THE WORD OF GOD, THE BARK OF A DOG

  “Before quitting the scene of his brutal butchery, looking first in at one window, then at the other.”-George J Mastin

      Now we stand before the second canvas. Each canvas looks like a different sign painter tackled it. This artist’s hand is more skilled. It is an interior scene, the dying young George, the baby is draped in his sister’s arms. Streams of red paint run down his creamy white bedclothes. His head is gently cradled,(Christ like) by Helen Holmes, standing safely behind the locked raised panel door. Julia and Helen’s eyes implore each other, over John Van Nest’s body propped against the wall. For the moment they are safe. But wait! Bill’s still there, LOOK! Behind the window- again the racist, rolling white, google eyes, and obscene grin, luridly intruding into the room, seeking more victims, phallic spear raised…… 

Helen Holmes (victim) sworn:

“I was at the house of John G. Van Nest the night when he and his wife and child were murdered. I had retired to bed in the northwest bedroom. Julia slept with me, Peter with Mrs. Wyckoff and George W. in the sitting room with his parents. The first alarm I had was a scream from Mrs. Van Nest outdoors and the bark of a dog.”

 Cornelius Van Arsdale (victim) sworn:

“I was at the Van Nests at the time of the murder…After I had been in bed about five minutes I heard a woman scream. I raised up in bed, but seeing no one I laid back down again. In less than a minute I heard Mr. Van Nest speak to someone and ask what he wanted? Next I heard something heavy fall on the floor. I then got up and put on my pantaloons. Wilst doing so I heard scuffling in the hall below. I then stooped over to put on my stockings, when I heard the stair door open and heard someone ask if there was a man up there? As I raised up I saw a negro coming upstairs with a butcher knife in his hand. He came so near that the blade was about 18 inches from me. He stabbed me in the breast. It stuck on the breast bone and glanced off to the left side.

    I pushed him off, took his candle stick out of his hand and threw it at him and he fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom. I followed him down, seized a broomstick at the bottom of the stairs , with which I struck him several times. He escaped as fast as he could out the front door. I then shut the door. I then discovered the front hall door was open. Mrs. Wyckoff was just going off the steps. I called to her, but she went towards the gate where she again met the negro and had a scuffle with him, but after getting through the gate she went south and he went north.” Phebe Wyckoff would die of her wounds. 

    The third canvas shows the peacefully sleeping, innocent child George Van Nest with the monstrous, blood splattered, black giant looming over him, red knife, ready to strike.… We can’t take our eyes off it. Finally we turn away and move down the barn, settling our gaze on the last work; the only piece that is not historically accurate. It is another hanging, similar to Dunning and Teed’s, composed as a tryptic. The hooded, condemned man is front and center, dressed in his white burial shroud. It’s hauntingly familiar to the Goshen hangings. There’s one man— flanked by the community, in a Bruegel-esque composition. The citizens of Auburn recoil on the left and right, as a young white boy picks the  pocket of an engrossed spectator and a black man (supposedly the infamous horse thief Jack Furman) smiles a self-satisfied, gruesome grin from within the crowd. There’s only one problem—that’s not William Freeman with the rope around his neck. He would not die by hanging.  

    

    “William Freeman, the subject of this notice, was born at Auburn, in the county of Cayuga, New York, in the year 1824 (or 1823). His father was born a slave, but became a free man in 1815, by purchase of his time, under the act for gradual abolition of slavery in New York. He died in 1827, from disease of the brain, caused, as was supposed, by a fall from a dock into the basin at Albany.” 

  I want to quickly go back to Bill’s father, James Freeman, before we leave all our dear ones in the ether. Of all these aliens, over hundreds of years, the Freeman family had it the worst. After a lifetime in slavery, James Freeman bought himself twelve years of freedom, before dying unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm; induced by a blow to the head. His entire family was enslaved, poor, incarcerated or institutionalized. His son would suffer a similar fate—a severe blow to the head. After being beaten in the ear and driven insane by society, Bill could no longer hear, nor understand the forces stacked against him. There was no hope for the Freemans. 

     The brilliant lawyer William Henry Seward would lose out to the hangman’s rope in the re-trial of Henry Wyatt, but succeeded in getting a mistrial for his client, William Freeman. It wouldn’t help. The Mastin “hanging portrait” of Bill Freeman was wishful thinking, revisionist history, catering to the revengeful masses. Although granted a new trial, after the guilty verdict was overturned on a technicality, William Freeman wouldn’t live long enough to face the judge a second time. Fearing he would be lynched every day, Bill anxiously awaited his second trial in the Auburn Jail; taunted by his keepers and the mob on the street. William Hannibal Freeman died tortured, forgotten and alone, like George Jackson (on my birthday) Aug. 21,1847, of a brain hemorrhage; his autopsy revealing massive trauma of the ear and extensive brain injury. It was a miracle he had lived that long.

   A few days ago, after a fifteen year moratorium, U.S. Atty. Gen. William Barr reinstated the Federal death penalty. It was reported that, “In his statement, Barr said the government was moving to seek justice against the “worst criminals” and bring relief to victims and family members.” Five convicts are scheduled to die by lethal injection in December. It goes against a national trend to abolish capital punishment state by state. We are a country of laws. Federal and State sanctioned killing of offenders will continue. Society’s most base instincts will be once again satiated. 

  

 “I-n” said the chaplain “That is the first word- In.” I wanted to end “in” the beginning. Ha!

    There’s Jack Hodges under that hemlock bough, in the shadows. Dick Jennings is chewing out Dave Dunning for chopping down his trees. Jack pulls up the shotgun and cocks it, as Dick turns to face him. He hesitates, then fires and hits Dick in the side of the face. The bird shot doesn’t kill the old man; so Jack walks over, looming over the injured man. As Dick pleads for his life, Jack Hodges plows the butt end of the shotgun into Richard Jennings’ skull. Then, holding the gun by the barrel, he swings it like a club into the side of Jennings’ face, breaking the stock, as Dunning looks on in horror. Still, this does not kill the man. Now, frightened that they will be discovered, assuming Richard Jennings will soon be dead, both men panic, leaving Dick Jennings where he lays. Dick crawls a few yards and freezes to death during the night. That’s another possible scenario. 

     I believe Henry Wyatt when he tells us that we aren’t safe and if the worst happens, we’ll never know when it’s coming. If nothing else, history teaches us that. 

“The sailor had now ended his story, and I thought it was time for me to make tracks before night……”- Rod Reed