Suddenly there is a commotion: the ill woman is being carried out of the gazebo. With a flourish the drummers stop drumming and the woman’s attendants help her to sit in a special chair in front of them. One girl, not an attendant, walks behind the others carrying something on a large wooden slab. More meat for the feast? But instead of going into the hut, the girl presents the platter to the ill woman.
Naomi and Nadoko hurry up to them. “Can you see from here?” Naomi asks. They help Onaway to stand and move closer for a better view. And then all at once Susanna can see what is on the platter: it’s the head of a bear. The Wyandots’ pet bear.
She turns to Naomi. “It’s the bear!”
Even from this distance she can make out its one crooked ear. Its fur looks darker, especially at the bottom where it is wet with blood. Its eyes are open. Something—a rock?—is keeping its jaws apart, and Susanna fancies she can even see a sliver of tongue. But even more astonishing: Meera is the one carrying it. Susanna can see the side of her face. She looks very solemn.
“How could they do that?” she asks Naomi. “That bear was a pet.”
Naomi’s expression doesn’t change. “It wasn’t a pet.”
“They kept it in its own pen!”
“Yes, like Saul, or any other farm animal.”
“Saul was a pig, this is a bear!” Susanna looks at Naomi, and then at Nadoko, and then at Onaway. None of them seem the least disturbed. Nadoko says something to Naomi.
Naomi turns to Susanna. “The bear is being honored. He is part of an important day. The girl with the platter must have guessed the riddle and the bear was the answer. Something unique and not unique—I understand it now. The bear is unique in this village but not in the world. She is clever, that girl.”
“She’s the one who traveled with me through the Black Swamp.”
“That one? But she’s so tiny!”
Susanna looks around: doesn’t anyone feel the way she does? Only she can’t tell what she feels most: pity or horror or fear. Naomi is wrong, she thinks, that bear was a pet. It was tamed and taught tricks. And then they killed it for a mere fancy, a riddle. Somehow that one fact seems more important than all the others. She can’t help but feel that her status is not much higher than a pet bear’s. Anything could happen to her here. Anything. The fact that Meera is connected to it makes it only feel worse.
“Yawi-tsi-no-ha daya-nos,” Nadoko says. “Notsi-raya-gyahac. Hao-she-e.”
“The girl will cook the head and the woman will eat from it,” Naomi translates. “And then she will be cured.”
Susanna watches the woman go into the feasting hut, and when she is gone the drummers begin drumming again. After a while people turn back to each other, laughing and talking. It’s getting to be twilight now, and men have begun drinking whiskey out of glass jars. Nadoko pulls her little fur cape closer around her shoulders, gesturing that it is time to go home.
Susanna is glad. The day has been a failure. But as she turns she hears a shout behind her: a fight is breaking out among the gamblers. They’ve gotten much closer since Susanna last looked, and there are more of them now, at least twenty, mostly Wyandot but also some of the visiting Ottawa and Potawatomi, too. The nearby crowd not involved seems collectively to take a step back, but the gamblers are spreading out, some of them waving their arms and others pushing whoever is closest. One man is knocked over and falls toward Naomi. Quickly Nadoko puts Naomi behind her, but in a moment the fighting is everywhere. Although Susanna is only a step or two away from the others, men keep pushing between them and she can’t get back. A bit of silver flashes to her right: the blade of a knife. She jerks back to avoid its sweep, and when she looks again she sees something rippling out of a Wyandot man in front of her. At first she thinks it’s cloth or, what is it, a snake? He’s been slashed across the middle and his insides are falling out in a long rope. Blood spurts out as he holds his body together and tries to walk, either in shock or hoping to get away. But the man who cut his belly now grabs him by his hair and slits his throat, and a strong scent of skunk oil rises up as he falls to the ground.
Blood is everywhere. In a panic, Susanna pushes harder to reach Onaway just as another Indian falls against her. She can’t see his face but she can smell grease paint on his skin. One of the drummers?
“Onaway!” Susanna calls frantically.
“Tarayma!”
Onaway stretches out her thin arm to Susanna but the Indian who has fallen on her is now holding her hard by the forearm. As she struggles to get free she hears the sound of a knife being unsheathed and all at once her skin feels like a taut sack around her.
She tries harder to pull her arm away. “Onaway! Naomi!”
But the man is holding on to her tightly. She twists around trying to get out of his grip, her heart fluttering as fast as a bird’s. Where will he cut her? She tries to protect every part of her body at once. But instead of using it on her, the man holds his knife out like a warning to others as he pulls her away. The drums go on faster than before, faster even than her heartbeat, and she can hear the tambourines rattle like a thousand snakes. She kicks him and falls backward and regains her footing and falls again. A bush scrapes against her hand and she tries to grab it and hold on but he pulls her away. Her vision cuts up and down between the sky and the well-pounded earth that smells strongly in one place of urine. She kicks out again and falls and he pulls her to her feet. In the darkness she still cannot make out the face of her captor, and even when he says in a low voice, “Susanna, it’s me, it’s Seth,” she still cannot understand who it is, this Indian, and how he knows anything about Seth Spendlove.
The River Raisin
Twenty-Six
After she finally understands that it is Seth himself who is dragging her away, Susanna stops struggling and tries to match him stride for stride. His hand on her arm feels warm and firm, and they cross the darkening village as though making the start of an X. Most of the villagers are still at the feast but a few old women are turning kettles upside down or shaking out blankets. No one looks at them.
When they get to the stream they stop to catch their breath. Seth bends to wash the greasepaint off his face and Susanna holds her stomach. Her breath comes out in hard punches. Ribbons of stars are forming above their heads and the bats swoop down erratically. She watches Seth splash water onto his face and she notices again his straight, even nose and his smooth hair. His skin looks even darker in the dim light.
“You’re Indian,” she says.
Why had she not seen this before? Why had no one seen it? Back in Severne they said he was part Italian or Hebrew or Gypsy. Never Indian. Well, his father and brother looked as German as they could be, maybe that’s why.
“Potawatomi,” Seth tells her. “My father’s mother.”
“Amos is half Potawatomi?”
Even though they are facing each other the darkness takes a layer of communication away. All they have is a tone of voice, and how much tone can there be in a whisper? Susanna doesn’t know how she sounds to Seth. Surprised? Surprised and not surprised somehow. Maybe she did know.
From the other side of the stream a man signals to them. “Koman,” Seth says, and that is the beginning and end of his introduction. They cross the water using an old footbridge that Susanna didn’t know about. Midway across her foot slips but she regains her balance quickly, half jumping half running as she keeps up with Seth. Koman takes her hand on the other side, helping her off the narrow plank. He has a gray pack with him that he gives to Seth as they run up the short clearing and into the woods.
By now Onaway would have alerted the men about Susanna’s capture. Seth urges her to run faster. But they are barely in among the trees when a noise makes Susanna look over her shoulder: two Wyandots are already behind them. Koman, who is last, turns quickly and puts a knife up into the first man’s belly. The second one lunges for Seth.
Susanna falls onto the ground, her only idea for protection. Face down, eyes closed, she breat
hes in the scent of dry leaves. She thinks of the dry smell of her father’s barn, a small unpainted outbuilding, trying not to think of all that could happen to her. Naomi was right, they found her at once and now they will kill her. She hears a grunt and clenches both her fists, waiting for the first blow.
“It’s all right Susanna,” Seth says finally. He helps her up by the arm. “They’re dead.”
Up on the path she looks for the bodies but they are already hidden, rolled out of sight. Koman speaks quickly in a low voice as Seth translates. “In a little while, maybe very soon, another party will come looking for the first one. We must move fast. Once we get to the Maumee we will be safe.” The Wyandot will not follow them across the river, Koman believes, since the river marks the end of their territory.
“But I’m not going to the Maumee,” Susanna says. “My plan is to go to the River Raisin. That’s where Penelope is. She was sold to a fur trapper called Boucherie.”
Even as she speaks she realizes that she is throwing out a kind of challenge: Seth can come with her or not, but either way she is going. Inside one of her pouches is the slingshot Tako made for her, and in the other one is all the food she’s stolen. This is all she has in the world. Four months ago this might have stopped her. But maybe not. Her past self sometimes surprises her now that she knows more. She hopes Seth will come.
Koman says, “It is difficult. The village lies between here and the Raisin. But they will not be searching in that direction. That is an advantage.”
“How many days’ walk to get to the Raisin?” Susanna asks.
He holds up two fingers and then says in English, “One if run.”
A great many streams run between the Wyandot village and the Raisin: Ottawa Creek, Plum Rill, Bear Creek, Old Woman Creek. Whichever one they find will lead them to the river. Koman will stay behind and make a false trail. He will fight if he has to. He draws a map for Seth in the dirt, but when he straightens up he is looking at Susanna. Something in his manner reminds her of her father. He looks her straight in the eye without shyness and without dominance either. She wonders how he met up with Seth.
“Why are you helping me?” she asks.
His expression seems to leave his face with his breath. He is still watching her, but now he looks thoughtful. He says something in Potawatomi.
“In reparation,” Seth tells her.
“Reparation? Why?”
Koman draws a knife from his belt and holds it out in its sheath. “For you,” he says in English. “Take it as my gift.”
After they part, Seth and Susanna loop around to the north taking care to keep a good deal of woods to the east of them, while Koman goes south toward the Maumee. In the darkness Seth cannot find a path so they walk straight through the thick layer of dead leaves that litter the woods. When she moves behind him to avoid a fallen tree trunk, Susanna notices that he is holding his arm.
“What is it?” she asks in a low voice.
“From the fight.” Without stopping he pushes up his torn sleeve to show her in the moonlight: a long knife cut just under the crook of his elbow. He has a handkerchief pressed against it.
“We must clean it,” she tells him.
“Let’s get a little farther first.”
The night air is full of blind insects that bump up against them as they walk. Every once in a while Seth stops to listen. The trees make no noise, not even the occasional creak, and the wind has died off. The air feels unnaturally warm and still. Susanna glances at Seth from time to time thinking of how they played on the stream that one summer when they were little, pretending a footbridge was a boat and they were going over the falls. Sometimes she steered but then he had to call her captain. They saw river rats slinking up the banks and ate bread and butter that Ellen gave Susanna folded in half like paper. She doesn’t remember what they talked about, but she remembers talking quite a lot.
After what seems like a long time walking in silence, they come to a clearing ringed with flowers like round white biscuits. They sit down on a damp log to rest and Susanna takes a closer look at Seth’s wound. His breath comes out in a stream. “Is it painful?” she asks, but he shakes his head no. The knife sliced the skin a long way but it is only deep at one end, near his elbow. If it were day she would find a patch of trillium to make a paste for it. As it is all she can do is wash it with the cold water in Seth’s pouch and wrap it up again with his handkerchief, hoping the cloth is clean. He has another shirt in his pack, he tells her, a cloth shirt, if she needs to cut a new bandage.
“Why did Koman give me his knife?” she asks him.
“It’s a long story.” Seth tucks in a loose end of the handkerchief and rolls down his sleeve.
“Tell me.”
He looks into her eyes as if there might be a way out of this conversation if he searches there hard enough. An owl hoots above them and they both tense, knowing it could be one man signaling to another. But after a moment they see the owl fly down and extend its claws to pluck something from a pile of leaves, its wings flapping hard as it tries to turn and lift at the same time with its catch.
“Let’s keep walking,” Seth says.
She tries to count their paces but loses the number after two hundred. She watches the moon grow smaller and smaller. When the night noises fall off for a moment, Seth stops again to listen. Susanna closes her eyes but can hear nothing behind them, no twigs breaking, no sign that anyone is following. When they start up again Seth says, without preamble, “It was Amos. He wanted your store.”
“What do you mean? What was Amos? Everyone knows he wanted our store.”
“Yes but I don’t think you all realized how much he wanted it.”
Back in Virginia Amos had owned a dry goods store himself. Everyone knew that, too. However now Seth tells her that he never got over the fact that Sirus set up a store in Severne first, before Amos got there. Instead of accepting his fate or leaving to start a store somewhere else, Amos stayed in Severne year after year building up his bitterness. When Sirus and Ellen died he thought this was his chance. He became overly confident. The daughters would leave, he boasted to his sons, and he would have their store for a song.
“But the day that Beatrice told him you all were staying in Severne, something broke in him. I could hear him talking to her just outside the cabin. There was a tone to his voice but I didn’t know what it was. A shrillness. Afterward he went out into Thieving Forest and got foully drunk. Worse than usual.”
That must have been when he came up with his plan. Give the Quiners a fright. Get them running to Philadelphia. Amos found Koman and his half-brother, who were up the Blanchard negotiating with some Miami for horses. He picked them because they were Potawatomi and he knew their language. He gave them money and said there’d be more once they took the women away, and that he would meet them in Thieving Forest where he’d pay a ransom and take the women back.
“Then he pulled your wagon and team from your barn and had Cade and me sell them, which also got rid of us for the day. If I’d known...”
Susanna glances at his face but it’s too dark to see much. The pieces are coming together but she still cannot see the whole picture. She thinks she remembers Aurelia saying that name. Koman. The one with the swine wolf. But there was no swine wolf with him on this trip. She tries to keep following the story as Seth speaks, though what she really wants to do is stretch out among the brittle leaves and go to sleep. She wants to wake up to find that parts of the story never happened.
She thinks of the man with the face painted half red, who saw her hiding behind the maple tree but let her get away. That must have been Koman.
Amos was supposed to meet the Potawatomi at a given place in the forest, Seth tells her. He was supposed to make a show of negotiation with the money from their horses and wagon. His plan was to buy the women back, and in return they would give him their store.
But Amos never came. Why he decided to renege on the deal was anybody’s guess. He got greedy. He didn�
�t count on Susanna being left behind. His sons bypassed his cabin and went straight into the forest without giving him the money he meant to use to pay the Indians. Whatever the reason, Koman’s band circled around and around, waiting for him to show up. Later, someone found an opportunity to come back and kill him.
“They found Amos...” Seth stops. He doesn’t say how Amos was found. “It was clear that he was killed by a native. In revenge for deceiving them.”
“Koman?”
“Not Koman. But that’s all I know.”
A wind rises gently, as if not entirely willing to commit even to this first step. The moon has sunk behind the trees, which means she cannot read Seth’s expression. Amos planned all this. It’s hard to believe.
“I’m sorry,” Seth tells her.
She understands what he means. “You’re not your father. I don’t hold you responsible.” And she doesn’t. For a long time they say nothing more. With the moon gone, the morning seems somehow further away. It occurs to Susanna that maybe Seth followed her all this way out of shame for what his father did, some need to make it right, like Koman, and not as she thought out of love. All at once her weariness hits her like a stone.
“I need to rest,” she says.
An aching in his arm keeps him awake after Susanna falls asleep. They are lying between three logs that form a broken triangle around them. Seth pulls his blanket up and looks at Susanna’s face. Her expression is firmly set as though whatever she is dreaming takes all her concentration to maintain.
There is no question about it, she has changed. And not just her short hair and the rings in her ears. He’s changed too. He wonders what she thinks of him now.
He must have slept. When he opens his eyes again Susanna is looking at him with that direct look he remembers from childhood and he feels it in his heart. Her face is only an arm’s length away from his own.
Thieving Forest Page 30
