All True Not a Lie in It (23 page)

—Come here.

He looks at me in surprise as if he had forgotten my presence, as if I had disappeared into the trees. My heart sinks for a moment, but I say:

—I am here, look. Come here.

Jamesie moves towards me and I tuck him into my shirt, his back to my bare chest. He is embarrassed, far too old for this, but pleased. He curls his legs down between my knees, and I feel his
limbs relax. I smell his fair hair and give his plait a little tug. I am certain there is no mother’s comfort like this, sitting by the campfire in the night.

—Better now?

—My front is hot and my back is still cold.

Jamesie says this in his precise fashion. He is like Squire in this way, but I have not seen Squire or Ned since burying Daddy. Squire has gone off on another hunt alone, I do not know where. When I think of him now I am not easy, but Jamesie shifts about and I say:

—Do you want to sit on your own?

—No.

After a time we settle on our bedrolls under our bearskins with our feet to the fire, and we are quiet. I think of Stewart and of Squire and Kentucky and I grow melancholy, but all of it seems a long-ago story. The fire spits in a spiteful fashion.

—Daddy.

James is used to the vast dark. It is the sudden leap and punch of the flames in the night that unsettle him, even at this age. He always arrives on my bedroll at some time during the night, and I do not mind. I say:

—You tired of the little people yet?

—The Lilliputians.

He is always a one for being correct. I say:

—That is right. Had enough of them, a big boy like you?

—No.

So I tell the old story, which is our favourite, and which we know we will never tire of. Jamesie listens hard with a short dry laugh from time to time. His eyes reflect the fire darkly. We are near asleep when he says:

—But they did not want him to get up.

—Who?

—The big man.

I can tell that Jamesie is on the edge of sleep or he would have said Gulliver. But to tease him I say:

—Who do you mean? I cannot think who.

—With the strings the little people tied all over him. He got up.

—Yes, he got up. The Lilliputians were only tiny, you remember. Their ropes could not keep a big man like that tied to the ground.

—Not a big man.

—No.

Jamesie goes silent but he is not yet asleep. He worries the question again, he turns and looks at my face, considering. He says slow:

—He got up but he was not supposed to. He was not supposed to be alive.

—He did get up, yes.

—He was supposed to stay with them and be their prisoner. And be dead if they wanted him to.

—What, like a dog? Lie down, play dead?

I tickle his thin neck below his ear and I make a little howling noise. He jumps, his body stiffens. I touch him and I feel his heart leap under my hand.

I wish with all my soul I had never made that noise, Jamesie, forgive me.

I
N SUMMER
, I come up from the goddamned corn one evening to find Ned and Martha visiting. They have brought Squire’s wife Jane with them. They sit in a row on the bench outside the door with Rebecca, stiff as a row of plates. The children are all running about in a frenzy, knocking one another down, a pack of cousins doing their best to inspect the condition of each other’s blood.

—Ned. Thinking about joining me on a hunt?

Neddy smiles in his sleepy manner and lifts his eyes. He leans against the wall and says:

—You were a long time about your last one.

—You might have come along, Keep-home Neddy.

He chuckles and says:

—I like it here. Did you find what you were looking for?

—No.

—Well oh well. You might come back to Virginia, Dan.

—Do you think of going there again?

Ned tilts his head and says:

—Bryan has me driving the tobacco there, doing his brokering. I go where life takes me. And where my wife takes me.

He turns his smile on Martha, who is sitting upright with her arms folded over her belly. She is with child again. Her big eyes run
back and forth between us. One of her little girls draws great frowning and laughing mouths in the dirt at her feet. Ned says:

—Saw a friend of ours at market.

I look up:

—Stewart?

—Afraid not. No such good luck. Hill.

—So our Hill came through the wilderness on his own. He is full of surprises.

Neddy laughs his easy laugh and rubs his neck:

—Alive as ever. No sign of any woes. And with a new scheme for raising investments in Kentucky.

—What now?

—He wrote about it in the newspapers, he showed me one of his articles. He must carry them everywhere he goes. He told me to give you his especial compliments. And the family. He fondly remembers his visits, he says.

—He was here?

Ned nods and says:

—He came here when he first returned, seeking old tales about your man Findley. Old dirt to dig up. And about you. He is writing a book now, he says.

My heart is coated in ice. Hill dividing up my beautiful faraway country into rags and patches. And coming here sniffing after me.

Now my heart freezes to the core. I say:

—Rebecca. Did you see him?

The baby Jemima is shrieking inside the house but Rebecca does not move, she only says:

—All you men can talk of is Kentucky.

I see Jonathan looking up from where he is oiling a harness in the barn doorway. The baby’s cry gets to him also. It does not stop.

I go inside and I pick up Jemima. She is wet and struggling. All my chest aches, cut up with the thought of Hill as her father. But I
cannot believe it. How can I? No. I look into her face from an inch away, and she unleashes one of her best screams. I sing to her:

—No, no, no.

She gazes at me without blinking.

I have begun to be fond of the little stranger. To my surprise, it is not difficult. I banish Hill. I will not let this be her fate. I will erase her beginnings for her, whatever they are, and why not? Here you can reshape yourself. You can forget. Others can also. At this time, I suppose this to be true.

I kiss her. I carry her out and say:

—I believe this child needs her mother.

I kiss the baby’s head again. Rebecca’s eyes lock on me for a moment. Martha’s do as well, they are round like eggs. She touches her throat and stands up heavily, dragging her daughter up from the dirt. She says:

—It is time we left.

Squire’s wife Jane stands as well. She is clearly as uneasy as the other women. They know all about the baby, it appears. Jane is not one to say much, like her husband, but she does look at me. She is a little woman with a narrow face and narrow green eyes. I say:

—Jane, are you getting on all right at home without Squire? Is there anything you need?

Her eyes fill to the tops with tears before she blinks them away. She waves her hand before her face and says:

—Fine. Fine.

The baby howls, and Rebecca walks off bouncing her up and down. No one has any further remarks to make. They round up the children. One of the girls has pushed a nut up into her nose, she is shrieking and hiding her face and saying, leave it, leave it, as Martha shakes her and tries to fish it out.

It is two mornings later that Martha is in the cornfield where I am working very early. Her feet are half-sunk in the earth between the rows. She looks like a determined scarecrow waiting for me. The sun is rising behind her head. She has been running or walking fast. The words spill out of her as if from a boiled-over pot:

—I love to see the sun rise over the fields.

I want to laugh, but her eyes appear to bruise as she speaks, they go dark and shaded. She is thin and pressed-looking despite her condition. She is one of those who inhabits her skin nervously, although she forces herself into boldness now. She steps closer to me through the mud, holding her round belly. She is suffering, which has its appeal and which she knows.

—I have—

She breathes in and flattens a hand over her chest and goes on:

—You treat that child as if it is your own but it is not. You know that, I think?

She touches my sleeve, the sun makes a halo of her hair. The line of stalks I am weeding shades her body. Every word and gesture feels as though she has rehearsed it, even the sun coming up behind her at this moment. Her dress is muddied and its hem is fallen on one side as though she has planned that as well. I say nothing. I do not understand her. Then her hand is on my arm, travelling upward, and she is laughing lightly as she says:

—Rebecca and Squire. The names sound pleasant together.

She gives a little click of her tongue. The cornstalks feather and rustle with her movement. My head buzzes and I say carefully:

—Do you mean to say that Squire was with my wife? How am I to believe that?

Her eyes go bigger, they flood with instant tears. She says:

—I do not know but I believe it to be so. He was here when you were gone. He said he was looking out for her safety as she was
so alone, it must be so hard for her without you. He said that. He brought food.

Her hand travels higher up my arm like a tentative but insistent mouse. I say:

—Martha.

—Squire and Rebecca.

—Martha.

I shake my head and try to laugh as she goes on touching me. I say:

—If you insist on pairing names, Martha and Daniel sound like a couple of Old Testament types. The types who get smote. Did Jane send you?

She is staring hard at me, her pupils wide, she is an inch away. She whispers like the stalks in the wind:

—I was there when your first was born.

And I remember of course that it was Martha who told me Jamesie was here, that he and Rebecca were all right, who took me to see him. Her eyes were hot and bright as they are now. She is a secret squirrel for knowledge, I see it now, she keeps everything squirrelled away. When I thanked her at the time for the good news, she said: You are welcome to it, and her smile showed a triumph. Her face was upturned and shining and seemed to say:
I have known Rebecca all my life, I have seen her do everything, I have seen her legs open to send out that baby, I have heard her piss in the night, I have smelled her smell when she is sick, I know her in every way and so I know you too. I know what you know
.

Now she says only:

—Daniel.

I am stirred, uncomfortably so. She moves her hand to the waist of my breeches and plucks at the shirt there, pulling it out slowly as if she were sewing. Her fingernails needle my skin.

How easy it would be.

She is so angry.

The crows veer overhead. When I blink I can still see the pattern of black and white, crows against clouds. I hear myself say:

—This will not help any. You have a husband, I have a wife. We all need to go along.

Her hand halts, her voice ices over:

—She killed our mother—my mother—you know, being born. Then in came the stepmother and all the other children, and she and I going off to live with our granddaddy. And she has you again, she has that baby, she is starting fresh as if nothing ever happened—

This seems to me the cry of the sister who never has anything to herself, never anything new or first. I can feel how she suffers, the air vibrates with her queer suffering. She wants me to put an end to it. She wants me to taste her blood, she wants to pull me into a hole and let me do it. I am all confusion. My stomach is hollow, her hand is still on it. I try to speak gentle:

—Go home now. You are tired out.

I am talking to a pack of wild dogs all trying to run in different directions. I foresee her baying but she bursts out laughing and says:

—Home?

—Yes.

—You make your home wherever you like. Do you believe there is really any such thing as home—that happy home we were all promised when we were girls? Be good and think of home, you will have your own when you are married, home will lift your heart when it is low—

—Go to your children.

She sets both her hands over her belly now and spreads her fingers: