“We should sleep up in the trees tonight, with the rest of the meat,” Meera tells her.
They can hear more wolves howling and fighting. Meera finds two trees with horizontal limbs a good ways up from the ground. Up in her tree, Susanna wraps her arms around the massive wet branch, too exhausted even to worry about falling. She rests her cheek against its rough bark. The moon is higher and smaller now. She can feel her heart beat against a raised knur in the wood.
What would her mother say if she could see her? Aurelia is right, she has changed beyond recognition. Susanna closes her eyes. She lost something a long way back, and it’s more than just her mother’s glove. But she’s gained something, too. Stealing meat from the wolves was her idea, and she was the one who rushed at them first. In the distance, she can hear them snap at each other like her sisters quarreling over some triviality. Is the porridge burning? Whose turn is it to feed the pig?
“Good night, Susanna,” Meera calls softly from her tree. “Don’t fall off your branch. I don’t think there’s enough wapiti for them all.”
The next morning Susanna is awakened early by the cold and by an uncomfortable stiffness throughout her body, particularly her neck. She’s hungry and thinks instantly of the elk. How weak they were last night! They should have been more aggressive with the wolves and taken a larger share of the meat.
A low mist rises from the ground as Susanna climbs down out of the tree, thinking she will go back to look for anything she can scavenge. It’s very early and Meera is no doubt still asleep. However Susanna is not altogether surprised to see Aurelia sitting among the ferns at the base of her tree.
“Where are you going?” Aurelia asks her.
“To look for bones. For soup.”
“Well I might as well go along, too,” Aurelia says, standing up. She pats down her dress. “Gracious, what a strong smell this place has. I don’t know how you can stand it! But of course they say that one can get used to anything by and by, and a good example of that I suppose is you, Susanna. Just look at you, sleeping up in a tree!”
As always, Aurelia can lay down sentence after sentence without seeming to take breath. Susanna only half listens as she picks her way through the trees. Everything looks different in the pink light. Is this where they turned?
“And eating that deer after the wolves got hold of it!”
“Elk,” Susanna tells her.
But as usual Aurelia pays no attention to a correction. “You are like a vulture now, Susanna, you are, yes, or one of those terrible creatures the Black Swamp has created, half of this and half of that. Like the swine wolf I told you about. Now, as it turned out, that swine wolf was a good creature, he really tried to help me, so I suppose the lesson there is...what is the lesson? Well, I suppose the lesson is that you never know how events will shape a creature. But I beg you, heed my warning, I mean to say, scavenging from wolves! You are already losing part of your person and becoming part of something else. Half person, half something else. But what, I wonder? A bird of prey? An Indian?”
“An Indian is a person,” Susanna tells her, offended.
“Oh, you know what I mean.” Aurelia laughs.
“Indeed I do not,” Susanna says as stiffly as she can.
“Oh, your pride! Penelope really used to shake her head over you and your fussy ways. How you hated Severne. Susanna, goodness, I’ve just figured it out! Your problem? You are not satisfied with where you are. That’s it! Never satisfied. And that’s why you’ve found yourself here in this desolate bog. It has nothing to do with Penelope and Naomi. You are not going someplace, you are leaving someplace else.”
Is this true? Susanna looks up at the mist settling among the tree branches like soft fur. Certainly she never hid the fact that she did not want to live in Severne. And she did not want to be a missionary, either, but no one could expect her to want that. Could they?
“I don’t believe it,” Susanna says. But maybe she does.
“Over here,” Aurelia tells her. “There it is.”
The elk carcass lies in the mud among the twigs and old leaves, nearly picked clean. All the organs, the rib meat, the shank—gone. The head is turned north with spaces where its eyes had been, and a few small feathers are crushed into the hollows between bones. So the birds have come, too. Aurelia stands with her feet apart looking down at it, her small nose wrinkled. She would never do what Susanna has done. She is still pretty, her hands smooth and white.
“Aurelia, please don’t leave me,” Susanna suddenly says.
“Oh, you don’t need me. Now Susanna, when you get out of here make sure to cut yourself a new dress, and mind that you make it soft, cut it out of some nice, soft material, so you can feel the wind. That’s what I miss most, the feel of wind on my skin.”
“Susanna!”
She turns her head. Meera is coming out from among the trees with her blanket over her head, carrying Consolation’s shawl and Susanna’s grain sack. She comes up beside Susanna and looks down at the elk.
“There’s nothing left,” Susanna tells her.
Flies cover the carcass and the bits of gristle left on the bone shimmer blue. Meera opens her pouch and they both look at the meat they still have. It is such a small amount. Susanna looks back at the elk. There is nothing to salvage.
“We won’t get out of here, will we,” she says.
Meera says, “That’s not true.”
“You’ll never meet your guardian spirit. We’ll die here. We’ll starve.”
“We will not starve.”
“We’re starving now.”
“After you eat some more meat, you’ll feel stronger,” Meera says. “We’ve been hungry for too long.” She stops and lifts her chin. “What’s that? Do you smell that?”
Susanna turns her head and catches the faint scent of hickory smoke. Another illusion? But Meera smells it, too. It’s coming from the east where the trees are ancient and thick, mostly bur oaks with cracked lined faces like old men watching everything but keeping their thoughts to themselves. They walk toward the smell and Susanna is surprised to find that the bur oaks do not lead to more trees but instead form the outer edge of a little clearing. A grassy brook runs along one end, and above that stands a large garden encircled by a wattle fence. But where is the cabin or hut? The smoke is coming up from the shade.
“Who’s there?” a voice calls out in Delaware, although Susanna could have sworn they’ve made no noise. She follows the sound of the voice to an old squaw standing between two great elm trees with a reed mat in one hand and an English hunting rifle in the other. She is Crow, Susanna guesses, or part Crow, with a wide nose and full lips. When Susanna begins to walk toward her she switches to English. “Don’t come any closer.”
“We are travelers in need of food,” Susanna says. “Will you help us?”
Silence.
The squaw is wearing a long deerskin tunic painted with decorations—deer antlers and a moon—over a pair of English trousers. Her hair is long and dark and frayed at the ends, worn loose. She might be fifty, sixty, seventy years old. It’s hard to tell with natives. When Susanna takes another step the squaw drops the mat to hold the gun in her two hands, not pointing it directly at her but not too far off, either.
“I am Susanna Quiner,” Susanna says. “From Severne, Ohio, and before that, the city of Philadelphia. And this is Meera.”
“She your slave?”
“Not my slave. My...” What is she? “We’re traveling together.”
“Tell her to put down the weapon.”
Meera places her knife on the ground between her feet and shows the squaw her open palms. “Welankuntawakan,” she says. Peace.
“We’re traveling north,” Susanna explains. “We got lost.”
“Of course you got lost. You shouldn’t have come.”
Does she live here by herself? Susanna wonders. But that is impossible. Her husband must be out hunting or tending to the—what, pigs? Sheep? Hard to imagine sheep in a swamp, but i
t is equally hard to imagine an old woman standing with a hunting rifle in front of a large, well-tended garden. A noise as familiar as Aurelia’s voice makes Susanna turn her head.
Chickens.
“Are those Dominicos I hear?” she asks, taking a chance.
The squaw shifts her rifle. “You acquainted with Dominicos?”
“My sister raised them. Said they were the best breed for intelligence and hardiness.”
“Fine mothers, too. Not all raise their young so unselfishly.” She cocks her head at Susanna and rests the butt of her rifle on the ground. “All right. I’ll give you some food and one night’s sleep, but then you must be on your way.”
“Thank you, grandmother,” Meera says.
The squaw snorts. “I’m not your grandmother. I’m English. You can call me Omie.”
Nineteen
Back in Severne Penelope often told her sisters a story in bed at night, either true or made up, but if she ever conceived of telling a story about a white woman living alone deep in the maze of the Great Black Swamp who hunted on her own, built whatever needed building, and needed no man’s help (Susanna can imagine how such a story would appeal to Penelope), she probably would never have dreamed up a woman so talkative as Omie. Once Omie puts down her rifle it’s as if a spark has been touched to dry sticks, and the flow of words begins.
“Grow my vegetables there,” she tells them, showing them the garden first. “Some are under those vines to keep the birds off, see that? And over here just flowers. Inside you’ll set your eyes on a beautiful sight, all my little darlings in pots and jars, some growing wild around here, some I put in from seed. You found me by my smoke, no wonder. When I first came I took more pains to be invisible but I’ve grown less careful with fires as I like my meals to be hot each one. No one around anyway, I’ve not seen a person since...” She stops to think. “Don’t know, actually.”
Although Susanna is looking for it, she does not see Omie’s hut until they are ten paces away from it, surrounded as it is by trees and undergrowth. Its outer walls are lined with bark, and it has a straight, well-formed chimney constructed of small gray stones no larger than a child’s fist.
“Every autumn I pull new bark for the walls,” Omie tells them. “I do love that smell.”
She directs Susanna and Meera to wash themselves using a bucket of water by the door and hands them a sliver of soap so dry and rutted that Susanna has to work it a full minute before it gives up any lather. Afterward Omie gives them each a cloth to dry themselves with. For a moment Susanna just holds hers. It has been a long time since she’s held anything so dry.
Inside, it’s true, flowers stand everywhere: daisies, swamp roses, purple coneflowers, and clusters of what her mother used to call turkey-foot grass. They are arranged in hard clay jars on the floor all around the room like wallpaper that starts at ground level and grows to life against the log walls. The cabin is undivided, just one large room that smells like green plants and smoke. Three windows without glass bring in the light, and Susanna notices clever shutters on hinges to close them up. A rough three-legged stool stands by the hearth, and that is the beginning and end of the furniture.
Omie sits down on the stool and stirs the fire embers with iron tongs and then pours a bit of water into a standing kettle. She tells them to eat slowly and not too much at first. “You look near death.”
Clearly she came here from somewhere carrying iron tools and supplies, but where, and how long ago? As Susanna puts the soupspoon to her mouth she feels a sigh escape her like it’s from her whole body. Squirrel. For a while she forgets her questions and just eats. Meera, sitting across from her on the floor, is holding the bowl up to her chin and Susanna can see she is also trying not to gulp it down in one swallow. Susanna bites into a boiled potato and then with her tongue presses it into a warm grainy mash on the roof of her mouth. She’s almost forgotten that sensation.
“I’m no stranger to hunger,” Omie is saying. “Back some years, before I came here. Famine of ‘90, but ye’ll not remember that. All we had was sap porridge, that’s cornmeal and maple tree sap. After that was gone we ate snow.”
“Where was this?” Susanna asks politely.
“I’ll not tell ye,” Omie says sharply. “I’ll not go back.”
She glares at Susanna. Then she abruptly changes again. “Let me give you a touch more.” She tips half a ladle of stew into Susanna’s bowl, the rest into Meera’s. “My father gave me a hundred acres of land as a wedding gift, all hills and rocks. From his parents, two sheep. Look at this.” She takes from the mantel a pair of hand millstones. “When I left I packed them out with me. Grind my own grain. Ever have johnnycakes fried in bear oil? A little honey on top. I like honey. Just follow the bees back to their home when I see them, I can’t be bit nor stung. That’s why I don’t get swamp fever.”
“You don’t ever get swamp fever? I don’t either!” Susanna says. Until now she thought she was the only one. She is strangely pleased to find something in common with this odd woman.
“Can insects bite ye?” Omie asks.
“Not mosquitoes. But swamp fever comes from plants, you know, not insects. It comes from their gases.”
“Gases from plants? Puh!” Omie scoffs.
After they’ve eaten, Omie takes them to the side yard to show them her chickens.
“Here my lovelies, here my own,” she calls.
It’s here that Susanna begins to realize why Omie still has the habit of speech: she talks to her hens. No doubt, when alone, she talks to her flowers as well. Each hen has a name and curious markings painted on their feathers like the markings on Omie’s tunic: rings, purple moons, a star. Only the two roosters are left unmarked. They perch on top of a henhouse made of boards pulled from crates or barrels or both and then nailed and roped together. The door is made from barley straw.
“Aye, it looks a mishmash but it holds,” Omie says about the henhouse, holding one chicken loosely in her arms. “Good scratch about. Times I give them a little crushed grain too, if I have it.”
“My sister mixed wood ash into their feed,” Susanna tells her. “Said it made their shells stronger.”
“That interfere with the hatching?”
“She’s lost only two chicks in the last two years.”
“How many does she have now?”
“She doesn’t...she recently died.”
“Then who’s taking care of her hens?”
“I don’t know.” Susanna feels a pang of guilt. Aurelia asked her to do that. But isn’t it strange, she thinks, that Omie is more concerned over the fate of Aurelia’s chickens than Aurelia? Later Susanna tells herself that Omie is a woman without kindness.
Omie has brought out with her a large knotted net, tangled and full of holes. She sets her hen down and shakes out the net. “Help me with this. And you too, Little Pea,” she says to Meera. Last night she saw a flock of passenger pigeons fly overhead and she figures more are on their way.
“Like to catch some for supper. But I have to mend my net or they’ll fly right through it.”
She spreads the net on the ground, and Meera and Susanna help her to untangle it. When it is lying straight out they begin to mend it with odd bits of string and rope.
“How is it that this land isn’t wet?” Susanna asks her.
“Limestone not too far underneath,” Omie tells her. “And it’s on a little rise as you can see. I chose the spot smartly.”
She takes up her knife and cuts a worn piece from the net, measures it against her thumb, and then cuts a new piece to match it from her scraps. She makes a pile of the worn pieces, perhaps intending to mend them later, while Meera and Susanna tie the new pieces to the net with small tight knots. All the while Omie talks and talks, sometimes to Susanna and Meera, and sometimes to her birds.
“My father raised flax to sell but kept some back for our clothes. I had a new dress every year. A little bit of cleared land, that’s all we had, and right beyond was the wildern
ess. Hard to imagine now, but how I feared it as a girl. Hated to go into the woods even for kindling. Father worked the land with a hand hoe. My husband, he mostly talked down the neck of his whiskey bottle. It was his right to beat me but he took on that responsibility a deal too often.”
Is this why she came to this lonesome place, Susanna wonders? It seems a hard thing to have to live alone like this. She never would.
“Why do you paint your birds?” Meera asks.
“For the powers. Stars for might, moon for understanding, rings for their ability to heal the cramp. I mostly use pokeweed berries but there’s a lichen I sometimes mix in, cuts a nice shade.”
“Can you tell if a venture is unlucky?” Susanna asks her.
“I can tell your venture is,” Omie says with a laugh. “Else you wouldn’t be here.”
But she shows no curiosity about them or why they have come. She sits on a little tree stump with her knees spread, the part of the net she is working on pulled up onto her lap. Her fingers are thick but nimble, and her hair webs around her shoulders like a shawl. When the net seems good enough, Omie puts her hands flat on her thighs and pushes herself to standing.
“At sunset is when the birds fly,” she tells them, shaking the net out. “We’ll catch a few then and make us some good pigeon pie.”
They set out just as the last line of bright sun is sinking out of view, Omie leading the way with her gun broken over her arm. Where does she get her gunpowder, Susanna wonders as she follows her. For Omie is preparing to shoot the birds as well as net them. The sky is filled with flat, distant clouds outlined in pink and purple, and the air smells like wet leaves.
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