by Ron Carter
“Trouble?”
“No. I think the Mohawk left that way. The frogs quit talking while they passed through. Just before dawn, I’ll go find out.”
Billy glanced at the eastern sky, which remained black, showing no definition between earth and sky. The moon was touching the western rim. Dawn was yet a little time away. He settled his head back onto his own folded blanket as a shiver shook him. He pulled Eli’s blanket up to his chin and lay in thoughtful silence, aware that the strange need in both men—one to talk, the other to listen—had passed. He moved his left arm, and it awakened the throbbing, and he lay still. He did not know when he passed into a restless sleep with Eli beside him to be certain he did not roll on his left shoulder.
He wakened in the darkness to the soft touch of Eli’s hand on his chest. “Dawn’s coming,” Eli whispered. “I’ll be back. If anything goes wrong, work your way to the Hudson and set a log in the water. Keep your good arm over the log, and it’ll take you downstream. There’s half a dozen settlements where you can get help.”
Billy nodded, understanding, as Eli rose, picked up his rifle, slipped his hand through the leather loop on his tomahawk handle, and stepped over the log. Guided by senses and instincts long since lost by white men, he moved soundlessly north through the lush undergrowth, missing no shadow, no movement, instantly recognizing every noise in a primeval forest moving from night toward day. The chirping of the crickets had ceased with the onset of the chill of night, and the frogs had fallen silent an hour earlier. The near owl spoke again, and to the west another answered, but Eli did not pause. Authentic. He moved on as the light of the coming sun gradually separated the earth from the sky, and the first gray came filtering through the forest.
The birds were awakening, moving in the trees to call out their territorial claims. Eli slowed to allow a porcupine to stop and stare up at him with two beady eyes before he waddled on, contemptuous of anything that had only two legs. To his left, a mother raccoon with the black mask of a bandit over her eyes and three white rings on her bushy tail paused by a tiny stream while she studied him. He was harmless, and she grasped one of her two young and thrust its face into the water, then rubbed it vigorously. The little one had to learn he could not eat until he washed both the food, and his face.
Suddenly Eli dropped to one knee. A large, lacy fern leaf showed a slight bruise, and he gently pushed it aside. Beneath it was a moccasin track, then another. He studied them for a moment, then rose, moved on, and again dropped to his knee. The tracks continued, moving north. He moved twenty feet to his left, to where he and Billy had plunged wildly south in their desperate run to the burial grounds, and turned north once more, following their trail through the disturbed undergrowth as easily as if it were a beaten path. He slowed as he approached the place of the ambush and dropped to his haunches for several moments, listening, testing every scent on the air.
Nothing.
After a time, he rose and cautiously walked to the place where the fight had taken place. The underbrush was crushed, twisted, broken. The dead and wounded were gone. He studied the dark splotches where blood had stained the green, and he studied the moccasin tracks. Then he moved on north, and forty yards later once again dropped to one knee to read the sign on the ground.
The Mohawk had stopped to study the tracks left by his moccasins and Billy’s shoes. They now knew Eli was from the Onondaga tribe, his height, weight, stride, and that he was a white man, knowledgeable enough of Indian ways to take refuge in a burial ground to save himself. They knew he carried a rifle and was skillful in the use of a tomahawk. They knew, too, that Billy was white, shorter, built square, carried a musket, was powerful enough to throw a man against a tree with sufficient force to break his neck, and hit hard enough with his fist to break a man’s jaw and knock him unconscious with one blow. Perhaps fracture his skull.
Eli made a broad circle to his right, moving slowly until he again cut their trail, and for yet another time, went to one knee. The moccasin prints were deeper here—they were carrying their dead and wounded. He counted seven sets of tracks, followed them half a mile north, until he was satisfied they had left no one behind to set an ambush. Then he turned and trotted back to Billy, who was sitting with his blanket around his shoulders, his musket lying across his legs.
“They’re gone. Took their dead and wounded north.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Billy said, “did they have muskets?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t they shoot us instead of what they did?”
“They prefer to fight hand-to-hand if they can. They think it shows their bravery, courage.” Eli worked the corncob stopper from Billy’s wooden canteen. “Thirsty?”
Billy raised the canteen and drank long before he handed it back. Eli held it in his hand as he spoke. “Want to eat anything before I look at that shoulder?”
Billy shook his head and pulled the blanket from his back. “Let’s get at it.”
Eli knelt behind Billy and carefully tugged at the slit in Billy’s shirt. “Shirt’s stuck to your shoulder. We’ll have to soak it off.”
Billy gasped as Eli poured cold canteen water onto the crown of his shoulder and waited for it to soak into the shirt, then poured more and waited again. Gradually the stiffness in the blood-soaked fabric softened, and he poured more, then stood with the canteen in his hand and reached for his own. “While that loosens, I’m going for more water. We’ll need it before we’re through.”
Minutes later he returned with both canteens wet, dripping clean water taken from one of the hundreds of small brooks that worked their way to the Hudson. He set the canteens on the blanket beside Billy, dropped to his knees, and tugged at the slit in the shirt. A corner of the crimson-black cotton cloth broke away, and a bubble of thick blood rose in the wound. Again he poured, waited, pulled, and the shirt came away from the wound.
“Raise your hands,” he said, and pulled the shirt over Billy’s head, dripping blood-stained water. He folded it with the clean side showing, poured water, and patiently used the cloth to swab the dried blood from Billy’s back, side, and belly, while Billy shivered in the cool morning air. Eli draped his blanket over Billy’s right shoulder and gathered it beneath his left arm. Then he carefully soaked the five-inch cut and wiped it as clean as he could before he spoke quietly in a matter-of-fact voice.
“That’s about an inch deep, and it’s going to break open and bleed every time you move your arm.” There was a pause before he finished. “I think we’d better close it.”
“Burn it?”
“Can you stand it?”
“Get on with it.”
“After, it ought to be sewed shut.”
“There’s needle and thread in my pouch.”
Grimacing against the pain of the open wound, Billy watched as Eli gathered twigs, then larger sticks of gray, dead branches from an ancient windfall pine tree, cleared the soft, decaying matter from the forest floor behind Billy, shaved a handful of thin shavings, and struck flint to steel. While he waited for the flames to catch the larger sticks, Eli worked the point of the needle on a piece of granite shale until it was as sharp as he could make it. Then he laid the needle aside, wordlessly drew his knife from his belt, and held it in the flame. The iron blade began to glow, then turned orange.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Bullet or leather strap?”
“Leather strap.”
Eli doubled the leather shoulder strap of Billy’s pouch and handed it to him. Billy seized it in his teeth.
“Lean a little forward.”
Billy settled forward, head bowed, teeth clenched on the leather strap.
In one smooth stroke, Eli raised the knife, carefully lowered the blade into the gaping wound, and pressed it against the raw, bleeding flesh, first one side, then the other. Smoke curled, and the sound of burning flesh crackled for a moment as the orange-hot blade seared
and sealed the bleeding. The muscles in Billy’s jaw stood out like ridges as he bit down on the leather strap. His eyes were clenched shut, sweat dripping. He made no sound, nor did he move.
Eli jerked the knife back and blew to clear the smoke, then leaned forward to carefully study the gray, burned flesh. Most of the bleeding had stopped.
“I think it’s enough,” he said. “You all right?”
Billy spat the leather strap from his mouth. “So far.”
“Want to wait for the stitching?”
“No. Get it over with.”
Eli laid the knife aside and heated the heavy iron needle in the fire, then waited for it to cool before he doubled the cotton thread and forced it through the eye.
“This is going to take some time.”
“Go ahead.” Billy shoved the strap back between his teeth.
For forty minutes Eli worked, using the handle of his knife to drive the needle through the tough, stubborn flesh, pulling the two sides of the wound together into a ridge. One stitch at a time, the gaping wound closed. He tied each of the eighteen stitches tight, knotted them twice, and left more than an inch of thread hanging from each one to make it easy when he clipped them out.
He set the knife and needle on his blanket and drew and released a great breath. “Finished.”
Billy took the belt from his mouth; the tooth marks in the leather were deep. He used the corner of his blanket to wipe at the sweat dripping from his nose and chin. “How many?”
“Eighteen.”
“Think they’ll hold?”
“When we finish they will.”
“I thought you said you were finished.”
“With the stitching. We’ve got to pack it, and tie down your arm.”
“Pack it with what?”
Eli ignored the question, rose to his feet, and laid Billy’s pouch and canteen by his side. “There’s food and water. Sit quiet and don’t move. Keep the blanket around yourself, but not on the stitches. If you hear one rifle shot, that will be me. If there’s more than one, get ready for anything. I’ll be back, but it might be a while.” He took the wet, bloody shirt, slipped his tomahawk through his belt, picked up his rifle, and stepped over the log to disappear silently into the forest.
Billy reached for his canteen, locked it between his knees, and worked the stopper out. He drank long, reset the stopper, and laid the canteen back on the blanket. He pushed himself backward, close to the log, then leaned back. The deep, throbbing ache in his left shoulder held, and he could count his heartbeat in the gash where Eli had laid the smoking knife blade and then driven the needle through, eighteen times.
A giddy, light-headedness came. He waited for it to pass, and then he felt the fierce tension begin to drain from his entire body. He knew he was fevered and for a time felt so weak he feared he could not stand if the Mohawk returned. He sipped from the canteen once more and knew he could no longer fight off the demand of his body to sleep. He laid his musket across his legs and let his head fall forward. His last thought before he dropped into the dreamless blackness was, I can’t tip over onto my shoulder.
Something moved. Something whispered. The message reached from his inner springs to his brain, and Billy jerked awake. For a moment he could not remember where he was, and then awareness came jolting. Only his eyes moved as he scanned the forest, and there was nothing. Then, six feet from his right side, he sensed movement and turned his head far enough to see.
A mother raccoon with two tiny balls of fur by her side stared back at him. Her nose was working, testing, and her eyes stared from her mask to reach to the depths of Billy’s being. In that instant he sensed the mother was probing him with one clear question. Friend or enemy? As though it were as natural as the primeval forest all around him, he felt his own silent answer reach out. Have no fear. As he watched, she cautiously made her way toward him, her young following.
Slowly he moved his hand to his pouch and carefully raised the flap. He drew out a wrapped oil cloth and unfolded it to break off a piece of dried salt fish. He set the packet on the ground with the piece of broken fish on top and drew his hand back. The mother slowly approached the offering and carefully reached to seize the piece of dried fish. She drew it to her nose and sniffed at the strange scent while the two balls of fur remained at her side, watching her every move. She raised her eyes to Billy, turned, and calmly walked away, carrying the piece of fish to the nearest stream where she washed it, then tasted it, then broke portions of it with her forepaws for her young.
Billy watched until she disappeared with her two babies. Half a minute passed while Billy marveled at what had happened.
We understood each other. Me and a raccoon!
He raised startled eyes. It seemed a veil had been lifted, and he was seeing the forest and all within it for the first time. He saw the jays scolding from the branches of the trees, and the finches darting, and the raucous ravens perched in the tree tops, watching all below. Red and gray squirrels scurried with lightning moves, stopping with their bushed tails arched up their backs, curled over their heads, while they surveyed the forest with large, round eyes before they disappeared into holes in the trunks of ancient trees. A huge porcupine sat undisturbed in the upper branches of a nearby young pine tree, stripping the tender new bark to stuff in his mouth.
These creatures all see—feel—know something I don’t know—things they can tell me. The feeling washed over him, left him stunned, wide-eyed. Not just the creatures—the forest—all of it has its message—its story to tell—if one can only learn to hear it!
He marveled at the growing feeling of oneness with the beasts, the birds, the creeping things, and the great pristine forest. With it came a strong sense of his own infinite smallness beneath the great vaulted heavens. He was diminished and expanded in the same grain of time—only one man, but part of it all. He did not know how long he remained transfixed; he only knew that he had been changed, added upon.
The distant crack of a rifle came echoing from the north, and Billy blinked as his mind came back to the reality of being wounded, sitting in an Indian burial ground in Mohawk territory. He opened his mouth to breath silently while he waited for a second shot, and a third, but none came.
Eli? Or Mohawk? Eli.
He settled in to wait, listening intently to every sound, sensitive to every movement. Minutes rolled into half an hour. The ravens came to perch in the high branches of the pines and oaks, cawing as they gathered, then falling silent. Billy studied them, and realized they had been drawn to the blood on the blanket, and on his back. Scavengers that had sensed something wounded on the forest floor and had come to do the work to which nature had ordained them: clean all that died from the forest floor. He marveled at how they had known he was there, wounded. Scent? Could they scent blood that far?
Mosquitoes, the first of the annual generation, rose from the swamps and bogs to swarm where they could find sunlight. Bees came seeking the wildflowers that grew at random—small, delicate bursts of blue, yellow, red in the earth, or growing from the rich, decayed pulp of trees that had toppled a thousand years before. Billy drank again from his canteen, then broke off dried salt fish and put it in his mouth to soften before he chewed it down.
He glanced upward at the burial platforms suspended in the trees and was not prepared for the thoughts that came. He could see tattered, ragged edges of blankets hanging from the poles, where the years and the birds had frayed them. He saw some of the weapons and pottery, left by the living to be used by the dead in the invisible world to which they had traveled as they moved from this life to the next. Yesterday he had wondered about the spirit world, and about the power of Taronhiawagon, the Iroquois God of Gods, to send dreams to answer prayers, and to provide visions in which He foretold things yet to come. Today he wondered no more. The spirit in all things did not die. The remains of the dead on the platforms above his head were not the end of those who had once lived in the bodies. They were somewhere, moving on.
&
nbsp; John Dunson is there. My father is there. Bartholomew. Sometime I’ll see him again, and he’ll know me.
His thoughts ran on. Those bodies on the platforms—are their spirits nearby? If I can’t see them, can they see me? Strangely the thought that the spirits of those who had died could be in his presence did not frighten him. Rather, he found a sense of relief that one of the mysteries of life had at least in part lifted from his mind.
What’s happening? I’ve read the Bible—know about Jesus—the spirit—heaven—why are these things suddenly new to me?—powerful—as if I’ve never heard of them?
“Coming in.”
Jolted, Billy stared straight ahead before his mind came back to the forest, and he twisted his head to look north. Eli came striding through the trees and the undergrowth, the body of a small, spike buck deer wrapped about his shoulders, holding the four legs to his chest with his left hand, rifle in his right. He stepped over the log and lowered the carcass to the ground.
He looked at Billy. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Any trouble?”
Billy hesitated, then said, “A raccoon paid a visit. With her young.”
A rare, wry smile passed over Eli’s face. “I said hello to her earlier.”
Billy answered, “She said hello to me. I returned it.”
Eli sensed something he had never heard before in Billy’s voice. He stopped and looked into Billy’s face. “Something happened.” It was not a question.
Billy nodded and remained silent. For two seconds each man stared at the other without a word, and in that moment they knew much needed to be said, but the time was not yet. Eli broke it off and turned to the carcass of the young buck deer.
“I’ve got work to do.”
Billy did not question him.
Eli shaved more pinewood into the cold ashes of the fire, struck flint to steel, and within minutes had flames curling. With practiced efficiency he dragged the deer carcass a short distance, turned it on its back, and opened it from vent to throat. He emptied the entrails from the carcass, sorted out the liver, carefully cut the gall bladder away from it, then laid both the liver and the gall bladder aside. Minutes later the deer hide was spread hair side down flat on the ground with the skinned carcass on top of it. Carefully Eli cut deep into the liver and checked the large artery to be certain there were no flukes. He sliced thick chunks of meat from the loin, then gathered up the liver and gall bladder, and walked back to Billy.