The Mercy Seat Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  BOOK ONE - Carapace

  BOOK TWO - Testudo

  BOOK THREE - Plain Chant

  Grady Dayberry

  Lovena Wixon

  Grady Dayberry

  Manfrom Wister

  Agnes Day Skeen

  Grady Dayberry

  Field Tatum

  Grady Dayberry

  BOOK FOUR - Revelation

  Coda

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Rilla Askew

  STRANGE BUSINESS

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

  Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in 1997 by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Copyright © Rilla Askew, 1997

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Askew, Rilla.

  The mercy seat : a novel / Rilla Askew.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19163-7

  I.Title.

  PS3551.S545M47 1997

  813’.54—dc21 96 - 52416

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  For my family

  Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

  PSALMS 90:8-9

  Map

  There are voices in the earth here, telling truth in old stories. Go down in the hidden places by the waters, listen: you will hear them, buried in the sand and clay. Walk west in the tallgrass prairie; you’ll hear whispering in the bluestem. Stand here, on the ragged rim of a mountain in the southeastern corner; you can hear the sound rising on the south wind, sifting in the dust through the crowns of the cedars: stories told in old voices, in the pulse of bloodmemory; sung in the hot earth above the ceaseless thrum of locusts and nightbirds whillowing, beneath the faint rattle of gourd shells. One story they tell is about longing, for this is a place of homesickness. The land has become home now, and so the very core of this land is sorrow. You can hear it longing for the old dream of itself. Like this continent. This country. Oklahoma. The very sound of it is home.

  When the Choctaw people knew white soldiers were coming to force them from their homes in Mississippi, up the Great River and over the face of the earth to this unknown land in the west, the people walked for the last time in their forests and touched their hands to the trees, the rocks and healing plants, to say goodbye. They were herded on flat boats along the waterways, walked suffering over the earth, and brought longing, sickness for home, here. Others—white women, some of them—turned their faces backward, and then front, and ever after kept their eyes forward; they snapped at their children, grew tough as jackoak, and brought longing for home here. Men and women in the bellies of slaveships keened longing across the Deep and brought homesickness here.

  Its name first in English was Indian Territory, and then, for a short time, it was called two territories, Indian and Oklahoma—meaning both the same thing, a redundancy—and then, again, it was one. The land took and held its Indian name, its Choctaw name, okla homa, meaning “red people,” as the whole of the continent, changing, would hold her place names, her mountains and rivers, in the tongues that first named them. The shape of it, drawn in mythical lines by men who collaborate in illusion, is that of a saucepan, or hatchet. It lies not in the heart but in the belly, the very gut of the nation, and it contains, like an egg, the whole of the story: red people first, and black slaves among them, and soon the tide of white spreading westward from the eastern hills and mountains across the face of the plains, forsaking all behind them, to come. It is the whole of our story intensified and foreshortened, unfolding at the speed of mere months and years; the whole of our story and yet different, for Negro freedmen were strong here and prosperous; the First People, whose tongues named mountains and rivers, were wrenched from their homelands and marched here, and then when they had made of this land a home, the others came.

  The story tells how they came overland or by water, by iron rail or wagon or horseback or walking, in a burst of dust and hoofbeats pounding south in the land runs, or sneaking over the borders from the east, filtering, hidden in the oak and blackgum hills like bollweevils hiding in cuffs; many came to evade the law, some to purge the bile of defeat and Reconstruction. Blacks came for freedom here, to build their own towns, their own country. Whites came for land or a new home or to sell whiskey. They came, all of them, bearing their equal measures of pride and violence and hard work and suffering; they came wrapped in decency, steeped in sour greed and hope and despair; in fear and wisdom, in tolerance and hatred, in mindlessness and sorrow and abiding faith in the hand of the Lord. Forsaking all. Forsaking nothing. Bringing it all, every bit of it, with them.

  In deep winter, early February 1887, two white men left Kentucky and headed west toward Indian Territory, coming not as the Choctaw people before them—because they had to—but because they believed that they had to. When the Lodis left Kentucky, they fled quickly and quietly in the night, fleeing fear, the mind’s dream, crawling guilt, and the law. They could not flee what bound them.

  The two men were brothers, Lafayette Luke and John Major Lodi, and their souls were twisted together as if they’d come forth that way from their mother’s womb. They had not, for there was fifteen months between them, but the elder could not remember when the younger had not been behind or beside him, following in his footsteps, doing his bidding, copying his every gesture, solid and malleable as a lump of riverclay. In their boyhood it had been Lafayette who went first behind the harrow, John following with the seed corn or starts of tobacco; it had been Lafayette who led in their games of fox-and-geese or dare goal; Fayette who darted ahead always, quick and grinning, before his slower, more lethargic brother. It was not until John’s skill with a forge and hammer revealed itself at the age of fourteen—and later, after the War, as his particular, unfathomable gift at gunsmithing emerged so that men traveled from great distances to ask that gift of him, and pay him well for it besides—that the balance between the brothers shifted and changed. Slowly a discomfort built between them, and Fayette, struggling to settle again the proper equilibrium, bullied and cajoled and jabbed at the heart of his brother, and John, unable to resist, went along. But the trouble grew larger, and yet more silent, hidden between them. They did not speak of it. Their father and siblings did not see it—though their wives did, each secretly blaming the other for the trouble—but the trouble itself remained unnamed, unacknowledged; no one knew what it was.

  On the night they fled Kentucky, the men carried their families with them and this brotherness that would not let them love one another no
r unbind themselves. They carried it like a germ of fever in the pale shells of their wagons, across the great Mississippi, and west.

  BOOK ONE

  Carapace

  Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.

  ISAIAH 54:16

  This is what I remember.

  My mama was crying. It was cold in the house, and so dark. I was quiet under the covers, with my eyes open. The sound came down soft in the darkness, like the sound Sudie’s pups made under the porch after she tore her foot off in the fox trap and Papa had to shoot her. Before Uncle Fay pulled them out one by one, black blind fluffs and the one white one and the tricolor, and tied them inside a flour sack and threw them in the creek. That sound. I tried to tell myself it was the new baby crying, up in the loft bed between Mama and Papa, wrapped tight in white strips of cotton, soft in the featherbed, warm, crying hungry. But I knew it was not the new baby crying. It was Mama.

  My eyes hurt, from the cold, from staring into the dark seeing nothing. Thomas jerked in his sleep and whimpered, scrabbled under the covers, pushed out from beneath them with his fat little arms. I lifted my hand from where it was warm under the feathertick and felt for his forehead. I was afraid for him then, more than always, more than every half second, trembling—for fever, for mystery, for what could take him—from the very hour he was born. So I felt him. His forehead was dry and naked, smooth with cold. I rolled him against me, lifted his head and slipped my arm under, held him in the crook of my arm with his face turned toward me, soft, breathing milk. On the other side of him Little Jim Dee kicked once in his sleep and got still. At my back I felt Jonaphrene’s slow breathing. I held the feathertick over my brother’s head to warm him, off his face so he wouldn’t smother. My nose and cheekbones were burning. The hard knot cramped my chest. My mother was crying. My fingers were turning ice to the bone.

  Later, Papa’s voice called me.

  This was all the same night.

  “Matt!” Papa said. And then softer: “Mattie!”

  A weight was on me, like the cold press of pond water, and I tried to fight my way up. I struggled to the top, pushing, like black swimming, and opened my eyes. Still it was dark. I looked to the window. No light filtered through the oilpaper, not even the least hint of dawn’s whitish haze.

  “Matt!”

  Thomas twitched awake. He shuddered and reached out for me under the covers. I put my hand to him and felt his fist wrap tight around my finger.

  “Martha! Git up now!” Silence, and then “Martha Ruth!” and I knew I was in trouble, because I had in those days, and still have, four names. “Git up and light the fire, would you! Mama’s not feeling good.”

  I whispered to Thomas and slipped my arm from underneath him. My hand was asleep, tingling, buzzing on the inside like caught insects. Over my head the wood creaked in the loft bed. I pulled my finger loose from Thomas and wriggled out from under the feathertick, stood shivery and barelegged in my underslip on the cold floor. Thomas sighed and turned over. Jonaphrene rolled in sleeping to take my place.

  I moved quickly over Mama’s rag carpet and hunted in the dark until I found the iron poker. It stung cold in my hand like it would strip the skin back, and I traded hands, shifting it from one hand to the other while I poked the red embers. My hands and knees burned where I knelt on the cold hearthstones to blow. I picked sticks and twigs from the woodbox. The fire licked up yellow. I put two splits of kindling down crossways and stepped back to wait, dancing on the hearthstones, my arms wrapped around me. I thought then to run back to the bed and crawl under the covers, but the loft creaked again, and I waited by the fireplace, my breath small and smoky in the flickering light.

  “Git dressed, Matt,” Papa said. He was standing at the foot of the ladder, stuffing his overshirt inside his pants. His face was ropy, saggy with shadows, and very, very still. I wanted to ask him how come we were getting up to start day in the middle of night—for it was night then, true night, not early dark morning like Mildred or some others would tell you—and I wanted to ask Papa, but his face would not let me. And anyhow, I knew. It was part of the same thing. What made Mama lie in bed crying. What made Papa stand on the porch with Uncle Fayette and Grandpa and Uncle Big Jim Dee, talking in low, tight voices late into the night. What brought the hard knot a while ago to come live in my chest. I went to the foot of the bed and reached under the covers to pull my dress and petticoat from beneath the cold footwarmer. I put my clothes on, watching Papa.

  He crossed the house and bent to put one log only on the fire. Then he straightened and pulled his hat and coat from the peg. I thought he would tell me to start the fire in the cookstove. And then I remembered. I looked to the kitchen, where the empty stovepipe hung wedged from the ceiling, openmouthed, wrong-looking, emptying uselessly into empty air. Papa lifted the latch on the front door and went out.

  I waited then. A long time. I remember. The house was quiet. Papa’s fire burned blue at the bottom. After that long while, me waiting, Mama turned in the bed over my head.

  “Mattie?” she called me. “Mattie? You awake? Mama needs you. Come up here a minute, hon.”

  I climbed the ladder, my feet cold on the smooth logs. I could hardly see Mama in the heap of featherbed and covers. I couldn’t see the new baby at all.

  “Shhhhh,” Mama said. “Don’t wake her. Listen. I need you to do something for me. Can you do something?”

  I nodded.

  She turned in the bed again, and a small sound, like a moan, slipped from her. She held out her hand. I could see the pale line of it, her narrow arm, standing out straight in the dark. I crossed the loft, shaking. The wood of the rafters brushed the light hairs on the top of my head. Mama’s hand was warm, rough as cedar where I touched it, and then Mama wrapped her other hand around both our hands and pulled me toward her. “Listen,” she said. “I want you to get dressed.”

  “I’m dressed, Mama.”

  “Get dressed, Matt. Put your shoes on. Dress warm. I want you to do something for me. Go out back by the smokehouse. There’s a blackgum. You know that old black tupelo tree? Look under it. Facing south. Scrape off the dirt there, you’ll find something. It’s not buried deep. It’s just something, a tin box. I need that. Can you bring it to me?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you?”

  “Yes, Mama,” I said.

  Mama let go my hand then. “Hurry,” she said, and lay back, and the hurt sound came from her again. The new baby woke up crying. “Shhhh, shhhhh,” Mama said, turning, and the bedclothes rustled and whispered. The baby whimpered, grew quiet. I backed toward the ladder. The rafters tugged my hair the wrong way.

  “Dress warm, Matt,” Mama said, as if she was sleepy. “Put my shawl on. Hurry, honey. And Mattie . . .” Real still then. “Don’t let Papa see.” The bedclothes rustled once more and settled. Then there was just the soft suckling sound of the baby.

  The slivered moon was high and small and very white in the night sky when I stepped out the door. Frost covered the ground, twinkling dark in the starlight. A harness jangled in the barn. The sound leapt at me frozen across the frozen yard, and I jumped. I wrapped Mama’s shawl tight about me and edged around the side of the house, watching the thin line of light around the barn door. The knot in my chest burned hot-cold now, like the sting of the iron poker. I hurried. Behind the smokehouse I found the blackgum and knelt on the glinting earth. Frost held the dead leaves and dirt together in clumps where I scraped. My palms hurt. But, just like Mama told me, it was not buried deep. My palm brushed across cold metal, and I dug with my fingertips and found the edges of the tin box and lifted it. It was square and silver-colored and too burning cold to hold in my hands. I wanted to open it. I wanted to know what it was that Mama kept hidden. But the box was locked tight with frost, and it was secret. Something only for grown-ups to know, like their privacies, or babies dying, and it was c
old and forbidden, and it belonged to my mama. I wrapped it inside the shawl and held it close to my chest, close to the burning hot-cold place, and the knot seemed to ease or to be sucked away from me, drawn by the cold metal. I hurried back to the house.

  There were seven of us in the wagon. Little Jim Dee and Jonaphrene leaned against me on either side under the quilts. Thomas was in my lap. Mama and Papa were up front, and the new little one, and the air was still dark. Do you see? We had loaded the wagon, Papa’d hitched up the mules and we’d started, and the air was still dark. We’d left the chifforobe and the pie-safe. We’d left the oak frames of the two beds. Papa’s big forge stood in the empty barn behind us, his bellows squeezed shut on the floor, but all the rest of it we had, and Bertha tied at the back, and her calf following, bawling. Papa’s hunting dogs trotting beside. I was excited then, I’d forgotten everything, snug on the featherbed with the blankets and children. Forgotten then. But later I remembered.

  The weather was changed, had gone strange, just since we’d started. In that short a time. I thought back later, and it seemed to me that the very breath of the world knew where we were going: it was not crisp, cold, and clear now, but wet, somehow warmer. I listened to the chickens cluck mildly in their crate tied to the back of the wagon, and once the old redheaded rooster crowed. I thought, It’s going to be dawn soon. But the sky was thick black, and there was no moon now, no stars. The coal-oil lantern hung on a hook and made a yellow light pool around Papa. It dipped and swayed with the sway of the wagon.