by Ron Carter
For more than an hour Eli sat quietly holding Mary’s body. Then he stood and moved the chair and pillows and laid her on the bed and covered her with the clean sheeting. He walked out of the room, across the kitchen, and out into the sunlight. Parthena and the family were in the shade on the east side of the house, and they turned to face him, waiting for him to speak.
“We need to clean her.”
Eli carried the body to the dining table where they washed it while Ben kept the children away. The women cleaned the floor in the bedroom and changed the bedding, and Eli carried her back in to lay her on the bed, then left the room while the women dressed Mary in her wedding dress, brushed the dark hair, settled her head on the white pillow, and drew the comforter up to her shoulders. Their work done, Lydia and Parthena summoned Eli. With the afternoon sun bathing the room in a warm golden light, he sat for a time in a chair beside the bed, gazing at her face, sometimes turning to peer out the window at the forest and the sky.
The sun was dipping low when he walked into the kitchen where the two women were heating water to wash the soiled bedding. Parthena stopped working with her hands to study his face.
“I’ll see you home when you’re ready,” he said.
Parthena turned to Lydia. “Do you need me to stay the night?”
“No. We’ll manage. But won’t you stay for supper?”
“Abijah will be waiting. I should go.”
Eli said, “I can’t pay you in money, but I can bring you smoked venison hams for winter, if that’s agreeable.”
“Done. Lydia, can you nurse two babies for one or two days? Nathan and the new one?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll send Dolly Gertsen for an afternurse. She can stay as long as you need.”
“That will be fine.”
Parthena raised her hand. “I have to write in my book, and we didn’t give the baby a name.” She turned to Eli, waiting.
“Her name is Laura. It was the last thing Mary said to me. Laura.”
Parthena packed her battered leather satchel, and with the sun touching the wesern rim, Eli shouldered his long Pennsylvania rifle and led her across the clearing, into the forest. It was full darkness when Parthena opened her kitchen door and said good-bye to Eli. It was close to midnight when he walked across the clearing in the moonlight toward the yellow light in the windows of the Ben Fielding home and opened the door into the kitchen.
Lydia set ham and sweet potatoes and bread on the table, and Eli ate. Hannah came to the archway into the bedrooms and stood in her long nightshirt, squinting to see Eli’s face in the lamplight. He turned to look at her, and he saw the need in her, and he motioned her to come. She walked to him, bare toes turned up on the wooden floor. Eli picked the five-year-old up and sat her on his lap and folded her inside his arms, and she slipped her slender arms about his neck.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Mary is home in heaven. You need not worry.”
The small arms that could bind tighter than chains relaxed, and Hannah drew her head back to look in his face. He stood her on the floor, and she turned and walked out of the kitchen, back to her bedroom.
Eli stood and spoke to Ben. “Did you have prayer earlier?”
“Yes, but we can do it again.”
“No need. I’ll have my own.”
He took the large rocking chair from the parlor into his bedroom and set it beside the bed, where he could see Mary, and the west window. He closed the door and lighted a lamp and turned it low before he knelt beside the bed and bowed his head. He offered his silent prayer, then stood to settle in the chair. For a time he sat motionless, studying Mary’s face in the dim light, then leaned his head back and began a slow, rhythmic rocking. Moonrise cast pale light through the window, and Eli twisted the wheel to put out the lamp, and continued rocking. The moon was setting before he slept.
In the dark before dawn an instinct awakened Ben, and he rose from beside Lydia to lift his rifle from its pegs above the kitchen door and peer out the window, straining to see in the last vestiges of a moon nearly gone. He saw a shadow crossing the open yard, and he recognized Eli, then turned as Lydia came from behind him, hands clasped beneath her chin, eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Eli’s out there. I better go.”
“Maybe he has reason.”
“I still better go.”
Quickly he dressed in the darkness and walked out into the shadows, rifle in hand. He followed the trail taken by Eli, listening to the night sounds of the forest, waiting for any that did not belong. For fifteen minutes he crept forward, hearing the stream that flowed nearby, then climbed the gentle hill that formed the west boundary of his little valley. The black of night became purple, then gray, as he approached the rim of the hill and stopped.
Eli stood eighty yards ahead of him, on the crest in a small clearing, facing east, toward the coming sunrise. Both arms were raised shoulder high toward the east, and he was chanting softly in the Iroquois dialect. Ben did not move. Eli turned to the north, raised his arms, and continued the quiet chant, then to the west, and finally to the south. He lowered his arms and bowed his head, and for long minutes did not move. Then he raised his head and started back the way he had come.
Ben turned and quickly returned home where Lydia was waiting, anxious.
“Is he all right?”
Ben hung the rifle back on its pegs. “Yes. He said good-bye to her in Iroquois. That’s all.”
They had finished breakfast when Eli turned to Ben.
“Will it be all right to bury her in your family plot? North of the house?”
By noon the two men had dug a grave beside the headboard marked “CYRUS FIELDING.” By five o’clock they had built a coffin of white pine and set it on the floor beside the bed. Lydia fashioned a lining from a quilt, and they lowered Mary inside, laying her head on a pillow. They carried the coffin out to the kitchen table, where they held the children up to see her. They all stepped back to allow Eli his time to say his last farewell, and then Eli set the lid on the coffin and drove the nails. The two men carried the coffin to the grave, Lydia laid mountain laurels on it, and they lowered Mary back to mother earth with ropes.
They surrounded the grave while Ben removed his hat to read from the large family Bible with Lydia holding Nathan, Hannah holding Samuel’s hand, and Eli standing at the head of the grave. Ben said his amen, Eli crumbled a clod of black Vermont earth onto the coffin, and the two men reached for their shovels. Fifteen minutes later they smoothed the new mound, and in the rich yellow glow of a New England summer sunset they all walked back to the house to help Lydia with supper.
Two days later they returned to the grave and watched as Eli set the oak headboard he had cut and smoothed and carved.
MARY STROUD
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER
DIED JULY 12, 1780
That evening Abijah Poors rode in on his gelding with Dolly Gertsen trailing him on a mare. By Eli’s choice, they moved Dolly into the bedroom he had shared with Mary, and Eli made his bed in the barn, away from the painful memories of the room in which she had died.
In the northern climes of Vermont, survival in the winter depends on the work of the summer. There are crops to be grown and harvested, pork to be cured and smoked, venison to be salted, cheese and butter to be churned, wood to be sawed and split, apples and berries to be gathered and dried, nuts to be gleaned from the forest floor—dawn to dark, relentless work that will not wait. Nature gave no quarter for deaths. Accept your losses and move on, or starve when the bitter winds of winter come driving snow that can lock a family inside their home for weeks.
Through the heart of the summer, the family was up at dawn and came to supper with lamplight yellow in the windows, Dolly with them. They cured and smoked six pigs, and when the grain heads came white and brittle in the fields, they harvested twelve acres of wheat to sustain them through the winter, and fourteen acres of oats for the two horses and two co
ws. With the cool of fall approaching, they had six large rounds of yellow cheese sealed in wax, stored in the cool of the root cellar. Eli went into the forest with his rifle and one of the horses, and returned with two spike bucks to be salted and smoked. He loaded two finished venison hams on the gelding and delivered them to Parthena Poors.
Eli was relentless in the work, first up, working until darkness and exhaustion drove him to his blanket in the barn straw. He worked in silence, spoke at the supper table only when spoken to, ate sparingly, and went alone to the family cemetery plot for a little time each evening to sit in the grass beside Mary’s grave, occasionally reaching to touch the flowers he had planted. After Dolly finished nursing Laura in the late evening, Eli sat in the rocking chair to hold the tiny soul wrapped in her blanket, studying her face, her every expression, occasionally touching the tiny hands and face, seeing Mary once again.
The heaviest work was behind them when Ben pushed his chair from the supper table and turned to Eli. Lydia straightened in her chair, and Hannah looked at her mother, then quietly laid her fork beside her plate. Dolly went to the bedroom to nurse Laura.
Ben cleared his throat. “Lydia and I have been talking. The summer work’s nearly done.”
Eli eased back in his chair, waiting.
“You need to be away from here. Put the hard memories behind. Move on.”
Eli placed his palms flat on the table and stared at them in silence for a moment, then turned to Ben as he continued.
“You’re welcome here always, but that’s not enough. You need to be away for a while. Let your mind settle.”
Lydia broke in. “Mary’s here. You see her in everything. Your grieving will go on too long if you stay. You’ll not heal right. You’ll not come straight with the world until you’re gone for a while.”
Eli rubbed the palms of his callused hands together, looking at them, saying nothing.
“Sometimes we see things better from a distance,” Ben said. “You need to go away from here. Back to what you had.”
Eli looked at him. “The war?”
“Maybe that’s what you need. Places and people you know.”
“Laura?”
Lydia leaned forward. “Leave her with us. She’ll have Hannah and Samuel and Nathan, and we love her. We’ll raise her as one of our own as long as you need.”
For a time Eli sat still, working his hands. “How do I pay you?”
“Oh, Eli,” Lydia exclaimed, “just get yourself whole!”
“Can I think on it until morning?”
They cleared the supper table, had their prayer, and Eli walked out into the moonlight. He got his blanket from the barn and walked to the low, white fence enclosing the family cemetery and spread his blanket beside the grave. For a time he sat, knees gathered inside his arms, listening to the sounds of the night, looking upward at the endless stars and the moon, feeling the cool breeze on his face. Finally he laid down beside Mary and slept.
At first light Ben found him in the barn with the Jersey cow already in her stanchion waiting patiently while Eli forked grass hay into her manger. Ben sat on the short, one-legged milking stool to drain the dripping teats into a wooden milk bucket while Eli rationed mixed grain to the spotted sow that was five months along with her next litter. Lydia called from the kitchen door and the two men walked back to the house to breakfast. They ate griddle cakes and fried sausage and drank fresh milk, and then Eli turned to Ben.
“Wheat has to be ground for winter flour. If it’s all right, I’ll stay for that, and then I’ll go back.”
Ben nodded.
“If something happens, will you take care of Laura?”
Lydia exclaimed, “You mean if you don’t come back?”
“Yes.”
“Of course we will.”
“Will you need me to sign a paper?”
Ben shook his head. “No. You tell Dolly what you’ve decided. She can witness if anyone has a question.”
Lydia came from the stove to sit beside Eli. “What’s your plan?”
“Go back. Find Billy. Finish the war.”
“Will you come back when you can?”
“I will. If it’s too long, tell Laura about us. Mary and me. I want her to know. Can you keep her name Stroud? Laura Stroud?”
“We will.”
Eli sighed. “I guess that’s about all.” He stood. “Ben, we’ve got work to do.”
Notes
Eli Stroud, Mary Flint Stroud, and Eli’s sister, Lydia Fielding, and her family, are all fictional characters.
However, the process of giving birth in the wilderness as herein described is accurate. Midwives were commonly used. Regarding congestion in the lungs, lacking the expertise to correctly diagnose it, the catch-all term was “pulmonary pthisis.” Delivery of a baby came in three stages, each defined by the progress of the contractions. The mother was usually raised to an upright, sitting position, often held on the lap of one woman while the midwife knelt to perform the delivery. After delivery, the midwife used strips of sheeting to wrap the abdomen and thighs of the mother, which was called “closing the loin.” Following delivery of the baby, a woman capable of nursing the infant was called in, and is referred to as the “afternurse.” An excellent description of the entire process is found in Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, pp. 165–91. See also p. 248 for use of the term “pulmonary pthisis.”
Rugeley’s Mill, North of Camden, South Carolina
August 14, 1780
CHAPTER XXII
* * *
By seven o’clock a.m. the mid-August heat and humidity were already sweating the Americans camped at Rugeley’s Mill, some eighteen miles north of Camden, near the Wateree River. It was the heart of the “sickly season” in South Carolina—the time when the sun bore straight down and the sea and swamps and rivers filled the air with stifling humidity that killed more of the southern population than any other season. Soldiers were drenched in their own sweat, and dreaded the approach of midday, when the dead air became hazy, and everything about them was wet to the touch—tents, axes, muskets, cannon, clothing, faces, beards. Gunpowder was damp and questionable.
Inside the large command tent near the north end of the camp, Major General Horatio Gates, short, paunchy, thick-lipped, aging, sat at the head of his large war council table, chair turned toward the only other man present. Colonel Francis Marion of the South Carolina militia, wiry, small, nose and chin too large, knees malformed since his youth, was seated to the right of Gates, one arm on the table, listening intently as the sonorous Gates concluded their brief conference.
“I agree with your request, Colonel. We can trap the British when we drive them from Camden if they have no route of escape. Take your . . . uh . . . command to the Santee River and destroy all boats or craft of any kind you find there for a distance of twenty or more miles to the southeast. Without means of escape on the river, the British will be in our hands. You may leave immediately.”
Gates’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes were not. He handed Marion a sealed document. “Here are your written orders.”
Marion took the document. “Anything else, sir?”
“Nothing. Good luck. You are dismissed.”
The forty-eight-year-old Marion stood, nodded, and limped out the tent flap. Behind him, Gates’s smile faded as he watched the wrinkled, odd red coat of coarse cloth and the worn uniform move into the heat of the morning sun. Never had Gates seen an officer in such a mockery of a uniform, leading men who lacked the slightest sense of military protocol and who looked and dressed more like savages than a civilized fighting command. Never mind that Marion and Thomas Sumter and Andrew Pickens and William Davie and Lee Davidson had led small bands of such men to make lightning strikes on British regiments fifty times their number, wreak havoc, and disappear in the swamps and forests like ghosts, to strike again and again. Never mind that these Carolinans had terrified the British, stopped them in their tracks, cowed them relentlessly all over the state. Horrified, red-c
oated officers had sent the best they had, including the inveterate and detested Banastre Tarleton, to find them and destroy them, only to learn that British regulars had no chance of following these freedom fighters through the swamps and bogs and across the rivers, infested with cottonmouth and copperhead snakes and alligators. Indeed, it was Tarleton himself who had sworn to catch Marion and set out in hot pursuit, following him and his little company for seven hours and twenty-six miles through swamps and across rivers, to finally stop his men at Ox Swamp on the Pocotaligo River. The chase in the heat and humidity had drained Tarleton’s horses and men to exhaustion, and in frustration Tarleton cried out, “We will find Sumter. But as for this cursed old fox, the devil himself could not catch him.” In the retelling of it, up and down the rivers and through the swamps, the tough, gimpy little colonel became the Swamp Fox.
Gates glanced at the clock on his conference table, then walked to the front of the tent to watch Marion disappear in the morning cleanup of the American camp. A sense of relief flickered inside that he was quit of Marion and his band of rabble for a few days. He brought his thoughts back to the business of the day. Drill would commence at eight o’clock sharp. Discipline was the hallmark of a superior army, and Gates intended his assignment to the Southern Campaign to be a stepping-stone to greater things.
In the meantime, he had a war council of select officers convening at half-past seven in which he had prepared to lay out his carefully devised master plan to strike the British supply depot at Camden. He walked back to his place at the head of the council table and picked up his notes.
Six officers came striding, boots wet to the ankles from the grass and tunics showing dark stains beneath the arms and between the shoulder blades. The tent flaps at both ends of the long tent were pulled open in the vain hope that a stir of breeze might move the stifling air inside, but there was nothing. The pickets at the flaps nodded as they recognized the officers—Smallwood, de Kalb, Caswell, Stevens, Armand, Williams—and gave them entrance.