Wallace regarded me in plump, implacable silence, taking sips straight from the co fee-pot. The image of my father & mother back in Nauvoo, so complacent in their faith, appear’d as though stamp’d onto the news-printed walls. It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears, and if Wallace had kept quiet an instant longer, I surely would have done so.
But he did not. Instead, he straighten’d in his wicker chair & without the slightest warning slapped me viciously across the brow.
“I’ve cursed my luck often enough, Harvey, as God’s my witness; but I don’t curse it now. A man has come into this country — a man with the vision to recover everything we’ve lost, & a good deal else besides. A man to recover our birth-right for us.” He stood up from the chair with a noise like kindling catching fire.
“That man is Thaddeus T. Myrell, the Child of the New West.”
The old grange in Onadee that night was hung from floor to rafters with gaudy crepe banners scavenged from forgotten fairs, cheap tallow torches & bed-sheets painted with all manner of curious slogans—: WHAT LANGUAGEDO YE SPEAK, YE CHILDREN OF ANTELOPES — IS IT GOD’S? and, nearby, TO THE WEST ITS PROMISED HUSBANDS— TO EACH HUSBAND, NOW, HIS CHILDE!
I was unable to make the least sense of them, but they struck me in my eagerness as full of hidden portents. Most obscure of all was a device stencil’d here & there on the walls of the Grange itself, a figure made of intersecting lines that I took at first to be a cattle-brand—
In spite of these trappings, however, & the smoke from the sap torches, the mood of the assembly more resembled a gin-raffle or a country dance than any sober-minded gathering. The laughter, lewdness & commotion on all sides seem’d more in keeping with the medicine-shows I knew so well than with any true revival. But a revival, of a sort, it was. There was the dark, quiet stage — there the wooden lectern; & there, all at once, was the Child of the New West, stepping forward to address the crowd, his pale face glowing in the torch-light. His body was stretched to its fullest in every direction, like a squirrel falling from a tree; as he stepped up to the lectern, holding one pudgy fist aloft, I smiled to myself at how little he resembled Tempie’s second-hand accounting.
I’d pictured him in a buck-skin greatcoat, mud-spatter’d riding boots & a wide-brimmed trapper’s hat, perhaps with a jay’s feather tuck’d into its brim; the man at the lectern — if a man he was, & not a precocious truant — wore a well-iron’d suit of clothes & high-heel’d city shoes. He look’d more like a school-teacher or a claims-adjuster than any Hero of the New Frontier. Everything about him bespoke a quiet reasonableness. He appear’d the perfect gentleman in miniature; so miniature, in fact, that Wallace’s hosannas seem’d as laughable as Tempie’s. This served the Child well, however; my surpriseat his great delicacy disarm’d me.
The crowd had a di ferent notion of the Child. The men about me seem’d to treat him as they would any other beer-hall sermonizer — with beer-hall tom-foolery & cheer. With time, I was to learn that Myrell’s great gift was to convince each of his listeners that they’d caught a glimpse of his most secret nature, & that they recognized themselves — their own desires, ambitions, & hid-away beliefs — in what they saw. He’d fashion’d himself into an all-purpose cipher, perfectly suited in his blankness to take on any meaning, any color, any significance whatever.
For some minutes he tried, as if slightly pain’d, to check the hubbub in the hall. Then, in a low voice, hesitantly at first, he embark’d on what sounded more like a lecture in history than a political speech, let alone a sermon. This departed even further from the bellowing, whiskey-swilling charlatan I’d imagined. At no point did he allow the high spirits of the gathering to tempt him away from his sober tone; in time, out of simple curiosity, nearly everyone in the Grange had quieted enough to hear him. And in fact the Child grew more & more bewitching with every word he spoke.
I’ve often asked myself, in the course of the unquiet years that followed— what was it I found so remarkable in Myrell’s performance that August night in Onadee? Certainly not the substance of his sermon. He was expressing anxiety about the future of white settlers in the Territories — no more than that. Gradually, now, his shyness disappear’d; at times his voice grew strident. He spoke urgently & quickly. The mood he cast over the revelers was heady & violent,& went far deeper than the speech itself; try as I might, I can’t recall a single word of it.
But if I can no longer remember specific words, or even clear ideas — I was soon to learn that the fate of the Territories was of less importance to him than a wart on a nigger’s heel — I recollect the emotions which fought for dominion over my heart with a vividness born of a lifetime spent under their sway. Our tentative beginnings, the Child explained — our scattering of farms & stores & grain depots & churches — had been built on the very edge of an abyss. What gave the white settler his dignity was not the greatness of his holdings, or the respect of his neighbors, but first & foremost his independence; and this independence, it seem’d, was menaced from all sides. If the hordes of rogue Sioux & Cherokee did not roll down from the west in a mighty purging tide, then the corrupt nation at our backs, with its Federalists, its Pluralists &— worst of all — its Abolitionists, would suck our independence from us like rainwater from a gourd.
What the Child of the New West preached — twenty years before the fact — was nothing less than secession from the Union. The fact that Arkansas & Kansas, not to mention Oklahoma, had not even been granted statehood yet was of little interest to him, or to anyone else that night; by the close of his speech it was certainly of no interest to me. As he stepped back from the lectern with a sti f little bow & the brass donation-trays began to circulate through the hall, my sole desire was to speak with the Child in private.
Once the show was over, the Grange emptied from one moment to the next; the bulk of the crowd simply cross’d the muddy street to the nearest of Onadee’s seventeen saloons. A small clot of admirers remain’d to the left of the stage, forming a ring one-to-two-men deep, through which I caught glimpses of the Child’s well-groomed head. Wallace was among the men, & I took my place beside him. My plan was to wait until the group thinned out somewhat — the Child was reputed to lodge and dine alone. There should be ample time, later in the evening, for a thorough exchange of views.
I can’t help but marvel, even now, at my boldness on that apocalyptic evening — it would have served me better on countless others. And yet I understand full well why I acted as I did. I needed the attention of the Child; not to get it was unthinkable. Surprising is only that my gambit worked. But perhapseven that, on reflection, is not so unlikely — my desperation was all the calling-card I needed.
Within a few short minutes only myself, Wallace, & another man — an Irishman — remain’d beside the Child. What had begun as a political debate had taken on an agreeably informal flavor, as though we were attorneys-at-lawrelaxing after a trial. Wallace, in particular, affected a familiarity with the Child which took me quite aback.