All True Not a Lie in It

by Alix Hawley

  —Here is your present.

  She did not give him to me. I saw the tilt of his nose, the side of his little red face only. I was struck by a thought of my old fond red-faced uncle in Pennsylvania. Uncle James, you were good to me, you tried to help me learn.

  With a touch of Daddy’s bluster, thinking to make my boy part of myself, I said:

  —His name is James.

  But Rebecca did not argue in the least. She got to me by not arguing, all agreement and a pale brilliant smile. She had an Uncle James also, it turned out.

  I remember all of it. But now I wait outside again with my flask near empty and my hunting dirt still all over me. The day is finishing. Jesse comes out for a while after supper, but he will not sit down, he is not easy. I ask him how he has been, but he only says he is tired and will go to bed. He says goodnight very low.

  When I am alone again, I feel the sky watching to see what I will do. I can only think of Rebecca cut off from me inside. Did I do the cutting? Well.

  I want her. I want to have her, and not just to mark my territory, it is not only that. I am sunk with my desire, my body crackles with the old burning link between us, all the brighter for its coldness now. Other men want her, and why should they not? She is magnificent, she is Helen, she is a witch. She was afraid. And I was gone.

  At once I feel exhausted and hollowed out, like a child done with wailing and pleading.

  I trip on the steep steps to the sleeping loft. I find that I have forgotten how many there are and I am sorry for it.

  The baby stirs in the cradle beside the bed. I reach out to find the edge of the bed and it creaks under my hand. Her skin smells of bayberries. I find her neck, her shoulder, her swollen breasts and softened belly. I keep my hand there for a time, I do not move.

  Her fingertips fall on my back, light as moths. They mark questions all over me. I am burning and cold. The baby rustles and settles again like a small bird. Rebecca stiffens.

  I make myself speak into her ear:

  —It would not be easy. To untie ourselves.

  I feel drunk. I am somewhat drunk, my blood is drowsy and slow like a summer day. Her hair feels like breath on my cheek. I want to cover my face in it and sleep. She says:

  —Do not give me up, then.

  I feel her lips twist against my arm. I cannot help asking again:

  —Who?

  I close my eyes, I want to ask it again, who who who, make an owl of myself. But I say only:

  —Rebecca.

  She is silent. She does not answer, but she is not putting on her Queen-of-the-Backwoods air with me now. I feel her vulnerability, her held breath. But she is my Queen of the Backwoods, my Welsh witch, with all kinds of black power. I cannot bear to see her topple from that and become a thing squashed down by life. She is not afraid, she cannot be.

  Rebecca, in my mind you are black hair and shining eyes, spitting cherry pits. Witches can be burned but come back to life. Queens can do as they like.

  Do as you like. My dead brother said so. Israel, you are long dead now, and your boys are growing, they work the fields with their hunched shoulders, waiting for the next blow.

  Well there will be no next blow. I will not leave again. This I decide now. I say:

  —How can I give you up, little girl?

  My voice creaks in my ears, but I go on:

  —Can you give me up?

  She does not speak for some time. The wind picks up for a moment and hushes itself again. She says:

  —I did. For a while.

  —But I am not dead.

  —No.

  —No. I am here. Feel me.

  She laughs a little with her hand on me and says in her old lazy fashion:

  —I have felt you before.

  She turns her face to my ear. Her voice sharpens:

  —If you go again, if you die, I will not go looking for you, or your corpse. Hannah has been out of her mind with worry and now John is gone, just gone, that is all you can say—

  Her fingers pinch my shoulder until it stings, until her nails are in me. She has not said my name. I say:

  —You are free, you know. You were not wrong. You are free.

  —I do know.

  —Well. You are.

  —You are not.

  I laugh, my mouth open against her throat, and I do not know what else to do.

  WE GO ON. The children watch us. We are formal. We do not tease one another. We do not quite look at one another.

  The baby is part of the house. She screams suddenly out of deep sleeping silences and then screams on until the house throbs. The screams seem to be directed at me, and so I pick her up and stare at her face. She continues her yelling, her small mouth working and gaping and her eyes aiming to remain on mine. She has Rebecca’s temper, only set on fire. She begins straight away to attach herself to me. Her small lolling head tries to turn itself towards my voice.

  I see Jonathan and Jesse watching me with this other little outsider. Their faces are carefully arranged. I say:

  —Well well. A baby is a gift to everyone, is that not what people say?

  Still. I do not know where to go now. I work the fields with Jonathan and Jesse, and I hunt a little up the Yadkin but no more than a few days at a time. This gets rid of some restlessness but not all.

  Daddy and Ma visit in the fall. Daddy jigs his legs about and still talks of buying more land, enough to give to all his children. He has had to sell much of his to raise money to live. His cheeks and eyes are full of red lines like little forking rivers. He has an elderly look but his voice is the same. He blusters in his best fashion:

  —No one can take you off land once it is yours. No one.

  Ma pets the little ones and rocks the baby. I feel her watching me as she does so. She knows this child is not mine but she says nothing. When they prepare to go home, she kisses us all and holds my face in her cool dry hands. Daddy says:

  —Come on, my girl.

  And they climb slow into their wagon and drive off. I see Daddy pointing at a flock of swallows.

  It is January when Squire rides through the deep snow to say Daddy is dead. I turn my face from him when he says it. Daddy wished to be buried near Israel, and so we take his body in a wagon to the German town in Maryland, along the road from Pennsylvania. I ride ahead, I keep silent. We cut a black hole in the white ground and put up a stone for him: Departed This Life 1765. We put up a proper one for Israel now also. Squire walks off on his own. A dog looks at us from the edge of the field.

  I stand with Ma as she touches the letters and numbers. I say:

  —You do not mind them having headstones, Ma? I know it is not the Friends’ way.

  Ma says:

  —They should have stones. To show they lived. I will be here too one day. You can put one up for me, my Danny.

  She comes home with us. I lie awake for many nights, for weeks, as it seems to me. My heart is hot and empty and my eyes seem to boil. I wish for a dream of Daddy’s spirit but none comes. It seems to me there is no one between me and Death now.

  I hunt. Sometimes I take Jamesie along. I want to feel that he is mine. He is growing so fast, I can almost see his bones lengthening. He has fair hair with a gingery cast like Daddy’s and dark eyes like Rebecca’s but more careful than hers. They watch me always as if looking for clues.

  I tell him things: Here is how to load your gun. Here is how to shoot it. Here is how to kill the animal with a knife if you must.

  My hand covers Jamesie’s as the boy scrapes at a deer hide with the new clasp knife I have given him. Another debt. But I wish for him to have all good things, new things. The best life. I think of Daddy trying to read our futures and get land for all of us. Daddy, I understand this now.

  I say:

  —Here is how you dress the skin for market. Feel how the hair comes away. Stretch it between your fingers. Now get it on the board. Harder. Like this.

  Having answers is a satisfaction for me and for him. Jamesie keeps
at the one hide for hours, he hardly changes his position. He has grown into a cautious boy, always watching, always wanting to do things the right way. At last I coax him closer to the campfire and make him put down the skin for the night. It is cold again, and Jamesie can never get warm through out here, even if he sits so close to the fire he is struck by beads of sparking sap. He is thin, with the stretched look boys get as they grow. I watch him sitting with his hands to the flames. His mother would have pulled him back by now, but he is still shivering in bursts. I say:

  —Come here.

  He looks at me in surprise as if he had forgotten my presence, as if I had disappeared into the trees. My heart sinks for a moment, but I say:

  —I am here, look. Come here.

  Jamesie moves towards me and I tuck him into my shirt, his back to my bare chest. He is embarrassed, far too old for this, but pleased. He curls his legs down between my knees, and I feel his limbs relax. I smell his fair hair and give his plait a little tug. I am certain there is no mother’s comfort like this, sitting by the campfire in the night.

  —Better now?

  —My front is hot and my back is still cold.

  Jamesie says this in his precise fashion. He is like Squire in this way, but I have not seen Squire or Ned since burying Daddy. Squire has gone off on another hunt alone, I do not know where. When I think of him now I am not easy, but Jamesie shifts about and I say:

  —Do you want to sit on your own?

  —No.

  After a time we settle on our bedrolls under our bearskins with our feet to the fire, and we are quiet. I think of Stewart and of Squire and Kentucky and I grow melancholy, but all of it seems a long-ago story. The fire spits in a spiteful fashion.

  —Daddy.

  James is used to the vast dark. It is the sudden leap and punch of the flames in the night that unsettle him, even at this age. He always arrives on my bedroll at some time during the night, and I do not mind. I say:

  —You tired of the little people yet?

  —The Lilliputians.

  He is always a one for being correct. I say:

  —That is right. Had enough of them, a big boy like you?

  —No.

  So I tell the old story, which is our favourite, and which we know we will never tire of. Jamesie listens hard with a short dry laugh from time to time. His eyes reflect the fire darkly. We are near asleep when he says:

  —But they did not want him to get up.

  —Who?

  —The big man.

  I can tell that Jamesie is on the edge of sleep or he would have said Gulliver. But to tease him I say:

  —Who do you mean? I cannot think who.

  —With the strings the little people tied all over him. He got up.

  —Yes, he got up. The Lilliputians were only tiny, you remember. Their ropes could not keep a big man like that tied to the ground.

  —Not a big man.

  —No.

  Jamesie goes silent but he is not yet asleep. He worries the question again, he turns and looks at my face, considering. He says slow:

  —He got up but he was not supposed to. He was not supposed to be alive.

  —He did get up, yes.

  —He was supposed to stay with them and be their prisoner. And be dead if they wanted him to.

  —What, like a dog? Lie down, play dead?

  I tickle his thin neck below his ear and I make a little howling noise. He jumps, his body stiffens. I touch him and I feel his heart leap under my hand.

  I wish with all my soul I had never made that noise, Jamesie, forgive me.

  IN SUMMER, I come up from the goddamned corn one evening to find Ned and Martha visiting. They have brought Squire’s wife Jane with them. They sit in a row on the bench outside the door with Rebecca, stiff as a row of plates. The children are all running about in a frenzy, knocking one another down, a pack of cousins doing their best to inspect the condition of each other’s blood.

  —Ned. Thinking about joining me on a hunt?

  Neddy smiles in his sleepy manner and lifts his eyes. He leans against the wall and says:

  —You were a long time about your last one.

  —You might have come along, Keep-home Neddy.

  He chuckles and says:

  —I like it here. Did you find what you were looking for?

  —No.

  —Well oh well. You might come back to Virginia, Dan.

  —Do you think of going there again?

  Ned tilts his head and says:

  —Bryan has me driving the tobacco there, doing his brokering. I go where life takes me. And where my wife takes me.

  He turns his smile on Martha, who is sitting upright with her arms folded over her belly. She is with child again. Her big eyes run back and forth between us. One of her little girls draws great frowning and laughing mouths in the dirt at her feet. Ned says:

  —Saw a friend of ours at market.

  I look up:

  —Stewart?

  —Afraid not. No such good luck. Hill.

  —So our Hill came through the wilderness on his own. He is full of surprises.

  Neddy laughs his easy laugh and rubs his neck:

  —Alive as ever. No sign of any woes. And with a new scheme for raising investments in Kentucky.

  —What now?

  —He wrote about it in the newspapers, he showed me one of his articles. He must carry them everywhere he goes. He told me to give you his especial compliments. And the family. He fondly remembers his visits, he says.

  —He was here?

  Ned nods and says:

  —He came here when he first returned, seeking old tales about your man Findley. Old dirt to dig up. And about you. He is writing a book now, he says.

  My heart is coated in ice. Hill dividing up my beautiful faraway country into rags and patches. And coming here sniffing after me.

  Now my heart freezes to the core. I say:

  —Rebecca. Did you see him?

  The baby Jemima is shrieking inside the house but Rebecca does not move, she only says:

  —All you men can talk of is Kentucky.

  I see Jonathan looking up from where he is oiling a harness in the barn doorway. The baby’s cry gets to him also. It does not stop.

  I go inside and I pick up Jemima. She is wet and struggling. All my chest aches, cut up with the thought of Hill as her father. But I cannot believe it. How can I? No. I look into her face from an inch away, and she unleashes one of her best screams. I sing to her:

  —No, no, no.

  She gazes at me without blinking.

  I have begun to be fond of the little stranger. To my surprise, it is not difficult. I banish Hill. I will not let this be her fate. I will erase her beginnings for her, whatever they are, and why not? Here you can reshape yourself. You can forget. Others can also. At this time, I suppose this to be true.

  I kiss her. I carry her out and say:

  —I believe this child needs her mother.

  I kiss the baby’s head again. Rebecca’s eyes lock on me for a moment. Martha’s do as well, they are round like eggs. She touches her throat and stands up heavily, dragging her daughter up from the dirt. She says:

  —It is time we left.

  Squire’s wife Jane stands as well. She is clearly as uneasy as the other women. They know all about the baby, it appears. Jane is not one to say much, like her husband, but she does look at me. She is a little woman with a narrow face and narrow green eyes. I say:

  —Jane, are you getting on all right at home without Squire? Is there anything you need?

  Her eyes fill to the tops with tears before she blinks them away. She waves her hand before her face and says:

  —Fine. Fine.

  The baby howls, and Rebecca walks off bouncing her up and down. No one has any further remarks to make. They round up the children. One of the girls has pushed a nut up into her nose, she is shrieking and hiding her face and saying, leave it, leave it, as Martha shakes her and tries to fish i
t out.

  It is two mornings later that Martha is in the cornfield where I am working very early. Her feet are half-sunk in the earth between the rows. She looks like a determined scarecrow waiting for me. The sun is rising behind her head. She has been running or walking fast. The words spill out of her as if from a boiled-over pot:

  —I love to see the sun rise over the fields.

  I want to laugh, but her eyes appear to bruise as she speaks, they go dark and shaded. She is thin and pressed-looking despite her condition. She is one of those who inhabits her skin nervously, although she forces herself into boldness now. She steps closer to me through the mud, holding her round belly. She is suffering, which has its appeal and which she knows.

  —I have—

  She breathes in and flattens a hand over her chest and goes on:

  —You treat that child as if it is your own but it is not. You know that, I think?

  She touches my sleeve, the sun makes a halo of her hair. The line of stalks I am weeding shades her body. Every word and gesture feels as though she has rehearsed it, even the sun coming up behind her at this moment. Her dress is muddied and its hem is fallen on one side as though she has planned that as well. I say nothing. I do not understand her. Then her hand is on my arm, travelling upward, and she is laughing lightly as she says:

  —Rebecca and Squire. The names sound pleasant together.

  She gives a little click of her tongue. The cornstalks feather and rustle with her movement. My head buzzes and I say carefully:

  —Do you mean to say that Squire was with my wife? How am I to believe that?

  Her eyes go bigger, they flood with instant tears. She says:

  —I do not know but I believe it to be so. He was here when you were gone. He said he was looking out for her safety as she was so alone, it must be so hard for her without you. He said that. He brought food.

  Her hand travels higher up my arm like a tentative but insistent mouse. I say: