All the Truth That's in Me (4 page)

L.

This day they’ll come. This day you’ll die.
This day we wait in agony.
Mother makes me gather wood all morning. Fires, fires

for washing, steeping herbs for bleeding. Remedies. All the wood in all this forest will not stew from all its herbs the power to give a bleeding heart its beat back.

But we must be doing.
I forage for wood, glad to be moving. Rotting chunks of falling logs, damp with mold and thick with beetles. Won’t burn well but it’s all I find. Darrel has the hatchet.
The town is quiet. Quiet is all we have to hold on to.
Women gone, and children, and the aged who could travel. The rest wait at Horace Bron’s smithy, a stronghold. Eunice Robinson went into the woods with her sisters and her cousins. Maria stayed. She is brave, or reckless, too.
My wishes stretch across four miles to where you sit—up in a tree? behind a stone? within a bush?—and watch long hours slide by, slapping mosquitoes, waiting, desperate for riders, dreading sails around the bend.

LI.

Goody Pruett finds me gathering sticks near the track. Her dried-apple face is lined with years of weather. Her spine curves like a shepherd’s staff. Not even the homelanders frighten her. Nothing frightens Goody Pruett. Not even my missing tongue.

“Why’re you still here?” she asks. “Why hain’t you gone on with those wagons? Goody Pruett’s old, but you got your whole life ahead of you.” She talks that way, always calling herself by name.

I tap my lips with the side of my finger.
“Foolishness,” she says. “Run and catch up to a wagon.” I shake my head.
“Your mother’s staying, too,” she says as if I should be

ashamed. “And your half-grown brother’s gone off to the fighting. Your family ain’t idiots but they’ve got no sense. And you can tell your mother Goody Pruett said so. Wait. No, you can’t, or so they say. Well, good mornin’ to ya.”

LII.

Jip whines and claws at the bark on the tree. I try to appease him with milk, but he has no appetite. He watches for your return through mournful, cloudy eyes, peeping out through tufts of overhanging gray hair. Poor dog, he doesn’t know you won’t come back.

LIII.

How can I search for wood while you go to your doom? I find Father’s rock and stand upon it. I breathe in, wanting to taste life as long as I can.

While you live, is there nothing I can do?
Deliverance. If not from God, then where?
Father, my father who lived and died—speak to me here,

if you can, if you’re able.
A swarm of images unbidden: Powder. Boxes. His knife.
His face.
The arsenal. The town’s lost arsenal.
An explosion that would leave no trace. A colonel in hiding who coveted power.
The mind for warfare, now armed with the means. A stolen arsenal. And I lived for two years trapped in its
bowels.
I sink down, trembling, to my knees.

LIV.

So there is a way.
If someone can find and purchase it. If someone’s devotion and courage are sufficient to die for it.

LV.

This isn’t courage. This is choosing a death that could help you.

You’ll die, then I will. That’s one end to suffering. If you survive, you’ll marry, and how can I pass your house each day and see Maria there? Shall I overshadow your new life with my unwelcome presence? You must live, even if your marriage means my heart’s death.

I could let the river take me as it eventually took Lottie, and you’d be dead before nightfall.
But if anyone could save you—save the town—I know who he is, and where. And I may have something he wants.

LVI.

In hours, all I know will be consumed.

All that have mocked me, ignored me, spat upon me since my return. They were once my neighbors and friends, even if I am no longer theirs.

Even they are worth a sacrifice.

LVII.

I must hurry before it’s too late, before fear changes my mind. But when I pass by my willow tree I pause, climb into its lower branches, and remember.

Lottie knew to find me here, and I her. It was our safe hiding place, where we could whisper. I showed her a perfect robin’s egg; she showed me a comb she’d stolen from her dead mother’s things.

When she first disappeared, I knew she had run away. Both nights I waited for her here. I knew she’d come to me to tell me about her fella. I waited because I was worried about her, and because I never did figure out which boy in town was hers.

She was coming to meet me here the night it happened. I watched from this tree, watched the man whose face I could not see. I’ve watched since in nightmares, sometimes taking Lottie’s place.

When it was over, I climbed down to see if anything could be done. Coming down from this tree was the last free thing I did.

I climb down once more and retrace the steps I took that night.

LVIII.

I follow the stream to where it meets the river. I turn west, far upstream from where you wait.

I reach the rapids, where the river spreads wide and dashes itself upon rocks, rocks that I must step my way across.
I listen through the gorge but hear only rushing water, wind on dry leaves, and geese flying south. No roar of musket fire yet.

LIX.

I don’t believe in miracles, but if the need is great, a girl might make her own miracle.

Even if that means enlisting the devil’s help.

LX.

A miracle: your face, sun-warm, green eyes gold, drinking in the wind as it dances across your wheat. Your hands, encircling a new-foaled lamb, wiping away the caul.

A miracle that can never be: your face, your hands, pledged to me.

LXI.

Geese wing south, honking to each other as they leave the river valley to follow the sun. Invaders hold no threat for them, only the marksman’s aim, and they are spared the need to fear it. Freedom is theirs until the moment life ends. No lingering in pain or loneliness or dread.

Squirrels scurry on crackling leaves and disappear into holes. Rabbits sniff the air and vanish. A fox darts across my path.

Then nature stills. The ground vibrates. Hoofbeats coming fast. I swing into the lower branches of a red maple, none too soon, for riders thunder by, swift and grim. Through thinning purple-brown leaves, I count: twenty-three, following the geese, heading south to Roswell Landing.

I close my eyes and see you. Your heart will lift to see these riders. Your spirits will flag when you count how few there are.

I would leave this errand, follow the horses, and fly to your side. If you’d let me, I’d kiss away your fear, and let you rest yourself upon me, and I, I would die beside you and count myself lucky.

Would you? Fear of death drives men to stranger things, unlikelier comforts.
Shall I die satisfied while you die yearning?
I slide down, scraping my wrists and face on rough bark, and press on.

LXII.

I think of the river bringing the enemy ships to you.

The river brought Lottie home, but Lottie didn’t die in the river.
That much I know.

LXIII.

Closer now. I dread his face. I could not, would not picture it, over all this long-forgotten trail. Could be he’s dead. Once that thought would have brought me peace, but now, God help me, I need him. Him!

Everything’s changed, the trees thicker, the shrubs overgrown, yet I recognize the slim defile, the crevice in the rock that ought to lead to nowhere. It’s the doorway to his little vale of tears, the reason he’s been undiscovered all these years.

I duck my head and push through the gap. Now his face appears before me, set and hard with one intent. I blink away the image. Clench my fists. Take a rock from the dark cave floor in each hand. All my anger and all my need must not fail me now.

The taste of blood, the cry of pain, the last clear words that passed my lips, the sight of eyes yellow with drink, the suffocating size, weight, smell, the hands that clawed at my mouth and sliced away my voice.

The tunnel ends, and daylight blinds me.
I can still turn back, but I would only find ruin now.

LXIV.

The night I stumbled home, I entered a silent house. Mother wouldn’t speak. Darrel hovered, like a frightened animal. A strong smell of liquor hung in the air, reminding me more of the colonel than of home. Father wasn’t there.

I pointed to his chair. Darrel shook his head.
I waited.
“Died,” Darrel said.
Not Father. I didn’t think death could ever claim him. All that time away I thought it was I who would die. My father, dead. My mother, stunned. An emptiness in

his chair, his bed. The eyes that watched me seemed to say, you had a hand in this.

“Died of grief,” Darrel said, his face full of blame. “Wouldn’t stop looking for you. Took sick.”
How often had I prayed he’d look for me? But I knew he would look. I prayed he’d find me.
“They found your things by the river,” Darrel said. “How come they were there but you weren’t?”
“Hush,” Mother hissed, and Darrel, surprised, obeyed.
Father would have welcomed me differently, and now I would never feel his embrace again. In truth, I never expected to see any of them again.
There was food on the table. No one offered it to me. I picked up a chunk of bread and bit into it. They watched me, horrified. I’d already forgotten how young Judith ate before, when I didn’t have to chew like a cow to grind and wet my food to mush. I turned my face away.
Mother put blankets on my bed. She’d been using it to hold sacks of fleeces. She followed my gaze to the corner where bottles of cider and whiskey sat on shelves. Once a home brew, now her livelihood. She would not look at me, but turned back the sheets, then pulled the curtain that led to where she now slept alone.
There in my old trunk were my former clothes. They called to me from a sweeter time, when I had both a father and human dignity. That they were still here was a testament to hope. Mother hadn’t gotten rid of all of me yet. My eyes were wet as I struggled into an old nightshirt, too tight for me now, lay on my bed, and watched the moon out the window.

LXV.

I rose in the night and stood silent as a ghost by the curtains that hid my parents’ bed. Where the old faded fabric had gone sheer in spots, I saw a beam of moonlight find my mother. There she lay on her side, curled into a bow, staring at the wall, and stroking my father’s pillow.

LXVI.

“Keep pounding, daughter, or you won’t make firm butter,” she used to tell me. “A goodwife’s arms and back are strong!”

I knew hers were strong. Tight sinews tied her wrists to her elbows. When she rolled up her sleeves I watched the rare sight of her skin while her arms flew through their work. Her back stood straight and slim in dresses younger women might wish to wear, but there was nothing fragile about my mother. She was a hive of creation. She made things come alive.

Someday, I thought, I’d be just like her.

LXVII.

I wanted to tell her, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry I snuck out of bed to meet Lottie. Sorry I was gone so long and caused her pain. Sorry Father took sick searching for me. Sorry I’m like this now.

Ar-ee, sssshhar-ee.
My gruesome sounds made Mother wince.
“Be still!” she’d say. “You sound idiotic.”
She told no one of my return for days, bound even Darrel to secrecy. When at last the secret could no more be hidden, she led me to the shed and said, “You’ve come back maimed. I leave it to God to judge what brought this upon you. But the village will fear you. They’ll call you cursed. Some men may try to take advantage of you. I know my duty to my own flesh and blood, and I will protect you. But you’ll mind me and behave as a maiden should. Utter one sound to our shame, and you’ll sleep here among the rakes and shovels.”
Where were the hands that embraced me when I came in from across the fields? Where were the eyes that smiled at my little bread loaves and crooked stitches?
“Know me,” she said, lifting my chin so I’d see her eyes. “Am I a woman of my word?”
I nodded, resisting the pressure of her finger on my chin.
“Well then,” she said.

LXVIII.

He sent me back with these words:

“I spared you twice. Tell no one of me, or I’ll send Roswell Station to meet its maker. Blow it straight up to God. Heaven’s all they think of anyway.”

LXIX.

Roswell Station was never as agog as the day the news was known: Judith Finch had come home, alive but mute. Mother tried to hide me in the house, but Goody Pruett sniffed me out. She only had to hobble by in the morning, and her sixth sense spotted something different. She needled her way in for bark coffee. Needing no pretense, she pulled back the curtains where Mother had hidden me in her own bed.

“Well, well, well,” she said. “If it isn’t little Judith, back after so long. And why would we keep such good news a secret?”
It was all over then. Nothing Mother could say would stop Goody Pruett from telling. I was glad of it. We might as well face the world.
A stream of curious visitors flowed by the house all day, till Mother sent me to bed and told the rest I was too weak.
You came that evening through your fields, alone except for Jip. I’d crept out of bed, dressed, and gone outside to sit.
Jip ran to me and laid his panting head in my lap. He got to me before you did.
You halted when you saw me watching you, and waved. You almost looked frightened. I waved back, and you came to me.
Two years had made you fully a man. I looked down at myself and remembered they had made me a woman, too, or nearly. I knew I should flee indoors, out of modesty or shame, but I couldn’t escape. Two years I’d nursed thoughts of you, and now you were here before me, different and the same. We were four people: the children we’d been, and grown strangers now.
You couldn’t look me in the eye. You watched Jip go bounding after a rabbit in the hedge.
I waited for you to speak. I wondered if you could hear the chaos inside my veins and bones that your arrival had awoken.
“Beautiful evening,” you said after an eternity.
I looked around. It was, indeed, and in so many ways, to me. “Mm,” I said.
You looked at me then.
My voice made you turn. Of course you would have heard my news. I lowered my eyes.
And then your words surprised me. “I knew you’d come back.”
You did?
Then you knew more than I did.
“People said you were dead, but I . . .”
I looked up at you then. Our eyes met.
What did you say when others said I was dead, Lucas? What did you wish?
I heard your breathing. I saw your sadness. I thought of my dreams of you, and wondered, did you ever have dreams of me? Now I have come back, but not quite all of me.
“I . . .”
Still, it was kind of you to be sorry for what had happened to me.
“. . . I’m glad you’re back.”
We watched two mourning doves chase each other.