The Wood's Edge

by Lori Benton

  Abandoning shawl and basket on the ground, she went several paces into the wood to stand before him. He was taller than Papa now.

  “Two Hawks…you look so much older.”

  His gaze dropped to the braid she’d left unpinned that morning, following it down her shoulder, over her breast, to the curve of her waist. “You…you look so much beautiful.”

  What foolishness—if anyone was beautiful it was him. Flustered, overwhelmed by his presence, she reached to touch him. Dirt and plant matter stained her hand, but he took it and pressed it to his chest. His hand covering hers was big and warm. A man’s hand.

  Until that moment he’d seemed half dream. A thrill shot through her at the touch of him, and she stepped back. “Why have you stayed so long away? I thought you might never…” Flustered again, she couldn’t finish.

  “Never come see you again?” he asked, so gently the tears came.

  “Yes!” She turned away to hide them, surprised how deeply she’d missed him, even mourned his unexplained absence. Her nose was cold and running. She wanted to look at him, but the easy freedom they’d known as children had vanished. It was like meeting him all over again. She didn’t know what to say. How to behave.

  At length he asked, “You missed me, all this time?”

  She didn’t turn around. “Of course.”

  “I also missed you.”

  “Then why did you stay away?” She faced him again.

  “It was not by choice. I was needed for the hunting. It has been a…hard time for my family.”

  He was needed? Had something happened to his father? Dared she ask?

  He spoke again before she could. “You gather ferns?”

  “Fiddleheads, yes.” The ferns were for the table—they made a nice addition to salads, young and unfurled. It wasn’t what she wished to speak of, but the innocuous question eased the tension between them. She talked about Lydia and what she was learning of herb-craft and midwifery, but couldn’t meet his gaze.

  When at last she ran out of words and dared to raise her eyes to his, he looked away.

  “It is good,” he said, “these things you learn. They will make you a woman of status.”

  “I don’t know about status, but I enjoy it…” Her stomach twisted when he wouldn’t look at her. He must feel it too, this painful restraint. Where was the teasing boy she’d known? She’d thought seeing him again would be the most joyful thing—next to William’s return. Hadn’t she been joyful but a moment ago?

  “I too have learned new things.” Two Hawks shrugged off his rifle and leaned it against a nearby tree, alongside his bow.

  “What new things?”

  He hesitated, darting a look at her. “How to love my neighbor as myself.”

  Heat leapt to her face before she recognized the words. Her mouth dropped open. “You’re a Christian?”

  “I follow a Jesus path now.”

  Was that the same thing? She thought it must be. “But I thought…You seemed unhappy about Reverend Kirkland living in your village.”

  A smile tugged at his mouth. “You said you would pray for my family. Did you?” She had and told him so. “Did you think your prayers would not be heard?”

  He was teasing her now, like old times, yet she found it hard to collect her thoughts with him standing there looking so grown-up and handsome, and his English so much improved, and those laughing eyes doing strange things to her insides.

  “Will you let me help pick ferns?” he asked.

  “Of course, if you want.” She retrieved her shawl, though she was flushed and didn’t feel the coolness of the woods now. She picked up her basket. He took up his weapons. As if by consent, they moved deeper into the trees, leaving the clearing behind.

  They wandered the wood without picking a single fiddlehead or any other useful thing. Anna was too absorbed in listening to Two Hawks tell about his family. How Stone Thrower’s drinking got so bad his mother finally put his belongings outside her lodge, which Anna took to be the Oneida way of ending a marriage. He told her how Stone Thrower left Kanowalohale to get away from his pain and from Samuel Kirkland. He told her of the burden he’d shouldered afterward, of their hunger, and the panther, and someone called Bear Tooth who’d been unkind to him.

  “Believing in Kirkland’s God seemed the only way to keep off the path my father traveled, or one as bad. But since…I have come to know Heavenly Father for more than His help. I know Him.”

  An unexpected pang of longing shot through Anna’s happiness. Two Hawks spoke of the Almighty like a man did a friend. It reminded her of Lydia. She wanted to understand how both could talk so, coming from such different lives, but didn’t know how to put that question into words.

  “Did your father ever come back?” she asked him, steering clear of the subject of Kirkland and God.

  “He did. At summer’s end. I wanted to see you…” She could feel his gaze on her as they walked. “Autumn and winter were hard for us. If my father had not come back when he did, you might not have seen me again ever.”

  Anna wanted to take his hand in reassurance but couldn’t. He didn’t say it outright, but as he explained how far they’d had to travel to find game to hunt, she understood it was in part because of white settlers invading their land, pushing westward.

  “But Heavenly Father brought us through.” Two Hawks caught her gaze and smiled, and she felt a disconcerting sensation low in her belly. They walked on in silence for a stretch, then Two Hawks picked up the thread of conversation they—or she—had dropped. “Some in Kanowalohale still speak against Kirkland for the many ways he wishes us to change. But I see it this way: if knowing God in my heart means losing a little of what it means to be Oneida—I do not think it means losing everything, as the sachems fear—I think it is only what must be remade in every man who comes to Creator through His Son, Jesus. White, black, red, and any other sort of man. If I have lost anything, what I have gained is a trade in my favor.”

  Anna watched his face as he spoke, sensing that in some vital way he’d made a leap beyond her. One she couldn’t follow. “Are things still hard for you, for your people?”

  “It is hard to find food to eat. Hard to know who is enemy and who friend. I do not think the traders are friends. Not when they get our warriors drunk to do foolish things. That is why some warriors are embracing Kirkland’s teaching. But many still waste their furs on rum to help them forget how hard it is to keep their little ones fed.”

  “Like your father?”

  To her surprise, Two Hawks hesitated. “My father had other things to make his heart bad. Some things are hard for a man to forgive.”

  He looked away from her without explaining, leaving her to wonder what Stone Thrower couldn’t forgive. She moved ahead of him, picking a path through a thicket, noting the stems with their blossoms that would in months be blueberries.

  “But your father came back. Is it better with him now?”

  “His things are in my mother’s lodge again.” Her petticoat snagged in the thicket. Two Hawks bent to free it. Straightening, he added, “He has a new name. My mother also has a new name.”

  “A baptismal name? Like Stone Thrower’s uncle?”

  “Yes.” He followed her out of the thicket, adding in a tone both shy and proud, “I have a new name.”

  She paused beneath a chestnut tree that grew in a hollow between slopes covered in berry bushes. Morning sunlight fell in slanting shafts around them. “It’s nothing awful, is it?”

  “What name would be awful?”

  She laughed, for he looked suddenly worried. “Oh, I don’t know…Abimelech or Shamgar?”

  That made him laugh. “Shamgar is a good name. Strong. But no. I was baptized Jonathan.”

  “King David’s friend.” Hiding the depth of her approval, Anna set the basket on the ground and studied him. “Jonathan…Acceptable, I suppose.”

  She noticed how white and straight were his teeth when he grinned, aware that she teased him. “I
like to hear you say it. Call me so—if you wish.”

  “I’ll have to see which name suits you now.”

  “Both, I think. I am still Two Hawks.” With a deft motion he slid an arrow from the quiver at his back and raised his bow as if to shoot it. Anna thought he was playing along with her teasing. Then he stepped back and set the arrow so quickly she barely followed the smooth motion. He was scanning the forest.

  “What is it?” Then she heard it, a steady stride through leaves approaching, with no effort made at concealment. Seconds later, Stone Thrower came over a rise to the west, tall and broad-shouldered, as she remembered him.

  Two Hawks bent to her. “Have you a letter from William?”

  “I do. It came a week ago.” She usually carried them around for a fortnight, reading and rereading them, before putting them away.

  “He is not returned?”

  “No. He—”

  “Speak of him later.”

  It was unlike Two Hawks to interrupt. But as he returned the arrow to the quiver, Stone Thrower was upon them, a rifle carried loose in his grip. His hair, always plucked before as Two Hawks’s had never been, had grown out several inches all over his head. It made him look less fierce. A very little less.

  “Shekoli, Aubrey’s daughter,” he said. “Before dawn my son runs from camp to this place, hoping to find you.”

  Stone Thrower’s English had improved, but not as much as Two Hawks’s, who appeared to be blushing. “He ran fast,” she said. “He’s told me a great deal that has happened to you all. But he hasn’t told me your new name yet.”

  “I am Caleb. A great warrior name in the Book.” Stone Thrower set the butt of his rifle against the earth. “It is good for a man to settle his soul about these things. I have peace with Creator, through Jesus-who-walked-the-earth-as-man, who died and lives again so the red blanket of His goodness is thrown over us as a cover.”

  The red blanket of His goodness. Anna had never heard such terms used to talk about God but hastened to say, “Amen.”

  She’d assumed Two Hawks looked more like his mother than he did Stone Thrower, but as the pair smiled at her now, she marked the resemblance between them, howbeit faint.

  That was when the thought popped into her head.

  “Would you come back to the house with me? We could wait there until Papa comes home. I’m sure you’d be welcome…” Looking into their faces, she knew Stone Thrower was far less certain than she.

  “Aubrey is not Indian hater?”

  “Indian hater? What makes you say that? Oh…because of the old French war?”

  Two Hawks cut an uneasy look at his father. Stone Thrower, whose eyes had lost their earlier warmth, merely grunted assent.

  “That was long ago. Papa isn’t a soldier now. He builds bateaux. He’s been to the Carrying Place and beyond, though he doesn’t go anymore. He leaves that to Captain Lang—Papa can tell you this himself.”

  “Lang,” Stone Thrower said. “He is strong man, loud voice, white hair?”

  “You know him?”

  “I see at Canajoharie. He is known.”

  Encouraged, Anna pressed, “Why not come with me? I’ll tell the Doyles I’ve known you for years.”

  Stone Thrower looked at Two Hawks, who shook his head as if in reply to a question asked—though not in words. Stone Thrower’s gaze held a struggle of impulses Anna didn’t understand. He spoke to his son in Oneida. Two Hawks replied, his tone wary, as if he expected his father to do or say something unpleasant.

  He didn’t. He turned stiffly to her and said, “O-kee-wa’h, Aubrey’s daughter.”

  Stone Thrower was moving away with his rifle and blanket tied on his back before she found her voice. “O-kee-wa’h, Mr. Caleb!”

  At that he pivoted, and in his face was the struggle she’d seen moments ago, only now it was unguarded. She read sorrow and longing, but also something darker. It made her want to whirl and run like a rabbit through the wood.

  Stone Thrower turned and kept walking. Two Hawks watched in silence as his father disappeared over the rise to the west.

  “I—I should get back,” Anna said. “Mrs. Doyle expects my help with the wash. Unless…Will you come to the house?”

  He looked down at her, regret washing his features, and a heaviness that hadn’t been there before. “I must go with my father.” Disappointment flooded her until he added, “But I am fast. I will catch him after I walk back with you.”

  At the clearing Two Hawks hesitated. “You said you have a letter from William?”

  Anna had been silent as they walked back, troubled about Stone Thrower and, when she’d asked, by Two Hawks’s refusal to explain his father’s behavior. It made her want to leave him, and it made her want to stay in hopes this sense of restraint between them would pass, that all would be as it once had been. A few more minutes…

  They climbed to the stone shelf by the fall. Anna peered through the trees, relieved to see Mr. Doyle still in the field. She fished William’s letter from her pocket. “Shall I read it to you?” Her eyes sought William’s salutation, and she drew breath to start.

  “No.”

  She looked up, puzzled. Two Hawks reached for the letter. He held it to the sunlight, staring at the densely written page. Haltingly, he began to read it for himself. “ ‘Dear Anna…It is long past mid…midnight as I write this, but I find I am in such a state of nerves I cannot poss…possibly close my eyes, much less my mind, to sleep—’ ”

  “Two Hawks! When did you learn to read?”

  “You are kind to call it reading.” He spoke with diffidence but couldn’t hide his pleasure in her reaction. “Over the winter I learned, when I was not busy hunting. Shall I try more? Do you wish to keep parts from me?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. Please, go on.” Cheeks warming at the notion of William’s letters being of an intimate nature, she nodded for him to continue.

  “ ‘I am in Oxford! Mother and I obtained a room in Town with time enough to spare us the chance to walk the more spacious of these cobbled Streets and to see something of the City, though at present the East End is under improvement (our landlady assures us ’tis much needed, it having been a Mean Section of the City heretofore). We strolled along the High Street, passing many a begowned Denizen of the various Colleges going in and out of the Coffee and Ale Houses, fair boisterous in conversation. I confess my heart leapt to think of being soon counted among their Ranks. We took a turn through the Physic Garden, which lies opposite Magdalen College, and though the Yew trees were impressive, pruned into the shapes of…I’ve forgotten what, will give them careful study next time, but by and large the garden gives the impression of having gone a bit leggy. Lydia would disapprove…’ ”

  Anna couldn’t look away from Two Hawks as he labored over William’s words, reveling in the chance to watch him without his looking back at her.

  “ ‘Oxford is a towery sort of City, full of spires, but also trees, and beyond it much Heath and Wood and the encircling River. I am of course back in our hired room as I write this, having had Supper brought to us. Mother is worn from the day, already abed. Oh, Anna. I fear I shall wax effusive of this Place. I have yet to see Queens College—Yes, I am settled on Queens! And it is a year before I shall mat…muh…’ ”

  “Matriculate.” Anna leaned close as she sounded it out for him, though there was no need to see the page. She had it memorized.

  “Matriculate.” He flashed her a smile and read on, and she was dizzied by a sense that it was William sitting there telling her about Oxford and its charms, not Two Hawks reading his letter. She leaned back, staring at his face in profile, his black hair hanging long, his eyes so much darker than William’s. Or were they?

  She searched her memory of William’s ten-year-old face and felt a clutch of panic when it blurred, blending with the face of the young man who turned to her with his brows drawn in puzzlement.

  “You frown? Why?”

  “I was thinking of William. I—I ca
nnot remember his face.” She blinked away sudden tears to find Two Hawks staring fixedly at the letter.

  “I thought I read so poorly I displeased you.”

  He appeared so crestfallen that Anna started to reassure him with further praise of his reading skill—until she caught the twitch of his mouth.

  “You’re doing fine and you know it.” She gave him a shove with her elbow. He pretended to fall off the ledge. She laughed, then looked toward the distant field. Mr. Doyle had paused in his work and was looking toward the creek. Had the sound of her laughter carried so far? She knew he couldn’t see them through the trees, still she wanted to hide, and hide Two Hawks.

  It seemed foolish now, asking him to come to the house. “Let me finish reading before someone comes to fetch me home.”

  Two Hawks handed the letter over, the humor in his eyes replaced by something deeper, searching and intent. “Then we must say O-kee-wa’h.”

  “For now?” she couldn’t keep from asking or stem the rush of reassurance when his dark eyes warmed.

  “Always it is for now.”

  22

  July 1774

  Preoccupied as she was with learning the art and mystery of midwifery, Anna was aware of the passage of the Tea Act and the backlash of upset across the colonies it produced. Merchants protesting the restrictive tax—disguised outlandishly as Indians—had boarded ships in Boston and dumped their cargoes of tea into the harbor. In response, Parliament closed the city’s port, curtailed Massachusetts’s government, and forced citizens to quarter British soldiers in their homes. Outraged voices clamored for a Continental Congress, with delegates from each colony to meet and address these grievances against the Crown.

  To settlers in the Mohawk Valley, these events seemed of less threat than did the uprising of the Ohio Valley tribes that spring of 1774. In retribution for violence committed by Pennsylvania and Virginia settlers, Shawnees and Mingos struck back, appealing to the Six Nations for assistance. Sir William Johnson convened a council with the Indians at Johnson Hall to deal with the crises.