Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  Blood stood without moving in the doorway. He heard Sally come into the room behind him. He studied the insane unrestrained eyes of the phantasm stalled now before the group in the yard. The farmers silent, unmoving. None looked at Blood and most looked down or away from the Deacon. Blood said, “She is pretty, idn’t she?”

  One of the farmers sniggered. Another, out at the edge under the maple shade, stepped off and away around the corner of the store. Blood wondered what he didn’t want revealed.

  The Deacon said, “Look about you good men. Look sharp neighbors. It’s not his drink, not his taking your goods in usurious trade, nor even the corruption of your flesh with the bought services of that poor child, no, it is not these things you should tend to. Although they be enough, and not a man among you knows different, to make you tremble for your measly mortal souls, for your immortal perishment within those same souls. But look to this man before you. Walk up close to him and sniff if you so dare. It is the reek of his bedfellow you’ll detect. I promise it as the Lord promises the new day. Who is that bedfellow you might ask? Well yes indeed brothers that is the question before you. Who is that bedfellow?”

  Blood stepped down into the scabby yard. Did not look away from the derelict but could feel the eyes of his customers upon him. Appraising, no doubt. Some merely waiting the next step. Which Blood was considering.

  One of the farmers, Peter Chase, brother of the immaculate and in-corruptible miller, spoke up. “Why yes, I can smell him from here. It’s that same sweet stink of sulphur water, ain’t it now.”

  “Yes,” said Blood. “I am found out. It’s the devil himself visits me every night. Although there is no bed-pleasure. I’m no sodomite. It’s been one long card game though, I can tell you that. You see boys, he ain’t won my soul yet and it just frustrates the bejesus out of him. Wears me right out, I can tell you. Up night after night after a long day doing my business the best I can. But we’re even so far fellers. In fact”—and here he paused and looked around the ring of men, taking each one in his eyes for the briefest of tenures—“in fact, right now I’m one lick ahead in the game.”

  Laughter. Some few lifted their drinks and sipped, as if no longer caring for the figure out before them in the dust. As if they had been awaiting for someone among them to take this game up and play it with the pious lunatic. As if Blood had stilled what trifling doubts any felt before the Deacon.

  Who threw back his head and roared at the heavens. “O Lord deliver us. The Stench and the cloven hoof is loosed upon this blighted land.”

  One of the men interrupted. “We most all got oxen.”

  The Deacon did not avert his eyes where he gazed direct it seemed into the sun as if daring it to blind him. “Lord,” he implored. “Give these men eyes so they can see. O Lord smite this attendant of the devil. Save these men, Lord, save these lost men.”

  “Shit,” said Cole. “I ain’t lost. I know exactly where I am.”

  Another spoke. “What that poor fool needs is a drink. I ain’t cheap, I’ll stand him one.”

  This was enough for Blood. As if a weathercock indicated his customers. So he strode forward toward the Deacon and took the man by his decrepit coat-front and shook him until he looked at Blood. His eyes rolled, but there was no way for Blood to know if this was fear or sunstroke. Blood then held him still and without turning his head called out. “Sally.”

  She came out from the store and through the group of men and stood by Blood’s side. Wearing her one skirt and bodice, now worn thin from washing with hard soap. She smelled fresh to Blood, as if her work with young Bacon had not even raised a sweat on her. Blood stepped now to one side of the Deacon, still clamped to one scrawny elbow. So Sally was before them both. Blood lifted his other hand up and covered the back of the Deacon’s head, hair thin and meager, as if the skin over the bone was too poor to produce hair of any substance. Held the head thus to direct his gaze.

  Blood said, “Sally, take down your bodice.”

  She looked at him.

  The lounging men heard this and rose and closed upon them, a half-circle not too near but all of them there.

  After a moment studying him Sally reached up and opened the buttons so her skin showed from the base of her throat in a long white strip down her breastbone and the swell of her navel to the waistband of her skirt. She looked at Blood.

  “Take it off your shoulders.”

  So she lifted each hand and tugged the sleeves down onto her upper arms so her shoulders were bare and the fabric came away and revealed her breasts.

  Blood tipped his head so his mouth was close to the Deacon’s ear and said, “Now just look at those bubs. Ain’t they the sweetest things you ever saw in your life? I tell you what. You’re a poor man. It’s no secret. It ain’t even anything to be ashamed of. So be honest now. Wouldn’t you like some of that? Wouldn’t you like to just roll with this girl here? Ain’t it what you really came up here after? To look upon her and go back to your puny little shed and work on yourself as if upon her? Idn’t that truly what you’re about here?”

  The men were silent.

  Sally did not move.

  The Deacon said, “Lord. Lord, Lord.”

  Blood said, “All you got to do is tell me that’s what you want and you can have her this time, free of charge. But after that it’s full price.”

  “O my good Lord. Help me. Help me now.”

  Blood said, “You’re crying out for Him and you don’t see Him but brother, He’s right here. Look.” He took his hand from the Deacon’s head but gripped tight the knob of elbow and with his freed hand took up one of Sally’s breasts. He said, “If that idn’t God Himself right there I don’t know what is. It’s what starts us all off in the world. As if God Himself meant us to feed and live through this. And then we keep all our lives returning to it. How’s that wrong, you tell me? How could any Lord have made this and not wanted us to come back to it again and again? Why man, it’s as perfect a thing there is in all creation. Idn’t that so? Just look at it. Tell me it’s not.”

  The Deacon moaned, a sound like the whimper of a horse dying in harness. He made no movement, not trying to get away from Blood or draw closer to the girl.

  “Look,” said Blood. “I’ll show you how it’s done.” And dropped the elbow and bent and took the girl’s nipple in his mouth and stroked it with his tongue and then opened his mouth wide and sucked so near her whole breast filled his mouth. Then stepped back. Her nipple was up hard, swollen and her breast was blushed rose and the blue veins seemed to pulse against the skin as if to break free. Blood looked at the Deacon. “See?”

  And a sound came forth from the thin cracked lips even more awful than the last, a sound that had nothing of whatever god in it and the man turned in his black clothing and flapped an awkward, knees-out-to-the-side gallop a short distance down the road where he then stopped and with his back to them bent and beat his hands one after the other into his crotch. From behind it looked as if he were being jerked by invisible strings.

  Blood would not watch this mortification but turned back to Sally. The circle of men were gazing after the Deacon. Blood reached out and lifted Sally’s bodice and her hands came up to fasten it closed although her eyes were severe and hot on his. He faced away.

  The men in the group broke. One began laughing and others also. Then whooping.

  Blood spoke to Sally. “Get on to the house.” Did not watch her go but turned upon the men who were replaying the Deacon’s flight and he spoke. This time his voice a clear command, perhaps brusque. “Stop.” They looked at him. He glanced around them but not once down the road, not wanting to see if the figure was still there or had journeyed on. He said, “Finish your cups and settle up. I’m closing for noontime.”

  It had been a good spring once the trappers started coming out of the woods, enough so Blood was gaining confidence, though one inner eye remained tilted askance. Most of his commerce was in rum—he’d expected this; his sales in lead and gunpowder wo
uld gain as the settlers ran low on their own supplies and his convenience would be appreciated.

  He’d shipped five cartloads of furs south to Bath, that village the most northern navigable reach for river freight, where he contracted with an agent of a fur house in Boston. Blood himself made only the first of those five journeys: alone, not even taking Luther for company or protection, leaving the dog alongside the girl minding the store. Equipping her with his long rifle, after spending an afternoon teaching her; loading and unloading over and over, measuring the charge, placing the patch, setting the cap—all that a dozen times before he let her make the first shot. By the time he was certain of her ability they had drawn a small crowd by the steady rhythm of the practice and he was satisfied with that also. Let them know she was capable. Sat that night before his departure watching her rub grease into the yellow and purple bruise on her shoulder.

  So he traveled with only his goad and confidence to protect him, making the trip down to Bath in a week. He stayed at the public house and ate and drank well—knowing it likely that if he should return again someone would have heard something somewhere about him. So he took minor pleasures and returned north with a new load of rum and some lesser personal goods, candles and such, including small twists of paper holding vegetable seeds and a sack of seed potatoes. He thought Sally might make a garden.

  The remaining cartloads went to the same agent with the trapper Gandy as teamster—the agent in Bath had been apprised of this and arrangements made. Gandy only entrusted with the load of rum for the return trip. Sometime later a man working for the agent would ride horseback to deliver the balance of cash money due Blood, the cost of that extra trip deducted. It was the best Blood could come up with short of traveling each time himself. There was some small danger in it but Blood doubted Gandy would flee with the furs or the rum. Altogether it struck him as being more provident than leaving his store in the hands of the girl. Shooter or no, hound or no. And Blood without intent to return to Bath, a quiver of doubt paid true when Gandy returned from his initial journey and looked Blood up and down with the nerve of a man who believes he knows something of another.

  His voice soft, his eyes keen, Blood said, “So how did you find Bath?”

  Gandy studied him a moment more and then looked off and said, “It’s too many people for me. But that feller Moore is all right.”

  Blood said, “He treat you right?”

  Gandy nodded. “Bought me a couple of drinks. Plus he give me the money for a bath at the public house and some new cloth breeches.”

  “I seen em. They look good.”

  Gandy scratched at where his winter-beard was freshly gone, the skin there a strange pale white, with only the least tinge of color to it. He said, “He likes to talk, that Moore does.”

  “I don’t care who you listen to,” Blood said. “Just so long as you recall who pays your wages.”

  Gandy was quiet a time and then looked at Blood. “It’s not for nothing I live off in the woods like I do.”

  Blood stacked coins on the counter and pushed them across. “It’s not a bad place to be. The woods. As long as you don’t mind your own company.”

  Gandy grinned. “You take off whatever strikes you as fair. I want a night with that girl.”

  Blood said, “I don’t think so. It’s not a good idea.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Well. She works for me and so do you. I got a deal going with each of you and I keep those things neat. Separate.”

  “Good God man. Have pity. She’s the only girl in trade up here.”

  “You should’ve considered that you was down to Bath. There’s pretty girls serving in the tavern there.”

  “I know it. I seen em. I didn’t have the money though. I hadn’t been paid yet.”

  “Well,” Blood said. “Next time you should be all set then.”

  Three more loads after that. He had enough rum, powder and pigs of lead to go through a long winter and cash money for what he couldn’t get in trade. Besides the room built off the back of the house for Sally, he also constructed a double-log storeroom behind the tavern-side. It was no one’s business how much inventory he possessed. The door was behind the counter and had a bar set in braces and a great iron padlock and chain running between the middle of the bar and a ring and bolt set into the floor. It was only opened when he was alone.

  She had squatted on her heels against the warm southern end of the house watching while he dug up a piece of the streamside meadow, the place that got the best light and was well drained. The earth here had never been turned but once the tough deep roots of the wild hay were cut through and lifted the dirt was dark and dense—a handful would crumble even while staining his hand from the moisture in it. There were few rocks. It was topsoil made from centuries of flood. He turned it three times with the spade, his only tool. He planned to carve her a hoe from a fine shaved plank of ash and bind it to a handle of ironwood. When he was done the plot was even and free of clumps of wild grass. He’d bent over and over while digging to lift up and toss away root-clusters and all but the smallest of stones. It was as fine a garden-piece as he’d ever seen. He went up and sat beside her, his hands stained with earth, his face damp from the work and muscles in his back strained in odd places. As close to happy as he thought he might ever be.

  He said, “There’s English peas and beet-root and parsnips and white winter pease. And the potatoes. Oh I can almost smell one hot and broke open right now.”

  She was studying her fingers mingled in her lap. She looked at him through the hair spilling over the down-turned side of her face. “I never cared for potatoes.”

  “What?”

  “We ate potatoes most of the winter. Tough little bitter things, bland even with all the salt to spare and like chewing something been sitting in dishwater. I’m just as happy with the meat and bread. I like that just fine.”

  He looked at her. He said, “Why girl, there’s almost nothing better than a fresh dug potato with a little butter on it. Salt’s fine but you don’t need it. It’s about the finest food there is. Except maybe those green peas fresh out of the pod.”

  “I never ate no butter.”

  “Is that so?”

  “But it’s like milk idn’t it? I mean from the same creature so I expect so. I never could stand milk neither. Near makes me puke just thinking of it.”

  He sat a moment, considering a girl who’d never tasted butter. He could imagine what she’d been served and called milk. And could even guess that the shriveled and sprouting seed potatoes in the sack would look better than any she’d seen. He was quiet.

  Suddenly, her tone bright as if she’d hurt his feelings someway she said, “But those peas sound good. I like a soup of em. Get a chunk of salt pork in there and that’s some good. I know that.”

  After a time, only because he had to, he said, “You never had a garden before, have you?”

  She looked at him, a little alarmed. “Like I said, meat’s fine with me. I like those trout too. You’d show me, I’d bet I could catch a plenty of em for us.”

  Blood shook his head. “I’ll mark your rows and show you how to plant. But you have to tend it.”

  She sat back and stretched, her elbows lifted beside her head. She said, “I don’t see why. You got a good start on it. It was your idea. I don’t care a thing about it.”

  “The thing is,” he said slowly, “it’s not my job.”

  “Why’d you start it then?”

  He stood up. “I only did the hard part for you. It’s a woman’s job.”

  She looked up. “I didn’t know I was your woman. I thought I was something else.”

  “Right now, we’re the closest each one of us has to a man and a woman. That’s all I have to say about that. Now. I’m going down there and start to plant. And you’d better get your little rear down there and watch what I’m doing because the first time you hoe up even the first potato plant or beet sprout will be an unhappy day for you.”


  He turned from her and bent and picked up the sack of seed potatoes and the bundles of seed-papers and stalked back down to the turned earth. All joy out of the day. He used a stick to dredge up rows and before he was halfway down the first one on his knees, scattering the small hard near invisible pods of beet-seed she was beside him, not yet on her knees but bent close to watch what he was doing. He did not speak again but to announce at the commencement of each row what the seed was. Then when all was planted he walked back along the rows and covered the seed by collapsing the small ridges with his boot-sole and then broke sticks to mark the ends of each row. Finally he waded into the alder thicket by the streamside and with his beltknife cut young trees and stripped the limbs of their new leaves and brought out these slight skeletons to stick upright in the middle of the rows of pease. Saying only, “This is for the plants to vine up on.” Then, done, he turned from her and walked up to the bend above the store where the stream held a deep pocket against the bank and stripped and let himself down into the water and washed himself. After a bit he floated downstream just enough so he could see her pacing up and down the rows as if memorizing them. Or cursing them. He swam back against the current and sat in the pale late-day spring sunlight to dry himself. He waited until it was dusk to dress and go back to the house. He was eaten-up with mosquitoes.

  Still, the next load of furs that went south, this being the third of the final five, he sent a letter along with Gandy and so a portion of his payment arrived this one time with Gandy and the hogsheads of rum—a young freshened milk cow. A simple churn wedged between the casks on the back of the cart. Gandy had not tended the cow for the journey home and so it was three days before she would let down milk. Blood squatting on his heels morning and night at her side rubbing her bag and stroking her teats. Until the streams finally came. Blood thinking Good Christ I’ve turned into a farmer on top of everything else.