Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  He sat looking at her. She stood watching him, waiting for something. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t want to know. He was angry, some sort of fool. He stood and said, “Do you know what she wrote on the list?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to know?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess? Don’t guess girl. Be sure of what you want.”

  She tilted her chin up a little. “What was it? What she wrote.”

  “That you shouldn’t dress like a whore. That it’s bad for the children. That I should wrap you up in brown woolens. How does that sound?”

  “That’s what she said?”

  Blood went to the fireplace and took his hat from a peg and went to the door and stopped and looked back.

  He said, “I’m going to see if I can run down Gandy. Go on, make your beet pickle.”

  She said, “She hadn’t ought to’ve said such a thing.”

  Blood breathed deep and easy, three times. Then said, “We need some winter clothes though. They say it gets cold enough to crack iron. So, consider what you want.”

  And went out. Not liking himself very much and not quite sure why. Beyond the usual multitude. Although it would be interesting to see what sort of winter goods she decided upon.

  He would’ve knocked down the man who suggested it, or even the girl herself if she were to voice it but he wasn’t sure anymore what to make of her whoring. Most nights she slept through with him but afternoons and evenings she worked when work came her way. It irked him that this bothered him; it irked him that he allowed her to continue. There was no peace.

  Four

  As if the weather knew the calendar the last day of August broke with a hard killing frost. Where the sun fell the world spangled, autumn arriving in glacial brilliance, almost suggesting snow over the grass and low shrubbery. Where the sun had not yet struck it was ghostly, a pewter finish over the sagging grass and wilted goldenrod stems. The pods of milkweed were brittle and broke open to release their slight spherical webs of seed onto any straggle of breeze. Smoke streamed white straight up from chimney tops and mist obscured the lake, hanging in sheets of cold vapor that disintegrated slowly from the top down as the sun came over the hills. A third-quarter moon hung against the endless fathoms of a cobalt heaven, the moon a quartzite river stone.

  Blood woke early with the chill. Sally was pressed against his front but had dragged the covers over her so his backside was cold. He slid from the bed, gathered his clothing under his arm and went into the kitchen. Luther was sleeping against the door. Blood knelt and blew flames from the raked coals to kindling and then dressed. When he pulled his blouse over his head he heard a low thrum of sound coming from the dog. He looked and saw he was not asleep but was lying with his body pressed against the base of the door, his nose deep and hard against the slim crack where the bottom of the door fit the sill. The hair on his back quilled in a ridge.

  When Blood approached the dog rose and circled around to be behind him. Blood took up the ox goad and slid the bar off the door and stepped out into the smoking dawn.

  The pea-eating savage squatted against the side of the building. Dressed in leggings and loincloth and a rabbit-fur vest, hide-side out. His hair was oiled and hung straight onto his shoulders. There was the beginning of a new scar running down one cheekbone—a thick crusted scab of wound. Between his chin and mouth there was a broad swipe of bright yellow. An odd place for paint, Blood thought. Then saw the half-dozen broken eggshells littered between the moosehide covered toes and realized it was a simpler paint than he’d guessed. My goddamn breakfast is what he thought.

  “We ran right out of peas. But there’s potatoes and other such in the garden,” Blood said. “I guess you don’t care for that rough fare. Maybe you got a delicate stomach.”

  The man studied Blood a moment and then spoke a short burst of language that Blood did not know.

  Blood said, “I’m not buying that. I’d bet a penny you know plenty more English than you let on. You eat that many raw eggs, you’ll get loose bowels.”

  The man stood, a fluid effortless rising. He stepped close to Blood, not in menace but rather as one studying some mystery of an unknown world. A curiosity. He reached and touched Blood’s chin with his fingertips and took his hand away.

  “Dead,” he said.

  Blood’s bowels jellied. He said, “I guess someday. But it won’t be you brings it about.”

  The Indian gazed upon Blood with a face made from the scarred stunted hardblown land itself. He was silent. A long stare. Blood stood under it.

  Then the Indian turned and trotted up the rough road running north along Perry Stream. He did not look back this time.

  Blood stood watching some time after the man had gone from sight. Stood out in the dull silver stilled morning, his breath visible clouding out from his mouth. Finally he bent and gathered up the eggshells and walked as far as the bridge where Perry Stream ran into the river and closed his fists on the shells and then opened his hands out over the water and let the bits go. Like fragile broken brown skin the shell-pieces drifted down to the cold riled water and were gone.

  * * *

  Sally was in new winter clothing ordered from a dressmaker in Wells River Vermont through the store in Canaan, the materials all in grays and browns but for one skirt of dark moss green and a heavy shawl of deep cranberry. Blood scanned these wraps with mild amusement for while she had followed the Chase wife’s advice in tone the fit of the clothes was snug and spoke clearly of her form as well as her absence from the bitter chapping work that the other women of the settlement were accustomed to. And the goods were fine, warm enough but not the rough hand-loomed apparel the other women wore. Blood supposed Sally could be set down anywhere and she would thrive. The thought was not altogether cheerful.

  She had a basin of warm water set up on the table and was washing out the half-dozen sheaths of lamb intestine that she used with men, her sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she bent over the job, her hands working each sheath inside and out very gently. It was the basin he used to shave with but couldn’t say anything to her about it—what else was she to use? So he said nothing but each time she finished this weekly chore he took the basin to the river and scoured it with sand and brought it back to the house where he filled and emptied it not once but twice with boiling water from the iron kettle that hung from the crane. The thought of the crusts of other men’s sperm in his shaving water tumbled his stomach but he could not forbid her the use of the basin. If he were to regard this part of her work as so unsavory he must see it all that way. Even his scrubbing of the basin betrayed something of himself. Some hairline fault in his frank appraisal of the world.

  She pressed each sheath between folds of a piece of soft old dress material, the same dress he’d brought her north in five months ago, before hanging them over the back of the single upright chair which she then positioned far from the fire and out of the sun so the sheaths would dry slowly and not become brittle. Later in the day she would work a dab of the grease from sheep fleece into each one to keep it supple and less likely to tear. He guessed the lanolin made her work more pleasant for her. Perhaps simpler as well.

  Swiftly foul of spleen he said, “It’s nice work you do on the table where we sup.”

  She said, “I could set on the stoop and wave them at passersby, hang them on a bush to dry if you druther. I’m not ashamed.”

  “Watch your sass, girl. I’m in no mood for it.”

  “Don’t vex me then. It’s a bad enough job as it is without you pestering me. A week’s worth of men groaning and heaving. In a way, it would be funny, if it weren’t me it was happening to. But at least they don’t fill my belly. What would I be worth to you then, Blood?” And she met his eyes full with her own, boring into him as if she dared to know the answer. As well as silent somewhat hostile reminder of his own refusal to wear them with her.

  He turned away from her and took down his long gun from over the ma
ntel timber and his pouches from their peg. He slung the pouches over his shoulder and turned back to her. “I’m going out. A deer or young moose is what I’m after. You keep Luther close about you, in the house or out. I don’t like the feel of the day.”

  “What don’t you like about it?”

  “I couldn’t say. Just stay close to the house.”

  “You’re in a foul mood, Blood.”

  “I am,” he agreed. “Keep an eye sharp and stick tight. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  “No,” she said. “My eyes are sharp enough. I don’t rely on you to warn me. As for sticking tight, I’m not going nowhere. Not anytime soon.”

  He paused, knowing his face was sour. Then said, “It’s a burden off me. To hear that.” Then turned and left, shutting the door behind him.

  She waited half an hour and went into the tavern side and poured a dram of rum and drank it down. Then reached below the counter and took up the short tapered bludgeon of smoothed pig-lead kept there and put it in the apron pocket of her skirt and went back into the house side and spoke to Luther and they went out together into the morning.

  It had warmed enough so the frost was gone although passing into any shade was to go into a cavity of chill air. She went down to the road and walked over the bridge and came back up on the far side of Perry Stream where there was only a crude track to follow through the big hemlocks that bordered the stream. But fifteen minutes walking took her to a feeder brook that ran off to the west and following that another fifteen minutes she came into a wide bowl of open marsh.

  Here sumacs flared and some rock maples were balls of fire and birches the yellow of butter. Cattails grew in crescents along the shorelines of open pools of slack brown water and hummocks of dry grass lay stitched together throughout the marsh and she made for one of these and sat back to survey the day. She had been here twice before, both times without Blood’s knowing, after hearing of the place in passing one night at the tavern. It was trapped out but there were big trout in the deeper pools. She wasn’t after any of that but just the stillness of the place. It was a different stillness from the quiet of the tavern mornings. This quiet was a thing all of its own. It was here without her and yet it allowed her to enter into it, to become part of it. At least to tolerate her sharing of it.

  She sat on the dried grass of a hummock and hiked her skirt to her thighs and leaned back on her hands and tilted her face toward the sun. A flock of red-winged blackbirds swarmed the marsh, cutting and swerving each one but also all together as a group. She wondered how they did that. She sat in the sun until it was as warm as it would be that day and the grass around her was dry and then lay back upon it with her hands under her head. She did not close her eyes but looked into the open sky that was spread with high thin clouds made from the morning lake mist. This was the only thing outside of herself that she kept from Blood. It was important to have; it someway made what else she kept from him more substantial.

  The blackbirds roved over her. She thought it must be fine to be a bird. To go wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted to. Then again, noting how they moved each in some relation to the others, she wondered if it was not that way with all creatures—all can fly but only so much as allowed by their fellows, as if each was born to fill a slot allowed in the world. It was a mystery. A girl is all I am, she thought. And wondered what was a woman for? A wheel on the cart of man is what it felt like, and she snorted out loud. Yes there was that brief time when she knew how a man worked. At least until he rolled off and got his breath back into him and was already gone from her. It was a mystery all right. And decided if it was a mystery made by God then she wouldn’t like Him very much. Maybe just another man was all He was. The Head Man—the Boss of them all. She didn’t know. She didn’t know much about God and didn’t really want to. From what she could see God wasn’t much more than a torment to men. Women too. Maybe women even more.

  She watched the birds, the slashes of redwing markings when they turned. The two times previous she’d climbed up here there had been far fewer of the blackbirds and she marveled over the number now. Then studied again the color on the few trees changed from summer green and realized the birds were gathering to travel southward, away from the coming winter. She wasn’t even sure how she knew this—some mention sometime by someone regarding the changing of the seasons, spring to summer, summer to fall, the movements of the birds. Remembering the great flocks of geese and ducks and pigeons she had seen the spring before while traveling here with Blood. She did not know where the birds went. Some great distance. Some place she did not know.

  She considered what she’d told Blood: that she wasn’t going anywhere soon. A small lie, since she was here at the marsh when he clearly meant for her to stay at the tavern, but a larger lie also. Not that she had a plan. Plans, she thought, were what other people had. She’d seen her share of those plans fizzle to air. And what use was a plan when she barely knew where she was? What she had instead was a notion, a notion tucked tight, hidden like a coin in her boot. It was very simple: to pay attention to what was passing around her and watch for that opening, wherever, in whatever form it might take. Most likely a stranger. But nothing like Blood, nothing even close.

  What of her own tenderness for Blood? This the greatest danger of all, she thought. A tenderness mostly of proximity, of knowing one another, sharing in fortune, fate even. No. It was not that simple. She cursed him. Her tenderness for him was genuine—she cared for him. She cursed him again, cursed herself. Because she was no fool. She was not a girl smitten and there were two things she believed certain of Blood. The first being that it wouldn’t last and that however it ended Blood would abandon her altogether, even if that abandonment were only to relegate her solely to whoring again. Although she suspected that if Blood soured upon her he would sour thoroughly. She had a moment where she saw him sending her off to winter with Gandy or one of the other trappers, a meanness pure and simple: Blood’s revenge. And revenge for only being herself. Whatever she was to Blood, she thought, didn’t have all that much to do with who she really was. She guessed he saw her as something he might make amends to, amends for a fester tracked back to before she was even born.

  The second was less simple to parse. Opportunity, when it came, would demand she notice it first and lock it tight before Blood even guessed it might be coming. The idea sent a shiver through her. To outsmart Blood. All of this and to make the right choice. It was almost too much to consider. But it was within her now and not something to be cast off. It was not just paying attention. It was about how smart she was. Blood was the first person to make her feel smart. Again, the shiver of doubt. Against it, out loud she said, “I guess maybe I’ve learned a thing or two. On my own. It ain’t all from Blood.”

  The trick she thought was to be patient. But not too patient. She could patience herself right into the ground, she wasn’t careful. An important fact in this was that things weren’t working out for Blood the way he’d hoped—he hadn’t told her directly but it was clear that whatever it was he’d attempted between Chase and Hutchinson had failed. And perhaps even diminished Blood someway. She sensed it from the men around the tavern. It was nothing obvious but a slight loosening on their part, as if they feared Blood a little less. Or discounted him some other way. If he saw this she could not say. Again, she told herself, It idn’t all that much about me. In its way this only impressed further the need to jump. To pick and choose carefully. Because when she jumped it would be all the way.

  She thought If people could see their future all the world would be different. But it didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. Try was all she had. That and a sockful of money. And perhaps, the lies of love. A different sort of whoring. She could do that. She looked down at her thighs, white in the sunlight, tight and strong. She pulled her skirt down to cover herself and sat upright and watched the birds circle and cry, the light glancing off the still ponds, the sweet smell of the moist earth. Something was possible.

&nbs
p; She called the dog over and he sat beside her. Gazing off into the day, his brown eyes as liquid and unknowable as the marsh water. She put one arm over his shoulders and pressed against him. The dog did not break his gaze to look at her but allowed her to hold him so. They sat that way awhile. The day had lost a little of its warmth. There was a breeze breaking in short gusts over the marsh. The yellow birch leaves flipped over and some few came loose and tended toward the earth.

  * * *

  By noon Blood was far up Perry Stream. He crossed over Otter Brook and then left the waterside and began to work the triangle of land between the two streams, thinking this time of day the deer would be bedded but not up too high—it was warm enough so they would stay near the water. He moved slowly, working his way back and forth between the streams to cover the ground thoroughly. A bedded deer would stay right where it was unless he was close enough to alarm it. Especially a young one, what he was after. The spring fawns would be gaining size and weight but would still be with the does. The woods were big here: old trees, hardwoods. High enough so there were stretches where he walked with ease. It was the blowdowns and otherwise fallen trees he was hunting toward. In the scant openings there would be new growth of alder or larch or popples or hemlock. Good cover.