The Strange Letters of Amelia, From Nantucket, 1852
The Strange Letters of
Amelia, from Nantucket, 1852
Advance (narrator): The next to true story, “The Story of Amelia,” is told by herself, in a number of letters to her daughter, whom has discovered them after rummaging through the attic of her mother’s house, found in and among other sailor items in a wooden chest, Judith Cleland, of New England, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Amelia, the highlight of her life, and this story, takes place in Nantucket, 1850 – 1852, for the most part, although she spends a decade in Nantucket until she returns to Stockbridge. Judith, is holding the letters, with a few different dates on them, in her hands, about fifteen pages: it is 1872, it is twenty-years since those letters have been exposed to the open air; she is at her mother’s home in Stockbridge at the moment.
She has always been curious why her mother never married, and never talked about her father other than saying he was a sailor, and a hero of sorts to him, and thus, likewise to Judith; Judith is now 21-years old and the letters have to be opened up, so she feels, no matter what, even if it is like opening Pandora’s Box.
It is a story about a man she met, by the name of Gideon Asa Scott (an Irish-Scottish bulk of a fellow, in his middle to late forties).
To repeat myself, Judith finds fifteen pages of letters, her mother wrote and kept for her, not to be read, nor the envelope opened until after her death, she has now brought it to her mother, whom is outside, in the backyard, drinking tea. She lays it down on the table next to her (she is fifty-one years old, Amelia knows right away what it is, looks at her daughter’s eyes) she smiles and says:
“I think you’re old enough to understand why I never married, and to learn who your father really was?”
These were two questions always on Judith’s mind, matter-of-fact; she had asked her mother ever since she was a teenager, those two questions.
On another note, Amelia, had moved with her family to Nantucket for a number of years, it was because of the railroad was being built in that area, and her family thought it best to avoid the raucous and tribulations of the times, and the wealthy had moved in, as did poets and writers.
She had liked writing and had met Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who had wrote such books as ‘Hope Leslie,’ 1827 and ‘Married or Single,’ 1857. She was kind of her idol. Like Catharine, she also was sent to a finishing school in Boston, she was the most talked about female author of her day—this inspired Amelia, and of course, she liked the book Catharine wrote called: ‘Married or Single,’ what it expressed, that being: women should not marry if it involved losing their self-respect, self-worth, identity.
Now I have really said enough to this story, we must now go onto those lengthily letters of hers to find out those two secrets, Judith has waited so long for.
(Amelia is going to read it to her daughter as they sit under an umbrella, sipping tea, but first she makes a statement):
The Letters
Amelia’s Statement to her daughter before reading the letters: “I have read a lot of Cotton Mather in past years; he was very popular when I was a child with my family growing up. Need I say Judith, he was very influential with me, he wrote much, was married three times, had fifteen-children, so I suppose he knew what he was talking about, and put into writing, and many books, and a doctorate degree helped, honorary, but nonetheless, official. He said, “You should be more solicitous that their souls (meaning one’s children) may not be Starved, or go without the bread of life.” I presume some of that bread is understanding the truth, and by telling you the background of those letters, or reading them, shows caring of that nature, especially when you know someone close to you knows and doesn’t tell you—as in the letters you hold in your hand. I felt it would be a bit early to tell you the whole story, how you became you, and perhaps how I became me, or a little more of me, after your father’s death, I was waiting for you to become at least thirty-years old for that news, that is when Christ Himself took up his ministry. Cotton Mather also said in so many words and I hear you cry for understanding: if your dog and child were drowning, whom would you save? A poor example by and large, but it gets to the point. When one’s family member feels under an ill discipline, it is not unusual that it affects other members, so I shall read the letters to you:
Letter One: 1852
The Story
“When I first saw him, more like found him stranded on the beach like a soaked wet rag, or dead seal, and helped him, I said to myself: ‘He looks to me to be an honest and courageous kind of fellow, a sailor, one that would not try to do me harm,’ and once getting to know him, I was correct—for the most part—in my evaluation at first, as well as, he wasn’t too religious which I gathered from the start, unfortunately, but in his quiet way he was a sort of reverential unspoken noble natured person, perhaps a cry for a better worth of immortality, was in his soul…
“He did at the end of our relationship, pretty much make up his mind of what he had to do, and did it, although if you ask me, he had no rest in that anticipation, and beyond human kindness he left me little to hold onto, and hope for in the sense of his return—and for him, he left no definite belief. It is strange how he persists though, on wondering to and fro, around the world on a pile of wood: strange but fascinating at the same time.
“I am thirty-one years old, he is forty-six. There will be no correspondence I fear, between him and I, over our relationship that has lasted only two-years that brought me an abundance of warmth and fellowship. But faded the last season he was with me, which was most recently.
“I liked his name it was different, not his last name but his two other names, first and middle, not real different for an Irish-Scotsman I suppose, Gideon Asa Scott, but different for me.
“When I first found him on the shores of Nantucket, I dragged him a ways, and waited until he was semi conscious, and allowed him to lean on my shoulders, and I brought him to my home, put him naked by the hearth, I found soon after, his resurrection would be complete within a few days. And it didn’t take long for ourselves to get on a pretty much, formal terms.
(You must realize, I am pregnant now, and Gideon never knew this, and I did not know if you were a boy or girl inside of me, perhaps if you are a girl I will call you Judith, I like that name, it seems to have a Romanist ring to it, and thus, you will understand, I’m sure of that; on the other hand, if you are a boy, I dread to tell you, we live in a time, our skirts are made of iron, and the male gender, with all their whoring around, wants to marry a virgin, and I dare say, expects their mother to be one if the father was not properly wed.)
“As I was about to say, before that little interlude, it was perhaps just two weeks, and we became better friends, sociability and our confidence with one another showered in our place!
“Before he left he was or had not been well, of late. And to my guess, suffered from too constant a mental occupation, in pursuit without much success, of whatever he was thinking. Plus, he was drinking, as always, but I did curve that bad habit for him, somewhat.
“For a long while he was happy, and then some kind of morbid depression came over him. Perhaps wanting to go back to the sea, or at least that was, or better yet, is, my conjecture, or better yet, to his wife, Phoebe…whom he said was from New England, not sure exactly where, I surmised from our late night conversations, New Hampshire, he was quite secretive about such matters. My reasoning being, there is an old ruin, ancient archeologically site nearby, deep in the woods and he had mentioned it in relation to Phoebe (“Mystery Hill”).
“When he left he was seemingly not profoundly sympathetic or responsive as he was at first to our relationship that warmth had left.
“As you will know in time, I was born and raised in Stockbridge, moved to Nantucket for a number of years, the railroad had come in and my parents thought it best I live in Nantucket for a decade, and so I did, they feared the raucous, and hard drinking men, and men of no repute might take liberties they were not entitled to.
“When I think of him, it is still with exceedingly warmth and enthusiasm.
“For two-years I had looked into his deep dark eyes, and all I can now see is the story I now live, his story and mine, the one I am telling you, every line to me is a single and sincere longing on my part for him, and for you to know him better.”
Letter Two dated: 1857
Questions
“Here is a question I presume you will be asking: ‘who was he anyhow?’ You are five-years old now Judith and this is my second letter to you thus far.
“For years I have gone over the story me and your father lived, Gideon, He always had a strain on his face, for whaling…a subject rather rhapsody for him.
“But how was he, you will ask, and I will possibly say in passing: he was the ocean, and he left behind the earth, to find the mighty whales, sell their oil, make profit, help the so called original commodity, become what it might become. It might be said of him, as in a fable, he was made out of sterling metal, to me a face imprinted on a coin. And when Dorothea met him, my dear and best friend, she had become very puffed up with smiles, not to count his wealth, for he had none, she bethought herself, she wanted his recognition, with this purpose in view, I pulled him quickly away, like an architect would his plans for a great building, when someone else is peering over your shoulder, that should not be.
“Many a night we passed the evening together, listening to the fresh sounds of the Atlantic with his sailor talk. All jargon to me at first of course, and then I got to know his ways, terminology, and so forth. Actually I started to live his stories, as he relieved them; and it always made for a good stirring evening. He would plough deep into the depths of the ocean bring to surface his rich tales, atheistically. To him it was all a sacred matter, with its exquisite ironies. At times he was on the boarder line of blasphemy.
“As I have not said, but I must, it had already been rumoured in the town of our living together, they all looked at me to no purpose, as if their life was perfect, and undeniable on the right track to heaven’s gates. People are always the more ready to believe the worse of your neighbour, but they’d like to pluck the rose themselves. But as I was saying, or about to say, when I first met him, he was weather-beaten, like crushed marble, his skin like snow, from the long ordeal in the sea. Studded with muscle knobs all over his legs; but on the other hand, when he opened his eyes he saw me, with a gleam, especially beneath his eyelids.
“I do hope you understand, I see you playing at this moment outside on the grass next to my window, as I write, I wish you would have got to know him, perhaps this will help.
“Well, he said he was married, that he had wedded a woman as I mentioned before, named Phoebe, what I neglected to mention though, was she served time in Sing Sing, a prison for women. I doubt he really ever told me the full and true story, it wasn’t his nature to do so, he’d add fiction with non-fiction, to make everything a tinge mysterious. In any case, there were many of those so called prison girls, willing to sleep with the Judges and noble men of the city, sound standing citizens, they’d hide he’d say behind curtains in the prison, and have their orgies.
“Whatever case, he married one he said, and had five-children with her. I kind of frowned on this at first, and then overlooked it, as if there was some truth to it, but most likely, everything had its distortions, and deletions interwoven into it, and generalizations.
“No man had ever put such reality before me, unflinchingly as he did. Conceivably to see my reaction, so I often thought: to see if I got startled.
“He had said one afternoon when we were talking on the porch, drinking lemonade: he said in so many words: his boat had sunk and the ship he was on left him for dead, he was compelled to swim, even unconsciously for hours on end. This I know to be true, for I found him astray, on the coast. And I shall get more into that part of the story, later on, but I must say his sea stories were so good that I scarcely feel he was less of a story teller than Melville himself being a writer, surely, more so than a sailor: he need not have made them any better.
“He was neither a common man, nor that entirely intellectual, or even warm hearted, he was rather a brute of a man, with dirty fingerprints, and he’d leave them all over the house, especially on the walls.
“He was tall, and erect, sincere and somewhat revered or he tried to be with me at any rate, unsure, if he is not a great man in my soul. He seemed to me a man that had seen many things, and explained few, but in his tales he told everything accurately, as he saw them; he had eyes you know not keen eyes, but rather undistinguishable in anyway.”
•
“When he told his tales and in particular his long swim, he was always full of gesture.
“He was not handsome, but brave and manly he was. And once he started his tale he lost himself in it, and somehow he gave it graced and polish. He was, Judith, for the most part backwards you might say, but one could clearly comprehend what he was implying, if his words got into a rambling state.
“He’d give you a strange lazy glance, at the end of each tale as if waiting to get your response.”
Letter Three: 1859
Passion and Pride
“It’s been a few years now, you’re getting bigger, seven-years old now Judith. You are in school this afternoon, and I‘ve been thinking we might be going back to Stockbridge, my hometown, you’ve never seen. But I want to tell you more about your father, and our two-years together, and explain the passion I had for him, if I can in a light form.
“I loved making love to him, he was although a bear in the process, on the other hand, he was respectable being near to, not directly with, an innocence, with his child like mannerisms, and most amiable during the full course of the affair.
“He was in loving making, like he was in his story telling, he got lost in it and there was no stopping him. This he had much knowledge in and I very little, and it was his daily, or almost daily favourite pursuit activity.
“We ate breakfast at 5:00 a.m., sharp. Then we’d take a walk, then he’d say ‘Leave me be…’ and I’d go off some place by myself, after saying goodbye, and we’d meet later.
“We ate late supper usually, and I was always worried of his sleep, he never felt well the next day, if he didn’t get his sleep. The fact is, when your father left he was in a frightfully poor state of health, strain on his face, in his eyes, his mind, afraid to leave, to love, and possibly his body weakened from all those past adventures, and drinking.
“Wherever he was going to go that day, the day he left me, in 1852, which was on one of three ships, it was because he feared if he didn’t, he’d upset his next adventure entirely, as if he was missing something, he knew his work on the ship, nothing else, pride was more costly than he thought, it was, and would be more so, I told myself, that in the future, it would take a toll on him: but working on ships, other than story telling what could he do, I suppose it was a dreadful state of mind to be in, trying to see where he fit in, a condition of anxiety, and story telling was part of his trips, he never read much, perhaps couldn’t.
“The day he left he was more quiet than usual, and I had turned out to be his unpleasant companion. I even told him as we walked down to the shore, ‘Your recluse life on those ships is making you insane.’
“But I knew he was dreaming of those far-off tropic isles, the hard blue waves of the sea, life under the unmoving sun, it was life at its best for him, it was in a way his medicine, if only he could curve his alcohol intake on these adventures of his, he did while staying with me, but the ills of ship life and the world at large, would surely have an impact on him. I find as a woman, we are always trying to be the caretaker of the man we love, my mother does it with my father, and most of the folks I see do it that way, and now here I am doing it also. What can I say?”
Letter Four: 1860
Death
“It’s been a year Judith since my last letter; I keep putting them on top of one another, saving them for when you get older. We will be going to Stockbridge this year, pretty soon. I think I will write about your father’s death, it was an abrupt surprised for me to say the least.
“He was found on the streets of Nantucket of all places, in 1853, you were only a year old then, plus a few months. He had only been gone no more than six-months, and when found on the streets he was delirious, in need of immediate assistance, according to the man who found him—he was hurt, he had fallen over a wooden fence, and punctured his back somewhat, how he came to this drunken condition is all speculation of course, but it is just a matter of fact, drunks do not need to look for disaster, it follows them. He was slightly coherent, long enough to call out a name, before he died, whom exactly he was referring to is unclear, he was in a state of ‘doublespeak’ he wanted to avoid I feel the secret of his love, be it me or his ship it was obscure speech.
“To my understanding, the word he called out sounded like ‘The Amanita, or Amelia’ there was a ship called Amanita, but it was out to sea, and not due for another week.
“Be that as it may, he died it was said of congestion of the brain, coupled with alcoholism. They said, the doctors said, and a few town folks who had seen him in the local bars a few weeks prior to his death, he had the tremors, delirium, his heart wasn’t working right, he fell to his keens a few times.
“I of course arrived too late to be with him, the moment before he expired, perhaps it was best, it would have been quite trying on me.
Letter Five: 1861
“His death did not put me in a stupider, I had you. If anything, I’d have a lot of stories also to tell you Judith, when you got older. We had moved to Stockbridge, and lived now close to your grandparents. I also figured I’d not marry while raising you, it seemed to me, the very image of another man’s property, as Cotton Mather might put it, so is a child, the new father sure enough would not treat you as his own. Plus, I got an allowance from your grandparents, Ernest Cleland was his name, and he was a good lawyer in his youth in Boston, and had written some books, and the sale of them made him a small fortune; books on law.
“And to carry this one more step forward, I do believe the prophecy is true, once married to a man who does not command you, he becomes greatly perplexed, as did your father at times, trying to treat me as an old beggar-woman, and thus, it is best he is gone, lest you be a little beggar-child.
“But what I really wanted to say was when I wrote my father back in ’51, he begged me not to marry Gideon, he tried everything to persuade me different, sent me money, and said he’d support me and you. He called Gideon contamination. Oh I didn’t like his wording at the time, but his words would turnout to be true. How foolish we become when we are infatuated with love…one can’t see the trees in front of the forest, nor what is beyond it.
“I did love his tough, structured mutineer mannerisms, I think every woman does, they just got to realize such men are to be played with, for they are not tameable.
“Many of his stories were of dead sailors coming back as ghosts, subduing the sailors within the ship, and knife fights, in the middle of the night; stabbing and cutting one’s throat. You never quite knew what was real or unreal.
“He would tell me about the South Seas, that all those whales they captured and brought back, their oil supplied Nantucket with fuel for lamps, and therefore illuminated the night, and as for the baleen that is around the whale’s mouth, it was sold and used for women’s corsets, hairbrushes, buggy whips, such things that had previously never occurred to me. In his own world he was very smart.
“All in all, it was a lucrative business I gathered, made many a ports rich, he said, but I knew it was a rough and dangerous life.
“Now I will explain to you the story he told me prior to finding him on the beach, and I shall paraphrase him to the best of my ability:
“The crew and I, he said, took our boats, whaleboats, in pursuit of the objective, which was to harpoon the prey, he successfully speared his whale—not seeing the other two boats in sight, he figured they went after the other two whales, there was three spotted—and I knew in my heart we’d be treated to a …sleigh ride, meaning, that the whale was going to, and did, drag the hunters in that little boat, through the sea, as if on a safari. Then he went onto say, we lost sight of the ship, and as it turned to crash (the whale) us, I escaped, that being after five-hours of drudgery, in the open sea with a mad whale, that was spouting blood, and the mother ship nowhere in sight. It was late, perhaps 9:00 p.m., and he was left adrift. He claimed the whale was a big one, you know, like that Moby Dick, story Melville wrote back in ’51. He said it would have produced a lot of blubber to boil down to oil. He said the whale would have brought some 300-barrols of material; when a normal whale brings in about 150. I think with Gideon, you have to sort out the truth, from fiction.
“Let me continue, the whale was a mile off, it was one huge whale, as I just mentioned, and when we got close to it, or near enough for me to harpoon it, our blood was stirring with eagerness, wherewith to fill the ship’s galley, and hold with whale oil galore.
“We headed after one of the three, I was the oarsman, I held them at a peak, I rose he said, and plunged the harpoon into its flesh, and I did make his spout blood that was when he turned about, turned into us most furiously. The boat spun tossing us all into the air.
“The other two loose boats may have returned to the ship, I never knew.
The Confession
((End Chapters) (not a letter))
“Now I must tell you face to face the hardest truth you will ever endure, and likewise, myself, one I did not write in the book, one I was not going to tell you.
“One afternoon, when the sun was going down, I saw your father, Gideon Asa Scott, standing drunk outside a door of an Inn, in Nantucket; it was in October, of 1853. He had but to lift his eyes, and there I was plainly to be seen, though for him in his drunken stupor, miles away, perhaps with the sunshine brightening on some tropical island.
“And what did he have to say, “Where is the Amoral-Mather,” a ship he was waiting for, the captain’s name being Amoral, and he, like myself, adored Cotton Mather and his works, so he named his ship that. You see he had been on Nantucket for three months; and was only at sea for three months. Some of my good friends, such as Dorothea, a long time friend, was seeing him, he was staying with her. He thought I was her at first, after he called out the name of the ship. Then he recognized me, and was quite uncomfortable, we walked up the hill past the church, to the old meeting house, along the hillside, I love those long and gentle slopes.
“The night was not populous, no one congregated at the meeting house—it was built in the late 1600s, I leaned against the fence, and it broke, and so we moved farther down and leaned on a different section—I had picked up a piece of wood to fiddle with, almost unconsciously. In short, we were having a moderate conversation; his face seemed like always, to be made of stone. He listened, but didn’t hear, he was more a work of nature, than a human being, I dare to say. (Judith looks at her mother puzzled, as if to say, what is all this, where is she going with all this; her mother is starting to tremble.)
“For a while—within the perfectly still night, not a neighbour about, he was in a good mood, there appeared a short lived majestic playfulness in him, then abruptly, he wanted to leave, and I knew where to, Dorthea’s house, and when the Amoral-Mather came in, then back out to sea.
“His back was to me, I remembered now, I had picked up a thin piece of wood from the broken part of the fence, it was old dried up wood, sharp at the tip like a knife, a small harpoon to my mind at the time, grey with age, about five inches long, he was just the proper distance, precisely to stab, as if he was the whale himself, he seemed to me as an enormous giant standing in front of me with his back—a human Moby Dick, as if shunning me, overlooking me as being insufficient. The reason he did not want to make love to me was that I was showing with child, you Judith. I was the talk of Nantucket, that was one reason, I did not want to leave the island, and why I did not want to go to Stockbridge until you got older, so I could tell them my husband was a sailor, and died in the course of his duties on a ship. Matter of fact, I knew the story so well of how he swam for hours in the open sea, that I was going to tell that story, with a few amendments.
“In any case, he and I were no longer a happy lot, I said to myself at that moment: it seemed unfair, positively unfair for him to be alive and do what he felt like doing and having no regard for anyone else’s feelings, that he could hurt at will, and have no penance to pay; he was guilt free: his whole being, just illuminated the clouds over my head with black vapour, I could only think of retribution, and not allow him to glorify the devil and his works any longer, infusing no more tenderness into my life, or anyone’s life for that matter. So I leaped forward, and with all my force, plunged the danger like object through the midsection of his back, I thrust the piece of wood into him, like Abraham was going to do to Isaac, but I did it.”
“Mother,” said Judith, with an even toned voice, while her mother let out a great long sigh of relief, “what did he cry out to the authorities?”
“My dear, you’re not dreadfully angry with me, your countenance says you’re not?” asked Amelia.
Eagerly inquired Judith the second time, “Please tell me what his words were, his last words?”
“Well, ok, the authorities said it sounded like the “Amoral-Mather,” but I was there, I had left and someone found him, and on his dying bed, I had to return, caught or not, and he said, ‘Amelia, murderer!’ but the words were slurred, they came out distorted, and the authorities could not believe such words would come out of his mouth I suppose so it was overlooked, but Dorothea knew what he had said, she was there before me, but she did not disclose my name, in fear of whatever, perhaps, shame for her, or our old friendship, to be mended—I mean dead is dead, and he was no more to her, than she was to him, a think to be used, they both complimented each other’s needs. Whatever the case, it was affirmed and documented as a matter of a deadly assault, and the weapon was gone, I took the piece of wood, and no one was the wiser, they figured he may even have fallen down drunk against the fence, and staggered to and fro, and the fence unintentionally killed him. So there were a few theories, but they went along with the first because he was a short distance away from the cracked part of the fence. But the case was never persuaded beyond that”
†
Judith’s Curiosity
“What did you think mother, after you killed him?” asked Judith.
“By the time I came to, out of some hasty fog, I found myself looking at a poor almost dead old man, much older looking than the time he spent earth, and who was going buried him once he did die, because he hadn’t died yet; perhaps the church or state: and the strangest part of the whole thing was, that his mammon, or his means to survival, which interwoven into his body and spirit, his very existence, had disappeared before me, his death was leaving nothing of him but residue on the walk, as I said, he was old before his time, wrinkled with yellow skin. Melting away in front of me, there was no longer a striking resemblance of the heroic man I thought I knew, betwixt, the ignoble features of this sailor and that majestic glow that was under his eyelid, when he first saw me, was gone, I was although magnificently curious about his face, a mountain of a face, the longer I looked at it, it ceased to honour himself. Who will now honour him in our lifetime I asked me, not me, nor you, nor Dorothea, nor the sailors on the ship, they will drink a toast to him, and say once and for all, farewell. And quietly be consigned to forgetfulness. I will be the only one, and perhaps you Judith, that once in a while will think of him,
“Whatever he was noted for in life, history will not remember him or it, that is what I thought, when I stood over this war-worn veteran, infirmed with age, weary of life’s turmoil, no purpose of returning to life once expired, even if given a chance. As I approached him, looked over him, bent to see his hands and back and neck and profile, beseeching a blessing on the good things he did, so maybe he will be sent to limbo, to right his wrongs, I felt next to anxiousness to get away. I knew soon after, people would congregate about this happening, call it a grand and awful thing…
“He never stepped aside for anyone or from his own path for anyone, but I still wanted my blessing to reach him.”
•
“In answer to your question mother: it’s a good story, but so very old though, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited the island, the forefathers, you might say, would never take it seriously. I’d rather believe he was the noblest personage of his time, who got lost at sea, doing his duty—thus, this concludes mother my curiosity, so let’s finish tea.”
Afterward (Narrator): Of her (Miss Amelia Cleland) selected collection of strange, rare letters she saved for twenty years, forbidding her daughter to see them, on subjects of her relationship with Gideon Asa Scott, I’d be glad to share more, enough to have you hate them both, but I have a responsibility to a certain sense, not to drag a bundle of nerves like they both had down to a madness, although I shall slip in a few things that took place after the letters were read, and a few years passed.
I tell you, you can’t imagine what the feeling was for good ole Gideon, laying on the ground half drunk, with a five inch knife, an item sharp as a knife, a piece of wood stuck in you, puncturing a lung. I promised my wife to keep you informed over the letters, but to only share the necessary ones, ‘…enough is enough,’ she said, we don’t have to reach the center of the earth you know, with gore. Because in truth, she stuck him several times in the back, she had no remorse, and as you know, her daughter, is much like the mother, to a certain degree. Therefore if I seemed desperately anxious to close this case, it is because my wife when it comes to gory things, she can be inflexible, obdurate.
As this can be remembered, for what it is, though I no longer know exactly, I pieced this story together when I was in Stockbridge, and Nantucket, in 1999, and rewrote it recently, did some research, heard the beginnings of a story, and had to imagine how it ended, and had to fill in the gaps. Oh it is all mine, don’t get me wrong, but much truth interwoven in it.
The story was all discolored from age, and the gravestone that bears Gideon’s name was likewise.
In the lone silence of those long nights after Amelia told her daughter the true story, Judith’s mind conceived the most ghastly fantasies and illusions, nightmares, and even in her room made a grotesque shrine to her father. It was all too much for her, consequently she lived in a shadowy world thereafter, lurking in the dark halls at night; constantly consulting her time piece.
“What are you hearing Judith?” asked Amelia one evening, as she noticed her daughter talking to herself (1875); she said “I’m hearing a voice; it seems to be my father’s.”
“And…” Amelia asked “what did the voice inquire?”
“To be left in alone, in peace, that you were back down to the cemetery, and you pulled back the slab of concrete over his tomb, he said, there was nothing else you could do to him, that he did not want to talk to you so he came to me, to tell you to leave him be.”
She kept on hearing that voice, it was deep and hollow, awakening, remote and unearthly, inhuman, what more can I say, it was a dead man’s voice. And Amelia would not listen to Judith’s request, made via Gideon, and Judith, was experiencing a petrified life, and the haunting voice of her father. Thus, one evening she committed suicide, I need not say how, that is the gory part, the part my wife doesn’t care to see in this story. Perhaps it was Gideon’s revenge on Amelia. And all I know beyond that is she lived to a very old age, and alone, some times screaming for Gideon to talk to her, and sometimes pleading Judith to do the same, but all she got was silence.
Written in Lima, Peru, 4, 5 and 6 of February, 2009
Amelia, from Nantucket, 1852
Advance (narrator): The next to true story, “The Story of Amelia,” is told by herself, in a number of letters to her daughter, whom has discovered them after rummaging through the attic of her mother’s house, found in and among other sailor items in a wooden chest, Judith Cleland, of New England, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Amelia, the highlight of her life, and this story, takes place in Nantucket, 1850 – 1852, for the most part, although she spends a decade in Nantucket until she returns to Stockbridge. Judith, is holding the letters, with a few different dates on them, in her hands, about fifteen pages: it is 1872, it is twenty-years since those letters have been exposed to the open air; she is at her mother’s home in Stockbridge at the moment.
She has always been curious why her mother never married, and never talked about her father other than saying he was a sailor, and a hero of sorts to him, and thus, likewise to Judith; Judith is now 21-years old and the letters have to be opened up, so she feels, no matter what, even if it is like opening Pandora’s Box.
It is a story about a man she met, by the name of Gideon Asa Scott (an Irish-Scottish bulk of a fellow, in his middle to late forties).
To repeat myself, Judith finds fifteen pages of letters, her mother wrote and kept for her, not to be read, nor the envelope opened until after her death, she has now brought it to her mother, whom is outside, in the backyard, drinking tea. She lays it down on the table next to her (she is fifty-one years old, Amelia knows right away what it is, looks at her daughter’s eyes) she smiles and says:
“I think you’re old enough to understand why I never married, and to learn who your father really was?”
These were two questions always on Judith’s mind, matter-of-fact; she had asked her mother ever since she was a teenager, those two questions.
On another note, Amelia, had moved with her family to Nantucket for a number of years, it was because of the railroad was being built in that area, and her family thought it best to avoid the raucous and tribulations of the times, and the wealthy had moved in, as did poets and writers.
She had liked writing and had met Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who had wrote such books as ‘Hope Leslie,’ 1827 and ‘Married or Single,’ 1857. She was kind of her idol. Like Catharine, she also was sent to a finishing school in Boston, she was the most talked about female author of her day—this inspired Amelia, and of course, she liked the book Catharine wrote called: ‘Married or Single,’ what it expressed, that being: women should not marry if it involved losing their self-respect, self-worth, identity.
Now I have really said enough to this story, we must now go onto those lengthily letters of hers to find out those two secrets, Judith has waited so long for.
(Amelia is going to read it to her daughter as they sit under an umbrella, sipping tea, but first she makes a statement):
The Letters
Amelia’s Statement to her daughter before reading the letters: “I have read a lot of Cotton Mather in past years; he was very popular when I was a child with my family growing up. Need I say Judith, he was very influential with me, he wrote much, was married three times, had fifteen-children, so I suppose he knew what he was talking about, and put into writing, and many books, and a doctorate degree helped, honorary, but nonetheless, official. He said, “You should be more solicitous that their souls (meaning one’s children) may not be Starved, or go without the bread of life.” I presume some of that bread is understanding the truth, and by telling you the background of those letters, or reading them, shows caring of that nature, especially when you know someone close to you knows and doesn’t tell you—as in the letters you hold in your hand. I felt it would be a bit early to tell you the whole story, how you became you, and perhaps how I became me, or a little more of me, after your father’s death, I was waiting for you to become at least thirty-years old for that news, that is when Christ Himself took up his ministry. Cotton Mather also said in so many words and I hear you cry for understanding: if your dog and child were drowning, whom would you save? A poor example by and large, but it gets to the point. When one’s family member feels under an ill discipline, it is not unusual that it affects other members, so I shall read the letters to you:
Letter One: 1852
The Story
“When I first saw him, more like found him stranded on the beach like a soaked wet rag, or dead seal, and helped him, I said to myself: ‘He looks to me to be an honest and courageous kind of fellow, a sailor, one that would not try to do me harm,’ and once getting to know him, I was correct—for the most part—in my evaluation at first, as well as, he wasn’t too religious which I gathered from the start, unfortunately, but in his quiet way he was a sort of reverential unspoken noble natured person, perhaps a cry for a better worth of immortality, was in his soul…
“He did at the end of our relationship, pretty much make up his mind of what he had to do, and did it, although if you ask me, he had no rest in that anticipation, and beyond human kindness he left me little to hold onto, and hope for in the sense of his return—and for him, he left no definite belief. It is strange how he persists though, on wondering to and fro, around the world on a pile of wood: strange but fascinating at the same time.
“I am thirty-one years old, he is forty-six. There will be no correspondence I fear, between him and I, over our relationship that has lasted only two-years that brought me an abundance of warmth and fellowship. But faded the last season he was with me, which was most recently.
“I liked his name it was different, not his last name but his two other names, first and middle, not real different for an Irish-Scotsman I suppose, Gideon Asa Scott, but different for me.
“When I first found him on the shores of Nantucket, I dragged him a ways, and waited until he was semi conscious, and allowed him to lean on my shoulders, and I brought him to my home, put him naked by the hearth, I found soon after, his resurrection would be complete within a few days. And it didn’t take long for ourselves to get on a pretty much, formal terms.
(You must realize, I am pregnant now, and Gideon never knew this, and I did not know if you were a boy or girl inside of me, perhaps if you are a girl I will call you Judith, I like that name, it seems to have a Romanist ring to it, and thus, you will understand, I’m sure of that; on the other hand, if you are a boy, I dread to tell you, we live in a time, our skirts are made of iron, and the male gender, with all their whoring around, wants to marry a virgin, and I dare say, expects their mother to be one if the father was not properly wed.)
“As I was about to say, before that little interlude, it was perhaps just two weeks, and we became better friends, sociability and our confidence with one another showered in our place!
“Before he left he was or had not been well, of late. And to my guess, suffered from too constant a mental occupation, in pursuit without much success, of whatever he was thinking. Plus, he was drinking, as always, but I did curve that bad habit for him, somewhat.
“For a long while he was happy, and then some kind of morbid depression came over him. Perhaps wanting to go back to the sea, or at least that was, or better yet, is, my conjecture, or better yet, to his wife, Phoebe…whom he said was from New England, not sure exactly where, I surmised from our late night conversations, New Hampshire, he was quite secretive about such matters. My reasoning being, there is an old ruin, ancient archeologically site nearby, deep in the woods and he had mentioned it in relation to Phoebe (“Mystery Hill”).
“When he left he was seemingly not profoundly sympathetic or responsive as he was at first to our relationship that warmth had left.
“As you will know in time, I was born and raised in Stockbridge, moved to Nantucket for a number of years, the railroad had come in and my parents thought it best I live in Nantucket for a decade, and so I did, they feared the raucous, and hard drinking men, and men of no repute might take liberties they were not entitled to.
“When I think of him, it is still with exceedingly warmth and enthusiasm.
“For two-years I had looked into his deep dark eyes, and all I can now see is the story I now live, his story and mine, the one I am telling you, every line to me is a single and sincere longing on my part for him, and for you to know him better.”
Letter Two dated: 1857
Questions
“Here is a question I presume you will be asking: ‘who was he anyhow?’ You are five-years old now Judith and this is my second letter to you thus far.
“For years I have gone over the story me and your father lived, Gideon, He always had a strain on his face, for whaling…a subject rather rhapsody for him.
“But how was he, you will ask, and I will possibly say in passing: he was the ocean, and he left behind the earth, to find the mighty whales, sell their oil, make profit, help the so called original commodity, become what it might become. It might be said of him, as in a fable, he was made out of sterling metal, to me a face imprinted on a coin. And when Dorothea met him, my dear and best friend, she had become very puffed up with smiles, not to count his wealth, for he had none, she bethought herself, she wanted his recognition, with this purpose in view, I pulled him quickly away, like an architect would his plans for a great building, when someone else is peering over your shoulder, that should not be.
“Many a night we passed the evening together, listening to the fresh sounds of the Atlantic with his sailor talk. All jargon to me at first of course, and then I got to know his ways, terminology, and so forth. Actually I started to live his stories, as he relieved them; and it always made for a good stirring evening. He would plough deep into the depths of the ocean bring to surface his rich tales, atheistically. To him it was all a sacred matter, with its exquisite ironies. At times he was on the boarder line of blasphemy.
“As I have not said, but I must, it had already been rumoured in the town of our living together, they all looked at me to no purpose, as if their life was perfect, and undeniable on the right track to heaven’s gates. People are always the more ready to believe the worse of your neighbour, but they’d like to pluck the rose themselves. But as I was saying, or about to say, when I first met him, he was weather-beaten, like crushed marble, his skin like snow, from the long ordeal in the sea. Studded with muscle knobs all over his legs; but on the other hand, when he opened his eyes he saw me, with a gleam, especially beneath his eyelids.
“I do hope you understand, I see you playing at this moment outside on the grass next to my window, as I write, I wish you would have got to know him, perhaps this will help.
“Well, he said he was married, that he had wedded a woman as I mentioned before, named Phoebe, what I neglected to mention though, was she served time in Sing Sing, a prison for women. I doubt he really ever told me the full and true story, it wasn’t his nature to do so, he’d add fiction with non-fiction, to make everything a tinge mysterious. In any case, there were many of those so called prison girls, willing to sleep with the Judges and noble men of the city, sound standing citizens, they’d hide he’d say behind curtains in the prison, and have their orgies.
“Whatever case, he married one he said, and had five-children with her. I kind of frowned on this at first, and then overlooked it, as if there was some truth to it, but most likely, everything had its distortions, and deletions interwoven into it, and generalizations.
“No man had ever put such reality before me, unflinchingly as he did. Conceivably to see my reaction, so I often thought: to see if I got startled.
“He had said one afternoon when we were talking on the porch, drinking lemonade: he said in so many words: his boat had sunk and the ship he was on left him for dead, he was compelled to swim, even unconsciously for hours on end. This I know to be true, for I found him astray, on the coast. And I shall get more into that part of the story, later on, but I must say his sea stories were so good that I scarcely feel he was less of a story teller than Melville himself being a writer, surely, more so than a sailor: he need not have made them any better.
“He was neither a common man, nor that entirely intellectual, or even warm hearted, he was rather a brute of a man, with dirty fingerprints, and he’d leave them all over the house, especially on the walls.
“He was tall, and erect, sincere and somewhat revered or he tried to be with me at any rate, unsure, if he is not a great man in my soul. He seemed to me a man that had seen many things, and explained few, but in his tales he told everything accurately, as he saw them; he had eyes you know not keen eyes, but rather undistinguishable in anyway.”
•
“When he told his tales and in particular his long swim, he was always full of gesture.
“He was not handsome, but brave and manly he was. And once he started his tale he lost himself in it, and somehow he gave it graced and polish. He was, Judith, for the most part backwards you might say, but one could clearly comprehend what he was implying, if his words got into a rambling state.
“He’d give you a strange lazy glance, at the end of each tale as if waiting to get your response.”
Letter Three: 1859
Passion and Pride
“It’s been a few years now, you’re getting bigger, seven-years old now Judith. You are in school this afternoon, and I‘ve been thinking we might be going back to Stockbridge, my hometown, you’ve never seen. But I want to tell you more about your father, and our two-years together, and explain the passion I had for him, if I can in a light form.
“I loved making love to him, he was although a bear in the process, on the other hand, he was respectable being near to, not directly with, an innocence, with his child like mannerisms, and most amiable during the full course of the affair.
“He was in loving making, like he was in his story telling, he got lost in it and there was no stopping him. This he had much knowledge in and I very little, and it was his daily, or almost daily favourite pursuit activity.
“We ate breakfast at 5:00 a.m., sharp. Then we’d take a walk, then he’d say ‘Leave me be…’ and I’d go off some place by myself, after saying goodbye, and we’d meet later.
“We ate late supper usually, and I was always worried of his sleep, he never felt well the next day, if he didn’t get his sleep. The fact is, when your father left he was in a frightfully poor state of health, strain on his face, in his eyes, his mind, afraid to leave, to love, and possibly his body weakened from all those past adventures, and drinking.
“Wherever he was going to go that day, the day he left me, in 1852, which was on one of three ships, it was because he feared if he didn’t, he’d upset his next adventure entirely, as if he was missing something, he knew his work on the ship, nothing else, pride was more costly than he thought, it was, and would be more so, I told myself, that in the future, it would take a toll on him: but working on ships, other than story telling what could he do, I suppose it was a dreadful state of mind to be in, trying to see where he fit in, a condition of anxiety, and story telling was part of his trips, he never read much, perhaps couldn’t.
“The day he left he was more quiet than usual, and I had turned out to be his unpleasant companion. I even told him as we walked down to the shore, ‘Your recluse life on those ships is making you insane.’
“But I knew he was dreaming of those far-off tropic isles, the hard blue waves of the sea, life under the unmoving sun, it was life at its best for him, it was in a way his medicine, if only he could curve his alcohol intake on these adventures of his, he did while staying with me, but the ills of ship life and the world at large, would surely have an impact on him. I find as a woman, we are always trying to be the caretaker of the man we love, my mother does it with my father, and most of the folks I see do it that way, and now here I am doing it also. What can I say?”
Letter Four: 1860
Death
“It’s been a year Judith since my last letter; I keep putting them on top of one another, saving them for when you get older. We will be going to Stockbridge this year, pretty soon. I think I will write about your father’s death, it was an abrupt surprised for me to say the least.
“He was found on the streets of Nantucket of all places, in 1853, you were only a year old then, plus a few months. He had only been gone no more than six-months, and when found on the streets he was delirious, in need of immediate assistance, according to the man who found him—he was hurt, he had fallen over a wooden fence, and punctured his back somewhat, how he came to this drunken condition is all speculation of course, but it is just a matter of fact, drunks do not need to look for disaster, it follows them. He was slightly coherent, long enough to call out a name, before he died, whom exactly he was referring to is unclear, he was in a state of ‘doublespeak’ he wanted to avoid I feel the secret of his love, be it me or his ship it was obscure speech.
“To my understanding, the word he called out sounded like ‘The Amanita, or Amelia’ there was a ship called Amanita, but it was out to sea, and not due for another week.
“Be that as it may, he died it was said of congestion of the brain, coupled with alcoholism. They said, the doctors said, and a few town folks who had seen him in the local bars a few weeks prior to his death, he had the tremors, delirium, his heart wasn’t working right, he fell to his keens a few times.
“I of course arrived too late to be with him, the moment before he expired, perhaps it was best, it would have been quite trying on me.
Letter Five: 1861
“His death did not put me in a stupider, I had you. If anything, I’d have a lot of stories also to tell you Judith, when you got older. We had moved to Stockbridge, and lived now close to your grandparents. I also figured I’d not marry while raising you, it seemed to me, the very image of another man’s property, as Cotton Mather might put it, so is a child, the new father sure enough would not treat you as his own. Plus, I got an allowance from your grandparents, Ernest Cleland was his name, and he was a good lawyer in his youth in Boston, and had written some books, and the sale of them made him a small fortune; books on law.
“And to carry this one more step forward, I do believe the prophecy is true, once married to a man who does not command you, he becomes greatly perplexed, as did your father at times, trying to treat me as an old beggar-woman, and thus, it is best he is gone, lest you be a little beggar-child.
“But what I really wanted to say was when I wrote my father back in ’51, he begged me not to marry Gideon, he tried everything to persuade me different, sent me money, and said he’d support me and you. He called Gideon contamination. Oh I didn’t like his wording at the time, but his words would turnout to be true. How foolish we become when we are infatuated with love…one can’t see the trees in front of the forest, nor what is beyond it.
“I did love his tough, structured mutineer mannerisms, I think every woman does, they just got to realize such men are to be played with, for they are not tameable.
“Many of his stories were of dead sailors coming back as ghosts, subduing the sailors within the ship, and knife fights, in the middle of the night; stabbing and cutting one’s throat. You never quite knew what was real or unreal.
“He would tell me about the South Seas, that all those whales they captured and brought back, their oil supplied Nantucket with fuel for lamps, and therefore illuminated the night, and as for the baleen that is around the whale’s mouth, it was sold and used for women’s corsets, hairbrushes, buggy whips, such things that had previously never occurred to me. In his own world he was very smart.
“All in all, it was a lucrative business I gathered, made many a ports rich, he said, but I knew it was a rough and dangerous life.
“Now I will explain to you the story he told me prior to finding him on the beach, and I shall paraphrase him to the best of my ability:
“The crew and I, he said, took our boats, whaleboats, in pursuit of the objective, which was to harpoon the prey, he successfully speared his whale—not seeing the other two boats in sight, he figured they went after the other two whales, there was three spotted—and I knew in my heart we’d be treated to a …sleigh ride, meaning, that the whale was going to, and did, drag the hunters in that little boat, through the sea, as if on a safari. Then he went onto say, we lost sight of the ship, and as it turned to crash (the whale) us, I escaped, that being after five-hours of drudgery, in the open sea with a mad whale, that was spouting blood, and the mother ship nowhere in sight. It was late, perhaps 9:00 p.m., and he was left adrift. He claimed the whale was a big one, you know, like that Moby Dick, story Melville wrote back in ’51. He said it would have produced a lot of blubber to boil down to oil. He said the whale would have brought some 300-barrols of material; when a normal whale brings in about 150. I think with Gideon, you have to sort out the truth, from fiction.
“Let me continue, the whale was a mile off, it was one huge whale, as I just mentioned, and when we got close to it, or near enough for me to harpoon it, our blood was stirring with eagerness, wherewith to fill the ship’s galley, and hold with whale oil galore.
“We headed after one of the three, I was the oarsman, I held them at a peak, I rose he said, and plunged the harpoon into its flesh, and I did make his spout blood that was when he turned about, turned into us most furiously. The boat spun tossing us all into the air.
“The other two loose boats may have returned to the ship, I never knew.
The Confession
((End Chapters) (not a letter))
“Now I must tell you face to face the hardest truth you will ever endure, and likewise, myself, one I did not write in the book, one I was not going to tell you.
“One afternoon, when the sun was going down, I saw your father, Gideon Asa Scott, standing drunk outside a door of an Inn, in Nantucket; it was in October, of 1853. He had but to lift his eyes, and there I was plainly to be seen, though for him in his drunken stupor, miles away, perhaps with the sunshine brightening on some tropical island.
“And what did he have to say, “Where is the Amoral-Mather,” a ship he was waiting for, the captain’s name being Amoral, and he, like myself, adored Cotton Mather and his works, so he named his ship that. You see he had been on Nantucket for three months; and was only at sea for three months. Some of my good friends, such as Dorothea, a long time friend, was seeing him, he was staying with her. He thought I was her at first, after he called out the name of the ship. Then he recognized me, and was quite uncomfortable, we walked up the hill past the church, to the old meeting house, along the hillside, I love those long and gentle slopes.
“The night was not populous, no one congregated at the meeting house—it was built in the late 1600s, I leaned against the fence, and it broke, and so we moved farther down and leaned on a different section—I had picked up a piece of wood to fiddle with, almost unconsciously. In short, we were having a moderate conversation; his face seemed like always, to be made of stone. He listened, but didn’t hear, he was more a work of nature, than a human being, I dare to say. (Judith looks at her mother puzzled, as if to say, what is all this, where is she going with all this; her mother is starting to tremble.)
“For a while—within the perfectly still night, not a neighbour about, he was in a good mood, there appeared a short lived majestic playfulness in him, then abruptly, he wanted to leave, and I knew where to, Dorthea’s house, and when the Amoral-Mather came in, then back out to sea.
“His back was to me, I remembered now, I had picked up a thin piece of wood from the broken part of the fence, it was old dried up wood, sharp at the tip like a knife, a small harpoon to my mind at the time, grey with age, about five inches long, he was just the proper distance, precisely to stab, as if he was the whale himself, he seemed to me as an enormous giant standing in front of me with his back—a human Moby Dick, as if shunning me, overlooking me as being insufficient. The reason he did not want to make love to me was that I was showing with child, you Judith. I was the talk of Nantucket, that was one reason, I did not want to leave the island, and why I did not want to go to Stockbridge until you got older, so I could tell them my husband was a sailor, and died in the course of his duties on a ship. Matter of fact, I knew the story so well of how he swam for hours in the open sea, that I was going to tell that story, with a few amendments.
“In any case, he and I were no longer a happy lot, I said to myself at that moment: it seemed unfair, positively unfair for him to be alive and do what he felt like doing and having no regard for anyone else’s feelings, that he could hurt at will, and have no penance to pay; he was guilt free: his whole being, just illuminated the clouds over my head with black vapour, I could only think of retribution, and not allow him to glorify the devil and his works any longer, infusing no more tenderness into my life, or anyone’s life for that matter. So I leaped forward, and with all my force, plunged the danger like object through the midsection of his back, I thrust the piece of wood into him, like Abraham was going to do to Isaac, but I did it.”
“Mother,” said Judith, with an even toned voice, while her mother let out a great long sigh of relief, “what did he cry out to the authorities?”
“My dear, you’re not dreadfully angry with me, your countenance says you’re not?” asked Amelia.
Eagerly inquired Judith the second time, “Please tell me what his words were, his last words?”
“Well, ok, the authorities said it sounded like the “Amoral-Mather,” but I was there, I had left and someone found him, and on his dying bed, I had to return, caught or not, and he said, ‘Amelia, murderer!’ but the words were slurred, they came out distorted, and the authorities could not believe such words would come out of his mouth I suppose so it was overlooked, but Dorothea knew what he had said, she was there before me, but she did not disclose my name, in fear of whatever, perhaps, shame for her, or our old friendship, to be mended—I mean dead is dead, and he was no more to her, than she was to him, a think to be used, they both complimented each other’s needs. Whatever the case, it was affirmed and documented as a matter of a deadly assault, and the weapon was gone, I took the piece of wood, and no one was the wiser, they figured he may even have fallen down drunk against the fence, and staggered to and fro, and the fence unintentionally killed him. So there were a few theories, but they went along with the first because he was a short distance away from the cracked part of the fence. But the case was never persuaded beyond that”
†
Judith’s Curiosity
“What did you think mother, after you killed him?” asked Judith.
“By the time I came to, out of some hasty fog, I found myself looking at a poor almost dead old man, much older looking than the time he spent earth, and who was going buried him once he did die, because he hadn’t died yet; perhaps the church or state: and the strangest part of the whole thing was, that his mammon, or his means to survival, which interwoven into his body and spirit, his very existence, had disappeared before me, his death was leaving nothing of him but residue on the walk, as I said, he was old before his time, wrinkled with yellow skin. Melting away in front of me, there was no longer a striking resemblance of the heroic man I thought I knew, betwixt, the ignoble features of this sailor and that majestic glow that was under his eyelid, when he first saw me, was gone, I was although magnificently curious about his face, a mountain of a face, the longer I looked at it, it ceased to honour himself. Who will now honour him in our lifetime I asked me, not me, nor you, nor Dorothea, nor the sailors on the ship, they will drink a toast to him, and say once and for all, farewell. And quietly be consigned to forgetfulness. I will be the only one, and perhaps you Judith, that once in a while will think of him,
“Whatever he was noted for in life, history will not remember him or it, that is what I thought, when I stood over this war-worn veteran, infirmed with age, weary of life’s turmoil, no purpose of returning to life once expired, even if given a chance. As I approached him, looked over him, bent to see his hands and back and neck and profile, beseeching a blessing on the good things he did, so maybe he will be sent to limbo, to right his wrongs, I felt next to anxiousness to get away. I knew soon after, people would congregate about this happening, call it a grand and awful thing…
“He never stepped aside for anyone or from his own path for anyone, but I still wanted my blessing to reach him.”
•
“In answer to your question mother: it’s a good story, but so very old though, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited the island, the forefathers, you might say, would never take it seriously. I’d rather believe he was the noblest personage of his time, who got lost at sea, doing his duty—thus, this concludes mother my curiosity, so let’s finish tea.”
Afterward (Narrator): Of her (Miss Amelia Cleland) selected collection of strange, rare letters she saved for twenty years, forbidding her daughter to see them, on subjects of her relationship with Gideon Asa Scott, I’d be glad to share more, enough to have you hate them both, but I have a responsibility to a certain sense, not to drag a bundle of nerves like they both had down to a madness, although I shall slip in a few things that took place after the letters were read, and a few years passed.
I tell you, you can’t imagine what the feeling was for good ole Gideon, laying on the ground half drunk, with a five inch knife, an item sharp as a knife, a piece of wood stuck in you, puncturing a lung. I promised my wife to keep you informed over the letters, but to only share the necessary ones, ‘…enough is enough,’ she said, we don’t have to reach the center of the earth you know, with gore. Because in truth, she stuck him several times in the back, she had no remorse, and as you know, her daughter, is much like the mother, to a certain degree. Therefore if I seemed desperately anxious to close this case, it is because my wife when it comes to gory things, she can be inflexible, obdurate.
As this can be remembered, for what it is, though I no longer know exactly, I pieced this story together when I was in Stockbridge, and Nantucket, in 1999, and rewrote it recently, did some research, heard the beginnings of a story, and had to imagine how it ended, and had to fill in the gaps. Oh it is all mine, don’t get me wrong, but much truth interwoven in it.
The story was all discolored from age, and the gravestone that bears Gideon’s name was likewise.
In the lone silence of those long nights after Amelia told her daughter the true story, Judith’s mind conceived the most ghastly fantasies and illusions, nightmares, and even in her room made a grotesque shrine to her father. It was all too much for her, consequently she lived in a shadowy world thereafter, lurking in the dark halls at night; constantly consulting her time piece.
“What are you hearing Judith?” asked Amelia one evening, as she noticed her daughter talking to herself (1875); she said “I’m hearing a voice; it seems to be my father’s.”
“And…” Amelia asked “what did the voice inquire?”
“To be left in alone, in peace, that you were back down to the cemetery, and you pulled back the slab of concrete over his tomb, he said, there was nothing else you could do to him, that he did not want to talk to you so he came to me, to tell you to leave him be.”
She kept on hearing that voice, it was deep and hollow, awakening, remote and unearthly, inhuman, what more can I say, it was a dead man’s voice. And Amelia would not listen to Judith’s request, made via Gideon, and Judith, was experiencing a petrified life, and the haunting voice of her father. Thus, one evening she committed suicide, I need not say how, that is the gory part, the part my wife doesn’t care to see in this story. Perhaps it was Gideon’s revenge on Amelia. And all I know beyond that is she lived to a very old age, and alone, some times screaming for Gideon to talk to her, and sometimes pleading Judith to do the same, but all she got was silence.
Written in Lima, Peru, 4, 5 and 6 of February, 2009
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 3:37 PM
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