The Vanishing Point

by Mary Sharratt

  Hurrying away, she left her empty basket and water bucket outside the hen house, then went to the creek. She didn't know what she hoped to find, but she whistled loudly, the way Gabriel did when calling the dogs. Three sharp piercing whistles and they came rushing. Rufus, the big red-and-white-spotted hound, was the leader of the pack. She pointed to the opposite bank and the dogs plunged across the creek. They were Gabriel's dogs and yet they followed her commands, charging up the bank. She nearly had to run to keep up. Bouncing in his packsack, Daniel giggled and pulled at her hair.

  The dogs knew the forest as well as their master did. Gabriel had put out the traps some days ago. When he wasn't ill, he checked them every few days. Used to the routine, the dogs led her efficiently from trap to trap. Noses to the ground, they sniffed out the scent of blood. Hannah surveyed the dead rabbits and raccoons and the single dead bobcat. At each trap, the dogs looked at her and wagged their tails. They seemed disappointed that she didn't skin the animals and throw them the meat. She just pointed and urged them on. They obeyed, drunk on the excitement of sniffing out death, leading her past the scattered remains of earlier victims. Ruby picked up a bone and loped along with it in her mouth. Hannah counted the traps. They had visited eleven; Gabriel had twelve.

  The dogs led her deeper into the forest than she had ever gone. Breathing hard, she followed them uphill. The dogs stopped abruptly, keeping their distance from the bear trap, still empty and unsprung. Rufus looked at her inquiringly, then set off in the direction from which they had come. Now he would lead her home.

  Hannah whistled three times, calling them back. They wagged their tails and tilted their heads in confusion. She didn't know what order to give, just pointed blindly around. "Go!" Rufus started off again, the others at his heels.

  It seemed a familiar path to Rufus, although some of the younger dogs whined and looked a little bewildered. Ruby kept glancing back at her.

  Rufus led them down into a hollow where beech trees grew. A slender spring flowed from the hillside, then disappeared underground. Hannah's first thought was that it was a pretty, sheltered place. If they were driven off the land, she and Gabriel could build their new home here. It seemed so protected from the outside world. Picking her way down the steep incline, she saw the dogs sniffing and digging at a fallen log. A crow cawed harshly, then flew off a branch. When Hannah caught up, the dogs pawed at a piece of rotted fabric. Something turned in her stomach. Shrugging off the leather packsack, she set Daniel down so that he faced away from the log. He smiled at her, showing off his milk teeth.

  Hannah kissed the top of his head before going to the log. "Rufus, away!" she ordered. He and the other dogs shrank back. The fallen log covered a shallow pit. Someone had buried something here, then a wolverine or raccoon had dug it up. Kneeling in the loose dirt, Hannah pulled up a piece of rotted cloth, slimy in her fingers. Bracing herself, she put it aside and dug to find more pieces of cloth underneath. They were too rotted and weather-worn to make out the original color, but their shape was still discernible. They were women's clothes. She shook them out and spread them flat on the mossy ground. Grabbing a stick, she dug deeper, finding another garment, heavier than the rest. The quality of the fabric had saved it from degrading too fast. It was filthy, beetles crawling in its folds, but Hannah recognized the lawn embroidered with roses and doves. Her sister's wedding dress. Beneath the dress was a glint of ivory. Bare bone with a bit of decayed flesh stretched taut over what had once been a face.

  The bile rose to her mouth and burned her lips. On all fours, she spewed into the ferns. She roared, pummeling the fallen log until her fists were bloody. The dogs barked and whined and licked her face. Daniel howled. She wiped her hands clean on the damp moss and went to her son. "Just a while longer." She didn't dare touch him with the hands that had dug in her sister's grave. Instead she kissed him until he stopped crying. She made Ruby sit with him.

  Soil tore at her fingernails as she dug with her bare hands. Only fragments of skin and rotted cloth clung to the bones. Worms lived inside May's skull. Wild animals had gnawed at her. To keep herself from screaming, Hannah thought of the ordered anatomical diagrams in her father's books, illustrated skeletons crisp and clean, clearly marked, not stinking of decay.

  She could not pull the corpse out of the grave without tearing it apart, but could only dig slowly, revealing one bit of May at a time. When she unearthed her left hand, she found the wedding ring loose on the bone. She took it off and rubbed it clean on the moss. A plain gold wedding band with no ornamentation, not like the pearl and ruby ring Gabriel had given her. Her own ring was filthy from the digging. She tore it from her finger and stuffed both rings in her pocket.

  At last she uncovered the legs. The tibia and fibula of the right leg were shattered. It might have come from the bear trap, matching the story Richard Banham had told her, or it might be that the bones had slowly disintegrated in their shallow grave. She didn't have the skill to know. But the bones of the left leg, though brittle, were unbroken.

  Gazing bleakly around the hollow, her eyes came to rest on a beech trunk, which bore an awful scar where someone had hacked the bark away. The scar formed a rough rectangle. Shakily she stood up and walked toward it. It was as if someone had carved something on the tree and someone else had hacked the message away. She thought of the carving of the heart pierced by three arrows.

  Daniel was crying again, no doubt from hunger. She had nothing to give him.

  "Just a while longer!" she called. Stumbling to the spring, she washed her fingers until they were numb. "Hush-a-bye!" She kissed Daniel, strapped his packsack on her back, and squatted on her haunches to pick up May's wedding dress. When she tried to shake the beetles out, grave dust hit her face.

  Whistling to the dogs, she started back toward the creek. Barking and sniffing, they led her up the steep hill. Daniel cried all the way back. "Hush-a-bye," she sang while the tears glazed her face. Reaching through the opening of her skirt and into her pocket, she fingered the two rings. One belonged to her, the other to her sister, both given by the same man.

  ***

  Hitching up her skirt, she splashed through the creek, not caring that her feet were soaked. The dogs made for the house, but she went to the orchard, where she found one shriveled apple still clinging to its branch. She picked it, tore off the wrinkled skin with her teeth, and bit the soft flesh into small pieces, which she fed to Daniel, letting him take each piece from her lips so she wouldn't have to feed him with her hands.

  Looking at the house, she saw the thin trail of smoke rising from the chimney. The dogs would wake him up. They would want to be fed. Hoisting Daniel back on her shoulders, she picked up May's wedding dress and made her way to the tobacco barn, where she took the biggest shovel from its peg. She carried it to the graves by the river. Setting Daniel and the wedding dress down, she dug, tearing up grass and the autumn crocuses she had planted.

  Near the house, the dogs kept barking. Gabriel shouted her name. Ramming her shovel into the earth, she labored until she struck wood—the coffin lid of splintering pine. She continued until the entire coffin lid was uncovered, then forced the shovel under the lid and pried until the rotted wood and rusty nails gave way. Wrenching off the lid, she stared down into the empty coffin. To think she had planted those crocuses and pleaded so tearfully over a vacant box.

  Daniel cried. The day had grown cold. He must be chilled and cramped in the confines of his packsack. His clouts wanted changing. Hannah rubbed her face with her filthy hands and stared at the river flowing past.

  Unsteady footsteps moved up the path behind her. Gabriel called her again. He didn't sound like a man anymore but a ghost. Hannah watched him stagger forward, his face pale and tight with pain. He was too ill to be out walking. If he took another step, he would collapse. Part of her still wanted to run to him, take him in her arms, help him back to the house. The part of her that still loved him wept to see his body sway. He grabbed a tree trunk to hold himself upr
ight. They tried to kill me, but they could not. I was dead already, living in a dead man's house.

  She didn't have to say a word. His eyes moved from the opened grave to May's ruined wedding dress flung on the grass. He looked at her soiled hands, face, and clothes as though she herself were the dead sister who had clawed her way out of her own grave. He sank to his knees, the dogs circling around him. Rufus took position at his side.

  Hannah regarded the bowed head of the man who had been her first and only love. The boy who had been so tender to her, opening up her heart and body.

  "What did you do to my sister?" She pitched her voice above the baby's cries.

  "Have mercy." He gulped for air as she strode toward him. Rufus leapt to his feet and threw himself between her and his master. "I did not harm her."

  "You think you can still tell the same lies?" Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the plain wedding band. "Was this the ring you gave her?"

  He jerked his face to one side as though she had struck him. "I did not kill her." He sweated and shivered with each word. "She ran away from me. She did step in the bear trap and perish. It was an accident, no murder."

  How could he look at her like that, with those imploring eyes, as if he were the wronged one? He said her name over and over like a prayer.

  "Then why did you lie to me of the childbed fever? Why the false grave?"

  He collapsed against the tree trunk, eyes glassy with fever. She had left him alone for hours in this state. No doubt his throat was parched. He needed physick, but meanwhile Daniel was screaming and she could ignore the child no longer. Strapping on the packsack, she rushed away, leaving Gabriel beside the grave. Tears blurred her eyes as she broke into a headlong run. Father had told her that an opened, empty coffin was a symbol of resurrection. She could hear her sister's voice again, speaking the words of her last letter. Forgive me if you can and then forget me, dear Hannah, for I was born under Cursed Stars.

  Remembering there was no water in the house, she went to the chicken coop where she had left her pail, then filled it at the creek. She washed the grave dust from her hands and face. Once back inside, she stripped the soiled clouts off Daniel, bathed him, and wrapped him in fresh ones. There was no time to wash the soiled rags; the goats wanted their second milking. Putting Daniel back in the packsack, she took him with her. The motion of her body seemed to soothe him. When the milking was finished, she cooked him cornmeal mush with hot milk—a proper meal to fill him at last. He devoured every spoonful, her robust boy. She still had him to live for, if nothing else. She had to endure long enough to raise him to manhood. She was thankful that he was so young: he would not remember this day. She wished she had the power to make herself forget. Sweet Daniel, the only innocence she had left. She kissed him and tucked him in his bed.

  Outside, the dogs scratched at the door. Gabriel was out there somewhere, shivering and ill. Rain clouds were moving in. Following the dogs down the path, she thought of the biblical Hannah's song of praise in the first book of Samuel. The words of triumph and faith that Father had told her to commit to memory rang out like a curse. The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up ... The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall be thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth.

  She found him only a few paces from where she had left him. Evidently he had tried to drag himself back to the house and had fainted from the effort. She touched the side of his neck and felt his pulse. Though unconscious, he was breathing. She ran to the river and wet her neckcloth, then returned. Kneeling at his side, she wiped his hot face until his eyes opened.

  Nearly two years before, she had been flat on the ground, coming out of her seizure to see the strange young man's face above hers, his dark eyes filled with such shy solicitude. How gentle he had been, cooking for her and comforting her while she wept for her sister.

  Gabriel looked up at her without speaking. Maybe he was too ill to speak. God would take him, just as he had taken Father and May. An evil voice inside her said that if God punished him, she wouldn't have to. Hannah wept in shame. Long ago, her father had made her swear an oath to use her knowledge of physick to heal, to do everything in her power to help those who needed healing. If Gabriel died on account of her neglect, she would be as damned as he was.

  "Water." His voice rasped like autumn leaves.

  "Open your mouth." She squeezed out her neckcloth over his parched tongue. It was only a trickle, but enough to moisten his throat.

  "I thought you left me here to die."

  Her tears fell on his face. "I must get you back to the house. Can you stand?"

  She put her arms around his neck and pulled him so he sat upright. Slowly she helped him to his feet. Wrapping his arm around her shoulder, she bore as much of his weight as she could. He shuddered with each step. She had to urge him on.

  "Look, you can see the porch. Just a little further."

  When he faltered, she held on to him with all her strength to keep him from falling. At last they reached the house, where he collapsed into bed. Hannah piled blankets and furs on him. She brewed cinchona bark. He shivered so violently, she had to drip the brew into his mouth with a cloth.

  "Just swallow." She made her voice gentle. These were her arts, and Father had insisted she use them to the best of her ability. Love the sinner but hate the sin. Gabriel sweated so much that she stripped the buckskin off him, sponged his body, and wrapped him in a man's nightshirt she found in the chest of drawers. It must have belonged to his father, for it dwarfed his thin body. She covered him up again, stoked up the fire, and made him onion broth. She brewed him a decoction of feverfew and sang to him as she would sing to Daniel. Tirra lirra lirra.

  "It is only the ague," she said. "You are young and strong. You will endure this." She stayed up through the night, gave him more cinchona brew, and wrapped his legs in wet cloths to lower the fever before tucking him under the blankets again. But his fever didn't break until dawn.

  ***

  Rain fell softly, beading the hairy flank of the goat she milked. The rain wet her dress, stiff with yesterday's dirt. Her joints ached as she dragged the milk pails, then the water bucket and egg basket, back to the house. Her bones creaked like those of an old woman.

  He lay in bed, still weak but out of danger. When she brought him corn mush, he ate in silence, not looking up from the trencher. She felt his eyes on her, though, as she fed Daniel his breakfast. She caught Gabriel watching them as if for the last time. After Daniel was fed and changed, she gave him his wooden rabbit and put him in his bed with its high sides to keep him from falling out. Then she took away Gabriel's empty trencher and spoon. She stood at the foot of his bed.

  "You must tell me, once and for all. How did my sister die?"

  "It is hard to remember. I tried so hard to forget."

  Hannah crammed her fists in her pockets to keep herself from slamming them against the bedstead. "You buried her in the forest like an animal."

  "Hannah, you have no inkling. She hated me, betrayed me, called me the vilest names."

  "I found a letter that she hid away for me to find. She said that you hated her."

  "She had no regard for me."

  "Did you kill her for it?"

  "I am no murderer."

  "Patrick Flynn said you stabbed her in the breast, then put her leg in the bear trap and left her there to make it look like an accident. Flynn said he found her in the trap, then turned her over to see the wound in her breast."

  "I never stabbed her. Mayhap Flynn stabbed her. Or one of her other lovers."

  "Don't you dare insult my sister." It was all she could do not to scream.

  "I never raised my hand against her. I swore that to you again and again, but you would never believe."

  "What am I to believe?"

  "She ran away and broke her leg in the trap."

  "Patrick Flynn said she fled from you in fear for her life."
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br />   He writhed beneath the blanket as though some devil were riding him. "The words of a thief."

  "Why did she flee you, Gabriel? Flynn said she was still weak from childbirth."

  "The woman hated me." He tilted his face to the ceiling. "When the baby died, she blamed it on me."

  "Did she have cause to blame you?" Sick inside, she took her hands out of her pockets and stepped around the side of the bed, placing herself between Gabriel and Daniel. "How did the cradle break?"

  He had the shakes again, but she wouldn't allow herself to be moved. "She threw it at me," he said. "I ducked and it hit the wall." He raised an unsteady hand to point at a scar in the wood near the window.

  Hannah shook her head. "You would have me believe she had the strength to hurl a cradle across the room when she was still weak from childbirth?"

  "Have you ever seen that woman in a temper? She cursed me and called me a murderer."

  "Why?"

  He sagged against the headboard. "I did not send for a midwife."

  Hannah's eyes stung. She remembered the pain that had nearly destroyed her during Daniel's birth.

  "What in God's name were you thinking?"

  "She had the girl Adele to tend her."

  Hannah couldn't speak, couldn't even look at him. She rested a hand on the high side of Daniel's bed. Absorbed in his own world, the little boy patted his hands against the blanket, pushing down into the straw mattress so it crackled. That girl Adele had been barely more than a child, with no knowledge of birth. How could she have been expected to deliver May's baby and keep the infant alive?

  "You wanted her to die." Trembling in rage, she turned to face him.

  He lifted his hands as if to ward her off. "The child wasn't mine."

  "How can you be so sure?"