawatomie tribe, and was almost entirely covered by cottonwood trees. Eight or ten families had squatted on the Island, all rebel refugees. Each family lived in a small mud-chinked, leaky-roofed one-room log cabin. For a while I stayed with Turner’s brother, Price Tinnell, his wife Eleanor, and their two children. Price, like all the men on the Island, had been a guerilla and ridden with Quantrill’s raiders. After several weeks of sleeping on their floor I moved in with the McQuinns, a family of five. Mrs. Annie McQuinn, was called Mother by all the Islanders due to her many acts of kindness and her caring nature. She was, like the rest of the islanders, a bitter rebel, believing firmly that General McClellan was in secret friendly to the Southern cause, which accounted for his dilatory movements on more than one occasion. While I was there she gave birth to a boy and to honor the general she named the child Brinton McClellan Jefferson Davis McQuinn. He was still living when I left the Island, but I have little hope that he survived far into manhood. Life on Keg Island was unforgiving, illnesses difficult to address, and life off the island was dedicated to wreaking havoc upon Yankees and Yankee sympathizers. There was little promise of a bright future for one such as he, raised in privation and fed on hatred.

One day I asked Mother McQuinn if she and her family intended to stay on the Island.

“I don’t got much choice. These men are a shiftless lazy lot and don’t do more work than necessary. They dream about going back to the mainland and joining up with gangs of former rebels, but they got women here to keep their homes going, look to the children and pleasure them when they get too randy. I suppose we’ll just stay here until the men get dissatisfied and decided to move on.”

There was a grim truth to her words. The Islanders wants were few, at least for the men. Those who had a sack of flour and side of bacon were considered well provided for. This with fish from the river, to be had for the taking, and crows-foot greens, which grew wild in profusion, formed their daily meals. Though the soil was rich there was not a truck patch on the Island as no one had sufficient energy to plant and cultivate one. The chief occupation, carried on at long intervals, was the salvaging of drifting trees, to be cut into logs and sold whenever someone felt the need for cash.

The women were busy with household duties, the care of children and labors at their spinning-wheels and looms weaving butternut jeans and linsey-woolsey, a coarse plain-woven fabric of which the garments of all were fashioned.

The Island had no wells or springs. Water for all purposes was from the river. The Missouri is aptly named the “Big Muddy” and the water was always a dirty yellow color and held so much muck in suspension that an inch of sediment would lie in a bucket of water left standing overnight. For drinking water we would ladle it out and let it filter through rags until it was deemed clear enough to drink. Of course, when the rags had to be washed they were dipped in the river and wrung out, so the filtering process was less than perfect. Except for skunks, we had no wild game. Jugging for catfish, which was the principal sport, became an occupation when the bacon ran low. Some of the Missouri River catfish grow to weigh thirty or forty pounds and can feed a family for several days, if one can get past the fact that they are among the most repulsive looking creatures on this green earth. Jugging was simple. A fisherman would take three or four tightly corked jugs, hang long baited hooks and lines from their handles and drop them in the river to float. He would then follow in boats and wait until a jug sank from sight and then bob up the next moment. Rowing up, he would haul jug and catfish aboard.

On a warm Sunday, I was walking around the Island and heard the sound of singing mingling with what seemed like voices babbling incoherently. I turned a bend and came upon Preacher Ives’ church. It was as Turner had described it, little more than a shanty. Made of driftwood boards tied to poles and roofed with other boards, it was less of a shelter from the weather and more of a space defined by its rude structure. A cross, made of two driftwood logs lashed together was planted in front of it.

The congregation amounted to the Preacher, his wife, Zerelda, the three boys, Willard, Wilbur and Wilfred, and Miranda along with four other people, two men, a woman and a little girl, all sitting or standing in front of the building. A bonfire blazed beside them, sending smoke and crackling embers into the air. The women and the girl were singing. Standing beside her father, Miranda uttered sounds that were like nothing I have ever heard even though she inflected them as if speaking. Her eyes were closed and her hands were raised above her head. Preacher Ives stood next to her, a rattlesnake at least six feet long and as big around as a man’s arm had curled itself from his right wrist to his shoulder. He held it upward as though he were reaching toward heaven, its tongue flickering in and out as its head writhed six or more inches beyond Ives’ hand.

I stepped backward, thinking to avoid being seen, but the Preacher’s eyes caught my motion. Lowering his arm he looked straight at me.

“Welcome Brother George,” he said.

I smiled and waved tentatively.

“Have you come to worship with us?”

“I was just taking a Sunday morning walk, Preacher,” I said, as Miranda stepped closer to her father and held out her hands. Gently putting them under the snake, she disengaged it from Ives’ arm and took it from him. Tongue still flickering, it curled itself around her arm, shaking its rattle with a dry clacking sound. All the time she held it her eyes were fastened to mine. I would turn away and when I looked back she would still be staring at me with disconcerting intensity.

Preacher Ives walked toward me. “Well the Lord must have led you here for a reason.”

“Perhaps he’s come to see Miranda,” his wife said.

He smiled. “Now Zee, don’t be embarrassing the boy. Is that why you came, George, to worship with us or to see Miranda?”

...

******* END PART 2 ************** --> “As I said, Preacher, I was just out walking. I didn’t know you were here or I wouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sorry if I interrupted your services.” “It don’t matter a bit, boy. I’m happy for any chance to get the Lord’s word out.” He looked around at his motley congregation and waved his hand over them. “I don’t reckon you’ve ever seen a church like this.”

“No sir,” I said. My experience with churches did not go much beyond a passing appreciation for the architecture of their buildings in the cities and towns where I had lived with Mother and Mary during my earlier years or a fascination with cannon balls embedded in their walls in the years following the war. The very few times Mother attended worship services, taking us with her, were in the plain and ceremony free Friends Meeting houses of her Quaker faith. Preacher Ives cleared his throat. “I’ve studied the holy scriptures trying to understand what it is that God wants us to do, George. He surely wants us to be fruitful and multiply.” He looked quickly from me to Miranda. “But there are other things, such as in the Book of Mark, chapter sixteen, verse eighteen, where Jesus says, ‘And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’" He lowered his voice. “These were Jesus' last words on earth, according to Mark's Gospel and I take them real seriously.”

I did not know how to respond so I kept my silence, nodding my head as if interested and encouraging him to continue. In truth, I was frightened. His voice was high and ragged and his eyes burned with an unsettling fervor. With trembling hands, leaning over and staring into my eyes, he resembled a character in a play, mad, demented and dangerous, and I could not help but recall Turner Tinnell’s description of how he could gut a man as quickly as someone else could filet a fish.

“And there’s other things, George.” Leaning over, he picked a burning coal from the fire. “The Lord protects us in many ways if he so desires.” He closed his fingers around the coal and held it aloft.

I watched, fascinated and repulsed, terrified by the sight before me. His expression blissful, he held the coal for five minutes. No one spoke and all gathered around ceased their singing as they watched his hand. All but Miranda who still held the snake and never took her eyes from me. There was only the sound of the nearby river rushing against its banks, the wind and the crackling of the fire. When at last Ives lowered his arm and opened his hand I looked in. There was no sign of his having been burned. He turned his hand over and let the coal drop to the ground, still glowing.

“Have you ever seen such a thing, George,” he asked.

I shook my head.

“It comes from my own understanding of holy writ. I heard God speak to me as I was running from Yankees through the forest, and he told me to do this thing, to take up the serpent and show the world of the truth of Jesus’ words. That night I was asleep and awoke to the Lord’s voice telling me to arise and pick up the Bible. When I did, I went right to Mark and found that chapter and I knew that it meant the Lord had anointed me to handle fire and snakes as a sign of his protection for me in my belief.”

He looked around at his congregation. “It’s a new thing, George. I have never heard of people handling fire and snakes and worshipping God in so doing, have you?”

“No sir,” I said.

The others were crowding around me and Miranda was standing so close I could feel heat from her body. She smelled slightly sour and her breath was rapid and shallow as she held the huge rattler, its tongue going in and out of its mouth, its rattle shaking.

“It’s a brave new way of worship Daddy’s creating here,” she said. It was the first time I had heard her speak. “He says it will sweep the world.” Ives kicked the coal and came to stand between Miranda and me. “I think the Lord brought you here today, just like he woke me up that night. It’s a revelation, George. He wants you to join us and worship here, isn’t that right, Miranda?”

“The Lord has his ways of letting us know what he wants,” she said. I looked at the sores and scars on her arms, clearly the results of burns and cuts, and thought that the Lord had a strange way of letting Miranda Ives know what he wanted.

“I have my own way of worshipping, Preacher,” I said, stepping backward. The group parted and let me move off.

He smiled and spread his arms, palms open to the sky. “We’ll still be here, George. I’m sure the Lord will bring you back to us.”

I waved and walked back the way I had come. Before I was out of sight they had resumed singing and I could hear Miranda’s voice again raised in babble. I had no intention of returning.

My teaching chores had not begun and I needed to work in order to pay for my rude room and board. I put in weeks of labor, which were not by any means continuous, working with the Tinnell brothers and we managed to get together several cords of wood. One evening an up-bound boat stopped at the Island and took it all. It was the only outside boat that stopped at the Island while I was there. While the roustabouts were loading up, by the light of flaming cressets, a party on the upper deck gave an impromptu concert, in the course of which a woman sang “Ben Bolt,” very sweetly, and a strong-lunged individual declared, with an appropriate air, that he was “a rambling rack of poverty, and the son of a gamobleer.”

The coming of that boat was a great event on the Island and formed the chief topic of conversation for weeks thereafter as my neighbors speculated about what life on a riverboat would be like, going from town to town, braving the river’s dangerous and unpredictable currents. One of the passengers gave me several old newspapers that provided me with the first information about the outside world I had seen in a long time and it passed from household to household, handled, folded and unfolded and read until there was little left of it but tattered newsprint.

Jimmy Jones hired the Tinnell brothers, McQuinn and me to build a raft. I stood in water to my knees, sometimes to my waist, pushing and pulling one end of a heavy crosscut saw through water soaked logs. That chore finished, we cut poles with which to bind the logs together, and shaped pins to secure them in place. When it was completed we were to float it down river to Nebraska City.

On a cool Wednesday morning we cut loose from shore and started our voyage, Jimmy in his skiff following close behind. The raft was controlled by an immense sweep, or rudder, at both ends. I was at the front of the foremost sweep with Price next to me watching the water for danger. Midway between the Island and Nebraska City there was a sharp curve, known as Snaggy Bend, named for its many jams of snags and sawyers of every conceivable shape and size. The river rushed through it like a millrace and it looked as though passage through it would be impossible.

“Man’s got to be crazy out of his mind to make this passage,” Price said as we neared the Bend. “For Christ’s sake, there’s good water on the Nebraska side, calmer and not to jammed up as we got here.”

“I done it lots of time,” Jimmy called, and we drifted into the churning muddy water in spite of our efforts to avoid the worst of it. We were drawn swiftly in and went grinding and crashing over countless obstructions. Price deserted his post and ran to the stern.

“Hell’s bells,” he said. “We’re going to die.”

Turner yelled, “Jesus Jimmy, hurry up with the skiff. This thing’s going down.”

But it was all Jimmy could do to save himself. He surely knew that if we tried to board his frail flat-bottomed boat it would surely capsize, drowning us all. Ignoring our threats and curses, he remained at a safe distance and worked out his own salvation. I remained where I had been placed, not from bravery, but because even then I was very much of a fatalist, believing that what is to be will be. I realized that the little boat would not hold five, and I had learned the character of those men so well that I knew if a sacrifice had to be made I would be the victim.

Death yawned before me. Without a doubt I would be drowned if I fell into that whirl and rush of waters with its matted mass of trunks and limbs of trees. I sat upon the arm of the sweep and waited for the end I believed was near, trying not to show my fear, performing for an audience consisting only of the Tinnells and McQuinn. Jimmy had drifted off and was struggling alone, unconcerned with anything happening on the raft.

Drowning must be one of the worst ways to die, fighting the water, desperately trying to reach the surface, holding your breath all the while as you battle the impulse to inhale. Gripping tight to the meager hold I had managed, I imagined with dread the terror and the horror I would feel when I was plunged into the torrent and after losing the struggle against currents that swept me under the dark river, instinct prevailed, the fight over, and I took a deep breath of that muddy water. Since then the dread of dying beneath water as never left me.

That time I was roused from the depths of my fears by Price’s voice, “We’re coming up on Snaggy Bend. Maybe we’ll get some help from the folks there.” Despite our peril, Turner laughed. “The damn fools that live there call it Civil Bend. They think Snaggy Bend sounds uncivilized.”

“I don’t think they’ll be civil enough to jump in and help us,” I said and my comment got a good laugh out of both the Tinnells.

I was right. As we bumped and bounced by Snaggy Civil bend, a man’s voice from shore called out, “You’ll get through all right,” but we were traveling so fast that we passed before I could see him and nobody offered any help beyond that encouragement. The distance through the bend seemed miles in length, but in reality was not more than five hundred yards and we went through without breaking up or losing a log. When almost opposite Nebraska City, I saw a broad ripple, or swirl, in the water.

“Thank God, a sand bile,” Turner said.

“Sand bile, hell,” Price said. “It’s a damned blind snag.”

We struck it with full force. The raft was torn into dozens of pieces and three of the crew flew into the water. Only the three front logs on which I stood held together. I did not even get my feet wet. As I floated down stream, I saw Turner trying to get on a log. As often at he climbed on it rolled with him and sent him head-foremost into the river, yelling for help. My part of the raft drifted ashore at the sawmill. The rest of the crew landed at different points. Once all were accounted for we began to salvage the logs. Quite a few of them had drifted well below town and it was hard work pulling them upstream against the current. After several hours of sweating, cursing and back breaking labor we rounded them all up, delivered them to the mill, and Uncle Jimmy was paid.

He gave us the wages we had agreed upon and took us to a saloon where he treated us to supper and as much beer and whiskey as we could drink. After several hours drinking and carousing, we loaded the skiff onto a wagon and Jimmy drove us to his landing. He and I on the front seat, the others in various stages of drunkenness sprawled in the skiff and on the wagon bed. At Jone’s landing he piled us into a boat and began rowing us back to the island. On the way, muddled from drink, he failed in rounding the sandbar, bumping into it half way between the head and foot, in the widest part, of course, and we had to drag the skiff across the sand.

Day was breaking when we reached the other channel. The strong current carried us some distance below the usual island landing and we had a long tramp through the brush before reaching our cabins. Exhausted, we parted with few words. Mother McQuinn had a catfish stew waiting but I barely had the energy to eat before going outside with a coverlet and falling asleep in the full sunlight. Three weeks later I had another frightening experience on the river, this time with a raft formed of several layers of railway ties. We managed to steer clear of Snaggy Bend, but before reaching Nebraska City the weight of the mud deposited between the layers of ties forced the surface of the raft four or five inches under water. Had there been a few more miles to go the raft would without doubt have sunk to the bottom of the river. This time we made return by the Iowa shore, corbelling, that is, three men walking along shore, pulling the boat, while another, long pole in hand, stood in the bow and kept the boat from the banks and snags.

One morning, while we were logging, McQuinn suddenly cried out, “Indians. Indians.” and looking the direction he pointed we saw a fleet of a dozen or more canoes, filled with Indians, coming rapidly down stream on the Iowa side. Sending the women and children deep into the woods, the men quickly armed themselves and lined up along the riverbank, ready for any fight that might arise. Whatever the failings of those island squatters, they did not lack courage. All were hard and battle tested, afraid of no man. I felt shaky, but with their example before me I had no choice but to screw up my courage and stand my ground.

The foremost canoe was quite long and in the middle sat a scantily clad elderly man. There were six women in the boat with him, all paddling rapidly, a sure sign that it was not a war party. As the canoe came opposite us, the man raised his right hand and they passed by, the other canoes following. Soon all were gone from view around a bend. We learned later that it was a party of Otoes and Winnebagoes bound for the Agency at the mouth of the Nemaha Rive to receive their annuities

Preacher Ives and Miranda stopped by the McQuinn’s place from time to time. He would encourage me to join their little congregation at the north end of the Island and she would stand close by, always with that slight sour odor and shallow quick breathing. The sense of danger he had earlier raised in me faded. I saw now that though mad, Ives was harmless unless, of course, one happened to be a Yankee sympathizer, in which case the Preacher might well revert to his murderous habits of yore.

Having lived long enough in Baltimore and Washington, as well as in Virginia, during the late unpleasantness between the states I came to understand the feelings of people on both sides and to have some human sympathy with them all. My own sympathies were mixed and it was not difficult for me to give the appearance of support for the Southern cause. In addition, I thought of my affection for Wilkes Booth, in spite of his terrible deed, and I was not alone in my feelings for him. He was possessed of a dark radiance that drew people to him, women and men alike, as if to bask in its embracing warmth.

Perhaps all great leaders have this power and it is only the ends to which they direct it that defines their historic destiny. Today Booth is a figure of infamy and, although I still believe he committed his crime out of devotion to his cause and not as the result of corruption of the soul, he will never be redeemed in the eyes of history. It is only in the memories of people such as I, who knew him as an actor and a person and were the recipients of his kindnesses, that any trace of his humanity is preserved, and soon we will exit earth’s stage taking those memories with us and only the remembrance of Booth, the murderer of Lincoln will remain to attest to his having lived. Booth the man, he with the stubbly cheek and affectionate embraces for a young boy who looked up to him and was the recipient of his largess, will never be known.

I made several trips to Plum Hollow, Iowa, eight or ten miles distant, for mail and provisions, swimming my horse across Wabaunsee Slough when the river was in flood. Mr. McQuinn and I visited Win Fryers and his wife, Lucinda, friends of his who had taken up a homestead on the Weeping Water Bottom, in Nebraska. Their one room log cabin was new, neat, and clean, and larger than any back on Keg Island. At the rear was a good-sized truck patch. Several acres had been plowed, and planted to sod corn. Lucinda invited us for supper and the meal we sat down to that evening was a Delmonico banquet in comparison with any served on the Island. There was excellent light bread, baked in a Dutch oven, antelope steak, salt pork, potatoes, the first I had seen in several months, greens, and preserved fruit, everything in profusion.

“Would you like some tea,” Lucinda asked me.

“I haven’t had tea since I came to Keg Island.”

“Long sweetnin’ or short?”

I had not the least idea what she meant, but at a venture I said I preferred long, and taking up a small pitcher she poured into the cup a liberal quantity of sorghum molasses. I took a generous mouthful of the tea and fought the urge to spit it out. It was sassafras tea, and decidedly nauseating, the molasses not helping in the slightest. Out of politeness I emptied the cup by degrees, but declined a second helping. It may be good medicine but it’s a poor beverage.

At another time, I went with a party from the Island to the Lancaster Salt Marsh, in Nebraska, some fifty miles or more distant, to make salt for Uncle Jimmy. Not more than three or four families were living in the vicinity of the Marsh at that time. Less than ten years later I appeared there with an acting company in support of Joseph Murphy, the Irish comedian, and it had grown to a city of thirty thousand inhabitants. Renamed Lincoln, it was by then the State capitol. Indeed, so rapid was the growth of the country that I scarce recognized many places I visited as a youth when I came upon them in my later travels.

Shortly after my first rafting experience I opened a school in the cabin formerly occupied by the Smith family. The sessions were often interrupted by other labors and excursions. Despite this I struggled to teach the rudiments of the English language to every child on the Island, twelve in all, plus two adults. Miranda attended regularly, from the first day of my tenure until I closed the schoolhouse doors and left the Island. She would sit in the back row, wearing the same dirty and patched dress day after day, staring at me or looking vacantly at the wall behind me and never answering any questions or offering any ideas. The other students were little better and I never felt as though I was conveying knowledge that would be of use to them. My initial thought that teaching would be like acting and the students an appreciative audience had faded by the end of my first day as a teacher. I continued to hold school only out of a sense of obligation to the Islanders who had taken me in.

There was a youth on the Island, Caleb Bannister, who was orphaned in the aftermath of the War Between the States and lived in the wild. He found shelter with Islanders in foul weather and was fed by their charity. Despite an ill-kempt appearance that hid his features behind filth and malnourishment, he was handsome by any standards, inordinately fair given his hard life and lack of opportunities on the Island. In addition, he had a facility for language far beyond his education and station in life and spoke in phrases that seemed almost poetic. He would often come to the school, stealthily entering the door as class was in session and sit in the back next to Miranda, from whom he rarely took his eyes, as though she was a delicate beauty instead of the unattractive offspring of a half mad purveyor of religious trickery. Sitting in quiet, he would listen as I told stories from plays and the tales I had heard from others as I traveled the roads that had led me to Keg Island. Once, I told my pupils the story of Othello, reading significant portions of the text, which I linked to one another with brief summaries of my own devising. When I reached the point where the Moor’s faith in Desdemona is completely broken, I asked the class how that could have occurred. They sat unmoving and unmoved, looking confused by my question and offended by my challenging them to think about a problem. After a long silence, Caleb spoke.

“He thought he was different. Different and ugly in her eyes.”

“But she loved him,” I said.

“I doesn’t matter, Professor,” he said. “If you think you are ugly you are ugly, no matter what. Sounds and sweet songs can give no pleasure if you feel that way. They only cause further hurt.”

In the ensuing years I often thought of that benighted lad and wondered if he had survived life on the Island. It was to be a long time before I discovered what became of him. I have ever since nourished sadness for such souls, those who seem trapped in their circumstances, looking out at a world that rejects them with cruelty or neglect. I came away from our encounter with what I hope is a greater appreciation of the conditions under which too many of our poor fellow humans live out their days.

One morning I took my axe, and went into the woods to cut a fallen cottonwood into logs. I was standing on the tree when the axe glanced, cutting my foot to the bone, a gash several inches in length that bled profusely. I tore a strip from my shirt, bound up my foot, fashioned a tourniquet from another strip and hobbled back to the cabin. When Mrs. McQuinn saw the blood-soaked rag and heard what had happened, she sent the children out to pick smartweed berries, a small pale-pink wild berry that is believed to have healing powers. Some also believe that if placed in a conjure sac and hung around ones neck they will lead the bearer to money. During my sojourn on the Keg I saw no evidence of any success in such a belief.

When the children returned with the berries, she put lard into a skillet, took down a joint of stovepipe, shook the soot onto the lard and added to this the contents of her husband’s powder horn. She mashed the berries into a pulp and added them to the other ingredients and lighting a fire in the stove melted and mixed the mass together. Two of the children held the cut open, and she filled it with a handful of the warm mixture. The yell I gave must have been heard on the far shores and I bounced up so high that my head almost hit the ridgepole. The remedy was a good one, requiring only one more application. In a few days the wound was healed.

The country along the river, with its swamps, backwaters, and stagnant pools was a breeding place of miasma and I contracted a severe case of what the Islanders called the fever’nager. At first the shakes came every third day, then every second, and finally every day. With the fever I seemed to be being burned alive, and more than once had to be restrained from jumping into the river to cool off. When the chills from the ague came, I shook like an aspen leaf and my teeth chattered together like castanets in quick action, even when being held down between two feather beds or wrapped in blankets and seated close to a hot fire.

Preacher Ives heard of my illness and came to pray for me, bringing Miranda to aid Mrs. McQuinn in nursing me back to health. The girl wiped my head and kept me covered when I was shaking with the ague and cooled me off when the fever raged. Once I woke in a semi-delirious state and found her lying next to me, her hands folded across her abdomen and her eyes staring at the ceiling. I coughed quietly, to alert her to my newly awakened state and she rolled over curling herself around me in a serpentine fashion. Her body was flat and hard, as lacking in curves as a boy’s. The sour odor I had come to associate with her was stronger than I had previously noticed, and her breath was pungent and unpleasant smelling. I squirmed, trying to get away from her.

“I’ll keep you warm, Georgie,” she said. “Like what Daddy said, I’m for you.”

“He said that,” I managed to ask.

At that moment, Mrs. McQuinn came into the room carrying a large steaming mug. “What are you doing, girl,” she yelled.

Miranda sat up and leapt from the bed, scurrying to the far side of the room where she cringed huddled against the wall. “I was just keeping him warm.”

“You leave that boy alone,” Mother McQuinn said. “He’s sick and doesn’t need you trying to take advantage of him.”

“I wasn’t,” Miranda muttered. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him or nothing, only to help him get better so we can marry up like Daddy wants.”

Mrs. McQuinn’s voice softened. “I know you didn’t mean no harm, but I think it would be best if you just let me take care of him. You can go on home now and thank you for your help.”

Once Miranda was gone Mrs. McQuinn helped me sit up.

“The girl don’t mean bad. She’s just not quite right,” she said, holding the mug to my lips.

“I don’t think I’m the marrying kind,” I said. “And if I ever did marry, it wouldn’t be to Miranda Ives.”

“She’ll spend her days here or someplace like this,” Mrs. McQuinn said.

I coughed and fell back. She helped me up again.

“This wild herb tea has never failed before, George,” she said.

Despite her assurances, the tea did me no good. I drank gallons of it and the sickness grew worse. Soon I was too weak to rise from my bed and one day I heard Mrs. McQuinn speaking to Turner Tinnell just outside the cabin door.

“I don’t think he’s going to make it. I’ve done everything I can and he doesn’t get any better.”

“I ain’t going to lose him,” Turner said.

He fetched a bottle of quinine from Plum Hollow and I used it liberally, not stopping to measure or weigh it, but pouring a large amount into a mug and gulping it down. I grew weak and yellow as saffron and so listless and woe-begone that I didn’t care whether school kept or not.

At Turner’s request, Doctor Crowley, Plum Hollow’s only physician, paid me several visits, trying with various nostrums and pills to cure me.

“You’re as well as you’re going to get on this hell-hole of an island,” he said on his third trip. “I can’t keep coming over here and seeing you not getting any better and taking the time away from other patients, folks that have a better hold on life. The climate here is terrible and you’re not getting the care you need.”

He waved a hand around, letting it hover above a full chamber pot covered with a dirty rag to keep the stench from filling the cabin’s single room. “All these people living together in this shack just doesn’t make for a healthy situation.” He turned to Mrs. McQuinn. “Sorry, but it’s the truth. I’m going to take him back to Plum Hollow and put him in my spare bedroom so that Mrs. Crowley and I can keep an eye on him.”

She stiffened and then nodded. “You should take him, Doctor. But you know we done our best. Life ain’t easy here, you know.”

He sighed. “Life isn’t easy anywhere, Mrs. McQuinn. I know you’ve tried to help, and George knows it too, don’t you boy?”

Weak though I was, I nodded and gave Mrs. McQuinn the best smile I could muster. A heavy storm was blowing. With thick dark clouds hanging over the island midday seemed like twilight, thunder so loud that it shook the muddy ground and lightening crackling around the edges of the cabin like blazing snakes. Mrs. McQuinn bundled me up. Turner and McQuinn laid me on a rude stretcher they had made of driftwood and a couple of dirty sheets and carried to me Uncle Jimmy’s skiff, which was waiting for the doctor at the dock. Miranda followed behind, snuffling that she was never going to see me again. Though too weak to say much, I told her that she would be fine and that her father and the rest of her family would look after her.

“But there won’t be no more school,” she said.

I shrugged, thinking of how little interest she showed in any studies, but said nothing. When we reached the dock she leaned over me, her hair knotted and greasy, the sour smells from her breath and body overwhelming.

“Just remember what Daddy said, Georgie. I’m for you. That’s what the good Lord wants, he says, and Daddy’s a preacher so I reckon he ought to know.”

I tried to smile up at her, but I knew it was a wan gesture. She leaned over and kissed me on the lips. “I’ll see you again, Georgie, don’t you never mind.”

As soon as I was on Uncle Jimmy’s skiff and sure I was out of her sight, I wiped my lips and turned my eyes away from Keg Island.

“They’re going to miss you there, boy,” Jimmy said, rowing us into the river.

“I suppose I’ll miss them too, although I never planned on staying there.”

“That island was killing you, George,” Dr. Crowley said. “It’s almost as though there’s foul vapors there that only folks who belong on that damned place can survive.”

Dazed from my fever, I looked back at the island for a moment. Miranda still stood by the dock, and a few feet behind her I saw Caleb Bannister, hunched over as if in pain. Obscured by the semi-dark of the storm and with his twisted posture he looked like a being only partially human. There was a sudden blast of thunder followed by brilliant lightening striking the ground behind them. For the instant of the flash I saw Preacher Ives, his hair blowing in the gale, his hands raised, in a benediction or a curse, his hands raised, snakes coiled around each arm. His voice carried over the storm and across the water.

“Miranda is for you,” he cried out.