Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

speech is that? No dutiful wife should utter such—” “You forget yourself. You may have asked me to wife. I have not accepted you. And from what you now say, it seems that such a match would be most ill-advised. I think it best for all concerned if we wind the clock back and forget that the question was ever put.”

“Bethia!” he called. I did not turn, but quickened my step. He was running after, and with one or two long strides drew close enough to reach out and lay a hand on me. His grip was hard, and this time I could not pull free. His ruffian’s face was close to mine. I turned my head away from him. He reached out with his other hand and dragged off my cap and dug his fingers into my hair, pulling my head back so that I had to look up at him, right into the deep of those ink-black eyes. His voice, when he spoke, was low and urgent. “I love you,” he said, and kissed me.

EWW

Master Corlett, more than anyone, seemed relieved that the matter was behind him. The whole sorry affair had been let fall like a plummet down a well shaft and forgotten, by all except those three of us who cared for her.

Like the baby

“Caleb?” I whispered. “Hush! Go back to sleep.” I sat up. The moon was so bright, I should have been able to make him out, but I could not descry his features. Then I knew why. He had taken a coal and blackened his face below the line of his cheekbones. He was wearing the master’s long black gown. “Caleb!” “Quiet!” he hissed. “This is not your affair, Bethia.” He passed through the door, silent and invisible, into the dark.

Lol the disguise

Then, as clouds scudded across the luminous disc, riding high now in an inky sky, the truth of the thing fell into my heart. I had told him to pray, and he was doing so. But not necessarily to a just and loving God.

the burial of the governor’s second son, who had served as his father’s clerk.

He had been carried off quite suddenly, after an uncommonly violent bout of flux.

his face was lit by an expression of ardent satisfaction.

wish we had some authority, other than your brother’s word, that she is indeed well set. He is not a man renowned for his fellow feeling. I will be glad, Bethia, when you are safely returned to the island and can see to her welfare.”

so completely governed was I by the animal passions he had awakened.

stay here for you, Samuel.”

Um caleb?

This time, it was my fingers that dug into his hair. Then his hands were on my waist, lifting me up to him.

The year since our crossing had wrought a marked change in him.

Crossing = to boston?

“Well, I have five brothers—Rest, Thankful, Watching, Patience, Consider—and each one of them the very opposite of their name. But they all went through this, and they all survived it. And you will too, if you follow Atherton family advice: Have Patience, keep Watching, and soon you can Rest, Consider and be Thankful. Or so I Hope.” I smiled at Hope Atherton as he grabbed his sophister’s bever.

So what need has such a minister for the poetry of Ovid, the rhetoric of Cicero and the philosophy of Aristotle? Were not these men pagans, living in the stews of anti-Christ and the devil’s house of lies? Perhaps so. One may say it, in the knowledge of their time and place.

Boring

Yester eve I asked them to bring me my inlaid box, the one I got in Padua the year of my marriage to Samuel.

What

Caleb’s looks troubled me. He had become rail thin. A persistent cough wracked him. In the years of my absence he had grown out of his health by reason of poor diet and too close an application to his studies.

such times, I look about me, amazed that such a restless girl should have grown old as matriarch to such a settled brood.

Now, even as Joel laughed and said kind words to his own kinfolk, I could see his eyes scanning the dock. I supposed he looked for Anne. Their reunion came later, when the Merry family fetched her to the plantation that afternoon. Grandfather presided over their marriage the eve of the following day. Anne had fulfilled her early promise of beauty, her green eyes no longer downcast but flashing, animated at last by a confident and joyous spirit. Joel’s dreamy brown gaze rarely left her face.

Later, when I tried to peer through my grief for any hint of a thing awry, I think that I sensed that the bark sat low in the water. But perhaps that memory is not a true one, just a thought planted in my mind, in the aftermath.

?

“Where is the body of my son?” “Friend,” Folger replied gravely. “Carry the memory of your son alive.” Iacoomis looked at Folger, his eyes akindle. “I will see my son.” Folger put a hand on his shoulder. “My friend, it shall be as you wish. As you wish. But I would spare you. They were several. They used warclubs. Their frenzy was very great.”

Where one loves another as greatly as Caleb loved Joel, the soul does not need words to bring fell tidings. My face, my body, the heaviness of my step—all these things carried the news to him plain. Before any word passed my lips—“shipwrack” or “murther”—Caleb knew Joel was dead.

could not peel my eyes from him, even as he walked on and past me. The set of his shoulders, the ceremonial cap squarely upon his head—and I thought of turkey feathers and raccoon grease, purple wampum and deer hide. I thought of the hands, dirt engrained, reaching so avidly for the book I held. I had begun this journey following him into the hidden corners of his world and here it ended with him crossed over into the brightest heights of mine.

I felt rather for young Jabez Fox, having to follow on from Dudley with the Hebrew oration.

BORING

Well, I thought. You have done it, my friend. It has cost you your home, and your health, and estrangement from your closest kinsman. But after today, no man may say the Indian mind is primitive and ineducable. Here, in this hall, you stand, the incontestible argument, the negat respondens

Finally, I made him out. He was halfway across the yard, leaning heavily against a tree. His back was to me, but I could see that his shoulders shook. For a moment, I considered whether or not to go to him. If he was in grief, he would not want me, perhaps. But then feeling overwhelmed prudence and I hurried on. As I drew near, I realized that it was not grief that wracked him, but a violent coughing spasm. He had a linen hankin I had sewn for him pressed to his mouth. When he drew it away, I saw that it was speckled with blood.

Omg this "education" at what cost?

Caleb did not lack for the best food, but it came late to replenish what town and college life had robbed from him.

There, I heard his fevered ravings as his illness worsened and he slipped in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he would murmur passages of scripture, other times, Latin aphorisms and epigrams would tumble forth from his lips.

Shut up

My pretext was supplied by the fact that Anne, still in deep mourning for Joel, had returned thence, having decided to honor his memory by walking the path he had planned to walk. She intended to start a school for the Takemmy children, and thereby fertilize the soil for the seeds of Christ’s gospel.

In the dim light of his wetu, Tequamuck spoke to me of what he had foreseen—his people reduced, no longer hunters but hunted. He saw the dead stacked up like cordwood, and long lines of people, all on foot, driven off from their familiar places.

Who would follow such a cruel god?

He sang out his death song, and died like a hero going home.

Wtf

But what I do not know is this: which home welcomed him, at the end. Whichever it was—the celestial English heaven of seraphim, cherubim and ophanim, or Kietan’s warm and fertile place away in the southwest, I believe that his song was powerful enough for Joel to hear and to follow him there.

They didnt seem THAT close?

think Bethia Mayfield would be pleased that a woman president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, now presides at commencement. Among those to whom she awarded a BA in 2011 was Tiffany Smalley, the first Martha’s Vineyard Wôpanâak since Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk to complete an undergraduate degree at Harvard College.

Also recognized was Joel Iacoomis, who was awarded his degree posthumously, after three hundred and forty-six years.