All True Not a Lie in It (14 page)

I take out my knife. I step over Jesse to put my ear to the gunslit again, and I listen hard into the deeper night. The quiet is like a heavy cloth. A horse tied in the centre of the fort snorts and stamps, the sound explodes. My heart surges, and I turn for the door.

Jesse’s face is pale and creased as linen laid out to dry. His eyes are like his mother’s, dark and still. They catch on mine. They stop me. His need is like lead weights. Well Gulliver, I spare a thought for you, all tied down by the Lilliputians.

To myself I say: Keep yourself still. Straighten your mouth. To Jesse I say low:

—Is your arm hurting you, Goodboy? Keeping you awake?

Sometimes I call him Goodboy as his mother did. He blinks fast, but after a moment he answers:

—Yes. Not much.

He tucks his head down again, and I crouch and place my own arm over his broken one, as if this will fix it.

—That hurt you?

—Yes.

—Oh.

I snort and Jesse laughs with a full ha-ha-ha, forgetting everything about his life for one moment. A young man in the corner groans a curse and the yellow-haired woman sits up, knocking her head, and baby Israel wakes and howls. I feel Rebecca looking at me and at Jesse with exhausted loathing. The boy retreats into himself, holding his stiff arm away from his body as if it were not his. Well I know how that arm must feel.

Forting up is rotten. After some days of the company here Rebecca can endure no more. She wishes to go towards Virginia where her family has gone, and so we do. She will not let the boys out of the wagon for an instant. She is cool all the way there until she sees her old granddaddy and her face splits open.

There is not much hunting round the place the Bryans have bought, but I am not expected to farm. There are plenty of slaves and hands. If I like, I can drive Bryan tobacco to market. Life here is like a set table. I will say that there is plenty of food also. The boys are cautiously happy. Rebecca is full of relief, she walks with the baby in a shrinking circle, regaining her old stillness. But I find myself curiously tired of eating. The smell of tobacco leaves seems to have sunk through my tongue to the floor of my mouth. I am tired of the heavy forks they have. I am tired of the talk of whether or not to have another slice of pie.

We stay through the summer, and all winter. My dreams are not frequent, but at old Bryan’s big house I do dream once of the ideal society of which Findley told me. The Englishman in the Florida wilderness with all his women, living according to inclination. Is that not what my dead brother told me, to do as I like? I think of
him, especially when his boys are near, but he is not here, though I keep watch.

Rebecca’s dreams are riotous and full of portents. If she tells me about one and I come up with no great understanding she is cross all day. I do not tell her when I have a surprising dream of Adam and Eve going about their innocent business in their own garden. In the dream this is a clean wilderness, fenced, with animals roaming prettily about. A dull dream within its noisy bright edges. There is much praising and clapping.
O Adam I am a happy woman! O Eve I am glad to hear it!

I remember these words as if they were shouted down my ear. Later I thought that Adam did not say that he was happy. I do not know why I recall this dream even now.

Well a fall was coming for that pair, as everyone knows. Snake, apple, surprise, punishment for ever. Goodbye! But their exile never seemed to me a true punishment, since they could go wherever else they pleased. Going on living with the Bryans in Virginia seems a penalty indeed. Always having to praise Rebecca’s granddaddy for having us here. He sits in his chair as if he has had himself stuffed for posterity. He has a drunkard’s veiny nose and cheeks, though I have never seen him take a drink, and so I cannot help but think him untrustworthy. He has a leafy dry-rot smell, the smell of old money, as I suppose.

I owe him twenty pounds for supplies he has bought me. I owe his son more. Daddy has taken Ma up to Maryland for the time as she wished to be near Israel’s grave. Neddy and Martha are here, and my sister Hannah with her family. I wonder about my brother Squire on occasion, though I do not let myself wonder whether he is alive back in Carolina, or dead from the fighting, or from being tied to his gunsmithing apprenticeship. I hate wagoning down to the pit of my gut. Squire, perhaps you hate your work also.

Trapped in the parlour, I make an attempt at conversation. To old Bryan I say loud:

—Spring is on the way.

A stupid remark, but something to say to the stuffed old man. What does he dream of? Hornworm in his tobacco. Or in his money, munching with a hundred thousand teeth.

I shift about in my chair. Rebecca and the women are talking as they thump and crack dough or nuts or bones in the kitchen. One says:

—I must almost have drowned when I was a small girl, that is why I am so afraid of water now. When I see a pond I just freeze all through, even in summertime.

The others cluck with enthusiasm.

—Perhaps it was another life when you did drown and you carry the seed of the bad memory in you. Like a cancer.

—Well I hope I do not have that. Is that what you mean? Do I look as if I have a cancer?

I pick out Rebecca’s voice, calm and sure now. She says:

—Do you believe in other lives? I do not.

Her sister Martha replies:

—I do. I would like another one. I think I must have died of fright once, I get such pains just here at night, and I am so fearful then. What a thought, to die in my bed with my mouth and eyes open. Imagine being found looking like that in the morning. Might that be a cancer? It is just here.

Through the doorway I can see Martha pointing to her chest, dead centre. She seems to believe this is the location of her heart. Indigestion, I think, though I say nothing. Rebecca says:

—I would be glad enough to have a cancer instead of being tomahawked, as we all might have been in Carolina.

One of the women goes on about the children wandering the Yadkin woods, their parents killed. Another says:

—I would not go back again for anything.

I want to shout to them: Do not believe all you hear. But Martha starts in:

—Neddy heard in town that the soldiers at Loudon’s fort have Indian wives who are sneaking beans and hog meat in to them while the Cherokees try to starve them out.

Rebecca thumps something hard and says:

—Would you do the same for Neddy? Or for an Indian husband?

They are all laughing. Martha says:

—Imagine being those women. I wonder what they wear under their skirts?

I think of a panther skin I once got as a prize at a shooting match and traded on again. It was deep black and had a weedy smell. But Rebecca, you might have liked it. You could have worn it, or wrapped the new baby, our girl Susannah, in it and made a savage princess of her. And your family would have fallen in astonishment like a set of pokers to the ground and perhaps snapped a pokery bone or two in doing so.

Such are my thoughts when Ned comes in from outdoors, his cheeks red with the wind. He nods to old Bryan and sits down beside him. The old man says in a sudden suspicious manner:

—Two black heads.

Neddy laughs. Ma used to call us her twins born in different years and say he was just like me. But though our black hair is the same, Neddy is still the one with the sweet voice and the darling countenance. Ma said he must never grow a beard, never hide his sweetness. He is always clean-shaven. Our sisters Sal and Bets used to call him Dolly Dear and make him twirl. He would usually do so without a fuss, and when he had had enough he would plop down on his backside, still smiling his sleepy smile. Ned, I do remember this, you know, and not just the rest.

To him I say:

—Been to town?

—Yes.

—Warmer out?

—Yes, a bit. Very pleasant.

—Anything happening?

—Nothing extraordinary.

Ned pities me, as I can see. He is himself content as usual and is perplexed by my restless questions. Standing and putting his back to the fire, he stretches and says:

—This is a good house. Comfortable. I know you could live in any place, though, Dan.

—Almost any place. Not you, our Ned? Keep-home Neddy, darling Neddy.

I speak in Ma’s voice, and for one moment I am homesick myself, though I do not know for where. Neddy begins to hum a tune. A child wails and Rebecca sings out from the kitchen:

—Here is Neddy now. Come and rock the baby for me.

Martha calls:

—And your own.

Another wife joins in:

—And mine, Neddy. She will keep quiet for no one else, you have spoiled her.

He goes obediently, smiling as ever. I hear the children’s chatter rise, the women teasing. If I had your complexion, they say. Roses and cream.

I remain in my chair having nothing else to do and feeling stuck to it, stuffed as old Bryan. He is now hard asleep, perhaps in an excellent dream of food and tobacco. I go out into the cool air and to the stables, I will bridle the team and drive to town for lack of anything else to do. I occupy my mind with the harnesses and buckles. This goes there, that goes here. In, under, out. And my Fate now appears in another form.

—Christ. You made me jump. You might have been a ghost.

He stands silently at the left edge of the stable door without a smile. A shower of bright dust surrounds him in the cold light. His shape is the same, his old slight stoop, though bigger. I know it is my brother Squire, fully a man now, thin and tall with a tight sandy plait. I stare and laugh:

—But I would have recognized your ghost, Squire, you know. Though you have gone and grown taller than I am, I think, even if you are trying to hide it. You look like a peddler crushed by a pack. Now hold yourself straight.

I say this last in Ma’s voice. He gives a thin smile, his hands in his pockets. What I say is true, and it delights me, him here and unchanged. We know brothers all through, down to the smell and the marrow. So I think at this time.

I embrace him. He says only:

—Well.

—Why are you here?

—I have left.

He hunches a shoulder higher. He means his apprenticeship, the life Daddy arranged for him. He means he has run off but he looks unabashed. I say:

—You have left all your guns? Did your master go after you?

—I know enough about gunsmithing. Few enough left in the Yadkin to make guns for now.

—Everyone is coming this way, even Keep-home Neddy is here. What will you do in Virginia?

He shrugs again and looks direct at me and says:

—My wife thought it time we left Carolina.

—A wife? Well I congratulate you. Though I never would have taken you for the type to bolt from apprenticing, least so for married life. Did it seem a fair trade?

He gives a quick, private smile. I pull his hat down over his eyes and I say:

—Another Boone bride, poor girl. I hope you do speak to her now and again. Will we meet her soon? Or have you warned her off your kin already?

The brim shadows half his face. It suits him this way. But he settles the hat on the back of his head and his precise eyes run over everything from rafters to ground. Nothing in the stable seems to strike him, and so his eyes go on another round. I clap him on both shoulders:

—You can do as you like.

Israel, our dead brother, I think of you now, and I think too that Squire must do as he likes before his time ends, for who can know when that might be? He is young, he has no children yet. I tell him to come inside, as if the house is mine. I am so glad he is here that I do not mind old Bryan sleeping in the corner still.

The women have gone out back with the little ones and Ned. Squire is restless, stalking about the room. He pokes at the fire, he goes over to stare at the clock, preoccupied as a dog with a lost bone. I say:

—Will you sit down, stranger? I will find Ned.

Squire remains on his feet, looking hard at the clock as if at an old enemy. He crosses the room again. At once he says:

—What would you do for some fresh game?

His voice is severe, unusually so. I stop and say:

—Have you any on you?

He laughs briefly with shut teeth. Walking back to the clock, he says lower:

—The Cherokees are backing out of Carolina. They will stay west. No settling any farther than the Alleghenies, treaty says. The Yadkin Valley is all right now. Ellis from upriver has gone back, no trouble. The only places burned were done long ago.

—Ah.

—Not everybody knows this.

We keep standing. We do not dare to look at each other. Then he says:

—We might see for ourselves. Check the properties. And—

I say it for him:

—The pelts will still be fair about now. Hides getting better, winter hair coming off.

—See how many beaver are left on the Yadkin.

—And west. A little way west. A longer hunt. Why not?

—Why not?

—Why not?

We begin to smile, fierce as dogs. Our talk is careful and unexcited, drumming out in short beats. We speak very quietly so that women do not hear us. But our grins are huge and angry, we are fools made to wait for a picnic. I get up and together we go to the window. The leaves are just showing their green on the maple beyond the yard. The clouds drift west in thin threads.