A Reckoning

by Linda Spalding

  Behold, the Lord God comes with might…

  And what if he were less frightened? Less brought up to obey? For he saw now that he was damned. If there is a God, rescue me. But if not, the forest danced with its meaninglessness while boy and bear began to run and moonlight touched a spruce that held out arms that pointed away from thickly tied boats, from bellowing boys and challenging girls, from horns and fiddles and floors, away from the wagon with its butter and rules to a place where they might eat fresh berries, climb tallest trees and be free of fear for is it not ordained that the young should no sooner come into the world than milk and honey should flow for them?

  58

  Having charged Lavina for her goods and animals a dollar per hundredweight, the captain of the New Statesman refunded only half of her money on Sunday when Electa hurried into town to explain that a family member was going to be late and could he please delay departure? It was late June and the water was still high, and when the captain refused the delay, Lavina cursed her son for ruining their plans and wasting their money, forgetting that she had wished him away, wished him into the woods where he would be safe. Thoughtless child! Ridiculously and abnormally self-centered! Endangering all of them out of spite. They certainly had no way to earn back so much as a dollar of what was wasted, she announced to Electa, but later she went for a walk by herself, able to move without pain for the first time in days, and she thought of Martin’s suffering and her anger vanished. Maybe he was not staying away out of spite. Maybe he had been gone three days because he was sick at heart over the sacrifice – the murder! – of his pet. I didn’t defend him one bit, she thought. I let it happen. Oh, she said very softly to herself, wasn’t the bear managing the journey better than anyone expected? After all, she was really very sweet and funny. She cheered us up. But Lavina stopped herself from going on with this thought because it would not do to question John or to wonder how he could deprive Martin of something so tenderly cherished although she began to feel some complicity with her son, secretly hoping he was hiding out of spite rather than grief. She, too, had been obedient and where was her reward? Was she glad her husband had returned? Of course. But no. And that was profoundly confusing. There were moments when she wished John would go back to Virginia where he was respected more than he was here in this rugged, wavering life where he was one of too many foundering men. No one paid him any mind now, although for the first few hours they were glad to see him back. Perhaps after the gladness, they remembered his defection, still unexplained. Not so much as a word had he offered to excuse the last-minute abandonment of his flock, nor the shame he had caused his wife nor the difficulties she had faced alone; not a word of regret had he spoken to anyone.

  —

  Eight days later a steamboat hurtled down the swollen river, full of furs and tired miners. It would stay in the St. Louis harbor long enough to take on cargo, then turn and retrace its path west and upriver. Lavina barely noticed. Martin had still not returned and she was frantic, begging the men of the wagon train who were still available to join John on his daily searches. It was an unbearable crisis of hope mixed with blame. John was either pacing the campsite, as if taking stock of something he’d forgotten, or he was riding into the woods to look for any sign of his son, who must be hiding close by. As the great white Arabia sat handsomely in port, the kind medic who had saved her life came to the wagon to visit his patient and see if she would be going or staying. Will you board, Sister? Any word of the boy?

  Sister Dickinson requires no company, John announced, sounding possessive and contemptuous.

  But Brother Borden called out softly: Sister? Do you hear?

  The answer from inside the wagon was a gasp, as if the end of a sob had been stifled.

  Sister? Are you ill?

  John said rudely: Your hope of free passage is doomed, Brother. We are not leaving on the Arabia because our son is lost in the woods as you should know, having encouraged him in his every folly, from what I hear.

  Brother Borden blinked at the accusation and then at the wagon which held his patient. Then he backed slowly away, expressing his concern for both mother and child by shaking his head while retreating. When, the next morning, the Bordens were gone without warning or farewell, Lavina kept her sorrow locked in herself, unable to acknowledge the blow to her pride or her bitterness at John’s stroke of mean possessiveness. Where was he when she was limping through the wasteland of Kentucky? The world had shifted. She did not know herself as Lavina Dickinson, preacher’s wife. Not now when her one friend in the world had disappeared without a farewell. She would never find comfort or understanding like that again! She was alone, left in hot and humid St. Louis with bedraggled passengers traveling from west to east on the steamboat Arabia who were appalling to her; a frightening preview of her future if she ever got to the place they had come from. Beggars and wastrels getting off. Miners and trappers coming home from triumphs or failures. The Arabia sat at its mooring, emptying and then slowly filling up again. A hundred crates being loaded onto its lower decks. Then a hundred more. The river was lower by the hour and the Dickinsons fed the fire under their iron pot and waited for Martin to recover his senses. John said he was clever enough to survive in the woods, but Gina coughed and cried in her sleep, wanting her brother, wanting to go home, refusing to believe her father’s promises. Lavina knew that they each imagined Martin’s unquenchable grief. They each suffered a horror of what he had done. Or, what if there’d been an accident with the gun? This new fear ate at her. She saw that John went into the forest on his mare, each day riding farther and deeper into the trees.

  59

  Trees never seen before and rocks that Martin picked up and put down since he had no way to carry anything but the old rifle, which didn’t fit well to his body. He had been a rock collector at home. He had rocks and pieces of wood and bone on the chair by his bed, but now he would sleep in a hollow and he would not keep anything in his pocket because what was the point? He had no place to store a treasure and no wish to remember where he was. He did not build a fire. It was only perversion, this running. Soon his father would come thrashing through the woods on his mare. He was tired and talking all the time to his bear. Never you mind. We did the trip without him up to now. I did it. I was the driver by the end when Mama was sick and there was no Papa then, was there? And now he just comes and says what he wants even if we were doing fine without any vote from him. So we just wait now. Just a day or two till Papa gets over his idea of bossing everything in the world.

  With nothing to eat, Martin fell into a wakeful slumber always worried about snakes, then woke up at sunrise in a pile of leaves that had turned to mush. The boy opened his eyes and looked straight up into green. He tried to remember why he was sleeping outside. He tried to imagine what drove his father to St. Louis after a month of staying back. Or the other question: What made his father hang back in the first place? He didn’t care. He hated his father. Martin told Cuff: I was boss of myself for a time anyway, although he knew this was incorrect.

  The bear was awake. Yes. They were pretty ravenous, but a forest is separate from human needs. Hungry and snappish, the bear climbed a tree. Martin admired her, saying: Brave bear, and Cuff slid down and they went off to find berries. The forest was a mass of thick and thin trunks, obstinate, unmoving, joined at the roots and whispering branch to branch. Vines hung down and wrapped around boy and bear so the trees had no beginning or ending. A smell of rot. Mushrooms. Should he eat one? Cuff wanted to scratch her back and leave her scent everywhere; she wanted to roll and be glad. She hid from Martin – it was a game they had played before, but now she understood the excitement of being found in an unknown place. She tried not to pant or sniff or growl and Martin called, Bear! Bear! Where are you? Martin knew she was resisting the impulse to fly into his arms. It was the first morning of the world. They were born again.

  Walking was slow. Low branches tripped them or they stumbled on rocks or fell over rotting logs. The gun was a tr
ial to be borne, heavy, useless. Crooked streams cut through the trees, some shallow, some fast. They walked downstream and upstream trying to cross, but why cross? Where were they going? Soon his father would come and now Martin told himself to leave signs, cut through root stalks or mark branches so his father would know where they had been. Or should they stop walking? There were spider webs hanging and clinging, sticking to Martin’s face and hair. He no longer had his gloves. Bugs jumped off the trees and into his face or he stepped on them and they squished and birds were heard but not seen and they had nothing to tell. There were berries. Big plump unfamiliar berries. Cuff ate them and then Martin picked some for himself because the bear had survived her meal. They walked uphill. It was slippery with moss and Martin fell. Then he was covered with mud. He was hungrier than he had ever been in his life. He ate a handful of moss and it was filling.

  Once, there were butterflies, orange and yellow, clinging to trees and flapping. Martin knew they were transformed like everything else in this forest, pulling themselves out of slug-shaped bodies and taking to the air while bees hit one flower and another, one sweet spot or another, nectaring by day and bats were nectaring by night and the air was full of more life than any cotton field and Martin watched, unfed, purposeless. If I could fly, if I could stick my nose in a flower. A bear is happy eating ants. Why am I stuck in what I am? He got down on the ground; he crawled for a time in the damp and muck. He licked a flower and ate it and barked because that was the most likely sound he could make without words. He heard animals in holes and nests. He heard growling and thought it was male and thought male creatures made too much noise. He tried to make himself girl-like and he ran his fingers through his hair, which had grown out since the barbering Bry had given him.

  He thought of Bry and wondered how he was doing. He probably found a shallow place to walk across the river or a narrow place; he’s probably halfway to Ontario. Or China. It took a lot out of me, but I saved him without an ounce of help.

  When they found a pond where there was a little break in the trees, Martin unlaced his boots and took off his clothes and laid the gun down on a rock. He was filthy. He had a slight rash. He felt the air touch his skin. It made him itch in one place and brought relief in another. He felt the water with his fingers and it was cold but he slipped in. Oh!

  On the edge of the pond, Cuff carefully pawed at its surface, which had a size and shape unusual to her. She liked creeks, but this water’s other side was not to be seen; it was a big pond and she tasted the flavor left on her paws. She paced along the shoreline and took a long, thoughtful testing drink by lapping the liquid into her mouth with her curled tongue and then she slowly, heavily lumbered in, losing her weight, lifting her feet one by one like a dancer until she and the boy could feel slimy plants rubbing against their six legs. The water was snow cold and the bear pawed her way along, muttering and complaining, and then paddled back to the shore a few feet away and climbed out slowly and shook herself very deliberately, and Martin clambered out too by grabbing at rocks and pulling himself up to dry ground and then stuffing his wet legs in his dirty black trousers, tugging them up inch by inch, and he put on his boots and hugged the bear, who was shaking herself, water flying off her fur, and he went off without the gun but then remembered and came back for it because he was lost in the woods and might have need of such a thing, although he wasn’t easy about killing.

  After that, they were three or four nights in the woods and he knew his mother must be worried half to death, and his father must be sorry and he thought they were making the boat wait for him and that would make them impatient. Or. Another thought…had they left without him? He jumped up and down a few times to test his legs. How fast could he get back to camp? He wanted food more than anything he could even imagine. He wanted to eat something cooked. How many berries could he swallow? Never enough to feel full. How many berries would it take to keep him alive? At home his mother made him pecan biscuits and saved him the buttermilk and now it was raw mushrooms and roots.

  One night he kept walking until sun-up. He thought he might come upon a farm or a campfire but how would he know if a campfire meant friend or foe? A man with a gun could kill Cuff in a minute. Out here in the forest he could yell for help but there was probably no one to hear him and he kept tripping over snags and once he landed on a thorn bush and screamed until Cuff sat down by him and put her paws over her ears. It was then that Martin cried for a while. The thorn plant had sap that made him itch like a thousand bites and Martin said: Bear, we have to walk. I itch all over and we have to get somewhere before I starve. I’m telling you. I eat or die.

  Try leaves.

  He had never heard Cuff speak before, but now she expressed her opinion. The woods were not cold or hot but there were mosquitoes and bugs that flew in his eyes and bit his neck and behind his ears and when it got dark he tried to crawl under Cuff but she moved away and still there were bugs big as his hand, little as his tears. He could make a night fire but he might burn down the forest and stupidness is the worst of all sins. Cuff was the opposite of stupid because she used her eyes and nose and ears and never got too hungry because the forest was full of food for her and she was born knowing what to eat. Even without a mother, she found the right things. He tried getting down on his hands and knees again but it was hard to see where he was going because his head wasn’t made like a bear’s on the front of his neck. You have an advantage, he said to Cuff, but just remember there are Indians who eat bears and wear their skins so don’t take any chances. He lay down under the confines of bear fur when Cuff would allow it and thought about the camping trip he’d made three years back with Patton. They were out setting traps. They had a small tent and one person carried it and the other one carried two rolled-up blankets and a saucepan. Martin was ten and he skipped ahead paying no attention to where he was going because he didn’t have to. Really, Martin never had to pay much attention to anything because someone else was always there to look after him. Sometimes Patton would grab him and swing him up in the air. They went into a stream and splashed each other but neither of them could swim so they were always on their feet. Before Patton had killed the mother bear, Martin had loved him best of all people and even now he wished that Patton would come walking along just parting branches and laughing and making jokes the way he always did. Right now, that would be the best thing if Patton would grab him and throw him in the air.

  He got up on his scratched, itchy legs and said get up to Cuff and the two of them took off like wind blowing fast for as long as they could run straight and after a while he felt something different than he had ever felt. First Martin ran to the count of one thousand, then turned right and ran to the count of five hundred, then turned left. Straight for a thousand steps, then right again. Was it a circle? No. It was a line toward something he meant to find. Something he had always wanted. And he was close to it. He could see stars blinking through the overhanging blur of leaves. He was going to fly. He was free of weight. He was some creature no one had ever seen.

  But of course there was rain and it came at them, slashing through branches, so that after a while there was a slight rift between the boy and the bear because the bear would prefer a cave and the boy preferred a shelter of branches. The boy was afraid of caves. He used the bear as his cover, was protected by the bear, and managed at least a few hours of sleep during which he dreamed of a fish that had to be carried to water.

  60

  The Dickinsons clung to the campsite as it filled and emptied with travelers going west. They made friends and then watched the friends board steamboats or move on in a wagon train. John rode off every morning sure that sooner or later he’d come upon his son, who should not have been given the gun. I should have shot the bear myself, John thought. The boy thinks because I was away for a time, I don’t have the authority I had at home.

  When news leaked out that the New Statesman’s boiler had exploded and the boat had caught fire, when it was heard that fifty pass
engers had died in the smoke or drowned, Lavina said Martin had saved their lives by running away. She said it to John, she said it to Electa, she said it to Gina. She thanked God in His Heaven but suddenly John decided they must proceed by boat even without the boy due to the descent of the water level. It was almost August. The search for Martin was finished. He’ll find his way to some wagon train. My son is no fool. He’s canny. He’s sneaking around out there watching me hunt for him. He’s almost fourteen. We’ll find him settled in St. Jo with his brother. We should hurry. We should board the Arabia while there is still space for us.

  Lavina put her hands over her ears. This was the moment when she should resist. She swallowed and looked for the strength she had grown in herself on the trail, but her courage had drained away with the arrival of John.