by Nick Arvin
When he sees the girl again she is sitting in the shade of a tree, sipping water from a leather bottle. Neither speaks as he passes.
A minute later he hears her coming up behind him, again. She strolls alongside him for several minutes. “Where’re you taking it?”
“Baltimore.”
She laughs. “If you can drag that all the way to Baltimore, I can be the Queen of Maryland. How old are you?”
Henry resents the question, but somehow he doesn’t want her to go away again. Mother says, She may be dangerous. Henry laughs, though laughing takes his breath and leaves him wheezing. Mother says, Well, she may be.
Forgetting what the girl asked, Henry says, “Mother died.” His eyes tear up. “Father’s in the debtor’s jail, in Baltimore.”
The girl angles her head. “That seems a poor sort of a joke.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“Too bad about that,” she says. “Too bad. Could be worse. Could be you never knew your mother, or your father.”
Henry grunts, regrets saying anything. “Bad luck always turns, Father says.”
“Ha,” the girl says. “I hardly know anything about anything, but I know that’s not true. I’ve known girls with so much bad luck you could drown in it.”
“Well, Father doesn’t need luck anyway. I’m going to get him out.”
The girl walks in silence a minute, then asks, “You haven’t any other family?”
“My brother is away with the Maryland regiment. I’m told he’s dead, but I don’t believe it.”
“You should go to family, or a friend of your family.”
“The Sutherses’ house burned. The Suthers women were never friendly to us anyway, except Mary, and she’s been gone. There’s no one else, because everyone has grown angry with Father over money.”
“Go to your brother’s regiment. They’ll take you as a cook or drummer boy or let you roll around the cannonballs or some such thing.”
“Army pay for a soldier is bad; for a boy they will pay less or nothing. And Father owes a great deal of money.”
“Too bad about that.”
They walk for a while.
“Too bad,” she says, in a softer tone, “that someone won’t show you where the war is. At a war, there’re soldiers with money and nowhere to spend it, and there’re all sorts of things just lying around. A war is like a rich man dancing with a hole in his pocket.”
“Do you know where the war will be?” he asks.
“Good thing you don’t need any help.”
“Oh, go away,” he says.
She moves ahead for a few minutes, but then stops to work something out of her shoe, until Henry catches up again. “What’s in the barrel?”
“Mother.”
“What?”
Henry stops, opens the barrel, shows her. The girl looks at Mother, at Henry, at Mother. She says, “Oh.”
He closes the barrel, starts off again. He hears Mother humming. He says, “She wants to be sent out to sea.”
“It’s foolish to go all the way to Baltimore to go to the sea.”
“She wants her family together. Then the sea.”
“A sensible person might hide the barrel somewhere and return for it later, with the family.”
Henry had never considered this. He stops a moment, then starts forward again. “It’s difficult to hear her when she’s far away.”
“You’re a funny boy. Are you sure you haven’t any money at all?”
“I have a half-dollar, is all.”
When they come to a hill, she helps with the cart.
They have traveled a mile or so when a bearded man on horseback catches up alongside them, slows to their pace, stares at the girl, says, “You’re too goddamn pretty to be clumping along in the dirt. I’ve room here.” He pats his saddle.
The girl doesn’t look up. “Leave me be,” she says, “or my brother will box your ears.”
Henry startles—brother?—catches himself, sets his shoulders back. The man looks him over and laughs. But he spurs his horse ahead. “Enjoy your trudge, filthy bitch.”
Henry stops and stares, quivering with fury. “Come on,” the girl says, moving ahead. “By the way, that’s what good you can be to me,” she calls back. “If you were wondering.”
They strike now a larger road. To the right lies Baltimore; to the left lies Bladensburg. From Bladensburg, the road continues to Washington.
Henry sets down the cart. His shoulders burn, dust grits his tongue, and the shafts of the cart have shaped blisters into his palms.
The girl starts left.
Henry looks after her. Mother will be angry if he turns from Baltimore. Already she mutters ominously. He calls after the girl, “Are you going to the war?”
“Too bad you can’t pay anyone to show you where the war is,” she calls back. “But you might take a chance. Might be where I’m going.”
He watches her walking away, feels desolate, feels angry with Mother for making him feel guilty, feels she has no right to do so, being dead. He grabs the cart shafts, starts after the girl.
From the barrel Mother cries, No no! Henry! Where are you going? Go to Baltimore. To your father. Baltimore.
Henry pulls the cart after the girl.
Mother cries, Your father is in Baltimore! Go to him! Take me to him! Ungrateful child!
“I need money to buy Father out!” Henry yells. “I can’t do him any good with no money.”
Mother cries, Your father will know what to do, you’re only a boy, and we’re all scattered. Turn around! Turn around!
The girl stares back at him.
Henry puts his tongue out at her. He plods grimly.
“If you’re bound to tail after me,” the girl says, “you might as well know my name is Abigail.”
Henry tells the girl his name.
Mother shouts at him for nearly a mile, then falls to mumbling.
The fires of the army bivouac glimmer a half mile ahead, below the town of Bladensburg.
But nearer to hand is a tobacco field beaten down by a chaos of tents and canopies, campfires, wagons, horses, carriages, livestock, dogs, cats, screaming babies, a preacher preaching from a wagon, barrels of whiskey, rum, and wine, crated fighting cocks, and all kinds of people—Abigail says they are hangers-on, soldiers’ wives and children, sutlers, farriers, gamblers, whiskey dealers, tobacconists, seamstresses, butchers, spies, curiosity seekers, ne’er-do-wells, and opportunists.
“And,” Abigail says, “ladies of modesty such as myself.” But Henry already understood that she was a prostitute. He had traveled with Father to Washington and Alexandria and had seen the harlots about, at the taverns and gambling places. He understood they were looked down upon, but he had a notion of prostitutes as a kind of a practical service, like gravediggers or providers of stud dogs. Once Henry had been with Mother when she went to try to sell some lace to the Suthers sisters. Father at the time was away in Annapolis, and the eldest sister said, “Don’t you worry about the city women?” Mother replied serenely, “Oh no. His apparatus doesn’t work that way anymore.”
As they enter the encampment, a man with a face craggy as a walnut glares at Henry. “What’s in the barrel?”
“My mother,” Henry says.
Three small boys crowd in and jeer, “Show it! Liar! Show it!”
Mother says, Leave me be. “Better to let everyone see,” Henry says. “If they know there’s nothing of value in the barrel, no one will steal it.” Well, Mother says, for goodness sake, preserve my dignity. Henry opens the barrel, adjusts her limbs, stands aside.
The boys fall back, screeching with delight. “His mother! He pickled his mother!”
People gather. Henry stands on the cart. “Clear room! Make space! Everyone can look, but give her room!”
Mother
murmurs, It is a light affliction, which is for but a moment.
A woman says, clucking, “Ought to be a Christian burial.”
“I’m taking her to my father, and then to be buried at sea,” Henry says. “She says that’s what she wants.” He doesn’t mind the attention. He tells the story of how she died. He tells it in a way that makes the crowd laugh.
“You seem awfully cheerful,” a man calls, “for a boy whose mother is freshly pickled.”
“Well, of course I still hear her,” Henrys says. “So it hardly matters about the cow.”
They laugh again. One by one they come to the open barrel. People go and bring back others. He’s asked to tell the story again, and by the time crowd thins, they’re calling him the mad boy.
Abigail has vanished; the sun has dropped away; the stars make shining holes in the sky. A warty, kettle-shaped woman lifts onto her toes, looks into the barrel, asks, “Georgina? Is that her? It looks like Georgina.”
“That’s not Georgina!” Henry cries, offended. “That’s Francine Phipps!”
“Such a wonderful lady, Georgina. She could make a custard the angels envy.” The woman wanders off, but returns a few minutes later and hands Henry a warm pig’s foot. “I did love that Georgina,” she says.
Henry closes the barrel, rolls underneath the cart, chews on the greasy pig’s foot. Mother mutters, They saw me, but seeing is nothing, and they saw only flesh and learned nothing, nothing.
Darkness expands the noises of the camp—the whooping of the drunks, the whinny of horses, the rattle of dice and bottles, the singing of tavern songs. Mother natters, hums. Someone shouts strange insults: “Gundiguts! Sapscull! Nigmenog!” A baby cries and jabbers. Cats screech. Henry rests his head on his elbow, counts breaths to a hundred, and sleeps.
Someone rolls up, presses against him warmly. Henry, startling awake, instinctively raises a knee, and it lands in soft flesh.
Abigail curses. “Don’t be beastly,” she says. They cannot both fit under the little cart. Her stringy hair is in his face. Her boney length bumps him. Mother says, Immoderate.
Henry wriggles backward and is cuffed in the head by a boot. “Little girl?” says a man’s voice. “Little whore? Come out. Aren’t done yet.”
Henry squirms as the man kicks again. Barking his shin on the cart, the man yelps. “Damn it, that will come back to you.” He sounds drunk.
“Who’s that?” Henry whispers.
“Tell him to go,” Abigail says.
The man grunts as he tries to roll the cart, but he’s only pushing the shafts into the ground. He throws his body into the cart, shaking it. “This is all coming due, whore!”
Henry says, “Go away—” Abigail punches him in the ribs. “Ow!” Henry yelps.
“Sound big,” she whispers.
“Go away, you!” Henry shouts in his deepest voice.
The man guffaws. “You find a croaky squirrel? A mouse with a cold?”
“Well, he’s bigger than he sounds!” Abigail says.
One oughtn’t tell falsehoods, Mother notes.
The man delivers a kick that catches the top of Henry’s head. Henry cries out, reaches, grabs the man’s ankle. This doesn’t help much—Henry is kicked again. Abigail meanwhile slides out from the other side of the cart. The man kicks yet again, and Henry wonders furiously why he is holding this ankle. But then Abigail shoves the cart backward, slamming it into the man’s knee. He howls. She jerks the shafts upward, bringing the cart down on the man’s shin. He roars and bends to grab Henry, but she drops the shafts, and the back of the cart swings up into his chin.
The man falls on the ground, moaning. “My teeth,” he slurs. He spits into the dirt. Henry stands and sets to kicking the man. Abigail yanks him away. “Boys,” she says, “always hitting this, kicking that. It’s nonsense. He’ll be up as soon as he finishes spitting teeth. We should go.”
They drag the cart to the opposite side of the encampment. Henry crawls under it again. Abigail follows. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but you’re not of any use to me if you can’t act bigger than that.”
Embarrassed, annoyed, Henry says, “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Good,” she says. She rolls onto her side, away from Henry.
“I don’t know why you led him to me,” Henry says.
“No one ever needs any help, I suppose you think,” she says.
“You have helped me,” Henry admits.
“Too bad you’re a fool,” Abigail says, “or you might be something else.”
She yawns. Soon she’s asleep.
But Henry lies awake, listening to Mother mumble.
Finally he climbs out. In the distance the fires of the army bivouac still burn. Henry starts walking.
He follows the road until he finds a soldier standing picket at the perimeter of the army camp. Mouth open, eyes half-closed, he doesn’t notice Henry until Henry tugs his sleeve. Yawning, he tells Henry that this is an encampment of the Virginia militia, and he doesn’t know a Phipps, and he doesn’t know anything about a firing squad, nor the whereabouts of the 5th Maryland, Franklin’s regiment, nor anything else, since all he does is march in circles the day long like a demented idiot.
Henry returns to the cart, lies down beside Abigail. Silvery moonlight comes and goes off the edges of the cart wheels as clouds pass.
When Henry wakes, Abigail is gone. He climbs up and sits with an arm around the barrel. The sky has only a little light in it. A breeze lifts and drops. A rooster starts going.
A moment later a rider comes pounding out of the army bivouac, toward the civilian encampment. He doesn’t slow as he comes but gallops right in among the rough rows of tents and wagons, spilling buckets and barrels, scattering pigs and chickens, bellowing, “It’s Washington! Washington! The redcoats have turned to Washington! We’ll meet them at Bladensburg!”
The camp heaves to life with shouts, cries, curses.
Men mount horses and spur them. Several sheep have gotten loose and dogs chase pell-mell. The sutlers yank down their tents. The whiskey dealers throw empty bottles into their wagons with terrific clattering noises. Mother says quietly, Well. I don’t know what you think you’ll do now. We might as well go to Baltimore.
“I’m going to the battle,” Henry says.
That isn’t wise, Mother says. People are killed in these events. That’s their purpose.
Already the army drums roll and tap, the noise reaching Henry faintly. A column starts from the army bivouac. Henry looks at the barrel. His hands and shoulders burn from yesterday’s walk. “I can’t take you. The British will be there any minute. I’ll be too slow.”
You will not leave me, Henry, Mother says.
“Too bad—” a voice says.
Henry yelps, jumps, turns—Abigail is only inches away.
“Too bad,” she says, “you’ve no money, and you’re going to miss the war while you stand bickering with a pickle barrel.”
Grimacing, Henry looks at the distant army on the road, at the barrel, at Abigail.
“I’m going,” she says, her face flushed, backing away. “Are you, or not?”
Mother says nothing at all, which alarms Henry terribly.
“I’m going, and I’m bringing the barrel,” Henry says.
“Not today. Too slow. I’m not going to miss the war for a barrel of pickled lady.” Abigail lifts her skirt and runs.
Henry takes up the shafts of the cart, yanks, lurches the cart ahead with the force of resentment. He follows in the trail of all the others hurrying on. “If there’re musket shots,” he says, “I’m going to drop you and run.”
But Mother chatters happily now, and he is glad she is not silent.
He does not, after all, need to go far. In less than a mile he is on the dirt track through Bladensburg—two rows of small houses and shops and a church wit
h a narrow, leaning, weathered steeple. To his left, between the buildings, he can see the water of the East Branch and beyond that willows and elderberry, and beyond these he can see American troops forming. There are thousands of men assembling in lines, many more soldiers than he saw in the bivouac last night. Drum taps, a fife, and high cries quaver over the river to him. But the buildings around him lie still and silent, with the exception of a speckled hen wandering the street, pecking and glaring. It screeches and runs before Henry. He nears it again; again it screeches and runs ahead.
Bless the chickens. However stupid I ever felt, Mother says, I could be sure the chickens were considerably more so.
He passes the last house, and the road turns to meet the East Branch, about forty corn rows wide, flowing unhurriedly south. Splintered wheel ruts mark a narrow log and slat bridge. On the far side the road bends through a meadow, and there in the middle of the road stand two cannon, their maws open toward Henry.
Stretched across the meadow behind the cannon is a line of American troops in triple ranks. Behind them the land gently rises, bearing the road with it, to a second line of troops, some half-mile away. And far behind the second line, visible as specks on the crest of the slope, is a third line. Sections of these lines are in upheaval while mounted officers trot here and there, shouting. There are thousands of militiamen and soldiers altogether, rather motley looking. Only a fraction are dressed in the army’s uniform, a blue jacket with white cross belts on the chest. The others wear black jackets, or common shooting jackets, or old-fashioned frock coats. Many wear breeches tight on the legs, puffing their posteriors. Some stand stiffly, while others are slumped or swaybacked, muskets set on the ground as crutches or chin rests. Away to the right the meadow ends at an apple orchard, and past that the forest begins. On the left runs the river. Behind the second line of troops is a large, disorderly group of horses and carriages and men and women in civilian clothes.
