by Jeffrey Lent
Her sex was swollen but the ache was sweet. She thought I ain’t no better than a animal. Then realized that was somebody else thinking, not her. She walked forward into the fire circle and sat on the stone Cooper had been on when she first awakened. She was looking at him but also without turning her head could see into the tent where Fletcher lay sleeping. On his back, breathing through just-parted lips as if he had no more pain. She looked back at Cooper.
He was still looking into the fire. Without turning his head he said, “I’d be lying I was to tell you I hadn’t wanted to do that. But it idn’t what you thought it was.”
She said nothing.
He shook his head. “No. You’re wrong.”
She said nothing.
He said, “But still there’s a part I don’t like. I hate it. To do such a thing to my brother.”
She said, “It wasn’t your brother you done it to.”
He looked at her then, his eyes terrible. “I swear I never meant to hurt you. When you come from the bed I was in a bad state. You seemed everything I needed. It wasn’t a accident you were there then. Tell me you think it was.”
She said nothing.
He said, “When Fletcher and I come up here we only had one thing on our minds. Then when he first met you and talked about you I thought it was a simple thing. Some boy thing. When I met you I thought he had good reason but you weren’t a girl to get tangled with. For plenty of reasons. That’s what I thought. But what happened wasn’t a gradual thing at all. It was that morning we were trying to get to Van Landt’s and the militia rode up. We was hid up that hillside and I turned to see you lift your head and crane after the men riding by. I can’t tell you what it was. It was the way the cords of your neck stood out. It was the look on your face. It was something delicate and fearless all at once in you. I’d never seen that before, just like that. Not a woman I’d ever met. Come to think of it, not a man either. It was something rare, was what it was.”
She was silent still. She recalled the time he spoke of but not the moment he’d seen her that way. She knew when it had been such with her for him but would not speak of it, not to him. Not yet.
He went on. “Fletcher is the last person I’d ever want to hurt this way. Any way. He is.” A pause. “And you. You too.”
Very quiet she said, “You already have.”
“I know it.”
She said, “Cooper.”
He looked at her.
She said, “What happened tonight—”
He interrupted her. “I won’t speak of it. I won’t say a word. Nothing good would come of telling him. And more than that—I swear to God I’ll leave you be. I won’t moon around after you. I won’t give you reason not to trust me. I won’t do a thing not proper. I won’t be bold, even, as best I can do it, in my head. I’ll do everything I can do to see this works out. It idn’t just him I’m doing that for, you know, it idn’t just that at all—”
Now she interrupted him. “It’s a mess, idn’t it?”
He looked at her.
She said, “Cooper.”
“I told you,” he said. “I’ll leave you be.”
“Cooper,” she said. Her voice changed, upthrust.
He was silent now.
She said, “When I first came out tonight. And found you setting here by the fire, so full of sorrow. That was something I know. I seen you then, something like you seen me.” Now she paused and determined, went on. “Not that it was the first. But tonight, all I wanted was to take that sadness from you. I didn’t want to make it more.”
His eyes bright upon her but he did not speak.
“What was it, Cooper? What happened down to Blood’s tonight?”
Now he faltered, looked away, then back. “I druther not talk about it.”
“Cooper you got no choice.”
He gazed into the fire. She thought He’s a man, once he lets you, you can read his face.
“I’m warm enough,” she said. “We can walk out and set up on one of those humps in the grass.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Cooper,” she said. “It don’t make a difference anymore. Don’t you know that?” She stood and waited. One of the horses blew when she stood. The night sky spread broad, the moon was down. The fire was low, a mound of red and black large enough to cover the three of them sleeping.
He looked up at her. And she saw it in his face and felt it within her at the same time and she thought There is not a solitary thing wrong with any of this.
And so walked out barefoot through the frosted raw-edged grass with the blanket drawn close about her but pushed back off her head so she could see clearly all around and above her. Hearing him coming behind her. She loosed the blanket a little in the front. So when she turned to him she would want all the warmth he carried. So when she turned to him she would feel every bit of his life come against her. Right or wrong, she wanted that.
He had not seen his father. Had halted in the copse of spruce across the stream from the tavern thinking he would just sit and study things a bit. See if there were other men about, inside the tavern or out. Recalling her warning. Once the door opened and meek light spilled into the yard as his father held the jamb and swung stiff-legged to the bottom of the two steps and stood and peed, Cooper able to see the great head swing about as he took measure with his relief. His father turned slow and clambered back inside. Still Cooper sat, his father most likely alone. Sat long enough to grow very cold. Watching the slender vapor of chimney smoke rise straight as a mast. But did not understand, did not know, until he rose and went not down to the road and across to the tavern but rather retreated up the trail toward the marsh, that he was frightened. That he did not have the courage to stride across and strike the door and demand or simply ask admittance. The courage to face what he did not know. The courage to apologize and attempt to begin again. Or simply offer his aid. That he was simply a badly frightened boy. And understood that he had lost not gained in wounding his father. The reflex had been one born of fear not boldness. And stumbled his way back to the camp knowing something of himself he had not known before and did not like and was helpless before.
They sat quiet some while after his telling of this. Wrapped amply against the cold, the blanket around them, clinging entwined, their bodies a furnace interim. So quiet their breath steamed audible into the night and the stars seemed to emit a faint crackle.
Finally Sally spoke, her voice low and warm, close against him. “I didn’t ever know my own father,” she said. “But I couldn’t imagine such a one as Blood.”
“When I came looking I didn’t know it,” Cooper said. “But all I needed was to meet him face to face and see what he would have to say. And then banish him from the rest of my life. But it idn’t going to be like that. However it ends here, he’s going to be somewhere inside of me all my days. And not in a single way I want or admire.”
Sally was quiet, then picked her way carefully through a handful of words. “Could be, some of those ways might serve you good some day. Even if it’s not more than knowing they’re in you.”
After a moment Cooper said, “I don’t like it but I got to ask you this.”
Sally said, “You’d be stupid not to. The first thing you need to know is that Blood brought me into this country tied like a beast to the back of his cart. And that remains most important of what’s true between him and me. But there’s been times, small things to most anybody but me I suppose, when he’s shown kindness. Never so much that it cost him great effort. But still they was there, those things. I think,” she said. “I think when he done those things it allowed him some measure of comfort also. As if he’d long since come to believe he wasn’t capable of kindness to another human being. There were times, times when he was tender to me. And I’ll not lie to you Cooper. I was tender with him as well.”
Cooper was quiet.
She waited and when he still said nothing she said, “Don’t get me wrong. Even so, I never doubted
that if it was in his favor he’d not think twice before selling me to whoever wanted me or cut my throat if I was more nuisance than worth.”
She took a breath and went on. “So. Do we trust? Do we choose to trust a bit more than ever before?” And thought if she’d gone too far better to know now.
“Sally,” Cooper said. “I am surely, sorely, lost.”
She pulled her head away enough to tilt her face up to see his. He was holding the blanket around both of them and she ran a hand up between them to cup over his head, her fingers in his hair. She said, “No. You idn’t lost. All that’s lost is some idea you had of yourself. You’re right here, same as me.”
“And Fletcher. He’s here too.”
“So who’s the guilty one? Me?”
“No,” he said. “Not you.”
“Is it you then?”
“I guess it is.”
“I should just walk out of here,” she said. “I should just wrap my things and go. Leave you two to your business with Blood. Just leave simple like that. Clean as I can.”
“No,” he said. Then, “Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Cooper,” she said. “Everybody lies, but there’s big ways to lie and small ways. The small ones are just a kindness and don’t count. My offering to leave is one of those. It’s the last thing I want. But, you’d said yes, or even hesitated, I’d been gone. Now that, I learned from all the lying I ever saw people do. But from your father, I learned the big lies idn’t worth it. It’s a lesson he never knowed he was teaching me.” She stopped like she was out of breath.
Cooper was quiet so long she thought he might never speak again. That she might have pressed hard against a hurt too fresh to bear up under. She wished that wasn’t so, wished she could take it away. But there was nothing she could say, nothing she would say. So she let her fingers work the slightest touch to his hair.
Finally she said, “It’s a strangeness, idn’t it?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “It is, Sally. It certainly is.”
They lay curled on their sides, Sally wrapped within him. Her back to his chest, his arms around her with heads so close that sleeping they inhaled the other’s breath. Their legs wrapped in unbroken chain. The blanket over them caught by frost in a crude heap of angles. In the predawn a single planet made a modest beacon in the west.
An owl called the night with it deep into the hemlocks.
Fletcher woke under the canvas flat on his back and tested the arm in the sling strapped tight to his chest. The bite of pain in his shoulder was dulled, a shade less each day. It was early and he was alone. He pushed the blankets off him and dragged his breeches close and one awkward leg at a time got them on. The hardest part was arching his hips up so his weight fell onto his shoulders as he got the breeches over his waist. Then getting them buttoned one-handed. He got to his feet and took down his blanket coat that was stiff with cold and worked it over his shoulders for a crude cape.
Then went out to the fire. He stood a time looking out at the marsh where the small prominence of frosted blanket seemed too small to contain all it did. After a time he took up a long stick with his free hand and stirred the mound of fire until he turned up black and smoking lumps of charred wood that steamed in the cold air and began to glow red and flicker edges into flame. There was a heap of firewood and he worked slowly to add one stick at a time until the fire was a bright living angry creature. With great effort he filled the iron pot with water from the tin bucket and put the pot on a stone close to the fire to heat for tea. Only then did he walk slow out over the rough ground, the frost breaking under his bare feet so there was a trail of dark prints behind him as he went. When he came up to the blanket he studied it some time, then shuffled his position and kicked hard at what he thought was the small of his brother’s back. And kicked again. Wishing he had his boots on. Suddenly almost crying because he wasn’t able yet to lace his boots.
The two on the ground came up together, a rough lurch to something close to sitting and the blanket fell partly away and the girl grabbed for it. To cover herself from his eyes, he thought. As if she’d forgotten she had clothes on. Her eyes blinking.
“Oh Jesus,” his brother said.
“I got water on for tea,” Fletcher said. “God damn you both.” And turned back to the camp.
Blood was out of bed some short hours before first light. Cursing his night-stiffened leg. He left the fire cold and lit the taper stub left from the night before and carried it into the tavern and surveyed the mess before him. He went blind in the dark to the barn and cut a length from the coil of hempen rope, then back into the tavern where he bound Gandy’s arms to his sides so they would not impede movement, bound the ankles together and ran the other end of the rope in a harsh tight loop around his own waist. Harnessed so, he took up the goad and fought his way out of the tavern into the dark, straining at the dead-weight load. On the frosted land the body moved more easily. He went struggling and panting, leaning into the job with both hands gripped to the goad that he moved before him and planted to draw them both along. At the edge of the stream he untied himself, went back to the tavern and several times returned to the streamside, carrying one-handed a partial quantity of lead Gandy had selected. When there was a plenty of it, he eased himself down and finished wrapping the remaining rope around Gandy. Drew it snug tight and knotted it hard. Then wedged the pigs of lead under the ropes, adjusting so they were secure. He stood once more and put his weight onto his good leg, bent as much as he was able and used the goad as a lever to roll the body over the bank. Where it caught on a rock and turned sideways, headfirst toward the water, stuck. Blood used the goad to pry and finally the little trapper slipped down into the water with barely a sound, turning some few moments in the current and then, as if the water sighed, the stream opened and Gandy was gone.
By first light not only was the wound dressed but he was washed and shaved, in the cleanest shirt he could find, his belly full of tea. His leg throbbed from the early exercise, as if a raven were snared within the flesh. So gingerly he made his way along the stream to the narrow path that branched off following the brook toward the marsh. He paused here, taking air in great gulps, and bent to study the ground. On the path, compressed between the rocks brookside and the woods growth, it was difficult to make out much except the obvious recent passage of a number of horses. Going up only, not returning. He’d seen no such sign coming along the wider road by Perry Stream. He went on, laboring over the rocks wrapped in moss, the moss here and there sliced in a crescent opening from the sidewall strike of a horse hoof. After a while he determined it was three horses. He recalled Sally relating she’d held back gold to buy horses with and their aborted effort to do so. He guessed they’d proceeded. These tracks were fresh, not more than a day old. He wasn’t sure this was a good thing but guessed it could be, he played his few cards right. At least the three up ahead could leave swiftly, the time came. If they would. Blood smart enough to know already he could be the impediment to that quick departure. He’d cut that impulse, whatever the cost. If his cards were few he still had the advantage of knowing the full range of the game.
The boys were standing either side of the fire, apart but facing each other. Cooper saw him coming and shifted to watch, Blood gimping proud as he could. Then Fletcher did the same. Blood couldn’t see Sally but as he came closer he saw Cooper’s mouth was bloodied, his lower lip bloated, seeping a red stain into his thin beard. Fletcher stood hunched to one side, his right arm in a sling that was muddied, mud on his breeches and a daub on one cheek. His eyes red, swollen. There had been a tussle of some sort, grappling over Sally, Blood guessed. And suspected the whole struggle useless—the matter already settled, she had made her choice. The boys eyed his approach silently. He was an interruption they hadn’t expected. He liked that. Now he saw Sally seated on a heap of blankets in the back of the tent.
The group was mute, awaiting him. He settled himse
lf on a rock fireside and stretched his hands to warm. He looked at the boys, Fletcher and Cooper. Then he spoke, reasoned and calm, a job with his heart and leg yet hammering from the hike. He was gentle, determined to be that. He spoke to Cooper. “Let me be clear. If you own any regret over shooting me discard it. What you did was right—protecting your brother, Sally, yourself. The three of you. Taking care of your own. It hurts me”—he let amusement slide over his eyes and was serious again—“but I’ve pride in you.”
Cooper said, “I don’t care for your pride. But you’re right, shooting you was never my intent. I’m not short on anger toward you, but not that sort. There’s accounting due but I can’t compel you. All I’m after is some answers and giving you the chance. And Sally reports your leg appears to be healing well and I’m glad of that.”
Blood thought he might regret it later but wanted the boy down a notch. So he said, “Was it you lurking in the spruce last night?”
Cooper colored. He said, “I wasn’t spying you.”
Blood nodded, as if this were reasonable. He said, “No.”
Cooper said, “I come down determined to talk. But wanted to see if you were alone. It idn’t simply a matter of walking in to visit. This whole country is fearsome, and we’ve pretty much squatted tight. Nobody much knows us and we can’t be certain if that’s a good thing or not.”
Blood nodded again. He was content to give the boy time. “You must’ve seen Van Landt at least. Are those my horses back there?”
“No,” Fletcher spoke up. “They belong to us.”
Blood looked at him. The long austere gaze most men broke from. Fletcher did not. Blood said, “Are you going to be the difficult one?”
