The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell (34 page)

Marie and I slept in the barn loft. We were warm and comfortable but could light no lamp for fear of the hay. Our end of the barn was close to the house, so we often heard pieces of conversation and became privy to Mrs. Spencer’s every dissatisfaction. We kept our secrets by talking softly to each other in what we called our barn voices.

On Sundays, Marie and I would walk about the meadows and the glens. We found a waterfall and built a campsite near it. I made a shelter using a piece of canvas borrowed from the barn. We slept there on the warm nights.

Beneath the falls, the water had carved a pool in the rock. We sometimes bathed there, though even in July the water was cold. One Sunday I rose early and started a fire beside the pool. I fed the fire all morning, and by noon, when the ashes fell away, eight large rocks glowed like embers. I pushed them with a sturdy stick, and one by one they went in, each letting out a loud hiss. A little later, Marie and I slipped into water that was silky and warm. We lingered and talked the early afternoon away, kissing and floating entwined. Finally, quite pickled, we left the water to seek the sun.

Marie lay naked in the meadow, and I sat and gazed at her. Her fine brown hair seemed to play with the freckles on her back. She was thin at the waist with a plump little bottom that I loved to look at. After a time, she rose and pushed me down and began to run her eyes over me. Then her loving touch.

If anyone should tell you that a woman cannot find satisfaction with another woman, I can be your witness to say it isn’t so. We both found our pleasure that afternoon—several times. And in being outside and not covered by a ceiling or a blanket, our love seemed almost like a sacrament. And if God had wanted to show His disapproval, He could have sent the rain or a stroke of lightning, but instead He sent dragonflies and sparrows.

D
URING THE WINTER, Marie and I slept in the small room behind the Spencers’ kitchen. Mrs. Spencer was in bed much of the time with a variety of complaints. We did what we could to be helpful, but she became increasingly disagreeable. In the spring, Mr. Spencer, with apologies, asked us to leave.

After three days on the road, we came upon a farm belonging to a widow named Emma Winslow. The corn fields were abandoned, but there was still work to be done around the house and in the garden. We were given a bedroom on the second floor.

Emma Winslow liked to tell stories, and sometimes I thought that was the reason we’d been taken on. Over dinner, she would talk about the boyish things Mr. Winslow had done during his courtship or about their children and the trouble they got into when they were little. Marie and I wove a sparse tale, saying that we had owned a small farm but had lost it by misfortune. We really didn’t have to say more, because, soon enough, Mrs. Winslow would be telling us about a cat that chased a bear or a daughter who snuck pie to the chickens on Christmas.

On Sundays, I’d hitch the mare to the carriage and off we’d go to the Baptist Church. After service, we might take Mrs. Winslow visiting, and on those occasions we wouldn’t get back until it was almost dark. On one such evening, I attended to the mare and then joined Marie and Mrs. Winslow on the porch. Fireflies by the dozens were around the yard. I sat next to Marie, while Mrs. Winslow moved gently in her rocker.

“Pastor Caulfield spoke to me after service,” she said. “He asked if you might want to join the church.”

Marie gave me a quick look, no question in her mind. “Please thank the pastor for us,” she said. “We would like to continue to attend, but we don’t wish to join. We have our own faith.”

“What is that?”

Marie sat up in her chair. “Well, we believe that God is all around us and within us and that we find Him most easily when we look for ourselves.”

“My goodness,” said Mrs. Winslow, “you sound like those New England philosophers we hear about from time to time.”

“Well, yes,” said Marie, “but we are followers of Jesus, nonetheless.”

Mrs. Winslow thought for a moment and then spoke of the picnic that we’d been preparing for. The gathering at her farm was an annual event, begun when she and her husband had small children.

“We always have a devotion,” she said, “and it’s never led by a minister, always by one of us. Perhaps you, Marie, or you, Joseph, would lead us this year? You can say what you just said to me—that was beautiful. Just speak your heart. Only a minute or so.

My knees felt weak at the thought, even seated as I was. Marie, however, loved the idea, and she wanted
me
to do the speaking. Before I could say a thing it was decided. Later, when we were alone, I told Marie that she should have talked to me first.

“Talked to you?” she said, not trying to hide her annoyance. “Isn’t this just what we imagined? People gathering in a field and speaking plainly to each other?”

“I don’t know these people, Marie. What should I say?”

“I think you should tell them about that time on the prairie when you were alone in the snow, about feeling that God was seeing the world through your eyes.”

“And be stoned as a heretic?”

“Well, find something else then. Is standing up for the Lord really such a chore?”

I was a coward, and my wife had shamed me. I agreed to do it, but I promised myself that the names of Emerson or Swedenborg would not pass my lips. I would speak of Jesus. That week I read the Gospels, though I was not much in the spirit to start. But then certain passages came to life, ones that Marie had read to me in the almshouse. And one in particular, about what Jesus had said to His disciples just days before the Romans drove spikes into His hands. I put it to memory but still hoped for rain.

* * *

The picnic day dawned fair, and wagons began to arrive around noon. We had a hog roasting on a spit, and people brought fresh bread, bowls of greens, and pans with berry pie. Women sat on blankets and talked like schoolgirls while the children ran wild and the men stood in knots and complained about the price of feed.

As the sun moved lower in the sky, Mrs. Winslow came up to the field and stood on a large, flat rock near the center of the meadow. Her neighbors gathered on the ground that sloped away, as they had done for years. “As you know,” she said, “Joseph and Marie have worked here since early May. I have asked Joseph, on short notice, if he would bring us the afternoon devotion.” She looked at me and nodded.

I stepped onto the rock, feeling unsteady. I clasped my hands and squeezed as though that might keep my voice even. “Marie and I have been blessed,” I said, “to have found our way to Mrs. Winslow’s door and to your beautiful valley.”

I looked over to Marie and she gave a reassuring smile. “In the Scripture we read that the disciples came to Jesus, afraid, for the end was near. But Jesus told them not to fear because His Father would watch over them for they had taken care of His Son when He was cold and hungry. But the disciples could not remember these things.
When, Lord,
they asked,
did we see you hungry and give you food? Where was it that we saw you a stranger and took you in?
And Our Lord said to them,
If you have done it unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.

The stillness was broken only by the sounds of children down below. I looked about to see open faces. My words came easier. “Now there are some who say that we should look for God in Nature, others say church. Both are surely good, for has He not said that He is everywhere? And if this is true, might we also look for Him inside those around us, and inside ourselves? And I believe
that
is what Jesus was saying—that He is
within
each of us.
If you have done it unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me
.” I paused for a moment then gave a slight nod. “Marie and I thank you for your kindness.”

Amidst the murmur of
amens
, I went over to Marie and she embraced me. People came up to us and offered simple words of appreciation.

* * *

A little later in the summer, Mrs. Winslow had a bout of indigestion. We didn’t give it much thought, but her complaints kept on. As the winter approached, she had trouble holding down food. The doctor came and gave her laudanum. Things improved for a time, but then the tonic only made her tired.

Mrs. Winslow grew weaker as the winter dragged on. In the last week of March, her daughter Julia arrived from Wilkes Barre. Her mother had written about us, but Julia seemed to have heard every kind word as evidence that we had tricked the old woman and taken advantage of her. We were surprised, for in Mrs. Winslow’s stories, Julia had been a mischievous but endearing little girl. Now she seemed made of spite, and by her looks, you might have thought we had something to do with the illness.

Julia had been there only a week when at dinner she started telling us about her visit to town. “I heard that on Sunday Reverend Caulfield denounced devil worshippers said to be in our midst. They give little sermons trying to lure good Christians from their churches. Perhaps you know who he is talking about?”

I gave Julia a cold look. “I know that your mother asked me to give a short devotion in the meadow last summer. I did so, and everyone was kind.”

“They were being gracious to Mother. I want you and Marie to go.”

I glanced at Marie and saw her flush. “We’ll go, of course,” I said. “We’ll say good-bye to your mother.”

“No, she is too ill. Don’t disturb her. I won’t permit it.”

Marie and I found work at a farm ten miles away. A few weeks later we heard that Emma Winslow had died. We went to her burial, but Julia made a big show of not speaking to us. Reverend Caulfield’s crusade against devil worshipers had taken hold. People turned their backs to us—even those who were at the picnic and who had come to us with earnest handshakes and smiles.

Marie and I went south to get away from the rumors, but our evil reputation seemed to precede us. We found work now and then, but it never lasted long, and usually, we were paid in poor food. What money we had ran out, along with our luck. In the town of Preston, they put us in jail and told us to leave in the morning.

We were weak and hungry. Had there been a way to give up, someone to surrender to, I would have done it. Had there been a way to put Marie on a train back to Boston, I would have done that too, with or without her consent. But as it was, we walked on, as beggars.

In Stroudsburg, we were left alone for a few days, but we could find no real work. The sheriff, an unpleasant man named Briscoe, said he was going to arrest us if we didn’t leave. I began to shout at him. People stopped and watched.

I might have done better to speak differently to the man, but I had laid up a lot of anger from the things that had been done to us, and it all spilled out. Marie and I got put in the Stroudsburg lockup.

T
HE BUNKS IN the Stroudsburg jail were rough planks. The food was oatmeal, and we were glad to have it. The judge would return in a few days and let us go upon our promise to leave town. That’s what we were told.

On our second day as his guests, Deputy Hastings took pity and passed me his
Stroudsburg Sentinel.
I had been pacing back and forth, and would have happily read the train schedule. But I never got to the trains, because on the first page, set in large type, were the words OUTRAGE IN DAMASCUS! The story told of a dastardly attack on a young woman who had been beaten, raped, and then thrown off a bridge into the Delaware River. She’d been found the next morning, barely alive. Then my heart made a fist—the woman was identified as the adopted daughter of David Fortnam of Tyler Hill, Miss Helen Slater. This had to be a dream. I shook my head and looked again. No, I was awake and the newspaper was real.

“Marie!”

She came to the small window between our cells, and I handed her the paper. A moment later she cried out. “Oh, Joseph! That poor girl! Helen. What are we to do?”

“I know what I’m going to do,” I said. “I’m going to get out of here and hunt those villains like dogs.” I ran my tin cup on the bars to get the deputy’s attention. He wasn’t amused.

“Those bastards raped my daughter!” I yelled.

The deputy gave a disbelieving look. “You saying that girl’s your daughter? She ain’t nobody’s daughter. Paper says she’s an orphan.”

“No, she’s mine! Let me out of here!”

In a clearer mind, I would have been less insistent, for we were to be set free in a day or two. But now I wanted out on a claim about a story in the newspaper, and they weren’t going to be “taken for fools.” That’s what the sheriff said.

Days passed. Then a week. The time had now gone when we should have been released. I was furious but could do nothing. My daughter’s attackers were getting away.

On the ninth day, Sheriff Briscoe walked back to my cell. “You’re going now,” he said as he unlocked the door. Then he clapped a set of irons on me. “You’re going to New York, that is. It seems you have some friends there.”

“What?”

“We have the warrant. And, yes, you were telling the truth about the girl, except it seems there’s some other question.” The sheriff curled his lip. “I think we ought to make an inspection. See what’s what. Wouldn’t want to arrest the wrong person. So if you’ve got a willie, let’s see it. Take them britches off.”

“I’m not taking off nothin’,” I said, pulling away.

“Maybe you need a little help,” the sheriff said, stepping toward me.

I raised my shackles, but he just laughed. “Whatever happens, it’s just you trying to escape custody, so I don’t care how much of a brawl you make. I’m gonna see what I want to see.”

I thought of my daughter at the hands of men who would rape and murder without a thought. I considered the sheriff one of them, and I was prepared to make him pay a price—I didn’t care what happened to me. Then Marie’s voice came from the next cell. “Sheriff?” she asked calmly. “Do you have a wife and children? Do you go to church? Do you care what people say about you?”

I think the sheriff had forgotten Marie was there. He quickly sobered and decided to get rid of us both. He opened Marie’s cell and told her that she was free.