December 6, 2022

The Beginnings of the Bad

It’s December 25, 1865, and all over the United States broken men are spending their first Christmas at home following four years of war.

In a modest house on the outskirts of Syracuse, New York Franklin H. Potter is both battle-scarred and worried. His wife is giving birth to their second child. Colonel Potter has been home for ten months and the transition from soldier back to farmer has been a difficult one. And now, he sees his newborn son struggling for his first breaths.

But, after a few stops and starts, the baby boy cries out, celebrating the joy and agony of being alive.

“Come here,” a tired but beaming Mrs. Antoinette Potter says to her husband. “Franklin, come here. Say hello to your son.”

Franklin H. Potter looks down upon his moments-old child. A bald, tiny baby boy who looks a bit like a tired old man.

“Hello, son.”  He says. “Welcome to the world, Henry Franklin Potter.”

The years are cold. And hard. The Potter farm struggles, succeeds, struggles, succeeds, then, aided in part by the recession of 1882 and then the panic of 1884, falters completely.

Franklin Potter sets fire to the house and the barn, the flames illuminating the graves of his wife and eldest son, both of whom died of influenza in the winter three years before.

His younger son, his only living family member, looks at the flames, the destruction, and his father who then puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger and Henry F. Potter sees his father’s body crumple to the cold, muddy soil.

A lone tear runs down the young man’s cheek.

Henry F. Potter joins the Army. He serves in the 6th U.S. Cavalry and is among those who go after and, eventually, capture Geronimo. Potter serves bravely and honorably. And he is known among his fellow soldiers for his candor, wit, and humor.

But there is often a coldness to him, a distance in his eyes that cannot be denied.  Or ignored. And when it comes time to fight, to kill, he does it well.

But he is loyal to those who serve beside him.  And in the last confrontation with the Indians he steps in front of a barrage of bullets that were coming for his friend, Charles Winters, in Troop D.

Potter is shot in both legs and stumbles down a bloodied hill, smashing several vertebrae. He is unconscious for days and then finally awakes and looks down upon his suddenly frail, useless legs and thinks of those days on the farm. Of the running. Of the laughter. Of his hobbled father and his smiling mother and brother.

And he knows he shall never walk again.

But he lives. He has lived.

And Winters’ father is so grateful that Potter’s heroics saved his own son that he grants Potter a deed to a silver mine in the New Mexico Territory.

The deed is worth $5,000. Henry F. Potter clutches the paper to his chest as he is pushed in his wheelchair onto a train. Some of Geronimo’s men are on the train, too. They are being brought back to the East to be educated. To be made Christian.

Potter rides across the country with them, holding his deed to his heart. He sees the mountains, the prairie, the cities, the snow, the cold. The rapid, muddled pulse of a blossoming nation.

The train takes him to New York City. Children point at this young but old man who cannot walk. Women turn away. Some men nod politely.

Potter closes his eyes and fights to recall the name of the beautiful place his mother was born. The calm, green, verdant area of kindness and hope.

He hands $10 to a man with a horse and wagon, looks him in the eye and says, “Bedford Falls.” --TK