by Jeffrey Lent
Then Cooper said, “Here comes the hurting part.”
“I been waiting for that.” Fletcher was sweating and his skin had gone white except for his face which was mottled pink and white like the inside of a flayed hide.
Cooper took the bound forearm and held it up tight to his brother’s chest and Fletcher heaved a little to one side. Cooper ran the dangling strips from the forearm beneath the shoulder straps and pulled them tight so the forearm was pinned to his chest and ran the ends of the strips down his back to the chest wrapping and tied the forearm strips behind. When he was done, Fletcher could not only not move his hurt arm but his shoulders were pulled back tight and down, so the bone might heal as natural as possible and not humped up in the hunch such pain would beg. Cooper explained all this while he was working, on through to when he tied the last knot he explained this theory of healing.
Fletcher said, “How’d you come to figure this?”
“I seen sailors come off ships rigged the same way. Most healed right up well. Some’d have a little lump to their collarbone but that’s about it.”
“You done?”
“I guess. How’s it feel? It feel tight, even all around?”
“I think,” Fletcher said. “I’d like to lay down.” And before brother or girl could grasp him he sank to his knees and swayed there as both crouched and held him from toppling. His face was down at the ground and they held him, looking at each other over the top of his bowed head, neither sure what to do next. Then Fletcher lifted his head and looked at Sally and said, “I’m feeling a little green. I don’t want to try my feet again but if you two was to help I believe I could get to the blankets.” And without waiting he moved one knee forward and they heard his teeth grind and they steadied him as he brought the other knee forward. In this fashion they got him the five feet onto the blankets and then eased him down and over onto his back. He was groaning and cursing again and his chest was slick with sweat. The two ineffectual nurses crouched either side of him on their knees.
He said, “Just cover me up good and I’ll do my best to swoon to sleep.”
They slept that night all three together, Cooper and Sally each alongside of Fletcher, pressed close as they could without touching him. In all their outerclothes now as the fire died and the bulk of blankets over Fletcher. He lay mostly still, his mouth open and his chest rising and falling in slow breathing that, to Sally at least, sounded as if there was a measure of peace there. She lay on her side watching him and reached one hand slow under the blankets to rest it on his naked belly. Thinking he might feel the light touch of her in his sleep and that it might soothe him. And her fingers came onto a hand already there and she thought it must be Fletcher’s and then realized it could not be. She stopped her motion and her hand lay up against the other. She looked across Fletcher and saw Cooper on his side also facing her, his eyes open upon her. She looked at him a long time and he met her look, giving nothing, asking nothing. After a time she slipped her hand so it was half up on top of Cooper’s hand, half down on Fletcher’s belly. After another time Cooper moved his hand up and rolled his fingers open and took her hand in his and they lay like that, looking at each other, linked over the boy between them. When she closed her eyes she felt a faint pressure on her fingers. She let that happen as if she had not noticed it. Then, just as she was sliding to sleep, she understood at a different level than she’d ever before guessed at. She pressed his fingers back.
At the first tint of dawn coming over frost-drooped land, the fog freezing a ghostcoat onto the trees, the banty trapper Gandy came silent through the ruined settlement and passed on down to the tavern where he studied the cold chimneytop before circling the building close, listening. With ginger touch he tried the door and felt the stop of the bar. He came to a stop outside the whore’s room. There was sound through the log walls. A rhythmic gasp of breath. His first thought was that she was with someone and then regarded the evidence and determined she must be doing herself. He pressed closer against the frost-burred logs and let his ear melt a circle there as he swelled in his breeches and then listening tried to fit what he heard to what he imagined he should be hearing and the two did not meet at all. He had no great experience in such things but what he heard resembled more a cut-throat hog than even his worst estimation of a woman and his breeches relaxed again, a sorrowful thing. It would’ve been some sport to have had her this way, both alone but together as well, her not knowing but that mattered not to Gandy. He’d had a hen once and it had been a bloody awkward thing, a great hot handful of feathers he’d pumped up and down clutched tight and he came away smeared with blood and yolk from a soft-shelled egg. But the wretched rasp came again through the wall and whoever was in there was not the girl. He circled again to the front and paused a moment, studying the barn and hogpen-turned-chickencoop and considered the hens there but the urgency was passed. With another in its place.
He tapped on the door. Thinking to rouse the dog that was a white terror in Gandy’s dreams and so bring out whoever lay moaning in the whore-crib. But there was only silence. The maniac cackle of an unseen loon far out on the lake, the sound like a spike of ice sent through the air. He tried the door again, this time a firm rap. Three hard pikes of his knuckles. He waited. Nothing.
He studied the door, the jamb and sill. It was stout all right but not as well-made as it appeared. Gandy recalled the builder, the youth Sam Potter. And his young wife who alone among the territory women had been kind to him, had seemed to appreciate he was not threat but possible companion. Who, as she grew round in all possible ways with the baby that would kill her seemed to become even easier with Gandy, as if she understood his absorption with women was a consumption that men would have scoffed at. As if knowing that the larger she grew the more he lusted her, as if he alone knew what women were not only made for but the delight they took in being that. At least he thought so. He thought The power of a prick to make her breasts and legs and arms and belly and ass expand like that. Thinking if she was his he’d keep her pregnant all the time. Wondered at men who stood apart from their women swollen with get, as if they did not know them. He recalled the Potter girl’s smile that she spread over him, as if she knew how he cavorted with her in his mind. And her killed like that, trying to birth that boy’s child. A waste but no bringing her back either. Except the odd times when she flooded over him. And she falling apart underground. It was a mighty effort, those times.
But the matter at hand. He got his belt knife out. Long and slender-bladed, honed fine. He could run one hand down a sunken trap chain and follow it with the other gripping the knife until the first came upon the caught but burrowed muskrat, feel the brush of snapping jaws just over his knuckles and slip the other hand blade-first up over his first hand and kill with one sharp thrust. Which tool he now slid into the gap between jamb and door and worked slow and quiet, patient, seeking to lever through the gap and come up under the bar. It took some time. He didn’t even look at where the blade slid between the wood but tipped his head off to watch the road in a general way and the shifting slips of fog more particular. To see if they revealed themselves to be in any way more than fog shapes. And so did not turn his head back to his work until he felt the blade catch against the bar. When the bar fell he pulled the knife free and studied the edge and he turned the knife over in his hand and by doing this transformed it from tool to weapon and then let his shoulder jog the door. All this quick and deliberate. He stuck his foot in the opening and kicked hard against the bar and heard it clatter out from the other guard and the door went in and he with it.
It was Blood he found in the whore’s bed. Lying in twisted fevered bedding with one leg outside, wrapped in crude bandage, the wrapping soaked through with dried and fresh blood and a clear fluid, enough so the blanket under his leg was daubed and stuck to his leg. Blood was hot but not sweating although the skin of his face was gummy, the texture of mush cooked too long. Gandy went immediately back and rebarred the door. Considered diggin
g through the cold fireplace ash for coals and pokering a fire up but did not; there was no knowing if Blood would want their occupancy advertised. He went instead to the tavern side and poured and drank off a dram of rum and poured another larger one, took up the pitcher of water and carried both back to bedside. Where Blood now lay with his eyes open.
Gandy said, “I knew something weren’t right so I let myself in. I got water and rum both here. You got a preference?”
Blood’s voice was scabbed, thrown by force through a wad of phlegm. “Water.” He made effort to raise his trunk and head.
“Here,” Gandy said. He bent to set the rum on the floor and held the back of Blood’s head and brought the pitcher to his lips and let him drink. When he was done Gandy said, “Was it the militia or the local boys shot you?”
Blood said, “This leg is a mess. I heaved all the night with it. It needs the dressing changed on it.”
Gandy studied him. Then said, “You’ll want hot water for that. I paused over building a fire, not sure you’d care for any to know you was here.”
Blood said, “Damn the man that cares if I’m here or not.”
Gandy thought He just idn’t going to answer me. He said, “You want this dram of rum while I go build a fire up, get water to heat?”
“No,” Blood said.
Gandy paused.
Blood said, “Go on, take it with you. Just not so hard you’re useless to me.”
“I was just thinking of the least drop.”
“You get a fire going, come back and help me out so I can set and warm while the water heats. Then you might gather some eggs and eat with me. I ain’t been able to keep food down but I got to try.”
“I could happy eat an egg.”
“Could you move along? I don’t care to have this leg rot on me.”
Gandy bent and took up the rum, held it delicate between his thumb and first finger. Turned for the door.
Behind him Blood said, “You seen the dog?”
“He’s not about, that I seen.”
Blood said, “It’s strange. Of all this plight, his being missing somehow worries me most.”
“Good god man,” Gandy said. “This whole country’s burned and gone to hell and you lie there shot fretting over a dog.”
“I know it.” Blood said.
Moments later from the other room Gandy called, “I see you got yourself a fancy new rifle.”
Blood pushed himself up, used both hands to lever his bad leg off the bed and dragged the other after it and sat on the edge, rippling with fresh pain. “Yes,” he said. “I did. Come in here and help me stand. I’m chilled through. I’d set in a chair and feed the fire while you went for eggs.”
Trying to determine if he should get rid of Gandy or enlist him some way without informing more than was needed. And decided the only way he could know this was to get up and move himself. Use Gandy for what he could until he knew best, one way or the other.
Sally was up before the brothers, squatting over the remains of the fire, cautiously raking the coals with a hemlock stub and adding wood to mound a small blaze. Fletcher was warm enough when she woke and she guessed he’d lie right where he was most of the day. Or let Cooper build the fire high. Sheets of cold fog drifted through the woods, mixing with streams of mist lifted from the pools. She had her shawl over her shoulders while she waited for water to boil for tea. After the peculiarity of the night before she was uncomfortable rummaging their food supply—the strange intimacy with Cooper had delivered her to a new, greater distance. She dropped a handful of tea into the seething pot and set it on a fireside rock to steep. After a time she poured out a cup and sat sideways to the fire to drink it, looking at the two boys, the one rigid with his mouth agape as if to draw all available air into his lungs, the other curled under slight covers, the one blanket pulled up as a cowl over his head so only his mouth and nose protruded. There was a thick rim of frost at the blanket edge where his breath settled moist coming out of him and froze.
She couldn’t organize her mind. It was all in pieces, bits that wouldn’t line up. At sixes and sevens. Something Blood would say. Calamities and opportunities all jumbled up together and no sure way to distinguish one from the other. There’d been a woman in the house in Portland who’d mastered the mystic qualities of numbers. Sally wished she’d paid more attention. Even though she doubted it could help her much now. This was more than numbers. Herself, Cooper, Fletcher, Blood. The four of them, what was that? A sum she could not do, she knew that. She drank her tea and considered the sleeping boys. Even as she considered Blood. What was clear by night less so by day. And she finished her tea, knowing she was the last person he might welcome to see. Whatever grace his doubts might have allowed her, she’d wiped clear the evening before. Abandoning him. Still, she would not leave it thus.
She stood. Bent and added some stout limbs to the fire and turned the pot of tea on its stone to keep warm. If she could write and there were supplies to do so she would leave a note she would be back. But she could not and there were no such supplies, at least in sight. So despite the chill fog she took up the boots and woolen stockings from the night before and squared them neat on the rock beside the tea. If they failed to read that it was not her fault. Boys, she thought. How could it be they were capable of missing so much and knowing so much besides? She looked again to them and recalled once more the coupling of hands over the belly of the one boy the night before and thought There is nothing simple in this life. Then turned and walked slow along the edge between the woods and marsh toward the brook trail. On one of the bog ponds was a single drake duck, drifting in a broad slow circle of its own making on the water. If it saw her pass it did not care. She was barefooted and the cold hard ground was a strange comfort against her feet. Driving her forward.
* * *
There was a healthy fullness of smoke from the tavern chimney, reassuring but a little frightening too. Perhaps his wound less than it appeared. If so she could guess at his temper. But her feet were cold stubs now, all she needed for boldness—that and the resolve to be the one to seek and not the other way around. She found the door barred and hammered blue knuckles upon it, calling out Let me in. As if she had the right. Which at least to her lights she did. There were any number of accounts to settle and she bet Blood thought so as well.
The door cracked open in such a way that the bar might be used to lever it closed. The rodent face of the lecher Gandy appeared in the opening, one eye peering at her. Behind him she heard Blood cry out to ask if she was alone.
“Best I can see,” Gandy said, keeping that one eye on her.
“Open the door,” she said. “Quit eyeballing me.”
“Let her in,” said Blood.
He was at the table, naked from the waist down, a blanket wrapped about him, his wounded leg stretched toward the fire, clean bandages wrapped around the thigh. A wad of stained and bloody rags lay on the hearth. On the table was a much-diminished basin of water run red with blood alongside a pitcher of water and two tin plates stained with egg yolk. She was sorry to see the plates; the odds were against Blood offering her food. She was hungry from the uneasy night and the cold hike down.
“If you came back to get that sockful of money you missed your chance, leaving it like you did last night,” Blood said. “Although it seems a bit light anyhow. You bring my keys back?”
“I got three gold pieces stuck aside. I meant to buy horses with em but never made it even halfway to Van Landt’s. There was soldiers all over this country yesterday. But I bet you know that.” She reached into her blouse and took out the pouch of keys and dropped them on the table. “The lockbox is in the storeroom.”
He studied her, as if smelling for honesty. Then he said to Gandy, “Leave us be some time. Don’t drift off, just leave us be. Go milk that cow.”
“I can’t milk a cow.”
“Don’t be a goddamn fool. Of course you can milk a cow. I need to talk to this girl private. Get yourself another dram
of that rum and go sit beside the cow and drink the rum and think about it. You’ll figure out how to get it done.”
“I ain’t sure I should leave you with her. Why wadn’t she here in the first place, tending you?”
“You’re considerate,” Blood said. “But you don’t want to know too much of my business, idn’t that right?” And held his eyes on the little trapper.
Gandy looked back at him and then took up the dram cup and went into the tavern and came out again and said, “You need me, holler. I’ll come quick.”
Sally stepped toward the pair of rifles against the fireplace. She said, “Get. Or I’ll shoot you too.”
He drop-jawed. “It wadn’t you shot Blood, was it?”
“No,” she said. “But I shot a wolf once. Next to that, you’d be nothing.”
When he was gone Sally walked close and studied Blood’s leg. She said, “That don’t appear too bad. It went right through?”
“It did,” Blood said. “I’m touched you came to check on me. What is it you want?”
“Don’t be nasty. What happened wasn’t nobody’s fault but your own. You’d knocked and called out instead of trying to brain that boy you might not be happy this morning but most likely you wouldn’t have a hole in you. All those boys wanted was to talk to you. Nobody planned to shoot you, not as far as I know.”
He studied her. “You know more about it than I do.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“You might tell me what you know. That one boy in particular, he’s a mystery to me.”
She said, “Is there eggs left?”
“Not unless Gandy missed some in the coop. We ate what he brought in. Are you trying to make a trade with me?”
“No,” she said. “I’m hungry is all. I got nothing to trade. Those boys, that’s business between the three of you.”
