Brave Enemies

by Robert Morgan

  Then it was like I was upside down and all this hot water and sand filled my mouth, and I was about to choke.

  “Turn your head over,” somebody said. I tried to turn my head and hot water came scalding through my nose and down my chin. My throat gushed again and my nose burned and my mouth was full.

  “Hold his head,” somebody said.

  The ground spun around and somebody put a hand on my forehead the way Mama used to when I was sick. His hand was cool and my forehead wet as grass on a July morning.

  “Where’s Mama?” I said, and somebody laughed as if he were way off at the top of the world. I was so tired I couldn’t move a finger. I couldn’t blink an eyelid. I was washed out and limp as a rag. And then I felt this storm coming from somewhere, like the wind behind trees on the other side of a hill. There was a grumble and a low roar, and gusts breaking through. But the spate was in my throat, boiling and flooding.

  “Turn your head,” somebody said.

  But I couldn’t move at all. The swill gushed into my mouth and rushed down my chin and on my neck. Somebody wiped it off with a piece of rag. I spat and spat.

  When my mouth was finally empty I got cold. A chill came over me all at once and my bones started aching and rattling. The shiver went down to my toes and my teeth were clacking. I shook and couldn’t stop. I shuddered and jerked.

  “Get him a blanket,” somebody said.

  They wrapped me in something, but it felt thin and cold as a tablecloth. I jerked so hard it seemed my bones were pulling apart. The air was blowing through my bones.

  “Take this,” somebody said. He put a bottle to my mouth and poured in some more oily ink. I tried to spit it out but swallowed a mouthful anyway. It went down like a trickle of warm oil, filling cracks and running along veins and pooling up in corners. I started to warm up around my belly and the heat spread to my ribs and groin. Warmth spread to my shoulders and elbows.

  They lifted me up. I reached out and felt all the arms holding me up. They were trotting and we moved faster and faster.

  “Hold still,” somebody said.

  It was as if I were floating in a warm swamp. There were flowers on the banks and a bird singing in the trees. It was a mockingbird that knew all the songs. There was grass way back under the trees and beyond the hayfields, and beyond that the haze of the mountains.

  “Hold his shoulders,” somebody said. They gripped me harder. A purple moon circled somewhere above my head. I remembered what it was I was afraid of.

  “You can’t cut off my foot,” I yelled as loud as I could.

  “Steady on there,” the officer said.

  It took all my strength and all my will to say it. I had to pull strength from my toes and my fingertips and from behind my ears. The air was on fire and the crows were laughing high in the sky. Men were laughing too.

  “Oh Lord,” the doctor said.

  Hands were touching me, hands on my hips and on my belly. Hands on my chest and on my throat.

  “I never saw the like,” somebody said.

  I tasted the flower of fever, a taste thick as porridge on my tongue. I had sleep in my mouth and thick batter drying on my tongue.

  “I never would have thought it possible,” somebody said.

  I knew I had to find my rifle. I’d dropped my rifle. But I couldn’t recall anymore. Mama would ask me what happened to the rifle. I stayed in the swamp, sinking deeper and deeper into the warm mud. There was silt and salt and rotten leaves, and leeches in the mud. I settled until my eyes were level with the water. There were lizards and crawfish on the bottom.

  I tasted the dry fever flames and the crust on my tongue. It was fever water, swamp water I sank into. Things floated in the pool, scums and slimes, crusts that shone like metal, skims and spiders. Bugs and water dogs crawled up my britches leg. Mud squeezed between my toes.

  I was pushed back and down, and the breath got sucked out of me. And then I raised up and the light hit my face. My nose stung inside and my eyes burned. My ears gurgled as I was thrown back and the water streamed off me. I tasted hot mud and couldn’t get my breath. My eyes were full of mud.

  “Is my baby all right?” I said.

  Everybody all around me laughed.

  ONE

  DID YOU EVER SEE somebody stamp a terrapin, just stand over it and come down with a boot heel on its shell? Mr. Griffin would do that. Now a terrapin never hurt a thing, except a strawberry or tomato that was lying on the ground. A terrapin is the quietest creature. Even when it moves through the leaves or sticks you don’t hear a thing. They say a terrapin will bite you and won’t let go till it thunders. But I never did see a terrapin bite anybody. You come close and they pull their wrinkled neck and beak into the shell, and even their legs. They act like Mama did when something bad happened, they pull all into themselves.

  But my stepdaddy, Mr. Griffin, would find a terrapin in the yard or on the road, or eating a dewberry at the edge of the woods, and he’d say to me, “Josie, this young fellow thinks he’s safe, all closed up in his armor.”

  I never would answer, because I knew what was coming. Since Mr. Griffin married Mama when I was twelve, I’d been keeping away from him all I could.

  “Thinks he’s safe because he can’t see nothing,” Mr. Griffin said, and kicked the terrapin onto hard ground. And then he stood over the wrinkled shell and brought his foot down like a hammer. You would have thought the terrapin was a big walnut the way it cracked into pieces. Mr. Griffin raised his boot again and squashed the pieces so blood ran out and guts, and the feet looked like little wings mashed into the dirt.

  “Let that be a lesson, Josie,” Mr. Griffin said. “Can’t nothing hide in this world.”

  And then he would tell me to clean up the mess he’d made. He’d grind his heel in the dirt to get the blood off, slap his pants, and walk away.

  I would take a spade and scoop up the bloody pieces and throw them out back where the chickens would peck them clean. The backyard was littered with pieces of bleached terrapin shell.

  When Mama married Mr. Griffin I was just a girl without any bosoms. I fed the chickens and ran in the woods till I was out of breath. I was a silly girl that wanted a daddy in the house almost as much as Mama wanted a husband. My real daddy had died of the fever when I was nine and Mama and I had been alone in the house in the woods north of Charlotte until Mr. Griffin came.

  A woman and a girl can’t keep a place, even if they work like Trojans. There’s too much chopping and sawing and lifting that has to be done. Somebody has to hitch up the horse and plow, and somebody has to pull out stumps, and somebody has to kill hogs. Mama was afraid of strangers, but she hired a man when she could, though he always left. She couldn’t afford a servant.

  It seemed the most wonderful thing when Mr. Griffin came. He showed up as a peddler, and he stayed to dinner, and he stayed the evening to fix Mama’s clock that had stopped. And after that he came back several times, and then Mama married him.

  “Josie, we’re going to be a true good family,” he said, and took me on his knee. I hadn’t sat on a man’s knee since Daddy died, and I felt happy and safe to be held by big strong arms and hands that brushed across my chest.

  “Josie, you’re going to be me own true love,” Mr. Griffin said, and kissed me on the forehead.

  But Mr. Griffin made me work harder than Mama had. He said a young lady should not be spoiled. A country lass could not be dainty. He made me milk the cow and strain the milk. He made me carry corn and water for the horse. He made me clear out the stall with the wooden fork and tote water from the spring.

  “We must all do our share to help your darling mother,” Mr. Griffin said. He said it while he sat on the porch smoking his pipe. Or he said it while he sat on the bank watching the cow graze in the weeds by the branch. He said it while he leaned on the milk gap and I carried leaves to spread in the cow stall.

  “The Lord has put us here to earn our keep by the sweat of our brow,” Mr. Griffin said.

 
Mama was so happy to have a man in the house and in her bed she would not disagree with him about a thing. She was afraid, and she believed her duty was to obey. She believed a woman just had to keep her mouth shut. When I argued with Mr. Griffin and he raised his voice, she pulled herself into a shell just like a terrapin. She hunkered down in a corner and wouldn’t say a thing. Even if she didn’t take his side in a quarrel, she never took mine either.

  My first bad quarrel with Mr. Griffin came when I was fifteen. I was beginning to have a woman’s shape by then and Mr. Griffin fastened his eyes on me when I was alone. He followed me with his eyes and ran his eyes up and down my bosoms in a way that scared me. When I was bathing he came into the room and then lingered as he excused himself.

  “Me and you don’t have to fuss,” he said one day when he caught me in the corner of the bedroom where I was making their bed. I tried to turn away and duck under his arm.

  “I’m the best friend you’ll ever find,” he said. He smelled like tobacco smoke gone sour. Before I thought, before I could stop myself, I kicked him hard in the ankle. It just happened that Mama walked into the bedroom at that instant and saw me do it.

  I kicked Mr. Griffin so hard he yelled and jumped back.

  “Josie!” Mama said, and I saw the terror on her face.

  “The devil has got her in his power,” Mr. Griffin said. He told Mama I must be punished, if I was to be saved from the gallows and hellfire. He said my soul was in danger unless I learned to behave and was punished for my pride and wicked temper. Mama only nodded her head. All she had seen was me kicking Mr. Griffin.

  “Are you sorry?” Mama said. “Tell Mr. Griffin you’re sorry.” Mama wiped her eyes and pleaded with me.

  “Next time I will kick you in the straddle,” I hissed at Mr. Griffin.

  Mama’s face turned white and Mr. Griffin slapped me hard. Mama started to pray.

  “You will go out to the crib and shuck corn,” Mr. Griffin said. “You will shuck three bushels of corn and you will shell it to take to mill.”

  Mr. Griffin grabbed my left arm and put his paw on the back of my neck and pushed me out of the bedroom and out of the house. He pushed me across the yard, scattering chickens, to the corncrib.

  “You will work until your heart is calm and you have time to repent,” he said. He pushed me up the steps of the crib and closed the door behind me.

  But shucking corn until my hands were raw was not the only punishment Mr. Griffin had in mind. As soon as I was inside the crib he latched the door behind me. The door had a simple latch with a peg that held it in place. I was locked in, and the slats of the crib were too close together for me to reach through.

  “Help!” I yelled to Mama. But she just stood on the porch watching me.

  “The Lord will hold us responsible for teaching that child,” Mr. Griffin said. His shirt had come loose from his pants and the tail hung almost to the top of his boots.

  “Let me out!” I yelled.

  The corn had just been gathered and I looked at the heap of un-shucked ears. At first I thought I wouldn’t shuck one single ear. And then I thought, No, I’ll work hard until he lets me out. For I’ve got to get out. And then I’ll think of my revenge.

  First I tried reaching through the cracks to touch the peg, but it was too far away. I looked around for a stick or wire. There was nothing but corn shucks and cobs. A cob wouldn’t fit through the slot, but a stiff shuck would. The problem was to find a shuck stiff enough to push the peg out of its hole in the latch.

  It began to get dark and started turning cold. It was October and the days were warm, but the nights chilly. I shivered and looked for the stiffest shuck I could find. But every time I pushed a shuck through the crack it bent on the peg and wouldn’t push it up. I reckon the damp of the evening made the shucks softer.

  I sat down on the shucking stool and cried because Mama let Mr. Griffin treat me that way. I hated it she was so afraid of Mr. Griffin, so afraid of losing him. Since she married Mr. Griffin Mama had acted stranger and stranger. I knew she was afraid of being left alone as she got older, there way out in the woods of Carolina, east of the Catawba River. And if I didn’t have Mama to help me I didn’t have anybody.

  I cried so long I shivered and felt dizzy. I reached back to the floor to steady myself and felt this strip of leather. It was a ring of leather on a peg, and I knew it was the shucking stick Mr. Griffin had made for himself.

  I grabbed up the shucking stick to see if it was long enough to reach the latch pin. In the dark I had to feel my way to the door and find the crack closest to the latch. Squeezing the leather band flat, I worked the stick through the opening. In the house the candles had been lit, but outside the only light was starlight.

  I pushed the stick hard against the wall and felt the peg come loose in its hole. I was sweating I was trying so hard. I pushed a little more and a little more, and the wooden pin raised out of the hole. I eased the stick up with all my strength and all my patience and heard it clatter loose and drop to the steps and ground. I’d been holding my breath till I almost smothered.

  The door of the crib creaked as I pushed it open. What was I going to do now that I was out? Was I going to march back into the house and announce to Mr. Griffin I was free? Was I going to take a piece of stove wood and hit him on the side of the head? Or should I run away into the woods and never come back? A little farther west were the mountains and the Cherokee Indians. But there were also bears and panthers and wolves in the mountains. I stepped out on the ground wet with sweat and shivered, trying to think what to do.

  Then I heard horses’ hooves and voices. It sounded like there were lots of horses. And I saw lanterns.

  A jolt of scare shot through my bones, for I knew these were either outlaws or rebels, gangs of men that had fought in the militia or that hated loyalists and rode in the night and burned the houses of Tories, those still loyal to the Crown. Mr. Griffin was known to be a loyalist, but so far they’d left him alone. He was too cowardly to argue his views and sympathies in public once the royal soldiers left the district.

  “Halt!” somebody yelled, and all the horses stopped in front of our house. Someone with a lantern got down and walked to the front door. I kept to the shadows, edging behind the crib.

  The man with the lantern knocked on the front door, and I saw another man with a lantern coming right toward me. Another with a musket followed him and I thought they must see me in the dark. But they walked right by me to the back of the house.

  “We’ll rub the polecat’s nose in his own shite,” one said. It was Mr. Pritchard, the miller from over on Bethel Creek. I cringed behind the crib.

  Mama opened the front door. She had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, and she held a candle.

  “Mr. Griffin, we have aught with you,” the man at the front door called. I don’t know what Mama answered, but the man yelled again, through the door, “Mr. Griffin, our business is with you.”

  The man with the lantern pushed Mama aside and started into the house. But there was a yell from the back of the house. I held my breath, and Mama ran out into the front yard. Mr. Pritchard and the other man, who I saw was Lonnie Sims from Fair Meadow, came around the house leading Mr. Griffin between them. Mr. Griffin had blood on his eye and cheek. I reckon they had caught him as he tried to run out the back door.

  “You have seized an innocent man,” Mr. Griffin said. There were tears in his eyes.

  Mama ran up to Mr. Pritchard and pulled at his elbow. “Mr. Griffin is a poor man, staying on his own property,” she said. “He’s done nothing for the Crown.”

  “Surely you have the wrong man,” Mr. Griffin said, his voice trembling so badly it was scratchy.

  Mr. Pritchard took a letter out of his pocket and held it in the lantern light. “He’s only wrote to the Tories a list of the militia members in the district,” he said.

  Mama gasped and grabbed at the letter, but Mr. Pritchard slid it back into his pocket.

  They tor
e Mr. Griffin’s shirt off, and his skin looked white as chalk in the lantern light.

  “Surely you have the wrong fellow,” Mr. Griffin said, but a man with a musket hit him across the face with the stock and Mr. Griffin sank to his knees.

  There was a rail in front of the porch for hitching horses, and they tied Mr. Griffin over the rail with his hands spread wide and his backside up in the air. Mr. Pritchard took a stick like a broom handle from his saddle and hit Mr. Griffin across the buttocks and back. He hit him until the skin broke in several places. “This is what we will do to the king when we catch him,” Mr. Pritchard said. “And we’ll do it to Tarleton when we catch him too.”

  “No!” Mama screamed, but somebody grabbed her and pulled her away. A man slapped her hard across the mouth, and I saw blood mixing with tears on her lips.

  “You leave Mama be,” I yelled, and ran out into the lantern light before I thought. The men were surprised to see me. I ran to Mama but was pulled away by strong hands.

  “Next time your womenfolks won’t be able to save you,” Mr. Pritchard said. “Next time we’ll burn you out and kill all your household. Tonight we give you a stick, but next time it will be the rope.”

  He hit Mr. Griffin on the legs, and he hit him on the small of his back. He hit him on the backside and on his thighs, and Mr. Griffin screamed. Mr. Pritchard hit him a dozen times on the back and Mr. Griffin howled and pissed on himself.

  Mama sobbed. Her shawl had slid off her shoulders and been trampled by the men.

  Mr. Pritchard leaned over and shouted in Mr. Griffin’s ear, “Have you heard our message?”

  Mr. Griffin cried like a baby. He was sobbing so hard he jerked and couldn’t talk.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Mr. Pritchard said, and hit him several times on the back so it bled even worse. Blood ran over Mr. Griffin’s shoulders and over his neck.