by James Scott
That golden fall day had been the longest the two of them had ever been in one place by themselves. It was their only shared secret. The gap between them had widened again after their brief connection and he felt it yawning even as he clutched her arm and helped her down the jagged path that split the hillside like a bolt of lightning. He worried that if he told her what he’d done she would leave him, and he would spend the rest of his days alone.
Elspeth was distracted by the map she had stored away in her mind. As her trips had become more and more frequent, she prayed constantly that the next child would bring her peace. The town of Caleb’s birth, Watersbridge, had wide, dusty streets and when the wind howled down their corridors the air filled with sand so thick one had to close the windows even in the height of summer. The church’s imposing steeple punctured the sky. Caleb had looked like a lumpy, disheveled angel, and Elspeth had tried to help herself, had sworn she would be happy with what she had, but this promise did not last his first day on earth. The train ride home had been short, and Elspeth marveled at her forked tongue, which could lie with no effort to other passengers about her reasons for forcing a newborn to endure such a journey. When she was met with Jorah’s wordless anger, her breasts would not produce for the child, and so she dipped her finger in milk and sugar and the infant Caleb would hang on with tenacity. She’d been gone for eleven months. Once Jorah had connected with Caleb—when the child peered over her shoulder at him—the boy had been like the rest. But not quite. Caleb and Jorah had never settled into a comfortable rhythm, not like the others. She’d waited another two years before Jesse, whose mother had turned to alcohol and laudanum, and she’d presented this as evidence to Jorah, and he’d accepted another child without question.
She tried to stop. For four years she swaddled, nursed, and delivered, not immune to temptation, but not succumbing to it, either. Emma had proved too difficult. She brought the baby home with no explanation, and Jorah had been sullen and taciturn. She heard him praying morning and night by their bedside for her salvation. Nothing could have made him break his word to her. Though she often tried its strength, she knew it to be true.
“WHICH DIRECTION WERE they headed?” Elspeth asked. She leaned down until their foreheads almost touched. They’d come a fair distance, and Caleb risked a glance back toward home but couldn’t see the barn or the tops of the trees he knew by heart. This section of the hill wouldn’t be visible from his fence post and the realization chilled him. Caleb had seen the footprints, their trail in the snow like a long snake of guilt, winding its evil way into and out of their house. He raised a snow-covered arm and pointed.
Elspeth pulled at her bandages, and thrust a finger into one of the wounds. The pain cleared her mind and brought her breath rattling back to her, gave life to her legs. The boy had pointed her back the way she’d come. She flipped through images of the towns and cities she’d visited, as if turning the pages of a book, examining them, looking for sidearms on the men, listening for the pop of shots as the taverns spilled their contents out onto the streets. “Hapsburg,” she said, remembering stepping around a broad puddle of dried blood outside her hotel one morning, and hearing the constant hammering of the overworked coffin maker. “It’s a good place to start.” The journey would be slow, she thought, and they would not come back this way again.
THEY COULDN’T FIND the energy to talk, nor did they have much to speak about. Elspeth recalled the long miles to Hapsburg and understood her crawling pace meant days of travel, days spent inside her own head, attempting to piece together where the men had come from and how they’d discovered the Howell farm in the middle of so much nothing. Rocks rose up out of the ice to snag her boots or appeared under her heels, sending shock waves of pain through her. Caleb’s thoughts zipped from his siblings to the fire to the great expanse of the world he found himself walking across.
As morning turned to afternoon, a low fog rolled in, thick as smoke, creeping its way up the mountain like a living thing. It wrapped around their ankles and then their waists and within minutes it became difficult for them to see their hands in front of their faces. Caleb held on to his mother, as she knew the way by heart.
She shook violently. He leaned in and saw her face wet with tears, her mouth contorted in a grimace of sorrow. “Would you like your Bible?” he asked, attempting to console her.
“They’re all gone,” she said.
“Yes, Mother.”
“The house, too. The house your father built.”
“Yes, Mother.”
The wind picked up for an instant and the fog unwound itself from their bodies, and the snow began again, landing with wet thuds on their hats. “He spared us,” Elspeth said. This was the cruelest punishment. “Why would He do that?”
THE MIST PRESSED in on them again, heavy and smelling of rot. Rain fell. Elspeth’s calves cramped, but her thoughts moved in an endless circle. And then, the bottom dropped out from under her. She stepped forward, and expected the pain of her stiff leg, but no ground met her foot. She slid through Caleb’s arms. She let herself go limp, moving with shocking speed. The sound of the ice rushing past produced a steady growl. One of the scarves around her neck caught on a broken limb, and she thought it would hang her. She hoped that the earth would disappear beneath her again and she would feel nothing.
But the scarf unraveled with a brief heat on her neck and the hill leveled off. The roar in her ears subsided. She remained on her back, listening to the ticking of the rain. She’d gone under the fog, the land covered in a low ceiling, all white and flat and impossible to tell one direction from another.
The fog hung so close that Caleb had to kneel to see that rain had washed out the edge of the path, and two slick lines in the snow marked where Elspeth’s boots had gone over the edge. He called to her. The air looked like dirty dishwater. He stood at the lip of the washout, and told himself to jump several times, but his body wouldn’t allow it. He thought of his brothers, how even Jesse would laugh at him, and he wished for Amos’s hands to come out of the mist and shove him. He longed for their taunts and their goading. Below him, somewhere in the murk, he saw something move. He slid. His pants rose on his ankles, and the ice started to burn his skin, so he lifted his feet, moving even faster. The object that had caught his eye became visible again as he crested a bump. He leaned left as he slid, stretching, trying to steer himself. The damp fog had made the surface of the snow so slick and he moved so fast he didn’t think he could get there. He reached. His fingers closed on the wet wool of his mother’s scarf, and he freed it, though the brief resistance sent him spinning and he continued down the hill backward. At any moment he expected to hit a rock or a tree and he braced himself for impact.
When he’d come to a stop, Caleb rolled over onto his stomach and checked the back of his pants. The ice had nearly rubbed right through the material. His ankles were hot and raw, and as he watched, dots of blood sprouted and pooled on his skin.
About twenty yards away, his mother made a strange noise from her stomach. His bleeding ankles forgotten, Caleb rushed to her. As he approached, he could hear with clarity the sound he’d confused for coughing or choking: Elspeth was laughing. Gales of it rolled from her broken body, throaty and gruff. Caleb laughed just hearing her.
For the first time in a long time, God had handed her a gift. She’d been lying there, trying to figure out how to locate Caleb in the murk, and as she’d decided to stand, she’d heard a noise, growing louder and louder, and then Caleb, his legs stuck up in the air, had blasted through the fog, spinning like a top. When she thought she’d controlled herself she heard Caleb’s helpless giggling—something she’d heard only a handful of times in her life, few enough to count on one hand—and she started all over again.
“The rifle,” the boy said, his laughter stopping abruptly. “Father’s rifle. I dropped it.” He flexed his hand like it might reappear.
“It probably got hung up on a root,” Elspeth said. He held back tears and she coul
d see that losing the rifle had further damaged his mangled heart. She would do her best to fix what she could, and traced the outline of the items lumped in the bottom of her bag. Inside it smelled of cedar and smoke from the fireplace of the hotel where she’d stayed while working as a nursemaid due to a thankful overabundance of midwives. After going unwashed for so long, her packed clothes had solidified into a filthy, mildewed ball that she left in the snow; they could not be saved. Besides, she enjoyed being surrounded by the scent of Jorah’s hard-earned sweat. Underneath her clothes were the gifts, and they made her breathe harder, each gasp causing more pain. Elspeth pulled the stopper from the small vial of perfume she’d purchased for the girls, and the tart scent stung her eyes. She placed it on the ground at her side, and the angular glass refracted the dim light, casting slight rainbows on the clean snow. She unspooled the ribbon meant for Emma. The three yards of purple fabric spilled across the snow, and when the wind tugged at it, Elspeth gave it up, letting it slide away like a colorful snake. From the very bottom of the bag, she brought forth the smallest packages, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. She undid one to reveal several chunks of pink gum. “Don’t swallow it,” Elspeth said, handing a piece to Caleb. “It’s gum. Just chew.”
The pinkish blobs looked to him like newborn squirrels. Once he got over the association, however, and the gum softened, he smiled.
“Let’s forget the rifle,” she said. “It was too heavy, anyway.”
Clouds rolled and undulated, moving fast across the sky. She put her arm in his, and led the way toward Hapsburg. The rain resumed. Caleb learned to trust the lean of her body when she steered him in an unexpected direction, but it was always sound and level. In minutes their backs and heads shone with the same glaze that had settled over the landscape. She forgot the bottle of perfume in the snow, but it would soon be buried.
WHEN THEY CAME to a group of evergreens that provided some cover from the weather, they made camp in the remaining light. The pines stood close enough to one another that Caleb could string up the canvas, and shortly they were beneath it, rain and fits of hail loud overhead. There wasn’t much to eat: a few nuts, three strips of salted pork. Caleb checked his tobacco rations and saw that he only had enough for one small cigarette. He rerolled the bag and replaced it in the breast pocket of his shirt. It smelled like Amos. He managed to start a fire, though the pine made for poor, smoky fuel. He located a dead birch at the edge of the firelight, and stomped on it with Jesse’s boot to break it into pieces. Rotted, it burned too quickly. They shared a jar of water and then Caleb filled it with snow and placed it close to the fire to melt.
“Did you see the house burn?” Elspeth asked, her hold on the events slippery. He said he had. “Where were they?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He took a pine branch—the sap hissing as it boiled and dripped from the makeshift torch—and wandered away looking for more wood, hoping his mother hadn’t seen the expression on his face. He hadn’t lied, he thought, but before long he’d have to tell the story, and he still worried she’d wander off and leave him there and he’d spend endless days trying to find their home again.
Elspeth watched Caleb’s torch rise and fall with his steps in the middle of the darkness, her feet throbbing and her body alive with pain. She got her Bible from her bag, shifted it closer to her chest, and fell asleep.
Not far from where he’d found the first, Caleb fetched another dead birch branch and dragged it back to their camp, the papery bark sliding off and shredding in his hands. As he approached, he made out a black form creeping along the ground, near the edge of the halo of firelight. At first he thought he’d imagined it, but then it moved again, sideways, close to the ice. Caleb moved to the side as well, in an attempt to keep the fire between himself and the animal. Its eyes glittered orange. The fire popped. The rain intensified.
Caleb drew near the canvas. The animal flirted with the light, allowing a paw—claws sparkling like jewels—to enter here, a muscled shoulder there. As Caleb leapt the last few feet to his pack, the animal growled, a low, guttural noise that stirred his bowels. But in the seconds he ducked under cover to pull the Ithaca from his pack, the animal disappeared. Emboldened with the gun, he walked out of the light, toward where the beast had stalked them. He made out a few footprints, claws digging into the ice, before he backed his way to the canvas, and sat under it, his head out of the rain, his Ithaca across his knees. Here he was, his mother shivering with fever, farther than he’d ever been from home, and he couldn’t help but feel that the world had turned against them.
EARLY THE NEXT morning, Caleb caught a snowshoe hare by following it back to its den. He checked for leverets; he wouldn’t take a mother. As he lifted it by its ears, the animal’s huge back feet kicked at the air and it produced a hoarse bark. Caleb let its weight stretch out its body then grabbed the feet and pulled. The spine snapped. It convulsed twice. He cleaned the animal, the meat purple and quivering in the cold, steam rising from the blood, the insides warm on his bare hands. He inspected the organs for spots, and threw them into the creek bed along with the feet and head, where a scavenger wouldn’t let them sit long.
As a boy, he’d once sliced right into the lower intestines, ruining the rabbit, the fetid stench staying on his hands all day, even as he crawled into bed with Jesse, who had made him sleep on the floor. Caleb woke early, the light blue. Jesse must have told their father, because Jorah grabbed Caleb by the hand and led him to the small pen the girls had made, where he grasped a rabbit by its hind legs, and it glanced around, confused but not panicked; the girls did all sorts of strange things with the animals, and they’d become inured to such rough treatment. Caleb’s eyes stung with tears that he didn’t allow to fall.
“Go ahead,” Jorah said. He held the animal out to him. This was before Caleb knew what Jorah was capable of, one of those brief days when he thought the square plot of grass on the other side of the hill was his secret, a magic land left for him alone.
Caleb put his hands behind his back. “It’s Emma’s.”
“It’s our Father’s,” Jorah said and grabbed the rabbit by the head and flicked his wrist. Caleb heard the crack and looked back at the house, sure the girls were watching from inside, sobbing. “This is a lesson you will learn.”
Caleb tried to run away, afraid he would make a mistake in front of his father, who—at that time—he loved so much that he watched him in secret, trying to copy his walk, his mannerisms, even his voice. Jorah caught him with a strong hand. “He is in the way of life that keepeth instruction,” Jorah said, “but he that refuseth reproof erreth.” Caleb dropped the knife with a clanging and buried his face in his hands, then tried to lean into Jorah, but Jorah kept him upright and wouldn’t permit his son to find solace in him. “The girls will forgive you,” Jorah said. “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven.” Caleb didn’t know what his sin had been.
“Mama,” Caleb said, “did you always understand what Father was saying when he quoted the Bible?”
It was the first time either of them had mentioned home, and Elspeth had to gather herself before answering. “Your father understood things I never will.” She left it at that and leaned on her elbows and let her head relax back against her shoulders. The fact that Jorah had seemingly memorized the entire Bible and could call up passages at will for any problem or occasion had frustrated Elspeth, but it was impossible to criticize. She’d only wished he would use his own words. She rested while Caleb built the fire up and speared the rabbit with a sharpened stick. Smoke rose into the murky sky, and the sizzling could be heard above the pops and cracks of the forest.
During their early years together, Jorah would tell her tales of his time away—small jobs on farms, minor carpentry—and the cruelty of the larger world. Often his skin color would cause him trouble in the form of thieves or employers who refused to pay his wages. He told her of how he fought, and how he held back, and sometimes he ran, knowing
his young wife slept alone in an unfinished house without enough food or money. Despite their violence, the stories made Elspeth itch: her feet, her legs, her hips spasming with the desire to move. As time passed, and he became more immersed in the Bible, he sometimes didn’t even come to bed, the faint rustle from the next room of the thin pages turning the only sign of his presence. The pages spoke through his mouth, whole chapters, psalms and hymns in their entirety. It was as if he had turned piety into a contest and Elspeth lagged far behind. Of course, he knew her secrets. Her feet twitched in bed at night, and Jorah told her it was as if she ran from him in her dreams.
ELSPETH HAD NEVER needed a compass and she led them with confidence even blinded by pain and fever. They walked on what had once been a grand thoroughfare. Great elms stood in lines on each side of the road, and their branches met overhead, so that beneath them the snow was only a pale dusting on the frozen dirt.
Caleb had never experienced such silence. The snow on all sides muffled everything. He stopped to let it wash over him.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s so quiet.”
“It’s a road,” she replied. “But they never built the house to go at the end of it.” The last time she’d passed this way, the elms had been smaller, and others had been cleared and chopped to produce the tidy lines. She placed her hand on one. Her fingers were dwarfed by the size of the trunk. “Do you mind if we rest? Only for a bit.”
Caleb hesitated. They’d only walked a few miles—four perhaps—since they’d set out that morning. Then his mother stripped off her jacket, and he saw the blood had soaked through again. “We’ll rest until you’re ready,” he said.