All True Not a Lie in It (47 page)

Black Fish is keeping himself to himself. He nods once. It appears that I have been forgiven. He looks set to make the best of what he has left. I understand this. I say:

—My father.

He looks at me so that I want to weep again but I dry myself out, I turn to Pompey and I say:

—Pleasant to meet you here as well. Out for a stroll?

My words fall flat. Pompey hums, he looks up at the birds crossing the sky. No purpose is obvious here. But I will say that I am glad to see them both.

Up the stream a short way, a horse is tied to a thin elm. It is splashing its nose in and out of the river. It is a paint, with a blotch spreading round one eye. In it the eye looks astounded.

—A gift for you, Sheltowee.

Pompey is watching me. I say:

—Indeed?

—Yes.

—I am lucky in horse gifts.

I think of the beautiful white mare from Hamilton, no longer mine, shifted off elsewhere. So many people and animals and things shifting about, bought and sold and traded, this country is full of their tracks. And do not wonder where they get to. There will be no answers, you ape.

Pompey holds out his hand. Black Fish is still. I walk down towards the paint horse. Its spots make it look as if it is trying to hide in the trees. Guilty horse. So calm am I now that I do not imagine the burned fort when I say:

—We are off on another journey, then.

Pompey laughs high and Black Fish echoes him, adding something in quick Shawnee. So surprised am I that I laugh too. Pompey says:

—Not yet. You will have to stay here for some time. Bridegrooms generally like to keep at home.

Keep-home Neddy, darling Neddy. I cannot help but think it. It is like a stone in the body, growing more and more until its pain cannot be stopped. I ought to have kept home more. But now there is none. And I cannot imagine facing Neddy now.

Rebecca, a gentle thought comes of you in the bed on our wedding night, your hair all outspread, before any of this. And in our first cabin on your grandfather’s land in Carolina when you felt safe. Queen
of the Backwoods. You would hate it here, even more than you hated the fort. One morning there I heard you outside, you said to Martha that you wanted to fall on the path to the spring and never get back up. You said: But I have no choice. How old do I look? You laughed for a moment and touched your neck, I saw you. I knew you were crippled up inside with homesickness and suffering. You went along for me. You were trying to make up for Neddy, for Jemima, for everything.

Black Fish’s eyes scan my face. They open wider when he says soft:

—Happiness will keep you here. You will be happy, you are my son.

Pompey translates in his slow measure but I have understood already. He is thinking: If I stay, you stay. I can see that Black Fish’s sentimental vein has opened. And I find myself not unhappy.

On my wedding day, the ceremony is quick enough. Black Fish presides and joins our hands and wraps them together in a bright calico cloth. My mother weeps through it. My little sisters stand at the front and look crafty. Delilah’s little girl is watchful. I cannot see Delilah’s face. My poisoner, my barber, that is to say my barberess. I might have known that we were intended for one another. I hand her a deer’s hoof when prompted, but I do not look. For a moment I think of you again, Rebecca, of dragging that dead deer to you when I was courting you. But quickly this thought slides away. Pompey passes the hoof to me and tells me very loud what to do.

He says her name is now Methoataske. Delilah’s name. My wife’s. It means Turtle in a Nest.

There is a feast, a circling dance that runs all night. I can still see the dancers at Bryan’s when I married my first wife. But it is a curious silent vision. The laughing and calling and shuffling here in the big house overlap that old picture.

Methoataske is silent beside me on the sleeping mat. My mother has draped this wigwam with fresh pine boughs and bunches of thin green leaves and a few pale orange flowers with black eyes. She backs out the door, where my little sisters and Methoataske’s girl whisper before she drags them away. I do not know what to say about them. I do not know what to say. But I speak nonetheless, her silence is so deep:

—This is why you shaved me again. Made me look a little more decent.

I feel her head move, she is nodding. I say:

—Well. You have seen all of me already.

I think of her beating me in the river, cleaning me and pulling out my hair. I think of myself opening my blanket to show her my wet body, limp also. I taught her that word. I want to laugh. I say:

—My father gave me a gun tonight. The horse as well. My mother piled me down with blankets. If I had known that this was the way to get all of this and a good barbering, I would have proposed to you some time ago.

My joking has little effect. I keep expecting Pompey to pop up from behind the cooking pot and say:
Aha. See where your sentimental heart has got you
.

Bang. I shut my mind to him and to everyone else. Here I am and here we are. I turn to face her, I touch her. Her skin is warm and very slightly rough.

She is accepting.

It is not difficult, of course it is not.

—Have you tried your gun yet? Does it work as you might have expected?

Pompey touches his breechcloth and the warriors laugh. A couple of the Boonesborough men are among them. One watches my face, his eyes moving in any direction mine do. I cannot look at him, he makes me think too much of the fort. His Shawnee father is very fond of him, he puts his arm about the young man’s shoulders. I want to say: This is not a bad place. This is better than what we have left. This is what we have now.

But instead I say to everyone:

—Everything is in working order. Rest assured.

Black Fish leads, smiling. We go up the street and through the growing fields and out into the woods. They all elbow me and ha-ha some, but they let me loose with the gun. No guard. The early air is warming, I feel myself freed from any prison I could imagine. My father fills my pouch with powder and shot. We cross the fields and go into the woods and get a couple of deer straight out. The lead smells damp and precious.

When I return to my wife’s house in the evening, I have plenty of venison. I bend to get through the door and I am knocked down hard. My back rocks on the ground, the meat is spilled, my breath is gone. I cannot see my attacker until I lift the body from my face. It is Methoataske’s girl. I grip her shoulders, she stares me down, the hard steady stare of children. Then she gets up and runs into the house. I am still sprawled amidst the meat when Captain Will comes along with his wife.

—Here, my old friend.

He pulls me up from the ground by the arm. He says:

—New wife, new daughter. A family. I congratulate you.

His wife smiles as women do with the newly married, thinking of their own weddings. She and the Captain adopted two of the whites, Hancock and Jackson. Another ready family. They pass on up the way with their sons behind.

Inside the wigwam, my wife is brushing dust from the mats.
She looks up. The girl is curled into a corner, whispering to a wooden spoon that she is revolving between her palms. Her fingertip is still dark. My blood still?

—Ought not you to wash your hands, miss? Or stir the pot?

She continues to turn the spoon about. I say:

—Now, what is your spoon’s name?

She is silent. Then at once she announces:

—Eliza.

—Well. Fine old English name. Not Sheltowee, after me?

—No.

Her eyes slide back to her occupation.

—And you, what is your name? I do not know it yet.

—Eliza.

She speaks just as though she is naming another utensil, as though it were no matter to her what her name is.

—Is that so?

Her mother looks at her with a small smile. The girl puts the spoon into her mouth and gets up to stand before me, her cheeks puffed out. Her stare is unblinking, like the wolf pup’s. She seems to decide something. She holds out the spoon to me. I take it, with its damp half-circle from her mouth.

—Thank you, Miss Eliza.

Methoataske bends, her plait slides over her back, her hips lift. My wife. I go out and I pick up the remains of the meat.

At night Eliza is banished again to Black Fish’s house to give the married couple their privacy. I can hear her howls. Methoataske stirs, troubled.

—Go and get her. Bring her back.

When Methoataske carries her in, Eliza’s eyes are triumphant above her blanket. She keeps them open for hours, I can see in the low firelight.

She attaches herself to me like a nettle.

Methoataske has to keep her from following me everywhere, even the latrine pit. She seems never to blink. My little sisters hover outside and call her to come and play but she suddenly pretends not to understand Shawnee any longer. They go off in a whispering huff.

When I go to hunt she keeps beside me. I do not mind. I like her presence. She sits on a rock where I tell her to stay. When I come back with game after a few hours, she is still there, chewing on a fingernail. She says:

—I am here.

—Why, so am I.

I carry her home on my shoulder, the rifle knocking awkward over my chest. She kicks at it with her ankles. She takes the ramrod and waves it about like a wand.

In spite of herself, she drops into a heavy early sleep after our expedition. Her limbs sprawl out as if she has fallen hard upon the floor. My wife and I sit outside in the light evening. We can hear her deep breaths and occasional snores.

Methoataske is shelling seeds from last year. The husks strike the ground softly. I am stealing a handful from the basket when my wife says:

—She is not easy.

—Easy? Is any child?

I crunch seeds between my teeth. I think of other children, but the thought is vague only, I chase it off. She slides a glance at me:

—Is this not a word?
Easy
?

—It is a word. You are not wrong.

—She is not—at home. She feels this.

—She has a good home. You are a good mother, I can see for myself.

Methoataske brushes husks from her lap, her arm is like a wing. I catch at her fingers. She says:

—You are her father now. She believes so.

—Her father, was he a good man? I hope so.

She shrugs one of her shrugs. I take her hand, I want to know suddenly. The man must be dead. Am I the first replacement?

—I am sorry.

She picks up her basket. The husks sound like light rain falling. Her fingers are quick and unthinking.

—I do not know her father.

For a moment she seems flustered, it is very odd for her. I look away and listen to the night insects and birds starting up. After a time I say:

—Your history is not my concern.

She carries on with the seeds, she moves her foot up and down. Inside Eliza coughs and gulps. The dark slides down.

—I am not her first mother. She was given to me.

—She was a captive?

—Yes.

My chest tightens and tells me to shut my mouth but I do not. I ask: