The Fall of Bellwether

Chapter 1: God Sees You

It was in 1841 when the damp winds lashed at town square, tipping hats and rustling papery leaves against the scaffold. Ada saw Elinor’s bonnet lift and a lock of reddish-yellow hair spill over her eye. She watched her trying to reach for the ringlet, to tuck it away, forgetting that her hands were bound. Surely the rope bit her skin.

“Don’t let ‘em see you hurting,” Ada said.

Elinor leveled her shoulders and blew at the loose curl.

“That’s my girl.”

Ada knew Elinor was confused. Her only child stood blank-eyed, the shackles heavy as headstones on her wrists. She thought, my daughter will die the same way she lived, her simple mind unable to grasp the evils of the world. Perhaps her daftness was a blessing after all.

Ada surveyed the crowd of pinch-faced hypocrites. Brown smoke hung over their heads. The ghostly remnants of dynamite blasts from Bellwether’s copper mine layered the air like sediment. She looked from face to face, marking the wrath in the onlookers’ eyes. The same good people who sat next to them at church just a few months before, nodding while her husband preached from the pulpit with fire and flair. These same upright folks who said––“Hello, fine ladies”––whenever she and Elinor crossed their paths at the postmaster’s or the mercantile.

Today, they were judge and jury. Executioners.

Though Ada had managed to shield her daughter from the town’s fury for months, ultimately, she had failed. And Elinor would pay with her life. Ada’s instinct was to cover her girl’s eyes to hide the cold-bloodedness. Her muscles ached that she couldn’t as her hands were tied, too.

“Heathens!” someone shouted.

“Swindlers! Crooks!” Deacon John cried, raising his fists in the air.

Others cast their eyes to the dirt, unwilling to spur on the rage, yet not brave enough to stop it.

Ada looked just in time to see the deputy slip the noose over her daughter’s head then pull it snug. The fat knot bulged at Elinor’s dainty neck like a tumor on a rose.

But Elinor merely looked up at the deputy and smiled. “Ma says I’m going home to be with God.”

When the coarse hemp rasped against Elinor’s jowl, Ada saw her twitch, bow out her chest and stand taller. “Never stole anything,” Elinor told the deputy, then looked to her mother for approval.

“No you didn’t, baby,” Ada called out, working past the swell in her throat.

The deputy yanked a hood over Elinor’s head.

“Mama, I can’t––I can’t see!”

...

She called her husband to mind, how he’d abandoned them the year before, as well as his congregation, taking all their money with him and six-month’s worth of St. Michael’s tithing. In his wake, he left the church with a leaky roof, a half-renovated belfry, and a penniless wife and daughter. The people of Bellwether couldn’t face the certainty that their man of the cloth, a Catholic cloth at that, could do such a thing. So they turned a blind eye to a desperate mother and her defective daughter, freezing them out of the church for their “selfish ways” and for “pushing away the Reverend like they did.”

Ada and Elinor Williams survived on the goods they had canned from the summer season and the few meat chickens they kept. Soon enough, though, they had finished the last of the tomatoes and squash and were down to a puny-breasted egg layer. Ada never learned to hunt or fish, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as her husband had taken the rifle and poles, too.

Ada held steadfast that they could survive on the food store until God’s grace came to pass, either the Reverend returned or their neighbors’ hearts softened. But she brought out the last of their provisions from the cellar and placed them on the table: two canisters of beets and a dozen or so potatoes. The sparseness glared at them as sure as the nights turned colder. When she looked at the dwindled reserve, the house closed in on her. And the air drew out. She wanted to run for help, scream for mercy. Anything to save her daughter and herself. But her feet felt nailed to the floor, her tongue tied. She knew Elinor was watching––deep-blue, vacant eyes––wondering what to do, how to act.

That’s when instinct took hold. Ada calmed her breathing, sucking in through her nose then blowing it out through pursed lips. She scooped several potatoes into her apron, then dropped them in the wash bucket, nodding at Elinor to do the same. As they rubbed the dirt from each spud and cut the tubers with dull knives, Ada said evenly, “Come tomorrow, we’ll beg for money.”

At the break of dawn, Ada made her way to the grove in front of the house, ax in hand. Though she struggled to garner a food source, she knew how to gather firewood and did so with a vengeance. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be idle while our bodies wither away, she thought. At least they’ll find our bony carcasses amidst cords of hardwood. She cleaved into a fallen oak. As her joints stiffened, her swing grew fiercer. They’ll never be able to say those Williams women were weak.

Oscar and Ruby Lee came clanking toward her, the falling-top of the carriage folded down, their two young sons in the back. Ada figured they must be headed to St. Ignace, in need of supplies for their dairy farm. This was her first face-to-face brush with the family as a spouseless mother, especially in such close proximity. They were friends. The week before the Reverend left, their families had eaten supper together. Inside, the men smoked pipes and talked about William Henry Harrison’s sudden death and John Tyler coming to office while the women added ingredients to the cake batter––stirring in the suet, carrots, flour and baking soda––taking turns trying each new mixture then either shaking or nodding their heads. Outside, the boys showed Elinor their milking cows, ever patient and kind with their slow friend. But today, when the boys waved to Ada, Oscar said, “Hands down, lads.”

After they passed, Ada’s inclination was to chase after them, rein in her disgrace and shout a response. Though she did try to catch up to the carriage, the lack of nourishment took its toll. She fell in a few steps behind, close enough to hear the eldest boy ask, “Why Pa?” and Oscar to respond, “‘Cause she’s lost the Holy Spirit, son. Rumor is she’s cursing folks, and it’s all coming true. Told Mr. Turner that she hoped he got the trots. Poor man couldn’t leave the privy for hours on end. And when Mr. Wilkinson told her she’d been acting like a witch,’ Ada didn’t say no. Instead, she said, ‘This damned village will make me into whatever it wants.’”

To hear Mr. Lee, of all people, say the words that she could only guess were being muttered about town was like a knife through her brain, slowing everything around her, blurring it together. Her breaths were quick and sharp. She backed herself against a hemlock tree to rest, the uneven ridges of the bark poking into her spine. Arching her neck rearward, Ada tapped the crown of her head on the trunk, gentle at first, then a bit harder. The emptiness in her stomach grew heavy, making her legs light, her arms more tired. She thought about the spongy, withering potatoes on the table, white sprouts coming out of the tops and sides, then rapped her head once more and slid down the tree.

By then, Elinor had made her way to the grove, too. Having seen her mother break, she stepped to her and with searching hands, found the sore place on Ada’s head. She held her fingers there a while before opening her mother’s legs at the knees and settling in her lap, her head against Ada’s chest. Both of them looked out over the road, and Ada could feel Earth’s gravity pulling at their cheeks, their eyes, their hearts.

...

For two days, the Williams women trekked to the houses of old friends, Ada leaving her dignity outside with her coming-of-age daughter while she pleaded. But the conversations were always the same, as if the town had rehearsed them. Ada started each exchange, getting right to the point by explaining that she could now see Elinor’s ribs when they readied for bed. Then she’d add, “It was the Reverend who left. Why is Bellwether forsaking us?”

“You ran him off! Your faith is weak. And the dimwit’s, too. That’s why you’ve fallen to conjuring and such things.”

Ada bit down on her tongue, the tinny taste of blood flooding her mouth. Being accused of meddling with black magic was startling. But more stunning, were the disparaging words used to describe her daughter, and the ease with which they were hurled. She could never get used to it. “That’s not the truth,” she’d say. “I held my husband up. It was his faith that wavered, not ours. Not until now.”

“You’re a liar, Ada! The good Reverend out and said in his last sermon, ‘If wives don’t lift up their husbands, faith can be shaken.’ And God knows you’ve probably been convening with the incubus all along. That’s why you were given a fool child. May the devil damn you!”

Though Ada suspected folks might blame her for the Reverend’s double-cross, hearing it out loud was overwhelming, stopped her mind from working. Finally, she was able to blurt out, “But we’re starving. We’ll surely die soon if––”

“That’s your penance!”

...

On the third day, after every household had turned them out again, Ada and Elinor made their way home. The sun had gone down and the sky was blue-black, the soles of their shoes wearing through, their feet aching and swollen. A voice shouted out from somewhere in the village, “We see you Williams girls, out there scampering with the Prince of Darkness!” followed by the thump shut. Ada felt the hollow in her stomach and quick as the winds of an arctic northerly, her grief turned to anger. “Tomorrow, we’ll beg in the street,” she said. “We’ll make our brethren have to see us every day.”

So they did. Each afternoon, Ada and Elinor sat in the village’s tiny marketplace––legs folded under, hands out––reminding their brothers and sisters in Christ how they were deserting those in need. After days of the townspeople walking by, wordlessly, Ada and Elinor traipsed to the front steps of Saint Michael where their husband and father should have been presiding. They sat on the church stairs in their best bonnets and tugged at their petticoats to make them smooth, greeting each family with the kindness of a loved one. Only to be slighted. The service began and the parishioners started to sing the opening hymns: the ones Ada knew by heart, the ones about grace and glory and blessed assurance as someone closed the doors upon the women.

“Burn in hell!” Ada roared, pounding on the wood slats. When she heard the muffled sound of Mr. Wilkinson––the deacon chosen as the interim minister––trying to preach, she pushed her mouth into the crevice where the doors came together and shouted, “Sinners! Praying in the house of the Lord then turning your backs. That ain’t our God in there!”

Below her, Elinor mimicked her mother, putting her lips against the dark slit, yelling, “I hate you!”

That night, as Ada crept into the Wilkinsons’ barn, she prayed. Not for forgiveness, but courage. Don’t know what God this town’s turning to, she thought, but Lord, MY Lord, give me strength. Let me feed my girl. One of the cows started to grunt, and Ada quickly moved to it, stroked its back lengthwise until it quieted. Her heart beat fast, but she grounded herself, saying over and over again, you have to be here. She tiptoed to an empty stall where two barrels sat side by side then plunged her hands into the first one, a heaping mound of feed. She couldn’t stop from letting the corn kernels slip through her fingers a couple of times before shoveling some into the burlap bag around her waist. Then she side-stepped to the second barrel, plucking out apples until the bag was nearly full. She felt a rush of emotions––excitement, relief, fear.

But no guilt.

At the edge of her neighbor’s property, just past the split-rail fence, Ada bent over a row of hardy radishes, grabbed several stems at the base and twisted them upward with a snap. With each stride toward home, she could feel the heft of the full bag against her thigh. She dusted off a radish and bit into it. Her face puckered at the tang then a smile broke across her face.

...

As autumn drew to a close, the Williams women continued to hunker down in the town square during the day, an empty basket between them and a coal-gray blanket covering their legs and feet. As the passersby shuffled to their destinations, heads high, Ada searched their faces, clearing her throat or calling their names until they looked her way. Elinor looked up at them, a fourteen-year old’s body, a toddler’s smile.

Though many had complained to Sheriff Thompson, often right in front of them, telling him to “Rid the town of such rabble,” his response was always the same––“They haven’t broken any laws.”

Then, come nightfall, Ada would sneak through Bellwether, pilfering neighbors. With each theft, she grew more confident and daring, swiping loaves of bread from a window set out to cool and from another, a pumpkin pie. Jars of honey from a porch and a salted down ham from a smokehouse. Though the Williams women were not overfed, the hunger pangs had abated some.

Talk began about the pillaged goods. Folks began bolting their barn doors against Ada and out by the county line, farmer Richardson set a leg-hold trap in front of his icehouse. Had a cricket not let out a leathery squeak, Ada might not have looked down in time to see the metal snare. Its sharpened teeth would have gnashed her foot. The heyday was coming to an end, Ada knew that. And once again, hopelessness thundered through her, louder than ever.

One night, as Ada was scampering through a backfield into the village, she told herself to take what she could as time was running out. Don’t feel or think, she told herself, just keep moving. She looked this way, that way, then fixed her eyes on Mr. Turner’s house, set back from the road a bit. In front, several big maple trees stood tall; out back, between the slanted outbuilding and chicken coop, there were several more. With all that cover, Ada had already robbed the old man’s icehouse weeks before––a slab of jerky and some rock mouth bass. But this time, she prowled around the coop like a fox, looking for traps before unlatching the wired gate. Most of the chickens were in the shelter; some were stirring, ambling across the straw strewn earth. A couple of them clucked at her approach but quieted, bustling out of her path as she slid each foot forward slow and steady, never changing pace. By design, Ada moved more stealthily now.

She glided between the nesting boxes and up to the outside roost then lifted up a fat hen, held it upside down by the feet. Though it spread its wings in protest, Ada held them down and coolly backed out of the coop. It only clacked a few times before she was in the yard again, away from the rest, and could wring its neck without an uprising. She gripped its head, pulled down hard then jerked upward, fast and fierce. The body flapped wildly, but she held on tight, creeping backwards a few more steps. Under the moonlight, the blood was dark, gushing in one steady stream, like a pitcher pouring water. She took another step back, thumping against Mr. Turner’s round, stiff belly.

“Give it to me, Ada.” His voice was low, husky. Ada’s mind whirred. In her fright, she clenched the hen’s hocks with all her might, as if she’d fall into a fiery pit should she let go. But Mr. Turner gripped it by its breast with the same ferocity. It was his lifeline, too. They yanked the draining bird back and forth, stretching its cape and thighs like bread dough. Hackle feathers flitted down around them.

“You’re a thief!”

“And you’re a fraud.”

Both shanks pulled loose and Ada tumbled back. One of the spurs had pierced her palm and she cupped her fingers over the cut as she dashed away from Mr. Turner.

“God sees you, Ada!” Mr. Turner called after her.

“God sees you, too! And all you twisted, hateful souls!” she yelled back.

...

Ada hadn’t slept much in the three nights since Mr. Turner caught her looting his coop. She paced in front of the window for hours at a time, waiting for someone to come, deliver their doom. Then, late that Saturday night she saw the lanterns bouncing down their narrow lane, heard the jittery voices of the two young deputies and shackles jangling against each other. The motion and noise were strange in the prevailing stillness. No one ever visited. By the time they approached, Ada was standing on the porch, gathering her thick tresses into a bun.

“Been expecting you.”

“Taking you to the town hall, Ada,” the first deputy said. With each word, his pitch rose and fell, his eyes on the chains as he fumbled them from his belt loop.

“Well, get on with it.” Ada finished pushing another hairpin through the black thatch that rested on her nape then held out her hands, wrists up.

“Where’s Elinor?” The second deputy’s voice was higher, more agitated.

“My girl’s whereabouts don’t matter none to you.” Ada was matter-of-fact, holding still as she was fettered.

“We’ve come for her, too.”

“But she’s done nothing.”

“Folks say she’s been stealing right along with you.”

Instantly, her face went slack. She felt weightless.

“And blaspheming the Lord,” the second deputy added. Then he shook his head and said under his breath, “That girl don’t seem like the ransacking kind, though. Let alone, a heathen.” He clicked his tongue a couple of times. “Hell, never thought you to be that way neither, Ada.”

“Well remember what the Reverend said, Lucifer means ‘morning star.’ And he was God’s favorite before turning into the Devil.”