In this moment, I gather the whole of the raid’s horrors and throw it on my shoulders. And in a steady and strong and sure voice, relaying none of my actual feelings, I say it.
“I will follow you.”
“The cripple’s a fighter,” Mr. Tyler booms. I bristle at his choice in words. They’re the truth. But they still burn.
I hear the rustling of Mrs. Decker’s buntlings before I see her. She hurries over to the group, elbowing her way in. She’s a short, heavyset woman whose countenance is forever frozen in a scowl. My father used to say that Mr. Decker’s farm yielded more beans than any other in the settlement because Mrs. Decker went out to the fields and, with a dark look, dared those pods not to produce. “Noah,” she huffs, “you’re staying right here.”
It seems there’s not a woman in this settlement who doesn’t think she can order me about. “Ma’am,” I say, too loudly, “I will follow Mr. Tyler and Mr. Cuddeback north.”
Frowning, she turns to Mr. Tyler. “What have you to say to this, sir?” She crosses her arms and waits.
I reply before he can. “Mrs. Decker, my father believed strongly in this struggle for liberty. He fought for it on many occasions. Therefore, I know he would be proud to see me doing my part. I also know that he’d want me to help bring the Van Eck boys home.”
“But, Noah …” she says, glancing pointedly down.
My earliest memories are of people’s eyes finding my foot. I used to wonder what their thoughts were when they looked at it. Later I began to make up these thoughts for myself—none of them good. But right now, as Mrs. Decker’s eyes find my foot, I don’t do either of those things. Right now I just react. With anger. “I will refrain from battle if you think it best that someone with my …” I don’t finish that sentence. “But Mrs. Decker,” I say slowly, “make no mistake, I will be marching out with the militia.”
Mr. Tyler chuckles. “He talks big, this one. Let the cripple come if he thinks he can keep up. It will do him good to see a little action, eh,” and he punches me in my shoulder with his fist, almost knocking me over. “Maybe we’ll let you scalp old Brant himself once we catch him.”
Mrs. Decker isn’t prepared for my heated speech or for Mr. Tyler overruling her, and before she can recover, Mr. Tyler is quick to forget about her. “Let’s get moving on the ammunition, the food and water. Who’s still missing? Anyone from your neck of the woods, boy?”
“The Van Ettens are at the Littles’ with my mother and sister. Mr. Little was shot going for his gun. He’s dead.”
“That’s too bad. He was a nice fellow,” Tyler says. “Anyone else?” No one says anything. “Then we are down four good men today.”
Quietly, in my head, I add the two boys.
The group breaks up. I make a wide circle around Mrs. Decker on my way out of the fort and start for the Littles’.
Once I’m alone again in the dark, I remember my mother. Getting past Mrs. Decker is one thing, but getting past my mother will be quite another. “Mr. Tyler said I could go” somehow sounds childish, and it won’t stand up against my mother anyway. If she isn’t behind the idea, and she won’t be, then it doesn’t matter if the Almighty Himself is behind the idea. I certainly can’t use my father’s zeal for the cause, because my mother doesn’t share it, not then and not now. And if I bring up how proud Father would be, pretending to know his feelings on the matter, I would be sending any hope I had of my mother listening to me straight up the chimney.
My stride slows. It’s as if my feet understand the danger in moving me closer to my mother while my head is still far from forming a convincing argument. Although as I listen to the steady rhythm of my footsteps, the inevitable confrontation with my mother fades and is replaced by a vivid daydream of fighting the British.
I have loads of these stories of glory stored in my head, thanks to my father—different ways where my quick thinking or sharp shooting turns the tide in a decisive battle. I choose one of my favorites to replay in my mind. And in what feels like no time at all, I’m back at the Littles’ farm.
The edges of the world are beginning to lighten. Morning is on its way. I haven’t slept all night but I feel more awake than I ever have in my whole life.
And I know exactly what I must do.
CHAPTER TEN
OH, YES, FREEDOM
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1779
Scar breathes noisily, asleep beside me. I stare straight into the darkness of my eyelids, concentrating hard. At home, this sometimes works and I drop off to sleep. It isn’t working now, even though I’m so unbelievably tired. Probably because Scar is sleeping so … loudly. My father was also a loud sleeper. He would snore and toss and turn all night. I think we sleep like we live, and my father lived and slept noisily.
Reaching out, I pick up the sleeve of his hunting frock. I bring it to my nose and breathe my father in deep, shivering as I release my breath. My body is on fire, yet I feel colder than the water in a washbasin on a February morning. Why am I here? Why did I want to join this fight?
I remember the walk to the Littles’ on my way back from the fort the day of the raid. A tight bitterness pulls at my chest and I toss the sleeve to the ground. “This is not like your stories, Father,” I spit.
He answers me in the universal response of the dead—silence—and the rage at the sound of it nearly splits me in two.
I jerk my head from these thoughts and turn toward the Indian snoring next to me. Knotted scalp lock … dark lashes resting on sunken cheeks … lips turned down in a loose frown … Not a single line crosses his brow. He would be dying here alone in the woods had I not come.
The anger runs out of me like dry soil through my fingers. It’s no use now anyway, and I don’t have the strength for it.
Scar shuffles his legs, stirring up the leaves underneath. His eyes flutter and his eyelids open just a tiny crack. “Noah?” he whispers.
“I’m here,” I tell him. “Go back to sleep.”
His eyes close.
“Wait!” I call. All of a sudden I need to know. “Your name. What’s your name?”
I see his mouth turn up in a small smile. “Scar,” he mouths. Then the smile fades and he’s again lost in sleep.
I laugh, quietly. So like Eliza … he mocks me. And now the ball, the heat, the cold, the scratchy dead leaves, I feel none of them.
He’s snoring again, this time a little louder than before.
I listen to him sleep … and begin to drift off. I remember that he was my enemy once. Scar. A healed wound. His new wound is not going to heal. Do the wounds of war ever heal, leaving only a scar where we once all bled? My head feels thick and heavy, as though stuffed full of deer hair like my moccasins in winter. His real name. I need to know it. To remember. And feeling unhappy and confused, I pass from wakefulness to sleep.
I watch the plants produce new stalks, or “tillers.” The young wheat is strong and green. The moist days of late spring make the plants happy. A good crop can grow two heads taller than a man, and this one is on its way. It tickles my chin as I walk through the rows.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MEN OF FLINT OR EATERS OF MEN
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1779
I head straight for the barn to hunt for Mr. Little’s musket. I’ve determined to follow the militia without warning my mother, and I’d like to do so with a musket in my hands. I’m positive the raiders have taken it, but I look anyway. It doesn’t feel right marching out of the settlement without one. Not that I know what marching out feels like, with or without a firelock.
I’ve never been out of the settlement. That is, if you don’t count the few miles around our cabin to check traps. I try to imagine the march north—which leads me to imagine those we’ll be marching toward. They’re up there … somewhere. I picture the Mohawk warrior who is probably right now pestering my pigs to pick up their pace, and I’m reminded of something my father told me long ago: that the word Mohawk is the Algonquin name given to these people and it means “ma
n-eater.” Their real name, the name they call themselves, is Kanien ´keháka, which means “flint people.” I wonder who we will be chasing, the men of flint or the eaters of men? And to which group does Joseph Brant belong?
Brant is definitely a man to be feared. He’s a veteran warrior, and his cruelty in battle is well known. But there are other stories, too, those that tell of his great intelligence and of the risks he takes to save settlers from being scalped or burned. He seems more legend than real.
But then I remember Mr. Little lying dead not ten feet from me. Brant is real.
I find a small lantern and light it, but I’m so unfamiliar with this barn that I don’t know where to start looking for a musket, balls, or powder. I’m just roaming around aimlessly, putting off the decision I’ve already made: returning to the fort without speaking to my mother. But then I see it, sitting on the leaching barrel outside the open barn door where I’d forgotten it yesterday evening. My father’s frock.
My father would have marched out with the militia. He never backed down when it came to serving in this war. He loved calling us Americans, instead of Colonists. “His Majesty’s subject?” he would spit. “I am no man’s subject.”
But then my mother’s face fills my head. That hard look in her eyes. It shouts the reason why I shouldn’t go—I am lame, maimed, a cripple. Although my mother has never once allowed this fact to keep me from tilling fields, splitting wood, stacking wheat, mending fences, rebuilding outbuildings, topping corn for the livestock, weeding and weeding and weeding, and all the other endless work that keeps me busy from morning to night, every day of every week. These tasks I can do. But enter the war? My mother’s logic is off and she knows it just as well as I do. What holds me back is not my mother, and it is not my foot … What holds me back is me.
I will go. I will keep my word to Mrs. Decker and stay out of the fighting so my being lame hurts no man, but I will go. “Don’t let others shoulder a responsibility that is yours,” my mother has told me many times. Well, this is my responsibility. Brant attacked us. He attacked me. He burned my home. He killed Mr. Little. It is my responsibility.
Blowing out the lantern, I hang it on the nearest peg and head over to the frock and put it on. The smoke from the Littles’ cabin catches my eye. I watch it curl from the chimney.
“I’ll be back in less than a day. Two days at the most,” I whisper.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TIRED
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1779
In midsummer, flowering begins. The kernels are soft but dry. The dark green plants begin to fade. Soon they will explode into a golden amber. The time for harvest is near.
An elbow jabs my arm.
Where am I?
Ah, yes. Here. With Scar. He’s sleeping … fitfully.
I close my eyes and listen to the whip-poor-wills calling to each other overhead. Or are those mockingbirds just pretending to be whip-poor-wills? Mockingbirds love mimicking other birds. I whistle the three notes of a chickadee, “Dee, dee, dee,” and wait. The mockingbirds whistle back, “Dee, dee, dee,” making me smile. I will rise soon. I will rise and pick up my grass sickle and finish edging this cornfield.
Scar mumbles.
But first I will help Scar.
I’m lifting his head to give him a drink from the canteen when I jerk awake. I’m not in my cornfield and I’m not helping Scar. I’m dreaming. And thirsty. And soaked through with sweat. I open and close my eyes several times, trying to unglue myself from this strange world between dream and reality. But when I try to move, fever rushes to my head and I give up, dropping back onto the soft earth with a sigh. I’m tired. Too tired.
“Scar.” It hurts my head to speak.
“Noah.” He answers from far away, though his body is lying next to mine.
Moving to comfort him, I catch hold of a piece of his shredded shirt, and then I slip back into sleep and away from him … or he from me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT’S A DANGEROUS THING THAT WE PROPOSE TO DO
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1779
The sun rises over Van Auken’s Fort as I approach it for the second time. Between yesterday’s stay in a ditch, losing Mr. Little, and the hike back and forth to the fort, all I want is to relieve my neck from the weight of my head.
I enter the dark fort. All is quiet. A thin ray of sunlight sneaks through the chinking. I lie down in it on the hard, cool floor, close my eyes, and sleep … but not for long.
Martinus Jr. discharges his imaginary musket way too close to my tired head. “You’re awful quick to reload, Martinus,” I yawn. “I would think it would take longer. It takes me longer.”
As if to impress me, he lays the invisible musket on his lap, opens the cartridge box, bites off the end to expose the powder, dumps it into the pan of the lock, slams shut the pan, drops the cartridge into the barrel, rams the rammer, cocks the lock, and presents his musket to the enemy, discharging the imaginary ball with such a roar that—even knowing it was coming—I jump.
“Good shot, Martinus, I think you got him.”
“I did,” he announces without emotion, because there had never been a question in his mind that he would. “Mr. Tyler asked for you, Noah,” he says, reloading.
The militia is here. I’m awake and on my feet faster than a flash of summer lightning. As I pass Martinus, he catches the hem of my frock.
“What’s wrong, Martinus?”
“Don’t go, Noah.”
He won’t look at me or release the frock.
“Martinus,” I say, bending down on one knee. I try to get his eyes to meet mine, but they won’t. “I’ll be back in a couple of days. I’m going to bring Abram and Daniel home.”
There is the sound of many hooves meeting hard dirt.
I disengage his grip.
“Martinus,” I call to him as I walk backward toward the door of the fort. “I’ll be home soon.” But he still refuses to look up. I turn to leave, telling myself that as soon as this is over I’ll spend some time with him. My mother’s voice repeating one of her favorite sayings invades my head: “Do it now, later never comes.” But at that moment the hum of a hundred voices drowns her out, and I hurry to see the sight.
And oh, what a sight it is! There are horses and men everywhere; it’s as though General Hand and Count Pulaski are back. Only these men are not in uniform. General Washington has no money to outfit the militia. My father liked to say, “A man can fight just as long and just as hard wearing his undergarments, if he has a mind to.” The memory of his loud laugh echoes through me and I smile. “I would be sweating far less right now, Father, if I were in my undergarments,” I whisper. And sweating I am, though the sun has barely had a chance to creep past the horizon.
My eyes search for Mr. Tyler and I find him across the road talking with a small, thin man who wears leather boots and a waistcoat. I can tell from the look on Mr. Tyler’s face as he listens to the man that he respects this small fellow. For one, Mr. Tyler is usually the person doing all the talking, but now he stands motionless, letting the man speak. I’m curious, and start off toward them, but I’m distracted by the crowd … the glorious, beautiful crowd. Men I don’t know, horses everywhere, voices ringing out all around me, and Joshua. Joshua? What is he doing here?
“Josh!” I call. But he can’t hear me over the mass of people and animals. Forgetting about Mr. Tyler, I head for Josh.
Joshua is a hat maker from New Jersey who is not much older than me. We met a few years ago when he stopped in our settlement for the night on his way north to visit relatives. My father struck up a conversation with him out in front of Patterson’s Sawmill, and invited him home for dinner. Josh was a Patriot down to his stockings, and he and my father were friends almost immediately. He had a great sense of humor, and like my father, he knew how to tell a story. He never failed to make us laugh.
The story I remember most was about a man who had come in for a hat and asked Josh for his very best. I try to remember the man’s
name. It was a funny-sounding name—Meeker, that was it, Mr. Meeker. When Josh showed Mr. Meeker a hat, it seemed to please Mr. Meeker in fit and style but surprised the gentleman by its low price of five pounds. Josh immediately understood that the man believed the hat inferior due to its low price, and took the five-pound hat back into his workshop, brushed it thoroughly, and then presented it to Mr. Meeker as a ten-pound hat. The gentleman quickly purchased it. What a great laugh we had at this poor man’s expense.
After this, Josh regularly stopped at our house on his travels north. But it had been a long while since I’d seen him. He’d been busy, off fighting in the war.
“Josh,” I call again. Before I can reach him, he sees me and bounds up the road. Grabbing ahold of me, he lifts me off the ground in a hug, shouting into my face, “How fares my old friend, Noah?” Laughing, he drops me, holding onto my shoulders to keep me steady. “How does your father? Is he here?” He spins around in his moccasins with a big grin on his face.
What wouldn’t I give to turn and see my father walk out of the press of people around us. My heart, so light a moment ago, feels as heavy as a hogshead full of ale. “Josh …,” I say, searching for the best way to tell him—but there is only one way. “Josh, my father has passed on.”
His smile vanishes. We say nothing to each other for a few moments, and then Josh claps me hard on my back. “We’ll get those Tory scum, Noah,” he growls.
“It wasn’t them, Josh. He died of illness over a year ago. I should have written. I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“No problem, old friend,” he says, steering me by the shoulders to a shady spot alongside the road. We sit on the grass. He opens up his jacket to pull out a handkerchief and slowly wipes his face. He is taking in my awful news as he looks off into the crowd. I follow his gaze.
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