“I don’t know what to do,” John said.
It was awful to see the pain of confusion in his eyes.
LATER, AFTER WE had gone to bed and been asleep, there was a knock at the door. It wasn’t only a knock, but a bang and a crash.
“Open up!” somebody yelled.
“Who is there?” John yelled. But the door burst open and somebody carrying a lantern stepped inside. We had forgotten to bolt the door.
John looked at me and he looked at the newspapers on the floor. I saw the dread in his eyes. He jumped out of bed in his nightshirt and reached down to gather the sheets and throw them in the fire. The man that had rushed into the room wore a red tunic with gold epaulets. He ran and grabbed the papers from the fire and stomped the flames out with his boots. John reached for the pages but the officer pulled him backward. I was still wearing my shirt and I pulled on my pants. And I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.
“In the name of the king,” the man bellowed. Three soldiers had followed him into the cabin and they seized John. Cold air from the door swept in and fluttered the fire.
“We are searching for sedition,” the officer said. “We are searching for sedition wherever it is hidden.” He picked up a sheet of the newspaper and studied it.
“A man brought that newspaper here,” John said.
“Who are you?” the officer said.
“I’m the Reverend John Trethman,” John said, “psalmodist and minister.”
“Are you a dissenter?” the officer said.
“I am licensed to exhort and to raise hymns,” John said.
“Then you are a Methodist and a traitor,” the officer said.
“I preach the Gospel and sing hymns,” John said. I could hear the fear in his voice. Soldiers that came in the night could do as they pleased. They could hang and burn as they chose.
“Only a traitor would have copies of a rebel newspaper,” the officer said.
Two other soldiers came inside and the officer told them to search the cabin. They climbed into the loft and threw the blankets down. They looked in the meal bin and under the bed. They knocked down the tree I’d trimmed. But they couldn’t find any more newspapers.
“You won’t find anything here,” John said.
“I have already found what I was looking for,” the officer said. He pulled a pistol from his belt and hit John across the face. Blood spurted from John’s lips.
“No!” I screamed. “He’s been burned.”
The officer turned to me with the pistol raised. “Who is this?” he said.
“He’s just a traveler staying the night,” John said, and wiped his lip. It looked like a tooth had been broken off.
“Did he bring the newspapers?” the officer said.
John patted his lip. “I swear he did not,” he said. “This boy is just a pilgrim and an orphan.”
“We give no quarter to enemies of the Crown,” the officer said.
“This boy is innocent,” John said, “and I am a wandering minister of the Gospel.”
“What better mask for sedition,” the officer snarled. He ordered the soldiers to bind John’s hands.
“You can’t hang an innocent man!” I shouted. The officer slapped me so hard I staggered back against the table. Tears plumped and blurred in my eyes.
“I’ll do whatever is necessary to stop this treason,” he said.
I expected him to take John out and hang him from the closest oak tree and set fire to the cabin. I expected they would hang me too. In a minute the world had turned upside down and was cracking to pieces. Everything was rotten and crazy behind a front that seemed real, and the stink and craziness had burst through again. It seemed that everywhere the common idea was to beat or hang people.
But instead they set John upon a horse with his hands tied behind him, then tossed a coat around his shoulders.
“You have information that will be useful to us,” the officer said to John.
“I know nothing but the word of God and songs of praise,” John said.
“We will persuade you to remember more than that,” the officer said.
The soldiers threw the gray coat around my shoulders and wrapped a blanket over that, and they tied me to a tree outside the cabin. I didn’t have any shoes, but I couldn’t even feel the cold ground. I was going to call out to John, but in the torchlight he was looking straight at me. He shook his head slowly, meaning I was not to say anything or do anything. He was lucky they didn’t hang him right there, and as long as he was alive there was hope he might be spared.
They set fire to the cabin, and as it blazed up I could feel the heat on my face. I turned to watch them march away. In the glare from the fire I saw John look back at me one last time. And then they went around a bend in the trail, and the woods were lit up by the burning cabin.
My eyes were so filled with tears I could hardly see the smoke and sparks rising into the sky full of stars. The logs of the cabin crackled and popped. The Christmas night had turned to horror. My face was burning in the glare and my back was freezing. I jerked at the rope that bound my hands and twisted in the scalding glare from the fire. I looked right into the heart of the flames, to where I should be still lying in bed with John, until my eyes burned.
The fire was so hot I could see right into the cabin. The logs got so hot they seemed to turn into a blinding liquid. Everything we had was burned up. John’s flute was melted, and the coins I had stolen from Mama. My eyes stung and I had to turn my face away.
THEY HAD TIED my hands to the tree about waist high. It seemed when I pulled the rope up on the tree trunk it loosened a little. I jumped up again and loosened it a little more. The young oak was tapered, smaller the higher it went. I jumped up and felt the knot loosen still more.
After four or five jumps my hands were up to my shoulders. I crunched my fingers together and made my palms as little as I could, but the rope still caught on the backs of my thumbs. I couldn’t jump any higher, and I couldn’t make my hands any smaller. The rope seared my skin where I twisted hardest.
Then I tried pulling one hand loose. All I needed was to free one hand. I squeezed my right palm together hard as I could, and crushed the bones under the grip of the big rope. It seemed impossible to pull it free, but I yanked and wrenched my arm, scraping knuckles on the rough rope.
My right hand came free, and it took just a minute to work my left hand loose. I jumped back away from the fire just in time, for the wind changed and leaned the flames toward the tree where I’d been. Branches in the oak tree caught fire.
I was so stunned by heat and all that had happened that night, I couldn’t recall what direction the soldiers had gone. The cabin roof caved in and sent a shower of sparks into the sky. Trees around the cabin had caught fire, and I was nearly blinded by the heat and brightness.
The only thing that had not been burned was the ax. It was stuck in the chopping block at the side of the cabin. The handle was smoking a little. I ran to the chopping block and grabbed the handle with both hands. It burned me, but I worked the blade loose and carried it into the cold woods.
The ax was the only thing I had that was John’s. His books and his flute were gone. I carried the ax and walked on into the woods. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew the ax could be used to cut firewood and maybe fight off bears and wolves if I had to.
I hadn’t stumbled far until I saw I needed light. I didn’t have a lantern, but a blazing stick would do. I turned and staggered back to the cabin and found a burning stick near the woodpile. Holding the stick in one hand for a torch and carrying the ax in the other, I made my way through the woods. I held the stick pointed down so it would keep burning bright. And when the stick burned down short I used it to light a pine knot I found. As I wandered through the woods I used up four other torches, and my hand got black with the smoke.
In the long night the woods looked stranger than a dream. I passed under vast leaning trees, and open places where the stars seemed so close I
thought I could hear them. I passed big rocks that appeared to shove their shoulders against the light. Big birds like owls flapped around in the limbs above me. The eyes of wildcats and deer shone out of the dark.
Nothing looked familiar. I was in the foreign country of night. The ground reared up in front of me and then fell away when I went around a hill. I walked along a trail where the slope seemed to drop away a thousand miles. In places the woods were a wall hemming me in.
I stepped on something soft and, lowering the pine knot, saw it was a bed of moss. That seemed as good a place to lie down as I was apt to find. I put down the ax and gathered some sticks. After lighting the little sticks I gathered bigger sticks. In the light of the blaze I broke several limbs and heaped them in a pile, and then I took the ax and chopped still more dead wood.
When the fire was galloping and soaring I lay down on the moss and tried to think what to do. I had to follow John, if I could find the way they took him. Since he was held by the loyalists I had to find a loyalist militia, or a troop of royal soldiers. I had no place else to go. I had nothing but the ax. It was likely they would kill John.
With the blanket wrapped around me I looked up at the stars beyond the trees. I missed John so badly the back of my throat hurt. I felt awful we had quarreled on what was likely our last night together. Our cabin was nothing but ashes and spots of melted silver. I wouldn’t even know if he was still alive.
With my face resting on my elbow I went to sleep and dreamed of the fire. I dreamed I was watching the cabin burn again and all kinds of things walked out of the fire. Bears and panthers stepped out of the blaze, and soldiers with red coats. The king stepped out of the fire wearing a crown of flames. But when I looked again the king didn’t have a face. He had only a skull with grinning black teeth, and worms in the eye sockets. And inside the flames were thousands of worms eating everything, eating the fire.
When I woke it was day and my fire had burned down to coals. I could see the sun and knew which way was east. I tried to remember which way I had come last night. The moss bed looked different in daylight. I couldn’t recall which side I’d first seen it from. I looked through the trees at some low hills, but none of them seemed familiar. I didn’t know how far I’d run from Pine Knot Branch. If I could find my way back there I could go to some of John’s congregation at Zion Hill or Briar Fork and ask for help. I could ask if anybody knew where he was. I had to get something to eat.
I thought I would circle around. Since I didn’t know in what direction to go I would circle to look for a road or trail, something I knew. If I walked in a straight line I might miss everything. But if I made a great circle I had a better chance of finding help.
But I had to take my fire. The fire was all I had to warm me and light my way at night. I blew on the coals and threw on leaves and dried moss until the flame started again. I built up the fire until a blaze was stretching, and found another pine knot to light.
With the ax in one hand and the burning pine knot in the other, I started off through the woods, planning to curve around in a great ring to see what was out there. Surely I’d recognize a hill or find a trail. I came to a swampy place, and walked through a canebrake. The stalks of cane reached high above my head, and they rasped and whispered against each other. It was hard to push the canes aside and hold both the ax and the torch. The canes whispered like they were mocking me. I hoped I wasn’t losing my mind the way Mama had lost hers. I stopped and listened.
It wasn’t long before I had to find a new pine knot. I pushed my way through a tangle of wild peavines. A deer bounded away and I just saw the white flame of its tail. I wished I had a gun, though I’d never shot a gun.
Next I came to a creek and saw a shadow dart deep in a pool. A curl of waterfall over the lip of rock churned the head of the pool. The shadow shot across the pool. It had to be a trout hiding in the bottom of the deep water. The trout waited below the waterfall for any worms or bugs washed down the creek.
I didn’t have a fish hook, and the pool was too big to corner the fish in. I didn’t have any cloth for a seine. But a baked trout would be wonderful to eat in the cold woods. A baked trout was the best thing I could think of. I looked around for some kind of spear or forked stick. I wondered if I could I throw a rock and hit the fish.
What I found was a kind of thornbush. The limbs weren’t long, but the thorns were sharp as needles. I broke off a branch and stripped it of twigs and stickers until only two thorns were left near the bigger end. I’d have to hold it by the tip. A thorn wasn’t exactly a hook, but it was all I had.
To keep my fire alive I made a blaze of pinecones and dry sticks on the bank. I couldn’t let the fire go out.
It took several tries, turning over rocks and digging in the mud below the pool, to find earthworms. But when I found two worms and stuck them on the thorns the worms slid right off. I had to thread the worms on the spikes, almost tying them on.
Quietly as I could I crept up to the edge of the pool just below the little waterfall. I had to be gentle or the worms would fall off the spikes. I reached the branch down into the pool and let it rest. It wasn’t but a second until something hit the tip and almost jerked the stick out of my hand. I pulled the stick up and saw the trout, a fat thing thrashing and flashing its spots. But soon as I pulled the fish out of the water it slipped off the thorn and vanished into the frothing water. One of the thorns on the limb had broken off.
There was nothing to do but get another branch off the thornbush and fix it as I had the first. I turned over rocks until I found two more worms. When the bait was wound around the thorns I eased up to the edge of the pool and lowered the stick into the water. I waited a second or two and held my breath. I didn’t want to move the stick or the current might pull the worms off the spines.
The stick whipped in my hand and I pulled quick, hoping to stick the thorn deep in the trout’s jaw. The fish throbbed and flopped on the end of the stick. I pulled the branch up and the trout thrashed and splashed on the top of the pool. But soon as I lifted him out of the water he slid off the thorn again, and disappeared into the foam.
I thought I might as well give up. The fish was going to slide off every time I tried to raise it out of the pool. But I didn’t have anything else to eat. I didn’t have a gun and I couldn’t catch a rabbit with my bare hands. There was nothing to do but try again. I broke another limb off the thornbush and fixed it like the others. I wished the thorns were hooked like blackberry briars. But a blackberry briar wouldn’t be long enough to catch a fish.
I had been so busy trying to catch the trout I’d forgotten the time. When I looked up I saw it was past noon. The sun was as high as it would get that day. It was Christmas Day and instead of feasting I was starving. I felt the dull weight of hunger all over me.
Gently I lowered the branch into the pool again. The trout had been hurt twice. I wondered if it would bite again. Had it darted to another pool? Surely it could see the branch and the thorns holding the worms.
When the trout hit the worm the branch almost slipped out of my grasp. The stick swerved in the water and bent like a witching wand. I thought the limb might break. I pulled hard to set the sticker in the fish’s mouth and raised it closer to the top of the pool.
But this time, instead of lifting the fish out of the water, I jumped into the edge of the pool and pulled the trout toward the lower end. I leaned close to the water and dragged the fish toward the shadows. The trout thrashed a little, but I let it swim and led it into the sand at the end of the pool. Then I jerked the fish right out onto the mossy rocks. The trout flashed and jumped and I fell on top of it.
The trout was so fat it filled my hands. It was slimy and squirming and almost jumped out of my grasp. I carried the fish quickly up the bank and, laying it against a rock, hit the head with the ax. When the body was still I cut off the head and slit open the belly. I raked out the guts and scraped off the scales and slime with the ax blade, then washed the fish in the creek and stuck it
on a stick over the fire.
After the trout had baked for a few minutes I ate it off the stick. The meat was so hot I took only a tiny bite at a time. The flesh was sweet and juicy. Nothing is sweeter than trout fresh out of water. I picked the pieces off the bones like they were manna.
When I’d eaten and washed my hands in the creek it was time to leave. If I was going to sweep in a circle, I had to get started. For it was already afternoon. I wasn’t sure how late it was.
I crossed the creek and started walking. I came to an old field that might have been cleared by the Cherokees, but there was nobody in sight. I passed the remains of a campfire, but rain had washed away all tracks around it. As the sun got low in the trees I walked toward the sunset.
MY FEET WERE NUMB from walking on the cold ground. I stepped into a branch to warm my feet and saw a high bank above me. It looked like the side of a mountain with big rocks scattered at the foot. The rocks were covered with deep moss. Logs had fallen over the rocks blocking the way. I raised the torch and saw a hole between two big rocks. It looked like the door to the cellar of a castle. I climbed over the logs and stooped to look inside.
The smell told me something alive was in the cave. I couldn’t have said what the scent was, but it was different from the wet rock and moss smell, the stink of rotten leaves. I took a step and pushed the light ahead of me.
In the corner of the cave something moved, something that looked like a pile of rags, and pieces of leather. There was a dirty blanket. And then I saw a foot.
“Who is there?” I said, taking a step closer.
And then I saw gray hair. It was an old woman. Her hair was tangled and knotted and piled around her head. She’d pushed herself back against the wall of the cave.
“You scared me,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
She pulled back farther and pressed herself against the dirty wall. She was shivering and didn’t say anything. I reckon my fire on the stick had surprised her. Her eyes were wide and she was trembling.
Brave Enemies Page 16
