Father said, “Now, let me say it again. Whosoever is fearful or afraid, let him depart from us. But if ye depart from us, say nothing of what ye have heard here. For ye have also heard what shall be done by us with traitors.” There were at that point a final few who made for the door, unbolted it, and disappeared into the night, leaving behind still more than thirty warriors to bind ourselves together and march behind Gideon against the Midianites.
“The Lord hath instructed us to reduce ourselves to this number,” Father said, “so that when we have accomplished our task, we will not say, ‘Mine own hand hath saved me.’ We must thank only the Lord,” he pronounced, and many in the group sang out, “Praise the Lord! Praise Him!”
Whereupon Father said, “This which I shall now read to thee is the Agreement, and when I have finished, come forward one by one and sign on this sheet of paper below it, so that we shall be bound together in this work as brothers and sisters, sworn to the death of every one of us.” He told us then to place our right hands over our hearts, which we did, and in a loud, clear voice, he read the Agreement, which, though I had myself written the words for him in the late hours of the previous night, sounded to me as fresh and new as if I had never heard them before.
As legitimate citizens of the United States of America, trusting in a just and merciful God, whose spirit and all-powerful aid we humbly implore, we pledge that we will ever be true to the flag of our beloved country, always acting under it. We, whose names are hereunto fixed, do constitute ourselves a branch of the United States League of Gileadites. We pledge that we will provide ourselves at once with suitable implements of war, and will aid those who do not possess the means, if any such are disposed to join us, to acquire and do the same. We further invite every colored person whose heart is engaged in the performance of our work, whether male or female, young or old, to join us in that work, which is the defense of our Negro brethren against the man-stealers and any of those cowards who would aid and abet them. All able-bodied men and women shall be prepared to die in this effort. The duty of the aged, infirm, and young members of the League shall be to give instant notice to all other members in case of an attack upon any of our people. Until some trial of courage and talent of able-bodied members shall enable us to elect officers from those who have rendered the most important services, we agree to have no officers, except a treasurer and secretary pro tern. Nothing but wisdom and undaunted courage, efficiency, and general good conduct shall in any way influence us in electing our officers.
Father laid the paper on the low table where normally flowers for Sabbath services were placed, flattened it with his left hand, and, saying, “So sworn, John Brown” wrote his name with a visible flourish. I then stepped to the table and took the pen from him, and saying the words “So sworn, Owen Brown,” with trembling hand wrote my name below his. One by one, the rest came forward, following the procedure exactly. So sworn, Alexander Washington. So sworn, Harrison Wheeler. So sworn, Shadrach Benchforth. So sworn, Mary Benchforth. So sworn, Felicity Moone. So sworn, Ebidiah Smith. And on down the line, until all of us had sworn and signed.
Then, bearing the document in hand, Father walked from behind the table where he had stood throughout and came to stand beside us, facing the nave of the sanctuary, where a small cross was attached high on the white-washed wall, and he led us briefly in prayer, humbly beseeching the Lord to protect us in this mighty task. “Make us hard, Lord, hard, like a stone, so that we shall crush and make bleed the teeth of the slavers when they bite down upon us” he prayed.
When he had finished, we all said our amens, and the Gileadites somberly filed out to the vestry and into the night. Father and I lingered behind to put out the lamps and candles, and when everyone else was gone and we were alone in the darkness of the vestry, I said to him, “Who’ll be the treasurer and secretary pro tern? And what will his duties be?” I couldn’t see much use for there being a treasurer, as there were no dues or other monies involved with the League, and I was unsure of what a secretary would do, as it was difficult to imagine a secret society engaged in much correspondence or keeping minutes. But the night before, when composing the Agreement, I had been ordered by Father to allow for that one officer, and so, without understanding, I had written it in. Now it seemed important. Naturally, I myself wished to be that person but, because of the honor it implied, dared not hope that the job would fall to me.
“The treasurer and secretary will safeguard these documents,” he answered, and he placed the Words of Advice and the Agreement with the signatures into my hand. “He will not deliver them to the enemy, Owen, even under pain of death. And when the time comes, as it surely will, that we receive monetary support for our work from our white friends, he will record such funds as we receive and will control their expenditure.”
I said nothing, and when Father had closed the church doors behind us and we had stepped down to the dark, deserted street, I carefully rolled the documents so as not to crease them, and we began walking side by side towards the warehouse. Finally, I could stand it no longer, and I said to him, “So are you making me the sole officer for the Gileadites?”
“For now, yes. I’ll speak of it first to the others, but I’m sure they’ll agree to it. There’s no one better qualified for the task. Do you mind?” he asked.
“No. No, I don’t mind,” I answered off-handedly.
But I remember thinking, At last! It has begun! At last, the killing has begun!
The wind outside my cabin has let up, and I hear mice skittering in the darkness across the warped, dried-out floors. Their bodies against the boards — though each weighs less than an ounce of fur and twigged bone, a mere thimbleful of flesh — seem nonetheless immeasurably realer than mine, weightier, as if the bit of stale, dusty air displaced by their tiny bodies and disrupted by their rapid movements alongside the crumbling walls exceeds in volume anything my body is capable of filling or disturbing. Yet I know that my presence, despite its frail ethereality, alarms them. The animals see and hear me the way they see and hear an ominous shift in the weather long before it occurs. I am like a ghost and in the course of this relation have traveled far and wide and back and forth in time, a dark spirit growing steadily darker, transported by memory and articulation and the compulsive direction of my thought. I can no longer say, Miss Mayo, whether I am in my cabin now in Altadena or our old house in ’89 in North Elba. Darkness merges time and place.
Above me, in the bare attic room where Ruth and I and the younger children and Lyman Epps and his wife, Ellen, slept on our pallets, divided one from the other, males from females, like Shakers by a curtain on a string, I hear the dry rustle of squirrels, or perhaps it is a pair of raccoons — it’s the shuffling gait of animals that have wintered inside, and now that spring has at last come to these northern Adirondack hills, they have mated, and the female has dropped a litter of cubs in her nest of sticks and leaves in the leeward corner, where since November she slumbered protected against the arctic snows and freezing winds. My sudden, unexpected presence here after years away has frightened the poor creatures. I hear the female trying to move her cubs to some place up there in the attic where she feels they will be safe, carrying them in her mouth one by one to the corner furthest from where she senses me. She senses the presence of an alien creature, possibly human, a killer, in one of the two rooms below.