My Name Is a Knife

by Alix Hawley

  —Those flowers you put by your door, the yellow ones. What do you call them?

  —Oh. I do not know what they are.

  We stand looking at one another’s edges in the dim. At once it seems she has grown very young again, she seems the girl I saw with Rebecca in the cherry orchard. She is soft still, and I am soft-hearted as I know. I am struck by a wish to be tender with her, I wish for tenderness myself. A lick of pleasure, a small drop of it to swim in. But I only say:

  —You have your water then.

  —I wanted water.

  Her hand comes out towards mine, I feel it near touch me again and then stop. I open the gate and all I can think to say is yes.

  Martha goes in but turns back to look in my direction, she says with a smile:

  —Yes.

  * * *

  Rebecca, I did promise you not to go, I know it. But Martha’s thought is my own thought risen to the surface of my brains, it will not leave me. Chillicothe. Is it still there? They move their towns as I know. If they are alive they will do it.

  I am restless. I watch Israel go off to see to his claim and keep his field cleared. Many people are wandering about Kentucky now, they might decide to have it. I tell him he must take good care of his property, and he says he knows it.

  Once September is out and the harvest done, Squire and I think to go on a hunt, a few days only, to get some quick money with the last autumn pelts. When I tell Rebecca we are going she says:

  —All right.

  —I will take Ned along too, there are enough men here to keep up the patrol.

  —Do as you like.

  —I will. And I will be back by Sunday with plenty of pelts and skins. A fine one to wrap our young fellow in. Right then, little girl?

  —I said all right, Daniel.

  —Then all right.

  I kiss her mouth and she smiles under my lips as I do it. My young Nathan in his cradle gives a raccoon shriek and I kiss him too, he swats at my cheeks with his happy fists.

  The morning we go is still and quite warm. Ned and I have our horses loaded early while the children scurry about helping, and Rebecca is still indoors with the baby, Susy and Jemima come out with their own, and make them wave their little hands. Jemima even gives me a wave herself when Susy runs to kiss me. Martha stands near her doorway in shadow. She has her hands flat against her stomach near her waist, they make a letter V. V is for victory. A sign, Martha, perhaps a small one, so I think at this time.

  —Well Keep-home Neddy, will you be all right without your bed for a few days?

  Ned is tightening the saddle round the belly of his big gentle grey, he says:

  —Do I have much choice, Dan?

  —Come on, we will have a fine time away. And some quiet.

  The children are yelling now, chasing after a ball they have bundled together of vine leaves. It flies apart every few minutes and they tie it up again with more yelling. Ned strokes his horse’s flank and says:

  —That is true enough. Where is Squire?

  As he says it, Squire comes out of his cabin looking yellow and green. I say:

  —You are sick.

  He shakes his head. When I go close, I see his eyes are shot with red. I say:

  —You are. Does Jane’s cooking not agree with you? Come out with us and have some fresh meat. You will get none fresher. Make a man of you!

  Squire tries to smile:

  —Ague seems to be back again. It is nothing. I will be all right.

  Ned looks him over:

  —You had best stay here.

  —Keep-home Neddy would say so!

  So I say but Jane comes out now with her narrow worried face and a hand at her neck. She says:

  —You cannot go like this, Squire, get back to bed.

  His thin arms are trembling, though he tries to hold them still. Jane pulls at him. I say:

  —Well Jane, you can keep him. Ned, we will have to do our best on our own.

  And so we wave and set off. Once we are beyond the fields and onto the grass flat, I dig my heels into the horse and off we fly, the thump of the hoofs shuddering up through my spine to the top of my skull and into all my joints. Very quick Neddy is beside me running his grey as well. I hear him laugh, and I cannot help doing the same, and yelling. It is as though we have won something or stolen it, it is that sort of relief. We ride whooping now and then through the gold grass and along the river and into the woods, and it seems to me we are quite young again.

  We get a few deer and make camp the first night near a small creek upriver. Once we have eaten and done some skinning, we sit with our rum and our feet to the fire. We are silent now, in our older bones again. My old hurt ribs and shoulder ache on the cold ground, though Neddy looks young as ever and sounds young. He sings low:

  They have thrown the lady in,

  And the fire took fast on her fair body,

  She burned like holly green,

  She burned like holly green.

  It makes my throat ache. The burning. I sit up and throw a leftover chunk of fat into the fire, where it hisses back at me. I say:

  —A nice love song, Ned.

  He gives a chuckle:

  I do not mind the words, I only sing.

  —Do you remember our Sallie singing that to scare us when we were young in Exeter, hiding in the spring cellar?

  —I do, yes.

  Our sister singing into a milk can in the deep rain-smelling cellar to make her voice hollow and dreadful. Sallie before she was called whore in front of the Quaker Meeting and was cast out. It seems very long ago now.

  Neddy sings on and I drift in my mind upriver and through the woods towards Old Chillicothe, the Shawnee town, my home some six months and now far too. I will not believe everyone in it has gone, they cannot all be dead, there are so many. We would have smelled such a fire surely. I have smelled nothing. No such burning.

  But why not go and see for myself, truly? The wish swells in my head. It would not take us long if we rode quick all the way, quick as we did earlier, we can do it still. I roll onto my side and I say:

  —Neddy, what do you think of a ride over to the falls of the Ohio? Good hunting there, plenty of ducks too.

  Ned eyes me. He says:

  —You would know that. Shelty was it they called you?

  My Shawnee name all wrong in his mouth makes me bristle. I say:

  —Come on Ned, leave your cowardice home for once instead of yourself.

  He puts his hands behind his head and lies back:

  —I told Martha I would not be gone long. She is nervous when I go. And I like to be home.

  —I know she is, I know you do! But the station is well built, we built it!

  —You have made a good place of it, Dan.

  —You have helped. Though we could do without your Baptist chatter there on Sundays. And your songs.

  Now I give Ned an elbow to the side and he laughs and shuts his eyes. Very soon he is breathing deep and innocent. Well in the morning I will ask him, perhaps he will have forgotten I asked at all, and I will start again.

  * * *

  When the sun is up, we ride some way along the creek towards the Blue Licks. About midday Ned says he is tired, and so we stop at a grassy place where the stream is lined with flat stones. We sit very quiet and get a few more deer coming to drink and lick at the earth, which has some salt even here. The leaves on the thin birches and aspens along the water flash yellow in the breeze. Later Ned shoots a bear across the creek, we hop over and have its skin off and the liver out while it still steams. We find a few chokeberries and walnuts to go with it. I sit on my heels watching Neddy with the pan:

  —You always were a fine cook, Neddy. Good at cooking up treaties too, I would bet, though you do not even know it.

  He chuckles and hands me a slice of liver on his knife. He says:

  —I know what you are thinking of.

  —Am I so easy to see through? Can you see my liver too?

  —Dan. I know
of your Indian family. I know you are thinking of them.

  I am silent a moment. A deer cracks a branch where the grassy flat meets the woods. I say:

  —Well. Everyone knows me, that is what they are always telling me. But you are a cipher.

  —Ha. I never learned to write as well as you. Or do figures.

  —Why would you? You go where life takes you.

  Ned bends over the pan and shakes it. Looking up at me, he says:

  —I will go up to the falls with you if you want to see your Shawnee town.

  I clap him on the shoulder, and I tell him:

  —Almost straight west from here. It will not take us long. Your wife will be all right another few days.

  —Your wife too.

  As we sit chewing in the smoke I am easy in my gut, though my skin pricks. My wife’s name in his mouth. I watch him cutting more of the liver, and at once I think to ask him what I have never yet asked him. We are alone here.

  When he hands me another slice, I say quick:

  —Why did you have my wife? Why did you do it?

  He is silent for some time. Then he says slow:

  —I thought to help. To comfort her. We thought you were dead.

  —Well well. So many times everyone has thought me dead, perhaps I am and do not know it.

  Ned gives a short smile:

  —It was a long time ago.

  —Would you do it again, if you could go back?

  —Dan.

  He will not look at me, again I say:

  —Would you?

  —I would.

  He is so simple in his answer. I feel myself a schoolteacher trying to dig something from a pupil who is cleverer than I am by appearing to be dull. Ned takes a piece of meat and chews again, comfortable where he is. At this time it strikes me that he is another Dan, an easier one and a better one than I am. Rebecca, your words click in my ears like a set of beads: He looks so much like you.

  I get up. I have had your wife, she looks so much like mine: this I think at him though I will not say it. Ned is up too though he does not follow me to the horses, he walks over to a great buckeye tree and sits against it taking walnuts from his pouch. He cracks them against a stone and eats. Crack crack crack.

  Now a great crack. The horses rear and mine bolts, too quick-footed for me to get its bridle. Ned’s grey horse twists and follows. I run after it for a moment, but I cannot catch it either. When I look back, Ned is spilled over onto his side, his hunting shirt a great flower of blood below the neck, a black hole opened in his chest. I get myself to the trees and flatten myself behind a fallen one. My own blood pounds in my ears, it is a hideous sound. My hands are clutching the ground, the edge of a stone juts up under my thumbnail. I have dropped my gun somewhere, where, goddammit, I look up again and I see what I have never wished to see. I did not ask for this, you must know it.

  Ned on his side, entirely still and without breath, he is gone.

  And now I feel you, you are very near and you see me, you still have breath and words. You are no ghosts.

  —Nientha.

  —We killed Boone.

  —We killed Daniel.

  The singing hisses from the trees over the flat at me, they do not see me go, they do not know who I am, I am running over the salty ground, my lungs are wretched and empty but I am running again as though my life were worth something.

  ALL THE MILES to the station I run on my old legs, my old feet, God damn them for being mine, God damn my face and my name. It is dark when I get back. I pass the patrol unseen and go gasping straight to Squire’s bedside. He does not weep, though the fever is shaking him down to his bones, and this terrible story makes him shake worse. I sleep on the floor next to him and listen to the bed quivering. The next morning very early he has to take two slugs of whiskey, but he insists on coming with me back towards the Licks, though Jane cannot understand it and throws up her hands at him. His boys Moses and Isaiah stand in their nightshirts watching us go in the dawn. We do not tell them where we are going. I have not yet seen Martha or Rebecca.

  We find no one. We see nothing. We bury our Neddy, our poor boy, his chest stabbed through, his scalp taken, his fingers taken, his coat taken, though his face is still sweet somehow and unhurt, as if they did not dare harm that sweet expression. I look at him for a time, I make myself look, then we put him under the tree between two great roots. I heap rocks on his grave as I did for my boy Jamesie. It seems to me that my Fate has done another murder on my behalf, another one I did not want, I never wanted this, Neddy.

  * * *

  Murderer.

  Murderer.

  All the time I think of Neddy’s old song at our last camp, the lady burning in the fire. She burned like holly green. The music bounces about in Ned’s voice in my brains. They have thrown the lady in. She burned like holly green. I hear it in my sleep, I wake in a great sweat. I want to see you Ned, I want to see you again but you do not come.

  And Martha. Squire is with me when I tell her, I am that much a coward. He says low to her:

  —Ought to have been me. I am sorry.

  He shakes still with his ague. Martha watches him, her face is startled in its usual fashion, it stays that way when she turns to stare at me and covers her mouth. Her children burst into crying and clutch at her. She says only Oh. It is a tired sound and a disappointed one, what else is there to say I suppose.

  Martha keeps away from me for some weeks but I keep myself away also, I go on watch all the time, I go into the woods as far from the station as I can get in one day, but I see no signs anywhere, no foot marks or blazes or broken twigs, no one has walked or ridden anywhere near. The Shawnee have flown straight up into the air.

  Rebecca will not look at me. And so I stay out longer.

  One day I find Neddy’s big grey horse, looking out at me all gentle from the trees. I take it back to the station and leave it at the gate, someone else can take it in to Martha.

  Ought to have been me. I near struck sick Squire across his lean face for saying it.

  It ought to have been you, you goddamned son of a bitch—so I say to myself again and again.

  When I come back, Rebecca is very silent. She sits rocking the baby for long spells, though he keeps trying to get out of her arms now. She answers when I speak to her, but her mouth hardly moves. Polly busies herself taking charge of the wash, making a great show of it before Israel and the other young men. Rebecca only thanks her very quiet and rocks.

  One night I sit up with her. The cold is growing, I bank up the fire so air rushes up the chimney and gives a great roar. She is nursing Nathan and does not move. I poke the wood about so it calms itself, and I say:

  —You ought to put him into bed now, little girl. And get some rest yourself.

  —I am all right here.

  She stares at the flames. The sturdy baby rolls over in her arms and away from her breast, his sleepy head flops to one side. I get up, I say low:

  —I will take you upstairs, young master.

  She speaks sharp and sudden:

  —No.

  —Let me put him to bed, he is asleep.

  —No.

  She tightens her arms about him. Now she looks at me, the fire gutters on the surfaces of her black eyes, and she says:

  —He is mine. He is yours—you can see he looks like you. But he is mine.

  I crouch next to her, I touch her arm and the side of her heavy veined breast but my hand hardly wishes to do it, I am all knots and burrs. I say low as I can:

  —I know he is mine, Rebecca.

  Still sharp she says:

  —Do not tell Jemima. Never tell her about—Neddy—

  She speaks as if the name hurts her throat. I go still inside, still as she is, I take my hand back. I say:

  —I will not tell her he is her father. That is for you to tell her, it is your concern now.

  —It is mine, it is only mine. It always has been. He was her father.

  Tears slip in wet ribbons
from her eyes, but she does not move. My guts are knotted and hurting. I stroke the baby’s curls, they are damp from where he was pressed against his ma. I say:

  —Maybe we ought to have called this one Neddy. If I had known.

  —Do you think that would have helped? There is no help. With that she stands and is gone up the stairs without a light and with the baby’s head lolling.

  * * *

  Will she ever run out of anger at me? I do not know.

  I go outside. There is a frost coming, and the stars are piercing. I walk along to Will and Jemima’s cabin, but it is dark there, and what would I say at any rate? There is nothing I can say.

  I nod to Israel at the gate. Usually one of the Harts’ blacks takes the night watch, but Israel says he likes it, he likes to be out on his own. I check the horses and I go back along the row of houses. A sliver of light shows round the curtain at Martha’s. I knock and press the latch and the door swings in. Martha is at the table stitching and moving her lips, praying, I suppose. She looks up. I say:

  —All right?

  As soon as it is out of my mouth I see how stupid my question is:

  —Do you want anything, water, wood? Meat? Anything the children need?

  She shakes her head. Then she stands. She stands only, she does not move. She sets down her sewing. It catches her pot of pins, which rolls from the table and falls to the floor. It is something I can do. I pick up scattered pins all round her, the ones shining in the rushlight and some that roll off into the dark. She goes on standing. I feel myself pricked all over, Martha, you have left a path of pinpricks on me. I feel the depth of your want threading me and tying me as Gulliver found himself, I do not know what I can do about it.

  Your feet are bare, I think of them as they were once before, up round my back. I feel my own want bend and sniff about in a black fashion of its own choosing. My brother’s wife, my dead brother’s wife. Ned, you thought to help my wife, you said so yourself.

  I put my hands on her. Neddy had my wife twice. I will have his more. My want thumps its triumph in my blood, whatever it is I am triumphing over.