by Alix Hawley
—You never called me Uncle. Not once, Sheltowee. You ought to start.
—I thought you wished us to be brothers, Uncle Pompey. You be Abel, I will be Cain then. Do you still wish to run off with me?
His light dips lower and for a moment I can see the hard line of his forehead and nose and chin, black on the black of the night, we are just as we were in Old Chillicothe, him speaking to me through the wall of the prison house. We have gone nowhere at all, we are trapped as ever. He says very sharp:
—Your way and Black Fish’s way is to say we are all brothers and must live together. It is not possible, do you not see it? I do not know how you cannot.
—It is possible.
I speak as sharp as he does, I hiss at the porthole:
—Tell Black Fish to come with a peace flag, I will make sure he is safe, we will talk again.
My throat is taut with want. So much do I wish for this, I can near see the shape of Black Fish walking from the camp under a white flag out of the dark towards me. But Pompey is furious now:
—My brother died of a whipping in Virginia. I buried my money in his grave to keep it safe. That is all the good brotherhood has ever done me.
—You told me that, Pompey. In Chillicothe.
—Then you know it.
He clicks his teeth. I say:
—Tell Black Fish I am willing. Please.
—And are the rest of your people willing? Or are you planning to leave them here again? What will you do now? Pompey does not say it, but he is thinking it. He gives another of his laughs and he calls very sudden and loud:
—Daniel Boone, your true wife expects you home to Chillicothe very soon.
—God damn you, that is not for here.
—Have they heard of it then?
—Pompey.
Again he lifts his voice:
—The Shawnee wife of Sheltowee awaits him at his home with their child.
It moves across the silence like river ice cracking, crazed and loud. I speak through my teeth:
—Pompey. Is she all right, my wife? And the girl?
—Why do you ask?
—Why do you think I ask? I think of her—
His voice goes smooth as a fur:
—What makes you think they have not married her to someone else?
I choke a laugh:
—What, to you?
—I do not need your leavings.
—Ha—you think my wife would have you?
But he is gone with the light, I am left spitting my empty words into the empty air. I pivot to walk back round the fort and I crack into a body. Ned. He has his little rushlight held up now, his face all shadows and hollows. He pushes back his hat, he says soft:
—Dan. Heard your voice. Who are you talking to?
—No one.
—Dan—
—Get back to your post.
I walk on quick, the horses startle as I pass their pen, they stamp and blow. I walk round and round all night until I see in the dark, I see the edges of the buildings and the animals, I see everything that is there and I wish for things that are not.
* * *
At first light I go up to the bastion facing the camp. All night my heart has chewed on its hope that my father will come, that we will have peace. And on my other hope, that no one here has understood Pompey. I stare out at the camp, the smoke of their fires curls up slow and vanishes against the cloudy dawn. Nothing comes, no one walks forward, only the smoke keeps up its curling path towards the fort. Below, the cattle set to moaning their misery again. I go down to see what we can spare them. I tell a pack of the young girls to get a few cobs from the cabin lofts to give to the animals, two apiece. Ned’s happy girl Sarah trots off in the lead.
A shot comes shrieking past her yellow head. She freezes with one foot up as if about to tumble into icy water. I call:
—Sarah. Get inside, get the rest.
They all run for the gunshop, some of the mothers run out crying all tired and helpless, which sets the children crying also. Sarah screams:
—My Jacky!
—He is with Uncle Monk, he is safe. Now go.
But she screams for Jacky all the way to Squire’s shop, and Martha stares at me with her eyes lightening from their usual black. I know she is thinking of me with a wife, another wife, an Indian wife waiting for me. I do not wish to be imagined.
I yell for the men to get to their positions, for some to stay at the trench we have dug ready to fire or bash the Shawnee heads in with shovels if they come through with their tunnel. Once they are in their places there is terrible silence for one minute, two. And now shots come from outside in a great stuttering volley. They have bullets and powder yet, so much the air burns black. I run along under the ramparts, I yell once more to the riflemen above to save their shot until they see someone to shoot. Holder calls out that the bastards are closer with their diggings, he fires towards the near side of the river.
I run towards his corner and I am falling, I am on my face in the dirt with a bullet hole in the back of my shoulder. My skin burns as though it has been stung, as though hornets are creeping into the wound. I lie and watch my blood puddle round my shoulder and neck, a small river of it trickles along the ground towards my chin. It smells of old metal, old tools.
—Get up.
Jemima tugs my arm and pain bellows all through me. I get up and run at a ducking limp behind her. In her cabin, she tears my shirt from my shoulder and looks at the shot above the axe wound I took when this began. She plucks the shot out of my flesh and bandages me up without a word.
As she stands to go, she says very stiff:
—It is not a bad wound. But you should lie down a while.
I sit myself up, giddy-headed, and I test my shoulder’s movement. I look round at what my girl has in her house, her married house, and it is not so very much. Jemima, I have not done anything for you.
We killed Boone. We killed Boone.
This I hear in pieces at first, between the shots and the crying and yelling. It carries on. My whole side hurts me and I cannot raise my arm, but I rush outside and up the ladder. In Holder’s bastion I stand for them to see me above the wall. Covered in blood and dirt I yell out at the camp and the riverbank diggers:
—Here, try it again! I am ready for you.
A great laugh from the river.
A gunful of shot flies at me but I am quick enough yet to get down. Pompey’s voice, always his voice. He fills the young men with such rage that they shoot at him on and on, all thoughtless. I do not try to stop them now. Out the slit I see Pompey’s head above the bank, he keeps his bright blue scarf on, it says Look at me, shoot at me. And they do go on shooting, but it does not stop him appearing and laughing in different places along the bank, and it does not stop the tunnelling.
At noon, Major Billy comes to me and says very weary:
—They are all digging now, Captain. They will be at our walls by tonight.
—I know it.
—Is there any sign of the Virginia reinforcements?
—You tell me, Major.
Billy’s shoulders give way. He says:
—It looks bad, you know. This talk of you having an Indian wife.
I hate her being talked of aloud, I hate all of it. Billy straightens and says only:
—Captain, what shall we do? I cough. I say:
—Throw stones.
I feel Billy’s eye on me a moment longer but then he goes. I feel myself coming to pieces inside my skin. I grip my gun, I keep to the bastion, I shout with the rest, but I do not fire my last powder. After a time the stones begin to fly again from our trench. It seems Pompey has taught the Shawnee more English, they all bellow as a chorus from the bank in return:
—Your mothers are whores. Your daughters are whores. Your wives are whores.
The hours crawl endlessly, they shout when they are not shooting and digging, and all they shout is whores. We can see the earth move where they are below it, coming towards
us like a snake swallowing its slow way along a smaller animal. Our young men return the compliments. I will have all your women. I will have them before we kill them. You can watch.
—Fucking buggers.
Holder says it, scrambling in his pouch for shot as the sun is wearing away behind the cloud. He begs:
—Captain, give me a bullet. I will get that son-of-a-bitch black of theirs with it before we are gone.
He is near weeping as he says it. Do not go crying, Holder, or we will all start. The tunnelling thumps below us. From the bank comes Pompey’s voice again, light and happy in Shawnee, a song of his own devising.
Rage billows me up, it does the same in the rest along the rampart. At once everyone is shooting with what they have left, and Holder is begging me for a bullet or even a buckshot ball, only one, anything I have. But I stand with my gun and I aim at the singing perched above all the other noise, like the smallest bird on a thick tree. I shoot. The singing stops.
Holder roars over the wall:
—Where is your black man now, you fucking sons of whores? The rest take up his call: Where is your black? Where is your Pompey?
At last a Shawnee voice calls back:
—Pompey neppa.
To this I yell in Shawnee:
—Sleeping, is he? Let him sleep.
* * *
But there is no sleep. As dark begins to scratch through the cloud, they come at us over the ground. Running and howling with burning torches again, and fires burst up everywhere. The children are too frightened to put them out with Squire’s water guns, they stand screaming wherever they are until they are shoved out of the way. I put the women back in men’s coats and have them crawl the ramparts with the water pistols or brooms, putting out the flames when they can. I call some of the young men down from the bastions if they are out of bullets, and tell them to shin up the cabin roofs with buckets. Holder is near shot doing so, he dodges down again and screams at the night:
—You will have to kill us all if you want to come in through your goddamned tunnel, you little coward bitches!
Do not say it, Holder. This I think at him. But he has already said it, and some of the children have heard and are howling at the thought. Hancock stands with his wife at the well, praying loud. I hurl my gun at him two-handed, it strikes his chest and clatters down. I say:
—Take it, you are not injured, get up on the wall and fight.
Hancock opens his watery eyes and says:
—You would do well to pray too, Boone. This is the end of time, as He has promised us in His book.
—Praise Him.
This from Molly Hancock, she looks surprised as ever saying it. I shout at her:
—We do not live in His book!
I take up the gun again and shove it at Hancock’s neck:
—I promise you I will kill you myself first. Fight.
—We are fighting for all the souls here, Boone. God may yet forgive you—
I cannot listen, I strike Hancock’s chest with the gun butt as I rip it back from him. A fire torch flies at us and lands across the well, Hancock gives me a look that says, You see His noble works? Before I can take it up and set him ablaze, Squire is at my side:
—Dan, come.
His face is bright in the light of all the fires. I follow him to the gunshop, where many of the children have hidden themselves, weeping in gusts. But Squire has a small box out. He shows me, it is full of powder. He drags out another one full of buckshot.
—I have kept it back. I need it for my cannon. I can see enough to aim at their camp.
—What—a cannon? You made it? Can you blow up their tunnel with it? Can you?
He shakes his head, it is a slight shake but I see all he means by it, I see his sorriness for what he cannot do when there is not enough. I take a grainy black fistful of powder from the box, and I say:
—Take it. Use it all.
He nods and carries the box outside, while Moses helps me push Squire’s little round cannon out from its hidden corner. We roll it to the ladder, and I have two of the young men haul it up to the rampart. A burning arrow lands near us, but Moses brushes it away, his young face so set it looks carved of wood.
Squire goes up and readies his machine with powder. He covers his boy’s ears when he has it lit. The noise of it cracks the night, the flash is wide, the shot in it surges out everywhere, the cannon blows itself to pieces and my shin is cut by a flying shard of the barrel. Cries go up outside, even from as far as the camp. I wait for Pompey’s high voice to call Why do you not fire again? But there are only groanings from low down, and bodies on the ground. And digging sounds, and the screaming of the fire runners who keep coming and coming, leaping over the bodies.
I go down to the trench, Squire following. We hear the dreary scrape and thump of shovels, they are not far from our wall now, but we cannot see just where under the ground. My wounded shoulder thumps in time with the digging. I yell:
—Throw the rest of the stones back into the trench, it will make harder going for them when they break through.
The men here set to do it though they are not happy. Another torch lands on a roof, Holder pulls himself up swearing hard, pebbles of shot bounce near him. He screams down:
—This is not the end. This is not the way we will fucking end!
The scream of a runner outside slashes through the night: Whores. His torch wheels quick and hard up into a bastion. A woman gasps into her lungs, and says Look up, look. It is Martha. And it is raining.
* * *
All night rain whips down in sheets. All the fires are out, all the lights are out, we are in a wet dark pit.
I sit at the trench in the rain. My bones ache, they feel nailed into place, as if I am a chair. I can hardly get myself to standing when dawn comes, I expected no dawn ever again. If it had not rained—
—Captain. Captain.
It is young Johnny Gass on his hands and knees on one of the wet cabin roofs. The air feels washed and squeezed out. I cough and say:
—Get down, Gass, they will shoot you.
He turns. His freckly face is all amazement and too wide for his boyish frame. He says:
—They are gone.
With Squire, I get my cold hurt body in its soaked clothes up the rampart. Rain is still coming down, though lighter now. Holder comes sleepy out of his bastion and kneels at a gunslit blinking. Again and again he says God damn.
The camp is empty, a clutter of tent poles and cold fire rings. The peach bower sits under a fur of black smoke, they have tried to burn it but it has not caught in the wet. They have tried to do the same with the great elm, but it has not caught at all.
The tunnel has fallen in on itself, a long trough of mud that stops some yards from our rear wall. Shallow smeared tracks drag from near the fort to the fields. The bodies. They have taken these with them. So many of these marks. See the burying ground at Chillicothe, the painted sticks sunk in the ground there so the dead can find their way and have air. My father, you and I were going there to see your son, the son killed through what I did trying to get my daughter back. We make our trades. So you said to me.
—Dan. Come down. Do not look.
This from Squire, but Holder bursts out with a yell:
—Shit! Look! Ha!
And I look where he is looking, towards the river. Up the bank a little distance is a blue thing, blue as the sky. It has come loose from a body, it trails from it. The body has been pulled along a way by the hogs that have come out of the woods and are rooting round it.
I know the body, it is Pompey’s, left uncovered, the clothing pulled away from the skin. I see a foot bare, its sole is terrible, pale and naked. It pains me so I have to turn away before I am sick. My guts heave in waves. Why would they not take you to be buried, Pompey?
Neppa. Neppoa. Sleeping, dead. You taught me these words. They are too close. Holder is screaming with joy:
—We killed their bastard black! We killed him! We did it! Boone did it!<
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More howls of triumph come from all the fort corners, they are so happy to know of the death, they are all scrambling up the walls to see. We killed him. This death is enough for them to feel they have won everything.
A shot echoes, then another, but they come from some way north and over the river. Squire tilts his head that way and says:
—Hunting now for their trip back.
I can say nothing. What is this place now? Kaskee dead, Pompey left here dead by his brothers who were not his brothers. My father gone without another word to me. No ghosts, no one speaks to me.
Victory.
I will go out to Pompey and bury him somewhere. But a knot of firing sounds again, from slightly farther north. A vague angry singing comes with it: Whores. Whores. They sing as they are leaving me, and I am left alive, but with what?
Another pulsing of shots. Some of the children begin to cry in long fatigued sobs. Jemima comes at a run, she bursts up onto the rampart and pushes past me, she throws Flanders’s hat from her head down off the wall so her hair tumbles out. She is throwing off his coat now, she is screaming in her shift, she is tugging that up over her shoulders with her feet apart and her legs in her torn stockings, holding her long black hair out with her hands. She screams half bare at the men on the walls and out at all the country:
—I am not a goddamned man! Look at me! Will it make you stop?
Autumn 1778
—GET IT OUT OF ME—why will the damned thing not be born?
—Susy, fetch some fat.
My daughter nods and goes quickly. She has her own little girl and has seen a few childbeds with me, but not a side breech like this. I get my half sister Anna up off the stool and onto her hands and knees on the bed. The other women file quietly out, knowing how this can go. Polly drags her feet, with cake held in her cheek. I do not know why I let my uncle’s girl come today.
—Polly, leave.
Off she flounces. Anna flings her arm over her face and says she does not want to see the baby, it is a devil, it is tearing her up.
