by Alix Hawley
—It is.
—Well then. I am proud.
Hamilton turns and looks out at the sky with its fat grey underbelly. He puts his hands behind him and says in a soft, more Irish manner:
—Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
More rain, more mud, more cold coming. The cold will preserve you, Rebecca, Jemima, boys, Squire. Neddy. At this time I do struggle with the thought of you being preserved, Ned, I will admit it.
Now Hill’s grey eyes appear in my mind, all curious. I say:
—What are you going to do with the whites my Indian father did sell you? Sell them on?
Hamilton looks at me from the side and says, still soft:
—It is a surprisingly cold country. A cold quite different from any I have ever known. I was born in Dublin, which is wet, but here it is not the damp, it is the ice in the air. It crystallizes on the skin remarkably. I dare say you find it as hard to sleep here in winter as I do.
His carefully dull face is almost beseeching. His hands go back to his elbows. Do not fall into this small trap, this small invitation to confidences. See his long waxy fingers with their yellowy nails. See him on top of his mountain of old hair. He says almost absently:
—A strange country. People simply go off and vanish here. It happens so often. Quite odd.
Oh, is that your game, Governor? He slips two fingertips under his wig for a scratch. See regiments of vanished people marching about, changing clothes and giving themselves new names, as easy as pie. Or being hidden in vanished graves. Easier still. He goes on:
—Your daughter was returned safely to you, however. I was pleased to know of it. Her story is quite a sensation in Europe, I hear, as is her father. Paintings, books, poems about her. They do take an interest in the more romantic aspects of our wild territory. Have you seen any?
Hill, I think of your stories spreading from you like clouds and drifting across the whole of the world, infecting all of it. But you are locked away here, hidden now. I say nothing, but Hamilton sees me looking at him and his face takes on the slyness of a cat who has seen a bird but is pretending not to see it. He says:
—Here is another question for you. Tell me, is it true that you were born the same day as the Queen of France?
He gives another boxy laugh. His question is real and eager. I answer slowly:
—The Queen of France. If they say so of me, it must be true.
—Then perhaps you will be living in a glass palace soon enough. Speaking en français. Do you know, I can quite see it. Destiny is a capricious mistress. And why not French? You seem to have a knack for the Shawnee tongue.
The lines of his face stretch out and I am put in mind of a net hanging underwater. A snap, a tightening, and it closes again.
THE QUEEN of France would eat her liver for my horse. Glossy white it is, with a waving white mane and tail. It looks like a painting of a horse, it looks quite varnished.
—Is that where Hair-Buyer got his wig from? A fine gift for Sir Turtle.
Pompey strokes the horse’s mane with a slow hand. The horse rolls her eyes and dips her lashes.
—Too beautiful for me, is that right?
—That is right enough. You have everything you wish as it is. Why did he give her to you? You were no help to him.
—He wants to keep me sweet. He thinks I might change my mind.
—Will you?
—I might. Make free and jump on, Pompey. That pony of yours looks as though it suffers beneath you.
I am walking beside the tall animal. It moves like water. It is morning and we have left Detroit behind. Callaway and Hill and the rest remain, they cannot see us now, but I do not ride the beautiful horse nonetheless. At this time I cut these prisoners from my mind. I cut them out like holes in wool. I do not wish to be their saviour even if I could. This is the truth.
People vanish here. A simple recipe.
I do not wish to see them. I do not wish to think.
Here is what I have. This white horse. Gunpowder on my hands and a few dregs in my pouch. A bag of silver trade trinkets and sweets from the Governor’s secretary, handed over at daybreak with the message that I was to make use of them with the Indians. I said:
—They treat me well enough.
The secretary looked as if he had something else stuffed beneath his white shirt and his snappish politeness. He said:
—They refuse to sell you yet. Will you not sell yourself?
He touched his pocket gently as though by chance. And this was my chance, as I know. I might go back to the British, or act as if I had. Live at Detroit and have feather pillows and be praised all day long. Ride to Boonesborough with a column of redcoats behind. Secure a safe passage to Fort Detroit for the families, turn all of them British again. The Bryans would like it. Feather pillows for all, why not. Another new life.
But it was an impossible picture, it smelled dry and bad. It was a turning back, which I have never liked. And a recklessness had me by the neck. Hamilton had reminded me of the war going on. War makes people want to dig in and win. This is the way I explained it to myself, stupid as it is, stupid as a mallet banging on a rock.
I think of Old Chillicothe. But we do not go straight home. We accompany the other chiefs back to their winter towns first. The route is longer and muddier also. Spring.
Do not think.
Well I do not think. I get on the horse.
The violet-blanketed chief has a small village, a poor enough place in a hollow, but all of his people come out to see us arrive. They stand at the doors of their huts. The older ones look shrunken or sick, their hands tight about their ribs. A couple of the boys point at Pompey, and one makes a sign at me, his small fingers turn to small horns on his forehead.
—Your reputation precedes you.
I make no reply to Pompey. I am an empty house where sounds echo and have nothing to catch upon.
The trees sharpen before the late sky. All the village youths dance indifferently, their heads spiked with turkey and crow feathers, nodding and shuffling in a row. The women serve hominy with chunks of last year’s pumpkin in it. Their faces are proud but it is the sort of proud that goes with being too poor. I wonder again about their chief’s marvellous blanket, which I have never seen him without. He might sell it and feed them. I wonder what he traded for it. Perhaps a piece of this country. But perhaps it is the best thing he has ever got and he cannot give it up, the purple scrap of a dream of betterment. He tucks it about himself now with care.
I eat my plateful but I am struck with a sudden desire for grapes, or apples, or plums. Something fresh from a plant or a tree. Too early yet. But it is something to think of, a plum with a white bloom all over it, and yellow flesh inside the blue skin. And a stone at the heart, of course. Plums are well-made things. Near perfect things.
I see an orchard of plums in Kentucky, that is to say the Kentucky of my dreams, but the shreds of my old dreams do not help me. The violet-blanketed chief is smoking and talking intently with the others, a mixture of tongues. Shawnee, Cherokee, something other. I pick up a little, but I do not try much.
I sit with Kaskee, who is tossing a small stone from hand to hand. Pompey wanders over from the chiefs and says:
—They talked of you first tonight, big man. Beloved of the Governor.
—Did they? This should not surprise me, I suppose.
—Does it surprise you?
I am weary. I say:
—Need you ask? You seem to know everything about me. What am I thinking of right now? You tell me. You are the interpreter, my friend.
—I am not your friend. Do you miss your white friends? The ones Black Fish sold?
I shake my head. I set my eyes on the children dancing, and I say:
—He might have sold you.
—He did not.
He looks ruffled, he blinks long. I say:
—You must be quite special to him. Pompey, beloved of the chief.
Pompey grunts and says:
<
br /> —A special possession. A curiosity. So special he will not let me go.
—And where would you go?
—Where could I go?
—Anywhere you like. I am not stopping you.
He gets up and walks off. What he is thinking I cannot tell, and I do not care. The dancers start up again as the chiefs rise from their circle.
One of the boys, quite a tall boy, is at the centre of the line now. He raises his arms stiff as planks above his head. His top teeth grip his bottom lip. He stands still. He is meant to do something but cannot do it or cannot remember it. He keeps his arms up. Then at once he lunges to the left and his ankle bends over. He topples and balls himself up. The other dancers stop. I am sorry for him, I know how he must feel. I look to Pompey, sitting across the fire, but he for one is watching me instead, considering, and tapping his knuckles on the ground as if testing ice.
The warriors go on and on about the white horse, they offer me anything in exchange. Houses, shirts, beads, wampum belts miles long, favours, wives. When we stop at the towns we are entertained and the chiefs are good to me, but the warriors keep up their teasing with serious faces. They say:
—My wife I give to you for this horse.
I say:
—No.
This does not quiet them. They laugh at my Shawnee accent and kiss the animal’s neck and sigh and whistle after her: I will love you better than he does. I will love you under your tail. Name her after your daughter, Turtle, I will ride her.
Kaskee grins. I would murder them all, him too, at this time if there were some instant way to have it done.
In the morning when we set off, a pair of the warriors set into the same talk. My horse, my daughter. They whistle and hoot as they are always doing. But Black Fish turns and halts his mount. He looks back at me for the first time since we left Hamilton. Now he looks at the rest in turn and they are quiet.
The horse stalks on as if blind to mud and other horses and anything walking on two legs. She has dark, damp eyes. She drops a mass of dung without breaking her high stepping. The warriors laugh themselves sick, and she carries on without a flicker. Perhaps she is deaf truly. There is always a flaw, as it seems to me. Stewart, for a moment I see you. Your flaw also, deafness. One I would not mind having instead of all my silver and sweets, all my gifts.
For five days Pompey keeps back from me as we go on to other towns. Then he rides up on his Sweet Apples into the wood where I and Kaskee and two others have been dispatched to shoot some dinner for the night’s camp. We are at the edge of a narrow clearing, readying our shot. Black Fish has given me some powder. I have not told him of the handful I took from Detroit, some of which I have sprinkled out in a little trail as we have gone. A trail to nothing in particular.
Pompey seems to be taking lessons from my horse, he is sitting his pony silent as a stone. Before long I am tired of him sitting there. I say:
—Do you know, I miss your singing just at this moment. Go on, call up some game for us. Charm us a buffalo.
The two Shawnee warriors confer and point at a stand of trees to the east. They get their rifles up and check their powder-horns. One jerks his head at me. I say:
—All right, you start.
The men go forward silent and easy, they trust me to my keeper, who is eyeing the gun. I am about to let him load the shot when Pompey reaches for my upper arm. His grip is cool but insistent. His voice is very low:
—Take the gun. Take it back.
His eyes are still, deliberately so. A trick he has learned from the Shawnee, Black Fish especially. He blinks up at the sky where the light is reaching the perfect pitch of dullness, it is evening shading into dark. Shadows mix with things. His head tilts slowly towards the darkening bushes. He unwraps his blue headscarf, his hair fades against the twilight, like his face. He says:
—Let your guard go. Tell him to go after the others. Here is another opportunity. Life seems to serve them up to you.
I keep my voice low like his. I say:
—What has you so serious? You speak heavy this evening.
—I believe I do.
Our eyes light into each other like teeth.
Kaskee has the gun, ramming the barrel and paying us no heed. We both look to him and then turn our eyes back to one another’s. Pompey speaks again, soft and deliberate, as if he is teaching me more unknown words:
—Take the gun. I believe I saw a turkey in the direction of those bushes.
He does not turn his head from me, he does not twitch. Sweet Apples browses the emerging grass intently as if not listening out of courtesy. My horse hobbled behind us seems as deaf as ever to anything but herself. I say:
—In that direction?
I point to the west where the sun is gone, leaving a bright smudge on the sky. Pompey gives the slightest nod. I say:
—Why would I wish to go there?
He says:
—You know the way to Old Chillicothe and all their winter towns now. If I were a white man who knew so much, I would do something with my knowledge. I also know the way. There is much I know.
His mouth sets. This is his offering to me, I can see. It has cost him to give it. What does he want?
In the thicket of saplings, a gun blasts and sends out rings of echo. My keeper looks to the sound. No one emerges yet. My eyes find Pompey’s again, his are clear and open. He looks to the horse and the pony and I now know him to mean: Get on the horse and we will be gone together.
At this time, my capture in the snow with the other horse comes back to me. Fate having me try it once more, seeing what I will do this time. It strikes me that I do know where all the Shawnee towns are. And this time my horse is not loaded down. And I have a companion who knows much. I turn all this over in my mind. But Pompey’s movements are not clear. His hands twist, pulling the pony’s head up by the mane. The pony’s eyes roll behind the hair. I say:
—Why do you wish to do this now?
He stares at the pony until it shuffles. He hisses:
—I am nothing here. A servant. They might as well take my balls, I might as well be a eunuch.
—A favourite, surely. Quite a prince. Part of the Shawnee family. Black Fish—
—You are the prince. To Black Fish, I am still a slave, doing his bidding, interpreting and singing for him when he pleases. I am no Shawnee. No warrior. They call me a bearskin.
—You are safe, you are fed. What else do you want?
At once he goes stiff and proud. He says:
—I want—what you have.
He gives a sour laugh and his eyes on me are like Hill’s when we were boys, curious and determined. He comes closer and takes my arm and says:
—I have money. I buried it with my brother in Virginia. He stole it and gave it to me before the master curry-combed him with salt and pepper and hay for losing a cow, and he died. No one will ever have found it, the grave is not marked but I know where it is. It is at the end of a field. I paced it out.
My joints ache. Run now, run this time. Pompey is behaving like something in a cage bursting to get out, but to do what? His eyes are still, as if he is looking into the bottom of that grave. He says:
—It is not much, but I know where it is.
—You would dig up your dead brother?
—The Shawnee do it. I have seen it done. It is nothing.
The smell of powder residue floats back. I push my own brother Israel’s face away. The Shawnee hunters call to me: Sheltowee. Sheltowee.
So far their voices are without urgency, they are talking to each other about the deer they have brought down. My young guard is sitting splayed on the ground, troubled by the shot he is trying to fit into the barrel. Ten steps and we would be invisible to him, we would be in the dark of the trees. I am twisting as if on a rope. I twist and twist and I do not know what is beneath me.
Pompey speaks again:
—You could say you were my master for the time. Until I could get myself elsewhere. It is your turn to hel
p me, as you promised. You are free.
He shuts his mouth. But I do not loosen my grip on that rope. I have not finished. Not yet. If I run they will come after me, they and Hamilton will come for the fort and all of us, and they will not be kind.
And worse. The Shawnee will call me traitor. I cannot bear that somehow, the thought knots in my gut.
Looking Pompey dead in the eye, I speak up in a hearty manner:
—Well. Sounds as though we do not need a turkey now.
To the other hunters I call:
—Here I am.
Pompey instantly averts his face and rides away in the direction of the camp. Pompey, I am sorry, you thought I could give you some luck and another life. You could not go yourself and hope to be free. Where could you go? Free blacks have no true life, someone would have made a slave of you again. But I did not see this at the time. You bewildered me. I did not see what you were about. I did not wish to go looking for the dead and their money, I saw only myself twisting. I did not see you.
I RIDE ALONE as we continue on to the other towns. I watch for signs on trees or the ground, but there is nothing fresh or readable. The horses and ponies and walkers churn up the damp earth. Frost ridges the outlines of the prints as the sun climbs, they look silvered in the light. I watch the lines glitter and fade as a little warmth spreads out in the air. Soon enough they are mud.
The breeze rises as we ride on, the sun is warmer. The tiredness in my bones lifts. I see a woodpecker with its feet dug into the side of a tree, and I think of throwing my little bird club when I was a boy, again and again, until I could get anything I wanted with it. I would have been glad to get this bird with its scarlet crest and its black and white body. I would have taken it to show to my brother Israel. Israel, you would have been surprised. I think of you but I do not feel you near.
The bird raps sharp at the bark. My father riding ahead turns, and his eyes pierce me through. His silver earrings sway when he stops. I am startled somewhat. When he urges the horse on again, I see Pompey cutting away from him and dropping back among the warriors.
In his anger at me, Pompey has been telling Black Fish that I mean to be off. I am near certain of it. I can feel his anger from here. But no one comes back to truss me up. I walk the white horse for a time and no one holds me. I am slow, my guard Kaskee walks some little way ahead with the other young men. The horse steps high, the mud sucks at her feet. The dew will be heavy tonight. I keep my weight light and even to stop my tracks being too visible, an old hunting trick Israel showed me. Going along slow, I watch the light coming through the bare branches and the hard buds, a web above us. The trail curves to the left.