“I want to go home.”
“Lu, how—”
“It dropped from his belt when Frank was—” She can’t finish. “I found it on the ground in the mud after he left. I tried cutting through my own ropes, but couldn’t do it. I’m so stiff and it hurts to move. I can’t get the angle right.”
Lord, how I want to hug Lu. I wrap my fingers tight around the knife handle and together we cut ourselves free.
When we climb outside, it’s almost as dark as it was in the cave. We have maybe an hour of daylight left, and it’s hard to hurry through the woods with our stiff limbs and sore bodies. Despite all she’s been through, Lu manages to keep up with me. Maybe it’s because she wants to get home with every fiber of her own self. Every step I take drains life from me, because it pushes me in the opposite direction of Stonefield.
* * *
No one’s at Papa’s, so we go on to the Lenoxes’. Effie and Dora come running from the lit-up porch when they see us. Papa’s there, too. He gets up from a rocking chair like it’s difficult, and walks toward us. They must have been keeping watch.
“Heavens; oh my Heavens, my Heavens!” Dora squeals.
Effie’s eyes are red and puffy. She embraces Lu and grabs me into her hug, too. I never felt Effie shake before. Like God was playing a washboard up and down her spine with a thimble.
“I thought—” Effie pulls in a deep breath. “I thought I might never see you two again.” Her laugh sounds like a sob. “I’m so glad I was wrong!”
Dora’s hands are on her face, like she’s scared she might have to cover her eyes at any moment. “What happened to you both? Oh, don’t tell me.” She covers her ears.
Effie looks into Lu’s eyes and I can tell she knows what has happened to her sister. She puts her arm around her shoulders. “Come inside with me, Lu. I want to take care of your wounds.”
Papa reaches me and takes me into his arms. He smells like coffee and soap and pipe. “My Cat. I was so afraid I’d lost you, too.”
I bury my face in his chest.
When I’ve hugged all I can hug, we go inside, too.
Later, after I’m clean and fed, I find Effie sitting near the bed as Lu sleeps. I sit down beside her and she gives me a small smile. “I’m glad you’re well.” Her smile fades. “Lu told me what happened to her. She also said she might never have been able to leave the cave if you hadn’t been there to help her.” Effie rests her hand on mine. “What happened to you?”
I remember the bullets and dying soldiers, the scalp Frank cut and the boy he shot. I shake my head and close my eyes.
“I understand.” Effie nods. “The Union soldiers will be asking questions about the bushwhackers. They’ll want to know where Stonefield, Frank, and the others are headed next. I thought if you could tell me anything, I might be able to help them in their search.”
I can’t tell her they’re headed to Mexico, because Stonefield will be traveling with the men until he gets to Indian Territory. I want them to catch Frank, but not Stonefield. Even if I never get to be with him again, if he got killed because of me, I’d want to die, too.
“I don’t know.” I turn away from her so she can’t see from my face that I’m lying. I stare out the window into the darkness. “Don’t ask me.”
“All right, Catrina. I know it’s been a difficult day.”
I’m so grateful she’s not going to call me out for lying, I feel my body relax—I didn’t even know I was so tense. “Effie, how is your father?”
Effie’s face tightens up like a hem thread pulled taut. “Father’s out of danger now, though he’s lost his leg—the doctor from Rolla was sent for and he finished the amputation just before you arrived.” She clears her throat. “It will take a while for Father to recover, but he was in good health, so there is reason to be optimistic and hope for the best.”
I bet she stayed in the room when that doctor cut off her father’s leg, to learn everything she could about the surgery, even while it hurt her to see it.
“I’m sure you are wondering about your new husband’s health as well…”
I don’t answer. I hope the preacher’s arm was cut off, too; then he’ll never be able to hold me down again.
“I was able to remove the bullet with little stress to the surrounding area. It missed the bone, and you’ll be happy to hear that he’ll certainly be back to normal soon. He’s anxious to hear word of you and plans to pray in the church continually until you return.” She clears her throat again. “On their way home, your father and Dora will drive you to the parsonage.”
“The parsonage is not my home.”
Effie lifts her chin. “It is now.”
“It will never be my home.”
“Catrina, it became your home the day you said ‘I do’ to Reverend Preston.”
“They’re just words. I don’t belong to him.”
“Words are powerful things, and so is a person’s free will. You used both when you married Reverend Preston, and now you need to go make the parsonage your home with him.”
Hell. Why does she always think she’s right? Can’t we both be right in different ways? My rightness suits me thousands better than hers does. I want to argue with her, because I hate when she acts like she knows more than me.
But I’m worn out and feel like something got broken inside me back on that road, and then it cracked even more, seeing Lu in the cave. Now all my thoughts keep leaking out the crack and I lose them. I can’t think straight enough to give Effie a hard time. So I go, because Effie wants me to, and because I don’t have any fight left in me tonight.
* * *
When I walk through the door, a single lantern is lit, but the preacher’s not there. Nothing’s changed since I left. The kitchen is still a mess from when I made my own sealskin, the pots of dye on the stove and spools of thread on the table. The new dress now hangs from me, dirty, tattered, and ruined. I want to close up this day like a book I hate. I want to shut the covers hard and throw it across the room. But something draws me to the church instead. Like the unfinished story is gnawing at me and I just can’t sleep until I find out what happens.
Lit candles flicker in the two front windows. They’ve burned down to stumps. I walk, quiet, back outside to the front doors of the church and lean in to press my ear against the wood. I hear a muffled sound like moaning or low sobs coming from inside. I stay still for a long time, but nothing happens, so I push the doors open, gentle—they don’t even creak—and find Reverend Preston, lying prostrate before the Lord. I read about that in the Bible—prostrate before the Lord—and asked Papa what it meant. He said it meant to lie on the floor with your face to the ground like a dead man before the Almighty. I know the preacher is alive, though, because he is quivering and murmuring.
“Please, Lord,” he begs. The flickering candlelight casts eerie shadows over his back. One arm is in a sling and he has a bulky bandage where Stonefield shot him.
At first I think the reverend’s praying to God about me, asking Him to keep me safe and bring me back to him. But he isn’t.
“Please speak to me.” He groans. “Why do You stay silent, O Lord? I don’t understand. Why can I no longer hear Your voice? What have I done? Do not remove Your presence from me. Where are You? What shall I do without the voice of Your Spirit to direct me? I am lost! I am nothing without You! Please, O Lord. Speak to me!”
But the Lord can’t hear him or isn’t listening, because Reverend Preston lets out a moan full of such pain and anguish, it makes my knees buckle. I’m scared thousands more than I was lying in the road during the ambush. Right before my eyes, the thing most dear to Reverend Preston in all the world is being ripped away from his insides. I didn’t know God could be so cruel to folks that aren’t even heathens.
I walk closer and drop to my knees beside him. “Reverend Preston,” I whisper, “are you all right?”
He turns still for a moment as he realizes I’m here with him. He doesn’t ask me how I am or what’s happen
ed. He just keeps prostrating and moaning to the Lord as he did before. I never felt so sorry for anyone as the preacher, because I know what it feels like when the secret voice of the one you love most in all the world is taken from you. It hurts worse than a thousand pokers of fire set inside your ribs. And it leaves a deeper scar.
30
All night, I lie on the floor next to the moaning preacher as we drift in and out of sleep. In the morning, my back is sore. I open my eyes. Reverend Preston is staring at my sealskin dress with bloodshot eyes. He sits on the step below the pulpit, one elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He must have run his fingers through his hair many times, because it stands on end.
“Reverend Preston?”
He doesn’t ask me to call him Samuel. He doesn’t say a thing.
“Reverend Preston, what’s happening?”
He slips the wilted lavender from his pocket and crushes it between his fingers. “I truly do not know, Miss Catrina.” The pieces fall to the floor. “I thought the Lord wanted me to come to these hills and start a church, help establish a town. I heard His voice so clearly, guiding me to Roubidoux and to you, but I must have misunderstood.” He hangs his head and stares at the floor. “I’ve displeased Him somehow.” He unties the sling from around his neck and with a grimace of pain, he flings it away from him to where it lands beside his Bible. I don’t think he’s touched the book since Stonefield shot it three times and threw it against the wall.
“What else are the humiliating and crushing events of these last several days, if not punishment from the Lord? And this war—it’s His wrath upon us all for displeasing Him. He has withdrawn from me. From us all!” His whole body shudders as if he wants to weep but is trying to hold back. “Without His guidance, I am forced to guide myself until He speaks to me again.”
He straightens his shoulders. “I’ve decided to go away for a time.” The blue of his eyes no longer looks like the hottest part of a flame. The color’s turned a dull gray. “Faithful is gone.”
At first I don’t know what he means, but then I remember Faithful, the horse that Stonefield stole from him.
“I’ll sell the buggy and buy another horse.”
“Where will you go?”
“The Missouri State Militia has been asking any men of the area who aren’t enlisted to join—they hunt out Confederate guerrillas. The branch in Rolla has formed a group to track down the bands of outlaws who have been terrorizing the area. I’m sure that will include the group who caused us such grief here in Roubidoux. I’ll leave tomorrow.”
Something catches in my throat.
“It’s a noble cause—to seek justice. If I cannot be a minister of God to the people or a true husband to you at this time, then there is no reason for me to sit here and do nothing while outlaws run loose.”
Oh God. My heart throbs like the burning wound on my shoulder. My whole body starts trembling at his words. I can’t think.
Reverend Preston looks me in the eye for the first time since I arrived at the church last night. “It may not be possible to send letters by post during my travels, but if I can, I’ll inform you of my situation by sending messages however I am able.”
He turns to leave, his shoulders slack, his hair tangled. Every inch of his clothes is wrinkled. He reminds me of a broken piece of porcelain that has so many tiny hairline cracks that one more will make it fall apart completely.
I can’t let him hunt down Stonefield. My darkness comes flooding into my body like a rushing muddy river over my head.
“Stop,” I say. The word is loud in the quiet church.
He pauses, his back still to me.
“Don’t do this, Reverend Preston.”
He turns to me. The surprise of my resistance makes his weary features wake up.
“You can’t. I love—”
A hopeful question rises in his eyes as he takes a step nearer.
I take a step back.
“I love Stonefield. If you hurt him, you hurt me. If you kill him, you kill me, too.”
Reverend Preston’s mouth falls limp, but his eyes widen. He seems frozen in place. Then he shakes his head, stunned. “That outlaw? The Indian?” He looks like I just told him that I’m in love with Napoleon the dog. He shakes his head again, unable to take it in. “But that was before, when you were guided by the evil spirit. You changed. I—God released you from the savage’s hold on you.”
“You can’t go hunt him down. My child—you’ll be killing the father of my child.”
His chest rises and falls like someone’s pumping a bellows into his lungs. I think he’s going to burst. The blue flame of his eyes rekindles. When he speaks, his voice starts low but grows louder, like a rumbling train headed straight toward me.
“I wanted to seek justice and that’s exactly what I will do. If anyone deserves to be hunted down, it is that scoundrel! I know this even more certainly than I did before.” He turns to leave.
“No!” I grab hold of him. His body is shaking. So is mine. “I won’t let you do this.” I shove him away from the doorway and block his path.
“Please step aside, Miss Catrina.”
He moves forward again, and I push him. He takes hold of my wrists, forcing me away from him as he flinches from the hurt in his wounded arm.
“No!” I scream in his face. As soon as he lets go of me, I grab his injured arm as hard as I can and twist it. He moans in pain like a bellowing cow.
The horrible sound startles me. I look down at my fingers, tight and so white, gripping Reverend Preston’s arm. My hands don’t even seem like they belong to me. I feel like I’m in a bad dream.
“Catrina,” he whispers. “Let go. Let me go.”
As soon as I release my hold, Reverend Preston pushes past me, over the threshold, slamming the door shut behind him.
All my darkness inside presses me to the floor. All the air is being sucked out of me. I gasp and gasp, but I can’t remember how to breathe.
31
Even with the preacher gone, the parsonage is still not my home. I know the truth—the woods are my only home now. When I pledged my soul to Stonefield’s—using my words and my free will just like Effie said—I made that vow to myself and to him, not like the lie I told to God and the reverend when I married the preacher. Stonefield is gone, but the secret house is still our home.
Sometimes I eat the food Effie and Dora leave for me at the parsonage, but mostly I eat what I find in the woods. At first there was watercress, wild onions, walnuts, chanterelles, and persimmons, but now food in the woods is getting harder to find. When I grow so hungry I feel faint, I find a page of one of Stonefield’s books where he wrote a note in pencil in the margins and I tear each word out and place it on my tongue. I imagine his voice saying the word inside me. I feel it dissolving and becoming warm liquid in my mouth, becoming part of me as I swallow, like when Jesus told His men to break off a piece of bread and eat it because it was His body. After I’ve eaten enough, Stonefield’s words fill me up and my stomach finally stops growling.
I keep busy making wild work and sending messages to Stonefield. I cut my name into pieces of bark and send them down the creek so he will see them and have to think of me. First, I whisper a charm over them so they will find him and so they will cut me into his heart like a sharp knife when he reads them. Once, before the mourning doves flew south, I caught one in a net of knotted yarn so I could tie a tiny scrolled message to its leg. For ink, I used the blood that blossomed from my arm as I picked off the scab where I’d scraped his name from my skin. I pray the dove will reach him.
Always throughout the days, I watch for Mother. I see her more and more, now that I spend most of my time in the woods. Sometimes she appears through the trees, looking for me. If I lie still long enough for it to feel as if the moss has begun to grow over me and the tree roots to entangle me, then I might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her. She never sees me. But if I hold my breath, she grows clearer and brighter for a moment before sh
e fades away.
Sometimes I watch the farm from the woods and wait for Dora to go a-visiting. When she leaves, I step inside to see Papa and read to him in front of the fire. He scolds me for how dirty and skinny I’ve become. He wouldn’t understand that the dirt I’ve rubbed into my skin is necessary. It’s from the spot on the ground in the secret house where Stonefield used to sleep. At first I lay in the space and sank down a little into his piece of earth, but I needed to take it with me when I got up, so I stuffed the moss in my pockets and pressed his dirt into my skin, all over my body.
Papa reminds me that Effie will be leaving for the Congo in the spring, and says I should go visit with her to hear all about her plans, but the Lenox house seems as far away and unreal to me as Africa now. Mostly, Papa is quiet and rocks in his chair, his gentle eyes on me. I know he sees Mother in me when he does that, and it opens the door to my darkness. That’s when I kiss his forehead good night, and run back to the woods to look for her myself.
One month after the preacher set out with the militia, a letter arrives. But it’s not from Reverend Preston; it’s from Henry to Dora. Dora is waiting for me at the parsonage to open the letter and read it out loud in my presence. I don’t want to hear it. I go inside and close the door on her instead of inviting her in, but she just opens it again and walks in behind me. She fusses about the mess in the house and fans away the smoke from my pipe as I light it up.
No one’s ever doted over a couple pieces of paper the way Dora is, making a show of opening the envelope with a special knife and waving the pages like a fan as if she might faint from the excitement. If Henry is able to write a letter, then he’s still alive. That’s all I really need to know. I’m sure and certain Henry won’t include any of the interesting things that happen in the army, so as not to scare Dora. I sit cross-legged in the preacher’s red velvet gentleman’s chair and smoke my pipe, half-asleep, hoping she’ll just leave.
Stone Field Page 20