by Alix Hawley
—Do you?
I laugh and I say:
—I do know, but we are not going that way.
—What is it like there?
For a moment I let myself think of it, the ice breaking on the river, the bark houses in the snowy cornfields. The black earth showing in the spring. I say only:
—It is not a bad place.
It is all I can say. Montgomery is tense all through now like a child waiting for a treat. He says:
—I would like to see it. But I would not have stayed as long as you did.
—Well. Do you want a haircut like mine? I know how it is done.
He laughs but I see his hand creep to his hair, the colour of a bright penny. Montgomery shifts on his heels and says:
—Do you miss it?
—I have enough to do here, Montgomery.
I hand him a strip of meat and shake my singed fingers. He blows hard on it. I think of little Eliza and Methoataske, their thinness. I hope you have enough to eat, more than enough. Perhaps you are not so far from here. Perhaps they have punished you for being mine. But I must shut you away in your drawers. It seems I am full of drawers, quite a chest of them.
At once I am full of ghosts also, they breathe between my ribs, though I do not know who they are now and I will not listen. I stand and I say:
—We will cross the Ohio tomorrow.
* * *
I am still lying on my bedroll when they come. For a moment I think they are ghosts themselves. Eleven of the men stand before me in the blue early morning. James Estill is in front, looking tired. He says he has dreamt of his children talking all night, telling him woeful things. Now the rest of the married men with him say so as well, as though the same dream were good enough for all of them. I say:
—All your children said so? Every one? Curious.
Estill raises his hand and says they are returning to the fort. I lie watching them ride off the way we came. Well Old Dick will be pleased. I had no dreams, myself.
The lone young men stay, Kenton and Montgomery the most eager. We move on. I put them in charge of the raft building once we reach the river. The current is still quick enough though the water is quite low. On the other side, we make a camp for the night, and in the morning, Montgomery paints up his own face this time, very careful about it, and careful not to mark up his fancy beads. Kenton blacks round his own eyes and grins:
—They will think they are looking in a mirror.
Montgomery laughs and claps Kenton’s big hand. I send the two of them to scout out the Paint Creek town while the rest of us wait. We sit on our arses silent in a canebrake, or as silent as I can keep such young men. They twitch and mutter. They want to shoot, to yell, to go straight to the Indian town and burn it. They keep their clubs and guns out, they are restless all day and all night.
Very early the next morning Kenton returns with Montgomery at his back. The men stir and rustle. I sit up and I say:
—Well? Was the town all you had dreamed?
Kenton says:
—Looks just as you said it did. All the wigwams are standing. But all empty.
—Nobody there at all?
—Only two of them, and a pony. I got this. The other ran off.
What he holds up is a scalp, still wet at the roots of the long black lock. He keeps his gun raised in his other hand.
The Shawnee heads I know parade along inside my eyelids. The scalp dangling from his hand tells me nothing, as if it never belonged on anyone’s skull.
Montgomery shuffles his moccasin in the dirt. The black paint has bled away round his eyes so he has the look of a backward raccoon. He says low:
—Thought I would get something. The houses were emptied out.
Kenton brandishes the scalp:
—You are not having this!
Young Hodges is standing now, shivering bare-legged in the dawn light. He says:
—Captain Boone, will we go back there and look for them?
The others begin to rouse themselves, already they are checking their powder and shot again. Kenton bellows:
—There was no one there, I told you. Would have seen them if there was.
Hodges swings up his gun:
—I would rather see for myself.
All at once I see everything, as if a paper has been stuck before my eyes. My back teeth begin an old ache. I say:
—No.
Kenton pulls his back up. His great bruised kneecap shows through a hole in his leggings. He gives my shoulder a slap, it is not a light slap. I feel his wish to argue. The men are gathering, planning what they will take once we hunt down the Indians.
Well. There will be no arguing, there will be no planning. I stand and I say:
—All of you. I am sorry to have to give you bad news, unless you have seen it for yourselves already.
The faces are perplexed. Kenton’s mind is turning inside his great head, but he does not see. No one does. I tell them:
—If the town is empty, they are already on their way to meet us.
Montgomery whoops:
—Get ready for them, boys! Get your scalp blades out!
At this they all tug their knives from their belts. I say:
—No. They are not on their way here. They are on their way to the fort. They have gone to meet the others who will be coming from the north. This is why they have left their town.
—How do you know?
Montgomery’s eyes are pale and furious. I say:
—I know it. We must get back.
He flings out his arms:
—You take us all the way out here and now you want to go running back? With nothing? You will not let us even see them? I want to see them.
I can see it all, I can see how all will be. Kentucky stretched out like a great quilt, the goddamned fort a hole falling inward. Rebecca, I see your hand tugging your needle through the air, stitch upon stitch from all directions. The piece at the centre is the first to tear.
I feel the needle in my own brains. I want to see them. Is this what I have brought them here for, my own want?
What have I done—
Kenton is still looking at me sideways, Montgomery has turned on his heel in his sparkling shirt, the others are quiet and uncertain. I say:
—We must go back, for God’s sake.
WE GO, we do not stop all day. We cannot take the Warrior’s Path, we keep to the woods. I do not even try to make trail through the brush and roots and trees, I feel us back to the Ohio even if I go blind doing it. Leading their horses, the men crash and swear, and I turn and hiss. For a time there is quiet until someone stumbles and falls again. I shut my eyes to stop myself from murder. I have done enough of it as I believe at this time.
At noon I halt us and we sit, I pass some jerked meat down the line. Skinny Jess Hodges behind me wishes to go off and get a deer, but I tell him no, it is not safe to shoot, we will be heard. He grows louder, he says he will not go far, he saw one not long ago, he will get it with his knife, he is a good thrower. I tell him:
—Shut your goddamned mouth.
He snaps his jaw shut, his face curdles like a skin on a pan of milk left in the sun. These young men are full of fire and piss, indeed one of them is always stopping to piss on a tree. They do not hold themselves in, not in any fashion.
Kenton and Montgomery are not with us. They rode off back to the empty Paint Creek town, as though they could magic up some plunder and scalps, as though disappointment ought by rights to make these appear.
Among these men I feel my age in my joints. I walk faster.
* * *
In the evening I stop us and let Hodges go off and hunt something with his goddamned knife. For a moment he is grinning like a small boy, then he is off into the trees. The rest sit stretching out their legs, all weary with the day’s walk. We will keep on towards the river and cross at a shallows I know in the morning.
I am bent over when I hear the bang and echo of the shot. Hodges, damn you. I stand straight and I
say:
—If any of you shoots again, I will kill you myself.
Three of the men pick themselves up and follow me. The trace is easy to track, snapped twigs everywhere. God damn it, Hodges. When we find him, he is standing very proud over a buffalo. I have not seen one since I came back. Blood streams from its eye-hole. I say:
—Well. A nice shot. But you are a goddamned fool. Do that again and you will answer for it.
He kicks the buffalo’s side with his skinny leg and laughs. I say:
—You will only hurt your foot, Hodges. Get butchering and we will eat some now in camp.
As I am still speaking, I hear it behind my own voice, the soft rush of a word I know. Nishwapitaki. Twenty.
It seems as though it has flown straight to my ear out of the sky. But as I turn, the dropping sun catches and flares some yards off. A silver earring, I see it.
Two faces burn from the trees. One’s name comes into my mouth: Kaskee. My young guard in Chillicothe, tied to me half the time. I know his pimpled cheeks, his startling smile, I near smell him. He has his ears split and ringed with silver now, and his hair has been shaved. They have made him a warrior, his deepest wish. And now he is gone, with the other whose face I did not know. But he was here and he saw me, his smile flashed out, I saw his teeth.
—Kaskee—
I stop myself speaking. Twenty. They have counted us then. They know where we are.
I shout the word back, Nishwapitaki, and my four young men stop their butchering to stare. I call:
—Take what you have cut and come on.
They are up to their elbows in the buffalo’s rib cage, Hodges has the great liver in his two hands. I slip back through the trees, running all the way to the grassy opening where the rest have started a fire and laid out bedrolls. I say:
—No. Pack up. We must go, we are going.
Pem Rollins is squatted down at the weak fire trying to stir it up. He is not yet seventeen. He peers up from under his hat and he says:
—We are going? Where?
His face is like a moon, the wrong side of the moon, it is pure white and blank, it might as well be without eyes. Rollins, I am sorry for thinking it. I say low:
—To the river, farther down. Now. Pack up quick. They are coming.
—Sir, how do you know?
This question makes me wish to beat Rollins to porridge, him and his innocent eyes that have never seen a thing. Behind me Hodges and the rest crash out of the trees all bloody, carrying thick cuts of meat. I look past them, Kaskee’s face is still in my mind, but he is not there now, or does not choose to show himself. Hodges throws down the heavy buffalo liver and says:
—Now what is it?
I am still looking about, but they are not here, I do not feel them. I tell him:
—They could have killed us just now but they did not.
—Why?
This from Rollins.
—We are nothing, we are small fish to them. They know where we are and they do not care, they are after more. Eat now, eat it raw, we have to go.
There is a thin slip of moon to see by. We ride along a wide old buffalo road, packed flat by years of herds coming through, it is easy going. Boonesborough is two days from us if we keep to this route. I hope you are asleep Jemima, safe with Flanders nowhere near you. Keep him off you, no babies, no more bad births.
* * *
The road begins to drag uphill, the stony slope catches the horses’ feet and Rollins’s mount stumbles. He is thrown:
—Shit. Sir.
He has not thought, and has spoken too loud. I crouch and bend his foot about between my hands. He gives a yelp, and I whisper:
—Hush. Not broken.
He sucks in air, again he says:
—How do you know?
My own ankle nags at me always. I am all irritation but I say only:
—Get up.
I get him back on his horse. At the top of the hill, the buffalo road is wider again, following a long flat with the slope dropping away beside us. I keep us to the path. I know this place from the first time I was in Kentucky, when I was alone. I wish I were alone now.
Rollins pants with his pain. Through his noise I hear the river’s low hurry. Nothing else. I whistle low. The rest gather in a hoop about us, I see their dark outlines. I wait until Rollins halts his puffing and I say very soft to everyone:
—Just down the next hill we will be at the water. We stop at the edge for the rest of the night. There is an easy crossing place, and we will go over at the first sign of daylight. No talk. And no sleep if you can help yourselves.
They wait for me to move and I do. We go on, the river noise growing louder. Clouds have spread over the dark like great blots of ink, I can hardly see. When I bend and touch the ground, it is very flat. I taste the earth on my fingers. Salt.
Here I can feel it is treeless, open. My back pricks. Standing here we must appear helpless as the game I first saw in such places before Kentucky was spoilt and torn. All innocent, only standing here waiting to be shot.
A breeze comes as we reach the water. I strain my ears but I hear only insects winging above the mud and the water, a fish jumping with a clean splash that turns quick to silence. Kaskee, you are silent again too. Where are you?
The wind opens the cloud, the moon has risen higher and brightened. Some yards downriver two does and their fawns pick their way towards the water. They smell us but they carry on after they give us a good stare. Hodges has his gun up at once, his hair wild as though someone has swept out a chimney with him.
—No.
This I say too loud. I go to him and I shove the barrel down into the dirt. But Hodges is not looking at me. No one is looking at me. They are looking across the river.
A long barb of smoke rising. It is dark grey, like lead against the moon. More such barbs hooking into the air, a great circle of them.
I raise my palms. Stop. We smell it, we all smell it. Meat cooking.
My stomach roars, I cannot help it. The deer are very still in shadow. A fawn tugs at its mother’s teat and she kicks it from her. She stands a moment and then springs off away into the trees, the rest follow and are gone. We know who it is, we all know it.
I walk into the river. On the bank I leave my gun, I leave my shirt, I leave the men, I leave everything. The water climbs up under my arms, my ribs shrink from the cold, but it is low enough at this ford to walk straight across. On the other side I run in a crouch into the trees, then I stand and run faster, far enough to see what I know I will see on the fort side of the Ohio. Some of them are standing and scratching themselves and pissing, most are on bedrolls round the fires. Bare skin in the firelight, buckskin hunting shirts, red jackets off in a tight knot of their own. Not so many British then. But of the rest, the Shawnee and others, there are hundreds. Perhaps four hundred. My eyes tick and tick as I count. Their camp sprawls for a mile back through the trees on this side. The Paint Creek town people have not gone north. The north has come here to meet them. And here they are.
Black Fish, my father, I look for you. And Methoataske, Eliza—my eyes try to find you also. I search and search. I want to go close. I want to fall, to make a great crash, I want you to see I am here, I want to be found.
I have to stop. I have to place my hands flat on the ground before me.
I watch. They are all so easy in their camp. They know we are about and they do not care, they are not troubling to hide. They are making their slow procession to the fort just as they please, just as though they had all the days left in the world. All round the trees are kindling orange and yellow, the leaves are on the turn. September already. Winter is not so very far off. And four hundred warriors coming to call on us at home.
I tear my eyes and my desire from the great camp. I go back through the woods and back over the river to where my men are still standing on the salt flat as though they are houses someone forgot. Young Rollins whispers from where he is sat holding his ankle:
—The Ind
ian army?
—Yes.
—Very many of them?
—Yes.
Hodges is keeping his gun down as he eyes my face. He says:
—What will we do?
The smoke from their cooking fires blows at us in a gust. Full of bluster as Old Dick now, I say:
—We will go round them.
* * *
I hack us a way through the thickest brush, it is quite dark beneath the furry pines, their trunks are cool. We slip on needles, the horses slide also as we tug them along, we go fast as we can, Rollins limps and the skin peels again from the soles of my feet, they have healed up too soft after my last run. In my mind I follow a line away from the Shawnee camp, which I will turn sharp back to the fort. A great letter V. Victory.
A night and another day we go until we are at the walls. Squire lets us in and Dick is upon us before I can say a word to my brother. Dick says:
—Have you brought your Indians with you?
At once I am tired out, not least of Colonel Dick’s existence in my life. I sit in the dirt and I lift my bloody feet at him:
—We have come fast enough to beat them. But they will be here in the morning.
The young men burst out with how we saw the Indians, the great army camped, how we were not caught and outwitted them. They have made a great tale of it already. Old Dick is almost pleased as I can see, he believes it now, the enemy of his dreams coming at last.
Major Billy has come down from the top wall with his gun. He says:
—We have been ready long enough.
I say:
—We will be more ready. Get water, get all the food and animals in from the fields. Clean all the guns tonight. Make more shot if there is anything to make it from.
And here is my girl Jemima, she is smiling, she is running back to the cabin for her buckets. The other women do the same. Martha looks at me as she passes, Squire keeps watch over them outside the front gates. The grass shivers, the corn shivers in the fields.