Wrong or not, his outburst convinced Lottie. She would tell him, she said, but he must promise not to judge the men in her story too harshly. Her father had been one of them, and whatever she thought of what he’d been part of, she loved him and would not have him thought poorly of because of any tale she might tell. Yes, yes, the Reverend promised, of course.
II
The story Lottie told began before her family had departed the old country. She didn’t know much of what had occurred while she was still a child in Germany — before she or either of her parents were born. Reverend Mapple pieced most of that together after he had Lottie’s story, from visiting local libraries and museums, digging through archives, reading old newspapers and letters. Where most of it took place is under three hundred feet of water now, out beneath the Reservoir. I’m sure you fellows know that the Reservoir dates back to the First World War. Before that, it was the Esopus river valley, with eleven and a half towns in it. From west to east, you had Boiceville, West Shokan, Shokan, Broadhead’s Bridge, Olive City, Olive Bridge, Brown’s Station, Olive, Olive Branch, Glenford, and West Hurley. West-northwest of West Hurley was a half-dozen houses some people called Hurley Station, others the Station. A lot of folks didn’t call it anything, either because they didn’t know it was there or because they assumed it was part of West Hurley. It wasn’t, though. Near as the Reverend could figure, the Station had been there first, built a good few decades prior to the settlers who streamed into the area in the early seventeen-hundreds. When the town had been put up, the Catskills were still Indian country, and that’s no exaggeration. Twice the tribes swept down from the mountains and burned Wiltwyck. The families who founded the Station were Dutch. I don’t know what led them to that spot, except that the Dutch as a whole kept moving further north up the Hudson to get away from newer settlers. Why those families called their settlement the Station is something of a mystery as well, since the railroad was close enough to two centuries in the future when they started clearing the land for their stone houses. The name could have had to do with the spring they built the town around. Reverend Mapple guessed that traders and trappers might have used the place as a way station on their journeys up from Wiltwyck.
Anyway, as far as the record shows, the Indians left the Station alone. And for a long time, until the eighteen-forties, not much of interest happened there. The other towns in the Esopus valley grew up around it. The hemlock tanneries were established and became a thriving concern — that was the big business here, the tanneries. Then, one summer’s day, this man comes riding out of the west, along the turnpike. He isn’t much to look at. Even for the time, he’s a little fellow, with black, stringy hair — kind of greasy — and a black, stringy beard that hangs down from his chin like a cheap disguise. His features are delicate, boyish, even, what you can see of them under the wide brim of his hat. He’s dressed in a black suit that’s been whitened by the dust of too many days on the road. This man comes riding on a one-horse cart, and there isn’t much remarkable about either horse — a brown nag that’s wearing the same thick coat of dust as the man’s clothes — or the cart. Oh, except for the cart’s wheels: apparently, their rims are twice as thick as they need to be, and covered in pictures. Actually, this is a little unclear. Some folks who see the man making his slow way along the turnpike say that the wheels are wrapped around with symbols like hieroglyphs, you know? While others declare that the wheels are decorated with pictures that look like writing but aren’t. A language that looks like pictures, or pictures that look like language: whichever it is, everyone who studies the cart for any length of time agrees that whatever is on those broad wheels seems to move in a way that isn’t quite in sync with their turning. When greeted, the stranger doesn’t say much, doesn’t volunteer his name, certainly. If you call out hello, he’ll touch the brim of his hat to you. If you ask him where he’s coming from, he’ll answer, “The western mountains,” and that’s that, won’t tell if he means Oneonta or Syracuse or what. His English isn’t too clear, his speech refracted by a heavy accent that folks think sounds German, though there’s debate about the matter. He rides up the turnpike for several days, meandering along at what is, by any standards, a snail’s pace. A few kids from the various towns along the way who’re ducking their chores try to spy on his cart from up in trees along the side of the road, but they’re out of luck. Everything is in boxes and bags and under tarps, none of it marked except for one sizable crate covered with the same strange markings as the cart’s wheels. One daring lad tries for the stranger’s hat with an apple, but the branch he’s standing on snaps just as he throws, and the missile flies wide. He breaks his arm for his trouble, that boy. The stranger, who’s moving slowly enough to hear the boy’s cries for a good long while, ignores them.
Finally, the fellow takes the turn off for Hurley Station. By now, most of the residents of the towns up and down the Esopus have heard about this man in his black suit. A good portion of them could describe him better than I can, regardless of whether they’ve seen him in the flesh. Something about the man sets people’s interest boiling. When the stranger halts his horse at Cornelius Dort’s front door, speculation, already at a brisk canter, runs riot. The Dorts are one of the six families who founded the Station. When the foundations were dug and the first stones laid, they were the wealthiest, and that’s a condition time has only improved. The Dort estate, I guess you’d call it, is considerable, as are their holdings in and around the area. Cornelius is in charge of the lot; there was a younger brother, Henrick, but he left as a young man and didn’t return — lost on a whaling ship, was the report. There’s a portrait of Cornelius, a painting, hanging in City Hall in Wiltwyck today. Seems in his younger days he was quite friendly with one of the mayors, so much so that he gifted the man with an addition to his house. What Cornelius received in exchange for this I don’t know; aside from his picture in City Hall, I mean. Maybe that was all, though I doubt it. The portrait’s not that good. It makes Cornelius look just a little more mad than you think he would have wanted. His eyes are open too wide, and his eyebrows climb halfway up his forehead, which is saying something. I think the artist, whose name escapes me at the moment, meant Cornelius’s mouth to look stern, but it wobbles at one end, so it’s more like he’s on the verge of laughing or crying. Honestly, the more you look at the thing, the more you wonder how Cornelius didn’t have the man who painted it horsewhipped. Graves, that was the artist’s name. Did I mention the hair? This great wave of red hair that looks as if it’s rearing up to strike. I guess it’s lucky for Mr. Graves Cornelius Dort wasn’t much of an art critic.
Because he’s that kind of man. He’ll horsewhip you himself if he thinks you’ve wronged him, and his definition of what constitutes wronging him is pretty loose. No one cares for him much. No one ever has. He’s stern and unfriendly, a shrewd businessman who’s increased his family’s fortune through a series of deals that have forced more than one family from their land. When the stranger climbs down from his cart and walks to Cornelius’s front door — moving no more quickly by foot that he did by cart — you can be sure anyone watching — mostly kids, hiding in the trees — expects him to make a quick and painful acquaintance with the toe of Cornelius’s boot.