The Wreckage of Eden by Norman Lock

Author:Norman Lock
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942658399
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2018-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

HARPER’S FERRY

Remorse—is Memory—awake—

—Emily Dickinson

–1–

“YOU LOOK LIKE A MAN WHO WAS DELIVERED from the belly of a whale, only to find himself washed up among cannibals.”

With those words, you greeted me in the doorway of the Dickinson family “mansion.” We hadn’t seen each other since 1855, but you could not bring yourself to show me tenderness—if not that, then kindness. Always your hand and mouth must do your spiteful muse’s bidding. Carlo wriggled past you and licked my hands, as Odysseus’s dog, Argus, had once welcomed him home from the windy plains of Troy.

“I’ve been in hell!” I said with a jauntiness I did not feel. Men must play their part, regardless of their true feelings, which are often unknown even to themselves.

After the rebellion had been put down, I returned to Springfield and resumed my duties at the fort. In mid-December, I used my leave to visit Charlotte, Tess, and you in Amherst. Your family had moved from North Pleasant Street to a stately house on Main—the Homestead, where you have taken refuge, as if in a storm cellar in the eye of a hurricane.

“You’ve been in ‘Zion,’” you replied. “What news of the Kingdom of God?”

Brigham Young had finally renounced his dream of a Mormon Zion, and the Saints had accepted Buchanan’s pardon for their sedition. Humbled, they had laid down their muskets, sabers, and bayonets fashioned from scythes. In time—where even gods grow old—Zion will forfeit its splendid isolation to western expansion. America’s new frontier will be ruled neither by theocrats nor statesmen, but by another sort of visionary: the plutocrat. Of the three, which will prove the more grasping and corrupt only time will tell.

“No pasó nada,” I said. “It came to nothing.”

“And so shall we all.”

I could think of nothing to say.

“In the meantime, have you brought me some little gift?” you asked in a way that could have been mistaken for flirtatious. “A Paiute blanket, perhaps.”

I reached into my coat pocket and took out a smooth stone, which I’d picked up nearby the body of the dead Mormon, where it might well have lain—obedient to the law of inertia—for millennia.

“A stone,” you said, weighing it in the palm of your hand. “Very pretty.”

“Its name is Urim,” I said in a voice rich with mystical solemnity. “Together with its companion stone, Thummim, it embellished the sacred breastplate worn by the high priest of Israel. Both were lost when Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem.” I was enjoying myself at your expense. “Then, in 1823, instructed by the angel Moroni, Joseph Smith unearthed them on a hill called ‘Cumorah,’ some twenty miles from Rochester. Fitted into silver spectacles, they served Smith as lenses, by which he was able to translate the gold plates of Mormon. The stones are said to possess the power of divination. Perhaps you can use Urim to unveil the truth.”

“The truth is too bashful for common eyes, but thank you, Robert.”

I shrugged. “I’m only sorry that the original diamond has long since turned into common quartz.”

“Even

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