“What are you doing?” I yelled.
John dug out a kind of hole in the mountainside, and then he grabbed me and pushed me down into the fresh dirt. He fell on top of me so hard my face was pushed down into the ground. My mouth was right in the dirt and my teeth ground in the soil, and I couldn’t move, for John was on my back and holding me down. My nose was mashed into the ground so I could hardly breathe and I couldn’t yell. John’s head lay right on mine so I couldn’t raise up.
He is trying to kill me so I won’t suffer from burning up, I thought. He is trying to save me from the pain of roasting. Above John’s breathing, I could hear the fire. There was snapping and crackling and a rush of wind like a chimney on fire. There was a whoosh of flames on top of flames, and flames inside of flames. It was the awful breathing of fire.
I thought, this is the last thing I will remember. I couldn’t get any breath except dirt in my mouth. There was dirt on my tongue, and I couldn’t see anything. John was crushing me with his weight on the back of my head.
I must have fainted then, for the next thing I knew John had lifted some of the pressure from my head and back. He got off me and pulled me up. I was dizzy and my eyes were watering so badly I could hardly see. There was dirt in my nose and in my mouth. I blew my nose and tried to spit out the dirt. I spit and spit and coughed.
There was smoke in the air but it wasn’t as thick as before. Everything was smoldering and smoking. Everything was black as soot. The fire had gone on up the mountain. I could hear the flames crackling and raging up above us.
John’s face was red and his hair was singed. He had taken off his coat and beat the flames out while I was coughing. And I saw his trousers were burned right at the seat. He’d burned his buttocks and his back as he lay over me while the mighty fire raged past us. His face was black and already blistered. I was not burned anywhere because he had shielded me. He had saved us by crawling into the ashes.
I put my arms around him trying not to touch the burns on his back. The mountainside was nothing but smoldering black trees.
FIVE
IT WAS HARD TO tell how bad the burns on John’s backside and back were. His boots had partly burned too, but I don’t think the flames had touched his feet. His back was such a mess of soot and blood and burned cloth, and he smelled like meat braised in a pan. I was afraid to touch him again. I wondered if I ought to put my coat over his back.
The fire was gnashing and raging in the woods above us, but the smoke was starting to clear lower down the mountain. John moaned and gritted his teeth when he moved.
“I’ll have to get somebody to help us,” I said.
“No, I can walk,” John said, and winced as he twisted around.
“You can’t even stand up,” I said.
John held on to me and stumbled to his feet, his teeth clenched with the pain. The burns made him stiff and the burns tore on his skin every time he moved. He held on to my shoulder.
“You go on to Briar Fork and lead the service,” he said.
“I can’t lead any service,” I said.
“You must,” he said and looked me hard in the eye. The pain made him sweat through the soot on his face.
“I have never preached,” I said. “I’ve never even led in prayer.”
“They know you are my assistant,” John said. “Even if you only sing one song and say one prayer, and tell them I’m injured, it’s better than to leave them waiting.” He reached into his shirt and took out the Bible and the songbook. They had not been touched by the fire. They were clean and cool.
“You are my wife,” he said. “You must do this for me.” He handed me the books.
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at the blood and soot on his back. I couldn’t just leave him there on the smoking ground. I was only married a few days, and my husband had asked me to do something for him. I had a duty to him.
“If you love me you will go now and take my message to Briar Fork,” John said. “You are my wife.”
“Because I’m your wife I’m not going to leave you,” I said. It came to me that because of the pain John was not at himself. I had to stay with him and look after him. I was only sixteen years old, but I could see that.
“Then you have deceived me,” John said. “I thought you loved me.”
“You can’t walk by yourself,” I said.
“Then damn you!” John shouted.
I broke a stick to use as a crutch, and I helped John stumble down the trail. The mountain was burned as far as I could see and smoke rose thick as pillows into the sky. Sooty birds and burned rabbits lay on the trail. The smells of burned meat and scorched bark and sour roots were sickening. Bushes here and there were still burning. John didn’t say any more about me going to Briar Fork, but I could tell he was angry. His face was sooty and grim and he was sweating with the pain and heat of the burns.
It was almost dark as we started back on the trail. We were at least an hour from Pine Knot Branch. We didn’t have any lantern, and my night eyes were ruined by the glare of the fire farther up the mountain. As it got dark you could see all the little blazes on the side of the mountain where the fire had been. The mountain looked like hell itself tilted up to the sky.
There were fires burning close to the trail and that made it a little easier to see our way. I stumbled over rocks and charred logs, and held John’s arm tight. The woods were dark as a cave away from the scattered fires, and poplar trees loomed above, hung with blackened grapevines.
John stopped walking and leaned on his crutch. He trembled so badly I had to hold him up.
I CAN’T SAY HOW long it took us to get back to the cabin. It might have been three hours, or it might have been five. I tried to help John as much as I could, but mostly he had to lean on the stick and hobble. I had to lay down the books and help him across branches.
When we finally got back to the cabin it must have been near midnight. Something was wrong there, for we stumbled on things in the doorway and on the floor. Nothing was where it was supposed to be.
“Is anybody here?” John called out.
Finally I found the flint and tinder on the mantel and struck a fire in the fireplace. John’s bed was knocked over and the table was knocked over. Pots and pans and dishes were scattered on the floor. A sack of cornmeal had been cut and was spread like lime on the mess.
When I held the candle up to the mantel I saw the writing in charcoal across the logs. death, it said. I held the candle closer. death to rebels, it said.
I TURNED THE BENCH over so John could sit down. But his backside was too sore to sit down. He would have to lie down on his belly. I turned the bed upright and put the quilts on it and helped him lie down. His pants and shirt were so badly burned I just cut them off. And with the candle I looked at the burns. In places there was blood, and in other places the flesh was black. Around the edges there were blisters big as eggs. John was burned deeply on his buttocks. I’d never seen such burns, nor known somebody in that kind of pain, since Mr. Griffin was beaten.
I’d always heard you put grease on a burn. In the spring behind the cabin there was some butter one of John’s flock had given us a few days before. I took the candle and ran to see if the butter was still there. What a relief when I lifted the lid of the crock and saw the butter firm and clean as ever. I grabbed the crock and ran back to the cabin.
Pinching off a piece of the butter, I rubbed it between my hands till it was melted and wiped the grease on John’s back.
John screamed.
I told him I’d try to be gentle. But there was no easy way to spread butter on the wounds. Melted butter could be dripped on the burns, but then it would be too hot. I rubbed as softly as I could, and melted the butter in a cup to drip it on the worst places. I covered every inch of the burns with glistening butter.
But John needed something for the pain too. There was nothing I could think of but the jug of medicine liquor. I poured some in a cup and gave him a dram. John gulped the whiskey and shook
his head. I reckon the liquor burned his throat.
“What you need is laudanum,” I said.
He shook his head like he couldn’t think what to say. I asked him what was the matter, but he just kept shaking his head. And then he coughed liquor and spit out of his mouth. He threw up over the end of the bed. I ran to get a pan and held it under his chin. I held his forehead that was streaming with sweat.
That was the longest night I’d ever seen. John couldn’t sleep because of the pain, and he couldn’t move around either. He had to lie on his belly, and he needed sleep and rest. He needed something to stop the pain. But liquor was the only thing we had, and he couldn’t hold that in his stomach. I gave him water to drink and he gulped that. The burns made him thirsty and hot. I went out to the spring and got some cold fresh water. But after John drank he heaved up the fresh water too.
John’s shoulders shook and I thought he was trying to say something. But then I saw he was crying. He was weeping like a baby he was in such pain. But almost as bad as the pain was the fact that he couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t move. He had to lie there on his belly helpless. He was not at himself and he sobbed as if his heart was broken. There wasn’t anything I could do but sit there and wipe his forehead and neck with a damp cloth. He had burned himself to save me. It was a miracle we were both alive. I didn’t sleep any watching him.
“I’m being punished for my failures,” he said again and again.
“You saved my life,” I said. “You saved both our lives.”
Before it had been me that was in need, and John was the grown-up person in charge. I was sixteen and he was twenty-four. He was the preacher and I was the guilty waif. I wasn’t any better than an orphan. But with John helpless and in pain, he might as well have been a child. He couldn’t do anything for himself. Even to twist a little made him holler. I was the only one there to do for him. John began jerking with the chills. I built up the fire and heated the cabin more, but he was still shivering. His teeth rattled and his shoulders trembled.
“I’m cold,” he said. I’d heard of chills and fever, but you got that in the summer, in the hottest weather. I would have put a blanket over him except his back was so bad you couldn’t lay anything over the burns. He couldn’t stand the pain of a feather, much less a blanket.
After looking at the fireplace and around the room, I moved a bench and some pots out of the way, and I scooted the bed closer to the fire.
But John kept shivering. He had lost so much skin on his back, I figured there was nothing to hold the warmth in him. There was nothing to hold the warmth of his blood. If I didn’t find some way to warm him he might freeze to death.
I got more wood from outside and threw it on the fire. The blaze made the room brighter and threw the glare on John’s side. But I saw I had to get the heat under him, under the bed. I’d heard that when people rode in carriages in winter they heated bricks and wrapped them in cloth and put them at their feet, so I ran outside in the gray light of early morning and looked for rocks. There was frost on everything, white as a week’s growth of beard on an old man. The brush and sticks in the yard, everything, was covered with frost. But there was a pile of rocks beside the chimney, heaped where they’d been left when the chimney was built. The rocks had frost and dirt on them. I rubbed them off and carried them in one at a time. The rocks were so cold they burned my hands, but I lined them up on the hearth in the edge of the fire.
While the rocks were heating in the flames, I looked around for some other way to warm John up. He was still shuddering and jerking. It’s hard to get warm when your blood is chilled, when the blood in your heart is cooled.
There were some rawhide strings hanging from a peg beside the fireplace. I cut them into pieces and stretched them in an X from the four posts of the bed. I stretched the strings about three inches above John’s back, and then laid a blanket over the strings. I tied the blanket so it didn’t touch him.
“I’m freezing,” John said, and his teeth chattered. He sounded weaker.
Water was boiling already in the kettle and I hammered some coffee beans to powder and made coffee. The scent filled the cabin.
When the rocks were hot I rolled them into pans and slid them under the bed. The heat came up through the bed like there was a furnace down there. I poured coffee in a mug and held it to John’s lips.
“You don’t need to wait on me,” he said, his lips trembling.
“There’s nobody else to do it,” I said.
After throwing up, I guess he felt too weak to drink anything. But he was parched inside. The coffee smelled fresh and strong and he took a sip. And then he took another sip. The coffee was so hot it smoked, but he sipped it between his lips. He was shaking and he took a sip and pulled away. He took another sip.
As the heat rose from the rocks, and was held in by the blanket over his back, John stopped jerking so badly. He took longer and longer sips of the coffee. He was so thirsty he needed the coffee. And the more he drank the clearer it was he wasn’t going to throw up again. I’d heard that coffee was good for a troubled stomach, and now it seemed to be true. As he drank more coffee in little gulps, I saw John was feeling better and looked a little better.
“Do you want some grits?” I said.
“More coffee,” he said.
“Do you want some whiskey in the coffee?” I said.
“Pour in a spoonful,” John said. I added a dram of liquor to the mug of coffee and held it to his lips again.
The coffee was the only thing that seemed to help. It warmed him inside so he quit jerking and his chin stopped trembling. I reckon the liquor helped too. As I watched him sip I could almost feel the coffee going out from his belly into his arms and legs. Strong coffee makes the world seem brighter and your thoughts clearer.
After John drank the coffee, I fed him some grits with butter. There is nothing richer in the morning than grits and butter. It was what John needed to get back some strength.
After he ate the grits John dropped off to sleep. It was the first time he’d slept. His head lay sideways on the pillow and he slept with his mouth a little open. He muttered in his sleep like he was remembering something or arguing with somebody.
The rocks under the bed had cooled and I slid the pans out and rolled the rocks back into the edge of the fire. And then I went outside to get more rocks so I would have some to heat while the others were under the bed. It was a clear cold day, the first day that felt like winter. I carried in three dirty rocks, and when I went out to get a fourth I saw men on horses coming up the trail.
A pain stabbed through me, because the man in front wore a uniform. It was not a red uniform, like an officer of the Crown wore. But a man in uniform was always dangerous.
“Have you seen a cavalry?” the officer called out to me.
“No, sir,” I said.
“Don’t lie to us, lad,” the officer said.
“I’m not lying,” I said, and shivered in the cold.
“We know the dragoons came through here last night,” he said, and swung down from the saddle. The rest of the men stayed on their horses.
“We were away last night,” I said.
“You ain’t lying?” the officer said. He stepped up close.
“This is the house of Rev. John Trethman,” I said. “The preacher got burned last night in the fire on Bee Water Mountain.”
“Are you hiding a soldier?” the officer said, and pushed me aside. He took out his sword and opened the cabin door. I followed him in and saw John had waked up.
“Sir, he is badly burned,” I said.
The officer marched to the bed and tore the blanket off the strings. “Who done this?” he said.
“He was burned in the woods fire,” I said.
The soldier looked around the cabin and pointed to John. “If you are harboring a soldier of the Crown, you will be burned and your house too,” he said.
“I’m just a parson,” John said, “and Joseph is my assistant.”
&nbs
p; The officer searched around the cabin. He saw the writing on the mantel. “You wrote that?” he said.
“That was done while we were away,” I said.
“So the dragoons were here,” he said. He saw a basket with eggs in the corner and ran his sword through the handle and carried it outside. I followed him.
“We will burn you out if you harbor redcoats,” he yelled, and climbed into the saddle. I had been meaning to boil the eggs for us. I was hoping to make eggs and hoecakes. But I figured we were lucky to lose only the eggs. As they rode away I hurried back inside and put the blanket over John, and I put more rocks in the fire.
“These are terrible times,” I said to John.
JOHN TRETHMAN
IT WAS THE SECOND DAY, when Joseph got up and fixed hoecakes, then helped me dig the graves, that I understood the help might not be just from me to him. For I never saw a more willing assistant. Though slender in his person, he had hands rough from work and his back was strong. As I watched him fill in the graves I saw the Lord might have sent me an assistant. After my years of solitary travel and preaching, the Lord might have sent someone to share my burden, and my joy. The thought made me so happy I dared not think of it, and I felt guilty, for I had assumed I would do my work alone.
Your will be done, I prayed. For I didn’t dare ask for such assistance. But I thought of Paul, and how Silas was sent to travel with him and pray with him and sing with him when they were in chains. And Timothy was sent also. And of course Jesus himself had his beloved disciple John.
But I dared not suggest to Joseph that he become my permanent assistant. For I didn’t know what burden he carried in his mind. And I didn’t know what plans either. I would not hurry him, and I would not make him feel an obligation. He must stay with me and assist me of his own free will.
Being with Joseph made me feel young again. As we walked in the woods and waded streams and raised a hymn in the glade, as we carried potatoes in our pockets to bake over an open fire for supper, and carried wood for our fire, his presence made the work more significant. His presence made the work seem like play. And the hours with Joseph went by so fast they seemed mere minutes. He was like a younger brother I must cheer up. When I knew him better I would ask what terrible secret he carried in his heart. But in the meantime I would befriend him and try not to pry.
Brave Enemies Page 12
