The Empty Heart: A Collection

by Derek Murphy

  Martinson had prevailed on the city council and the local courts to exert a writ of eminent domain against his property, claiming that the land was needed for a new street and a new factory. If he refused to sell the house, he would be evicted and the proceeds from the sale of the house would be eaten up by court costs, leaving him with a pittance. The offer for the house was much less than the house and grounds were worth and he refused to even consider a sale out of principle. He was sure that Martinson, once he was out of the house, would exert his considerable political influence to stop the new street from being constructed so that he could have the property transferred into his name. Then Martinson would have everything that he had once possessed. Everything but his name; Robert Rowbridge.

  He sat now at the small table in the kitchen with a cold plate of soup in front of him; grease congealing on the surface of the liquid and crumbled bits of stale bread into it. The soup was all that was left of the small bit of meat he had purchased the previous week and he hated to let it go to waste. Mrs. Murray, the bakeress, had let him have an entire loaf of stale bread today for his last two cents, and he had looked forward to sopping up the soup with some of it. The thought of eating the cold stuff made his stomach roil, despite his hunger and he considered bringing one of the books from the library to start a fire in the oven. Maybe one of the more recent, lesser known works. Unconsciously shaking his head, he knew he would never destroy a book for something so prosaic as warm soup.

  He heard the muffled hoofbeats and jingling harness of a carriage in the snow-covered street outside. It would be nice if one of his old friends was coming to see him, but as the sound died away, he knew that would never happen. His friends had deserted him shortly after Martinson began his persecution of him. Robert never understood what Martinson had against him other than the fact that Martinson wanted his house and property. Oh. And Patricia, of course. Though an academic, Robert knew that there were men, and women, never forget them, who liked to exert their power and influence, simply because they could. For such people, what they wanted took precedence over everything else, even the rights of others.

  Robert reflected that everything had been taken from him for the whim of another and now, even his home was to go to feed that other man’s ego. He felt that Martinson had so marginalized him that he had become insignificant. What was he now? Once, he had been a respected professor at the University and his peers in academia respected his opinion. He had owned the home that generations of his family had built and lived in. He had owned several properties in town that he rented to individuals and businesses for less than they were worth because he liked to help others. Now all those people and businesses had forgotten his kindnesses and turned from him because it was in their interest not to anger Martinson. Even his wife had left him for Martinson. Now, he didn’t feel the disappointment of not having fathered any children on her. If he had, would they have as gladly let him be replaced by Martinson?

  His eyes wandered around the kitchen and as they went to the door leading to the front of the house, he heard someone clacking the doorknocker. Rising, he hurried to the door, hoping against hope that someone had come to offer some form of help. Or, even just to talk for a while so he could forget his circumstances.

  Snatching the door open, he saw a small woman standing on the doormat. It was the pretty, little maid, Dora Leslie, that he had hired for Patricia a few years earlier. Holding the door wide, despite the cold, he ushered her in.

  "Come in! Come in, my dear. It’s so nice to see you! How have you been?"

  Almost diffident, her dark eyes flickered up at him before falling to take in the state of his shoes and clothing. He had sold everything but the most threadbare clothing and his shoes were badly in need of a polishing. He was ashamed of his appearance, but was overjoyed to have a visitor.

  Her voice, slightly raspy with the cold and, low as always, was hesitant.

  "Mr. Rowbridge, sir. I’ve left Mrs. Rowbridge’s employ, sir."

  Embarrassed, Robert’s hand swept out to take in the house, almost bare of furnishings and he said, "I’m very sorry, my dear. Positions are so hard to find these days. What are your plans?"

  He hoped she wasn’t going to ask for a job; he had nothing with which to pay her and in this Victorian society, the scandal of having a young woman who wasn’t his wife living with him would just be too much for the townspeople to bear. He feared for the young woman’s reputation. Besides, if she was seen to throw in her lot with him, Martinson would find some way to make her pay for her loyalty.

  "Sir. I’ve come to tell you that my cousin has found me a position in her town working for a doctor."

  Slightly puzzled that the girl would think that her situation would be of interest to him, he nevertheless said, "Oh, that’s so very fortunate for you! I’m glad that you were able to find employ so soon after leaving Mrs. Rowbridge."

  Her brows knit as she looked into his eyes and he noticed, not for the first time how fine and dark her eyes were. She was as pretty as Patricia and he knew that Patricia had been slightly jealous of her. Something that his wife would never admit openly, but her demeanor around the maid had been pretty plain to see.

  She said, "This isn’t coming out the way I want it to, sir. Mr. Rowbridge, my cousin also told me that there is a teaching position in their town. The last teacher left town quite hurriedly, leaving them without anyone to teach the children in the middle of the term."

  She lifted her head, her small chin below the heart-shaped face lifted defiantly as she continued. "I’ve come to ask you to come with me, sir. The whole town is against you here! There is nothing to keep you here! Please come with me! I can’t stand the thought of a kind man like you being forced to live this way!"

  Taken aback, he thought of her position as opposed to his. His position in society left something to be desired at present, but he was sure things would improve. He was touched that the girl thought of him that way and wondered if there was anything he had done in the past to give her the impression that he was attracted to her. He was, but that was beside the point. He wasn’t one of these men who carried on with women of lower social stations, forcing his will on them because of their weakness. He felt that even if he acceded to her request, he would be perceived as being that kind of man.

  "Thank you, my dear, for your kindness, but I still have hopes that I can turn this misfortune around. Judge Renquist has ruled in the case, but I still think that Judge Stables, in the higher court, will step in. If he does, it will look better if I still occupy the property."

  Plainly disappointed and hurt by his refusal, knowing from what it stemmed, Dora’s eyes teared up as she said, "I’m very sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Rowbridge. I thought of how kind you’ve always been and I thought that it was past time that someone did something for you. I’ll leave now. I’m taking the train tonight."

  Opening the door for her, he extended his hand to her and felt her soft-gloved hand in his tighten for just a moment, leaving behind a small wad of paper. As she whisked quickly out the door, he barely heard her tear-choked voice.

  "If you change your mind, the train leaves at ten o’clock!"

  Dumbfounded at the depth of her emotions, he watched her walk through the snow and pass under the illumination shed by the gas streetlight. He watched her until she turned the corner, headed toward the train station before he closed the door and looked down at the paper in his hand. It was a train ticket and a five dollar bill. Snatching open the door, he made to follow her but decided that the last thing he needed now was a scene in the middle of the street with his ex-wife’s erstwhile maid. That would never do.

  Closing the door, he walked back to the kitchen, stopping in the library for a lightly regarded novel. Once back in the kitchen, he ripped the pages from the book and stuffed them in the firebox of the stove. Touching a match to them, he got a fire started and fed the cloth backing of the book to it. He poured the soup back in the small pot and set it on the stove to heat
.

  When it was heated through and he had eaten it, no longer feeling the empty spot in his stomach, he heard the door-knocker again and walked quickly to the door. If it was Dora again, he was afraid that he would have to be more firm with her. He didn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings, but enough was quite enough.

  Opening the door, instead of the slim girl, he saw the towering bulk of their running-to-fat sheriff. Stanton had been a veteran of the War between the States, but his dashing cavalry officer days were far behind him. The veins that stood out on his nose and face denoted a fondness for the bottle that had helped to increase his girth. Nevertheless, Stanton was a good man and had always spoken fairly to him.

  "Mr. Rowbridge. I’m sorry to bother you so late but the court clerk brought this to me late and said the judge wanted it served to you as soon as possible."

  Taking the paper in the sheriff’s hand, Robert read it quickly, his hopes dying more with each word. When he was finished reading, he felt twenty years older than his current forty-four years and could feel a sudden stoop come to his shoulders.

  He said, "I’m to be out of the house within the week or they will have you put me out. Very well, Sheriff. I won’t put you to any trouble."

  Embarrassed at being the bearer of bad tidings, Stanton turned wordlessly and walked away as Robert closed the door behind him. Sighing, Robert wondered if he had any rope in the attic. He didn’t really want to walk out to the carriage house in the cold. Then his sense of injustice was roused in him and he grew angry. Walking through the house, his eyes going to familiar places in the rooms, made less familiar by the absence of the furniture and furnishings, his anger grew with every step.

  When he thought of all that Martinson had taken from him, he felt that he could froth at the mouth and howl his hatred to the moon. Despite the cold, his ears burned and he found himself loosening his collar in an attempt to cool off. Take his position at the University from him, would he? Take his wife, would he? Take his home?! No! By God, no! This was one thing that it was in Robert’s power to deny his enemy! For, enemy he was! Any man who did the things to another that Martinson had done to him, had to be an enemy! Very well! Robert would show him!

  Striding into the library, he scooped a stack of books from one of the shelves and broadcast them into the center of the room, watching them fall, some open, some breaking their spines. More and more books joined them. The Greek Classics, the Roman collection, then Dickens, Poe, Twain, Rimbaud, Beaudelaire! They were all going into the bonfire! He fumbled in his vest pocket for his box of matches and hesitated as he looked at the scattered books that littered the floor with tears coming to his eyes. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he struck the match and bent to hold it to the riffled pages of one of them. As the fire caught, he held his breath, not daring to believe that he was actually doing this.

  The inane thought that he should be sitting before a roaring fire with a glass of spirits came to him and he hurried to the cupboard where his father had always kept a bottle of whiskey. He fumbled with his keys until he got the cupboard open and removed the bottle. He had never been a drinker, but with the bottle in hand, he twisted the cork from its neck and upended it into his mouth. Streams of the fiery liquor ran down his chin and he drank off a quarter of the bottle before lowering it to take in the fire in the middle of the room. Stumbling to his chair before the cold fireplace, he noted that the fire had bitten into the leaves of the books and the room was noticeably warmer. At last, a warm library! Collapsing into the chair, he leaned back and watched as the fire devoured his collection of books. The carpet was burning now, sending its odor of burnt hair through the house and he coughed at the smoke. Deciding to combat the smoke with alcohol fumes, he lifted the bottle again, toasting the authors of the works. He chuckled at the thought; toasting.

  By the time the fire had crept to the shelves and up the walls, he was nearly finished with the bottle and was coughing more. Reeling up from the chair, he staggered toward the door and found his head wreathed in smoke. Bending, he was racked by a paroxysm of coughing and was lightheaded from the smoke and liquor. Blearily, he looked toward the front door and wondered if it was too late to drag himself clear before the smoke killed him. Mentally shrugging, he lay full-length on the floor and turned his head toward the portrait of his great-grandfather that hung over the mantel. The flames crawling up the wall had just reached the frame and the canvas had begun to smolder. He lifted one hand to his brow as a salute, but passed out before he could lower his hand.

  * * *

  His breath was short as he ran along the edge of the clearing, keeping low and trying to blend in with the trees and bushes. Others of his party also skirted the clearing, he knew, but he was making toward the other side much faster than they. Despite being half Scottish, his mother’s brothers had trained him in tracking and moving through the forest as silently and quickly as any of the full-bloods. Being taught such things by your uncles was a tradition among the Cherokee and though his mother had married a white man, she was as traditional as they came.

  It was important for him to get to the other side of this clearing without getting killed, and his mind was on the task, but thoughts of Diana Starr seemed to fill his head. Diana, known as Ti-yo-ni among the Cherokee, was the girl he had loved from afar for most of his life. She had ignored him as being no more than the son of an itinerant preacher and trader, but with a band of Sevier’s men raiding the towns along the river, he had cast aside the hurts her taunts had caused him and joined the rescue party. Diana and a group of other women and children had been captured and carried off. He knew that the whites of Franklin would try to force all the mixed blood women to renounce their families and join the whites as little more than slaves, and he would not have that happen to Diana. He had heard of the rapes perpetrated on mixed blood women by the whites and was almost beside himself with worry and fury.

  Some of the women carried off had already been raped; they had found some evidence along the way, as well as a witness. A boy of about twelve had managed to sneak away during a stop and hidden in the underbrush. What he had told the men who found him had infuriated them and it was all their leader, Red Bench, could do to keep them from rushing headlong after the whites. To-mas-i, or Thomas, had accompanied his father on trading trips to the white settlements and heard Sevier himself utter that phrase that would become a watchword among the whites for generations; "the only good Indian is a dead Indian".

  Coursing through the woods on the other side of the clearing, he heard sounds of a struggle off to one side and turned to investigate. At first he thought that one of his band might have encountered a white who had stayed behind to ambush the pursuers, but the pitch of one of the voices denoted the presence of a woman and his brain burned with outrage as he parted the leaves ahead of him.

  A small woman, her colorful skirt identifying her as a Cherokee, rucked up above her hips, had been forced to her knees and was bent over a log as a white man cursed and struck her, trying to keep her bent forward. Thomas shifted his rifle to his left hand and slipped his tomahawk from his belt. The noise of the rifle might draw more whites to him before he could return the woman to his band, and relative safety. A series of quick steps brought him to the pair and he grunted as loudly as the white man when he drove the tomahawk into the man’s back. Pulling its blade from the man’s flesh, he kicked the man forward over the log beside the woman when he tried to rise by reflex and drove the head of the tomahawk again and again into his back and neck. As the man’s breath rattled and he moaned his way into death, Thomas kicked the body to the side and grasped the woman by the arm, lifting her to her feet.

  She was very short and as her tear-stained face turned toward him, he saw through the streaks of blood from her nose and split lip, the features of Ti-yo-ni. Her black eyes that had once glittered at him in dislike were liquid as she looked up at him. The diminutive girl threw herself against him, sobbing in relief as he tried to put the tomahawk in his be
lt. He managed to push her back far enough to do so and drew his knife, quickly slitting the rawhide that bound her hands behind her. He led her back to the trail, hindered by the arms she persisted in wrapping about him. Her dislike was gone, replaced by gratitude and…something else. Though his mind was on getting her to safety, he briefly wondered if she had liked him all along.

  On the trail, he pulled her to one side when he heard sounds of someone blundering by in the brush and her breath was hot on his neck as she clung to him. When whoever it was had passed, he decided to let the girl rest for a bit before starting out again. Turning to look at her, he handed her his water-bottle and watched as she wasted precious drops to wash the blood and dirt from her face. His hand went to her hair, tousled and hanging over her face on one side. As he pushed it back behind her ear, she raised a hand to his and held it still.

  Ti-yo-ni didn’t speak English as well as Thomas; her white blood being a generation back and having less exposure to the language than he, but her words were clear.

  "I will repay your care and devotion, To-mas-i. Though Death itself come between us, I will repay you. Today has taught me that I must let you know how I feel; time is too short for people not to make others aware of their feelings. I’ve seen you in my dreams and you…disturbed me. That’s why I always teased you for your white blood; to keep you at a distance."

  Shaken and surprised by her words, he answered her in English, knowing that the depths of his own feelings could never be translated into Cherokee. At least, not by him. Not with his imperfect knowledge of the language.

  "Ti-yo-ni, I’ve loved you since the day I saw you at the well in Turtle-town. Remember? We were just small and you were with your mother and sisters. You taunted me because of the white man’s clothes I wore. I will always be the man who rescues you from danger. In this life or any other. I will be that man."