All True Not a Lie in It (40 page)

I get off the pony and walk along beside my pimply keeper, closer to my men, though they want nothing to do with me. Black Fish has retreated deep into himself. The other chiefs ride quietly ahead. The purple blanket flashes like a signal in the trees, I watch it come and go.

Pompey sits his pony with idle ease. He says:

—Walk on, Sweet Apples.

His voice and his lazy manner infuriate the younger ones, and Ben Kelly shouts:

—At home I will have you picking my apples for me. Baking my pie. I will have you for my own sweet prize black boy. Or girl, if you prefer.

Young William Brooks, whose face has thinned and hardened, makes kissing sounds. His brother Sam chuckles. Pompey gives his high laugh, a gang of pigeons flings itself into the wind.

Be empty, I tell my mind. I watch the trees: hemlock, ash, pine. No fresh blazes chopped out of them. This path is old and well-worn. We have not made any great turn yet, though we are tilting east. Some leaf buds are beginning to appear, still hard-packed. The men speak occasionally, their voices carry to me on the wind. The word
spring
strikes me like a hand in the face, as does
home
. How long before the Shawnee insist it is time to go and take the fort as promised?

Snow still lies in brittle heaps and hollows.

There are still trees with no buds at all. No green. The bare branches do not hide the sky.

The sun is pale, near lost.

Do not think of the fort. No bread by now. No corn. No salt. Only meat, if they are lucky enough to get out for any without being killed. Johnson will tell them to hold on. He will tell them that the men are alive and that we are here. That it is not all lost. That we will all be brothers and sisters with the Shawnee, ha. Johnson will tell them about us. If he gets there.

It is curiously easy not to think of Boonesborough. As if it is in a private strongbox in a past time. Lock it up. Bury it. Do not think of it. Well. It does fling its lid open into my face sometimes when it will. It does now. It blacks my eyes and dents my nose. It is an agony.

Rebecca, you are strong. You have been without me before, and plenty. You have Squire and Neddy and the old men and the boys. The girls too. Put them in boys’ clothes, if there are any left to wear. Make it look as if there are more men about. Walk them about on the walls, do what you must.

Only when I think of the place, I cannot see myself there. Not on the blockhouses or at the gate or in the cabin or digging in the cursed ha-ha. I am not anywhere.

I close the lid. I nudge the pony.

A moment later a wet shot strikes the back of my shoulder. The Brooks boys have their heads lifted, the rope tugging at their necks. The guards are smirking.

—Oh, did my spittle land upon you, sir? My apologies.

—No no. He got in the way of your spitting.

Do not think. The pony keeps its head low and plods. How can it see? It has no need to see. It snaps at a flea or tick in its shoulder, its feet carry on. On his mount, Pompey lollops ahead. I slap my pony’s back and loudly I say:

—Giddup, Beauty.

I aim for Pompey’s tone. To myself I say: Straighten your mouth and keep it straight.

We make a camp near a small lick. Two of the warriors get a couple of deer in the trees. The smell of venison and cornbread softens the evening chill. Pompey comes over to where Kaskee and I sit eating.

—Going to call on Hair-Buyer.

Pompey says it as he finishes chewing. His tone is cordial, as if he wishes to chatter. He swallows slow, I can hear every muscle of his throat working separately, every mite of the food moving down him. He adds:

—You have not much hair left for anyone to buy, Sheltowee.

—So we are going to Detroit, then. Good of you to tell me.

He goes on chewing and swallowing. His noise interferes with my relief that we are not marching on the fort. But I do not trust Pompey. I do not trust the hard film over his eyes and whatever is behind it.

A knot of warriors laughs suddenly from down near the fire. Two of them throw and catch something. A knife. The moon is like a fingernail hooked above. Callaway and Hill and the others appear to be asleep sitting up, bound tight to one another for the night. Their heads dip and loll. The horses’ bells swing and tinkle in the breeze and my scalp pricks.

—Why is Black Fish taking some of us there now?

—Perhaps he thinks you will run away from him, and then where will he be? Alone, alone again. No son.

He smiles at me and I know he wants something. As I think this, he says:

—Would you like another language lesson, Sheltowee? You have not forgotten that you owe me for the first.
Neppa, neppoa
. Do you remember the difference?

Sleeping. Dead. I do remember. This night I lie wrapped in my blanket with Kaskee next to me. Pompey sleeps not far off. I do not think that I will sleep but I must, for I dream of Hair-Buyer, that is to say the British Governor at Detroit, sitting in mounds of scalps, clouds of hair, all colours of it, fair, brown, black, grey. Crisp and dry and rustling. Hair floats and spins like straw and gold in the light. High above everyone he sits on the mountain of it as if riding a great shaggy beast. The dry skin of the scalps shifts and rustles
under his great legs, white rebel scalps and enemy tribe scalps alike, some French. Any scalps. Everyone is digging up trouble for him in this land. Idly he brushes loose hairs from his face. His fingers run over the strands, they decide on quality and then flip shillings to sellers who scuttle off like beetles with the money in their mouths.

In this dream I see Governor Hamilton from every side as though I am a vapour curling through the air, as though I have no body. The Governor crooks his great fingers around a china cup, it is a blue and white one, and then he says in his puzzled British voice:
No more today?

Black Fish steps forward with fistfuls of scalps and lays them down like flowers upon a grave. The violet-blanketed chief arrives with more. I know each one. Each hair. My men’s, and the women’s too. The children’s.

Aha
, Hamilton says with satisfaction.

My hair is not there, it is
not there
—

I wake with one hand over the top of my skull. No relief in finding my scalp still attached. My guard is asleep on his back. Pompey is half-awake and staring at me with an interested gleam in his eye. He pats his own head in its scarf and turns over when I say nothing.

Someone else is awake, one of the tied-up men. I hear my name cutting through the quiet:

—Boone.

When it comes again I rise quietly and step closer though not so close as to rouse the guards. I crouch and whisper:

—What is it?

—Can you hear me? You can.

It is Callaway. I can near feel the current of his breath, rude and stinking and sickening like his buffalo carcass left outside the fort. I think of his dogtooth with its blackening tide line. It must hurt him. I say:

—Callaway, do not start in. There is no way to get anywhere tonight. Unless you see something I do not, which I doubt. Leave it to Detroit and I will—

He gives short laugh. Then he says in his cool fashion:

—I know your promises. I know all that you are capable of. I have travelled with you quite enough to know, as my uncle did when you went chasing after my cousins and your daughter.

He coughs and rubs his arms against the rope about him with a painful chafing sound. He carries on:

—I assume that you know all that your girl did to please the Indians. My cousins told me that she seemed quite at home. Just like a wife. Or a whore. But you do know all about that. Did you have her yourself when you got her back? Is that how you consoled yourself, by making her your own flesh truly? Perhaps this is what we will have to do for you to get us out. You can see we are quite powerless before you. Will our mouths do, or must you have our persons, Boone? I have wondered.

He drops the words like a string of pearls he has had stashed in his cheek. He has been thinking over this little speech, likely for weeks. His breath is a stinking wave. I aim towards it and I break his mouth. His teeth snap rottenly. He gasps and groans, and a warrior shifts nearby. I hold myself in, but only just. Hill is awake, calling me in urgent and thick fashion:

—Dan.
Dan
. Do not hurt him. He means nothing. I know you will have us out soon enough.

His voice is small and slurring. I say:

—Hill, are you all right? Are you ill? I will have them get you something.

Callaway gives a clipped groan and says some gummy words. I will crack his mouth again and split the corners far into his cheeks, I will rip out his tongue and make jerk of it. Callaway, I would have made a Wide Mouth of you, I would have made your
face just like mine, and how would you have liked that? But Hill is speaking again:

—We do not mean Jemima is a whore. Only a song, a laugh to pass the time.

I am scored through with anger, it has got right through me, or eaten its way straight out of me. My breath sears my throat:

—I will kill you if you call her by name again. She is not yours. You never had anything to do with her or Rebecca, she is mine. She is mine! Do not speak of her, you make me sick, God damn your shitty stink.

Again I strike at the dark. My fist catches something or someone. The others tied to them are moving and murmuring. Hill is trying to speak rapidly but his voice is giving out:

—Dan—I never did, did you think I did?

—Shut your mouth, Hill, before I have them kill you.

His words tumble out of him:

—Your brother had her, Dan, I heard of it when I went back, I thought you knew. I am sure he meant no harm. You were gone—

—I have heard that bastard story, thank you. Squire and I can settle our own family troubles.

The guards are up, they are coming. I hear Callaway working his mushy mouth:

—Does not know which brother, ha. Ha ha.

He sucks in a wet stringy breath and says:

—Brother Ned. Squire would not know how.

A
S DAWN BEGINS
to break up the dark, I hear what I think I hear. My keeper hears too. At first I believe it to be Hill or perhaps Ben Kelly, who is so young. But it is Callaway rubbing at himself, trying to grind some pleasure out of this life perhaps. Well, he will have to grind hard.

He does. Kaskee turns his head in embarrassment. It is very odd. The sounds are tight, as if forced out of Callaway’s great new bloody mouth. As well as lonesome and cold. He is alone but it seems to me that he has got his wish to be so. Stewing in your own irresistible juices, Callaway. He is forcing himself upon us, we can only listen. The sounds speed and then cease.

He has won. The terrible thing he has told me stands upon me like a great lead horse. Ned. Was it so?

I am visited by thoughts of Martha, pictures of doing every terrible thing with her I can think of, and things I cannot think of, I only see darkly. Getting children on her through every hole, stuffing her full of children, using her like a rag. Martha, trying to protect Ned while having her private victory over her sister. Using Squire that way, stolid Squire who bears everything like a block. Everyone wishes to keep Neddy happy. Now I see what you were about, Martha, I did not know then. I feel I have crawled up out of
a hole into a weird scribbled sketch of a place I thought I knew but do not know.

It must be true. Darling Neddy, Keep-home Neddy. Wanting only happiness for himself, and to spread his to others. To offer comfort to the lonely, abandoned woman. Wanting to drown the world in sticky happiness like flies in jam. Ned, did it have to be in that fashion?

He looks so much like you
: Ma’s old words. Might well have been Rebecca’s also. Rebecca. You protected him also, but you did tell me in your way. You said the baby was like me too.

Callaway is silent now. I burn my eyes out at him through the dark. They will crumble into ash. I know he is not a liar. He is a collector of information, like Martha. He is a liquid for mixing it in and turning it clear.

My mind roams back like a dumb ox let out of harness. It noses along the ground, chewing anything it finds, it will not stop. It sees Hill returning alone from Kentucky, blundering about looking for stories to write about me, getting a sniff of trouble before I returned. It sees the girls kidnapped, Callaway’s young cousins thinking they were going to die, telling Jemima all the truth they knew about her out of concern for her soul, as I suppose. It sees her insisting she was mine. Calling me Daddy. Jemima, is this how it went, did they tell you? Or did Jonathan or Jesse, the other orphans of our house, do so? My mind sees their big eyes and open ears. They were there while I was gone. Did something slip? A visit too many from Uncle Neddy? A visit too late in the evening for travelling home again, a soft sound from the barn in the night?