The Color of Lightning Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kansas on a home for himself
    in Westchester County.” He looked up. Absalom had a full head of dark hair, and it seemed to Samuel that he was such a complete ac- countant that, as it was said in Matthew, every hair of his head was numbered. He had been elected clerk of the business committee at the Yearly Meeting of Friends for his dry obsession with columns of figures as well as his occasional visitations of the Inner Light. Samuel wondered if he had attempted to calculate its speed.
    “That’s terrible,” said Samuel. “The army contractors were nearly as bad.” He jiggled his foot and then stopped and placed both shoes flat on the floor.
    “Yes, yes.” They nodded and murmured. It was a subject loaded with explosive and combustible matter.
    Joseph Kane slid forward in his seat. “The war will be over in a few months. We must not only live in the present but look ahead.” He raised one finger. His brown and gray hair glistened in the win- ter light and his voice was a high, thin tenor. “Looking ahead, we have succeeded in urging the Peace Policy and appointing Friends as Indian agents.” His eyes were brown too, or hazel; his coat was chocolate-colored. He turned to Lewis Henry Morgan. “Lewis, say something.”
    Morgan was a handsome, restless man. “Samuel, they have me in a headlock. I am supposed to be the final clinch in convincing you to take the Indian Agency out in Indian Territory.”
    “Not quite. Not quite. In a way.” Kane’s rich browns were like imported cocoa. “Not quite the final one. But Lewis is here to give us some of his insights into the nature of the red man. Having spent so long among them.” Joseph Kane owned three merchantmen and had just bought his first steam-driven bottom a month ago. He was related several times over to the Cope family and had that family’s sturdy probity; he shared their long history in both the Society of Friends and in Philadelphia’s shipping community. Thomas Cope smiled blindly from his frame over the mantelpiece. Quaker, ship- owner, railroad magnate, who proved that a man could serve both God and Mammon. A deeply kind man. An example to them all, except he had not been faced with a civil war.
    Samuel twisted in his chair. “I see. Lewis is here to give us some insights into the nature of the red man.” He paused. “Why not ask a red man?”
    He watched them sit back in their chairs and make very small wavering, defensive gestures. Their minds turned somersaults down the center aisles of their egalitarian beliefs. They turned to one an- other but no one said anything.
    Morgan laughed. “You are cruel, Samuel.” He put both sets of fingertips on the library table and shifted the papers. “We had a wonderful summer among the Seneca when you were fifteen.”
    “We did.” Samuel smiled.
    “I am free now to travel up the Missouri River, and pursue my studies, my deepest interest, and I urge you to do the same.” He re- moved his fingertips and folded his hands together. “Your year was hard. I know.”
    Samuel nodded. “The title of your work is Systems of Consanguin- ity, isn’t it?”
    “ Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Miraculously saved.” Morgan had been prepared to deliver his monumental work of fifteen years on the nomenclature of personal relationships of various Indian tribes to the Smithsonian when a great part of the Smithsonian building had burned down a month past, in December.
    “God had other plans for thy work,” said Dr. Reed, “than to be consumed in a fire.” Morgan bowed slightly to the aged doctor. “And Samuel, he has other plans for thee.”
    Samuel inclined his head in a short nod. “It is the same as last time. I have business interests to attend to after my year’s absence. I find that I must look to the future as well as all of you.” He shifted again in the chair. Everything was so clean. The year with the army had been several centuries of mud and blood and uniforms in rags,