THE PESTILENT THIRST

“The sheriffs will falter, all hell they don’t fear, they will bring them in guilty if they prove themselves clear.”- The Prisoners in Jail, anti-rent song (Christman)

     Because of bad luck, and an aggressive attitude, numerous premature and unnatural deaths in the family would take place throughout this movable edge of empire; until America’s mythical borderland dissolved in the salty Pacific. The term “Intra-history,” comes closest to defining what was going on behind the headlines; a history in the shadows. Very few members of the family, outside of the scientists, artists and clergy, ever became urbanized, celebritized, or historicized. I was the only Osterhout in the 1985 Manhattan phone book (I checked) and by 1995 even I had left the city; gladly returning to my comfortable rural obscurity, now just as antiquated and useless as that old Manhattan phone book. I effortlessly picked up right where I left off….nowhere….. falling back into the slow, familiar step of a small town, seldom making much of a stir, but always willing to help out if need be. Just not after 5pm.

  I left “The New York” with the City Marshall’s sticker and padlock on my apartment door. It was one last humiliation I was forced to suffer as a poor urban tenant before becoming an even poorer country yeoman. Not wanting another showdown in court, the landlord’s management company was reticent to initiate proceedings when I was just a couple of months late on the rent. When the arrears continued to pile up, they reconsidered their legal options. My plan was to ride it out and leave town just as soon as I closed on a little piece of property upstate. It was a race to the finish line. A month before the closing, a stranger knocked on my door, shoved a piece paper in my hand and mumbled, “You’ve been served.”  

    In order to save a little money, I’d stopped paying rent five months prior. It was a gamble I was willing to take. A week before the deal was to close, I received a registered letter in the mail. The sellers had second thoughts. The upstate property was owned by a father and son and I needed both their signatures to close the deal. The father, grieving over his dead wife….. remembering all the good times…feeling sentimental…not wanting to lose that one last connection…well….you understand. NO! I did not fucking understand! The son was as furious as I was. He just wanted out. Forget sentimentality! The taxes were killing them. He was on my side. “But….” he wrote apologetically, “his mind is made up. I’m so sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

  I wish I had made a copy of the letter that I wrote back; directly to the father. I don’t even know what I said. I just know I was desperate, and wrote from deep down in my guts. Both Hallmark and the C.I.A. probably would’ve given me a job after reading it. A week later, the son called and informed me that his father had changed his mind….again. The deal could go through. I packed up the truck and headed north, leaving only an empty parking space. The padlock was on the door of my apartment in the blink of an eye and the Marshals were combing the city for Richard Hoffman; the recently passed, original tenant of the apartment, whose name I had put back on the new lease. Good luck.      

     For centuries, “constables” and ”marshals,” were little more than legally hired guns that could be employed at a moment’s notice to do almost anyone’s dirty work. These deputized, armed agents had the authority to arrest any individual who was deemed “chronically,” in arrears. Chronic behavior was capriciously assessed by the state towards the bottom line. Flagged scofflaws could be served with a writ at any time. If the fine was not paid in full, one ran the risk of getting thrown into the county gaol, in disgrace and discomfort, until it was. The policing system was set up to collect, punish and shame, predictably concentrating on those who were most able to pay.

    The poor weren’t off the hook by any means; but they hadn’t yet been collectively criminalized. Fines were levied on the marginalized and underrepresented; remanding them to jail as well, while the lawyers, clerks, magistrates, jailers, and constables were all paid their wage through tax collection- hired by “the people” to grind the wheels slowly- minimally housing and feeding the scofflaw public. It was the birth of custodial over-reach, endemic in the modern penal system. Ticketing, court costs, and parole helps keep municipalities flush and jails full, while trapping the poor in a never-ending cycle of debt, punishment, and more debt.  A constable (or marshal) was a well paid and very unwelcome reality for both the rich and poor in 1818. For horse theft or murder, hanging was the quick solution. For your outstanding debts, you got locked up with an indeterminate sentence. Pay up or spend another night on a straw covered stone floor.

  Richard Jennings was far from poor or marginalized, but, like all of us, he was at the mercy of his bills. For no other reason than the spitefulness of Conklin and Teed; Richard Jennings and his daughters were arrested, taken into custody, and thrown into the Goshen gaol until relatives bailed them out. That Dick Jennings didn’t kill James Teed and David Conklin himself, before Jack Hodges and David Dunning were hired to kill him, is another family mystery. 

  If uncle Dick had an eccentricity (aside from his misanthropy), it was his unpredictable schedule. Well known to disappear for days at a time, if we are to believe his children and in-laws, it was this one well-worn habit that explained nobody searching harder for the man. This quirk in Richard Jennings’ personality is pointed to over again as the reason that his disappearance didn’t warrant more scrutiny.

  Here’s where I become suspicious of my own family; and I don’t mean just the jailed cousins, James and Hannah Teed. There is Coe and Ira’s tepid, vague testimony. Seventeen year old cousin William Henry Seward was home for Christmas vacation and was never questioned. Sally and Mary Ann Jennings lived close by and are only referred to extraneously in court testimony. There were plenty of other family members scattered all across the county. Yet, nobody delved any deeper into the conspiracy than the arrested five.  Everybody said that it was just one of those odd things that the body was never discovered. As Doc. Seward put it from the stand, "Dog's meat will lie a long time above the ground and not smell."

     Dick had just celebrated his 65th birthday. Christmas was almost upon them. Why were all these relatives, bustling about during the Christmas holidays, not in the least concerned when Dick’s horse and gun remained in place, while he was nowhere to be found? He was gone for days before anyone inquired on his behalf, and missing for a week before anybody seriously took up the search. Why didn’t anybody go to the obvious place, that piece of woods by the Teed house, where the body laid in plain sight, hidden only by the wood line shadow? And where was Dick’s other son Richard jr. all this time? As the eldest, Richard Jennings, Jr., was the only one who would have benefitted from his father dying without a will. According to case law, if no will is probated, upon the death of the parents, the eldest son automatically inherits the entire estate. As the eldest child I repeatedly reminded my parents of this old legal loophole in estate law. They assured me that their will had been drawn up long ago, and I’d just have to wait and see if there was anything left.