Arundel

by Kenneth Roberts

  “I’ll He behind the brush on the far bank of the stream,” Natanis said. His canoe rustled against a bush and vanished.

  For the most part the swamp ranged from knee-deep to thigh-deep. There were gullies between the alder roots, under water, into which a walker, if careless, would sink to his waist.

  It was bad, and a part of my mind turned to Phoebe, wondering how she had passed through this water. The other part was busy timing the movements of my feet to the whir and click of my mother’s spinning wheel; feel, feel, feel for the alder roots; feel, feel, feel; step! feel, feel, feel; step! I had no time to think of the ache in knees and ankles.

  When I came to the mound, a patch of land no bigger than our gathering-room in Arundel, I blazed trees, marking the direction of Natanis and the river. Then I laid about with my hatchet, glad of the opportunity to warm myself, until the treelets were cleared and lopped into burnable lengths. This done, I kindled a fire, a high, flaring fire to attract the waders.

  It was dark before the first of the company reached the mound. They came out of the water like wooden men.

  At their head was a butcher from York with shiny red cheeks that looked dark blue in the firelight. “Where’s the bateau?” he asked huskily.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He stared into the fire as if drugged. The second man stood silent, contemplating a gash on his bare leg.

  A third man came out, stiff-legged and grunting a little whenever he put foot to the ground, which I thought was natural since he had no shoes upon his feet. He pushed himself between the first two, who staggered as they shifted to left and right. Noah Cluff came into the firelight, one leg of his breeches flapping open where it had been torn from waist to knee. He looked at me as if we had parted ten minutes before: absent-mindedlike, and casual.

  “Bring anything to eat?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Where’s the bateau?”

  “I don’t know. Haven’t you got anything to eat?”

  He shook his head and moved around the others to stand in the warmth of the fire and stare into it.

  “Where’s Phoebe?” I asked, seeing that Asa Hutchins had stumbled onto the mound, and remembering James Dunn and Phoebe always marched near these two.

  Noah shook his head, seemingly unable to move his eyes from the fire.

  Asa Hutchins coughed a racking, tearing cough that pitched him forward on his hands and knees. He crawled to a clear place near me.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” he said; and added, without waiting for an answer: “Anything to eat?”

  He seemed to need no answer; for when I was silent, he observed: “Figured there wouldn’t be.” He reached into his hat and took out a square of moose hide, an untanned piece. He examined his right shoe. I saw it had broken at the heel, so that with each step the whole lower part of the heel must have slipped from his foot. Shaking his head, he drew out his knife, cut a strip from the moose hide, wrapped it around a stick, and held it close to the fire.

  A straggling line of men waded slowly out of the swamp and onto the mound. One of them fell and lay still. The others laughed. The man next to him plucked at his coat, and the fallen man rolled over and sat up, coughing weakly.

  “Where’s Phoebe?” I asked Asa.

  “Back there a piece,” he said, drawing the moose hide from the fire to sniff at it, and replacing it again. More men came up onto the mound and pushed close to the fire, all of them watching Asa with eyes that glittered in the firelight.

  “Back where?” I asked.

  There was a long wait before anyone spoke. Finally a musketman who wore no stockings roused himself sufficiently to answer. “Back near where Goodrich started from,” he said, never taking his eyes from Asa.

  “Anything wrong with her?”

  “Wet!” Asa said. Two or three men tittered dryly. Asa took the mooseskin from the fire and felt it with his teeth. Then he put it on to cook once more. Some of the men began to have paroxysms of shivering, throwing up their heads and shaking like kestrels balancing in a high wind.

  “Everybody with hatchets go to chopping,” I said. “We need wood and you need warmth.” I loosened Noah Cluff’s hatchet in his belt and put it into his hands. “Try to remember where you saw Phoebe, will you? I’ll try to find her.”

  “Where’s this place we’re in, Stevie?” Noah asked.

  “Right on the edge of Megantic. There’s no cause to worry. We’ll all be picked up in the morning.”

  “They’ll have to pry me up,” said one of the shiverers.

  “What became of the bateau?” asked the butcher from York.

  “It must have gone down Seven Mile Stream and across to the other shore of the lake,” I said. “What became of Goodrich?”

  Asa sunk his teeth in the crisped mooseskin and tore off a little. “He was looking for a place to get across this river over here”—he pointed to what might have been east: looked bewildered: then swung his hand uncertainly toward the southwest—“and he walked and walked, up to his waist in water, backward and forward, until he got kind of sick.” After prolonged chewing, Asa swallowed with difficulty, and held the mooseskin to the fire once more.

  “I never see nothing like it,” said the barefoot man.

  “All our flour was in the bateau,” Asa said. “We got five pints apiece to last us to Quebec.”

  “We have if we get it,” said the butcher from York.

  “How far are we from Quebec, Stevie?” Asa asked. All the men turned their eyes on me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Not far.”

  “You’re a liar,” said Asa. “It’s a hundred miles if it’s an inch.”

  “Gosh!” Noah said. “We walked pretty near that far in the swamp this afternoon.”

  “What became of Goodrich?” I asked again.

  “When he couldn’t find a way across the river, so’s we could get out of the swamp,” Asa told me, “he took a file of men and waded out to a clump of bushes in the pond, thinking he could mebbe see somebody with a bateau and get ’em over here for us. Dearborn come along in a canoe and took him off, and I guess the men are still there—Whitten and Burbank and Stone and Nathaniel Lord and Merrill and Walt Adams and some others. He was figuring on coming back with the bateau.”

  “Look here,” I said, “try to remember where you saw Phoebe. How’s it happen she stayed out there?”

  “Dunn’s sick,” Noah Cluff said. “We waited for him two-three times. She wouldn’t leave him and we had to keep moving.”

  “Couldn’t anyone carry him?”

  “Some of us tried,” Noah said apologetically. “’Twasn’t no use. I guess we ain’t been getting enough to eat. It’s all we can do to lug our packs and ourselves.”

  “Was she near the lake, or near the easterly river, or near the westerly river?”

  The men looked helplessly at each other. I reminded the stockingless man that he had seen her near where Goodrich started. “Did you mean where he waded into the lake?”

  “Yes,” said the stockingless man, “but I disremember which way that was.” He pointed, with no great certitude, away from the lake. Noah Cluff disagreed with him, pointing to the westward. Others had different ideas. I was glad I had blazed trees to tell me where the lake lay.

  “Keep the fire up,” I said, “and don’t be afraid to use your lungs.” I waded into the swamp, knowing I would have no trouble while I could see the light of the fire.

  The snow was falling steadily, in small flakes, and the swamp had scummed with ice. Ordinarily this would have been unpleasant; but now, it seemed to me, I might find it a help in returning. As I went I cut saplings, feeling for them in the pitchy dark and hacking them clumsily until I could break them down; then, when they were down, laying them in a line toward the lake, sighting back to the fire across the stumps to make sure I was going straight.

  I would not recommend walking for pleasure in any swamp on such a night; yet it is bearable so long as the
re is an object to be reached, and while the mind is occupied. Mine was busy indeed, holding a straight course, lopping saplings, feeling for footholds so not to sink over my waist in the icy water, and counting my steps to be sure how far I’d come.

  When the fire grew dim to my sight, I felt around for higher ground, and found patches of icy moss through which the feet sank little more than ankle deep. Here I stood and bellowed, “Phoebe! Phoebe!” into the darkness until my throat felt raw.

  By the grace of God I heard a sound off to the northwest, more of a movement in the air than a sound. When I had bellowed again, and cocked my head so my ear was toward what I heard, and raised and lowered myself to have the benefit of air currents, I heard it again and knew it for a voice, a weak, faint voice, but one my imagination said might be Phoebe’s.

  I went to cutting saplings again, determined not to lose my way, and moved slowly toward the voice, shouting from time to time, and each time getting a response that came clearer.

  So I came closer and closer, laying my line of saplings, feeling among the alder roots with my feet, the snow coming ever thicker on my face, until I could hear Phoebe cough, and snuffle a little after each cough, and was close enough to speak to her without shouting.

  “What’s the matter with him?” I needed my breath and had no words to waste.

  “I don’t know,” said Phoebe, her voice thin and wavering from cold. “Just worn out, I guess.”

  I could see neither hide nor hair of her or James. When I had laid my saplings up to her, so that I could get my hands on her, I found her crouched against a rotted stump, with James lying against her, his legs drawn up out of the water, and his blanket, wet, laid over him.

  I thought at first he might be dead; but there was warmth in him, though not much, and a movement of his heart.

  I felt of the handkerchief on Phoebe’s head, and her flat back, and the brass-studded belt under her buckskin jerkin. A sort of tightness went out of my chest at the feel of her. She was wet from her breast down. Her ribs, under her jerkin, were like those of a lamb with the fleece off.

  “You all right?” I asked her.

  “I guess so. Can we get to a fire? Did the bateau come back?”

  “Pick up his blanket,” I said. “Let’s get out of here. Listen, now: follow the cut saplings. Don’t lose them. Don’t move till you have your hand on one of them. Keep them on your right. It’s ninety-eight of my steps to the turn, and a hundred and sixty-one from the turn to the fire. Go ahead, and don’t lose the saplings.”

  She stumbled into the water, and I after her, with James balanced over my shoulder. I could feel this would never do. My legs bent too easily; the added weight forced me deep into the swamp.

  “Wait, Phoebe. Does he know what’s happening?”

  “No. He’s asleep. I can’t wake him. Even when he wakes, he only half wakes. He makes the wrong answers, and gets angry when spoken to.”

  “I’ve got to drag him,” I said. I lowered him into the water and hauled him as I might haul a canoe. After a time I stopped and buttoned his arms inside his coat to keep them from catching in alder roots. He was heavier than a canoe, and hard to hold because the hand with which I held him became too numb to grip.

  “I can see the fire,” Phoebe said.

  “Follow the saplings,” I told her. “Take no chances.”

  We came to the turn, and for the first time I could see Phoebe, outlined against the distant firelight, little and blundering, like a fly caught in a pan of molasses, moving forward through the swamp as though the legs would be wrenched out of her at each step.

  In due season we reached the mound, where some of the men had come to life and were chopping at the fallen trees. Asa Hutchins was still chewing the last of his broiled moose hide. Some had put their feet to the fire and fallen asleep, their bodies pointing outward like the spokes of a wagon wheel, and their heads two feet or so from the swamp. I hoped the weather wouldn’t moderate, letting the snow turn to rain, lest the waters rise around us and drown us into standing.

  When I dragged James onto the mound, the men stopped their chopping, and gathered around us.

  “Ain’t done any talking, has he?” Noah Cluff asked.

  “No,” I said. “He just laid.”

  “It’s been three hours since I waked him last,” Phoebe said.

  “He’s tuckered,” Asa said. “I told you he was tuckered this afternoon.”

  Phoebe looked down blankly at the inanimate James. “We got to do something for him. What’s the best thing to do?”

  “There ain’t nuthin you can do,” Asa said. “You just got to leave him lay.”

  “But he’s got to be dried off! Cut poles and we’ll prop him back and front and under the arms, so to stand him in front of the fire.”

  “’Twon’t do no good, Phoebe,” Noah Cluff told her. “He’s as well off wet as dry.”

  “You do as I say!” she cried, her voice shrill and cracked.

  Some of the men silently went to cutting crotched poles. Asa knelt down and looked in James’s face, then opened his coat and felt of his chest. Not content with this, he put an ear close to James’s mouth; then the other ear.

  He hunkered back on his heels and looked up at Phoebe. “He’s dead!”

  Phoebe stared hard at Asa. “It ain’t so!”

  She dropped to her knees and looked into his eyes; then she felt again and again of his chest; held her cheek over his mouth, and then the inner part of her forearm. She got to her feet at last, pushing close to the fire and looking half dead herself, black smudges under her eyes and the skin tight over her mouth.

  “It’s true,” she said, and her voice was a dry whisper. “He’s gone! I felt he was going, late in the day, before I got him to that stump where you found us. I felt he was going then.”

  Just for a minute I wanted to get away from her. I didn’t know anything I could say.

  I stared at the still face of James Dunn. It looked like a good man’s face to me; so I just stood there looking down at him and wondering why I hadn’t thought more of him than I had; for it seemed to me that I had always been pretty hard on him in my thoughts, and that there hadn’t been any reason for it.

  I wondered and wondered why I had ever had hard thoughts of him; and when I thought what a good soldier he’d tried to be—tried to be so bravely right through to the end—I could only swallow and wish I could get a decently kind word through to where he was now, so that he’d know I felt sorry about the hard thoughts I’d held of him, and would like to be more appreciative of him than I had been.

  But after a while I saw that just standing there like that wasn’t doing any good to me or anybody else, so I turned back to Phoebe.

  She’d sat down by that time, looking into the fire; and I did the same, sitting beside her and coughing now and then because I didn’t know anything to say.

  It was long, that night, what with the snow coming down on us all the while, the coughing and snoring of the men, choking and muttering in their sleep, their heads lower than their feet, and the hissing of the fire and the chock, chock, chock of the woodcutters.

  Knowing James Dunn must be left on the mound, I smoothed a pine slab and carved his name on it, and the date, which I was hard put to it to remember, though it finally came to me that it was only Saturday, October the twenty-eighth or even Sunday, though I think it was still Saturday when he died.

  Phoebe rolled herself in her blanket and lay close beside Noah Cluff. I couldn’t see that she slept overmuch. She kept starting up and looking around; then lying down again and shivering in spasms, all through the night.

  When it came to an end, at last, I waked Phoebe and told her I was going for someone to take them out of the swamp. “Listen carefully when I’ve gone,” I told her. “When you hear me shout, send Asa Hutchins after me. I think I’ll have trouts.”

  I had meant to tell her I was in disgrace: that Arnold thought me a spy, and had put me out of the army; but what with the dirt o
n her face, and the way she strove to square her shoulders when she looked at James Dunn, wrapped in his blanket with my pine slab on his breast, and the rents in her buckskin jerkin, and her poor attempt to smile when she saw me ready to leave, I had no heart to put any other burden on her mind, and so held her by the arm for a moment and then went into the swamp.

  When I had floundered to the edge of the stream I saw Natanis fishing, as I had expected. He came over to me with all of a hundred small trouts strung on alder whips; and as he came he continued to fish, shooting his hook into the water and instantly flipping it back with a trout on it. I shouted for Asa, and went a little way to meet him, handing him the whips and sending him back to the mound goggle-eyed with amazement, but not so goggle-eyed as to prevent him from pulling off one of the trouts, squeezing out its entrails and eating it raw.

  We pushed out into the lake and saw a canoe coming toward us from the direction of the bark house where we had left Cap Huff. This, I knew, would be Goodrich and Dearborn, so we signaled to them, and when they had seen us we went back up the stream again, with them following. Opposite the mound we shouted, until we heard someone splashing through the swamp.

  “Here’s Goodrich!” I called. “Come over to the stream!” There was a triumphant whooping from the waders, and more whooping from the direction of the mound; so we knew we could leave them and go about the rest of our sorry business.

  XXV

  WE COULD hear Morgan’s riflemen coming down Seven Mile Stream in their seven bateaux, spirited and noisy from their good night’s sleep in the meadow, and so for safety’s sake we pushed our canoe into a clump of spruces until they had gone by.

  I wondered, as I watched them passing, cuffing each other and hurling insults at the occupants of the other bateaux, whether they had made an honest division of their rations with the other companies in the meadow, or whether they had concealed some of their stolen goods in powder kegs. I say again that these Virginians of Morgan’s were great fighters; though to me, at times, their high spirits were wearisome, especially when they felt the need of enlivening their fighting by playfully cutting buttons from their companions’ breeches, or stealing food from the haversacks of starving friends.