The Saint of the Wilderness - Jess Carr

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 7
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Page 121-125 – At the home of Wendell Swecker
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He had hardly gotten out of sight of the house when he turned around to make another pass He could just stop at the house and inquire of the best route to Ivanhoe … make the occasion so natural it would look accidental – but then an explanation would be needed as to why he was off the main road, and he could not lie. All the people came into view again and he thought that he recognized Elizabeth, for one of the women had long black hair falling nearly to the waist. Then and there he knew once and for all that he had to see Elizabeth Swecker one more time.

He dismounted in front of the log house and hitched his horse to a small ash tree. Chickens and geese scattered to the right and left of him, noisily announcing his presence. Presently a lanky, slightly stooped man came toward him from out of the field. Robert extended his hand and had it grasped by a large calloused hand on which prominent blood vessels seemed to stand up in little ridges. Equally prominent were blood vessels running up the neck, and the man’s brown eyes were bulging but congenial.

“I’m Robert Sheffey and I was just passing through...” He stopped, unable to tell it all.

“Obliged to meetcha.”

“Would you be Elizabeth Swecker’s father? I was just passing by and I knew her … and I wanted to pass the time…”

“Elizabeth’s my girl. She and her sisters and brother is workin’ in the pumpkin patch. You want me to get her, er’ you comin’ on to the patch?”

“I’d be obliged if you’d ask her if I might speak to her a moment.”

He waited, shifting his weight first from one foot, then to the other, and hoping his shaking knees did not show. Did he dare assume she had not married? He watched each end of the long house; it looked as if each room had been laid end to end rather than placed one behind the other, foursquare. She appeared around the right end of the house, and her approach slowed when she saw him. Then she stopped altogether.

“It’s me, Elizabeth. Robert Sheffey.”

She continued toward him then until they were face to face. Her hair, almost as blue-black as a crow’s wing and shining in like manner, hung down to the small of her back. She had not changed, except that the indelible caress of her eyes penetrated him even more deeply than before, if that was possible. Still, there was a distinct sadness about them.

“Elizabeth, I told your father I was just passing through, and part of that is true, but I remembered you and wanted to see you again.” He thought he might as well get it all out at one time and added, “I understand you got married to one of the furnace workers. Are you living here at your father’s place?”

She Covered her hand and ring finger quickly, instinctively. But then she uncovered it, for the question had already been answered.

“We – we didn’t get married,” she said, voice cracking.

“I understood you were,” he said stupidly, instead of, “I’m sorry,” or, “I’m glad,” or, “There’s plenty of time for a thing like that . . .”

“No, we didn’t. I thought we were but we didn’t – he’s gone away from here now.”

Now his heart jumped with glee, but he dare not show it overtly. “Elizabeth, I thought about you a whole lot after that first day we walked to the town spring. I wondered what happened to you. I didn’t forget you.”

“For a while I recollected being with you too.”

“Did your kin from Washington County tell you I came out to see you?”

“No, they never wrote nothing about it. It pleasures me that you thought about doing it.”

“I would have ridden down here except” – he fingered his chin, rough now with red-blond stubble – “except I ran away from home and afterward went to college and . . . heard you were marrying.”

“Won’t you come in and sit a spell?” she asked when he allowed the silence to persist.

“Won’t your father be expecting you back in the pumpkin patch?”

“He won’t growl none if we just sit and talk a short while. Papa don’t think much of a feller trying to make a mash on the weekdays, though.”

They talked in the parlor for the better part of an hour and it was agreed that he would stop on the following day on his way back from Ivanhoe and have Sunday dinner. He left Wendell Swecker’s house and unhitched his horse. Twice his foot missed its aim into the stirrup, but finally he was mounted and on his way to Ivanhoe. The rhythm of the horse’s trotting hooves and the palpitation of his own heart were beating in near perfect time.

When he sat at Wendell Swecker’s table on the following day his skittishness had subsided to a feeling of well-being. Wendell Swecker said a long thanksgiving, and his soft-spoken wife, Rebecca. Served their guest with grace, as was the household custom.

“Did you find everything at your farm in good shape? I didn’t make no connection with who you was till Elizabeth straightened me out,” Wendell Swecker said.

“Everything looks well kept to me, and I enjoyed staying the night. My brother just wanted me to take a look around. That was our home place. My father was Henry Sheffey. Ever hear of him around here?”

“I never knowed him, personal-like. I knowed of him, and your uncle Daniel too. They used to tell that your uncle Daniel walked down the valley of Virginia from Baltimore with a cobbler’s kit on his back. They tell me he was one of the smartest fellers ever hit this country and that what he didn’t know he learnt in a hurry.”

“That story has been passed down in the family,” Robert said.

“He cobbled shoes and studied for a while and then apprenticed hisself to a lawyer, didn’t he?”

“Yes, sir. Alexander Smyth – the one Smyth County was named for. He left this section after a few years of law practice and went to Augusta County, Virginia. That’s where two of my brothers went to live – with him. The other three of us went to live in Abingdon with our mother’s brother. Uncle Daniel served in the House of Representatives, but I can hardly remember it. He died when I was ten years old.”

“Your pa married again, didn’t he – after your mother died?” Rebecca Swecker asked.

“Yes, he married Sella Nuckolls, and then he died after his son by her – Ezra – was born. That’s when we were all split up. My stepmother married again to a man both of you might know, by the name of Joshua Jackson. Ever hear of him?”
‘’I know of him, but seems to me they left this section of the county,” Wendell Swecker said. ‘’Well, you’re getting’ pretty close to home agin after all. Goin’ to farmin’ agin?”

“Robert is teaching school down a ways from Simmerman,” Elizabeth said.

“Well, it’s getting’ thick-settled up there now. You ought to have a big school,” Wendell Swecker said.

“No, it isn’t large. They have a school at Speedwell and they’ve got one at Fogle furnace. Mine is sort of in between, and it’s too far for the children to go either way to the other schools. Why, some of my students walk or ride six or eight miles.”
Elizabeth’s sister Leah had been quiet, listening, but she smiled at him then and said, “Are you ready to hire an old maid for a helper? I can’t get no teaching job around or nothing else.”

Robert was almost embarrassed to say he needed no help. Because of the distance he didn’t think she was serious, unless she anticipated boarding away from home.

Elizabeth’s other sister, Sarah, and brother, Ben, laughingly told Leah that they had her employment problems all taken care of if she’d just marry a certain neighborhood farmer of the area who was quite wealthy.

“Maybe bein’ a rich man’s darling wouldn’t be so bad if the man was under seventy,” Leah said. But this one wasn’t, Robert found out, and he joined in the family joke.

After they had eaten he walked with Elizabeth to the spring at the side of the house. It was an abundant and unusual spring for he could see hundreds of rising bubbles seemingly popping from the sandy bottom, then rising upward to the surface and bursting.

“It’s the strangest thing I ever saw!” Robert exclaimed.

“Nobody knows what causes it,” Elizabeth said. “There’s been dozens of people come to look at it. That German assayer who used to run all up and down Cripple Creek said it was some kind of strong air down under the ground trying to get out.”
Robert looked up at the sun and knew that it would be after dark before he got back to Bertha Kincannon’s, but he couldn’t tear himself away.

“You’d better be getting’ along,” Elizabeth said. ‘’You don’t know this section yet, and you could get lost after night.”

“It’s pretty country, and I’d like to see more of it. What I’m really saying is that I want to see you some more.”

“I thank you, Robert, but I don’t expect that will do.”

“Don’t your folks approve of somebody who doesn’t live in the neighborhood?”

“I’m over the age of needin’ to ask Mamma or Papa about things like that.”

Suddenly he felt foolish for saying what he had. “I just meant I didn’t understand why I can’t call any more.”

“It just won’t do. Not for now, anyway,” she repeated.

Riding off with a heavy heart, Robert tried to recall if he had said or done anything that could possibly have angered Elizabeth Swecker. He could think of nothing – except that it was easy enough to tell that Elizabeth’s brother Ben did not how a genuine friendliness toward him. Maybe he, Robert, had pressed her too much about having heard that she was-I married. No, it wasn’t that, for then she wouldn’t have asked him to Sunday dinner. Maybe the age difference worried her. Maybe seeing him reminded her of the other man who wouldn’t go through with their marriage. But that would be foolish. She wouldn’t judge him by another man. No answer made any sense to him, and he was still thinking about it when he unsaddled his horse in the moonlight outside Bertha Kincannon’s barn.

The following week, and still another, Robert knew that if he had done any teaching at all he had done it subconsciously, instinctively. He saw visions of Elizabeth Swecker dancing angel-like on his desk during the day, and she was the unseen table guest when he dined with Bertha Kincannon at night. He suspected that Mrs. Kincannon recognized the signs of his melancholy, although he hadn’t told her all the complications. Nevertheless, when he felt his spirit ebb, she would make little attempts to cheer him up or change the pattern of his thinking.

“Robert, some of the older folks I’ve talked to sure are pleased with the good work you’re doing with the young’uns. If it’s not just bragging parents you must have some real little scholars in your school.”

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 7
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Page 126-130 – The strange case of Mrs. Lewinski
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“All of them are smart enough except for two or three. Cass Wilkerson’s oldest boy will make a fine lawyer one of these days – you wait and see.”

“Has there been any change in the Lewinski girl?”

“No. She’s getting worse, if anything. She’s always disrupting the class, looking for things. Her little brother shows the same signs, but not as bad. The girl just won’t mind, and she’s jerky and nervous and does the craziest things for no good reason. And you never know when she’s going to do them.”

“I promised you I’d find out more about the family and I haven’t done it. Give me a week. I’ll get out while the weather is still pretty,” Bertha Kincannon said.

In the middle of the week, when he had dismissed the students for the day, Robert sat down and wrote a letter to Elizabeth. He didn’t ask to see her – he’d go slow on that – but he felt that if he wrote occasionally and told her of his work and problems he might get a reply and some feeling of unity between them. He wrote of Bertha Kincannon’s fine home and how her ancestors had hand-molded and fire-kilned the red clay bricks used for the building. He wrote of Cass Wilkerson and what a fine businessman he was and how much he was helping the Cripple Creek valley to grow, with new jobs and new products for shipment elsewhere. He wrote of Wanda Lewinski – at the very moment when the child burst back into the classroom, weeping and knocking over the stools.

“What is it?” Robert rose quickly from behind his desk.

The child ran from one side of the room to the other, upturning books on the tables and shattering slates in her frantic search.

“What is it, child?” Robert demanded.

“I’ve got to find my caul! I can’t find it nowhere! I’ll die if I don’t find it!”

“I don’t understand, child,” Robert said. “Is it something you lost during class today?”

“It’s my caul. Don’t you understand? Mamma said I would die if I didn’t find it!”

He began to help her look, not knowing at all what they were searching for. While he helped her she calmed down. And her frantic babbling subsided to a barely audible whimper. He placed his arm around her shoulder. “Wanda, child, what I is it? I want to help you, but I don’t understand.”

“It don’t matter none. I’ll find it one of these days. I’m agoin’ home now,” she said with a slightly Slavic accent mixed with the mountain dialect.

That night he told Bertha Kincannon what had happened.

“It’s the worse she’s ever acted,” Robert said. “And what is a caul, anyway?”

“I can see you’ve never met any midwives. A caul is a baby’s skullcap or head covering at birth. In some places when a baby is born the midwife, or sometimes even the mother, will sell this caul. It is supposed to bring luck and protection. Many sailors buy them in the seaport cities of the world as protection against drowning.”

Robert was a little embarrassed, but he was too deep into the subject to drop it now. “You mean it’s a part of the afterbirth?” “Yes, but all is cut away except that portion which covered the infant’s head. It dries out like the shed skin of a snake and I suppose the owner carries it around his neck or attaches it to his body in some way.”

“Well, they didn’t teach us that at Emory and Henry.”

“You have learned something today.” Bertha Kincannon smiled. HI have heard that the caul of a princess or the offspring of a very important person brings an exceedingly high price. And it’s passed down from one generation to another. It is one possession that traditionally is never taken from the owner by murder or theft. To do so destroys its good-luck powers for an unworthy owner.”

“Now I know what a caul is, but why would a twelve-year old child search for her own?” “Maybe I can cast some light on that. I told you I would do some checking around. I did. I talked to a woman who lived near the Lewinski family when they first came here and lived on Gleaves Knob. Mrs. Lewinski was crazy then, and I guess she’s still crazy.”

“You think she puts all these ideas in her children’s heads and they don’t know she’s not right?”

“I’m thinking they know that something is not right, but they don’t know her good times from her bad ones. They’ve lived with it too long.”

“Yes, that would explain it,” Robert said. .

“If we ever find out the truth, I’ll wager Mrs. Lewinski sold her child’s caul and now in her twisted mind she has convinced the girl that if she doesn’t find it she will die.”

Robert pondered her statement without saying anything.

‘’It wouldn’t be hard to believe if we remember that the child has probably heard her mother’s ravings since she was very small.”
‘’Yes, I guess it would work that way,” he said. “Now, what to do about it is the next question.”

“My guess is you’ll have to take her out of school. I know you’ll want to talk to Cass about it first. There’s not much else to do if the child keeps the others from learning and upsets them.”

When he mentioned the incident and Bertha Kincannon’s findings about the Lewinski family to Cass Wilkerson, the latter said, “Our sons have been telling us about the Lewinski children. Stanislaw Lewinski doesn’t work for us, but I know him. I’ve heard talk that there was some family trouble there, but since they moved farther up on the mountain I haven’t heard any more about it. I suppose as long as Mrs. Lewinski stays away from people they make out all right.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Robert said. “Except for the children, that is.”

“Do you think we ought to take the Lewinskis out of school?”

“I’ve had it on my mind a lot, and I wish we didn’t have to. I’ve got an idea, but I want to reread some of the notes I took at college. A visiting professor from London talked to us once about a case like this. I’ll tell you more when I study a little.”
“I hope you can handle it. I must say you’ve been doing a fine job here, Robert. The children think you’re somewhat peculiar in your ways, but they’re learning, and that’s the important thing.”

“Thank you.”

“I regret I haven’t been able to help you more, but as you can tell, I’ve had my hands full. See? We’ve got the lot fun of salt kettles and now we’re spilling over into the meadow.”

“So they’re cauldrons. I wondered what they were.”

“Yep, most of these go to Saltville. There’s an awful lot of people using an awful lot of salt, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

“The country is growing,” Robert agreed, “and if we ever get the railroad we’ll really see something.”

“The railroad won’t get here until we break the backs of hose capitalists promoting the canals. Canals may be fine for Lynchburg and Richmond, but I’d like to see a canal boat coming down New River, and it fast flowing north!”

Robert agreed with him, for Lawrence had mailed an Abingdon paper and it had said the very same thing.

“Well, at any rate, when the railroad does come we’ll be gelling more plow points, nails, and bridge spikes. . . Let me know what you decide about the other.”

The notes Robert searched for were those taken during a lecture given early in the first college term. Recorded were certain theories of British philosophers pertaining to the human mind. The visiting professor had expounded on this, saying how easily a child could be either properly guided or corrupted by philosophies or specific suggestions repeated over and over again. This influence in the home, most times innocent and natural, was what made people as they were. The danger, according to the professor, lay in the fact that a wrongful suggestion could be as impressive if repeated continuously as a right one. The cure for such a misguided person was either to drive the false learning from his mind completely or to cause him to question the truth of his learning each time the occasion arose to use it or think about. In serious cases, just telling a person that his learning was based on a lie and potentially harmful would not have much affect, the professor had explained. The will had to be broken and the mind subjected to self examination.

Now Robert had the idea for dealing with his classroom problem with Wanda Lewinski, but a practical means of execution was another matter. He outlined his plans to Bertha Kincannon at supper one night and solicited her aid.

“Of course I’ll help, but I want to know if it’s all right with the child’s father. Have you talked it over with Cass, and does he approve?”

“I discussed it with Cass first. He spoke to Mr. Lewinski And Mr. Lewinski told him that the business about the caul was only one of the crazy notions the girl’s mother was putting into the child’s head.”

“Cass said to go ahead then?”

“Yes, he said that as long as we didn’t hurt the child he and the child’s father were willing to try anything. Cass doesn’t have much faith in the method, but he knows we’ve got to do something – or make her leave school.”

“People will think we’re plumb crazy when they hear about it.”

Robert couldn’t sleep during the early hours of the night, and he lit the lamp by his bed and wrote a long letter to Elizabeth. Again he did not ask to see her but tried hard in his writing to achieve a sense of needing and longing for her. As a final touch he pen-sketched at the bottom of the paper a drawing of the rising sun coming anew upon the Cripple Creek valley. In the foreground a young man and woman walked across Cripple Creek on a foot log and the man held the woman’s hand so she would not fall. The young woman had hair falling to her waist. He drew his pen hack and forth across her hair until the blackness penetrated the paper.

During the week that followed, Wanda Lewinski seemed to suffer from melancholy but there were no outbreaks of temper or destructiveness. When the school day was over on Friday, Robert pulled the girl into the saddle behind him and took her toward the home of Bertha Kincannon, as they had previously planned. The child had been told earlier in the week that she would be staying with Bertha Kincannon, so it was not lack of preparedness which caused her to tremble in the saddle behind him. Comfortingly he spoke to her as they rode along.

“You’ll like staying with Mrs. Kincannon. She is nice and has pretty things. On Monday after school I’ll take you home and tell your papa what a good time you had.”

That night Bertha Kincannon fixed a meal with all the trimmings. The child gnawed hungrily at the leg of the rooster and handled the English silver of her hostess with both visible wonder and care.

Later in the evening, when all of them sat in the parlor, Robert began the approach he had both agonized and prayed over.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 7
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Page 131-136 – The deliverance of Wanda Lewinski
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“Wanda, Mrs. Kincannon and I asked you to stay here this weekend so we could help you. Do you believe that?” he asked.

The child rubbed her hands together in her lap and nodded slightly.

“I believe in some ways you have adult understanding, Wanda. In other ways you are still a very small child. Do you really believe you must find your caul?” Robert asked.

"Mamma says I gotta find it or I’ll die,” Wanda said, trembling.

“Your mamma loves you, child, but she is sick,” Bertha Kincannon said.

“She’s good as anybody!” the child blurted angrily.

“Of course she is,” Robert agreed. “She’s just sick, and. She can’t help that. She’s sick like other people when they run a fever or get sick to their stomachs.”

“We have no way to help her, but maybe we can help you,” Bertha Kincannon said.

"What you goin’ do to me? You ain’t goin’ to hurt me!”

“No, child. We wouldn’t hurt you for anything. You must believe that,” Bertha Kincannon said and rose from her chair to put her arm around Wanda’s shoulders.

“The only thing we want to do is help you forget about the caul. If you can’t forget it you must learn that it isn’t important any longer and that some of the things your mother says, you needn’t listen to,” Robert said.

“Papa’s been telling that to us lately, but we ain’t sure about believin’ him. Mamma says she can see things other people can’t see. She tells me and my brothers scary stories all the time and they’s so real the hair on my neck stands up.”

“But you must learn the true stories from the made-.up ones,” Robert admonished. “You must forget about finding the caul. You simply must. If you don’t you win get sick like your mother, and you might cause your brothers to become sick also.
You will need to help them after we help you.”

“I believe Mamma. She ain’t never done nothin’ bad to me. Papa screams at her and says things about Mamma that I don’t think are right.”

"It’s not good for your papa to scream at your mamma, but he doesn’t know how to help her and maybe he’s scared you will become like her,” Bertha Kincannon said.

"He shouldn’t ought to scream at her,” Wanda said.

“No, he shouldn’t,” Robert agreed, “but that’s why you must understand that your mamma is sick and help her and your little brothers.”

"Mamma ain’t sick. If anybody is sick it’s Papa what’s sick.”

“No, child,” Bertha Kincannon said.

“Wanda, you are going to stay here with Mrs. Kincannon and me tonight, and tomorrow, and Sunday. When I take you back to school on Monday I want you to be changed in two ways. I want you to believe that your mother is sick and that you will not die if you don’t ever find your caul. In fact let’s get that straight right now. You will never find it. It can’t be found,” Robert said.

Wanda started to whimper, and then tears rolled down her cheeks until soft sobs echoed throughout the room. Both Robert and Bertha Kincannon pulled their chairs closer to Wanda, that she might feel their nearness.
“I love Mamma. I love Mamma so!” the girl cried.

“We know you do,” Robert said, “and that is a good thing. She is lucky to have a fine daughter like you, and she needs a strong healthy girl to help her.”

“But Mamma ain’t sick or she couldn’t love us,” Wanda argued.

“She is both well and sick at the same time.” Bertha Kincannon tried a new approach. “She can be well in part of her mind and sick in the other parts. Can you understand that, child?”

“I don’t believe you. You-all don’t like my mamma, and Mr. Sheffey fussed at me when I was lookin’ under things for my caul.”

“I didn’t want you to be looking for something that wasn’t there, Wanda. It upsets you, and your behavior upsets the class. We must find a way to help you or you will need to be dismissed from the school.”

“No! I don’t want to leave!” Wanda rose from the chair in protest. “I like it better than anything a-tall”

Bertha Kincannon seated the child gently and cast a look of desperation toward Robert.

Robert heaved a sigh and began again. “Wanda, for whatever length of time it takes, you are going to change your mind. Mrs. Kincannon and I will stay by your side all night and all of tomorrow, and all of tomorrow night if it takes that long, to make you understand what we are trying to reveal to you.”

The child stiffened then. Her posture was not one of fear but of defiance. Robert looked deep into her eyes and saw there a determination to hold her ground and, if necessary, to fight for it.

Alternately he and Bertha Kincannon repeated the same statements to the child: Your mother is sick. You need not look for your caul. You will never find it and you will not die. Even well into the night Wanda showed no signs of fatigue, but Robert’s bones seemed to ache from the mental and physical effort he was putting forth. Bertha Kincannon yawned but kept up her efforts to bombard the child verbally. A rooster crowed in the barnyard before Wanda showed n signs of tiring. Then she yawned and her eyelids drooped like weighted objects. Bertha Kincannon walked tiredly to the kitchen and brought back a dish of cold water and a rag with which she bathed the child’s face. Then it was like starting all over again.

“Mamma ain’t sick. She’s weller than you and me. If I don’t find my caul I’m a-gonna die.”

“No, child. You must believe your mamma is sick. You can never find your caul,” Robert pleaded softly but wearily.

Full daylight came and Robert’s stomach was stinging from hunger and thirst. He could see the fatigue in Bertha Kincannon’s face. Only the child seemed vigilant, as if sustained by some hidden power.

They would not give up and they would not eat. They must win this battle, Robert thought. They must win, for if they lost now there would not be another chance and there was too much at stake to call retreat.

In an hour he felt the strength of a second wind. Bertha Kincannon had bathed her own face with the wet cloth and looked alert. Bertha Kincannon took her turn and repeated the same statements Robert had made in exactly the same way and in the same strength of voice.

Finally the child showed signs of tiring again. Strangely her fatigue had overtones of victory and not defeat. Robert motioned Bertha to hand him the wet cloth and the dish it was kept in. He squeezed the cold water out of the rag until the bowl was nearly half full. Without warning he splashed the entire contents of the bowl onto the child’s face. Even Bertha Kincannon jumped. Wanda sputtered but didn’t cry. She had shown no signs of crying for several hours. Bertha handed Robert a towel, .but he waved her away. All of them sat in silent the child’s face still dripping with water and her dress getting wetter and colder. Wanda looked at her clothes and then at Robert and back to Bertha and back to Robert again. As the child’s glance moved from one of them to the other Robert could see cold fury in her face. Neither he nor Bertha uttered a sound as they watched the child. Like the moon moving from behind a cloud, they watched Wanda’s face change; the taut, angry lips and gritting teeth of fury became transformed into an expression of almost angelic sadness. Then the welled-up tears burst loose and she sprang from her chair and clung to Bertha Kincannon.

“Mamma is so sick – she’s so sick!” the child wailed, and Bertha held her tighter. Robert found himself awkwardly patting the child’s back and wiping his own tears.

They all had breakfast then, and mentioned no more the subject that had held them captive for over eight hours. Wanda ate heartily; then Bertha Kincannon put her to bed. The child slept for the rest of the day and throughout the night. When Sunday came the three of them rode in Bertha’s buggy to church at Simmerman. All day Robert and Bertha exchanged glances and smiles of elation at what was obvious to both of them: the heaviest part of a great burden had been lifted and with any luck at all the flower growing under the rock could now be drawn straight and upright toward the sun. Throughout the school day on Monday, Wanda Lewinski sat in a daze, and Robert made no special demands of her. There were times during the day when he wanted to take the child in his arms and comfort her, but he knew he couldn’t. He dismissed the students early and loaded the Lewinski children into Bertha’s buggy, which he had borrowed for the day.

He had expected Stanislaw Lewinski’s wife to be a wild, raving woman, big in body and excessively animated in movement. Instead he met a mousy woman, short in height and not quite plump. She was also younger than he expected her to be. Only greenish eyes that were not fully conscious of the present gave away her state of mind before her conversation confirmed with certainty an aloofness from reality. Robert waited until Stanislaw Lewinski came home from work and gave him a detailed report on what he had done.

“I’m glad for you to tell her. Wanda my child, she wouldn’t believe me,” Mr. Lewinski said.

“You must stay and eat at my table, Mr. Sheffey. We would have honor to have the teacher of our children. Mamma,” he yelled across the yard, “set another plate for Mr. Sheffey!”

Robert sat on the porch of the cabin with Mr. Lewinski until Wanda came to fetch them both to the table. Stanislaw Lewinski looked upon his daughter with a new pride, Robert thought.

The child’s father put his arm around her waist before they were seated at the table. “My Wanda is a good girl,” he said. “She’s a good girl, wouldn’t you say, Mamma?”

Mrs. Lewinski looked toward her husband, but Robert could tell she made no sense of what her husband was trying to say.

“It no matter, Mamma, it is so good to have Wanda home again.”

Finally the dull eyes of Wanda’s mother focused half knowing upon them all and she said. “Lewinski, what you mean you want Wanda home? She’s not been nowhere and she ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Wanda rose from the table and held her mother’s face in her hands. “Oh, Mamma,” she said, “you need me so much to look after you. I’m never goin’ to leave you.”

Robert had not come very far down the mountain before he climbed from the buggy and knelt upon the thick moss beneath the trees. He thanked God For the Lewinski family, asking in particular that little Wanda might be a further blessing to her parents, and expressing gratitude that he and Bertha Kincannon had been instruments of healing.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 8
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Page 138-141 – Christmas at the Sweckers
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“I thought you weren’t going to forget supper!” Bertha called from below.

Before he descended the stairs he reviewed his letter to Elizabeth one more time. Yes. It said what he wanted to say the way he wanted to say it. Before long she would want to see him. It would only be a matter of time.

Within the week he had not only a reply to his letter but an invitation to partake of roast goose and boiled chestnuts at the Swecker home on Christmas Day. Some mention was made of pumpkin pie (and did he remember she was loading pumpkins in the field the last time he saw her?) and games the Swecker family traditionally played at Christmas.

The letter was warm beyond his wildest dreams. He had planned to get Elizabeth a present for Christmas anyway, but now he would buy an even nicer one. Thinking upon the matter of finding just the right gift, he announced his decision to Bertha Kincannon at breakfast.

“I am going into Wytheville on Saturday. Cass has given me money to buy presents for the children. I think I’ll buy Elizabeth a high-waisted pelisse dress. You think she would like that for a Christmas present?”
Bertha looked at him quizzically and, without smiling, said, “Robert, it might not be wise for you to give your Elizabeth clothing for Christmas.”

‘’Why not? I’m very knowledgeable along the lines of dry goods. I’ve had employment in more than one dry-goods establishment.”

“It has nothing to do with being able to pick good merchandise. It’s just not proper for a young man to give clothing to a young lady.”

Robert reddened and coughed a little and said voice, “What shall I give her then?”

“I think some gloves or a chain necklace or some of the playing games she could enjoy during the winter months would please her.”

He took her advice with some reluctance and bought all three of the items that she had suggested. On the return trip from Wytheville snow peppered the ground, but it did not stick to the unfrozen soil. Riding along, Robert tried to think of the Christmas program he had planned for the children but thoughts of Elizabeth occupied his mind. How pretty she would have looked in the high-waisted pelisse, with her black hair falling down the garment! In spite of what Bertha had said, he was sorry he hadn’t bought the dress. He had even decided on the color of mouse-gray, and now his grandest plans would be unfulfilled and Elizabeth would not stand before the smoldering yule log and look beautiful for him in the dress he himself had selected. Perhaps she had no pretty clothes, and the thought of that saddened him all the more.

On Christmas morning he crawled from bed as silently as possible. Bertha Kincannon and all of the valley people still slept, he supposed, but he wanted to be on his way. There was only faint visibility and that would continue to be so for another two or three hours; but once his horse was on the road and headed in the right direction the animal would instinctively find her way.

He placed his gift for Bertha. On the kitchen table and took in exchange several cold biscuits and a baked potato left from supper. Bertha would like the carving knife he had bought for her and would most probably reward him with a roasted goose or gobbler on which to demonstrate the new tool.
He saddled his horse by lantern light and led the animal through the barnyard gate and into the snow-covered main road. The snow was two days old, and a fine sleet that had covered it made an eerie crunching sound under the weight of animal hooves in the chill stillness of morning.
At the full rising of the sun his faithful horse had delivered him a third of the distance to Huddle and, more specifically, Elizabeth Swecker’s house. The vision he saw while riding east was that same diamond-like glow of reflected sunlight on ice that he had seen at the gap of the Cumberlands. There the similarity ended, for the mountains now on each side of him were closer, seeming almost to crush him in their grip; Cripple Creek, shallow and narrow, had a unique melody on this morning as clear cold water flowed under ice until, crossing the rock ledges, it rippled merrily downstream. Snow-covered fields sloping down from the mountains looked mirror-like, except for the crisscross of animal tracks coming to water.

Robert sang a song as he rode, knowing there were no ears to offend – unless the horse should throw him from the saddle! He loved to sing, and after a while he sang the little ditty the children had taught him the first week of school:

“Going to Cripple Creek, going on the run… Going to Cripple Creek to have some fun.”

When he turned into the lane of Elizabeth’s house there was a look only of silent desolation, but before he dismounted she came through the front door to meet him.

For lack of something better to say he cautioned about getting her feet wet. They shook hands and Elizabeth smiled at him faintly. He did not let her hand go while his eyes searched her own. They were still sad eyes – movingly sad eyes – and she focused them on the icy ground.
“You must have started before sunrise.”

“Yes, I did,” Robert said. “I wanted to get here as quickly as I could.”

“’We would have saved some of the goose for you,” she jested.

“I did not come to see the goose.”

He joined the Swecker family at their sumptuously laden table soon after midday, but his appetite seemed to have deserted him.

“You’re not doing much damage to the goose,” Elizabeth’s mother said.

“I guess that cold baked potato and biscuits I had for breakfast reduced my appetite,” Robert said.

He dug into his sweet potato more vigorously then, but invariably his eyes would lift from his plate and level on those of Elizabeth’s, directly across the table. It suddenly occurred to him how much he liked the way she chewed her food and held her fork in such a dainty, ladylike manner. How much Aunt Elizabeth would be impressed with Elizabeth’s table manners, and the rigid sitting posture she maintained while eating. Half consciously he mimicked her posture and mannerisms, not mockingly but with a feeling of endearment. He steadied his gaze toward her down-tilted face until her gaze returned his own. The question had occurred to him many times before, but now it pressed down on him with a relentless demand: How could any man repudiate one so lovely, so bathed in sweetness that to behold her was like departing the world and abiding among the angels?

The Sweckers had not the gift of table conversation he was accustomed to, but he did not mind that. He had not come to see Wendell and Rebecca Swecker nor any of their offspring except Elizabeth. A stillness permeated most of the meal, and he missed the mirth and banter of previous Christmas dinners he had enjoyed. There were politely asked and answered questions and an occasional jest from one of the girls, but not the merriment of volume and numbers he remembered from his holiday dinners at Colonel James White’s house.

Presently the bent frame of Wendell Swecker rose from his chair. His son Ben, somewhat dwarfed by his father’s height, did likewise.

“The livestock don’t know nothing about Christmas,” Wendell Swecker said.

“I don’t feed but once a day when the days get this short, but they’re lookin’ for it about now.”

“I wonder if I might take my horse out to the barn and give him three or four ears of corn and some water?” Robert said.

“I think we can spare that much and not cheat the mice,” Wendell Swecker said – more jokingly now that his stomach was full.

He followed Elizabeth’s father and brother to the barn and fed his own animal while they trudged through the snow to break open a haystack in the distance and feed the livestock.

As he started back to the house he saw Elizabeth’s face at the window. Breaking the crust of sleet, he balled up a fistful of the soft snow and threw it in her direction. He missed the window considerably, which was just as well, although he thought the snow too soft to break the glass.
Elizabeth, unsmiling, watched him until he rounded the corner of the house. He took a deep whiff of the smoke swirling upward from the house chimney and, reaching the porch, brushed the snow from his shoes. He took the Christmas gifts from his saddlebags lying on the porch and re-entered the house.

Elizabeth waited for him in the parlor, and from the kitchen he could hear a high-pitched voice as one of the sisters accompanied herself on the dulcimer. He listened to the slap of the goose quill on the strings for a moment, then said to Elizabeth, “Is it Leah or Sarah?”

“Leah does the playin’. Sarah is helping Mama with straight’nin’ up the kitchen.”

“No. Leah, she sits there on the hearth and plays for hours, and Mamma and Sarah gets the work done before they hardly know it.”

 

[rockytopva]

These are the sounds of Sarah Swecker's dulcimer the way it must have sounded in Cripple Creek, VA way back in 1841...

Julie Ann Johnson on mountain dulcimer - YouTube

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 8
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Page 142-145 – Christmas at the Sweckers
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Robert pulled the homemade chair closer to the parlor fireplace and warmed his hands before handing Elizabeth his gifts. She opened the smallest one first.

“What’s this? I don’t know what it is!”

“It’s a game called dominoes. I’ll show you how to play it after a while.”

Then her face really came aglow when the small rectangular wooden box revealed a gold-colored chain necklace. “Oh, Robert, it’s so pretty! But I don’t have many places to wear it.”

“Wait a minute. Here’s something else that goes with it,” he said and handed her the ivory-colored kidskin gloves. She hooked the necklace around her slender neck and he held the gloves so her hands could be inserted. She slid them in gracefully, but not before he could see the wear of summer sweat and winter’s chapping cold. She wriggled her fingers in the gloves and looked first at them and then back to him. Her pretty face, devoid now of summer sunburn and looking scrubbed white, came aglow with surprise and pleasure. He felt his own heart would melt at seeing her enjoyment.

“Robert, you oughten to spend your wages on me like this. I’m much pleasured – I know you can tell – but I never gave you any reason to treat me so good.”

“I just wanted to, Elizabeth. You’re in. my thoughts, I might as well tell you that.”

“You ought not be lookin’ at me, Robert. You’re forgettin’ I saw the house you lived in in Abingdon, and you’ve been to college. You ought to be sparkin’ some of those high fashion Abingdon girls. I saw them in their straw bonnets and bombazine dresses, paradin’ around, and the men couldn’t keep their eyes away.”

“I’d rather have you in a pair of dirty beavercloth breeches than every girl in Washington County in the finest Italian silk.”

“I can tell by lookin’ at you that your talk is straight, and I’m obliged, but there’s other considerations.”

“A man wouldn’t want a woman another man spurned.”

“That’s not so, and what happened with you and he is past and done.”

“It may be past but it’s not done. The cut’s too deep to stop bleedin’ altogether.”

He rested his hand on her own with some trepidation. “I’m sorry you’ve been brought to distress, but I hoped my caring for you might be a balm toward forgetting.”

Her eyes welled up then, but she gave no sound of unhappiness. He kept his hand on her own until it appeared that she was lost in the depths of her own anguish. He gave her hand an affectionate squeeze and she looked back at him anew.

“If it hurts so bad, do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“There’s nothin’ much to talk about. We were to be married last summer and before I knew it he was on his way out west.”

“He just ran away without telling you goodbye or writing anything?”

“No, he did write me from Tennessee . . . but be was gone by then. I wouldn’t have stopped him if I could. He sounded as excited as a banty roaster.”

“If he was more interested in adventure out west than getting married you’re better off where you are.”

“I’m tryin’ to believe that, Robert. I’m tryin’ So hard my teeth ache and my hands sweat – that’s how hard I’m tryin’.”

She told him that she did not want to talk of it further. . He unpacked the dominoes then, and proceeded to show her how to play. She was caught up in the spirit of the game before long, and Sarah and Leah soon joined them. Leah continued her dulcimer playing from the parlor hearth and, at Robert’s request, sang a holiday ballad he had loved since childhood. Sarah learned the intricacies of the game more quickly than Elizabeth, but by the time Wendell and Ben Swecker returned to the house all of them had the game of “block-and-draw” mastered.

When the evening meal was over and a once-fat goose lay devoured except for the carcass, Robert pulled the last remaining present from his saddlebag. Although it was intended for family use (and as a gift of appreciation to his host, in conformity with his aunt Elizabeth’s training), he handed it to Wendell Swecker first.

“I don’t know whether I know what it is or not,” Wendell Swecker said.

“It’s a checkerboard,” Ben Swecker said.

“Now you can put away your old fox-and-goose game,” Elizabeth’s mother said.

The two men took to the game like excited children.. They played by the firelight, aided by one additional lamp on the edge of their playing table. Robert and Elizabeth returned to their game of dominoes at the foot of a small cedar Christmas tree, decorated with homemade candles, strings of popcorn, and colorful Indian corn strung vertically from the top.

Leah stopped playing her dulcimer and asked to take on the winner at the checkerboard. Finally she had her chance and beat her brother three games in a row.

It was beginning to feel like a genuine Christmas now, Robert thought. Elizabeth’s mother supplied them all with popcorn, and Wendell Swecker got down his fiddle and tuned up. His large hands dwarfed the neck of the instrument as he crouched over it, locking it firmly in. his fist and forearm. He performed no Christmas music, but Robert liked his playing it and liked seeing the man so absorbed that his soul seemed to be lifted and so oblivious to others in the room.

As the evening grew late the other members of the family deserted the parlor.

“I don’t know when I’ve ever had a nicer Christmas, Elizabeth.”

”Wouldn’t you rather be back in Abingdon?”

“No, or I’d have been there.”

“At least somebody might’ve had a Christmas present for you.”

“That doesn’t matter. You’ve made my Christmas all by yourself.”

“Robert, I can’t tell you what I’ll be thinkin’ about a month or two from now, but when a warm Sunday comes if you want to ride down you can go to church with me.”

“I’d like to do that. I’d like to very much.”

She told him it was bedtime and that they were keeping the household up. Sarah, who had been stationed out of hearing range but still in sight, was summoned, and she and Elizabeth showed Robert his sleeping place. He ate sparsely at breakfast the next morning, for Elizabeth again sat directly across from him. And she wore the necklace that he had given her. She had on a plaid linsey dress, and he thought surely that God had not made any woman more beautiful in the world. Her eyes sparkled a little through her natural demureness and once she fingered the necklace with one hand as she ate with the other.

Wendell Swecker left the table first and, without being asked. Saddled Robert’s horse and led her to the front gate. Robert puzzled a moment, not knowing whether the man was just being helpful or if he was telling him that his welcome for the time being was over and that it was departing time. When he stood with Elizabeth unduly long in the parlor, and noticing Ben through the window, holding the horse’s bridle in his hands, he knew it was time to go. He shook hands with Elizabeth on the front steps and headed west, for Bertha Kincannon’s house. He did not mind the chilling wind. The love in his heart seemed to surge violently throughout his being, and there was a very new form of warmth that he could feel, pounding, pounding away.

School did not get back to normal the first week in January. Absenteeism from sickness was widespread, and it was not until the first of February that each stool was occupied again. As the bitter cold and deepening snows of February descended upon them Robert sometimes felt at the point of tears for the smaller children. It was not rare to see youngsters so cold that they could neither cry nor unclench their hands when they came to him in the mornings. Whether they walked or came in a wagon it was the same. The older I children sometimes rode a horse by themselves with a smaller brother or sister behind them, almost too cold to hold on. But they all wanted desperately to learn, and none of them made any harder effort now than Wanda Lewinski.

During the last week of February snow drifted so high that Robert had no alternative but to suspend school until a thaw came. He resented the inconvenience of nature as much as the children did, but for a different reason: he had been to see Elizabeth only once since Christmas, and on that occasion her little Methodist church had been so packed that Absalom Fisher took advantage of the opportunity and preached for nearly two hours. By the time the late dinner was over, he had to rush away to get home by nightfall.

He had wanted to tell her so many things that time, and now his feelings filled him to overflowing. They corresponded in the meanwhile, but the things he wished to say were deep things, and he did not want to write about them if he could explain them to her instead. He wanted to talk to her of his exhortation experiences and of his belief that he was gifted for work in this special way. He wanted to tell her of the places he had been and those places he still wanted to go, on behalf of Christian work, both after school was over and in his future.

When March came he made up for the prohibitions of February. By the second week of March he had seen Elizabeth twice more. Bertha Kincannon accused him of having marriage plans before school was let out, but he sorrowfully told her that his progress with Elizabeth was slow and subject to changes of her mood.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 8
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Page 147-150 – The visit from his brother Daniel
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After he had turned the children out to the call of spring and the many chores that awaited them during the planting season he collected his last wages and headed for Elizabeth’s house. He was more than halfway there, having passed Gleaves Knob, when he saw a sight he had not seen in five years. Before he could recognize the man riding, or the man leading his horse, the tinkling of a sheep bell held in the hand of the servant told Robert that his blind brother Daniel was making one of his occasional treks down the valley of Virginia from Staunton to visit his brothers.

Coming abreast of them, he and Randall, the servant, began having a backslapping contest until Daniel made an emphatic inquiry as to what was going on. Robert placed his hand on that of his brother.

“It’s me, Daniel, Robert. Where did you come from? I didn’t expect to see you this early in the spring – or this year, for that matter.”

“Robert! By jove, I thought I recognized your voice. It’s good to see you – there I go saying that again. You know what I mean.”

“It’s good to see you too, Daniel. It still gets cold nights and some days yet. Why didn’t you wait until a little later in the spring?”

“Cause after I get all my visiting done I want Randall to lead my horse very slowly up the valley of Virginia and I want to smell every blooming thing from Abingdon to Staunton and stop at every wayside and make new friends.”

“I’ll do it too,” Randall said obediently.

“But how did you find me?” Robert wondered.

“I wanted Randall to lead me by Ivanhoe, around the home place, before we went on to Abingdon. I was anxious to see if I could get a feel for our old home . . . maybe run my hands over the logs and stand in the kitchen where Mamma used to stand. Our renter told me you were at Simmerman. I hate to tell James when we get to Marion, but we’re going to lose our renter. He’s been thinking about it during the winter and he tells me he’s not putting out any spring crops. He wants to be gone by the middle of April. He let us stay the night and said to tell you-all that there were no hard feelings and he’d try to help us find another renter.”

“If we can’t find one, I could put up there for the summer and maybe get out a corn crop. At least I could watch over the place and see that nothing happens,” Robert said.

“I’ll talk it over with James and see what he thinks. He might have somebody in mind already. Would you like to ride on to Marion with me?”

“No,” Robert said. “I’ve got some last-minute chores to do, and some of the things in my classroom need storing until the fall session.”

“Lawrence wrote me about your teaching. You planning to teach again at the same place?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been offered teaching jobs several places. They want me back, but it depends on a lot of things.”
The conversation lagged momentarily; indecision registered on Robert’s face. “You can’t make it to Marion today anyway, so why not spend the night with me? Mrs. Kincannon – she’s my landlady – won’t mind.”
“Well, I thought you’d never mention it. No reason why we can’t visit a while longer. Are we close to home? Where are you heading now?”

Robert told his brother and said that he would like to introduce Elizabeth to him. Daniel agreed, and since they were so close to her house: “It’d be a pity not to,” he added.

Such a strange-looking entourage of visit he added. Tinkling of the sheep bell Randall carried in his hand aroused the whole Swecker household. The four women stood out in the yard when the trio reined to a stop. Robert introduced them, and one by one, Leah, Sarah, and their mother drifted away. Elizabeth invited them in and took Daniel’s other arm: as they climbed the front steps. After reaching the porch, Daniel, free of their over-solicitous grasp, turned and called in the direction of Randall. Water the horse good!”

“Yassir!” Randall shouted back.

“Do you want me to get some corn from the barn?” Elizabeth asked.

“No, I’ll feed him when we get back to Robert’s place. You are kind, and I thank You,” Daniel said warmly.

Elizabeth kept her eyes on Daniel; she looked deep in thought. Suddenly, with no further discretion or hesitation, she said, “How long have you been blind?”

“I started going blind in my teens and everything went black by the time I was twenty-one.”

She had a more deeply worried look then. “The doctors – they couldn’t help you none?”

“They said I did most of it to myself.”

“I guess I do have to take the blame,” Daniel said. “I remember many a night I’d sneak out of bed and read or study by the firelight. Uncle James never knew I was doing it until my eyesight started to fade.”

“What a pity,” Elizabeth said; with a tenderness Robert had never before heard her show.

“We reap what we sow.” Daniel sighed resignedly.

“It’s a shame you can’t go on studying. I never had the chance myself, but I like people who learn a lot of things,” Elizabeth said.

“But I can go on studying, and I do,” Daniel said. “My brother Hugh – I guess Robert’s told you about him – still helps me and reads to me sometimes. He’s a Yale man and interested in politics. Oh, I get a lot of information from him and lots of others. There’s still plenty to learn. Fact is, I learn something from everybody I meet, and that takes in a lot of people, when you consider the hotels, taverns, and stage stops.”

“Tell me, what does it feel like to be blind?” Elizabeth inquired, child-like.

”Well, if you had never had vision I guess it would be different, but in my case it’s an easy question to answer. Just close your eyes right now and pretend that they will never open again.”
Elizabeth did so and held them closed until Robert felt that she would never relax her eyelids again. When she did, and raised her head, silent tears rolled down her cheeks. “I understand,” she said in muted voice.

“It is well that you do.” Daniel smiled. “Not for the sake of pity, but for the sake of learning. You see, you will never be the same again, for you have stepped outside of your skin and into that of another. You cannot ever be the same again. You cannot be the same again because you have seen further than you’ve ever seen before. Now you understand my adventures in learning as well.”

Daniel and Elizabeth kept up a stream of steady conversation, and Robert sat back, feeling almost like an unwanted third party. Watching the two, he soon realized that what he saw was two people probing the souls of each other. And - he hadn’t realized it until then – they were like two wounded souls seeking strength from one of like kind.

“Even in disappointment we should become wiser,” Daniel was saying when Leah came into the room and reminded her sister that perhaps the guests would like to join them at dinner. They all sat down to biscuits of crisp-fried side meat and buttermilk.

“You play that thing out there? I wasn’t nosin’ around or nothin’, but I saw it when you unsaddled,” Wendell Swecker said to Daniel.

“The fiddle, you mean? Yes, I play it riding or walking, or on my lap and behind my neck. Everywhere I stop they ask me to play it.”

Everybody but Daniel knows that Wendell Swecker was really saying that he wanted to show his own skill and play a duet with Daniel, Robert thought to himself.

“Would you play some for us?” Leah asked

“Pass me another biscuit, please, and I’ll be ready for a concert,” Daniel said.

Daniel played and played until so many feet were keeping time that Robert felt that the porch roof might collapse. Finally Daniel asked Wendell Swecker to get his fiddle and join in.

They tuned up and, faintly, from another room, a dulcimer was tuning in with them. Never had such beautiful music come from the hollow. The whine of the crying strings seemed to glide to the very top of every hickory in the mountains and drift right back down again; only sweeter, traveling on with soothing sorrow or delicious joy, depending on which selections were played.

The spring days were longer now, but they still did not get back to Bertha Kincannon’s house until after dark. They walked right in to find Bertha cleaning off the Supper table, except for Robert’s unused dish and silverware.

“Think you could fill three plates?” Robert said before he introduced his brother.

Bertha Kincannon looked at the eyes shielded by closed lids and then at Robert’s hand still upon his brother’s more muscular arm. “Sure I can,” she said and helped to seat I Daniel. Daniel’s head of wavy chestnut hair seemed to tower a foot above Robert, even after they both were seated.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 8
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Page 151-154 – The marriage of Elizabeth Swecker
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“It’d be no wonder if they called you the runt in the family if all your brothers are like this one,” Bertha said jovially as she filled their plates.

“They do already – but none of them is any taller than Daniel. Nor any smarter, either,” Robert added.

“Would I be guessing right that you two ran into each other down the road apiece?” Bertha asked while serving their dinner.

“Yes, Randall and I caught Robert on a romantic journey,” Daniel said. “We went with him to do his courting, but I don’t think we helped his cause any.”

“You helped me too much,” Robert said. “Elizabeth paid more attention to you than she did to me.”

“What do you think of Robert’s Elizabeth?” Bertha asked of Daniel.

“I sense she is very beautiful and full of grace. She has a fertile and inquiring mind too, I think. She’s so extra-sensitive, though, that Robert will need to be on guard for it.”

“I haven’t met the girl you know,” Bertha said. “I keep hearing more and more about her, but Robert always stops a little short when he speaks of Elizabeth.”

“She has the quietest way of picking your mind,” Daniel said as an afterthought.

The more they talked about Elizabeth, the more Robert shuffled uncomfortably, and Bertha said, “I think we are making Robert uneasy. Perhaps we had better talk of other things. Tell us the news of the outside world.”

“Where shall I begin? Would you like the unusual or the mundane first? I heard that the center chandelier in the hall of the House of Representatives fell to the floor. Somebody else told me that the Federal Party in central Ohio ended up with two-thousand-one-hundred-sixty-eight more votes than they had party members. A couple of days ago when we came by Fort Vause I heard the news about Benjamin Sharp’s being thrown from his horse. His head went through the ice of the creek, and he drowned.”

“We want to hear important news closer to home,” Robert said, “not those tales traveling agents and tavernkeepers are always telling you.”

“Well, now, there’s some hot action in the state legislature. Seems like a group of lawyers down there have sponsored a bill to take the important cases out of county courts and have them tried in superior courts. Uncle James would come out of his grave and fight that one if he could.”

They all talked until a late hour, but by hazy daylight the household stirred, breakfast was eaten, and the tinkling of a sheep bell was heard through the mist as Randall and Daniel headed for Marion.

Within a week a letter arrived from James in Marion; he seemed upset about the family farm at Ivanhoe that was lying unrented. He had no tenant in mind and suggested to Robert that since he, Robert, was free during the summer he try to put out a corn crop and generally watch over the place. Tools, seed, supplies, and bedding would be coming down by freight wagon, James said.

By the last of April, Robert had survived his own cooking. Nursed his blistered hands, and smiled with pride upon his tilled acreage now pregnant with seed. On top of it all he had a bonus to report to James. The man who had furnished the team and plowed the rich ground wanted to rent the farm. If James approved, the new man would take over the place in the summer when his own hay crop was harvested.

James quickly wrote back his approval of the plan provided that the prospective renter had a good reputation in the community and kept his own place well in order.

Robert tended the corn as it began to come through the ground, but this duty did not prevent him from resuming his travels and exhortations wherever he could find a listener. At first he worked the Cripple Creek valley. He did so for a variety of reasons. First, he felt that since there was a considerable influx of new people coming in to work in the various mines and iron furnaces his work would be especially fruitful. Second, he got to see Elizabeth more often in his comings and goings. He also wanted her to be aware of his Christian work. And third, the area was close enough to Ivanhoe that he could keep an eye on the farm and his corn crop and still have time to do the work he had long planned to accomplish.

Everything seemed to be going well, with one exception. At times he felt that Elizabeth and he were of one accord; at other times she indicated otherwise quite strongly. The fluctuation of her love gnawed at his peace savagely.

He was working in the corn field one day in the latter part of June when this problem began to plague him beyond endurance. He dropped his hoe on the ground, washed himself, changed clothes, and saddled his horse. He ate no dinner and did no worrying about the miles ahead, for the time could be used to devise the most important speech he had ever made in his life.

When his well-rehearsed proposal had been delivered in trembling tones, Elizabeth took her eyes from the floor, and he knew before a word was spoken that he had not won her.

“I don’t wish to get married right now, Robert. You do me honor with your askin’ but I’m not ready.”

He traveled the miles back home, feeling hot and dazed from his effort and disappointment. He had not eaten all day and he was sick to his stomach. He had need of food, but on finally reaching the kitchen, Were the first skillet was placed on the fire the events of the day overwhelmed him and he wept.

He did not go back to Elizabeth’s house again, though many weeks ago (and before his proposal) she had asked him specifically to come on the Fourth of July, his birthday. The second week in July he received an unexpected and total surprise: a letter from Elizabeth saying, “I might be in the same notion you are. Come and see.”

In his instantaneous joy he did not run to the distant pasture field for a horse but glided, half dazed, from the house onto the roadway and, half running, half walking, traversed the miles up Cripple Creek.

“Yes, I’ll marry you, Robert. I changed my mind. If you’ll look after me I’ll be your wife,” she said moments after he stood before her in the parlor.

He took both of her hands in his; then suddenly, as if the subject had never occurred to him before, he said, “I want to look after you better than anybody’s ever done, but I don’t have anything but what I’ve saved from last winter.”

“It won’t matter. We’ll add onto that when we can and build our own place. I’ve already talked it over with Papa I and we can live here for awhile.”

“We’re not going to fudge on him for our room and board. I’ll talk to James and maybe we can use the home place at Ivanhoe.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, but I’ve got an even better idea. Why don’t you and your brothers deed your shares of the home –place to Daniel. Somebody’s got to look after a blind man. Let him get the benefit of the rent money.”

Robert considered a moment and said, “That’d be all right, but I always thought Uncle Daniel’s estate would keep him comfortably.”

“Even a blind man likes to think he’s earning his own keep,” Elizabeth offered. “Go ahead and rent it like you planned and give the money to Daniel. I’d be happy over that, and you and me could live with Papa awhile yet.”

“You’re a good woman, Elizabeth. I’ll agree for my portion and I think the others will too.”

He headed home on a borrowed horse that night, but he could just as well have flown like a chicken hawk, so lofty were his senses. The woman he loved more dearly than he could tell anybody had not only agreed to be his wife but she I had given up unselfishly what might have been her first home. No day could crown this day. Never again would all things be so much in harmony that the night bird sounded sweeter than ever under the moonlit sky and the bullfrogs had a lilt to their voices and the waters of Cripple Creek sang and sang to him as he rode along.

On July twenty-second Robert rode with his future father-in-law to Wytheville and executed the marriage bond. Four days later Absalom Fisher stood in the parlor of Wendell Swecker’s house and joined Robert and Elizabeth in holy matrimony. .

At the wedding feast thereafter, Bertha Kincannon did not comment when Robert added vinegar to his watercress or when he scooped teaspoonful of sugar over his honey. Neither did she comment when he had his fourth helping of turkey breast, although he saw her eye him suspiciously.

Presently she came to him and said, “Robert, how could a man be thinking about his stomach when he has just got himself such a lovely bride?”

“Have you ever heard of anybody being happy on an empty stomach?”

She said no and asked him one final question. "You’re not going to insist on a white counterpane for the bed?”

He nodded “yes” and they both laughed.

“Don’t be too demanding and learn patience, Robert. And remember, ‘A deaf husband and a blind wife are always a happy couple.”

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 9
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Page 157-171 – Married Life
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Shortly before Thanksgiving in 1844 Wendell Swecker’s house resounded with the cries of Elizabeth Swecker Sheffey’s first child. Robert had not been there for the birthing. It all happened so suddenly that by the time he was fetched from his new school, east of Huddle, Elizabeth lay smiling in her bed, her labor ended and the proud mother of a son.

After Robert looked at the infant he went out under the pear tree in the side yard and knelt and thanked God for his newborn boy. He stayed there until the cool fall ground had chilled his knees. When he returned to the house the midwife was preparing to leave, but she asked to be informed of the child’s name.

“I’d like to name him James Wesley,” Robert said. “I want to honor my brother and Uncle James … and I’d like to think that God would let the little fellow be like John Wesley one of these days.”

He looked at Elizabeth for approval. She agreed, and so it was. Elizabeth was again heavy with child in the late spring of 1846.

“Robert, we’ve got to have room of our own after this one comes,” she said one day early in June.

It was not a point he could argue with. Wendell Swecker had already added more space to his house, but it was still too small, especially since James Wesley had begun to walk. That weekend Robert took Daniel with him to a revival in Grayson County, near the North Carolina state line. As they rode along, Daniel was playing his violin, and Robert held fast the lead line from his blind brother’s horse. He asked his brother to stop playing for a minute.

“Daniel, Elizabeth and I have got to get a place of our own. There’s going to be two babies soon and double the amount of chatter isn’t going to sit well with the older folks, it unnerves them and we are crowding them.”

Daniel said that that sounded logical.

“What I’m thinking is this: Would you be willing to sell me a good lot of the acreage we all deeded to you? Would you just as soon have some money and land both as have nothing but land?”

Daniel fiddled a note or two playfully and said, “Sure, I’ll do it. I always did think all of you were too good to me. You should have had a fifth of the farm anyway. The truth is I’d like to have a little money. You know I don’t enjoy staying in one place very long, and I’m hankering to take another trip back up the Valley of Virginia. Randall would like that too – he’s not so happy being hired out to my renter.”

“What part would you be willing to sell?”

Daniel played a few more notes, then said, “I’ll sell you a hundred acres on the southwest side. You always did like the creek, and you can build yourself a cabin there.”

The bargain was made without stopping a horse. Robert went silent for awhile, figuring how much of his savings from teaching would be left to start the cabin after paying Daniel the agreed price of seven hundred dollars for the land.

They rode on to Greenville to spend the night, and there ate the vittles and sweet honey of strangers. The next day, before the service started, Daniel played hymns on his violin while Robert wandered about the churchyard, talking to individuals and small groups of early arrivals about the lovingkindness of a great and good God. Perhaps the preacher would not thank him or even know about his work in advance of the service. One thing was certain, however – and it was the only reward needed – potential converts would fill the church pews a great deal warmer in spirit and more receptive in heart than if he, Robert Sheffey, had not walked among them.

He would sit in a back pew behind his adopted flock, and they would know that he observed their every mood. If someone looked in agony of mind he would kneel by his pew, or, if he had been ineffective, search that person out on the church lawn after the service. If his help was spurned, and if he knew that the pain of the would-be penitent was genuine, he was not adverse to following the man, whether he was on foot or horseback, from the church grounds, calling out his love and concern, praying aloud that the sinner act now, with courage, free of pride or fear of embarrassment.

During the remainder of the summer he continued his travels, but without Daniel, who had told his brother that he believed in the work but found it repetitious and tiring. Robert learned that Daniel enjoyed the variety of friendships and found the diversity he sought in the tavern as well as the church.

When the school session started in October the new cabin, placed on a rolling bare spot of ground and in sight of Cripple Creek, was well under way. After school Robert customarily rode back to the homesite and pitched in, doing whatever he could to help with the labor. So pleased was he with the rising cabin, and the setting of trees and jutting rocks surrounding it, that he would sometimes draw the scene in chalk for the schoolchildren to see. At other times he would pray about his new home in their morning devotionals. His prayers were long, and he could feel the children’s uneasiness. But he knew that they got restless not so much from the length of the prayers as from the fact that he talked simply to God, as if He were perched upon the desk in the very room where all of them sat. He never smiled about it, but it was a little amusing to see the children lift their heads after his prayers and look around, frightenedly or suspiciously, as if they expected actually, to see this Divine Being to whom Robert spoke so lovingly and with such familiarity.

“God is our friend to love and talk to as we talk to our mothers and fathers,” he would say. “In fact He is Our father our loving father. Does anybody here not love his father?” he would ask. No child would raise his hand, and he would go on: “You see? You go to your own father and sit upon his knee because you love each other. God is like that, so there’s no reason we shouldn’t talk to Him as if he were our father – and right here in this room!”

Eight days before Christmas the Robert Sheffeys moved into the nearly completed cabin. Although Robert himself had worked after school hours to stuff the chink and daub between the logs, two rooms were still unfinished. The cabin had four rooms, a limestone fireplace, and a steeply arched roof that allowed for a very roomy garret.

Whatever joy of ownership had been lacking in the beginning quickly disappeared. Robert could see the fruit of his own labors, could remember the sweat he shed in notching the adz-hewn logs with concave and convex Vs so they would dovetail at the corners. He had helped make the shingles also, from short chunks of chestnut that were split into thin boards with a froe. His hands were still callused from gripping and driving the small wooden maul against the blade of the froe, time and time again, until he felt that the mound of thin boards was high enough to cover every house or cabin roof in Huddle.

Yet all the work he had done still comprised the smaller share. Felling the trees, snaking them out of the mountains I with horses and log Mains, and adz-hewing the logs until they were smooth and straight on two sides had been the biggest jobs of all.

When all the wages and material he had had to buy were added up, he was a hundred dollars in debt. Elizabeth was worried by the indebtedness. “There won’t be much Christmas celebrated in this house,” she said. "If it’s not the wind blowing across our bed that keeps me awake, it’s wonderin’ how we’ll make out if you go to debtors’ prison.”

“I’ll talk to the Lord about it,” Robert said. “I’ve got a hundred and eighty dollars coming for the final school term. That’ll pay the debt and keep us this summer, the Lord willing.”

By working diligently during the few warm days of late December and early January he was able to finish the chinking and daubing. On the final day it was so cold that the daub was like stale bread in his hands. His work would probably need to be repeated, for he had run out of horsehair, and the daub would probably crumble and fall out without the binding substance. If necessary he’d redo the work in the spring, but if it would keep the chill wind and drifting snow from their sleeping faces now, he wouldn’t worry about it.

Cripple Creek flooded her banks when March came, but water three times as high would not endanger the cabin so securely perched on the knoll. During that period when Robert rode home from his school he would find Elizabeth standing in the front door, watching the swirling water wind past their house, rushing frantically for an outlet into New River.

“It is a cleansing of nature,” he would say as he paused to watch a few moments with her. ..The floods clean and nourish, and spring is not far behind. Praise God for all His blessings!”

During the last week of school Robert took all seventeen of his students for a creekside walk so they might observe and appreciate the wonders of nature as he did. He found that many of them did so already, while still others seemed hardly aware of the beauties around them. The latter group complained of the foolishness of wandering about the meadows and stream – complained with more vigor than they would have dared use had not it been the last day of school. Robert realized, too, that some of the malcontents would be backed up by their parents, who would be just as happy having the children at home, preparing the gardens for planting. Nevertheless, he tried to make the nature study interesting. During his walking lectures he told of the parts that melting snow and sunshine played in the growth of budding plants and leafing trees.

Once, as he stopped to make a point, he noticed that half his class was missing. Looking down Cripple Creek, he could observe several of the boys trying to make a dam by breaking off tree limbs and stacking them in the path of a tributary branch emptying into Cripple Creek.

“You musn’t break the tree’s limbs unless you intend to put them to good use!” Robert called sternly. “They are living things just like you and me. How would you like somebody to twist your arms off?”

Some of the children bowed their heads in shame, and others snickered. Robert did not chastise them further, but walked to the nearest tree and placed his arms about it. “I love the trees,” he said. “God made them and breathed a special kind of life into them. If we tear away their limbs and strip them of their bark they will surely die and lose their very special voice of praise.”

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 9
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Page 172-174 – Introductions from Jess Carr
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This particular book can be divided into two parts…

1. The life of Robert Sheffey pre-civil war
2. The life of Robert Sheffey post-civil war

It is very regrettable that we have very little on Robert Sheffey pre-civil war. But there are evidences that this man was very much in active ministry in his early years. One is in the huge volumes of mail he would get in his older years testifying of the miracles that would occur after his visits to that particular region. Lost in time also are the many revivals and camp meetings he would attend in the 1840’s.

We know he was active as so many stories of miraculous works have been handed down to we Southwestern Virginian down through the years. Tales of moonshine stills where he prayed the Lord would turn into churches, and those churches still standing today. There are also creeks and wells that went dry that he prayed for, and are still giving water today.

Also in evidence are that the Sweckers and Sheffey’s who still live in Cripple Creek are still very proud of the man. The Swecker family stood by this man and supported him throughout the years. For more on the man I turn it over to Jess Carr’s introduction….

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The Introduction to ‘The Saint of the Wilderness’ by Jess Carr….

Dedicated to the memory of my paternal grandparents, George and Sallie Carr, whom I never knew; and to my maternal grandparents, Esca and Minnie Mitchell, who helped inspire this story; and most of all, to my own dear Mother and Father. Without whose love and guidance this story would have held no importance at all.

I heard first of Robert Sayers Sheffey at the feet of my maternal grandmother and grandfather. At the same time thousands of other children like myself were hearing the same story, just as our own mothers and fathers and grandmother and grandfathers had before us how much this old saint of the wilderness captured my imagination! How I longed even as a child to meet him, rejecting every thought that for nearly half a century he had lain rotting in his grave.

Not even in Sunday school had I been exposed to a lesson that taught a greater message than this true story of a person who not only preached and taught, but who lived the example of what he preached and taught. That he demanded of others to put the teachings they allegedly believed into practice was a thing later to be marveled at.

Perhaps this old Methodist circuit rider was really- crazy after all. Plenty of people thought so. It wasn’t normal for even a white-bearded old itinerant to stop his horse and get off to help an upturned turtle back on its legs again; or to take his own socks from his feet and present them to another more needy than himself. And it certainly wasn’t normal to make the statement when confronted with a problem or decision that: “I must talk to the Lord about it.”

The day had not yet arrived when conservation, ecology, civil rights, awareness of natural resources, and similar contemporary problems held any major importance. The world of mostly rural America in the period of 1840-1900 was one of survival of and recovery from three wars. To Robert Sayers Sheffey, however, conservation, ecology, civil rights, and a simple awareness of the goodness that surrounded every man was not visionary wisdom or political foresight; it was, to him, the way God intended mankind to live. Every single thing to which man was exposed was a gift of God to be used if needed. And, if not needed, to be preserved with infinite care until somebody did need it. Man ought to love and cling to one another because God intended that, and to do otherwise was really the unnatural thing.

After my own slow growth into adulthood and a tour of duty in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War I came back to Virginia, married shortly thereafter, and entered civilian employment. That first job after marriage was a sales position requiring constant traveling. Once on a northeasterly journey from my office I chanced to take a short cut through a section I rarely passed through. In the course of the journey I came to one of the most picturesque rural churches I have seen anywhere in this country, alongside a well-kept hillside cemetery, I noticed only half consciously that a small group of people stood at a grave, but gave no further thought to the matter until I had driven several miles down the road, where I stopped at a country store for a Coke break. I mentioned to the storekeeper (more to make conversation than out of any real interest, I must confess) the funeral I thought I had noticed in progress. He questioned me about which church and reaffirmed its location, finally telling me that there had been no funeral in the neighborhood on that day. I asked the reason for the entourage of visitors to the cemetery and was told that the grave of Robert Sayers Sheffey was there and that individuals and groups both large and small visited his gravesite all the time, year-round.

I did not go back to the cemetery, although I had the strongest inclination to do so. After many years I took my aging father to Sheffey’s gravesite and was told by a custodian 0f the church who lived nearby that the streams of visitors seemed never ending – usually small groups or single families. ‘’What manner of man?” The question kept repeating itself. And the words so moving upon the tombstone seemed a magnet. All that then remained for my interest to be goaded into action was the moving and unique story of Robert Sheffey’s own conversion. From that point on, there was, for me, no turning back.

Rediscovered was the man who believed and practiced a total integration with every facet of life – a man who showed a unique appreciation for every gift bestowed by a loving and very personal God. The tiniest bug and the most gigantic tree were friends who breathed a very special breath and paid a very special tribute of living testimony.

This St. Francis of the wilderness carried his message and lived the example of his life for sixty-three years after his own conversion. Although the extent of his own travel throughout his life was confined to parts of four states, his spiritual step children still oversee the missionary posts of the world and sit I in the highest councils of government. He was only one of many who helped to shape the real character of the American frontier. No American may with impunity disregard the dynamic influence of the pioneer circuit rider. No American can disregard Robert Sayers Sheffey as one of the great chiefs among them. And now step back into history and ride in saddle with the man who was called The Saint of the Wilderness. – JC

So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Janas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.

He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.
Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep. – St John 21:15-17

---Excerpts from Jess Carr’s Introduction to the Saint of the Wilderness

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 9
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Page 172-174 – Married Life - We are covering seven years in just a few pages here. Robert would spend most of these years close to Elizabeth and family. Lost in history are their adventures in camp meetings and revivals.
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At last the children were gone until the following October and all Robert’s supplies were packed away. First he would help Elizabeth prepare their garden and then he would be on his way to continue his exhortations. During the winter he had been told of the isolation of Burke’s Garden, a growing frontier settlement far to the northwest, and of what a beautiful spot it was. He could think of no better place to proclaim God’s lovingkindness and perhaps to explore that vast domain even farther and follow the meanderings of Wolf Creek and then cross East River Mountain into territories he had never before seen.

He helped Elizabeth with the May garden planting, but his mind was elsewhere. He was re-living his early experiences in preaching, both successes and failures. He practiced almost daily the sermon he had originally tried to deliver and couldn’t, plus a dozen more. Some days he would work in the garden, digging the weeds from a row of beans and, on coming to the end of the row, drop his hoe and preach to the fence rails surrounding the garden. So passionate would his voice become that it seemed to ride the very ripples of Cripple Creek.

“Can’t you practice your sermons with the hoe in your hands?” Elizabeth would say time and again when he got carried away and she toiled alone.

His travels and exhortations continued, but it was not until the very early fall of 1849 that his chance to stand in the pulpit alone came again. During this year he had not strayed very far from Elizabeth. She had given birth the previous year to another son – whom Robert decided should be named Daniel Winton, in honor of his brother – and now, only three weeks ago, Elizabeth had been delivered of their first daughter. Robert deferred to his wife’s judgment on this occasion, and the child was named Sarah Louise, in honor of the infant’s aunt. Elizabeth’s recovery after the birth of the baby girl was slow and troublesome. She had pleaded with Robert before and after the infant was born not to leave her for very long, and he honored her wishes.

For that entire summer he did not journey beyond the distance of one full day’s ride, coming and going. What he felt at first to be a confinement proved itself a blessing. The temporary shortening of his range had found him discovering small out-of-the-way churches and people in every direction that he might otherwise have missed. Such was the case one day when he found himself only twenty-odd miles from home in the village of Hillsville. He had been there several times _ though only once had he given his exhortations – and he remembered warmly. The congregation was waiting impatiently for its preacher and his guest, a minister from North Carolina, who was to speak as the revival got underway.

An hour later, when the men had not appeared: “Let Brother Sheffey say a few words to us,” somebody said, and the message had started from there. Although he received thanks for his sermon. There were no compliments. His prayers however, were highly praised. “I could nigh feel the Lord God a-sittin’ on my lap when you prayed I” an old woman said, and the remarks of others were similar. Joy did indeed come by strange routes and small doses and his heart overflowed.

After school was let out in the spring of 1850 he kept close to his wife’s side, with only occasional exceptions. He did make one long and several short trips, but only because he had actually been sent for. The summer, however, did not pass idly by. He used the time to study his Methodist Discipline and in so doing to become convinced that it spoke to and of his own heart. On a Sweltering night in August he made up his mind that if the Methodists would have him, he would have them. The inclination might even go farther, if he could learn to preach well. But he wouldn’t push in that direction. He would learn as fast as he could, and God would move in His own good time.

He called Elizabeth to him and told her of the decision he had made.

Throughout the fall and winter to follow, his school teaching progressed in a routine manner. He gave his best efforts to the classroom work, but during this year a great deal of this had been forced and he knew it. In the back of his mind was the overwhelming desire for spring to come.

Elizabeth had made it through the winter well. Her spirits were high and she looked forward to planting her garden and getting the children outside in the sunshine. Their firstborn was now seven years old, and he was a constant companion to his mother in the garden while Leah or Sarah took turns visiting and looking after the younger children.

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 9
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Page 175-181 – The trip to make things right with Aunt Elizabeth
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On the fifth day of April, 1851, Robert was preparing for his first missionary journey of the year. After family prayer service that night, and when the children were tucked snugly in their beds, he told Elizabeth of his plans.

“The planting can wait until I make this one trip,” he began. “I must ride on to Jeffersonville with all due haste. They need me there,”

When he had finished talking, she told him that she was expecting their fifth child, that it was indeed already well on the way.

By daylight of the next morning Robert was riding northwest. Jeffersonville was a village west of Burke’s Garden, and although he had never been there he did know the man who had written asking him to come. The man, Shales Thompson, had lived on Morris Knob during the time Robert had been staying with his brother James in Marion. He had met Shales Thompson, a bachelor trapper who lived alone, he recalled, during the early summer of 1840, when he had been giving his exhortations to one mountain family at a time along the ridges of Morris Knob. Robert had stayed with Shales one night – not with particular comfort, he recalled, for the smell of curing hides had saturated the cabin in spite of the fact that it had been summer and no hides had been in evidence.

The letter from Shales Thompson that Robert now carried in his pocket revealed that the man was still a bachelor, still a trapper, though he had moved closer to Jeffersonville. Thompson’s request of Robert was a plea to come to the trapping camp Thompson now resided in to help break up a feud among the trappers that had already taken five lives. Robert remembered. With joy his being instrumental in the conversion of Shales Thompson, but being a mediator in a feud was a new and unwanted task. Still, he had felt it upon his heart to come, and Shale’s pleas were as one Christian brother to another, with the admonition: “You have the power to help us.” If that were possible, Robert had no choice but to go.

He found Shales without difficulty. Every resident of the nearby village trembled .a little each time a gun went off in the trapper’s camp, apparently, and did a daily head count of each other, according to rumor. After learning that the trouble was caused by disagreement among the trappers as to who had what right to what territory, Robert felt his task of mediation even more impossible. Large landholders would give trapping permission to one trapper and then another trapper would infringe innocently, Robert was convinced on this territory, claiming all the while that the land boundary was unknown. As Robert saw it, the only answer to the dilemma was to persuade friendly groups of trappers to stay between streams of water where the boundaries would be easily identifiable and beyond questioning.

With Shales at his side, this proposal was presented at each small cabin along the ridge. Robert closed every visit with a prayer that God would help in the trouble and that the men and their families would forgive one another for past ill will.
Only one family and Shales were willing to abide by the plan. The others disapproved of it totally, claiming that the trapping was better along some streams than others.
When daylight of the next day came Robert left Shales’s house without breakfast and took a kneeling position upon a large flat rock in sight of a. few of the trappers’ cabins along the ridge. Some gathered around him after the breakfast fires had gone out.

“Lord, forgive them for shooting and hating one another,” he pleaded so softly as they listened. “And, Lord, I’m going to stay here until they do your will. I’m not going to eat, Lord – although I love the sweet sourwood honey and cakes as much as any man – and I’m not going to sleep until I fall dead on this rock, unless the good brothers and sisters promise to try and do better.”

He repeated his prayer over and over again, sometimes for a new group and then for those who had watched his tired face before. Soon all who had stood before his kneeling body had come, gone, and returned.
Shales Thompson stayed with him, wiping his sweating brow, until the sun mercifully passed behind the mountains.

“You got to get some grub in your stomach,” Shales pleaded. “You ain’t had nothin’ but water, and you can’t live on that.”

“Lord, forgive them ...” He prayed on.

The moon became visible through the trees before a small group of men stomped through the brush to the rock on which Robert kneeled, feeling almost paralyzed.

“We’ll try what you say,” one of them offered in a condescending growl. “Ain’t no use in you stayin’ out here all night on that rock like a hoot owl. Some of the women thinks you’re a-doin’ it fer us.”

They had to carry him to Shales’s cabin. He had no feeling in his legs. He was seated and given food, but before he began to eat he searched all of their eyes.

“This is not all there is to it,” he said. “I want you to hear what the Lord has to say. Let me rest tonight and then. I want you all to gather in front of this cabin in the morning before you go about your own business.”

Robert had finished his breakfast when he heard them gathering, but he had difficulty standing. His legs were sore, and his knees refused to function in the normal manner. Shales helped him to the cabin door and pushed it open. Robert rested against the doorjamb and begged the group’s pardon that his legs would not support him.

“Now, I promised you what our Lord says about the trouble that has come upon us.” He then opened his Bible to the marker he had placed there. “Our blessed Jesus said, ‘But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.’ Now, trespasses mean the wrong you have done to a neighbor or the wrong you think he has done to you.”

He kept them only a short time with his sermon. Seeing them standing before him, eyes repentant, he felt that a new start had been made, but he couldn’t help wondering how long the truce would last. His quick dismissal was really one of personal necessity. The tears forming in his own blue eyes were not so much for them as for himself. Before he had gotten halfway through his short sermon his own hypocrisy had condemned him. How could any man stand and preach forgiveness when he hadn’t extended it himself? His heart was still not forgiving toward his aunt Elizabeth. In spite of time and separation there was still a chasm.

As the moistness in Robert’s eyes welled over, Shales Thompson left him alone in the cabin, where the very silence seemed a mocking condemnation. The years had gone by and he had never gone to his aunt Elizabeth for the reconciliation he had promised himself and his God time and time again. Suddenly, sitting there in the cabin with his head resting in his hands, this matter seemed the only thing standing between him and his complete submission to his God. Vainly he tried to get to the horse he insisted be saddled, but still his legs would not hold him up.

“Brother Sheffey, you’d best stay one more day and rest up,” Shales Thompson pleaded.

Robert finally agreed, but no one could know how much he wanted to get to Abingdon and hold his aunt Elizabeth’s face in his hands and tell her that all was forgiven, and to hear her make the same declaration if she was so inclined. Now, but not before, he did not need the latter condition, but if it came, there would be even more joy.

It was nearly one and one-half days’ ride to Abingdon. Robert’s heart swelled with memories and expectation as he crossed the north fork of the Holston, near to where he had fled so many times as a youth. To the east of him, not more than ten or twelve miles, was Emory and Henry College, and he would go there after he made his peace with his aunt Elizabeth. It would be fitting that he return to the college and sit upon the crest of the hill where so many things had been revealed to him. Maybe he would pay a call upon the president of the college, from whom be had received a complimentary letter pertaining to the humane work and exhortations that “are now well known.”

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 9
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Page 175-181 – The trip to make things right with Aunt Elizabeth
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When the north boundary of the town was reached, Robert planned his strategy. He would ride to the back of the house and tie his horse to the stable fence where Big Edmund used to prop his massive foot when nobody hurried him on one chore or another. Then, quietly, he would slip into the back of the house and tiptoe down the hallway into the parlor, where his aunt would. Be sitting in her rocking chair, looking onto the street. He would kiss her on the cheek before she knew who had invaded the room, and she would turn and recognize him and cry out for happiness.

His plan worked until he had passed the kitchen door and a servant he didn’t know saw him and called out. He put his finger to his lips to silence her and continued forward.

He sprung through the parlor door. The room was empty and the rocking chair deserted. He went back into the hallway to observe the same servant, wide-eyed, her mouth hanging open.

“Where is Aunt Elizabeth?” he asked with a note of foreboding in his voice.

“You ain’t heerd?”

“Heard what?”
“Miz White – she done passed on to glory. She been daid and buried fer three days.”

He looked at the servant incredulously and dismissed her without telling her who he was. He still sat in his aunt’s chair when a male voice called out before coming into the room, “It must be Cousin Robert! Where are you, Robert?”

A young man who Robert at first did not recognize entered the room. The boy extended his hand. ‘’You would be Cousin Robert. I knew it from the description the kitchen girl gave.”

“Yes. The house gets emptier by degrees. You had not heard about Mother until today, I take it?”

“No, I didn’t know until I got here. I’ve been on one of my rounds.”

“Your brother James tried to get word to you when she died, but, as I understand it, your wife said you would be gone perhaps for a week or two.”

“Yes. There was no way you could have reached me,” Robert said.

By lunchtime, which Milton had asked him to share, they were joined by Eleanor White, who now had the distinction of being the second-oldest surviving child of Elizabeth White.

“Mother longed to see you,” she said with a sense of his reason for coming that had escaped Milton.

“And I longed to see her. May God forgive me that I waited till too late,” he said with tears spilling onto his plate.

The palatial dining room seemed to him then as a tomb. He wished for the time when the table was lined on both sides with young people and family banter echoed about the walls; a time when Colonel White sat at the head and his aunt at the foot and the whole world had had an unshakable stability. Now they all, including Lawrence, his brother, had spread out to other places, with wives and families of their own. All that remained was a memory, and he could see it on the face of Eleanor White as plainly as she must be able to see it on his.

Before preparing to leave, he thanked his cousins for their hospitality.

“Can’t you spend the night, Robert?” Eleanor asked.

“No, thank you. I’ll drop in on James in Marion. Then I’ll have to get home and plant my garden. I’ve got four hungry little mouths to feed and a fifth one on the way.”

He had mounted his horse when Eleanor came running from the back of the house. “Oh, I thought you had gone!” she cried breathlessly. “I just remembered. Wait a minute.” It was a dozen minutes before she returned and handed him a flat package wrapped in cheesecloth. “I don’t know is, but Mother said if you ever came back and she couldn’t give you the package herself, I was to do it.”

He accepted the flimsy parcel with thanks. Made up his mind it was a suit of clothes formerly belonging to one of his dead cousins; and rolled it up for insertion into his saddlebags. As he rode east toward Marion he passed the college without stopping. Closer looks into the past would not be welcome on this day. Ellen Sheffey would expect him to be clean, he realized as Marion came nearer. He was no less concerned about it than she, but the practicalities of keeping immaculate while riding the dusty trails was another matter. Nevertheless, a cove formed by offshoots of the middle fork of the Holston provided a private place to wash himself. It was a chill April day, and the water was too cold for an all-over bath, but he scrubbed all the skin he could get to without actually removing his underwear. He cleaned his coat I by means of a quick whiplash that sent miniature dust clouds skyward. His breeches were as thin as the cutting edge of his straight razor, and his extra pair in the saddlebags were probably beyond even Elizabeth’s skilled needlecraft. There seemed no better time to open his aunt’s package in the hope that the clothing of a smaller cousin had been saved for him. Perhaps he would walk into Ellen Sheffey’s house looking like a gentleman of the court.

When the cheesecloth had been removed, he was staring at the wooled hide of a sheep – the sole item within the package. He rubbed his hand over the wool and noted the professional manner with which the sheepskin had been cleaned, trimmed, and prepared for use. He still did not understand until he turned it over and saw the pinned note written in his aunt’s hand:

The sheep is the meekest and most vulnerable of God’s creatures.
But perhaps its very humility and helplessness is why it is honored , of God and man.
The lost sheep needs not only rescue, but to remember it is still a sheep.
Ride upon this sheepskin, Robert; pray upon it; sleep upon it;
and remember the humbleness of the animal from whose back it came.
I too will do penitence. I have left in my burial instructions that the oldest dress I have
(and the one Surviving garment I possess from my first days in Abingdon)
now moth-eaten and bare, be used on my body as I am laid to rest.

I cannot go out of the world like as I came into it, but for my part I will do the next best thing.

ELIZABETH WILSON WHITE

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 10
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Page 183-186 – The fate of Mrs. Stanislaw Lewinski
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On August eighteenth the wailing voice of a fifth child broke the stillness of a sweltering and breezeless afternoon.

“We can honor you, Aunt Elizabeth, and my own mother, you’ll agree to Margaret Elizabeth for the name,” Robert said when the infant was only hours old. His wife made no protest and sank into a deep sleep.

The room still smelled of the lingering odor of human sweat, for Elizabeth had been in labor since early morning.

‘’You let Elizabeth’s sisters wait on her for a long spell.” The midwife admonished as she left. ..She’s not going to be hopping around so quick after this one.”

Robert said that if Elizabeth wanted him to, he would ride to Austinville and fetch the nearest doctor.

Presently Sarah came from out of the kitchen and announced that their evening meal was ready. As he passed Elizabeth’s bed he saw large beads of sweat on her forehead and in the hollows of her cheeks. He stooped to dry her face and felt her hot, still-panting breath in his face. He kissed her dry forehead and. Stood over her until Sarah called him a second time.

Elizabeth sat with them at the table the next week, but her flesh showed a. deathly yellow-white pallor and blue-black circles underscored her listless eyes. She could hardly hold the infant to her breast, and the child always seemed hungry and restless.

The following day Robert brought the doctor from Austinville. His diagnosis was rendered quickly.

“Your wife has lost too much blood. She will need to rest as much as possible and eat well. Her breasts will not produce the amount of milk the baby needs. She can nurse at night and in the early mornings, perhaps. Get a wet nurse and use her throughout the day.”

Robert promptly found. A slave woman at the crossroads leading to Austinville whose mammoth breasts would by no means be emptied by her own newborn child. Arrangements were made with the woman’s owner, who, in a neighborly gesture, gave his permission and a mule for the woman to travel upon.

Elizabeth’s slow recovery again prevented extensive travel throughout the rest of August and September. In the interim Robert read his Bible avidly, searched again the pages of his Discipline for anything he might have missed, and read thrice over the Abingdon paper to which he now subscribed. The latter would be of benefit in the classroom when October came. He could now tell the children more about Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and a new man they had not heard of, one Abraham Lincoln. The most recent issue of the paper had carried a story about Lincoln’s effort while serving in Congress to propose a bill for the gradual and compensated emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia. Such was to take place with the approval of the free white citizens. According to the paper, however, the bill displeased Abolitionists as well as slaveholders and never was seriously considered.

School hours were over, and Robert stood in his garden, digging the October crop of turnips, when a galloping horse ; and rider pulled to a halt at the back door of the cabin. Instinctively he dropped his hoe, for across the years he could seem to sense when the unusual or urgent was at hand, and a horse in a lather never left any doubt. He recognized the rides face but could not recall his name.

“Yes – what is it?” Robert said as the man dismounted.

“Cass Wilkerson sent me to fetch you – there’s been a terrible accident!”

“Well, what is it, man?” Robert urged as the messenger paused, wetting his lips with his tongue.

“It’s Bertha Kincannon – she’s been burned up.”

“That crazy woman of Stanislaw Lewinski’s burned the house down in the middle of the night and Bertha alayin’ fast asleep,”

“Nobody was able to get her out?”

“None of the neighbors seen the fire or smelled the smoke till the roof was fallin’ in.”

“’Do they have the Lewinski woman in custody?”

“She’s in custody, all right. In custody in a pine box. The neighbors said that when they got to the fire last night that lunatic had climbed plumb to the top of that red oak tree between the house and the barn – you remember it?”

Robert said he did and asked the man to continue.

“Well, she was sittin’ on a top limb – you could see her I plumb ghostlike by the light of the flames – leanin’ over farther and farther, tryin’ to catch stuff flyin’ through the air and goin’ up the chimney,”

Robert shuddered. “The poor woman was sick.”

‘’Well, she was in good spirits last night, aclimbin’ a sixtyfoot tree and screamin’ at the top of her lungs. She kept a-yellin’, “Here comes my baby’s caul – here it comes!’ She would be a-scream in’ and lean out of the tree limb and try to catch a piece of trash floatin’ in the heat and smoke. She leaned over too far and came tumblin’ out of that tree like a shot squirrel.”

Robert then asked what Cass Wilkerson would have him to do.

”Mr. Wilkerson said the girl – Wanda, I believe her name was – wants you to conduct her mother’s funeral.”

Robert promised to be there on time the next day. He asked Sarah to stay with Elizabeth and the children, and of Leah he requested that she take her dulcimer to his school and entertain the pupils in his absence.

When he reached the Lewinski cabin Wanda flew into his outstretched arms, inconsolable in her grief. “Oh, Mr. Sheffey!” she cried. “If I hadn’t told Mamma you and Mrs. Kincannon helped me she wouldn’ta done this terrible thing. It’s all my fault!”

“No, no, child. It wouldn’t have made any difference and she’d have heard about it sooner or later anyway. But who’d have thought, even imagined, after all these years … “ His words died.

“It went over and over again in her mind. Things like that did sometimes. Mamma would go wild thinkin’ about things like that, and she probably believed in her poor sick soul that Mrs. Kincannon had my caul”

“I’m sure that tells the story,” Robert said, aware for the first time of the magnitude of the cure he and Bertha Kincannon had effected.

“Come and look at Mamma. We’ve got her fixed up so puny. I did it myself.”

He looked upon the singed face of the woman in the open pine box and was repulsed at the green flies circling about her mouth. Yet, in spite of all the offensive things that he saw, the look of peace that had at last come to the face of Helga Lewinski made all other things negligible.

He stayed with the family then (one of the boys had married, and his wife was there) as they all awaited the funeral hour. No neighbors were present, and no friends, if they had any. He stood at Wanda’s side as she prepared a humble meal of fried mush and boiled turnips. She was a grown woman now, a kind of wild, raw beauty that no man had discovered. He was thinking – until she told him otherwise.

“I’m getting married at Thanksgiving. My man runs a delivery wagon between here and Wytheville. He thinks an awful lot of me.”

‘’Most everything I know started when I began school under you.”

She told him then that only her youngest brother remained at home and that she and her new husband would live with her father until they had the means to build their own cabin.

By two o’clock Cass Wilkerson, his wife, and several of the men Stanislaw Lewinski worked with made their way up the mountain. Some had brought their wives, and there were also girls that Wanda had gone to school with. He was glad to see them, and since they had held Bertha Kincannon in high esteem he suggested that after the funeral was over they all go to the ashen remains of Bertha’s house and hold a memorial service. Stanislaw Lewinski, even in his grief, wanted to go with them. Not even a wall of Bertha’s house remained. A part of the chimney up to about the second floor stood as a grotesque monument of what once had been.

Robert rode around the red oak from which the Lewinski woman had fallen. In the charred branches of the tree, just above the level of his eyes, his outstretched rasped a partially blackened piece of the white counterpane Bertha Kincannon had first reluctantly, then lovingly, kept stretched upon his bed. Perhaps Helga Lewinski did see a caul floating upward through the smoke after all . . . perhaps the blackened cloth he now held in his hands was the thing she reached for. He looked toward the top of the tree, folded the small square of cloth, and put it in his pocket.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 10
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Page 187-191 – the Last Words with Big Edmund
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Elizabeth had gained some of her strength by Thanksgiving, and Robert took her for a short ride in the family buggy to the house in which he was born. The trip was not altogether a pleasure trip, for Daniel had written asking Robert to collect his rent. Daniel now wandered from place to place, and it was not unusual for Robert to get a letter from any of a half-dozen counties in western Virginia or any number of post offices northward up the Valley of Virginia. Wherever he happened to be Daniel would be happy playing his fiddle, telling stories, talking politics, or generally drinking of the warmth of human fellowship. The relationship he shared with all his brother was a precious thing to him, even if it depended upon correspondence alone to keep it alive. Lawrence wrote the most often, and indicated that Alabama might become his permanent address. Hugh wrote more rarely than the others, but he always had something important to say, reporting in his last letter the part he had played in the convention of 1850-51 that passed the Manhood Suffrage law, opening the way for non-landowners to be able to vote.

Robert never came back to his birthplace without the same feeling of confused nostalgia. Time and again he had tried to picture what his mother had looked like, what her mannerisms and habits had been, the smallest details that would let him see the woman from whose womb he had sprung. As a small child he could recall being scolded by his uncle James and his · other uncles for asking them over and over again to tell him of his mother when she was a young girl. Now he wanted to call out to the log wails that had witnesses the shadow of his I mother’s movements and tell her that womb had borne fruit of which she could be proud.

He did not think that Elizabeth had been particularly cheered by their outing. As they rode home she sat quietly on the buggy seat, her black nun’s bonnet pulled low against the chill of November.

“Does this remind you of our courting days?” he asked cheerfully.

She smiled a little then, and straightened. “You never courted me in a buggy. You always rode horseback.”

It was true – although they had used her father’s buggy a time or two.

“Do you still feel bad, hon?"

“Like every ounce of sap has left me: she tried to say in an undejected tone of voice.

He patted her knee affectionately. “You’ll be well by Christmas. You must be. I want you and the children, even the baby, to come to our Christmas program at the school.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be well, Robert. I can’t even feed my own baby without the milk of a slave.”

“That’s no disgrace. Plenty of women do it. You’d still be my sweetheart if you went as dry as an old jersey cow.”

She smiled, but her face took on a suspicious look. “You sure you’re not just butterin’ me up before you light out again in the spring?”

“No. If I was doing that I’d wait until about the last of February or the first of March.”

She looked at him intently then. “Please don’t leave me this spring. It’s not that I don’t want you to do what you’re doin’, but I’ve been seein’ bad signs about myself.”

Elizabeth was not well by Christmas, nor by spring either. In anticipation of spending most of the summer at home, Robert put out a corn crop and from the lonely hours spent there a grand idea was born. If Elizabeth’s health continued to plague her throughout the summer into the winter and he could not leave her in clear conscience when the following spring came, there was an alternate solution: he would get a preaching license and try to find a small church to serve somewhere within riding distance of home.

His crop did well, and by the time school had opened an the first big frost hit, the corn was in the shock and the pumpkins, for hog feed and home use, in the barn. Elizabeth began to feel like helping him in the husking of the corn, and on many days when he returned from school he would hitch up the one-horse sled and take her output for the day to the corncrib, sorting out first the mound of children that covered his load. By late fall Robert insisted that Elizabeth stop this work. There was a good reason to avoid over strenuous activity: Robert learned that she was pregnant with their sixth child.”

John Robert was born July 6, 1853, just two days past the anniversary of his father’s birth. When the child was a month old Elizabeth could not stand up for more than an hour. Her breasts had little milk, and she depended entirely upon still another wet nurse that Robert had been able to find.

“Don’t go from me anymore this summer, Robert,” she pleaded, and he promised he wouldn’t.

But he did find himself breaking the promise. First there was a summons from Big Edmund. Who was now the property of a plantation owner at Glade Spring, a growing village almost halfway between Abingdon and Marion.

When Robert got there Big Edmund lay dying in the slave quarters, from massive ruptures on both sides of the abdomen. He gave a hug to the suffering man, who burst into tears at I this display of kindness and the nostalgia of reunion.

“Your owner told me you just about killed yourself trying to lift a wagon,” Robert said.

Big Edmund was whimpering and trying to talk at the same time, and Robert could hardly understand him. The slave started again.

“They said I couldn’t do it – lift that wagonload o’ corn. … I done it, but it hurt - Robert.”

“Had the wagon turned over on somebody?”

“No, sir, Mr. Robert. We was puttin’ a new wheel on it – the old one broke off – and th’ other fellers said we’d have to put a prize under it an’ I toI’ I could lift it.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to do so much. And you’re not as young as you once were,” Robert added, not really knowing how old he was.

“It don’t help me none to know hit now. . . . I’m a-dyin’ for sure. That doctor, he wouldn’t tell me nothin’ – just let me lay here.”

Robert was satisfied that the slave owner had done all he could. Neither did he doubt the doctor’s prediction that slow internal bleeding and infection would kill Big Edmund in two or three days, at most. The pain came and went in cycles. When Robert decided to bind the sick man’s belly with a long cloth, to relieve the pressure and, hopefully, the pain, Big Edmund said: “The doctor done that before. I took it off so’s I could breathe a mite better.”

Throughout the night Robert was torn by the groans of pain. By morning he himself felt a bone-deep fatigue.

The slave held on through the day, weaving in and out of consciousness. The slave owner’s wife brought bread and soup, but Big Edmund refused to open his mouth, though he watched Robert eat with a glassy-eyed interest.

“You must eat, Big Edmund,” Robert said again. “Let me help you eat."

“It don’t make no matter to a dyin’ man . . . don’t make no matter a-tall.”

Robert tried with conversation to comfort the man. They talked of the days they had both known at Colonel James White’s house in Abingdon and the work and fun and laughter that had been a part of it all.

Robert had talked to the slave about his soul’s salvation the previous day, when Big Edmund had spoken too convincingly about his preparedness. Robert had not forced the pursuit of the subject then.

“Now Mr. Robert, I’m in need to ax you about somethin’,” Big Edmund said between grimaces.

“Yes?”

“You never knowed about me when Colonel White done bought me?”

“Uncle James never told me anything about your purchase.”

"I was a whupmaster – what the other slaves done call flogger man er whupmaster. I worked for a county man down in Alabama.”

“I don’t understand . . .”

“That county man got paid for whuppin’ runaway slaves when they was caught.”

“Did he make you help him?”

“Not exactly,” Big Edmund said and stopped, his face contorted again with pain. Robert waited.

“No, he never made me do it, but he give me some pay if I would.”

“And you whipped and flogged your own brothers, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

”Yas, Lord!” Big Edmund cried out in pain and remorse that seemed to strike him simultaneously.

Robert moved his chair closer to the bed and wiped the tear-swollen eyes of a dying man. “God will forgive you for that. And when you get to glory every man you flogged will forgive you.”

“No, they won’t do it. I whupped some of ‘em until their eyes done rolled back in their heads.”

“God can, and will, forgive that.” The black man shook his head, but Robert insisted. “Yes, He will. All of us in some way have beaten the helpless and betrayed our brothers.”

“Ob, lordy, I don’t feel it!” Big Edmund cried out his anguish.

“The greatest Christian who ever lived Participated in the stoning to death of one of Christ’s own servants. And he whipped and gouged and imprisoned hundreds of others. He cursed the name of Christ. But he saw a blinding light and he was a changed man after that. He himself felt the stripes of the whip on his back and the damp loneliness of the prison cell. “

He went on with the story of Paul until Big Edmund seemed to be seeing a profound vision. “Oh, lordy, it must be so!” Big Edmund cried. “It must be so!”

“Have you ever been baptized?”

“I don’t know. I don’t ‘member my mammy, but I know I ain’t been since I’se a man.”

Robert asked the slave’s wishes and. In conformity with them, brought a cup of water from the watering trough in the barnyard and sprinkled the dying man’s head. They talked in quiet tones after that, and finally there was an unmistakable peace in the fading voice of Big Edmund.

By dark Big Edmund’s body started to stink, and he raved fitfully throughout the night. At dawn the giant of a man made one attempted leap from his pole bed of cornhusks and fell back wide-eyed and dead.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 10
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Page 192-195 – The first attempt at a preacher’s license
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Robert returned home after Big Edmund was buried and found there a message to pay a call on one Martin Ingo. He did so, and after returning from the visit he burst into his cabin, as excited as a schoolchild at Christmas.

“Mr. Ingo and some of his neighbors are thinking about building a new church at the foot of Henley Mountain! He’s asked me if I’d consider pastoring the church if they built it.”

“It would be close home for you, but looks like to me there’s churches enough around here,” Elizabeth said.

“Some of the mountain families want a church nearby, and I’m not real sure but I think there is a serious division underway among them.”

With a feeling of exhilaration Robert made his way the next week to the presiding elder of the Wytheville district to obtain his license to preach. He was questioned at length and some of the questions and the tone of the questioner gave him cause to wonder. In each case, however, he answered as fully and patiently as possible. Finally he was told to come back in a month.

He returned to the home of the presiding elder when the time was up, only to confront an evasive churchman who obviously had the backing of the examining committee.

‘’Mr. Sheffey, I’m afraid your application for a license to preach is not in order. We must in all cases determine the fitness of an applicant for licensing. As you know, one of your duties would include the performance of legal marriage ceremonies. The suitability of a candidate is not so much in question when he is a graduate of a divinity school or comes with the recommendation and endorsement of a church conference. In your case you are an unaffiliated itinerant.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t serve my blessed Lord the love and faithfulness, and minister to His people.”

“No, not if you’re qualified,” the elder said. “Many itinerants are licensed and perform an honorable service to the state, the church, and the people. There are also those men who never bother to get a license, but of these, everyone must of course, be suspicious.”

“Do you have reason to believe I can’t honorably serve?” Robert asked, catching the inference.

The elder paused for a long while. Finally he cleared his throat and looked down at the floor. “Frankly, Mr. Sheffey, we asked you to wait a month to allow us time to do some asking around, and, more specifically, to discover if some of the things we had already heard were true.”

“And what did you find out?”

“We learned that you are a man of some ability and piety – maybe too much piety. There are those who think you cannot properly see the real world for walking around in a heavenly one of your own invention.”

“I make no apology for seeing the fruits and evidences of a blessed earth and acknowledging a merciful and benevolent God.”

“What about some of the other things that have come to our attention? What of your throwing cold water into the face of a pupil? What of wrapping your arms around a tree as though it were a sleepy child? Do you really believe tearing off tree limbs is like tearing the limbs from a person?”

“I have done these things, and believe in what I have taught.”

“Then, too, Mr. Sheffey, all of us pray, but do you not consider it strange that you are known to pray for three and four hours at a time and in the most unusual places? In the rain too, sometimes, I understand. You frighten the children with your prayers. I’m sure you know that. They say you do not pray but that you talk to God.”

“Good sir, whom do you talk to when you pray?”

“Be that as it may, men should not act in peculiar ways. . It unnerves others.”

“But it is said that God’s people are a peculiar people,” Robert said.

“When they get queer enough to hug the sugar-maple trees and pray out loud for the honeybees – why, we can’t help taking notice of that,” the elder said gently.

“Yes, I do those things,” Robert said. “And I have shouted among the bee gums also. Can you grasp what a wonderful thing it is that the little bees gather the sweetness of God’s beautiful flowers and work like tiny soldiers to make the sweet honeycomb? Why, it is a most wondrous thing!”

The elder appeared unmoved by Robert’s simple defense. “I’m sorry, Mr. Sheffey. Your application has been fully reviewed and I cannot give you a license to preach.”

“I have been preaching already,” Robert uttered in disappointment.

“With all due respect, I’m not sure that your wanderings and exhortations over this state and into the border counties of others could be considered ‘preaching.’ They certainly aren’t done with the sanction of the state or any religious body that I know about.”

“I don’t need the sanction of anyone to proclaim Gods’ lovingkindness,” Robert said.

“No, no one can stop you from being an unlicensed itinerant. And I did not mean to imply that you have done no good. Your kindness to the lowly and the high-bred alike has reached my ears – and I understand that your testimonies are quite eloquent. Mr. Sheffey, if you got the recommendation of the Holston Conference on Methodism or the bishop perhaps -.”

“I need no recommendation to speak what is in my heart,” Robert interrupted. He thanked the elder and walked from the room.

He returned from Wytheville in a state of such dejection that he avoided even his wife until she discovered him seated, unmoving, In the corner by the fireplace.

“Why, Robert, I thought you were still in Wytheville. When did you return?”
“I’ve been home for about an hour.”
‘’What is the matter?”
“They refused to issue me a license to preach. They think I am ‘too peculiar’ to be trusted with one.”

Elizabeth listened while he related the rest of his story, but she did not seem fully to share his disappointment.

“I hope you’ll still stay home in the summers anyway, Robert. I’m not feeling so perky yet; the baby is past three months old and I’m still not doing right.”

He visited with Martin Ingo the following Sunday and told him of the failure to get a preaching license.

“Don’t worry none about it. We’ll all go over there and sign a petition when the time comes. Actually, some of our folks have cooled off a little on the new church idea, so I don’t know what’ll happen,” Martin said.

Robert rode down the mountain so low in spirits that he did not even wish to go home. The children would miss him, for they would be looking forward to their Sunday-afternoon ride in the saddle behind him, and they would not take kindly to his breaking the tradition.

At the bottom of the mountain he got a piece of chalk from his saddlebag and drew a landscape scene upon a flat rock. The picture depicted a small mountain church of log and wooden shingles with a horse tied to a nearby tree and a man kneeling on a sheepskin prayer mat near the front door.

When the sketch was finished to his liking he studied it for a few moments, smiled, and got to his feet. He placed the sheepskin on which he had been kneeling back on top of the saddle, climbed on, and headed for home – in plenty of time to give horseback rides before dark, he thought.

 

[rockytopva]

The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 10
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Page 195 - 197 –

The sad end of a good mom

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But when he reached his home Elizabeth was complaining of an abnormal blood issue and he sat by her side until his oldest boy could fetch a neighbor. The temporary care arranged for, he rode to Austinville for the doctor.

The doctor stayed the night, and between frequent trips to Elizabeth’s side Robert slept in the rocking chair beside the fire. He fixed breakfast for the physician before the children were up.

"Your wife has not made a normal recovery from her last delivery,” the doctor said between gulps of coffee. “I would suggest you keep her in bed until the bleeding stops fully. After that she should do no lifting, nor any strenuous work.”

Sarah and Leah took turns staying with their sister until the first of December. Robert thought all was normal again and took his wife and family to his school Christmas program where Elizabeth sang the Christmas carols with all the gusto demonstrated by the other participants. The next day, however, she was compelled to return to her bed.

“I may as well move in,” Sarah said the next morning. Trying to add a note of cheer to the depressed household.

“Either that or you do the teaching and I’ll stay home,” Robert said.

“I’d like that,” she said and hurried the two oldest boys, who now numbered among their father’s pupils.

Elizabeth’s constant need of care continued as January passed and February came, contributing even more height to the unmelted snows of January. By the second week in February half of the class – including the two Sheffey boys – was out of school with mumps. Parents came frequently to take ill children home from school, but the appearance of Melville Catron, a neighbor and father of two of Robert’s students who had been out of school two or three days already with the mumps, seemed unusual.

“Robert, you’d better ride home – and hurry,” Catron admonished. “I’ll look after the children and send the oldest boy there for the doctor. It’s your wife, I might as well tell you that “

Robert rushed home, and when he got there Sarah sat by her sister’s bed, weeping. As though a dam had broken, a flood tide of blood saturated the feather tick of Elizabeth’s bed, and no color at all was visible in her face. About their mother’s bed, the older children, eyes terror-stricken, looked up at their father for an explanation.

“I did all I could, but I couldn’t stop the blood.” Sarah sobbed. ”It just kept coming and coming till I knew there wasn’t any left.”

“You did the best you could, I know that,” Robert comforted her.

“I had to send James Wesley – and him with the mumps – after a neighbor. Poor little feller, I hope I didn’t do him permanent damage in his condition.”

With this pronouncement and its ringing finality invading his very soul, Robert’s own tears joined the chorus of those young and older who knew that a beloved mother, wife, and sister was no more.

Robert did not return to his classroom on Monday; he had to be reminded that it was time that he go back to work. After that he did so instinctively, but as days turned to weeks he knew not in the slightest what he had taught, if anything. Sometimes the students would ask him a question and he would hear it as an echo in the farthest reaches of his brain, but he could no more answer than he could fly. In his mind he was making trip after trip to the Peters cemetery, where snow lay upon the clay-covered ground of a fresh grave.

Mercifully, March passed and his students were gone. He had his children, but he felt that if God were just, He could not have left six motherless youngsters in the world. How in the name of every holy thing could God in His abundant lovingkindness deprive a helpless baby of his mother’s arms? He prayed to understand and could not. With vision blurred by his anguish, he was not comforted to read in the Scriptures time and time again that the rain fell upon the just and the unjust alike. That did not apply to seven-month-old babies, or two-and-one-half-year-old babies or ten-year-old children either. “My God!” he prayed. “Mercy! I never knew my mother’s arms but for the shortest while, and I can’t remember sitting on my father’s knee. Must my little ones feel thy wrath!”

Like a caged animal. He paced back and forth from his cabin to the mountainside, where he used to pray in the rain and the snow and on the hot nights of summer, when the fireflies cast an eerie light upon his face.

Even when he was with his children a terrible inadequacy overcame him that he could not explain. And he felt helpless. On warm spring nights he would wander from the cabin to the creek and back, trying to shake from his shoulders the millstones of grief and doubt. He could hear the dulcimer music of Leah as she sat on the porch, playing, when the younger children had been put to bed. He both wished her to stop and throw her goose quill in the creek and, at the same time, to continue and play louder and longer.

“Is there anything you want to hear?” she said one night as he came back from the creek.

“No, just keep playing,” he replied and seated himself on the front steps.

She stopped to rest her fingers after awhile, and he looked in her direction, but could see her form only by moonlight.

“Leah, I don’t know what to do. My faith is shaken, and I cannot believe my God is just to me. I would be His advocate without pay or praise and He smites me down like I would swat a fly.”

“I have heard Absalom Fisher preach on our trials and the strengthening they bring all of us. I don’t know if that thought’ll help you any, but I’ve been pondering on it.”

“Thank you, Leah. Brother Fisher has come to see me twice since the funeral and he has comforted me some with those ideas.”

“Robert – I don’t know very much except how to play the dulcimer and look after children and keep a house, but I’ve been wondering if I couldn’t help in your work. . . . There’s all kinds of ways to serve.”

"You help me by taking care of the children – you and Sarah both.”

“But that’s what I mean. Couldn’t I serve the Lord by taking Elizabeth’s place? That way you can go on with your missionary work like before.”

His eyes grew moist then. Others around him evidently looked for better ways to serve, while he wallowed in self-pity and felt as if everything he had once believed now rang with hollowness and shame. So many times he had comforted the doubtful and the bereaved with words he now wanted to deny, for they seemed a mockery where his own life was concerned.

That summer he cleared more land and worked his corn crop, anticipating staying close to his children. Also, Sarah finally convinced him of her desire to be a mother in the stead of her dead sister and she reassured him that she and Leah would work out a system even if he had to be gone. He listened to the plan the women had worked out, but thought little about it, for this was one summer when he did not propose to go riding off to the farthest reaches of the state.

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 10
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Page 198-202 – The Preachers license... Welcome to your new world Rev. Sheffey!

Hopefully that wasn't the equivalent of giving Sponge Bob his drivers license!

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Twice he preached for Martin lngo’s people on Henley Mountain – in one of the mountain homes – and noticed the number of worshipers dwindling. “You don’t have enough here to justify the building of a church,” Robert observed, and lngo conceded that they had all come to the same conclusion. During some of the summer days when his crop work was done, Robert would ride alone to the mountain cabins of lngo’s people and visit with them. Most were dirt-poor and wore rags or cheap jeans cloth dyed with walnut hulls for their better clothing.

For those who still wanted to worship among themselves Robert suggested a Sunday or midweek prayer service, alternating the location from week to week. Once, during a time when his blind brother Daniel had dropped in from his wanderings, Robert took him up on the mountain to help get the home meetings going. He found out quickly that Daniel would not be welcome anymore. The mountain people did not approve of fiddle music during worship, even if soul-stirring hymns did come from the crying violin strings. That seemed to suit Daniel just fine. He’d rather play for his nephews and nieces; they appreciated him more anyway, he said.

Daniel was off again when school started in the fall, and Robert went to his work with a dread he had not experienced at any time before. He longed for a church to serve, and deep down he knew that word of the refusal to grant him a license had gotten around. He wanted to do it the right way. He did not want to give up his work as an exhorter, but neither did he want to forgo the duties and privileges of a legitimate preacher. It was almost as though God himself were against him – that he was condemned forever to be a wandering, unlicensed itinerant whom people would laugh at and point to and call “preacher” in the most derogatory fashion.

Shortly before school was to let out in March, Sarah met him at the back door of the cabin one day and told him that a Reverend White awaited him inside. The man introduced himself and gave a quick resume of his background.

“I am presently a conference-appointed pastor on the Wytheville circuit. Long before I came here my fellow members of the Holston conference and I agreed we had a serious and unusual problem to combat in some of our territorial areas if the Christian work is to proceed as we would have it.”

“And in what way can I help?” Robert asked.

"Many areas of the Wytheville circuit are infested by the whiskey makers, and intemperance infects whole neighborhoods. Young men and old alike abuse and starve their families while under the crazed influence of drink. We want to shut down these stills – or as many of them as we can – and see if we can’t do something about this problem. You know the territory and many of the mountain people. Will you help us?”

“I am aware of this problem, but I have already looked into the matter and found there is no law saying that these men can’t make their whiskey. As I understand it the law against manufacturing it without first paying excise taxes was taken off the books before 1820.”

“We know this, but we are more interested in pursuing God’s law than man’s law. These men may have every legal right to make all the whiskey they want, but they do not have the right to corrupt young men and women. Some of our circuit ministers can hardly hold a meeting for the rowdy crowd of toughs and troublemakers who get their courage from the demijohn.”

“I understand. I have exhorted and preached to the folks around here some, but I haven’t been able to get a license. I guess you already know that, if you checked enough on me to find your way here.”

“Yes, we do know about that,” Reverend White said. “If you will help us, I believe I and other conference members can aid you ill obtaining a license. You come well recommended enough that your work will consist of more than just trying to eradicate stills. . . . And you will be paid – not much. But I suspect we both believe in the same Provider and don’t worry a lot about that.”

Robert looked to his sister-in-law, who, he guessed, had already anticipated his next question. Sarah gave an affirmative nod and smiled.

All that summer of 1855 he worked with the Reverend White, or, as he came so easily to call him, Ben. The Wytheville circuit covered hundreds of miles of main roads, side roads, mountain roads, and settlement footpaths; in all, the equivalent of more than six counties.

Ben White was a small man like himself, but not lacking in drive and determination. He was a dark-haired, dark-eyed man, animated of face and with a gentle disposition.

"Perhaps we’re both too gentle,” Robert heard him say at the end of summer. They had traversed the territory, met and pleaded with many a whiskey maker, and preached and conjoled in every village they came to on the evils of making whiskey and drinking it, but their accomplishments fell woefully short of hoped for results. They had not even scratched the surface; if anything, they may have increased the tempers of the toughs and rowdies against them.

It was not a totally wasted summer for the true magnitude of the work to be done was spiritually uplifting. There was yet another bonus: when Robert returned home from his and Ben White’s last foray before the starting of school his preaching license awaited him.

He taught that winter, but the way was now open for change. He and Ben White both agreed that if they were to effect even a slowdown in distillery building and its consequent evils, it would be a full-time job. Robert agreed to give up his school if Ben wanted him full-time and could arrange it with the conference officials.

By the new year Ben White had made all the arrangements, When spring came Robert did not leave the school teaching profession with a great deal of sorrow. He now felt that he was not directing his own path but that he was being led by a much higher authority. His one reservation concerned the long absences from his children.

“Far as the youngsters know, Leah and me have been part mother to them as far back as they can remember.” Sarah said. “Elizabeth would want me to do this, and she’d know I’m happy doin’ it.”

"I thank you for that. Pray for me while I’m gone, and that I might be doing God’s will,” Robert said.

She promised she would and he rode away- on the most beautiful spring day he could ever remember.

The first route taken after he joined Ben White was along the base of Cove Mountain for several miles, then eastward toward the adjoining county line. They were riding single file when suddenly Robert stopped. “Ben, I want to pray before we go any farther,” he said. He left his companion sitting astride his horse, took his sheepskin prayer mat, and climbed halfway up the side of Cove Mountain, where he knelt upon a rock.

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 10
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Page 203-206 – War against the Moonshiners
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The first route taken after he joined Ben White was along the base of Cove Mountain for several miles, then eastward toward the adjoining county line. They were riding single file when suddenly Robert stopped. “Ben, I want to pray before we go any farther,” he said. He left his companion sitting astride his horse, took his sheepskin prayer mat, and climbed halfway up the side of Cove Mountain, where he knelt upon a rock.

After a while Ben’s calling brought Robert to his feet, and he descended the mountain. Ben sat in the shade of a large poplar tree with an embarrassed look on his face.

“I was worried about you, Robert. You’ve been up there for over two hours.”

Robert made no apology and said, “I have sought the will and the companionship of God. Unless He be with us our missions will surely fail.”

Numerous mountain streams provided a choice of inevitable distilling sites, and along one flush stream they found two stills. Robert volunteered to go pray with the owner of one and Ben took the other.

When he told the proprietor his business Robert felt certain that he was about to be set upon. With generous oaths the whiskey maker told him he’d make and sell what he pleased and the Methodists and the Baptists could be da**ed. In the very midst of this tirade Robert dropped too his knees. “Lord, make him stop . . . and if he does not. Remove him from the earth that he may not corrupt Thy people, and cause his evil machine to be dislodged from its foundation with a crowbar and destroyed forever if it be Thy will. . . .”

When he rejoined Ben White, Robert could see that he was not alone in having suffered rough treatment. Ben’s nose bled and his neck was red and bore scratch marks.

“Did John Wesley ever have to go through anything like this, do you suppose?” Ben asked.

They rode eastward for several miles and took their dinner in the home of a widowed woman with five sons and from whom they learned of the biggest distillery operation in the valley.

“That poison put the devil in my husband. God rest his soul, and if those snakes of iniquity ever give my boys as much as a smell, I’ll blow that still outta that meadow with gun-powder ‘” she exclaimed.

It was not difficult to find the stillhouse. The large I copper boiler and won box could be seen easily from the buggy road. The unit sat on the edge of a meadow under an open stillhouse by a clear stream that wound its way into the eastward-running creek along the base of the mountain.

“I don’t believe there’s anybody around!” Ben called out as they circled the apparatus without dismounting.

“You better think agin’, neighbor!” a growling voice from I the nearby woods called out. Presently a squat, red-faced man with powerful arms emerged.

Both of them dismounted at the approach of the distiller.

“I was just sittin’ around waitin’ for the corn mash to work off. What’s your business here, anyhow?” the man asked.

Ben asked first who the still belonged to and was told by the speaker that it was his own. He then informed the man of their business; before he could finish, the owner became incensed.

“Git your hides back out in that road and keep a-goin’!” he said without further hesitation.

“Not before you have heard the will of the Lord,” Robert said.

“It is not His desire that you should turn good men into wife-beaters and hatemongers who abuse their children and take food from their mouths to buy your devil’s nectar!”

“If you won’t git, then I’ll gitcha,” the distiller growled before he landed a swift kick against the calf of Robert’s leg.

Robert dropped to the ground because of the pain, but while there he implored his Maker to destroy the evil apparatus. “Make a mighty oak to fall across it and break its back,” he prayed.

“Now that’s a plumb funny request.” The distiller laughed. “As you can plain see, the nearest tree is thirty yards from this branch.”

Robert waited out the interruption and resumed praying. ‘’”We ask it not for ourselves, Lord, but for Thee who said: ‘All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing ye shall receive it’.”

Robert looked up to see the rage-filled face of the distiller. With a powerful fist he struck Robert flat to the ground.

When Robert’s eyes focused again he was sitting under a tree by the creek and Ben was carrying water in his cupped hands to pour over his throbbing head.

That night they stayed in the home of a chair maker near the road fork leading southward to Newbern. “You ain’t seen one-tenth of the stillhouses there is around here,” the aging householder told them when advised of their adventures.

They journeyed on to Newbern anyway, knowing that they would need to make the same trip over again and do the job better. The Methodists of Newbern gave them a good reception and showed a healthy enthusiasm for several sermons on intemperance that Robert and Ben preached.

Returning to Wytheville. They made visitations along the route to pastors of all denominations. Inviting help and pulpit orations against this growing menace. Before Parting from Ben, Robert confirmed the date of their next rendezvous.

“I’ll be ready for another foray in a week or so – say, the beginning of May. We’ll make it the first Monday,” Ben said. “I’ll meet you at the courthouse,” Robert agreed.

The ride from Wytheville southward to Cripple Creek had never been more beautiful. Profuse moss along the mountain trail punctuated by wild flowers and ornate fern seemed a Persian carpet of welcome as he wove in and out among the dogwood and blood-red Judas-tree blossoms. He inhaled again and again until his lungs cried for relief.

When he reached his cabin he found that somebody had already plowed his garden. Sarah and Leah were bent low, carrying stones from the newly upturned soil in their aprons. The three older boys were assisting their aunts by raking the rich earth in preparation for the seed. One whistle and they all ceased their labors to run and welcome him home.

Before they left the courthouse he and Ben decided to strike out in new directions. Ben’s reasoning was simple and wise, Robert concluded. If they spent their time traveling to many areas and as far as the conference officials would authorize, pretty soon unscrupulous distillers in every neighborhood would know of their efforts. Admittedly they could not stop the practice as a whole, singlehandedly, but pointing out the evils of the practice to men who otherwise might never have stopped to think about the matter was the first step.

Being of one accord, Robert and Ben rode north, with the intent of working around Stony Fork, from whence they would journey across Walker Mountain, traveling still farther north until they came upon many east-running streams. Where the fertile valleys and cool limestone springs were found, there would the whiskey maker be also. Robert reminded Ben that they would not find the distillers as active in the spring as in the fall. At this time of year they would be using last year’s corn, while in the fall, at corn harvest and when the fruits were plentiful for brandy, they would be out in full force.

“It matters little whether they’re makin’ or not,” Ben said. ‘’We can see the stillhouses anyhow. Portable stills along the streams can be traced to the owners, and we’ll certainly know a man’s intentions whether we see him at work or not.”

They spent two weeks in the selected territory and decided to spend a third. They had learned early during this foray that it would be best not to separate: Robert had been badly beaten by two young toughs and Ben told of being switched like a disobedient schoolchild. Now they stayed together not so much as a fighting force, for defensive violence was out of the question and self-defeating, but for the benefit of attending each other if hostile treatment was inflicted. There was another realistic point; as Ben said, “Both of us put together hardly make up one real good fighting man.”

“But we can run fast” – Robert grinned – “and a little man can get through the brush like a rabbit.”

“We may have to try that out if we get amongst too rough a crowd. I heard some tragic news from North Carolina before we started on this journey. One of our Methodist brothers got tied to a tree in that state by a bunch of toughs who thought that it was time to close down a prayer meeting. They tied the brother to a tree and poured molasses over him. We don’t have to guess about what the ants did to him, but a bear interrupted the proceedings and mauled him to death trying to lap up all the molasses from his body.”

Robert shivered a little, for he’d never made a trip across any of the mountains without having seen at least one of the muscular beasts. “I’ll try to remember my Lord and His decree when Daniel found himself in the lion’s den,” he said self comfortingly.

 

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The Saint of the Wilderness Chapter 10
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Page 207-210 – Moonshining for Jesus!
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If they had received harsh treatment in the first two weeks of their foray, the remaining week proceeded toward the other extreme. They found an entire family along Kimberling Creek distilling liquor with such fury and friendliness they could only watch in amazement.

“Sure, we’re God-lovin’, God-fearin’ Christians,’· the head of the clan informed Robert.“ But you see that wash-poor new ground on the side of the mountain? We’re nigh about to starve to death, and can’t make a dollar nowhere. There was a bunch of surveyors from some land company working through here for a few weeks and they said they’d buy anything from me I could make with any kick to it. I’ve already run out of corn, but those wild berries you see a-fermentin ain’t gem’ to be in good supply for very long, and you better bet I’m a-squeezin’ out every drap of brandy there is in ‘em.”

The family paused long enough for group prayer and went energetically back to work.

Robert had not encountered quite this situation before, I and he puzzled over calling down the wrath of God or exercising restraint in the light of economic necessity. The family worked on, but he called to them, “I will pray that you may be shown a better occupation so you needn’t make your living from the misery of others!”

“I’ll do it, preacher, and I ain’t particular what the Lord sends if it will fill our bellies.”

Ben brought up the horses with a grin.

“That oldest boy walking toward the worm box . . . he said those fellows they’d been selling to weren’t the least miserable the last time he’d seen them … said they were downright happy, in fact.”

“Whose side are you on?” Robert exclaimed. “One day you might just buy one of those tracts of land, and I’ll bet the lines are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg,”

The final two days of their journey found them crossing still another mountain to Bluestone Creek. They were immediately discouraged from spending more time along the meandering waters of that stream, for here problems of another nature became known to them. The disease of milk sick ran rampant along the valley. That night they circled back to the base of East River Mountain and spent the night with a non-English-speaking German family. Robert read his Bible for them anyway, and the young German man got his own Bible when Robert had finished and did likewise in his native tongue. At dawn they were saddled, well fed, and ready to head south for Wythe County.

“Lebewohl!” Friendly faces and waving hands gave a last salute.

“Thank you and may God be with you!” Robert called to them in return.

In contrast to what Robert had experienced along the westward-running roadways, travel across the mountains going north was infrequent. During their return journey only a few loaded wagons and fewer than twice as many buggies met them, heading north. Mounted riders were plentiful, but it was hard to determine whether they were long- or short-distance travelers.

Finally Walker Mountain alone remained to be crossed before the lush green bottoms of Wythe County would be not many miles in the distance.

“It won’t be long now until you can take that sheepskin from your saddle and shake the dust out of it,” Ben said jovially.

“And it won’t be long getting dusty again. Between the trips with you I want to do some pulpit supply work close home, and before we get tied up full time this fall with the whiskey makers I want to join with the workers at some of the camp meetings. I’ve been invited to go to the Dismal camp ground and I’d like to attend.”

“I don’t see why you can’t make your own arrangements between our trips. I do think you ought to keep a good record of the free-will offerings you are given. You don’t have to, since you’re not officially with the conference, but as long as we’re working together I’d like to give a report when I am called upon to render my own accounts.”

“That hasn’t been much of a problem so far, has it?” Robert said.

Ben laughed and said that nobody could ever accuse them of being in a money-making business.

A heavily loaded wagon crested Walker Mountain at the same time that they too approached the summit. Robert threw up his hand in greeting to the wagon driver and his family but instead of waving back, the squat little man stood up in the wagon and whipped his horses unmercifully.

“What do you make of that?” Robert said.
“Don’t we know that man?”

Robert turned in his saddle to get another look and saw the wagon picking up speed as frantic horses started downgrade. At the turn the speeding wagon wheels careened in the loose dirt and the rear of the wagon smacked broadside into a hickory tree, flipping on its side into the opposite ditch.

Both Robert and Ben pulled children from under furniture and household paraphernalia before the young ones knew what had happened. The stocky strong-armed little man came from under a burst feather tick, cursing loudly and apparently not in the least grateful that the soft protector had saved him from a broken neck. The mother was bleeding about the forearm, but she could walk. She moved to stand quickly beside her children.

“Get away from us!” the man screeched when he came fully to his senses.
“Who are you? Your face looks familiar:’ Robert said.
“You ought to remember me – you put me out of business.”

Robert had to follow the man’s back-pedaling footsteps to keep up the conversation.

“This is one of the distillers,” Ben said in a flash of recognition.
“I don’t want nothin’ to do with you!” the short man trembled. “I seen it happen with my own eyes!”
“Saw what happen?” Ben asked.

“It started to rain and lightnin’, and afore I could get to the woods the wind laid me flat on the ground … and I looked. Up . . . and like a feather in a whirlwind a white oak tree as big around as that wagon wheel came dancin’ down the hill and squashed my stillhouse like a stepped-on chicken egg!”

The wagon horses were unhitched, and, with the aid of a. chain, they righted the wagon until all four wheels sat on solid ground.

“God be with you, my brother!” Robert called earnestly.

“He already was,” a fearful voice shot back from the disappearing wagon.