To be sure, the place was not well-made but slapped together, the boards on it sides scratched with the letter R to signal ownership--Mr. Roelse, a Civil War veteran who fought with Grant at Vicksburg. Roelse came to northwest Iowa, put up what was thought of as a beautiful home along the Floyd River, west and just a bit north of Hospers, but also slapped together a flimsy shack on another chunk of good Iowa land, as per the conditions of the law. As a Civil War vet, he was entitled to free land, but he had to stay there.
So he did, sort of.
Every once in a while, Charley Dyke says in the History of Sioux County, Roelse and a friend or two or four would meet out there and yak, talk about Vicksburg and trout fishing along the Floyd and maybe last Sunday's sermon from Dominie Bolks. Oddly enough, Roelse sold a little Johnny Barleycorn in that shack, liquor-by-the drink, by the cupful, so much so that occasionally late night singing was heard floating loftily over the prairie grass for miles around. You wouldn't call the place a tavern, wouldn't think of it as a house really; it was little more than something slapped together to meet the letter of the law.
On the vast and beautiful prairie back then, wood was at a premium; the only cut lumber had to be hauled up north from LeMars and purchased with provender most pioneers didn't have.
So one day that makeshift slapped-up shack simply disappeared. It was gone--Dyke doesn't say much about the barrel of hooch. Remember, 'twasn't a house really; it was little more than a lean-to. Someone had hauled off with the lumber. Wood was valuable.
Roelse the veteran did a little detective work and discovered that a man who lived closer to Orange City--think Newkirk-ish--had made off with Roelse's own man-cave in the middle of the night, his oxen pulling the load of stolen goods back past the sod house of yet another pioneer neighbor. Late night processionals were rare back then, and that neighbor, up with a colicky child, had cause to investigate.
Roelse got word, visited the thief, acted kindly, greeting the family warmly. Over a cup of coffee, they talked for awhile about the new northwest Iowa world they were in, about the war now successfully behind them, and about the sterling nature of Dominie Bolks's sermons. Mr. Van Berkenbosch, Dyke calls him (then tells the reader he's creating a name to protect the innocent) was quite the pious sort, a man "good at religion," you might say.
But Roelse had the goods on him right there in his hand, a board scratched with his initial, a smoking gun. When he made the accusation, Van Berkenbosch was smart enough not to further sup with the Devil. Immediately, Van B's wife launched into a tearful outburst of "I told you so." Van B begged for grace, supplicated for forgiveness. Roelse told him no harm would come if this little shack of his got back to its government-appointed place by sundown the next day--and it did.
Now that would be a Sunday School lesson if it were the end of the story. But Dyke says Van B's penchant for piety was topped only by his taste for nice things--and who could blame him, after all? The story is rooted in the very earliest of pioneer Sioux County days; the Yankton Sioux still wander around. It's the era of sod houses after all, open fires, snakes in the roofs, puddles on mud floors. Van B wanted some stability. Van B wanted wood.
What he wanted got the best of him. He grabbed what he thought he needed from the LeMars lumber yard one night, started the long trip back to Newkirk, and never got there because the sheriff caught him and stuck him in the clink, where he stayed for a week or so, missing church the next Sunday. Dyke doesn't say what his wife said, but if you want to imagine her in that sod house when the news came of her husband's crime, you can assume more wet floors.
Dominie Bolks minced no words, Dyke says. It was a communion Sunday too, and those days of blessed sacrament didn't come often back then. "It is with a feeling of great shame and sorrow that I have to announce to you," Bolks said before the entire congregation, "that one of the brethren who intended to sit with us at the table has disgraced himself, his family and his church, and is now behind the bars at LeMars for stealing lumber. God be merciful to him, and let it be a lesson to us. He who means to stand, see to it that he does not fall."
And there, blessedly, Charlie Dyke ends the story, still a touch of Sunday School.
No comments:
Post a Comment