by Alix Hawley
FROM THE RAMPARTS comes a wild babble, a wild cry. A cabin roof is on fire. Shrieks rear up outside the walls, growing louder.
The smell makes itself at home inside my skull, which is shrinking down to nothing. Burning pitch and powder. They have rubbed hickory branches with this mixture and are throwing them at the roofs. Flames catch the shingles of Jemima’s cabin and jump at the dark. Another torch is flung, another roof sparks and blazes up.
Elizabeth Callaway comes out yelling and runs back in again, now she is out with Kezia hiding under her arm and the other women and children pouring after them. In the burning light I see Jemima with a broom, smacking the roof and sweeping the bright torch down from it. She steps back and lifts the sides of her breeches as if they were her skirts, watching the torch burn out on the ground. More girls run for brooms, they swing them all frantic as torches fly onto other roofs or straight into the walls.
I haul myself up to the rampart to see more warriors bolting straight for the walls. They run howling in twos as though trying to beat one another to a prize, their lit branches sparking and spitting above their heads. Firing blasts out of the Shawnee camp and from behind the felled trees, and begins to fly from over the river. I crouch, I yell Get down, but I do not know if anyone hears.
Holder crawls along and finds me. His face is like a candle, thin and bright with fire and joy, he salutes and bawls in my ear:
—Can we shoot these bastards now?
My gut gives a lurch but I say:
—Yes.
Before the word leaves my mouth he is taking aim and laughing. He fires, then he yells:
—Fuckers are making it easy. No sport at all.
I raise my gun. The Shawnee Holder has shot is flat on his face, his torch lies burning across his arm. More run past him and I shoot into the air. The rest along the ramparts fire straight at the runners. I see some stumbling and falling, I see more who do not get up again. I can hardly bear to watch. One goes down, his torch catches his lock of hair, and it flares up bright. Names scramble together in my mind: Captain Will, Moluntha, Black Fish, Father—
I do not let myself blink though my eyes are parched with the cloud of powder and smoke we are all of us caught in.
—Dan!
Squire is below with his unhurt arm full of gun barrels. The light round him is bright as day. Another roof is blazing, the torch jammed between shingles, the women are batting at it as if they are trying to kill a bird that got into the house. I go down and yell close to his head:
—What are you doing?
—Help me give these out to the children, quick now.
—What?
He drops all the barrels but for one which he tucks in to his body, with his good hand he pumps a rough rod like a piston at the end of it. Water shoots me in the neck, the cool wet is startling. Squire, calm enough to invent machinery while his house burns.
Without thinking I clap him on his hurt shoulder and he flinches, but he gives me the water shooters. I hand these to any children I see, I show them how to make rain on the burning roofs and the torches that lie fallen, and how to fill the guns up again at the well-hole. The last I have I give to Squire’s littlest boy Isaiah, who I find shadowing me. He speaks, but the guns and howling are too loud. The burning light shows all his freckles. I kneel and I pull him straight to me:
—See what the others are doing. Shoot your water at the fires.
His breath is hot in my ear:
—I can see everything all over the ground. I found this.
He holds up a pin before my eye. Hancock rushes by, praying at the top of his voice, God and all Heaven’s angels be with us.
Isaiah says:
—Is it Heaven now?
—You know better Isaiah, you are smarter than that!
I give his shoulders a shake, I am sorry for it. He does know better, he is a big enough boy, but his face is so bewildered and sleepless. I hug him to me and I say:
—It is not Heaven.
I do not scream out all the times I have believed myself to be in Heaven in this place, in Kentucky, all the times I have been cast out of it again into this.
* * *
They had more powder than we believed. They were only waiting to use it. The shooting keeps up, they howl their war cries on and on, the pairs of them keep coming with burning branches. We are running out of bullets now, the children screaming endlessly, we all have run out of words.
The sky is light as day still though day is far off, perhaps it will never come again. I hand what shot we have got up to the ramparts. Old Dick calls down from his bastion, but I do not know what he says and I do not care to know. Another great crackle of shots comes from over the river, and he turns back to his post, ramming his gun.
Isaiah has kept near me, he ducks in and out beneath the ladder. Now his brother Moses comes and jabs at my arm, pointing to the paddock where a torch has landed at the base of a post and is flaring high. The animals have herded themselves backward, they will crush themselves against the wall. I yell:
—Put it out!
Squire’s boys run quick for the pen, they have been waiting to be told what to do. Everyone is waiting to be told. They pump water over the flames with their shooters, and I am up the ladder to look out, the blood from my wounds seeping down my back again.
Smoke is pouring up into the night outside, fire leaps all jagged beneath it. A small paddock fence outside our rear wall is blazing, the wind pushing the flames towards us. The warriors who set it on fire are fleeing, their voices spiking the dark. I jump down and run for the gunshop:
—Squire—shovels!
The cows are all bellowing now, which sets the dogs and littlest children crying louder. Squire has two shovels ready, we go to John South’s cabin at the base of the corner bastion nearest the paddock fire and set to digging under its wall. South’s old wife totters on her heels next to the bed with a lamp, she is weeping:
—Do not let them in, do not let them.
There is no answer to this, I do not answer. I yell hard as I can and more men come, London is the first, with Jacky riding his hip. London pushes the boy into the corner with Mrs. South and takes up a shovel. Quicker than Squire or me with our weaknesses, he opens a hole below the lowest log in the wall in a moment and pushes his great cloud of hair out through it. I lean down near him and I say:
—Get the fence put out, Squire will get another water gun.
Squire is partway out the door when London pulls himself back again. He sits up quick and says low through his teeth:
—Get me a real gun. One of the Indians is just outside this wall.
We are all silent now, even the shooting jolts to a stop for a moment. Mrs. South’s lamp sputters. I pass London my gun:
—Steady.
His deep black skin and eyes shine in the quaver of the light, he whispers:
—They will never see me. Or you, will they Jacky?
A short smile for Jacky who has hidden himself against Mrs. South, and London is sliding his body out the hole. Crouched there, I hear the lock of my gun snap. No bang. I say:
—London, London, do you need more powder?
He reaches back through the hole to me, his hand is open, I put a measure of powder in it. There is a sudden crack just outside the wall and London’s arm falls, his legs give a great backward jerk, his fingers curl and uncurl and stop.
* * *
I am out of the cabin, Jacky’s high wail behind me like a kite. I cannot get away from it though I walk the whole inside of the fort. The air is darkening. All I see behind my eyelids is London’s legs bending all contrary from his spine.
Martha is with Ned next to the animal pen, where the beasts have quieted, perhaps at his presence. She is in his old coat, giving him a cup of water. She says:
—Daniel? What is it?
To her I say very rough:
—Get back inside. Look after your children.
—What is it?
I do not answer, I only
give Ned a shove and I say:
—Go back to your watch. The shooting may have stopped but they have not finished.
Ned looks at me half a moment, then takes his light back to the gate. Martha melts herself into the dark of the fort again with a flash of her great eyes. I go up to walk the ramparts. At a half crouch my wounded back hurts me more and I stand to stretch it. As I do so a shot sings past my head, and the stillness cracks open like an egg. Holder and the rest set to shouting straight away: You cowards. You bastards. You goddamned spiders, you sons of bitches.
Your sister is a whore. In the firing I hear it, I have heard it since I was a boy. And Your daughter is a whore, I hear this now also. They are not shooting at us now, only these words creep in on the wind in low Shawnee voices that do not know just what they say, though they understand it well enough.
—Your daughter is a whore.
Just below me I hear it now, I do hear it, I know the voice, the dark high amusement of it. I go down the ladder, and through a split in the logs I say:
—Pompey.
My mouth is pressed to the wall, splinters pierce my lips but I press harder:
—Pompey!
No answer, only a low whistle. Two of the dogs inside bark, though they have done so much of it they can hardly make a noise. I hear him whistle again, I know his whistling and his breath, in my mind is his face and his smile. Still there is no firing, only urgent talk in the cabins. I try again to call to him:
—Something to say to me?
—A few things, Sheltowee.
—Not the first time you people have told me I have a family of whores.
He laughs in his high fashion:
—We people? Your own people say the same, have you forgot your white brothers at Old Chillicothe? Have you forgot everything?
I see the men’s faces, all of them in a line, all dismal and hating, waiting for me to do something. I say:
—Are they at Old Chillicothe still, or have you killed the rest?
—You are the one with the taste for killing. You have only to ask Chief Moluntha, or your father. Or look out here and you will see.
Pompey is in the roots of my teeth and the roots of my hair. I know all the deaths he is speaking of. Have I not seen bodies of every sort, white and Shawnee, flung about the ground, have I not seen them every minute of my life since Chillicothe? I say:
—Damn you, Pompey, Moluntha killed two of my men at the Paint Creek town, I know it! You have this minute murdered one of your own people, a good black man is dead—
—I am a Shawnee.
He says it in Shawnee, so calm it boils up my blood:
—You are nothing, I do not know what you are.
—And what are you?
I strike the wall with my palm and I cry:
—I ought to have bought you myself! Would that have served you better?
He pauses a moment before he answers in his cool fashion:
—With what money, Sheltowee? They did give you some at Detroit, did they not? Silver coins. Good British money.
He is right, I could have bought him, he could have been free, or at any rate mine.
—Is it that black of theirs?
Holder has appeared next to me. He yells:
—You can shut your mouth before I shoot you a new hole through your goddamned face.
With another laugh, Pompey says:
—Then I will be able to fill it with more of your food.
Holder gives a squawk, a shot cracks quick from a front bastion, where the big Dutchman David Bundrin is hollering. He stands upright and his fair hair glows in the smoke of his firing. Another bang, this one from outside, and he goes down.
Holder is before me, up the ladder and crawling along the rampart, we reach the bastion with our heads still on. I say:
—Bundrin.
Holder breathes out:
—Fuck.
Bundrin is slouched crooked into the corner with his hands to his face. I say:
—Get the light, get it close.
Holder goes for the small rushlight on the floor, he holds it to Bundrin who shrinks back. I say:
—Bundrin, let us see you.
His cupped hands fall only slightly as though he were afraid of dropping something. When I pull them down I see they are dark with powder stains and wet with blood. His eyes are near white in the bright of the flame, they look at me blinking and blinking. His forehead is a black bleeding hole, his whole head slumps forward and I catch it between my palms. I say:
—Get the light closer, Holder.
Holder’s narrow face pokes in above the rushlight:
—Huh. Not dead.
—No.
I move Bundrin’s head as gentle as I can so I can see the back of it, but there is no wound there. The ball is in his brains, there is no getting at it. His neck is like a poor broken stem, his hurt head wobbles on it. Very stupid I say:
—Bundrin. David. You are all right now.
I say it as if we had been at a tavern all evening and he had fallen in the gutter on our way home. Holder has his hand to his own forehead, as if this will help anything. Bundrin manages to lift his hands back to his face and he rocks and rocks on the base of his spine. Then he slumps forward onto his knees and elbows and goes on rocking. Holder caws all strangled:
—God damn.
He takes up his gun and runs off along the rampart towards his own position, and in a moment he is shooting and so are the rest. I yell:
—Hold your fire. No shots!
They do not hear me, I cannot make them hear. More firing comes from outside, the sky shines as if the whole fort were a torch we had lit to stare at ourselves with. I go down to find Jemima or some other woman to sit with Bundrin. When I see my girl, she is marching about with her broom, watching the cabin roofs for sparks. I think of telling her to take the broom up with her into Bundrin’s bastion and strike him hard with it until he is dead.
She goes to find his wife and I keep away, I make myself watch the burning.
TWO TO BURY. We do it before the sun is visible, within the walls. The animals huff and bawl their hunger and the women all stand dry-eyed in the rushlights. The children are told to keep indoors though they peep out the windows, chewing on the corncobs they have been given to keep them quiet. My girl stands with Bundrin’s wife as we dig the graves. The wife could be a sister to her lost husband, she is as fair all over and with as big a head.
We have no cloth to spare for wrapping Bundrin or for poor London. Instead we dig very hard to make big graves, they are over-big, I would go on digging all my life though my back pains me and weeps bloody water. London, if you had never come back from riding to get more men at Logan’s. If you had ridden off somewhere else and tried to be free, though where could you have gone?
It is Pompey’s dream I know, caught in my mind now as though he were camped out in it himself.
Looking into her husband’s grave Bundrin’s wife thanks God over and over that the bullet did not hit him in the eye. With her hand round the woman’s shoulders, Jemima looks at me, her own black eyes as big as if she has taken a poison. The madness here is like a slow fever taking everyone.
Uncle Monk and the other black men swing London’s big body into the grave. Jacky has come out with Ned’s Sarah and stands watching. Seeing him I am slapped by a thought of Eliza’s face, my Shawnee wife’s girl in Chillicothe, she is my girl also. It is the same private face all orphans have when they think they are not seen. Eliza. Have they shunned you because of me, have they sent you away into the wilderness with your ma?
Do not think.
Jacky watches close as London goes into the ground. Monk’s wife has put her kerchief round the dead man’s neck to hide the bullet holes. Bundrin’s big wife did the same with her husband’s head. She sets to thanking God again now as we cover him with dirt.
* * *
The quiet is full of tension, though everyone but the watch has gone back to their cabins and it is early
yet. I go indoors, and I feel her there in the shadow before I see her. Martha in my cabin in Ned’s greatcoat, his shirt beneath it and her legs bare above the shredded stockings falling down to her calves. Ned’s hat, her hair under it coming loose from its plait. She is quite aware that it is loose as I can see, she moves her head very unconcerned. She says:
—I brought you bread, Daniel. Captain.
There is only the smallest heel of it in her hand but she wants to give me something, she thinks this is the way to do it. Captain. She shifts her knees so the coat parts. Her face is very nervous, more nervous than her body is, it says You have no wife here, you have no wife.
—Martha.
She holds out the bread, which I take in a stupid fashion. She sees my arm does not move right with the pain in my back, and she says:
—You are tired.
—I am.
She takes off the hat and tugs a strand of hair free, which sits in a black loop on her shoulder. She does not take her eyes off me. Very soft, she says:
—I know you are.
The loop of her hair. I think of other black hair. Rebecca’s and Methoataske’s. I am tired to death, she is not wrong. She parts the coat farther and I cannot help looking at her knees and her thighs, and the rest of her. My want cannot help coming back to life, though I do not know just what it is I want.
Then she says:
—Please.
And here is something I can do. It is something. I will not take her on the bed where you have slept Rebecca, do you hear it? I keep her standing at the wall. I want to turn her round and put her back to me, but she will not turn. She closes her eyes but I do not. I am hard on her, I tear the shirt hem as I shove it up, I am rough on her hips and between her legs with my hands. Her thighs are about me, she locks her heels tight and I brace my spine to hold her up. Her hand catches the wound in the back of my head and flies off again. She has wanted and wanted this and it makes me sick to think of it. I press her thin breasts hard with one hand. But I cannot carry on.
For a moment my legs tremble, I wilt against her as if I will never get myself right, then I am straight again and I set her on her feet. I turn as I set my breechcloth back in place, I do not wish to see her open legs or her questioning face. After a moment she says low:
