by A. R. Moxon
Without Love they would have foundered and failed. The families were mainly of farmer stock, and used to rough living; however, the trail offered new hardships: of tedium, of deadfalls, blockages, detours, of rivers with no easy ford, of blinding rain churning up paste-thick mud, of insects beyond count, and of disease, which incapacitated the strong and dispatched the weak. Pushed from behind by a relentless Love, they soon wearied of the hard trail, which left them dirty and tired and every day fearing attack from savages, and so, when they broke through into a clearing beside which a happy river chuckled, they rested the night, and when, following a strange disappearance, Love returned to announce it was not the Ohio territory in which they would plant themselves, but rather here in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, no dissenting voice sounded. A cask of cider was relieved of its bung, and the travelers themselves were relieved of their travels, for it was relief indeed to have come to a perch—any perch. They became talkative and gay, incurious about their leader’s sudden, uncharacteristic deviation from their objective, glad for cessation of discomfort.
Love shared none of this felicity. He had been captured already.
On the first morning, as had become his custom, he had gone foraging alone. The river crafted an abeyance through the thickness of the forest, a bank of packed loam and gravel along which Love walked at ease. Presently, however, he spied a curiosity: a pathway, cut into a spinney growing up between old growth of evergreen and so attenuated by neglect, it seemed more tunnel than path. Curious, Love followed it into the thickness, and soon found himself within a tunnel indeed. The spinney surrounding him was composed of bushes, from whose darkwood branches wicked thorns projected and crimson berries hung. The thicket to each side was impenetrable, concentrated, and between the rare gaps in its profusion could be glimpsed hazardous rotten deadfalls.
Love pressed on. The wood encroached wetly around, putting him in mind of constrictive snakes. The farther inward the path led, the narrower it grew, the tangling above descending until Love found himself obliged to walk stooped, marveling at the forester who had set himself the task of fashioning a path here—the will, the strength, the madness vested in any man who would dream of such an undertaking. Yet here it stood, even now it had lasted against a wood so consuming, so impenetrable, so dark and malevolent. What end had fueled such obsession? Love’s curiosity contended against a growing sense of entombment. The wood, though silent, was too close, too alive, too quiescent; it was a watchful thing, and not only watchful, for the thicket’s thorns now bit his shoulder, and though reminding himself he was no timid man, still he resolved to continue along this course for another minute only, and no more.
By the time he broke into the clearing, the path had narrowed to such a degree that he walked bent with head nearly level to his waist, arms shielding his face, hands cut and bleeding; his shirt, once clean, now spotted red. He came to the opening, little more now than a rabbit hole, and, heedless with an excitement he could not name, pushed through into brightness. He stood, shielding his face from the sunshine, in a place most unnatural. Love was no superstitious man, but now he remembered tales of fairies, of bogies, of druids, of hob and sprite, sylph and imp. This lacuna in the forest’s heart was circular. No, that was too imprecise a formulation: not circular; it was a circle. As if some titan had crafted it in the earth by means of a vast compass. The debouchment in the greenery birthing him into this grassy ring was the only rip visible in the fabric of the surrounding wood. Inside, the ground lay draped with a bright green turf as soft and as level, in surface and coloration, as any fitted carpet in any gentleman’s sitting room. It was hot there, and very still; he could hear no hop of hare, no twirrup of bird, no chatter of squirrel.
At the hub of this wheel, in the very center, a fountain pointed its white finger to the sky.
Love circled the fringe, never taking his eyes from the alabaster formation, his back always to the forest. Though it was a thing inanimate, he did not deign to approach, for there could be no natural account for it—not for its existence, nor for the precision of the demarcation between lawn and wilderness—none, save witchcraft. But Isaac Love was—he reminded himself—a rational man. Still, to pause seemed wise; in any case, it might be an ambush. He made one full revolution around the circle, convincing himself he was alone, yet still he waited, his back to a tree, pondering. Prudence suggested caution; but curiosity insisted upon action. He felt within himself a growing ire for his unseemly quailing. It was stifling hot within the circle. Slowly, he approached the basin. Upon closer inspection, the fountain proved white as whalebone, without spot, without blemish, but now he espied on the basin, filigreed in delicate calligraphy, some unrecognized cuneiform, cut with a skilled hand, flanked with tracery of vine and leaf wrought by the same ingenious chisel. The basin was as round as the ring of forest encompassing it, its circumferential area broad enough that, were it drained, a brace of yoked oxen could pull a wagon in a circle within the basin as easily as a pair of children might garnish a maypole.
Love reached the basin’s edge. The ground about was ringed with three concentric bands of stone paving: The outer was of gray slate; the middle, wider than the other two, of a glistening stone black as coal; the inner was a terrazzo tile of deep red hue. Before drinking, Love paused to study the tower. At the base, a massive stone terrapin lay flat upon a rock rising only an inch above the water; facing Love, it regarded him with old and sunken eyes. Water fell from its mouth into the pool. From its back the tower rose, three-tiered. Around the base of each tier stood cherubic statues—figures of such intricacy, so natural in their poses, that an observer might be forgiven for being taken in momentarily by the counterfeit. From the center of each of these laughing figures, water tumbled forth in high arcs. Love frowned at the perversity. These angels…were they pissing forth the water? Could a craftsman of such skill stoop to base vulgarity?
Love, thirsty, stooped and cupped some of the water into his hands, yet he did not drink. It occurred to him the water of such a fountain might bear some adverse quality. In any regard, this water—he now looked from his hands to the basin—was it…black? Indeed, the pool in the basin seemed dark, suggesting either some taint or a greater depth to be sounded than a fountain’s basin should possess. Or was it merely cloudy? He could see his fingers through the water he held, but the volume was too meager to divine its true properties. He sniffed it. It smelled like nothing.
Fear gripped him then without reason. Hastily, he let his fingers open, spilling the liquid onto the stone, the spatter disquietingly loud in the silence. He could hear in his ears the thrubbing rhythm of his own heart. The turtle seemed to him a living thing even in its stillness, its eyes auguring portents evil and ancient. The cherubs now appeared minatory, their childish smiles transmuted to warning grimaces, their stone eyes desperate and trapped. He backed away, calling himself a dastard even as he did. Again, he circumambulated, forest to his back, like a duelist facing a fellow master, and, nearer now, he discovered something new.
Stairs were cut into the black middle ring of flagstones. A rondure of granite steps, the contour of which approximated the curve of the ring, leading beneath the fountain. Love heard himself breathing, thirst forgotten. Somehow he had come to the brink of the steps, toes hanging over the topmost, hesitating, vacillating between trepidation and wonder, fearing what lay at the bottom, scorning to leave the mystery unexplored. There was something there, he knew, some secret grand and terrible. It was unthinkable to climb downward, but impossible to resist the pull of what lay beneath. Finally, he descended.
He emerged at last in late afternoon parched beyond even a soldier’s reckoning of thirst, thirsty down to his lungs. He walked directly to the hole in the forest and pushed through, incautious of thorns, making his way quickly through the tunnel to the banks of the river, and upon gaining it he walked directly into it until the water reached his mouth and he drank himself full. Returning to camp, Love ann
ounced, before even taking food, that they would not only camp by the banks of this river, but here they would settle, and there was such mantic fire in his visage, such vitality in his countenance, and such a paucity of it in their hearts, no objection was raised to this abrupt and capricious change, and none dared inquire as to his recent whereabouts. They eyed the blood dried to his shirt where the thorns had marked him, but they did not gape long, and they held their tongues. Then Love chewed on what they set before him, and when it was swallowed he fell off the log upon which he sat, sunk already into a deep sleep, and if he had dreams he did not remember them. As he slept, his people shook off their confusion, unbunged the cask of cider, and set upon the meticulous task of convincing themselves Love’s command had been their heart’s hope all along.
When Love woke, he changed his clothing and ate a quick but hearty breakfast, then went out again, taking with him a full flask of water, a leather poke filled with dried fruits and jerky, an axe, a sharp hatchet, and a boy of their party named Frankton Jay. No man asked him his business as he went, and none followed but Frankie—a big boy, not bright but hardworking, open-faced, and well liked. He chattered easily as they walked along the bank, as unperturbed by Love’s lack of reply as he was unconcerned about the details of their task. His arms swung loose-jointed with each step, and from one hand dangled the axe.
When they came to the pathway, Love pointed and uttered one word: Cut. And so Frankie cut, plowing through the tangle with the joy of one who has found the task for which he was originally conceived, never questioning the end of the path upon which Love had bent him, content to merely hack, and to clear, and to widen, chattering empty and well-meaning observation as he did so. Sure is warm today. But not as warm as yesterday. You reckon tomorrow it will be warmer still? That’s what I reckon.
Behind him, Love added finishing touches with the hatchet, giving no reply, and in time Frankton’s prattle ceased and they worked without speech, delving into the quiet part of the wood, where the only sounds were their grunts and the methodical toc toc toc of blade on wood. They rested briefly to eat, then fell to once more, this time with the smaller man taking the lead in the tight places. They returned to camp exhausted and dirty to find the obedient men already at work, industriously surveying parcels to clear-cut for their homes. After a hasty meal, Frankie collapsed into slumber on the ground like a beast, and Love followed him, once he had spent an hour at the grinding wheel returning the edge to the blades. Frankie slept like one dead, but when Love nudged him with a boot-toe an hour before dawn, the lad leapt up, eager as any hound, and followed. The inventory of their kit kept unchanged from the day previous, save that on this outing, Love carried three makeshift torches, fashioned from spokes pried from a broken wagon wheel, and topped with brown turbans of rags soaked in pork fat and creosote.
Frankie, keen to return to chopping, took the fore. Love, working drag, widened Jay’s rough-cut path with short, precise strokes. They arrived at the narrowest place by midday, the thatch above a solid verdant ceiling sparing their backs the wrath of the noon sun. They stopped before the final push for repast, and Love drank deep from the flask, which was filled with cool river water. When it came his turn, Frankie drained the flask dry, his thirst unquenched—naught had been left him but a swallow.
When at last they broke through into the clearing, Frankton Jay bullied into the circle, a smile cresting his broad simple face, but then he saw the thing and wailed and turned to run. Blind with dread, he stammered and stumbled back into the hole they had carved, caught his foot on a root and landed heavily on the earth.
What is that, Mr. Love? Oh my Lord. What is it?
Come boy, don’t crawfish on me now. We have work yet to do.
After many blandishments, Love was able to lead the boy back to the clearing, where Frankie sat on the grass, near enough to the opening to feel safe of escape, and looked at the thing with fear and awe, still close to panic. Love had some skill in soothing a calving heifer, which tactics he now employed: murmuring, cooing, distracting the body with soft pinches and punches, and the mind with empty words and simple questions.
Frankie’s words came slow and stubborn, but from them Love came to understand the boy supposed he, Love, had himself crafted the fountain during his long absence two days previous—a foolish notion which surprised the blacksmith, though he made no attempt to unfurnish the boy of it. Love walked up to the thing to prove it safe, to show it would not crush him for his temerity, as the lad was convinced it would do. He walked slowly around it, laughing, calling to Frankie in a loud cheerful voice, and when the tower blocked them from sight of each other, he dipped the empty flask into the dark water. The boy would not budge, so Love returned to him. They sat on the grass. Love spoke without pause, frequently reassuring the boy they would soon depart.
We can’t stay in this place. None of us. We can’t live here. Not next to…
Of course, boy. I see it now. Are you thirsty?
Thank you, Sir, I surely am.
Love stood, proffering the flask.
It’s empty, sir. I finished it.
I brought two. If you were thirsty, you should have asked me.
Greedily, Frankie took the flask. As he fumbled with the stopper, Love moved to the place where their tools lay. He held the axe close to the end of the handle and watched carefully to see the effect, if any, of the draught.
He regretted what needed to be done; Frankie was a fine boy. He would have made any smith an apt apprentice—but a sheep gone mad with fear can stampede the herd. The boy raised the flask to his lips and drank deeply. For long minutes he sat, still as a stump. Then he rose with unnerving suddenness, turning in blind circles, his eyes filled with confusion and fear, and what he said stayed Love’s axe.
Who am I? Who am I!?
He asked it again and again, in dumb frightened yelps, and with such guilelessness there could be no suspicion of deceit. Love cajoled and interviewed, for a second time in an afternoon whispered him back into his placid nature as if he were livestock taken fright.
Who are you, boy? You tell me.
I don’t know, sir. I don’t know.
Are you alone or with some group?
I wish’d I know’d sir. I wish’d I know’d.
Love carried on the interview until he was certain. The water of the fountain, or else something in it, had flooded into Frankton Jay and washed him away, flooded him right out of his own body: all seventeen of his years washed, dirtfoot Carolina childhood washed, the weeping mother and the drunken father he had left behind washed, the three younger brothers and four younger sisters also washed, loves and likes and hates and all of the longest-held grudges and the oldest friendships, all washed out; and Frankton Jay, too, had been washed away and out of his own comprehension, settling like silt into some faraway ocean’s basin. Now he bleated and kicked at the turf like a panicked calf newly born into a world of trouble. His eyes rolled, rootless as his mind, as he scrambled to gather any identity to himself.
Frankie finally passed into whimpering, then into sighing, then into deep snoring slumber. When Love was sure he was completely asleep, he took his torches and the axe and went down the stairs once more, which led him again to the short narrow passage carved into damp earth. A timid stripe of sunlight ventured halfway down the shallow incline of the stairway, allowing a notion, however slight, of what lay in the passage. The clay of the corridor was thick but malleable, and Love worked a wagon-spoke torch into it until it held there.
The door was still there, crafted from unvarnished wood and ensconced in an unadorned wooden frame on the left-hand wall at the end of the passage. Locked, Love knew from yesterday’s labors. No force of limbs would cause it to yield in the slightest. Today, however, it would fall. He felt the weight of the axe.
He eyed the door as he would an adversary, the iron head of his weapon resting between his feet. Readying himself for
the task, he pondered what to do about the lad above: Should he be allowed to live? What if he tells tales? Yet who would believe? And if any do believe, they can be easily managed. And, if they cannot be managed, they can be disposed of. These corridor walls might be dug out with ease, and are capable of holding more than torches.
Already he knew the deference his people offered up to him. This sad huddle of suffering lazars waved their collective fatigue like a white flag. Beaten, they looked to the strong to lead them. Look now: Had they not already obeyed his edict to abandon their goal of an Ohio settlement—nothing less than the prize that had urged them into this undertaking in the first place? And moreover, had they not celebrated their abandonment with drink? Stronger than their dull rage, more powerful than their weariness, was their unadorned obedience.
Love decided Frankie would live. He was among the strongest in the company. No disease had sapped him, nor fatigue. Had he not been so simple he might have emerged as a rival, but providentially Frankie had none but the most animal of appetites. Strength without will was the measure of Frankton Jay, and of the two qualities, will was most to be feared. Jay had complied with Love’s commands with incurious good cheer through all the most difficult tasks. Now the boy was wiped clean of even his modest thoughts, feelings, beliefs, scruples…yes, Frankie could well be useful. Yet even now time pressed. The boy might wake, and wander, cause nuisance. So: for the door.