“Levannon’s where I want to go.”
“Why — them’s no better’n heretics over yonder.”
Sam asked: “You ever bejasus been theah?”
“Sure I have and wouldn’t go again at all.”
“Got to cross Levannon if you and Vilet be goin’ to Vairmant like you say.”
“Ayah,” Jed sighed, “but just to cross it.”
They were still edgy. I said: “I dunno — all’s I ever beam of Levannon was hear-tell.”
“Some pa’ts may be respectable,” Jed allowed. “But them quackpots! Snatch y’ sleeve, bend y’ ear. You hear the Church figgers if the quackpot religioners all drift into Levannon that makes it nicer for the rest of us, but I dunno, it don’t seem right. Grammites, Franklinites, that’s what religious liberty has brung ’em to in Levannon. No better’n a sink-hole of atheism.”
I said: “Never hearn tell of Franklinites.”
“Nay? Oh, they busted away from the New Romans in Conicut — New Romans are strong theah, you know. The Mother Church tol’ates ’em so long as they don’t go building meeting-places and stuff — I mean, you got to have religious liberty within reason, just so it don’t lead to heresy and things. Franklinites — well, I dunno…”
Sam said: “Franklinite a’gument sta’ted up about St. Franklin’s name not being Benjamin and the durn gold standard not being wropped around him when he was buried but around some other educated saint of the same name. My wife’s mother knowed all about it, and she’d testify on the subject till a man dropped dead. One of ’em carried lightning into his umbreller, I disremember which one.”
“The Benjamin one,” said Jed, all friendly again. “Anyhow them Franklinites did stir up a terrible commotion in Conicut, disgraceful — riots, what-not, finally made like persecuted and petitioned Mother Church to let ’em do an exodus or like that into Levannon, which she done it, and theah they be to this day. Awful thing.”
“Wife’s mother was a Grammite. Good woman according to her lights.”
“Didn’t go for to hurt y’ feelings, Sam.”
“Didn’t. According to her lights I said. But when it come to my wife, why, I said to her, ‘Jackson,’ I said, ‘you can be a Grammite like your respected maternal pair’nt and prophesy the end of the world till your own ass flies up,’ I said, ‘and bites this ’ere left one,’ I said, ‘or you can be my good wife, but you can’t do both, Jackson,’ I said, ‘account I a’n’t about to put up with it.’ Homed it out’n her too, so’t of.”
“Why,” said Vilet, “you mean old billy ram!”
“Naw, Jackson baby, that a’n’t meanness, that’s just good sense, that is. All’s I mean, she was a lickin’ good church-woman ever after, real saint, never had a mite of trouble with her that day fo’th. About religion, I mean. Did have a few other faults such as talky-talking fit to wear the han’le off a solid silver thundermug, which is why I j’ined the A’my so to get a smidgin of peace and quiet, but a real saint, understand, no trouble with her at all, no sir. Not about religion.”
“Amen,” says Vilet, and glanced up quick at Jed to make sure she’d said the right thing.
12
We spent the early afternoon in that place, drying out, getting acquainted. I again said something about Levannon and the great ships, the thirty-ton outriggers that dare to sail to the ports of Nuin by the northern route. And Jed Sever was troubled again, though not this time about religion.
“The sea’s a devil’s life, boy Davy. I know — I had a taste of it. Signed on with a fishing fleet out of Kingstone, at seventeen. I was big as I am now — too big to listen to my Da, that was the sin of it — but when I got back by the grace of God ’n’ Abraham I weighed no more’n a hund’d and twenty pounds. We sailed south beyond the Black Rock Islands, wheah the Hudson Sea opens out into the big water — oh, Mother Cara have pity, that’s a lonesome place, the Black Rocks! They say a great city stood theah in Old Time, and that’s ha’d to understand. As for the big water beyond, oh, it’s a hund’d thousand mile of nothing, boy Davy, nothing at all. We was gone seven months, op’rating from a camp wheah we smoked the fish, a mis’ble empty spit of land, sand dunes, dab or two of low hills, no shelter if’n the wind’s wrong. Long Island it’s called, pa’t of Levannon and they’s a few small villages at the western end within sight of the Black Rocks; any nation’s free to use the eastern end — sand — seldom a living thing except the gulls. Men get to hating each other, such ventures. Twenty-five of us at the beginning, mostly sinners. Five dead, one murdered in a brawl, and mind you, the comp’ny expects to lose that many, expects it. We never saw a new face only when the comp’ny’s freight vessel brung firewood and took back the smoked cod and mackle. And on our saiings — ah, sometimes we was a couple-three hours full out of sight of land! That’s an awful thing. You be in God’s hand, amen, still it’s a terr’ble test of y’ faith. Can’t do it ay-tall without a compass, some call it a lodestone. Comp’ny owned one that was made in Old Time, and we had three men in the crew considered fit to han’le it and keep watch lest God should weary of holding the little iron true to the no’th for our sakes out of his ev’lasting mercy.”
Vilet sighed. “Hoy, I bet them three was the real panjandrums of the outfit, wasn’t they?”
“You don’t understand these things, woman. Man’s han’ling a holy object, y’ own life depending on it, stands to reason you treat him respectful. Ayah, boy Davy, that’s the blind side of nothing when you’re out of sight of land. You work in skiffs, maybe six-seven hours labor with the big nets, and mustn’t leave the main outrigger out of sight for that’s wheah the compass is — come a sudden fog or a great wide wind, what then? — needn’t ask. And when the last net comes in, then it’s fight y’ way back over the cruel water to make camp, get the fish smoked before they spile. To this day I can’t abide the stink of fish, any fish, couldn’t if I was sta’ving. It’s a judgment onto me for a sinful youth. The sea’s not for men, boy Davy. Le’ me tell you — when I came home at last, sick and punied-out though I was I had me a woman-hunger fit to drive a man hag-wild, and — well, I won’t go into that now, but on my first night back in Kingstone I succumbed to the urging of the evil one, and I got robbed, ever’ penny of my seven months’ pay. A judgment.”
Sam said to the fire: “You claim God would gut a man just for heavin’ it into a chunk of nooky?”
“Language! Nay, why was I robbed, if it wa’n’t a judgment? Answer me that! Ah, Sam, I pray for the time when scoffing will pass from you. You harken to me, boy Davy: at sea you be a slave, no other word. A devil’s life. Work, work, work till you drop, then comes the old chief’s boot in y’ ribs, and sea-law says he’s got the right. I wish ever’ vessel ever built was to the bottom of the deep this day moment. I do. You listen to me: it stands to reason, if’n God meant men to float he’d’ve give us fins.”
We got moving soon after that, to look for a location where we might spend the night in better safety. I learned a few things from Sam as I walked with him, out of hearing of Jed and Vilet. Jed, he told me, was short-sighted, objects twenty feet away from him not much more than a blur, and he was sensitive about it, regarding it as another punishment dealt out to him by the Lord. I couldn’t see Jed as any kind of sinner, let alone a big one, but Jed firmly believed the Lord had it in for him — testing him to be sure and maybe friendly at heart, but tough all the same, never giving him a break without taking away something else or reminding him of the Day of Judgment. The poor Jo could hardly turn his head to spit or square off by a tree-trunk to take a leak, without the Lord’s jolting him up about something he’d done wrong ten days ago, or ten years. Unfair, I thought, and unreasonable-but if that was the way Jed and God wanted it, Sam and I weren’t about to butt in with our ten cents worth of suggestions.