All True Not a Lie in It (20 page)

F
OR DAYS
I pad about in the snow looking for Stewart and occasionally for Findley. My entire skin listens. I call out quietly and then high like a bird, I use my own voice and all kinds of others. I take care with my tracks. But the Captain’s Shawnee are long gone to their town, and nobody else seems to remain near the Warrior’s Path now that winter is gripping.

Stewart is not anywhere. I look in puzzlement at the letters carved on the tree.
JS
. People have their reasons for disappearing, as I am left to suppose.

The creeks are icy. I get a few fish, a few turkey, a deer occasionally, some nuts. I survive the winter.

I use a precious shot on a great bird with beautiful bright underwings. I wish I had paper to try to draw it on. I keep the wings. I survive.

I go north, back towards the Ohio, where I see no one. Then I go west. I know where all the creeks and the buffalo roads lead and where they converge, I know all the licks, and which are the most crusted with salt. I climb to a ridge above one to see a living sea of buffalo pawing and butting and licking at the snowy salty ground as though all praying busily. Their noise and smell wrap me up like a robe, and I feel myself almost happy for that moment. I shoot one
through the throat. It dies quickly. I eat some meat and jerk what I can. I am happier still, though less yet another shot.

I thin down to sinew, I feel strung like a bow, which makes me reckless in my body as I was when I was a boy. I dare Fate to injure me. I fashion myself a real bow and some arrows with saplings and gut and the beautiful bird’s feathers. I shoot a wildcat with it just as it considers tensing to spring at me out of the snow. It falls, shot clean. Killing it so, without touching it or hurting it, is a beauty to me, there is no other like it. I love that bow sending its quick arrow to the heart just as if it is stopping time.

I could fire-hunt. I remember Israel showing me how. But I do not do so, I will do better. And I do not wish to summon Israel in this place.

I keep my bow and I do not die. Summer comes, and autumn again. I am alone, I feel myself at the core of silence. Again I think of being inside a huge sleeping wolf, but now as a bone in one of its joints. Or as a figment of its sleeping mind. I sing in the cold evenings as I lie in the canebrakes, which I keep to for shelter. I sing anything, and when I hear wolves singing back distantly I keep at it, though my heart speeds. I invent a song about Kentucky. I sing it at the top of my lungs: Yellow-jackets. Hornets. Pan pan fee. I think of the Shawnee but they do not come. The sky is a dark circle like a pupil open above me with the fringe of high cane all round.

Again the cold lightens, again the daylight holds longer. Pale green appears out of the ground like a thin fur. With the new spring, I begin to move east. I know I must. I am down to the last dust of the powder Captain Will left me. I have no feathers left for arrows.

I skirt the edges of buffalo traces. I go slowly. I will follow the Warrior’s Path back towards the gap in the mountains that Findley
showed us. All the time I want to turn around, turn and keep walking and let this place have its way with me. It is mine now.

First I stop at the station camp. I pull the pine branches back over the roof of the toppled shelter. Their cold scent puffs back to life as I move them. A blanket torn into shreds lines a hollow in one of the tree roots at the back of the lean-to. A faint smell of Findley and also of wolf. I go to find some fresh hemlock to line the shelter again.

I am beginning to kindle a fire when I hear a cracking in the quiet. I have near forgot how it feels to have no explanation for a sound, I have grown so used to the noises of snow falling from trees or of animal life at night.

I see nothing yet. The trees are not thick and there is no cane on this part of the creek. When I stand, I suddenly feel myself human again. Only now do I feel my weakness and my thinness and my lack of ammunition. Long teeth seem to poke into my mind. I have been living a half-inch from Death, I have been winning, I have been happy. I clear my throat and I rub my matted beard. My chest goes tight, the way it did when I saw Rebecca at her granddaddy’s door after I dragged a dead deer to her. Here I am.

Only now, I do not want to be seen. I walk through the trees, following the line of the creek. I catch the scent of smoke before I see it clouding upwards and spreading thick. A large dry dead tree is fallen, and it is on fire, flames skip from branch to branch. The sound sharpens. I crouch to look. There is a blowing and stamping, a footfall. I stare through the smoke and burning branches and shadows. Four horses are behind the fire. One neighs and tosses its head. A figure wrapped in a cloak is standing with them.

Israel
. But I will not say his name. No ghosts here. Instead I say:

—Stewart?

My voice is rough and patchy. I am ready to forgive Stewart his sudden disappearance, it is no matter now. But he may still be angry.
And I do not forget he may also be captive again, brought back here as bait to catch me too.

I do not move. The shape is dark behind the fire. A pulse jumps in my neck. The tree blazes and cracks and sends out thick black waves.

A voice calls through the smoke:

—Findley?

It too is wary and distant. It is too low to be Stewart. My heart falls, but I say:

—No. Gone.

This cannot be Findley, then. At once I think of Captain Will, but it is not his voice. Then I think of Hill. I am even ready to tolerate Hill if he has horses and powder.

I look hard through the bright flames, my eyes water and clench in the haze. Still I cannot see. The voice says:

—Is it Dan?

I hesitate before I reply:

—Yes.

I step towards the fire, straightening myself, pulling at my dirty hunting shirt and wiping my running eyes with the back of my hand. I come so close that the heat of the burning tree scorches my cheeks. The air pops and sparks, drops of fire land upon my clothing. The shape becomes clearer and taller and thinner. It cannot be Hill. The man opens his cloak and looks for a moment like a great bird preening its wings.

Squire. It is my brother behind the leaping flames, raising his arm to shield his eyes. He is alive. He has the horses packed with supplies. They are restless and wary. Traps dangle and clash on their sides.

Relief washes through me. I say:

—Well, Squire, all right, well done. Your fire led me direct to you. Quite a burning bush in the wilderness. You turned prophet since you left?

But he does not move. He only looks at me through the fire as if considering what he ought best do now. He drops his hand, but still I cannot see his face properly. At last he says:

—Looks like you need rescuing.

I consider this.

—Perhaps I do.

I pull another of the beavers from one of the new traps. I slice gentle into the under-jaw to draw the pelt down and off clean. The beavers have been obliging. We have got ten in the lines today and found a good new pond to try. Our packs are growing heavy again already. If anyone has to be here, I am glad it is Squire, though we are still somewhat strange together and I am unused to conversation. I ask whether he has seen any sign of Stewart on his way out, but he shakes his head. He only says:

—Your family told me to bring their hellos.

—They are all right?

—Seem to be. Though they have their concerns about you.

Squire pulls the trap from its chain and feels the edge. He says now:

—Bryan moved them all back to the Yadkin to set the farms going again. Ma and Daddy went too.

—All of them there again? Well. I will know where to find them. If they will have an old man back.

I pull at my beard as old Bryan sometimes does:

—I will be able to compete fairly, for one thing. Look at this beauty. Rebecca will not know her husband when he appears on her doorstep.

Squire’s face goes still and obscure over the trap. I say:

—She is all right? I did ask you.

—She is all right.

Squire squints into the jaw of the trap and says no more. I have the beaver pelt off now, and it is a good long glossy one. I get out the hoop to stretch it. I say:

—I will be glad to see her. And home, if that is what I may still call it.

And I will be glad, although the way I imagine Rebecca now is perhaps less spiky round the edges than she is. This happens with one’s idea of home also, as it seems to me.

—You were glad to get back there for a while, Squire?

He does not answer, he is busy filing at the trap. The rasping puts me in mind of Daddy in the forge. Squire goes on until he bangs the trap closed and turns to look very slow about the camp. He remarks:

—Should have enough beaver and otter to make up for some of what was taken.

I know Squire and I know what he means, which is that my question is not worth answering. We sit silent until he says:

—You ought to get back.

His face remains shut but his eyes rise to meet mine. I know that this is all he will say on the subject. His opinion has been presented like a small rock striking my head. Squire always had a good aim. I say:

—I know it.

Then I keep quiet, though something is evidently not right. I do not feel the need for more rocks to the head at this time.

We pack our way out through the mountain gap after more luck at trapping, and we travel past the white cliffs, where I stop to look for the letters of our names we carved. They are unchanged. We carry
on down the eastern side of the Alleghenies. The Warrior’s Path turns and follows a creek through the narrow valley I remember. Powell’s Valley, I say, and I think of coming through here with Findley. I do not wish our trip to be finished, though I do not know where he is now.

Squire offers his hand to help me through the fast high stream. I say:

—I am not quite an invalid. I am alive yet.

He is still somewhat ill at ease but he laughs and says:

—I respect my elders.

We walk the horses through the water and stop on the far bank, our leggings wet and stiffening. The air is still cool, especially in the shaded places such as this. I sit to dry my feet a little. Squire says:

—We should keep on.

—Your favourite phrase, it seems to me. What is wrong with taking one more night here?

—Feeling your age, old man?

—I feel nothing, nothing at all.

I try to believe this, though I am still half-minded to go back to Kentucky. I find myself almost afraid it will have disappeared without me. I begin to gather kindling, and Squire sighs but sets to helping.

We do not see them until they are in the creek, running their horses straight across, straight for us. We have enough time to reach our guns but not to load. They dismount and stand, dripping and huge, their heads wrapped in coloured scarves. Giants, I think. Here are we in Gulliver’s Brobdingnag.

We stare mutually.

I take my gun in one hand and step forward. I say:

—How do, brothers. Shawnee?

—Cherokee.

The one who replies is very tall with a long face, all bone. His cheekbones look as though they will burst straight through his skin. His headscarf is frayed along the edge, and he tucks it back up with care. His movements are all ease. His five companions go on staring until he lightly puts out his hands for Squire’s rifle. With a glance at me, Squire gives it up. I speak little Cherokee and so I say in English: