The Dixboro Ghost, Act III

Act III Scene i

Rachael: The sun rises through the eastern window, and soon the boys will be awake, larking about.- You must be gone, my love!

Isaac: One kiss and I’ll descend, l or rather ascend, into my workday. Set my tables away, as I was up late again considering the appearances.

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Rachael: Hurry along, as you know Hawkins awaits, even at Clements store.

Isaac: And Betsy, fed and harnessed as today we go for boards and shingles to the Geddes mill.

[As Isaac walks across the yard in the rising sun, Martha appears]

What! In broad daylight?

Martha: I wanted Joseph to keep my papers, but they are…[she looks and stops her speech]

Joseph! Joseph! [Looking at Isaac] I fear something will befall my boy…

[Martha disappears]

III. Scene ii

SD: [Jackson and Isaac riding on the Hawkins’ wagon]

I did not wish to disturb our getting on the road- but I have seen her again- this time in daylight! As I left the house to come for work, and the sun was rising, there in the yard she appeared. Again she spoke of Joseph, saying “I want him to keep my papers.”

Jackson: Joseph is likely yet still on his way, and we may pass him coming from William and Mary’s. where he has no doubt been up early helping with morning chores. Bless them- for they also keep and employ at their farm one sister, a full grown child they say is blessed with idiocy. She is helpful about the house, but surely could not shelter from the skies if left alone. But Joseph often spends the sunrise at his mother’s new grave, and so is likely to have passed already.

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Isaac: No papers were found in the house, and Rachel has been into the corners with her broom. Yet if Joseph had them, she likely would not visit to bring attention to it.

Jackson: We will find an easy way to mention it, perhaps to William. For Joseph’s sake especially, it seems we should keep much of what is occurring under wraps as yet. It does seem that she appears to you rather than to him in part to avoid disturbing so young a mind.

Isaac: It is a frightful matter, and she also seems to intend our assistance to Joseph. I am barely able to acclimate to one marvel when another appears to confuse my prior astonishment. She has accused this James of robbery and murder- That is his mill, though such are likely sleeping it off at this hour,

Isaac: leaving the highways safe.

Jackson: And well we might believe her- yet it would be difficult to proceed publicly with yet no more reason than his cruelty and the tale of the ghost, though marvelously and repeatedly verified to us.

Isaac: Still the effect for the town is the same, whether her story can be verified or not.

Jackson: Well, yonder on the left there is where the Gypsies used to camp when they’d come through, carousing and singing about their fires into the night. They have not been seen in the past few years.

Isaac: The locals must have thought it quite a sight.

Jackson: Dixboro folk say they would tighten down the calves and pigs, and if there was some loss from chicken coops and woodpiles, they barely noticed. but even welcomed these vagrant livers as a curiousity- their rhythmic violins and bright colored linens, dark eyed girls dancing in a whirl into the night, children and babes all strewn and laughing on the ground, the dark haired handsome men and boys loitering afternoons about the grass, even as our farmers rest a bit just after the peak of summer. Then suddenly, just as the pears would ripen, with their ponies and colored wagons they would disappear.

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Isaac: And no one knows to where? Or where they come from, and why they’d stop just here?

Jackson: Flemings creek is a bit off the beaten train by the full Huron, where there are many settlements and mills. The boys of the town say the Gypsies would come up from Ohio and the South to flee the summer heat, then follow the Indian trails down through the West of Michigania, now named Indiana. We go now to the mill of John Geddes- one of the first settlers in this place and so something of the town historian. He attends his mill daily. John has been representative to the state congress, and there met president Martin Van Buren. Nor was he much impressed, according to report. Geddes is now a Whig, having been an anti- mason for a while, a Clay man, who spoke at the University in this late election. We could not contain our laughter, as Geddes tried to say of the Liberty party that they could “see nothing in Clay but dueling and slave holding,” and were “so blinded as Achilles when his back eyed maid was forced away.” Texas and free trade would not effect these liberty men, and indeed their aversion to Clay turned the election for Polk. Yes, this Geddes is quite the settler- starting out in a ten foot cabin with his brother Robert, they have tried to work up the mills along the Huron. He was smart enough to avoid the speculation that ruined many in this late panic and depression that now seems to pass, such as John Allen, our notorious founder of Ann Arbor. His wife is said to be the very Ann around whose Arbor She and Mrs. Rumsey would take tea, while the men debated such things as capital punishment. Rumsey ran the Washtenaw coffee house- the first hotel in Ann Arbor. But my Uncle Olney married John Allen’s neice- and were we in England, you would be seated next to Washtenaw Royalty!

Isaac: A Duke or Earl, easily!

But Allen prospered easily in the First decade, till all watched as he played with loans and land like dice. Buying land backed with borrowed money and unsecured paper. Allen went out East rich, and returned just lately as a pauper to Ann Arbor. He is starting over, though. Now his wife- the very Ann of Ann’s Arbor- had finally had enough of his adventures and has returned down South where she perhaps belongs. Allen runs a small law office now, and is considering a run for governor. But this Geddes has been more remote from politics of late. He has read the whole Bible through twice, and is set to be voted an elder of the Presbyterian church over in Pittsfield. He stays clear of Dixboro, for the most part ever since the days of Captain Dix. Yet he knows William, living so close by- William is a bit up the road to the left there, while Geddes is here! [Arriving at the Geddes mill]

Isaac: Whoe, Betsey!

Jackson: John Geddes!

Geddes: Jackson Hawkins! How is Olny in his Ann Arbor village Presidency these days? They are underselling us on wheat- ours is 62 cents a bushel, theirs only 60 cents!

Jackson: But yours is here, and theirs is there! He is doing fine, the town being fairly simple thing to run, even while chased about by one’s wife with the rolling pin! Fanny and Sarah are fine? And little John?

Geddes: Yes fine thanks, and Your Abigail is well?

Jackson:

Geddes: Yes, Sarah has gone to school at Ypsianti, and finds it hard, but quite enjoyable, as do we, for the price! [laughing}

Jackson: My Abigail is all I’v got as yet, so fast is she or I slow in my chasing, but we have a new settler here from New York who has brought two boys to brighten up the town: This is Isaac Van Woert Carpenter and expert selector of boards for siding and shingles, at our service, and his fair ox Bessie, having worked much on the framing of houses in the East, and coming to us just in time. He will reject the knotty and the twisted, mind us, and as sharp sighted as any man they have out East for the moon of the board [makes an arc motion with his hand], the perpendicular and the level. He, with wife and brood and ox to draw the plow, was stranded by good fortune just short of his destination in Ann Arbor, where he hoped to find work in the building being done now at some pace, his wagon axle and wheel quite broken on our ruts, when we promptly seized them with such bribery as Maple syrup cakes, and took them in and found them shelter at the vacant house of Joseph Crawford. We have now raised 3 of 4 walls, and come for boards especially for shingles and siding.

Geddes : Pleased to make your acquaintance. I will show you all I have milled, and Van Sickle has some shingles too up in Summit, as close as Ann Arbor, and cheaper. Mine are better, though! And speed your project- I will be by if I can get up that way. Say, I have here the old stove from my kitchen. I just bought a new one for 23 $ at Ypsilanti, pleasing the wife and sister sure for decades to come. I was going to put the old one in the mill, but its not much better than what I have, and doesn’t quite fit anyway.

Jackson: It may help to keep away the drafts.

Geddes: Two centers of fire make the space between quite comfortable away from the fireplace, and much easier for cooking. We can fit it on the wagon, if Betsy doesn’t mind.

Jackson: We’ll see the weight of the boards- but she is strong as an ox!

Geddes: We have heard that John Sinclair has died in August near the mill there.

Jackson: And now Martha Mulholland, the widow of John, the brother of your neighbor William… Just over three weeks ago.

Geddes: yes, we have heard, as William was over looking for work for for her young son, to busy his bereavement. Yet the pal over the town of Dixboro continues strange.

Jackson: Your Joseph has been set now to work at stones for John Whitney, which should keep him distracted yet for a while. Isaac here is staying in the house now where she died, of some mysterious cause, after a long decline, similar to that seen in the demise of her sister Ann.

Geddes: That alone is an odd event, as are the other occurrences in the darker days of Doxboro. But come, we have coffee within and news from Ypsilanti. It has been a sickly season since the bloody plum.

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[Exit to enter the mill house]

III, Scene iii

Isaac awakens in the night. The room is as if lit by the appearance of Martha.

Martha: She will not awake.

SD: Seeming to be in great pain. Martha leans over grasping her bowels in one hand. In the other, she holds a vial containing a dark liquid.

Isaac: What is that?

Martha: Doctor said it was “Balm of Gilead.”

She disappears, and Isaac reaches for his notebook.

III, scene iv

SD: Hawkins’ cabin. Mrs. Hammonds, Isaac, Rachael, Abigail and Jackson at breakfast

Hammonds: …so it goes, “there is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole

[with Rachael and Abigail singing] There is a bam in Gilead

To heal the sin sick soul.”

Abigail– The marvel of these visions…As though from the other side

Rachael: “tween which and us there is supposed a gulf impassible!

Abigail: Yet Lazarus, to warn his brothers it was not permitted-

Rachael: As though she had not crossed over yet.

Abigail: yet she seems to care for her endangered son, and more, to wish to tell a message, or…

Hammonds: and if he were to warn them, they would not hear.

Abigail: The balm of Gilead in the song is the anointing oil, made from a certain balsam bush given to Solomon by the queen of Sheeba, from Ethiopia.

Isaac: It would be the balm in annointing at the sacrament of death, as she is Irish.

Jackson: Odd, though- a balm is an ointment, and that of Gilead was made by soaking balsam in oil, not a liquid or an extract…In the Western sphere, they call a terpentine made from pine by this name.

Like the oil of anointing held- is it by Magdalene- to anoint the Lord for his own death…

Isaac: She showed a vial of dark liquid.

Abigail: We had taken her to Dr. Denton- maybe he gave her something.

Jackson: Yet that would not cause her long illness and decline. Indeed, she had no access to a doctor until it was much too late, and whatever he did do did no good. I do not know a medicine called balm of Gilead, though here we have a liquid called Balsam of Wild Cherry, sold though for consumption and ailments of the lungs.

Rachael : So balm of Gilead would be a balsam balm, while balsam of wild cherry is neither balsam nor balm!

Hammonds: Yet it is there to heal the sin sick soul, as balms heal the body of its inflictions.

Jackson: Just here, we have some medicines sold at Ypsilanti by Sampson and others. A doctor Van Der Hayden teaches that poisons are not medicines at all, and appeals from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom as the source of all cures. Here he writes:

“You may perhaps in the future save yourselves and family from the lasting and tormenting effects of calomel, opium, arsenic and deadly poisons of scientific drugs of the earth, blisterings and the lancet.”

Here is a “University pill” which seems to be no more than an oil of corn. No Balm of Gilead, though is in our pharmacies anywhere seen- one wonders, though, about wares of our peddler.

Such things are sold for stomach ailments and the liver. Martha, though, did not say that the doctor in Ann Arbor gave her any medicines or practiced any bleeding- though she could not by then say much, so near to death.

Abigail: And perhaps had more to say.

Isaac: Nor have we found anything about the house.

Jackson: I have a friend in Ann Arbor, Mr. William Perry Esquire, both a lawyer and apothecary, out of his bookstore there down the street from Allen’s little law shop. We must now try to make as much of shingles and a roof before the autumn rains, and we are lucky these have not yet come. But a visit will be in order when the time allows respite from labors. Perry is also a Justice of the Peace with some sway in Washtenaw County, and may be informed at least of our precautions and suspicions. Old Voorhees struggles to wield the township peace in Springfield, of which Dixboro is a part, it’s only city, as Geddesburgh is across the line, within the township of Ypsilanti. [pointing to two places in the paper] We see in the press old Vorheis has lost his wallet, and another found a wallet, and they have yet to put these two together! [They laugh]. We think him not long for the job, and an election will come in July.

Isaac: We will attend to what is ours to do with our integrity. When a danger is unknown, and the reasons can’t yet be shown, we may yet prevent harms from occurring, covering possibilities.

Jackson: Which, if these possibilities are not real, the precautions, with the specters, will be without effect, and like these, disappear. So one can act with near certainty amid uncertainties.

Isaac: Often we do the same in carpentry! [they laugh].

III, Scene v

Rachael: Late! The boys already have taken the Toledo fort, in play down by the mill, with two or three other boys,

Isaac: Fine friends from school.

Rachael: They have pushed some villainous invading fellow named Two Stickney, all the way back to Ohio.

Isaac: As to stay in Michigan, he was weak syrup, not too sticky!

Rachael: Already, their simple backwoods school seems enough to keep them in local letters.

[To the boys] And time for bed!]

Thomas: Izzy told me there is a dead man under the bed!

Isaac: If there are monsters, tell them that they are not real! That always gets ’em, by confusing them right into disappearing- every time!-

Rachael: Ha! Those you must fear are not the dead ones, but the QUICK [tickles him] THESE may do harm- especially if when little boys, their mother let them be BAD!

Izzy: We will drive them back to Ohio!

Isaac: Izzy, do not terrify your brother. He may not sleep till Halloween! Ahh [chasing the boys, who exit ahead of Rachael, running off to bed]

Enter Rachael

Isaac: The moon has left yet but a sliver- though I will work a while yet at the bench. We have cut shingles nearly enough, but must yet finish to set them before it rains on Jackson’s floor and walls.

Rachael: Do not stay too long at your bench, my love- for soon, the sun will rise in time for work again.

[Isaac pours coffee and begins to work. A moment passes, then Martha appears again]

Martha: I wanted to tell James something, but I could not. [Looking up at Isaac] I could not!

Isaac: What did you want to tell him?

Martha: Oh! He did an awful thing to me!

Isaac: Who did?

Martha: Oh! he gave me a great deal of trouble in my mind…[mumbling] the man they would not let me have! …Oh, they kilt me, they kilt me!

[Isaac approaches her, reaching to touch her shoulder- she recedes as he approaches]

Isaac: Did you take some medicine that killed you?

Martha: Oh, I dont … Oh, I don’t… [froth in her mouth seems to stop her speaking]

Oh, they kilt me!

Isaac: Who killed you?

Martha: [Becoming calm] I will show you. [Martha leads Isaac out the back door near the fence. Two men appear, James and the Peddler, standing and looking downcast. and dejected. Then beginning from the feet they melt, like lead melting. As they disappear, a blue flame appears over the surface of the molten mass, which begins to bubble. Isaac turns to Martha, and she disappears. He turns back to the sight, and it is gone.] He goes in, and takes up his notebook.

III, scene vi

[At the mill, James and the Peddler with a cauldron of molten lead]

James: Drink as much as you like! There libations will bring life to the flame! [He throws some whiskey on the fire, which leaps]

We must only remain sober enough to pour. Old Shavehead will soon be by, expecting cold bullets for his services.

Peddlar: und viskey varm!

James: Soon Blackwood will have the papers acted upon, and no more rents will be received by that ill-gotten boy!

Peddlar: There! A noise and large motion. In the bush!

James My pitchfork! [he hurls it into a tree] Rats!

4 Boys: Screaming Ayyy!

Thomas: Moo-mmy!

Izzy: Run!

[The boys run into Shavehead, a huge Pottawatomi native, coming up the path. Screaming]

Ayyy!]

[III, Scene vi]

Isaac: Another good day! We have beams to hold the shingles, and shingles to hold out some of the rain.

Jackson: Tomorrow we will go to Ann Arbor.

Isaac: A clue to the poison may be the blue flame. It was as though she could not say, and so set out to show there in the yard, but by the torrent her account producing specters for the imagination, in the semblance of what has occurred- and not of ghosts but people yet alive, and yet appearing as specters, as does the ghost.

Jackson: I will relate to Abbey what you have told of this, now the seventh time that Martha has appeared. and consult her wisdom for our journey. Give out regards to Rachael, and here- some maple candies for the boys, if they have been good, and not up to tricks!

Isaac: I will! It is well to be off work in time for dinner- And to Abigail, the same, regards. I will have more shingles cut tomorrow any way. [Isaac goes around to the back yard]

Martha!

Martha: I want you to tell James to repent! Oh, if he would repent [looking off] But he won’t. He can’t!

John was a bad man…[muttering and looking down]. And I the worse for second husband [Looking up to Isaac] Do you know where Frain’s Lake is?…

Isaac: No.

Martha: It is just up Plymouth road, up Fleming’s creek Do you know [whispering…the well, on the corner there by the house…? Don’t tell of that!

Isaac: I will keep your silence. But should I inform the pubic of the two men you say have killed you?

Martha: [Looking into the distance] There will be a time…The time is coming…The time will come…But, Oh, their end! Their wicked end! They kilt me! Oh, they have kilt me…muttering…[ they would kill Joseph, too].

Intermission