Pursuing Daisy Garfield: The Hummingbird Express

Sometimes when the wind gusts wild through the cedars, either bearing a storm in from the west or whisking the sky clean after a storm, the wind shucks the cedar needles and scatters them on the road. The cedar needles are easier to see against the dark clay rather than the rusty rubble of limestone, but in either case, the needles lie bright green and shattered. God is very like that ambivalent wind: He goes whither He will, sometimes a locomotive and sometimes a caboose, but always doing precisely what He likes with no rails to confine Him--and of course we are but cedar needles before the gusting wind.

Then again, as the poets tell us, God is also a hummingbird, a surprise and a delight, whirring his wings in frenzied stillness at the periphery of sight and then zipping away through the cedars leaving nothing but a gentle awe. So, too, God's voice is like the whir of wings, a fetching hum that summons us from the monotony of our labor into the realm of the miraculous. With his softly whirring wings the hummingbird proclaims, "The Kingdom of God is at hand! Yea!" The ruby throat and inscrutable black eyes and the shining wings all proclaim the banner-less army of love, the shield-less forearms of the saved, and the sword-less hands of the martyrs. For the Kingdom of God is tiny--herein lies a tremendous truth--like a mustard seed or a lost coin or a honeybee with pollen on his buskins. Yea, be it known that Solomon and Caesar and General Grant and all the munitions and armies of the world are nothing compared to the glint of light on the bead of nectar that clings to the beak of a hummingbird.

But here's the thing about it: God's voice may be still and small, but when amplified in the chamber of the skull, the hum becomes a mighty wind. At first, His Voice may be heard as a cry of greeting--Hello? Helloo?--or reproach--You fool! What made you think you could get away with that?--or even warning--Watch out! Remember that cliff? Yore about to pitch forward yoreself! Steady now! In the chamber between William's temples, the hummingbird transmogrified into an accusing presence, for what seems insignificant against a panoply of trees or the great blue arch of sky burgeons in the modest domain of the mind.

To wit--

Hey, William! You murdered a man. Whirrrr.

She asked me to do it. 'Sides, it warn't murder. You cain't murder a dyin' man. It was a mercy, what I done.

You killed a man too weak to fend for hisself. What if he'd got better? How you know he wouldn't've? Hummm.

Got better? That leg of his'n was swole with pus. And stunk to high heaven. Fever wracked his joints and was writ in his face. 'Sides, she asked me to do it.

You murdered a man. Hummm.

A mercy killin' ain't murder, I tell you!

Killin's killin'. Whirrrr.

Such discourse William endured when he passed the Garfield homestead on the way to his own cabin.

That he also felt a vague fear is true: He had killed a man, and though he had never heard of anyone hanged for a mercy-killing, he couldn't be sure his own act would be so perceived. The complication, of course, was Daisy. Her beauty would surely serve to convict him, because no man would believe or even could believe that William killed her husband with disinterested motives. Behind his eyes, he was interrogated thus:

So, Mr. Crawford, if John Garfield was dyin', why'd you kill him?

He was sufferin', that's why. 'Sides, his wife asked me to.

Oh, his wife, eh? What was yore intent with regard to her?

No intent. Just bein' a good neighbor.

A good neighbor, eh? Tell us, Mr. Crawford, did you ever lust in yore heart for Daisy Garfield?

Lust? No! 'Course not. She belonged to her husband by convention, troth, and Holy Writ.

In her testimony, Mizz Garfield says she saw you lookin' through her winda more'n you shoulda. Is that so?

Mebbe. She is a comely woman. (Why in holy hell would she tell 'em such a thing? I was doin' her will 'n' biddin'.)

Ah, ha! So you did lust in yore heart for her?

What? No! But you can see for yoreself she's a fine-lookin' woman. (She said she'd take my hand!)

We can see that. But we ain't killed her husband.

Oh.

This interrogation he also endured within the chamber between his temples.

Even more distressing, however, was the inevitable elision from inquest to trial, not simply because William feared a verdict leading to his execution, but because he saw his eternal soul dangling from an unraveling rope over an open ravine. He, William Crawford, might be declared guilty--Just stick to yore guns! It warn't murder--and heaved over and down, down, down where he would groan forever, fractured on the shattered rocks and bemoaning his innocence. In short, he faced not judgment but Judgment.

Hush now. The trial begins again.

Listen! You can hear contending Voices in the chamber--more strident, more incisive, angrier than ever--and the shuffling of papers.

Behold the accused. He is riding his mule past her homestead on the way to his cabin.

Is she in there?

Cain't see.

Naw, she ain't in there.

Look closely: You can tell--can you not?--the defendant feels the inevitable Entrance of the Lord God, an Almighty Judge like unto the rushing onslaught of an eyeless locomotive--a Massive Machine unyielding. William Crawford stands before the pounding train, reassuring himself that he is justified and defiant when, in fact, he is frozen by fear.

Watch as he watches the road pass on either side of the withers, his head drooping like that of a man condemned, like a flower beaten by rain, like a penitent.

All rise!

A mercy killin' ain't murder, yore Honor. See, I was ridin' by, when she was out fixin' her fence; it really warn't much of a fence, tell the truth. And she said, I'll git it later. So I says--

Now the defendant speaks in frantic terror of the onrushing locomotive, as if such a train as the Lord God will heed windy words, and some Fellow on board might throw the brake:

And she says, "I learnt that day thar's always another dog." So you see, yore Honor, it was a mercy to John Garfield, what I done. And I done it gentle-like, visiting neither violence nor fear upon his already suffering self. And I done it with no intent of selfish gain. It warn't like I killed that man to take his . . . .

The pounding wheels become overbearing at this point.

Well, what if I did do it 'cause I thought that woman might be beholdin' to me and yield to me, or maybe even love me?

And always at this point in the proceedings, he remembers Daisy's unfulfilled promise made moments before he stretched the pillow over John Garfield's face.

She told me that she would take my hand! It's true I touched her neck--Almighty Lord--beneath her spun-gold hair. And I stroked her cheek soft as the breast of a dove. But she lied to me! That woman never took my hand, never! She said, and I quote, "There's always another dog!"

William vents his indignation, but the onrush of mighty wheels drowns out his impotent defense.

Wait! Wait!

A hum ensues.

She said she wanted You to leave her the hell alone!

And so saying, he extends his forefinger toward the locomotive so close before him that he smells the acrid metal and stands aghast before the overwhelming eye, the forward lamp, which is suddenly bright as star-silver, because William Crawford is now enveloped in coal black night, and the locomotive which he first discerned as an inevitable Machine is now invisible in the night save for the lamp which smites him like a great Eye.

Yore not Time! She said you was nothin' but Time! But you ain't! Yore more'n Time! You ain't us givin' up! And I said things I knew to be untrue. I said You didn't know me . . . But You do know me! I confess it--You know me! And, Lord, I'm sorry for my self-deceit and my reckless hungerin' and my yearnin' for that pretty woman! Yes, I done it because I wanted her! I'm sorry I killed that man! We could-a let John die natural-like, and I could-a buried him in her backyard and lashed two sticks together to be a proper cross and drove it in the ground to mark his grave. But I didn't. And it warn't her fault nor doin', though indeed she played a part. It was me, like a fool . . . seein' somethin' that pertained in a story 'bout a dog.

And all in a moment, the great forward, silver-bright lamp shrinks to a small, yellow glimmering lantern, and the locomotive reconfigures itself into a bearded man of medium height with indifferent features, and the man approaches William Crawford, not in haste but with undeviating purpose. A glow lightens the hills in the east, and William looks down to see a bright green beetle scurrying across the road, fumbling its way over the cedar needles. The man holding the lantern reaches out and touches William Crawford's chest, and when William Crawford looks up, the man tips his hat back from his eyes and smiles.

So the trial ends. Until the next time he rides past her cabin and suffers the resumption of contending Voices and declares his innocence into the roar of an implacable train.