Emil Buckendorf Character Analysis

Asiginak and Cuthbert suddenly burst out singing. They began high—Cuthbert’s voice a wild falsetto that cut the air. Asiginak joined him and Holy Track felt almost good, hearing the strength and power of their voices. And the words in the old language.

These white men are nothing

What they do cannot harm me

I will see the face of mystery

[…] The boy was too light for death to give him an easy time of it. He slowly choked as he kicked air and spun. He heard it when Cuthbert, then his uncle, stopped singing and gurgling. Behind his shut eyes, he was seized by black fear, until he heard his mother say, Open your eyes, and he stared into the dusty blue. Then it was better. The little wisps of clouds, way up high, had resolved into wings and they swept across the sky now, faster and faster.

In the winter of our great starvation, […] citizens of Argus sold their grain and raffled off a grand piano. More recently, when we traveled to Washington to fight a policy that would have terminated our relationship with the United States Government guaranteed by treaty, only one lawyer, from Pluto, stood up for us. That was my father. And in 1911, when a family was murdered […], a posse mob tore after a wandering bunch of our people.

[…] I told [Geraldine] that later on the vigilantes admitted that they probably were mistaken. She hadn’t known that. “But it happened in the heat of things, one of them said, I think Wildstrand. In the heat of things!”

Geraldine said, “What doesn’t happen in the heat of things? Someone has seized the moment to act on their own biases. That’s it. Or history. Sometimes it is history.”

I do think of how I have grown up in the certainty of my parents’ love, and how that is a rare thing and how, given that they love me, my breakdown is my own fault and shameful. I think of how history works itself out in the living. The Buckendorfs, the other Wildstrands, the Peace family, all of these people whose backgrounds tangled in the hanging.

I think of all the men who hanged Corwin’s great-uncle Cuthbert, Asiginak, and Holy Track. I see Wildstrand’s strained whipsaw body, and Gostlin walk off slapping his hat on his thigh. Now that some of us have mixed in the spring of our existence both guilt and victim, there is no unraveling the rope.

[…] Sometimes doves seem to hover in this room. At night, when I can’t sleep, I hear the flutter of their wings.

“To live my life atoning for another person’s sin?” She said at last, her voice scratchy and faint. “I wouldn’t have had the strength. But then again, the hanging undoubtedly had something to do with my decision, growing up and finding out. Knowing one could be capable.”

“One could be?”

“Anyone, perhaps. My father said that his grandfather was very kind, the kindest one of all. And yet he always knew he’d been one of the lynching party. My father was never able to put him there, in his thoughts. A couple of times he said he spoke of it. He spoke of your grandfather.”

“Mooshum?”

I leaned forward and waited […]

“I believe your grandfather used to drink in those days. Your Mooshum told Eugene Wildstrand that he and the others were at the farmhouse. Mooshum told how they had found that poor family.”

Asiginak and Cuthbert suddenly burst out singing. They began high—Cuthbert’s voice a wild falsetto that cut the air. Asiginak joined him and Holy Track felt almost good, hearing the strength and power of their voices. And the words in the old language.

These white men are nothing

What they do cannot harm me

I will see the face of mystery

[…] The boy was too light for death to give him an easy time of it. He slowly choked as he kicked air and spun. He heard it when Cuthbert, then his uncle, stopped singing and gurgling. Behind his shut eyes, he was seized by black fear, until he heard his mother say, Open your eyes, and he stared into the dusty blue. Then it was better. The little wisps of clouds, way up high, had resolved into wings and they swept across the sky now, faster and faster.

In the winter of our great starvation, […] citizens of Argus sold their grain and raffled off a grand piano. More recently, when we traveled to Washington to fight a policy that would have terminated our relationship with the United States Government guaranteed by treaty, only one lawyer, from Pluto, stood up for us. That was my father. And in 1911, when a family was murdered […], a posse mob tore after a wandering bunch of our people.

[…] I told [Geraldine] that later on the vigilantes admitted that they probably were mistaken. She hadn’t known that. “But it happened in the heat of things, one of them said, I think Wildstrand. In the heat of things!”

Geraldine said, “What doesn’t happen in the heat of things? Someone has seized the moment to act on their own biases. That’s it. Or history. Sometimes it is history.”

I do think of how I have grown up in the certainty of my parents’ love, and how that is a rare thing and how, given that they love me, my breakdown is my own fault and shameful. I think of how history works itself out in the living. The Buckendorfs, the other Wildstrands, the Peace family, all of these people whose backgrounds tangled in the hanging.

I think of all the men who hanged Corwin’s great-uncle Cuthbert, Asiginak, and Holy Track. I see Wildstrand’s strained whipsaw body, and Gostlin walk off slapping his hat on his thigh. Now that some of us have mixed in the spring of our existence both guilt and victim, there is no unraveling the rope.

[…] Sometimes doves seem to hover in this room. At night, when I can’t sleep, I hear the flutter of their wings.

“To live my life atoning for another person’s sin?” She said at last, her voice scratchy and faint. “I wouldn’t have had the strength. But then again, the hanging undoubtedly had something to do with my decision, growing up and finding out. Knowing one could be capable.”

“One could be?”

“Anyone, perhaps. My father said that his grandfather was very kind, the kindest one of all. And yet he always knew he’d been one of the lynching party. My father was never able to put him there, in his thoughts. A couple of times he said he spoke of it. He spoke of your grandfather.”

“Mooshum?”

I leaned forward and waited […]

“I believe your grandfather used to drink in those days. Your Mooshum told Eugene Wildstrand that he and the others were at the farmhouse. Mooshum told how they had found that poor family.”