Hamilton Stark by Russell Banks Read Free Book Online Page B

and ask, Where has he gone, my husband and my son’s father, why did he not come back to us, why did he leave in the first place?… when of course, Father, we know all the answers to those questions, don’t we, Josiah? it’s not easy for us, the weak and fragile vessels of Thy everlasting love, to keep ourselves from crying out in the long night of our solitude, is it, Josiah, my son, my dear sweet boy, my beloved boy, you do so resemble your father, Josiah, his black hair, and his eyes, eyes the color of Irish peat, the clear white skin, the smile, the teeth, the tiny ears … thank Heaven I have you, my son, else my grief for your lost father would surely break me, I fear it, I’m ashamed for it, but I am a weak woman, my son, your mother is weak, son, but you shall be strong, I know it, as your father was strong, a tall, muscular, energetic man, who loved you, my son, oh, yes, he surely loved you, and if I say he did not love you wisely but too well, I say it onlybecause his love for you, his
love
, was what made him run from that pitiless Indian chief, that Beast of the Forest, the one they call Horse—the ugly one you have seen in the village, the same who now claims he is Christian, yes, but who cannot be, or he would confess publicly what he did to my husband, your father, and be hanged for it or thrown in a pit and slowly pressed by stones until he is crushed beneath them, forgive me, Father, for the force of my anger, I know that revenge is Thine, yet I cannot bear that the savage who slew my husband, the father of my son, I cannot
endure
that the murderer is allowed to walk easily about the village and forest like any Christian and loyal subject of the king, and if I cannot have revenge, and I know, Lord, that to continue lusting after it would only lead me sinfully to envy what power is rightfully Thine, but if I cannot have revenge, if I cannot see that savage pressed to death by stones, cannot throw the final, crushing, bone-snapping stone upon him myself, then I shall at least make sure that you, my son, know the truth, that you know your father loved you and was no coward, that you know he was not afraid, no, and that you know he now resides in the bosom of the Lord and is looking down on us, surely, and weeping at our plight and the way his good name has been smeared with mud and filth by that savage, the one called Horse, yes, my son, he would weep to see us now, his good wife and baby boy living alone on the land below the very mountain where he was cruelly slain, here on the plot of land he purchased with his honest toil the year before you were even born and a full year and a half before I myself even saw this place, this bleak and ungiving plot of earth, this scab, this mountain-shaded rockpile where the winds come all year long and bring us disease, chills, agues, where we must wake every gray morning and look out onto the mountain where your father ended his all too brief life in courageous defense ofyour life and my honor, for that is how it truly happened, my son, not as the savage, the heathen, Horse, would have it, no, and not as those in the village would have it, those who wish to believe that the heathen is converted so they can gain credit for it in Heaven, we both know who they are, my son, and why they choose to believe the Animal instead of the knowledge that God Himself has placed into their darkened hearts. They choose Satan, and God will surely loose His rage upon them for it, my son, just as surely as He will protect and comfort thee and me in our distress and despair, here in this tiny cabin where every morning we must wake to shade, winter and summer, shade cast by the heathen as much as by that mountain. You must not cry, Josiah, for the Lord is our shepherd, He will comfort us, the Lord and His truth, and the truth of your father’s love for us, his bravery, and the treachery that followed, what we should expect from Savages but not what we should have expected from our