Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  Blood studied her. After a time he said, “I know the one. It’s the other has no place in my mind. You know the one I mean. I only had two sons and one’s long dead. As you know.” He paused, perhaps meaning to remind her of other, bolder intimacies. Secrets shared. He said, “There’s meal if you care to turn out some quick bread.”

  “I come to make sure you was all right. And to get some of my things. I ain’t got time to make bread.”

  “You’re abandoning me when there’s little I can do about it. Perhaps when I need you most.”

  “Blood,” she said. “I ain’t sure what I’m doing. But I can’t be two places at once. I can’t be setting here tending you cause I’ve thrown my lot in otherwise. I made a choice. Could be it’s strange the way it happened but I always knew someway I’d leave even if you didn’t. You think about it, it idn’t that strange how I went to them. I learned something from you Blood. Maybe you have ideas about what that might be but I don’t want to hear em.” She paused, tightened her face with thought and said, “Opportunity. Not to miss when it comes. I never seen it much before. All I know, those boys are like nobody I met before. The one, that Fletcher, he’s tender to me, a way no man has been. Not even you.” She made a small grin. Not altogether without regret. “I don’t forget the ways you been kind to me. But neither do I forget all the rest either.” Before he could respond at all she looked away from his face, not wanting to see him and said, “Excuse me.”

  She went into her room, leaving the door open. She was hiding nothing. Saw the mess where Blood had slept the night before. She took down from pegs her winter clothes and her best summer skirt and bodice and blouse and made them all up into a bundle on the bed. Then took the cleanest of the blankets and wrapped it around her clothing and tied the corners in a rough knot together to make a handle of sorts. Dug under the tick mattress and pulled out her neckerchief knotted over her own money and hefted it and took the bundle up in the other hand and went back into the room. Blood was right where she left him, had been watching her through the door. He ran his eyes quick over her burdens.

  “Sally,” he said.

  She said, “Those gold pieces of yours is up to the camp. You hadn’t shown up last night we was going to buy horses and come searching you this morning. I bet Gandy told you but yesterday this country was filled with soldiers that left it near a shambles. Still is, best I can see. Just so you know. I can bring em back to you or we can set and you can count through this,” and she lifted her own money, “and see if it adds up to that much or more. I’d trust you.”

  “Why?” he asked, his voice extraordinarily simple.

  “Because I got no reason not to.” And then added, “And I druther not have one.” Then she looked away from him and back. “Blood?”

  “What is it?”

  “With everything I seen and heard, this whole country was burned or torn up. A load of men was killed, more arrested. With all that, how come nobody bothered this place here?”

  Blood rubbed his face with his hand. Sat silent. After a time he said, “It’s complicated. Most simply there was a deal made that wasn’t kept. A deal I knew nothing of. More than that you shouldn’t know. It’s safer you don’t know.”

  “Safer for me? Or your boys?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Even if you weren’t with em. Safer for you all.”

  She considered this. Then her face softened and her voice was low. “It’s true that when the boys and I made our way down here last dusk, the place weren’t touched. The front door was open but nobody’d been inside. But they killed Luther. He was dead in the yard. He died fighting em. There was a torn shred of coattail in his jaws.”

  Blood just looked at her. His face somehow the best reflection of her own feelings. She simplified, not wanting to name anyone. “He’s buried. Up behind near the stream. Where there’s a little birch.”

  Blood only nodded. His face gathered back, near a sneer. As if he assigned private blame. She didn’t want to know if that involved her but guessed not.

  She looked away, at the fire coiling in the fireplace. And saw the new rifle leaned beside Blood’s own. The double set of pouches on the wall peg. She set down her bundle of clothes and took down the new set of pouches and slung them. Then picked up the strange rifle and said, “This don’t belong to you. I’ll just carry it along with me.”

  “You’re a hard girl, Sally.”

  Her mouth twisted. “You know better. You want to settle the money now or wait on the gold brought back?”

  Blood shrugged. He said, “It idn’t nothing to me, either way.”

  “You mean to tempt me? Or bribe me someway?”

  “I speak the God’s truth. It just doesn’t matter. Do what you will.”

  “Blood,” she said. “I never thought you this sort of man.”

  “Long ago I gave up on whatever sort of man I was.”

  She said, “I already heard that story twice. One time from you, another version more recent.”

  He said, “The one shot me. That’s my son, Cooper. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. That wet night they both first come in. But it’s the other’s the puzzle. Last night, when I was laid out on the floor, Cooper called him his brother.”

  “I can’t help you, Blood.” She shifted her load around to accommodate the long gun and then went close to him, standing right up against his chair. Then she said, “Both of you, Fletcher and yourself, you’ll be laid up a span. You wanted, time to time I could slip down here, see if you was all right. I ain’t much to nurse but I seen my share of bad things. You want to keep that wound dressed clean.”

  “No.” Adamant, almost angry. “Gandy told me where you’re pitched. It’ll be a hard job just to keep him quiet. I got no idea what faces me. But you three keep tucked tight, you hear me?”

  She was quiet then. Her face pinched tight with new knowledge. She said, “Oh Blood. God damn.” A sad voice.

  He made an effort of a smile. He said, “You was to wait a minute more that useless Gandy would at least have some fresh warm milk to fill you up.”

  “I ain’t so hungry anymore. I got to get on.” She leaned then and touched his forehead and stood away, looking down at him. A long look. Then went with her load toward the door.

  Once more he called to her. “Sally.”

  She said, “I ain’t quit the country, not yet. You’ll see me again. I’ll bring that gold back to you, the time comes.”

  She opened the door. Gandy was bent low, leaning up against it. A bucket a third full of milk was behind him and he jumped back, knocking over the milk. It spread a white sheet over the frost, then pooled in the furrows of the hard ground. She turned back and looked at Blood. His torso was twisted in the chair to watch her, his face blemished with the effort.

  She said, “I was you, I’d get other help. This one’s near useless.” She stepped down onto the grass.

  Again his voice came. Even stepping away she knew it would. Her name as a plea: something she’d not heard before from Blood, not once, not at their most joined. Plaintive, it stung her. Old debt raw and true.

  She paused. The air was hard, thickened, drawn close and shivery with cold. She turned once more. “Fletcher’s mother. Her name was Molly,” she said. “There. You got it out of me. Maybe I was just born to betray. I certain hope not.”

  Then she turned away and walked. Past Gandy and the milk spill. On toward the fog and then into it. By the time she reached the road it was as if the tavern was altogether gone. She went down the road over the bridge and turned up the trail along the stream. Her bare feet making no sound in the drawn-down morning. The only noise, harsh as a sailor’s Jew’s harp, was her own breathing.

  When she came into the marsh and the camp the fog had thickened to the point where she thought it could start to snow and there would be no way to know. Cooper was up, squatting by a low fire with a couple of long alder switches strung with young trout stretched over the fire. He looked at her as she came in, watched her
place the rifle against one of the tent-poles and hang the pouches but did not speak. She went under the fly and set down her bundle, bent to look at Fletcher. He was sleeping, flat on his back, his face composed but through his open mouth the passage of his breathing had the faint hiss of pain to it.

  She went to the fire and took up her boots and stockings undisturbed from the rock and sat across from Cooper. She hiked her skirts to her knees and began rolling the stockings up first one leg then the other. She felt him watching her.

  She said, “I brought that other rifle back. It got left last night. If I’d thought I’d of asked Blood for a pitcher of rum to help ease Fletcher but I didn’t.” Then she pushed her skirts down and while working her boots on and hooking the lacings, she looked up at Cooper.

  Cooper looked away from her out at the trout and fiddled a bit with the sticks and then looked back at her. “He’s better off without it anyway I think. He’ll sleep through the first part of it, the hardest part. Then we’ll just have to see. It was a smart thing, getting that gun back. We’re all going to need food but that boy’s going to need meat the most of all. But I’d of hated traipsing off on a hunt and leaving you two without a weapon to speak of. This country’s quiet now but it idn’t going to stay that way long.”

  “I’d be nervous, you going off shooting, after yesterday. People’ll be edgy to the sound of a gun.”

  He said, “That boy needs fat meat. It’s cold enough, if I was to get a deer or young bear, the meat’d keep. I’ll be way up in the woods anyway and fog like this a gunshot don’t travel far. Just hope I get that shot, that’s what you should be thinking. How’s he doing anyhow?”

  She glanced back. Fletcher still slept. “He looks peaceful enough.”

  “I meant the other one.”

  “Blood? He’s a little worn. But he’s all right. Took some of the vinegar out of him, at least for the time being.”

  Cooper nodded. Then uprooted the alder switches and brought the trout over and with his belt knife shucked them like so many ears of corn into the tin pot they used to boil water. He laid aside two on a stone and covered the pot with its lid and settled it into the ashes where it would keep warm.

  He said, “These two is for you and me. The rest make him eat when he wakes. Even if he says he doesn’t want em. And get plenty of water into him. Can you shoot?”

  “I can.”

  “I’m not looking for anyone to bother us three today. But you never know who’ll come along.” Cooper stood. Got into his blanket coat and took up his rifle and pouches and then leaned and handed her one of the trout. Stood over the fire eating the other. She ate slowly, watching him. When he was finished he went to the other gun and checked the priming and set it in under the fly.

  He said, “It’s dry.” He turned to look in after his brother and then came back out and stepped around the fire close to her.

  “Cooper,” she said.

  “I just want to say,” he said in a rush, “I’m sorry to’ve mistrusted you. You stuck clean with us last night. And that other business, when we was all going to sleep, I don’t want you to think the wrong thing of me over that.” He held her gaze, his face flourishing blood under his skin.

  Her lips were suddenly dry. She wet them with her tongue.

  Abruptly he turned away. “I’ll be back,” he said.

  Her voice low, just loud enough for him to hear, she said, “Luck.”

  She sat watching him slip soundless into the fog, the blanket coat bright and then muted and then gone. Still she sat watching after the last spot she’d seen him. Sat until the fire was low enough that she grew cold and then looked to the small heap of firewood and stood up so quick she almost lost her balance.

  Seven

  Much of the following week passed quiet and cold, the oppression of fog stiff and unmoving over the land, roiling slightly over the rivers and lakes. Broken by the occasional rifle shot of a hunter and the weary repetition of axes as the remaining men threw up the roughest of shelters before winter came upon them—these crude camps little better than squat log bunkers built around the chimneys still standing from the burnt-out homes. Men working alone when it was their own homes to rebuild and in groups when providing for the wives and children of the men taken by the militia to the jail in Lancaster—those men not yet heard from or word of their fate. Some people had left altogether, sometimes just the forsaken women and children, other times whole families whose men had been untouched but still elected to depart the enshrouded bereft land.

  The few remaining empty structures were occupied by the members or partial members of two or more families, with no talk of who should profit from the place come spring and who would return to their original pitches to begin again; it was enough to be in tandem against the winter. The people, even the men hard awork, moved through those days with the shambling gait of survivors, struggling to parse what had occurred and what might be done about it but most narrowly bound to necessity. A group of people foundered as sure as a ship with blown canvas, snapped masts, strewn rudders, stove both fore and aft. What men remained were rowers not navigators.

  So Blood and Fletcher convalesced undisturbed, each assisted and tended but also spending much time sleeping or abed and so passed abundant time considering their situations. Fletcher was comfortable as long as he didn’t move and so quietly enjoyed the care of his brother but most clearly Sally, who if not romantic was at least tender and attentive and there was unavoidable intimacy that he was cautious to reciprocate but not exploit, thinking he showed himself in a strong fashion and, watching, believed she was responding to this. He wished nothing more than for her to comprehend him as a gentle man. As for his father and his broken collarbone he allowed only that the man had made a mistake, determined to wait for their next meeting without judgment. For his part, Blood was more agitated. That Gandy was an ineffectual nurse meant spit to him—of true concerns he was divided. The past and future seemed colliding and his damaged leg at times was merely practical—get the damn thing healed—and at other, stranger more fevered times, night-hours mostly, the wound took on mystic qualities. Thoughts he would not revisit during the days, most of which he spent fireside, the leg stretched for warmth, the wound either freshly dressed by himself and other times open to the heat and air. An instinctual combination. He forced himself to hobble around and daily looked for improvement. Sometimes he saw it, other times he thought himself delusional. He was short of patience.

  Twice Sally visited him and both times he sent her away. Brusquely and with unkind remarks that accomplished the job. The opposite of what he wanted but determined she would never know that. Not the only reason being that if she were there he would probe after his sons. That job he was saving for himself. Also, he missed her.

  At noontime on the fifth day a horseman came up the road from the south and passed unchallenged for there was no sentry. The horse a gaunted gray speckled with dried mud and manure-stained from poor stabling, the rider in black from hat to boots and all points in between but for a boiled white shirt gone yellow at the neck and cuffs, the black of his overcoat and vest and trousers a shabby dull tone, a plumage of neglect and age. A minister of the Congregational denomination from Lancaster who once or twice a year traveled unannounced into the territory to hold a service for the general endowment of the inhabitants and to sanction what unions had occurred through need or desire since his last appearance. A man respected not so much for his calling or ability as for his simple unambiguous vinculum to the greater world.

  The minister tied his horse to the tavern hitching post. Blood was alone, Gandy hunting or as likely sleeping away the increasing quantities of rum he pilfered while Blood slept. As if Blood did not know this.

  While Blood had not yet met the minister he knew immediately who he was, even something of the sort of man he was. Luckless in life, lean of faith, dependent more upon his office than it upon him.

  Blood inclined his head in greeting. He said, “Reverend.”


  “You are the man Blood?”

  “I am.”

  “I bear a message from Emil Chase.”

  Blood nodded as if this was expected. Without mockery he said, “This portion of the building is my domestic quarters. Come take a seat with me. It pains me to stand.”

  “You have taken a wound.”

  “I have.”

  “Mister Chase did not mention that.”

  “He would not have known of it.”

  “I have no use for public houses such as this. But my reputation suffers nothing from my entering one.”

  I expect not, Blood thought. But only hobbled back from the door and swept a hand to indicate the table. Which was clear of all but a pitcher of water and his horse pistol.

  The minister stepped inside. “Are your needs being met? Have you care?”

  “I want for nothing. Let us be seated. I can offer you water still bright from the stream or tea if you would prefer.”

  The minister said, “You’re not the sort I expected.”

  Blood said nothing.

  The minister went on. “I mean no disrespect.”

  Blood sat at the table. He said, “Sit with me or stand as you’re comfortable. I take no offense. Men are the agents of their own fate, Reverend. And that should end our theological discussion. You have a request from Chase?” He suspected he knew already what the request would be and was trying to decide if he should be amused or offended.

  The minister removed his hat and held it before him. His hair was surprising to Blood, a rich chestnut brush on a man otherwise devoid of notice.

  He said, “The number of men arrested in the insurrection here are too great to be housed within the jail at Lancaster. The majority have no capital warrants beyond simple resistance. Chase is charged with inciting insurrection but it appears he and the Sheriff are coming to agreement. The man Watkin, who was the instigator of this sad event, died in transport from wounds suffered through his own hindering to lawful arrest.”