All True Not a Lie in It (26 page)

—Naturally! Naturally everyone has heard that we have been into the fair country of Kentucky. They will read my book when I have finished it. When we have completed our tale, that is to say. Your husband, Mrs. Boone, is the man to lead a party back. We are the men to make it pay.

When I am able to speak, I say:

—You plan to return to Kentucky in person? In spite of its insect life?

I puff out my cheeks and Hill laughs from the bottom of his lungs, full of his old joy at a new prospect, the hornets who near killed him now a joke. Touching his beard, he says:

—Now I have this to protect me, and we have the land company registered.

My heart falls within me. Hill carries on:

—You might do the surveying once you get us there. We will pay you. You cannot say you will not go back. I know the cockles of your heart!

—Do you indeed?

—I do! And you may choose the first lot. Any land your cockles fancy.

Slowly I say:

—There is no stopping you, Hill, is there.

—Never.

—You are going to sell it—Kentucky—to all takers?

Hill’s grey eyes brighten, his face softens. He says:

—Not to all. No border trash. Only to good people, the best people! We will make a proper place of it. Big plots, plenty of land, and no need to see anyone if you do not wish to, Dan.

I feel him waiting for my answer. I say:

—Perhaps I do not give you enough credit.

—Your credit, Boone, is not your strength, but I will not remind you of old debts now. Only old times.

Hill touches my arm and juts out his jaw in a grin. Hill, arranging my life for me again. It seems to me at this time that the rich always carry a happiness that they do not know they have. Not to need money is a happiness that must go down to the marrow. I see it in Hill’s and Russell’s posture and their ease. For a moment I wish deeply to be like them. Unhappiness wells up in me. I smooth my face and I say:

—Land is the way to my heart, is it?

—I know all the hidden paths of anatomy. Every twist and secret turn, I have made quite a study—

He glances sidelong at Rebecca and the girls, then curbs himself and bows slightly.

I also look at Rebecca. My unhappiness boils. Staring at her, I say:

—Well, all right. We will go. We can settle there. I can look for Stewart, for Hannah’s sake. Why not?

Rebecca is keeping herself very still, her black eyes do not twitch. Little Jesse snuffs over her shoulder and chews her ear, but she does not move.

I pass my hand over my mouth. I say:

—Did you hear this? Some excellent land of our own, my girls and boys. Easy cropping, and no stump-clearing in those meadows. And a job at that. Here is a chance.

Surely speaking these words will make it true. Surely Russell and Hill and their money have the power to make it true. So bright
and golden is their luck, I count on it to rub off on mine. Susy gives a little leap and a laugh.

Russell puts out a smooth plump hand and says:

—Women and children will make a home of the place. Land and game enough for everyone, just as you say. Houses on the creeks, corn and wheat in the fields, orchards in the clover. Silver in the ground, too, some say, once we open it. For myself, I have plans for peach trees first.

Hill barks:

—Barmaids, a round of peach brandy for all!

He pulls himself up and bursts out in song:

Chickens, sweet chickens
,

See them take the morning air
,

See them drop eggs without care
.

In my mind I see my brilliant sea of grass reaching out to the far hills. Teeming with chickens, spattered with eggs.

Russell says lightly to me:

—Other parties have already set out surveying since the Iroquois treaty.

He looks again to his slaves. One nods as if set to go this minute. I have to stop my throat from tightening and closing entirely. I have to stop my eyes from moving back to Rebecca or the children.

My Kentucky is all I can see. And chickens might as well be game as any other bird. In my mind I shoot them all from the picture.

A
NYONE WOULD
hear us coming, our clanking parade through the bush, cracking branches and flattening saplings. The cows and hogs moaning as the boys whip them along, complaining worse than the littlest children packed into the creaking baskets tied on each side of the horses. The children bawl: Out out out, no no no, Mama. And some only bawl on and on without words. I do not like to hear them.

Rebecca rides our mare with the bald patch, holding the youngest to her, willing herself to look at the future and like it. I have told her she and the girls can be the first white women to dip their toes in the beautiful Kentucky River. She is very quiet. Well, I suppose I have won entirely.

I look back a few times from where I am leading once we have ridden beyond sight of Ma at the last Yadkin house. Jonathan and Jesse stood alongside her. They said they would stay and be with her. My Ma weeping, too old for this journey, clutching at the back of her cap. Even now I can see her outlines but not her features. All my days I will wish for a likeness of her face, even one of her as a little Quaker girl in grey, anything to turn over in my hands like a coin. But in my memory I see only her arms holding herself in as she watches us all setting out for Kentucky, whose beauties and terrors
are beyond her capacity to imagine. I know that she did not wish to imagine them. We fired a salute and I called out goodbye only once, my voice falsely bright, anyone would hear the tinniness. Oh, Ma, I hope your face will be the first I see when I leave this life. Ma, yours will be a happy face then, I pray, and not the weeping ruin it is at this time.

In my mind I say goodbye to Israel too, and to all my ghosts. But Daddy appears that night when I am dreaming to frown and look puzzled and say:

—Well Dan, there must be a newer world.

When I wake I beg him to return and say more, but there is no more. My sleep for some time thereafter is as blank as an
O
. It is odd that we wish to know what the dead think of our doings. All my life I will wonder what my Daddy thinks. Daddy, I wonder still.

We move very slow along the narrow path. Horses are always going lame or sore-backed, children are always falling out of their baskets, boxes are always tipping off the pack animals. Hill and Russell have rounded up eight families aside from our own, Callaways and Mendinalls and others from Virginia, some slaves also, and a few lone men. Some of the Bryans have decided to go along. All have paid Hill and Russell for the privilege and also for the land they will have in Kentucky. They are game to settle. They have enough baggage for ten cities.

The way feels steeper and sharper than it did my first time through. At this slow pace my limbs do not work. My feet feel not my own, I stumble more than once. I have to laugh. With Findley leading it felt easy enough. Irish magic, he would no doubt say.

Rebecca’s rocking chair rears up from the back of an ox like a weird double spine. Granddaddy’s old black cabinet from England is balanced between two more beasts. We have some comforts. I know I am whoring myself to Hill for land, but Hill is fond of whores, as I know well enough. Besides, he is happy at this time,
enjoying the noise and slowness and the feeling that he has helped me. He acts the chief of a royal progress, riding along with his reins slack, surveying in all directions, sending the slaves off here and there, though they are not his. Russell dismounts and walks ahead a little now and then, turning his agreeable face and his bright eyes everywhere. He catches me up and says:

—This is the original Indian warpath, Boone? I do not know how you know it. No one like you for finding a trace, for seeing signs no one else alive could see.

You do not know me: so I think. But I nod and carry on. My boys are happy enough, walking with their guns and looking out for any game. Susannah and Jemima dart back and forth along the queue, dragging the cat and two of the younger girls. Their arms are scratched and dotted with blood from it and the heavy bush. They run to me:

—Daddy, can Tibby have a drink of your water?

—Daddy, can I walk with you?

—Daddy, can I—

—Yes, all right. Anything.

The cat Tibby stares into the woods, its eyes burning green. The trees are thick here and the undergrowth thicker. In many places we have to chop it away to get through. The infants in the baskets squall like gulls as the branches press them. But the forest has a powerful silence and a beauty in spite of all our noise.

Russell approaches with two of his boys as I am taking out my axe for more felling. He sits on a stump and says:

—This is really a ridiculous procession.

—It is so.

Hill appears also, sniffing, and says grandly:

—Like herding wild buffalo along.

I say:

—When was the last occasion you did so, Hill?

He laughs, touching his beard fondly, and says:

—I remember when we shot buffalo together, Dan. Do you not remember that time?

—No such time, Hill.

Russell interrupts to say:

—The weather has been good to us. No frost yet. There is no such thing as frost in Kentucky, now, is there?

Hill throws out an arm and cries:

—No frost! Always summer.

Russell puts his arms around his sons’ shoulders and says:

—Eternal summer. Of course. Do you hear that, boys?

The boys grin, Russell and Hill laugh again. I think of my private Heaven. Nobody will set foot on it before I can claim the best part of it, one part to keep safe. And I will find Stewart and make things right with him. All I have ever wanted. I clench my back teeth and try not to crack them.

I begin to hack at the saplings in our way. At the edge of my eye comes a movement, a blur of grey like a quick jet of steam from a kettle in the thick trees. The skin between my shoulder blades pricks as if a finger is just above it. A wolf, perhaps. Looking into the trees, I want to whistle, I want to go after it. I think of my brother Israel shooting wolves for magistrates’ money. But no bounty is offered here. And no ghosts are here. I tell myself again.

So slow are we that we run short of flour and cornmeal, not to mention rum, before we reach the great mountain gap. Then we run out.

We are in Powell’s Valley, with its steep sides and narrow path. There is no way to turn the whole rattling bawling group around now, and no way forward with all of these women and children
and trappings. My skin bristles. All of this is wrong but I do not know why.

We stay in our camp for some days as we try to decide what it is that we should do. People seem to plant themselves, as people will do. My gut sinks. Some of the men sit up jawing half the night, and Hannah sets up preaching from a box, as though we have all the time in the world. As though this place is good enough. Rebecca and Martha and Jane make a nest of babies amidst boxes. It has the look of a miniature fort. I am for riding ahead, but how can I?

Russell takes me aside and says quiet:

—You and I might ride back with a couple of the blacks to Virginia and ready supplies to send on. If we have to winter here, it is not a bad place.

I look over the winding line of tents and cooking fires along the valley. All of it puts me in mind of the army train marching to the Monongahela and disaster. The smell of supper rises peacefully and says:
Stop thinking of such things. Do not think
.

Turning to Russell, I say:

—Can we leave these people?

Russell says:

—There is Hill to keep order.

Even he looks dubious. Hill is washing his head noisily in the creek, taking great gulps of air so that everyone will take notice and share in his joys.
See my great head, see my shoulders, see my health
. Ned and a few of the other men are playing cards with their backs to him. Old Dick Callaway grunts. He insists on being called Colonel, his Virginia militia title, and likes to walk about with a stick as if inspecting troops. His gangly red-headed nephew Jimmy shows in the set of his neck how purposely he is ignoring Hill. But Hill keeps trying with greater
Ahs
.