3stalwarts

by Unknown

  On her way from the stone house to her own kitchen, Lana heard the widow hissing like a whole stableful of grooms. She stopped again in the doorway to look out over the valley.

  Two days— and they had had no news. The valley was still and hot; the earth was dry; the river, shallow and slow. Whenever she looked across it, Lana had a feeling of the hills drawing together. She felt the presence of the woods behind her back, as if, on the north bluff, the wilderness crept close and watched her movements through the day with an invisible intelligence.

  At the departure of Gil, life as it was known on the farm seemed to have departed too. The three women, in spite of Mrs. McKlennar’s noisiness, were imprisoned in a green silence. There was nothing to hear but the crows at evening, or the sounds of their own voices. There were not even any wagons on the Kingsroad, now. No boats on the river. It was as if the valley held its breath; as if the going of the militia drained it of all the things that made for life. One stopped one’s talk suddenly for no reason except an unexpected instinct to listen. Listen for what? Lana did not know. But her breast ached.

  A thought lived in her with the beating of her heart. He would surely die.

  Sometimes it occurred to her that since last fall both of them had been dead. Even in the little Schuyler hut she had had that feeling, though they had felt crowded there, so near that they withdrew from each other, as though to avoid physical encounter. Later, in the early summer, life had seemed easier. Work had been good for Gil. He was the kind of man who needed to be tired. But on Lana’s part, living had been merely a slow regulation of the breath. What they did, what they said, had lost all personal significance.

  Then had come the first muster and Gil’s departure for the Unadilla. And then he had come home, and her first quickening had come and gone like a moth’s temptation. She was healthier. But she had not been able to regain her vanished impulse towards happiness.

  Gil seemed unaware, detached, and baffled. Often Lana had heard women say of other women that they “got along” with their husbands. She wondered whether that was how she was living with Gil. She submitted to him as she had submitted to the fact of the destruction of their farm, wordlessly, blindly. Blindly until she had seen him making the turn in the road to Fort Dayton, with the erratic flamadiddles of the Palatine drums passing after him. When it was too late she had had the choking thought that he would surely die.

  As she looked westward she could see the Schuyler house. The little shack stood by the river, shuttered and forlorn; but it seemed to her that she was again lying on the narrow bunk bed, exhausted, still, cold, pressed down entirely by the bleak terror and her sense of outrage. She struggled against the memory. Her mind worked vaguely with the words with which she must try to tell him they were not themselves then. That she had got past that time. That it was neither his fault nor hers, but that they both had been forced by something which was neither of their making nor of their understanding. Her effort to find words and reasons was pathetically in-adequate. She wrenched herself away from the sight, turning into her own kitchen, with an awareness that when two people acted so against each other it was beyond the power of their minds ever to retract the moment.

  It was Mrs. McKlennar who first heard Gil coming home. The night be-fore, she and Daisy and Lana had been roused by the noise of Fisscher’s fleeing rabble. She had come down to the farmhouse and knocked on the door.

  Lana went down the stairs in her nightdress to open it. Mrs. McKlennar was standing in the moonlight, her hair stringily fringing the edge of her white cap.

  “Did you hear them, Magdelana?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something’s gone wrong with them,” said the widow. “I’m going down to the road and see if I can find out how bad it is. Give me something dark to throw over this and go up and make sure Daisy don’t scuttle off somewhere.”

  “I’d like to go with you,” said Lana.

  “Well, you can’t. No telling who they are. They sound almighty like licked militia to me. But if there’s anybody chasing them, a pretty girl has got no business hanging around in a nightgown.”

  Lana fetched her shawl.

  “Will you be all right?”

  Mrs. McKlennar grunted.

  “Don’t be silly!”

  But as she went down to the road, Mrs. McKlennar almost wished she didn’t feel so safe. She remembered how Barney once said to her, “Now don’t you go traipsing round the militia camp at night. You can’t tell about militia. And, begod, in the dark you’ve got a figger would make a lion out of a rabbit.”

  But that was long ago, when he liked her in a green silk nightgown, to go with her red hair. Now her body had taken after her face, with angles and joints, and no waist that Barney used to try to enclose in his two big hands. All that was left of those days was the fact that the militia were an unpredictable force.

  She stood by the rail fence until she saw a man drop beside the road to take off his shoes, and she moved over behind him and prodded him with her forefinger.

  He jumped and yelled and swung his gun round.

  “I’m only a woman,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “and I’m too old to bite.”

  “Oh, my Jesus,” he said. “I thought the Indians were still after us.”

  “What happened?”

  He cast a look down the road after his comrades, a dark disorderly shadow hurrying on the white dust.

  “God! I got to get going.”

  “Is the army licked?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. We was in back and then they started shooting out of the woods. You couldn’t see. Fisscher came back and yelled the army was licked. That’s all I know. We ain’t seen anybody since. Only we heard them yelling after us in the woods. And I seen some. All painted. To look like devils.”

  He was already down the road. Edging off from her, breaking into a weary shuffling run.

  Mrs. McKlennar sniffed and turned back towards the house. There was no use waiting for more, the way those men had gone.

  She walked into the kitchen, getting an “Oh, my Gawd, Mis’,” from Daisy, shut the door and dropped the bar.

  “We’d better stay here tonight. You too, Magdelana. And I think we’d better not light a candle.” She made her way through the moonlight from the window to the settle and sat down. “Stop your jibbering, you black baboon.” When she had sat down she repeated what the militiaman had said.

  “Fisscher’s run away. And I guess they’ve surrounded the rest of the army. John Butler always was a clever devil.”

  Lana’s voice surprised herself. She said quite calmly, “They’ll be killed.”

  “Some of them. Magdelana dear, that’s the business of war.”

  “Gil will be killed,” Lana said.

  Mrs. McKlennar pulled her shawl tighter.

  “Go ahead and think so if it does you any good. I used to be just a baby myself when Barney was away. But there’s no sense in it.” She straightened herself with a slight shake. “I think we’d just better sit quiet here until morning. Then we’ll see what’s actually happened. I’ll even move to a fort if necessary. Hush your noise, Daisy.”

  “I was only saying de Praise-God-from-whom.”

  The widow would not even let them light a fire until she had come back from the road. She went down, dressed, soon after sunrise, and held up a horseman with her brandy flask. He turned out to be a dispatch rider from Fort Dayton, starting down to General Schuyler’s camp somewhere below Fort Edward. But you couldn’t expect a soldier to disoblige a lady with a flask.

  “No, ma’am, we don’t know what’s happened to the army. We’ve just got word they had an action up the river. They’ve sent for boats to fetch down Herkimer. He’s bad hurt. But they say the British left the field.”

  “God bless you,” said Mrs. McKlennar. “Take the flask with you.”

  The rider accepted it, touched his hat with it, and spurred his horse. Mrs. McKlennar watched him go with a small swelling of her heart. A nice-looking la
d, a poor soldier— God knew what would happen to this country if a regular army ever came against them. She was humming a dim alto to something or other as she came back to the stone house.

  “There’s been a fight. They’ve stood the British off. I don’t see why we should move yet. Magdelana, get some sleep. You look a sight. I’m going to wash and eat and lie down myself. Daisy can milk this morning.”

  Lana was upstairs in her house. She had prayed for Gil. It seemed futile to pray, now that the battle was over, but it was the only thing she could think of to do.

  She was still on her knees, her elbows deep in the bedtick, her head in her hands, when Mrs. McKlennar shouted from the yard.

  “Magdelana, Magdelana! Here he is!”

  For one breath Lana was like ice. Then she got on her feet and went down. She went out into the yard, where, in the hot sunlight, she saw him kneeling at the horse trough, drinking, while Mrs. McKlennar stood at his side and splashed cold water on his head with her hand.

  All Lana could think of was how dirty he looked. His face was dirty, almost black with grime; his hair was matted with sweat and hemlock needles. His shirt was torn and his trousers looked as if he had been lost in a briar patch.

  He raised his face at her across the trough, and she thought he looked indescribably old. Then, as if he had seen enough of her, he put his lips to the cold surface of the water and drank.

  Mrs. McKlennar nodded.

  “Come here, he’s had plenty. We must get him to bed.”

  Lana went to his other side. His shirt sleeve had been torn off and there was a dirty rag round the upper part of his arm. The rag was stiff with a brown clot.

  “Gil,” she said softly.

  But Mrs. McKlennar was abrupt.

  “Up, lad!”

  He got up. The two women bolstered him on either side as he made slowly for the farmhouse.

  “We’ll get him some brandy,” said Mrs. McKlennar. “It’ll put him to sleep like a poleaxe, the way he is. We can look after him when he’s sleeping.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to fetch the doctor?”

  “Doctor?” Mrs. McKlennar stared. “Anything that old fool Petry can do, I can do. And this arm is nothing. He walked home, didn’t he? All he needs is a little sleep.”

  “Yes,” said Gil, unsteadily. “I’m tired.”

  2. Gil

  He had gone to sleep, as Mrs. McKlennar had foretold, within ten minutes of swallowing the brandy. Mrs. McKlennar had taken charge in a way that allowed Lana no protest. As soon as Gil’s eyes had closed, she started cutting free the bandage with her sewing scissors. She held the dirty rag by the tips of the scissors and took hearty sniffs of it. “It isn’t mortified,” she said. “But anyway we’ll swab it out.” She dipped the chewed birch twig that was her toothbrush in the brandy and swabbed it through the bullet furrow. To Lana it looked like a brutal operation. “Nonsense,” said Mrs. McKlennar. “So long as he don’t feel it we might as well be thorough.”

  “He might wake up.”

  “Don’t be a fool. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen him drunk be-fore. But he couldn’t be any drunker if he was lying in a ditch.”

  She bandaged the arm deftly.

  “Now,” she announced, “I’ll help you bathe him. You get his clothes off while I fetch some warm water.”

  While she was gone, Lana worked quickly. Gil lay like a log. She found that he would not wake no matter how she shoved and heaved, and for some reason she was glad to have him stripped and a blanket over him by the time Mrs. McKlennar returned with towels and a pail.

  “Pull back the blanket,” ordered the widow.

  “Thanks,” said Lana. “I can do the rest myself.”

  Suddenly Mrs. McKlennar laughed.

  “Don’t you think I ever saw a naked man, Magdelana? And I old enough to be his mother, or his grandmother, too. Heaven help me! Oh, come on!”

  Her decisive hand laid hold of the blanket and peeled it back, and she looked down on Gil’s straight brown body with frank curiosity. Then she raised her eyes to Lana’s.

  “Don’t look so shamefaced, girl. He’s nothing to be ashamed of. Why, damn it, you ought to feel proud!”

  But Lana could not feel that way. It seemed unrighteous for her and the widow woman to be working over Gil like that. But she said nothing, only dried the parts of him that Mrs. McKlennar had done washing.

  The widow, to do her justice, wasted no time.

  “There,” she said. “He ought to have one blanket. He’s tired. But no more, or he’ll wake up with a head like a punkin.”

  She picked up the pail and the soiled towels and said, “I’m going now.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. McKlennar.”

  The widow snorted.

  “Thanks, my foot. You’re just wondering when the old fool’s ever going to take herself off.” She stamped deliberately down the stairs.

  Gil slept all the through the day. He was still asleep when the sun set. But as darkness came he had a spell of restlessness. In the first dusk, while Lana was getting a bite of supper, she heard him muttering overhead, and stole swiftly up to him. He was saying over and over, “I won’t run. Oh, God, I won’t run.” She put her hand on his forehead and he flung round in the bed and shouted, “For God’s sake, kill the next one.” She shuddered. His face had not changed, but his voice frightened her.

  His forehead was slightly feverish, and she went down again to get cool water, with which she bathed his head until his muttering stopped. Then she fetched the Betty lamp, lit it, and sat down where she could watch him on the bed.

  Now that he was quiet again, the look of age went gradually out of his face. He had turned on his side with the complete rest of a boy.

  As the night crept over the valley, she heard the widow finish milking and turn the cattle into the yard. A little later the light in the window of the stone house went out. There was no further sound except the last sleepy clucks of the hens settling on their roosts. All the farm was dark but for the light in their own room. It brought her a queer feeling of the world withdrawing, leaving them together, just they two. And as she watched his face, hour after hour, she lost all track of time.

  A breath of air stirred in the room, flickering the lamp. Looking up from her hands, Lana saw Gil’s eyes upon her.

  She got up from her chair and went to the bed.

  His eyes followed her. His hands lay on the blanket in front of him.

  “It seems a long time, Lana.”

  “It does to me, too.”

  “You didn’t see me.”

  “I didn’t see you wake up.”

  “I was watching you. You made me think about the way you were when you were burning flax. In Fox’s Mills. Do you remember? On the side of the hill?”

  Her voice had a small catch. “I was thinking of it too.”

  “Were you?”

  Suddenly she put out her hand to touch his. At the touch he turned his hand over and grasped her wrist.

  “Have you been sitting up with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what time it is.”

  He did not comment. But he began increasing his pressure on her wrist. It frightened her, and she had to force herself to look at his face. She made herself relax until his grip was so strong that her fingers spread apart and stiffened.

  He let go.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “It didn’t hurt.”

  “It must have.”

  “A little,” she admitted.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you want to do it again?” she asked suddenly.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She felt that a spell had come upon her. Whether it was the darkness or his hand upon her wrist, or both, the fatigue of her long watch was transmuted. She was no longer afraid of him, and yet she was afraid. In that moment whe
n he had taken hold of her wrist his dark eyes had lost un-certainty.

  “Sit down.”

  His hand guided her so that she sat beside him. She could feel herself trembling; but if he felt it, he did not mention it.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “There’s a light,” she said. “Up beyond the fort, on the hill to the west.”

  A pale tongue of flame was lifting from the hilltop. He hoisted himself, without letting go her wrist, and looked at it. While he watched, it mounted rapidly, and sank again.

  “That’s Indian fire.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. It makes you realize we’ve got no way of telling if the fort surrenders. They might come down any day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  The fire dropped, before she could answer. In a moment it was gone. They were just they two again, in the low-eeilinged room, with the wide bed and its swelling feather mattress.

  “Tired?”

  “I was.”

  He was watching the small oval of her face, with its dark hair. As she spoke her lids closed and the curves of her lips softened and filled. She sat beside him as if entranced.

  She could not stir for the swelling blood; she felt it in her helpless quiet through all her body, breasts, thighs, and arms. Suddenly he let go her wrist, and she raised both hands to her temples, pushing the hair back. She turned her face to him.

  He saw that she was tremulous, half shrinking.

  “Lana.”

  “Yes, Gil.”

  “When I was up there, I kept thinking about you.”

  “Did you?”

  “About what it would be like coming home.”

  The pause drew out. Her heart started beating.

  He said quietly, “Are you coming?”

  “If you want.”

  “Yes.”

  She got up slowly from the bed. Her fingers had a feeling of fullness as she took the laces of her short gown. She met his eyes and flushed painfully, and slowly. It was no use to think that he was her husband. He was a strange person who had acquired a right; and she felt completely without power or desire to thwart him. But her instinct made her turn from him towards the far corner of the room.