Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  Once she was settled, with her skirts under her but pulled back so her legs were bare from midthigh down to her boots, Cooper let go of the headstall and the horse began to wander among the ponds, Sally slipping in the saddle, dropping first one rein and then the other, having to stretch forward along the horse’s neck to retrieve them, her rear lifted high as she slid her hand down toward the bit for the rein. The bay walked at leisure, in no particular pattern and without visible agitation, as if awaiting this strange human to locate itself and send some directions his way. Meanwhile he was content to amble.

  The brothers sat on the ledge, not talking, both watching the vision of the girl riding. She was beginning to guide the horse.

  Cooper said, “I knew that was the one for her. That bay horse, as long’s she can stay on him, give him some idea what she wants, he can do the rest.”

  Sally was moving the bay slow along and between the pools of water. Around a clump of thick young alders. The horse working well. Cooper said, “Look at that. That horse is just waiting for her to learn what he needs her to learn. That’s a good horse.”

  Fletcher reached back with his good hand and pushed off from where he leaned against the ledge. “All right,” he said. “Which of those sorrels do you figure for me?”

  Cooper grinned at him. “I ain’t sure. Let’s go look em over.”

  When Blood returned from giving away the cow it was without satisfaction of any kind. Even being done with the animal gave no pleasure. His leg was hurting badly and it looked to be an evil night before him. Already the brief warmth of the day was gone and the wind was lifting off the lake. He was cold and sore and came up to the tavern to find Gandy waiting with a skinned and gutted young bear, the carcass hanging from the meat-hook by the tavern door. An old trapper’s handsled with fresh bloodstain in the yard.

  “Meat,” Blood bleated. His body washed with the colors of pain. He wanted hot water and to change his dressings. A big fire and a cup of rum. He would’ve been happy with potatoes for his supper. Let Gandy come tomorrow, was what he wished.

  Gandy said, “This should keep you some time, the weather stays cool. If it don’t freeze up like a rock. Then you can hack at it with a axe. But I need to settle. I need powder and lead for the winter. I expect some rum as well. If you ain’t been keeping a tab I have. The bearmeat is just the tip-end of it.”

  Blood said, “I’m sorely worn. Leave the bear hang. We’ll settle on the morrow.”

  Gandy said, “No I don’t believe we will. I want to be done with it tonight. I hauled the bear with my sled and plan to leave before nightfall with my winter provision.”

  Blood shook his head. “It will have to wait. One more night sleeping on the tavern floor won’t be the death of you.”

  Gandy studied Blood a moment and then easy as a cat swung the rifle up and covered Blood. He said, “Things’ve turned against you Blood. I can’t say I’m sorry but wouldn’t say I’m glad neither. I just don’t plan to get caught in the midst of any of it. So I’ll load my sled and head for the Dead Diamond country tonight. I can do it with you approving what I take in trade or I can do it otherwise. But, unless the Lord smiles such that you’re here come springtime this is the last you’ll see of me. You clear on that or do you need another hole in you to sharpen your senses?”

  Blood leaned on the goad. He said, “I hadn’t expected this of you.”

  Gandy said, “I ain’t survived so long in this hellhole land by being as much a fool as you think me Blood.” He stepped up and kicked open the tavern door, still holding his weapon upon Blood. “You go on first. Go slow.”

  Blood looked at him, heaved his head back on his neck and said, “Slow’s all I’ve got right now Gandy. But you’ll have to load your sled yourself. You’re not such a man as to heft a powder keg one-handed. The pig lead idn’t light neither. So why don’t you calm down with the long gun. I got no desire at all to be blown again. This time, it might go lucky and be the end of me.”

  Gandy grinned. He said, “I’ll tell you what. We get things moved out of your storeroom, agree on quantities and such. Then I’ll determine how to get it loaded.”

  “Rifle or none, I’ll be no man’s slave.”

  Gandy said, “More what I had in mind, is when you see what I intend as mine by rights, you’ll see I’m not greedy but fair. Then we might close this deal more civil than we opened it. I ain’t such a hard one. I’m just determined to quit this settlement by this evening.”

  Blood studied him a moment, straightened a little so the goad was a better prop and said, “Is there news you own I ought to as well?”

  “No,” said Gandy. “Not beyond what ripples in my bones.”

  Blood studied him a long moment. Gandy held the rifle steady, looking right back. Blood sighed and stepped up into the darkened tavern. He said, “I need to make a light.”

  “Do it then.”

  Blood lighted a stub taper and they passed into the tavern side. Blood went around the counter and set the saucer with the stub on the counter and drew the pouch of keys from under his shirt very slow, even though Gandy knew what he was about. He took the larger key and opened the padlock from the hasp of the storeroom door. The chain bolted to the floor fell away. He swung the door open. Then stepped back, leaned on the counter and said, “Let’s see your accounts. Roll it on out here.”

  Gandy rocked one-handed three kegs of powder out and then a matching weight of pig-lead that he stacked atop the kegs, his rifle bobbing up and down and around. Blood thought if he were to die from Gandy’s weapon it would most likely be by accident.

  Gandy now surveyed the interior of the storeroom. He said, “Them empty powder kegs, they been rinsed?”

  “No.”

  “Did you stove the tops or they still of use?”

  “They’re stacked right behind the empties. Down behind.”

  Gandy said, “If I was to fill a couple from the hogsheads, they wouldn’t leak, don’t you think?”

  Blood shrugged. “Those powder kegs’re lined with sailcloth soaked in beeswax. It keeps the powder dry. I’d think, if they keep wet out, they’d hold it in pretty well.”

  He stood watching Gandy. Who said, “I’d like four of em. You think I been that much use to you, on top of the powder and lead?”

  Blood did not. He nodded and said, “Take four. When you come hauling furs through the muck next spring we can argue about whether you was worth that much or not.”

  Gandy grinned at him. Then set to filling the kegs with rum. When he had them sealed he moved them out alongside the powder and lead. It was an impressive load. Blood himself, had he been healthy, would not have coveted the long haul by handsled.

  Blood said, “Is that it?”

  Gandy paused. “That girl, when she run off, did she leave behind any of her skirts or underthings?”

  “No,” Blood said. “She took em all.”

  Gandy said, “That’s a shame. Some one little piece or another would’ve been pleasant to have as a memory.”

  Blood said, “There’s bolts of cloth for dresses and skirts and the like folded atop the hogsheads.”

  Gandy said, “You ain’t been able to sell the first cut of that, have you?”

  Blood was silent.

  Gandy said, “I don’t believe I’d care for it myself.” Gandy still held the rifle, butted under one arm, that hand holding the stock up by the trigger guard. “Now,” he said, “I’m going to move this bit by bit to the door. You follow on, but not too close.” And he half-crouched by the first powder keg and began to tip it on edge back and forth so that it rocked toward the counter opening. It was hard work and the rifle clenched under one arm made it all the harder.

  Blood moved slowly along with him. When they reached the end of the counter Gandy had to crab sideways to get through the opening. When he was partway through Blood took one last step and said, “Wait.”

  Gandy tipped his face up from where he was bent over the keg. The rifle was sideways in the ope
ning. “What is it,” he asked.

  “You forgot one thing,” Blood said. And caught up the little leather and lead sap from the shelf behind the counter and split Gandy’s head open with it, such a soft puff of sound but the lead crushed right through the bone. Gandy fell across the keg and briefly his arms and legs worked as if he might swim someway off the keg and away. His rifle clattered to the floor.

  As Blood stood looking at him Gandy slipped from the keg and fell. The keg turned sideways and lay pinned in the narrow opening with the dead trapper. Blood wiped the sap on his breeches and surveyed the scene.

  As if asking Gandy he said, “Now how in hell am I going to climb out over you. You goddamn fool.”

  He turned and went back and relocked the storeroom, disregarding the chain and the items out on the floor. There was nothing to do with them this night. Then, moving slow, he trod carefully up over the little trapper’s body. Turned back and took up the candle and went into the other side of the house. He shut the door and barred it. He needed to get the fire up and water heating. His wound was in fearsome ache, a blister of pain the size of a man’s head. Seeing to that was his first job. He staggered to the fireplace, then, just before he began to lower himself down to the floor to blow up the fire, he spotted on the mantel the eggs gathered earlier. At least, he thought, I get through this, I’ll have something to eat. A bit of drink after that. He was cautious but drinking some no longer bothered him in the least. If nothing else he’d earned back that right.

  * * *

  Dusk into nightfall. Fletcher was already sleeping. Sally sat out by the fire with Cooper, both drinking tea, not talking. She watched him as he gripped the tin cup, gazing blank into the fire, one foot tapping up and down, the knee jogging with his preoccupation. She knew before he stood that he was about to. And also what then.

  He still did not look at her but upward where the flame tips bled into the night. He said, “I’m going to walk on down there. Take a look around. Maybe have a little talk.”

  She said, “You don’t want to do that alone.”

  Then he looked at her. “Why ever not,” he said. “What’s he going to do, shoot me?”

  There was nothing funny in his grin and she knew it. She paused a moment, then revealed herself. “I been down twice on my own. He’s in a foul humor, drove me off and all I wanted was to offer help. Blood’s still struggling to get around—you think about why that is, and unless you got less sense than I know you do you’ll see it idn’t the time. At least not alone and neither one of us is about to leave Fletcher here solitary in the state he’s in. Anybody that wanted could come in and he’d never even wake to see their mischief. No.” She raised a hand to hush Cooper. And went on. “Also, there’s no way to know if Blood’s alone. The last thing you or him wants is anybody incidental to connect you two. It idn’t just that useless little bastard Gandy neither, but men slipping up private in the night to buy drink from him. They don’t stay but carry it away. Cooper, trust me, this idn’t the time for it. Not yet. We got to get Fletcher stronger. And it may strike you strange but Blood himself, the more he heals the best it will be. For both of you. Can’t you see that?”

  There was a long pause while he again studied the firetip or the stars, she could not tell. Then not looking at her, he lifted his blanket coat from the tent pole and finally turned. He kept his eyes full upon her as he put it on and when he was wrapped against the night he said, “I got to. I’m beginning to feel at loose ends here.” And did not wait for her reply but walked from the circle of light into the dark. This time she did not watch him go but took a stick and jabbed apart the settled fire and then stick by stick built it high. To build a beacon for him? She wasn’t sure what he’d meant—that last remark.

  * * *

  Sometime after this she went back into the tent and stood over Fletcher. Even with the fire it was cool enough to see her breath. She knelt to one side of him and removed her boots and woolen stockings, folded her shawl atop the neat pile and still wearing her skirt and bodice slowly peeled back one corner of the covers and slipped in beside him. He was on his back, his arm strapped to his chest, his breathing even and a little moist. He did not stir as she came in and settled herself, on her side facing him so she could study his profile. Small bubbles of saliva broke against the corner of his mouth, catching the firelight, bright beads rising up and then gone.

  Throughout the cold days of healing she’d sat long hours on the blankets beside Fletcher with her feet curled under her, chatting with him, lifting his head to bring the tin cup of water to his lips. He’d asked about her life with Blood and she refused to talk of it. He asked of her life before that and she refused him there as well.

  “It’s not so much I’m shamed of it,” she told him. “As I’m just done with it. I got no idear what comes next but I know I’m not going backward. There’s nothing to be gained by hashing it over. Past is past.”

  “I’d not judge you by any of it.

  “It’s not your judgment that I care for,” she said, not certain this was true. “It’s myself. I can’t make a bit of it go away but that don’t mean I intend to carry it forward with me. Don’t mistake me—I don’t expect a thing of you.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk that way.”

  She went on, “I don’t expect a thing of anybody. For the first time ever I don’t owe nothing to nobody. I like that.”

  As if this was enough, he relented. She knew his great patience was rare and understood this was a gift bestowed upon her.

  Other times he talked of his ideas for the future. But these were vague, near to awkward and he would stop of a sudden, as if come against a barrier he held no idea how to penetrate. She knew this barrier to be herself. But was content to let him come to that stop. If he would hesitate to pursue her in that sketched future he should expect no encouragement from her. Let’s see what happens, was what she thought.

  * * *

  Sometime later she woke, wrapped in blankets, warm and her breath gasping as if drinking the cold air of the night, lying carefully bundled beside where Fletcher slept. Then slowly came more awake. The fire was up, just barely and there came a sound she could not place. She sat up as she woke further.

  Cooper sat before the fire on a stone, his back to the tent, a black hump obscuring the dart of flame. He was leaned over, not looking at the fire, his head in his hands. He was crying. The sort of silent hard contorted cry she knew so well, the soul-crying of privacy. She came out from the covers and went to him. Up beside him and knelt there, reached and touched him. Just touched his shoulder, his arm. He turned to her. Eyes and cheeks wet and swollen. He looked at her as at a stranger: his face distorted, wild torn and damaged.

  “Cooper,” she said.

  He came down off the rock to kneel before her. His arms dropped at his sides as if broken.

  Again she said his name. And reached to touch his upper arms with both hands. He lifted his face and looked upon her again. He touched her arms, ran his hands up and down them. She gripped him. His arms went around her, his hands hard upon her back, working at the muscles there. And held her clenched and rose up so he was standing and she with him, against him. Once up he did not stand gentle with her but ran his hands once more hard over her back and then bent against her and picked her up and carried her out into the dark, into the marsh, into the hummocks of harsh frozen grass. Not at all anything she wanted until it was happening and then all she wanted even as it changed everything, all notions of time right or wrong gone from her. She looked back over his shoulder at the camp behind and then looked away, up into the night sky. At a point that was not marsh and not hummock but some place in between he stopped and dropped to his knees and settled her onto the ground, a placing not rough but determined. All she landed on was the earth. She fit against it as if it had been waiting for her. Her legs spread wide as she went down, her skirt pulled up, her own hands doing that job. The sky a maniac of lights. He on his knees struggling with his breeches. Hurry
. Hurry she thought. Then his graceful obliterating weight. All of it. All throughout her. She got her heels up, the soles of her feet pointed toward the stars, the moon, her moon. As if her feet would lead her there.

  The world gone red and black, blood-pods bursting over and again.

  Later they lay clenched to each other. She began to shiver, shaking against him. He tried to wrap her in his arms, to hold her against him, to turn her away from the cold ground as if that was what caused her chill. She pushed against him.

  “Goddamn it,” he said.

  She shuddered, pushed harder. “Let go of me.” Her voice grim.

  He heard this. Rose up and gathered his breeches to his waist and reached to help her stand. She rolled away, going around his hand, pushing herself off the ground, feeling as if her body carried all the marks it possibly could, the stains of earth and mud and grass and blown dead leaves in her hair and blood coarsening the skin of her breast and face. She pushed with her hands at her clothing and then went around him some half dozen steps toward the camp. And stopped. It was no place to go.

  Behind her he said her name.

  She stood where she was. Her arms wrapped tight over her breasts, her thighs pressed tight against the convulsing. He came up beside her. She kept her eyes ahead of her, looking at the fire, the faint orange glow backlighting the canvas. Her voice flat as pond ice. “Get me a blanket. If he’s awake don’t say nothing.”

  When he came back he opened the blanket as if to wrap her. She snatched forward and took it from him. Pulled it tight around her, over her head, up hard against her throat.

  He said, “Sally.”

  She thrust her free hand from under the folds and slapped his face as hard as she could.

  He stood against the impact. “Christ,” he said, a small voice of despair.

  “What do you think I am?” she said. Then, “Shut up. I don’t want to hear anything from you. I already know.”

  He stood rocking a moment before her. Then, his voice with the lisp of anger said, “Don’t tell me what I think.” And turned and walked toward the fire. She watched him go, his feet flat and steady over the uneven ground. When he reached the ring of light she saw him stand a moment looking into the tent and then he turned and in one swift sagging motion settled crosslegged on the ground before the fire, his hands loose in his lap. He watched into the flames. His head did not move. He did not look out into the dark where she stood.