All True Not a Lie in It (36 page)

—Neppa
.

—What?

—Neppa
.

—The same to you.

The black man gives the word a stony drawl and keeps his eyes closed. I do not understand it. A branch cracks in the knot of trees where my guard has gone. I decide to play along. I say:

—Tree. Is that it?

He opens his eyes and rolls them upward, smiling to himself. I say:

—Cloud, then. Ice. Water.

He shakes his head very slightly and then lifts his hands and fans his fingers as though something were spilling out of them. I say:

—Salt.

He gives a short high laugh like a horse. He says:

—Idiot. Salt got you here.

I laugh back and say:

—I would not disagree at this moment.

—Your little white friend is an idiot.

He sits up somewhat and nods towards a spot upstream where Johnson is cowering on his hands and knee. He is swaying his head low like a sick dog and muttering. A small group of Shawnee men is behind him watching. I say:

—If you say so.

—Idiots, all of you. Devils.

—Idiots and devils come in all varieties. All colours. Just like flowers. Are you fond of flowers?

I look straight at him, all innocent. He stares back, making his eyes pots of innocence also. We have a brief contest of innocence until Johnson begins to bark. He is dripping foamy spittle at the mouth. One of the Shawnee shouts at him to point to where our
fort is, and he gets up and points in every direction, including up to the sky, with a sloppy grin. We look to him, and I say:

—They call him Little Duck now, I think.
Pekula
. But I defer to your knowledge of the local tongue.

—Ought to be Little Bastard. Or Crazy Mongrel.

—They have a way with names. As do you.

He glances at me and in his slow stony way he remarks:

—Sheltowee.

—Is that what they call me now?

—Do you not listen to your mother? Big Turtle. It was their dead one’s name, but it suits you well enough. You looked like a turtle coming out of the river after they washed you. Sheltowee.

—Well. I am flattered. Turtles are no fools.

—Fools are generally popular. They do not work that one at all. Like you.

The man nods towards the foaming Johnson. I say:

—And like you, may I say. What do they call you? Thunder and Lightning?

—Pompey.

I have to laugh:

—Pompey, is it? Hardly sounds Indian. Pompey. That what you call yourself?

Now he closes his face to me, and I feel his coolness return. We sit for a time in silence. I hear my guard poking roughly at the ice.

The woman who tugged out my hair is coming along the bank, holding a child’s hand and carrying a bucket. The child is the sharp little girl. Her hair has a rusty tone in the sunlight. She trails a stick behind her and keeps looking back at it as if hoping a small dog will attach itself. When they near us, I say:

—How do, Delilah. How do, young lady.

Both of them ignore me. They leave shuffling marks in the snow. I watch them go. To Pompey I say:

—That woman speaks some English?

Pompey rolls lazily towards me, he shows the most interest I have seen from him yet, but he is refusing to give up his game. He eyes me and says only:

—Neppa
.

And he passes his hand through the air before his face. It changes to a flat sleeping face.

—Ha! Sleeping. Sleep.

He smiles with his teeth now and says:

—Close to
neppoa
. Which means
dead
. A sensible language, Shawnee is.

—Well. Thank you for the lesson. Now tell me how to say female barber.

He says:

—You can repay me first.

—Well well, and what can I do for you?

—I will think on it.

He holds his grin a moment and then appears to go unconscious again, eyes closed and lips open and nostrils going in and out. I think of the last time I really slept so. It was the night my Jesse Bryan was born in the little house I built on Beaver Creek, when I plaited Rebecca’s hair for her and went to open the door and look at the sky. A stripe of pink was above the trees, morning a certainty. I say:

—
Neppa
. There you are. Or
neppoa
. Well. I wish I were one or the other.

Pompey props himself up on his elbows and surveys me once more. He says:

—You look as if you are smoking something sour. Shall I have someone fetch more of the drink for the sick? Give you a purge? I saw how you enjoyed it.

I want to laugh but I remind myself to get up and stalk off, though I am tired of conjuring these bursts of anger. I am tired of
my aching ankle and rib and shoulder, reminders of wounds that did not kill me.

Johnson is bucking like a young mule trying out its first kicks. His knees are knocked together, all awkward, and strings of drool swing from his chin. His audience is contemplating him. Some of them make low remarks to each other on his performance. Delilah and the girl are standing slightly apart, looking on calmly as he yells: Ee-aw!

I can see what he is playing at. It would be easy enough to do the same, to become another Little Duck, or Little Ass, to save oneself. All of the capering and foolery. But surely Johnson cannot keep this up. Do ducks live for ever? No. We had a mule once that lived to a great age but not even asses live for ever.

There are ways to preserve oneself. Bury oneself in salt, for instance. I think of it. At this time I still imagine that I might preserve everyone I have not yet lost.

—A
LL RIGHT
.

This is all I seem able to say. My men look at me for signs and I have none to give. They look at me as if I were a gypsy ball that shows the future. I am the freest of us, but the guards do not allow me to be too close to Johnson or the others. They put up with a few words in English if we pass in the town, but this is the only time we can speak. All I can do at such times is try to harden my face or say: All right. Perhaps it is a question.

I see men working outside their new families’ wigwams or in their plots in the fields where the snow is beginning to clear. They grind corn or chop kindling or pull up dead stalks and roots with their mothers and guards nearby. But two I do not see, Hill and Callaway. I do not know where they are until the night I hear their voices shinning up out of the dark and over the distance. Hill is singing as if drunk, and Callaway is speaking the song’s words as if he were arguing.
Poor Britons, poor Britons, poor Britons remember
. He is the sort who believes there is no point to singing at any time. Then there is a shout and a banging and the song goes no further. Well, perhaps Callaway is satisfied with this outcome.

When I go about in the village in the morning, I notice a small log outbuilding behind the big house. It has no windows, and two
rough, raw-boned young Shawnee lounge about before its door. Now I know Hill and Callaway are in this little prison house with little space between them, to judge from the size of the place. No one has adopted them. Perhaps they are such dirty types at bottom that they are not yet clean. Perhaps they need another good ducking in the river, but who will adopt Hill now?

I give a halloo. Shufflings and questionings come from inside as if I have awakened them, but my young guard hustles me on with his face forward and his eyes sliding towards the two rough fellows. There is no reply.

We turn and pass through the town again. I hope to see the children but they appear to have been kept at home today. I make for the riverbank. The day is warming and Pompey might be lolling at the water again. Perhaps he will teach me more words, perhaps he will give me some sign of what to do. He seems to want something from me, though he is not straight about it.

My guard follows me along the water’s edge. I go farther along the bank than before. The river is higher today, the earth softening somewhat where it meets the water. Round the bend is a great canebrake, high dead stalks blocking the way. I push back a few to make a path. And here is Johnson, sitting in a flattened patch and staring saucer-eyed at the current. He is throwing sticks into the water and still drooling. His guard is also throwing sticks, but keeping his spittle contained. I say:

—Surely you can find better bait.

I kick my moccasin high into the air and take my time finding it. My keeper looks at me with his pimply face but lets me be. Johnson turns his saucer eyes on me to gibber:

—The falling of the stars, the smash-up of the moon.

His voice is trembly and aged though he still looks small and young. He quacks loud and I say:

—No need to keep that up with me, Johnson.

I shake my head sadly at the guards and say:

—Poor madman. Poor little fellow.

I roll my head and eyes about to show them what I mean. To Johnson I say:

—I know what you are doing, and you are doing it just fine.

Johnson whispers again, his head stuck into the cane. He throws a twig feebly and dangles his fingers as if he has dabbled them in something sticky and dripping. He clutches at my leg and I near jump away.

—What?

I bend to hear him and he grins at me through his beard, which the Shawnee barberesses have not touched. This beard is like old rotting rope picked apart and slathered in wet. The grin is humourless. His hands keep still on my leg. He says through his teeth:

—Get us out. That is your job.

My guard and Johnson’s are smirking and watching him in hope that he will perform some new antic. The Shawnee seem distantly fond of Johnson, as they are of Pompey. They appear to like characters, which is sensible enough, as everything here is unchanging and endless, it seems.

I smirk also as if we are sharing a joke, and I say low to Johnson:

—We will get out. Not yet. So do not give us away now with anything stupid. Or too stupid.

My young guard is suddenly reminded of his authority and tugs my head back by the remaining lock. Behind his pimples and his disinterest, his face is full of longing. He wishes to be a warrior. He still has all of his hair, for which he is ungrateful. When he lets me go, I shake my head again and I say:

—Poor Pekula. Little Duck, is that right? He has always been the same.

In my mind I can see Johnson at the fort, chopping logs and hunting quite sanely, and showing no interest in ducks or play-acting.
Something has loosed itself, but it is not true madness, and not only an attempt to keep himself safe. He is enjoying himself in some fashion.

I replace my moccasin. My toes are damp and cold but not frozen. The days are slowly lengthening. How long have we been here? A month. More.

Johnson’s guard shakes his head also. Johnson begins to chant and thump himself upon the chest. His voice is melancholy and deep as he calls out of the cane:

—O your mother is a whore, your wife is a whore, and your daughter i-is a
bastard
whore.

I hear it in the night travelling on the air from the prison-house.

Some of the other men are singing it in the morning. They are in the fields hoeing at the mounds of black earth emerging from the snow. They have the look of grave-robbers at their work. I watch. The women watch too and walk back and forth, their hands in their pouches full of rattling seeds. They are waiting to plant the hillocks with their crops. If there are any dead beneath, they will make for better plants perhaps. Young Will Brooks spies me and lifts his hand in greeting, but soon it falls as if ashamed of itself.

The singing cuts through the chopping and digging. The men sound merry enough but with a hard edge. The kind of merriment that comes when there is someone to kick. This is new. Though not new in my life.

Your daughter is a whore whore whore, your daughter is a whore.

Someone has given it a melody, sweet and almost melancholy.
Whore whore whore
runs slowly up the scale. As we walk back to the village, I even catch my guard humming it.

Well. It seems to be providing amusement. The white men’s music carries on the breeze, and my little sisters dance to it, hopping over pebbles set in rows in the street outside of our wigwam. In the midst of their hopping, the girls grin at me. I tip them a small bow.