All True Not a Lie in It

by Alix Hawley

He shakes his head very slightly and then lifts his hands and fans his fingers as though something were spilling out of them. I say:

  —Salt.

  He gives a short high laugh like a horse. He says:

  —Idiot. Salt got you here.

  I laugh back and say:

  —I would not disagree at this moment.

  —Your little white friend is an idiot.

  He sits up somewhat and nods towards a spot upstream where Johnson is cowering on his hands and knee. He is swaying his head low like a sick dog and muttering. A small group of Shawnee men is behind him watching. I say:

  —If you say so.

  —Idiots, all of you. Devils.

  —Idiots and devils come in all varieties. All colours. Just like flowers. Are you fond of flowers?

  I look straight at him, all innocent. He stares back, making his eyes pots of innocence also. We have a brief contest of innocence until Johnson begins to bark. He is dripping foamy spittle at the mouth. One of the Shawnee shouts at him to point to where our fort is, and he gets up and points in every direction, including up to the sky, with a sloppy grin. We look to him, and I say:

  —They call him Little Duck now, I think. Pekula. But I defer to your knowledge of the local tongue.

  —Ought to be Little Bastard. Or Crazy Mongrel.

  —They have a way with names. As do you.

  He glances at me and in his slow stony way he remarks:

  —Sheltowee.

  —Is that what they call me now?

  —Do you not listen to your mother? Big Turtle. It was their dead one’s name, but it suits you well enough. You looked like a turtle coming out of the river after they washed you. Sheltowee.

  —Well. I am flattered. Turtles are no fools.

  —Fools are generally popular. They do not work that one at all. Like you.

  The man nods towards the foaming Johnson. I say:

  —And like you, may I say. What do they call you? Thunder and Lightning?

  —Pompey.

  I have to laugh:

  —Pompey, is it? Hardly sounds Indian. Pompey. That what you call yourself?

  Now he closes his face to me, and I feel his coolness return. We sit for a time in silence. I hear my guard poking roughly at the ice.

  The woman who tugged out my hair is coming along the bank, holding a child’s hand and carrying a bucket. The child is the sharp little girl. Her hair has a rusty tone in the sunlight. She trails a stick behind her and keeps looking back at it as if hoping a small dog will attach itself. When they near us, I say:

  —How do, Delilah. How do, young lady.

  Both of them ignore me. They leave shuffling marks in the snow. I watch them go. To Pompey I say:

  —That woman speaks some English?

  Pompey rolls lazily towards me, he shows the most interest I have seen from him yet, but he is refusing to give up his game. He eyes me and says only:

  —Neppa.

  And he passes his hand through the air before his face. It changes to a flat sleeping face.

  —Ha! Sleeping. Sleep.

  He smiles with his teeth now and says:

  —Close to neppoa. Which means dead. A sensible language, Shawnee is.

  —Well. Thank you for the lesson. Now tell me how to say female barber.

  He says:

  —You can repay me first.

  —Well well, and what can I do for you?

  —I will think on it.

  He holds his grin a moment and then appears to go unconscious again, eyes closed and lips open and nostrils going in and out. I think of the last time I really slept so. It was the night my Jesse Bryan was born in the little house I built on Beaver Creek, when I plaited Rebecca’s hair for her and went to open the door and look at the sky. A stripe of pink was above the trees, morning a certainty. I say:

  —Neppa. There you are. Or neppoa. Well. I wish I were one or the other.

  Pompey props himself up on his elbows and surveys me once more. He says:

  —You look as if you are smoking something sour. Shall I have someone fetch more of the drink for the sick? Give you a purge? I saw how you enjoyed it.

  I want to laugh but I remind myself to get up and stalk off, though I am tired of conjuring these bursts of anger. I am tired of my aching ankle and rib and shoulder, reminders of wounds that did not kill me.

  Johnson is bucking like a young mule trying out its first kicks. His knees are knocked together, all awkward, and strings of drool swing from his chin. His audience is contemplating him. Some of them make low remarks to each other on his performance. Delilah and the girl are standing slightly apart, looking on calmly as he yells: Ee-aw!

  I can see what he is playing at. It would be easy enough to do the same, to become another Little Duck, or Little Ass, to save oneself. All of the capering and foolery. But surely Johnson cannot keep this up. Do ducks live for ever? No. We had a mule once that lived to a great age but not even asses live for ever.

  There are ways to preserve oneself. Bury oneself in salt, for instance. I think of it. At this time I still imagine that I might preserve everyone I have not yet lost.

  —ALL RIGHT.

  This is all I seem able to say. My men look at me for signs and I have none to give. They look at me as if I were a gypsy ball that shows the future. I am the freest of us, but the guards do not allow me to be too close to Johnson or the others. They put up with a few words in English if we pass in the town, but this is the only time we can speak. All I can do at such times is try to harden my face or say: All right. Perhaps it is a question.

  I see men working outside their new families’ wigwams or in their plots in the fields where the snow is beginning to clear. They grind corn or chop kindling or pull up dead stalks and roots with their mothers and guards nearby. But two I do not see, Hill and Callaway. I do not know where they are until the night I hear their voices shinning up out of the dark and over the distance. Hill is singing as if drunk, and Callaway is speaking the song’s words as if he were arguing. Poor Britons, poor Britons, poor Britons remember. He is the sort who believes there is no point to singing at any time. Then there is a shout and a banging and the song goes no further. Well, perhaps Callaway is satisfied with this outcome.

  When I go about in the village in the morning, I notice a small log outbuilding behind the big house. It has no windows, and two rough, raw-boned young Shawnee lounge about before its door. Now I know Hill and Callaway are in this little prison house with little space between them, to judge from the size of the place. No one has adopted them. Perhaps they are such dirty types at bottom that they are not yet clean. Perhaps they need another good ducking in the river, but who will adopt Hill now?

  I give a halloo. Shufflings and questionings come from inside as if I have awakened them, but my young guard hustles me on with his face forward and his eyes sliding towards the two rough fellows. There is no reply.

  We turn and pass through the town again. I hope to see the children but they appear to have been kept at home today. I make for the riverbank. The day is warming and Pompey might be lolling at the water again. Perhaps he will teach me more words, perhaps he will give me some sign of what to do. He seems to want something from me, though he is not straight about it.

  My guard follows me along the water’s edge. I go farther along the bank than before. The river is higher today, the earth softening somewhat where it meets the water. Round the bend is a great canebrake, high dead stalks blocking the way. I push back a few to make a path. And here is Johnson, sitting in a flattened patch and staring saucer-eyed at the current. He is throwing sticks into the water and still drooling. His guard is also throwing sticks, but keeping his spittle contained. I say:

  —Surely you can find better bait.

  I kick my moccasin high into the air and take my time finding it. My keeper looks at me with his pimply face but lets me be. Johnson turns his saucer eyes on me to gibber:

  —The falling of the stars, the smash-up of the moon.<
br />
  His voice is trembly and aged though he still looks small and young. He quacks loud and I say:

  —No need to keep that up with me, Johnson.

  I shake my head sadly at the guards and say:

  —Poor madman. Poor little fellow.

  I roll my head and eyes about to show them what I mean. To Johnson I say:

  —I know what you are doing, and you are doing it just fine.

  Johnson whispers again, his head stuck into the cane. He throws a twig feebly and dangles his fingers as if he has dabbled them in something sticky and dripping. He clutches at my leg and I near jump away.

  —What?

  I bend to hear him and he grins at me through his beard, which the Shawnee barberesses have not touched. This beard is like old rotting rope picked apart and slathered in wet. The grin is humourless. His hands keep still on my leg. He says through his teeth:

  —Get us out. That is your job.

  My guard and Johnson’s are smirking and watching him in hope that he will perform some new antic. The Shawnee seem distantly fond of Johnson, as they are of Pompey. They appear to like characters, which is sensible enough, as everything here is unchanging and endless, it seems.

  I smirk also as if we are sharing a joke, and I say low to Johnson:

  —We will get out. Not yet. So do not give us away now with anything stupid. Or too stupid.

  My young guard is suddenly reminded of his authority and tugs my head back by the remaining lock. Behind his pimples and his disinterest, his face is full of longing. He wishes to be a warrior. He still has all of his hair, for which he is ungrateful. When he lets me go, I shake my head again and I say:

  —Poor Pekula. Little Duck, is that right? He has always been the same.

  In my mind I can see Johnson at the fort, chopping logs and hunting quite sanely, and showing no interest in ducks or play-acting. Something has loosed itself, but it is not true madness, and not only an attempt to keep himself safe. He is enjoying himself in some fashion.

  I replace my moccasin. My toes are damp and cold but not frozen. The days are slowly lengthening. How long have we been here? A month. More.

  Johnson’s guard shakes his head also. Johnson begins to chant and thump himself upon the chest. His voice is melancholy and deep as he calls out of the cane:

  —O your mother is a whore, your wife is a whore, and your daughter i-is a bastard whore.

  I hear it in the night travelling on the air from the prison-house.

  Some of the other men are singing it in the morning. They are in the fields hoeing at the mounds of black earth emerging from the snow. They have the look of grave-robbers at their work. I watch. The women watch too and walk back and forth, their hands in their pouches full of rattling seeds. They are waiting to plant the hillocks with their crops. If there are any dead beneath, they will make for better plants perhaps. Young Will Brooks spies me and lifts his hand in greeting, but soon it falls as if ashamed of itself.

  The singing cuts through the chopping and digging. The men sound merry enough but with a hard edge. The kind of merriment that comes when there is someone to kick. This is new. Though not new in my life.

  Your daughter is a whore whore whore, your daughter is a whore.

  Someone has given it a melody, sweet and almost melancholy. Whore whore whore runs slowly up the scale. As we walk back to the village, I even catch my guard humming it.

  Well. It seems to be providing amusement. The white men’s music carries on the breeze, and my little sisters dance to it, hopping over pebbles set in rows in the street outside of our wigwam. In the midst of their hopping, the girls grin at me. I tip them a small bow.

  Inside the house I cannot hear so well, and I must admit that I am somewhat relieved. The dark and the smell have also become a relief to me. The young guard coughs outside to remind us that he is still doing his job. The chickens rustle on the roof and one pokes its head down into the smoke hole. My Shawnee mother smiles without looking at me and then turns her back as she tends the fire. I can see she would rather I were not here.

  The men’s voices rise. Black Fish is resting on his mat and says nothing at first. But as soon as he opens his black eyes they are on me. He stands and takes up a gun from beneath a blanket in a corner. It is an old flintlock with a poor splintered stock. He holds it out and I take it. I put it to my shoulder and take a sight and say:

  —Is this to shoot my men with, now?

  He smiles very briefly. I could say: Or shoot you with. But I do not say so. For one thing, who can tell whether the gun actually works?

  I watch his face for another break in the flatness, another joke. He says:

  —Go off and hunt.

  —Hunt what, Father? I am at your disposal.

  —What you like.

  I expect a smile, but there is none. My mother bangs down her pot.

  —A bastard daughter. Excellent wife you must have.

  Pompey says this in his stony fashion. The crows are examining the papery old cornstalks and brown leaves the melt has revealed at the edge of the woods. He sits smoking a pipe of willow tobacco and watching, as if they will try to get away from here if he takes his eyes from them.

  I have come by a long route towards the woods, away from the field where my men are at work. I take the gun from my back. I have made a new stock for it and it is a good one now. I give it to my sullen guard to hold and I say:

  —Shoot yourself a bird.

  And the young man aims straight at the sky as ordered, his face near happy for an instant. He keeps the gun plumb.

  —How many daughters, Sheltowee? Big Turtle Who Holds Up the World Entire?

  Pompey sucks in his cheeks at this title. The dead one’s name has not settled on me yet. Even Black Fish does not use it for me, though I have heard him calling his little daughters by name, Pimmepessy and Pommepessy. From my sleeping mat with half-closed eyes I have seen him kissing the girls good morning and letting them snatch pieces of maple sugar from between his teeth. I think of Hill’s stories of him burning people tied to stakes, toasting them so slowly they go on dying and dying. There is an art to doing this. How does one learn such an art?

  At last I say:

  —Plenty of daughters. You?

  —None for me.

  —No sons either?

  —No.

  —That makes sense. Who would have Pompey?

  The crows laugh and flap off. He curls his lip up over his gapped teeth in a great false smile. For once he looks caught out for something to say. I ask:

  —Where did they get you? You have been here a good while. Bedded right in, I would say.

  Pompey only shrugs and keeps up his frozen smirk. I say:

  —You were captured?

  He looks at me. He says:

  —Not like you, son of a—chief.

  —How is that?

  He spits out a few pellets of laughter and says:

  —I am no one’s son. And I did not come running to them like a blind man at the end of a sack.

  —Ha.

  He begins to chew on his pipe. It gets caught between two of his teeth. His mouth twisted sideways, he says round it:

  —As I see it, you wished to get yourself caught. And your white fellows with you.

  I strike the pipe hard from his teeth, it falls into a puddle of slush where it sticks stem-up. He looks at me, keeping still.

  —Well, Turtle. Touched your turtle heart?

  —Do you think I wanted us all taken? Do you think I choose to be here?

  —I do not think you mind. It has not hurt you any. Some are born lucky, the rest of us have to put up with seeing that.

  He hums a little of the whore song, then he says:

  —They hate you well enough now, your own people.

  Be safe here. Preserve everyone. I remind myself. I do not feel at all safe around Pompey. Carefully I say:

  —It will all be for the best. My men know that. Our joining the Shawnee will stop all the warri
ng between us. Make us all better off. We can ally against the British.

  His eyes lift to the sky and he gives an idle half-smile. He says:

  —We shall all be brothers in the spring. You did tell us so when we took you.

  He begins to unwind the blue cloth from about his head. His hair jumps free in its tight coils. It smells of clove oil or something like it and I wonder whether he has a headache. But I do not ask, and he would not tell me if he had. The pipe is still sticking up out of the slush like a jaunty leg. I say:

  —You seem to be a brother here yourself, I might say. But you must have been taken prisoner first. You were somebody else’s slave to begin with.

  His eyes go hard and dull. He says:

  —You know everything about the lives of slaves, I am sure. Slaves of your own at your fort. They do say you are clever.

  —There are slaves there. And I am that. Clever enough.

  He rubs hard at a place on his head as if it itches him. The scent spreads. I say:

  —We are staying. We are not going to run. Are you?

  His face twitches, and he laughs, a forced sound like a bellows:

  —Run? Back to Virginia? To whippings and eating beside hogs? To eating hogs’ arses? I do not even remember who I was then. I do not even remember my name.

  —Maybe you were a hog’s arse. Or merely a hog.

  —Maybe I was.

  He is about to knock me down, I feel it coming. I stand still, I dig my feet in.

  He stills himself also. It is an effort. His fists are tight, his boil rises.

  A long silence knits itself between us. The river chuckles. The guard takes the opportunity to pull the gun’s trigger and fall over with the kick. The bang rings round us and fades away slow.

  I crouch and pick up Pompey’s pipe. I try to make my voice solemn when I say:

  —Well. Life is good here. Better.

  —No mistake. True.

  Something hangs in the air, a deceitful whiff. Our agreement surprises us, we do not trust it. I see a great unhappiness stiffening him. Then his bones give way and he stretches his arms in a lazy manner as if he has no cares at all. In his usual fashion, he says:

  —They may still kill you, you know. Your new brothers.