Born
on the riverbank like the other children, Wilhelm Hagerman
had been washed as a baby in the icy spring torrent. Some
said the sudden shock to his small body forced the warmth
from his eyes, and for others the fresher air he'd taken in
with his first cries had set him apart from babies born in
the summer. At the Baptist church Meme claimed that he'd not
fussed when he'd been pulled from his mother, and that slick
with birthing matter he'd already set his foot on the trail
that would drive him from her side. Some listened to Meme,
for even though she was given to proclamations and warnings,
she was the only midwife who'd been present, and it had been
her who offered Wilhelm to the river's icy grip.
Others
remarked on portents that had accompanied his birth. The Howland
farm lost a dozen chickens to a bloodthirsty weasel, the Brown
boy had suddenly been stricken with deafness, and an old white
pine that overhung the brook dropped onto the road even though
there'd been no wind for a week. Heavy clouds circled over
the great bog, and the William horse bucked and nearly threw
John Hallet when he came to borrow a bridle. People crushed
eggs that had been hatched on the day Wilhelm was born and
the Ingrahams would have slaughtered their calf if they'd
been able to find a knife.
In later
years Wilhelm's mother Ida claimed that the intemperate current
went to his blood, spoke to him of other lands upstream, and
with the flotsam of the time, set him on the path that would
drive him from their warm home to wander the wilds beyond
the ridges. Like many in the valley, she had noticed that
the river changed when the ice broke up and tore trees from
the bank. She had seen the weeks-long tumult of the rush for
the sea, and although she turned her back on such flagrant
vitality, she suspected the spring flood wore at the edges
of her carefully prepared nest. Wilhelm was a symptom of that
wearing, and for her that tempered her relationship with her
firstborn.
For Samuel,
the birth of his son was a cause for celebration, and he was
two days recovering from his night of celebratory liquor that
the Perleys made behind their pig barn. He already felt the
strong arms of his son beside him on the farm, and almost
immediately began planning an extension to the stable. "My
son will need a horse of his own," Samuel declared, and he
thought he was rather subtle when he visited his neighbours
in order to find a likely foal. Most understood a father's
myopic delight, and as they walked him to the barn they said
nothing about how the Tuckers had imitated their matriarch
and rumoured Meme's warnings downriver.
Samuel
rejected Meme's claims, and when she returned to help with
the baby's care since Ida was a new mother and inexperienced,
he cursed her off the doorstep. Her back as rigid as iron,
she climbed into her wagon as though it were a mountain and
only when she had her reins in hand did she turn to Samuel.
"Each of your words will follow that boy and close his mouth
to others," she said, her eyes dark with prophesy and her
hair wild as the river weed. "His own voice stilled by your
cursing, that's all he'll hear until the day he leaves, and
you'll not live to see him return."
Samuel
apologized with a chicken less than a day later but the damage
had been done. One rumour chased another like a dog going
after its tail, and although strangers wouldn't have noticed
it, blind as they were to the murmur of the riverbank, an
uneasy note had entered what the settlers thought of as the
melody of their existence. Almost stirred to action by the
talk of prophesy and Wilhelm's strange birthing, some people
contemplated leaving for town. Despite the frailty of his
age, John Heustis said he would pack his trunk, and Ira Ingraham
soaped his harness for the first time since he'd cleared his
fields. The community settled down after a few months, but
many thought the Hagermans had done so much damage that they'd
be a generation recovering. Their statements survived long
after what had inspired the sentiment had been forgotten,
and even in town some people weighed Samuel's grain twice.
Others were ashamed by what they saw as superstition and they
overcompensated. More than once Samuel left a shop confused,
his hands overflowing with ten-penny nails or broad sticks
of butter.
Wilhelm
grew up hearing what was said about him, and although it was
a torment to his mother, it meant little to him. His eyes
were fixed on the horizon, which in their narrow valley seemed
to hover over their house. Even as a baby he either looked
at the wooded wasteland across the river on the border, or
the boundless quiet of the deep forest that surrounded them.
To their dismay, more than a few people noticed that Wilhelm
was enraptured by the broad circles of eagles riding the thermals
on summer days. Even from his crib he seemed to see another
path when the huge raptors went beyond the ridges.
"He's
the dreamer of the Hagerman boys," Meme Tucker said as he
grew older. "He's got it hanging over his eyes like a hat
on a winter day, like moss from a cat spruce. He'll wander
off some day and we'll never see him again."
Meme's
tendency to prophesy notwithstanding, most people thought
little about what she said when she'd jump to her feet to
proclaim or warn during Preacher Ozwald Slattery's droning
Sunday. Her urge to be a preacher had been stifled by those
who argued it wasn't a fit profession for a woman, since it
involved holding the hands of the dying and being responsible
for their worldly goods as well as their souls, but like many
before her, Meme was determined. She pushed Preacher Slattery
aside when the call came to her and the one time he'd decided
to take back the pulpit he'd regretted both the lost parishioners
and his unsteady limp. Meme had the passion, and even without
her gift of sight, most people felt she was a better leader
than Slattery, who'd been found with his hands on a girl's
skirt more than once. Hers was a voice that everyone who lived
along the river knew, and even if she turned it against them,
they'd learned to season her statements with the streamside
mint of good-natured assent.
Wilhelm's
mother took Meme's declarations more to heart. She remembered
the night he'd been conceived and even though she'd turned
her face from the pillow as her husband laboured above her,
she'd been terrified by the comet that hung in the sky like
a warning written on a heavenly banner. She'd protested, pointed
soundlessly to the flickering glow, but Samuel had spent the
day of the eclipse sowing corn, and he was in no mood to be
dissuaded by yet another ambiguous message from the luminous
heavens.
Although
she'd felt nothing when her second son David was quick within
her, Ida knew the moment of Wilhelm's conception. She'd felt
the cells stir and her body, flushed with its first success
since she'd stood at the altar, panted with the import of
new life even as an owl flashed across the window and momentarily
dimmed the lurid comet. Later Ida would tell the neighbour
women, who rough-shouldered their way into her kitchen after
Wilhelm was born, that her firstborn was part star, part bird.
The jest faltered as Wilhelm grew older and, alert as a fox,
spoke from his crib to visitors in the hall who were too astounded
by what he said to remove their muddy boots.
Subject
to vision even while his peers used the morning sun to pull
splinters from their fingers, Wilhelm became an isolate. He
learned to read from the thick family bible, and although
Ida never told a soul, it hadn't been her who taught him.
Soon, even while he played with his food and his hands moved
uncertainly to his mouth, Wilhelm would preach from his high
chair. "Goliath will rise again only to catch his huge shoulder
on the boy," he'd say, his chin smeared with squash. "The
river will run with wine and the Perleys will lose their business
and turn to thievery and raising goats."
Some said
Meme heard Wilhelm's voice in her sleep, and that her prophesy
had always owed more to him than she'd let on, but those closer
to the Hagermans knew the temper of Wilhelm's statements was
rock hard and brittle like a poorly forged axe. Even though
his sentences chipped on the frozen fir of their doubts, Wilhelm
spoke of possibilities and potential while Meme spread the
butter of fear over a people shaking with what the future
might bring. Soon Ida was turning the curious from her door,
and when a Black-Stocking preacher in the full ecstasy of
his faith showed up to rant and curse, she forbade Wilhelm
from speaking to others.
Solitary,
Wilhelm played in the mud of their yard, building from the
trickles of snowmelt a river of his own. He pawed the gravel
with a hoe, forcing the eager stream to twist this way and
that, confined by the tiny banks he'd meticulously made from
sod and sticks. If anyone had asked, Wilhelm might have said
he was building a town, lording over his creation like any
child, but with his mouth clamped shut by his mother's decree,
he said nothing. Instead, he would nod knowingly and return
to his tiny village, scraping gullies and torrents, building
pebble houses and barns, his eyes narrowed with concentration
as if he saw people moving about on their miniature farms.
In his version of the village, the river was a threat, and
more than once he'd judiciously placed stones so a deluge
from a puddle would swamp the houses closer to the shore.
Even if
he'd been able to speak to other children, Wilhelm's cryptic
game would likely have horrified them. They made little houses
and in their solemn way enacted the vicissitudes of streamside
living, but they weren't ready to take responsibility for
their tiny charges. Apocalyptic floods were a terror, and
even if they were dry in their cowhide boots, their minds
would have been sodden with what they'd done until their crying
was beat into sleep by their exhausted parents.
