Russell’s Knob, New Jersey
1933
I.
The homestead is noisy with bird calls. Who is the particularly worrisome visitor who is disturbing his sleep, his waking? Robert’s mother would know the name of each bird at a snap. Robert’s mother was fond of birds and was delighted with them. He feels uneasy here now, on this land, surrounded by chirping and singing.
His mother would know it by its voice. They are uncertain. Which is this persistent chatterer? When they hear it and try to catch a sight of it, it has flown away. Robert is certain this particular bird means to harry him. He has decided that. Pearl, his wife, is unbothered by the birds. She sits with her coffee and The Crisis Magazine on the porch and is enthralled with their swoops and dances between the tree branches between her forays into the pages. She’s heard all of the fanciful stories Robert’s mother told about the great bird-calling prowess of the women of Russell’s Knob. His mother attested that Dossie Smoot, doyen of Russell’s Knob’s birders, who’d begun her life enslaved on a Maryland plantation, could mimic the songs and titters of every bird that flew. What most intrigues Pearl about the stories of Russell’s Knob is the absolute certainty of the storytellers that all of the earth’s birds and fish and game animals and hilltops and gullies, and rivers were within the imaginative purview of the people of Russell’s Knob. They held nothing back in describing their world. It was all and everything there was, was the right and true world. Oh, but Pearl loved the idea of that certainty, that power. Russell’s Knob had been a powerful place. Pearl looked through the birding materials belonging to her mother-in-law. Well, of course, birds would be on hand to see Mother Lucille settled. Lucille Murtaugh had loved their company, had drawn and recorded them in great detail. Though he was not in the mood to admit it now, Robert had always been delighted by his mother’s drawings of the birds of Russell’s Knob. They were shown to all of their children. Poured over by the children. Ooh-ed and Ah-d over.
It was said that, in his later years, Duncan Smoot, Russell’s Knob’s legendary underground railroad conductor, the man who’d brought the child Dossie to freedom and married her, had trained a kestrel to hunt squirrels for his stew, a much beloved dish in the highlands. Lucille Murtaugh disputed this saying that the kestrel had been trained to keep control of bats and mice and voles and such animals, as well as insects in the summertime. Folks in Russell’s Knob fed and trained birds in those days and carved their forms onto fence posts. Pearl thought it was a pity that only a few of these beautifully carved posts remained. For their part, the birds had remained abundant in Russell’s Knob though most of the people had moved into other towns around the turn of the century. It was hard now to imagine the heyday of this settlement. What Robert and Pearl actually knew of those times was passed down in stories and Robert’s mother’s collections, her diaries, bibles, other books and artifacts of the town. There were collections of quilts and kitchen utensils and machines for planting and cultivating and food preservation and preparation. And there was a sizeable collection of photographic prints, plates and cameras belonging to Robert’s grandfather, Ismail Murtaugh, who had an early interest in photography.
It still surprises Pearl to comprehend the breadth and depth of Mother Lucille’s scholarship. Robert’s mother wrote a complete history of the town in 1920, the very year that women got the vote. She, a colored woman, had endeavored and done it: written about a “colored” town that existed as a refuge from slavery and the tyranny of the north. And she had published her book! Lucille Murtaugh had also founded The Williams–Murtaugh Institute for the Education of All Colored Women, the place that changed Pearl Miller’s life. Pearl had always been rapt in the stories of her husband’s family. Robert snorted and pronounced some tales entirely apocryphal in the worst way and was impatient that his mother kept repeating them. But Pearl’s secret had always been that she was as enamored of Robert’s mother as she was of him and marrying him meant having Mother Lucille for herself, too. Mother Lucille, Lucille Murtaugh, was a woman of stalwart stature, of soft bosom and erect posture. She was compassionate, intelligent, and courageous and she gave herself to countless children, mostly girls. Pearl had been one of these and she was rocked by the loss of her mother-in-law. Robert was devastated and she was worried about him. Pearl understood that her husband had been shaken to the core by his mother’s sudden death. She was an active, busy woman with great energy and seeming vigor. She had simply said, “Oh,” and died with her hand on her chest as if patting at her heart.
Pearl wondered about Duncan Smoot’s kestrel. Was that the lovely, articulate bird that perched, hovered and swooped about the place? The very bird of the legend? Not at all likely. But a descendent? Still, the presence of the kestrel – or a bird she thought was a kestrel – yes, a kestrel – seemed to further unsettle Robert. First Robert was upset by something he’d read in his mother’s diaries and then by the sudden death of his mother’s dog, Rilla, and then the persistent, bleating call of this hovering raptor. Is it harrying them as Robert snapped peevishly? She didn’t believe birds had that kind of intention generally. Despite his skepticism about magical relationships with animals, Pearl thought that Robert did believe birds were peculiarly powerful here and that the dog had died of a broken heart. But this could not possibly be the same kestrel that Duncan Smoot had trained. Old Smoot’s bird would not roost or perch here but would be further up the chain at the Smoot homestead. The settlement had always had, for the sake of safety, a circuitous, ambiguous layout to guard against a complete burnout. How long did these birds live? Was this one a descendent of that storied falcon? If so, it is only after small rodents, bats and bothersome insects and has Pearl’s invitation to stay and have a good dinner.
Pearl and Robert had been companions since Pearl came to the Institute. She was a ten-year-old drawn by the sounds of great activity inside the large building and by the heat from the basement boiler on the frigid night that she was abandoned on the streets of Washington by her mother’s fancy man. Discovered by the janitor in the morning she was brought to Mother Lucille, hired as a part-time char girl, fed and clothed and educated at The Institute. Robert and Pearl became confidants, siblings, allies, rivals, lovers, spouses and parents. It was Pearl who at first declined to marry, saying that Robert should choose more advantageously. But Robert was so shocked that he might have to live with someone other than Pearl, that he proposed an elaborate wedding. To the delight of all and the surprise of none, Pearl and Robert married in June of 1906.
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
The kestrel is the smallest and most common falcon in North America. It varies in size from about the weight of a blue jay to a mourning dove. It ranges to South America and is well adapted to different habitats. Both sexes have a rufous back with noticeable barring. Its plumage is colorful and attractive. The kestrel hunts by perching and scanning the ground for prey to ambush, though it also hunts from the air. Sometimes it hovers in the air with rapid wing beats while homing in on prey. Its diet typically consists of grasshoppers, insects, lizards, mice, and small birds. It nests in cavities in trees, cliffs, buildings, and other structures. The female lays three to seven eggs, which both sexes help to incubate.
Pearl showed Robert the picture of the kestrel in his mother’s drawings. “This is your noisy birdie, Robert. He has the rufous back that Mother Lucille speaks of. Perhaps it is a female though. Both have the same brick-red color and markings on the back. The female is larger. Imagine that,” she said, satisfied to have given him the identification and oddly satisfied that the female kestrel was the larger. He was unmoved. His face remained grim. The loss of his mother’s presence was incomprehensible. She had never been ill or near death. Surely that could not actually be true. Certainly, she had been ill once or twice in her long life. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her helpless or even very still for very long. She was an energetic, busy woman. And she had never gone away from him, she had never sent him away or cared to leave him behind until now, so suddenly, so cruelly. He didn’t sleep well, and the blasted bird started vocalizing at the first whisper of light, on the lip of first light.
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
Robert slipped on a pair of soft, doeskin shoes, the foot coverings of his childhood summers. Mother always exhorted him to wear them and to take care of running over splinters. Only here at the homestead did Mother allow him to slough off his collars and cuffs and run about with abandon followed closely by one of the dogs. Mother was different here, too. Here she took off her corset and stockings and went about in plain cotton dresses and aprons with large pockets filled with cookies and nut pieces. She was a different mother in the summers at Russell’s Knob. Yes, it was in summer that she made most of her drawings of birds. Yes, these were their happiest days. They were alone together and carefree. Mother in her soft summer dresses with breezes and bird calls and berries. Yes, tramping and hiking through these woodlands as though they were first peoples here. But Mother knew the paths very well. She could find her way on all of the paths between the houses in the chain that comprised the outsider settlement. Yes, Mother imitated the songs and calls of birds for him in the old way, the way the old women of the town used to do. Cheer-up, cheerily, cheer-up, cheerily. He would clap and laugh and say what a perfect mockingbird she was. Mocking, mocking, mocking. That was their joke. She would demur. She would insist that Dossie Smoot was the absolutely perfect bird caller and that often a songbird would come close enthralled and join her singing. Yes, they were the perfect days, the days before the school and the students. These were the days before even Pearl had come. Before all of these came, Mother was his mother alone. She belonged to no clever girl needing encouragement or desperate child needing food and shelter. His mother alone. And she was his carefree, bird-calling, pockets filled with surprises Mother. Yes. Yes, at summer’s end, Mother made jam that they took away with them. She was fussy about the jars, wrapping them and packing, coddling them so none would smash on the train ride home. Yes, she was fussy about him, too, on the train home to Washington. Brushing his hair flat, brushing his lapels, picking lint off his clothes, inspecting his hands and fingernails she coddled him on the train ride home, too, her arms around his shoulders. Yes, he lay asleep against the side of her breast, under her arm in a carefree world theirs alone.
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
They called them fairy paths. Was it just Mother’s word for them? No, it was a term used in the whole town. He wasn’t certain of the reason. These were the paths between the homesteads in Russell’s Knob and they were circuitous and wound through the forested areas. Were they really enchanted paths? No. But they were called enchanted paths because the soft, mossy understory was not tamped flat from use, left no footprints. They were incomprehensible trails between one point and the next. They were learned steps that depended on one recognizing topographical features and counting out turns and twists. They were for ambling or obfuscating. They had served both purposes. At first light . . . No. On the lip of first light . . . Ah! They said that often in Russell’s Knob for they could capture that exact moment the light came over the hilltops. On the lip of first light, Robert set out from the house and followed a path that he’d followed his mother along long ago in the summertime. No, no, no. He lay his head on the ground at his mother’s grave. In some weeks the granite headstone will be placed. Now only a wooden placard with her legend marks her spot. He lay stretched out on the ground beside her and wept loudly, wetting and pummeling the ground.
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
He sat up suddenly. The kestrel, the blasted kestrel made strangled, bleating sounds as if its middle was being squeezed in the maw of some animal. In the cemetery, kneeling before the headstone, he confronted the words.
Lucille Murtaugh
1868 – 1933
He never would have wished her to have a painful, lingering illness. But the abruptness, the cruel shock of watching her drop dead at his feet has taken his breath. No chance to beg her pardon for disagreeing with her. No chance to say farewell. Since then he feels as though he must gasp for air. His body is wracked. Of course, Pearl is right to say that he must bear up and assume his mother’s place at the school. It’s the job he’s trained to do. His mother has prepared him. She never prepared him to be without her though. And she never managed to tell him all of the truth about his birth. It was so shocking to have discovered the facts that his mother had concealed – why? – all of his life. Yet the facts were so easily discovered after she’d died. They were there in her journals, her blasted journals! He’d been obedient. She’d forbade him never to read her journals and he’d obeyed. He’d never read them while she lived. The identity of his true mother and father! Mother had lied to him. Now he realized he was no different from any of the other waifs and orphans she took in over the years. Apparently, he was only the first, the only one that she gave her family name to. He had always felt a little bit closer and more vital to her than the others, the true orphans, the waifs like Pearl who claimed her maternal attention. He’d thought that he had the more primary claim to her because of his familial links. He’d even thought he’d been Mother’s love child, a token of a great and fatal affair. Now even that silly, romantic notion seems sullied by Mother’s web of inventions. Now to discover so many lies!
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
Those blasted journals! And the letter! So innocuous yet filled with shocking revelations. Had she always meant to keep this information from him while she lived? Or did she die suddenly before she could reveal these facts? However small the significance in his life’s unfolding, it is a cold shock to know that he is not Mother’s own child or even connected directly to Mother as he’d always assumed himself to be.
For Robert, upon my death:
Robert, legally your surname is Closter. Your father, Reuben Closter, married my cousin Mary, your mother, on her deathbed. She did not survive the day. You did. He left. Mary and I met Reuben Closter at Oberlin College in 1886. Reuben Closter and Mary began a courtship during our second year at Oberlin. Rules were strict, but Mary managed a rendezvous with Reuben, and the matron came in upon them in compromising circumstance. There was a furor and Reuben and Mary were asked to leave the school. Mary had fallen completely under the spell of Reuben Closter. When they left Oberlin, she was confident that he intended to marry her. Reuben abandoned her in Cincinnati. She was, by this time, pregnant. The poor girl was left alone and destitute. I do not know how she survived all those months. I received two letters from her. She wrote brightly, cheerfully. I had no reason to be concerned. Then I received a telegram from a boarding house proprietor who said that Mary was pregnant and alone and she was reluctant to take responsibility. I came immediately. Within three days of my arrival, Mary began a long, arduous labor. I made inquiries to find Reuben, and I engaged a doctor. Mary was in the midst of her labor when Reuben arrived at her bedside. He married her during a lull in her ordeal. I knew that Mary would die and I was profoundly and irreparably affected by her loss.
We went to Oberlin because Father had attended there. Mary did not wish to study to be a teacher. She was too shy to express her own opinion on any matter. I twisted her arms to go with me to Oberlin knowing my parents were wavering at the thought of my going alone. The two of us together would be safe and beneficial and our town needed teachers. Reuben Closter was handsome as you are. He was young, tall, slim, black-haired, biscuit-colored with hard black eyes that were then called beautiful and he was of a lively temperament. He was in school to become a preacher, but after he left Oberlin, he continued schooling as a mortician.
I understand that you may find it difficult to learn facts about yourself in my papers. Now that you are reading this, now that I have gone on, every single person who was affected by your birth has died. You are naked before no one. But, Robert, perhaps I do regret not explaining all of this to you before now. I am convinced I did the right thing, the compassionate, the heroic thing. It is only because I am committed to the preservation of our family’s true history that I put these facts before you. Mary’s parents and I invented an entire web of lies to cover up the truth. We said that Mary had died from influenza. Many people had that season. I stepped in to say that I would claim you. Mary’s mother, Naomi believed I was responsible for the quagmire into which Mary had slipped and she was unsympathetic toward you. Among people who aspired to propriety, having a baby outside of marriage was deemed low. We were concerned with rising from indignity and disrespect. We Negroes felt we must show the white man that we, too, honored the Christian tradition of chastity before marriage. Many people were hard upon this point. But there were other traditions that would not allow our people to give an orphan or an outside child to the state home or the police. Nor would we put them out to starve. So, in our town, there was traditionally an unmarried Auntie who took in the child of adverse circumstances or tragic death and provided for them. I chose to be that Auntie and more for you, dear Robert.
Yes, Robert, I created a false story. I embraced you and called you Robert Murtaugh. My wonderful father had no objection.
Your Loving Mother
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
III.
Beloved, Robert, how handsome you are on this early morning. The kestrel is here. Ah! The yellow goldfinch is a lovely visitor, a favorite. You must remember that it is a particular favorite of mine. Did you follow it here? The abundant colony of lily of the valley has perfumed the air. It must have drawn you. Look! The tiny bells hanging over. I know that you are as fond of it as I am. You pretended that a kingdom of ants used them as parasols.
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
Oh, Robert! Please. If you will permit me to say so, wailing is unmanly. Robert, listen to me! Pshaw! Exhortations don’t reach you. I forget. I must press the kestrel to call out with alarm to get a rise from you.
Kee, Kee, Kee
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
How often have I warned you about setting fire? You do it badly, carelessly. My mother could set a small hot fire to boil her coffee in the blink of an eye and set a hearth to roaring in just about no time. I do like that expression now: just about no time. Robert, please do not burn my journals! This is a plea from all of your ancestors, me in particular. I know what you are planning, and I know why. I’ve blown away your matches several times with my breath. That was not the wind.
Kee, Kee, Kee
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
Now do not shout in this place! This is not the place for noisiness, Robert. This is the place for sadness, for remorse, for apologies, restitution, resolution, and finally transcendence. I regret not knowing this sooner, but sooner no longer matters. And regret? When I was with you, I did not have – as you do not yet have – a complete understanding of the so-called Afterlife. It is a misnomer, I think. Neither heaven nor hell. There is. Only. Is.
Perhaps you feel my breath on the back of your neck now? I have always loved to buss that place upon you, Robert. Your mother held you only for a moment, her last one. I guided you and cared for you and have left you endowed with a calling. Don’t burn my secrets. Forget this plan. Forgive me.
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
Don’t be angry long, Robert. You are an exemplary man and Reuben Closter was not a man to emulate. A boy becomes a man when he is given good guidance. I gave you a far better guardian in commending you to the care of my exemplary father, Dr. Ismail Murtaugh. Father fought heroically in the War To Free The Slaves, was a doctor, was a scholar of photography. In the spirit of absolute frankness, I must admit that I was surprised to learn, upon my death, that I am the sister of a Florence Crockett, who is also the natural child of Ismail Murtaugh. She is likewise deceased and favors father quite a bit. She was a schoolteacher. All of which goes to say that our parents are not fully known to us. All persons have secrets, Robert.
We are helpless here. We cannot change what has been.
You are still unripe for The Afterlife, Robert. Your ancestors are an imperturbable bevy. We would not hurry you along by even one second. We understand that all of our souls are together even now. A conundrum, dear Robert. Time does not pass here. My friends the kestrel and the goldfinch do and there is lily of the valley in abundance. Imagine that! I do think of you and smile when you are thinking of me as you snap open your watch that is engraved For Robert. Â Love Always, Mother.
Killy, killy, killy
Killy, killy, killy
Robert, put the bundle of papers, the kindling, and the matches back into your pocket. Brush the newly turned dirt that smells like a peat bog from your cheeks, your arms, your pants, and from your moccasins. Follow the yellow goldfinch, your mother’s favorite, back to the porch, its flitting color easily seen. Per-tee-tee-tee-tee! Easy to follow all the way home.
