All True Not a Lie in It

by Alix Hawley

—In Carolina there was a big Cherokee with a long face, an over-tall man. A sad face. You know of him? He called himself Jim. Big Jim.

  I spit the words in two pieces. She might know him, she might well be his sister. His wife. She might have learned her English words from him, in his voice. I sit in expectation of an answer. I expect to have all of the answers. But now she is quiet, her eyes perplexed. She says:

  —I do not know that name.

  Her words are so simple, so straight. She is so separate from me, sitting calm on her stool with her seeds. I kick over her basket. She is confused by my rage. She does not touch me. She says:

  —I had a different name then too.

  —What name?

  —Gogiv. Crow, in Cherokee.

  Still she does not move, but she says:

  —Everyone remembers things, but why say so? Maybe not to talk is better. The girl is my girl now. She is your girl now.

  She knows that I will not turn away from this. I feel her quiet certainty like a cool wind. She picks up her basket and takes up a seed with her fingertips. Crack crack. The past is stuffed with the dead, I know. I cannot look at them. Look at what is here now: Here is my wife, here is my daughter, here am I. We are all in pieces. We all move about, everything moves, as it seems to me. These pieces have landed here for the time, but who can say when they will fly apart again?

  IF ALL IS nothing, you might well have a share of it.

  You might well start again. Again.

  You might well start here.

  You might well continue on with your wife, touch her and sleep with her and eat her food.

  You might well keep the girl as your own. You might well love her. She holds on to your ankle if she is close enough. She never blinks, she is worse than the eye in your chest. Her fingers are strong.

  These are things that I tell myself. I do not know whether I believe them. But I tell myself.

  When I cannot see her sharp little face, I ask her. She is riding on my shoulder again as we walk back from the woods. Her feet dangle against the gun. They are bare, the day is bright. We are looking at the towers of clouds when I say it:

  —Do you remember the other place you lived in? The other town? You remember your Ma and Daddy, I imagine.

  Her sudden stillness is terrible. A bird flaps up out of the bushes and spins quickly in the air, flying away from us and into the trees, flashing its bright underwings. I think of the children left to wander the forest after attacks, surviving on something. Indian, white, black children. Sometimes they run if they see us, they hide in the trees rather than say anything, they store up the scraps of what they have seen and turn them into God knows what. Once Squire saw a boy from one of the Indian camps that had been burned and routed. The back of the boy, shirtless and blistered and raw, the brown skin left around the edges. Running away at full tilt. Squire never caught him.

  Out of nowhere Eliza says coldly:

  —My father is a great big man. My mother is a great big woman with big feet. They have a chimney and big dogs to eat everyone.

  —Is that so?

  When I say nothing else, her legs slowly relax against the gun again and we carry on home, both of us easier with this story.

  We do go along. This is our life. The crops grow well. Boonesborough recedes to a grey point. I can see all of it and none of it. I stop looking. In Eliza I can see Jemima of course, and Susannah, and Jamesie too. I see the wariness, the sudden bursts of confidence, the big eyes always watching.

  I am asleep when the door is pushed open. Methoataske is instantly awake beneath my arm, Eliza rolls and sits up. Pompey’s face is almost invisible, there is no moon and the fire is near out. But the slow amused voice in the dark is his.

  —You are wanted, Sheltowee. At the council house.

  —Now?

  —Does that not suit you?

  —All right, I am coming.

  I find my leggings and moccasins. I feel Methoataske and Eliza trying to see me. I say nothing, I walk out after Pompey. The night is loud with insects, moths touch my cheeks. We pass by the hunched wigwams, feeling our way along the walls until there is a swath of light from the open door of the big house.

  —Not going to send me to prison again, Pompey?

  He laughs low and slaps the log wall of the hut as we go around it. He says:

  —The bridegroom never likes to leave the nest, as I said.

  He seems at ease with me again, his laugh is warm enough. I have not escaped to any freer life, I am still here, as he is. Pompey, I remember this.

  He leads me in. The raw light makes me blink, the fire is heaped up and blazing with sparks.

  Black Fish is standing before it. His lock of hair is slightly dishevelled from sleep. He gives me a small smile, an indulgence for the bridegroom. The warriors are talking. A few of the whites see me with bright awake eyes. Jackson looks doubtful and tired, Hancock smiles very broad.

  Black Fish raises his hand for quiet and says:

  —This evening, hunters have seen the duck. Not far.

  I think only of fat ducks flying by in some insulting fashion, perhaps relieving themselves upon the chief. Pompey sees my lack of understanding and bends to tell me:

  —The little bastard duck, if you are wondering which one in particular. Pekula.

  I see Johnson’s lean face again, all long jaws. I had forgotten it but here it is. I say:

  —He is alive? Here?

  —There were other men with him in the woods beyond the fields. We could not catch up with them.

  Black Fish looks to an elder warrior, who speaks quickly. I say:

  —Is Johnson—Pekula—here?

  —No.

  Pompey says:

  —Away with the spirits, the little madman.

  The Shawnee laugh, the fire leaps. Black Fish steps forward again. He says:

  —The white fort is strong, we know. They have more men. We will not wait to take it.

  His eyes hook into mine. Hold your face still. In truth it is easy enough to show nothing, I am so perplexed and so surprised that I am empty again. So often I told them that the fort is too strong, and full of sick women and bawling children. And now to myself I have said: It is gone.

  I cannot think.

  Pompey is looking at me with his lips tight. Black Fish is looking at me, my men are looking at me. A tremor is holding itself back, waiting to open a great cracked seam in the floor.

  Slowly I say:

  —Of course. We will not wait.

  Black Fish nods once, his eyes go behind their doors. The talk pools into planning and drinking and loose celebration. My mind runs everywhere. The fort. Johnson made it back there alive. There must be people there. It must still exist. All of you still alive, is this what you were saying to me in my sickness? Did I have it so wrong?

  There will be more deaths. The fort will be ready for a fight now, there will be no surprising it. Death, is this what you were here to tell me? That you would wait a while?

  Black Fish’s face is sure and set. His profile stands out sharp in the firelight.

  My heart leaps like a caught trout. The fire spews sparks and ash, a curl of smoke drifts out the hole into the night. Pompey grins at me, leaning forward and mopping his forehead with his blue scarf. He shakes it out like a flag and begins to sing.

  It is happening. It is already happening, Daddy. The past circling back, pushing down the door.

  THE MESSENGERS ride out very early, before most of the men are up to hunt. They are going to the other towns to enlist their allies and prepare the attack. When I close my eyes, I can see an army massing and rolling forward like waves. I hear the hoofs pound off. Their rhythm is stern but has a catch of joy, it travels through the earth. The sound carries.

  I go to hunt. I think on the feel of the gun, which is not so very good a gun, but I will make a new stock. I think on the stock I will make, the wood I will choose for it. The dew is wet and not frosted. The grass does not crunch, it slides like hair
underfoot. I hook my finger around the trigger, I watch for movement in the sky, my finger pulls back and bang, a duck falls out of the air. It lands with its beak open, looking disgusted but reconciled to its end. Eliza sits on the rock where I told her to sit, she is watching hard.

  The women are preparing over-much food, gutting and plucking and skinning. Joints and limbs hang in the trees.

  Methoataske brushes out her hair like a blanket over her body, like a Quaker cloak. I touch it. I call her Squethetha, Little Girl. I give her a woodpecker I got. It has bright black and white wings and a silky crest. I have no Governor’s silver left to give her, only this. She smiles and takes the bird. I give a wing to Eliza, a crow’s, black with an oily bluish cast and a leathery handle. She turns it into a fan, she will not let anyone touch it. She fans her face, in and out of shadow.

  The dance is serious and ancient but a current of happiness ripples through it. Everyone is dressed up, painted up, very fine. Even the children are in the big house. Everyone eats and talks and goes back to pick again at the meat and bread and bones, and then more food comes in on platters. A warrior vomits quietly at the side of the room and I think briefly of poison, but it is only too much eating. He is a famous eater, as Pompey tells me.

  The drummers started long ago, their bodies are coated in sweat. The rhythm drags and then bounces back up. Bodies mill and shuffle round them. Pompey stands about, refusing to be pulled in, looking as though he has to be persuaded, which he likes. At last he lets himself be pressed to the centre of the room beside the drums. He raises his arms to shoulder-height and looks distant before he begins a high song, another familiar tune that was once English, perhaps. Many of his words are unfamiliar. I understand some: people, time, war, sing. It is something about the past, old times, I think. Sechcommika. It sounds as though he is making it up. It goes on and on.

  Black Fish is smiling a little, tilting his head, then he catches himself and sits up straight. Pim sits upon his knee and pulls his earring. The men make a circle to one side of the room, women make one on the other. All turn and turn, no one looking at anyone else. The concentration is great. The bodies seem walled off from one another. Only the feet move on and on together with the drumming.

  The women melt away, their silver brightens into gold in the firelight and then vanishes. The children go too, some crying with fatigue. My wife turns to me with Eliza in her arms before they disappear.

  Alone the men carry on faster, twisting their upper bodies within the circle. I am jostled in, Pompey pauses in his singing to grin at me, his face glistening. I shuffle my feet about, I was never a dancer. But this is not difficult. I turn, I feel the mass of the turning, a great shivering wheel. I feel the drums in my ribs and my back and the top of my head.

  When the circle breaks into pieces, the drums roll back down into a low steady pulse. We all stop and breathe and stand about, a little foolish. Some stretch their arms and necks. The smell of us pervades the great room and I am glad for the smoke hole, though not much cool air comes down. Several old women, their eyes down, drag in a huge salt kettle. One of those they took from us at the salt spring, most likely. Perhaps the one I toted here. So long ago, back down a thin tunnel in a rock.

  The women struggle to set it down, they puff and back away when they have done it.

  Black Fish has vermillion on his raised palm, which he pulls across his eyes. Red streaks his forehead and eyelids, his finger-lines show in it. He dips a cup into the pot, he holds it in both hands. The air is heavy and liquid and over-breathed. My head wheels, I pull my eyes back to my father. He is drinking. His throat swallows, down and down.

  We all form a tail. We all drink. Black Drink, they call it. War drink. When my turn comes, I take the cup from my father. Bitter, brackish, strong. It moves into my blood. His eyes glitter at me in their red, they are full of love. He dips his chin.

  And Eliza’s face. It catches me. She has crept back in, she is crouched in a corner, she fans herself with the crow’s wing.

  —You ought to take your mother’s old name. You are like a young crow.

  Eliza feels heavier on my shoulders this morning. The paint horse walks beside us, its head nodding. I am tired, I have not slept. The Black Drink did its work on me but now I am emptied out, though I must hunt with the others. I must go with the men to the graves beyond the trees. She, however, is wide awake, banging her heels.

  —Why?

  —Because—you make such a noise. And your eyes do not shut.

  I talk stupidly, I talk to stop my mind from darting about. I tease Eliza and I tickle her legs. Others are out already on their way, laden with food and pots and clothing and other offerings. We are late rising. Methoataske is coming along as far as the fields. Women are at work there with their white sons, they are crossing their arms and leaning on their hoes and sticks, turning their faces to the sun. Methoataske stops to speak with them, she bends to pull up a string of weed. Her hair is plaited up again. I have an urge to touch it and to make her look at me.

  We are to dig up the dead warriors and rebury them with better things in hope that their old strength and luck are still about and will settle on us. We do not like them to be alone. They will be with us when we march on Boonesborough. We will go there and I will see the people there again. There will be more deaths, more burying, and whose? This I do not know. I watch my feet.

  I go on with the girl. I walk slowly, I try to sharpen my brains. I hold onto her sharp knees. We are close to the trees at the edge of the woods. Here I set Eliza down on a greying trunk.

  —Your place for this morning. All right?

  She flaps her fan at me. I remember the waft of air on my face. Eliza.

  Four or five others are drifting into the woods, spreading themselves out. No one is moving quick today. They are walking towards the painted grave-markers, the sticks weathering in the trees. I cannot see them yet. Black Fish is first. His head is bowed slightly. He is thinking of his real son. They brought his body back here to bury it. He will see him.

  I walk the horse forward, the shade cools my sore tired eyes.

  Across the sun it comes, a burst of black and bright red, a flight. We have not seen turkey for months. So many of them fly out that they are crashing into one another, knocking heads and wings, crying garbled sounds no one can understand. They are like the bright flying souls of the dead, they are absurdly close to us, within our reach. They are alive and flapping and fighting and callling. The men laugh, hardly able to get out their guns and load and aim. This abundance is a shock. It is like seeing Kentucky for the first time, full of turkey and full of everything.

  My chest goes hollow. Surely this is some sign. All my life I have been looking for signs. And the turkeys seem to be looking on me with their peaceable ringed painted eyes like spirits. So beautiful is it here, and so strange. But nothing can stay so beautiful and so strange.

  You might run.

  Go.

  Be gone you ape.

  The old voices in my head. Human voices, but so far away.

  I rein the horse in, I turn her head, her hooves twist, her ankle near rolls. The day is bright and sharp-edged above the forest. The figures dip and sway in the fields. Clutching at the horse’s mane I drop the rifle, the stock cracks and splits as it strikes the ground. No gun, no knife. Here again am I. I have not moved an inch since they first caught me in the snow.

  An army surges at my back and it is an army of ghosts, all of my dead. My neck pricks and cringes, so bare is it. They do not touch me. They are watching, they are all eyes, what will I do this time?

  I argue with them: We need to go along. We have been going along here.

  A turkey gobbles and gibbers like a dead aunt offering advice from the next world. It is no advice. It is no help. The dead blow cold nothing on my neck. Israel is smiling. More of them are waiting, quiet in their graves in the woods. I wheel, I try to see but again there is nothing. Still your face is not there.

  I want to see
you. I want to see you again. Then perhaps I would understand.

  The want strikes me like a blow, my heart is a great hole full of want. I had not thought want could go so far into a body. I hear Eliza calling after me, insistent as the turkey: Daddy, Daddy—

  Out of her words shapes grow. Jemima, Rebecca, my boy Israel, and Susy and the rest. Perhaps alive at the fort. Not safe, but there at least. But Jamesie, your missing face rips a hole through me. I think of you calling me in the same way as Eliza does. I turn again to try to catch you but you are not there.

  Here is the bargain I offer Death: Take others if you must. Let me see my son.

  We make our trades.

  I see what I want, what I must do. I dig my heels into the guilty horse, I push her so she runs and we are ahead, we are in the trees. I narrow my eyes against the branches, and the day dims. And as I race on I see myself running on through black woods and mountains, for days and days, all the long way to Powell’s Valley. I see myself in a light spinning snow at the grave Squire went back to make, where it is higher and colder, where the wolves have been first, trying to scratch a way in.

  I see that I will dig down to the two bodies wrapped together in Rebecca’s linen sheet. One has dark hair and one is fair. The fair plait is yours. It is stiff and unpliable, like frozen straw.

  The face is yours but covered in a film of salt. The eyes are still there beneath the half-closed lids but they have withdrawn entirely. You have become strange. The waxy flesh is dull, still torn. I had thought it might have healed itself up in some way, I suppose. I take up the forearms, the poor hands, the nails all gone, pulled out one by one. The stabbed palms. The black bites from knives look like small gills, as if you had been trying to suck at air with your whole body, trying to get free of the terrible net.

  I hold your hand. A dart-arrow is broken off in your side, I touch it gently beneath your torn shirt. Your shirt makes me want to weep. You are still seventeen years of age, but strange.

  The dark boy is Russell’s son Henry. His body is in much the same state and is worse to look at, it makes my shoulders heave, I cannot touch it. I can only touch you. I cannot let you go. I am the only living thing here, a black mark in a field of snow. I put my face to your chest. It is cold and hard, no sound comes from it. If I do not move, wolves will eat my body. They have not eaten yours but they have been close. They will eat us together and we will be mingled inside them then, we find out where wolves go.