Civil Disobedience
By G. Miki Hayden
"Civil Disobedience"
by G. Miki Hayden
Copyright 2011 G. Miki Hayden
All rights reserved
Thoreau was angry at his Auntie Louisa for bailing him out of the Concord lockup, although he had kissed her nicely on the cheek and had thanked her before stomping back to his one-room cabin. Of course, a person can only stomp for so long, and the walk was at least a two-mile trek in the heat of July. Therefore, some of his annoyance dissipated along the way, and he hoped that the look he had given that kind soul hadn’t been too petulant a one.
A single night in jail when he’d been willing to stay as long as need be. Proudly. For not paying his poll tax over the last six years. He smiled to himself and imagined Emerson coming to visit him in what the people of the Western territories called “the hoosegow.”
“Why are here, Henry?” Emerson would have asked his supposed protégé.
“Why aren’t you here, Ralph?” Thoreau would smartly have responded.
Thoreau smiled to himself a second time. Of course he wouldn’t pay a poll tax funding this unjust war with Mexico. As everyone knew, the conflict was simply an excuse for the slave states to expand their influence. Such was not the whole of the injustice, either—the deepest wrong here was that not enough of Thoreau’s fellow citizens would stand up and put an end to the enslavement of other human beings.
Arriving near to Walden Pond where he’d built his little house on Emerson’s land, Thoreau felt immediately buoyed by the natural setting. Yes, this was how a person ought to live—simply, and in the midst of nature.
But wait, was that a man lying on the ground over there? The fellow seemed to be taking a mid-morning nap. ...And another man crouching right down there beside him. Out for a picnic? Thoreau wondered if he would ever see an end to visitors here. He, who sought only solitude and pristine loveliness, was continually trampled in the midst of crowds.
He came closer, and then, closer still. The man who had stooped stood up with a sudden movement, and Thoreau could see his face quite clearly. The second man was black and the expression he wore was one of fright.
Then Thoreau looked down at the sleeping man. Oh, dear Lord. The man’s eyes stared up sightlessly. The man wasn’t sleeping... He was dead.
“I didn’t do it,” declared the Negro in a rush.
“Oh course not,” agreed Thoreau hoping to convey complete confidence in the other’s innocence. But his heart had accelerated and he was suddenly afraid. Still... if the black man had murdered the dead white man on the ground, no doubt he had a very good reason. Thoreau took in a more careful impression of the colored man. He seemed quite respectable, albeit poor. He wore a shabby, black jacket decorated with the dust of the summer’s road. But being poor was not yet a crime, and Thoreau doubted his own pants or shirt were that much cleaner.
“You wouldn’t be Mr. Thoreau?” asked the colored man.
“I would be,” acknowledged the philosopher. Still rather shaken by the sight of the corpse, he didn’t quite know where to go from there.
“I’m Jeremiah Wheatley.” The accent was pure Southern Negro.
Stepping aside so he wouldn’t have to reach disrespectfully over the dead body, Thoreau extended his hand in sociable greeting. Wheatley hesitated a moment before accepting the gesture and shaking Thoreau’s hand. Was that show of reluctance a matter of guilt, or did Wheatley dislike taking the hand of a white man?
“And who have we here?” asked Thoreau indicating the deceased without exactly pointing.
“I do happen to know who he is,” said Wheatley. “But I didn’t kill him.”
Thoreau crouched as Wheatley had done a moment before and had a look at the body. The dead man had been shot in the chest and a stain of red, now dry, had spread over and around the hole.
Thoreau had seen animals shot and would have expected a lot more blood surrounding the corpse. He pushed at the body gingerly—to raise it up and see if the bullet had gone through the dead man and if the blood had pooled beneath him.
The shot had gone straight through, but the blood hadn’t pooled. That meant the man hadn’t been killed right at Thoreau’s doorstep. He’d been shot elsewhere and dropped off here.
Thoreau, tired from a restless night in jail and from the walk home, rose to his feet. He inspected the colored man again, a man who appeared tentative and anxious.
“Let’s put him under the thick foliage for now,” said Thoreau, a one-time schoolmaster who knew exactly how to handle an emergency. “Then you come in the cabin and we’ll have some tea.”
***
Inside Thoreau’s small but neat, single-room dwelling, he offered Wheatley one of his three hard chairs, and lit the stove to heat some water. “Who then is the dead man?” he asked his guest.
“A slave catcher name of Breslin, John Walter Breslin. I know that because he’s been tracking me and I was told his name.” Wheatley gazed at his hands, which twisted in front of him.
“A terrible man then,” observed Thoreau. But surely even an evil slave catcher was not better off dead. That thought sent him on one of his philosophical excursions, which didn’t pause until he again heard his visitor speak.
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“I know you didn’t,” answered Thoreau gently. “You haven’t a rifle on you.”
The two men sat and drank the China tea Thoreau’s mother had brought for him and looked one another over while appearing not to.
Only minutes later, a loud knock on the door startled Thoreau and set his heart to pounding rather fast once more. But when he got up and saw who was there, he felt relieved. Just Nath Hawthorne. Thoreau gestured him in.
Hawthorne entered, and the men shook hands. “How’s Sophia?” asked Thoreau.
“Oh, she’s good, but I came to see how it is you’re doing. We heard you were arrested yesterday.”
Wheatley startled, and the two white men turned to look at him. Thoreau laughed. “Yes, I was arrested,” he said in good humor, “but my aunt paid my taxes—silly, loving old lady. My guest is Mr. Wheatley, Nath. Mr. Wheatley, this is a friend of mine, Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
Wheatley regarded Hawthorne with some mistrust while Hawthorne regarded the Negro with heightened interest.
“Sit down, Nath. That’s why I have three chairs, you know. Two for guests and one for me.” Thoreau smiled.
Hawthorne sat, but in a second jumped up again and paced. “You remember I’ve been in Salem since April working at the Custom House. I’ve found a place there and now we’re packing up to move.”
Thoreau’s cabin was small and a bit too crowded for Hawthorne’s erratic progression around the room. Come to think of it, Hawthorne wasn’t his usual stiffly composed self. Suppose Hawthorne had shot Breslin, the slave catcher, and had come back to see if the body had been found.
But why would he have left the body at Thoreau’s door? Thoreau and Nath had been fast friends for ages now. Thoreau had planted the Hawthorne vegetable garden and the fellow writers, along with Hawthorne’s wife, Sophia, had spent many hours talking about morality and whether man was capable of it. Hawthorne possessed a fairly dark streak that Thoreau had never really understood.
Suppose Hawthorne, a fellow abolitionist, had shot the man, and knowing that Thoreau was in jail and couldn’t be blamed, had set the body here. Or not knowing at the time that Thoreau was in jail had wanted to cast suspicion on Thoreau. But why? That dark side of Hawthorne might have emerged. Pure evil. Or an unexpressed grudge.
“I’d better get back,” Hawthorne said a minute later. “Just came to check up on... you.”
Thoreau had been about t
o prepare another round of tea and even to break out some of his mother’s tasty molasses cookies. But Hawthorne, after a set of obligatory farewells, was off like a shot.
An odd visit, decided Thoreau. Had the nervousness been over a matter of murder or was it merely due to the impending move?
Thoreau was about to lie down and rest, when he remembered his guest. “The bed will be yours for the night, of course.”
“Oh, no, sir. I couldn’t take your bed,” said Wheatley, and he meant it. When Thoreau, ever the gentleman, urged the colored man to indeed take the soft spot, Wheatley more than declined—so Thoreau gave in.
He lay down to rest, grateful he had lost the fight, for he was tired. So tired that, after a moment or two, he fell asleep and didn’t awaken until after sunset.
***
Rising, he felt disoriented for a moment. So much had happened. And they hadn’t had dinner.
Guided by the moonlight streaming in the window over his bed, Thoreau was able to find the stove and avoid stepping on his visitor who lay on the floor.
Wheatley sat up. “Am I in the way here, sir? I neglected to say I was sent to Concord by a Mr. John Brown in Springfield, Massachusetts. He told me that the abolitionists here would see me to Canada.”
Thoreau had begun frying a slew of potatoes, which he considered solid, filling food. “Mr. John Brown,” he exclaimed. “I’ve never met the man, but I know how strongly he stands in the movement.” John Brown, indeed. Both Thoreau and others here had even sent the man money for his work. Upon this reliable recommendation, Thoreau would do everything in his power to get Mr. Wheatley up to their neighbors in the north.
“When we finish eating, sir, we can bury Mr. Breslin,” Thoreau added.
“Bury him!” Though only lit by moonglow, the black face powerfully transmitted an expression of astonishment.
“I can’t think of anything better to do with the body,” answered Thoreau mildly. Even if Mr. Wheatley hadn’t killed the slave catcher, he would be a natural suspect, and many of the hotheads in the area might be inclined to convict the colored man on the spot. Although burying Breslin in an unmarked grave would be no consolation to the slave catcher’s family, for now that seemed the only solution to the problem.
***
Thoreau kept but a single shovel in his woodshed, and after trundling the body in his wooden cart to a site near a tree he knew, he hove to with the implement. Asking the fugitive to dig first would be a sort of social insult, Thoreau judged. But while he did a bit of physical work now and again—building the cabin, chopping the wood—Thoreau’s stamina was rather poor. He began to cough after digging up only a few shovelfuls.
Mr. Wheatley took the tool from his hand.
“I have a bit of tuberculosis that acts up occasionally,” apologized Thoreau. The night remained hot and both men had begun to sweat.
“Not too deep,” Thoreau advised.
“We don’t want animals to dig up the body,” Wheatley objected.
“No, but still...not too deep.” In a bit, Thoreau took another lung-straining turn, and later did his part a further time.
After burying Breslin, they stopped by the pond. “I often fish at night,” remarked Thoreau, though tonight he didn’t feel the urge to do so. He took off his shirt, however, and leaned over to wash. “You can wash, too, Mr. Wheatley,” he encouraged his guest.
Wheatley hesitated, then stripped to the waist. The man had wide whip marks on his back, and tears sprang into Thoreau’s eyes. How in this seemingly wonderful world around them were such things possible? Were Southerners a different breed entirely than Northerners?
***
Thoreau had no shades on his windows and he awoke with the sun. Mr. Wheatley was already up and sitting in one of his host’s “social” chairs, looking out the other window. Thoreau had but two intentions for today: to find someone who could take Mr. Wheatley north across the U.S. border and to discover who had killed John Walter Breslin.
After a serving of leftover potatoes and the rest of the cookies Thoreau’s mother had brought, the two men shut the door behind them and set off for town. Town was so close, in actuality, that Thoreau went visiting nearly every day. He wasn’t a hermit and not an ascetic, only a nature lover and a scribe.
Not far from Walden, the first person they encountered was someone Thoreau could happily have gone the rest of his life without ever seeing a single time more—Timothy Swinburn, an infamous poacher in the environs of the pond. Swinburn was, moreover, an ignorant reprobate who liked to stand out from the Concord crowd of abolitionists with his pro-slavery stance. Now he arrived walking bold as you please, shotgun on shoulder, toward Emerson land.
Thoreau, a fury boiling up in his gut, came to a dead halt right in front of the scoundrel. “Not on Emerson property,” he told Swinburn, teeth gritted together.
“Oh, no, your honor. I wouldn’t dream of it,” answered the hunter sarcastically.
Thoreau continued staring at the man. Swinburn held a gun; Swinburn often hunted near Walden Pond; Swinburn must have a deep resentment of Thoreau.
But Swinburn wouldn’t kill a man just for nothing; and he wouldn’t have shot a slave catcher since he so approved of their work.
Thoreau released Swinburn and walked on past, though when he glanced back a few seconds later, it was now Swinburn who stared at Thoreau. Or at his companion. Swinburn spat onto the road, but Thoreau turned forward and continued on. “Poacher,” he explained to Mr. Wheatley.
While they progressed, Thoreau began to think about Emerson, for whom he’d worked over a period of several years, living in the man’s house and tutoring his children as well as being a general factotum. All that was fine. What had always bothered Thoreau, however, was Emerson’s patronizing attitude. Might Emerson have picked up on Thoreau’s annoyance and developed, in turn, a resentment of Thoreau? Perhaps Emerson saw his disciple as not being respectful enough. Maybe the great man had wanted to teach Thoreau a lesson.
Just imagining that Emerson had acted so out of character as to seek out the slave catcher and shoot him down, Thoreau went on to consider further. Would Emerson’s counter hostility to Thoreau, who lived on his land and was attended to frequently by Emerson’s own wife, have been enough to drive him to leave the body at Thoreau’s humble door?
The scenario seemed quite a bit farfetched, but so did finding a corpse and a runaway slave the moment Thoreau had returned home from a night in jail.
A few minutes later, they were at the Emersons’. Like Thoreau, Emerson had been a schooolmaster at one time, and like Thoreau, he’d had a tragedy involving a brother. Thoreau’s brother, John, had died of lockjaw in Thoreau’s arms, while Emerson’s younger brother had been sent to an asylum. Then too, Emerson’s first wife had died of tuberculosis. And a few years ago, Emerson’s son Waldo had expired from scarlet fever. Too many hardships, Thoreau thought, feeling guilty that he’d had the slightest ill thoughts about his friend.
Emerson’s wife, Lydia, came to the door holding Edward, the two-year-old, and invited them in.
Margaret Fuller, a fellow writer and one-time editor of The Dial, sat in the parlor with the Emerson girls. Fuller smiled up at the two men when they entered the room. Though never in the best of health, she was certainly “vivacious,” as Emerson liked to say. “I’m sailing for England next month,” she called out. “Going to cover the Continent for the Tribune.”
“The New York Tribune,” Thoreau explained to Mr. Wheatley, not wanting to leave him out of the conversation. Then he introduced the Negro to everyone present: each of the three children and the two young women. Thoreau knew the little girls, of course, and taking a seat by them while motioning his new friend to do the same, he questioned the girls about their studies and bantered with Fuller, before coming to the point. “Is Emerson around?”
“He went to Boston two days ago, but I expect him back later today,” answered Lydia Emerson.
Thoreau would have to admit to himself a
reprehensible pang of disappointment. Emerson hadn’t shot Breslin, the slave catcher. Not that Thoreau would have turned Emerson in to the authorities. ...Nor would he hand Nathaniel Hawthorne over to the law. So why had he wanted Emerson to be the killer? Perhaps to see a stain on the man’s character? That motive could only place a blot on Thoreau’s own evaluation of himself.
The Alcotts of course were just a hop, skip, and a jump away, so after they all swallowed down a rather tart lemonade, the two men rose and took their leave. On the way out, Thoreau whispered to Lydia that they wanted someone to take Mr. Wheatley to Canada, if Emerson should know of the right individual.
***
At Hillside, the Alcotts’ house, 14-year-old Louisa came to the door. Of course Thoreau’s friends had no servants—in part because of their social consciousness and certainly in part because they hadn’t any money. Louisa, peeking at Mr. Wheatley all the while, offered them seats in the parlour and glasses of her father’s favorite beverage—water. Thoreau knew the Alcott daughters very well, having brought them out on nature tramps with the Emerson children when he’d lived over there.
Louisa went to fetch her father in the library, and Amos Bronson Alcott emerged putting on his jacket. When he saw who his visitors were, he seemed to consider not covering his shirtsleeves, but after an evident final debate with himself, he did.
Thoreau made the introductions. “Where are Abba and the other girls?” he asked.
“Mother and the girls went to see the baby, but I stayed home because I might be ill,” answered Louisa. She smiled. “Not really,” she added.
Baby? Thoreau tried to think who that could be. Then it struck him. Of course. Sophia Hawthorne had given birth last month. Between the baby and the move to Salem, that might explain Hawthorne’s nervous demeanor. This time, however, Thoreau felt glad. He didn’t like thinking of Hawthorne as a killer.
He looked at Bronson Alcott in speculation. An optimist and an idealist, a man of innovative ideas and remarkable vision, Alcott didn’t strike Thoreau as the type to take up arms. On the other hand, he was a convicted abolitionist and agreed with William Lloyd Garrison, who demanded immediate empancipation—as did Thoreau.
“Were you out and about yesterday?” Thoreau asked Alcott obliquely, while Louisa again offered around the pitcher of water.