Harrison County, Ohio, November 27, 1926
At exactly two-thirty in the afternoon under a gray and dismal sky, Hannah, newly widowed wife of Henry Moesher, and two weeks shy her forty-fifth birthday, stood at the edge of an open grave staring down at a plain pine-box containing the body of her deceased husband. Friends and neighbors, standing a respectable distance from the gravesite, did not notice her remove the plain gold ring from the third finger of her left hand, nor did they see her drop it into the open grave. Neither could they see the satisfaction her narrowed, upturned lips betrayed as she noted the ring’s disappearance into the symbolic handfuls of soil and the strewn flowers lying on the coffin’s lid. You might have taken me with you for all you cared. It was a ring that put you where you are. You might just as well have this one to go with it.
It was fortunate the widow’s improvised veil, fashioned of curtain material and dyed black for the occasion, obscured the tearless, dream-drained eyes behind the concealing drapery. Hannah continued to stare down at the coffin as though she would have one last look at the husband with whom she had shared twenty years of married life. She learned forward slightly and with hands clenched, in a voice too low to be overheard, hissed a message to the dead man, You shouldn’t have made me do it Henry. You sure shouldn’t have made me do it.
November 21, 1926
Hannah neither knew nor cared whether it was Henry’s scream of pain or the enraged bull’s bellowing she heard as she stood, back arched against the closed door leading into the barn from which she had fled in terror moments before. Damn you, damn you to hell, she silently mouthed while composing herself. She took a deep breath and without a backward glance, made her way to the house, kicked aside a milk bucket left for her to wash and return to the milkhouse, then flung open the screen door with such force it flew off its rusted hinges. The door, its screening long ago pawed into shreds by Scout, Henry’s beloved hunting hound, did little to keep out the pervasive flies in summer. Except for a small hand pump sitting at the end of a chipped and stained galvanized sink, the distraught Hannah entered a plumbing-free, refrigerator-free kitchen, her main living quarters since first entering as a bride twenty years previously.
Hannah’s anger dissipated but little as she poured herself a cup of tea and added a generous amount of brandy—something to which she seldom treated herself—before settling her still shaking body in the rocking chair she kept by the coal and wood stove. As the beverage dulled her nervousness, she remembered the fear that first froze her into immobility, followed by a rage twenty years in the making. She wasn’t sure if it was that or fear that caused her to fling aside the tool with which she was to clamp a brass ring in the nose of Henry’s prize breeding bull. She scarcely remembered her flight from the barn.
Henry had made it sound so easy. After I have Socrates’ head safely secured to a corner post of his boxstall, just do as I’ve told you. Place the opened ring inside his nostrils and push hard on the handles. No sense getting in paid help when we can do this ourselves. She had heard such assurances all too often.
Hannah’s day had began, as had yesterday’s and all previous yesterday’s: Henry, always the first to rise in the morning, had stoked the stove in the kitchen below, bringing to life a glowing flame from a bed of embers. The sound of the poker hitting against metal was enough to rouse her from the bit of sleep she allowed herself after he left the bed. In winter, the kitchen would be warm by the time she entered to shed her nightgown and dress for the morning milking. It was one of the little things she appreciated about Henry, but if he valued her help with the milking and other chores before breakfast, he never said so. His morning grunts of satisfaction, after eating a hearty and generous breakfast she prepared while he stretched out on the davenport in the living room, pleased her. At least she knew that he knew she existed.
Hannah shook off such thoughts. There had been nothing out of the ordinary during the day; that is, not until just after the evening milking was over and the cows settled for the night. It was then Henry decided it was long past time to place a brass ring into the nose of his two-year old breeding bull, Socrates. The animal was large for his age and of a mean temper, making him dangerous to lead about when it became necessary. Hannah, town-raised but soon accustomed to farm life after her marriage to Henry, never lost her fear of Plato, his first bull. When young, Socrates had allowed himself to be led about like a reluctant calf. Now grown, he was much larger than Plato had been and out for blood, especially Henry’s. It was long past time to have changed from nothing more than a halter for control to the brass ring in his nose.
“Just place the open prongs of the ringer inside his nostrils and push the handles together once I have his head so he can’t move,” Henry assured his terrified wife who had reluctantly watched him while he collected the tool needed from a cabinet in the harness room. “I’m not going to pay for somebody to come in when we can do the job ourselves. Just be ready when I say so,” and Henry, with a small quantity of grain in a shallow container in one hand, a leather and chain halter in the other, entered the wary bull’s stall.
“Please, Henry, come out of there. I can’t do what you want me to do. Can’t it wait until tomorrow and you can get Abner to help you? What if something goes wrong?” Hannah pleaded in vain. Confidently, Henry approached the bull, all the time gently shaking a pan of oats. The familiar sound of rustling grain caught and held the animal’s curiosity. His muscled neck arched and with his eyes fixed on the tempting treat, he allowed his enemy to approach. Henry deftly slipped the halter over the bull’s head with one hand, than, while Socrates was eating the grain, Henry quickly buckled the halter in place and left the the boxstall. Safely outside the pen, Henry threw the rope over a sturdy post set in concrete, formed a sliding knot in the rope and pulled the tether taut. Socrates quickly realized he could not move backward and pawed the ground, sending straw up and over his back. To ease the tension from the leather strap on the back of his neck, he took a step forward. Every time the enraged animal took a step or two forward, Henry drew in the looped rope until Socrates was trapped beyond movement and unable to move his head, The enraged bull bellowed his anger and frustration and learned into the railing. Without taking his eyes from the angry bull, a grinning Henry called out, “Hannah, there’s nothing to it. Just put the ring in his nose and clamp it. I can’t hold him forever.” He never knew he was calling out to a wife with her hand already on the latch to the door leading out of the barn.
“Henry said he had something he wanted to do in the barn before supper,” Hannah explained to her closest neighbors, Henry and Emily Willard, whom she called after discovering Henry’s body. “It was not until he was gone for almost an hour that I went out to the barn and found him lying in the walkway. It was so horrible. Blood everywhere.” She could go no further. Emily placed an ample arm about her friend’s shoulder and led her to a sagging horsehair-stuffed sofa at the far end of the kitchen.
November 26, 1936
It wasn’t often a woman, possibly in her middle-fifties, wearing the latest in fashion and driving a new white convertible, drove down the unpaved road leading to a farm once owned by a long line of Mosher’s. Everyone knew the story; Henry, the last Mosher to have farmed the land, had tried, without assistance, to put a brass ring through his breeding bull’s nose and was gored to death for his foolishness. His grieving wife, Hannah, while preparing to sell the house, discovered a small locked box that must have lain hidden in the attic since the days of the American Revolution. It was rumored about the neighborhood that the rare, black pearl necklace nestled into the disintegrating velvet lining of the container, was practically priceless.
The white convertible slowed to a stop before the abandoned and decrepit farm house. The woman behind the wheel sat for several moments as though deciding whether or not to get out of the car. Then, with tires kicking up a hail of dirt and stones behind it, she continued on. A half mile down the road, the vehicle stopped again, this time beside a small, country church in need of a new coat of paint, but otherwise in good repair. Behind the church, a low stone wall surrounded a small country-style cemetery. This time, the driver did not remain in her car. She reached for a package lying on the passenger’s seat, opened the door and stepped out. She noted with satisfaction that the cemetery, while not closely manicured, had been tended with reasonable care. The stranger found the grave she was looking for and stood for several minutes, her gaze on the name chiseled into the simple, marble marker. The woman glanced down at the platinum watch on her left wrist. It was exactly, two-thirty. “I’ve brought you something, just to let you know I forgive you,” and Hannah Moesher Biltmore placed a large wreath of blood-red roses on Henry Moesher’s grave.
