Haints Stay

by Colin Winnette

  He nodded.

  “I do not approve.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “As long as you know.”

  “I’ve always known,” said Bird. “You do not have to speak on it.”

  “Known what ?”

  “That you don’t approve.”

  “Of what ?”

  “Of me. Of my plans. Of the way I think of things.”

  “How do you think of them ?”

  “You know clearly well how I think of them and what I expect of the world.”

  “Horridness and dread.”

  He did not respond.

  “You expect only the worst.”

  He did not respond.

  “You do.”

  “No. But I am prepared for the worst thing. I will work against the worst thing with everything I have within me.”

  “Murderously.”

  “Yes.”

  “But murder is that worst thing you are preparing for.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “It is up there on the list of worst things then.”

  “Depending on the circumstances, yes. John’s murder was a worst thing. The men who killed my family was a worst thing. The man who took Martha was a worst thing.”

  “Do you know who killed your family ?”

  “Two men killed my family and brought me into the woods with them when I was much smaller than I am now. They tried to raise me or hold me hostage, but then they turned on me. I cannot remember everything. I will never be in that position again. I will fight that position with everything that’s within me.”

  It was a line he’d drawn from one of the adventure books. There was a man who wore the same hat daily and fought evil with everything that was within him.

  “You will die,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “And you are likely to do an accidental wrong.”

  “Not if I pay attention,” he said. “And not if the world watches out for me.”

  “These men,” said Mary. “What color were their hats ?”

  “They did not wear hats,” said Bird.

  “What were their faces like ? Did they have any scars ?”

  Bird shook his head. “I do not know.”

  “How will you know them then ?” she said.

  “I will know the feeling of being near them.”

  “I will not read you any more from those books,” she said.

  “You have read enough.”

  The next day, the sun broke finally from beneath the rooftop. It lit the edges of the room in which they slept. They woke to it. They wept. Time itself had freed them. They ate the jerky they had been saving. It was salty and tough, but a treat nonetheless. It stung the roofs of their mouths and puckered the edges of their lips. The sun. There it was. Mary sang a song about the sun. Bird practiced with his pistol.

  Everything, then, seemed connected to her. When the snow stopped, it was because she had brought hope to the world. When the sun came out, it was to echo her filthy beauty. Brooke fed her from the desert and the stream and she held him. They did not walk together, but sat and let the snow vanish and the creek widen. The air was suddenly warm enough for exposed sleep. The stars were out. The sky was thick with them. Throughout the day, the moon was as clear as a treetop in the distance. She did not seem to sleep. She cried every so often. He slept on her, where she would let him. His head on a thigh, or a leg thrown over hers, if she was also sleeping. When she began to warble late in the night, he simply rolled away. She did not speak much. He told her what he’d found for them to eat, or how he’d caught it. Told her how to eat the spiny things, or the smallest creatures with the most delicate flavor. He was perfectly content to sit with her, day after day, in the mud and vanishing snow. It still sat atop the red rocks towering in the distance.

  “Which way did you come from ?” he asked. “Are we near a town ?”

  She shook her head.

  “I was lost in the storm for some time before I found you,” she said.

  That was heart-warming to him. The idea that, with him, she did not consider herself lost. He left it at that. He was eating no more than before, a little less, in fact, but he felt he was getting some of his old strength back. He felt he could last a little longer. That he wanted to last a little longer. He was curious what was in store for them. He imagined she would stay with him forever, seeing as it felt so right as it was.

  She avoided locking eyes with the horizon. She kept her gaze on nearby things : her hands, the food he was providing, the water, the soles of her feet, the edges of the blanket. She was in no hurry to get anywhere, and that was more than fine to Brooke.

  One night, he set a hand on the delicate tissue between her legs. She was on her back, her legs apart. He set his palm there, on the outside of her leggings. She did not react. He rotated his hand in a small circle, as he had done with Sugar, years before. She did not react. He kept it up, brought himself onto an elbow and leaned toward her. She was fixated on the clots of stars above them.

  In the morning, he woke and she was gone. He was on the muddy blanket, alone and sweating in the sun. He heard voices, horses, active wood. He turned and discovered the wagon train, its carts and carriers still in a tight line, its travelers scattered across the landscape. Some were resting in the shadows of the wagons. Some were collecting water from the stream, passing around a cupped pan. There were four men and two women. The eldest of the group was of indeterminate age, a weathered old man sporting a beard and perched on a rock. They had a few mules and several horses, both harnessed and un-harnessed. He could not spot her. He gathered himself up and brought himself over to the older man sitting on a small rock beside several young men. Brooke tried to speak, but his voice was tired and unpracticed.

  “I’ve been lost,” he said.

  “We know,” said the older man. He put out his hand. “I’m the Pa here.”

  “Hello, Pa.”

  “My name is Wendell.”

  “Hello, Wendell.”

  “These are my boys : Jack, Marston, and Clay.”

  Each of them had the man’s face at some previous stage. It was like standing before a row of daguerreotypes taken at ten-or twenty-year intervals. The youngest seemed about eighteen or so.

  “Howdy,” said Brooke.

  “Your wife’s in the wagon. She’s ill and needs to be cared for,” said Wendell.

  “Which wagon ?” said Brooke.

  “That,” said Wendell.

  Brooke shook the boys’ hands and nodded to Wendell and walked toward the far wagon containing the woman he’d met in the snow. He lifted himself on the wagon’s step and peered into the back.

  An older woman and a child were at the woman’s side. The child was holding her hand and the older woman was mixing something in a small bowl.

  “What’s she sick with ?” asked Brooke.

  “You must be John,” said the girl holding her hand.

  Brooke nodded.

  “Some kind of fever,” she said.

  “She’ll be all right ?” said Brooke.

  They both nodded. The woman with the small bowl applied its contents to the sick woman’s lips. It was a red paste of some kind. From where Brooke stood, it had no smell.

  “She’s just out of sorts,” said the woman applying the paste. “She needs to rest and eat. You can ride with us as far as you like. From what she’s told us, you can handle providing sustenance for the two of you.”

  Brooke nodded. “As long as we stay by the stream. And as long as it doesn’t start snowing again.”

  “Wasn’t that something ?” said the girl holding her hand. She was younger, by fifty years or so. A granddaughter, maybe.

  “It was not easy going,” said the woman applying the paste. “I imagine it was particularly difficult for the two of you, out here alone as you were.”

  Brooke nodded.

  “She says you’ve been wandering for some time ?”

  Brooke nodded.

/>   “My guess is that you’re not opposed to joining up with us ?”

  “We could use your medical help. A few days off of our feet,” said Brooke.

  “Most of us walk,” said the woman applying the paste. “Alongside or behind the wagons. The more the horses have to carry, the more often we have to stop, and the greater the risk of exhausting them or losing them to injury. She’ll have to rest here for a while, but you’ll have to do your part.”

  Brooke nodded.

  “I can manage that,” he said.

  “It is a nice surprise to meet new people,” said the girl holding her hand. “We’ve been walking for so long, and my brothers really aren’t much for company.”

  Brooke nodded.

  “Do you and your wife have a family looking for you ?” said the older woman. She set down the bowl and began to blow on the sick woman’s pasted lips.

  “I have a brother,” he said. “But I have not seen him for some time. I do not know what’s become of him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said the girl holding her hand.

  Brooke nodded.

  A shout from Wendell set the horses to a steady pace, and the other travelers fell in line alongside the wagon train. Brooke lowered himself from the wagon as it startled into motion, and told the women he would be back later to check on his wife.

  Then they walked. The man introduced as Marston led three ponies at the rear of the wagon train. He was not skilled at moving them. They gave him great grief, and he tugged their reins and poked at their muzzles with a thin switch. Brooke took pace to the right of the third wagon, nearest the back. None in the party seemed concerned with him. None spoke to one another, or sang any songs.

  When they stopped, for water or for rest, he checked on his wife. She was on the edge of sleep for nearly two days, never fully in or out. She spoke to him, but he could not make sense of it. She told him that the earth had begged her for the child. That the earth had told her it wasn’t hers and she could not care for it. She had wanted to help the child, she assured him. She had set out to perform good. She was losing her mind as his was slowly coming back to him. His memories faded, his reflections on all he had done before and how it had led him here. He was more and more simply there. He watched the female members of the wagon train. He had many ideas about them, but kept them all to himself. One was either slow-witted, or had a damaged speech capacity. She spoke at a slant, from the corner of her mouth. She did not say much, but when she did, it was about the wind, or about her clothing. She chased down a rag as it was drawn several hundred feet from the caravan by the wind. She clutched it to her body. So far off, she looked like a scraggly tree. Wendell fired a shot into the air, which startled her and brought her running back toward them. Another woman, her sister or cousin, wore muddy clothes and often spoke with Wendell privately, in hushed tones. It was Brooke’s assumption that these two had conspired to mobilize the family. They seemed to carry the weight of the trip. They made the decisions for when to stop and when to go, when to set up camp. Brooke’s best guess was that the woman was Wendell’s daughter. She seemed roughly twenty-five years his younger, and there was nothing in their body language to suggest they were intimate.

  The woman caring for Brooke’s wife introduced herself as Wendell’s sister. They’d made camp after several hours of slowly working their way back in the direction from which Brooke had first started out. They were headed back to the corpses of the men who had captured him, the stagecoach that had once been his transport.

  Marston pulled a crate of rocks from the back of one wagon and arranged them into a circle for the fire pit. He dug a shallow hole, spitting and cursing as he did. He was thin and not well suited to the work.

  “My name is Irene,” said Wendell’s sister. She offered Brooke a sip of water from a thin aluminum saucer.

  Brooke accepted, but took only enough to show he appreciated the offering.

  “John,” said Brooke.

  “Right,” said Irene. “How long have you and your wife been on foot ?”

  Brooke shrugged. “The only honest answer is that I lost count.”

  “Where are you headed ?”

  “My wife and I,” said Brooke, “we lost a child not too long ago.”

  “I know,” said Irene. “She’s said as much.”

  “She has been wandering ever since, and I have been following her. At first, I tried to stop her, but she would not be stopped.”

  Irene nodded.

  “Dorothy lost hers,” she said. She gestured to the woman who spoke at a slant. “Some six years ago, maybe ? It was born dead.”

  Brooke nodded.

  “She is lucky to have survived,” said Brooke. “I’ve seen a stillborn do much more damage.”

  “We are lucky,” said Irene. “I’m not sure what she is.”

  “We won’t be any trouble to you all,” said Brooke.

  “I know,” said Irene.

  “We appreciate your help. We’ll uncouple ourselves from you at the first town we come to, if you like. I think my wife needs a bed and a good meal. Maybe we’ll find a small place to call our own. We had a ranch once, but we cannot go back there.”

  Irene nodded.

  “Haints stay where and as they please,” she said.

  Because of the snow, the creek was enormous now and moving quickly. There was less food to be found, but there was still food to be found. When they slept, they tied the horses together and blocked the wagon’s wheels. Many of them chose to sleep outside, beneath the stars. Wendell and his sister took to one of the wagons. Brooke slept in the third wagon, beside the woman he met in the snow. She spoke throughout the night, every so often. Some bit of nonsense or another. She took no notice of him. He listened to her for some time before he began to respond.

  “I was told to do as I did,” she said.

  “By the earth,” he said.

  “I could feel I’d done wrong as soon as I did it.”

  “I know that feeling,” said Brooke. “I have felt it often.”

  “It would not stop screaming,” she said.

  “It goes away,” said Brooke.

  “Until I put it down, it would not stop.”

  “But then it stopped,” said Brooke.

  She began to cry then.

  “Then it stopped,” she said.

  The bodies were water-logged and delicate. Bird lifted the arm of a young man and the skin shifted, the body cracked as if Bird could tear loose the limb without much more than a tug. He dropped the arm and retreated to Mary where she stood on the porch, her hands over her eyes, still speaking out in protest.

  “You must stop,” she said.

  “We cannot move them,” he said.

  “You should not,” she said.

  “It would be impossible,” said Bird. “They are too full of water and too far gone. We cannot move them.”

  “We have to leave,” said Mary.

  Finally, Bird agreed.

  Mary spent the evening preparing food for the journey : baking loaves of bread and gathering butter, salt, and cured meat into manageable sacks to be carried on their backs. Bird checked the houses again and found more bullets, another pistol, rotten meal, and some more jerky. The houses groaned as he moved through them. They were each tilted on their foundation, sagging and heavy with water. The roofs of several had already collapsed. He moved through them, navigating the rubble. They were lit cleanly by the blue sky above. He found two more bodies. Two children huddled in a basement. He covered them with blankets from a nearby dresser. He did not mention them to Mary.

  They set out for the woods. Mary walked in front and Bird took up the rear. He carried several sacks on his shoulder, but dropped them again and again, claiming to have heard some sound or another. Birds launched from bushes and startled him into withdrawing his pistol. And every time, in order to do so, he had to drop the sacks.

  “You’ll mush the bread,” said Mary. “You mustn’t drop them.”

  �
��Carry a pistol then,” said Bird.

  She took one, but did not like it and kept it unloaded.

  “It is no good that way,” said Bird.

  “I will not shoot off my foot,” said Mary, “carrying a loaded pistol in my belt and with several sacks in each arm. I’ll do things my way.”

  They had to stop often. The sacks were too much for them. They kept the sun behind them. Mary insisted there were several towns founded at the far edge of the forest, directly opposite the desert towns. She had never traveled from one to the other, but John had, and had told her as much. At the far end of the woods would be either mountains or a town where they could eat proper food and find some safety. They walked for hours and hours, until the sun began to set. Mary did not like it one bit. Each step was painful and unpleasant and the bags kept slipping and swinging and making her gait unsteady. Bird was silent. He seemed neither comfortable nor struggling. She made the decision not to complain, though there was plenty to complain about.

  “We’ve probably walked fifteen miles,” said Mary. “Maybe even twenty.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bird.

  “How many do you think ?”

  “Five,” he said. “Or six. Hardly any. These bags are slowing everything down, and you keep stopping. So we’re crawling.”

  On the far side of the woods, she would consider the possibility of leaving his side. She had thought about it long and hard and she did not want to marry him. She wanted to marry someone nicer and smarter. Bird was a violent nuisance. There was nothing to him that made her want to stay.

  Bird insisted that they cover themselves when they slept. What the blankets could not reach, a sack would cover. The more they seemed to be a pile, the better. He slept with a bag of bread on his face. Mary found it funny and refused to do so. The treetops seemed miles above them. They tilted and groaned in the wind. She wanted to consider them as she prepared herself for sleep.

  “If you are spotted,” said Bird, “we will have trouble.”

  “I have a pistol,” she said.

  “You will get us both tortured, eaten, or killed,” said Bird.

  “That is silly,” she said.

  She knew it wasn’t silly. She was carrying twice the sacks he was able to because the woods had shown him precisely what there was to be afraid of. Still, she had her pistol, and was intelligent and strong, and she would not be told over and over again by him what to do and how to feel. They were not a family and they were not in love. The moon was out, and it was full.