Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  “What is it,” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. Then added, “Take the dog with you. I believe he’ll serve to discourage anybody gets rude with you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “No,” he said. “Take the dog. And wear your shawl.”

  “It ain’t cold out.”

  Blood sighed. “It could be, the time you head back.”

  She went to the cart setting askew in the yard and dug out her shawl and notwithstanding the afternoon warmth spread it over her shoulders and closed the ends over her breasts. She looked back at Blood. “Is that better?”

  Tired, he spoke without thinking. “You’re too goddamn pretty for this place.”

  She tilted her head and looked at him. “I thought that was the idea.”

  He scowled and shook his head. “Go on. Get us some food if you can.”

  She walked out to the road, Luther beside her as if he’d heard and understood everything said. At the road edge where it was driest she turned and tramped up toward the mill. For a long moment, Blood stood and watched her go.

  He had to knock both door jambs out to get the hogsheads through and then he got the rest of his stores off the cart and piled everything in one far corner and holding an axehead in his hand he used it to hammer the jambs back into place. It was a rough job but would hold the door. There was a twig broom and he used it to sweep the ceilings and walls and then the floor. What he really wanted was to heat water and scrub everything with lye soap and he would’ve done it if he’d had a brush or lye soap either one. He wanted to rid the house of its mourning, to wash out the young wife and dead infant, the months of the young man’s grief, the long winter nights of whiskey-tears and the short days of interminable hours. All the remorse and what-ifs that clung to the place like shipwrecks at the bottom of a harbor, unseen but there certain as the tidewater washed over them. And it would happen, Blood knew. Not this afternoon or evening but over the days, with building the place into a store and letting it fill with new humanity, all the complexions and tonalities of the living. For a house was nothing but the structure its inhabitants erected within the walls. Everything came before passed away. Except in the minds of the living. Those certain rooms remained forever.

  The man Blood sat waiting the girl Sally and what she might bring for food as dusk came on that first evening, landed where he hoped to remain as long as fortune turned whatever snarled look she had his way, landed in the far deep reaches of the great northern woods, a place he’d not been driven to by any but himself, as the years passing had drawn him in ever-greater outer rings from where he started.

  Blood and Sally supped together on a wheaten loaf that he knew was dear and a piece of brined beef that had already been soaked and slow roasted—the miller’s own supper he guessed. And was not happy for it implied debt of some sort. But did not complain to the girl, could not lessen her delight in having been so sharp in her trading. He had fires going in both fireplaces and had dropped the bar on the inside of the door and they ate by the firelight that filled the house with blistering orange tongues of light. Running along and over her face as she tore the soft stewed meat apart with her hands and fed herself, chunks of the bread also. The dog Luther lay silent, unmoving, his head on her near foot. One of his eyes tracking every motion of her hand to her mouth.

  “I like that Mister Chase,” she said. “The miller. He was kind to me. I didn’t care for his wife though. That’s a hard worn-down woman, she is. Looked right through me. Like I was taking their last bit of loaf. But he says to me, ‘Don’t worry about it, dearie.’ Said, ‘You and that man look like you’ve a rough bit of trek behind you.’ Wasn’t after anything but a niceness. I know the difference.”

  “You leave that miller be.”

  She looked at him, frustration on her face. “Like I told you, I’m leaving everybody be, less you tell me otherwise. It was you sent me up there. I behaved myself.”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “It ain’t going to work good between us, you double-guess everything I already been told once about. I never had no father and ain’t looking for one. We’re in business together is how I see it—even if there was somewhere to go I wouldn’t run off on you, you’re the sort would hunt me down and cut me up. Or worse I guess. Although this is one piss-ugly place to choose to set up business. I guess that’s the idea. You and me, we’re going to be the big show here, idn’t that right?”

  Blood looked at her. Long enough so she looked away from him. The small tilt of her nose in profile. Her chin just raised, not defiant but making clear she was not scared of him. Which of course she was. Then, Blood still studying her, she raised her hand to her mouth and sucked the meat-grease from her fingers. Afraid and hungry. He wondered what caused him to come to such a land at the spring of the year and not think to find room for more than the single sack of wormy meal, most depleted. Even if the land was full of meat it would be winter-lean. So he paused, his eyes still upon her, pondering if that was the only mistake he’d made. This matter of food was such a simple oversight it worried him. As if some warning of what else he might have missed.

  He was tired. He said, “You flap your tongue at me all you want and I’ll do my best to bear up under it. But otherwise, the rest of these people here, you keep buttoned up for now. We come up from Portland Maine and anything else, you tell whoever’s doing the asking to talk to me. I’m serious as can be. I catch you blabbing on I’ll work you over so bad you’ll wished I killed you. We can make something out of this place, we watch ourselves sharp to start. You hear me?”

  She turned and faced him. Her lips in the firelight grease-stained, fresh as new-cut fruit. She said, “It irks me some to hear you. Ain’t you listening to me?”

  “You’re young. Young forget themselves.”

  “I ain’t that young.”

  “No. I guess not. But not one of us is ever as smart as we think we are.”

  She said, “You just speak up, you see me going wrong.”

  “Don’t you back-talk me.”

  “Idn’t there no pleasing you?”

  He was quiet then. Sat a time. Considered the gallons of rum just feet away and dismissed the notion. Not now. Not for some time. He wanted to be vigilant as he could be. After a bit he turned to face the girl again. Seated across from him over the lovestruck table, her hands cupping her chin, her face waiting for him, her hair spilling down meager with grease and dirt but pretty around her bright face. She was looking at him with something that might have been affection. Or amusement of some kind. Most likely, he thought, just her paying-attention, ready-to-run face. Practiced and for good reason. He sighed.

  He said, “You please me as much as I want pleasing. It’s just that what’s ahead of us is two three weeks of hard work and tight lips. And after that we’ll have this place stitched tight as a mean woman’s purse. And those that don’t like it can frig themselves in the woods for all I care. That’s how it’ll be, as long as we step careful at first. It’s a lesson in life, one you likely know but maybe never put so many words to it: You let the other feller talk enough and you’ll know everything you ever want to know about him. Idn’t that right, now?”

  “I seen that work.”

  “I imagine you have. It’s like that here, except it’s more than one feller. It’s the whole place. It’s got its own ways and they’re going to be somewhat different from what either one of us seen before. So we go easy at first. That’s all.”

  “Let me ask you something.”

  He wanted to rise. Go outside, walk around studying the sky and the clearing of land. See how things felt. Try and divine if there was any danger working immediate or close. He said, “What is it?”

  “Are we partners here? Or do you figure you own me? How’s that going to work?”

  He studied her. So goddamn young. Still thinking she could inform her life. He said, “I guess that part’s up to you.”

  “What’s that mean?”

/>   He stood and stretched. The hound rose with him, also stretching, a shudder running along the ridge of his spine. Blood looked up at the rough rafters of the loft and back to Sally. He said, “That’s enough. It was a hard trek here and I’m worn to a nubbin. And we’re not even started yet. What I’m going to do is go out and scout around, make sure I feel comfortable to get some sleep. I’ll take the dog with me. What you do is bar the door after me and then stand by it, ready to let me in when I holler. It’s another thing for you to recall: However good things are you can always depend on them to turn against you. You follow me?”

  “That’s a shitty deal.”

  “I didn’t bring you here to pamper you.”

  “I’m not asking for nothing like that.”

  “I’ve got no intention to be cruel to you either, you don’t demand it. You shouldn’t trouble me with this sort of thing. I got enough to worry over. And I’m not as young as you. I’m a tired man tonight. I get back in I plan to make up a bed one side of the chimney and let that heat seep into my bones. You can sleep the other side of the chimney or up in the loft, I don’t care. Either way will be better than anything either of us has had in a while. But right now I want you to stand by the door. I won’t be long, so long’s there’s nothing to trouble me out there. After that, we can sleep and worry about the rest of it tomorrow. All right?”

  She sat a long moment and then rose and came around the table and stood near. She was so small and he felt her shaking so close to him. Not a fear but some other pulse. As if she would give him something. She said, “You’re a strange man, Mister Blood.”

  He said, “You’re the most recent in a long line to make that cipher. There’s no help for it, none wanted nor needed. I am who I am and that’s not a matter for human eyes to see or judge. But you mean a kindness, Sally. You’re a good girl.”

  “That’s not something I’ve been called before.”

  “Like I told you, you can’t expect what life will bring.”

  She nodded. Did not move away from him. He was sweating. It was the first time he’d been warm in weeks. He didn’t want to leave it but needed the sudden sharp clarity of the cold one last time for the night. He paused and ran his hand over his face, squeezing the muscles, to try and let his eyes open a little wider. To see more clearly.

  “By Jesus,” he said, “I feel like I been trampled by an elephant.”

  She stepped back. Then reached one finger out, a delicate tenuous impact that touched just the tip of her chipped and chewed nail to his skin where his linen blouse opened down from his throat onto his chest. Took her hand away and held it with her other before her breast. She said, “What’s a elephant?”

  Two

  High summer. Days carved by the heat, explicit, exact, the world as if new each day. Nights so short as to be little more than a single dream, if the day’s labor left any dream room to work. Winter altogether vacant from the land save for the short gnarled trees and the bitter bite of spring water, river water, lake water. As if winter slept in the water.

  A man called the Deacon lived in a collapsed cabin built by some long-forgotten departed trapper in the bog up on Coon Brook, dwelt there on the meager rations provided by his negligent god, living his days to a calendar unknown to other men and so his Sabbath day fell not by a simple cycle of seven but according to some reckoning of his strident parched soul. This Sabbath not a single day either but a pilgrimage of however many days and nights without stopping it took him to tramp the rough circuit of dwellings of the Indian Stream country, those hundreds of miles surrounding the four Connecticut lakes.

  Regardless of the hour of arrival he’d stand outside and hold forth, his harangue particular and directed, as if the log or frame walls themselves gave forth knowledge of the infirmities of the souls within. It was a mystery what he knew for otherwise he did not venture from his miserable den and would not speak of the everyday when encountered on his rounds. More than once he’d been shot at, not yet with any intent to kill but only to drive him off, the gunner wanting his sleep or dinner in peace. Even if the Deacon’s words rang a bright shade too close to true he was tolerated as a nuisance child: not imbecilic but touched, and in such a place this gift was not important but neither was it scorned. Only the Papist Saint Francis Indians avoided him. When he would come upon their trapping encampments, regardless if day or pitch night, they would leave him ranting to rouse and pile their gear and goods onto hand sleds and drag them off into the woods, leaving him with his head tilted to the sky, his words trailing after them as if it were nothing to him if they heard him or not; he was speaking for them. He made no effort to follow them. As if this was not necessary for his commission.

  The Deacon came to Blood’s door one midmorning. Not his first visit there but the first so public. A gang of men gathered inside and out in the shade of the rock maple relaxing after the morning scythe when the sun burned dry the dew that let the blades cut clean. Men lounging in linen shirts black with sweat, some seated upright, backs against the outside wall with legs splayed full out before them, the blithe exhaustion of work well done. The air steady as water in a bucket. Pewter and tin cups of rum. Clay pipes, smoke a blue pleasant blur to the air, fragrant as the spruce from up hillside. Meadowlarks crying from Blood’s own uncut meadow.

  Blood himself was inside, in the dim cool, seated high on the stool he’d fashioned from the top of a powder keg and three peeled-pole legs. Behind his plank counter, a tally sheet beside him, a quill and well with ink ground and mixed just that morning. So it was the farmer Cole who spied the figure surging up the road raising his own small devil of dust, a scarecrow in rough linsey-woolsey the burnt black of a dead crow, pantlegs and coat-arms too short so his scabrous wrists and ankles were displayed, the boneyard glimpse calling all to view their own future.

  Cole in slow motion was sharpening the blade of his scythe, spitting to whet the stone. His pewter noggin secure against his inner thigh. He said, “Bless the day. Here comes something lively.”

  One of the Canadian habitants, Laberge, said, “One good swipe that throat be stopped for good.”

  Cole said, “You Papist bastard, it idn’t his fault he puts the fear of God to you. Do you good to mind the Deacon.”

  “Plenty fear in me, plenty God too. But my business, that’s mine. Not his.”

  Cole grinned at his neighbor. “It do make you uneasy don’t it? The way he knows what he hadn’t ought. It ain’t like nobody talks to him.”

  “The Devil.” Laberge spat and rinsed his throat.

  “Oh, I don’t reckon so. I guess when he’s not out spouting he’s shut up in that shack listening to voices you and me can’t hear. Or maybe just slipping around with his ear pressed up against walls, doing the same thing. It’s one or the other I guess. But he’s harmless, less you let him get to you. There ain’t no hiding from the Deacon.”

  “Something wrong with that man.”

  “Why sure there is. But that ain’t a reason to cut his throat or we’d all be dead.”

  “It be a hard travel to find a priest to hear my confession. So maybe only one two times a year I get before a true man of God. The rest of the time surrounded by heathens. So it is. But I got nothing to hide. Pure is me, pure before God.”

  “Oh Jesus,” said Cole. “Ain’t we all.”

  Blood heard this from inside and frowned. It didn’t matter that the men made light of the Deacon—he saw the man as bringing trouble. As if the man gave voice to those few who by nature or some garnered sense of the appropriate had aligned themselves against Blood from his arrival. Mostly women but he did not discount the power of women over their men. Even, perhaps especially, those men who flaunted their wives and came to Blood’s for what they would anyway. Blood licked clean the quill tip and laid it atop the tally sheet and waited for the first words to issue from that parchment throat. Both hands flat on the counter but he did not realize he was leaning forward until there came the swift urgent cries from the back of the sto
re, from the log room built onto the domicile end of the house with a single door, from the inside. Sally at work with the young pitch-holder Bacon who’d arrived only days after them to start his work, his wife and children left behind this first season down-river at her parents’ home in Bath. Blood didn’t blame Sally. She knew what took a man over the top, could gauge it in each and every one of them. But he regretted the timing.

  So he rose, pushing himself up with his hands, wiped them on his breeches although they were clean enough, went around the plank counter to stand in the shadow of the open door and watched the shabby devout come on toward the group of men, he alone in his ragged black not arrested by the fierce urging of the girl. But ploughing through the road dust, a filament extended out from him.

  The Deacon came to a stop before the group as she sang out. One of the men snorted phlegm-choked laughter. A short bark of wet sound. Then all was quiet.

  “Whore-master,” cried the Deacon. “The rest of you also. I speak to you all. For what one man provides and another embraces, the second man is as guilty as the first. Nay, I say even more so, for in his taking, in his embracing, by his allowing the supplies of evil to flourish, he makes possible the existence of the first man. So. All should heed. But Whore-master. How come you to this wilderness? What brings you here to this spot near barren of every kind thing needed for simple human sustenance? Why would you descend upon these good people, these people come forth onto this hard land to try to make a simple life for themselves and their families. I speak not of the criminals among them—they know who they are and they know I know it also—it’s no mystery to any of us why they are here, beyond the reach of law. That is what they believe. But there is a greater law and all men know this in their hearts. So tell us now, Whore-master, why choose this place to defile with your demons of ruin, your drink, your whore? We’ll speak not of that child. Not now. That poor little deformed pretty child you pervert to the lust of any man with a bit of the devil’s own coin. We’ll not speak of her. But of you, Whore-master. Tell us, tell your new neighbors, tell us all where it is you come from and why. Tell us what has brought you among us?”