Not Quite Salvation
A New Short Story
William Tucker staggered out of the main house, into the din of the harvest festival that the master of the estate gave each year for all the residents of Sleepy Hollow. A band played in the gazebo as a breeze made its way up from the Hudson River, keeping everyone comfortable on this warm Indian summer day.
William looked back and saw Judge Dobbs, his employer, straightening his jacket and taking deep breaths. A few minutes before, in the servant’s quarters, the Judge was losing his temper with William for impregnating Daisy, the downstairs maid. Daisy disappeared earlier that morning and the Judge raged at William’s immoral conduct. He vowed to go to the courthouse in Tarrytown and sign a warrant to have William arrested for duping the impressionable young girl.
While Judge Dobbs was threatening William with prison, Horace Musselman was loading the cannon in front of the house that would be fired to mark the end of the fall festival. He carefully measured out the powder and rammed it into place with the same efficiency as when he was a gunner in the New York 5th Light Artillery during the Civil War under Judge Dobbs’ command. He longed to load one of the cannonballs he stashed in the barn to see if he could still hit a target with the same accuracy he had done during the war, but the Judge never let him have any fun.
William stumbled down the steps into the crowded festival. He did not hear the band, or the people engaged in conversation, or the children running from game to game. Some man with more strength and virtue than him, rang the bell in a display of strength. The man that rang the bell was obviously not someone who would seduce a girl of sixteen, with promises of marriage and a life he never intended to give her, even after she submitted to his will. William realized that the Judge was right, that he was a man of low moral fiber.
He looked across the crowded lawn, past the tables of watermelon and drinks, past the booths with games, to the railroad tracks leading to the city and to the river just beyond. He summoned all his strength and walked through the non-existent crowd. His legs wobbled as he descended the steep hill.
His mind was made up. Either a train would smash and end his unworthy life, or he would just walk into the water and end it.
All the noises of the day combined into an echoed vibration inside his head. Everything to his periphery was hazy, as if the world slowed its motion and lost all adherence to the laws of time. He heard celestial music over the ringing in his ears. Was he already dead? He took a deep breath to test if he was still alive. Maybe the train had squashed out his life without him realizing. Luck was not on side, he lived still.
The music grew louder as his foot toed the steel tracks. He stepped over onto the gravel between the ties and waited for the singing angels to be replaced by the whistle of the train bound for Grand Central Station or Albany.
He closed his eyes and waited. He tried to remember the hymn from when his parents would walk him to the old stone church on Broadway when he was a boy. He hummed along as his memory found the second verse.
The angels began the chorus, “Shall we gather at the river…”
William looked north to Albany and south to the city, there was no sign of smoke on the horizon and no rattle of an oncoming locomotive. He was drawn again to the Hudson and began walking to the banks. He closed his eyes again as his first shoe filled with water.
He was up to his waist, waiting for the depths to swallow him, stopping as small waves lapped against his chest. He tried to summon the will to go on, taking another deep breath and lifting his leg to finish what he started. He would let the river take his body past the city and out into the Atlantic, never to be found, since he did not deserve a proper burial or any sort of remembrance after what he had done.
He felt a hand on his forehead and another on the small of his back. A large man appeared in the corner of his eye; he was suddenly plunged under the water with the man holding him beneath the surface. He kicked and swam his arms in an attempt to get out of the water, but he had no balance, and the man was very strong. Just as he was about to run out of air, he was lifted, back to his feet. Gasping, he saw his attacker, the Reverend Fletcher from the First Baptist Church and behind him on the dock, his choir singing the praises of the newly baptized.
“You are saved!” the reverend declared as William blinked in disbelief.
Just as his head cleared and he was finally grasping what had happened, screams rained down the hill from the festival. He saw the crowd rushing for the front of the Judge’s house. The screams continued.
The reverend began to run from the water and as he crossed the tracks, William felt compelled to follow. He barely had the strength to climb the hill. After forcing himself through the crowd, he saw Judge Dobbs on the ground with Dr. Jennings holding a blood-soaked towel to his employer’s head. The Judge was not moving and looked to be barely breathing.
William grabbed the man next to him by the lapels.
“What happened?” he asked.
“David Templeton was showing off for a group of girls by ringing the bell at the test of strength. On his third try, he swung so hard the head of the sledge flew off and hit Judge Dobbs square in the head. He went down like a sack of potatoes.”
As William pushed closer, Dr. Jennings stood, removed his jacket, and covered the Judge’s body.
“Our gracious benefactor is gone,” the doctor announced to the stunned crowd.
Master Washington Irving Sneed, great-great grandnephew of the man who had made the town famous, aged seven years, was playing with his tin soldiers near the ceremonial cannon. Unfazed by the commotion by the house as he marched his favorite figurine to the end of the breach, where he pretended to shoot his toy’s musket into the cannon, moving closer with each shot, until it teetered on the opening. Wash, as he was called, then promptly dropped the painted Revolutionary War soldier into the breach when his mother yelled at him to get away from there “before he got his head blown off.”
William headed to the barn to try to clear his mind. He should be dead, but instead it was Judge Dobbs who was growing cold. He decided to saddle a horse and get out of Sleepy Hollow before anyone could figure out that it was his debauchery that caused the unfortunate chain of events. He mounted Midnight, Judge Dobbs’ huge black stallion, and tried to ride off. He turned and looked back at the house and stopped because he thought he heard singing again.
That was because at the very same time, a grief-stricken Horace Musselman, felt it was his duty to honor his fallen former commander. He walked over to the ceremonial cannon and started to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. By the time he got to “trampled out the vintage,” the entire crowd was singing along with him.
When they finished the verse, Horace lit the fuse, which fizzed and stopped for a few seconds until it finally exploded, sending the tin soldier hurtling in the direction of the barn where the half pound of cast metal made contact with William’s neck, taking his head off cleanly, sending it bounding down the hill, where it bounced through the window of the 6:15 express train to Albany and into the lap of Miss Daisy Downing.
She rang the bell for the conductor.
“Providence has delivered this piece of refuse; can you please see that it is properly disposed of?”
Spooked by the sound of the cannon, Midnight took off with his headless rider, across the lawn, the crowd politely clapping, as many commented about how realistic the tribute to the history of Sleepy Hollow was and that the reenactment seemed appropriate as the town was beginning to mourn the loss of their patron.
William’s head spent an hour in the lost and found at the Ossining Station before the authorities finally arrived to begin their search for the rest of William. Midnight, with the most recent headless horseman galloped south unabated, reaching the Bronx, before stopping outside a saloon, where the stallion squeezed in between the other horses for a drink at the trough.
I love Tom's stories!!