On the unpaved road he spied Content and tucked his head into his coat, trying to go on unrecognized.

“I am sorry we were not there, but Dorthea has come down sick. I spent the morning at her bedside,” Content said, after catching up to him.

As Merian listened to these words he could barely look at the man without anger. For the sake of former friendship, he held back from saying that it was an outright lie he was hearing and had walked seven miles through the rain to suffer. He felt a great anger at his circumstances. If he were more prosperous, he explained to himself, there would be no need to resort to desperate works to achieve his ends and desires in the world.

“Let me make it up to you,” his friend offered. “Next week we are celebrating Easter and would be much pleased if you came.”

“It is a fairly long way, especially in weather,” Merian reflected, letting his accusation hang there as Content looked at him. “I will see how it is next week.”

“Well, we would be much pleased,” Content said again. “And I am sure there is bound to be a woman there or two. I know at least Dorthea’s cousin is coming from the coast.”

“I will see what the weather is,” Merian replied. “It is not so short a way for someone walking in foul elements.” At that he took his leave, bundling himself back into a knot of angry shivers and tension that warmed his muscles briefly against the springtime cold.

The next week brought nothing but more weather, and Sunday was the wettest day among them. Under his roof, Merian pattered about, preparing his porridge and trying to decide whether he would go into town or not. He listened to the spikes of rain hammering the boards and, in his own self, felt emotions hard and bitter that the growing season had still not arrived and his fields remained untilled. Beyond this, he felt a deep sense of gnawing discomfort that was not so sharp or hateful as hunger but reminded him of an abiding sickness. He knew it was loneliness that roiled within him, for he had been out on the land over a year and a half with scarce any human company. Still, he was surprised to find it so sharp within himself, for he seldom felt need for association of any kind. He remembered then the celebrations of springtime they had had back in Virginia, and how he felt among them like part of the company, even if he could not always share fully in their belief. If only for the sake of this remembered fellowship, he resuscitated his expectations, allowing that he might join in the Easter Day services and the festivals that followed.

He dressed himself diligently before the low flames, taking from a stool beside the fire his pants, which he had washed by hand the night before and hung to dry. From a box beneath the bed he removed his other shirt and wrapped it around his body. At the flame again he took a piece of glass and a sharpened knife, which he lifted to his throat and began scraping until his neck and face were passable smooth. Outside, he saddled the mule with the harness it wore when he first liberated it from its former captivity and climbed on top of the animal. Man and beast then were prepared and headed down the road combined in a single quixotic form.

At the bottom of the hill he listened again to the ghost, singing with even greater strength than before. The creature’s tortured sound caused him to stopper his ears in fear, with the base of his palms pressed against his minor lobes, as he knew everything that lives, or else half lives, does so on the constant edge of annihilation. There were those who saw this edge and got on with it — that is to say past it, smartly — and those others who looked on it and passed through the rest of life in paralysis of fear. The beast sang its dirge. Merian adjusted himself in the saddle astride the mule and coaxed it into a faster and faster trot. The animal would never reach anything even approximating a proper gallop, but it gained speed enough to hurry him beyond the sound of singing and on his chosen way.

The mule moved over the muddied pathways toward civilization, sure-footed even without the man’s hand guiding its journey, until they neared the settlement’s center. Half a mile from the burgeoning square, the animal came to a flat stop and refused to budge, regardless of goading or the eventual outright violence. The spot where it stood was the railing next to a stone-built house with a plot just inside the fence. Instead of keeping to the road, the animal shoved its head between the slats of wood and began rooting in the garden for whatever might reveal itself.

From the side of the house a man, who had watched and saw this, stepped forth and called to the two of them. “We just planted that ground.”

“I don’t know what her interest is in it,” Merian replied, whipping at the animal’s hide. “You know how mules are.”

“I know that mule,” the man said, walking closer toward them. “It belonged to Mr. Potter, who took his family west last spring.”

“Wrong mule,” Merian answered.

“Well, I would swear.”

“You would be lying.” Merian looked the man in the face, and the man looked away, past him at the animal, then back toward the house.

“I didn’t mean nothing by it. It’s just I had a neighbor with a mule that was the image of that one, liked to root in the same spot.”

“Must be something there that attracts them all,” Merian said.

“Must be,” the man returned, then took a half eaten and moldy apple from his pocket and offered it to the animal.

The mule lifted its head from the soil and nuzzled the man’s hand, taking the fruit from his grasp.

“Mule’s name was Potter too, just like the man. It liked apples nearly as much as yours here.”

“Well, we thank you for it, friend,” Merian answered, as he coaxed the animal back onto the road and they finally turned toward the square. The animal finished the apple in two great bites and began to trot again. In its mouth the taste of fruit was ancient and sweet.

three

The spring when he was released into the company of manumitted men, all were told by court and legislators they could not remain in the colony but had to leave under penalty of death. Those who did not hide and ransom their lives to chance in order to stay near loved ones and old ways joined the lines on the roads heading north and west at the beginning of the year. The month when he set out had been marked by pox, but it was very mild that year and put in check before too long, so that only twenty thousand souls died in the season. It was this fever and dying that he would associate with springtime for the rest of his days. On the square that morning it was brought to mind as bile welled in his throat and he tried to turn it back down, to force himself into better spirits before the Sunday service.

He dismounted outside the tavern and tied Ruth Potter to a railing, then straightened his shirt and went across the square to the little building that served as a church. He was met at the door by the sound of communion and found Content and Dorthea among the milling crowd, enthusiastic to see him as they attempted to banish any possible ill feelings from the previous Sunday. Merian nodded warmly, acknowledging that their fight was now behind them, and followed the couple into church, where they took a pew in back. Some who noticed him there a second week tried to be more generous in their gestures toward their outland neighbor. There were of course also those who did not. He took both sentiments in stride as he sat on the bench and listened to the Easter service.

That week was a different preacher than the one before, and his talk was all of schisms and something he kept calling Utopia, which they would build right there in the newbornland. The sermon was a towering success, and everyone brimmed afterward with talk of this grand enterprise the preacher kept calling by that name all the rest of them seemed to know. The idea, at least in its rough form, was not unknown to Merian, but the word itself was new, and when he asked about its exact meaning later he was told it was a vision for the perfection of place. He smiled with pleasure, savoring its optimism. It was years before he found it also meant nowhere.