by Julie Berry
He shrugs and jams his dirty fingers in his mouth. His whistle doubles my headache. It is one of his few talents, so loud it brings others over to check on us.
“She wanted me to whistle,” he tells them, making a face like he’s the one humoring an imbecile.
I hear a rustle behind me. I creep back to see, plying my way through willow branches like a swimmer.
I can’t see her but I feel her there. The sweet dusty scent of her hide, the whoosh of her breath. It’s a wonder she didn’t flee at the explosions.
I don’t know her name, neither could I use it if I did. She is more shadow and fancy than flesh and bone. I christen her Phantom.
Murmuring low, I approach her with my hands outstretched. She makes a warning sound, and I pause, pouring warmth and comfort into my sounds.
She takes the smallest of steps toward me.
Pretty lady, pretty Phantom, do you remember me?
Wet nostrils nuzzle my nose, my hair. I lift a hand and brush my fingers over her coarse hide, the warm disk of her cheek.
I unhitch her from the cart she pulls, little more than a box on wheels, and lead her with coaxing noises to where Darrel lies. In my mind, I ask her to carry my brother to a safe place. I thank her for coming to me.
She bows her head and taps a hoof on the ground.
We speak the same language.
II.
I get behind Darrel once more and hook my arms underneath his shoulders. I wish Mother didn’t always give him first crack at dinner. I can barely lift him up to stand. He can’t mount a horse, except to lean over Phantom’s back with his arms and upper body. He does so, and I give his good foot a boost. After some struggle and protest, I get him on Phantom’s back. The men with torches mill about. Fourteen dead, I hear one man say. Sixteen, says another. Others join them, and they confer. Too many injured to hike home. Where to spend the night? What to do with the dead and wounded? Who should send word of their victory back to town?
I could take word, if Darrel was able to tell the message or if someone had paper on which to write it. Darrel’s head bobs on his neck, and his hands burn with fever. By now I’m not sure how much of what happened tonight he understands. I lead Phantom away, and no one makes a move to stop us or ask us anything.
Phantom wants to lead me back to the colonel’s cottage. I consider it. It would be closer, and we’d avoid the river. I am curious to see what is there. Quick to the spoils am I! Perhaps there is a cat or some other creature needing care.
It will have to wait. I coax Phantom homeward, back to Mother, who’ll be torn in pieces with worry.
It takes us nearly an hour in the dark to reach the river’s crossing place. Darrel moans and shivers with pain and need for sleep. The rapids at night are nothing but noise and slick invisible rocks where a horse or a girl could topple and break an ankle. I stop and nuzzle Phantom. I explain to her what I need her to do and why. I tell her I won’t ask of her anything I won’t do myself. Holding tight to her bridle, I step forward into the river.
I miss a rock and find myself soaked to the knees in ice water. Phantom leans slightly toward me and I rest myself on her. Together we plunge and slip and splash across until soft mud meets our feet, then hard earth. Once I nearly fall and she nips my clothing with her teeth.
Are you catching me, pretty girl? Do you already know you’re mine?
III.
He is dead. Your father, my jailer, my torment, the town’s savior. I asked for his help and led him to death. If he deserved little better it scarcely matters. He is dead. I remember once he brought me a dress. Snagged it from some travelers passing through toward Pinkerton, so no one in Roswell Station would notice it missing.
“You’re bustin’ out of that one, even if you don’t eat much,” he said, tossing me the rumpled wool. I waited for him to leave so I could change, but he made no move to go. “What’re you waiting on, then?” he said. “Put it on.”
I began to slide it on over my soiled, worn blue dress, but he stood and seized my collar. He ripped my dress down the front and wrenched it off me bodily. I cried out and clutched the new black dress to my front, then hurried into it as fast as my shaking body would let me. It was warm and scratchy against my skin, too large and long by a good deal, for which I was grateful.
IV.
We follow the path that leads to the village. It is past midnight. I think of the wives and old ones who remained, too weak to flee. They must have heard the battle noises, though they can’t have known what they signified. How amazed they’ll all be to know we’ve prevailed, that most are coming home. How devastating, still, the deaths. We draw closer, and I expect to see women bursting out of their doors hungry for news. I dread it. It is one moment where I won’t regret that people pass me by.
But we see no one, passing around the outskirts of town to home. Darrel clutches the reins like a corpse. He shows no alertness, but only sways in his saddle, slumped as he is over Phantom’s neck.
V.
Mother’s frightened face, underlit by a candle, peers out the window at the sound of hoofbeats. I know what she’s thinking—bad news, if a rider delivers it. When she sees me her jaw drops, and she yanks the door open. She’s upon Darrel, gasping at his maimed foot, speechless with concern. She doesn’t even mention Phantom. Together we topple him off the saddle and catch him before his bad foot touches ground. We are the oxen, and he is the yoke we drag into the house and lay down upon his bed.
Jip, sensing the lights and commotion, barks fit to wake the town, but he can’t be satisfied, for I haven’t brought you back to him.
Mother doesn’t speak, but a river of sound flows from her mouth, little sobs and soothes and clucks as she peels off his trousers, washes, and tends him. Half-snatches of prayers and endearments. Those who can utter, must, it seems, and those who cannot, lead the horse to the barn, stoke fires, heat water, cut cloth into strips to dress wounds.
VI.
Finally Mother can endure the agony no longer. She breaks her own rule and asks me a question that demands I speak.“What happened?” I gaze at her. Whether I answer or not, she’ll be angry with me.
“The homelanders?” she asks.
I shake my head: they are dead. But she doesn’t understand.
“What do you mean?” I draw a finger across my throat. Her eyes grow wide. She falls into a chair.
“Who?” she says. “Us, or them?”
I tap my breast for “us,” and shake my head. Oh, how to say this?
“Home-wlanh-uhz.”
“Yes?”
“Gawnh.”
She frowns. “Gone?”
I nod. Here are some sounds I can make. “Boom!”
Then she does something I could not expect. She smiles broadly and drags me instantly back to five years ago, seven, ten, when she was a happier woman. There is laughter in her voice. “Boom?” she cries. “The homelanders? Boom?”
I nod, and she claps her hands over her cheeks, then shrieks with laughter and crying. She rises, hoists her skirts up over the tops of her boots, and does a little jig. “Boom,” she laughs. “Boom.”
As if I were two, using my first words. As if she had lost her wits.
Darrel moans then, and my somber mother returns where the giddy one had been. Her son’s injury is a worrisome one, but still, when destruction seemed all but certain, even she can be happy that the enemy is gone, we live, and we didn’t lose the war.
It pleases me to think, though she’ll never know it, that I had a hand in her brief joy.
Her voice interrupts my thoughts. “Do the others in the village know yet about the battle?”
I shake my head no. Will she send me now with a message?
“I suppose I should send you to tell them,” she says, eyeing me shrewdly. Then she shrugs. “They’ll find out soon enough. You and Darrel and I will rest quietly here tomorrow and see what we shall see.”
VII.
I am home tonight. I didn’t think I would be.
I am home cutting bandages. The colonel brought me cloths when my bleeding began. I had to ask him or risk his rage.
After my first bleed was when the touching began.
I’d be crouched, washing dishes in a pail on the floor. I would stand, and he’d be there, leaning against me. Then he’d walk out the door and be gone for an hour.
I would wake from troubled sleep to find him standing over me, running his hand down my leg. When he saw my eyes blink, he’d go back to his chair.
VIII.
Morning isn’t far off by the time we collapse into our own beds. Darrel is as clean and comfortable as we can make him, well dosed with whiskey. That is when Mother lets herself weep.
“At least Darrel came back to me,” she says to me. I am startled by this intimacy. But not the irony. I’ve long been accustomed to that.
Her eyes are red and puffy as she looks at me, as though for the first time.
“Thank you.”
IX.
Once I tried to escape, after a few weeks there. I had seen that he went out in the mornings for some time, walked far off into the woods to do whatever he did. I gathered my courage and crept out the door. I began, on tiptoe, to walk away, in the opposite direction of the one he had taken. Twenty paces out, I sped to a run. Fifty paces out, he tackled me. I never saw nor heard him approach. I landed on my back, his face over me, his hunting knife blade clenched between his teeth. He dragged me back to the house by one hand, whistling over my sobs, and threw me in the cellar to spend two days without food or the privy.
X.
Had I forgotten all of this? Had I forgotten when I went charging off into the woods to trade myself for you? What trick of the mind obscured these memories, and what further trick brings them back now?
XI.
He is dead. Not asleep, nodding off in his chair, propped against his door, his knife holster in his lap. He is dead. Annihilated. There’s no body to bury, no remains to find. I imagine his long gray hairs catching fire and curling up, orange, till they all are consumed, till the flames reach his head, his body, his hands.
I can’t relish it. In the flames in my head, his body, his hands become yours.
XII.
Sunrise finds Darrel snoring and Mother frowning down at his foot. My body aches all over, but what of that? I didn’t burn at the stake, didn’t even fight a war. I only took a walk in the woods. I’m alive! And that’s something.
I’m eager to know what the morning brings to Roswell Station. I dress quickly and fly through everyone’s chores. It’s wonderful to see Phantom in the barn. There hasn’t been a horse here since I was a little girl and Father was alive. Old Ben, long gone. I groom Phantom with his currycomb.
I squat down and scrub Jip’s gray hide with my knuckles, until he flops on his back and begs me to scratch his belly. You’re alive! Jip and I can celebrate.
When I return to the house, I find Goody Pruett there, lecturing Mother on leeches and dressings. The veteran’s awake now and making a show of his moans for our widow neighbor. I try to slip outdoors but Goody’s shiny black eyes catch me. Why do I always feel she knows where I’ve been and where I’m bound?
I leave Goody and Mother and head into town.
What right do we have to such a glorious morning? Shouldn’t the sky be ashamed of itself for such a vivid blue backdrop to red and orange leaves and grasses glazed with early frost? When have wood smoke and hay smelled so sweet, and fresh-gathered eggs felt so warm in my hand? When has our lazy old cow’s cream bubbled so thick?
The cow doesn’t know what to think about sharing her barn with Phantom.
XIII.
A basket of eggs, a bushel of apples into the wheelbarrow, and I hurry into town. I need a reason. I pass your home but you’re not there. Of course not. You’ll have stayed to help the injured. In town, all doors are open, women whispering, huddled talking. Caps askew, bedclothes on, infants wandering dirty. We’re all upended, duties forgotten. Word hasn’t reached home yet, it seems. People stop and gawk at me as if they would ask me for news before remembering I’m mute. And why should I have news? They don’t know where I’ve been. They look at my barrow to say, it was crude of you to bring goods to market on this day of apocalypse.
Maria ventures from her door, all color drained from her face. Her clothing is dark and neat, like one already in mourning. She sees me and searches my face. Like Goody Pruett, Maria sees through me. She knows I know something. She takes a step toward me.
That we both love you makes me feel close to her. I want to clasp her hands and bring her joy: Lucas is well and coming home! The gift of your survival overshadows rivalry. As if I could be a rival to her!
Even as we face each other, fife music reaches us, and footsteps. The villagers freeze. Are these the conquerors, come to invade? Only I know, and the secret consumes me. Down at the end of the street the men appear, two by two, bearing the injured and dead between them. Those who can are calling out to loved ones, those that do not dangle in blankets. The women hitch their skirts and run, their voices rending the air at the sight of familiar faces. Maria lingers longest, then hurries after them. I leave my eggs and apples to whoever will have them and follow.
Women weep, and men, too, some embracing, others searching for wives who’ve ridden to shelter. The schoolmaster, the blacksmith, the preacher, all on foot, and you, far in the rear, walking sideways, helping Abijah Pratt carry Leon Cartwright.
Maria searches the crowd and finds you. My throat is tight. She runs to you.
You see her, and you stop. Your face is a flood about to break, and you look as though it takes all your presence of mind not to drop Leon Cartwright on the ground and sweep her up in your arms.
She paws past you and seizes Leon’s face between her hands.
“Leon!”
I stop where I stand.
“Is he dead?”
I edge closer. In all the talking and crying, I’m invisible.
Mr. Cartwright hobbles over with his cane.
“No,” you say. “He’s not dead. It’s his leg. He lost a lot of blood last night. But he’s alive.”
Maria dissolves into shuddering tears.
You and Abijah exchange a look and lower Leon to the ground. Maria rubs him up and down, his shoulders, his ribs, calling his name. His head bobs, and his sunken eyes open. His lips are cracked and peeling.
“Maria?”
She buries her face in his neck and sobs into his ear. He flops an arm around her.
Everyone averts their eyes but you. You stand looking down at your bride-to-be, at the net of dark curls that spills out from under her starched white cap.
Her father appears, his arm in a sling. He looks at you, then at his daughter, and his eyes grow wet. He pats your shoulder with his good arm and tries to steer you away, but you won’t be moved. Not until Maria rises from her knees, snuffling, and looks around at the knees of the men who surround her. That’s as far as she gets. It’s safer to look back at Leon’s face, which has some color now, and wipe her tears off his cheeks.
Only then do you retreat and disappear into the crowd.
XIV.
You send a rider to summon back the escapees to Hunters Ferry. You see the wounded to their homes, then organize return parties to bring back more dead. You tell new widows how their husbands fought and died valiantly. You tell them their sacrifices saved Roswell Station. Alderman Brown stands on the sidelines and watches. I watch through the parlor window as you carry Leon in your two arms and place him on the couch in Maria’s father’s home. You shake her father’s hand, and bow to Maria and her mother, and leave.
X V.
If you were mine I’d comfort you; if you were mine you’d need no comfort!
Brave heart, that carried her lover home unknowing, that sets your formidable energies now to gathering all the injured and burying all the dead. Sorrowing heart, to lose a father and a wife in one battle and still lead the village in its mournful duty.
I
see the slice of your shovel blade into the hard, red earth; I hear the grunt as you heave the clay behind you and plunge the spade again. Hearts must wait while a grave is dug so Tobias Salt, the miller’s son, can be laid to his earthly rest.
I would hate her for your sake, but how can I not love her now?
I would shout that Leon’s a lesser man if I could, but thank God Maria does not know it.
XVI.
“Miss Finch,” you say, seeing me in the street. We are back to formality. “Did you see Darrel safely home last night?” I swallow and nod. Yes.
“All by yourself?”
Yes.
You clap your hand on my shoulder and squeeze it, like you would do to one of your men. For they are your men, now. Then you drop your hand in some embarrassment.
“He’s lucky to have a sister like you,” he says. “Lucky you were there to look out for him.”
I watch your back as you walk away. You know that’s not the reason I was there.
You know I brought your father to the battle and yet you say nothing about it. My fate, my reputation, are in your hands. I can trust your honor like no one else’s.
If I thought I could never love you more, I didn’t understand you well enough.
XVII.
The sun rises high. I can find no more excuse to linger. You’ve gone back to the gorge for more search and recovery. I heard someone say there were fears of stray homelanders who had left their ships before . . . The thought went unfinished. No one, it seems, has told the village all that happened last night. But you are gone, and the skeletal families who are here in town are closeted together to cry or celebrate, so I let my feet carry me home to Mother and Darrel. Halfway there, I realize I’ve forgotten the wheelbarrow. I leave it. It will give me a reason to return.
