My Name Is a Knife

by Alix Hawley

  —Bastards have brought down another tree across the river to hide behind. Watch the north, they can see us.

  I ought to climb up onto the ramparts but I cannot, my body is heavy and ruined and my heart is worse so. I see Squire when he was a boy, he is walking away, he turns his small serious face back to see me.

  It is not Squire, it is his boy Moses, carrying a bowl of water from the poor well where perhaps Colonel Dick has sat on big Tice Prock to drown him. I go as best I can to catch up with the boy, I put my arm about his shoulders and I say into his ear:

  —Keep to the walls. You are a good boy to your ma.

  He nods, his eyes flinch and flinch at the sounds of firing but he keeps the bowl very straight and does not spill a drop. I walk with him along the wall to his cabin next to Squire’s shop. My heart beats slow.

  A low groan comes as I open the door. I say:

  —Jane. It is only Dan with your boy.

  Jane is next to the bed in her shift. On the bed is Squire, his eyes shut and his mouth open. He looks as though he had been whittled of bone but for the soaked red cloth over his shoulder. He is still, still.

  Moses sets the bowl down at his ma’s side, she kisses his head without taking her eyes from Squire. She says something low to her smaller boy Isaiah, she wets a cloth, her hands wring it over the bowl.

  Another groan, it is a hard raw one this time. Squire, not dead. I go to kneel next to Jane, I put my face near his. He turns his head back and forth on the mattress just as he did when he was small and laid up with summer fever and I climbed in the window to surprise him. I gave him the fever. Squire, I remember it.

  —Dan.

  He speaks through his teeth. I laugh again, I am so glad he is alive.

  —Squire, they got you too, did they? You are still the better looking man here.

  He takes a hard breath and his words come out as a sigh:

  —Shot is still inside.

  I pull my knife from my belt, my hand is glad for its weight. I say:

  —Moses, you hold your daddy’s hand now, hold it hard.

  Moses comes and takes Squire’s hand in both his small ones. Squire keeps his eyes shut, Jane covers Isaiah’s, and with my one eye I see my way into his wound. It is an ugly one, black with powder. The ball peers up unblinking as a fish eye out of the white bone. I cut a circle into the flesh and I wedge the blade under one side of the lead. I lift as gentle as I can, and with my finger and thumb I pull at the ball until with a creak and a suck it comes free. Squire’s breath hisses. A gun cracks outside. I laugh, I cannot help laughing. I say:

  —Jemima was shot also, you are in fair company. Only hers fell straight out of her breeches.

  Squire’s eyes waver as he opens them, he steadies them on my face and looks at me all quizzical. Jane holds the cloth to the wound, Moses’s knuckles are shuddering as he keeps his hold on his daddy’s hand. Isaiah is holding his nose against the smell of me. Squire wets his lips and he says:

  —They are not using enough powder. Young South was shot four times outside, he has only grazes.

  —Did you see Rollins?

  —Shot between the bones above the elbow. All right.

  —Well Squire, that is good. Good for young South and Rollins especially.

  Squire gasps very sudden. Jane looks at him and at me with her white little face and tilted eyes. He rolls his head towards me:

  —No. Not good. They are saving their powder. Planning a long stay.

  He shuts his mouth tight. I have the ball from his shoulder in my hand. I want to ask him if he saw Black Fish outside, if he was still on the ground. But I only pinch the lead ball and I squint at it. I think of it being made in the Shawnee town, on a Shawnee fire.

  NO ONE SLEEPS, though the night is quiet and the watch sees nothing. I see nothing though I stare myself blind. As soon as first light comes we creep out from the cabins into the centre of the fort. Shot cows and horses sprawl dead all round, we must get the meat off them before they bloat.

  I am dizzy and stinking of stale piss yet, but not bleeding any longer. I work, I strip the skin from a milk cow. Well old cow, you made a long journey to this place to meet your end, not every cow can say the same. I peel the muscle away from her flank. No salt as ever. I tell the women to cook what they can. Squire stands propped in his doorway with an axe in his hand, though he looks half dead.

  Hancock and his wife lead the Baptists in a prayer round the well as they are lacking a river to go to this morning. They lower their heads and put their hands together. Hancock asks God to preserve us from our enemies, he praises him for our victory yesterday and the halt to the fighting. He says:

  —And we praise you O God that the enemy has not brought any cannon as we believed they might. We put our trust in you, our great Lord.

  His wife Molly says:

  —A miracle. Praise Him.

  With my arms coated in blood and cow fat up to the pits, I say loud:

  —Victory, was it? A miracle, is that what this is?

  Molly cries out:

  —You are free to accept God’s grace and you throw it away. You cannot throw it away for all of us! We will not be thrown away with you!

  As she says it a spatter of shots comes from across the river. The men in the rear bastions set to firing back. The living animals scream, the remaining corpses seem to scream too with their jaws lying open. The women snatch up the children and run again to the gunshop to hide them, the men swarm up to the ramparts with some of the women following, it is all yesterday again as though no time at all had gone by. And if God is here, He is a spy, a poker, a brainless ball of lead.

  All day the shooting goes on without a stop, I am deaf with it, my tongue is dead with the taste of powder. My back and my head pain me still but I will not think of them. Do not think. When the sun is high, I get up to a front bastion to see if there is still an outside beyond this place. To see bodies, if there are bodies. My father, if your body is there I swear I will look at it, I will walk out of the fort into the bullets. I will crouch, I will look you in your face and tell you I am sorry, if my sorry is worth anything.

  I crouch now next to David Bundrin at his gunslit. He is country Dutch like Tice Prock, the same faded hair and eyes and big bones, though of course old Tice is nowhere to be seen. Into Bundrin’s ear I shout:

  —Anyone dead?

  He tips more powder into his gun’s pan. He grins at me and points to my swelled eye. In his odd English he says:

  —I hope for dead. I want that black. He is behind stumps and trees, he smiles, he smiles.

  Pompey, keep yourself to yourself. I find your body is not one I wish to have to look at. I say:

  —Save your powder, Bundrin. Save your shot. We do not have so very much of it, and they are not going away.

  He grins again, he sets down his gun and takes off his hat. Now he props it on a stick and waves it just above the wall. Several bullets whip past it. He says:

  —You see? They think more men.

  —Well Bundrin. I will not contradict you.

  He does not hear me, he is again taking up his gun and firing it with a great laugh.

  * * *

  Evening falls very quick, quicker because of the black haze hanging in the air. With it the Shawnee fire stops. I order ours to stop also. The quiet peals in my ears. The animals have gone dumb with their terror now, they huddle snuffing at each other in the big paddock we have knocked together, as if their reek is the only comfort left them in this world.

  Old Dick finds me the minute I am down from the wall. Before he can start in I say:

  —Colonel Callaway, we might have had peace. We had it.

  —Peace will never come here until they are dead to the last man, the last infant.

  —And so you thought you would bring that about, did you?

  —Why do you not go over to them, Boone? All of us can see you are only waiting for a time to do it.

  I keep my voice steady though I wish to pull ou
t his eyes:

  —You may call me Captain Boone. Would you like to start a mutiny as well? Now is certainly the ideal time. What do the rest of you say?

  My insides twist and my wounds throb, but I hold myself still. Major Billy stands a ways off. Squire has come to his door with his axe. Little Jacky puts his head out the front of the gunshop, Ned’s girl Sarah has her hands on his shoulders. At her back Martha says something to Elizabeth Callaway, who makes a sourer face than usual. Martha’s eyes are on me, I know they are on me, just as everyone else’s are. What will you do now? The old question shot at me all my life, the same arrow over and over again.

  —God damn it all to Hell. Water!

  Young Holder yells it from the far rear bastion. I see his narrow skull dipping below the wall then popping up again. Old Dick barks after his son-in-law:

  —What is it?

  Holder shouts again, I run to him as best I can, but he is already down, he is running for the front gate and screaming for water, fucking water. A woman comes out of her cabin with a bucket, he takes it and runs on slopping it as he goes.

  —Open the gate! Get it open now!

  So Holder yells, and Ned does so without asking why. I cry:

  —Stop. Holder!

  But Holder carries on outside, he is gone. I call down to Ned to shut the gate, keep everyone inside.

  A whiff of smoke, the sharpness of scorched grass. Back to the front bastion I run, my nose has the smell in it. No one speaks, other men set to running along the ramparts to see, women get more buckets out of their houses. Once up the ladder I look down through the slit in the floor. Dirty smoke is puffing from a stack of drying flax, the flames are short ones but growing, they are too close to the wall. Who put it so close—

  Below, Holder flings his bucket over the fire. It sizzles and coughs, the smoke rises in a fat grey tower, the flames fall. He turns to run back to the gate, and three shots fly from behind a felled tree some yards off. Holder dips and dances away:

  —Fucking red-boys might be smart enough to set a fire, but they will never have me!

  It has the sound of a child’s song, he is so cheerful about it. The shots follow Holder as he flies back round the wall. The young men roar as though he were their horse in a race. Ned lets him in, and as the gate bangs the men roar louder. Below Hancock and his wife begin to thank God again, for my benefit as I know. Young Holder bellows:

  —I have no time to pray, God damn it! Is the fire out?

  I hear Elizabeth Callaway hiss at her son-in-law’s language. On the walls someone yells it is out well enough, and some of the men begin firing into the falling dark. The smoke from the flax drifts away. Shouts fly from the Shawnee camp, I cannot make out the words. I keep myself up in the bastion and I listen. Old Dick comes to the top of the ladder and stays there. It strikes me that he would have liked the fire to catch the wall, just enough to cause a stir, just a measure more trouble, just for me.

  * * *

  Once night comes full, the moon is a thin blade, and we can see little from the ramparts. I tell the men to chop holes between the cabins so the women and children can pass between them and not have to hide in the gunshop all the time. I know Holder and his friends would rather set to drinking, though there is little enough to drink. Our water supply is low, the troughs are empty. Another worry to gnaw at my brains. Do not think.

  The men get their hatchets and a few torches. Their chopping is loud and unsteady, it rings through the air as their talk does, all of it makes me uneasy. I look out a slit into the black. My neck pricks, I go stiff as the cat. I see nothing moving, but I feel movement in the soles of my feet.

  Before morning has quite dawned I go to Squire. He is awake and his eyes are not so hooked with pain, though his shoulder still oozes. When I ask him about ammunition, he swings himself up from where he lies and insists we go to the shop. Holding his hurt arm close to his body, he looks into the boxes with a fat-lamp, and says the young men are too fond of shooting, we must ration our supply better. I say:

  —I will tell them to choose their targets.

  —Plenty of them would like to take a chief.

  —Or Pompey.

  —That their black man? You call him by name, Dan?

  —I do. He was good to me in their town.

  As I say it I know I am putting Pompey in a kindly light, too kindly. He was not always good to me, but I was not always good to him. I am struck at how easy it is to smooth out my past when I wish to. Squire says:

  —Is that so. More of your Indian family. Perhaps he is the one who shot me, out of jealousy that I call myself your brother.

  —He might have shot Ned also then.

  Squire smiles small in the flicker of the torch and I smile also. Ned’s name is still like a chip of bone caught at the top of my throat. The sky is lightening, and the goddamned firing starts up again sharp. I go out and yell to the men on the ramparts:

  —Hold fire. Hold it!

  They do so for a time, though they look at me like wolves disturbed over a deer they have brought down, and I am not fond of thinking about wolves. But it is not long before they are again shooting at anything that moves, anything at all, though there is nothing to see but the twitch of shadows on the edges of the trees. These might be true wolves for all I can say. The wolves that dug at my Jamesie’s grave, come back again to see us sink.

  Do not think. I walk the whole of the rampart. The Shawnee camp is quiet, there is hardly any firing from them at all. Perhaps they have run out of powder before we have, perhaps we are safe as long as the fort stands. I walk the walls, all sides, and still there are no shots. I go to a rear bastion to look over the river, and as I step to the gunslit I crouch. Before I can look out I feel it, the odd movement again. At this time I think it is my feet themselves reminding me of their many old pains. I am still, I spread my toes in my moccasins. I wait. Again it comes, a small quaking, very small. I shut my eyes to feel it better, I put my shoulder to the wall. The quaking rolls through my body, like my wife turning next to me on the pallet in sleep. Rebecca, I think of you even now, do not forget it.

  Young Holder on the rear rampart shouts very sudden:

  —Shit!

  —What is it?

  —Look.

  I go to him, I do look. The river water is always clear, even when the level is low, and now it is mud just opposite the fort, a great brown fan of it.

  —Shit, Captain, what is it?

  Holder leans out over the wall to see better. I pull him down, expecting a shot at his narrow head, but there is none. He yells out:

  —What are you doing, you Indian fuckers and your British fucking friends?

  —Get down, Holder, before they kill you. You have used up at least two of your lives in the last day.

  A call comes to us from the river:

  —Come out and see.

  It is Pompey’s voice, it is his blue headscarf I see appearing just above the bank on this side. Before I can stop him Holder swings up his gun and fires, Pompey ducks, and we hear him laugh and begin one of his meandering Shawnee songs. As I push Holder down again, he cackles and yells:

  —You are a fucker too, you black shit.

  He sets to singing loud through the gunslit: My bonny black hare. Below us others join in, it is just as though they had been waiting to do it. I hear Neddy’s sweet voice above the rest:

  His gun he reloaded and fired once more

  She cried, Draw your trigger and never give over

  Your powder and balls are so sweet I declare

  Keep shooting away at my bonny black hare.

  His voice is always level and joyful, even singing such words, even here. The beauty of it scrapes at my ears in this terrible place. I give Holder’s back a shove:

  —Stop your noise. Save your own powder. Listen.

  In a moment he stops and the rest trail off. In the little silence there is no firing, no singing of birds, no talk. The movement shudders beneath my feet again, the river swamp
ed with mud. Neddy goes on humming soft at the gate. Mm mm, mm mm, mm mm.

  * * *

  As night nears again, the women take their buckets to the cattle penned at the fort centre, who have had no water today, and their milk has slowed. I watch Jemima, her face laid against the cow’s side, she looks to be asleep. We are all so tired but sleep does not come here, how can it?

  In the later dark I see torches dipping and swelling on the riverbank, though I feel no more shaking. The campfires ripple low in the Shawnee camp also. The wind is light, the narrow moon hangs plain. The watch calls now and then, All clear.

  I go to look in on Jane, who has her children in the bed with her, she tries to keep them all in her arms. Little lights quiver in their eyes from the rushlight on the floor. Squire has gone out to take his place at his porthole though he cannot lift his arm.

  —All right, Jane?

  She nods and shifts herself, her face passing out of the light’s circle. She says in her soft way:

  —Quiet tonight. Have you finished?

  I sink down inside. I manage to say:

  —We have not finished. But it is quiet.

  I touch the boys’ hair, and I say low:

  —All of you try to sleep, be good for your ma. Have you had something to eat?

  Jane breathes in to speak, but she stops. A smell drifts in, sure as an animal finding its den. We all know what it is. Powder, the black scent of it igniting. Jane does not close her mouth, she does not breathe. I say:

  —Stay inside.

  Out the door, the smell is bitter and everywhere, the wind pushing it hard at us now. I run to the gate where Ned is at a gunslit, I ask:

  —What is it? I have heard no firing.

  —No, no firing Dan.

  —What are they doing?

  But as I say it I know what they are doing. Ned turns to me and before I can speak there is a great raw screaming like something being torn to pieces, and the night with it.