Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  Midday they came out onto the open height of land they’d been climbing toward and paused to survey what spread before them. A little east of north lay a large lake, only partly visible although he could track the vague outline of it by the treeline and the surrounding low hills. From near the lake rose trails of flimsy smoke and further up one hillside was a lush billow where men were burning slash where they were making a field amongst stumps. With the distance they could hear nothing, could not even smell the woodsmoke but there it was. Between where they halted and the lake were a series of low hills and in places he could see silver stands of dead trees marking bogs and beaver marshes. Beyond the lake the land stretched off toward the north in long low ridges. To the east were larger mountains and looking back, southwest, more mountains stood. The shortcut, he saw, had been a good one.

  When they camped at dusk they were all but out of food and Blood took his handline and turned rotted logs for grub-baits and went after trout in the roadside brook. After the other night it was almost the last thing he wanted but the only thing worse was alerting the settlement with gunfire. He wanted to come in unexpected. They were close enough now to smell the woodsmoke from the houses and he told Sally to keep the fire low this night. An unneeded caution as the blackflies and midges were swarming from the nearby marsh and she needed a low fire to hold a good smudge. He wasn’t worried over the smell of smoke. There was plenty of that. It was light he wanted to avoid. There was no way to know who might be situated so as to look out over this stretch of land.

  They ate by that dulled light. If the trout reminded the girl of anything it was only how hungry she was. He studied her, eating. She stripped the meat from the bones with her fingers, as if combing a loved one’s hair. When she finished each trout there was a head and tail connected by the bare spine and most of the ribs intact and she would hold each out in the flat of her hand. Luther would take up the offering with mild courteous mouth and they could hear him chewing the bones and head of the fish. When she was done she took herself out into the bushes and then to the brook where she washed her hands and face. Then returned and dug her skirt and bodice and shawl from the cart and shook them out and draped them over a bush to let the night take the wrinkles from them. She sat again and looked at Blood.

  “I’ll have to walk in barefoot. My feet’s too swelled to get my shoes on.”

  Blood said, “You won’t be the only one barefoot there.”

  “What sort of place is it?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you much. What I heard it’s rough. As you know, it’s a good long ways from anywhere else, so it’s whatever the people there have made of it.”

  She was quiet, clearly considering the implications.

  After a moment Blood sighed. He spoke again. “However it is, there’s a chance there may be someone who thinks they know me, one maybe who’s heard something of me. There’s stories told of me. You can believe what you want. Just don’t bother me with any of it. I won’t dispute a word, truth or no.”

  Saying this he looked severe upon her but once done turned his gaze off into the darkness. Not daring her to probe but unmistakably ending it.

  After another time Sally said, “There was people to know them, there could be plenty stories told of me I guess. True and not true, I’m sure. But it don’t change who I am.”

  Blood looked back at her. He said, “Oh, the true ones change you all right. There’s just nothing you can do about em.”

  * * *

  There was hard frost on them in the morning and she huddled shivering before the small fire and turned journeycake on stones while the woods about them filled with mist from the unseen marshes, trailing through the bare gaunt trees in phantom multitudes and the light when it came was a hard blue that seemed to come from some far more distant sun than the one they knew. Even Blood was shivering where he hunched.

  “Damn it,” she said. “Ain’t there ever a spring to last?”

  “I don’t know. I sure hope so.”

  “It makes me wonder what winter must be like.”

  “Don’t think about it. We got all spring and summer before worrying about that. No telling what winter will bring. Where it’ll find us, you or me both.”

  By late morning they were sweated through when they came out into the opening of the first cleared lands although even here north-facing hillsides held crumbling remnant snowbanks and all meadow edges ran overflow brooks and they passed through without seeing a dwelling or person. The field they were in had not been worked but tatters of last year’s cornstalks flagged among the stumps. They came out the far side of the field beside a flooded river and onto a real road, one mired thick with a sandy marl and rutted where the ground was firmer and they went up that toward where they could see woodsmoke and dwellings, a house of logs some better than the trapper Gandy’s but not much and across from that a larger two-story house of boards beside a mill that stood where the lake emptied over a ledge into the river. Sally walked by the side of the road, pressing through close-packed underbrush of old broken grass and bracken of brown-rotted ferns where here and there a gray-green uncurled new fern was pushing up. She had her skirt lifted to her knees and her feet and ankles were overlaid with layers of dried mud. She carried her shoes in her hand, not as if she would put them on but to be seen as a person who owned shoes.

  A quarter mile before the mill three men came out of it and stood watching down the road at them and soon another man came from the log house and joined the first three. None carried guns of any sort but one in a heavy smock had a sword in his hand and the man from the log house had a club of firewood with him. The board house had heavy shutters over the windows and gun-slits cut in the upper story, a small fortress. As Blood watched the house some unseen hand pushed the open front door closed and even this far away he could hear how solidly it shut into the frame.

  Sally said, “I’d feel better I could see a woman.”

  He looked over at her. “Those fellers don’t know it yet but they’re going to be some glad to see us, is what I think. Also, you might find the women here not as friendly as the men. I might be wrong but that’s my guess.”

  She looked at him as if gauging his intentions but he already was looking ahead up the road. Then he said, “Get back in the road, behind the cart. Walk there with the dog.”

  So she waded back into the slurry and wordless lurched after the cart which was pitching and heaving side to side as the wheels found irregular frozen foundation deep within the mud. She stepped up and set her shoes in the cart and then fell back a few paces, trudging slow with the waist-high dog beside her. Luther walking through the mud as if it wasn’t there. She wanted to rest a palm on his head but did not want to risk rebuff. It was enough he was beside her.

  There were stacks of board lumber up on chocks alongside the mill and in a field opposite were a hundred or more logs. The lake stretched capacious beyond the mill, the water blue near to black and glittering as if strewn with chipped and sharded ice. The lake and sky were bright and clean, while the road was a mean puny thing and the four men out awaiting them seemed to be more of the road than of the land around them. She wished the men weren’t there at all, that they might just travel through. To where she could not say. Just on into this good day.

  Blood halted the cart fifty or sixty yards down the road from where the men stood waiting and walked forward to meet them, carrying with him the ox goad because he already had it in his hand and it was natural to take it with him and would look otherwise were he to lay it up in the cart. Blood was only of medium height but thick-trunked and wide-shouldered, with heavy arms and thighs and the goad itself was a sinister tool; heavy ash-wood with an iron point on the slender ground end and the thick butt capped with bullhide over a brad of lead. He came to a stop a dozen feet from where they clumped, ample room for the goad should he need it. The men were winter-lean save for the stout miller but Blood had long since learned that heft or the lack of it could be a trivial feature
in a man.

  “Good morning,” he said to all or none of them. “Or is it noontime yet?”

  “Still forenoon,” said the miller. “You carrying an Eastman deed?”

  “I’m carrying no deed at all, Eastman or otherwise. I’m not looking to farm but trade.” All the men but the miller leaned to peer down the road at the cart. Blood waited, silent.

  “Where’d you come from?” The miller again. This brought the attention of the other men back.

  Blood determined to take the question in a local manner. “Come up the road through the puckerbrush from the head of the notch.”

  The man with the firewood club said, “That so.”

  “It’s some rough road.”

  “You didn’t come up through Coos County then?”

  “Not that I know. It’s not a place I passed through.”

  The miller frowned at him. “You didn’t come through Lancaster?”

  “I busted the axle in the notch and there was a farmer with a forge told me there was a shortcut road.”

  One of the other men said, “David Brown.”

  Blood nodded. “I believe that’s what he called himself.” Then, wanting the rest out of the way, added, “The girl and I brought the load out of Portland down in Maine up through Conway and Errol and then through the notch. Then north to here.”

  “What’s in the cart?” One of the other men.

  Blood ignored this as bad manners. “The word I got was that a man could make a start for himself here. If that’s what he was looking for.”

  The miller said, “And you have no deed?”

  “I didn’t know I needed one.”

  One of the other men smiled. “Most likely, you’re better off not having one.”

  “What you’re talking about is land speculators, idn’t that so?”

  “Honest men that done the work here don’t care a whit what some fool paid for and so thinks they own.”

  “All I own’s my stores. Of course, I’d be looking for someplace to set up shop. Someplace not too far out of the way if I can help it. Maybe some feller who things ain’t worked out for the way he’d like. But I’m not looking for anything but one where everybody’d benefit.”

  The miller now said, “You’re not after some place in particular? You don’t have some one feller’s name in mind?”

  Blood said, “I’ve got no tomfoolery about me.”

  The miller said, “You’ve got some years on you. To be starting new in a place like this.”

  “Older men than me have had to start over.”

  “Now, that’s true.”

  The man with the club said, “There’s plenty this time of year discouraged with the outlook. If it was cash money you was talking about.” He grinned.

  Blood looked hard at him. “When it’s the right man I’ll make my arrangements with him. To his satisfaction and mine too.”

  Club said, “I wasn’t prying. Spend the winter and see how you sing then.”

  The miller said, “Every man’s business is his own. But there’s too few of us here not to watch out for each other.”

  “Mostly.” One of the other men spoke for the first time.

  The miller looked at him and back at Blood. “You’ll not get rich here.”

  Blood said nothing to this.

  The miller ran his free hand over his face, thumb and fingers kneading cheek muscles. “There’s Sam Potter.”

  “Why yes.” Club interrupted.

  The miller went on. “Lost his wife trying with their firstborn this winter. Took the piss right out of him. Sold his cow for potato licker and lived on moosemeat and I don’t know what. He’s young enough but was tender over that girl. I imagine he’d be happy to hump back downcountry, he had something to show for it.”

  Blood said, “It never makes me happy, to hear of another’s misfortune.”

  The miller nodded. “Everyone gets their share. Some sooner than later.”

  “That’s right. This Potter place, is it off in the woods or someplace people could get to easy?”

  “Why it’s right down to the mouth of Perry Stream. Most of the land’s north-facing but that wouldn’t make a difference for you I guess.”

  “I’d want pasture meadow for the oxen.”

  “There’s a intervale by the dadewater. It’s not much but it would do for winter hay. And there’s all the upland you could ask for to summer them on.”

  “Summer,” said Club. “Now what’s that?”

  “You recall,” said one of the others. “That’s when the sledding gets bad.”

  Blood said to the miller, “You think I’d find him to home?” Asking far more than he appeared to.

  The miller understood this. “He’s not taken to woods-running. Just setting with the mope, mostly. You want, I’d walk down there with you.”

  Blood studied the lake a moment. Then looked at the miller. “It might be less harmful to his pride, I was alone.”

  “That’s right.”

  Blood said, “I’ve got powder and pigs of lead. Other goods as well.” He glanced toward the board house. “There’s some bolts of cloth might be welcome to your women.” Then he extended his hand for the miller and said, “Name’s Blood.”

  The miller took up his hand, a short hard grip. “Mister Blood. I’m Emil Chase. Saw your logs or grind your meal. For cash or shares, either one.”

  Blood looked at the other men but made no effort at introduction. He turned back to Chase and said, “I’ve got two hogsheads of good Barbados rum as well. I come to terms with young Potter, come down and have a dram.”

  Chase nodded, promising nothing. Then he could not help himself. “Have you a Christian name?”

  Blood stood stone-still, holding the other’s eyes. “Just Blood.”

  Sam Potter was more boy than man and Blood would not allow himself to consider how it must’ve been only the year before when he brought his young already pregnant wife into this wild land with his head and eyes full of expectant vision, nor would he consider the events that ruined that twist of hope in the boy. He saw how Potter looked at Sally, his eyes raw with hunger and then self-disgust but Blood did not send her from the house; it was not in his interest to diminish Potter’s despair.

  The pitch was poor enough with few improvements made—the log house was but a single large room with a loft although Potter had taken the time to build a center standing chimney of well-fitted stone and back-to-back fireplaces, the only true measure of the young man’s ambitions. The intervale meadow was greening nicely but the hillside pasture was barely halfway cleared, no more than five acres of stumps with slash piles still heaped, not burned over the winter as they should have been. There was a log barn smaller than the house but snug and well-built. Beside it was a small lot barricaded with a tight fence of upright poles. Inside that was a small log pigpen but there were no swine and Blood guessed this had been built for a future that would never be. With the stream yards away there was no spring dug. All in all it was a gloomy place and even cleared of mourning detritus it was not the spot Blood would have hoped for, if he’d hoped for anything specific which he had not: other than by the road which it was and close enough to the mill to be easily incorporated into the rounds and needs of the people. Potter was willing to lose money and most of that he took in a note and Blood was willing to let him, thinking that however the man looked back on this place it would only be grievous anyway and it was not Blood’s job to alleviate that even if he was inclined. Which he was not.

  But at the last minute, seated at the year-old table hand-worked to love’s smoothness, writing out the note for the balance agreed upon, Blood did pause and offer ten more dollars in coin for direct and immediate occupancy, furnishings intact. And so midafternoon Potter hiked south along the road with a rucksack of clothes and what other few items he held dear. Blood had not remained in the house to watch Potter pack but under pretense inspected the barn.

  “It idn’t much of a house.” She stood barefoot o
n the rough plank floor, sunlight coming skewed through the open door.

  Blood said, “It’ll do fine. It’s got the center chimney, that’s the main thing. I can partition off this downstairs and build a counter in one half to set up a store. The rest of it, we make do for living quarters. For now, we just see how it goes.”

  “That upstairs’s nothing but a loft. I work up there, anybody down below will hear every little thing.”

  Blood went to the door and stood looking out. Then said, “We’ll go slow. Get everything set up right.”

  “I’m awful hungry.”

  He turned to her. Then drew out the leather pouch he wore around his neck under his blouse and dug and handed her a silver piece from it. “What you do, is walk back up to the mill. Tell Mister Chase I came to terms with young Potter. Ask if we could buy some meal and meat to get us started. Then, whatever he says, make sure you tell him I’d be happy if he was to come for a dram at his convenience. Be polite. If he’s got no provender I can likely walk out and find us something, fish or game. All right?”

  She nodded. Stood a moment and then went around him and out the door. He called from the doorway before she was out of the mud yard.

  “Sally.”

  She turned.

  “Be modest. Don’t be bold with him or no other man might be hanging around the mill. Keep your eyes down. To yourself. And if you should meet his woman don’t let her pry. You’re an orphan girl here to help Mister Blood with his store. My ward. That’s all. Do you understand?”

  “I ain’t in no hurry to whore.”

  Blood said, “I need to take measure of this country. Cipher the people here. Learn who’s who. That’s how it works, a new place.”

  “I’m ignorant,” she said. “But I ain’t stupid Mister Blood. Long as you keep telling me what you want of me, best as I can, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Sally,” he said.

  The entire journey lay heavy on him as he stood looking down at her. Not just the cart trek. But along with everything else were the two hogs-heads of rum that word was already spreading of and that he needed to get inside before night came down. It was late afternoon and they would come off the cart hard and harder up into the house. If the goddamn door was wide enough for them. Which, one way or another, it would be.