“One more . . . try, friend,” he said hoarsely.
“Have you got the strength for it? You’re missing a leg, sir. Part of one, anyway. Gone from the knee on down.”
“Yes . . . had to cut it off . . . to get free . . .”
“You cut it off your own self?”
“Yes . . . Help me up. . . . Let me lean on you.”
The man seemed to be gaining a little strength and clarity. But with it came renewed pain. Even so he put forth great effort to rise, and with Reuben joining his strength to the man’s, he managed to get upright after several more attempts, his weight resting on his one remaining foot and on Reuben.
“Come on, let’s figure out how to walk together,” Reuben said. And they moved forward, an odd kind of shuffle that relied on instinct and mutual coordination—and on the injured man managing to hold on to his consciousness.
The trees, darkness, brush, and the physical clumsiness of their mode of locomotion served as impediments, yet step by step they advanced, until at last they cleared the stand of woods at the base of the bluff and entered the back edge of the meadow. As they entered the back perimeter of the camp meeting, no one noticed them initially, their attention turned toward the speaking platform where Abner Bledsoe was talking in his piping voice and gesticulating freely, pacing from one end to the other. They went forward, and then the injured man drew in his breath sharply and passed out, his weight dragging him off Reuben’s supporting shoulder. Littleton hit the ground with a sound like that of a dropped sack of grain.
Reuben looked around. They were still unnoticed. Then one man, who was jerking slightly with the religious spasms that marked Bledsoe’s meetings, noticed Reuben struggling to rouse his companion again. The man didn’t move to help, but turned his eyes forward toward the preacher again. Reuben felt a burst of resentment.
Littleton groaned and moved a little.
He was never quite sure thereafter how he did it, but Reuben pulled his companion up to his single foot, managed to balance him for a moment while he positioned himself, then heaved the mostly unconscious man up onto his shoulder, completely off the ground. He tottered under the weight, but somehow didn’t fall. Astonished at his own strength, he took a step, and again didn’t fall. Then another, and another, and another, and slowly he advanced through the crowded camp of worshipers, tents, and arbors, going mostly unnoticed, but in a few cases drawing the attention of people who gasped in horror when they noticed the state of Littleton’s severed leg. So distressing was the sight that people withdrew as Reuben advanced, mothers covering the eyes of their children and men taking on tense stances of wariness, as if anticipating a fight.
Reuben had no thought of carrying the injured man back to the place where his own family was emplaced. They were unequipped to deal with such as this. He would take him to the stockade, where, he had heard, an actual trained physician was usually present, some fellow who was settling in the area and building a fine new hostelry.
Reuben was most of the way through the crowd when he saw men coming out of the open stockade door and trotting his way. Help at last! He’d been seen from inside the fort, obviously.
Exhausted, he fell, the bulky form of the man he carried crushing down upon him.
The camp meeting continued unabated, the worshipers fully distracted by the theatrical preacher, who himself seemed to have not even noticed the odd sight of a boy carrying a large one-legged man on his shoulder through the middle of a camp meeting, then falling beneath the burden.
With the air crushed out of him by the weight of the limp figure lying upon him, the exhausted Reuben passed out for a few moments, and next was aware of walking along beside an older man through the interior court of the stockade. He no longer bore his human burden. He looked toward the man and recognized a face that was famous through the region: Crawford “Edohi” Fain, the very man who had built Fort Edohi. Reuben had seen him twice before, once when the family had first come to the region, and a second time when consideration was being given to a possible farther move to the Cumberland Settlements, and Reuben had joined his father in a visit to Fort Edohi to talk to Fain about the safety of such a move. Fain had spoken honestly about the dangers posed by Indians and white bandits along the way, and Reuben’s father had been dissuaded from his notions of moving farther west.
“Are you all right, son?” Fain asked Reuben as they walked toward Fain’s cabin. Others now carried the injured man Reuben had hauled, a few steps ahead. The man seemed to have passed out again and his one remaining foot merely dragged the ground beneath him as he was borne along.
“I’m fine, Mr. Fain.”
“You’re that McCart boy, I believe.”
“I am.” Reuben was surprised to be remembered.
“When we get inside and the doctor does what tending to this fellow he can, we’ll want to hear everything you can tell us about how you came by him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know his name?”
“He never said, sir.”
“Looks familiar to me, but I can’t place him.”
Houser got directly to his task, which was illuminated mostly by the fireplace, plus a few candles grouped nearby. Reuben was at first intrigued, but when he got his first clear look at the raggedly severed leg stump, he felt his gorge rise as a wave of faintness lightened his head. Fain noticed and moved him toward a bench against the cabin wall.
“He cut it off himself,” Reuben said. “He told me that. He said the bottom part of his leg was left stuck in a hole down in the pit he was in.”
“A devil of a task, cutting on yourself that way,” Fain said. “Don’t look at it and don’t think on it. I believe it’s bothering you a mite.”
“More than a mite, sir.”
“Dr. Houser will see him put as right as he can be. I’ve known others who lost extremities, and every one of them came through and did pretty well after. He’s got enough leg left that he’ll probably peg-leg it pretty well, if a peg can be made that fits him right.” In his mind, Fain was already going through the process of whittling out a peg leg for this man. A proficient whittler, Fain had made three such prosthetics in his life: one for a neighbor whose leg had been crushed in a tree-cutting accident, and removed after, and two more for survivors of a fierce siege by a band of Chickamauga, or “Lower Cherokee,” so called because of the location of their towns farther south than the ancient and revered Over-hill Cherokee villages.
Conversation dwindled. Houser bent to his work, and the injured man remained mercifully unconscious, making Houser’s labors easier. Reuben kept his eyes on the leaping flames in the fireplace and tried not to hear the meaty, ugly cutting sounds made by Houser’s blade. He began to feel a bit better and decided at last he could even sustain a glance at what the doctor was doing.
“Why is he cutting on his leg stump, when it’s already cut?” Reuben asked Fain.
“I’m no physician, son, but I think what he’s doing is getting that leg in shape to heal better. He’ll pull what skin he can down over the wounded flesh and stitch it all up right neatly. I’ve seen something like that done before. Makes a world of difference in the healing if it’s done right.”
Reuben was pale. “Lord, how did that fellow do it? Cut through his own leg? Wouldn’t the pain have made him stop? I’d never be able to do that.”
“Men do what they have to do in such moments. And generally they can do more than anybody would think they could. I’m guessing that this gent probably was in such pain already that he might not have much felt his own cutting. All the hurting kind of mixing in together, you know.”
Reuben shuddered. “God, I hope I never have to do such a . . .” He trailed off.
“Likely you’ll never face such a situation, son, but if you did, you know what you’d do?”
“No, sir. But I think I’d just throw down the knife and hope for the best.”
“No. You’d do what you had to do, whatever it was. It’s the way the good Lord
made us . . . and maybe part of the reason he lets us face such dreadful things at times. So we can learn just what we’re capable of doing.”
“I don’t know that I want to know what I’m capable of doing, sir,” the youth said.
“I understand what you mean, son. I do. I think most of us hope to pass the tests we’re put to, but that’s no reason to hope we get put to them in the first place.”
“I need to go back and get with my kin,” Reuben said. “Thank you for helping me get that fellow some aid.”
“Nothing but what I’d have done for anybody, and hope anybody would do for me.”
“Evening, Mr. Fain.”
“Evening, son.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Molly Reese presentation had been given so many times that the preacher could have recited most of it without the aid of the papers on the lectern before him, just as the woman did her part without prompting or direction. She had it easier than he, of course, possessing no tongue and being able to produce only the most rudimentary approximations of understandable speech. She was not required to say anything to the congregants.
Repetition of the performance had helped her overcome any sense of shyness or hesitancy she had once possessed. In earlier days she had felt a normal human resistance to letting others see her abnormality, and had gone through life with her mouth clamped tightly shut most of the time. Those who sought to see for themselves what was, or was not, inside the oral orifice were turned away consistently. She would not be treated like some living horror or mutilation.
All that had changed when she met Abner Bledsoe. Something about the man had drawn her, pulled her out of herself, and filled her with fascination for him. Just what it was she could not say. It was certainly not physical—he was a plain enough fellow, to be sure—nor was it a serious interest in his religious teachings. God had done little for her, in her estimation, and she had decided years ago she could and would do without him. And if that meant she would also do without him when she entered the next life, whatever it was . . . well, so be it. Fine with her.
She had met Bledsoe on a street in a town in Virginia. A purely random meeting, made memorable by the injury she had suffered when Bledsoe rode too close to her on his horse and a hoof crushed her foot into the dirt street, breaking two of her toes. She had gone down with a cry and Bledsoe had dismounted to see what he had unwittingly done. It was a fated meeting for them both.
It didn’t take long for Bledsoe to realize that the woman he’d injured had a distinctive handicap. Her first effort at speaking revealed it: muddied, murky approximations of word sounds, only a few of which he understood.
As coincidence or fate would have it, Bledsoe had, only the day before, read the already-famous account of Molly Reese and her bloody girlhood adventure—and a fascinating possibility suddenly presented itself.
“Are you by chance named Molly Reese?” he asked. The woman’s answer was impossible to understand, but it didn’t matter. Bledsoe had continued: “Because if you are, ma’am, we stand to benefit nicely from this encounter, you and I.” From the look of her he could tell she was impoverished, and would surely respond to any prospect of “benefit.”
She did respond. She accepted an invitation from him to dine at a nearby tavern—having not eaten a real meal in days—and her usual defensiveness quickly faded. He told her about himself and his preaching life, working his way delicately around the nature of his motives and interests, allowing her to realize slowly that his “calling” was not really a spiritual one. Rather than be put off by his blatant and unrepentant hypocrisy, she was drawn to it, finding in his willingness to exploit others a ground of hope that perhaps her life could become something better than she had known.
She had not left the preacher’s presence that night, and was still with him when the next morning came. He sent her away from the inn where they had stayed long before he left, so they would not be seen departing overnight lodgings together. They rejoined outside the town. They had not parted since, forming a partnership both personal and professional: He told the sordid Molly Reese tale and she allowed the gaping devotees of the false preacher to stare into her empty mouth while she sat beneath torchlight with her jaw dropped for their viewing convenience. She hated them all but pretended otherwise for the sake of the gifts some of them gave her in pity. In all her lonely life she’d never fared so well as she had since she took up with the preacher Bledsoe.
She’d done better than usual here beside Fort Edohi. Her little wooden collection bowl was filled with coins and other items, even a ring and a locket, a generosity quite surprising and unexpected from a population of people one would expect to be quite poor. She could not account for her good fortune, but gladly accepted it, and without guilt. She’d been deprived of much in her life, and it was surely only fitting that she receive something in recompense.
She’d grown bored, though, sitting there as she had so many times, maw lolled open like an idiot’s, men, women, and children filing by and ogling so they could see for themselves that, yes, indeed, this woman had no tongue in her head! She despised their morbid curiosity, their looks of pity and revulsion. Fools! They could use her as an entertaining display if they chose, because she was in turn using them. The jingle in her wooden bowl more than made up for the shame of being stared at like an object of pathos.
At last the line of gawkers melted away and she stood, giving a quick smile to Abner Bledsoe, who remained on the platform, waving his dignified farewells to the scattering worshipers. She had turned to step away from her post when Bledsoe suddenly made a subtle gesture indicating she should remain, and tossed his head slightly to make her look to her left.
A man was approaching her, a gray-haired, slender fellow in excellent clothes, a man who would have looked more in place in a Boston parlor than in an open meadow beside a frontier fort. She smiled at him and sat down again as he reached her, and thought he looked affluent, maybe able to give her more than the usual pittance.
“Ma’am?” he said pleasantly. “I’m late, I know, but I’ve been occupied within the stockade, tending to an injury. I am a physician, and my name is Peter Houser.”
She smiled again and nodded, putting out her hand for him to shake. He did so delicately, holding her by the fingertips.
“As a man of medicine who is often called upon to tend to injuries involving injury and mayhem, I am intrigued by you. I’ve never had occasion to see the type of injury you have suffered. I would like to make a quick inspection for the sake of my own education. May I?”
She seldom encountered such politeness. Almost no one ever asked permission to inspect her mutilated mouth. They simply walked past, giving no greeting, acknowledgment, or thanks, and gawked at her like a pathetic object rather than a person.
She nodded and dropped open her mouth, turning her face up to the light of the nearby torch. Dr. Houser leaned over and stared in. She studied his eyes as he examined what he saw. He was no idle, ignorant gawker; he looked at her with a knowing and understanding eye. As she realized this, she suddenly clamped her mouth closed.
“Is something wrong, sir?” Bledsoe asked him, having watched all this from the platform.
Houser hesitated, his eyes flicking between the preacher and the seated woman, who now rose to her feet again. “I would like to speak with you privately, Reverend.”
Bledsoe repeated his question. “Is something wrong?”
Houser climbed the little flight of steps leading up to the platform and went to Bledsoe. He put his hand on Bledsoe’s upper arm and gently prodded him to the rear corner of the platform, away from where the woman was.
“Sir, what is wrong?” Bledsoe asked, concerned now.
Houser paused a moment, glanced over his shoulder to make sure the woman would not hear him, then said quietly, “I am afraid you might have been misled by your associate.”
“Miss Reese?”
“The woman who professes to be Miss Reese, you should say.”
> “Explain, sir.”
“Sir, if Molly Reese lost her tongue in an act of violence during her girlhood, then the woman standing over there is not Molly Reese.”
Bledsoe jerked as if he’d been stung, his slightly crossed eyes narrowing as he stared at Houser. “Why would you say such a thing, sir?”
“Because the woman there is indeed missing her tongue, but I can assure you, as a physician, that it was never cut out of her mouth. The deformity is one of birth. Her tongue was never cut out because she never possessed one. She was born in her current condition, and if she has presented herself to you as Molly Reese, she has deceived you.”
Bledsoe glared at Houser and for a moment struggled for words. “I—I don’t believe that, sir. I’m sorry. I’m sure you speak what you think is truth, but I tell you, before God, that she is Molly Reese! I have spent too much time with her, shared her story so frequently. . . . I cannot, will not, believe she is anything or anyone other than the Molly Reese I have known for years.”
“Well, then, if she is in fact Miss Reese, then it is her account of her misadventure that is false. For I must tell you with the firmest of conviction, that woman’s tongue was never removed from her head! She lives today in the condition in which she was born.”
“No.” A firm shake of the head. “No, sir. She is who she says she is. She was attacked by her own father, mutilated, then rescued by a being who well might have been an angel sent for her protection.”
“Reverend, with all respect due to you, may I ask you why, then, did the angel not present itself sooner and stop the assault aborning? If protection had been the divine intention, why was it not given before the severing of her tongue?”
“Aha!” Bledsoe said, aiming a stubby, pointing finger at the physician’s face. “You admit, then, that her tongue was severed! You just said as much!”
“I am presenting a hypothetical, not a statement of fact. And that is beside the point in any case. What I say, I say on the basis of trained observation. I know scarring when I see it, and the marks left by cutting and severing. Those are absent from this woman’s mouth. I must stand by what I have declared.”
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