Carry the World

by Susan Fanetti

  “Hey girl.” He tried to keep his voice calm. When he reached for the drooping reins, she whined again, an agonized sound more like a screech, but she didn’t shy. “Hey, girl. It’s alright. I got you. I reckon you wanna get warm and dry, yeah?”

  He began to lead the horse toward the barn. The very first step she took, she faltered badly and cried out. She was hurt.

  “Alright, girl. We’ll take it nice and slow. You’re alright.” He set his hand on her neck and walked right alongside her. Something was wrong with her left front leg, but he needed real light to know what. She limped, whining, but came with him.

  “Pa?” Elijah was on the porch, his thin arms crossed over his bedclothes. Each lightning flash, faint or bright, gave him bare hints of information of the world around him.

  He wanted to reassure his son and send him back to bed, but he needed the help. “It’s Henrietta. Mizz Ada’s not with her.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Easy, boy. I need you calm. I’m gonna get this girl safe, and then I’m gonna go out an’ look for her.”

  “I knowed somethin’ was wrong!”

  “Elijah! Get dressed. Try not to wake your sister. Get the lantern and come out to the barn.”

  His son snapped into action. He turned and hurried back into the house. Jonah eased the horse back, moving across the yard by feel.

  He got her into the barn, out of the rain, and tied her in the little space beside Petal’s stall. He felt around on the wall for the lantern and pulled a match from the box. Just as he got it lit, Elijah was out, running through the rain, holding his hand over that lantern as if to shield it from the storm.

  When both lanterns were hung and throwing light around the barn, Jonah examined Henrietta’s leg. It didn’t take long. There was a long gash through her left shoulder. The rain had washed it out enough that he could see it was deep. He put his fingers to the edges of it, crooning softly when she shuddered and huffed at the pain he’d sharpened. The blood was sticky. The wound was fairly fresh, but not brand new. A few hours, he thought. There were two other gashes, one on either side, not nearly as deep or long, but oriented in the same way. There was at least an inch between each gash.

  Elijah leaned down and peered at the gash. “That’s bad, ain’t it?”

  “It ain’t good. But it’s clean, and that means she can heal. You know that salve we use on Petal when her teats get sore?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Get me that, and the mendin’ box from the cabinet inside.”

  “What about Mizz Ada?”

  He wanted to go immediately, but the night was pitch black and he didn’t know where to start. At least he knew he could help the horse. “How you think she’ll be about us lettin’ Henrietta be hurt longer than she need to be?”

  That got Elijah moving, and he ran toward the rain.

  There was something else, too, something Jonah didn’t want to say to his son. Something that terrified him for going out into the woods—not for what might happen to him, but for what he might find had already happened.

  He was fairly sure Henrietta had been swiped by a bear.

  Chapter Ten

  Jonah set out to search for Ada at the first sign of morning light. By then the terrible storm that had sat on the mountain all the day and night before had finally gasped its last and left a sodden, foggy mess behind. But there was enough light and quiet for Jonah to search.

  He’d hunted these woods all his life and was a good tracker, but there were no tracks to follow. Not even Henrietta’s hoofprints remained in the yard; the driving rains had erased them completely in a yard so muddy it seemed to wave like water, and the winds had torn limbs from the trees. He spent a moment wondering if the horse could help him, might know the way she’d come and lead him back along it, but that wound on her shoulder was bad, and she’d come up lame if she didn’t rest it. Horses were valuable; Jonah had felt the death of his horse four years ago every day since.

  More than that, though, Ada loved this mare and would be heartbroken to lose her.

  Ada.

  Near three full seasons, the better part of a year, she’d been visiting the cabin every two weeks, and only in the past few hours had he let himself say or think her name. He couldn’t remember why he’d shied from it at the first, but he understood that, at the last, the thought of her had become stronger in his head than he could bear, and her name seemed like it would conjure her even more powerfully.

  The way Grace’s name had always, until recently, conjured her.

  He left his frightened, fretful children alone, with the usual strict instructions to keep together and stay in the house. Bluebird asked him to promise to bring Ada home—home, she’d said bring her home—but Jonah couldn’t promise. He didn’t know what he’d find, if he found her at all. Worry of his own sat like a hot stone on the floor of his belly.

  In the morning light, he was more sure than ever Henrietta had been attacked by a bear, but he didn’t know if she’d encountered the beast after she’d lost Ada, or if they’d been attacked together. He didn’t know why the bear had taken only one swipe, if the horse had fled and the bear had turned its full attention on an abandoned Ada, or if the storm had simply dissuaded him from the chase.

  Where was Ada? How had she and her horse been separated? Something bad had happened, clearly, but what? And how bad?

  Without tracks to follow, Jonah followed his instincts.

  He cast his mind back to things she’d said over the months, talking to the children about her travels. She went to Red Fern Holler on the same day she visited them. So he started off on the regular trail, keeping his eyes and ears sharp as far as he could see and hear in every direction.

  At its best, the last few miles of the trail were narrow, steep, and difficult, barely passable by anything but the most surefooted person or beast; Jonah’s holler was its end, and for years, only he, and now she, had traveled it. There might be a few souls who made their home even higher than he did, but not on this side of the mountain. Storms had washed out the better paths over the years of his isolation, and Jonah had found no cause to undo Nature’s will. Anything that made visitors feel unwelcome had been a boon in his mind.

  And yet, Ada had wended her way to them, as undeterred by the remoteness of his home as by his aloofness when she reached it.

  Moving slowly, stopping every ten feet or so to peer into the woods and listen sharp, Jonah made it down about a mile and a half before he hit a sudden new cliff, and a fresh gully about fifteen feet below. A great hunk of the mountain had shorn off and slid down. Even this unfriendly path was impassable now.

  His instinct flared bright. Was this what had happened? Had Ada gotten caught in the slide? If so, Henrietta had found her way above it, to the only place she knew on this part of the mountain.

  He stared down the sheer muddy slice in the side of the mountain at the water rushing through the newly formed stream at its bottom. That water rushed with force; he knew it must connect to an established water source. Probably one above it. There were only two possible sources: Cable’s Creek, or the small lake it fed from, Willow Lake. Jonah’s own well shared an underground source with Willow Lake. Even in the height of summer, the water from the pump was so cold it made one’s teeth ache and tongue numb.

  If she’d fallen in the slide and was still in that water, there was no way she was alive. A bear attack, if that had happened to her as well, might be some kind of brutal mercy, compared to freezing to death in mountain ice water.

  Following an instinct that had cemented to a bitter certainty, Jonah eased sidelong across the top of the slide until he found a place where he could work his way down. He landed feet-first in the new stream and gasped at the cold—so cold the water was slushy, and nearly up to his knees.

  He stepped out and followed the flow of the water.

  She was about a hundred feet away, at the end of the slide area, where a massive chestnut oak, centuries old, had defied the will of the m
ountain and stopped the slide. The new stream rushed against the trunk and tried to divert downward, but scattered over the ground instead. There was danger of that rushing water causing another slide, but Jonah barely entertained the thought. Ada lay near the base of the tree, out of the stream but still soaked by it, sunk into mud and washed in the icy spray.

  He dropped to his knees beside her and instantly sank several inches in mud. She was unconscious, and even the flow of water hadn’t washed all the blood away. Her ginger hair was stained with it above her ear, and her waxed canvas jacket bore a large red stain at her waist. There was a jagged tear through the stain.

  His head began to shake to and fro, but he didn’t know if it was denial or despair. She was pale, so pale, inhumanly pale. Her lips were greyish blue, as was the tender skin around her eyes. As he pulled a glove off, he knew the truth before he set his fingers beneath her nose. She was gone. There was no way she could possibly still be alive.

  But a faint warmth tickled at his fingertips. Breath? Or wishful thinking? He gathered her into his arms, and even so cold as she was, her body was soft, pliable. Laying her flat across his thighs, he opened her jacket and her shirt, apologizing to her modesty with a thought, and lay his head on her chest, above her cotton underthings.

  It was faint, and far too slow, but her heart was beating. She was still alive. As he sat there, he saw the source of the bleeding near her waist—a tear in her side that matched the one through her coat. The bear, he reckoned. A swipe so powerful had to be a bear.

  “Ada?” He slapped lightly at her cheeks, but got no response. “Ada. Come on, darlin’. Come back.”

  Still nothing. There was a gash in her head, too, topping a swollen mound in the space between her temple and her ear. He’d brought what medical supplies he could, but in these conditions, there was little he could do for her. So, with a desperate hope that the cold would work to keep her wounds from bleeding too much more, and that he wouldn’t do her more harm getting her to safety, Jonah gathered Ada up and surged back to his feet.

  She moaned then, and Jonah felt a gust of relief. “That’s it, darlin’, that’s it. Stay with me.”

  His cabin was still closer than anywhere else, and he didn’t know the condition of the way below. That rushing water could have made more mudslides, or might yet. Home was the safest route. He had to find a way back up this slide and back to the path to his house.

  It took him hours, and his shoulders and arms burned like fire, but he got her back to the cabin. She’d moaned a few times in his arms, and each one was like a promise—she was still alive.

  Elijah and Bluebird ran out onto the porch as he approached. Bluebird wailed in fear, seeing her angel draped over her father’s arms. “Oh no, Pa! Mizz Ada’s hurt!”

  Elijah’s face cramped with fright, too. But the boy asked, “What can I do?”

  “Stoke up the fire, and get the pot boiling. I need hot water and that ointment.” His medical skills were rudimentary at best, but he had no other option but to do what he could.

  He carried her into the house, went through the front room, across the hall, and into his room. He’d laid Ada gently on the bed and stood straight before he understood what he’d done.

  It took his breath away.

  He’d laid her down on Grace’s side, set her head on Grace’s pillow. Her wet, bloody, muddy head on the pillow that had held his wife’s scent, and then the memory of her scent, for seven years.

  Feeling a crushing weight of loss and guilt in the midst of this crisis, Jonah darted a glance around the room. Grace wasn’t here.

  Ada moaned again, and Jonah focused his attention where it belonged, on the living woman, badly injured but alive, before him.

  Working carefully, he eased her boots off, and the sodden socks inside them. He gently worked her arms from the sleeves of her jacket. The guilt coming at him from every direction made his fingers tremble, but he opened her shirt. Under it, she wore a light cotton thing, like the top half of a slip. Grace had called them camisoles, and he’d found them powerfully alluring.

  He cast every piece of that thought out of his head.

  But he had no choice with the next thing: she was bleeding, wounded. A gash in her side. He had to get to her skin. And he had to be sure he found every place she was hurt.

  “Pa?”

  Elijah was at the door.

  “Yeah, boy.”

  “Here’s the ointment, and the water’s on the fire. What next?”

  “I’m gonna need all our winter blankets, and the mendin’ box.”

  “You gonna sew Mizz Ada up like you did Henrietta?”

  “I reckon I gotta. She’s got a couple deep cuts. Once she warms up, they’ll bleed.”

  “Is she gonna be alright?”

  He paused and gave his son his full attention. “I don’t know, Elijah. She’s hurt bad, but I’m gonna do what I can, and you’re gonna help me.”

  “Yessir, I will. Bluebird wants to help, too. I told her to pray.”

  “That was good thinkin’. Go on now, do what I said. Close the door.” He didn’t want his son to see Ada when he opened the rest of her clothes.

  When the door was closed, he pulled the folding knife from his trousers and sliced through the camisole. The wound at her side was angry, the edges waterlogged, but fairly straight. Again, he thought of the gashes on Henrietta’s side. It looked as if Ada and her horse had encountered a bear together.

  Trying not to focus on her body—her shoulders were freckled, too; he saw that and wouldn’t let himself look farther—Jonah eased the sodden, filthy clothes from her top. Then, with another wave of guilt slamming over him, he opened her trousers and eased them off. Now, all she wore was a filmy pair of undershorts. Muddy water had soaked through her pants to stain those shorts, but Jonah left them on. He couldn’t steal all her modesty away, and the only sign of blood on them was at the waist, near the gash in her side.

  Now that he’d exposed her legs, however, he saw that her left knee was easily twice the size of its right mate and bright red with swelling. She’d wrenched it. He grabbed a little stitchwork pillow and pushed it beneath her sore knee, then got down to the work of examining her for more injuries.

  He found no others of note. Besides the gash in her side, the blow to her head, which had begun to bleed again, and the swollen knee, she had an array of bruises and scratches that showed what a hard night she’d had, but nothing that would require special care. Her skin was deadly pale and cold, though, her lips and fingernails that terrible shade of dusky blue, and it bothered him that she wasn’t shivering, and hadn’t moaned again since he’d put her to bed. Again and again, he laid his head on her chest to hear her heartbeat—still weak, but there.

  When Elijah knocked, Jonah drew the top quilt over Ada’s body. The boy brought in a pail of hot water and the mending kit, and Jonah began the work. He had no whiskey or any other way of easing her pain as he cleaned and stitched her wounds, but she never reacted. He made a dozen stitches, as even as he could, in her side, and another half dozen in her head, working slowly around her hair, and she never even flinched.

  He was worried. No—he was frightened. She was holding onto life by a thread as frail as spidersilk. What would his children do without their Mizz Ada?

  What would he do? He shoved that thought aside with the others.

  After he cleaned and closed her wounds, he washed her with more hot water, wiping the mud and blood from her frigid skin. Then he took a flannel nightgown from one of Grace’s bureau drawers and eased the clean, soft fabric over her, and bundled her under as many covers as he had to spare.

  By then, the day had gone to afternoon, and he’d hardly thought of daily chores, or feeding his children. So he forced himself to leave her resting and try to be a father for a while.

  The chores had been done, and Elijah was making butter and sugar sandwiches with applesauce for dinner. Not much of a meal, but Jonah was impressed nevertheless.

  Blueb
ird was on her knees by the fire, her little hands clasped together, her mouth moving silently. Had she been praying the whole day?

  “Hey, baby girl.” He sat next to her and brushed his hand over her back.

  She opened her eyes and peered at him over her praying hands. “Is Mizz Ada better? Did God listen?”

  “We found her, and that’s a prayer answered, right?”

  “But is she better?”

  He didn’t know how to explain this to his little girl, who was so innocent of anything beyond their holler. “She’s real sick, Bluebird. I don’t know if she’ll get better. But she’s here, with us, and that makes her better than when she was lost.”

  “I want her to be all the way better.”

  “Me too, baby girl. Me too.”

  Ada began to shake in the middle of the night. Jonah had stretched out on the worn rag rug beside the bed, where he could rest and keep watch, and he was brought to full wakefulness by the sound of the headstead drumming against the wall. He rolled at once to his feet and lit the candle on the bedside table. Ada lay on her back as he’d arranged her, still unconscious, but shaking so hard her teeth knocked loudly together. A loud sound came from her, not a moan or a whimper, but her breaths coming through her violently shaking chest.

  Since he’d gotten her home, she’d never yet woken or made a sound or move until this wild quaking.

  His mind full of the crimson light of agonized memories, he laid his hand on her forehead and found what he feared: she was burning with fever. Her skin was as hot and dry as a banked coal.

  Had he sewn infection into her wounds? He’d tried so hard to clean them, but all he had was the bag balm for medicine. He’d never been a drinking man, never kept liquor in the house, not even moonshine, and had no other thing that might kill infection.

  He’d thought of that tonic she’d brought up several weeks back. There was half a bottle left. It had helped Bluebird so much, taken away her discomfort and let her rest. But it had always put her into deep sleep, and Ada had been senseless for hours. He was afraid what that tonic might do to her. He didn’t understand about medicines, when and why and how they worked. But he knew medicines could hurt as well as heal.