My Name Is a Knife

by Alix Hawley

  —You have another family, as you may recall.

  —I do, or perhaps I did. My wife and most of my children are gone.

  He gives his head a slight shake. To him I wish to say, Squire, I thought it was you, I thought you had been with my wife, I had thought you were Jemima’s father until I heard the truth. I did learn some things when I was with the Shawnee, ha.

  It is a long sharp splinter between us, though we never talked of it. Squire did not give Neddy up. I see him and Ned as small boys sitting quiet on the bench in Meeting and swinging their legs. They were close when they were young, though Neddy and I were always closer in looks. He looks so much like you. Ma’s words. My wife Rebecca’s words also, after I came back the first time. I thought you were dead.

  I hold out the gun pieces. Squire takes them, he fingers the lock and reaches for the grease on his shelf. His eyes take their usual interest in how a thing is made. When he runs his hand down the grain of the stock, his fingers shake. I say:

  —You are ill, Squire?

  He says:

  —Ague. Comes and goes. I am all right. Cannot do so much work as I would like here.

  —I see that.

  His eyes stay on the gun’s lock. He moves its parts, he says:

  —No worse than most.

  —Well. I thank you for that opinion. He holds the barrel up to his eye:

  —Trade garbage. English.

  —Yes. They are still making friends in the wilderness.

  —What did they trade you for?

  Squire’s eyes are flat and shadowed. I hold out my empty hands and I say:

  —I ran. I left.

  —Time you did, was it?

  —It was.

  —And they did not chase you.

  —No. Or not far. I kept to streams after the horse they had given me wore out. You can see the great beauty of my feet.

  I thrust one out at him. It has the look of a skinned creature, with the old bullet scar on my ankle a sicker white. He says only:

  —They gave you a horse too? What did you give them?

  —Squire—

  —It is only that we heard you had given all of us away.

  He sets down my gun barrel and kneels once more before his sputtering fire. I could tell him about my wedding horse, my wife, all my gifts. My guts churn up again. I say:

  —Squire. There is no truth in that story. Tell me you do not believe it.

  He looks at me hard. He says:

  —Then what was Johnson talking of? He left for Harrodsburg after he got back here. Said he would not live in a place with your name after what you had done to those men with you, and to us here.

  —You believe what Andy Johnson says? He played a madman the whole time the Shawnee had us. I believe he is half mad, hairy creeping bastard. He did not know what I was about. Harrodsburg can have him. It has had its share of Indian trouble too. Perhaps they will sell him back to them.

  Johnson, Pekula the Shawnee called him, their Little Duck, all mad stupid prancing, who ran off sly one night months ago. Squire shakes his head again. He does not like to be perplexed.

  —Squire.

  He turns his back. A line of sunlight is just inside the shop now. He squats, his thin legs tremble slightly as his heels lift. His moccasins are patched and patched, the soles of his feet must be near as bad as mine. His shoulders round as he says:

  —Dan, I am glad you are all right. But I do not know why you are here now after so long.

  —To tell you what they are planning—that is why I am here. Look at the state of me. I need your help—

  He puts a hand up. I say:

  —Listen now, the rest will not listen. There will not be so very much time.

  —Dan, I cannot hear anything more from you now. There is food to get. I have children here. We lost one while you were gone. I cannot take them anywhere other, but at least I can hunt.

  This cuts me down to my ribs.

  —You lost one?

  —Born dead in April. No midwife. Rebecca was already gone.

  —Well. Well Squire. Is Jane all right?

  He only crosses the little shop and takes up a long gun from where it leans against the wall. Looking down its barrel he says:

  —There will be no more dead children. I will see to that.

  I say:

  —I will hunt with you, give me a horse—lend me a horse and a gun and I will promise you whatever game there is to get. You know how Kentucky game feels about me, no matter my condition.

  I force a laugh from my rotten lungs, but my brother only gets his powder horn and shakes two bullets about in their pouch, then turns it out empty as if to show me how poor I have become.

  * * *

  The sun sits just above the wall. A clear day it will be, bright and fine. Birds call from the trees past the fields beyond the stockade gap. The women chatter as they go about their business. My name pokes up like weeds through their talk again and again. Boone, Boone. I drag myself off towards my cabin. I will think of what to do, my brains will grind to work again.

  I suppose I will have to hunt somehow, if only to feed myself. I think of setting a fish line at the river so I will not have to hobble far, though in truth I would like to get Jemima and hobble as far as it is possible to go from this place. I am hungry, hungrier than I have been since the Shawnee marched us half starved through the snow for days to their town. On my run back here I smoked the tongue of the buffalo I killed, I meant it for my youngest boy Jesse, but I lost it along with my shirt when the raft I made to cross the Kentucky was tugged away by the current. I did manage to keep hold of the gun in the water, but what use is it to me now? Squire.

  —Why is no one watching him?

  The voice is cool at my back. I know who it belongs to, so I do not turn. My spine hardens and I limp on as best I can.

  —Just as well, I will ask you before everyone, as you are out. Where are the rest? We sent more than twenty of you to get salt, and by God I see only you back.

  I carry on in my limping. But Dick Callaway only speaks louder so all may hear:

  —Boone, you will tell me now what you have done with my nephew and the others.

  At this I face him. His grey hair is greased back hard from his unhappy forehead, his wide shoulders are raised. I say:

  —Whatever your nephew did, he did himself.

  Even as I say it I see young James Callaway’s angry face, always red like his red hair. Rooster, the Shawnee called him, Napeia. Impossible young man, impossible prisoner, refusing all they asked, fighting them whenever he could. No one would adopt him as their own. Chief Black Fish, my Shawnee father, sold him to the British, who can blame him? James Callaway is dead, hanged at Detroit and buried there, I am sure of it. And I could do nothing.

  Old Dick’s face is pained but he goes on in his measured fashion, as though he has waited all his life to say this to me:

  —It was your command he was under, Captain Boone. You had charge of those men, and what did you do? Gave them to your Indian friends, very nice indeed.

  The words fire out of his mouth: Captain. Nice. He thumbs the corner of his lips. Here is why he did not kill me outright, wanting to say his piece to me before everyone. The women stand in a tight little fist to listen. A few children run to their mas, a cow lifts its tail and shits in lazy fashion not far from Colonel Dick. Billy Smith comes with his white head and his hands raised, saying, Now boys—

  But Dick has not finished. He walks slow at me with his hands behind him:

  —You sold them, we all know it. You are no captain, your title is worthless. You ought to be hanged.

  —Where did you get your title, Colonel?

  Dick is one who loves titles and marching about. And outranking me. Before he can answer I hold out my arms:

  —Go on. Here I am at your service. There is surely still a length of rope to be had even in this place.

  I feel myself quite Christly in this position. I cock my head at him. In spite of his
attempts to keep himself cold, his grey eyes bulge with blood. He holds himself unmoving just before me, all shiny face and patted-down hair. Many of the men are gathering now also, and a rumble of talk rises. We might be on the stage, in this position. When I grin at this thought, Dick grips one side of my neck, his hand is very glad to find it:

  —By God I will do it, you son of a whore, but not before you tell us just what you did!

  In the edge of my eye I see Squire coming in the back gate. He has his gun but no meat. This makes my arms drop and my strength rush from me. Old Dick tightens his hold. Billy Smith has come up beside us saying:

  —Peace now, Dick.

  I jerk my head away, I step back. Everyone goes on standing about. Well I will give them a speech for their trouble:

  —Billy is right, I am back alone.

  I look up until my sore eyes shut themselves against the blue. The talk starts up again, the low vicious hum of it. I say:

  —I did sell the rest after the Shawnee caught us at the Blue Licks, but I sold myself along with them. You wish to know why? It is because they would have come for you.

  —Goddamned lies!

  This from Dick of course. I say:

  —You are correct, Colonel, and you are lucky too that I am an excellent liar. The Shawnee believed every one of my tales of the fort being in sound condition, too strong to take, and full of brave fighters.

  I bow in his direction. I bow in the direction of the hole in the stockade. A low groan bursts from him:

  —You left us without enough men to keep the fort in order, and many were sick all winter and spring.

  —Is that your tale, Dick?

  Quick he is pointing at me, looking round for agreement:

  —Look at this brave man, brave enough to save his own skin. Going over to their side and laughing like Judas. Ha ha ha ha.

  My heart bangs in my throat with the beat of his furious false laugh. I say:

  —I saved everyone. As many as I could. Most are alive, adopted into families. The Shawnee would have slaughtered the lot of us otherwise. Blood all over the snow at the salt licks. A fine picture.

  Most are alive. I see graves, I see a tangle of corpses of all sorts, I see the smile of my Shawnee wife, the faces of my children, my boy Jamesie now dead, Squire’s baby.

  —God will be your judge.

  This from Elizabeth Callaway who has followed the children fleeing her school teaching. She sets her long chin at me, and I say:

  —God is not here. I am here! What I did saved you, and you, and you, and the rest!

  The women draw themselves together like a mouth readying to spit. Dick stalks to his wife’s side:

  —Boone, I judge you before all these witnesses as a coward and a traitor.

  Billy Smith holds up his hands, Dick nods at his own pronouncement. Elizabeth clutches his arm, the other women scatter slow as geese. I step back with my legs throbbing. I must speak now, I know it, though my chest sags at the thought. I raise my hands like Billy and I say:

  —Listen to me. We must build up this place. All of us must. As it is, it will not withstand a single one of them if they come. They may come. This is true, it is the truth.

  Elizabeth cries:

  —How can we believe anything you say? Why would we? Look at you!

  —What choice have you got? I know them better than anyone here does. I now know their winter towns and the routes to them. I know the British fort at Detroit, come to that. I know many of the chiefs, Shawnee and Cherokee. Black Fish adopted me as his son.

  My breath catches, if there were a way to take back the words and make them private again I would do it.

  —Gained a few relations for yourself, Daniel.

  It is Billy Smith who says it. The rest are shocked and silent. My Shawnee wife, my father and mother and sisters sleeping in their bark houses. I cry:

  —I know it! Come to think, the colonel here is my relation too, with his nephew Flanders married to my daughter. Quite a happy family we all are.

  My daughter. At these words some of the men smirk, some of the remaining women look at me sideways. Dick sets his mouth. Old talk, old tales, they are never gone. But Jemima is mine. She is beside me now, staring down the rest. I go and pick up a chunk of log fallen from the stockade, I jam it hard into the ground and I say:

  —Well. Here I am, so now you must take me back.

  * * *

  I find a hammer in Squire’s shop and I take it as he watches. I go out and I begin to repair the hook for the bar on the front gate. No one else will start and so I will do it.

  The rest go on doing little, puttering about, no one guarding either gate. A few young men up in the one good corner blockhouse, aiming their guns at nothing. A few women in the fields and the young orchards. My old friend William Hill had plans for these, when we were young men, when this was new country. His bright dreams of peaches and easy game and Indian maids all over Kentucky. Oh the Indian maids. So he would sing. Hill, the plague of my life since we were boys, always wanting to write stories about me, to marry me off, to take my life over for me. Dead at Detroit too through my wishing it. But I will not think of him now. I will not think of being young.

  At noon I stagger indoors. My whole head burns, the skin of my back is sunburnt, my mouth has a queer taste. I recognize I am half starved. Jemima comes in with a shirt and a bowl and Flanders behind her. She says:

  —Here. Put this on. And this is for your feet.

  I sit and pull Flanders’s linen shirt over my head, it is long in the arms but it will do and I am glad to have it. My girl begins to poultice me up. The oak ooze spread over the sores and torn blisters on my feet has its old bitter smell, it is an odd comfort, it makes me think myself in the woods again alone. I dab a little of the ooze onto my fingers and swallow it to settle my shrunken stomach. Flanders says quiet:

  —Quite a talk you gave everyone.

  The oak is sharp as old vinegar, I gag on it and I laugh. Jemima says she will put a heap of it in everyone’s water buckets tomorrow morning, that will lay them all up in bed for a day or so and teach them their lesson. I catch at her sleeve and I say:

  —They do not understand, duck. The Shawnee will be here soon. The scouts are likely here by now. I have not said so to everyone yet so as not to start a panic, but this fort is no fort—

  My girl is a lover of danger, always the child to throw herself laughing off a horse into the depths of a river. Taken by Cherokee and Shawnee, gone for days, and bold as could be when we found her, while my body near gave out with relief that she was not dead like her poor brother, my Jamesie. She stands now and bounces up onto her toes just as she did then, calling Daddy Daddy through the trees.

  I look Jemima in the face, it is all I can do. How many times have I seen you dead in my mind? How are you still so full of life?

  I grab hold of her wrist and she is talking still:

  —Daddy, I will watch, I watched for you all the time. I saw nothing today, but I will keep looking.

  Flanders takes her hand from me. The apple of his throat bobs as he says:

  —Sir, we nearly lost her to Indians once. I have to tell you I will not let it happen again.

  —No one wishes anything bad to happen here, Flanders. We will parley. We will make things right with them. How, I do not know yet.

  Jemima shakes him off and he says in his thin fashion:

  —That is fine. Only you ought to know that I will not let her go again, no matter how many I have to kill.

  SEE MURDER, see all manner of knives, guns, tomahawks, axes, ball clubs, plain clubs. See the shine on all of them coming straight down at your face before your eyelids can shut themselves. See all faces turned to mash, all skulls staved in like ice on water, all limbs broken into letter Vs.

  But V is for victory, it was the first letter I learned to write, at the table in my older brother Israel’s little house in Pennsylvania. His wife taught me before she was dead and my brother was also. A long time ag
o, I can hardly count how long.

  Now what is there to write? I cannot sleep. I line out 1, 2 and 3 on my forearm with my finger. How many days have we got? I count and count in my mind like a schoolboy, but there is no fathoming it, and my brains are still fatigued, perhaps they are full of mud also. It could be tomorrow the Shawnee come. But I do not expect so. An army takes time to travel, even a quick-moving Indian army. Black Fish, my father, I know you, I know this. Again the idea of murder comes into my mind. I want none of it, though perhaps you do now. Perhaps you wish to start with mine.

  Can you forgive me? I do not know if you can.

  I turn over on the bed. Let us say we have a month. Think of a month and what can be done.

  There is food to think of, and I do think of it. All night my stomach roars its complaint. Jemima brought me cooked green corn and green onion. Wholesome, I will say, if not much to go along on. The plantings have taken hold, at least. The corn is getting higher, the people here were not driven to eat all the seed over winter.

  Green corn has never been to my liking, it is small hard stuff and always pricking up its ears on the stalks to see how I will get out of this or this or this.

  We have some food then.

  What else? I have one poor bird club to my name, I made it as I ran, and my gun barrel. How many guns here are working? Squire, you will have to speak to me. Everyone will, I will see that they do.

  * * *

  Bang bang bang bang bang. And bang again.

  I stand beneath the great elm outside the walls. Day is just cracking over the hills across the river, the fort is still quiet. Elizabeth, I will be schoolteacher today. I have stolen the bell from the thin cow roaming about and I bang at it with my little club without stopping.

  Billy Smith is the first to come out through the gate, his white hair is startled, his white legs look ghastly beneath his nightshirt. He says:

  —Dan, what is this for?

  I bang on, and I call as loud as I can: