Blue Moon (10 page)

Noah looked over at the Matheson woman and found her staring intently at him, squinting hard behind her spectacles. He started to turn the scarred side of his face away from her, then caught himself and stopped.

“Do I know you?” She folded her arms, forgetting Olivia entirely as she focused on him.

“You were going to tell her how to find her father,” he reminded her.

Faye Matheson shook her head. “It’s the darnedest thing. I feel like I ought to know you for some reason. You’re not from around here?”

A farmer driving an empty cart drew up beside them. “Mornin’, Miz Matheson. How you doin’ this mornin’?” He nodded to Olivia and then turned his attention on Noah.

“We really have to be going.” Olivia tried to excuse them again. “If you could just tell me the way, ma’am?”

Both the farmer and Faye Matheson were staring at him now. Noah’s hand tightened on his rifle. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he had a sudden urge to scratch under his eye patch.

The farmer, with a blank expression not unlike that of his ox, stood by expectantly. Faye Matheson continued to try to place Noah.

“What’s your name?” she finally asked.

Noah said absolutely nothing. The farmer smiled.

“His name is Noah.” Olivia sounded frustrated. “Noah LeCroix.”

“Well, I’ll be hog-tied and pickled.” The farmer took off his hat and slapped his knee with it and whistled. “Wait ’til the boys down at the tavern hear this. They’re gonna have to see it with their own eyes, I’m afraid, or they’re never gonna believe I saw Noah LeCroix in the flesh.”

“What are you talking about?” Noah was barely able to unclench his jaw and get the words out.

“Why, last I heard, you was
dead
.”

For the life of him, Noah could not figure out why this man he had never met from a town he had passed through but once—and that more than five years before—should have heard anything about him, let alone that he was dead.

“I’m standing right here,” Noah told him coolly before he turned to Mrs. Matheson. “Lady, we need to be on our way. If you won’t tell us where Miss Bond’s father lives, then we’ll find someone who will.”

He felt Olivia’s hand touch his sleeve. “Please, Noah.”

“Noah LeCroix. Noah LeCroix.” Faye Matheson muttered. Far from showing any offense, she shook her head and continued to repeat his name over and over.

“The flatboat pilot,” the farmer said, nudging Faye with his elbow. “
The
flatboat pilot. The Prince of the Ohio. The half-breed who made a deal with the devil and guided near on to a thousand flatboats safely down to New Orleans, ’fore the devil took his due and turned the river on him, ripped off half his face and swallowed him up without a belch afterward.”

Tall and lanky as a scarecrow, the farmer looked Noah up and down, from the toes of his moccasins to his black felt hat.

Faye declared, “That’s it! I knew he reminded me of somebody. I heard the river took off half his face. One of the survivors of the accident claimed he saw your eye float past while he was swimming to shore.”

Now Olivia was staring at him too. She stepped closer and said in a hushed whisper, “Oh, Noah, I’m so sorry.”

As the farmer chuckled and congratulated himself for spotting Noah first, Faye started to hum a little ditty and tap her foot. Olivia looked appalled and anxious. It was bad enough he stood out because of his mixed blood, but now, somehow, while he had been hiding in the swamp, he had become a legend. The Prince of the Ohio.

Then right there in the middle of the muddied thoroughfare, Faye Matheson started humming louder and with more enthusiasm until the farmer joined in and they started singing.

Noah turned to Olivia. “Make them
stop
.”

“Let’s go. Surely someone else knows where my father lives.” She tugged on his hand.

A crowd was gathering. Faye and the farmer sang on.

The farmer suddenly noticed their chagrin and stopped in mid-verse. Over Faye’s off-key warbling, he said to Olivia, “Did you say you’re looking for the Bonds?”

Two steps away, trying to outrun his humiliating notoriety, Noah stopped in his tracks and swung around.

“We are.” He tried to intimidate the farmer with a one-eyed stare.

“I’d be mightily honored if you would let me lead the way. Payson Bond’s land butts up to mine. I’m Bob Carver.”

“Which way?” Noah demanded to know over a rousing chorus of “
Oh, Noah LeCroix, Noah LeCroix
.”

The farmer pointed northeast. “Right through there, past the land office and the Cake and Beef store.”

Noah turned to Olivia. “You ride along with him on the oxcart. I’ll go on ahead and wait for you at the edge of the woods.”

Olivia’s heart went out to him as she watched Noah pull his hat low on his brow and stare at the ground as he jogged a few yards down the muddy road. He quickly disappeared between two log buildings, one sporting a fancy shingle that read
CAKES N BEEF
.

When she turned around again, Faye had finally stopped singing and was hurriedly explaining to three newcomers what the fuss was all about.

“… so I stood here thinking to myself that I knew him from somewheres, and then Bob come along and recognized the name and sure enough, it was Noah LeCroix.”

“
The
Noah LeCroix?” A bearded gent in a tall crowned hat and a cutaway coat leaned into the center of the crowd toward Faye. “
Oh, I’ll give you more than fame
…” he sang. “
That
Noah LeCroix?”

“One and the same. Half-breed with a missing eye.” Bob nodded. “How many of
them
you think are running around here?”

“Where’s he been all these years?” A squat, fat hunter in the back of the crowd shouted. “Has he made another deal with the devil?”

A hush fell over the crowd. They all looked at Olivia. Part of her was tempted to fabricate a whopping tale to satisfy their curiosity, but she quickly decided that would only add fuel to the fire. She envisioned Noah’s beautiful treehouse sanctuary and his peaceful life before she had turned it upside down.

“He’s been away.”

It was all they would ever hear from her. Her patience at an end, she drew the farmer aside. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to get to my father’s homestead before dark.” More than that, she wanted to leave Shawneetown behind and join Noah at the edge of the woods.

The center of attention, Bob Carver immediately straightened his shoulders and offered her his arm. “Right this way, miss. Any friend of Noah LeCroix is a friend of mine.” He actually shouted so those in the back row could hear.

As he helped her up onto the narrow seat of the oxcart, Olivia tried to tell herself that she was anxious because she could not wait to be reunited with her family. But her heart kept reminding her that what she really wanted was to reassure herself that Noah had not disappeared and left her without a good-bye.

It was hard to ignore her heart.

Chapter 8

Bond Homestead

Payson had Little Pay and Freddie to live for, which should have been enough for any man. But on days like this, when a dense gray mood of lethargy and heavy sorrow settled over him, he seriously thought that his boys might have been better off raised by their Grandfather Morrison in Virginia.

He wrapped a rag around his hand and pulled a Dutch oven out of the fire. Turnip-and-squirrel pie was a habit he wouldn’t mind breaking, but turnips and some corn flour were all they had left until he could bring down something other than the squirrels the boys had practically tamed.

“That smell good to you, Susanna?” He lifted the lid of the pot and waved his hand over the steaming contents, hoping to tempt his wife.

The rocker never even slowed, nor did the off-key tune she hummed almost continually now. The steady creak of the wooden rocker was enough to drive him as crazy as she appeared to be.

“Have you seen the boys?” He had vowed weeks ago that he would not give up talking to her. He would not be reduced to silence, driven to hide behind it the way she did. Not as long as the boys still depended on him. Not until he had given up altogether.

“It sure looks good,” he lied. It looked downright watery, the crust lumpy. The piddling bit of squirrel meat was hardly enough for a single man, let alone a family of four.

“You know where the boys are?” Payson crossed the room and put his hand on Susanna’s shoulder. He had not touched her any more intimately in almost a year. She did not even look up.

“Susanna?” He gave her a gentle shake. “Where are the boys?”

The humming stopped, but she continued to pump the rocker back and forth.

“Outside, I suppose. Playing outside someplace,” she barely whispered.

He swallowed the anger and frustration that he seldom gave in to and wondered if she would notice if he walked out and never came back. Would she eventually get up? Fix some food for the boys and herself?

If he thought his leaving would force her back to life, he would go this very minute. But what father could take that chance? He could not afford to be wrong. Susanna had locked herself deep into the dungeon of suffering she had built for herself. The boys did not deserve to lose both of them.

“I’m going out to look for them.”

He knew that she would eventually shuffle over to the table and sit waiting for him to return. Mealtimes were the few times of day she would get out of the rocking chair, and that was only because he had demanded she sit with the boys while they ate.

“We’re still a family,” he had insisted not long ago. The words had sounded hollow and false the day he threatened and cajoled her into sitting down with the boys for meals. He had never raised his voice to her before, nor had he again. After that, she went to the table for meals, but she rarely ate more than a few bites.

The boys had to be found while the pie cooled. Payson opened the door, squinting against the setting sun. Across the half-plowed field, an oxcart bumped and rumbled over the furrowed ground. Beside it, lanky as a beanpole, walked Bob Carver, his nearest neighbor. The man had been more than willing to befriend Payson when they first settled. He and his family had even brought some of the other Shawneetown folk to help the newcomers clear out the old cabin and shed, but after the baby was stillborn and Susanna began to curl up inside herself, the Carvers and the rest of them had stopped coming by.

The callers were still too far away for him to recognize the tall, broad-shouldered man in buckskins walking beside Carver or the woman seated on the oxcart. He did not really care who they were, for he would have welcomed the devil if he walked up to the door offering a momentary diversion.

“Bob Carver’s crossing the field with an oxcart, Susanna.” He looked over his shoulder. “Hear that, honey? Someone’s coming to call.”

Virginia came to mind, and with it the days when they had lived with her father, existing on the man’s charity. At the plantation, whenever callers were seen riding up the long drive, house slaves would begin fixing refreshments. Susanna and Olivia’s laughter would echo up the stairwell as they speculated on who might be calling.

Payson shook his head, refusing to let the past spoil the present.

He looked outside again, where a blazing sunset fired the sky above the treeline. He raised his hand in salute, although all he could make out against the bloodred sky were the dark silhouettes of the two men walking beside the oxcart, and the woman riding high on the swaying seat. Bob Carver waved back. Payson calculated just how far the turnip-and-squirrel pie might stretch as he stepped over the threshold and waited to welcome the visitors.

Noah heard Olivia’s quick intake of breath, saw her scoot to the edge of the seat and grip the wood until her knuckles whitened. She leaned forward, straining to get a better look at the man who had suddenly appeared in the open doorway of the small cabin up ahead of them. Her face went pale, her eyes unusually bright. She nearly flew over the front of the cart when the right wheel hit a particularly deep rut and the vehicle bounced a mile high. Noah reached up to steady her, drew her attention and earned himself a nervous smile.

“That’s my father.” Her voice was strained, unsteady.

Although he could not imagine any father turning away a daughter who had suffered so much, and none of it her fault, he knew she would be hesitant to tell her family about Lankanal and the whorehouse. He did not know Payson Bond, and therefore did not know what the man might do.

He was already in too deep. He was not about to walk away until he knew that she would fare well here.

The man in the doorway waved. His brown hair was shot through with blond highlights. As they drew closer, Noah could see that Payson Bond was not a very big man, slight of build, wiry. He wore sturdy, coarse wool trousers and a white cambric shirt. He still had a full head of hair, but his shoulders were already beginning to stoop.

“Please, stop the cart. Let me down, Mr. Carver,” Olivia begged.

Carver stopped the huge ox and stood by its head while Noah helped Olivia down. Concentrating on her father, she did not notice when Noah held her too close for a breath too long. She clung to his sleeve while she gathered courage to go the rest of the way alone. She was trembling.

“Do you want me to go with you?” He spoke softly, for her ears alone. Bob Carver was watching them closely, alternately shifting his view from them to the cabin and back again.

Olivia shook her head no. “I have to do this by myself,” she told him, searching his face with her gaze as if looking for strength. He could not give her that, only encouragement.

“He is your father, Olivia.”

She let go of his arm and took another step toward her future and all the doubt that plagued her.

Olivia tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. As she neared the house, she could see her father more clearly but as yet, he had not recognized her. He was thin, much thinner than she recalled. Hatless, his receding hairline etched pale coves on his forehead. His eyes were stark blue, and the planes and angles of his face stood out in sharp relief. Only thirty-eight years old, he looked much older.

For a while after her mother died there had been only the two of them. Versed in scholarly pursuits, he had taken work where he could get it, traveling Virginia, hiring on to tutor rich planters’ children.

Seeing him so slight and looking so vulnerable all alone in the doorway of the little cabin made her heart ache for him. Where were Susanna and the boys? Where was the family he had sacrificed her in order to save? She hoped to God he had not lost them, too. Not now.

All the resentment she had harbored during her long months of captivity shifted, not as far as forgiveness, but away from resentment. He still was and always would be her father.

She knew the moment he recognized her, for his whole demeanor changed. He straightened, gave a cry she could not hear, then started running across the field, arms open wide as if he wanted to embrace not only her, but the woods and trees and the fiery sunset sky.

Tears were streaming down the hollows of his cheeks by the time he reached her. They fell into each other’s arms, rocking side to side without a word, for there were no words. There was nothing that anyone had ever said before that would express all they needed to say.

He held her close, his shoulders heaving with silent, soul-wrenching sobs, and when he finally pulled back he did not let go. Payson ran his hands over her face, tracing it like a blind man, his fingers shaking so hard she had to close her eyes.

“Are you all right?” The words were strained, furtive, demanding only because he needed to know. “Are you all right?”

No, Daddy. I will never be the same
.

I will never be that young or carefree or innocent again
.

I am nineteen now and I am old inside
.

My soul is tarnished and I am afraid to love
.

Olivia hugged him close, patting his back as she would have one of the little boys. All the things she might have said, all the things she had thought of saying to him in the middle of those long and terribly desperate nights in New Orleans, all of those things she could not say now. Not with his tears of joy still wet upon his cheeks.

“Yes, Daddy,” Olivia lied. “I’m all right.”

“Oh, Livvie, we thought you were dead.”

I was, Daddy
.

“I’m here now, Daddy.”

“Oh, God, Olivia. Why are you dressed that way? Where have you been? I’ve been so worried.” He tried to read her face the way he read his books.

Olivia whispered, “Please, don’t ask me that now, Daddy. I’ll tell you someday.”

He went very still. Finally he said, “I’m just so happy to have you home.”

“Where are the boys? Where is Susanna?”

“The boys are fine. They’re off playing someplace.” He looked down at the ground he had tilled. “Susanna … Susanna’s been sick.”

“
Dearest Lord in heaven
!”

Payson’s strangled cry had slowly sifted through the haze, intruding into Susanna’s carefully woven web of isolation and retreat. Something in his voice had sent a chill down her spine, one as cold and sharp as a knife, so much so that she winced. She looked up from where her hands lay idle in her lap. The door was open and a shaft of burnt-umber light streamed into the room, forcing her to squint against the unaccustomed brightness.

There was no sign of Payson, only the fading sound of his cry lingering on the still, close air inside the cabin.

Susanna pushed herself up out of the rocker. Every bone creaked, every muscle screamed. She was stiff and sore from sitting—how long had it been? She could not fathom time anymore, nor did she care to try. Her gait was no more than a slow, uneven shuffle as she hobbled toward the open door, drawn not by the light, but by the cry torn from her husband’s throat.

She flung her arm over her eyes to shield them from the intense light before she stood in the open door and took the brunt of the sun’s last rays. As she finally dared look out across the field, what was left of the sun ducked below the horizon and Susanna could see clearly. She dropped her arm away from her eyes, using her hand to brace herself in the doorway.

While she was in the safe haven of her rocking chair, time had moved on and left her behind. Where trees had once surrounded the field, Payson had cleared more land. Row upon uneven row of tilled soil fanned out around the cabin, but then abruptly halted. A plow missing a handle stood off to the side of the tilled soil, in silent explanation of why the furrowed rows stopped.

She watched Payson run across the field with his arms open wide, staggering, righting himself, running again straight toward the slight, fragile figure of a young woman in an Indian gown of doeskin standing a few yards in front of an oxcart and two men.

A cry was building inside Susanna, too, one that she was powerless to stop, and yet when it bubbled up into her throat and her mouth opened to let it out, not a sound issued forth. The searing pain of that suffocated scream brought her to her knees.

She knelt in the dirt outside the cabin while the past slammed into the present, and watched Payson race across his land, reach for the ebony-haired girl and pull her into his arms. She watched them rock back and forth in each other’s embrace. Then he ran his hands over her face, making certain it was truly his girl come back to him again, back from whatever horrors might have befallen her, back from the grave.

The scream inside Susanna finally found its way out and the word that the sound wrapped itself around was “
Olivia
!”

Noah sat in the evening glow of twilight resting on a stump outside the cabin, engaged in a silent staring contest with two little boys. They had come tearing around the corner of the log house jabbering and shoving at one another until they saw him sitting there and stopped dead in their tracks. Their eyes popped and they froze to the spot.

Finally, the taller boy glanced at the closed cabin door. He screwed up enough courage to speak.

“You an injun or something?”

Noah nodded. “Partly.”

“What happened to your eye?” The little one took a step toward Noah, but his older brother put his hand on the boy’s shirt and yanked him back.

“Accident,” Noah said.

He hadn’t been around many children, just the ones who happened to be on board flatboats he was hired to pilot downriver. Hunter Boone had a passel of nieces and nephews down in Sandy Shoals and Noah had taken meals with them sometimes. One Christmas he had even carved some wooden animals for them to play with, but on the whole, children were a different breed of animal he knew nothing about.

The older one looked as if he had thought things through. He straightened his shoulders and puffed out his narrow chest. He scrutinized Noah carefully. He seemed particularly attracted to the skinning knife.

“You gonna scalp our ma and pa with that?”

Noah took his time wiping his hand over his mouth to hide a smile. “No.”