Wilderness of Spring

by Edgar Pangborn

  _Chapter Two_

  Ben surged up on a stiff arm, listening. The uproar had been in theshed, he thought. Maybe Ranger had broken his rope and run out. Now Bencould hear only the bumping sickly turbulence of his own heart. In adream he had been flying; the dream had betrayed him into this agony oflistening where no sound was, and fear grew over him like frost on astone image.

  "_Arm!_"

  That noise was part of the dream. In the dream, faceless beings had beenshouting, not willing that Ben should fly.

  Then he knew the cry was the summons of the watch in a world of nodreaming--a few rods away, near the north end of the palisade. Itflared, a jet of terror in darkness, and died.

  The covers dropped. Cold slapped and squeezed Ben, but he could not moveuntil some sound released him from this frozen waiting.

  It came, a yelling that soared upward like fire swallowing dry pine,throbbing yells made by only one kind of creature alive.

  A different voice pierced the clamor, snarling in search of authority:"_A droit, vous! La-bas! Enfoncez les portes!_" And a wild drawledafterthought: "_Prisonniers!_" The voice was smothered by the yells anda whinnying of some other man's laughter.

  Footsteps pounded on snow. Steel assaulted wood. Then--Reuben stillsleeping--the flintlocks began to talk, the near ones a dry thundering,the farther ones like slamming doors.

  Ben could move. He reeled up, shocked into panic, thrashing againstsullen-clinging bedclothes. "Ru!" Ben punched and shook him. "God damnit, wake up!" Reuben made an empty noise. "Raid! It's the French!"Reuben leaped under his hand, comprehending. "Here!--your britches. Yourshoes--no, bugger it, these're mine, where'd you put yours?" Benslammed his forehead on the foot of the bed, searching; his nightshirttripped him and he flung it off. A floor-splinter lanced fire into hisknee. He heard two thuds, one below the window, the other in the sameinstant on the opposite wall. "_Ru!_"

  "Leave off shouting, Ben."

  "That bullet----"

  "What bullet?"

  "Never mind. _Will_ you tell me where your shoes are?"

  Reuben could not answer. Joseph Cory's voice fumed at the foot of thestairs: "Come down! Coats--don't forget your coats!"

  Ben shouted: "We're coming!" He pursued the shoes under the fallenbed-cover. He found his own breeches and shirt, then his hunting-knifewhere it always rested on the table by the bed.

  Orange glory beyond the window marvelously bloomed, flooding Reuben'sangelic face and thin naked body moving toward the square of light."Why," said Reuben--"why, the cods're burning us!"

  "God's mercy, get away from that window!"

  He had to pull Reuben from it; force the shoes on his feet and findarmholes for him. Father was calling again. Ben hustled his brother tothe head of the stairs. "Stay here. I'll get the coats."

  The room shimmered. Red-black ghosts in a swirling jig hid the coats,defying Ben to come get them and fall on his face. He got them; then hetoo was drawn against his will to the window.

  The fire danced on his left, the heart of it out of sight--west andsouth, beyond the training field, the Hawks house perhaps. North, nearthe meeting-house, a confusion of shapes under gunfire was twistingtoward some climax. Five fire-tinted men broke away, soundless to Ben,moving with apparent slowness. One leaped forward in mid-stride to dropin the white; his arms sought each other above his head, scooping thesnow as if he would embrace it, or climb like a hurt bug up the side ofa world for him overturned.

  The others disregarded him, plunging toward the Cory house. Reuben wastrying to speak. "I'm here, Ru. We must go down--could be trapped."Reuben mumbled something. "What?"

  "Ben, I must----"

  "God damn it, don't be looking for the pot, use the floor, if they burnus who's to care?" Ben called again to his father, but his voice wasswallowed by a bang. Not his father's gun--Jesse Plum's musket, a pieceof trash the old man had picked up at third or fourth hand, likely toshoot anywhere but forward. "Come on, Ru!"

  "I'm sorry."

  "Your coat. Here--I'll button it for you."

  "Ben, I didn't pray tonight, nor I didn't forget neither."

  "What? Oh, put on your coat!"

  "I didn't pray."

  Ben forced the boy's arms into the coat and lifted him, amazed at hisown strength, at the sureness of his feet on invisible stair-treads."Ru, you deceive yourself."

  "Mr. Williams saith that without prayer----"

  "Ru, be still!"

  Jesse's wretched gun slammed again, a different sound, a spatteringclang, followed by the stridency of Jesse cursing and weeping.

  Ben's mouth brushed Reuben's cheek; he tried to say somethingreassuring. How could even a child suppose the disaster was on hisaccount? What of all those in Deerfield who did pray? He supposed Reubenwould presently recover his wits, and set him down, but held him stillin the hollow of his arm.

  No true dark prevailed here in the entry facing south. The front room'swest window admitted the glare of the burning, showing the emptyfour-poster. Ben's father was a specter in a nightshirt, cursing himselffor not having locked the shutters. "Where's Mother?"

  "In the hall." That was the name for the rear room,kitchen-parlor-workroom, heart of the little house. "Go to her, Reuben."Ben let him go. The brass face of the clock blurred in its tall oakencabinet; Ben could not make it out. His time-sense said it was neardawn.

  Outside the front door voices set up a gobbling not in French. JosephCory yelled: "I hear you, God damn you!" And to Ben, quietly: "See toJesse, I think his gun blowed. Find out if you will."

  _If you will_--he had never spoken so to Ben before. Ben groped throughthe doorway between the rooms; Reuben was shivering there alone. Benfound his mother and Jesse Plum in the hall, Jesse swinging his gauntarms, one bare, the other trailing a wisp of nightshirt. The old man wasfending her off. "Don't impede me, Goody Cory! 'Tis a nothing--leave mefetch my axe!" He lurched clear of her helpless hands, and Ben glimpsedhis right side where the nightshirt had been blasted away--cooked meat.A piece of the gun-barrel stuck from a crack in the wall. Jesse seemedunaware of pain.

  "Let him be, Mother. Come away from the windows!" She heard, understood,came to him. Jesse plunged into the woodshed and returned with his axedangling.

  "A nothing!" Jesse hooted. The little blue eyes burned above a madsmile. "I'll hold this side, Goody Cory. They won't pass, not by me.I'll see their guts cheese and the dogs eating it." He raved on. Benhurried back to his father.

  "Look!"

  Only a blot with eyes, at the west window. In wide fluid motion like thefinal leap of a cat, Joseph Cory swung his gun and fired. The thingtoppled away. Below the ridiculous starred hole in the glass a chokingbody began a gradual dying.

  "You got him."

  "I got him," said Joseph Cory, and turned on his son a sickened face Benhad never known. "What of Jesse?" The choking continued. Goodman Cory'svoice climbed, beating down that noise: "Speak up, boy!"

  "His gun did blow, he's hurt but not down. He fetched his axe. I thinkhe knows what he's doing."

  Goodman Cory reloaded the gun. "Ben, I'm weak." The choking became abubbling squeal. Goodman Cory stumbled toward the window.

  Ben's mother was kneeling in the doorway between the rooms, Reubenclutched in her arms, her cheek against his head. She was praying. Thelight of the fires showed Ben her moving lips, her dark eyes that nowand then sought for him, too. Goodman Cory had halted short of thewindow, crucified by uncertainty, the flintlock a stiff burden. "Ben,"he said--"Ben, hear me...."

  The crash of an axe against the oaken door blotted out at last theclamor of a man strangling in his own blood. But Ben could still hearhis mother praying.

  "A stone axe, not steel," said Joseph Cory, and nodded to Ben as one manto another. "No good against our oak."

  "Will you shoot through the door?"

  "... _and forgive us our trespasses_ ..."

  "Nay--only waste a bullet. Ben, thou art a man--if I'm lost, takecare of thy mother and Reuben. Be ready. Readiness--I mean_alway_-
-later--all thy life--readiness, wherein I've failed."

  "You've not failed."

  "No time for kindness." He shook Ben's arm. "Ben--if God liveth he isfar away."

  "... _for thine is the kingdom_ ..."

  "Ben, hear me," said Goodman Cory. "I say God is far away, no whitconcerned with man."

  "Deliver us," said Adna Cory--"deliver us from evil...."

  "I wanted learning, Ben. Find more than I did."

  The good oak was barely quivering under the petulant fury of the stoneaxe. "But Father, you know so much----"

  "I? Learning--oh, a key to so many doors! Why, I never found but a few,sniffing at the threshold, a fool, a bumpkin. And Reuben must findlearning too." He pulled Ben close, crouching, whispering: "Ben, hearme. I fear for Reuben. I pray you, keep him from being too much wounded.I can't understand him, Ben. Thou art mine own, I _know_ thee--whilehe--nay, I haven't words...."

  "But Father, you will----"

  The pounding ceased. Sudden footsteps thumped rhythmically on snow.Something different smashed against the oak with the gross dullness ofthe invincible. Goodman Cory pushed his son into the front room. "Thedevils have found a log. Why, Ben, I shall live if I may."

  It was an honest door, three-ply, studded with nails; the log ramthundered five times before that barrier yielded. Then Ben's eyes wincedat high-crested devil-shadows surging in the orange glare.

  Goodman Cory wasted no shot on the two who rushed the entrance. Themuzzle of his gun found their heads, snake-swift, aimed like the courseof a bullet. They collapsed in a mess of legs and arms. With thumpingviolence a hatchet skidded across the floor.

  Ben saw his father clamber over the stunned enemy and past the wreckageof oaken boards. He heard his father shout in a voice so searching thatall the roaring confusion, magnified with the door down and a suddencold wind in the gap crying, was momentarily a silence: "Did you comehere to murder children?"

  A French officer ten yards away in the corrupted snow gracefully liftedhis flintlock and shot Goodman Cory through the heart.

  * * * * *

  He said: "Mother, you must not shield me." But in her prayers she didnot hear him.

  The room before him spread out as a mass of darkness holding two oblongmouths of Hell, yet from moment to moment as his mother prayed, Reubenwas aware, coldly aware that those two hell-gates were simply windows ofthe house where he lived: the west window displaying an absurd, prettyhole--who'd have thought a bullet could go through without shatteringall the glass?--the south window a fainter gleaming, for its shutterswere partly closed and the glare of the fires came upon itindirectly--beautiful in fact, rather like first light of a red-skymorning; rather like----

  Wind struck him, rushing through the ravished door, and Reuben thought:_Now!_ "Mother, let me go! Let me----" but her cheek was heavy and hotagainst his head; her arms would not understand; he could not hurt herby struggling to free himself.

  Someone, maybe Father, shouted a dim word or two outside and wasanswered by a blast of gunfire. In the room behind them Jesse Plumraved. _Mother, let me speak to you_--Reuben understood he had not saidit aloud.

  "_Deliver us from evil--deliver us from evil...._"

  It was coming.

  Reuben had known it, waited for it, now watched with no astonishment asthe thing on all fours lurched obscenely from the entry into the frontroom and fumbled about, snorting, searching for the axe.

  Reuben caught his mother's wrists and pushed her arms away--no help forit. Amazed at their clinging strength, he was more amazed that he hadthe power to overcome it, and without harming her. He was free and notfree.

  He could drive himself a few steps forward, but it seemed that the airbetween him and the thing on all fours had thickened to monstrous glue.His lungs must toil to fill themselves. He located the thing again as itcrouched and began to rise. With all his force, with a sense of hugeachievement, he spat on the face of it.

  Reuben felt it at first simply as a brutal and foul indignity when thething, rising to a vast height, laid a hand flat across his face andlifted him so, with nothing but iron thumb and finger gouging under hischeekbones, and flung him sprawling. He struck the bed, and during somelong sluggish course of time, two or three seconds perhaps, he secured abedpost and hauled himself upright, finding that the firelight from thewest window was now behind him, and everything was changed. He must getback across the room.

  The thing towered to the ceiling between him and his mother, who stillknelt in the doorway and still prayed. He must get back across the room.She would not look up. It might be she did not see, did not know thestone axe was swinging down. He must go back across the room.

  Reuben felt the scream wrenched out of his throat: he himself hadnothing to do with it. He was certain then that he was running backacross the room. This room or some other, in this world or some other.

  * * * * *

  Ben moved into the light, stumbling over the ravished door, falling,gathering himself in one motion to go on, to kneel beside theunresponding mouth, knowing that his father was dead. His mind retainedan ice-fire shrewdness, a corner-of-the-eye intelligence understandingthe smoking houses, the running, the shrieking, the fur-capped Frenchmanwho was reloading, and shouting too in foreign-sounding English:"_Surrender!_"--was that what the fool was yammering? To Ben he appeareda stupid and trivial man with babyish pop eyes--couldn't the fellowunderstand that Goodman Cory was dead?

  Ben was on his feet, his father's gun dull and heavy--loaded, too, herealized. The French officer fired, clumsily this time, and ahornet-thing of no importance muttered past Ben's ear.

  In the house, someone screamed.

  Ben turned his back on the Frenchman dreamily. "Acquire learning?"Delayed knowledge of the scream penetrated him like blown flame. A manin the entry was struggling to rise. Automatically, with no consciousanger, Ben clubbed the gun against the black head, catching the Indiansmell of acorn grease and paint. Should he now shoot through thedeerskin jacket?--no, because he must be already dead. Ben had heard andfelt the splintering of bone. And anyway this man was only one, andthere had been two.

  The fires continued in his eyes and shifted to blackness. Here in thefront room he couldn't see. He knew his mother or maybe Reuben hadscreamed. He understood the blackness was in his head, a vertigo, and hecalled: "I'm coming to you, Mother!" The blackness dissolved, givingback the room. He must look there, where she was lying, and the spilledblood, and the boy kneeling beside her saying quite softly over andover: "Mother--Mother...."

  Out in the hall a muffled hammering went on and on. Ben explained aloudcarefully: "I will go and find out."

  Jesse Plum's nightshirt still flapped on him in strips. He was bringingdown his axe repeatedly, though the Indian's head lay nearly separatefrom the trunk. Ben stood quiet, compelled to watch until the head brokefrom a band of skin and rolled on the drenched hearthstones, theforehead displaying the gash of Jesse's first blow.

  Jesse squinted at Ben, a puzzled and exhausted old man. His hairy legsshivered, kneecaps dancing. "I was too late--plague and fire! Oh, thefair things I looked for in this land! Gold--the Fountain--yah, theFountain, the things they'll tell a man! Benjamin, it be'n't right, itbe'n't right...." Reuben was still speaking, too; the empty silvermonotone reached Jesse's consciousness and he pulled himself toerectness. "Goodm'n Cory?"

  "They've shot him, Jesse."

  "Dead?"

  Ben did not speak. Jesse lurched to the east window. "This side's clear.Fetch your brother, Ben. I'll get you out, I will so. Hatfield--Cap'nWells' fort anyway. Hurry--fetch him, Ben!"

  Reuben writhed away from Ben's touch. "Jesse, help me with him!"

  Jesse caught him up. Reuben fought in dumb fury, but Jesse held him fastignoring that, and rushed through the woodshed, opening the door at thefar end with a thrust of a horny foot. "Stay close, Ben!" They werestumbling across snow trampled by the flight of others, in the shadow oftheir own house that sto
od between them and the fires; then out of thatshadow toward a beginning of winter dawn. Men and women were runningabout here, unrecognizable in wounds and terror and nakedness, peopleBen had known all his life, swept into the panic of a crushed anthill.The east wall of the stockade rose cruelly high. There Jesse set Reubendown. The boy swung about mechanically, walking back toward the fires.Ben grabbed and slapped him; he only stared.

  Jesse snatched off the wreck of his nightshirt and twisted it into acord, running it through the belt of Reuben's breeches. "Go first,Ben--I'll h'ist you."

  Ben swarmed up somehow. Jesse yelled: "Drop! You must catch him." ThenJesse was up too, clutching the palisade with his knees, hauling on themakeshift rope before Reuben's groping hand could discard it. Jessegained a grip on Reuben's armpit, and Ben flung himself down. "Ready,Jesse!" But instead of letting Ben catch his brother, the old man leapedwith him, turning in mid-air so that he fell under Reuben, who sprawledfree and ripped loose the cord.

  Ben grabbed the boy's arm. Jesse reeled up on his knees. "Get toHatfield! I'm undone. The filthy papists've done me in."

  Reuben had at least delivered himself from his witless trance. He tuggedto free his arm and wailed: "Let me go!"

  "Get up, Jesse! You can't sit there so."

  Jesse shook his head, a stubborn child. "I stink. There's men fail ateverything--you don't understand." He whimpered, trying to cover hiscrotch. "I be naked, can't you see? You go on. I'm done."

  "Let me go, Ben! Let me go back! Let me go, damn you!"

  Ben's eyes were watering from the cold and from a billow of smoke thewind flung down on them. "God damn it, Jesse, you think we'd abandonyou? Get up!"

  "Plague and fire...."

  "_Get up!_"

  "Oh, I--I will, Ben. It's the old liquor rising up in me. Ben, Icouldn't help that, it was on me to drink. Leave me gather my wits. OLord Jesus, is it coming day already? I will get up, Ben, don't fret."And he did, jerky in motion like an ill-made doll, willing to follow....

  Some confusion of battle still fumed by Captain Wells' fortified housebeyond the southeast corner of the palisade. Ben heard gunfire, theheart-cracking sound of a woman wailing unseen. Leading, grippingReuben's wrist, Ben avoided that fort, plunging into the woods andwhite-packed underbrush to circle it and come out well to the south onthe Hatfield road--unmistakable, familiar, over there on his right underenormous morning sky. Others in flight had marked the road with thesignature of bloody drops, clear against white now that the sun wassurely rising.

  Reuben pulled back continually. Ben's right knee throbbed, he couldn'tthink why. He knew Jesse was following. Impossible to run in this whitemuck. He could push on, the sun at his left hand, and not look back. Hewas aware not of time but only of breathing, of driving forward in painagainst the sodden snow and retaining his hold of Reuben's wrist; yettime was moving too, as it would forever, and the sun advancing.

  He realized that for some while now he had heard no gunfire. They hadsurely not come so far on the Hatfield road as not to hear it, for themorning was still. It must have ended. The wind had dropped, the airbecoming sluggish, almost warm. Drowsy....

  Reuben struggled abreast of him and beat feebly at his shoulder. "Ben,you must let me go back. Mother----"

  "Ru, thou knowest she is dead."

  "You never loved her or you could not say it."

  Ben faced about, feeling the sun of March, seeing on the backward trailnothing familiar, only a rising faraway smoke. That must have beenDeerfield. Nearby, the quiet world of snow was lightly patterned withtracks of forest life; no wind at all now to disturb the shadowy treesand undergrowth. Ben knew his brother was nearly sane, already ashamedof the words just spoken. Jesse had halted, swaying and mumbling in hiscold nakedness, looking back. "I loved her, Reuben. Now save thy breathfor walking."

  More time unmeasurable passed in the dreary plodding. Small shadows downthe trail became large, large shadows became men--angry men fromHatfield, some of them soldiers. A blunt-faced sergeant of militiashouted to Ben: "They still there, boy?"

  "Yes," Ben wheezed--"I think so."

  The sergeant paused, seeing Jesse's side. "You're bad hurt."

  Someone tossed a jacket over Jesse. The sergeant offered a leather flaskand Jesse grabbed his arm, muttering uneasily: "Water?"

  "Water of Jamaica."

  "God magnify you!" Jesse drank. "Don't know you--'d pray for you was Ia'ready in Hell."

  The sergeant jerked his head at the north. "How many?"

  "Jesus, I don't know. Killed one Inj'an with my axe." Jesse said that instartled thoughtfulness as if just remembering. "My own gun gotme--peddler sold it me for a musket, bloody grape-shot it is now,might've killed me deader'n a son of a bitch." The sergeant ran on tothe head of the column. "A'n't left you much," Jesse apologized, anddiscovered the flask still in his hand. "Why, he's gone and left me it,in the name of God."

  "Come on, Jesse--he meant to. Come on!"

  "I will, Ben. But do you boys walk on ahead--it be'n't right a thing sougly as me should walk naked in the sun, the Lord never intended it."

  Some others of the column called to them, words sounding kind, passingover Ben like a slightly warming breeze.

  A vague time later--the column was gone and Ben was trying to ignore astitch in the side--Jesse's voice rose and fell in a fitful rambling;the old man sang a little, too. "If I knowed that man's name I couldpray for him. The race is not alway to him that can the swiftestrun--call that a Psa'm, they do, no music in 'em, Church of Englandmyself, if so be it makes any difference when a man's a sinner and lostand bound to Hell. I know what I'll do, I'll say to the Lord Jesus, thatman who gave me a drink on the Hatfield road the first day of March,that's what I'll say, mark it, Ben, and pity but the dear Lord'dunderstand, you would think--Benjamin? Won't he? I'll say, that man whogave me a drink on the first bloody day of March, right about there onthe Hatfield road, do you see, and will that do fair enough, Benjamin?"

  "Of course, Jesse."

  "You're a sweet soul, Benjamin, to gi' me that out of the good learningyou got. I call that an act of kindness to an old fart that's wallowedin ignorance and sin all his days, I won't forget it, I could kiss yourfoot. I used to could sing, Benjamin. At Mother Gilly's house they'd useto _ask_ me to sing, every smock there would ask me--her house was inStepney, not far from the Mile End Road. 'Brave Benbow lost hislegs'--that's a song I picked up from a chapman come by your father'shouse, Benjamin, I think it was last year. 'Brave Benbow'--oh, bugger meblind if I a'n't forgot it, anyway there was better songs in the days ofKing Charles that won't come again, needn't to think they will, boy.That's all past, that is...."

  Ben's hand had relaxed. Reuben broke free and plunged blindly ahead todrop face down in the snow, not rising.

  Here the road curved near the frozen expanse of the Connecticut.Distant in the south smoke threaded into the clouds, the smoke of decentfires--Hatfield village, warmth and safety. Ben raised Reuben's limplyprotesting body, brushing white smears from his face and collar. Jessestood by, trying to drink from an empty flask. "Ru, brother----"

  "I can't go on, nor I will not."

  "You must."

  "I cursed you."

  "What? That?--you know that was nothing."

  "I'm rotten with sin. I let it happen. I did nothing. And yesterday shechided me for using an ugly word, and I went out into the shed andI--and----"

  "That's nothing."

  "You say that. I befouled myself. I didn't pray last night. So I'm todie in sin and be damned forever."

  "No. No...."

  Jesse mumbled: "God-damn flask's empty." Ben's eyes were compelled tofollow the motion of a brown thing soaring up from Jesse's long arm,flying, descending to the river ice and skidding off to lie still, a dotof darkness. "Don't know m' own bloody strength," said Jesse Plum, andchuckled in apology.

  "Reuben, thou art no more in sin than any child of Adam."

  "I let it happen. He came out of the dark. I let it happen."

 
; "Reuben, get up on your feet!" As Reuben answered that angry shout withnothing but a sick stare, Ben searched in desperation for anything atall that might reach the boy's mind, and could find nothing, thwarted bythe barrier that rises or seems to rise between one self and another,and so cried out unthinkingly: "For my sake then! Because I need theeand love thee."

  * * * * *

  Reuben Cory clung to the power of a fantasy. The snow before him,through which his feet could now drive with amazing patience and force,was not really level but a stairway. Level it was--flat level, drearilyflat and white and cold--but his mind by quiet assertion made of it astairway: because a level may indicate infinity, but a stairway, anystairway, must come to an end. Let it be a thousand miles or a thousandyears away, a stairway must come to an end, for the mind refused toimagine one that went up forever, to no goal. Therefore each step was arising, something gained toward the summit where Ben stood waiting totell him he had done well.

  By fantasy the universe might stand divided, into a region endurable andan outer region. To the outer region one must return, soon, and Reubenknew it.

  From within the region of illusion that he knew to be illusion, Reubengrew aware, and more comfortably, that old Jesse Plum was still ramblingon, and singing.

  "Brave Benbow lost his legs, by chain-shot, by chain-shot...."

  Reuben no longer resented the croaking sound as a hateful intrusion. Theold man meant no harm, and was drunk. Ben had refused to abandon him,and Ben always knew best.

  "Says Kirby unto Wade: 'We will run, we will run.' Says Kirby unto Wade: 'We will run. For I value no disgrace, nor the losing of my place, But the enemy I won't face, nor his gun, nor his gun....'"

  Peacefully, almost unobserved, the boundary between the two regionsdissolved. The snow was flat. For a few moments Reuben's mind wascompletely engaged in an effort to understand how they had got away fromthe house. The axe--came--down.... Then what? Out of this blank tworemote voices spoke with needle sharpness: "_Goodm'n Cory?_" "_They'veshot him, Jesse._" Maybe after that he had fainted. But now, to thedeepest privacy of his mind, Reuben could state: That home was not; thathe would be twelve in May; that his mother and father were dead; that hewas walking on flat snow into the outskirts of the village of Hatfieldwith his brother and an old servant who was drunk and naked.

  Hatfield buzzed. For a short way--questions from distracted citizensspattered from all sides--Reuben knew that Jesse was shambling betweenhim and Ben, an arm on each, wobbling and protective; then under theguidance of a pink fat man they passed into the thick warmth of theordinary's common room. In this hot haze and clatter of voices, Reuben'ssenses clouded, not in retreat but bodily exhaustion. A birdy, ancientwoman hovered about them with noises of concern. Beside her face, Ben'sappeared, and Reuben searched the strangeness of it in a fluctuatingdark and brightness. They must be sitting near a fireplace, he reasoned,and Ben's arm was preventing him from toppling over. Ben was speaking,too. "What?"

  "I said, rest thee a while, Ru."

  The fat man had wrapped Jesse Plum in a huge brown horse-blanket; nowsomeone brought the old man a pewter tankard. At the rim of it gleamedJesse's little blue eyes, unfocused like those of a baby at the breast.At length Reuben heard someone drawl in unbelieving admiration:"Godso-o-o!" Jesse's grimy fingers fluttered; a frowzy-haired boy in agrubby apron giggled and snatched the tankard before it could hit thefloor. Jesse collapsed into himself, a wired skeleton from which rosethe bubble and rasp of a sudden snore.

  The fat man was talking in lardy tones. "Hoy! Killed an Inj'an, he didsay. He don't look it." Jowls shaking and puffy fingers gentle, hetwitched away the blanket to examine Jesse's burnt side. "Bad. Gunblowed, he said. We'd ought to have goose-grease." The ragged boy waspeeking at it. The fat man lifted him away by a greasy spreading ear."Mind thy God-damned manners, pup--a'n't we all brothers in Christ? Gofetch cobwebs. Good as grease, they'll mend a burn."

  Jesse Plum was carried away, his slumber undisturbed, and Ben wastalking with the old woman.

  Reuben supposed he ought to listen, say something himself. Their speechcame to him disconnected and obscure. "Grandmother in Springfield--MadamRachel Cory ... great-uncle--Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury."

  "... sleigh gone a'ready to Hadley with others from Deerfield--be theremore on the way?"

  "I think there was no one near us."

  "... to your grandmother--certainly...."

  Most unmanly, Reuben thought, to let his head sink, to leave Ben thewhole burden of caring for him, but with that head an unmanageable lumpof exhaustion there was no help for it. He found it strange that Ben'svoice should be rumbling directly under his ear and yet sound far away."Ma'am, if my brother might rest in a room where it's quiet?"

  Reuben tried to protest as he was lifted. He could walk. The protestfell short of words. An alien hand touched him, someone else offering totake him. Ben's voice was oddly impatient: "Nay, I'll carry him...."

  Reuben sensed the passage of a creaking stairway. Ben let him down, on acot, and as he stretched out his vision cleared, showing him a narrowroom, and Jesse Plum on a pallet nearby, snug in his horse-blanket,brown gnarled feet innocently protruding, Adam's apple bobbing with hissnores. The old woman was hovering. "Nay then, boys, you bide here longas you're a-mind. Jerusha'll get a cart, or you might wait on thesleigh's returning if you wish. Eh, Lord, we saw the fires on the skybefore dawn, I'd only just come down to see after breakfast. Anyone'dknow you for brothers--eh, Lord, yes! What's your name?"

  "Reuben and Benjamin Cory--I'm Benjamin."

  "Eh, Lord, yes! I'm Goody Hawks, and you can trust my Jerusha--he'll getyou to Springfield one way or t'other. Some tea, ha?"

  Reuben thought: I _must_ speak, if only for thanks. But Ben, sitting byhim, a hand spread without pressure on Reuben's chest, was sayingeverything, taking care of everything. "You're most kind, ma'am."

  "Eh, Lord, nothing--shame if we couldn't help the Lord's own on such aday...."

  Reuben saw his brother wince and lean down, pulling up the leg of hisbreeches to bare his knee. Though it made the room swirl dangerously,Reuben braced up on his elbow to look at the long splinter embeddedbelow Ben's kneecap.

  "Law me!" Goody Hawks knelt by Ben, clucking and muttering. She securedthe end of the splinter in horny nails, drew it free with skillfulquickness and held it up. "You walked from Deerfield with that and all?Marry, it's two inches long if I'm a day old. You must have a poulticeof sawdust or the like. I'll fetch it when I bring the tea. That'll drawout any that's left--like draws like, you know--eh, Lord, what a thing,I'd've dropped flat with it in twenty paces."

  Reuben thought: I _will_ speak, and his hand reached out, and he heardhis own voice as a hoarse and stupid little noise: "Give it here."

  Goody Hawks dropped the stained thing in Reuben's hand, apparently notpuzzled that he should want it, though Ben was, and studied him withsome mixture of amusement and concern. Reuben pushed the splinter intohis shirt pocket, and then, in some dread that Ben might ask questionsunanswerable, he lay back and shut his eyes.

  He heard them whispering together a little while, the sound partlysmothered by the snoring of Jesse Plum. "... was there when our motherwas killed ... outside the house, but he was forced to see...."

  Reuben thought: _A stairway. I am lying still--nevertheless a stairway._

  As Goody Hawks tiptoed from the room, he felt again on his chest theundemanding weightless warmth.

  * * * * *

  "Ben, what are we to do?"

  "Nothing for now, except you should rest.... I suppose Grandmother willhave room for us. If not there's Uncle John at Roxbury."

  "Last night I saw a part of his letter that Father didn't read aloud.Uncle John must be a great infidel."

  "What did he write?"

  "'Nor no man, by threat of damnation nor promise of paradise, shall everbetray me into the folly of hating my neighbor, whether in the name ofprinces who are b
ut men or in the name of a God I know not....' Howcould anyone write such a thing, unless he...."

  "Marry, I don't know. I think--oh, let it be, Ru. He's a good man, weknow that.... I suppose he only meant that the general opinion is nothis own, that his own religion is in some manner different."

  "Yes, maybe.... Ben, is it true 'tis a hundred miles to Boston andRoxbury?"

  "More than a hundred, I believe."

  "Will the French be coming down this way, you think?"

  "They'd be here now, Ru, if that was their mind. Though I did hearCaptain Wells saying a few days ago that if the French found the wit andthe forces to drive down the river and hold it, they could cut theMassachusetts in half. But, he said, he thought they hadn't the men, northe wit to think of it. There'll be no Inj'ans here."

  "What'll we do--I mean in Springfield, or Roxbury?"

  "Oh, I must be apprenticed to some trade or other. But thoushalt--continue studies. That was Father's wish--'deed it was the verylast thing he spoke of before they broke down the door. And 'tis my wishtoo, remember that. Thou must acquire learning, he said."

  "And why should I have that, and thou not have it?"

  "I shall too. But being older, I can be apprenticed now, to earn my keepanyway, and I'll find means to study at the same time. I dare saythat'll be Grandmother's wish, or Uncle John's."

  "What about going to sea?"

  "D'you know, I believe that's why I keep thinking of Uncle John andRoxbury. He's a shipowner. If thou couldst stay with him until a littleolder, and study, why, I might well be able to sign on shipboard for awhile, so to earn my way."

  "Ben, thou wilt never see thyself."

  "Why? What does that mean?... Who ever can see himself?"

  "Maybe no one. But thou especially--thou art ever thinking what may bedone for others, the while I've thought only of mine own--mine own----"

  "Heavens, Ru! I'm selfish enough."

  "Not as I've been. Nay, let me say it--it's on me to say it, Ben: I meanto do better, to make thee not ashamed of me. I'm afeared, but I tellthee, I will try to be brave."