I wonder me what Ghetel will be like on th’ morrow, Mary thought. Back to herself, I pray. I figger there’s a hundred mile more to go, provided we don’t lose our way, an’ more if we do, and I surely can’t go a hundred mile while a-fightin’ a crazy woman every step, now can I?
Mary was drowsy again and her limbs were buzzing with the sleep feeling, but she wanted to run the succession of landmarks up out of her memory one more time, because the difficulties of the last few days had rather befogged them.
There weren’t many landmarks left. They had come back past most of them. The next one she could recall was the big creek where the Indians had washed the paint off of themselves and had painted the trees. That was the creek where they had made a camp and the chieftain Captain Wildcat had playacted the birth of a Shawnee baby. Let’s see, she thought. We was ten or twelve days—twelve, if I remember correct—down from Draper’s Meadows when we come down out o’ that crick, an’ I remember we crossed th’ New River there at a shallows to th’ other bank there.
She could remember that, and was sure she would recognize it, but beyond that the prospect became quite bewildering, with hardly a landmark. She could remember that they had ridden for several days north along a high-level ridge without a glimpse of the New River. Lordy, she thought, a shiver of awe running down her flanks, I can’t guide us up that crick and up that ridge because I was half out o’ my head when we come down it and it’s all either blank or dreamy. I couldn’t find our way back the way we come those few days; I got to keep us right along the New River. I das’n’t get us away from the New River.
She wondered, as she had wondered before, why the Indians had left the New River and gone up that mountain ridge. The only reason they take a way, she thought, is ’cause it’s most passable. That’d likely mean we came down over the mountain way because the New River for some stretch in there was too rough f’r good travel.
Her heart sank and she felt even more hollow than she had been feeling all these hungry, tiring weeks. God knows what we’re a-gonna find the valley like after we get above that painted-tree creek, she thought. God help us. Lord, she thought, I hope y’ve had your fill o’ punishin’ me, for I’ve a feelin’ I’ll need all y’r kind aid and guidance to get through this next week or two.
And then Ghetel groaned and shifted in her sleep, one of her legs drawing away from one of Mary’s, leaving it cold where it had been almost warm, and Mary lay there in the blackness in the old woman’s stink and her own, hugging her still with one arm, this old woman who had tried to kill her, and it was strange, the strangest thing ever, because after trying to kill and beat each other they had needed each other so much that Mary had lingered waiting for Ghetel to come along and Ghetel had come along the ravine crying for Mary. They had needed each other because it was more than one could bear to be out here in this land alone.
But Mary knew, even as she held the sleeping hag for the warmth of life, that she would have to be on guard every minute Ghetel was awake, and that she must never sleep while Ghetel was awake.
I’d better just stay awake now till morning so’s she won’t wake up afore me, Mary thought.
And that was what she was thinking when the wooliness move into her head and she went to sleep.
CHAPTER
21
In Philadelphia when she was a little girl, Mary had taken pity on a pariah dog she had seen sniffing for slops in the gutter; there had been something wordlessly good in its dark brown eyes when it had looked up at her, and she had gone into the house and taken a blood pudding from the pantry, stolen it out past her parents and given it to the pariah dog. Then she had gone back in the house thinking about the dog, and that night the dog had scratched at the door. Mary awoke now to a sound of scratching, dreaming about the dog.
She started awake. It was early dawn. Ghetel was sitting up, half out of the blanket, her legs still covered, doing something that made that scratching sound, and Mary was instantly defensive, angry at herself for not staying awake. Stealthily, she extricated her arm from the blanket and reached behind her to grasp the handle of the pointed pole which she had placed in her side of the hollow the night before.
Ghetel was clawing at the rotten bark on the underside of the big fallen tree that sheltered them. Bark debris and wood-punk kept falling on the blanket. Ghetel, a silhouette against the half-light, would scrabble in the decaying wood for a moment, then pause and put something to her mouth.
Th’ poor thing’s eatin’ punk, Mary thought. She’s a-goin’ to kill herself yet to fill ’er guts. Mary herself was nothing but a tremendous craving hollowness; the blood pudding of her dream was still tantalizing the back of her mind, even though she had never liked blood pudding.
“Enough o’ that, dear,” Mary said wearily, and at the sound of her voice Ghetel jerked around like a child caught stealing. But then she said, in a voice that sounded actually cheerful:
“Nah, May-ry. All’s well.”
“Please don’ eat wood. Y’ make me ill.” Hauling against an enormous weariness, Mary crept out of the blanket and stood up outside the shelter in a frost-covered world, squatted on pain-wracked legs to make steamy water, shivering and surveying the weather and trying to get her bearings. It was still gloomy in the ravine, and the fast stream they had crossed last evening rushed and gurgled nearby. The sky above the ravine was pinkish-blue and the leafless trees on a ridge far downstream caught the early-morning sunlight and gleamed a soft rosy yellow. Promise of a fair day but cold. It would be hours before the sun could mount high enough to light these deep valleys.
And us with one blanket a-tween us now, Mary thought. One and t’other of us’ll have to go naked in turn.
Nay, she thought then, angrily: She lost her blanket. She’ll go naked.
Forgive me, she thought then. Of course we’ll take our turns. If the old thing’ll cooperate we will. I think she be a-needin’ a lecture.
She heard footsteps above; over the noise of the stream she heard leaves crushing. She stood and turned, hoisting the spear.
A deer came down between two mossy ledges of rock, going toward the creek. It was a buck with fine antlers. It sensed her presence, paused to look at her, then went on down to the stream. It was too far away for her to throw the spear at it. She took a few cautious, wobbly steps toward it, her skin in gooseflesh, frost biting her bare feet, her breath condensing. The buck raised its head from drinking and bounded away up the bank. The white under its tail disappeared in the brush.
Ah well, Mary thought. Nothing lost. No expectations for that’n.
She went back and peered under the log. Ghetel was sitting in the dim cranny, the blanket up over her shoulders, a mass of wood-rot in her upturned palm. She was probing in it and putting things in her mouth. She was too intent to see Mary loom over her. Mary bent down and looked closely, then shuddered violently. Ghetel was picking little dark beetles out of wood dust and eating them.
Ghetel became aware of Mary, raised her eyes and suddenly hid her hands in the blanket. She looked angry. “Not enough for both us. You find a tree.”
Mary’s mouth gaped. She saw a blaze of red behind her eyes. She reached in and grabbed the edge of the blanket and jerked it with all her might, dragging it off Ghetel and dumping her over. “You find a blanket,” she snapped. She flung the blanket around her shoulders, took one hard last glance at the awful-looking bundle of baggy gray skin and protruding bones floundering to sit up under the log, then stalked away down the creek bank. About thirty yards farther on she stopped, stood looking at the cliffs, took a deep breath and sighed it out, and waited until she heard Ghetel’s neck-bell and querulous mutterings coming along behind her. She turned and watched her catch up, meandering as if drunk, kicking up leaves as she stumbled forward, her baggy skin flapping as loose as the rags of her dress, holding something forward in her palm.
“Forgif?” she said plaintively, drawing near. “Here. I bring you some …”
“I’ll not eat bu
gs! Ghetel, hear me, I must tell you how it’s to be if we go on together … Listen!” Ghetel stood there twitching and trembling with the cold, eating the rest of the beetles, then dusted the wood punk off her palms, and waited, ruminating on her revolting cud, staring ingenuously at Mary with her bleared hazel eyes, waiting for admonitions she perhaps understood were deserved.
Older’n my mother, Mary thought, yet I must now scold ’er down like a nose-pickin’ child.
“Ghetel, I come away ’cause I got a pinin’ for a faraway place and my husband who needs me. That, dear, is why I’m not t’ be stopped, by starvin’, nor sickness, nor any kind o’ hurt. Nor’ll I be stopped by a woman who grudges me my purpose.
“I know your purpose is weaker, as you’re goin’ t’ no one. And Lord knows y’r gut rules ye more’n mine does me … Mercy! One who’d eat bugs!
“Many ways, I know, y’re stronger’n me. Oh, aye! How you took that whuppin’ at the Shawnee town! Now, I’d’ve died I’m sure! I admired that more’n you could know.
“But now, dear, having purpose, I’m the stronger one. And though I need ’ee quite some, why, I sh’ll just go on alone if ’ee ever serve me as bad as ’ee did yesterday! Aye, leave ’ee back, and a good riddance, too! Now, are we agreed, eh?”
The old woman had swallowed her bugs. She nodded and stood hugging her bosom and shaking. “Aye, aye. Vat I done yesterday I don’t remember. But I don’t hurt you again, May-ry. Oh, I am cold!”
“We must get a-movin’ or we’ll seize up frozen. Now, listen, Ghetel, I sh’ll give ’ee this blanket now and then, in turn, but only if ’ee promise to give me it back when I say. A promise?”
“Yah, a promise.”
“I mean your true word, God as your witness.”
“Yah. Gott I swear.”
“So be it. Now come.”
They reached the mouth of the roaring creek and turned southeastward late in the morning. The descent had taken them hours because they had had to cross two great, precarious rockslides where any misstep sent stones and boulders tilting out from under their feet and rattling and crashing down into the creek. They had also been slowed by Ghetel’s new taste for bugs. She had picked up a sharp-edged piece of flat rock, and at virtually every downed tree she had lagged behind to hew rotten bark away with the stone and look for such beetles as she had enjoyed for breakfast. Mary grew impatient, and was constantly coaxing her on. But in a way it was better; as long as Ghetel had hopes of finding food and was preoccupied with it, she seemed less desperate, less sullen toward Mary, less dangerous. Ghetel had found no more bugs despite all her stalling and hacking, but she seemed certain that she would, and was comparatively happy.
Crossing the rockslides had done awful damage to their feet. The skin was off most of their toes and ankles and they left little red smudges of blood wherever they stepped. Mary had a deep gash in the arch of her right foot and a puncture in the sole of her left where a locust-thorn had gone in at least an inch. She had pulled it out but a part of the point had broken off and was deep in the flesh. Ghetel had caught her left foot between two jagged rocks, and in trying to lift one off had badly ground up the flesh of her little toe. But, as the white bone was visible, they had been able to inspect it and see that the toe was not broken. Every part of their feet had been stubbed and jammed and scraped countless times, so often that each time it happened it was a surprise that the new pain could be felt through the old pain. And so when they reached the narrow strip of bottomland in the New River gorge, they sat down on a drift log in the weak November sunlight and, despite the chill of it, made plasters of the icy mud and caked each other’s feet in them. They spent an hour there, sitting side by side on the log, the blanket across both their backs, facing the sun, all the weight off their feet, letting the mud dry and pull the sharp pains out of their feet. “Notice?” Mary said. “Y’can count your heartbeat by th’ throbbin’s in your feet.” They did that for a while as the sun shone on their faces and closed eyelids. Ghetel jerked awake suddenly, saving herself from falling backward off the log.
They sat in the hush of the river valley and waited for the courage to put their weight back on their feet and go. A flash of intense scarlet shot through their vision and stopped on a bush ten feet away: a cardinal. He sat on a swaying twig looking about with abrupt little turns of his crested head, his bead-black eyes almost invisible in the band of black around the base of his beak. Mary was seeing him with an intense clarity of vision brought on by her utter emptiness, a kind of seeing in which he was not just a bright red bird in a wintry landscape of browns and grays and dying greens, but was a flying vehicle designed to carry the vibrancy of its life from place to barren place and thus to keep all places from being without the beauty of life. Mary had never had such a thought before, and she was staring at the bird the way she had stared at the burning spring several nights before, warming her soul at it, when Ghetel moved abruptly beside her and flung the rock she had been carrying. The toss was feeble and inaccurate; the rock struck low in the bush, shaking it, and the cardinal fluttered away untouched. Mary turned and looked at her, incredulous. “Why?” she demanded.
Ghetel’s eyes were blazing, happily. “I just t’ink: There are alvays birds, here, dere … and a bird is not much to eat, but it is more den a bug! We carry rocks, eh? And one time now and den, ven ve trow ve don’ miss, eh? And ve vill eat a bird dat day, eh?”
Mary shook her head. Ghetel and her gut.
But when they put their weight on their feet, groaning with the returning pain and then getting used to it, and started to move on, Mary stooped alongside Ghetel and gathered rocks of good throwing size, enough of them to carry at the ready in one hand. It was true, there were always many birds darting about, even in this stark season, and one bird, one cardinal or mockingbird, even one small oriole or robin or a tiny sparrow, would be more nourishment than they had taken in the last week.
Maybe, Mary thought, still working things out in the lightheadedness of hunger, maybe that is what the redbird was telling us, all bright red and full of life like that.
Early in the afternoon they reached the creek of the painted trees. By that time they had gathered and thrown several handfuls of stones, but had come nowhere near bringing down a bird, and Mary was beginning to understand that if they ever did hit one of the swift little creatures with their feebly-thrown missiles, it would be more by chance than by aim. She had resigned herself to that. Still, there was a chance, and so they carried rocks and they stalked birds and threw at them as they went along.
But somehow as they progressed they saw fewer birds, and Mary sensed that somehow the birds were warning each other.
The river and the paint-tree creek both were higher and faster than they had been in July. They could not wade across the New River at the shoal; it would have been too high and fast now even if they had been on horseback. And it appeared that they would have to do still another walk-around to get across the paint-tree creek. So they turned up through the brushy, narrow canyon.
The narrow bottomland where they had camped on the way down was under water now, just saplings and bushes sticking up out of the water, and where the sides of the gorge were too steep to walk on the two women waded in the cold water up to their knees and held to a bush, a tree, a root, a vine. They were extremely weak now and did not trust their benumbed legs to support them even in this shallow water, so they would not let go of one handhold until they had a new one. This creek twisted like a snake around the base of steep mountains whose sides seemed to mount to the very center of the sky, and the sun was down from sight early in the afternoon so there was not even that faint warmth to bless their skin. The ravine was so narrow that Mary sometimes had to hang onto a tree and look up and around to assure herself that the mountainsides were not moving together to crush her.
They went about five miles up the west side of this creek before they found a place of riffles and decided they could cross there. Mary decided. The old woman was simply
following along now, moaning with hunger or pain or both, stopping now and then to heave a rock weakly at some bird. They waded across the creek easily, simply clenching their teeth and letting the egg- and fist-sized pebbles of the bottom torture their feet as they would; that did not matter any more; they just had to get across this creek and back down to the river before dark.
Mary had assumed a similar attitude about her stomach. It was simply going to gnaw and hurt and give her that awful, weakening hollowness, and that was the way it was. She did not try to find just any old thing to put into it anymore; she simply was not as desperate as Ghetel to have something in it for the sake of having something in it. She thought it probably was better to have nothing in it at all than to have it half full of such trash as Ghetel was continually picking up and gnawing and swallowing: bark and seed pods and husks, fungus off the dead trees, dead moss full of dirt, and now, even beetles and grubworms.
But as dusk came down and they returned to the valley of the river, Mary’s hunger made her so faint that the world around her began humming and swooping, and she realized that even though she could stand the misery of starving, her body would not keep going much longer on nothingness. It really had exhausted all the residue of roots and sumac berries and slippery-elm bark she had eaten days before and was now consuming itself, and will or no, or Will or no, her body would simply stop here. The truth was that she could not ignore her hunger any longer; she could not just rise above it.
And so in the last light of this day she hunted food alongside Ghetel with an equal urgency. They pulled up and gnawed roots. They ate buds. They found a few acorns, cracked them with rocks and ate the dried-up, leathery, bitter meats. They threw rocks in vain at a few sparrows. They threw the spear at a raccoon and missed. And when Ghetel at last barked an old log that yielded a few squirming grubs, Mary did take a few in her palm and, trying to think of faraway things, threw them into her mouth and swallowed them, unable to bear the thought of chewing them. When they were down she gave a great shudder. And she had a grim thought then that made her smile:
Follow the River Page 29
