A Reckoning

by Linda Spalding

  He watched Cuff mark certain trees with bite marks, advertising her size. We will have no trouble finding our way back, he thought, and from the line of trees he watched Brother Borden leaving their wagon, his back straight and his coat tails flapping. In a few minutes, then, he saw his father ride up on the old, familiar mare wrapped in the black cape Martin knew so well. It covered him when he bent forward over the neck of his horse. At least that isn’t changed, Martin thought, and he stood for a time keeping to the trees and shadows, well out of sight, watching his father remove his hat, slide down off the horse, and walk over to the wagon with his shoulders set. Lavina came out of the wagon and eased herself over the wheel and down to the ground so that she could cross the distance between them. They stood for some moments a few feet apart and Martin could not imagine what they could say to each other at such a time. His father had let them struggle up through the wilderness of Kentucky with Lavina’s injury and illness and fever and then deliver themselves onto a boat that was defying death and now he was greeting his wife without getting down on his knees to ask her forgiveness, which seemed wrong to Martin, who walked on with his bear as the sky darkened and a handful of stars came out. Martin wondered if he would know how to read a sign if God sent him one. He looked straight up and stroked the bear’s fur and felt hollow as a drum, as if there was nothing solid inside him, as if he was made of light from the unrisen moon. He was tempted by fear and then he was fully afraid. Night all around. He longed to go back to his family. The vegetation was full of heavy smells now, dew-laden, and Cuff flared her nostrils and Martin felt a sharp sorrow that was new to him. He could feel something slip away for good. He tried making a sound. He said jig without meaning it, although he’d once thought that in the West he and the bear might earn money with a dancing act. Now the bear bent her knees and took an experimental jump and Martin’s heart banged in joyful response. When they had first walked together, Cuff had not yet developed her sense of smell and her eyesight was still cub-blurry and Martin remembered her loping back from the trees and missing him altogether, rushing past him and searching around in fright. A bear cub must know the shape and color of its mother, if nothing else, and he’d reminded himself to wear dark clothing on future walks so that Cuff could see his shape. Now it was a habit. Martin wore black trousers and a dark blue shirt. He wore heavy gloves and boots so that Cuff’s claws couldn’t slash him, and a felt hat covered his head just in case.

  Cuff nuzzled and grunted and showed that she was pleased by the fur rubbing and night walking and now Martin realized that it was something rare, the way he and his bear could communicate. We are born in ignorance and must make ourselves civil, is what Preacher John always said. But Martin looked at Cuff and knew her to be true to her nature rather than ignorant. He thought: I must pray that Cuff will always be true to the way of bear. Then he thought: If our Heavenly Father cares, does He provide only if I ask?

  56

  Gina had slipped into her old position on her father’s lap, but Electa, after pressing his stiff hands in hers, found reason to see to the cows. Greener pastures, she said, smiling, when her father wondered where she was going. Her parents would have some need for privacy. She would take Gina. Anyway, it was Saturday evening and the town was in full swing along the riverfront and this was what she’d been hoping for all day. A band played waltzes on the fairgrounds and musicians, black and white, stood on street corners with their hats turned up by their feet. Leaving their uneasy parents, Gina and Electa walked behind the cows, passing the canal, the fairgrounds, the livery stable, and, at the edge of town, a narrow street lit by gaslights. Through a window they could see a parlor with flowered paper on the walls. At the edges of the window, dark red curtains. The wainscoting was white. The floor was covered with a patterned carpet. Electa craned her neck and fastened her sights on a woman standing in this perfect room holding a piece of paper and an envelope. Look at the dress, she whispered, but Gina could not see over the windowsill. Electa said: The dress is blue with lace at the shoulders. The skirt is so long I can’t see her feet. And her hair. Has she added a false piece to it? It is so nice and thick the way it holds to the back of her head. She sighed.

  The cows began to graze on a patch of nearby grass and Gina pushed up closer to the window and stood on her tiptoes and tried to peer in. You are too short, Electa said. So listen. There are papered walls like Aunt Elizabeth’s. There is a perfect little writing desk and the settee is green with red cushions. Settee; is that what it’s called? I wonder if she’s married. I wonder if the letter she’s reading is from…

  Gina said bluntly: It’s from her uncle who died and left her rich.

  No, Gina, this house belongs to her stepfather. That is her only dress, inherited from her dead mother and now somewhat out of fashion! The letter is telling her she has to leave this pretty house by midnight because the stepfather is going to marry someone in the morning and he wants to be alone with his new greedy wife.

  Like Uncle Benjamin, said Gina wisely.

  Yes! But Electa was surprised. Had her little sister understood the family catastrophe so well? Electa had come to believe that all of their misfortunes could be laid at Matilda’s feet.

  Gina pulled at her arm. I’m really sure her died mother gave her this nice house and meant her to stay here forever and there’s a garden at the back with a little creek and some pretty fish.

  Electa said: But girls don’t get to own houses, Gina. She has to leave by midnight with nowhere to go. There is a coach coming but she has only a little money for her fare and then it will be gone and she will have nothing to eat. The money is hidden in a drawer that her stepfather doesn’t know about, but he’s been looking for it. Electa turned away from the window. She took in the whole street. St. Louis was so much bigger, noisier, rougher, smellier, and faster than Louisville. Every one of these people had a story and she tried to imagine such variation. Her sojourn at school in Asheville was marked by a pastoral quiet that bore no comparison to this rowdy place and now, just like her mother, she wanted to see the shops and alleyways and residents and streets. Come on, let’s go see everything! She was glad of the dark, which covered her rustic appearance. Then she noticed two men shoving each other. Well, I be one of em you did and I never even noticed! a young girl was shouting.

  Electa grabbed Gina’s hand. Hurry up!

  Gina pulled back. No, I want to watch. In a minute, she had jerked away from her sister and rounded the corner, where she could watch the fighting men from a safe distance. Electa screamed: You come back here this minute! A young man standing in a doorway with his hands in his pockets said: Your cows es tekin off, miss.

  Electa ran to take hold of the lead cow’s halter. She touched the bell to call the others and called to Gina again.

  You from herebouts? The boy caught up and was trying to help bring the other three cows, smacking a flank here and there.

  Yes, she said. I live here. She caught up with Gina and slapped her hard in the face. Gina squealed and ran to the square, her braids shooting out behind her and her shoes ringing on the wooden walkway. She howled and ran until she was out of sight.

  The young man was only a boy and what Electa’s father called a hayseed, meaning he might not have gone to school. Electa looked at him.

  You could see dancin if you like it. The boy took off his cap and offered his arm.

  Electa took the arm of the boy and he led her to a corral where the cows could calmly wait. Beyond there was a place of boards and posters lacking windows and built on the slant. Inside, the beardless boy put his damp hand on Electa’s waist and inched her forward between three-legged tables, some with candles but the room was all shadows and the people around her were bulky shapes. A fiddler was at work on a tiny stage and people were moving darkly across the floor.

  57

  Where is your sister? John shouted when Gina got back to the wagon. He stood in the deepening twilight, glaring ahead as if any minute he might whip the drowsy mules
into motion. As if they had not got this far without him.

  I don’t know, Papa. Gina’s voice had a slight squeak of fear.

  John grabbed her ear. Fiddlesticks! But this was not how he had wanted it to be and had he looked closer, he might have seen the red mark on Gina’s cheek from her sister’s slap. Contracting arteries. Why are my children impertinent? Tight again with nerves so that he could not think. And where is Martin, Miss Know Nothing? His blasted bear caused trouble today is what I hear. Is that the reason I have not laid eyes on a boy who must know what’s coming to him?

  Having dried her eyes on the walk back to the campsite, Gina began to cry again. It always warmed her papa’s heart when she burst into tears but John, in his reunion with the wagon train, had visited several old friends and here and there taken a drink of brandy or cider or plum wine, which was not his custom and against his principles and yet it was necessary to renew allegiances. The jugs had been open on many a wagon seat, as the lack of a preacher had given the travelers license and why seem unpleasantly righteous on such an occasion as this? The surprise reunion merited celebration and a drink was libation at such a time according to custom. Even among the teetotalers, it was a singular situation, the night air liquefied with the scent of renewed trust and fellowship. As far as John was concerned, no one must ever know where he had been and what he had tried to do. If it helped everyone to watch him quench his thirst, he would allow himself that leeway. His neighbors seemed genuinely glad to have him back, as if they had missed his leadership. As if they could not imagine that he was a man with a heart that was ripped in half, a man who had ridden night and day to catch up with the family he should never have let out of his sight. Now, where are they? Answer me!

  From inside the canvas he heard the tail end of a sentence.

  …away, I suspect.

  Say that again!

  I said, they ran away, I suspect.

  Gina was now hysterical. John shouted at the blank canvas: My sixteen-year-old daughter is wandering the streets of a filthy city while my son harbors a dangerous creature without permission at half past ten o’clock?

  Seventeen, said Lavina, poking her head out of the canvas. And we have all harbored dangerous creatures at one time or another. She closed the canvas.

  In the woods, Martin had thrown himself down with Cuff, who was settled with her heavy head on his narrow shoulder. Having grown past the habit, Cuff suddenly searched with her tongue for Martin’s left ear. What shall we do? Martin whispered, running his hand over her nose and loving her more than ever. Shall we go back? There was a knobby bone in the middle of Cuff’s skull just under the fur, and he liked to rub it and he did that now while looking into her small eyes, which were close together and rimmed in black as if she had come from another planet. He nestled under her bristly chin and held her paw and felt each long, curved claw with his fingers and it was much like the hand-holding Electa was then performing with the boy in the shack in candlelight, for they too had found something not to be forfeited. While Martin held the bear, Electa held the boy and put her face against his neck. When Cuff rolled over on the ground, Electa threw her head back and led the boy outside. Martin lay against the bear’s stomach, grabbed a foot, and found the place between two toes where Cuff was most ticklish while Electa gave her boy a tender shove and he fell clumsily onto the grass. Girl and boy. Boy and bear. An hour or more while mortals held fast to each other vowing that no one would come between them – not ever: that they would become dance partners, go into business together, learn each other’s language – that neither would ever again catch a fish for anyone else. Till death do us part.

  Cuff put a paw against Martin’s throat, as if taking his pulse. Unaccustomed to such melancholy, the two of them got up off the forest floor and began walking back to the campsite where Dickinsons were trying to reshape their lives. Seeing his approach, Lavina wanted Martin to pull Cuff in the other direction, away from the father who had made them get up in the middle of the night because Electa was finally back and her late return had further maddened him. Wasn’t he kicking at a wheel and raising his voice? Hadn’t he even raised his hand to his daughter? With all the campers quiet, trying to sleep or listening, wasn’t he provoking them to hear every word of his shameful, humiliating rant? Lavina, who had been fully in charge all these weeks, was now mortified.

  And Martin was dragging himself back to camp.

  Run, Martin! Lavina thought. Stay away. (Awful thought!) Don’t come back.

  But John pointed at the boy who was slowly approaching. Come here this instant! Just where is the respect due to your father, who has ridden for days to find you? My children should be here when I arrive, and yet I find Electa beyond control in a strange city and you still smitten with the unholy creature I told him to leave behind. John was too angry now to feel any pleasure in the sight of his son. I will not stand by to see that animal ruin this venture. It should be in the woods, but now it’s too late for that. You have tamed a wild creature but it will never be tame enough! Boy, do you hear? Do you hear what I will not stand? Do you intend to do what I say, which is that the bear is not coming on the steamboat your mother has expensively engaged? Don’t you look at me that way! I’ll see a smile on your face or give you something to really frown about, something to make you cry for a week. John fell back against the wagon, stunned by the intensity of his outrage.

  Martin saw his father’s fallen face and was shocked by its decay. His father was grasping at the lost threads of command and Martin slumped his shoulders and bowed his head as he had learned to do at such times.

  John said: I require a response.

  Inside the wagon, Electa was crying savagely and Gina had taken to coughing. Lavina was rummaging in the medicine box. Martin could hear these things going on out of sight and he knew in that instant that the balance they had achieved over the past weeks had come undone in a few quick hours and that he would never understand the weight his father carried against which all the rest of them were as feathers on the wrong side of the scale. He heard his mother opening bottles. He heard Cuff grinding her teeth at being bound to such a family. He moved very slowly along the side of the wagon, still holding the leash, reaching for the sturdy bear rope so that he could tether her safely. His arms were watery. We have just been out walking…Father…here he tried to firm up his words…is all.

  We shall not proceed…

  Please, Father.

  …until she is disposed of.

  Martin’s stare an act of disbelief.

  Which of us will do it?

  Martin held tight to the leash, remembering the way Cuff had tumbled off the tree into his arms. The thought of it made him cry while John reached under the seat of the wagon where the old gun was kept. No! Martin leapt for his hand. Me. I. With the gun gripped hard in one hand now while the leash was wrapped around the other wrist, he began to plead. No, oh no, come on, Cuff, come on, bear. The two of them running and the father’s voice ringing in each frightened head. Abraham must kill Isaac. It was this that his father had set for him. Shouting it too. Faithfulness to Father and to father, since they are one and the same. But does the Father in Heaven imbibe? Does he drink plum wine and cider? Unnerving it is and yet we are running, panting, even the stumbling bear. And let me hold your furry head and touch that knobby spot between your ears and aim the gun where you have just been kissed. Let me be covered in blood and brain and then I will be someone not myself.

  Martin knelt and Cuff lay willingly before him, even rolling onto her back and exposing her tenderest places so that no gun was needed, only Martin’s knife, which he pulled from the sheath that hung on his belt. Easy to bring to a throat and…if God is directing, Cuff will be saved as Isaac was but if God…turns a blind eye…

  Martin and Cuff are watching each other while Martin holds on to the knife and imagines the act, which requires a thrust. Who will he become after that? He places himself on the steam paddle wheeler in his mind, thinking ahead, moving al
ong at full speed, bow waves fanning through dark water just as the earth itself is foaming along in its orbit. While this foaming goes on, he does his best to relive every day of Cuff’s life, beginning with the first terror of fur hurtling down the black walnut tree. He makes himself remember the outing when Cuff found the tree again and smelled her mother’s death. He remembers how Cuff climbed to the top and clung there yowling, as if she had heard the song of that tree above all other trees and could not forgive that eternal thrum. Why is all learning connected to loss? Cuff had tried to climb down, but whenever her hind feet tried to grip, the bark chipped away and she lost foothold, finally tumbling into Martin’s arms again as if her story could never take another shape. Clutching the knife, Martin saw himself on the deck of that wheel-churned boat, boilers banging. Always and forever, wherever he was on the river, his thoughts would be on the bear even as the landscape slid by. The river would change but the fact would not. It would define him, this murder. Guilt would be all through his blood for the rest of his life and he would never forgive or love his father. He remembered the tall pine where Cuff had discovered a hive and loosened a hundred bees and Martin had been stung how many times? The mistake of saving, the mistake of loving, the mistake of obeying. Now Martin dropped the knife and picked up the gun.