by Alix Hawley
—How?
He shakes his head:
—Some sickness, I do not know. She was living with her children north of us. Two of them came to tell Jane afterwards. That Polly and Reba you were raising in Carolina.
—Polly. I see.
—They wanted to tell us how good God is to those who really believe. Believe and be chosen, all you have to do. Those were her words, close to the last.
He watches a bobwhite giving itself a dust bath across the creek:
—They said she went very peaceful. Blessed Daniel’s family. She wanted you to know it.
Martha, believing most in her own powers, summoning her own death, making sure it is known.
I think a moment before I ask:
—Did you bury her with Neddy?
—We hid Ned pretty well. I am sure her children put her somewhere close to where they are living.
I watch the bobwhite flicking its wings. I say:
—Thank you. For coming to tell me.
Squire nods, and says:
—I told Dan. You do not have to.
With this he sets out for the camp. Partway there, he comes back again, and says:
—Do not let him stay here. He will fight those people suing him until he is dead too.
The bobwhite gives itself a shake and flies off clean. I say:
—I know it.
—Well. All right.
He turns again, but I say:
—Squire, will you and Jane go with us? He has talked of the Spanish territory, did he tell you?
—Not us. We are all right.
He stays only a night, and when he leaves, I watch until I cannot see him anymore.
* * *
We stay some weeks. Joseph Scholl stays too. He says the Spanish territory is not for him, he likes Kentucky. I grow used to his presence, though I can never see him without thinking how Israel would have looked at this age. I am glad Joseph is so ruddy-skinned, big and fair. My son was dark.
No one talks of going. This place is not a special one that I can see. But the weather is gentle, high clouds softening the last heat of the summer.
Daniel is somewhat more settled in his bones. He goes miles up and down the creek during the day, showing things to Joseph and Isaac and the children, talking and talking as though he must get all his knowledge out. Here is how you make a fish trap, here is how you make a spear, here is how you follow a trace. Look. No, look here.
The children are hungrier and dirtier than ever after their tramping walks with Daniel. Levina is a help to me, always knowing what needs doing before I ask, darting about in her quiet anxious way. But even she falls behind on the washing. At dinner one evening, Jemima appears in a pair of her husband’s breeches when the baby has soiled her skirts and all the cloths she has for him. Holding the little one out before her, she says:
—Look at me, ha! These might be the ones I wore at the fort, when all the girls wore breeches! Fanny and Betsy Callaway and I made very good men. Aunt Martha in Uncle Neddy’s coat.
The children spit out crumbs of bread laughing, and Joseph Scholl gives a guffaw, but Daniel says nothing. He holds his face flat. Jemima flattens hers as well, with a sideways look at me, and goes off in silence, patting a rhythm on the baby’s bare bottom. I miss her then, my one sister. My heart feels squeezed by her fist somehow. She was at the fort with my daughter when I was not. She knew my boys. She knew Neddy’s body. She knew our mother, and now she is gone.
* * *
Daniel sets to building a cabin on his own, waving Joseph Scholl and Isaac away when they try to help. We will not be here forever, he says, slapping one plank down on another, sweating and red-faced. But might as well have a real roof while we are.
There is no telling him anything. I have all the older children help with rolling his felled trees across the grass from the woods’ edge, making a game of it so he will stop and watch. I call:
—Who can go fastest? Show me!
And Daniel does stop, with a thin smile. But the children keep falling over, Lizzy and Swan staying hidden in the long grass when they do, one of Jemima’s boys cracking his chin on a trunk and howling. He is such a howler that he sets the smallest ones off, and we do not hear the riders coming along the creek. Morgan and Jesse, sunburnt brown and trotting the horses easily, as if they own all they see.
—Boys!
They wave and canter towards us, bracing themselves over the horses’ necks. Morgan is first, Jesse close, throwing back his untidy hair and complaining:
—Would have beat you if she had not lost a shoe before.
Morgan raises his arms in victory, and most of the little ones stop their crying to watch him dance the horse in a circle. Susy says:
—You are back! And Will?
Jemima joins her:
—What did you do with our husbands?
Morgan leaps down to embrace me and rolls his eyes at his sister:
—They are a day or two behind. Sorting out claims.
—In the Spanish territory?
—Yes. They have the money for it. But it is not so expensive.
Jemima bounces her baby up and down. He has a clean cloth again, now that Easter and Levina and I have got the washing dry. Daniel sits down on the sloping log he was hacking at, rubbing his shoulder. Susy says:
—Did you hear, Daddy?
—I heard.
He hears what he likes. He stands now and says:
—And did they swear their allegiance to that Spanish king?
His eyes are fiery. Morgan shrugs:
—It is not hard to do. Only words.
Jesse bursts forth with a long string of muddle ending in lalala. It might be Spanish for all I know. Lizzy and Swan giggle, and Joseph grins. Daniel says:
—Well.
He sits down again, and I say:
—We had best feed these travellers.
The boys have brought some Spanish drink with them, but even this does not soften Daniel. He is sunk in himself for the rest of the night, and shows no happiness at seeing Will and Flanders when they arrive two days later with all kinds of talk of the murky Mississippi River, the valley soil, the Spanish horses. He goes up and down the creek in his usual way, looking hard at the trees, until he announces he is going west on a hunt, on his own. It is the time for it, no one else is coming, we can all stay here.
* * *
Perhaps he will not come back. Perhaps this is the time he never does.
There is enough to do here. Susy is heavy with another child, more tired than usual. She rests in the shelter when I tell her to, and I take her dandelion-root tea, which she says smells too bad to drink. I tell her she will drink it, and she holds her nose and does so. She asks what is happening outside in the world, and I tell her it is still warm. The boys have found a great patch of that ginseng, which they have set to digging and plotting over. The children are nut-collecting with Easter, and bring me pretty red and orange leaves. I give Susy one from a maple, which she lays on her belly. She says:
—This one will be another Kentucky girl, if we stay much longer.
—Or boy. You are carrying high.
I pat her stomach, and the leaf slides off. She says:
—Are we staying, Ma? Will would like to go before the snow.
—I do not know, sweet.
Jemima puts her head in and says fiercely:
—We are not going without Daddy. How can you think of it?
Her anger stops me:
—We will see, Jemima.
She whirls off. When I come out, I see Jesse and Nathan trying to lift a log onto the cabin, which is hardly a cabin at all. Only the one corner shows it is not a heap of wood. I tell the boys to leave it, their daddy will not like to see it done without him.
When the weather turns and we begin to lose daylight, I cannot stop my thoughts. I worry he will be cold—he is alone—or perhaps not alone. White Indian. They all said so of him when he did not return from the Shawnee, when he did not even try
—
* * *
It is winter, too late to go. I cannot leave him lost this time, coming back here to find us gone. When I try for a few hours’ sleep, I see his grey hair in the snow—it troubles me all day.
He comes back in a great blizzard. We do not see him until he is upon us, stumbling outside the door of the cabin Will built for his family. He does not call out. The horse is walking head down, without direction. He is huddled on its back, wrapped in a hide against the blowing. Jemima is the first to reach him, crying that Daddy is back, Daddy is back. Come down and get inside, Daddy!
Will and Isaac go out with lights, calling and reaching for the reins, but he does not speak to them. He does not move as they walk the horse to us. Is he frozen? Is he breathing?
Over the wind, I call:
—Daniel, you are home. Come in and get warm, now. Fetch him some rum, Jemima.
She does not listen. She pulls at him, whatever she can reach through the frozen hide:
—Daddy!
Now he turns his head. His beard is white with ice, his nose and cheeks chapped purple. Joseph Scholl behind me says:
—Can I help you down, sir?
At this Daniel speaks:
—Well all right. But take care.
His voice is thin. He turns his body stiffly and holds out one arm, which shifts the hide.
A child, curled sideways into a ball on the saddle before him, wrapped in a bearskin. Wide eyes. A shining face, a wet-looking head. Daniel says:
—Keep her warm.
—Daniel—
He blinks stiffly at me, as though his eyelids are freezing shut. He says:
—Get her inside.
I reach for his arm:
—Take her, Joseph. Jemima, did I not tell you to get some rum?
Joseph takes the girl into his arms. Jemima pulls again at Daniel, and he shifts himself to dismount, but can hardly swing his hip to do it. She helps him to stand, and calls for Flanders and everyone else:
—Here is Daddy!
They press into the cabin, where Levina is piling more wood on the fire and Easter is gently pulling the heavy bearskin from around the girl, who sits staring at everyone, her skin gleaming. She is not wet, she is covered in grease. With this and the way she keeps her legs curled up, she looks like a newborn, though she must be five years old, or six. A smell of bear fat begins to spread as she warms. Jemima pushes Daniel down onto a stool. His backside strikes it hard, and he winces. He sits breathing roughly, and waves off questions:
—Enough fuss.
I fetch a blanket for the child, though she is not shaking. She scratches her head and looks alertly at me when I put it over her shoulders. Her hair is a dark snarl at the ends. Daniel says:
—She is quite warm. I greased her up well before we set out.
—Where did you find her?
—At a camp with a few Shawnee hunters, sitting on that very bearskin, happy as could be. Traded some meat and a bottle for her. I made the better bargain, would you not say?
He winks at the girl, who gives him a hesitant grin. Her grownup teeth are halfway in. Her eyes are a light brown.
—Where is her family?
—She does not know. No matter.
—Is she—
He warns me off with a look and raises his palms to the fire. Then he bends to take her on his knee. He bounces her and says:
—She is mine now. Ours! How do, miss?
Levina gives the girl a cup and says softly:
—What is your name?
The girl tucks her head into her shoulders. Daniel laughs and says:
—She looks like an Eliza to me. What do you say, missy? A pretty name.
She does not answer. She does not say much when Daniel insists on carrying her back to our shelter, only frowning when I wipe the grease from her face and neck and put her into one of the children’s shirts to sleep. I ask him now if she is a Shawnee, but he shakes his head as if I am a moth, and goes straight to sleep. The girl shuffles for a while, her fingernails scratching at the sheets, before she is asleep also. Eliza. That child he said he knew and lost.
In the morning, Daniel is happier than he has been in years. One of Susy’s small daughters cries out of rage and jealousy when he trots the new girl about on his back in the snow, as if he were a young man, as if this were his only child. Even the bigger girls cry a little, hiding their faces behind the shelter, picking off icicles and throwing them at the ground.
In the spring we hear of a family missing her up the Ohio. She was taken in an attack on a farm, her mother killed when she was putting out the sheets to dry. Her true name is Chloe. She smiles when I say it to her. That is your name, I tell her, squeezing her hand so she will not forget it again.
He will not take her back himself. He sends her home on a flatboat passing. He will not watch it go.
Only now does he say we are going. Get me away from here—
He takes a torch and limps over to the small cabin he has nearly finished all on his own. He sets fire to it, and stands watching in the smoke until there is nothing left.
1800s
MY SUSY’S last baby comes too soon. He slips into the world well enough, though small, and she names him Jesse. She has three days with him before her fever sets in, and nothing she says makes sense any longer. I cannot save her. We have to bury her in the middle of an empty meadow in Kentucky.
Will is drunk for a month. I keep Susy’s children near me. I tell him we are taking them with us. I tell him to pack.
The day before we are at last set to leave, Levina asks Daniel to marry her and Joseph Scholl. I see her grasping for any sort of certainty, standing with him before everyone. She is more like me than I had known. Late that night, she comes to find me, and says they are remaining here, as Joseph wants. She will name the child already in her belly after me. I tell her she will not.
Then we go. Daniel and I live with Jemima and Flanders on a broad creek called Charrette, in the Spanish territory. They have many acres, and build a big double house. Will has another large claim nearby. He takes too much to the Spanish rum, but he keeps alive. In a year Isaac asks Lizzy, my Susy’s Lizzy, to be his wife, to make himself part of the family for good, and I say if they must be married, they cannot go far. Lizzy says, in her grave way, that she will stay close to her daddy, of course. I embrace her and shut my eyes at thoughts of what is to come for her.
Her new husband and my boys raise oxen and horses and make enough money to make good claims also. It is a beautiful place here, flatter, different. I am glad of its difference. None of it belongs to Daniel and me.
Daniel goes off all the time. He hunts and traps, and says it will be easy to sell enough pelts to make a good living, get us some land east of here. When he is gone, I can hardly think. I have no young children left to think of, and so he occupies my mind. He limps everywhere now, and goes about with his jaw set hard. I ask Morgan and Nathan to help, and they buy him a young black man with big eyes, Derry. Daniel does not like him tagging along, but Derry is gentle and watchful, a good woodsman, and takes care to stay a way behind on hunts. I say to him:
—Do not let him go too far.
Derry nods and says he will not. But one winter it is very cold, and Daniel has insisted on a long-hunt, and they are gone weeks longer than Derry promised me. I spin more thread than I ever have to keep myself from watching out the window all day. My fingertips are left without any feeling.
Derry has to hold him up when they come back—Daniel has sprung a trap on his hand and broken all its bones. He is very cheerful about it, saying they had to hide in a cave from some Indians they saw, Osage, after these had told them to keep away and go home. Could not see the damned trap in the dark, he says, holding up his crippled hand, which he has wrapped in a bloodstained skin.
Later, Derry tells me in his careful way that Daniel was very bad at first with the pain, fevered and raging and full of confusion. He said Derry ought to kill him, smash the rest of him and
finish it. When Derry said he would not, he would fetch oak ooze to help, Daniel asked: Are you my son? What happened to you?
Derry told him no and calmed him as best he could, but when he returned with the oak, Daniel reached for him and said, gasping: You will be my son now, will you? Are you my boy?
I soak the hand in salt. Then I straighten and splint the long bones as best I can, and poultice them. He has no fever now, but I give him teas he refuses to drink, saying:
—I am not such a shipwreck. All my own hair, my own teeth, and they are good teeth—
I say:
—No long-hunting.
—Next year.
—We will see then.
—Next year.
He sits and reads to Jemima’s little ones. Gulliver, his old favourite. I have heard quite enough of it in my life. But again and again he reads out a part when Gulliver meets a man who can summon any ghosts he chooses. Famous men, emperors and kings and the like. Now I am ready to tell about Gulliver and the ghosts! He met Alexander the Great though he was dead, did you know it? A king called Julius Caesar, a general called Pompey.
Here he breaks off and says:
—I knew a man named Pompey once. I would like to talk to him again.
The children begin to whine for something else, but he only laughs, holding up his hand muffled in bandages:
—No no, the trouble is in your ears, listen better!
At last they win by climbing onto his knees all at once until he cries for mercy, and he reads the Lilliputians, which they love. Larkin, one of the youngest, asks if they can tie Granddaddy up that way, and Daniel says he will consider it.
It does something—that old book, and his reading it again and again.
It brings a woman. She is an Indian woman, walking from the river path straight for the house. The children hear the ringing of the tiny bells on her skirts. Jemima calls for Flanders, who goes out with his gun. But Daniel gets up from the chair in the window and yells:
—She has nothing with her, you can see that. Leave her be.
