Thoreau at Devil's Perch (14 page)

Monday, August 17th

 

T
his morning my fear was that Trump would not get a fair Hearing, and indeed he did not. This evening my fear is that he may be hanged even before he is tried.

Had not been given the opportunity to examine Trump after his rough capture, so after the Hearing I went to the Powder House to do so. How bleak his provisional prison looked as I climbed up the hill to it. Until now I had thought this town landmark quaint and picturesque for it is built in the shape of a bee skep and capped with a pleasing domed roof. Its construction is not of wicker, however, but of solid brick, and the walls are a foot thick and windowless. It dates back to the French and Indian War and was last used to store ammunition during the War of 1812, so it is hardly fit for human habitation. To keep Trump imprisoned in such dank, dark quarters is already subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment.

Four young men from the town militia, awkwardly holding muskets passed down to them by their fathers and grandfathers, stood guard in front of the Powder House. I demanded to see my patient, and there ensued much apprehensive discussion among the youths as to whether they dare unbolt the thick oak door.You would think there were a tribe of wild demons inside instead of one man. I had brought Trump's boots with me, and they inspected them most warily before finally allowing me to go within. The door was slammed shut behind me so fast I had to pull my frock coattail free after me.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the faint light filtering through the small, barred square cut in the door. Trump was standing in the middle of the cramped enclosure, as if waiting to pounce. I would have thought being imprisoned in such a murky, musty crypt would have thrown him into a state of utter despondency, but to the contrary, I found him as alert as a hungry raptor. I soon learned that his entire being was focused upon quarry that seemed impossibly out of his range.

He thanked me for bringing his boots, but rather than put them on, he tossed them aside. He then allowed me to look at his head wound, and I was relieved to see it had completely healed shut. Nor did he have other open wounds that might become infested by creatures residing in the Powder House. I observed that his hands were caked with blood and dirt and the fingers swollen, but he did not let me examine them further. He has little patience with my medical meddling.

“I reckon it did not go well for me this morning,” he said.

Such an understatement as that almost made me smile. “You did not help your case when you went into such gory detail about how you aim to kill Rufus Badger.”

“And I will do it, too.”

“How? Do you expect Badger to come here and hand you over his knife?” Trump glared at me and I regretted my sarcasm. “I do not mean to make light of your resentment toward the man, Trump. He is a brute and a liar.”

“I have better reason than that to kill him,” he said. “And it grieves me more than I can bear that I didn't kill Peck when I could have. I held myself back because Miss Julia and the old doc were present, but I shouldn't have let my regard for them stop me.
Nothing
will stop me from killing Badger.”

“Why do you hate Peck and Badger so much, Trump?”

He did not speak for many long minutes, but I sensed he wanted to, so I did not speak either. Finally he said, “I never told nobody this before.”

He sat down cross-legged on the dirt floor, and I did the same, despite the bat droppings. He then related the following to me in a low growl, as though the very act of putting voice to his memories caused him pain. I will set his words down as exactly as I can recall them.

I nodded in sympathy. That Trump should want such bloody retribution was understandable. It was unfeasible, however. I cautioned him that if he wanted to ever be free again, he must keep his story to himself, for he would surely be convicted of Peck's murder on the basis of such a compelling motive. I then asked him how he had survived after extracting himself from his grave. He could not have been more than a boy of twelve.

He told me he had lived like an animal in the woods for months, snaring rabbits and shooting squirrels with a blowgun and digging roots and cattail bulbs in the swamps. He avoided all men, Indian and white, since he feared the Indians might be working for the soldiers to lure out the last of the tribe. When winter came on he began to starve and stumbled down into the camp of a family going west in a Conestoga wagon. The man didn't care a hoot if he was red or white, for he needed a hand to drive his cows behind the wagon, so the wife fed him and dressed him and treated him decently enough. Trump stayed with them, that being as good as any other prospect for a boy whose world had disappeared entirely. They got to the Mississippi, and Trump figured he'd stay with them maybe to California, but as they were ferried across the river the barge carrying them swamped, and all got swept away. He never knew what happened to the family. The men calling out the river's depth on a steamboat fished him out, and a gambler took him in to serve him and help him cheat planters out of their cash by signaling the cards they held.

He tried cards himself when he got older and eventually got so good at it he struck out on his own in New Orleans. Could be he got too good at it. To escape the wrath of a rice planter he had cleaned out, he had to stow away on a departing steamboat heading for Boston.

That's where he had met up with Caleb, a fellow stowaway. They became fast friends and had worked the North End of Boston together for the last few months, until Caleb disappeared. Trump had come to Plumford to find him. He now believes Caleb was the instrument Fate used to lead him to Peck and Badger, so that he could avenge the death of his family.

I again counseled him to keep this to himself or Fate would lead him straight to the hangman. The best I could do for him now, I said, was to try and find him a good lawyer. He scoffed at that. He said no lawyer could persuade a jury of white men that he was innocent, short of proving he was on another planet at the time of the murder.

Nevertheless, as soon as I left the Powder House I attempted to solicit the help of a lawyer for Trump. Neither of the two attorneys who practice in Plumford wanted to take on his case, nor could either of them recommend anyone in their profession who would be fool enough to represent Trump. I can only hope Henry has better luck in Concord.

That Julia continues to avoid my company has made me most fidgety, and so off I went to the Sun for an ale this evening. The tavern was abuzz about Peck's brutal murder. I was asked time and again for particulars, and time and again declined.Yet I lingered, trying to gauge the state of mind of my fellow townsmen, for some might well be jurors at Trump's trial.

There was much talk about Indian atrocities of the past and much eyeballing of a picture that has hung over the bar for decades and is usually ignored. It is a rude copy of a painting I am told is both famous and well respected, but I find the subject matter most sensational and maudlin. The rendering is of a lovely maiden on her knees in supplication, her clinging gown in disarray, her white bosom bared, as one Indian raises his tomahawk to strike her dead and another grips her golden tresses and brandishes a scalping knife. It is supposedly an historical depiction of the murder of a woman called Jane Mc-Crea by two Iroquois during the War for Independence. If this did in fact happen or it is merely folklore, I cannot say.

I do know for certain, however, that Plumford has experienced Indian violence in the past. Journals of my ancestors report the burning down of half the town by raiding Nipmuc braves in 1675, and many at the tavern tonight were eager to relate tales concerning long-gone relatives maimed or slain by savages in King Philip's War. No one bothered to mention that the vast majority of the natives in our region never raised a hand against white intruders but were wiped out anyway by their diseases or by starvation as all the game was shot out and the forests cut down.

When anecdotes about past Indian atrocities ran out, conversation turned to current newspaper reports concerning savages attacking wagon trains in our Western territories. In the midst of this talk Rufus Badger entered the tavern, and all turned to watch him make his way to the bar. He was drunk as usual, but this did not lessen admiration for the lout. A cheer rose up, and many a man hefted his glass in a toast to Badger for capturing Trump.

“Let's go lynch that dirty redskin, men!” he bellowed. “Why should he get a white Christian trial? I say hang him now and be done with it. He already confessed to me that he killed my captain.”