by Alix Hawley
We eat, stiff as puppets. I see Black Fish take a lump of cheese and set it down again. He takes instead a piece of tongue. He looks at me as he does so but he says nothing. I think of thanking him for his kind gift but I do not, I chew a cob of corn, though I have never been one for corn. We eat on and on to keep from talking.
Well. The talk must come eventually. When we have made a wreck of the meal, I stand and I say:
—Will you follow us to the big elm, where there is more shade?
Pompey tells them what I have said. He has eaten nothing, as though eating were beneath him. The chiefs look to one another. The elm is within shot of the fort, but within shot of their camp back in the meadow also. When they nod and stand, we all begin the walk. Pompey rushes to be first and spread his blanket for Black Fish on the grass beneath the huge tree. Old Dick keeps behind, walking very leisurely in his red coat. I look back to him, and I see the quick shine of a gun nose stuck out a wall slit and pulled back in. I watch the little boys and girls dart out the gate to clear the food from the table, they are filling their mouths and cheeks as they do it. In the group of sycamores down the slope I see quick shiftings, like small birds in autumn leaves. My arms go to gooseflesh in the sun. I say nothing.
At the tree we sit on the ground. Only Dick refuses to sit. He says:
—Too many of you.
He says it to Pompey, who does not trouble himself to turn it to Shawnee. Dick is counting off all the chiefs and warriors:
—Twice as many as us. What will you do about it, Captain Boone?
I hold up my hand to ease him. I say:
—We are here for peace, I think.
Black Fish looks at the warriors and lifts his own palm to them. They retreat a way. He says:
—You see we are willing to make a long peace.
In Shawnee I say:
—I am willing.
—Speak English.
This from Colonel Dick. I say no more, but wait as Pompey speaks my words again for the chiefs. Without looking at his men, Black Fish says:
—Here is our proposal. We will use the Ohio River as a wall between us. When we both have kept peace for some time and your Detroit chief agrees to our treaty, we will cross for trade and hunting, and be two parts of one family.
My hope rises, my men’s faces lift slightly as Pompey tells them what is proposed. The other chiefs are very still, I cannot read them. Dick barks:
—And what must we do to get this peace out of you?
Black Fish looks at me:
—Your people must all promise to keep to it and swear loyalty to the white king again. Detroit asks this.
Pompey near sings this in English. Loyalty to the white king, to King George in Britain, whom you have thrown away, you whites with all your kings and your fights. So he is thinking. Major Billy and the rest begin talking at once to each other. Colonel Dick comes straight to me and says hot in my ear:
—I will never do it, Boone, and neither will anyone else in Kentucky, except perhaps for your wife’s family. But most of them have run off back to Carolina. Closer to the king at any rate.
His breathing smells of meat. Slow. Slow. I turn to Squire and Billy and I say low:
—It is only saying words. Only words, the same as any others. They do not have to mean anything.
Major Billy says:
—We have always taken you at your word, Captain.
—Billy—
Here Black Fish speaks again:
—You have no right to be on this ground. I have promised my warriors many scalps and much treasure here. They will be angry with me now. So you must trust what I say. I have put myself in danger to say it.
The warriors indeed have a sulky look though the chiefs keep their faces still, even Moluntha. Before Pompey can say it, I lean closer to my Shawnee father and I speak soft:
—My father. You are good to me, you have already lost much in your life.
I see the smallest ripple in the depths of his eye. He says:
—Your wife is waiting for you. She is your wife still. Where is your white wife?
I shake my head, I cannot say her name, I cannot say anything of her. Out of my mouth comes my other wife’s name all in a breath, I say:
—Methoataske.
Here Colonel Dick calls:
—We cannot hear.
Pompey leans in with his face all officious, as though he were nothing but a page for writing on. Black Fish pays him no heed. He says to me:
—Your mother weeps, your wife is sick at heart. Your child and your little sisters miss you. Bring your girl, my granddaughter. I have seen her. I will love her as you do.
I see it costs Black Fish to say this, to talk of his wife and daughters this way. My Shawnee mother, always full of tears, her real son lost and me a poor replacement. My little sisters turning their backs to me. Eliza, waiting for me to come. My wife, Methoataske. And my father here, looking me in my face. I cannot say anything. I feel Pompey’s happy breath on my head.
Black Fish is holding his mouth still. In English Pompey says low:
—You may answer now. It is only saying words. The same as any others. Just a play you are performing, Sheltowee.
Pompey smiles very bright with his strong white teeth. I look again to my father but he has retreated as if behind a wall and gives no sign of understanding what Pompey says, though I know he does.
Smooth your expression. Slow, slow. So I say to myself in my mind.
I stand and fold my arms, I say very loud:
—Get your pipes. We will smoke after we sign the treaty.
Colonel Dick seethes and tries to get Billy’s ear without me hearing. The others keep where they are. I do not listen, I do not care. I call for a table to be fetched, and I have Flanders sit and write it all out, the agreement. He has a fine slanting hand, he makes only two blots on the paper’s edge. Words. Some of the warriors watch him do it, their faces are curious. Two of them are smiling at it.
The elm leaves judder in the breeze. Their shadows pass over our faces and hands as we stand. Once Flanders has done with writing he holds up the paper to dry it. Black Fish speaks in a great voice to all his warriors and chiefs, then Pompey repeats for my men:
—We have made a long peace and now we will shake hands and let our hearts beat close as brothers’ hearts should.
The smell of the tobacco spreads like a sheet over us. A warrior begins to pass the pipe among the chiefs. Black Fish locks his arm through mine, he takes my other hand also, and the left sides of our chests are pressed together. His silver brooches dig into me through my shirt, his hair is against my cheek and my eye. I am so happy, I am too happy.
I watch the other chiefs do the same, very slow, to my men. Old Moluntha steps up to Old Dick and sizes him up before grasping his arm. Dick will not let himself be embraced, he is yelling and sputtering Goddamned son of a bitch, he is dragging Moluntha who does not let go. He goes on fighting and yelling louder You will not have me—
I see it all coming. I say:
—My father.
His arm presses mine hard, his fingers are like roots searching out water in the dry. And before I can say a word more the bullets are crying through the air and no one can hear anyone.
BLACK FISH is on the ground, I have thrown him from me as if he were nothing, an empty bag. Then my head bursts at the back, I am struck hard there and again lower down, and I am on the ground also, crawling over my father’s arm. I cannot see right and my arms do not work right. My head is hot and sodden, my back is the same between my shoulders. I am everywhere wet. My father—
Father—
—Get up. Get up, Dan!
Squire is yanking me to my feet, he rips something out of my back and I see it in his hand, the peace pipe with its little bowl and hard edge. He roars:
—Run! Now!
He has just the sound of our old daddy with his roaring. I get to my feet with his arm tight about my body, I look back and I see a chief lying shot thro
ugh the face. A silver half-moon brooch at his throat catches the sun and flares. The gate is open, some of the men are rushing out, young Pem Rollins with his round face limps at the back of them and stops to look round as though he had just arrived on the moon. He is blasted through the arm, he falls sideways and goes down.
—They are in the sycamores. More coming. Shut the gate!
Squire calls it, Major Billy is with us, Crabtree is coming behind, we are all running for the fort. Again Squire yells:
—Shut the gate! Shut it now, Ned!
The men who have come out run back in, I see Ned’s face halved through the opening as it shrinks and he shuts us out. Bullets pierce the air and the grass and the earth. My blood slides down my back into my breeches, which are wet in front from my piss. Squire has my gun, he shoves it into my arms and pants in my ear:
—The postern door, west side—
We run round the fort corner, under the bastion, where they are shooting and yelling. A bullet sings over my head, and another just past my shoulder. I am staggering, I am nowhere near quick enough.
Squire disappears from my side. My legs carry on towards the small hidden door cut into the stockade, my eye fixes on its edges. It is nailed shut as I know, but I breathe in as if I am about to dive and hurl my shoulder at it. It cracks open and I am gasping on my stomach inside the walls. I kick the door to and roll my body against it. My gun is under my side, my blood is running out of me, my breath is loud as anything, in and out.
Where the rest are I do not know. How long I am down I do not know.
Get up, you fool. You ape. You arse. The shooting is ongoing. The dogs and horses have gone mad with the noise, the cows are bawling. I crawl forward into the great haze of dirt they have all kicked up. My backside is warm with the seep of blood. One of the horses pulls itself out of its hobble rope and kicks the wall. The children are running and screaming, a little one standing still is near trampled by cows. The dust and powder are so thick I am half choked.
Two shots fly down into the fort centre from the direction of the river. One goes straight through Old Dick’s starry flag. Some of the Shawnee must have set up on the higher ground over the water, they can see into the fort very fine from there. I am reminded of our poor position and our poor building work here. My back stabs me with each breath. I cannot get up.
Some of the women are down from the ramparts and trying to catch the smallest children. A boy runs screaming from his ma, he does not know her in his daddy’s clothes. I see her lose him among the animals.
Squire—
I do not see him anywhere, I cannot see.
—Captain Boone!
Elizabeth Callaway is gripping my arm, wrenching me to my knees. Her Kezia is screeching, her face hidden in her ma’s hip. Elizabeth says straight into my ear:
—Get these children safe before they are all killed.
My tongue is stupid, my brains are stupid, I have been cut right through and am two stupid people. Elizabeth’s face is a smear in my vision. I stand, I say:
—Squire.
—Fine. We will put them in your brother’s shop, if you think that a safe place.
—It is a safe place—away from the walls—
Kezia turns her face up and screams all the louder until her ma drags her off towards Squire’s gunshop. Snatching at the sleeves of children running past, Elizabeth gets a small clutch of them and herds them inside. A bullet falls hot onto my shoulder and singes my shirt. I tuck my gun under one arm and seize London’s little Jacky who is standing alone beneath the rampart with tears threading the dust on his cheeks. He sets up howling as I carry him through the animals’ mad noise and stink.
—Jacky, Jacky—
He does not hear. I hardly hear myself. I cannot hear Elizabeth though I can see her yelling from Squire’s doorway. Old Dick runs past me with a shove, trying to catch the loose horse. There is hammering, someone has brains enough to nail a plank across the postern door I broke. Jacky struggles and kicks. I near drop him as he twists himself about and hits the wound in my back. I gasp and cover his eyes with my shirt as though he were a pony, and I push on.
At the gunshop, Elizabeth is beating a man with a broomstick, it is Tice Prock with soot all over his big face and yellow hair, who has refused all along to soldier with the rest. Old Dick now chases big Tice into the sea of animals, Elizabeth blocks the door with her body and thrusts the broom after him like a spear. I push past her with Jacky. The other children are tucked in behind the bellows and boxes, some are crying loud for their mas, and this starts Jacky up again. I set him free and he stands bewildered and blinking and set to howl his loudest, only Kezia screams first:
—Tice Prock was hiding under the bellows, my ma got him out!
—Did you, Elizabeth. Well done.
Blocking the door again, she cries:
—My husband will see that he fights like the rest of us. She is telling me that I have not managed it. I have not managed anything. I am still stupid and slow, I say:
—He will get that well dug.
She throws up her chin and says:
—Perhaps he will meet his end in it.
I wipe my forehead, my hand comes away all blood. My heart beats in my hurt back, my brains swim. Black Fish, my father, I see your face rushing up at me from the ground as I fall. And now it vanishes, I do not see at all.
Elizabeth snatches up another child in the doorway, a slice of her thin arse shows through a split in the breeches. Jemima elbows in past her, panting, her hair coming down under Flanders’s hat:
—Daddy.
She has an odd look, her edges are blurred, as if she is a ghost. The ghost of a boy, in boy’s clothes. Jamesie, Jamesie. I say:
—Jemima, you are not dead, are you?
She frowns and then her hand is on my face. She tears off a strip of the great shirt she is wearing, it comes away easy. She holds the cloth to the back of my head. Jemima, your poor ribs show, you are so lean, there is nothing to you. She says:
—I was shot.
A loud crash outside as though the gate has come down, the children bawl, all fear and misery, someone runs past the door saying Jesus, Jesus, I am spinning, I am gone, I am gone.
* * *
The dust is caught in my lids and I can see almost nothing, as though I have walked through thick spiderwebs. I rub at my face and my head. I am on hard ground. The world is still this one, it is shrunk, the noise of it has not changed, it is all firing and howling.
—Daddy, do not pull at the bandage. You are still bleeding.
I am slow to know my girl’s voice though her earlier words bang and bang in my ear. I was shot. I say:
—I am all right, but you, are you hurt?
I pull the cloth from my eye, I push Jemima’s hand away. She says:
—Only a bruised backside. The bullet stuck in my breeches. I thought someone had pinched me. Look.
Close to my face she holds up a half-flattened lead ball between her fingers. I say:
—Go put your skirts on.
I do not like looking at her as a boy. I try to heave myself up, but my head and my back burn. Hidden in their various places, the children stare out at us, I see Jacky still all tears. A blast of quick shots fires high outside, close to the roof. My girl ducks:
—I poulticed up your head and your back where they axed you. The wounds are not deep, you were lucky, like me. Your eye is still swelling up from when you fell.
—Well.
She grasps my shoulder, she says:
—You ought to stay here. Flanders got his finger shot off and I have sent him to our house. I have to help him now.
I get to my feet. The room totters like a boat. My breeches are still wet in front, they are cold and heavy now. I can smell my piss over the rusted-out smell of my blood and all the other stench. I say:
—Have they got in? The gate—
Jemima says:
—None of them got in. They are only shooting all the time. We are
shooting back. Stay here Daddy.
Spikes of energy crack from her. She flies off out the door. Elizabeth tells me:
—Not much good you will do in your state.
She is eyeing the wet front of my breeches. I say:
—You keep the children here. I am going.
And I go back into the sound of the world falling in.
The firing is heavy. Above me young Hodges is sitting barefooted, ramming his rifle and swearing at the top of his lungs and enjoying himself mightily. The other young men near him are the same.
—Captain.
It is Billy Smith beside me, his face grey. I say:
—Billy. Major. Were you hurt outside?
His fine hat is gone, his white hair a thin point above his forehead. He says:
—No. It is very bad though.
—Did everyone get in? I cannot—I did not see.
—Most of the men are in, so far as I know. It is madness.
—Squire?
He shakes his head. I say:
—Christ. Callaway should not have fought them.
—We are fighting them now. We have corralled the animals in here as best we can. What would you have us do, Captain Boone?
I stiffen my spine though it hurts me. The bandage on my back is wet. I say:
—Tell the men to carry on firing.
It is a stupid order as I know, but it is all I can say and all we can do. I drag myself over to the front gates as if my body is not mine, as if it is a stupid log I found. Ned has his eye to a gunslit at the side of the gate.
—What can you see?
He does not take his eye away, and only says:
—The same. They are shooting from everywhere.
I do not want to ask it but I do:
—Any bodies?
—No.
—Pem Rollins? I saw him fall.
—We got him in. Not dead, last I heard.
I do not want to ask Ned about Squire. I do not want to ask him anything more. I drag myself off, my gut beginning to hurt me more than my wounds, it is saying Squire, Squire. Another great crashing outside. From one of the rear bastions someone yells: