“That didn’t mean much to those idiots,” Dury answered. “A wife’s testimony counts for little or nothing in a court of law. I had to ask a neighbor of mine, a man who lives nearly ten miles away, to come and verify that we were pulling a stump together on the very day my parents were murdered.”
“Do you know why the police should have been so hard to convince?” Kreizler asked.
Dury slammed his mallet down on the ground. “I’m sure you read about
I held a hand up to Kreizler. “Yes, we saw some mention of such,” I said, trying to coax more details out of Dury. “But the police accounts were very vague and confused, and it was difficult to draw any conclusions. Which seems remarkable, given that the question was vital to the investigation. Maybe you could make it a little clearer for us?”
Lifting the manure spreader’s wheel onto a workbench, Dury began to pound at it again. “My parents were hard people, Mr. Moore. They had to be, to make the trip to this country and survive the life they chose for themselves. But while I can say that now, such explanations are quite beyond a small boy who—” A blast of passionate language seemed about to escape the man, but he held it down with obvious effort. “Who only hears a cold voice. And only feels a thick strap.”
“Then you
“I wasn’t referring to myself, Mr. Moore,” Dury answered. “Though God knows neither my father nor my mother ever shrank from punishing me when I misbehaved. But that was not what caused our—estrangement.” He looked out a small, filthy window for a moment, then pounded at the wheel again. “I had a brother. Japheth.”
Kreizler nodded as I said, “Yes, we read about him. Tragic. You have our sympathy.”
“Sympathy? I suppose. But I’ll tell you this, Mr. Moore—whatever those savages did to him was no more tragic than what he endured at the hands of his own parents.”
“He suffered cruelties?”
Dury shrugged. “Some might not call them such. But I did, and do still. Oh, he was a strange lad, in some respects, and the ways in which my parents reacted to his behavior might have seemed—natural, to an outsider. But it wasn’t. No, sir, there was the devil in it all, somewhere…” Dury’s attention wandered for a moment, but then he shook it off. “I’m sorry. You wanted to know about the case.”
I spent the next half hour asking Dury some obvious questions about what had happened on that day in 1880, requesting clarification of details that we were not, in fact, confused about, as a method of concealing our true interests. Then I managed, by asking him why any Indians should have wanted to kill his parents, to lead him into a more detailed discussion of what life in his home during the Minnesota years had been like. From there, it was no great job to expand the discussion to a history of the family’s private dealings more generally. As Dury related these, Laszlo stealthily withdrew his small notebook and began to silently scribble a record of the account:
Though born in New Paltz in 1856, Adam Dury’s earliest memories dated back only as far as his fourth year, when his family had relocated to Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, a military post inside that state’s Lower Sioux Agency. The Durys lived in a one-room log house about a mile outside the fort, the kind of residence that afforded young Adam an excellent vantage point from which to study his parents and their relationship. His father, as Kreizler and I already knew, was a strictly religious man, who made no attempt to sugarcoat the sermons he delivered to those curious Sioux who came to hear him speak. Yet Laszlo and I were both surprised to learn that, despite this vocational rigidity, the Reverend Victor Dury had not been especially cruel or violent to his older son; rather, Adam said that his earliest memories of his father were happy ones. True, the reverend could deliver painful punishments when required; but it was usually Mrs. Dury who called for such action.
As he spoke of his mother, Adam Dury’s aspect grew darker and his voice became far more hesitant, as if even her memory held some tremendous threatening power over him. Cold and strict, Mrs. Dury had apparently not offered her son much in the way of comfort or nurturing during his youth; indeed, as I listened to his description of the woman, I couldn’t help but think back to Jesse Pomeroy.
“Much as it pained me to be shunned by her,” Dury said, as he attempted to fit the now-repaired wheel back onto the manure spreader, “I believe her remote spirit hurt my father even more—for she was no real wife to him. Oh, she performed all the menial domestic duties, and kept a very tidy home, despite our meager circumstances. But when your family lives in one small room, gentlemen, you cannot help but be aware of the—the more intimate dimension of your parents’ marriage. Or the lack thereof.”
“You’re saying they weren’t close?” I asked.
“I’m saying that I don’t know why she married him,” Dury answered gruffly, making the axle and wheel before him bear the brunt of his sadness and anger. “She could scarcely abide his slightest touch, much less his— his attempts to build a family. My father, you see, wanted children. He had ideas—dreams, really—of sending his sons and daughters out into the western wilderness to expand and carry on his work. But my mother…Their every attempt was an ordeal for her. Some of these she suffered through, and some she—resisted. I honestly do not know why she ever took the vow. Except—when he preached…My father was quite an orator, in his way, and my mother attended nearly every service he ever held. She did seem to enjoy that part of his life, strangely enough.”
“And after you returned from Minnesota?”
Dury shook his head bitterly. “After we returned from Minnesota things deteriorated completely. When my father lost his post he lost the only human connection he had to my mother. They rarely spoke in the years after that, and never touched, not that I can recall.” He looked up at the filthy window. “Except once…”
He paused for several seconds, and to urge him on I murmured: “Japheth?”
Dury nodded, slowly rousing himself from his sad reverie. “I’d taken to sleeping outdoors when it was warm enough. Near the mountains—the Shawangunks. My father had learned the sport of mountaineering in Switzerland from his own father, and the Shawangunks were an ideal spot to keep his hand in, as well as to pass the techniques on to me. Though I was never very good at it, I always went along with him, because they were happier times— away from the house and that woman.”
If the words had been explosives I don’t think their concussion could have hit Kreizler and me any harder. Laszlo’s weak left arm shot out, and his hand grabbed my shoulder with surprising force. Dury saw none of it and, unaware of the effect his words were having on us, continued:
“But during the coldest months there was no avoiding the indoors, not unless I wanted to die of exposure. And I remember one February night when my father…he may have been drinking, though he rarely did. But, sober or no, he began to finally rebel against my mother’s inhuman behavior. He spoke of the duties of a wife, and the needs of a husband, and he began to grab at her. Well…My mother screamed in protest, of course, and told him he was acting like the savages we’d left behind in Minnesota. But my father wouldn’t be stopped that night—and despite the cold I fled the house through a window, and slept in an old barn that belonged to a neighbor of ours. Even from that distance I could hear my mother’s cries and sobs.” Once again, Dury seemed to lose all awareness of his present surroundings and spoke in a detached, almost lifeless voice: “And I wish I could say that those sounds horrified me. But they didn’t. In fact, I distinctly remember urging my father on…” His presence of mind returned, and, somewhat embarrassed, he picked up his hammer and began pounding at the wheel once more. “No doubt I’ve shocked you, gentlemen. If so, I apologize.”
“No, no,” I answered quickly. “You’re only giving us a better understanding of the background, we quite understand that.”
Dury shot Laszlo another quick, skeptical look. “And you, Doctor? Do you quite understand, too? You haven’t had much to say.”
Kreizler kept very cool under Dury’s scrutiny. There was, I knew, little chance that this man of the earth was going to make so seasoned a madhouse campaigner as Kreizler uneasy. “I have been too absorbed to comment,” Laszlo said. “If you’ll allow me to say so, Mr. Dury, you are very well-spoken.”
Dury laughed once humorlessly. “For a farmer, you mean? Yes, that was my mother’s doing. She made us work at our school lessons for hours every night. I could both read and write before the age of five.”
Kreizler cocked his head in appreciation. “Laudable.”
“My knuckles didn’t think so,” Dury answered. “She used to come across them with a stick like—but once again, I’m off the subject. You wanted to know what became of my brother.”
“Yes,” I answered. “But before that, tell us—what sort of a boy was he? You’ve said odd—odd in what way?”
