by Alix Hawley
Findley does not return.
—Likely gone over to the Indians. Could wait no longer for his Indian maids.
Stewart says so as he pisses steamily into the snow. Even his pissing has an angry sound. He cannot look at me for long. He lies down on his boughs again, his mouth set harder. He grieves the loss of his bearskin especially, among all the other skins and all his dreams of money. I know that I am to make up for every disappointment. I do not understand the luck Fate has given me, or that I took from my brother Israel. It perches hard and heavy on my shoulder, digging in its claws. It seems to think it is a help.
I go out, I shoot a scraggy turkey. Thank you, Fate. I carry it back and place it at Stewart’s angry feet. As though we were in the middle of a talk, I say:
—Well all right. We had best go after them, then.
The horses’ bells are easy to follow. The moon is thin but the snow reflects its cold light enough to see lines and shapes by. The horses are browsing in the white-powdered grass outside the camp the Shawnee have made. Their fire is a low red glow down by the creek. A few voices rise occasionally, then go quiet.
We wait in the trees.
We are happy again somehow. It is curious how happy we are.
We wait another quarter-hour in silence. I creep forward and crouch to unhobble two animals, working by feel. The silky cold grass and the bony forelegs and the cold stiff ties. My fingers work to loose the knots and I reach up to feel the horses’ necks. They are bridled. Good.
—How can we tell which are ours?
Stewart’s hiss explodes in the night. I speak as quietly as I can, through my teeth:
—Take any.
—I want my horse.
One of the animals whinnies, the others stir. Their bells tinkle, their warm smell rises with their movement. I go on working, I have the two loose, their reins in my fist. Stewart is feeling for me, grabbing at my arm:
—I want my horse.
His voice grows and his grip tightens, as if he is trying to keep himself from a fall. I shrug him off:
—Stewart, let me work, damn it—
A flare bursts up out of the thin dark behind a tree. Three Shawnee faces appear in the sudden snapping torchlight. One of them is my former guard. Stewart is squinting and crouching. I am still holding the reins.
They are smiling, they are delighted to see us again. For a moment I believe this to be true. Then my guard reaches out with his palm flat, he takes the bridles. He speaks in gentle crippled English:
—Steal horse, ha?
A thing is around my neck. A rope. A noose. My spine goes rigid up to my skull. Hold yourself still, hold your face still. The Shawnee man pulls at the rope and it chafes and burns my skin. A lump pushes against the side of my throat where the rope is tightest. It shakes and jingles. I reach for it, it is cold metal, a bell. Another of them sings something I cannot understand, and they are all looking at me, wanting something. Slowly I try to repeat the words:
—Pan pan fee?
They all laugh at my efforts. Stewart is still crouching, his eyes racing. One of the Shawnee pulls him up and begins to beat a rhythm on Stewart’s back with his gun butt. The horses circle and look interested, the other two men are clapping their hands and encouraging.
They want me to dance.
Well, I dance. The bell jangles merry in the night as if it is Christmas. It is Christmas or thereabouts, as I realize now. Rebecca and the children in the warm dry Bryan house without me. I go on jingling and I say:
—Happy Christmas, boys. Happy Christmas, everyone.
They laugh again, watching me, and they do not kill us.
When Captain Will lays eyes on me once more, he looks at me as if I were a disobedient dog. In truth I have a queer wish to be one, to perform tricks and be forgiven and let back into the house. Into someone’s house, or perhaps anyone’s.
We walk and walk. I still have the bell on.
The sky looks colder every night, black with the stars like a windowpane shattered all over it. We are following the Kentucky River to the Ohio, towards the Indians’ winter town, as I assume.
Stewart’s eyes look stuck open. He watches me and he watches the Shawnee.
I say:
—Would you like to see their town?
He shrugs and asks:
—Have we any choice? Would you?
—I would not object. You, Stewart?
—I would not object either.
He takes a long breath and says:
—I was thinking of Hannah. I told her I would bring her money, but I have nothing for her now.
He stops. He says:
—I would like to see a house again, even if it is one of theirs.
He has begun to accept the way that life has turned. After walking along slowly for days, it is easy to accept the need for it, as I find. The guards ride alongside us, holding our ties loose. I hear Stewart trying out a word or two in Shawnee on his keeper now and then. The Indians call him Bear in their tongue, Makwa, which pleases him, as I can see when I tell him what they say. He does smell of bear still, and it is a pleasanter name than Wide Mouth, which they call me in English at times.
When one of them shouts for us to sing, I oblige. I rack my brains for more music and find myself wishing Hill were present. They like “Over the Hills” and also “Come Butter Come,” which Jamesie and Israel like to clap and stamp to when their mother is churning. I learn a couple of Shawnee tunes, or learn them near enough. I will teach them to the children and scandalize Rebecca. The guards laugh and try to correct my words and my tone, but their music is so meandering that I cannot always see the path through it.
I allow myself a thought of the children’s bare feet dancing, hopping up and down before the cold fire, dipping their toes into the ash. I allow myself a thought of Jamesie’s feet in particular, I kissed their soles when he was just born and had never touched ground. He is a great boy now, his feet will have grown still more. Israel’s too, he will have grown, and Susannah no longer tiny. Time will have continued at home. In some fashion I have been picturing it as stopped there, as if everyone were keeping still. At once my bones ache violently.
I walk in silence for a half-mile. Under the jingling of my bell, I speak into Stewart’s good ear:
—Stewart. John.
—What?
Stewart looks as if I am a bedbug or some other distraction. His eyes are very fatigued. I say:
—You know the butter song.
—No.
—You do, I know. “Come Butter Come.” Be ready when you hear it.
—Why?
—Be ready. We have to go. Think again of your Hannah and your little one at home.
He stops walking. He says:
—I have thought. Look at me, look at how weak I am. Will she want me back?
He walks on and I carry on a pace behind. Two days more I take to ready myself. It is difficult to think of a way to leave, and to think of leaving at all. When the Shawnee are making camp in the evening, Captain Will says he can smell the Ohio. We will see its waters tomorrow, he says. Stewart and I are tied to one another but to no one else now. The Shawnee all loosen, they stretch out along the fire trench and talk as the dark comes down. They are easy at the thought of nearing their winter home and families.
I breathe in and smooth my face and sing a line:
Johnny wants a piece of cake.
I will admit that I am curiously slow and sad in singing it. Stewart looks at me, his face also sorrowful and perplexed. For a moment we stand blinking at one another.
I jerk my head. He ducks his and follows me to take up a gun from the careless heap left near the packs and the horses. The cane here is high and thick, we move into it carefully at first, then we run with the guns out to push the stalks down before us. There will be an easy trail for them to follow, but it is winter dark already, the fast-falling dark, so we keep up a slow run and turn south, and though we listen all the time through our breathing, no one fo
llows. We are not worth following, it seems. I keep my fist around the bell at first but after a time I let it ring out. I will keep it always.
He disappears soon after we make it to the station camp again. One morning he goes out alone and does not come back. I search for him as I go out hunting. I find JS on a tree one afternoon, and I look at it for some time. The letters seem an insult, a wound on my own body. They remind me that Stewart was once here and has now gone, left on purpose, sick and disappointed at all he lost by following me. I wonder always what made him go. Could he not bear the thought of returning home penniless to his good Hannah? To have her gasp and step back from his filthy skin and beard?
Stewart, I brought you to Kentucky and to the Shawnee. Some will say I butchered and ate you, most likely. For my own purposes. What purposes? Keeping the furs and skins for myself? There are no furs and skins left. You were right, there is nothing. I am alone in the wilderness with a stiff-triggered, badly built gun and a paltry supply of shot and powder. I imagine Findley watching me from somewhere in the trees, laughing to himself and saying in Hill’s voice: What will you do now?
FOR DAYS I pad about in the snow looking for Stewart and occasionally for Findley. My entire skin listens. I call out quietly and then high like a bird, I use my own voice and all kinds of others. I take care with my tracks. But the Captain’s Shawnee are long gone to their town, and nobody else seems to remain near the Warrior’s Path now that winter is gripping.
Stewart is not anywhere. I look in puzzlement at the letters carved on the tree. JS. People have their reasons for disappearing, as I am left to suppose.
The creeks are icy. I get a few fish, a few turkey, a deer occasionally, some nuts. I survive the winter.
I use a precious shot on a great bird with beautiful bright underwings. I wish I had paper to try to draw it on. I keep the wings. I survive.
I go north, back towards the Ohio, where I see no one. Then I go west. I know where all the creeks and the buffalo roads lead and where they converge, I know all the licks, and which are the most crusted with salt. I climb to a ridge above one to see a living sea of buffalo pawing and butting and licking at the snowy salty ground as though all praying busily. Their noise and smell wrap me up like a robe, and I feel myself almost happy for that moment. I shoot one through the throat. It dies quickly. I eat some meat and jerk what I can. I am happier still, though less yet another shot.
I thin down to sinew, I feel strung like a bow, which makes me reckless in my body as I was when I was a boy. I dare Fate to injure me. I fashion myself a real bow and some arrows with saplings and gut and the beautiful bird’s feathers. I shoot a wildcat with it just as it considers tensing to spring at me out of the snow. It falls, shot clean. Killing it so, without touching it or hurting it, is a beauty to me, there is no other like it. I love that bow sending its quick arrow to the heart just as if it is stopping time.
I could fire-hunt. I remember Israel showing me how. But I do not do so, I will do better. And I do not wish to summon Israel in this place.
I keep my bow and I do not die. Summer comes, and autumn again. I am alone, I feel myself at the core of silence. Again I think of being inside a huge sleeping wolf, but now as a bone in one of its joints. Or as a figment of its sleeping mind. I sing in the cold evenings as I lie in the canebrakes, which I keep to for shelter. I sing anything, and when I hear wolves singing back distantly I keep at it, though my heart speeds. I invent a song about Kentucky. I sing it at the top of my lungs: Yellow-jackets. Hornets. Pan pan fee. I think of the Shawnee but they do not come. The sky is a dark circle like a pupil open above me with the fringe of high cane all round.
Again the cold lightens, again the daylight holds longer. Pale green appears out of the ground like a thin fur. With the new spring, I begin to move east. I know I must. I am down to the last dust of the powder Captain Will left me. I have no feathers left for arrows.
I skirt the edges of buffalo traces. I go slowly. I will follow the Warrior’s Path back towards the gap in the mountains that Findley showed us. All the time I want to turn around, turn and keep walking and let this place have its way with me. It is mine now.
First I stop at the station camp. I pull the pine branches back over the roof of the toppled shelter. Their cold scent puffs back to life as I move them. A blanket torn into shreds lines a hollow in one of the tree roots at the back of the lean-to. A faint smell of Findley and also of wolf. I go to find some fresh hemlock to line the shelter again.
I am beginning to kindle a fire when I hear a cracking in the quiet. I have near forgot how it feels to have no explanation for a sound, I have grown so used to the noises of snow falling from trees or of animal life at night.
I see nothing yet. The trees are not thick and there is no cane on this part of the creek. When I stand, I suddenly feel myself human again. Only now do I feel my weakness and my thinness and my lack of ammunition. Long teeth seem to poke into my mind. I have been living a half-inch from Death, I have been winning, I have been happy. I clear my throat and I rub my matted beard. My chest goes tight, the way it did when I saw Rebecca at her granddaddy’s door after I dragged a dead deer to her. Here I am.
Only now, I do not want to be seen. I walk through the trees, following the line of the creek. I catch the scent of smoke before I see it clouding upwards and spreading thick. A large dry dead tree is fallen, and it is on fire, flames skip from branch to branch. The sound sharpens. I crouch to look. There is a blowing and stamping, a footfall. I stare through the smoke and burning branches and shadows. Four horses are behind the fire. One neighs and tosses its head. A figure wrapped in a cloak is standing with them.
Israel. But I will not say his name. No ghosts here. Instead I say:
—Stewart?
My voice is rough and patchy. I am ready to forgive Stewart his sudden disappearance, it is no matter now. But he may still be angry. And I do not forget he may also be captive again, brought back here as bait to catch me too.
I do not move. The shape is dark behind the fire. A pulse jumps in my neck. The tree blazes and cracks and sends out thick black waves.
A voice calls through the smoke:
—Findley?
It too is wary and distant. It is too low to be Stewart. My heart falls, but I say:
—No. Gone.
This cannot be Findley, then. At once I think of Captain Will, but it is not his voice. Then I think of Hill. I am even ready to tolerate Hill if he has horses and powder.
I look hard through the bright flames, my eyes water and clench in the haze. Still I cannot see. The voice says:
—Is it Dan?
I hesitate before I reply:
—Yes.
I step towards the fire, straightening myself, pulling at my dirty hunting shirt and wiping my running eyes with the back of my hand. I come so close that the heat of the burning tree scorches my cheeks. The air pops and sparks, drops of fire land upon my clothing. The shape becomes clearer and taller and thinner. It cannot be Hill. The man opens his cloak and looks for a moment like a great bird preening its wings.
Squire. It is my brother behind the leaping flames, raising his arm to shield his eyes. He is alive. He has the horses packed with supplies. They are restless and wary. Traps dangle and clash on their sides.
Relief washes through me. I say:
—Well, Squire, all right, well done. Your fire led me direct to you. Quite a burning bush in the wilderness. You turned prophet since you left?
But he does not move. He only looks at me through the fire as if considering what he ought best do now. He drops his hand, but still I cannot see his face properly. At last he says:
—Looks like you need rescuing.
I consider this.
—Perhaps I do.
I pull another of the beavers from one of the new traps. I slice gentle into the under-jaw to draw the pelt down and off clean. The beavers have been obliging. We have got ten in the lines today and found a good new pond to try. Our packs are
growing heavy again already. If anyone has to be here, I am glad it is Squire, though we are still somewhat strange together and I am unused to conversation. I ask whether he has seen any sign of Stewart on his way out, but he shakes his head. He only says:
—Your family told me to bring their hellos.
—They are all right?
—Seem to be. Though they have their concerns about you.
Squire pulls the trap from its chain and feels the edge. He says now:
—Bryan moved them all back to the Yadkin to set the farms going again. Ma and Daddy went too.
—All of them there again? Well. I will know where to find them. If they will have an old man back.
I pull at my beard as old Bryan sometimes does:
—I will be able to compete fairly, for one thing. Look at this beauty. Rebecca will not know her husband when he appears on her doorstep.
Squire’s face goes still and obscure over the trap. I say:
—She is all right? I did ask you.
—She is all right.
Squire squints into the jaw of the trap and says no more. I have the beaver pelt off now, and it is a good long glossy one. I get out the hoop to stretch it. I say:
—I will be glad to see her. And home, if that is what I may still call it.
And I will be glad, although the way I imagine Rebecca now is perhaps less spiky round the edges than she is. This happens with one’s idea of home also, as it seems to me.
—You were glad to get back there for a while, Squire?
He does not answer, he is busy filing at the trap. The rasping puts me in mind of Daddy in the forge. Squire goes on until he bangs the trap closed and turns to look very slow about the camp. He remarks:
—Should have enough beaver and otter to make up for some of what was taken.
I know Squire and I know what he means, which is that my question is not worth answering. We sit silent until he says: