Thieving Forest

by Martha Conway

  “Name’s Becky. Found her out stuck in a mudhole starving and motherless. ’Twas Liza who saved her. Fed her by hand every two hours around the clock for three weeks.”

  They have no children, he tells her, only Becky. “You can see she never got to her natural height. Comes from losing your mother too soon.”

  He goes into the kitchen and brings out a wooden plate of food and sets it before Susanna, who is sitting on a chair near the window with a planed tree stump serving as her table. Roasted turkey with gravy and boiled carrots and new greens, and a smaller dish of apples and cream. While she eats Susanna thinks of Ellen, who grew up in Scotland where her father leased land near Loch Shiel. Six months a year they ate, Ellen used to say, and six months they didn’t. When Old Adam and Mary lost four of their pigs to a disease of the stomach, Ellen sent over half a barrel of cornmeal. She believed in working hard and watching out for your neighbors as well as yourself. “It might be your trouble next,” she reminded her daughters.

  “Where’s Old Adam?” Susanna asked. “He must be hungry.”

  “Well I don’t know—off with the men? Don’t worry, I’ll make a plate for him when he comes back,” Jonas tells her.

  He begins lighting candles at the other end of the counter. The daylight is gone. Susanna tries to picture her sisters sleeping outside on the dirt: an almost impossible vision. Penelope will be complaining bitterly about the hard ground, and Beatrice’s hipbones will hurt. She can hear Liza begin to sing to Aurelia in a husky voice in the other room. The tune is familiar, but what is the song? It is low and sweet and calls up something down in her that has been crouching in wait for a while. She closes her mouth but it is too late, her tears are coming. She truly believed that she would find her sisters in Risdale, either already ransomed by the townspeople or awaiting ransom. But they are gone and she is left behind.

  Jonas shuts the heavy tavern door and locks it. Then he comes to where Susanna is sitting. She tries to stop crying but every time she breathes out a new wave of grief rushes in. Jonas pats her arm and then, after a moment, awkwardly, he pats the side of her head.

  “We’ll do our best for your sister,” he promises.

  But the next morning Aurelia wakes shaking with fever. Liza bathes her wound again using water boiled with herbs and then strained and cooled. She wears the same apron, the same frown as last night. Susanna isn’t sure if she is worried or if those are just the natural lines of her face.

  “We’ll keep her cool,” Liza says. “Keep feeding her. Best we can do.”

  Cade dampens the fire but does not put it out. He spent the night wrapped in a blanket sleeping on the barroom floor. Susanna takes Aurelia’s hand in her own. Aurelia searches Susanna’s face as though she has just asked a question and is now waiting for the reply.

  Susanna doesn’t know what her sister wants, but she says, “Aurelia, I’m so glad you’re awake! Are you hungry?”

  No answer. No sign she understands.

  Susanna tries to explain what has happened to her, the Potawatomi, the forest. Maybe she’s confused or doesn’t remember. “Old Adam and I found you. We’re in Risdale now. In the tavern. Eager Tavern. Sirus told us that the owner has a pet deer and we didn’t believe him but it’s true, her name is Becky.”

  But of course Aurelia would not be interested in any animals, only her birds.

  “Your hens are fine,” Susanna tells her. “Mop is tending them. I showed him the feed bucket before I left. I told him about the mash.”

  A slight frown. Susanna touches Aurelia’s cheek. Her skin is burning up. There is a knock on the door and Cade comes in with some broth.

  “Are you hungry? Why don’t you drink some of this, Aury?”

  Aurelia is struggling to get out a word. Not.

  Susanna bends closer.

  “Not. Mop.”

  Her voice is slurred and strangely low. It is unsettling to hear her struggle. Susanna always thought it was fitting that in Sirus’s mnemonic—Please Be Neat And Seldom Late—Aurelia became a conjunction, since she usually talks in one long sentence peppered with ands and ors and howevers. A conversation with Aurelia might find you with your mouth closed for ten minutes on end. Susanna knows more about Dominico chickens than she has ever cared to. And isn’t it silly, she always thought, to waste feed on penned-in birds here in Ohio, where there are so many wild ones easily caught?

  Susanna touches the spoon to Aurelia’s lip. “Take another sip, Aury. Just a little one.”

  Cade says, “Anything?”

  Susanna has forgotten about Cade. She shakes her head.

  “Want me to try?” he asks.

  She gives him her chair. Unlike Susanna, Cade doesn’t try to convince Aurelia, he just goes about tipping her head back, opening her mouth gently, and tilting a small spoonful of broth between her lips. Then he massages her neck until she swallows. It takes a long time to get half a mugful in her. Finally he puts the broth back on the little oak stand.

  “I think she’s asleep.”

  “Probably good for her,” Susanna says. But every time Aurelia closes her eyes she is afraid they will never open again.

  Cade pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Then he stands. It is still morning, and outside a low fog clings to the trees. “Why don’t I go see if there’s any news,” he says. One of his trouser legs is unbuttoned at the knee and his hair needs combing. He picks up his hat but then just stands there, turning it over in his hands.

  “One thing,” he says finally. “About your team and wagon?”

  “I already know. They were stolen.” Susanna looks down at Aurelia.

  “Well yes, I mean, that is, I wondered...could maybe one of your sisters, say Penelope, could she have decided to sell them?”

  “That would be foolish. We were thinking of leaving, you know, going back to Philadelphia. We’d need our wagon.”

  Cade looks at her, still turning his hat.

  “As soon as I get the others back...” she begins, and at the same time Cade says, “My father...”

  They both stop. Susanna thinks of all the things she’d like to say about his father. A drunkard who wouldn’t fetch the farmers and who needlessly delayed her.

  “I blame him for this,” she says angrily.

  Cade looks surprised. Susanna knows it is unfair of her to say this to him. In truth she blames herself.

  He opens his mouth and closes it again. Then he puts his hat on his head. “Well, if I find out anything...”

  As he is closing the door behind him, Susanna calls out, “Cade, what about Old Adam? Where is he, do you know?” But Cade doesn’t know.

  Cade finds his brother walking along the stream bank ahead of a horse he borrowed off a Risdale farmer. Seth’s dark hair is out of its customary ponytail and he leads the horse loosely by the reins. She’s a young mare but well trained, not grabbing her mouth around every full branch she passes. Seth is looking down at the water as if for someone drowned.

  Cade says, “You been back?” He means to their home.

  Seth shakes his head and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. It is humid, worse than yesterday even. The clouds are one long paintbrush stroke across the sky.

  “What should we do?”

  “Keep looking,” Seth says. “Ransom them if we can.”

  “I tried to tell Susanna but I couldn’t.”

  “What would you say? We don’t know anything.”

  They walk not looking at each other. Seth’s horse blows air out from her nostrils and stretches her neck.

  “What are you looking for here?” Cade asks.

  He isn’t sure. Signs that people have been here, have traveled this way. Mud clings to his boots, and the horse’s legs are splattered up past her forelocks. “Maybe they got hold of some canoes.”

  “Is it deep enough for a boat?” Cade looks at the water, which is as flat as tar.

  “It was deeper a ways back.”

  Frogs are everywhere in evi
dence, most of them the same color as the mud. They rise up in unharmonious noise like they are mocking Seth’s thoughts. Like Cade, he doesn’t know what to say to Susanna. He wants to give her the money for her wagon and team, but how would he explain it? And if he says nothing, how can he give her the money? Back in Severne Aurelia is considered the prettiest Quiner, but Seth has always favored Susanna. He had a standing hope that she would be the one to come into the shop to get any little thing Sirus might need: new iron nails, a dent in their kettle pounded out. Before he moved to Severne Seth had seen only one red-headed woman in his life. She was thin and tall and ancient, thirty at least, and unmarried. She carried a small bucket in lieu of a purse. Miss Anders. They said she was a poet. To Seth she looked like a bird in winter, all beak and wing bone. He thought all red-headed women must be ugly until he got to Severne and saw five of them, all of them pretty, and all, according to the farmers, bad mannered and not worth the effort it might take to claim one as wife. Barren, too, they said later, or at least not able to give birth to a son. And the Quiners for their part looked down on the farmers. They might look down on Seth, too, the son of an ironmonger, but Seth hopes not so much. Susanna herself greeted them on the day the Spendloves arrived in Severne. She was only ten or eleven and came around as bold as a boy to see the new folks. She looked Seth straight in the eye, and then she looked at Cade, and then she looked back at Seth. Most people when they meet them look at Cade and stop there. He is the handsome one. Seth is the one no one could figure out where he got his looks. But Susanna looked at Seth more than she looked at Cade. That first summer they even played together sometimes around one of the brooks that fed into the Blanchard. By the next summer they were too old.

  Seth halts his horse. He kneels by the stream and splashes water up onto his face and neck. There are no signs of any natives: no canoe marks, no prints. Cade is right, this water is too shallow. He feels the ring in his pocket, which now feels insubstantial. He should go back to Severne and confront Amos. Or he should take a new route, ride more slowly, look more carefully. Or he should ride as fast as possible to Fort Wayne with ransom money in hopes of finding the women there. If the Potawatomi want ransom and they didn’t stop in Risdale then that’s where they would go. Fort Wayne to the west or Cincinnati down south. But the Potawatomi are northern people, most comfortable in forests, which means Fort Wayne.

  He glances at Cade, whose blond hair is plastered to his neck in the heat. “How is Aurelia?”

  “She can’t hardly speak,” Cade tells him. A muscle moves in his cheek. Seth can see how worried he is, how he carries it on his skin. A man who keeps all his big feelings to himself.

  “Used to be I’d hear her talking even before I rounded the cabin,” Cade says. “Now her whole face looks different. Not young exactly. Soft, but not young.”

  They walk along the water. Seth waits for Cade to say more. He doesn’t know if talking helps or not. He fingers the ring in his pocket again and thinks, maybe I’ll just carry it forever, come across it whenever I change my handkerchief: oh that, I should do something about that. Then he thinks: All right. I’ll go to Fort Wayne.

  “You should rub some soap up on your skin,” Cade says. “Change your shirt and collar. You look a mess.”

  “You do too, brother,” Seth tells him. “You do too.”

  The next day Jonas comes in with news from the men: they have found signs of a small campfire near the Blanchard River, and there are marks that might have been made from canoes scraping down the bank. Now they are following the river on horseback, and four men came back to town to fetch skiffs.

  Later Liza has Jonas move Aurelia onto a straw tick with a folded quilt on top of it. The new bedding smells like vinegar, a smell that, strangely, comforts Susanna. Ellen used to wash their hair and clothes in vinegar to stave off a fever.

  “How is she doing?” Susanna asks. Liza is trying to feed Aurelia some applesauce.

  “Doesn’t want to swallow.” Liza puts a drop the size of a fingernail in Aurelia’s mouth and, like Cade, massages her throat. At last Aurelia swallows. “Such a pretty,” Liza says.

  “I think she’s the prettiest of us all, though some people say Naomi.”

  “You’re all of you pretty. My cousin had dark red hair like yours. Always liked it. You see it brown, then she goes into the sun and you see it red. She married a coureur de bois, a French backwoodsman, they moved up north. Docia. Wonder about her still.”

  Sunlight slants in through the open window. There is not a whisper of wind. It is late afternoon, her mother’s favorite time of day. Out of all of them, Aurelia looks most like Ellen: the same color hair, the same mouth. In a way this is like watching her mother die all over again.

  “If only I started sooner,” Susanna says. “If I had followed them as soon as they left...”

  “Then they would have taken you, too. They use scouts, you know, to see what’s behind them as well as what’s in front.”

  “I just can’t understand it. Why would they do this to her? The Potawatomi have always been friendly to us. To my father. They often came to our store.”

  “Nothing to do with that. It’s just what they do if they find themselves with someone ill. So they don’t carry disease back to their people.”

  A log from the fire shifts and falls, and Liza gets up to attend to it. Above the fireplace hangs a map hand-drawn by Jonas. It is very neat, with small upward arrows indicating trees and looping lines for streams. There is Severne, there is Thieving Forest, and there is Risdale. And at the very top in block letters: The Great Black Swamp.

  Liza leans the poker back against the water cask. She sits on the chair next to Aurelia and picks up the bowl of applesauce again, but Aurelia has fallen asleep. She is asleep more than awake now. She slept for almost six hours after breakfast.

  Susanna says, “I want to ask you something.”

  Liza gets out her pipe and lights a twig off the fire. “All right.” She touches the glowing end to her pipe bowl and takes a long pull.

  “The Indians, the Potawatomi...” She is looking for the right words. “Could they have taken Aurelia...taken her honor?”

  “Acted like a husband?” Liza asks. “Except by force?” Susanna nods. To her surprise, Liza seems to get angry. She waves her pipe stem in front of her as if scratching the air. “You know who does that? White men. That’s who. Not Indians. That’s not their way.”

  “But in the stories...”

  “I know about those stories. White men tell them to keep us afraid. Listen now. I’ve lived around forest Indians all my life. Before Jonas and I moved down here we ran a trading post near Canada where we were the only white people excepting a little cripple Welshman who lived with a Mascouten wife. Only houses I’ve seen made of stone were made by the French before they left. Never been to a city, don’t know anything about that life, but I know Indian life. Kidnap women, they do that, always have, women from other tribes, even men from other tribes. They do it to replace someone who has died or for revenge or for the ransom. But not to satisfy themselves. It’s not their way. Not forest Indians, no.”

  “I just thought...”

  “They harmed your sister, they did, but not in that way.” Liza looks at her sternly. “Nor none of your other sisters I’d wager. So you chase that notion right out.”

  Susanna doesn’t know what to say. She believes Liza and feels a little ashamed of herself. Sirus always told them not to listen to the lies white men spread about Indians, but her fear got the better of her. Liza gets up to knock her pipe against the hearth, and then she washes her hands in the basin and feels Aurelia’s forehead over the bandage. Susanna watches her, relieved but still uneasy. Why then did the Potawatomi take them? Not for revenge, not for ransom, not to satisfy themselves. Aurelia’s hair is spread out like the wings of a red moth, and Liza strokes the top of her head. When she speaks again her voice is a little softer.

  “Stories are lies made up to make us feel something,” she
says. “I don’t hold with them unless they have music, and then I mostly give over to the music.”

  The Risdale men find the company of Indians in canoes, but they are Sauk Indians, two brothers and their uncle, and they are traveling with their women. They have not seen anyone else on the water, they say, all this past week.

  That day a good number of the men return to their fields. After this disappointment their energy seems to flag. There are no other signs to follow. Old Adam is not among those who have returned, Susanna notices.

  “Has he gone back to Severne, then?” she asks.

  No one knows.

  Aurelia’s fever seems a little abated, which is good, but she sleeps more and more. In the afternoon, Susanna decides to give her a sponge bath. Her arms feel heavy, like sleeping snakes. After washing her, Susanna trims her fingernails.

  “I knew there was a reason I brought these,” she says, getting out Ellen’s nail scissors. Aurelia is breathing deeply and her pale eyelashes do not so much as flutter. But Susanna keeps talking. “The bird heads are pretty, don’t you think? When I was little I was glad there were two of them, so they wouldn’t be lonely. I used to pretend they talked to each other.”

  Aurelia’s nails are hard and brittle, and Susanna takes her time. Through the door she can hear Becky’s hooves clicking on the wood floor as she follows Jonas. Since Becky won’t use stairs Jonas built a little ramp for her against the kitchen door so she can get out to the yard. Sometimes she sleeps there, in the sun. As Susanna finishes Aurelia’s pinkie nail and turns to take her other hand, she notices that her sister’s eyes are open.

  “Aurelia! You’re awake!”

  It is the first time in almost three days that Aurelia has woken up on her own. A good sign. Susanna squeezes her sister’s hand and a little sob escapes her, like a hiccough.

  “Hi, Princess,” Aurelia says slowly. Her voice is thick and unnatural, as if a heavy coin is lying on her tongue.

  “How do you feel?”