All True Not a Lie in It

by Alix Hawley

  —Martha.

  —Squire and Rebecca.

  —Martha.

  I shake my head and try to laugh as she goes on touching me. I say:

  —If you insist on pairing names, Martha and Daniel sound like a couple of Old Testament types. The types who get smote. Did Jane send you?

  She is staring hard at me, her pupils wide, she is an inch away. She whispers like the stalks in the wind:

  —I was there when your first was born.

  And I remember of course that it was Martha who told me Jamesie was here, that he and Rebecca were all right, who took me to see him. Her eyes were hot and bright as they are now. She is a secret squirrel for knowledge, I see it now, she keeps everything squirrelled away. When I thanked her at the time for the good news, she said: You are welcome to it, and her smile showed a triumph. Her face was upturned and shining and seemed to say: I have known Rebecca all my life, I have seen her do everything, I have seen her legs open to send out that baby, I have heard her piss in the night, I have smelled her smell when she is sick, I know her in every way and so I know you too. I know what you know.

  Now she says only:

  —Daniel.

  I am stirred, uncomfortably so. She moves her hand to the waist of my breeches and plucks at the shirt there, pulling it out slowly as if she were sewing. Her fingernails needle my skin.

  How easy it would be.

  She is so angry.

  The crows veer overhead. When I blink I can still see the pattern of black and white, crows against clouds. I hear myself say:

  —This will not help any. You have a husband, I have a wife. We all need to go along.

  Her hand halts, her voice ices over:

  —She killed our mother—my mother—you know, being born. Then in came the stepmother and all the other children, and she and I going off to live with our granddaddy. And she has you again, she has that baby, she is starting fresh as if nothing ever happened—

  This seems to me the cry of the sister who never has anything to herself, never anything new or first. I can feel how she suffers, the air vibrates with her queer suffering. She wants me to put an end to it. She wants me to taste her blood, she wants to pull me into a hole and let me do it. I am all confusion. My stomach is hollow, her hand is still on it. I try to speak gentle:

  —Go home now. You are tired out.

  I am talking to a pack of wild dogs all trying to run in different directions. I foresee her baying but she bursts out laughing and says:

  —Home?

  —Yes.

  —You make your home wherever you like. Do you believe there is really any such thing as home—that happy home we were all promised when we were girls? Be good and think of home, you will have your own when you are married, home will lift your heart when it is low—

  —Go to your children.

  She sets both her hands over her belly now and spreads her fingers:

  —There is one in here already, there is no danger for you that way—

  My heart skips and I close my eyes an instant for fear of striking her, or taking her, throwing up her skirts and pushing her beneath me in the dirt.

  —Martha. Go to Ned and Jane.

  —Ned. And Jane. Of course Jane.

  —Jane needs your help, in any case.

  —I am trying to help her.

  She is shaking with rage now. She turns and dives through the thick ploughed earth, her feet bogging in it and her arms shoving vicious at the corn, sad and ridiculous as a blinded cat. She stumbles and falls and does not move. Her head is turned, her eyes are open, her belly forces her back up into a hump. I move to help her. She clutches at my knee to get up and then thrusts a muddy hand at my chest to propel herself off again, staggering and gasping, her clean elbow shows through a rip in her sleeve.

  —Martha. Martha.

  I think: Your wife is a whore. Which makes you a—

  The corn seems to listen. I might go after her. I might find her and we might lie together in the furrow beneath the stalks, belly and all, her legs smeared with dirt. I might ruin her as she wishes, though I cannot understand why she wishes it. I see that I have shipwrecked her already in some fashion. My ribs and skull compress me, and queer thoughts swim in of the baby Jemima beating at me with her wails. Someone else who wants to dig something out of me, something that I cannot give.

  Another thought crashes in like a wave.

  What is she going to say that I have done to her?

  Again I begin to think only of escape, but there is none here. I am forced to think of Squire and of Hill and of men without faces and with large hats, all with my wife’s legs around them.

  Martha does not return. Nor does Jane. I am forced to wonder too what they are saying.

  I take my Jamesie into the hills. I tell Rebecca that we are going, and that I do not know how long we will be gone. She does not protest. We stay out for a month, inching farther west all the time. The leaves begin to turn their colours and burn round us when the daylight strikes them. It would not be difficult to keep going.

  I help James get his first bear on this hunt. It has a white muzzle. I tell him that is lucky. We look at the dead animal, its fur showered with dew. I make the boy pull back its lip to see all of its teeth. I watch Jamesie’s serious face. His tense arm holds the bear’s head as if it might decide to come back to life, his fingers curl back the black lip. I feel peaceful for the first time in many months. I say:

  —Soon enough you will be going off on your own hunts.

  In his cautious manner he thinks for a time before he says:

  —I like to hunt with you.

  —We will go again soon, and for longer. I will show you a place. The finest place.

  —I know. Kentucky.

  He knows my stories of Kentucky and of the Indians and the game. I have made stories of some of it, though the real place is like a golden ball, sitting private in my mind. I have to laugh as I think how like Daddy I am becoming, trotting out the same old stock of tales.

  To Jamesie I say:

  —Yes. Kentucky. You will have some of it.

  I sit and have a little dream of all my boys and girls with land enough, and beautiful land, when I am gone. They will be entirely free. This is all anyone could wish for the future. For now, though, there is nowhere to go but home, where I keep my head down and feel myself to be always looking at the ground as though I have lost something. I kill two hogs and put them up for winter and smell of hog for a week. The harvest is good enough. Rebecca and I remain cordial with one another, as if we are always part of some fancy ceremony. Cracking this shell might smash our lives all to pieces. I do not know what to do about it. I only know the children cannot survive without me. A shell is a shell in any case.

  I drive the fall skins to Salisbury before the snows start. James goes with me. The leaves are beginning to come down, the clouds lift and roll apart in places. The wagon shakes along on the ruts, sinking to the left. I have Jamesie drive and he looks at the road in his intent fashion, holding hard to the reins.

  —Let them go a little. The horses will not run.

  —I know.

  Jamesie makes a brief effort to loosen his grip as he looks at me, then tightens his fists again straight away. I smile and say:

  —Well, my boy, I am glad that you are your own man.

  We are close to town when a wagon comes at us from around a long bend. The road is narrow here, we are both forced to stop.

  —There is Uncle Ned.

  As he says it, Jamesie’s face drops. He is always one for watching and he knows that something odd has been afoot. Martha is beside Neddy, her face shocked to see us, her belly bigger than ever. Jane is on the other side, looking held-in and grim. Neddy’s face looks set as well. The children in the back clamber up to wave. One of the little girls stands on one leg stork-fashion and calls:

  —Uncle Daniel, Uncle Daniel, look at me!

  Her mother hushes her. We all seem to steady ourselves as if ab
out to walk a rope. James is looking to me. So is Martha, her fingers at her throat. So is Neddy. And Jane as well, with her narrow eyes. All are waiting for me to speak.

  My horses sigh and shift. Two of the children topple over in the back of the wagon and one begins to cry. Martha says nothing. Ned looks at me in a speculative manner, as if I were a skin brought for sale. What has Martha said to him?

  The child increases her crying. We are trapped here. At last I do speak:

  —Been to market?

  Ned nods. I look up and say as if I have only just noticed the sky:

  —A fine day for it.

  At last Ned says:

  —How many skins?

  It is best to fall into this kind of talk, as if it is one long conversation that has never been interrupted. I feel some relief as I say:

  —Only fifty. Deer are disappearing again. We have gone far enough to get these, as Jamesie can tell you.

  I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder, and I am glad of his presence.

  Now Martha says:

  —Your boy is growing up fine. Do you not think so, Jane? Look at him.

  I hear the weight she gives that word, I see her great eyes brighten. Your boy. She is stirred, excited, almost trembling. She presses a hand to her bodice and I see it heave as the baby shifts within her. She knows I see. Now I know that she has said nothing. She has not said that I begged her for bodily comfort in my distress or that I tore at her clothes and ravaged her in the dirt, unable to help myself. She sits with a smile hovering about her lips. Here am I, the prim wife who knows nothing at all.

  There is an appeal in that too, which she does know. I feel myself watching her. She wants to even our score. She has gone home as I told her to do, and she has kept quiet, and now she wants her reward.

  I watch her and not Ned, though Ned and I talk of hunting for a few minutes more. Jane turns her face away. We drive off in our respective directions at last and I am very uneasy. The shifting clouds no longer appeal to my eyes. I hear Neddy’s child shouting goodbye, goodbye like a knell from up the road. My careful Jamesie sits forward, gripping the reins harder.

  WE GO OUT farther when we hunt, but everywhere letters are scored into trees. I grow tired of reading them and after a time I stop Jamesie from carving our initials, which he still enjoys doing. DBJB. His angled writing, as if the letters were only just halting themselves from falling over. Are any still there now, or have all the trees been cut? I do not know. I do not know what I would do if I found any.

  We keep on. But the game is fleeing again as old settlers and new ones push back into the Yadkin. And I cannot keep my mind from all of my many-headed troubles for long. Gulliver, I do feel your position. I too am pinned down with no understanding.

  I do not read life’s signs to me at this time.

  Bailiffs with names like Flesh come and sit on the steps for hours with their knees apart, worrying the children. It occurs to me, and not for the first time, that bailiffs are generally a wide-legged sort. I owe plenty, and to more than I can count. Shopkeepers, tavern-keepers, traders, the new taxmen who keep coming round. I am summoned to magistrate’s court, and the judge has a look of granddaddy about him. Money runs away from me laughing, the one thing I cannot hunt down. I will not allow Rebecca to ask her family for any more of it. I do not talk to her of this trouble, though she is well aware of it.

  I have no real land to call my own, and I cannot always ignore this old low smouldering in my gut. I cannot leave my children with nothing. And so I say we are going. Again I feel myself like Daddy, snorting and unsure but longing for a fight.

  But Rebecca gives in without much fight at all. She is still uncertain of me and at the same time unwilling to let me go off on my own again. She has much to make up, as she knows. With her black eyes muted she says:

  —Do not take me too far. I cannot live too far from here.

  And I say we will not go far. And we will have family with us. Our own little family, and Hannah and her children, left without Stewart and hoping to find him again. And Ma, come back to us now that Daddy has gone to his rest, as she puts it. Some of the Bryans. Even Keep-home Neddy, whose wife has persuaded him of her desire to stay close to her sister.

  Squire returns from his long-hunt with good furs and comes round to offer half to me, but I will not take them. I do not wish even to think of what he might mean by offering them. Seeing him, I am struck with a picture of him when young, slipping off from his gunsmithing apprenticeship for a woman.

  —No. I do not want your furs. Keep them.

  This is all I am able to say. He goes away with his usual stoop and his deliberate walk and looks no different. A few days later, Jane comes to tell Rebecca that she and Squire will go along with us as well. This would once have been a joy to me, but Martha has let a poison into my mind where it swirls about like black ink. Martha visits too and talks with Rebecca of our departure. I hear her voice outside when I am in the barn. Squire keeps away. He and I are strange with one another and it cannot be helped.

  In spring, we move up along the Yadkin River where no one else has settled yet. We make camps and several times build a cabin, and though we cannot find the right place to stay, I am glad to keep finding new ones. We have another little girl, and the next spring a little boy, and we name them after ourselves. Any other names are dangerous. I do not have much to do with these children, though I know they are mine. I leave them to Rebecca. I clear scraps of land and hunt with my boys. All the time I am thinking of Kentucky, the game and the wild empty grasses. I think sometimes of the Shawnee and Cherokee, I think of how we will trade there and keep civil. I do not wish to ruin it by touching it too much, this dream, but I cannot help thinking of it. I do not forget any of it.

  For a time we all live in a huge cave near the river with a sloping floor and a low ceiling. Though its mouth is narrow, it is a dry and homey enough place. I tell the children we are going under the earth to find the fairies. Come on, I say, crooking my finger and taking them with me into the narrower dark. Susannah and Jemima are in ecstasies, and even Jamesie and Israel show some interest in spite of their great age. The women have no interest in the fairies, though I insist we stay there a while. They try to sweep out some of the dust and dried mud, and they squint in pointed fashion whenever they look up. Covering the younger ones’ heads with her apron, Ma raises her brows at me. I say:

  —That ceiling will not come down on you, it has stood this long. Imagine old times here. Imagine being Indians and living here a hundred years ago. Then you would be happy enough. You would know of nothing else.

  Martha looks at me then with a pitying expression and a soft mouth as if to say: I understand you truly. And she rocks her latest child with some great meaning, as it seems to me. It is better when Ned builds his own cabin some miles off. Ma goes with her darling Neddy. I miss her.

  We stay. Rebecca says:

  —I am not giving birth in a cave.

  This latest baby is low and near its time. Fatigue has blurred Rebecca’s temper, her spark has dimmed. She has let me drag us all into the wilds, and farther into the wilds. I say:

  —Not even in this cave? Good enough for she-bears. Roomier than most of our houses.

  —A nice place for a child to appear.

  Rebecca looks at the long drips of rock overhead, trying to laugh. She blinks and two tears run down her cheeks. I say:

  —A fine place. A palace of a cave.

  —Surely. We might call it Cave-dweller. The baby.

  —Sounds Indian. Sounds fine.

  —None of your romancing now.

  She is smiling a little with her eyes glittering like rain. She stretches her tired back. She says that I may kiss her hand. I do so. And I build her a house up near the forks of the Yadkin, on Beaver Creek. It is a solid one. This house has likely disappeared now, like all our houses, Rebecca, but I remember the place. Here is where I stay for the birth, I insist on watching all of it. Martha is also present to help and
she watches me all the time, keeping her mouth in that soft squashed O. She grips my shoulder when the baby is coming as if she is faint, but she is not faint. I kneel below the birthing stool, and I see the dark circle of hair at the crown appearing out of Rebecca like a whirling pool out of flat water. If I close my eyes I can see it still now.

  Rebecca lies in the bed, tired out but glad that her child has appeared in a civilized place. She lets me name the new boy. He is quiet. His hair is black like mine, I think. I pick Jesse.

  —Not Cabin-dweller?

  She smiles thinly now, her face slick and grey. She does not want me here, but at the same time she is glad of my staying, I know. I say:

  —No. Not this time.

  —This household has a Jesse already.

  —He will be on his own soon. He needs a namesake here. Show his roots. Jesse Bryan Boone.

  Rebecca likes this, my talking of roots. She likes the Bryan too, a huge gift. It costs me some to give it but I do. Martha glances at me sharp as if to ask, Why do you let her win? But Rebecca tells me to plait her hair for her and says:

  —Martha, you go now. I am all right with Dan.

  She briefly gives off her old bright light as the baby begins to suck and opens its fist against her breast. I plait her hair smooth. It seems as though we have walked over a thin skin of ice. We have not said much. But we are easy enough together for the first time in some years.

  At this Beaver Creek homestead, we set to clearing, and we get the first crop in the ground. James and Israel are old enough now to do much of the work with Jonathan and Jesse, as well as to hunt with me. They are fine boys, I am proud of them all.

  We are all digging out stumps for a new field when we hear the horses. We stand to look. Two men, one riding and the other walking. They are wearing headscarves and bright calico shirts. It seems to me at this moment that I have conjured them up. But the others see them too. Jonathan and Jesse and Israel stand, Jamesie stays crouched where he is. Jemima runs out of the cabin and shrieks:

  —Mama! Some Indians are here!