The Gospel of the Sycamore

A Narrative of the First Settlers of Marlinton (cyber fiction)

I. The Schism

The winter of 1751 did not arrive at the forks of the Greenbrier with a whisper; it arrived with a bone-cracking frost that turned the river into a ribbon of black glass. In the valley that would one day be known as Marlins Bottom, Jacob Marlin sat inside his cabin, the hearth fire throwing long, orange shadows against the hand-hewn logs. He was a man of deliberate routine, but his mind was snagged on a single, sharp obstacle: the man living in the tree fifty paces away.

Across the clearing, tucked into the cavernous, rotting heart of a giant sycamore, Stephen Sewell blew on his fingers. His motivation for being here was simple—he wanted the freedom of the woods—but his flaw was a pride that burned hotter than his meager brush fire.

The trouble had begun over a passage in the King James Bible, read by the flickering light of a tallow candle back when they still shared the cabin. They had survived starvation, panthers, and the crushing loneliness of 1749, only to be undone by the doctrine of infant baptism. To Marlin, it was the seal of the covenant. To Sewell, it was a "popish superstition." The dispute had lasted three days, ending when Sewell threw his bedroll into the snow and swore he would sooner live in a hollow log than share a roof with a man who "water-logged the innocent."

II. The Silent Winter

The duration of their silence lasted through the turning of the leaves and into the deepest drifts of January. Their only communication was a grim, mandatory courtesy. Every morning, Marlin would step onto his porch, and Sewell would crawl from the belly of the sycamore.

"Good morning," Marlin would bark.

"Good morning," Sewell would rasp.

It was a motif of stubbornness. They were two atoms in a vast, empty universe, held apart by a theological magnetic charge.

The tension reached a breaking point one silver-mooned night when a mountain lion—a "cloud-walker" of immense size—tested the seam of Marlin’s cabin door. Sewell, watching from the darkness of his tree, felt the internal conflict flare. He could stay silent, but the memory of shared salt gnawed at him.

"Jacob! The door!" Sewell whispered across the frost.

Marlin barred the latch just as the beast lunged. For three minutes of adrenaline and black powder smoke, the men fought as one. Marlin fired from the loft; Sewell fired from the clearing. When the beast was driven off, they stood together in the cabin for the first time in months. The warmth of the hearth and the smell of cider nearly bridged the chasm. But as Sewell’s eyes drifted to the Bible on the shelf, the old pride reasserted its grip.

"The beast is gone," Sewell said, his voice returning to its distant tone. He stepped back out into the four-below-zero night, choosing the hollow tree over the "tainted" house.

III. The Arrival of the World

In the spring of 1752, the world finally found them. Colonel Andrew Lewis and his survey party pushed through the rhododendron thickets and stopped short at the sight of the two dwellings.

"I find it curious," Lewis remarked, looking from the sturdy cabin to the pathetic, hide-covered hole in the tree. "Two souls in a thousand square miles of forest, yet you live apart by the length of a stone’s throw."

Marlin spat into the snow. "The cabin is plenty large. It’s the theology that’s got too cramped."

Lewis shook his head at the ridiculous, tragic solemnity of the scene. He realized then that he wasn't looking at a partnership, but a schism that would foreshadow a century of divided mountain sects.

IV. The Departure

Shortly after Lewis left, the thaw brought a claustrophobia of the soul to Stephen Sewell. The "Good Mornings" had become too heavy. He packed his meager belongings—a bedroll, a rifle, and a tin of salt.

"The air is crowded, Jacob," Sewell said as he stood at the edge of the clearing. "A man starts to smell his own thoughts when he stays in one place too long."

"You’re heading for the high ridges where the Word can’t reach you," Marlin replied, his voice heavy with empathy.

"I’m heading where the Word is between me and the Almighty, without a middleman to muddy the waters," Sewell retorted. He turned his back and walked into the western mist, toward the high peaks that would eventually bear his name. Marlin stood in the clearing until the sound of footsteps was swallowed by the rush of the river.

V. The Afterward

Years passed. Jacob Marlin became the architect of the settlement. He cleared the hundred-yard patches and welcomed the first of the pioneering families—the McLaughlins, the Prices, and the McNeels. But he never cut down the sycamore. Even when the tree died and stood as a bleached skeleton, he left it as a reminder.

In 1754, Lewis returned with news from the high ridges. "He’s gone, Jacob. We found him on the mountain. The Shawnee got him, or the winter did first. He was alone."

Marlin didn't stop his work. "He always was a man for a high ridge," he said quietly.

By 1765, Jacob was an old man sitting on a porch in a valley that was no longer silent. He looked at the jagged stump of the sycamore and realized the epiphany of age: he had won the land, but he had lost the only man who truly knew what it cost to be first.

"We were both fools," Jacob muttered to the coming rain. "I wanted a church, and you wanted a wilderness, and neither of us realized we just needed a friend."

In his final hours, the neighbors heard the patriarch of the Greenbrier whispering to the shadows in the corner of the room. He wasn't speaking to the living. He was looking toward a hollow tree that existed only in his memory, his voice finally at peace.

"Good morning, Stephen," he murmured.

And in the quiet of the cabin, the long silence was finally over.

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