On Kingdom Mountain (23 page)

“The Kinneson family name will survive very nicely. Look at it this way, cousin. Whatever the outcome, a Kinneson is bound to walk away victorious.”

“Aye. For the ninth consecutive time.” Eben neatly folded his cloth napkin, folded it again, gave his lips a fastidious pat, and placed the napkin beside his pie plate. “A superior birthday dinner, cousin. I thank you. Your biscuits are unsurpassed. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Satterfield?”

“I would,” Henry said.

“Thank you for coming, cousin,” Jane said. “It is always a pleasure to entertain family.”

“Thank you for inviting me, cousin.”

On the way across the dooryard to Eben's car, Henry said, “Meaning no disrespect, Mr. Kinneson, but how can you torment your own blood relation this way? She cooks you a tasty birthday dinner and then you abuse her hospitality by arguing with her. Why don't you leave her be?”

Eben gave Henry a wondering frown. “Why, sir,” he said, “don't you know that Jane had the best time today that she's
had since the last time I was here? I've been venturing out to this fastness, checking up on your friend, and arguing her out of her most capricious follies for decades. Who do you think has saved Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson from herself all these years?”

Henry looked at the attorney. “So I am to understand that you are Miss Jane's benefactor?”

“Jane is a remarkable individualist,” Eben said. “Perhaps the last great individualist in Kingdom County. For that I admire her. But she cannot prevent this road from going through. Frankly, I doubt that her archenemy, King James's Jehovah himself, could stop the Connector at this point. Progress has at last reached the Kingdom. It will not be stopped. It, I mean progress, is the one true perpetual-motion machine. In the meantime, who do you suppose persuaded the town fathers to offer Jane twice as much for the right of way as they originally intended to? For that matter, who do you think put Jane in the way of her little jobs as village librarian and projectionist? I respect you, sir, for standing by your friend. But when young lawyer Allen appears in front of the Supreme Court on her behalf, I shan't spare him or her. Nor will the justices. This is no parlor game, Henry. Use what influence you have with the woman to dissuade her from her course of action. It can only end badly for her.”

Amen
, said the granddaddy in Henry's head as Eben drove off down the lane.
I am right glad to see, boy, that not all Yankees are complete fools. There is a man worth heeding.

“I've asked you before to stay out of this,” Henry said.

I cannot
, said the captain.
I have been in it for well over half a century. You have been in it since I told you the first part of the jingle when you was a tadpole in short pants.

“Why did you give the second part of the riddle to Jane's father?”

To pit you and him against each other for my amusement, why else? But you, boy, are blood. Blood's thick, thick. You and I are in this together. We are as alike as two peas in every way.

“We are not, sir.”

Who taught you to cast genealogies? Who tolt you to go into the banking profession?

Henry decided to ignore Captain Cantrell Satterfield. He was under no obligation—he was not beholden to the old man, as the granddaddy would have put it—to reply.

How is it you wear white?
the captain said with a mean chuckle.

“Because I'm a showman,” Henry replied despite himself.

No
, said the granddaddy.
You wear white because I did. Deny it if you can.

“If you are who you say you are, tell me where you hid the treasure,” Henry said.

To this the granddaddy's voice said nothing.

“I declare, Mr. Satterfield,” Miss Jane said from the porch. “You remind me of myself, standing out there talking to yourself a mile a minute. Whom are you conversing with?”

“No one, Miss Jane,” Henry said. “Absolutely no one. What may I do to help you get ready for your big day in court? Are you really planning to represent yourself again?”

“Come up out of the sun,” Miss Jane said. “I'll tell you just exactly what I'm planning.”

For the next forty-five minutes Miss Jane spoke to Henry nonstop, laying out her case point by point, exactly the way she would present it to the Vermont Supreme Court. When at last she finished, he thought for a time. Then he said, “Miss Jane, I wish to tell you something.”

“Yes, Henry? Do you think my argument has holes in it? Don't be afraid to speak up.”

Although Henry was not at all sure that Miss Jane would be
allowed to present her own case, or any part of it, he did not think her argument had holes in it, and had he thought so, he certainly knew better than to say so.

“It has occurred to me that one day, many, many years from now, after you and, I venture to hope, I as well have ascended to the celestial canopy, Saint Peter may ask you to spell him at the gate from time to time. Regardless of what happens with the Supreme Court, that is how highly I regard you and your judgment.”

“Why, thank you, Henry. But whom do you think I would admit to the celestial canopy?”

“Everyone.”

“Nay, nay, Mr. Satterfield. Surely not everyone.”

“Yes, Miss Jane, surely everyone. Every applicant during your watch would receive the most severe and horrible tongue-lashing of their lives, so to speak. After which you would throw open the gates of heaven and, with open arms, welcome every last wretch to the canopy. It is the highest compliment I know to give and it came to me just now as you were telling me your plan.”

“Well, it is a fine, original compliment, and I much appreciate it, and I agree with half of it, at least. That, of course, is the tongue-lashing part. I hope the second part would be true as well. But lord, Mr. S., can you imagine spending an eternity with Eben Kinneson Esquire and the town fathers? Not to mention such luminaries as Sneaking Saul and King James's Jehovah?”

“Not really, but when you stop to think of it, it might be more pleasant than the alternative.”

“Well, that's so, too,” Jane said. “When all's said, however, I must say that I seem to get on better with my life when I dwell less on how I'm going to spend eternity and more on how I'm going to spend today. Come. Let's go write that in the Kingdom Mountain Bible.”

“T
HE SUPREME COURT
of the great Republic of Vermont, claiming statehood but not relinquishing independence as a Republic in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty-six, is now, on this eighteenth day of August in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty, officially in session. Please rise.”

Into the Vermont Supreme Court in Montpelier filed the five black-clad justices. Often in her girlhood Miss Jane had sat in this musty-smelling gallery, watching as her father, Chief Justice Morgan Kinneson, presided. Jane herself had briefly considered pursuing a legal career. Now, looking around the courtroom, she was glad that she had not and that, whatever the future might hold, she had devoted her life to teaching, carving her birds and dear people, and lending and even occasionally selling books to the people of kingdom County.

The justices took their seats behind the dark, polished bench at the front of the courtroom. One by one their faces began to register reactions ranging from curiosity and surprise to consternation. As they looked out from their hallowed bailiwick, they saw, sitting or standing next to the dark-complected gentleman in the white suit and the attractive, light-haired woman in black, a row of figures with long, narrow heads and painted features, dressed in a variety of antiquated styles, all looking straight back at them with the same grave, wide-set gray eyes as the light-haired woman's. A young man wearing a blue uniform held a two-headed snake staff in his hand. Beside him stood a boy dressed in homespun and carrying a rifle. One figure wore a great wooden ox yoke around his neck. A tall man
with a wild halo of white hair held the hand of a black child, herself holding the hand of a black woman escorted by a black man. Next to them was a man dressed as plainly as a Quaker, carrying a woven basket containing an infant with a shock of coal black hair and black eyes.

Otherwise the courtroom was a rather nondescript place, much smaller than Judge Allen's in Kingdom Common, with no pictures on the walls and seating for no more than fifty spectators. At the plaintiff's table sat Forrest Allen, just out of Yale Law School, wearing a broad, light-gray necktie and a dark gray double-breasted suit, waiting eagerly and perhaps with some apprehension, to make his first appearance before his home state's highest court. Across the aisle at the defendant's table sat Eben Kinneson Esquire. In the first row behind him were the town fathers of Kingdom Common, shooting glances at Miss Jane and her dear people. How had she gotten her wooden menagerie into the building, much less the courtroom? Four of the justices wondered the same thing. The court clerk looked significantly toward Chief Justice Hamilton Dewey, now a white-haired magistrate but once, as Miss Jane well remembered, her father's law clerk. It was Justice Dewey who, earlier that morning, had instructed the clerk to allow Miss Jane's people, whom she had transported to the state capital in the back of her Ford truck, to accompany her into the courtroom. If the daughter of his old mentor, Chief Justice Morgan Kinneson, wished to bring her wooden creations from the Kingdom to court with her, that was fine with him. This might be the state capital, but it was still Vermont, and Justice Dewey, at least, was determined not to forget it.

The chief justice nodded at the clerk, who announced in a grave and sonorous voice, “To the Vermont Supreme Court come Jane Hubbell Kinneson and the selectmen of the township of Kingdom Common in the case of Jane Kinneson versus
Kingdom Common. This case came on to be heard on the fourteenth of May in the Shiretown Court of Kingdom Common, in which the court chancellor did order and decree that the town highway known as the Connector stop on the south side of the Upper East Branch of the Kingdom River and not be continued across said river onto the property of Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson. The defendant in this case, the township of Kingdom Common, has filed a demurrer averring that the ruling of the chancellor is contrary to evidence, not supported by evidence, and contrary to law. Now comes counsel for the plaintiff, Mr. Forrest Allen, Esquire, duly admitted to, and in good standing with, the Vermont Bar, to present the case of the plaintiff, Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson.”

Forrest Allen started to stand but, cutting him off, Jane herself stepped briskly to the podium in front of the bench, cardboard file folder in hand. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. “I am Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson of Kingdom Mountain.”

“Where is your counsel, Miss Kinneson?” the chief justice inquired. “Is the gentleman at the plaintiff's table your counsel?”

“I'm my own counsel.”

“I'm sorry, Miss Kinneson. Only attorneys licensed by the Vermont Bar Association may argue cases in front of the Vermont Supreme Court.”

“
Vermont Supreme Court Decisions
, volume XVII, 1892 to 1893, pages 824 to 912, page 825,
Kittredge versus the Grand Trunk Railroad.
I cite: ‘It is hereby ordered and decreed that any free-born Vermonter may argue his own case in any Vermont court.' Mr. Kittredge argued his own case against the railroad, which was trying to appropriate part of his farm, and won. The decision was unanimous, and the court's opinion was written by my father, Chief Justice Morgan Kinneson.”

“Hasn't that precedent been superseded by the ruling in the 1901 case of
Vermont Electric, Inc., versus Rufus Hodgdon
, who was
not
allowed to represent himself before the Supreme Court because he had not passed the bar examination?” another justice said.

“It most certainly has not been so superseded,” Miss Jane said. “The
Vermont Electric versus Rufus Hodgdon
case, found in volume XXXVI of the
Vermont Supreme Court Decisions
, states on page 418, ‘Cases before the Supreme Court must be argued by licensed attorneys who have passed the Vermont Bar Exam and been duly admitted to the Vermont Bar,
with the exception of land-claim cases brought by Memphremagog Abenaki property owners against town, state, or federal government, the presumption being that native landowners know their land best and can, therefore, speak best on behalf of that land'
Also authored by Chief Justice Morgan Kinneson. My father felt, gentlemen, and very rightly so, that no one but a Memphremagog could speak for the Memphremagogs. My mother was a full Memphremagog Abenaki. I'd like you to meet her.” Jane gestured at the carving of the infant Pharaoh's Daughter, wrapped in the red Hudson's Bay blanket, in the sweetgrass basket.

In the meantime the clerk had checked the pertinent volume in the
Supreme Court Decisions
and confirmed Miss Jane's statement. Chief Justice Dewey said, “Let's get this show on the road and move ahead with the arguments. I'm satisfied that there's good precedent for Miss Jane Kinneson, whose Memphremagog mother I remember very well, to speak on behalf of her own land.”

Forrest Allen, shaking his head, started to rise.

“Sit down, young man,” Jane told him. To the justices she said, “I am here as the last Memphremagog to dwell on Kingdom Mountain. Unfortunately, mountains are inclined to be silent. If it could, however, Kingdom Mountain would tell many powerful stories. It would tell how it was formed long
before our puny Green Mountains. How, a mere ten thousand years ago, the great ice sheet deposited on its summit a massive glacial boulder inscribed with wondrous carvings. And how, for many millennia, it was the home of caribou, wolves, panthers, and a unique, now endangered species of fish known as the blue-backed char.”

Chief Justice Hamilton Dewey leaned forward. “Taxonomically speaking, Miss Kinneson, is the blue-backed char officially designated as a separate species?”