Follow the River

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Careful now, she thought. Slow; must no’ sicken yourself.

  She could not have eaten them fast if she had wanted to. Her teeth were so loose that she could gnaw through the tough skin and firm flesh only with care and difficulty, wincing and squinting. As she chewed, a molar came out into the mass of turnip pulp. It was the first tooth she had ever lost. She worked it forward in her mouth as one does a fishbone, took it out and looked wistfully as it as she chewed and savored the mouthful of turnip. She chewed and chewed that first bite, almost in a state of bliss, and it softened in her mouth and tasted heavenly, and her stomach clamored for it. What I like about a turnip, she thought, the longer y’ chew it, the bigger it gets. And y’ want it big, don’t ’ee, my belly? She smiled at the thought of talking with her belly. Then she swallowed and shut her eyes and smiled and felt it go down. “There, how’ee like ’at, my belly?” she said aloud. Her stomach clutched up and hurt for a moment at first, but she did not get nauseated, and she got up and went back to the hut and sat against its sunny side again and carefully began working her teeth through the second bite, and carefully chewed it, her gums itching and aching with the pressure of chewing, and she ruminated on this mouthful, dreamily, ecstatically, soaking in the weak dry sunlight, shivering now and then when a cold breeze would touch her, and she believed she had never, never been quite so happy.

  She used up about an hour, eating the first turnip, which had provided four bites, and when it was gone she sat and gazed at the other one. She was full now, and she wished Ghetel could be here to eat the second turnip. O but wouldn’t she be in heaven, the poor thing, her and her appetites, Mary thought.

  She lay there in the sunshine for perhaps another hour, her mind drifting like fog, blank and light, looking at but not really seeing the river, while her innards burbled and grumbled over the unaccustomed task of digestion. She was too blissful and lethargic to move.

  When she woke up, the sun had moved around to the south side of the hut; it was about midday; she felt drugged. The whole bright gray-yellow landscape pulsated with each heartbeat.

  Must get on, she thought. Now’t I got the wherewithal.

  She yawned and groaned and hoisted herself to her feet. “G’bye,” she said, looking back at the hut and garden. “It’s been a nice visit. I sh’ll surely come back sometime.” I shall, she thought. Sometime I’ll come back down here with Will and have another look at a place where I ought to’ve died but didn’t, thank the Lord.

  She carried the remaining turnip in her left hand and hobbled along the narrow bottomland. With her immediate agonies of starvation allayed a bit, she was more aware of her other discomforts: the feet and legs with their hundred aches and stabs, the silent grinding of her swollen joints, the various twinges around her kidneys, the gurgle of phlegm in her chest and the wintery air on her nakedness. But now at least she felt she could bear these things and keep going. Having a little strength was everything; having pain was nothing.

  She had lost a few hundred yards during the canoe crossing and she had walked for half an hour before she saw on the opposite bank the thicket where she had fought Ghetel and later found the canoe. A little farther on she saw the low bank under which she had crouched and waited for Ghetel to pass.

  The New River here continued its twisting course among mountains of awesome height and mass, mountains that seemed to be the backbone of the world, but for some miles now there had been flat bottomland to walk on, though occasionally it was necessary to clamber through windfalls and tangled drift. These obstacles tired her and demanded all her attention while she was in them, but during most of her progress she would look up every few minutes from her footing and search the opposite shore for a sign of Ghetel. O it’s strange after all that’s happened, she thought, but ’twould be a lovely thing to see her over yonder.

  It was midafternoon and the sun was already dipping behind the high ridges, whose shadows crept up the mountainsides opposite, when Mary noticed something she had been seeing for several minutes without heeding: Circling in the wedge of blue sky in the valley ahead, silently and gracefully winding a course downward toward the riverbank, there were buzzards.

  Something dead, she thought, remembering the muskrat remnants she had pirated from a flock of buzzards back at the waterfall. Pray it’s on this side of the river …

  And then she thought:

  Ghetel.

  O, pray not …

  Heavy brush impeded her way as she went with dread curiosity toward the place upon which the buzzards were descending. She plunged and wove through it in the greatest haste she could manage, ignoring the scratches and the stinging slaps of the branches on her cold skin.

  At last she broke out of the thicket and found herself looking almost directly across the river at the sight she had dreaded to see.

  There on a flat rock shelf next to the river bank, out in the open, lay a gray and white shape, which was Ghetel half-draped in the old blanket. She lay sprawled, inert, on her side, one arm extended stiffly beyond her head, the other lying limp over her waist, as if she had died while trying to claw her way one last inch forward across the rock surface.

  The buzzards were almost upon her old carcass now; one had landed on a bare limb a few feet above her and was watching her; the shadows of the others drifted back and forth over the blanket as they rode the air down to her. Mary sank to the ground, her heart squeezing, her face crumpling up, and moaned. The whole pitiful scene blurred beyond her tears. She felt as crushed as when she had watched the Indians come down with the scalp of her mother.

  O God, to have come this far together, Mary prayed. O dear God, if she’d only behaved, we’d still be together and I could’ve kept her alive, I know I could’ve; I did for weeks and weeks and weeks.

  She wiped the tears away and looked at the dreary, final tableau of that brave old woman’s eventful life. She thought about throwing rocks across the river to drive the buzzards away. At least I could do that for ’er.

  But that would be futile. She could hardly lift a rock. She could not possibly throw one even halfway across this river. And even if she could, how long could she stay here throwing rocks to keep hungry buzzards off that pitiful old carcass? One thing she knew about buzzards was that they had the patience that outlasts all other patience; theirs is the final hunger to be satisfied.

  Eh well, then. The next best thing I can do for ’er, I guess, is not to watch ’em. When they do it to me I’d not want anyone t’ see it.

  So … Ghetel, old dear … I’ll say bye now … an’ get along … leave ’ee in privacy …

  She took one last look, rising to go on. Tears were trickling down her nose, and she saw that the buzzard on the limb had half-spread his wings and was dropping toward the carcass, and one of the flying ones was just settling on the blanket and folding his wings. From this distance she could just see the ugly red nakedness of their heads.

  “HAH!”

  The scene burst into a flurry of motion: black wings beating the air; Ghetel’s form suddenly lurching; Ghetel’s outcry and the clanking horsebell echoing faintly over the river. Mary had to blink to see it.

  Ghetel was trying to scramble to her feet. She had a buzzard by the leg and it was beating frantically to escape, losing wing feathers. “I got you! I got you!” Ghetel was cackling. Mary stood with her mouth agape, shivers of awe running down her flanks, and then with a jolt of gleeful comprehension, she whooped.

  The cunning old devil had finally got hungry enough to ambush buzzards!

  Mary was doing an exuberant dance now, screaming with laughter, cheering Ghetel, having the time of her life. It was simply the most wonderful thing she had ever seen. Even though this was the same desperate visceral cunning that Ghetel had used to attack and hurt Mary, Mary cheered it and thought Ghetel was surely the most marvelous madwoman who had ever come round the mountain. Her heart leaped the wide river to her.

  The ambush didn’t quite work. Ghetel’s feet got tangled in the blanket,
and when she fell the buzzard tore itself free and blundered along the ground until it could gain the air, surely having learned never to approach a carcass in a blanket again. And Ghetel stood there in her scanty rags, a skeleton in wattles of loose skin, shaking her fist and hurling a screeching stream of Dutch profanity skyward after the climbing carrion birds.

  But what heart it had given Mary!

  Ghetel was stooping to gather up the blanket when she seemed to realize that she was not alone. She straightened up and looked quizzically about, simmering down from her rage and disappointment, until her gaze finally came across the river and she saw Mary rocking back and forth and waving to her.

  Ghetel raised both hands and called Mary’s name. It came faintly across the river. It was very strange, hearing her name come from that distance and then echo along the hills.

  Ghetel, white in the winter sunlight against the enormous gray and brown backdrop of the wintery landscape, pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. “I am sorry!” she called.

  “So, then,” Mary called back. “I’m glad to see you!”

  “Ya, ya, me also! May-ry, you come back now, heh?”

  “I can’t!”

  “Please! You come! Ve be friends like before!”

  “No!”

  “I like better to be with you! Please you, come back!”

  Mary shook her head. “This is my side! That’s your side!”

  Ghetel cupped her ear. “Vat you said?”

  “Better we stay apart!”

  It was impossible to see the old woman’s expression from this distance, but her postures and hesitations and gestures showed her to be very cast down and full of remorse. “I am sor-ry!” she called out in drawn-out syllables and pitiful tones. She paused for a long time, extending her arms toward Mary again and standing that way with her head tilted. Finally she called: “I vill not hurt you, I promise! I found a root to eat!”

  “Good! I found two turnips!” She held up her hand with the turnip in it.

  Ghetel was silent for a minute. “Turnips! O, I vant!”

  “Sorry!” But Mary yearned, for an instant, for the strength to throw this turnip across the river to Ghetel. She wondered at herself for having that impulse, after all that had happened the night before.

  She wished she could go across to Ghetel and give her the turnip and put her arms around her and make things be the way they had been before Ghetel had lost control of herself. Because they had had each other close, those had been good days, despite everything. She now remembered their easy passage along the beautiful O-y-o in the warm autumn sunshine as if recalling a balmy holiday with a dear friend.

  Now the valley was in shadow and the air was becoming bitter cold again and it was time to move or freeze. She started up the bank.

  “Pleeeeease!” Ghetel was wailing now. She got down on one knee and wrung her hands, far over there. “I vant us together!”

  “I can’t come over anyway!” Mary called back. “Now, come on! We’ll walk now, shan’t we?” In a way it would be like being together, she thought, if they could keep each other in sight. They would still be together. There would just be a nice safe river’s breadth between them. It would be just fine. She was a long way from the blanket, of course, and from the warmth of a fellow body to sleep alongside in the cold of night. But she was an equally long way from that murderous craziness that came over Ghetel when her belly was truly, truly empty.

  “Come along,” she called again, waving her arm. “We’re still together, dear!”

  And at last, slumping, chin on her chest and head wobbling from side to side in dejection, Ghetel clutched the bedraggled blanket around her and began trudging up the other side of the river.

  So they were together again, in this new and necessary manner of being together, with a river between them, and they resumed their upriver journey which had been interrupted by that hour of utter terror the night before.

  Mary lay shuddering with cold in a deep drift of leaves and waited for dawn to lighten the way enough so that she could rise and go on. Because of the cold, she had not slept at all during the night. The leaves had not kept her warm, as she had been when sharing the blanket with Ghetel; they only slowed her heat loss enough to keep her from freezing to death as she lay still during the interminable night.

  The sky gradually grayed. She rustled the leaves around her head and raised herself far enough to peer around. It was perhaps light enough now to make her way along the cluttered shore. It was easy enough to see the path and the obstacles now; they were outlined with a heavy frost.

  When she rose, the cold pressed on her naked skin like steel. She was painfully hungry. The two turnips had fed her momentarily yesterday, but they had also taught her stomach again to have expectations.

  She shivered and peered across the steaming river to its dim frosted shore and tried to see where Ghetel lay. She would have slept well, doubtless, with the blanket, and probably was still asleep. Mary called her name, her breath making a frosty cloud, then called it again and again. She did not want to lose sight of the old woman, but knew she could not wait here in this frigid air while Ghetel slept late.

  “Yaaaah!” Ghetel’s voice answered across the river, a grouchy wail that made Mary smile in fond amusement.

  Mary trembled and rubbed her forearms up and down over the gooseflesh of her bosom, and bawled back in high spirits: “Roust the old bones, slug-a-bed!” There was no answer for more than a minute. “Up, dearie,” she called again, “if y’re a-goin’ t’ walk with me!” She tried to press her thighs together to warm each other but they were so wasted that only her knees touched. While she waited for a sign of life from the other shore she remembered to tie another knot in the yarn rope that was now not only her only garment but her only possession. And her history. She was wracked with a painful spasm of coughing and her nose was running like a spring. She could scarcely move her swollen fingers or control their trembling to knot the yarn.

  She had reckoned it all out during the sleepless night; according to her count of days and her perception of terrain, she was sure they were not much more than thirty miles from home. She was not in the least inclined to waste a minute of daylight waiting for Ghetel to get her sleep out. But, on the other hand, she had dragged and prodded and coerced the old crab more than seven hundred miles and was determined not to lose her this close to salvation.

  They were able to keep each other in sight most of the day as they climbed and stumbled and crawled up the dark, wild valley with the seething gray river between them. The sight of Ghetel over there, looking as insignificant as an insect at the base of an enormous, mist-shrouded mountain, made Mary aware of how small and weak she herself was in this immense, indifferent wilderness.

  Nought but a couple o’ bugs, she thought. O how mighty stupendous this world is, and how feeble we, and O how far we’ve creeped over it! Ten times ten times ten. Aye, it’s no surprise if the Lord overlooks us entirely, as I fear He has done.

  They called to each other often across the water, to keep in touch and to keep their spirits up. Mary sang, and Ghetel would sing da da, da, da, da, da … They were past worrying whether Indians might hear them. Anyways, if Ghetel met a Shawnee now, Mary thought with a grim smile, she’d doubtless kill and devour ’im.

  At every resting place, Ghetel would come to squat at the water’s edge, huddle there with the blanket drawn cowl-like over her head and plead with Mary for one chance to rejoin her. She professed penitence, and made elaborate and contrite promises, which Mary could barely hear over the rush of the water and the rising wind in the forest, and implored forgiveness, and begged to resume their old companionship. Mary could not seem to make her understand that she could not have recrossed the river if she had wanted to. Mary yelled to her about the canoe, about its sinking, but Ghetel seemed not to understand a word of that. Maybe she did not recognize the word canoe, or maybe she could not hear Mary’s words. Or perhaps she was still, or again, in that condition of mi
nd she had so frequently been in, when she simply would not hear anything but her own plaints.

  Rain started, then turned to sleet, stinging their skin, driving them onward and increasing their lamentations.

  Withal, our witchy wailin’ ought to haunt this Devil’s valley, Mary thought, f’r many a generation t’ come.

  CHAPTER

  27

  Will Ingles, Johnny Draper and Gander Jack rode slouching in the cold rain. Water dribbled off the drooping edges of their hat brims. Each had his rifle lying across his loins, protected by their deerskin capes. The skins were sodden and clammy but the men were warm inside the pungent wool clothes they wore under the hides.

  They were not in good spirits. Their trek down among the Cherokees in the Tennessee and Georgia country seemed to have been a waste of weeks and expense. Snake Stick had given them no sense of confidence. He had not only remained reluctant to carry their ransom offer to the Shawnees, he had also, as his parting words, told them that he might not even go up to the O-y-o country until next spring, instead of this fall. That pronouncement had been almost the last straw for Johnny, who had been simmering under Snake Stick’s insolence, and Johnny had boiled over. Eyes flashing, he had demanded that Snake Stick return the ransom goods. “I’m damned if we give you all this if y’re just a-gonna sit here in your hutch an’ count it all winter!” But Will had managed to cool Johnny down before he could make a real scene, which might have been fatal. In the end, the chief had shrugged and said only, “Snake Stick might go now and he might not go now. Snake Stick does not live to please English.”

  Their return from the Cherokee lands had been uneasy. Gander Jack had sworn a hundred times on the way back that he saw Indians in the corners of his eyes, though he had never managed to get a fixed glimpse of any.