All True Not a Lie in It (22 page)

I go again. I vanish. I plunge into the woods across the Yadkin, I shoot pheasants and sparrows and squirrels and anything else that I see moving. I think of things I might take an axe to. Houses, heads, pricks. I sit by my campfire into the night with my eyes wide, and I wake cramped up as a claw. How can you uncramp yourself from such a state?

I think of going up to Squire’s place to see how he has fared with his wife, or of going to Hannah’s to tell her Stewart is lost. But I do not. I sit. And after some days I return to the cabin. I sit outside the doorway for a time, where I can see Rebecca passing back and forth inside the house. I say nothing. I will stare her out. But she refuses to acknowledge my presence. I watch her moving about, I see her face ease as she lets her eyes settle on the cradle. This baby is another first child to her. This dumbstruck look that mothers get with their newborn babies, as if a new planet has been made before their eyes. She has spent many nights away helping at births and come home sleepless, coated with awe as if she had been dipped in gold.

I see this life here without myself. I look at the dark fields with their accusing crops that say: You were not here.

I go back to when Jamesie was born and Rebecca was bright golden all through. I was waiting outdoors then also, smoothing a piece of wood with a sharp-edged stone. It made the shape of a leaf, a thing still living when it falls from the tree. I was afraid that Rebecca would not live and I wanted to make her live. Or to see her out of this world with some gift. I took out my knife to nick the edges. A stupid gift. I did not wish to think.

—You have a son.

A woman stood in the shadow of the doorway with bright eyes, watching for my reaction as her due. Women do this, as I know.

—He is all right?

—Yes, very well. Rebecca too. The boy is eating already.

—I cannot say I blame him.

It was pleasing to say this new
he
and
him
, I was proud as a prince. I laughed at myself. At once I was hungry enough to eat a cow whole. Another woman stepped outdoors and said:

—Come on. I will feed you, as you are so poorly off without your wife. We can spare you a cake and some beer, lucky man.

—No, no, keep those for yourselves. I want to see my son.

When I went into the hot room, I was full of aching delight. I had never felt so unnecessary and so full of my stupid part in the thing. Rebecca looked at me, sparkling, her cloudy hair brushed out against the pillow. She was surrounded by women coming and going. The baby was wrapped up on her chest. She had her hand round the back of his head. She said:

—Here is your present.

She did not give him to me. I saw the tilt of his nose, the side of his little red face only. I was struck by a thought of my old fond red-faced uncle in Pennsylvania. Uncle James, you were good to me, you tried to help me learn.

With a touch of Daddy’s bluster, thinking to make my boy part of myself, I said:

—His name is James.

But Rebecca did not argue in the least. She got to me by not arguing, all agreement and a pale brilliant smile. She had an Uncle James also, it turned out.

I remember all of it. But now I wait outside again with my flask near empty and my hunting dirt still all over me. The day is finishing. Jesse comes out for a while after supper, but he will not sit down, he is not easy. I ask him how he has been, but he only says he is tired and will go to bed. He says goodnight very low.

When I am alone again, I feel the sky watching to see what I will do. I can only think of Rebecca cut off from me inside. Did I do the cutting? Well.

I want her. I want to have her, and not just to mark my territory, it is not only that. I am sunk with my desire, my body crackles with the old burning link between us, all the brighter for its coldness now. Other men want her, and why should they not? She is magnificent, she is Helen, she is a witch. She was afraid. And I was gone.

At once I feel exhausted and hollowed out, like a child done with wailing and pleading.

I trip on the steep steps to the sleeping loft. I find that I have forgotten how many there are and I am sorry for it.

The baby stirs in the cradle beside the bed. I reach out to find the edge of the bed and it creaks under my hand. Her skin smells of bayberries. I find her neck, her shoulder, her swollen breasts and softened belly. I keep my hand there for a time, I do not move.

Her fingertips fall on my back, light as moths. They mark questions all over me. I am burning and cold. The baby rustles and settles again like a small bird. Rebecca stiffens.

I make myself speak into her ear:

—It would not be easy. To untie ourselves.

I feel drunk. I am somewhat drunk, my blood is drowsy and slow like a summer day. Her hair feels like breath on my cheek. I want to cover my face in it and sleep. She says:

—Do not give me up, then.

I feel her lips twist against my arm. I cannot help asking again:

—Who?

I close my eyes, I want to ask it again, who who who, make an owl of myself. But I say only:

—Rebecca.

She is silent. She does not answer, but she is not putting on her Queen-of-the-Backwoods air with me now. I feel her vulnerability, her held breath. But she is my Queen of the Backwoods, my Welsh witch, with all kinds of black power. I cannot bear to see her topple from that and become a thing squashed down by life. She is not afraid, she cannot be.

Rebecca, in my mind you are black hair and shining eyes, spitting cherry pits. Witches can be burned but come back to life. Queens can do as they like.

Do as you like
. My dead brother said so. Israel, you are long dead now, and your boys are growing, they work the fields with their hunched shoulders, waiting for the next blow.

Well there will be no next blow. I will not leave again. This I decide now. I say:

—How can I give you up, little girl?

My voice creaks in my ears, but I go on:

—Can you give me up?

She does not speak for some time. The wind picks up for a moment and hushes itself again. She says:

—I did. For a while.

—But I am not dead.

—No.

—No. I am here. Feel me.

She laughs a little with her hand on me and says in her old lazy fashion:

—I have felt you before.

She turns her face to my ear. Her voice sharpens:

—If you go again, if you die, I will not go looking for you, or your corpse. Hannah has been out of her mind with worry and now John is gone, just gone, that is all you can say—

Her fingers pinch my shoulder until it stings, until her nails are in me. She has not said my name. I say:

—You are free, you know. You were not wrong. You are free.

—I do know.

—Well. You are.

—You are not.

I laugh, my mouth open against her throat, and I do not know what else to do.

W
E GO ON
. The children watch us. We are formal. We do not tease one another. We do not quite look at one another.

The baby is part of the house. She screams suddenly out of deep sleeping silences and then screams on until the house throbs. The screams seem to be directed at me, and so I pick her up and stare at her face. She continues her yelling, her small mouth working and gaping and her eyes aiming to remain on mine. She has Rebecca’s temper, only set on fire. She begins straight away to attach herself to me. Her small lolling head tries to turn itself towards my voice.

I see Jonathan and Jesse watching me with this other little outsider. Their faces are carefully arranged. I say:

—Well well. A baby is a gift to everyone, is that not what people say?

Still. I do not know where to go now. I work the fields with Jonathan and Jesse, and I hunt a little up the Yadkin but no more than a few days at a time. This gets rid of some restlessness but not all.

Daddy and Ma visit in the fall. Daddy jigs his legs about and still talks of buying more land, enough to give to all his children. He has had to sell much of his to raise money to live. His cheeks and eyes are full of red lines like little forking rivers. He has an elderly look but his voice is the same. He blusters in his best fashion:

—No one can take you off land once it is yours. No one.

Ma pets the little ones and rocks the baby. I feel her watching me as she does so. She knows this child is not mine but she says nothing. When they prepare to go home, she kisses us all and holds my face in her cool dry hands. Daddy says:

—Come on, my girl.

And they climb slow into their wagon and drive off. I see Daddy pointing at a flock of swallows.

It is January when Squire rides through the deep snow to say Daddy is dead. I turn my face from him when he says it. Daddy wished to be buried near Israel, and so we take his body in a wagon to the German town in Maryland, along the road from Pennsylvania. I ride ahead, I keep silent. We cut a black hole in the white ground and put up a stone for him:
Departed This Life 1765
. We put up a proper one for Israel now also. Squire walks off on his own. A dog looks at us from the edge of the field.

I stand with Ma as she touches the letters and numbers. I say:

—You do not mind them having headstones, Ma? I know it is not the Friends’ way.

Ma says:

—They should have stones. To show they lived. I will be here too one day. You can put one up for me, my Danny.

She comes home with us. I lie awake for many nights, for weeks, as it seems to me. My heart is hot and empty and my eyes seem to boil. I wish for a dream of Daddy’s spirit but none comes. It seems to me there is no one between me and Death now.

I hunt. Sometimes I take Jamesie along. I want to feel that he is mine. He is growing so fast, I can almost see his bones lengthening. He has fair hair with a gingery cast like Daddy’s and dark eyes like
Rebecca’s but more careful than hers. They watch me always as if looking for clues.

I tell him things: Here is how to load your gun. Here is how to shoot it. Here is how to kill the animal with a knife if you must.

My hand covers Jamesie’s as the boy scrapes at a deer hide with the new clasp knife I have given him. Another debt. But I wish for him to have all good things, new things. The best life. I think of Daddy trying to read our futures and get land for all of us. Daddy, I understand this now.

I say:

—Here is how you dress the skin for market. Feel how the hair comes away. Stretch it between your fingers. Now get it on the board. Harder. Like this.

Having answers is a satisfaction for me and for him. Jamesie keeps at the one hide for hours, he hardly changes his position. He has grown into a cautious boy, always watching, always wanting to do things the right way. At last I coax him closer to the campfire and make him put down the skin for the night. It is cold again, and Jamesie can never get warm through out here, even if he sits so close to the fire he is struck by beads of sparking sap. He is thin, with the stretched look boys get as they grow. I watch him sitting with his hands to the flames. His mother would have pulled him back by now, but he is still shivering in bursts. I say: