My Name Is a Knife

by Alix Hawley

  SQUIRE IS THE FIRST we see at the station, his narrow outlines at the gate. We get everyone out of the fields and inside the walls, saying only that we have seen bears about. Squire rides for Boonesborough to tell them the truth, I cannot do it.

  I leave Israel with Will and Susy and I go to Rebecca. It is warm in the cabin, the sap in the walls smells clean at least, you might imagine you are in a forest if you shut your eyes. The baby is sound asleep in the cradle and Rebecca is in the bed in clean sheets and a poultice on her sore left breast. She looks to be asleep also. I lie beside her and I kiss the yellow weed-smelling poultice, my poor girl. She stirs, she says:

  —Ouch.

  When she sees my face her brows stitch themselves together:

  —What is it?

  —Only kissing your heart.

  —I know what you were kissing. I do not need another baby on top of a milk fever, the age I am.

  She gives me one of her curled smiles, and my throat closes. Smooth your expression: so I say to myself again. Do not think, show nothing, you are not a book. You have seen nothing today, nothing at all.

  Before Rebecca can speak again I touch her forehead, she is not unduly hot, her eyes are black as ever and not shining in a sick fashion. I kiss her cheek, I close my own eyes.

  —Danny, what has happened?

  I keep my face at her shoulder, do not read it, Rebecca. I only kiss her cheek again. The baby sets to murmuring and so she sits up, holding the poultice in place. Her plait slips off her shoulder and down her back. I take it in my hand, I twist it about. I am no use for anything. I say:

  —I will fetch the little man for you.

  When I pick up my young Nathan, he twists like a fish and smacks his small mouth like one. I am glad to have him to look at, I am quite sorry to have to give him up to Rebecca. I ask:

  —Can you manage him, the state you are in?

  —I am all right.

  She is still looking at me, but Nathan has begun to wail and so she pulls off the poultice and sets him to nurse. She shuts her eyes tight as he begins to suck the sore breast, he turns himself about in his bundle as he gulps. With her eyes still closed and her face pained Rebecca says:

  —This one is a dancer.

  —Or a criminal. But no prison will ever hold him, he will wriggle out of anywhere.

  She smiles:

  —He does look like you. See his long nose.

  —Poor fellow.

  —Yes.

  The baby pulls hard at his poor ma and she rocks back and forth very gentle. As I am stroking her shoulder, the door opens. Martha comes in, her face startles in its usual manner when she sees me. She has a handful of stiff little pink flowers, and says all breathless:

  —Oh, then you know what has happened at Callaway’s—

  —None of that in here, Martha. You go on, we are all right.

  I say it very loud but she does not move. Martha, loving to hold private things and bad things inside herself to turn about there. Now she blinks a few times:

  —I was going to find you next, Daniel.

  —You can go now, I said we are all right.

  —I came to check Rebecca for fever.

  —She has no fever.

  She puts her hand to her mouth and steps towards the bed. No closer, Martha. This I think at her and she feels it, she stops where she is. Realizing fresh that she has a fistful of flowers, she holds them up now:

  —I have some live-forever for you, Rebecca. My Sarah found it earlier near the nettles up the woods. It might do you more good than the dandelion.

  Rebecca says:

  —I am all right, Martha, I am well enough. Leave it and I will try it later.

  She looks to Rebecca and then back to me, their faces are so similar, their voices are the same. It strikes me that they are like two ways a thing can go, two sides of an apple or a coin. Heads or tails, one flip, flip again and see what comes. Well. Martha does go now, and Rebecca sends a look like an arrow in my direction:

  —Do you have something to tell me, since Martha would not?

  —No. Everything is fine here.

  Smooth your expression and keep it smooth. Rebecca raises an eyebrow and nods towards the flowers left lying on the table, she says:

  —Perhaps she brought that for you. You ought to eat some. Live-forever, live again and again, is that not what you want?

  I feel her eyes going through me.

  —It is not what I want.

  —Is it not?

  —No.

  —Then you ought to stop asking for it.

  The baby smacks his mouth and rolls in his ma’s arms and she shuts her eyes once more.

  * * *

  She finds out soon enough about Dick Callaway and young Rollins, everyone knows it, everyone is poisoned again with fear. Squire says Old Dick’s family went to get him. The girls insisted on going too. We heard thin wailing from upriver. His wetted-down hair torn from his head. His young Kezia’s doggish face opening in a cry. How many times have I wished him dead? Do not think.

  They bury the two men in one grave dug quick inside the Boonesborough walls near Dick’s favourite blockhouse. I do not go to see it done, but Ned goes to pray over it. Well Dick, your own fort was not ready for you, my old one will have to do. Do not come haunting me Dick. Nor you either poor Rollins. They left you your eyes, do not turn them on me.

  Ned and Squire and Israel go to Harrodsburg to tell them of the killings. I give my boy a bag of extra shot when he has mounted:

  —Keep this on you. Do you hear me?

  —I will, Daddy. I will get as many skins as I see.

  —It is not only for skins.

  He nods and gives me a tilted grin, he has beautiful teeth. He comes back with all of them still beautiful three days later, and again I can stop my mad ploughing and planting and patrolling the fields with the other men. Ned and Squire come back all right also, they saw nothing, no sign of Cherokee or Shawnee or anyone other. Harrodsburg sent parties out scouting, far up the Ohio even, but saw nothing of note, so Ned said. We help Israel with a pack of deerskins he got. When I am unrolling one, Squire says to me quiet:

  —John Bowman was visiting at Harrodsburg from his place on the Cane Run. Says he and his men went up into Ohio a couple of months since with Logan and some of his militia. Surprised them before spring. Burned an Indian town, killed plenty, lost eight of their own.

  —Which town?

  He shakes his head:

  —They did not give a name, nobody knows any of those town names but you.

  My brains squeak and babble in my head. I say:

  —Was it a Shawnee town? Was it Old Chillicothe?

  Squire looks me in my face. He says:

  —From the way you described it, I would say so. On the Little Miami River not far from where it leaves the Ohio. They believed that is where they were when they found it. Big cornfields all round the Indian houses. Plenty of those.

  —Were they all killed? All the Shawnee? All burned?

  Very careful, Squire says:

  —I did not ask. They did say there were some whites there, they have a couple of the men at Logan’s now, they call themselves by Indian names. Logan only said they got a chief in the leg and wished they had shot higher. They were driven back before they could do any more but set fires.

  My father, my house, my wife and child burning. My eyes stream. I smear the wetness away but not before Squire sees me do it. He says in the same careful fashion:

  —They did not say they killed him, they did not say any chief was dead. They said nothing about women, Dan.

  Squire’s face looks too soft, I wish to shove it out of my sight. I hold my forehead, I say:

  —Did they find Cherokee Jim? Did they?

  He folds his arms, he is all uncomfortable angles. It is a stupid question, I know it as I say it, it is all my stupid hope pouring out of me looking for a thing to land on. Ned is at Squire’s back now, he comes round to touch my arm:

&nbs
p; —Bowman said they did it for the fort, after they heard all about the siege. For you, Dan.

  —Did he say my name?

  —Yes.

  —God damn him. God damn—

  Israel steps out from the other side of his horse now all unhearing, his face is young and bright. He carries a big raw-ended pair of buffalo horns he got on the journey. He holds them out to show me:

  —Look Daddy, for my house. I have some of the meat too.

  He sits himself on the ground and leans back on his elbows. Then he rubs his head and turns to me, he says:

  —What will we do now?

  * * *

  What will you do now?

  What will you?

  Everybody knows now about the Indian town being burned. Everybody is quite satisfied with this sum adding up. The men patrol in shifts, they are very alert, much more so than anyone was at Boonesborough. They do not question me much, though I hear muttering now and then about my court martial. I never talk of it.

  At night in bed Rebecca is quieter in her body, her old stillness is about her, though it has not quite settled. She does not ask me about my Shawnee wife, but this question flies about me too like a bat. Is she dead? Did she burn? Did she disappear, did the rest?

  I go outside and smoke the last of the Indian tobacco I bought from a trader near the Virginia border. Black Fish’s smell. We make our trades. It is all I can think.

  ALL SUMMER I am always listening for what I never hear.

  Sell land, sell yourself as a surveyor. Take your chain and sticks and pace out the yards, with bees following you. Mark the acres in great squares on your map. Write the new owners’ names in them. Collect your pay.

  Go north and west with Israel, shoot as many deer as you can get, bundle and sell the skins to traders quick. Make salt too at the springs. Carry it to the new settlements. More money for paying your debts. Keep looking for the thieves, never find them.

  Only there are others selling skins and making salt and surveying. There are other maps. Go to Virginia to make more claims and find there are questions about yours, others arguing they paced out the acres first. The clerk shows you a map like a shake roof, all squares overlapping one another.

  Go back to the station and work the fields and keep up the patrols. Watch for someone coming with a white flag out of the wilderness. Only there is no one to see, even in the dawn or the last daylight, just the high grass and the corn shifting in the wind and the birds swooping in stretched circles. And never enough money though it is always just in sight, flying just ahead, flying so low you keep following and looking at nothing else though you know Fate uses you as a coin also.

  * * *

  But the children are happy, they run about free. I watch them and I am easier while doing it. My Morgan and Jesse are fine young patrollers now. I have had Squire make them their first guns, they will be as good at shooting as Israel is. I make a straw target for them and the other station boys to shoot at, I show them how to make bows and arrows in case they are ever out in the woods alone and have to get food.

  —Or fight!

  This from Jesse, waving his bow over his head. I say:

  —You are right. When we go long-hunting later this autumn you will come and be our lookout. We will get so many skins and pelts, you will never believe it.

  I know Rebecca hears this and I look at her sidelong, but she is smiling at our boy as he marches about and turns quick on his heels to march the other way in the hot sun. Our young Nathan crows in her arms. Now she does look at me and her face says, Not too long a hunt you great oaf, there will be no more disappearing. I give her the widest grin I can summon and her lips curl into a bigger smile. Then Jesse takes a mad shot at a hawk high overhead, and the bang makes the baby bawl.

  Ned comes in from patrolling. He only gives us a nod before he goes on through the gates. I see Rebecca look at him and not look at him. I put my arm round her shoulders and say she ought to go in to bed. Go on and rest, I tell her. Bouncing the squalling little one, she says:

  —When have I ever slept in an afternoon? There is plenty to do.

  She touches the back of her neck where her hair has curled with sweat. I say:

  —The girls will do it. Polly, Becky, come here and sort dinner out for your ma. Levina, take the baby. Your mother needs sleep.

  The girls come up quick and I say:

  —You see? They are eager to play at being women. They are women, near enough. Give them a turn, madam.

  Polly says:

  —I can do it. Give me the baby.

  After a moment Rebecca passes Nathan to Levina and stands and goes back inside the walls with the girls jumping round her. She touches my hand with two fingers before she does it, and my skin is surprised.

  I tell the boys to leave off shooting now. Jesse fires one last time at a crow dipping over the field, a great cackle rises from the others when it sails off unperturbed. I stay and watch the boys chasing the birds off the squash and corn until the sun is right down, then I fetch them all in. I walk the field edges in the twilight, but there is nothing as always. Back inside I pull the gate to, it is warmer here where the sun has struck the walls all afternoon. The horses and foals in the corral smell of heated flesh. I give them a pat and a nod as I make a count. All here, all in.

  From the cabins some of the women’s voices slip across the growing dark. Rebecca, as I listen the place on my hand pricks where you touched it, it is not like you to touch me for no reason anymore.

  When I turn, you are there. Only it is not you, it is Martha. No apron on and no cap, her plait knotted up. Holding up a bucket, she says:

  —I am going for water. Have you barred the gate already?

  I know she has stitched out these words and this bucket in her mind ahead of time. I say:

  —Looking for your freedom, are you? Well water not good enough?

  —You are free.

  I pull myself in:

  —Dark enough now, do you have to go out?

  She does not move, she only holds the pail, I know she will keep it there until I open the gate, and so I do it. She says:

  —Will you walk with me?

  —What, afraid of the dark now? Where is your husband?

  The whites of her eyes show as she turns them on me. She says:

  —Everyone is afraid of something here, Daniel.

  —You do not seem so afraid.

  Still she does not move and so I say:

  —Well now, come on, we will get you some water.

  We go out past the kitchen garden and along the biggest cornfield towards the little spring. She still has her quick way of walking, her feet step along very light. She says:

  —You have seen no Indians? None? Today or another day?

  I do not answer straight away. What are you thinking of me, Martha, what pictures are you seeing? The grasses sigh in the dark. I sigh also:

  —I would have told you if I had. Do you not believe it?

  —I hardly know what to believe.

  Very light she says it, light as her quick feet. An animal rushes out of the corn, a young skunk with its tail up. Martha gasps and stops, I laugh:

  —Well well, here I am caught without my gun.

  The skunk backs up and vanishes in the stalks:

  —No need to be afraid of you, at any rate. Goodnight, neighbour!

  —You ought to have your gun with you out here, Daniel.

  Her Daniel sounds so like Rebecca’s. I will admit my body is listening. I say:

  —We will not be long. Give me the bucket.

  I stride ahead and I crouch at the spring to fill it for her. I listen properly, there is nothing about, all the skunks and everything else have gone quiet. The wind lifts slightly. Martha at my side now, her hands clasping and unclasping. She says:

  —It is very warm.

  —It is. Good for the corn.

  She breathes out, and a light scent of maple sugar comes with it. She is close enough for me to catch it. I st
and and she says very sudden:

  —Ned told me about the Indian town being burnt down.

  —Did he. Well.

  She touches my hand just where Rebecca did. She says:

  —Should you go and see it? Should you go—and make sure? Or make peace with whoever is still there? There ought to be a lasting peace, Daniel, so we can all—stay here. You could hunt on the way. You would be able to do it.

  The soft drop of her voice says, The others do not know it, only I know it, only I know you truly.

  —I promised my wife I would not leave. Not to go to Shawnee towns at any rate.

  It is more than I ought to say, she knows this also, but she goes on standing before me as though I will do something. Perhaps I ought to throw the water over her, wake her up from her dreaming. Her wet dress clinging to her body, her cold skin, her cold breasts pressing through. No Martha, I cannot do it, I cannot now. I say:

  —You ought to tell your Neddy to go. He is a peaceable man.

  She takes half a step back, her face is very sad. Why such sadness, Martha? For whatever it is Ned does not give you that you think I can give you? For anything that has ever gone wrong in the world?

  I shake water from my hands, and say:

  —Well. Perhaps it would be no bad thing for someone to go. But we must get inside now.

  She turns, and we begin the walk back. The bucket drips against my leg. The wet is quite refreshing and I cannot help a thought again of Martha in a wet dress. I feel her settle beside me, she is easier again in some fashion. We walk. I do not think at all and it is pleasant not to do so for a moment.

  We listen to owls calling one another across the trees. They make quite a song of it. A few lightning bugs go spinning about in the air. When we get back to the gate we stand watching them a moment, and I say very stupid: