Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  It was some time before Sally would try the fresh milk or spread the butter that Blood himself churned on their rough bread and days of silence before she would admit she liked it. Even longer before she would churn the butter. Blood did not ask her to take up the milking. Telling himself not to expect too much from one such as her. But he had grown to like those quiet moments he spent that framed each end of the day beside the cow, when he could rest his head against her warm side and think of nothing at all. That was worth everything. In the end it did not matter that he was the only man not living alone who milked his own cow. Whatever people might think he did not care. It was a simple pleasure.

  Sally took up the hoe he made her and worked the garden. And he did not have the first complaint. However it happened, she knew weed from seed and the garden was as clean as any he’d seen. She did the work at dawn, while the soil was still soft with the night dew and the weeds came away cleanly. Times during the day when he knew her to be sleeping he would walk down and not enter but stand and look out over the filling rows and the vees marking her slow bare-footed tread down along them. Something in the impressions left by her feet touched him. He believed this was nothing more than her doing what she’d been told.

  Her customers paid her as well as Blood. It took him some time to discover this. When the man came almost immediately back into the public room with his complaint Blood did not blink but told him it was the policy of the house. After the fellow had gone Blood went to her room before she’d finished washing herself at her basin. He stood in the door and watched her. She knew he was there but did not look at him until she was clean and dried and back in her clothes.

  She said, “It seems fair to me.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “There’ll come a time, one of us is cold, the other still quick. It happens I’m the one still living I want to be able to do whatever I need to do without starting out from scratch flat on my back somewhere.”

  “It’ll take more than you to kill me.”

  “I never thought I’d be the one.”

  He stood looking at her. She looked back at him, arms crossed over her breasts, eyes reasonable, not placid. After a time he asked her what she charged. It was exactly half his price. He considered how many men there had been before one spoke out. Then he said, “Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

  “There’s some men I won’t go with. I ain’t a animal.”

  “I don’t blame you, the ones you refuse.”

  “Well. I need a new dress or two. I can’t go on wearing the same clothes forever.”

  “I asked could you sew.”

  “Well, I can’t. But you got that cloth. Seems we could find some woman who could measure and cut and sew.”

  He shook his head. “I dress you in that cloth I won’t sell the next yard of it.”

  “That don’t change the fact I need some new clothes. A new outfit sparks men up, ones that might’ve thought they’d lost interest in me.”

  Blood smiled. Then said, “All right. Use the tape and measure yourself and write it down and next time someone goes to Bath or even down to Lancaster we’ll send along an order. Pick your colors but nothing like what I’ve got in the other room. All right?”

  “Who pays for them clothes?”

  Blood nodded. “I guess we’d split it.”

  “Thirds.”

  “What?”

  “I’d pay a third, you the other two. It’s how it breaks down now.”

  “But you’d be the one wearing em. And like you said, something happens to me, why I wouldn’t be taking em with me, now would I.”

  She shook her head. “Thirds. I’m more than just the money men put in your hand. There’s plenty come not just to drink but to look on me as well. Ones that wouldn’t lie with me except in their heads. So I make you more money than we could sum, most likely.”

  He was quiet some time. Then he said, “You got it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “You’re the man that knows business.”

  Blood knew he was not being flattered. It might be one of her gifts but she reserved it for success and expediency. He said, “Think hard on your colors. And write down your measurements.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t what?”

  “I can’t read the numbers. Nor write nothing down.”

  Blood studied her. “How do you keep track of your money then?”

  “I can do money in my head. I learned that much. I wanted to, I could tell you how much I have. But I couldn’t write the figure out.”

  “All right,” Blood said. “I see.”

  So spent a long hour after closing one night measuring her with his tape and writing these measurements down with his terse descriptions of which body parts the numerals referenced. And noted also that she was not as meager or shrunken as she’d been when he first acquired her. She had fleshed up to a good sturdy body that was now all of a piece and her skin was taut and shining, as if the very life of her came near to overwhelming her body’s simple bounds. He was careful and steady with the tape and when finished wrote down the colors she’d chosen and indicated which color was for dress, for skirt, for bodice, for shawl. Then folded the paper in half and placed it under the salt cellar on the table.

  After she’d gone to bed he let himself back into the store-side and for the first time poured himself a cup of his own rum and sat there drinking it with only the light of the single candle beside the salt on the table coming slantwise through the open door. Pallid, fluttering light. Nothing like the hot bolt of rum in his throat.

  One mid-July dawn Blood was halloed from his bed and went out in his breeches to the already warm, sunless day. It had rained during the night and would rain again by noon. It was a good month since the last of the winter furs had been brought out of the woods and he smelled it before he even opened the door. A handsled stacked high and the load roped down. Something odd atop the load, a rotten pumpkin, a ball of hide and hair. The man calling, the sled-puller, was half-naked also, barefooted, shirtless, his knee breeches fretted and tattered by his passage. His chest and arms and legs bore great welts and cuts, some oozing yellow puss. His hair and beard were grown together, a thick black mass that surrounded his head like a crazed halo and covered halfway down his chest. Matted with twigs, leaves, caked dirt, appearing to sleep not upon but within the ground. He stood before the sled, calm and facing Blood but passing the tumpline back and forth from one hand to the next as if the hauling process were ongoing, as if his motion could not be altogether arrested.

  Blood remained just outside the door. A host of flies rose and fell around the sled. It seemed to Blood that even the flies were not sure they should land. He said, “What’s this?”

  The man peered at him, his eyes so red they seemed on the verge of seeping blood. He said, “It’s furs. You’re the one buys furs ain’t you?”

  Blood rubbed his face as if to push sleep away. He was wide awake. He said, “I bought some in the spring. When they was fresh. Whatever else that load is, I can smell from here it’s gone off.”

  “It couldn’t be helped. I got here quick as I could. There’s been problems.” He stepped toward Blood, the fetor coming with him. He dropped the tumpline and stretched a hand, “Simon Crane.”

  Blood did not move or speak. After a moment he said, “Where’d you come from?”

  “Up in the bogs southeast of the Third Lake.”

  “I can’t take your furs.”

  “Oh no Mister. Don’t say that. You got to look at em. It’s mostly beaver and mink, some otter too. They’s prime furs.”

  “They don’t look so prime. They sure don’t smell it either. They been out in the heat awhile. You waited too long.”

  “There wasn’t no helping it. I got em here quick as I could. You got to at least look at em.”

  “There is nothing,” Blood said. “That I have to do.”

  Simon Crane turned back and went to the sled and picked up the
tumpline and dragged the sled a little closer to where Blood stood. Then he dropped the braided rawhide line and walked around the load as if studying it all over again. Finally he stopped and seated himself on the load, facing Blood. As if the most natural thing in the world he reached and rested a hand atop the globe strapped to the load. Blood could see now that, whatever it was, it too was strapped in place with rawhide. Strings put on wet so they shrank and melted partway into the globe. That object was going nowhere.

  Crane said, “You got no idear man. What it’s like up there. Beaver and mink and marten and every last good thing you could think of but the land is like some froze-over spot of hell. Water everywhere. You’d walk out onto what looked like dry land, some hummock with trees growing in it and you’d be up to your ass in water. Right through the snow. Didn’t make one good goddamn how cold it got, that water was everywhere. It’s why nobody had trapped it. And we only touched it. We only just got it started. We didn’t hardly tap it at all. It’ll be good like that three four more years, no one else goes in there. And I tell you what.” He looked at Blood then, his head tipped sideways, a grin splitting his face. “There ain’t no one going in there. I know it. I seen to it. Ain’t that right Wilson?” He turned to face the globe that his hand rested on. And Blood saw the hand stroke the top of the globe, near a caress. And saw the globe rock, shudder, a wavery, watery look to it. As if it would come apart if not for the rawhide lashings.

  Blood said, “What’s that there?”

  “This? Why, this here’s Wilson.”

  Blood took a step closer. A man’s head, the flesh black and putrefied, the mouth a taut lipless grin, the eyes gone from the sockets, either rotted away and fallen free or eaten out by something or removed some other way. Blood halted and spoke to Simon Crane. “He don’t look so good.”

  Crane said, “He’s the best partner a man could ask for. I would have to say that Wilson is the best. And I’d fight a man would say otherwise.”

  Blood was fascinated. “How’s he so good?”

  “Well right off I’d have to say he’s agreeable. We don’t have no arguments, Wilson and me. But the best part, the best part of all is that he’s doing what no other partner could do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Why he’s in two places at once. He’s right here alongside where I can see everything he’s up to. But he’s also back to the camp, keeping track of things there. It would be a tough man would go up against Wilson either way, either place. Like I said, You couldn’t ask for a better man to work with.”

  “How come,” Blood asked. “How’d he come to be in two places at once?”

  “Well it were easy. When it came down to it. But before that, it was some tough I can tell you. Like I said, there’s been problems. To tell the truth Mister, it was not a winter I’d care to go through again. The spring either. And the water wasn’t the most of it either. Say, there been any Indians come through here?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “I’m not talking about them Saint Francis people all with their nuts cut off. I’m talking honest-to-god savages. Not but two, maybe three of em. It ain’t like I’ve seen em—no they’re too clever for that. But they’re out there. Been so right along. I don’t know what they are. Sometimes I think they’re some sort of ghosts. Except Wilson here he done a fair bit of time with em. Could be Mohawks, maybe even Cree. Wilson never did say. For that matter they might be some band I never even heard of. But they’re ugly sons-a-bitches I can tell you that. You sure you ain’t seen anything like that?”

  “Like I said, no. And I’d know it, I did.”

  Crane shook his head. “It seems like they’re behind me all the time. But I ain’t stupid. The rate I been traveling they could’ve caught up anytime they wanted. So I was sort of thinking maybe they was circling around me. It would be like em to do that. So I just wondered if you’d seen em. Or heard anything.”

  This time Blood just said, “No.” Then after a minute he said, “So what was it happened with Wilson? How’d he get so lucky as to be two places at the same time?”

  “The luck’s all mine Mister.” Crane paused and squinted at Blood. “You ain’t wintered here yet.”

  Blood remained silent.

  “It’s a hard winter. Hard as Satan’s anvil. You look like you can stick it. But there ain’t no way to tell. Now, come next March or April, whenever it is you think you’d crack your own head open for a new thing to look at, you remember how lucky you is to be here, where there’s mankind coming and going. Even if they be the same measly handful of ugly faces. You bear that in mind.”

  Blood waited.

  “The long and short is it weren’t that hard. It was Wilson’s time is all. It was either his or mine and I’m just as happy with the result. It was between the two of us is what it was. It was some time simmering, I tell you that. Now listen. You want these furs or not? I ain’t got all the day to stand jabbering. Them savages is around somewheres close.”

  “No,” said Blood.

  “I’d let em go cheap. I ain’t going back up to that bog anyways. Leave it to Wilson, is what I think I’ll do.”

  “No.”

  “They was prime once,” Crane said. “There’s some good to em yet. I just need some cash money to travel on.”

  “No.”

  “I’d take Wilson with me. For Christ sake man, I’m needing some Christian kindness here.” Crane stood from the load and came close to Blood. The smell was someway the most solid part of the man. His redshot eyes were wet, close to tears of some kind.

  Crane said, “I split him brisket to breadbasket. I didn’t have no choice. It was him or me. Even then the only way I could get him to quit that grin was to cut his head off. And them awful eyes. No man should see such a thing. Not even on his own best partner. I need to quit this country. I need some help man.”

  Again Blood said, “No.”

  “I heard you was buying furs.” As if he could not get past this idea. That had driven him through however many days and nights, and so could not release Blood from this obligation of his own mind.

  Gently Blood said, “They’re no good. They’re shot. You should just haul em off in the woods and leave em. Give up on em.”

  His voice a scabbed whisper Crane said, “They’re all I got.”

  Blood paused and then said, “That’s a sad fact all right. But I can’t help you.”

  Crane kicked one horn-hard foot in the wet sand of the road. Watching his own foot as if it might turn up the missing answer he sought. Then looked up and said, “I’m well and fucked ain’t I?”

  Blood looked off at the lowering clouds and then back at the creature before him. He said, “Each man-jack of us is, one way or another.”

  Crane said, “That ain’t no help to me right now.”

  Blood said, “I didn’t intend it to be.”

  Blood went back inside and shut the door but stood and so heard the blunt hard groan as the man took up the tumpline and drove himself forward, the handsled pulling up from where it had settled in the wet sand and man and burden went slowly away, a receding sound of sucking runners no louder than the pant of the man hauling. After a time Blood went back outside. It was still early. The road was empty but for the skewed tracks of the runners. Where it had stood there was a slight stain where the load had seeped its liquids down. The air was moist, inert, fresh with moisture. Blood considered the taint in the road and the churn of footprints to and fro, then looked up at the lowered sky. As he stood with his face tilted up the first of the new rain began to fall. Small spatters at first. Then a gust of air pressed through the trees and the rain came in hard, straight down and then abruptly sideways. Blood stood until he was mostly wet and then went back inside. He built fires in both fireplaces, small fires that he tended to ward the dampness from the rooms. With the rain stalling their harvest or as excuse to avoid other labors men would flow freely in through the day. He wondered if any others had seen the carrion voyage this morning
. It was possible some had been about that early. He hoped not. It was not anything he wanted to talk over. Or even listen to.

  Two mornings following he awakened early to the smell of tobacco smoke. The night had only begun to slip back, nearby trees mere dim presence, gray shadows. No more than quarter past three. The rain had passed and the weather cleared and so was cool, chill with the dew and mist off the lake this time of day and so he dressed fully and stepped to the door where the hound lay, wide awake and silent, his head tipped up and his hairline raised. Blood knelt and whispered the dog to Stay and opened the door and stepped out, letting the door settle back into the frame but not shut tight.

  A pair of Indians sat against the side of the store, hunkered with their knees up before them, their thighs bunched muscles against their ankles. Naked but for loincloths and moosehide moccasins and the straps and pouches of some considerable arsenal. Both had muskets and huge Canadian hunting knives in soft-worn sheaths, and the rest of their accoutrement consisted of supplies for the muskets. One was smoking a short-handled clay pipe and the other sat with a handful of the not-quite-ripe English peas from the garden, slitting the pod with a thumbnail and then running his thumb back up to free the small fruits and tip them into his mouth as a powder off a paper. A pile of empty peapods lay between his feet. Blood had been watching these peas ripen. He stood before the wild men and said nothing. When the pea-eater was done with his handful he rose and spoke to Blood in a tongue Blood did not know.

  Blood asked if they spoke English.

  They looked at him.

  He tried again, this time in French.

  They looked at him, faces immutable.

  Then he considered and after a moment of recollection asked twice more, first in Latin and then Greek. Not only for the small pleasure of the recall but more to impress; if he did not know their tongue they also did not know the variety he occupied.