SelfSame

by Conway, Melissa

  She remembered a phrase from Joseph’s will, “Not long after Enid left this world, her words led to my current success in a time when these United States have yet to recognize the Advantages and Validity of my Citizenship.” Enid had written down all the future events she could think of, including inventions that anyone in the know would have been wise to invest in.

  She’d never intended for it to be ‘investment advice,’ as John put it, but that’s what her words had become.

  By the time lunch crawled around, she was not just angry; she was frustrated with herself for not having considered all the consequences of her own actions. She was the one who had so blithely given Joseph the ‘investment advice’ in the first place, so how could she justify getting angry? And yet angry she was.

  She and Paula sat on the stage in their usual spot. Sorcha didn’t touch the lunch Grammy Fay had packed for her. She just sat on the linoleum like it was her launch pad and she was a tightly-coiled spring.

  “You okay?” Paula asked. “I mean, obviously you’re not okay, but you seem…I don’t know, more wound up than I expected.”

  Sorcha glanced over to where John was sitting with his friends. She’d never seen him in the gym at lunch before. On any given day, he probably left campus to buy fast food and smoke. He wasn’t disguising the fact that he was watching her. Every once in a while, he looked around, and she knew he was waiting for Ben to make an appearance so he could witness the fireworks.

  Ben was late. She wondered if he’d left school early to go cash his check.

  “Sorch?”

  “Sorry. Um…wound up…yeah, you could say that.”

  She saw Ben then, coming through the door with none other than Dalton Boyle. The two walked companionably up the aisle and stopped in front of Paula and Sorcha.

  “Hey, Paula,” Dalton said. “Nice costume.” He didn’t even look at Sorcha.

  As much as she was itching to let Ben have it, Sorcha held her tongue. Dalton was making his move and not even Ben’s well-deserved comeuppance could prompt Sorcha to ruin it for her best friend. Paula had been nothing but loyal and deserved to be happy.

  Still, Sorcha couldn’t fake a pleasant expression. Ben stepped close to the edge of the stage, but didn’t touch her. Was he already pulling away now that he’d gotten what he wanted?

  Paula and Dalton were bantering back and forth, but Sorcha only heard every third word or so. Her resentment simmered just under the surface and some of it must have showed because Ben said quietly, “If you want to leave, we could go for a walk or something.”

  A walk. Yes. That way, she could tell him what was on her mind without ruining Paula’s big moment and without giving John the satisfaction of savoring the effect his words had on her.

  She jumped off the stage and walked up the aisle and out the door without looking to see if Ben followed. She headed straight for the exit, but from behind she heard him say, “Shouldn’t we get our coats?”

  Without turning, she said, “Oh, I’m plenty warm, thank you.”

  He grabbed her arm. “Wait. Are you mad at me?”

  She looked down at his hand. “If you want to keep that hand, I suggest you let go of me.”

  He released her arm and said in a low voice, “John got to you, didn’t he?”

  She glared at him. “Just out of curiosity, what excuse were you planning on using?”

  “I’m going to turn down the money.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “You think I want you to wonder how I really feel? No amount of money would be worth that.”

  She pressed a fist tightly to her chest, touched that he was willing to give up so much to prove how he felt. But she said, “That’s stupid.”

  Now it was Ben’s turn to say, “What?”

  She dropped her head and put her hands over her face as all the hurt and confusion slowly drained away. When she looked up again, he was waiting patiently.

  “You should have told me,” she said.

  “I wanted to. It’s just...the money clouded things, you know? If you’d known, you might have thought...”

  “Thought the money was more important than the fact that if Enid didn’t die, you wouldn’t have been born? You didn’t have a lot of faith in me, did you?”

  He put a hand to her cheek and whispered, “I had all the faith in the world.”

  When she didn’t respond, his hand dropped to his side. He stood there like a man waiting for judgment to be passed.

  Over his shoulder, she saw John enter the hallway and stop abruptly when he caught sight of them. He crossed his arms and leaned casually against a bank of lockers, not hiding the fact that he was watching and listening.

  “I want you to take the money,” she said, loudly enough for John to hear.

  Ben’s left eyebrow disappeared into the lock of hair on his forehead. “Why?”

  “Because you need a car. I don’t particularly like riding around on your handlebars. Hurts my butt.”

  She slipped her arms around his waist, pressed herself against him and lifted her face. It started out as a way to show John his latest attempt to stir up trouble had failed, but as Ben took the hint and met her lips with his, she forgot about everything but how alive she felt in his arms.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Luanne picked Ben and Sorcha up in her brand-new pickup truck. She proudly drove to the opening in the gate that led to the path along the highway. Someone had torn down a bigger section of the fence, and Luanne drove up over the curb and onto the path.

  “Don’t worry. We couldn’t say anything before, but this is WPS land.”

  Dozens of cars and trucks lined the field that surrounded the copse of trees where Bear Talker’s longhouse used to be.

  The first time Sorcha had attended a WPS meeting, the mood had been festive. Now it was nothing short of jubilant. When she appeared in the circle hand-in-hand with Ben, a ragged cheer rose up, startling the birds from the trees. Everyone was grinning and clapping each other on the back. Even the sunshine seemed to agree it was a worthy day to send its rays down upon them. Each happy face only sobered long enough to wish Sorcha well and to express, in one form or another, how sorry they were that Enid had died. A few of them had the temerity to ask her what it felt like, and to them she replied, “Someday you’ll know.”

  She finally had the opportunity to meet Sarge, a big man with the enlarged and reddened nose of a chronic alcoholic, who pumped her hand up and down and boomed, “Damned glad to meet you, girl.”

  Paula hadn’t come along. She and Dalton had made plans to go see a movie. “I’ll tell my mom my car wouldn’t start just in case she talks to your mom, okay?”

  “Have fun tonight. Don’t, uh, do anything I wouldn’t do,” Sorcha said.

  “When you get off from being grounded, we can double-date.”

  Sorcha hoped by then the idea would appeal to her more. It was hard to summon the proper enthusiasm while the wound from losing Enid was still so fresh.

  It was hard, in fact, to listen to the Webster family celebrate. Someone had set up tables and a portable grill and the smell of cooking meat reached her. She hadn’t eaten her lunch, but the scent failed to stimulate her appetite. Still, when someone brought her a plate heaped high with charred chicken and beans, she nibbled at it before abandoning it on one of the tables.

  Ben was glued to her side. “This is too much, too soon, isn’t it?”

  She looked around. Children, absent from the first meeting, shouted and laughed and ran around. “No, I’m glad I got to see this.”

  Sarge stepped up onto a plastic chair and raised his arms for silence. The adults closest to him began to shush those around them, and silence moved through the crowd like a ripple in still water. Sarge’s arms slowly lowered and he spread them expansively, as if inviting everyone there to come give him a hug.

  “Two hundred and thirty some-odd years ago,” he said, his deep voice projecting across the clearing with seemingly little
effort, “an old Mahican medicine man lived on this very spot. His name was Bear Talker and his nephew was Joseph Webster.”

  Murmurs of appreciation spread through the crowd.

  Ben linked his fingers with Sorcha’s.

  “One cold fall day,” Sarge said, “Joseph met a young woman named Enid who would change his destiny. When a party of Mohawk warriors met with Bear Talker, they came under the pretense of peace. But Bear Talker was suspicious and sent Joseph on a false errand in case the Mohawk were lying. It turned out they did have an ulterior motive, and when Bear Talker refused to tell them where to find Enid, they tortured him.”

  Sorcha gasped and looked up at Ben. He squeezed her hand.

  Sarge continued. “Joseph came back from the errand to find his uncle’s longhouse engulfed in a raging conflagration. He was too late to help Bear Talker, whose last words to him were, ‘Save her.’ And so Joseph rode his horse through the fields and arrived at Enid’s house before the Mohawk.”

  “I didn’t know,” Sorcha whispered. “Poor Bear Talker.”

  “But Joseph didn’t save her,” Sarge said, his voice full of sadness. His eyes briefly met Sorcha’s. He didn’t have to say it: the reason Joseph didn’t save Enid, couldn’t save her, was because she fell asleep.

  “Instead,” Sarge’s voice boomed out, “the Mohawk caught them, and they cut out his tongue to silence him. When Joseph was lying staked to the ground, choking on his own blood, he vowed to find her. Soon after the Mohawk took her away, the household slaves came out of hiding and released him from his bonds. Joseph barely allowed them to tend to his wounds before he set out.”

  Sorcha remembered the crude stitches to the base of Joseph’s tongue and sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Bess and Aggie. It was good to know they had survived.

  “The Mohawk were easy to track. Joseph followed them to a large Haudenosaunee village. On the outskirts, he released his horse and snuck as close to the village as possible. But his thirst for revenge was not strong enough to overcome his injuries. He might have died there, hidden away so near to his goal of carrying out his uncle’s final wish.”

  Sarge smiled then, his cheeks contracting in dimples very much like Ben’s. “But don’t despair! Because Enid...” he looked at Sorcha with raised eyebrows and mouthed the word, ‘you,’ before going on, “Because Enid found him and nursed him back to health, and he found a better reason than revenge to go on.”

  Several people in the crowd said, “Love.”

  “Love!” Sarge shouted. Then more quietly, “Love. And it was this love that made it possible for our family to not just survive the last two-hundred and thirty some-odd years, but to exist. If it were not for Sorcha, who stands before us less than a day after dying, after giving up half of herself...for love...we, every single one of us standing here on this glorious day, would have winked out of existence without any evidence that we had ever walked the Creator’s earth.”

  Sorcha had been so caught up in Sarge’s speech it startled her when Ben leaned down and said quietly in her ear, “See? I told you he had charisma.”

  She laughed self-consciously. “He’s got everyone in the palm of his hand, hasn’t he?”

  But Sarge wasn’t finished yet. “There is nothing we can do or say to convey the depth of our gratitude. And there’s no way we can make it up to you: the loss of Enid. How could we? Still, thanks to you, Joseph had a lifetime to think about it, and I know this is the last thing you may have expected, Sorcha, but he made sure your investment advice would benefit you, too.”

  Sorcha looked at him, appalled.

  Sarge said quickly, “That’s not to say he thought money would in any way compensate you. He wasn’t one to put a price on life, none of us are.”

  Sorcha’s eyes found John, who lurked on the fringes of the group, just as Harry had at the last meeting. He shrugged and gave her a crooked smile, as if to say, “Not all of us, anyway.”

  “And with these final words of heartfelt gratitude to you, Sorcha, I hereby declare the Webster Protection Society dissolved!”

  A deafening “Hurrah!” rose from the crowd, and to Sorcha’s surprise everyone around her set off little hand-held confetti cannons. Bits of sparkling paper rained down like brightly-colored snow.

  The merriment got a little crazier after that. Skip brought out a case of champagne and corks began popping. Someone handed Sorcha a plastic champagne glass brimming with the clear bubbly liquid. She sipped it once to be polite, immediately disliking the taste. It ended up next to the discarded plate of food.

  Ben must have seen the glazed look in her eye, because he gently steered her away from the frenzy to the tree he’d sat under that first day. He knelt down and gave her the same expectant look he’d given her then. She laughed and sat within the circle of his arm. They watched the Webster family celebrate their good fortune.

  It had never occurred to Sorcha that they would give her any portion of the money. She didn’t want to think about it now, didn’t want to sully Enid’s memory with thoughts of what her life had been worth.

  It did make her think about how the lives of these people would change. Not only had the specter of their sudden demise disappeared, but their money worries were gone as well. But everyone knew money didn’t guarantee happiness. It wouldn’t bring back Ben’s father, whose loss had been the catalyst for Ben going to juvie, and had sent his uncle Harry into homeless seclusion.

  She scanned the crowd until she spotted Harry, talking with Luanne not far away.

  Sorcha looked at Ben. “Harry is John’s real father, isn’t he?”

  Ben took in a breath before saying, “How’d you guess?”

  “Process of elimination. I think if he were your brother, you’d treat him differently, so it couldn’t have been your father. He’s not Sarge’s son, and Skip’s not the kind of guy to sleep with his brother’s wife.”

  Ben laughed. “Well, I don’t know about that, but yeah, from what I understand, Harry’s the culprit. Um, speak of the devil…” Ben nudged her and nodded.

  She turned. Luanne was leading Harry by the arm, tugging the coarsely-dressed man in their direction. Luanne looked excited, and not just in response to the general merriment, but as if she had discovered something.

  When Sorcha saw the tissue paper charcoal rub of the words on Sarah Murphy’s gravestone in Harry’s rough-skinned hands, her heart skipped a beat. Ben helped her up and she brushed her fingers down the seat of her pants to remove the dirt and leaves.

  “You are not going to believe this!” Luanne was practically shouting. She pushed Harry forward. “Go on, tell them. Tell them what it says.”

  The people in the near vicinity quieted down to hear. Harry lifted the tissue, made a phlegmy sound, like a harrumph, and looked down at the words.

  He read: “One Soul Becomes Two.”

  Sorcha blinked. Her lips moved as she silently repeated the words. As their meaning struck her, she turned to Ben and cried out, “Enid!”

  Ben’s face was alight with the same wonder she felt. He swept her off her feet and swung her in a dizzying circle. She bent her neck and gazed up at the tops of the trees as they spun around, the weight on her soul lifting with each beat of her heart.

  Epilogue

  A white shaft of sunlight slanted in through the wavy window glass. Her eyes focused on myriad tiny dust motes floating lazily in the cold air of the small, unfamiliar room. She’d awakened from a deep, black nothingness some time ago and tried to get up, but had been overcome with dizziness and nausea. Now she waited in the strange bed for someone to come.

  When the door finally opened, a man brought in a tray and set it on a chest by the bed. He appeared to be older than her by several years, dressed in plain homespun, dark hair pulled into a stub of a ponytail under a tricorn hat.

  “Good, yer awake,” he said, removing the hat. “Do ya speak English?”

  She realized he thought she was an Indian. “I am English…I mean American.”

&n
bsp; “Ah. Well, ye’ll forgive me if I assumed otherwise. Ya were dressed like a native and living among them. Name’s Charles Murphy. How do ya feel?”

  “Alive?” She hadn’t meant for the word to come out as a question.

  He laughed. “And just barely, at that. What’s yer name?”

  “Did you…did you rescue me?”

  “Aye.” He looked down at the hat in his hands. “And me captain weren’t none too happy when I brought a half-drowned chit back ta the garrison.”

  “I am sorry to have caused you any trouble.” She sat up. The dizziness was still present, but milder. At the moment, the hunger pangs gnawing at her stomach were more urgent. Without waiting for an invitation, she reached out and took a hunk of bread from the tray. It was stale and tasted as if the cook had added no salt, but it was food.

  “Oh, please,” he said, gesturing to the bread in her hand. “You must be…”

  He seemed more flustered than a man who’d forgotten his manners should be. She noticed him staring in the vicinity of her chest and glanced down. The buckskin dress was gone and she was wearing a man’s shirt. It was so big the neckline hung halfway off her shoulder. She tugged on it and looked up into his red face. He had pale, lightly freckled skin and green eyes, like Sorcha’s.

  “How did you rescue me? The last thing I remember was...” she trailed off as the horrific memory of dying in the cold sparkling water assailed her.

  The corners of Charles Murphy’s lips turned down. “Truth be told, me patrol had been watchin’ the village fer days. The current brought yer body right to us. I saw ya save that child and it struck me that yer method was sound. Who would have figured I’d have the opportunity to use it on ya?”