No, I will not call him Judas. I taught that poor child on and off for four years when Adelaide Peague and I alternated with the lower grades in the old Ridge Road school, and I could never see him without a tug at my heart. He was a frail little boy with very beautiful eyes that looked straight through you. One of the quietest children I’ve ever taught, the soul of patience. His eyes were always sad, and I don’t wonder. He wanted to play with the other children, wanted it desperately, but there’s always one child the others pick on, and Judah was that one. I was convinced it was because of his name. The other children never let him forget it. You know how mean young children can be. I could see him cringe every time the hated name was flung at him in the play yard, cringe and turn away. He never fought like the other boys. He would just go very pale when he was taunted about being a “traitor” and a “coward”, go pale, and then walk away. His brother Cain, who was older, fought a lot of his battles, and it was Cain who protected him from the parochial school boys when they walked home from school.
...told his father what I thought of a man who’d give a child a name like that, while his mother sat by wrapped in lap rugs, not saying a word. Mr. Bendigo just laughed. “Judas is his name,” he said to me, “and Judas it’s going to stay.” But I’d seen the look in Mrs. Bendigo’s face, and that was all I needed. The next day I took the boy aside during recess and I said to him, “Would you like to have a new name?” His pinched little face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh, yes!” he cried. But then his face fell. “But my father wouldn’t let me.”
“Your father doesn’t have to know anything about it,” I said. “Anyway, we don’t have to change it much, just one letter, so that if he does see the new name on a report or something, he’ll think it’s simply a mistake. From now on, dear, we’ll just drop the s and put an h in its place, and you’ll be Judah Bendigo. Do you know what ‘Judah’ means? It means someone who is praised. It’s a fine name, and a famous one, too, from the Bible.” The child was so overcome he was unable to speak. He looked at me with his big, sad eyes, then his lips began to tremble and before I knew it he was in my arms, sobbing...
It didn’t take the other children long. Just about one term. I called on him by his new name as frequently as I dared. By the next year they were all calling him Judah, even his brother Cain. I don’t know how Mr. Bendigo took it, and I didn’t care. He was going through a lot of business troubles at that time, his wife was sick — I suppose he was too busy to make an issue of it...
Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN
Let’s see, remarried in ’98 — the second boy was born in ’99, which makes him two years younger than Cain Bendigo. The third boy was born five years after the second, which would be 1904. My Lord, Abel’s forty-seven!...
Don’t know, can’t say, but I’ll guess. My guess is the third one was an accident. I know I’d warned Bill about his wife’s health, and taking it easy, but Bill being what he was...
No, I don’t know why he named the third one Abel. Figured he’d keep his Biblical string running, I guess. I do remember he had no more interest in Abel than in the other two. Just had nothing to do with them. And Ellen was getting sicker, and after a while she developed a chronic whine, which was exactly what those three boys could have done without. The truth is the Bendigo boys grew up without any real love or affection, and whatever’s happened to them is no surprise to me whatsoever, young fellow, whatsoever...
MARTHA E. COOLYE
(67, Principal of Wrightsville High School.)
I’m not really that ancient, Mr. Queen. I was very, very young when I taught Cain Bendigo in the upper grades...
Student is hardly the word. I don’t believe he stuck his nose into a book ever in his life. Certainly not while I taught him. I don’t know how that boy got by...
Cain’s forte was violence. If there was a fight at recess, you could be sure Cain Bendigo was at the bottom of the heap. If a window was broken, you checked up on Cain first. If one of the girls came to you in tears exhibiting a braid which had been dipped in an inkwell, you knew in advance who had done the dipping. If you turned to the blackboard in class and jumped at a B-B shot on your backside, you looked for the peashooter in Cain’s desk...
He led the boys in everything. Except, of course, scholarship. He was ringleader of the worst boys in school. I was always having to haul him down to Mrs. Brindsley’s office to be disciplined...
Athletics? Well, of course, we didn’t have organized athletics in the lower grade schools in those days the way we have them today. But there was one game Cain Bendigo excelled at while I was his teacher, and that was the game of hookey... No, I didn’t say hockey, Mr. Queen. He was the champion hookey player of the school!...
CHARLES O. EVINS
(Director, Wrightsville Y.M.C.A.)
My father, George Evins, was truant officer for the town between 1900 and 1917. He never forgot Cain Bendigo. Used to call him “my best customer”. He called the Bendigo boys “The Three Musketeers”, which was funny because Abel, the youngest, was only seven when Cain graduated from grade school. I remember myself how Cain would go off with Judah and Abel after school to fool around in the Marshes, and that was unusual for a boy in the eighth grade — he and I graduated together. Usually we big boys kicked the little kids aside. Cain was the first to do the kicking, except where his little brother Abel was concerned. He fought a lot of bloody battles over Judah and Abel. Way I’ve figured it out, it was Cain’s way of getting back at his father. He hated his father with a burning hatred, and anything his father was against, he was for. Of course, he led the younger boys around by the nose, but they never minded. To Judah and Abel, Cain was God, and whatever he said went...
I’ve often wondered how Cain Bendigo turned out. I know he’s supposed to be a multimillionaire and all that, but I mean as a man. Even as a boy he was a contradiction...
WRIGHTSVILLE Record, July 20, 1911
(In 1911 the Wrightsville Record was published only once a week, on Thursdays.)
Wrightsville buzzed this week over a deed of heroism done by a 14-year-old boy.
Cain Bendigo, eldest son of William M. Bendigo, well-known High Village building contractor, risked his life last Saturday to save his brother Abel, 7, from drowning while the two boys and their brother, Judah, 12, were on a tramp through the woods in Twin Hills.
According to the young hero’s account, they had gone to the rocky pool at the foot of Granjon Falls, which is a favorite “swimming hole” of Wrightsville’s younger element. The 7-year-old boy, who does not know how to swim, was sitting at the edge of the pool watching his brothers when he somehow fell into the water, struck a jagged rock, and was borne unconscious by the fast current toward the rapids at the foot of the Falls. Cain, who was on shore, saw little Abel being swept away to certain destruction. Showing rare presence of mind for a lad of 14, Cain did not try to swim after Abel. Instead he raced alongshore and plunged in to meet his brother’s body rushing towards him. In rough water and fighting the strong current, Cain managed to struggle ashore with the little boy and, exhausted as he himself was, he worked over Abel until Abel regained consciousness.
Cain and Judah then carried Abel down Indian Trail to Shingle Street, where the three boys were picked up by Ivor Crosby, farmer, who was driving his team to Hill Valley. Mr. Crosby raced the boys back to town. Medical treatment was administered by Dr. Pierce Minikin of Minikin Rd, the Bendigo family physician. Mr. Minikin said Cain did a fine job of resuscitation. Abel was taken home shortly thereafter, little the worse for his experience.