Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  “Come on,” she said. “Come in the house.”

  * * *

  He sat on the bench with her shawl around him while she blew the fire up and sat also when she opened the door and spoke the dog’s name and waited until the dog came in, where once inside he looked at Blood and went into the tavern and Sally shut and bolted the door and knelt again and pokered the fire flat and added logs on top. Then she came to him, took the shawl from his shoulders and folded it and placed it on the table and then took his hand and he stood and followed her into her room. Where she undressed him while he stood motionless and then let himself be led to the bed where she covered him with the soft bearskin and he lay shivering in the dark while she reached up to close the shutter of her window. Lit only by reflected fire from the next room she undressed and came under the cover.

  She knelt up under the robe which tented over her and spilled down to cover him and he could not see her at all but felt her hands running over him, just sliding at first over his chest and arms and then down his stomach to his thighs and on down his legs until she was hunched at the bottom of the bed with first one foot and then the other between her hands. At his feet she began all over again, this time gripping and stretching and working the muscles between her hands, doing this all the way up his body, this time much more slowly, and he was warming as she went. As she worked and moved over him some part or another of her body came against his briefly and he knew this was not provocation but still each time something other than her hands touched or brushed him he clenched hard his teeth against that impact. It was the first time in years anyone had touched him so; the first time he would have allowed it if any previous had tried but none had.

  When she came again to his arms and chest and shoulders she did not stop there either but worked her hands over his face and he felt his face coming apart much the way he’d wanted it to earlier. But nothing like that for this was a loosening, a gentle breaking into parts that once broken could then readhere.

  When she was done with that she paused. In that brief moment he heard both of them breathing and nothing else. Then she went down the length of him once more, this time her fingers spread flat and easy, serving only to guide her head as she worked him with her mouth, the lightest of kisses and licking, at his armpits, his nipples, navel, the bones of his hips, down the inside of his thighs and then lifted his legs to run her tongue in broad slow swaths against the backs of his knees. And on down again to his feet where she took each toe separate into her mouth and laved it with her tongue. Then holding one foot in each hand she spread his legs and came up between them to his groin and took him in her mouth and his teeth unclenched and he groaned. In an agony pure from a deep recess of his soul.

  She rose up over him and with a sweep of her arms threw the robe off, at the same time leaned her face toward his as she arched the small of her back and without needing any hand to guide fitted herself around him. She stopped for one long moment with him just inside. Then she rocked back and forth again very slowly until she was all the way down pressed tight against him. His hands came up and cupped her buttocks and she paused and through her teeth said, “Let me” and he did, keeping his hands upon her but only to feel her movement. She took his lips with hers and her tongue pressed through and scoured the inside of his mouth with its tight hard probe and he was inside of her and she was inside of him. She did not take her mouth away even when she began to speak words of some language that he’d forgotten he’d ever known but recognized and arched up to strain his mouth against hers and began to answer her. Both muffled and both insistent. Both known to the other. His hands slid up to her back and shoulders and drew her against him, to hold her as tight to him as he could. Their hips rocked. His toes strained toward the inevitable sky. His mouth filled sudden with only her hot breath. His own was gone.

  After a time they just lay against each other. Not either of them wanting to move. Both very still, neither one poised or alert. The precise clever inertia of satiated bodies. The air beyond the log walls flecked with birdsong.

  Finally Blood spoke.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice rough, his throat barely able to work.

  She raised her head and then pushed up on her elbows to look down at him. Her hair streaming down to shroud his face.

  “Don’t you ever,” she said, “thank me.”

  He was quiet some time. Then he said, “Why not?”

  “Because,” she said, “it’s like getting paid. Don’t you ever try to pay me Blood. Not one way, not another. Not no way at all.”

  Three

  A few days later the Coos County high sheriff rode up into the country looking for a man he would not name. And Blood waited patiently to see if the quarry was in actuality himself. Mose Hutchinson spent several days, taking board with the miller and his wife but otherwise riding the hinterlands, tracking the smoke of campfires at dawn and was reported to have covered the territory deep past the lonely outposts of the most ragged of trappers, finally taking the scrabble of a trail all the way over Halls Stream into Canada and still came back without his man, riding in a thunderstorm. It was that night he tied his horse in Blood’s barn and came into the tavern to shed his sodden woolen overcoat, hanging it topped by his wide-brimmed hat on a peg by the fire before coming to the counter. What few men lounged leaning there stepped aside to make room for the sheriff, each maneuvering to give ground in such a way so it seemed they were not moving at all. In the corner there was a single improvised table with keg seats and here Gandy sat at cards with Cole and Van Landt and Peter Chase and these players glanced up at the sheriff and then went back to their game. While none knew whom he was seeking all knew it was none of them. It was someone new to the territory. This much was clear from where and how he rode.

  Hutchinson was a lean man with long arms and a slab-sided head with thick hair the color of lead. His vest was dry but the collar and sleeves of his shirt were wet where the water had come through his overcoat and his hands were red-chapped at the ends of long wrists that lay on the counter as if there were too much of them, as if his hands were clumsy and difficult for him to use. He leaned his weight onto his elbows so his face came most of the way across the counter and introduced himself to Blood. Sally was up on the stool at the end of the counter and he did not glance at her.

  “My pleasure,” said Blood, who did not reach out his hand. “And yours, as long as it’s rum. It’s all there is.”

  “A tot.”

  “A tot. Yes.” Blood poured a dram into a cup and placed it between the man’s hands. Hutchinson took up the cup and turned it as if seeking unknown alignment and drank it down.

  “Another?”

  “One more.”

  Blood poured. He said, “It’s wet out.”

  “It’s better than ice.”

  “That’s so.”

  Hutchinson said, “I could do with one more of these. Can you supply provender?”

  “I can not,” Blood said. “It’s still a jackleg setup. I don’t have the kitchen for it. I should. Come winter, men would welcome it.”

  “Other times, too,” Hutchinson offered. For the first time he looked at Sally. “Perhaps the girl could find some sup for me. I’m chilled through and feeble with hunger.”

  Blood gazed upon the sheriff without blinking. After a beat he said, “The fire will dry you, the rum should take the worst of the chill. You sleep at Emil Chase’s. Does not the wife lay an ample board for you?” Then poured the requested third dram.

  Hutchinson spread his lips thin to bare his teeth. A smile of sorts. “She does. But the cost is dear.”

  “No less dear than here. If we did such.”

  “It’s not the money, man. It’s the chatter goes with it.”

  “I always found Emil Chase tight with words.”

  “I wasn’t speaking of the miller.”

  “The wife avoids me.”

  “Emil Chase is no friend of yours either.”

  “Each man lives as he k
nows best.”

  “It’s so. You seem to offend few others.”

  “I can’t swear I’d hear of it if I did.”

  Hutchinson drank off the dram and wiped his mouth with his yet damp sleeve. He said, “It’s the curse of public life. Most men tell you what they think you want to hear. Or they do not speak at all.”

  “So you think I undervalue Mr. Chase’s opinion?”

  “I would not go so far.”

  Blood studied the man across from him, making no disguise of his perusal. The sheriff’s face was open, placid; also giving nothing of himself. He was mild and without concern throughout Blood’s penetration. A man used to such. Blood saw all this and it was useful in its way. He reached for his pitcher and poured another dram into the sheriff’s cup. Then said, “I’d feed you if I could. But then every other man would expect the same. Like I said, I’m not set up for such custom yet.”

  Hutchinson nodded. “A man in your line can’t afford exceptions.”

  “Not any man can.”

  “Not all know that.”

  “That,” Blood said, “is not of concern to me.”

  The sheriff took out a purse and opened it and placed a dollar on the counter. He said, “You were right. I’m warming up. And in less of a hurry for my supper. There’s a drink or two left in that coin, isn’t there?”

  “More than two. If you want them.”

  Hutchinson looked at Blood. “I believe I do. But tell me this, Mister Blood. My horse has no fire nor drink to warm himself. Could I purchase fodder for the beast?”

  Blood did not pause. “Did you not see the haycock as you rode in?”

  “I did.”

  “Go feed what he’ll eat. A horse is not a man. There is no need for him to be hungry with good feed five steps away.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  Blood said, “Let your horse be grateful. There is no charge for him. Go tend him and then come back and drink the rest of your dollar. Or however much you want. That was not the lone coin in your purse.”

  “You’re shrewd, Mr. Blood.”

  Blood shrugged. He said, “I’m in business.”

  “I guess I am too. After a fashion. Sometimes with more success than others.”

  “All ventures are such.”

  “I’ve worn my ass raw riding after some fool boy. Sold his cattle and ran rather than settle honest debts. No one but himself made the trouble.”

  “What makes you think he’d come this way? There’s not much to spend money on, here.”

  Hutchinson leaned across the counter to speak to Blood. “There are those who think I’ve no jurisdiction here. I myself am not clear on the matter. What you people do to one another is not my concern. I recently tried to explain that to Emil Chase. But if someone, from here or there, does wrong in Coos County then I’ll ride into Canada after him if that’s what it takes.”

  Blood studied the man. Then he said, “It’s summer. There’s young men all over this country taking a look at it. Some serious and some on a frolic. I imagine you’ve met a good number of them these last days.”

  “I have.”

  “And none seen your man?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “If they had, none was in a hurry to tell me.”

  Blood said, “A young man with motivation, I couldn’t see him stopping here.”

  “I guess not. I thought it was worth the ride.”

  “At least,” Blood said, “you had a chance to look the country over.”

  Hutchinson paused, showing he understood Blood’s implications. Then said, “No, I expect you’re right. A young fellow like this rascal Gibbs, had that much money, I guess he’d push right on through to Canada. He could travel west up there and come back into the country and no one would know a thing about who he was.”

  Blood said, “Or stay right there in Canada. There’s a lot of it, is what I hear.”

  “There is. There surely is. Why, who knows? Someday this right here might be a part of it. Not if New Hampshire has a say in the matter, but no one much listens to us. It’s up to the men in London and Washington, I guess.”

  “Being here in the middle of it, it’s hard to imagine who would make much effort over it. But then, it’s almost never about the actual place, is it?”

  “Sometimes,” said the sheriff. “But not very often.”

  Blood nodded. Thinking whatever invention the character Gibbs might be, this short interview was not enough to justify the time spent hard riding in bad weather—that whatever Mose Hutchinson sought encompassed more than Blood himself.

  A week later Sheriff Hutchinson and four men from the Coos militia rode up from Lancaster under cover of darkness and at first light arrested a pitch holder called Watkin up on Indian Stream under a warrant from the Coos County judge for bad debt. Watkin would not go with them and so was clubbed with the barrel of a horse pistol, strapped across the back of one of the men’s horses and led out of the dawn dooryard with blood running down matting in his hair while his wife and children stood watching, listening to the sound of their husband and father coughing and choking on his own blood. His older boy ran then the half mile to the nearest neighbor and roused the man who rode first back to the Watkin house to speak with the wife before turning his horse with the Watkin boy behind him to race to Emil Chase. He reached the mill as the sun came over the hills beyond the lake and spread the still water with a broad path of fire. Chase was grinding early Canada corn. The miller listened and then sent the Watkin boy and his own off to alert neighbors and have them spread the alarm.

  By midmorning there were eighty men and youths in disorderly and boisterous assemblage at Blood’s that filled both the tavern and domestic quarters and spilled out into the yard, men weaving their way back and forth through all those clustering so the multitude reminded Blood of a swollen and maddened hive of bees kicked into a swarm but lacking the presence of the antagonist. The Watkin woman had been brought down by a neighbor and she alone was very still, seated at the kitchen table with tea grown cold before her, her hands engaged in her lap, turning over and over as she worked her fingers as if to divine something in the red-blistered digits.

  Emil Chase arrived with his wife and stood in the doorway and called out for silence, for order. Then his wife brought Mrs. Watkin to the door and tried to leave with the woman but men called out for her to stay, that they would hear from her. Mrs. Chase surveyed the crowd and did not look to her husband but addressed them all.

  “She hadn’t ought to’ve been brought here in the first place. Shame to all of you, those who brung her thus and those who left her so.” Then the Chase wife raised a hand against protest and finished. “Consider her needs above your own. Put down those cups and listen. She’ll tell you once and not again. Then I’m taking her from this place.” She looked at the stricken woman beside her and placed a broad hand in the small of the woman’s back and moved her up so they stood side by side. Mrs. Chase said, “Tell them, Cilla.”

  And the sun-red grief-smirched woman tilted back her head and cried out. “They come and burst through the door with axes and took Paul from the bed. He was in his long underwears. He would not go with them and they was shouting at him and the sheriff had a paper but would not let Paul hold it to read. Maybe he was afeared Paul would throw it in the fire. Or maybe there was nothing about Paul on it at all. The children was crying and the oldest boy Edgar kicked one of the men and that man swatted him down like a bear cuffing a dog. And Paul still would not go and so another one of the men broke his head open with the long pistol he was waving and Paul sagged down and they carried him out the house and strapped him across the back of a horse like a carcass and rode out of there. It was my boy Edgar ran down here with word of it. There is blood, the blood of my husband, seeped to stain the floorboards of the house. He could be dead,” she said and paused. Then said again, “He could be dead. And any one of you could be the next one battered or killed. We been too long without any authority in this country. We’re betwix
t and between. What kind of men are you to let it come to this? What kind of men? Just answer me that.”

  And Mrs. Chase led her down off the step and through the crowd of men who stepped back for the arch procession of the two bold women and some looked upon her and others dropped their eyes and not one spoke but all stood and watched as the women went up the road through the soft churning dust and sand until they entered the house beside the mill. The men stood, shamed.

  Behind the counter in the tavern Blood listened to the woman speak and watched the stiff set of her back and when both women stepped down into the yard they passed from his sight but he heard the silence of the men even more clearly than if they had been raging wild and he thought There, that’s done it, as the click of apprehension that he always paid attention to turned over in his brain. A physical sensation, the mild disturbance a bat-wing passing close in the dark brings to the cheek. More than what it was. A signal of some kind. One he could not fully read.

  Sally came beside him. She said, “What’s going to happen?”

  “You watch close, you’ll know as much as me,” he said. “But, I had to guess, I’d say you’re about to witness mankind striving toward the best it can do and most likely failing utterly.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means look sharp.”

  “I always do.” She stepped closer so she was just against his side. “You know that.”

  He put his left hand on the counter edge and left it there and stepped away down the counter, leaving his elbow out between them. He said, “Here it starts now.”

  Emil Chase shouldered his way to the counter and stood across from Blood. He said, “Will you suspend sales while we call a meeting? If not, I’ll make it the first motion.”

  Blood surveyed the room. Looked at Chase. “Your motion wouldn’t pass. But you need men sober as can be hoped for. For your goodwill, I’m happy to have your meeting run dry. They’ll drink up after.” And be looking to fill their ammunition pouches, he thought.