Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  Russell said, “You come up here trusting, idn’t that so?”

  “I guess. To see anyhows. We ain’t made no deals.”

  “Fletcher here thinks much of you.”

  She was silent.

  Russell nodded. She didn’t know what this agreement signified. He said, “So it’s only fair we trust you.”

  She blew again and made a small sip of the tea. She said, “You can.”

  “All right,” Russell said, the tone of a man making a contract.

  She was silent, agreeing to nothing.

  A short pause. As of final assessment. Then Russell said, “My name idn’t Russell Barrett.” He leaned his shoulder to direct her toward Fletcher. “And he idn’t a Barrett either. It’s only a name we come up with. Although he truly is Fletcher.”

  She was watching Cooper close. Aware things were shifting toward some great weight. She made no response.

  The brother was abrupt. “I’m Cooper Bolles. And he’s Fletcher Bolles.”

  She said, “All right.” Placid even as a crack of recognition opened.

  “You don’t understand. What do you know of Blood?”

  She considered. “A fair amount, someways. But not so much, others.”

  “He’s got more name than Blood.” Cooper watched as if expecting her to understand something. She glanced at Fletcher. He was watching her also. His face was kind. He had a kind face. She looked back at Cooper.

  Who was awaiting this look. He said, “He was born and named and still is Micajah Blood Bolles.”

  Without pause she said, “He’s your father, Blood is.”

  Cooper nodded.

  She looked at Fletcher. “And yours.”

  He drank some tea and nodded. Looking out the tent-fly onto the late summer dusk.

  She sat silent a moment. When neither of them spoke she said, “He told me his wife and older boy died in the sea. An accident. But there was someway he held hisself responsible. He tried to explain that to me.”

  Fletcher turned his gaze up toward the canvas fly lit as a candle from the late sunlight. When he spoke his voice strained to stay even. “There’s plenty men not callous enough to turn their backs on every thing in their lives. Like what children they left behind. Even just the ones they knowed about.”

  Her voice tentative, Sally said, “What was it then?”

  Fletcher remained looking out, away. Cooper tossed the last of his tea into the fire and sat watching where the small jet of steam rose. Sally let their silence be.

  Then Cooper stood under the tent-fly and so without apparent effort was closer to her, looking down upon her. He said, “I waited a long time for this. But there’s not a thing we need to do this evening. There’s time enough to hire horses in the morning and ride to Hereford to learn what trouble he’s in. And see what he makes of us, and what we make of him. There’s a pile of story you don’t even begin to know yet girl. But I need to mull this some. I waited too long to hurry now and mess it up. I want to get it right. So, I thought I’d stroll on out and see if I can catch some trouts for a supper for us all. And I got to consider just where you stand with all this.”

  Without waiting response Cooper took down a loop of handline from one of the upright poles and turned and walked away. Fletcher was still gazing upward toward the screened sky. So Sally sat with her cold tea and watched Cooper tread his way out into the threads of the marsh. She was thinking We hadn’t ought to just set here. But they were. Neither boy seemed in much of a hurry. Then she realized Fletcher was waiting for his brother to lead.

  She didn’t know what to think of Cooper.

  Late in the afternoon the party of troopers and the twice-burdened mule came down the western ridge of narrow switchbacks above Halls Stream and sat their blowing horses at the streambank. One of the troopers wordlessly handed a canvas waterbag to Blood and he drank and handed the bag back and then without ceremony they crossed over the stream and were in Quebec. They rode north through the low rolling hills and broad valley past farmsteads with rail-fence enclosures and small well-built barns, the farmhouses all without exception painted in a variety of hues Blood had not imagined for a house: mustard yellow and chalk blue and pale pink, with sills and window casements in sharp contrasting colors.

  The evening sun was lowering over the western hills and the light poured forth over this land as if onto some favored place and Blood could not help but wonder if he hadn’t stopped some few miles too short on his northward trek the spring before. He recalled the Canadians dancing to the wondrous accordion music and thought perhaps he might have been more welcomed here. Among these Catholics, the men might’ve welcomed him more than the men of Indian Stream—the habitant trappers he’d met seemed now to him to have been reserved only by their minority. Perhaps their religion would have been benefit rather than hindrance. Even for the girl, although he expected she would have faced the same censure from the women. And there would’ve been the black-robed Fathers to contend with. It seemed no place was free of the righteous. In his own way, he guessed he was well righteous himself.

  Blood thought all this trotting raw-buttocked on the mule with his hands blistered from the harsh ropes binding the corpse before him. Then a gaggle of children grew roadside and he realized it was himself they were peering at. A few flung pebbles and one struck Blood below the ear and another a trooper’s horse and the officer swung about in the road and ordered the children off. If they spoke English as well as French Blood could not guess but the officer’s message was clear in any language and the children fell back, calling names or threats lost in the soft twilight.

  It was dark when they came into Saint-Venant-de-Hereford, the windows of the houses lit from within and only stray dogs to stir to the muted jangle and leather-creak of the troop and they rode through the town until they came to a plain one-story modest garrison house with a long ell of a stable. The captain remained mounted while three of the troopers took Blood down off the mule and held him by the elbows and brought him before the officer.

  Quigley stroked his mustache and looked down at Blood. “You’ll be placed in stockade for the night. I have yet to deliver this body and see no reason to offend the family with your presence.”

  “I thought I was here to see the magistrate.”

  Quigley regarded Blood. “By the hour it’s plain the magistrate would be sitting to his dinner. Would you care to interrupt him?”

  Blood said nothing.

  The officer went on. “You may of course purchase whatever rations would otherwise be also available to the garrison this evening.”

  Blood said, “I have no money with me. But the girl is coming along tomorrow and will have ample funds for reimbursement.”

  “Will she,” said Quigley. “In that event, you will be able to eat when she arrives.” He turned to the troopers restraining Blood. “Make no concessions to his pleas. Irons, both hand and leg.” Then he spurred his horse forward into a tight trot and the others of the company moved forward with him, even the blueroan mule trotting into the darkness. Leaving Blood as a minor hindrance of more solemn concerns.

  The three cavalrymen led Blood to the end of the horse stables. The last stall did not have a half-door as the others did but one made of stout oaken planks with iron straps. While one of the men took a candle-lantern from a peg and lighted it another removed his horse pistol and struck Blood behind his ear and he went to his knees. The trooper struck again and Blood went down, his face scraping the hard-packed dirt of the floor. They rolled him face-up and one sat on his chest and held the muzzle of the pistol to his face while the others fitted his ankles with manacles attached by a short chain and then his wrists with a smaller set. The man stood off his breast and replaced his pistol in its chest holster and the three stepped out without speaking and shut the heavy door. A moment later Blood heard an iron bar being fitted across the door. Then boots receding in the measured uneven pace of horseback men walking. They had taken the lantern with them and he could see not
hing but floating shapes of red and white pain sifting over his eyes. He was able to lift his bound hands and could feel a small blood-flow behind his ear. A knot stood out on his head there and the flow was already crusting in his hair.

  He rolled onto his side and made his way up onto his knees and like an animal crawled around the enclosure. The inner walls were reinforced with planks like those on the door and buried well into the hard earth. There was a small pile of coarse marsh hay such as would be used for animal bedding in one corner. With the darkness it was already cold but he would not sleep in hay. He moved down the wall and sat with his back against it, his knees drawn up and his hands together down before him. Other than the pound of blood in his head he could hear nothing except the faint settle and tramp of the horse in the stall behind his back.

  Some time later someone worked the iron bolting the door and the sudden pale lantern light near blinded him. Two men stood behind the light. Blood could see only their boots and legs. One held the light and the other advanced. He came only to the threshold and set down a tin plate and a pair of tin buckets, one of water and the other empty.

  The trooper squinted at Blood. “Compliments of the lieutenant. If you drink all the water take care not to shit or piss but in the other bucket.” Then the door closed and the men were gone. Although for some moments Blood still saw them etched before him, his eyes refusing to let the memory of the light go. Then a darkness even greater than before.

  Blood crawled cautiously toward the door, toward the lode of food smell, a richness so vast it displaced all other senses. With his linked hands he carefully judged the water bucket and moved the empty slop bucket off to a corner and came back and lifted the water bucket and drank. Then very slowly and carefully outlined the rim of the plate with his hands, grazed the surface with his fingertips and then dug them in and lifted a wet portion of the food to his mouth. It was a stew of dried pease and ham, still hot enough so that he cooled the first mouthfuls on his fingers. After those mouthfuls he scrabbled around so he was squatting and brought the plate up to balance it on one knee and so ate his meal. Using his first and index fingers to pare up the last traces. Drank again and then shifted the bucket against the wall beside the doorframe. A place he could find in the dark if he moved prudently.

  He still believed this was temporary. Whatever the magistrate was after could not include confinement of this sort for any length of time. It was a matter of waiting out the night. The morrow would bring all manner of light. There returned the question of what purpose he truly served being here. What master had approved this, brought it to fruition? It was apparently simple—Blood was the one who could answer most clearly what happened to Laberge. But there lingered the image of the lounging and unconcerned Peter Chase and Isaac Cole. To witness his arrest as something expected. There the mystery deepened. And Blood with no choice but to wait.

  He scratched his wrists, the irons rattling in the utter black silence. Even the horse in the stall beside had stilled to equine sleep. For long moments he found relief pondering what dreams a horse would have—what dreams would visit a warhorse with no war? Carnage or pastures verdant everlasting? Would a horse, once shut into a stall, wonder if it would ever again be set free? Could it forget the expected routine of life and tremble over some horse-notion of being forgotten? Of rotting some slow death, away from all fields, those of war and those of browse as well?

  The girl would arrive in the morrow. Sally and Van Landt. Blood was confident both would come. There was enough money, Blood was sure of that. Even as he calculated how much Van Landt might overcharge for the horses and his time, how much he could skim off Sally with her threatened to silence. But there was enough. Blood had done nothing that money could not smooth. He knew he could drip money out by the shilling, dollar, or pound until whoever had to be appeased was satisfied. The mystery of it all be fucked. Worst, he thought, I consign the tavern to Van Landt and walk out with only Sally and Luther alongside to start some place anew. Great God it would not be the first time.

  In the enveloping darkness he was washed with sudden longing for the girl. Sally trusted Blood and depended upon him. She would resent him though, if not now then soon enough. But she would never be free of debt to him. The older she grew, however she ended up, he knew this was true. And the Dutchman was the only man he’d met in the Connecticut Lakes who was even close to an equal with himself—the only man who comprehended life as capriciously as Blood and so chose to stand apart from his fellows, to make of himself what he would or could and leave the rest to their own misconceptions and expectations. He would come. Blood could almost see him, Van Landt with nothing of pleasantry about him. Interested only in solving the problem before him, turning that solution directly to his own favor. What more could a man ask for in another?

  * * *

  Some uncountable hours later there was a visitation. What Blood had long since trusted to be mercifully unattainable. If it began in the familiar nightmare it continued unabated long after he was sweating upright strained against the stockade wall—some moments or even hours returned from that locked black closet of his brain between the long-gone New Bedford gin-house and his own home there, now within that home, in the entry hall as he fell against the wall trying to remove his boots and fell again until sobbing he got them off by kicking like an Indies juggler lying flat on his back with his feet up in the air and in this way recaptured a brilliant crystal energy, upright again, sock-footed, his mouth a web of drought, his brain luminous and distinctly attuned to nothing more than whatever lay before him, whatever now he might seize, to swallow of the old life and so suspend if not outright rend forever, casting himself already out, the old self out, destroyed.

  So was wavering his vision-led feet toward the candle-lit but empty sitting room where his wife and son should still be in their caskets when he looked up and saw his lovely Betsey not dead at all but cringing halfway down the stairs, her hair tangled evermuch as always but not tangled enough, not the way he wanted it to be. Oh she was so lovely trembling in her soft nightdress and his head swung back and forth like a weight, like a bull with its throat cut but yet still standing and then cried out her name and went up the stairs as if his feet were only born for this and caught her as she turned away from him, Betsey drawing him on as always by her feigned shrieks and he tore the flannel from her and clasped her to him and then it was his own daughter Sarah Alice naked against his chest and beating at him with her fists as he carried her upward, her small breasts there just short inches from his mouth and his one arm scooped under her thighs feeling the heat of her run through into him and so when he reached the top of the stairs it was not accident but a deliberate thing that he turned left not right and carried her down the hall where he kicked open the door of her own bedroom and threw her on the bed and closed the door behind her—standing there as he removed his clothes watching her scurry back and forth over the bed trying to cover herself even as he worked his breeches off, not taking his eyes from her and then paused, watching her face turn up to him pleading her mouth silent as it worked and her eyes not able to not go between his face and his dreadful penis as he advanced upon her and then that last glorious wrestle around the room where he destroyed any objects she thrust in his path as if to prove himself beyond doubt to her and then that most perfect moment when he caught hold of her and her body arched away under the lock of his arms, the slow exquisite spell of his strength and then felt her succumb. Her body collapsing, failing, floor-bound. He kissed her hair as he lifted her and carried her to the bed, knowing she had to say those words, the way every one human has to deny what they truly desire. Papa Papa No No No—

  Ripped sweating in the cold pitch night, the stink of manure and old hay, the visitation as cruel as the nightmares, vivid, actual, the moment of his life one second before him in each full realm of each exerted sense for now as ever before as he entered her she faded, became some fluid greater than water, then gone, all lost.

  He found the wa
ter bucket and drank from it. Then vomited hot hard curds into it. On hands and knees again. The manacles clashing as to break bone. He swayed over the bucket. Retched and puked again and felt something splash blistering against his hand. Rocking back and forth. His stomach seethed and rumbled. He leaned forward and butted his head against the door. A too-small flower of pain spread red around him. He lifted his hand and smelt his vomit. Wiped the backside of the hand in the dirt, the iron bracelet cracking hard against his wrist. Then slowly fell onto his side and rolled away from the door to put his back to the wall. Got his back against the wall, his knees up before. So whoever might open the door in the morning would find him facing them. It was important to do this.

  At dusk the three of them carried a stick of gilled trout down along the brook to Perry Stream and followed that as the twilight came on until they were in the moosewood bushes under the hemlocks across from the tavern. They crouched there in shadow some time, the tavern dark, silent, the chimney cold. They hunkered until past full dark when the owls began to call from their perches back in the woods. If anyone was in the tavern they had neither light nor fire—if there was anyone watching they had not revealed themselves.

  Finally Sally left the boys and went down to the road, across the bridge and up to the tavern, approaching the gnarling threat from the dog within. She spoke his name and the sound changed to his greeting of low rumbled delight. She stepped in and made her way in the dark to the fireplace, stooped to blow up some coals and bring a splinter to tender flame and lighted the candle-lantern. It was she insisted if they were not to go on to Van Landt’s then they must return to the tavern, to see if any mischief had transpired and to guard it against the night. Whoever the boys might be, and whatever might happen on the morrow, whatever chance or opportunity came her way she still was determined, until that final second when she broke from him, to give Blood no reason for rage against her.