Anxious Hearts

by Tucker Shaw

  Michael struck a new tone on his strings, a sober melody passed down from the ancients, the traditional wedding music that signified the arrival of the groom to collect his bride from her father. All eyes turned toward Gabriel and his father. They dismounted, handing their steeds over to a boy who walked them to the barn. Basil, beaming in the attention, smoothed flat his coat and led his son down the orchard-aisle, tipping his head at all he knew, which was nearly everyone.

  Gabriel followed several paces behind, stalwart and steady and serious, eyes focused forward, only forward, grateful and humbled by Evangeline’s adoring gaze.

  eva

  I am with Gabe again, only this time we are somewhere different, somewhere higher. There is no tide, no fog. We are in the mountains, high mountains I’ve never seen before, mountains above the trees. The peaks stretch ahead forever, and I know because I can see forever in every direction, and what I see is beauty, quiet and unchanging, no tides to wash away the past or the future, and Gabe’s arms are wrapped around me, his notebook pressed against my chest, and we’ve come here together, to stay together, forever. And then I realize that we are not on the mountaintop, but soaring above it, flying, together, silently and effortlessly, the weightlessness of infinity surrounding us on all sides, lifting us higher and higher. As I rise, I look for Gabe, but he is gone and the sky is cold around me.

  Gabriel

  “AND DO YOU SO PROMISE, FOREVER?” ASKED Père Felician. He stood behind the flower-strewn altar.

  “I so do,” answered Gabriel, kneeling before Evangeline. “Forever.”

  Gabriel stood up and gingerly lifted Evangeline’s veil. Every corner of her face smiled at him. He kissed her, and the crowd cheered. Michael’s bow hit his strings, giving rise to a cheerful tune.

  And Gabriel, proud and complete, his beloved aside him forever now, finally knew what it was to be alive.

  eva

  It is not until I wake up that I really begin to worry about Gabe. It is still night, and he is not back, and it is raining, hard. Not like raindrops, but like big, juicy chunks of water, splattering on the roof of the tent like water balloons. “It’s raining cats, dogs, and fried fish,” Da’ would say. I am glad I moved into the tent.

  I am not worried about Gabe’s safety. Gabe knows the forest. If anyone can find his way through a storm, Gabe can. I am worried that he will never come back. Maybe he decided that he doesn’t want me around. He wishes he hadn’t brought me here. He didn’t want us to be together last night, he hated the way I looked, the way I moved, the way I sounded. I try to remind myself how I felt this morning, leaning against the birch tree, unworried and certain.

  I unzip the tent and shine the flashlight out into the woods. I gasp when its light catches a pair of sneakers, standing four feet from the tent.

  Gabe’s sneakers.

  “Gabe? How long have you been standing there? Why didn’t you come in?” I shine the light up at Gabe’s face. “You’re wet.”

  “I’m going, Evangeline,” Gabe says, emotionless and stern and certain. “Away. Forever.”

  I slide on my shoes and step out of the tent and into the rain. “Gabe, what are you talking about?”

  “I only came here to say good-bye.”

  “You said that yesterday,” I say. “What’s the deal?” My hair, suddenly soaked with rain, begins to mat to my face. “Gabe?”

  Silence.

  “I’ll come with you,” I say. I think. I’m not sure. I want to say it, and I want him to say yes.

  “Not this time,” he says. “No.”

  I point the flashlight at his sneakers again, then turn it off. “What did I do?” I say. “What did I say?”

  “Not you,” he says. “Not you.”

  “Is this about Paul?”

  Gabe turns around and takes a few steps toward the woods before stopping. He shakes his head. “I failed him, Eva,” Gabe says.

  And I know, as well as I’ve ever known anything, that this time Gabe really is going away. He wants to disappear.

  He walks not slow, not fast. I notice that he is limping more than before. His notebook peeks out from under his sleeve, wrapped around his forearm. And I just stand still and watch.

  As his footsteps fade and his shadow is swallowed by the wet pre-dawn forest, my heart sinks and slows. I feel for my pulse in my wrist and I find none, and I wonder if this is what it feels like to die.

  Gabriel

  SUN GAVE WAY TO MIST, WHICH GAVE WAY TO A shower, reversing the usual order of things, but the wedding celebration progressed through the hazy seaborne spray. Gabriel held Evangeline’s hand tightly while they danced, spinning her faster, ever faster, under the canopy of apple trees, her swirling skirts and his soaring soul caught up in the lively tune from Michael’s fiddle and the clapping hands of the Cadians. All joined in the dancing, jackets tossed aside, the children skipping between the frolicking legs of the revelers.

  Gabriel saw none of them. His eyes and mind were filled with Evangeline, spinning with him through the orchard, and there was no room for anything more.

  The only man who didn’t dance was Jean-Baptiste Leblanc, who stood beyond the orchard wall at the farthest crest of the bec, sullen, watching. Just watching.

  Suddenly, as if from a giant’s bugle, a shrill, ear-searing sound rang through the air, a blaring, disconsolate note so piercing and broad that Michael the fiddler dropped his bow and the dancing Cadians froze instantly, their flying skirts settling with a silent sway at their ankles. The air fell hollow and dead.

  Wordless faces twisted in surprise and fear as each citizen searched the others for an explanation. Gasps gave way to whispers.

  Evangeline darted to Benedict, clasping him in her arms. Gabriel turned his eyes skyward, seeking the source of the sound, and followed her.

  “It is the sounding of the horns of heaven,” said the pastor’s wife. “Judgment day is here.” A murmur ran swiftly through the crowd, culminating in the shriek of the seamstress. “The rapture!” she cried, filling the silent air with her frenzied call. “Oh, heaven!”

  “You are wrong,” shouted Basil the blacksmith above the panicked voices. “That song is not the angels calling us home. It is a song of ill. It is the New Colonists! They are here!”

  Gabriel turned and looked over at his father, who was pointing at the woods just beyond the orchard. There, blocking the exit from the orchard, was a wall of sixty soldiers, muskets drawn, bayonets glistening, faces soulless and blank. They wore matching uniforms of close-cropped woven jackets, buttoned at the neck, with buckskin breeches and broad leather belts.

  The blistering note rang again, slicing into the ears of the Cadians, drawing gasps and shrieks. Gabriel covered Evangeline’s ears until it ended, then whispered softly, “Do not be afraid, my love. My wife.”

  “Attend!” shouted Basil, and he raced to the head of the orchard. “Gabriel!”

  Confusion spun through the crowd now milling in quick, tiny circles as mothers searched for toddlers and old men tossed their hands toward the sky. “What will become of us?” “What do they want with us?” “Where is my baby?” Evangeline steadied Benedict, who was breathing heavily.

  “Gabriel!” Basil shouted again. “To arms, my son!”

  Gabriel stretched his head above the crowd, straining to see Basil. “Father!”

  “Gabriel.” Evangeline’s voice was just a whisper, but it resonated in Gabriel’s ear.

  Gabriel took her cheek in his palm and cupped it for one eternal moment. And then he tore his hand from hers and pushed his way into the panicking crowd toward Basil.

  “Gabriel!” Basil shouted again. “To arms!”

  But Gabriel, and everyone, knew that there were no arms there.

  The wall of soldiers began to move. They stepped forward, in perfect formation and at an astonishing speed, easily surrounding the orchard in just seconds, muskets across their chests, bayonets raised. The Cadians crouched toward one another, condensing themselves in the cent
er of the orchard.

  “Cadians!” came a steady, booming voice, from a source Gabriel could not see. “Cadians, all. Please pardon our interruption.” The murmurs quieted slowly. The voice had a strange accent, not entirely foreign but not a native speaker of the Cadian dialect. It was formal, polite, like he’d learned the Cadian tongue from books, not people. “Please, forgive us for interrupting what appears to be a lively set of festivities. We understand this is a day of celebration here.”

  Gabriel looked around the circumference of soldiers for the speaker. His eyes came to rest on the one intruder dressed, like Gabriel, in expensive black. His coat was stiff and square, with shoulders that sloped upward, giving the illusion of wings. Rows of silver buttons lined his chest in crosshatch patterns. His woolen breeches fastened at the knee with a silver closure. Two soldiers crossed their muskets in front of his chest as he read from a tablet. Gabriel guessed he must be the commander.

  “We have been sent from the New Colonies by His Excellency Lord Governor Lawrence to welcome you and your land into his generous governorship, and he asks that all able male inhabitants of thirteen summers or more convene in the Great House for a formal meeting. Presently.”

  No Cadian moved.

  “This way, please,” the commander said, gently and politely and formally to the Cadians nearest him. “Thank you very much. Please.”

  “It’s a trap,” said Basil. “Beware.”

  Just then, a ruckus arose at the crest of the bec. Three soldiers had surrounded Jean-Baptiste Leblanc. Two soldiers lifted him by his armpits and a third began prodding him forward with the butt of his musket. Jean-Baptiste strained and thrashed against them, but the three soldiers dragged him down the bec and to the orchard with the others, tossing him onto the ground in front of the crowd. He quickly stood up and smoothed his jacket.

  “Assemble the male inhabitants!” barked the commander, spitting as he said it.

  “Yes, Commander Handfield,” answered the soldier next to him. “Attention!” The soldier directed the soldiers flanking the head of the orchard to part. From the back of the crowd, soldiers began to bear down, nudging the men into a group and pushing the women and children aside to the stone wall.

  Evangeline covered her father with her cloak, hoping to disguise him, to mask him from the soldiers, for he would surely die in their care, so frail was his body. A soldier tore at the cloak, revealing Benedict’s face. “He is not able!” Evangeline cried. She pointed at his cane. “He is not able!”

  The soldier pushed Benedict to the ground and walked on.

  “Evangeline!” Gabriel shouted. A tall soldier grabbed Gabriel by one arm and jerked him away from her. “Angel!” He held out his other hand, but she could not grasp it before another soldier pushed her to the ground beside Benedict.

  “Gabriel!”

  The shower intensified over the bec, droplets running like tears down the cheeks of the gathered Cadians.

  Evangeline squared her shoulders and steadied Benedict. “Take care, my husband,” she said, though he could barely hear her. “Be not afraid, as I am not.”

  The rain, now a deluge, saturated the bec and all upon it, as the weaponless men were corralled into two lines and led away. Unprotected from the weather, they marched along the soaking, muddy trail down the back of the bec, sliding here and skidding there, trampling slowly toward the fate that awaited them at the Great House, musketed soldiers on both sides to keep any from flight.

  Gabriel walked beside Basil and watched him simmer—surveying the guards, assessing their statures, recording their arms in his memory, silently moving his lips in running protest. Water ran down their noses, dripping into the trail ahead of them and soaking the tips of their moccasins. Gabriel fell twice, knocked down once by Père Felician, who slid into him from above, and once by a soldier who pushed him too quickly around a switchback and nearly swept him off the path.

  It was two hours before the door of the Great House saw the arrival of Gabriel Lajeunesse and all the able men of Cadia.

  eva

  It takes me pretty much all day, but I finally find my way out of the woods, past the No Trespassing sign, up the road, and back to the house, where I find Da’ in a wicked bad state. He hasn’t slept in the two nights I’ve been gone. I feel even smaller than before.

  “I am so sorry, Da’,” I say, bending over the back of his chair and cradling his head after I feed him a warmed-up can of noodle soup for supper. “I am so sorry.” He cries, just like he cried on my dead mother’s birthday, and he calls me Evangeline, all the syllables, but this time it doesn’t bother me as much as it did before, because I know how badly I screwed up, and I know I scared him, and if using that name gets him through being scared, then it’s cool with me. I hold his head in my hands, watching the dusk fall outside the kitchen window.

  Da’ eventually falls asleep in his chair, and I call Louise.

  “Where have you been?” she says, practically yelling. “Where are you? Did you hear?”

  “I’m at home. Did I hear what?”

  “Where have you been?” Louise repeated. “Were you with Gabe?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Did I hear what? What happened?”

  “Where is he now?” Louise asks, urgency in her voice. “Eva?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I tell Louise about Gabe showing up at my house before dawn, about walking with him past the No Trespassing sign and into the woods, about the salami and the spring and the limp and the camp and the fire and the night in the sleeping bag and how he left this morning.

  “So he didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Eva.” Louise’s voice slows down. She says gravely, “It’s Paul.”

  “What about Paul?” I say impatiently. “What now?”

  “He’s dead, Eva.”

  I freeze, the blood draining from my stomach to the floor below. My eyelids feel heavy. “He’s what?” Dead? How could that be? Surely they found a donor for Paul. They did those operations all the time. Paul couldn’t be dead. “How do you know?” I ask, and then I realize it’s a stupid question.

  “Eva, it happened two days ago.”

  I think back on the past two days, Gabe’s strange appearance at my house in the morning, his silent walk, our night together, his disappearance, and then his second disappearance.

  “Mr. Lejeune has been calling everyone in town constantly for the last two days looking for Gabe. No one can find him. Pretty much everyone is freaked out. Do you know where he is?”

  I say I don’t know, which is true.

  Had Gabe known about Paul and not told me? Did he not know yet?

  Or did he know everything? Is that why he left?

  “Eva?” Louise is talking, but Gabe is all I can see, all I can hear. I know now why Gabe is gone, truly gone this time. I stare at my father, snoring in his chair, and feel the pain of this moment take over my body. It doesn’t wash over me, it doesn’t slice through me. It shreds me from the inside. This is a pain I’ve never felt before, a desperate, jittery pain that I don’t recognize, that I can’t trust. And it won’t let me breathe.

  But I don’t want the pain to subside. Suddenly I’m nauseous with fear that it will go away, just like Gabe went away. And then I will have nothing.

  I turn to look out the kitchen window. The first evening stars are rising.

  “Eva?” Louise says.

  “What?”

  “Did you go all the way?” she says. “With Gabe?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just answer me, Eva.”

  I don’t answer. I breathe a few times, and once my voice cracks when I open my mouth, but I don’t form a word. Silence.

  “I see,” says Louise. “D’accord.” And then she doesn’t say anything for a long time.

  I don’t either. I hear a few drops of rain hit the window-pane, running lazily down the glass, distorting the early-evening view.

  Louise talks first. “What kind of p
erson disappears when his brother dies? Eva?”

  “I can help him,” I say. “I can find him. I have to find him.”

  “Eva, do you know where he is?”

  “Oh, God.” The words rise involuntarily from my stomach. Oh, God.

  “You can’t help him, Eva.” Louise’s voice is flat and serious. “You will only lose yourself trying, and no one will be able to find you.”

  Gabriel

  WHEN ALL THE ABLE CADIAN MEN HAD FILED into the Great House and taken seats on the benches that lined the center of the common room, the front doors were bolted closed with a thud.

  The commander stepped onto the small platform at the front of the room. Tall and slender and younger than half the soldiers in his employ, he had been protected from the rain by a canopy hoisted over his horse by six of his men on the trek down. Gabriel, bone-sodden, was insulted by the commander’s dry uniform and clenched his jaw in humiliation and rage.

  Gabriel counted eighteen troops surrounding the commander. He knew there were a hundred more outside. The commander opened his tablet, cleared his throat, and read in a nasal, patrician voice:

  “His Excellency Lord Governor Lawrence has resolved that the governing of this country shall be assumed by the New Colonies and the lands cleared of their current inhabitants, who shall be relocated thusly: To be transported to the Capital District, three hundred persons. To the Central Valleys, two hundred persons. To the Western Prairies shall be transported three hundred persons. And to Vieux Manan for holding until a final destination is determined, two hundred persons. We are ordered to use all the means proper and necessary for collecting inhabitants together for relocation. If we find that fair means will not do, we shall proceed by more vigorous measures. We are ordered to deprive any who escape all means of shelter or support by burning the houses and destroying everything that may afford them the means of subsistence. We are directed not to delay, and to use all possible dispatch to save expense to the public.”