My mother hiccupped with laughter at that one. “I would say so. Men had many tales of your exploits.” Her smile slipped as her gaze fell on me. “Then word came of the battle of Plattsburgh and I quaked inside, imagining your fate.” She pressed one hand to Jacob’s chest, extending the other to me. I snatched her fingers and brought them to my lips. Her whisper slipped out between clenched teeth. “I thought I would never see either one of you.”
“What about me?” Nicholas brought levity to a dark moment, as was his habit.
My mother blew him a kiss. “You? I knew nothing could stop Old Stoner.” Her voice choked. “Praise God or my men would not be here. Bless you, Nicholas.”
I scanned the room, each face dear to me. Everyone had tears in their eyes. Bless us all.
The next morning, I was sitting at the table eating breakfast and savoring a hot cup of coffee when Jacob hobbled from the bedroom, grimacing with every step. The instant my mother looked up at him from the table, his face smoothed. “I am going to the shop today.”
“Your leg will pain you too much, Jacob. You are not used to the wooden leg yet, and your poor stump. It is raw.” My mother went to him and pressed her hand to his face.
He closed his eyes, setting his forehead against hers. “I will not be walking. I can ride with ease and my capability to sit has not been impaired in the least. My hands and eyes are fine. I can still do productive work and plan to do so until the day I die. Otherwise, sit me in a rocking chair and you might as well put me in the ground.” He kissed her. “Do you understand, Charlotte? I must prove that I still have a purpose.”
She smiled and kissed him, dashing a tear away. “Then practice sitting on your bottom while you and your son eat. The both of you are much too thin.”
“I have told them the same,” Rebekah called from the kettle by the fire where she dished out porridge. “If they do not put some meat on their bones we will have to stick them outside to be scarecrows.”
Laughter rang out and bounced off the walls, lighting up the room. The four of us shared a meal and companionship, catching up on the latest news. I carried that warmth and the lingering heat of my Rebekah’s kiss as we mounted up and rode to town. True to his word, my stepfather did not falter. He managed getting to and from his saddle without mishap and only a smattering of curses. I attempted to help him get inside the gunsmith shop. He told me in no uncertain terms to take care of the horses.
When I returned, we fell into our normal routine, deeply engrained from years of working together. The day went quickly. There was plenty waiting for us after our long absence. I was so engrossed in the project at hand that I did not even notice the sun dipping in the sky or the lengthening of the shadows on the wall. A soft moan brought my head up with a snap, cut off so quickly I almost believed I had imagined it.
My stepfather’s wooden leg sat beside him at his bench. His hand moved to his stump, rubbing intently. He leaned forward and pressed his fist to his forehead, his eyes closed tight.
“That is enough. It is time for us to go home. The women will have dinner waiting.” I blew out the lamps and crossed the room to Jacob’s side. I knelt and took his stump in my hand, waiting patiently. His imperceptible nod was my cue to slip the piece of wood back in place. Jacob’s face tightened, and he clamped down on his lip the instant the leg rubbed against his stump. I gripped his hand. “All right?”
He nodded. “Heaven help us if we keep your mother and Rebekah waiting. Let us get home.” He moved slowly but on his own, out to Smoothbore. Townspeople waved, some approaching to reach up and shake Jacob’s hand, wishing him a fast recovery. Others were incapable of speech, patting my arm. It was as if they had to touch us to reassure themselves that we were real. It was our first time back in town since our return from Plattsburgh.
My stepfather’s horse, Smoothbore, led the way home, but Flintlock could have found it with his eyes closed. We had traveled on this path more times than I could count over the years. The trees were changing colors, dressed in all their finery. The beauty around me took my breath away until I closed my eyes and only saw blood. Everywhere.
Bile rose, forming a bad taste in my mouth as we ambled into our lane. I dismounted swiftly and took care of Flintlock, fighting to control my stomach. I prepared to bring him in when Jacob slid off Smoothbore’s saddle and his leg folded, pitching him to the ground. He pushed the wooden leg aside and held the stump, quivering with agony.
I hooked a hand under his arm and brought him up on his foot again, holding on with a firm grasp. “Father, you need to rest. Give yourself time to become accustomed to this leg. Difficult as it may be, I can function without you for a short time. You have trained me and taught me well. Let Mama and Rebekah pamper you here at home for a month or so. It is what women like to do and Mother came so close to losing you. Give her time with you if nothing else.”
“You are a wise man.” Jacob smiled and let me help him into the house. I took care of the horses and returned.
Once inside, we sat at the table. I was quiet. Too quiet. Being home, becoming accustomed to my surroundings was difficult. I was on edge, startling easily, snapping with bursts of temper that brought out the hurt in my mother and Rebekah’s eyes. I did not understand it.
That night, I sat in the chair by the fireplace, staring into the flames. Mama and Jacob were in bed. His injury, recovery, and new leg wore him down. He tired easily. I wish I could say the same. Rebekah was in my bed and I had a pallet by the fire. I refused to sleep with her before we wed and struggled to sleep anyway. I did not want to disturb her. In addition, I was cold all the time. My illness and weight loss still affected me. The heat of the fireplace helped to warm my bones. I sat in the chair, head bowed, hands on my knees, and let my home have me. The quiet. The snap of the fire. The soft sound of my parents’ breathing. The slow drumming of my heart.
Light footsteps approached. Rebekah, in her nightgown and robe. “You should be asleep. It is late. Come to bed.”
I shook my head and forced a smile that I did not feel, taking her hand. “No. Not until we are married. I am fine here.”
“Let me sleep here then. Perhaps in your own bed, you can rest. I am the guest.”
I would not dare ask a lady to take the floor, especially when that same lady gave up her bed for me. “You are the keeper of my heart and you deserve the best I have to offer.” I pulled Rebekah on to my lap and tucked her head beneath my chin. “Besides, I have a chill deep down in my bones. Sleeping close to the fire helps.”
She sat by my side for a while, holding my hand, a calm presence in the middle of my inner storm. My angel could not sit quietly for long. “Let me help. Lie down and I will put you to sleep. I promise.” I could not resist her. I stretched out and she sat before me on the floor, humming softly, stroking my hair. My body gave. I slept, and I dreamed.
I was on the field, experiencing my father’s death. Again and again, the musket ball pierced my heart. The scene changed. Jacob was wounded again, but this time, the blood flowed in a river from his leg. It would not stop until all of it ran out as I held him in my arms and the light faded from his eyes in a face gone white. All around, bodies littered the ground, an ocean of bodies and they rose to their feet, closing in on me. Burying me alive.
I thrust myself up off the floor. Drenched. Shaking, my covers tossed aside. The fire had burned down to a few dim coals. I staggered to the door and pushed my way outside, striving to keep everything locked up tightly inside. I shook even harder. It was so cold. The door opened and closed behind me and a blanket was wrapped around my shoulders. My angel.
“The dreams again?” She asked, her concern filling her eyes with shadows that even the moonlight could not banish.
I could not talk. The best I could manage was a nod. My fingers threaded through the disheveled strands of my hair as she held me and kept my nightmares at bay. The last shreds of my sanity were in her hands.
A soft humming began beside me, drifting on the air. I
lifted my head and gazed at the moon overhead, watching as the cloud of my breath seeped out and floated off into the night. Rebekah continued to hold on, a steady presence in a world gone mad. She had seen me through a time of crisis. Now she would be with me through a time of peace. Somehow, this was more difficult. Before, we had faced an enemy outside of us. Now, my enemies and Jacob’s lived inside of us.
“Come back to bed. Things will look better in the morning.” Her voice and her touch were reassuring, soothing the raw places inside of me.
I turned and took her chin in my hand. “How do you know?”
She leaned into me with a sigh. “Because every day since you have been in my life has been better. Even when you were so ill that I feared losing you, you gave me a purpose. I had a reason to get up again. I was no longer simply getting by minute to minute. When you left for battle, a flame of hope burned that you would come back to me. With each passing day, I found myself more and more wrapped up in you until it got to the point that you were like the air I breathed or the water I drink. I am no longer in a desert of loneliness because you make each day better, no matter what happens.”
I stood and tucked her in against my chest, picturing Rebekah’s long, empty months alone after her husband’s death. She was a resilient woman with courage enough to find a way to survive on her own, but that did not mean that it gave her any satisfaction, nor should she have to go it alone. Sifting through all the layers of fear, sadness, and pain that had nearly buried me these past few months, I realized that I held the solution to my problems in my arms.
“You are my purpose, Rebekah. Every minute with you in it has been better than all the rest of my minutes strung together.” I held her until the nighttime bite to the air set her to shivering in my arms. We walked back hand and hand to my pallet by the fire. I stretched out and let go of a bottomless sigh, my entire body going loose. My eyes drifted closed. A weight shifted against me, startling me to wakefulness before sleep could take me. Rebekah lay beside me with a finger to her lips. She tucked herself in against me and all my frustrations seeped away. I was too tired to make her go. My purpose. My angel was my remedy. Together, we surrendered to sleep and the prospect of a better day ahead.
***
“Lord, help me!” A tortured shout tore us from sleep and on to our feet. The cry came from my parents’ room. I sprinted to the door to look in. Jacob was rolling from side to side, his hands gripping the covers so tightly that his muscles bulged. His face was twisted in agony as he fought his way through his suffering. “Dear Lord, … the pain! It is as if I am trapped in the jaws of a trap, shredding me to bits.”
The phantom pains, like he had suffered before, had him in their grasp. My mother grabbed the bourbon and wrapped a strong arm behind his shoulders, raising him and holding the jug to his lips. He took long, deep swallows. Still he moaned in between. Rebekah handed me the salve that had eased him in the past and I began to rub it into the stump, silently cursing the trembling of my fingers. Mama and my angel held my stepfather’s hands, waiting out the storm of pain. Gradually, his body went slack, and his breath let go in a rush.
My mother pressed her head to his chest. “Liberty’s price is too high, Jacob. First Benjamin’s father. Now this. I cannot bear to see you in such torture.”
His hand slowly floated up as if too heavy to lift and settled on her golden hair. When he spoke, exhaustion weighed his voice down. “No price is too high, my love, if you are safe. If this country is ours. If I leave this world a better place for Benjamin, Rebekah and their children.”
For the first time since our return, my mother broke, her sobs shaking the bed. Rebekah and I took our leave, giving them their privacy.
I shrugged into my coat and stomped out of the house, too upset to remain indoors. This time, my angel did not follow, perhaps respecting my need for privacy. I busied myself in the barn, feeding the horses, cleaning the stalls after letting them out in the corral. My task completed, I took hold of the heavy oak door from Flintlock’s stall to borrow some of its strength and bowed my head. I cast up my prayer above, wondering if God was tired of hearing my pleas. In recent months, I had sent him more than I could count. I prayed anyway. Dear Lord, ease his pain. Please. Jacob has paid enough. Give him the rest he deserves.
I stayed out of doors throughout the morning hours, finding one project or another to occupy myself. I could not go indoors just yet. I needed time to calm my spirit. The sun was high overhead when I sat down on the step and stared out at the woods surrounding our home. Closed off from conflict and our neighbors, I could imagine we were the only people on the face of the earth. I closed my eyes and breathed in the tranquility. Slowly, the place that was a part of me worked its way in, pushing away my troubled state of mind since our rude awakening much too early this morning.
The door creaked and banged shut behind me. The clumping, loud step followed by a quiet one identified the source without any need to look. My stepfather lowered himself down beside me and propped his elbows on his knees. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He looked worse for the wear, drawn from his rough morning. His hand reached out to grasp my shoulder. “Will you walk with me? I am stiff. Perhaps some movement will loosen my joints.”
Inwardly, I railed against his request, but I would not deny him. We stood up at the same time, Jacob leaning on me as we worked our way down the steps, taking care to put most of his weight on me until we touched the firm, hard ground. With a gesture of his hand, we ventured down the lane. He raised his head, jutting his chin forward. “To the sign and back, aye?” A wooden plaque with our family name inscribed in it swung from a post that directed travelers to our home. It had to be a good quarter of a mile away.
I shook my head. “As you wish, although I think it is too much.”
“Tell me something is too much for me to bear and I will prove you wrong. Do you not know me by now, Benjamin?” Tight-lipped he let go of me and advanced on his own, swinging his arms as he became accustomed to his new sense of balance. I followed at a discreet distance. I did not want to hover. I had already aggravated him and possibly humiliated him as well.
“Father, I do apologize. I did not mean to offend …” I called after him, my words trailing off when he hit a hole in the road with his wooden leg and pitched to the ground. He landed on his hands and knees, cursing.
I ran to close the gap between us and crouched down beside him. “Let me look.”
He gripped his thigh with both hands, teeth gritted, as I carefully pulled on the wooden leg. The muscles in his jaw bulged as his bloody stump was revealed. He drew in a deep breath, his eyes closed, and slowly let it out in a hiss. “You need to put something over it. I will ask Talmadge to make you a leather cap. Until then, a stocking should do. Let me help you to the step.”
“To the post and back,” Jacob told me grimly.
I jumped to my feet and threw my hands in the air, my frustration boiling over. “Why must you push yourself so hard? We are home. Mama is safe. The British are not breathing down are necks or knocking at our door.”
He leveled me with his fiery stare, his brilliant blue eyes snapping. “How do you know that they will not? Our future is uncertain, my son. I prepare myself to the best of my abilities to face it, whole or not. Now, are you going to stand there all day and make me crawl or will you lend me a hand?”
He shamed and mortified me at the same time. All my anger faded away and I bent down to hook an arm around his waist. Together, we made it to the end of the lane and back to the porch, Jacob hopping awkwardly all the way, but accomplishing the goal that he had set out to do. Tension coursed through his body the entire journey, making his brow damp with sweat, and his face tight.
His breath came out in a huff, the color draining from his face when I lowered him down on the step and set his wooden leg beside him. I gripped the nape of his neck. “I think you need to rest now. The world is not going to end if we sit here for a few minutes.” I eyed him intently, con
cern welling up. My stepfather would never tell any of us how bad he felt, but I could see the agony in his darkened gaze and the rigid lines of his body. “I will get the salve.”
A jerk of his head and Jacob gripped my arm to pull me in closer. “And the whiskey, aye?’
“I will make it Rebekah’s finest bourbon.” My stepfather had grown a strong liking for her recipe. I looked forward to learning how to make it with her, sample it … and her as well. Yanking my thoughts from that dangerous path, I stepped inside to find my mother and my angel rocking and sewing by the fire, chatting easily as if they had known each other forever. “Mama, could I have the salve for Father? His leg is paining him.”
Needlework forgotten, she quickly stood and went to the bedroom, returning with a tiny pot. Her eyes were troubled as she gazed up at me. “He does too much. I am just happy he is here, with us. Alive.” She raised her hands to cup my face. “That goes for you too, Benjamin.”
I kissed her on the crown of her head and gave her a smile. “You know we cannot stop him and there is no telling the stubborn man anything.” I took up Rebekah’s jug of bourbon, dropping a kiss on the top of her head before I left them. Her smile lit, like a flare-up from the cinders of a fireplace. I carried that glow inside me as I joined my stepfather on the step.
He was rubbing at his stump with one hand, the other balled in a fist. I winced. The end of his leg was angry, red, and swollen, bleeding where it had become aggravated. “You have to give your body a chance to become accustomed to your wooden leg, to toughen up. That means resting each day. If you do not, you will have yourself a nasty infection again. You have enough of that, have you not?”
He gave me a weary smile, took the bourbon, and tipped his head back for a healthy swallow, passing it back to me. I took a slug as well, then took out the salve, a fresh batch that my mother and Rebekah made using herbs from the Natives and their garden. I started to rub my stepfather’s stump, pressing my fingers deep into the skin.
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