Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  Blood said, “As much as she’ll allow.”

  Fletcher said, “I never heard a whore run that way.”

  “What’s a boy like you know of running whores?”

  Fletcher dug again and got his purse out and set down a dollar. He said, “Enough.”

  Blood took up the dollar. He said, “That takes care of me. The rest is up to her. She won’t take paper money nor notes.”

  Fletcher looked at Blood. He said, “At least she idn’t stupid.”

  Her room was small but ordered: clothing hung on pegs, a candle-lantern with the door closed so it threw its spew of dappled light evenly from a small stand beside the bed. A basin and pitcher also on the stand. The high small shutter was opened to fresh air. The bedding was neat-ened, rough blankets with a warm bearskin over them. He followed her in and dug a dollar from his purse and handed it to her. She slipped it into her apron pocket without looking at it although he was sure she knew it was a full dollar. He sat on the edge of the bed with his hands loose on his knees. She shut the door and slid a newly-peeled pole into supports that should’ve held a bar for the door. Turned and began to unbutton her bodice.

  He said, “Don’t.”

  She paused her fingers and looked at him. It was the first time she’d looked at him since he’d paid Blood. She said, “There’s things I won’t do. One’s to have some feller tear my clothes once he gets going. I can’t afford that kind of rubbish. If there’s something wrong with you that you don’t want me bare I don’t want to hear about it. Also, you get rough with me beyond what’s tolerable, you’ll go out. And Blood idn’t gentle over that sort of dealing neither.” She finished the buttons and took the bodice off and dropped it to the floor. She looked again at him. “You got to undress yourself, at least as much as you want. Usually it’s the older men with their bellies that like to keep most dressed. But it don’t matter to me.”

  He stood off the bed and bent for her bodice and held it to her. “Here,” he said. “Put this back on.”

  She ignored this. For a moment her eyes flat upon him. “What’s wrong? Your breeches is about bursting.” She reached behind her and began to untie her skirt.

  “Please,” he said. “Get your clothes back in place, girl.” He held the bodice as an offering, the garment a flutter from his hand.

  Her mouth compressed as she studied him. Not sure what he was about. So she said, “It’s the whole idear. Why else waste your money? You don’t get it back, not if it idn’t my fault you changed your mind.”

  He laid the bodice on her bed, stepped to the door and lifted the pole from the brackets. She came fast then and caught his shoulder. “Wait,” she said. “What’s wrong? Where you going?”

  He stood like that with her hand on his shoulder. Then dropped the pole back into place and turned. He stepped around her and picked up the bodice and handed it to her. She looked at him and put it on. Did just the one button to close it over her breasts.

  “There,” she said. “Is that better?”

  He stood pondering her. Abruptly she understood. She thought Maybe. But. Go slow. Take time. Something else she couldn’t name ticked over inside her as well.

  She said, “Now. You going to tell me what’s wrong with me that makes you want to run off?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “You ain’t never been with a girl?”

  “It’s not that.”

  She almost smiled at him. “That idn’t what I call a answer.”

  Fletcher was almost grim. “I paid Blood so I could see you. I paid you so you wasn’t thinking I’d waste your time.” He took a breath. “I want to talk to you.”

  “You want to what?” Still thinking Go slow.

  He said, “How long do I get?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much time did that dollar to Blood buy me.”

  “Most usually, as long as it takes. I ain’t never had a problem that way. Although you’re jabbering more than most.”

  He went back and sat on the bed. “Come over here and set down.”

  One corner of her mouth twisted. “It don’t buy you all night.”

  He almost asked what that would cost. He said, “Why don’t you just set down. I ain’t going to bite you.”

  “I’d bite a gouge right back, you did. What do you want to talk about? I don’t even know you. What’re you called?”

  “Fletcher Barrett. And your name’s Sally, idn’t that so?”

  She nodded. There was something she needed to know. “Was that your brother come in with you the other evening?”

  He looked away from her and back again. When he did this she thought she’d made a mistake. Careful, she thought, as Fletcher said, “Listen—.” And stopped.

  She stepped and sat on the edge of the bed. “What is it, Fletcher? What is it you want to talk about?”

  He sat silent a time. Already wondering how much time he had left. He looked away from her. Then, his voice quiet he said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “What?” Guarded.

  “How’d you come to doing this?”

  She looked away from him. Well there it was. Her voice emphatic, without sway she said, “I was born to it.”

  “It wasn’t something you chose?”

  She looked back at him. “I ain’t never known anything else. There wasn’t any choosing. Not for me. I heard all the hard-luck excuses some girls made but I never had that chance.”

  “Well—.” He stopped and reached and took her hand. She let him hold it a moment, felt the heat there, felt all his intention and unspoken honesty and spiked desire at once in his grasp. His hand wrapping hers like it had been waiting longer than either of them knew for just this. She pulled free.

  “No,” she said. “There idn’t a way out. You got to stop this.”

  He took his hand in his lap, joined it with his other. Neither looking at the other. After a bit, his voice not bitter or smooth but matter of fact as if speaking of the rain and cold, he said, “I guess my mother was one of those hard-luck girls. Except the way I heard it, it was just the one man, a man with family of his own. I don’t know what she expected of him, but what she didn’t expect was me. But by the time I come along he’d long since disappeared.”

  She also was easy. “Happens like that, more often than no. How’d he find her?”

  “She come in off a farm, was working as a serving girl at a public house.”

  “So then there was you and she was stuck. That man gone like a Christmas orange and no hopes for another. Everybody has to survive one way or another.”

  He looked at her. “That’s the part of the story you got wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “Because he never even knew of me. When I was born she took me up to his family. Everybody knew who they were. She didn’t even try to find my father. Because he was gone, long gone, not just from her you see but his own family as well. Didn’t bother going to his father either. But went straight on and presented herself to my father’s grandfather. Who was a fearsome old man but I guess knew simple truth when he heard it. And he done the right thing by her. By me too. It was him made it possible for her to live a different life than the one facing her. And me as well.”

  They were quiet awhile. Then she said, “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You tell me.”

  “It sounds like you was lucky. That’s all.”

  “It was more than that. It wasn’t luck. It was the viewpoint people took on the matter.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You seen that boy I was with the other night in here.”

  “The one with the new beard.” Now she’d stopped thinking all angles, any notions. Was just listening.

  “That’s right. He’s my half-brother. My father’s son. We’ve known each other since I can remember. And he’s always treated me just like his brother.”

  “Well you are.”

  “No.
You ain’t thought that one through. I was the brother he wasn’t supposed to have. There wasn’t any reason for him to even want to know I was alive, let alone tolerate me as his brother. But instead, the way it turned out, when I was little, he was the one protected me from other children. He took to me and we grew up close. Still are.”

  “I still don’t know what all that has to do with me.”

  “People don’t always act the way you think they will.”

  “Well,” she said. “You was lucky.”

  He was quiet as if considering this. “No,” he said. “It started with that old man. He had a wisdom rare. And the strength to force it on those who’d as soon looked the other way. In the later years of his life he had more heaped on him than many a man all their lives long. And he stood up and faced it head on. Some part of that come through to my brother. And I like to think some part of it come to me as well.”

  She sat silent looking at him.

  He stood. “I guess I used up my dollar. I got to get along. But I could come back, some evening, you wanted. We could talk more.”

  She shrugged, her eyes away. Then, propelled, she came off the bed and took his hand and pressed it and let it go. They were quiet together a moment. Then she said, “Fletcher. I ain’t but a whore.”

  “Sally.”

  “No.” Her voice tight, concluded. “You’d end up hating me. I’d not blame you for it but it idn’t something to wish on either one of us. Please.”

  He reached for her but she stepped away, just back enough to stall him. Seated herself on the bed. His eyes bored upon her a long moment, then relented. As if he would not even do her that harm. Abrupt he swung toward the door, stopped and turned back.

  “Don’t you tell no-one what I just told you. Nobody. All right?” This tone new for the evening. She noted it but only tilted her head, her chin tipped at him as if defying him to question this of her. She said nothing.

  He tried a frail grin that did not work. “Well.” A last hesitation. “Good night then.” And lifted free the peeled pole.

  Quick, as if to keep him a bit Sally said, “Where is it you’ve pitched? You and your brother.”

  He said, “Why, right up the stream. Off the path some in an old beaver meadow.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I know that place. It’s pretty.”

  “Right now it’s awful wicked damp.”

  “I can picture you there. See you in my mind, knowing that’s where you are.”

  He nodded. Then cut his eyes away from her.

  “Fletcher.”

  “No,” he said. “I got to go.”

  And now looked at her seated on the edge of her crude bed, shoulders stiff and her knees together, her skirt smoothed down, hands limp fallen into her lap. Still silent he opened the door, stepped out and closed it behind him even as he heard her whisper good night.

  The fire was burned down to a heap in the kitchen and he went through into the tavern that was lit only by a likewise fire. The room was empty but for Blood up on a stool behind the counter, a pewter mug before him. Fletcher went to the fireplace and got down his blanket-coat and put it on. Blood was watching him. Fletcher met his eye but did not speak.

  Blood said, “It was awful subdued. Usually she’s a screamer.”

  Fletcher said, “She was mostly quiet with me.” He dug out his purse and stepped to the counter and laid another dollar on it. Blood looked at the coin and back to Fletcher.

  Fletcher said, “I come to terms with Sally. But I figure I owe you. I just got going and couldn’t stop. You was a young feller once yourself—you know what I mean.”

  Blood said, “Yes. A fool with a pecker like firewood. A pup, you could say.”

  “It must be hard, having her flaunting around all the time.”

  Blood said, “I get what I need from her.”

  Fletcher said, “I bet you do. I bet you do indeed.” And without any final words walked past the sleeping hound and out into the cold starry night. He did not linger, did not walk around to the back to stand below the open port of her small glassless window to see if it was still lighted within, did not walk back to call her name once low into the night but strode hard over the curds of mud freezing on the road and over the bridge and up the near-hidden trail, not once looking back, not wanting to know if Blood came to the door to watch him go or not. Guessed that Blood would not do such a thing. Wishing he would, wanting Blood provoked enough to step out to watch him walk away. And knew it best if Blood did not. So he tramped up the uneven brockled path of stone and mud lit only by pale starlight breaking through the layers of hemlock boughs, his right hand made into a fist that over and over he smote into his left palm.

  Five

  Following the days of freezing rain the skies remained clear, the air came from the south and the warm wind and sun dried the land. The lakes and marshlands filled with geese and ducks at dusk and at dawn they rose, breaking from the mass of water into clumps that fell apart into files ever more as they climbed and the sky darkened with the thousands of waterfowl in their chevrons. The eagles and falcons came off the ledges to feed among them, stooping from great height to clout the unknowing duck into a burst of feathers, scattering the flock. Daytimes the geese not flying would come off the water and into the stripped grainfields and meadows to forage the rare kernels or the tender blades of younger grass. Boys went among them with rawhide snares at the end of poles and women rendered the goose fat into crocks to store for winter when the cows went dry and there was no butter and the wild game was lean and so fat of any sort was not luxury but sustenance.

  On the third day of this season a party of heavily armed mounted men in royal uniforms rode over the rough trails that ran west to east from Saint-Venant-de-Hereford in Canada along the upper reaches of Halls Stream, where they came out on the road running down Indian Stream and arrived midday at the tavern with a warrant claiming complicity of Blood in the murder of the habitant Laberge. The officer of this company was a whipthin horseman named Quigley and he sat his horse quietly while he explained that Blood must be presented to the magistrate in Hereford to answer in the inquiry of the death. His manner was pleasant and whatever he’d heard about the ferocity of the local residents had left little or no impression upon him. Blood stood in the temperate morning and related the events as they’d occurred while the officer watched and listened until Blood was finished. Sometime during Blood’s retelling Peter Chase and Isaac Cole arrived on horseback from the direction of the mill but they stood their horses well back in the road and made no sign of interference or even great interest and Blood saw they expected no reinforcements, saw also they wanted none. When he was finished the royal officer removed a glove and leaned to blow his nose away from his horse’s side and replaced the glove.

  “I’m sure, Monsieur. It’s a legal matter. My job only is to escort you to Hereford. It is, you understand, your deposing that is of interest to the magistrate. My own duties are freed from judgment.”

  “I did what I could to save him. It was self-defense on his part.”

  The officer gazed with interest upon Blood, as a man would a stranger’s child caught in mild mischief.

  Blood said, “You’re out of your country. Nothing compels me to go with you.” He looked at Chase and Cole. They were intent upon a pair of boys coming up the road from the river dadewater with a pole they dragged between them. The pole sagged, heavy with dead geese. Blood looked back at the officer.

  Quigley said, “Dead, you’d be useless for questioning. Otherwise, your physical condition is of little concern to the magistrate.”

  Blood did not even bother eyeing the troopers but kept his gaze on the officer. After a moment he said, “There could be considerable havoc short of me dead.”

  The officer lifted his eyes to gaze toward some horizon. Mildly he said, “I’ve the men for it.”

  Blood drew breath and waited. The officer looked back at him. Blood said, “Resistance would be naught but loss for me but I see litt
le gain in going freely—with no assurance of what waits.”

  “What waits you Mister Blood is not my consideration,” Quigley said. His voice had clicked up to just short of command. Blood heard this and felt as much as saw the troopers gather themselves. Quigley said, “I’m charged with bringing the body as well as you. There is family awaiting.”

  Blood paused a long moment and then sighed. “I’m not digging him up.”

  The officer leaned sideways a little to study Blood. “But, as a Christian man, you’ll be inclined to accompany men of my company to your burying ground and point out the grave. Yes?”

  Blood said, “Shit.”

  “Sir?”

  “It wasn’t me killed him. It wasn’t me strung him up. Left to their druthers, the ones who did would’ve left him hang till he turned black and rotted. So I buried him best I could. A Catholic—he’d never been allowed in the cemetery.”

  The officer sat his horse and glanced at Cole and Chase then back to Blood.

  “So,” he said. “Where did you bury him?”

  “I wanted him gone. I was trying to do the right thing for him, best’s I could.”

  “And so?”

  Blood felt his shoulders give. “He’s in the garden.”

  The officer glanced around the packed bare earth before the tavern as if he might discover a bed of flowers. Then he looked back at Blood. “The garden?”

  Blood paused, knowing whatever authority or goodwill might have once been his was as good as gone. “It’s round back of the building,” he said.

  When the party of three royal soldiers came around the corner of the tavern their breeches were stained with dirt and they carried Laberge as three men might a short length of log along their sides. The body was wrapped in heavy canvas and belted with hemp rope crisscrossed along its length. They did not look at Blood. They loaded the body onto a blueroan mule that stood throughout as if its life-job was to have dead men strapped over its back. Again without speaking, the three went to the stream and washed their hands and came back up to the party and remounted their horses. Sometime while they were gone on their digging, Chase and Cole had ridden off up the road, at the easy gait of a late summer afternoon, as if their only job in the world might be to catch up to the boys with the geese and get their share. Their observation and departure bothered Blood as much as whatever adventure lay ahead in Canada. Perhaps more.