All True Not a Lie in It

by Alix Hawley

  My watching men have gone silent. I see their bruised faces and eyes from their run down the alley of beatings. They can see what further misery is coming for them.

  I say loud:

  —You have made a fine turkey of me, ladies. I am good and plucked.

  —Your feathers are poor.

  The woman speaks Shawnee to me slowly. I try to catch her eye but she folds in her lips and seeks out the next hairs. Her smoky smell puffs round her lightly as she moves her arms. I sniff and I say:

  —I can only make do with what I was given.

  —You should have asked for better. More.

  She says more in English. She pats my forehead where the hair has already backed off of its own accord, as I will admit. It is a cool and efficient pat. Then she plucks out a handful from the back of my skull. My eyes water.

  —Well, and are you the local barber? Or medicine man? Or woman, should I say?

  She does not answer but hands me the ribbon from my plait, now faded to grey. Findley, I have kept it. I clutch at this damp sorry thing you gave me. You got me here and you are gone, somewhere you are laughing at me.

  She goes on to the next plucking, smiling at Will Brooks’s curls. I am certain that my head wears a great bright halo of agony and is twice its usual size. Well perhaps this is how angels are made. I raise one aching arm to touch the sore bared flesh, I feel the long lock left at the crown.

  —Ah. For ease of scalping.

  I mime the action on myself. I am shot with the old blue recklessness I have felt before. A couple of my men snort and the women smile pityingly. My barber woman says:

  —You can keep that.

  —Can I? Thank you.

  —Warriors do.

  —What?

  —Warriors.

  She faintly mimes a raised axe. I say:

  —Does this make me a warrior now?

  She shrugs with her whole body and says:

  —It is supposed to be so.

  —Well well. Does it work?

  She only looks at me, and so I flip my remaining hair in her direction. The old woman who washed my parts grins suddenly with bright teeth and makes a gesture that I understand. My barber woman smiles thinly too and says:

  —She says your hair is—

  —I know. Limp is the word you are searching for.

  I stand and I open my blanket. Her face does not change. I will admit that I am less than impressive in this condition. I feel my men behind me, I hear some of them chuckling. In English I shout:

  —You have evidently done this before, beautifying men’s heads for them. Making them less limp. We could give you a job back at Boonesborough. What do you say boys? Plenty of shaggy types there. Limp types too.

  I turn to the whites huddled under their blankets scratching at themselves. A few are holding the ends of their wet hair. No one laughs further.

  Well. I should not have mentioned the fort. The Shawnee could take it easy enough. Hair by hair, scalp by scalp. Burn everyone. Burn the place to stumps, let the grass grow over the burned black rectangle until there is nothing at all to show it had ever been. I see it, the bright wild grass and clover all along the river, the meadow whole and empty again. Beautiful and horrible. Which?

  At once everything here is pointed and venomous.

  Other women set to plucking the men’s heads now. My barberess has moved down the line. I shout:

  —What else are you going to do?

  —What do you want?

  She is calm as ever, but her voice shows a small note of surprise and I know that I have trapped her attention. In English I say:

  —I said what else will you do, Delilah? Curl it up for us? Perfume it? Mine is clean. It is limp. It will not hurt you.

  I twiddle the lock around my fingers. Everything I say feels hollow, though the words come easy enough. A wave runs through the men, and a few bark out expectant laughs again, their eyes on me.

  The woman only turns away and begins the walk back up to the town. I stop moving my head about. My skin is damp still and very cold. Callaway pulls his blanket tighter. He gets to his feet and begins to walk up the beach as if he is making to leave. Some of the Shawnee women point and call in alarm: Napeia. Napeia. The rooster. His final lock of red hair has the look of a cock’s crest falling over. He turns back and says:

  —No, the question is what are you going to do now, Boone?

  THE TRANSFORMATION they perform on us is real enough. Now we are something else entire. Clean. New. No longer white. The stinking stained heap of our clothes stays at the riverbank for burning. We are given new clothes. We are given new families. All of us are new people.

  I am to be Black Fish’s son and live in his house.

  So surprised are we that we go along. They speak to us differently, they are softer, their faces are softer. We are replacements for their dead men. We are their dead men come back.

  This strikes me now as a generous and clever idea, though at the time I could not believe in it. We whites are stingy with our dead, we hoard them and put them away, as I know. We roll their stories about like pebbles in our heads until they are polished and rattling and all we have left. And our dead are gone. That is what we say. Gone. I tell myself mine are gone. I will not think of them.

  The house is covered with sheets of elm bark and flecks of moonlight get in, all speckled. It is like living under a hen. I would prefer to keep outside, but they tie me in at night. The woman sighs and turns. The little girls roll about frequently. The man is a silent sleeper. He has the look of a grave, a mound covered to the forehead with a blanket. But many things make me think of graves.

  For lack of anything else to do in this long night, I call to Squire in my mind now. I imagine a small, flickering trail like a cannon fuse licking its way along through the woods, all the way back to the fort. I will it to keep going and not go out.

  —Squire. Hey-o.

  We have never spoken of the difficulty between us. The silence now is a great disappointment to me. I want a word from him very much. Any word would do. Any word at all: pincer, pie, prick. O Squire, I am such a fool that I laugh aloud.

  —My son.

  The voice is cool. The fire is down to the last embers. My spine aches and shivers up through its core. I squint into the dim. Nothing has changed. The cooking pot is squat above the embers. The shapes of corncobs still hang like icicles from the thin beams. A chicken murmurs once on the roof. It is only this same life. I wonder how long it may have left to run.

  I say low:

  —Only dreaming. Only speaking to myself.

  The voice is almost tender from beneath the blanket:

  —No more. Sleep now.

  And I do sleep.

  Light comes. The two little girls stare at me through a hole low in the wigwam’s bark covering. I am pretending sleep but I feel the eyes roaming. They have crept outside early, they are very quiet in their spying. They cannot have enough of staring at me. They laugh whenever I speak to them. They laugh more when I speak in English, as if it were a great entertainment. I do not trust them but I like them well enough. They are pretty little girls and full of life.

  One of them whispers wochkonnikee, the word for the colour white, and then Shawnee. I am startled enough to open my eyes. White Indian. There are a few other whites here aside from my men. They are dressed Indian-fashion and look as if they have lived here a long time. If they see me, their eyes find the distance at once, they do not speak.

  Now the girls are breathing puffs of air at me. I see the vapour coming through the bark as though their words are trying to give themselves a shape and stick to my skin. My head itches. I pull at my remaining lock of hair and I say:

  —You women are always trying to change a man.

  The girls shriek with laughter and run off.

  The early light comes in stripes like cold fingers on me. The girls have roused me fully, though I have not slept deeply and my head still pains me inside and out. I sit up on my mat,
and I see my Indian mother and father taking their breakfast from the steaming pot. They are crouched and silent. When she notices me, my new mother stands. She holds out a large bowl and says Skillawethetha. Boy. Her face is young but worn, and tight with effort.

  Well, here is another new life for me, I suppose, another beginning. I feel myself to be very young. I say in a hearty manner:

  —Well Mother, may I go outside just now?

  She stops, her mouth shifts. She wishes me to eat, I can see. But she puts down the bowl and says that I might grind some corn for her. She imitates a grinding motion, watching me to ensure I understand. She reaches for a handful of the dried corncobs that hang from the ceiling like a nest of bats.

  I say:

  —Ha. Woman’s work.

  She knits her thin brows, holding out a cob to me in hope. She turns to Black Fish, all tears, as she always seems to have ready. I dash the corn to the floor and I shout:

  —If I am your son, why do you work me this way? I am a warrior. Look.

  I bend low so that the crown of my head is visible and tug at my remaining hair. My Indian mother puts her face in her hands and sobs. I am not much of a replacement for her dead one. Black Fish says:

  —Let him go.

  His face reveals nothing. He is biding his time, I know one day he will react to my talk and my ways. I bow again to my Indian mother and I leave, feeling sorry. I do not like to make a woman cry. But I am a captive, son or not. We are captives. I remind myself of it. Well if my father is a king, I am a king-to-be. King of the prisoners.

  The young man assigned to guard me catches up easy. I am not entirely free yet. He shuffles along in silence dragging his moccasins, sending out ripples of misery and dislike and occupying himself with touching his pimples in tender fashion. In this way we pass up the street of wigwams. In the open beyond them and before the fields, my little sisters are playing with a few other children, squatting at some game with pebbles and dried cobs. It is a serious game. Trades are made. They are hoarding their piles and building banks of snow around them when the older of my sisters suddenly shrieks, swatting her stack of cobs so they go spinning off in all directions. She flings a fistful of pebbles at the others, and one starts to howl. She stalks off, pitiless. I call her Miss Hiss for the noises she makes. She is a fury, like Jemima. But I do not think of Jemima. I do not know what I can do for her or anyone now.

  The littler sister spots me watching and comes over, chattering in breathless Shawnee, to hand me a pebble. I crouch to take it and I say in English:

  —You are a fine society lady.

  She smiles with her chin tucked in and then leans on me and begins to suck her thumb. She pulls at my ear, all dreamy. It seems to do as well as her own.

  —You would have my ear if you could, miss.

  She looks at me, and I point and say:

  —My ear. Ear.

  —Eah.

  —That is good.

  I point again to my ear to show the other watching children and the guard, who is smirking now. The children repeat it after me. I say:

  —I can quite fancy myself a teacher, though that is near all I would be able to teach you poor scraps. But for a card game. All-fours perhaps, if we had some cards.

  They all go on staring at me, and so I put out my tongue and try to say what it is. It comes out as Ung. The children scatter in apparent disgust, even my little sister, who near takes my ear with her. The guard looks disapproving and shifts his eyes away. I suppose I have done some other wrong now.

  —O girls of mine, leaving me again!

  I groan and clutch at my heart, and I fall to the snow and play dead. Jemima loves this game. Susannah and Israel too. Jamesie—

  No.

  I lie still, my head is icy. I feel Death sucking at my breath again. So many times it has come so close.

  My furious hissing sister rushes over from wherever she has gone and leans into my face, batting her black lashes and blowing close to my mouth. I do not move. I cannot.

  She screams very loud. My ears bang with it. I will never be allowed to be dead, as I have learned.

  I sit up and see another little girl watching me closely from where she sits nearby, her arms round her knees. She has quietly gathered up all the corncobs and pebbles and has them heaped up before her now. I say:

  —Hello Miss. Have you won the game?

  —Tongue.

  She says it perfectly and matter-of-factly, and then spins away looking ferocious and careless, hard as a little bullet.

  I think of her sharp little face as I walk in an arc behind the wigwams until I reach the fields. She has an air of complete liberty about her, the way some young children do. As if she cares for no one. I walk and listen to my dull footsteps. I look out over the fields and try to feel some liberty and lack of care myself. The sky is wide and ash-coloured.

  Black Fish at my side with an axe.

  His face is remote. I know I have displeased him this morning. He walks ahead, saying nothing. After several yards he looks back at me, and I follow. He does not swing the axe, he holds it across his body in both hands, as if it is a thin child.

  We walk through a furrow that winds about the strange hillocks humping up out of the fields. He moves quietly but sends back a ripple of disturbance through the air. My guard is disturbed also and shambles along to the side of me with his head down.

  When we reach the edge of the woods, the chief stops and turns to me, the axe flat on his palms. I take it. The handle is rough-grained and heavy. I think of what I might do with it, and what it might do to me. My neck is quite thick, I think.

  —You are to build a trough for your father’s ponies. Choose any log you like.

  I look up. The voice comes from a short way behind, it speaks in English. It is the black man, our interpreter. I have heard this voice in the nights, singing from the big house, amidst other sounds and talk. This is a noisy place on the whole. A busy winter town, full of its own life. I can hear Miss Hiss bawling from up the track between the wigwams.

  The black man says now:

  —I have left my whip at home, but I will be pleased to be your overseer.

  Saying no makes him smile. A lump of sugar shows between his teeth. His eyes are on the axe. I have no wish to deal with a go-between. I turn to Black Fish and say:

  —I am not building a trough. I told you, you have made me a warrior. My hands are not made for stupid work, look at them.

  I throw down the axe and thrust out my palms as I used to do for Daddy’s inspections. I boil up old anger and force my gaze to hold steady. If I do not argue, I will have worse to face. Or I will sink into this life and never get out. I know that my men are always listening and expecting escape, I can feel them hovering like a flock of great birds all of the time, even out here. And so I stare hard at Black Fish’s cold face and I raise my voice again:

  —Look. Go on. Take a good look. Smell them. Read my future.

  Black Fish covers his lips with his fingers and speaks in quick Shawnee. I catch a few words before the black man cuts in:

  —He says you need not work, you are his son. There are plenty of workers to build things for your people, plenty of women to grow food for you and your family when they arrive. What do you wish to do?

  The black man puts his hands together as if praying. An air of friendliness hovers like a dragonfly over water but I do not catch at it. I say:

  —I wish to do as I like.

  Black Fish listens to the translation and nods. He speaks again and briefly makes the same praying gesture as the black man, who says:

  —All right. We only wish for you to do as you like.

  We all nod and go our separate ways. This all seems very simple and sensible and perhaps it is so. I am still too slow and heavy inside to think it through. The black man is whistling something that sounds familiar, but I am too fatigued to recall the tune. My young guard walks beside me again, his hand clamped on my arm. He looks with longing back at the axe
.

  The days fall past like water dripping. There are shooting contests here. There are fights. The Shawnee take my arm and offer me fights as if they are healthful remedies. I do it but I dislike it. I do not trust my excitement or my pulse. I do not like the feel of my body trying to act as if it is alive. I fight a thickset man with thick arms, we near kill each other, but we catch one another’s eyes in the midst of grappling and both see that it is a stupid false thing to be doing, though we do not stop until I let him push me down into the snow and that is that. I feel myself to be drunken all the time, though there is no drink.

  In my permitted idleness I wander about the village with my guard. I hope to see my men to speak to but instead I find the black man lying on a rock by the river in the cold afternoon sunlight. He is the only black in the Indian town. He is treated like a visiting prince of some minor sort, indulged and ignored in turn. Is he free? He must be so. He does no work but the interpreting so far as I can see. He dresses as an Indian, with his headscarf and large rings splitting his ears.

  For lack of anything else to do I sit down near him. My guard hovers about us looking uninterested and disapproving at once. He pokes with a stick at the ruff of ice fringing the river, crack crack. But the air is quieter here and queer to my ears. No insects yet, and still cold. The water is low at the edges. The sun looks thin and white, a cut-paper sun.

  —Neppa.

  —What?

  —Neppa.

  —The same to you.

  The black man gives the word a stony drawl and keeps his eyes closed. I do not understand it. A branch cracks in the knot of trees where my guard has gone. I decide to play along. I say:

  —Tree. Is that it?

  He opens his eyes and rolls them upward, smiling to himself. I say:

  —Cloud, then. Ice. Water.