Lay This Body Down: A Gideon Stoltz Mystery

TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. My servant David, who calls himself David Walton, had permission to visit his wife, belonging to Arthur West, Esq. near the Wood Yard; since then he has been absent, and I have every reason to believe he has made for Pennsylvania.

Chapter 1

GIDEON S TOLTZ, THE C OLERAIN C OUNTY SHERIFF, LOOKED OUT over the crowded church pews. He spotted his deputy across the sanctuary doing the same.

The speaker that evening was a young white man clad in a suit whose sleeves and pant legs were too short for his gangling limbs. Brown hair hung in ringlets to his shoulders, and a reddish-brown beard came halfway down his chest.

His voice, deeper and more powerful than his reedy body suggested, filled the church:

I have sworn to God! I have sworn to THE GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY that I will not cut one lock of my hair, nor a strand of my beard, until the ABOMINATION THAT IS SLAVERY has ended!

As if to emphasize the point, he gave his hirsute head a shake.

He aimed a finger at his audience. TWO MILLION SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND SLAVES IN THE LAND! He strode from one side of the platform to the other, then spun about to face his audience again. YOU! AND I! Here in the North, ALL OF US benefit from slavery as much as do the slaveholders in the South! Our banks loan their lucre to investors in the South. Those same banks accept slaves—ENSLAVED HUMAN BEINGS!—as collateral for loans. We sell our goods and products in the South, letting slaveholders expand their wicked empire westward, planting more cotton and rice and cane—all worked by slaves toiling under an overseer’s lash. We eat rice from the South! We sweeten our coffee with sugar from the South! Our mills weave THEIR COTTON, SOUTHERN COTTON, into cloth!

Adamant has no cotton mill! someone shouted from the audience.

Just as we enjoy the fruits of slavery, so will their bitterness choke us! Slavery is a sin foul as the crater pool of hell. It must end, I tell you. And if we do not end it, SLAVERY WILL TEAR THIS NATION APART!

Earlier Gideon had been hurriedly introduced to the speaker, one Charles C. Burleigh, of Brooklyn, Connecticut, on a lecture tour of Pennsylvania towns. Burleigh had identified himself as one of the Seventy, a cadre of young men dispatched across the country by the famed abolitionist orator Theodore Dwight Weld. Gideon had read about Weld in the newspaper: the man had spoken out against slavery so often and so vociferously that he had ruined his vocal cords.

Burleigh might be on the way to losing his voice, too, Gideon thought.

They say the negroes are HAPPY in the South, HAPPY in their enslavement! Burleigh thundered. That they are CONTENT! I ask you, then, WHY DO SO MANY OF THEM RUN? Do you read the fugitive notices? Do you consider the brutality they convey? ‘MUCH SCARRED WITH THE WHIP!’ ‘LEFT EAR CROPPED!’ ‘BRANDED ON THE RIGHT BREAST!’

Another cry from the audience: There are no slaves in Adamant!

Do you read the notices? Or do you look away? YOU CANNOT LOOK AWAY! THERE CAN BE NO LOOKING AWAY! There can be no neutrality toward slavery, no indifference! Each and every one of us is guilty—GUILTY!—if we fail to demand its immediate abolition!

A man in the audience stood and called out: Why do you come here and agitate? Gideon recognized him as the owner of one of the town’s banks: his belly like a stuffed grain sack, a red face with pouchy cheeks and a habitual frown. You’re nothing but a reckless fool!

Another man rose, pulled back his arm, and whipped it forward. Something sailed through the air and hit Burleigh in the chest. A corncob.

Burleigh smiled and raised his hands.

More men in the audience jumped up. Corncobs flew, some finding their mark. A din of shouted objections. Women hissed—whether at the throwers or the abolitionist, Gideon couldn’t tell.

When a rotten apple struck Burleigh in the shoulder, splattering his coat and making him stagger backward, Gideon strode to the platform. His deputy, Alonzo Bell, joined him.

Enough! Gideon shouted. That’s enough. He and Alonzo stood flanking the abolitionist. A man from the audience came down the aisle and joined them: tall lanky Hack Latimer, a member of the Colerain County Anti-Slavery Society, the group that had invited Burleigh to speak. Two sturdy black men also came forward: Melchior Dorfman, who owned a tin shop in town, and a young wagoner who drove freight.

Men in the audience hesitated, then lowered their arms. The banker sat down; others remained standing. A general grumbling, but no more missiles flew.

Burleigh resumed his speech: We claim that we live in an honorable country. But THERE CAN BE NO HONOR in a republic founded on slavery! BUILT ON SLAVERY! No honor in a nation determined to perpetuate this MONSTROSITY, this disease that is ROTTING THE HEART AND SOUL OF THESE UNITED STATES!

Gideon reckoned that well over a hundred people had packed the Episcopal church, Adamant’s finest house of worship. The pews were full, and listeners stood along the sides and in back. Gideon saw men and women from his own church, Methodist, smaller and humbler, a low log building. He spotted his brother-in-law Jesse Burns, whose face wore the smirk that was Jesse’s version of a smile. He saw his friend Horatio Foote, the white-haired headmaster of the Adamant Academy. Phineas Potter, publisher of the Adamant Argus, scribbled in a notebook; Hosea Belknap, who owned the competing Colerain Democrat, did the same. Gideon recognized shopkeepers, craftsmen, the man who ran the hotel. Several dozen women were present: he glimpsed his own wife True standing in back. Most of Adamant’s adult black residents were in attendance, around thirty men.

Slavery must be abolished! Burleigh exclaimed. NOT NEXT YEAR! NOT NEXT WEEK! NOT TOMORROW! NOW!

Gideon’s eyes settled on two strangers seated beside each other near the back of the church. One looked to be about fifty. He was bull-necked and bald-headed. The other was younger, in his thirties, with a pale moustache and a chin beard. Over the last few days, Gideon had seen the two around town. He had noted the good leather boots they wore and the weathered slouch hats. Now, bareheaded in the church, they sat silently as the abolitionist tried to continue while members of the audience shouted him down.

Humanity cries out against this FOUL STAIN!

You horse’s ass!

Prating fool!

In the sight of God, SLAVERY IS A GROTESQUE SIN—

Wake up, you dough-faced dreamer!

We’ll cut your hair for you, and that beard, too!

And, piercing Gideon’s awareness, a slur that perhaps came from his brother-in-law Jesse and was surely directed at himself: You god-damned Dutch blockhead!

An egg whizzed past Gideon’s head and went crump behind him.

Then a fresh barrage of corncobs, apples, and small rocks.

Gideon grabbed Burleigh by the arm and hustled him out a side door, Alonzo following. Where are you staying? Gideon asked. The abolitionist told him. See that he gets there, Gideon ordered his deputy. Off they went, Burleigh protesting that he must finish his speech while Alonzo hurried him along in the darkness.

Gideon went back inside. Hoots and guffaws, although the hubbub was lessening. Jesse, his brother-in-law, had vanished. Others filed out through the narthex, taking their laughter with them. Gideon didn’t see the two strangers who’d been seated in back.

Adamant’s black citizens stood in small knots at the front of the church, talking among themselves. All except Mel Dorfman, the tinner, who was caught up in an argument with the newspaperman Phineas Potter. Dorfman jutted his dark face close to Potter’s pale one. He held Potter’s lapel with one hand and jabbed him in the chest with the fingers of his other hand. Potter recoiled, blinking. Gideon moved to separate them, but before he could get there, Dorfman let go. Potter brushed himself off and walked away.

What was that about? Gideon asked.

Nothing worth mentioning, Dorfman growled. He was a barrel-chested man in his middle years with a bit of a paunch, gray frosting the black hair at his temples. He turned and stalked off.

True strolled toward home in the dirt street. She glanced up at the stars, floating in a hazy sky. Late April, a warm breeze from the south. Whip-poor-wills chanted from the brushy hills. Toads trilled in the mill ponds strung out along Spring Creek, the stream that gushed forth from the Big Spring, around which the town of Adamant had grown.

She heard someone coming up from behind. She turned and saw her husband.

Gideon put out his arm.

True hesitated, then linked her arm through his.

She was trying. Trying to be a good wife. To embrace life. A year and a half had passed since they’d lost their baby boy, David. True still grieved for her son, but the ache had lessened, sunk deep like an old burn.

She was trying to overcome the melancholia that had visited her off and on for as long as she could remember. Her grandmother, Arabella Burns, was also subject to bouts of depression, which the old woman called the black wolf. Gram Burns had shown True how to use certain plants, rattleweed and skullcap and bee balm, to push back the despair. True had also inherited from her grandmother an uncanny sense that the old woman called the second sight: like her gram, True sometimes had visions and prescient dreams. She’d had one before her baby had died.

Things got pretty tense in that church, Gideon said.

I’m glad you and Alonzo were there, True replied. Otherwise they might have cut that fellow’s hair, or tarred and feathered him.

People don’t like talking about slavery.

Or thinking about it.

At the jail we get plenty of advertisements for runaways.

Her husband’s Pennsylvania Dutch accent made True smile. She wasn’t Dutch, nor were many others in Colerain County, inhabited mainly by Scotch-Irish.

Do you and Alonzo watch out for fugitives? she asked.

Not really. We’re eighty miles from the Maryland line. But I suppose some of them could pass through here on their way north.

What would you do if a person caught one and brought him to the jail?

Gideon hesitated. I’m not sure. I should look into the law, or ask the state’s attorney, just in case.

True gave his arm a squeeze. I hope you would do the right thing.

What if the right thing—whatever it is—and what the law requires turn out to be two different things? Gideon said.

True stopped and turned her face upward. Listen.

From far above came a faint twittering, like old voices whispering secrets: birds calling to one another as their flocks streamed north through the night.

At the house they were greeted with barks and tail-wagging by Old Dick, the red setter who was Gideon’s hunting dog and True’s companion and friend. The dog was on a chain in their yard. True ran her hands through the setter’s fur. She went inside and brought out scraps from the evening meal. Old Dick wolfed them down.

It was early for bedtime when she went back inside, but True easily read the look on Gideon’s face. She slipped out of her clothes and lay down with him in their bed.

After David’s death, they had drifted apart. True had not let him touch her for almost a year.

Now, under the quilt, she let her husband enfold her. He kissed her eyes and cheeks and lips, her neck and shoulders and breasts. And, at last, gently entered her. True liked having Gideon hold her close. She was willing to give him pleasure. But she stayed in a part of her mind separate from this joining. She was not ready to conceive another child, even though Gideon wanted one. Too much to lose, tying up so much love in a new soul that could flit away as quickly as a bird on the wing.

Thanks to Gram Burns, True knew how to keep that from happening.

Ran away from the subscriber, a NEGRO BOY, named GEORGE STEWART, a slave for life. About 20 years of age, five feet in height, of a bright mulatto color. Had on a pair of blue pants, black frock coat, black hat, and coarse shoes.

Chapter 2

MORNING SUNLIGHT SPARKLED AND MIST CLUNG TO THE HILLS .

On his way to the jail, Gideon thought about the anger that the abolitionist’s speech had provoked last evening. And his dummkop brother-in-law, yelling out that he was a Dutch blockhead. Or maybe it was someone else. Lots of folks in Colerain County scorned him because he was Pennsylvania Dutch—the word came from Deutsch, which meant German—as well as an outsider and the sheriff. That he was also only twenty-four years old didn’t help.

He told himself he didn’t care. It was unsurprising for people to resent someone who held authority over them, especially if he wasn’t a longtime resident. Someone who could make them confront the fact that things they did might be wrong, against the law, even downright wicked. He hadn’t set out to be a sheriff, but the job suited him. Because laws needed to be upheld, and justice needed to be served.

Almost four years had passed since Gideon had first come to this place. He had left his family’s farm in settled southeastern Pennsylvania and ridden west on his mare Maude—swum her across the broad Susquehanna to avoid the bridge toll, then taken rough roads into the mountains.

A dark memory had driven his flight: the persistent recall of an event that had happened when he was ten years old. It had changed the way he looked at the world, and at people, ever since.

It happened on a bright midsummer day: they’d been making hay in the fair weather, he had stolen away from the work and gone inside the house all hot and sweaty. The picture of what he had seen there began to form in his mind yet again. He shook his head. As if that motion could eject the vision that was always ready to appear, always ready to trigger grief and fear anew.

He had never told True what happened back then. Many times he had wanted to unburden himself, but something always held him back. Joy, mostly. They had fallen deeply in love soon after they met. They married right away, and True got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. For seven months they had loved their little son dearly—until the influenza swept through Adamant, ending David’s life before it really began.

Gideon kept plodding along in the street, trying to let go of the bad memories. He adjusted his hat so the brim shielded his eyes from the sun. His fine new hat, made for him by the town’s hatter, of brown beaver felt and with its low crown banded by a brown ribbon.

A sheriff needed to look professional, like he knew what he was doing.

At the jail, he checked in with Alonzo and made sure his deputy had gotten the abolitionist speaker home safely. Then he went back out again.

Typical for a Monday, Adamant hummed with activity. People from town and the surrounding countryside entered stores and shops. They called out greetings and stood conversing. Carts and wagons threaded through the streets, horse hooves thudding, axles squealing, harness bells jingling. The scents of burning wood and charcoal mingled with the aromas of meat cooking and bread baking.

Gideon went into George Watkins’s barbershop. Watkins sat on a bench reading the Adamant Argus. Sheriff Stoltz, he said. He rose and set the paper aside. Shave and a haircut?

Just a shave, please.

Gideon hung up his jacket and hat and sat on the stool. Watkins draped a towel over his shoulders and lathered soap onto his face. A person looking in the window would have seen a broad-shouldered white man with even features and sandy hair attended to by a short, wiry black man wielding a bone-handled razor, his pinky finger upraised as he bladed off beard stubble.

I came past your shop on Saturday, Gideon said. You were shaving one man while another man sat waiting. I had never seen them before. Gideon described the man sitting on the stool: white, around fifty years of age, solidly built, with a horseshoe of dark hair ringing the back of his head. The other man had a blond mustache and a chin beard.

Watkins cleared soap and whiskers from the razor against the heel of his hand. Southerners, he said.

Where from? Gideon asked.

Virginia.

Is that where you are from?

No, sir. I’m from Maryland. Bought my freedom in ’twenty-seven. Got the papers to prove it.

Any idea why those men are in town?

They are looking for a boy. Watkins drew back, appraised his work. A runaway.

His name?

Watkins stared at Gideon for a moment, as if weighing whether or not to answer. Finally: The boy is called Leo Waller.

Did they say what he looks like?

Watkins resumed shaving Gideon’s face. Medium brown in color. Thirteen years old, small for his age. They said he knows how to handle livestock, especially horses.

Gideon had met a boy like that. Last summer, in Greer County, the next county south. The lad had stuck out like a sore thumb in a shabby backwoods settlement. But the youngster had given a different name. Gideon searched his memory until he recalled it: Otis. No last name, at least none that Gideon remembered. The boy had helped him out of a dangerous situation when he had been investigating a murder. The lad had asked about Adamant, its colored residents, whether work could be found there. He had claimed to be good with horses.

Those Virginians are staying at the American, Watkins said. They asked me to put out the word. Anyone who catches that boy, they can get a reward. He paused. Two hundred dollars.

Gideon’s eyebrows rose. Most notices of runaways that came to the jail advertised rewards of twenty-five dollars, fifty dollars, rarely as much as one hundred.

Do you know of any boy around here who answers to that description? he asked. Knowing already what the barber’s answer would be.

No, sir. Don’t know of any boy like that.

Watkins set the razor aside. He got a towel from the rack and dabbed the remaining soap off Gideon’s face. That’ll be a dime.

When Gideon left the barbershop, his shaved face felt cold in the breeze.

The American Hotel was new, and it was Adamant’s best house of lodging: three stories, fancy brickwork, a street-level dining room that did a brisk trade. The manager, Curran, stood behind the desk.

I saw you at the speech last night, Gideon said.

Curran wagged his head. He spoke with a brogue: A donkey of a man, that abolitionist.

You didn’t agree with what he said?

Not at all. To accuse us of enabling slavery—an amazingly insulting performance. If you ask me, he got the reception he deserved.

Gideon described the two strangers he was seeking: one of them stocky, the other lean. From Virginia. I’m told they are staying here.

The hotelier pointed to two names in the register. Mr. Tazewell Waller, of Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and Mr. Franklin Blaine of Alexandria. In adjacent rooms on the second floor. Mr. Waller paid for their stay.

Are they in the hotel now?

They are not. Took an early breakfast, and out they went.

How long are they staying?

Paid ahead for the week.

Gideon asked Curran to tell the men that if they wished to talk to him, they should come to the jail. Wondering, as he spoke, why they hadn’t done so already.

He continued on several blocks to Melchior Dorfman’s tin shop. Dorfman was Adamant’s only tinsmith and a leader in the town’s black community. His wife ran a school for children in their home.

Dorfman was at his bench using a hammer and punch to make a starburst design in a shiny rectangle of tin that looked like it would become a cylindrical lantern: several finished lanterns sat on a shelf, along with pans, cups, candle molds, wall sconces.

Dorfman laid his tools aside. Good morning, Sheriff.

Good morning, Mr. Dorfman. Are you aware that two men from Virginia are in town? He described them briefly and gave their names. They are offering a reward of two hundred dollars for a fugitive, a thirteen-year-old boy named Leo Waller.

The tinner’s eyes narrowed and a dark line deepened at the bridge of his nose. I heard that. And before you ask, I don’t know of any such boy in Adamant. Sheriff Stoltz, I voted for you last fall. So did every other colored man I know. Maybe you heard what happened when we went to mark our ballots. A dozen of us walked over to the Diamond together. All of us honest citizens, taxpayers and church-going men. The man who was running the election told us we couldn’t vote.

Dorfman glowered. I was expecting that. I had a copy of the state constitution in my pocket. It says that every freeman of the age of twenty-one who has paid a state or county tax shall enjoy the rights of an elector. Doesn’t say a thing about the color of the man’s skin. The tinner’s voice was tight. You know why we voted for you? Because you have never mistreated us. And we have faith that you will enforce the law.

Thanks for your vote. Gideon tried to keep the puzzlement off his face: he wasn’t sure whether Dorfman was referring to a specific law or was making a general statement.

I’m glad you came in here, the tinner said. Saves me from having to go to the jail. There’s something I need to tell you. Folks have gone missing lately. Colored folks.

Who?

Do you know John Horne? He wears an old blue army coat. A shy soul. Maybe forty years old. John lives west of here, in a cabin on Muncie Mountain. He has a dog that looks like a wolf—a big gray bitch that follows him everywhere.

I’ve seen them.

John walks to Adamant every Sunday, rain or shine, barefoot most of the year to save shoe leather. He gets up before dawn and makes it here in time for church.

Gideon had heard that the town’s black citizens had started their own church. African Methodist Episcopal, he thought it was. A circuit preacher once a month, and lay preachers on the other Sundays. The people met in folks’ homes and were said to be looking to buy a lot and build a real church.

After the service, John stays over with one of our families, Dorfman said. Then on Monday he buys supplies and totes them back home. He wasn’t in town yesterday. That’s two Sundays in a row. Something must have happened to him.

Gideon nodded. "You said that ‘colored folks’ had gone missing."

There’s two more I heard about. A man and a woman. Both light-skinned, mixed race. Dorfman looked down, fiddled with the tools on his bench. From that house owned by Annie Picard.

Annie Picard was a Frenchwoman who surreptitiously sold liquor out of a dilapidated house in Hammertown, as the seamy side of Adamant was known. The house was also a site of prostitution.

Last week, the man and his girl disappeared, Dorfman said. I heard they left their belongings behind. Sheriff, I’m a married man. You won’t find me down in Hammertown. But there’s a rumor going around that those two good-for-nothing folks got kidnapped. Maybe that happened to John Horne, too.

Kidnapped? Why?

Dorfman looked at Gideon as if he were stupid. To take them south. Sell them into slavery.

$30 Reward. A Negro Man named JIM, who calls himself James Myers, he is about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, stout made, with one or two scars on his face, also one on his ancle occasioned by an axe. He is well acquainted with farming and wagoning.

Chapter 3

IN THE SLANTING LATE-DAY LIGHT G IDEON TROTTED HIS BAY MARE Maude down the Halfmoon Valley road. Alonzo followed on his paint gelding, cantering in places to keep up.

The farmer had come to the jail almost bursting with his news: I was headed in to town like I do every Monday. Just poking along, when I saw ’em. Black toes sticking up from under a pile of branches.

Black toes instantly made Gideon think of the barefoot walker John Horne, whom Melchior Dorfman had reported missing that morning.

The farmer, bulky and florid, seemed