When I first came up on him, he was drawing water from the well, and he heard me and turned and spoke to me in his old, slow way, as if we had never been apart and I had merely gone to the house for a moment and was now returned. “I believe it’s time to wash,” he said. “D’ ye want a drink of water first, Owen? You look like you could use it, brother.” He picked up a wooden ladle from the lip of the well and dipped it into the bucket and extended it to me.
I thanked him and drank. He was perfectly right, I was dry, and at that moment, although I had not known it, preferred a cool drink of water to just about anything else. Refreshed, I set down the ladle and grinned and laid my hands on his shoulders and said how good it was to see him, as indeed it was. I loved Fred — we had been boys together, and I had loved him and had felt protective and custodial towards him long before I was conscious of there being any basic difference between us. We shared the same mother, he and I, and had marched off to school together, and had played and then worked alongside one another for years. I knew the shape of his eye, his inner face, better than that of any other human being, except perhaps Father’s, and what you have once known so well you must love always.
Together we lugged water back to his hut, where we washed off the day’s sweat and dust, his from the fields and mine from the road, all the while talking in our old, laconic way. He was in adulthood like my childhood imaginary friend, his namesake, had been. It was only in Fred’s company that I did not feel tongue-tied and conversationally inept and thus could speak in the manner that felt natural to me. Freed of my usual vanity and fears of sounding dull-witted, ill-educated, and rural, I could speak slowly and obliquely, and by indirection say and find true direction out. In speech, Fred and I were both oxen, but unlike me, he was an ox who never tried running with the horses. He drew his load of thought and feeling at the same steady, slow pace and direction, regardless of who accompanied him or whatever rocks, stumps, and gullies got in his path.
One by one, he asked after Mary and Ruth and the younger children in North Elba, and I reported on each, honestly, if obliquely, for the direct truth about each could not be said without making a narrative the length of a novel. Mary is nursing Ellen, the new baby girl, I said, at her age more worn out by the pregnancy than the birthing and glad that her other female children are now old enough to take her place in the kitchen. I told him that Ruth was living nearby but was pretty much taken up with meeting her new husband’s needs, which I described as complex if inconstant. Watson was in love with a religious girl, a Methodist, had gotten religion himself, and was building a mill, which he hoped would make him rich. Salmon was improving the scruffy local apple trees with cuttings from trees from Connecticut, and Oliver, though barely fourteen years old, had gotten hot with antislavery fever and was running fugitives night and day, and when he was home he was usually asleep.
And so on down the line I went, until I had made small portraits of everyone, except, of course, for Lyman and Susan, whom I did not mention and of whom he did not ask. He knew about their presence in our life, naturally, but he had never met them. To Fred, they were like so many of the Negroes who had briefly resided with us at one time or another over the years, invited in by Father for asylum or merely to rest during their long, dangerous journey out of slavery. They were more the continuing context than the content of our lives, and since Fred could safely assume that our context was unchanged, he did not need to ask after it or be told.
He made the two of us a simple supper of cabbage soup and rivels, which was very good with biscuits, and while we ate, he reported to me about the sheep, which he referred to as his sheep. Afterwards, we were silent for a longtime, until finally Fred pursed his lips thoughtfully and furrowed his brow and said, “Why’d you come all the way out from North Elba, Owen?”
“Well, the truth is, the Old Man’s finished up his association with Mister Perkins,” I said.
“Oh. That right?”
“Yes. And he wants me to bring you back up there.”
“He wants me to leave my sheep and go with you?”
“Yep.”
“Oh,” he said, as if it mattered not in the slightest to him where he went or why. He lit a tallow candle and stretched out on his pallet and opened his Bible and began to read in it.
I sat by the stove on a three-legged stool, wondering how long it would take us to arrange properly for our departure from this place… if we would have to hang around until Mr. Perkins hired himself another shepherd… if it would be adviseable for me to go on down to Hudson for a few days to visit with Grandfather and our other relatives… if John and Jason had left any of their possessions with Fred, or did they take everything to Kansas with them, and how did one do that, transport so much so far… just letting my mind drift idly, when suddenly Fred shut his Bible and in a loud voice announced, “Owen, it’d be best if I didn’t go with you.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, the fact is, I carry within me a great many lusts. And so long as that is true, I do not care to place myself amongst other people,” he explained in his slow, careful way. “Especially amongst girls and women. Here in my cabin and out there in the fields alone, I ain’t so tempted as when I’m with other people. Particularly those of the feminine persuasion.” He opened his Bible again and read aloud: Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. He leafed ahead to another passage, obviously much-read, and recited, Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. “You see, it’s because of my lust, Owen, that my seed doth not remaineth in me. I can’t keep it inside me. I am not yet born of God;’ he pronounced.
I did not know what to say then. We both remained silent awhile, until finally I asked him, “Do you pray, Fred? Doesn’t that help some? You know, with keeping the seed inside and all.”
“Yes, I pray a heap. But it don’t do any good. It’s been better since the others left, though. John and Jason and their families. Since then I’ve been able to move out here and be by myself and have mostly holy thoughts. No, I ought to stay right here where I am, Owen. It’s for the best. I know that.”
“Father won’t permit it” I said firmly. “C’m’on, Fred, you know if I go back without you, the Old Man’ll come hopping all the way out here to fetch you himself. And he’ll be mad at us both then. Up there in the mountains, you’ll be fine. The Adirondacks is still a wilderness. You can build yourself a hut there as well as here,” I told him, and gave him to understand that he’d be even more alone in North Elba than he was here in Akron.
“No, Owen, that ain’t true. All the whole family’d be around me. It’s the way we are. Remember, ‘Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’“
“Come on, Fred, you’re sounding like the Old Man;’ I said. “Thumping yourself on the head with the Bible. Ease up on yourself, brother. You’re the best of all of us.” Then I repeated Father’s charge to me and declared forcefully that we’d speak to Mr. Perkins in the morning and make our arrangements to leave here as quickly as possible. “They need us back at the farm,” I said, lying a little. “Not out here tending Mister Perkins’s flocks and arguing theology and sin all night.”