The Kept

by James Scott

  The cold mud pulled her down, down into the embrace of the Devil. Her hand went to her chest, where her cross always resided, but all that met her fingers was a naked chain. She gave in, the faces of her children turning away from her, and when they turned back, they were as she’d found them some days ago, waxen and unmoving, fear and accusation stuck forever in their skin. She struck her knee on a stone in the mud as she yielded. Something rustled above her—the wings of a demon beating, flying down from the rafters, close to her. The heat burned her face and the only relief she could find lay in the mud and she surrendered, allowing the cooling powers to provide for her, knowing all the while that they were a gift of the Devil.

  CALEB SHOOK HIS mother lightly. She groaned. He pulled the blanket over her bare shoulder. Even in the icy mud, her skin was hot. She’d bled through her bandages. Her eyes, glassy and unfocused, pointed in the direction of the house. His image of her rising, yawning, and stretching away the shotgun pellets he’d inflicted upon her, ready to take off after the men who’d murdered their family, was completely gone.

  She hadn’t done serious damage, merely opened a few wounds with exertion. Rivulets of sweat wiped the dirt away in thin stripes. He melted snow over the fire and used one of the clean rags to set about washing her. She’d lost weight, and it laid bare her veins and muscles. He started at her feet and worked his way up until he reached her thighs, then he worked inward from her arms. He removed what was left of her dress. As he did so, she called for his father in a feeble voice that cracked and turned to breath toward the end. The sound of his father’s name made him shake. His eyes averted, he even removed her muslin drawers, which were badly stained. He could smell them at arm’s length and added them to the fire. He blindly dabbed at her, and dunked the rag in the bucket, the scalding water forcing tears to his eyes, his skin prickling and he withdrew his clenched fist quickly, sending a wave of steaming water across the floor of the barn. The hay needed refreshing and the bedding needed cleaning, so he spread a blanket on the ground for her. To keep her warm while he worked, he dressed her in some of Jorah’s old work clothes that had hung on a peg near the horses, the buttons on a flannel shirt giving him greater access to her bandages than a dress could afford. He draped the wet sheets and quilt from the rafters over the fire, and the drops of water sizzled on the stone. Of all of this, he felt proud.

  He stared at the space where their home used to be. He heard them, his father’s high voice reading to them, the boys laughing, the girls arguing. There was nothing to mark where they’d been. He considered the other side of the hill, the four lumps that would remain there even though his father would no longer pull the weeds surrounding them or tend to the tidy field of grass.

  He crossed the yard. When the snow melted each spring, rocks would appear in the fields where before there had been none, like the earth had given birth to stone eggs. The large pile of cleared rocks formed a sizable hill, bigger under its wintery cover. During the summer, the loose rocks would provide housing for snakes and rodents alike, and Amos would sit in the tree with his hand-carved slingshot and hunt. He would send Caleb to collect his prizes.

  Caleb climbed the small hill, tricky with its uneven footing, and hacked at the ice with the shovel, his grunts deadened by the snow covering the ground and the trees and the bodies of his brothers and sisters, mercifully obscuring their intertwined skeletons. The blows—hard, thudding strikes—soon relented as the ice gave way to powdery snow. Each shovelful hit the earth like a whisper. He rested, the sun beginning to fade from the sky behind the hill, the warmth ebbing from the afternoon. His shoulders tightened up toward his neck. His hands bled. The work occupied his mind.

  He kept on in the dark, his hands ringing with the cold, operating on muscle memory alone, digging because he didn’t know what else to do. The shovel finally clinked against a rock. Caleb widened the hole, and worked his raw fingers around the stone. This first marker—small and smooth to the touch—would be for Emma. He placed it beneath the elm, gnarled by the fire, but in its former life the girls had sprawled under it, looking up into its branches and whispering. He retrieved a large, rough rock for Amos, and placed it next to Emma’s. Hours passed, and he persisted. Four rocks, one for each of them, arranged in a square around the tree.

  IN THE BARN, the fire glowed as it had been for the past few days, and one of the lamps had been lit. Its light fell on Elspeth, seated on the edge of her pallet, facing the bags and supplies Caleb had piled in preparation to find the killers. “Mama,” he said.

  “My necklace,” she said, her voice harsh and dry. Caleb found the cross had twisted around to her back, and he apologized for moving it out of the way. “Did you see them?”

  “There were three men,” he said. He told her about the red scarves but he stumbled over their descriptions, not able to put them into words.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She patted his hand. “You pulled me from the fire?” she asked and Caleb said that he had. “Where were they hiding? I didn’t see them,” she said. Caleb drew a breath to confess everything but she slumped and he helped shift her feet onto the bed as her head collapsed into her pillow. “My necklace,” she said again. He laid her hand over the cross and she tightened her fist around it. “Where were you?”

  “Making gravestones,” he said.

  She nodded, “Good.” She said it several times, and then faded away once more.

  He leaned against the wall of the barn, his hat in his hands, boots on, and slept for two or three hours—heavy, black sleep. When he awoke, the brightness of the world startled him, and he reached for the Ithaca, as if this light was one of the marauders for whom he’d been waiting.

  CHAPTER 6

  They went on like that—Elspeth and Caleb—for nearly a week. Each day Elspeth could sit up for longer and stomach a bit more food. Each morning, noon, and evening, Caleb changed her bandages, and the wounds no longer seeped liquid, and the scabs started to meet in the center like ice over a puddle. The snow continued, too, and the black shadow that used to be their home became lost in the sweeping, slow-moving drifts. The four broken posts turned half-white with driving flakes that stuck to the sides like moss.

  Inside the barn, the revived animals heated the air enough for Caleb to walk around without two shirts and two pairs of socks. His mother’s growing strength made him look upon the meager provisions he’d collected with new eyes. He packed and repacked, preparing for the journey ahead. Into an old rucksack that must have belonged to his father, Caleb placed what dried meats they’d stored in the barn for the winter. He rolled a thick wool blanket around clean shirts, extra rags for bandages, empty jars for water, a length of twine to hang their shelter, some matches, and—buried deep at the bottom—one of his favorite feathers, curled and so deeply black that when the sun shone against it, the edges appeared purple. He cleaned and oiled the guns. He took boxes of ammunition and stacked them in his arms, impressed by their heft.

  For lunch he made cornmeal cakes, picking out the grubworms with quick hands, trying not to burn his fingers on the stone. The animals perked up at the scent, and Caleb knew their interest signaled the restoration of their health. He sometimes thought of staying but pushed the wish aside by shutting his eyes tight and thinking of the gunshots and the emptiness in the faces of his brothers and sisters. For the first time he lit the lamps that lined the middle of the barn, and he saw the animals, thin but alive, their bones cast in sharp relief beneath their taut skin, their shining eyes watching him. At the last stall, he discovered the horses had died in the night. He slammed the bucket to the ground and the water sloshed out and puddled at his feet. The horses—hardly recognizable as such, they’d grown so thin and frail—had fallen together, curling into each other. Caleb got down in the muck and folded himself into their embrace as well. The mud was cold and stiff. The horses had materialized one day, grazing in the valley below. Jorah had owned some workhorses once, but they’d died before Caleb knew them. Sometimes Amos pretende
d to remember them, but Mary would dismiss this as nothing but dreams, pictures culled from the words of their father. Caleb and Jesse had spotted these horses at the same time, but it had been Jesse who went to tell Jorah. Their father’s look had not been one of delight, as theirs had been; he shielded his eyes from the sun with a flattened hand and scanned the horizon. The horses—he would explain later—had been broken and wore the marks of being saddled. He ushered everyone inside and sat on the rock at the edge of the cornfields and watched the animals for most of the afternoon before he whistled for Amos and the two of them disappeared down the hill. When they’d returned, Caleb had been awed by the horses’ size, their knotted muscles, their veins thick as one of his fingers.

  As he curled against the belly of the horse, he thought of his move to the barn, which had begun after he’d watched the man in the valley spasm and fall, the sound reaching Caleb’s hiding place long after the flash of the powder. Day by day, he spent more time with the animals—who were simpler and easier to understand—waking earlier and staying later, Emma or Mary bringing him his lunch. After one fitful night in which gunshots sprung him awake again and again, and Jesse clamped his hand to his mouth each time, the two boys paced the inky darkness of the yard, then spent a while on the fence—not talking, Jesse keeping Caleb company—before Caleb wandered into the barn. He’d slept in the loft with no nightmares. The next night in the house, he woke screaming. In the barn, tranquil slumber. He grew used to the outdoors, but inside he would flush and burn with heat. Part of him thought perhaps Jorah radiated evil, and at night it seeped into his head and poisoned his dreams, and he yearned to ask Jesse about it, but he could never manage to find the words.

  ELSPETH PRACTICED WALKING. She creaked her way to her feet and took tentative, choppy strides, reminded of the children’s first steps—their first betrayals—how when Amos had begun to walk, she’d rushed to the lip of the hill and stood atop a stump, contemplating whether to throw herself off.

  Down the aisle of the barn she limped, and considered how it must affect Caleb to see the animals in such a state. She didn’t know the boy well—she barely knew any of the children—but she understood, of course, that he loved the barn and the animals it contained. The walk quickly drew the breath from her, and she rested against the railing of the final stall, where the two horses’ bodies shrank each day, their teeth baring themselves and their rib cages poking through their tightened skin.

  On the second day, she made it to the end of the barn and back. She felt more herself, and though her body wasn’t ready, she couldn’t bear being locked up with death any longer. Every time she glimpsed the wreckage of the house, her skin itched with her damnation. This limbo could hold her no longer. “Tomorrow,” she said, walking back to her bed, knowing he listened from the hayloft, “we leave at first light.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Though from the state of her injuries and the fact that she’d woken in Jorah’s clothes she presumed that Caleb had seen her body, Elspeth retreated into the back of the barn out of modesty and wrapped bandages around her chest, drawing them tight with her teeth until it hurt to breathe, the fabric groaning each time she did.

  Caleb paused at the top of the ladder, wiping sleep from his eyes. His mother fastened her bandages with a series of pins that made her look as though she’d been stitched together with metal. “It’s time,” she said.

  “What about the animals?”

  Elspeth put one arm and then the other into the sleeves of Jorah’s shirt, trying to ignore the pain, knowing that worse—much worse—would come. To leave the animals must be hard for the boy, she thought, and their eyes followed her with rapt attention, awaiting their fate. Their snorts and shuffling steps amplified in her head. “Perhaps we set them free?”

  “They’ll die,” Caleb said. While he stood within a yard of his bed and his feeble belongings, his heart begged for a few more moments of childhood. He forgave himself his whining. He pictured his animals roaming the hillside sickly and weak. He hoped he’d meant much to them. “They won’t know what to do.”

  “You could stay,” she said. He came down the ladder, his twelve-year-old form so small in that giant space. The animals didn’t care, she thought, that he’d buttoned his shirt incorrectly and it hung crookedly over his tiny frame, or that his hair stood on end in the morning and then flopped into his face by midday. He’d found his place. Her head and stomach eased at the thought of walking off by herself like she had a dozen times since she and Jorah had settled in their small nook on the shaded side of the hill.

  Staying had of course occurred to Caleb. His mother had said it aloud and so it pushed its way to the front of his thoughts and hung in the air in front of him, easy enough to grab. He could live like this forever, among the animals. But his mind had been made up and his family depended on him, and he walked down the rows of pens, unlatching them as he went, unable to look at the expectant faces. While the chickens milled about under his feet, he slid the pack over his shoulders and took the Ithaca and Jorah’s rifle in hand.

  They swung the doors open. The cold air gripped their skin and turned their lips dry, and they tugged their scarves up to cover their mouths. The snow crunched underfoot. Caleb fought the urge to look back. The faint sounds of the animals called to him, begged him to reconsider. But then he passed the small lump of snow where his brothers and sisters lay entangled in each other’s arms and his resolve hardened. He hitched his bags higher onto his shoulders.

  Legs heavy and head dull, Elspeth stared at the empty space where her home had once stood. She saw the four stone markers, and the line Caleb’s footprints had drawn to them. She prayed silently, asking for a safe journey for both herself and Caleb on their mission and also for her children and her husband as they sought their way to heaven. Abraham had been willing to kill his son for God, and so He spared them both. On the altar of sacrifice that receded with each step, she had given not one, but four children and a husband. She wondered whether God had become so much crueler with the passage of time. Instead of giving thanks for what she’d been spared, she grew angrier at what had been taken from her, and a hunger grew deep in the pit of her—in the imaginary womb where she carried and bore the children she’d taken as her own—to find the men responsible and snatch everything from them with equal cruelty.

  Elspeth, usually as sure-footed as a mountain goat, stumbled and slipped along the icy rocks and steep descents. Caleb didn’t offer his help before she slid down an embankment and crashed onto the thick ice atop the stream. Her scream penetrated the thick air of the morning. Caleb tucked the Ithaca—safety on—down the back of his shirt, where it formed a second spine and helped him feel upright. The cold metal stuck to his skin. The rifle he used as a walking stick. He took Elspeth by the crook of her arm, and they made their way awkwardly, the path not wide enough to accompany the two of them side by side. Elspeth lost herself in pain—let herself be buried by it—her only focus to keep her feet moving.

  Caleb remained quiet, concerned that any conversation would lead to the logical questions. They’d never spoken much; Caleb didn’t speak unless spoken to—sometimes not even then. He had one strong memory of his mother, and he’d stored it away, much the same as his books or his feathers.

  One autumn morning, he’d risen early to fish in the eddies of the stream. He stepped out of the woods on a long, flat rock that jutted out over the water. The surface looked placid, but he and Jesse swam in it in the summertime, and the current spun them around like tops. The cool radiated up from the water onto his face and hands as he sat down to fish. His cork swayed in the stream, his feet kicked at the air, and a cigarette dangled from his lips when he heard his mother coming up from the lower path, a basket of laundry in her arms. She hummed to herself, a hymn he could hear them singing to Emma as he tended to the animals, “There’s a home for little children, Above the bright blue sky.” Elspeth, preoccupied and harried—having recently returned from months away—set the basket down and r
emoved one of her husband’s shirts, which she held up to the sun to look upon with a bewildered expression, as if she’d never seen such a thing before. Caleb stared at the shirt as well, at the way the sun shone through the thin fabric.

  Elspeth saw Caleb and flinched, skidding on the muddy embankment, and would have tumbled into the water if the shirt hadn’t caught on a rock. When she lifted it to the sun again, it had been clouded by mud and torn down the middle. She got to her feet, brushed herself off, and tilted her head at him. It was his turn to start, and he tossed the cigarette into the water, where it made a small hiss—enough for both of them to hear—and looped around in a spiral before it disappeared over the edge of the rocks. Elspeth smiled, dangled the shirt over the stream, and let it drop from her hands. It waved underwater, pushed and pulled by the indecisive current, and then it, too, went over the falls, like the ghost of a drowned man. Neither made a sound, though when Caleb caught a trout and brought it wriggling from the water, she smiled at him again. He strung the fish and tied the twine around a root that protruded from the ground in a wooden loop. He’d only needed one fish, but he liked sitting there in the weakening autumn sun with his mother so close by, doing her work. When she finished, she nodded to him once and walked off, the laundry basket in front of her like a belly full with child. Only then did Caleb gather his things.