Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  Sally perched on a hogshead behind the counter, her knees drawn to her chin, her skirt pushed down between her thighs so the cups of her kneecaps shone in the light and the light ran long ravels down her slender shanks. Her feet bare. Not talking to anybody, not yet. She’d commenced working again but only for the very few, usually not until the end of the night. Blood was watching to see if a favorite might emerge. He’d cut that quick. So far it seemed only who took her fancy evenings; what repeats there were had been short encounters during the day, which Blood rightly read as the result of convenience. He was confident that whatever thoughts she kept from him, it was not this. Not yet at least. She was forming no alliance save what trust lay between herself and Blood. Such trust a thing Blood would not attempt to measure or verify.

  The men were working long days to get their rowen up. If the weather held, if the month did not turn damp and cold, if the killing frost did not arrive until mid-September, there was hope for a scant but rich third cutting. The heathen fear had died before this stark realization. The endless dream of summer gone. Still, the patrols went out, down now to the same half dozen hard men once or twice a week, their circuit varied each time. They were relentless in their conviction to maintain this show into autumn. If the savages lingered, they hoped this resolute attention might move them along, even as they knew they’d as well be tracking day-old smoke.

  Blood drifted down the plank counter to where Sally sat. Gandy was leaning across trying to talk to her. He hadn’t given up, it didn’t matter what Blood had told him. Still, she wasn’t having any of him. Even the week it seemed there was no man she wouldn’t take she’d refused Gandy. It was a curiosity to him—Gandy seemed no less likeable than a fair number of the men. He guessed for each of them it was a form of game, at least they kept it that way. Blood knew Gandy burned. But that was all right. Sally could handle him.

  Blood said to Gandy, “Are you pestering her?”

  Sally said, “He’s a pest but he’s all right.”

  Gandy grinned at her. Blood said, “What’s the matter, those girls down to Bath get sick of you? Winter’s coming quicker than you think. Be worth the trek down there once more I’d think. Better than hanging around here where there’s no hope at all for you.”

  Gandy said, “I’m afeared I’d lose my head on the way. Or end up in some godforsaken bog. I ain’t going nowhere. My money’s run down too. I need to hold what I got for the winter stores.”

  Blood said, “Spend it. You know I’ll set you up.”

  Gandy grinned, his mouthful of black and orange shards. He said, “I’d bet you would.”

  Blood said, “It’s up to you. Just don’t moon around this girl so much you drive serious fellers away. But it was me, I’d take the trip to Bath. Those Indians aren’t going to bother you. They was, they’d long since of done it.”

  “I’m not going. One of them girls give me the pox.” Then he looked quick to Sally and addressed them both. “But I ain’t got it now. I took the cure.”

  Sally shook her head, an amused dismissal.

  Blood said, “The mercury salts?”

  “That’s it. Cleared the pox from me and near everything else I figger. I was struck low by it. Hard to say which was worse, the pox or the cure.”

  Blood nodded. “I hear the salts work. Still, you stay away from this girl here.”

  “Now you and I both know I’m right now as close to her as I can hope to get.”

  “That’s right. Just don’t forget it. And be grateful for that cure. There’s men gone blind and lost their minds, their bodies rotting away long before they’re dead from the pox.”

  “I heared that. I never seen any.”

  “You don’t want to.”

  “Can’t you two talk about something else?” Sally slid down from the barrelhead and came up beside Blood.

  He said, “It’s a fact. I expect you already know it.”

  “It don’t mean I want to set around and talk about it.”

  “Well, just check each man good for chancres or the drip. Especially those old reprobates like this feller here.”

  Gandy grinned. Blood guessed Gandy didn’t know the word but was glad to be included in some rare form of company.

  Sally said, “I know how to watch out.” Then she said to Blood, “Come over here a minute. I want to talk to you.”

  He looked at her. She was serious, rapt, something lit in her eyes. He stepped back against the wall by the stockade door with her.

  “What is it?”

  She worked a hand in her hair, a nervous twitch that aggravated him but one he would not speak of. It was not a thing she even knew she did. She said, “Well, it’s about my birthday.”

  “What birthday?”

  “I never had one. I mean I did. I wasn’t hatched I guess. But I never knew when the day was.”

  Blood waited. She was looking down, away from him. And when it was clear he would say nothing she raised her face and her color was high, her cheeks like sunburn.

  She said, “So I thought I’d just go ahead and pick one out.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “I see. You got any particular date in mind?” Something in Blood constricted, turned over, some thing he would not name. Or could not.

  “I was thinking maybe this Sunday?”

  “You asking me?”

  She looked down again. Then back up fast. Her words out quick as if she had to do it that way or not at all. “I was thinking maybe do something nice. Something quiet. The two of us.”

  Blood stood looking at her. He didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she was doing to him. He knew that. And so he went on the same as before.

  “This Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want your birthday to be this Sunday?”

  “I do.”

  “Well. Can you tell me what day of the month this Sunday is? A birthday is supposed to be the same day each year. I can’t see it would help to pick a day and not know what one it is. Idn’t that right? So, can you name the day of the month?”

  She looked up at him. “That’s where I was thinking you might help me out.”

  “I see. Well. You know the month?”

  “Don’t torment me,” she said. “It’s August.”

  “That’s a start. So this coming Sunday in August. Now tell me. You decided how old you’ll be this next Sunday coming in August?”

  “I did. I’ll be seventeen.”

  “Could be sixteen. What you told me.”

  “I feel more seventeen.”

  He paused and rubbed his hand over his face. He looked at her and said, “It won’t be so long, you might regret that extra year.”

  She nodded. “I can always change it back if I want, can’t I?”

  Blood shook his head. He said, “Sally.”

  She frowned. And he saw her uncertainty and let her have it. Her voice low but her eyes still clever she said, “What?”

  Then he said, “This coming Sunday would be August twelfth. Do you like that number?”

  She beamed at him. “I do. The twelfth of August. I like the way it sounds.”

  “All right then,” he said, already wondering what he was agreeing to. So he said, “Now get to work. Do something. Wipe down this counter.” She nodded and turned away from him, reaching for a piece of old sacking folded on the lip of the kettle behind the bar where he rinsed the cups. He said, “Well. Happy birthday, I guess.”

  She turned back. Her face ferocious. “No. It’s not til Sunday.”

  What she would not know, could not know, was the date she plucked from the air was the date his wife and eldest son drowned. And not only the date but by the unlikely coincidence of the simple cycle of years, this twelfth of August fell on the second Sunday of the month, the day of the week of that event. As always Blood would pass the day as all previous—he would not allow the sentimentality of grief to besmirch his burden. But could not but wonder what tender prov
idential filament had provoked Sally at this moment and time—if the air she plucked did not flow outward from him thicker than he thought or if it was indeed some greater authority. Either way he determined to hold his faith in silence and somehow allow the girl the day. This simpler than demanding a different choice.

  Sometime after full dark a stranger came in, a small man with a white beard spread down onto his chest but no hair on his head which was covered by a small round cap of colored triangles of cloth sewed together and wearing a vest of the same outlandish design over a simple white blouse. Full-length trousers of wide red and white stripes and however small he was he was smaller than he appeared because on his feet were high wooden clogs of a type Blood had never seen before but long ago had read of. The man had a silver hoop in one ear and a small battered squeezebox slung over one shoulder and on a leash held in one hand was a monkey dressed in miniature duplication of his master. The monkey came into the room on all fours and when silence had spread complete throughout the room and all were pondering this apparition out of the night the monkey stood on his rear legs erect like a man, slowly surveyed the room and deeply bowed as if overwhelmed with the honor of the company it found itself amidst. And the old man at the other end of the leash spoke.

  “Gentlemen.” He addressed the room, his voice at once persuading and commanding. “Gentle men. Forgive my intrusion, forgive my interruption of your evening but pray you allow me a moment to introduce myself and explain my unexpected presence here before you. An unexpected presence. For what else could it be. It could be many things, gentlemen, it could indeed be many things. It could be pleasure or simple amusement. But it could be more than that as well. Yes. Indeed it could very well be more than that. But I race ahead of myself. First things first, first and always. So it is that the world demands and rightfully so. We wish to know not just what but who we are dealing with. And always, gentlemen, always we must begin with the who. Even though I could name myself anything but my true name and you would have no way of knowing otherwise. But so it is. So it always is. We begin with the who and then can hang bits of the why upon the who and therefore we come to know a man. So. Indeed. The who.” Here he paused and reached his free hand and swept the round cap from his head as if his naked pate indicated not only his integrity but his vulnerability as well.

  He said, “I am Phineas Vitalis. It’s my true name sirs. Now you have that and the rest follows easily enough. I have seen the wonders of the known world. The known wonders of the world. I’ve stood before the humble cottage in Stratford where the great Shakespeare was born. I’ve walked the boulevards of Paris and bowed before Napoleon. I’ve been in Saint Petersburg by the grace of the czar and czarina. I’ve stood before the Great Pyramids of Egypt and seen the Sphinx. I’ve seen lions roaring at the breaking sea on white sand beaches of Africa and stood in the slave markets where black men sell their brothers and cousins, the daughters and wives they’ve tired of. I’ve trod the bazaars of Constantinople and drunk tea with wild men from the mountains of the Caucasus. I’ve sailed to the Indies both east and west. I’ve seen the mighty mountains of South America, mountains that make these mountains south of here, forbidding as they are, appear to be the merest of hills. All these things and more. Countless untold wonders. The world, my dear sirs, is filled with wonders. A man may travel all his life as I have and see only the least part of what there is to see. And I speak only of the places I have actually seen, make no mention of those wondrous places I’ve heard of, be they of myth or fable or just a day’s journey away. No. I content myself with what I have seen. For my eyes have no lies within them. Lies are the work of men but are puny failures when tested before the real absolute world. Sights once glimpsed stay within the grasp of the mind and are beyond dispute.”

  “You’re some kind of wonder, yourself.” One of the men, the first to speak.

  Sally came close to Blood and whispered to him. “What’s that little creature?”

  “It’s a monkey.”

  “It almost looks human.”

  “It’s the clothing it’s got up in makes it seem that way. You can train one about like a dog. Get up next to it, you’ll see it doesn’t look a thing like you or me.”

  She said, “I ain’t so sure of that. Except for his size he looks awful close to some men I seen.”

  Blood grinned at her. Then turned back as the stranger spoke again.

  “No gentlemen. I am not a wonder. I’m lucky, is what I am.”

  Blood spoke up. “So far. Tell us what brings you here. This is no place grand or memorable. Why choose us?”

  “A reasonable question from a reasonable man. I presume you’re a reasonable man.”

  “I’m tolerable.”

  “The proprietor?”

  “I am.”

  “I beg your pardon sir. I should have sought you out and gained permission for my poor spectacle before I launched myself.”

  “If my question’s so reasonable why don’t you answer. Right now you recall me of a frog leg in a hot skillet.”

  “A lovely dish. With a glaze of stock reduction and lemon peel and capers—”

  Blood cut him off. “The only caper I see right now is you. Come to the point man.”

  “Precisely. My circumstances are somewhat reduced. Nevertheless I’m journeying north to Montreal where the King’s Governor has extended an invitation to me. I have it here, in my pouch.” He patted the leather rucksack on his back. “You’re welcome to peruse it, although it is, in fact, written in the French language. Which is still, in some places, the language of the Courts.”

  “I read French.”

  “Indeed. I should not be surprised. You struck me as a worldly man when I first glimpsed you.” The little man bent and extended his fist that held the leash-end and said, “Hugo, up!” The monkey jumped and squatted on his fist and the man rose upright and came to the counter and, with the monkey still on his fist, dug his rucksack around to the front, opened the flap and rummaged within and brought out a folded parchment and handed it over to Blood. Blood stepped down the counter so he was under the light and opened the vellum which was folded three times and bore a number of seals and inscriptions upon the top of the sheet. The paper was no longer crisp but soft with age. The dating had been reworked with a lesser pen. His reading French was not as strong as it had once been but the name Phineas Vitalis was in prominent enlarged script in the second line. The rest of it could have been near anything. He scanned over the lines which were smudged and largely incomprehensible anyway and then lifted his gaze to the man who was leaning forward awaiting him. The old man had bright eyes that had once been clear blue but were now watered and filmy and shot with blood. The eyes were at once eager and urgent. Blood decided that if he was not quite what he said he was, he once had been, even if that was nothing more than a charlatan of high stripe.

  Blood said, “We have little entertainment here but what we provide ourselves. What do you propose?”

  Vitalis nodded as if they understood each other, as if he’d read correctly all that Blood saw. He said, “It’s not as grand as it once was. But it might prove pleasant enough diversion. Mostly I squeeze songs and Hugo dances. He has a broad repertoire. Most find it amusing. He will do tricks for a nibble of food. He’s not particular. And if the evening goes well, he has a peculiar behavior that a select group of men might be amused by. There is nothing more than that. I used to sing but my voice is gone. It was sweet once.”

  “And remuneration?”

  “Nothing more than what men offer to the cap. Nothing from the house. Although if my playing should satisfy you I’d not refuse a dram or two.”

  Blood held his eyes a long beat. Then said, “Do your best.”

  So the little man removed to the center of the room and unleashed the monkey from its collar and the monkey hopped to the floor and stood waiting gazing up at its master. Phineas Vitalis brought the squeezebox out before him and opened it and then rose on his toes in his wooden clogs and stood
a moment poised and while standing so fingered the valve buttons and then pumped the stretched bellows half-closed and a pair of rusted notes wheezed forth and hung in the silence of the room. And Vitalis closed his eyes and raised them to the ceiling and waited a long pause for the residuum of the warped notes to die off and then sank back onto his heels and brought the squeezebox together in a furious rush of ululation and a wild wailing music sprang forth into the room that was no music Blood had ever heard anywhere before but seemed transported whole from some place exotic beyond reckoning. And the monkey begin to spin and whirl about the floor as a creature possessed, holding his arms upthrust over his head so the ends of his unbuttoned vest flew out and slapped against his sides as he turned, his hard-horned feet clapping a curious counterbeat to the music as they struck against the floor and the men in the room stood back a little tighter pressed to the walls, to make room, to leave distance as great as possible as if there were some danger in the phenomenon before them. And Blood watching remembered the man speaking of the places he’d traveled and thought I’ll be damned but he learned that music somewhere. Unless he made it up out of his head. And even as he was thinking this the squeezebox slid into a long dying-away moan and then rose again this time in a slow lulling dreamlike tempo that was aching with sadness so pure and profound that the men grew even more still as the strains entered throughout them, beyond their ears and brains to the core beyond logic or reason that runs in muscle and tissue and blood and the monkey swung slowly as if a top driven by a breeze, with his arms extended before him and his wrists lank so his hands flapped gently as if moved by that very same breeze, the monkey’s head tipped back toward the ceiling now and like his master he moved within the music with his eyes closed.