God's Kingdom (22 page)

“Your honor,” Zack said, “no one can prove a negative. We need proof of citizenship. Until the girl can show the trustees a birth certificate, their hands are tied.”

“Well, I can understand that,” the new judge said. “While I fully acknowledge that there is a great deal, a very great deal indeed, about Kingdom County, Vermont, that I do not, and probably never will, comprehend, I can and do understand why the trustees of the Kingdom Common Academy need to see an American birth certificate for Mr. Kinneson's client in order to award her the scholarship. And now I will share a little story with you. I can understand this in part because my own parents, Antonio and Rosa Paglia, came to this country from Sicily. I was born the next year and I will assure you that they immediately obtained an American birth certificate for me.”

Jim's heart fell. When the judge had revealed that his parents had been immigrants, Jim had felt hopeful. But only momentarily. Antonio and Rosa Paglia had done everything according to the letter of the law. Clearly, Judge Paglia was going to rule against Francine.

“So, Mr. Barrows,” the judge continued. “This is your lucky day. It is your lucky day and it is the lucky day of the Academy trustees. Because if all you need to see in order to award Miss Lafleur the scholarship is an American birth certificate, I am going to arrange for you to see one. Mr. Kinneson, I'd like for you to go down to the county clerk's office on the second floor and bring back the clerk, Mrs. Kittredge. Kindly tell her to bring a blank birth certificate and her official stamp along with her. I intend to order the county clerk, Mrs. Kittredge, to issue Miss Francine Lafleur a birth certificate stating her place of birth as Mirage Island, Kingdom County, the State of Vermont, the United States of America. Right now.”

“Your honor,” Zack said. “She isn't even
white
.”

“Neither, as I understand it, was Pliny Templeton,” Judge Paglia said. “Miss Lafleur,” the judge continued, “I would like to be the first to congratulate you. You are the 1956 recipient of the Pliny Templeton Scholarship. If I may add a personal note, the state university will be most fortunate to have you as a student. You will do them, and us, proud.”

“Your honor, I object. These proceedings are an outrage.”

Bang!
Down came Judge Paglia's gavel. “Mr. Barrows,” he said, “on that point, we are in total agreement.”

*   *   *

In accordance with a tradition dating back to the founding of the Academy as a Presbyterian institution, graduation was held at the now United Church at the south end of the village green. The following afternoon at precisely two o'clock, the twenty-eight members of the class of '56 filed into the church to the labored strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” on the ancient organ. Proudly, and a little self-consciously, the seniors seated themselves in the first two rows of pews. Directly behind them sat their teachers and the Academy trustees. Then family and friends. The soon-to-be graduates were aligned in alphabetical order. Frannie sat next to the center aisle in the first pew. Jim sat beside her.

It seemed to Jim much longer ago than just yesterday that Judge Paglia had ordered the town clerk to make out an American birth certificate for Frannie, and the school trustees to award the Templeton Scholarship to her.

Frannie, however, had news of her own. Earlier that year, on the advice of Prof Chadburn, she'd submitted a backup application to McGill University in Montreal. Recently, she'd learned that McGill had offered her a full scholarship to attend its premed program. For the time being, her citizenship status was a moot point. Jim, for his part, was relieved for Frannie, but devastated that they wouldn't be going to college together.

During the opening exercises Jim looked around at the white wainscot paneling and plain glass windows decreed by his stern Presbyterian ancestors. How many hundreds of tedious hours had he spent sitting on these hard wooden pews? Whoever invented church had done boys no favor. Moreover, the United Church of Kingdom Common had a particularly unsettling feature left over from its Presbyterian days. Suspended from the ceiling over the pulpit on a long metal rod was a most curious acoustical device known as a sounding board. The board was actually a hollow wooden box, about six feet in diameter and a foot deep, octagonal-shaped, with holes an inch apart drilled in its top, bottom, and sides. Its purpose was to amplify the minister's voice. The sounding board was affixed to the base of the rod by a carved wooden hand gripping a brass handle and known as the “Hand of God.” Though very exact and lifelike, the hand had an otherworldly, genderless eeriness about it. The Hand of God, which was rumored to have carved itself, looked like a hand that would very gladly smite down an infidel city or two, much less an inattentive congregant. Anyone who doubted it needed only to read the legend carved into the outward-facing side panel of the sounding board:

The Board casts the Dominie's voice on high,

But should that Cleric tell a lie,

The Hand of God lets go.

The Board descends on the man below.

The Dominie dies.

Although Jim was no longer afraid of the Hand of God or of the sounding board, he detested them both, and viewed them as emblematic of everything that was harsh and rigid about the beliefs of his ancestors. Why the church trustees hadn't removed them decades ago he couldn't imagine.

The graduation ceremony began with a lengthy invocation in which Pastor John Wesley Kittredge, who disapproved of young people in general and teenagers in particular, gave the graduates and God alike some stern marching orders. Next came the presentation of a framed citation to Prof, who was retiring after forty years as headmaster of the Academy. A few modest local scholarships were awarded. Lizzy Kittredge won the Daughters of the American Revolution Scholarship. Jim had to smile. He knew from Pliny's
History of Kingdom County
that the first local Kittredges were Tories who'd fled Massachusetts in 1776. They'd settled in the Kingdom supposing that they'd reached Canada and sanctuary. No mention was made of the Templeton Award.

It was time for Frannie's valedictory. Prof introduced her by announcing that she was the best student he'd ever taught, and congratulating her on her scholarship to study at McGill. As she approached the pulpit, the entire class of 1956 rose and applauded. She did not seem to have a prepared text to speak from but was carrying her dictionary.

“Ladies and gentlemen,
mesdames et monsieurs,
” Frannie began. “My fellow graduates, parents, families, and guests. I would like to introduce you to a dear friend.
Un moment, s'il vous plaît.
”

Frannie walked across the dais and drew aside a plain dark curtain. Next to the sideboard where the communion service was stored stood what looked like a tall birdcage covered with a white sheet. Frannie carried the sheeted object back across the dais and set it down beside the pulpit.

“Voilà!” she said, and whipped off the sheet. Dangling from its pole was the skeleton of Pliny Templeton.

Frannie stepped behind the pulpit and opened her dictionary to a page near the back. “‘Valedictory,'” she read. “‘A farewell address.' The title of this year's farewell address is ‘God's Kingdom.' I believe that the term was coined by our good friend here, the Reverend Dr. Templeton himself. So I pose to you a question. Who, exactly
,
was Pliny Templeton?”

Frannie paused, giving the people gathered in the church a moment to consider her question. “As we all know, Pliny was born into slavery. At about the age of thirty, with the help of Charles Kinneson II, the man who would become his closest friend and great
benefactor
”—Frannie smiled and tapped her dictionary—“he made his way north to freedom on the Underground Railway. Here in Vermont, again with the assistance of Charles, Pliny became the first Negro to graduate from an American college. Congratulations, Dr. T!”

Frannie removed her mortarboard and placed it on the skeleton's skull. From the pews, scattered chuckles and a smattering of applause.

“After receiving his Doctor of Divinity degree from the seminary at Princeton, Dr. Templeton assumed this very pulpit, as minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Kingdom Common. He founded, built, and was the first headmaster of the Kingdom Common Academy. He went to the Civil War as Chaplain of the Vermont 142nd Regiment. At the Battle of Gettysburg he seized a fallen officer's sword and helped beat back Pickett's charge.”

From a shelf in the pulpit Frannie produced a military-style kepi from the Civil War era. She set the kepi on top of Pliny's mortarboard and snapped off a smart salute. This time the laughter and applause were general.

“After the war, Pliny introduced the sport of baseball to Kingdom Common. On the village green he laid out the first baseball diamond in New England. ‘Baseball Pliny,' he was called.”

Frannie reached into the pulpit again, like a magician reaching into a hat. This time she pulled out Jim's ball cap, which she balanced on top of the kepi and mortarboard on Pliny's skull.

“During Reconstruction, Dr. T returned to the South with some of his own students and established schools for freed slaves. He even found time to write a great book,
The Ecclesiastical, Natural, Social, and Political History of Kingdom County
.”

Frannie turned to address the skeleton directly. “You did indeed wear many hats, Monsieur Templeton. Preacher, teacher, soldier, scholar. You were each of those and more. And yet, though you told in your
History
the entire story of the place you named ‘God's Kingdom,' you recorded almost none of your own history. You never wrote the story we wanted most to hear: your own.

“Why did you never tell your story?” Frannie said. “Were you ashamed of your early life as a slave? It would not be surprising if you had been. Was that not one of the chief aims of that most wicked of all human institutions? To shame its victims?”

Frannie regarded the skeleton in the three hats. She shook her head. “I think, Dr. Templeton, that you were not ashamed. You were, after all, a proud man, and a brave man. Why, then, your silence about yourself? I believe that I know the answer. I believe that you felt that if you were to succeed with your great works here in God's Kingdom, you would need to pass for white. Correct me if I am mistaken.”

Frannie held out her hands palms up, inviting the skeleton to correct her. She turned to the audience. “You see,
mes amis
. He remains silent.

“Of course, Dr. T, years after your death, when the university found it convenient to claim you as America's first Negro graduate in order to
aggrandize
their own reputation, they were quick enough to do so. They even established a scholarship in your name. Yet you, Pliny, felt unable to claim yourself. And in that assumption you were undoubtedly correct. A place settled as the result of the massacre of a band of unarmed Indians? A place that stood by and did nothing to prevent the annihilation of an entire community of fugitive slaves? A place that built a great towering dam in order to flood and conceal the evidence of where those former slaves were murdered? To be sure, Pliny, everyone in God's Kingdom knew very well that, like the residents of New Canaan, you, too, were a Negro. One glance at you would have told them as much. This we know from your handsome portrait in the lobby of the Academy. But as long as the matter of your race never came up, God's Kingdom was willing to look the other way because you were useful to them. And then, in your ancient years, after you had served out your usefulness, you were killed, for reasons we can only guess at, by the very man who helped raise you from slavery.

“
Mesdames et monsieurs
. It may be
presumptuous
”—Frannie gave her Webster's another pat—“it may be ‘excessively forward' of me, a ‘Black French' girl from the so-called Indian Island, with not only Abenaki but very possibly Negro blood running through my own veins, a girl greeted on the steps of Pliny's school last fall as a ‘nigger from Niggerville,' to speak on behalf of Vermont. So be it. I will not do so. But while Frannie Lafleur may not be a Vermonter or even, in the opinion of some in this church, an American, her ancestry here in God's Kingdom goes back not just to the Revolution, and its daughters and sons, but thousands of years before that. So, Dr. Templeton, on behalf of God's Kingdom, I apologize to you. We apologize to you. God's Kingdom begs your forgiveness for forcing you to deny and ignore your own identity.”

A faint breeze found its way into the church through the leaky window casements.
Click.
Pliny's feet tapped together like the most delicate of billiard shots. Otherwise, the church was as silent as the forests of God's Kingdom on a windless midnight in January.

Frannie pointed upward, at the sounding board suspended above her by the unearthly Hand of God. “If one word that I have spoken to you today is a lie, may the Hand of God release its grip this instant.”

From the church pews came a collective gasp. In the ensuing stillness, Frannie waited for perhaps ten seconds. Then she said, “
Merci,
and farewell,” and rejoined her classmates.

Pastor John Wesley Kittredge offered the age-old benediction. “May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His light to shine upon you.” At a signal from Prof, the seniors rose and walked down the aisle and out of the church.

Graduation was over.

*   *   *

It was dusk in God's Kingdom. The lake lay still in the twilight. Half a mile off shore, the Île d'Illusion came and went in the mist. Somewhere nearby, a large fish broke the surface.

“Now then, James Kinneson,” Frannie said. “My summer classes at McGill start not tomorrow but the day after. In the morning I depart on the train for Montreal. I intend to complete my undergraduate studies in three years. Perhaps in two. Then on to medical school. You, meanwhile, will attend the state university. Pliny's university. There you will continue to write the stories of God's Kingdom. If you do not”—she shook an imaginary poker in the air— “Our Merciful Savior!”