Anxious Hearts

by Tucker Shaw

  The commander rolled up the scroll. “Please remain here as we provision our ships and prepare for transport. You are now guests in this land.”

  Gabriel bit down on his lip, releasing a stream of bitter blood.

  eva

  After I hang up with Louise, I cross the rain-slicked street to see Ada. She is sitting on her porch-rocker under the front-door light, straining to stretch her embroidery canvas over its hoop.

  “Hello, Eva,” she says when I hit the first step.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Aren’t you beautiful?” she says.

  “Not really,” I say. “New project?” Not that I’m really that interested. Gabe is missing. Paul is dead. I don’t know what to think or where to turn. I guess this is why I came to see Ada. At least with her, I know what to do: turn up the television, fix a snack, help with the crossword, bring in the latest issue of Yankee magazine.

  Ada ignores my question. “I never told your father where you were,” she says, dropping the hoop into her lap. “I knew you’d come back.”

  “Thanks, Ada. But how could you have told him where I was? You don’t know where I was,” I say. I hold out my hand for the frame and the embroidery pattern. “I don’t even know where I was.” I stretch the pattern over the frame, smoothing and straightening it.

  “Ah,” she says. “But I know where your heart was. I know where it still is. And so do you.”

  “He’s gone,” I say. I lock the canvas into the hoop and hand it back to her. “Here.”

  “Then you must find him,” she says. “You’ll never stop loving him, you know. He’ll never really be gone. My Gabriel is still here.”

  “Your Gabriel?”

  “Yes, my Gabriel. My husband.”

  “You mean Lawrence,” I say. Lawrence, her husband who disappeared in a storm over thirty years ago.

  “I mean my Gabriel. Everyone has one.” Ada takes my hand and puts it over her chest. “Eva, my heart is ancient. But it still beats for him. Only for him.”

  I look into Ada’s glistening eyes. She is telling the truth.

  “You must find him.”

  I know that she is right.

  Gabriel

  “NEVER!” SHOUTED BASIL, STANDING UPON HIS bench. He tossed off his embroidered jacket and tore open the neck of his white linen shirt, flexing his powerful arms. “We will never leave our land! You will kill us first!” Basil thrust his fist over his head. “Rise! Cadians!”

  Around the Great House, a few men’s voices shouted in lackluster agreement. “No surrender!” But it was a meager battle cry. The able men of Cadia knew better. There were no arms there. There was no hope of resistance.

  “Rise!” Basil bellowed again.

  Three or four men stood up. Gabriel, crestfallen and hopeless and dizzy with panicked thoughts—of his village, of his future, of Evangeline—was not one of them. He did not rise. He simply sat and glared at the commander in the black suit.

  “Rise, I say!” shouted Basil. “Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize our homes and our harvests! Gabriel!”

  Gabriel moved to stand in obedience to his father, but before he could stand, the commander pointed at Basil. “Please escort the gentleman in the center to the isolation area.” Three soldiers moved toward Basil, one pointing his bayonet, two approaching from the side.

  “Death, I say!” Basil growled. He did not see the fourth soldier, bearing down on him from behind.

  “No, Father!” shouted Gabriel. Basil turned for a moment to see his son stand, and in that second, the soldiers descended on Basil, tackling him to the floor. One pointed his bayonet at Basil’s chest, the others held him. “Death to these foreign soldiers!” Basil cried, flailing against his captors, who pulled him to the front of the room, then through a doorway, which they closed behind them. “Never!” Basil’s muffled voice cried out. “Never!”

  The remaining soldiers cocked their muskets and aimed into the crowd.

  “Oh, Father, forgive them,” came a voice from behind Gabriel, pleading. “Forgive them.” It was Père Felician, on his knees. “What is it that ye do?”

  Gabriel let out a single, desperate sob. Then he, too, fell to his knees.

  eva

  It’s nowhere near light yet, but I’ve been up for hours. Thinking. Preparing. Planning.

  Ada’s words keep bouncing around my head: My heart is ancient. But it still beats for him. Only for him.

  I pack a flashlight, two apples, a canteen full of water, three tins of sardines, and a Coke in my backpack, along with Da’s pocketknife and my rain poncho, only because Da’ says you never know. I’m wearing Da’s old fisherman’s sweater as usual, and over it I pull on my brown corduroy jacket, the one lined with gray plaid flannel that Da’ says isn’t warm enough every time I put it on. I tie my hair into a ponytail and pull a baseball cap over that. I tell Da’ I’m leaving early because I have to explain to the principal why I wasn’t there on Friday. I hate lying to Da’.

  “Do you want me to write the principal a note?” Da’ asks.

  I smile, and hug Da’. We both know that I’ve been writing my own notes since grade school. “I love you, Da’.”

  “And I love you, Eva.”

  Two hours later, I am standing at the No Trespassing sign at the edge of the woods. I look up the road, and back down, for any sign of a car or a bike or anything. Nothing. No one here to see.

  I duck into the trees.

  The change between the world under the open sky and the world under the trees is immediate and complete. On the road, I was squinting in the bright, white, mid-morning sunlight, but as soon as I breach the No Trespassing barrier, as soon as I’m three paces into the woods, the light is honeyed, golden, liquid. It dribbles like droplets from the gold and scarlet canopy of oak and maple and hemlock, diffused by the yellow-red leaves of ash. The light is dim here, but alive. Every wisp of breeze on a leaf overhead makes the light dance and ramble and speak.

  I try to find the path back to the clearing where I left the tent, folded and packed carefully in its nylon bag and tucked into the woodpile to protect it from the rain, in case Gabe returned there and needed shelter.

  But I can’t find the path. I can’t even guess at it. I walk a half hour in one direction, then a half hour in another, probing the woods in every direction, certain I’ve seen this tree before, or that one, but it’s as if these are different woods entirely, woods that I’ve never been in before.

  But they can’t be. These are the same woods Gabe brought me to.

  I am wandering in circles, or I am heading straight on, east, west, I don’t know. The ground rises and falls beneath my feet as I walk, through a thicket, around a marsh, over a log, across a stream, between boulders. I lean against a birch tree to rest and watch. Chipmunks scold me as I make my way through the trees. Birds scatter. Breezes swirl around me, alternating cold and hot and whispering words I don’t understand, or perhaps I do understand—they are calling me to Gabe.

  To Gabriel.

  I answer back, or think that I do. “Gabriel.” I say. I ask. I shout.

  I cross a small clearing dotted with summer wildflowers—witchweed and wood lilies and Queen Anne’s lace. Here and there the trees part overhead, revealing a patch of blue, brilliant against the flickering autumn leaves. A slow, squawking V of snow geese coasts across the sky. “Gabriel,” they say, and then turn and fly the opposite way and I can’t remember what season this is anymore.

  I hear a branch snap to my left, and spin around. I see nothing. It happens again. I spin in the other direction and still see nothing. I stand and wonder, or maybe hope, that I am being followed. Another snap to my left. “Gabriel?” I say. I step backward. Another snap, this time behind me.

  “Gabe?”

  I nearly trip over the shivering, speckled fawn, curled in the nest of leaves and twigs assembled carefully by its mother. It blinks at me, with baby-doe eyes, struggling to pull itself to its feet, panicked in its tiny, frantic way.


  Another snap. The mother. She must be nearby, snapping sticks to shoo me.

  I step quickly in the other direction, knowing that a threatened doe can be dangerous.

  A fawn? Wildflowers? But it is autumn.

  I never see the doe, nor do I catch sight or scent of the sea, which should be all around me. I never find the clearing or the wood stack I so carefully built for Gabe, and when the light begins to sink from golden to amber to black, I realize I am going to spend another night in the woods.

  I worry about Da’, and hope that he found the sardines I left him on the kitchen counter.

  Gabriel

  FOR ALL THE TALK OF A SPEEDY EMBARKATION, the men were kept locked in the Great House for many days. It didn’t make sense to Gabriel. The invaders had every able Cadian man already. What could they be waiting for? What more could they want?

  Perhaps they have been stymied by the Glosekap tide, Gabriel thought, and the thought gave him a moment of hope. It’s always protected us before. Maybe it will foil their plan.

  It was dark inside the Great House, day and night, and the rain, the pounding rain, had been unrelenting since the wedding. The room was thick with humidity and darkness.

  The prisoners, for that is what they were now, had been fed once a day since their seizing, dense, dry, crumbly hunks of bread and a small cube of fat for each. A barrel of water was brought into the room twice each day, manned by a New Colonist soldier who filled the ladle and handed it to each Cadian in turn, who would drink straight from the ladle. The soldier allowed only one ladle to each Cadian.

  “May I see my father?” Gabriel asked the water-bearing soldier when he reached the front of the line. “He is behind that door. May I take him a ladle of water?”

  The soldier, who Gabriel could see was even younger than he, didn’t answer.

  Gabriel sat on the dirt floor in a corner of the room along an exterior wall, where a small space between the slats gave him a sliver-view of the fields outside. He guessed it was twilight, but it could have been dawn. There was just enough light seeping through the slats for Gabriel to trace with his finger in the dirt floor. He traced Evangeline’s form, over and again, soft, strong lines that recalled her curves, her limbs. Gabriel imagined Evangeline as a deer and a panther and a porpoise and a girl, and his lines in the dirt recalled movements of each, and they nurtured a searing longing in his chest.

  “Evangeline,” he sighed through the slats as he drew. “Evangeline.” He was not calling that she may hear, he was calling that somehow her soul might know that he longed for her.

  Gabriel closed his eyes for a moment and remembered Evangeline, in her breeze-blown kirtle of blue and curly braid, feeding the chickens at her father’s farm. He drew his finger through the dirt for a moment and closed his eyes again, now picturing Evangeline, staring with determination and love and anxiousness and desire into his eyes as she had the night they lay together under the orchard trees. Another blink, another vision of Evangeline, surrounded by the frothy gossamer of her wedding frock, her midnight eyes piercing like the jewels of an emperor, smiling at Gabriel, only at Gabriel, forever at Gabriel.

  “Evangeline,” he repeated through the slats. “Evangeline.” He would repeat it for eternity, even if no answer ever came. “Evangeline.”

  “Gabriel?”

  Gabriel stiffened. He wasn’t sure he’d heard it at first. In fact, he knew he hadn’t. He’d been hallucinating, that’s all. Delirious. Hungry. Thirsty. “Evangeline,” he whispered again.

  “Gabriel!”

  This time, the voice was unmistakable. It was she. His beloved.

  Gabriel thrust his fingers through the slats into the rain. “Evangeline!”

  He felt her fingers, wet and slick but warm and alive, grasp his through the slats. “My beloved,” she said. “My beloved.”

  “You are wet,” he said. “You must find shelter.”

  “I will not leave here, Gabriel,” she said. “Now that I have found you. I have visited this place every night since our wedding, calling for you.”

  “What has become of Pré-du-sel?” Gabriel pleaded. “What has become of you, my beloved? Tell me!”

  “They have kept us in our houses,” Evangeline whispered. “We have not been allowed out. A new soldier has been sent to guard our exit each day. Father has not risen from his chair since the wedding. They say tomorrow they will gather us at the harbor and then transport us to the New Colonies.”

  “You must be strong, my love,” Gabriel said, willing the fear from his voice, glad she could not see his despair. Suddenly, he was seized with a burst of energy. “You must escape!” he shouted.

  “Not without you.”

  “Listen, Evangeline. You must take your father and escape.”

  “Impossible!” she said. “He cannot walk! And I will not leave without him and you both!”

  Gabriel knew it was a waste of breath to convince her otherwise.

  “Oh, Gabriel. Have you eaten? Have you slept?”

  “I am well,” said Gabriel, in as confident a voice as he could muster. “Do not worry, angel Evangeline. I am well, and Basil is strong. We will be together again soon. It matters not where they send us, or when; we will be together.”

  “You cannot deceive me, Gabriel. I detect in your voice that you are not well.” She paused, and inhaled deeply. “But nothing, in truth, can harm us. We are one.”

  Gabriel pressed his cheek into the wooden slat, willing the feel of her cheek through the slat to his own. The warmth he imagined forced his eyes closed. “Here, Gabriel,” Evangeline said. “I have brought you meat.” She slipped two strips of leathered mutton through the slats.

  “What about you, my love? Have you eaten?”

  “I cannot,” she said. “I cannot eat for worry.”

  “Then take this,” Gabriel said, passing one strip back through the slat. “Let us eat them together, as husband and wife.”

  “My beloved,” she said, and her words caught in her throat, and Gabriel could hear Evangeline, his sweet Evangeline, begin to weep, quietly, almost carefully, and though she couldn’t see him, or perhaps because she couldn’t see him, Gabriel wept with her.

  eva

  I am curled on a bed of leaves surrounded by trees, tucked under a sort of tarp I made last night from my rain poncho strung between two pines. The ground is hard, terribly uncomfortable, but at least it is dry. I have no pillow, and my hair is full of pine needles.

  I got no sleep last night.

  I get up and run my hands through my hair, working tangles loose with my fingers. I stretch. I fish around in my backpack for a toothbrush, but there isn’t one. But there is an apple. It’s my last one, but I bite into it anyway, the crispy flesh cool and sweet and clean on my teeth. Sun spackles sharply through the leaves overhead, and I realize it’s already late in the morning.

  I remember how Gabe found the spring back at our clearing, and I look around for a patch of moss. Within minutes, I find a bubble of water spilling over a ledge, and splash my face with it and drink.

  My poncho is wet with dew, but I roll it up anyway. I hoist my backpack over one shoulder and I start walking back the way I came. I think.

  I walk for more than an hour before I reach the edge of the forest. But it’s not the edge I was looking for. There is no road here, no sign that forbids trespassing. Here, the pines give way to a grove of white birch trees, and a few steps later the birch grove gives way to a sprawling meadow of green-gold sea grass and blueberry bushes. And beyond the grass, nothing. Only sky. The wind swirls around me, an ocean wind, not a meadow wind, and I can hear the restless, choppy surf in the distance. I realize I am on a bluff, high above the sea.

  I walk through the grassy meadow, wind tossing my hair first into my face, then off to one side, then the other. It takes much longer to reach the edge of the bluff than I thought it would, thanks to rocks and pine logs hidden in the grass. When I reach the edge of the bluff, a monumental cliff falls abruptl
y below me; it is so high that I’m afraid to look over the edge.

  When I do, gingerly, my stomach sinks to my feet and I feel woozy.

  I lie down on my stomach and hang my head over the edge, safer that way. There are ledges on the cliff, and a few renegade pairs and trios of pine trees cling to its face. I toss a rock over the edge and listen, but its landing is drowned out by wind and distance and waves. I imagine daredevil kids climbing the face of this cliff, and dying for their foolishness in the frothy water hundreds of feet below, the salty waves slapping their bodies against the rocky outcroppings.

  But I don’t recognize this seascape, or any of the islands in this bay. I can’t be that far away from home, can I?

  I turn over and look at the sky. It is split in two—blue and clear and endless over the ocean, but dark to the west. Thunderclouds are gathering.

  The wind picks up and I turn back toward the woods. I stumble on a rock. Only, it’s not a rock. It’s a stone wall. Crumbled, but still a wall of flat granite stones carefully stacked. I trace it around a large rectangle of land, a small plot. I walk its perimeter in just a few minutes.

  At one end of the plot, surrounded by blueberry bushes and sea grass, I find a rock. A big rock, a boulder, with a level top so smooth it seems unnatural. Almost more like a bench, or an altar, something made by someone for something.

  I sit on the edge of the stone and, feeling the warmth it’s been absorbing from the sun, crawl onto it and lie down. A moment ago it felt like I was at the edge of the earth. Now I feel like I’ve been here before.

  I don’t even realize that I’ve fallen asleep until I wake up and see that the sun is low now, grazing the tops of the pine trees I emerged from this morning. I sit up quickly. Have I slept all day?