My Name Is a Knife

by Alix Hawley

  In the morning it is all gone. My knife and powder and the money pouch gone from round my waist, and my breechcloth pulled down and loose from my belt. All the dollars and pounds. Will’s money and Flanders’s, my own money, others’ money. Gone. Before I am up out of the sagging bed tearing up the pillows and upending the drawers and water jug, the name that blazes up in my brains is Cherokee Jim’s. I do not know why it is here now but here it is. Perhaps it is the answer to the way things have all gone in my life. Murder. Why did you not murder me?

  Feathers rain down on me from the ripped bedding. I run down the hall banging on all the doors, calling everyone out, crying for the bastard innkeeper to show his bastard face, but there is nothing, nothing.

  I LOOK ALL OVER the city and other towns for the horse-trading thieves. I am all right in the woods where I can see everything, but here I see nothing but blurred faces, wrong faces and dirty windows.

  I will pay it all back.

  I will earn it all back. I will make salt and sell it to the other new settlements. I will raise an extra crop of corn, an extra crop of anything. I will get furs. I will breed goddamned horses, for God’s sake.

  Do not think, you ape, you ass. You are alive yet.

  I ride west again under the high cold clouds. I watch them but no answer comes. My body is still full of trembly hot life, my skin keeps up its uneasy feeling.

  The horse balks at icy creeks, and I let it stand chewing needles and whatever grass it finds. I see no one, no Indian sign at all, though I wish for it. The quiet is very heavy with the mountains all round. This is peace, so I say to myself at this time. Be a peaceable man, be a Neddy, make your face his, it is like enough. This is the feeling of peace on the back of your neck, you goddamned ass. Take it back to the settlement. It is all you have.

  * * *

  But Will’s face, and Susy’s, when I tell them about the stolen money. Flanders’s and Jemima’s. Jemima fleeing off through the snowy station.

  The rest level themselves out, they plant their feet and they say it is all right, all the men who had sent me to make their claims say so, but some of them look as though their hearts have fallen out through their arses. Miss Polly throws her arms about me and cries for my sake until I tell her to stop. Ned is here, watching with no change in his expression, but Martha is behind looking at me all holy, as if she saved me from taking Ned’s money for a claim, as if she were some thin sort of angel.

  I work and work through the last of February and into March, I plough and haul out stumps and hunt. And Ned comes to live here. I find I am glad of him, I am easier with him, as Rebecca is easier because of him. She is bigger now and more tired, her time is close. I plant blue grass for her square lawn, I stamp about flattening the earth. I send Israel off hunting and trapping though I would rather be going also.

  Jemima makes maple sugar and has plans to sell it. We have not had anything like it for as long as I can think of. The trees drip out their sweetness, my girl gives some to her tiny daughter to suck from her fingertip and Sallie’s eyes go wide at the taste. Jemima cannot help a short smile at me when I laugh to see it.

  We store it up, we find some of last season’s nuts and some wild leeks and chickweed. I set Polly to take the younger children picking in good places I have seen. Their mas are very wary of them going far, but there is peace, goddamned peace all the time, and no sign of Black Fish or anyone else. I try to think of the Shawnee words for maple or for oak but it seems to me I do not know them, perhaps I never did.

  Martha forgets nothing. I am skinning three deer with Israel when she is at once at my back, so close my spine feels her. I am not a door she will open, not now. She says my name soft, it crawls all up me. Daniel.

  —What is it?

  I hold up my bloody fat-smeared palms. Israel pulls his head up from his butchering. Martha says:

  —It is your wife’s time.

  Hear the way she says your wife, hear all the powder she has packed into it. I say:

  —Does she want me? Is she all right?

  —She is well, it has begun well. She does not want you. I only thought you ought to know.

  —Does she want me in with her?

  —No, not you, Susy and the others are there, I will midwife her.

  —Does she want you with her, Martha?

  She startles and covers her mouth in her old fashion. She says:

  —I am going.

  She turns and stalks off. Israel is watching, perplexed. I follow Martha some little distance away from where he sits cutting the venison from the bones, and I say to her back:

  —What do you want?

  She tugs at her skirts so they rise and fall, rise and fall over her feet. She says:

  —I am not asking you for anything now.

  —Martha.

  —I am not.

  Her skirt goes an inch higher, her ankles are thin and curving. She makes a half turn to see me. The blood is drying in rusted streaks up my arms. I say:

  —Martha, it is done, all those bad old times. We have Ned and Rebecca now, we are here. It is all different.

  Her eyes are wet now, she is fishing for something more. She says soft:

  —What is done, what is different? How can you not think of things you have lost—we have lost?

  —I do not think any longer. That is all. Is Rebecca all right?

  She drops her head. When she raises it, she twists her hands together and says:

  —I will tell you when your child is born and how my sister is.

  And she goes, and in a moment I am following, calling back to Israel to carry on, we need the hides to sell. I walk towards the cabin and I think of the baby who is coming right now. I will not think of anything else at this time.

  * * *

  —I will build you a palace here hanging out over the river. With a tower. A glass one.

  So I say to my wife as my new son snuffs and waves his fists with his eyes not yet opened, even for a moment.

  —With what money?

  —Do not think of the money, I am making it back. You will have your palace.

  —What am I queen of then, the air?

  Rebecca’s face is very white at the centre of her loose hair, but there is a cautious happiness floating about her. She has that tiny scrap of yellow silky stuff in one hand, she slips it back and forth between her fingers. I give the baby my thumb to grip and I say:

  —Look at the new little prince.

  —We do not need any princes here, Daniel.

  —But he would make a very fine king. Strong—look how he has my finger! And not so very big. He obliged you.

  —Not so very. Like you.

  She says this last very quick, though her voice is weak. She smiles at me, then back at the sleeping boy and I say:

  —Were you all right in here?

  The cabin smells of fresh sap and shavings, and the floor is dirt yet, but we brought the bedsteads and a featherbed from Carolina, at least she had those. And plenty of firewood. I stir up the embers and she shifts the baby to her other arm. Her expression is pained as she moves. She says:

  —I did manage to keep Polly out.

  —Why? She ought to learn. Our Israel will show her a thing or two if he has his way, or if she has hers.

  I laugh but her face shrinks as if she had been pinched. The old word whores slips into my ears again. I shake my head, and she says:

  —No. She is not ready for any of this.

  —You cannot keep them children always. Curiosity is natural.

  Her eyes snap:

  —Curiosity—

  But she looks away out the window, the sky is a fair windy blue today, she jigs the baby very gentle and says only:

  —I had Jemima and Susy with me, and Martha delivered me.

  I think to say And did she ask for the father’s name, did you tell her it was me? But I do not say it, I do not say anything like. I know this boy is my boy. I stare him in the face until my sight blurs. He does not open his eye
s for me in spite of all my looking. I like this boy and his ways. I will make sure he has land, money. I will do it in some way.

  We do not talk yet of names and indeed for weeks he has no name, he is only Baby, until Rebecca begins to call him Nathan one day out of nowhere and so he is Nathan, my boy, my last-born, a new name in our new house.

  —HE IS BUILDING a ferry boat up there, at the mouth of the creek he named for himself. Near done. A great flat thing. You ought to see it. He could break river ice with it.

  So says my son Israel to Squire and Ned and me one evening after he has come back from a few days’ hunt upriver towards Ohio with his friend Joseph Scholl. The two of them squat down with us just outside the gate. He is talking of Old Dick and his new boat, set to take people farther up his way and get their claims in. Well.

  Squire draws on his pipe and asks:

  —How is his new place coming?

  Israel says:

  —He has it measured out and one blockhouse near up. It will be big. Has some signed on to go with him, that round-headed Pem Rollins for one, and a few of the other lone men. And his girls and their husbands. As though they had any choice.

  I say:

  —And did you delight him with a personal visit?

  —No. I stayed in the trees. Might have thrown him a lump of bearshit over his wall. Or my shit! A gift!

  Joseph roars, Israel grins and I give his shoulder a smack. I pass him my tobacco. He leans back all comfortable in his joints. He hides nothing of himself. Squire blows out smoke and asks:

  —Did you see anyone else?

  —Indians? No. Nowhere. And no one saw me, I go very quiet.

  —He does that.

  This from Joseph, giving Israel a cuff on the back. Israel swats him in return and they are rolling about on the ground like pups and laughing. I laugh too until I see Squire holding his pipe still in his hand and the smoke breathing itself off into the dusk. I know his way of thinking. I say:

  —Squire, we would have seen sign when we have been in the fields. Unless they were the Lilliput sort of Indians, hiding in the corn shoots.

  He does not laugh, though I feel Ned smiling as he begins to hum. Israel makes up words for the song in a squeaking voice: Colonel Corn Kernel was the littlest man—the yellowest man—the—. Unable to think of anything else he says:

  —We would need squirrel shot for Lilliput Indians.

  —And here I thought you grown.

  Israel smiles round his pipe and says:

  —I am taller than you, Daddy. Taller than Joe here also.

  Joseph rubs his head where he hit the ground, and I say:

  —Well! We must have Squire make a pile of tiny shot for us then in his new shop. That and a ferry boat, eh Squire?

  Squire says nothing, only the muscles of his jaw work in and out. I say:

  —Listen to me, the day for a treaty will come, it will be all right.

  As I say it my chest floods with heat. We will make a treaty, I have been at treaty makings, we will do it ourselves here to secure peace. I know the words used. We will get Kenton back, and anyone else who is still living, perhaps even Hill or Callaway’s nephew, or Logan’s. It is not impossible. Black Fish wanted peace, we all do now.

  I have to slow my heart, it is so full of wanting. At last Squire takes a puff on his pipe and says:

  —Perhaps we ought to build ourselves a ferry boat. In case we ever have need to leave in a hurry.

  Ned says:

  —Not a bad thought. Ferrying would make us some money with new claimers.

  Squire nods. I do not like thinking of money, but I am always thinking of it, always now it squats in the lowest part of my brains. We could charge Bryans to get across, or Baptists who want to come and go from the fort where Hancock and his like remain so far as I know, praying their days away.

  One of the babies inside sets to yelling. Israel blows out smoke and a laugh:

  —That my little pisser of a brother again?

  —Your niece more likely. Jemima’s Sallie. The lungs that little one has.

  I do not like to say Jemima’s name when Ned is near me. But darling Neddy keeps his peace as always, he takes up humming again and the baby stops its bawls straight away.

  * * *

  I take Israel to check our traplines for any beaver and otter with the last of the winter’s good fur still on them. I am glad to be away from the fields for two days. I was not made for farming, my fingers have no care for dirt and seeds. And the station is safe and coming to life as if on its own. The others do not look to me so much, they keep themselves in their own houses, and it is more like a real town in this way than Boonesborough ever was. We all of us have our lives.

  My boy and I take twelve good otter pelts, it is more than I thought we would find, we ought to get a fair price for them. I do not like my son to help me raise money for my own stupidity, but Israel is quick and nimble with the traps and with skinning. I say:

  —You must do as you like, do you know it?

  He looks up startled from an otter’s weary-looking remains:

  —I like to hunt. And trap.

  —So do I.

  —I know it.

  —Then do it.

  —Well all right, I will.

  He grins at me and carries on with the otter until he has the pelt off in one smooth tug. Very sudden he says:

  —Do you like Aunt Martha?

  His voice is too light now. I wipe my knife across my leggings a few times and I say as light as he did:

  —Well. Do you like her? You ought to like your aunt I suppose. It is good to like aunts. What makes you ask?

  He smoothes the pelt and shrugs:

  —The way she is always watching you.

  I take the pelt from him and give him another animal, and I say:

  —I have seen someone always watching you, Israel. Our Miss Polly. What do you think there?

  —I halfway like her, maybe.

  He looks up at me with his dark eyes. They crease up in a smile but it is a queer one, an asking one. I say:

  —It is good to have someone to like. I liked a girl a bit like her once when I was very young.

  Little Molly Black, dead of a fever after I kissed her, her boot hanging out of her coffin, I do not know how it is I see it still. I do not see her face anymore though I once did, it once followed me through my life with the heat of her sickened skin. But all of that is gone. To Israel I say:

  —Polly seems a loving girl.

  —Yes.

  —Make sure it is the sort of love that will stay put on you.

  He is quiet a moment, then says:

  —I will start a real house of my own on my claim soon, after you make some sort of treaty, so Ma will leave off nagging me about going. Joe has got the land just past it.

  He cuts into another pelt but it tears and he curses. A breeze ruffles the heap of furs. It is not so great a heap. I say:

  —Perhaps a wife with money would be a better thing.

  He groans and kicks the torn pelt away and says:

  —Or a wife covered in fur.

  * * *

  My boy and I get some beaver and a few more otter in the higher trapline, we make a bushel of salt too at a good spring with just our cooking pot before we turn back for the station. We talk of how to make more salt and faster. We do not have many ideas but we enjoy talking of possibility. Squire might have better thoughts hidden in his clever mind. Well I will ask him.

  Israel gets a small buck with two-pointed antlers when we have gone a few miles downriver. When he has the head off, I tell him:

  —You ought to keep those horns to show off in your great new house.

  With one of his sidelong grins he says:

  —I will have the skin too, no bride could resist it.

  The hide is ratty enough, fly-bitten and moulting, but once we have the hair all off it will do all right for shoe leather. Israel ties the body over his saddle and we ride the open flats to the east of
the Kentucky with dragonflies mumbling all round. The horses flick their tails. The grass is everywhere growing now, it is gold and green and moving as if someone were blowing over it very soft.

  Israel says:

  —Like to see Dick Callaway’s place? We could go round that way.

  —Do you know, I would like to see it. Though not so much Old Dick. All right, we will have a look.

  We ride closer to the river again, though we keep to the birches so no one will see us coming. No noise but the flies and the horses and the river, and the quick creek we are approaching. I say:

  —Well well. No cannon to welcome us.

  Israel keeps his voice low:

  —Leave the horses here and come with me into the cane.

  We hobble the horses. The dragonflies and a cloud of midges stay with them and Israel’s scraggy deer. I follow my boy as he springs off into the thick canebrake where the creek meets the river. I push my way through the stiff stalks and I say:

  —This is where Dick is building his famous ferry?

  —It is—

  Israel stops so sudden that I crash into his back and knock him forward onto his knees. When he turns to look up at me his forehead is scratched open from the cane. I say:

  —I am sorry, it near got your eye, are you all right?

  —Daddy, do not—

  —What is it? Let me see you.

  I bend and try to wipe the blood from his head, but he covers his face before he rises onto his knees and looks up again away from me.

  Through the cane it stands out scarlet, red as a heart. Red as a coat.

  Colonel Dick still in his red army jacket but without his scalp or his eyes or his balls, his hands and arms burnt black and all of him rolled onto his side in the mud on the riverbank. Israel behind me is gagging and spitting. Someone else is lying face-up, arms out straight and legs together, making a letter T. My brother Israel’s wife teaching me my letters once at the table in your house, I do not know your name any longer though I wish to God I did, it would be a hook to hold onto here in this place that has rotted out again like old cloth. The face is young Pem Rollins’s moon face, the scalp gone too, a dark red slash between the legs of the breeches, the great pale eyes still there and reflecting the sky just as though they were nothing but water, nothing at all.