Brave Enemies (4 page)

“We're lucky they didn't burn the house and kill us all,” I said.

“Will you do something, Josie?” Mama said again.

There was naught to do but get some salve we kept for sores and colds and rub it over Mr. Griffin's wounds as best I could. He groaned and hollered out. I tore an old sheet and tried to bind the worst places, but his back and backside were all raw and open.

I gave Mr. Griffin a drink of the medicine whiskey, and that was the best I could do. And then I remembered Mama had a little laudanum in a bottle from when she had the grippe. I mixed some drops of laudanum with the liquor, and after he drank that he slept. Mama sat up with Mr. Griffin the rest of the night.

• • •

Y
OU NEVER SAW ANYBODY
who felt as sorry for themselves as Mr. Griffin did. While he lay in bed he'd holler out and ask me to bring him tea or whiskey. He especially liked whiskey with a drop or two of laudanum in it. And he liked sweet things, sweet cordials and cakes, biscuits and honey, cakes and jelly.

When he was lying in the bed he'd weep to himself and call himself “poor Charlie.” That was his name, Charles Griffin, and he talked about bad things that had happened to him in Maryland before he came to the Carolina upcountry, when he was a peddler. I couldn't stand to hear him weep and talk to himself. But Mama hovered over him and petted him like a baby. “You know, Mr. Griffin, you must forget all that,” she said. “You have a family now and Josie and I will take care of you.”

I expected Mr. Pritchard and the other riders to come back. I expected them to burn down our house. I heard them riding by several nights later and saw their lanterns on the Charlotte Road. But they never stopped. I guess they had other, more pressing business. I guess they knew other Royalists and loyalists that needed to be beaten or hanged.

Much as I tried to stay away from Mr. Griffin, Mama made me dress his wounds every day. Somebody had to rub oil and salve on them and tie on fresh bandages. His back was so badly hurt it took days for all the blood to dry up. The worst places were so deep they kept bleeding. At the edges the cuts dried up and got scabs. The scabs grew hard as amber and crumbled like pine resin. But the deep sores were still runny and they festered with pus in them. I rubbed salve on the bad places and black blood and yellow pus ran out. I shuddered, looking at the stuff that ran on my hands. And soon as I finished I washed my hands.

“What are we going to do?” Mama said.

I had to help Mr. Griffin to the chamber pot, and then I had to help him to the outdoor closet. I had to stand by and smell his stink and listen to him grunt and breathe hard. And when he went to the outdoor closet I had to listen to him weep. When he was doing his business he got sad and cried.

Because I had to nurse Mr. Griffin, he grew even more familiar with me. He leaned on me and he put his arm around my shoulder, and he hollered out when something touched his back or backside. He leaned his head on my shoulder and called me his lass. His arms were strong, even though his back had sores all over.

“The blackguards near killed me,” he liked to say.

I guess my feelings about Mr. Griffin changed a little while I took care of him. You can't feel hate for somebody you're caring for. You can't feel hate for somebody that needs you, and if you're doing for somebody you have to have sympathy for them.

I found that I liked to help somebody in pain and need, even Mr. Griffin. I liked to nurse the hurt and sick. To nurse somebody makes you feel more hopeful about yourself, and stronger. A sweetness came into me as I did for Mr. Griffin. I told myself I was doing it for Mama, and I
was
doing it for Mama. Mama herself just stood and looked out the window a lot of the time. She couldn't seem to decide what she wanted to do. She was more and more distracted. But a sweetness flowed through me because I was helping a body in need.

I brought Mr. Griffin things to eat, and I brought him tea. I emptied his chamber pot and I brought him drops of laudanum in water and in whiskey.

Mama continued to act stranger and stranger after Mr. Griffin was beaten by the rebels. She would ask me to do every little thing, and she just stood by the window looking down the road.

“They are coming,” she would say.

“Who is coming?” I said.

But she wouldn't say who it was she expected. I guessed it was Mr. Pritchard and his band, but they rode mostly at night. Mama stood at the window in broad daylight watching the road while I carried water from the spring and heated it in the pot in the backyard and did the washing. I dusted inside the house and scrubbed the floor.

“Gather the eggs and scatter chicken corn,” Mama said. But she never took her eyes off the road.

“Nobody is coming,” I said.

“They will be here,” Mama said. Billy Saunders drove by in his cart loaded with hay, and then there was nobody.

O
NE DAY
M
AMA LOOKED
down at the floor and saw a big spider. It was not a wolf spider, but it was a big brown ugly thing. She jerked away and pulled up her skirts and her face grew white. I took a broom and hit the spider, and I'm sure I killed it. But we couldn't find the body on the broom or on the floor.

“It jumped away,” Mama said.

“I'm sure I killed it,” I said.

“A spider can jump a long way,” Mama said.

She shook her skirts and she made me shake my skirts. She was sure the spider was on her legs or under her petticoats. She shook her skirts again and again and told me to sweep every corner and crack of the room and to sweep the ceiling. If she saw a bit of lint move, or a piece of leaf tracked into the house, she jumped back in horror, as if she had seen a black widow.

Our house had always had spiders. There were spiders in boxes and between cracks. Spiders built wide webs in the cellar over the potato bin and stretched their webs in the attic. Mama had got more and more afraid of spiders.

When I brought the washing in from the line she looked at the linen to make sure no spiders or other bugs were hidden in the folds. She looked in the meal bin and in the salt gourd. She would not go up into the attic for dried beans, but made me go. I had been bitten by a brown spider when I was five or six. The spot had swelled up and I was a little sick. But I soon got well and had almost forgotten about it. But Mama started saying I had almost died.

“I remember feeling bad for a little while,” I said.

“We thought you were gone,” Mama said. “We had to keep you awake all night, afraid that if you went to sleep you would never wake.”

I thought she would get better as time passed and Mr. Griffin began to heal. I did most of the work and I helped Mr. Griffin to the porch and back. I hoped Mr. Pritchard and the rebels wouldn't return. I wanted things to be normal, and I wished I had some friends. I'd always lived too far out in the country to have any friends.

Mama had a fine sugar bowl which she used when we had white sugar. It was a piece of china her grandmother had in the old country. She kept it on the shelf to look pretty, because we almost never had white sugar. One day I noticed it on the board beside the fireplace in the kitchen. I thought maybe Mama had decided to use it again, and planned to buy some white sugar. I was too busy taking care of Mr. Griffin and looking after the house to notice anything I didn't have to.

The sugar bowl stayed on the sideboard day after day, and once while I was dusting I decided to put it back on the shelf where it would be safe. For some reason I looked into the bowl. I lifted the lid and saw what appeared to be moss or knots of black thread inside. Looking closer, I saw some of the threads moving. The bowl was filled with spiders, some still alive. I put the lid back on and carried the bowl into the backyard and dumped it. Some of the spiders crawled away and some were dead. I stamped the running ones. I stamped them the way Mr. Griffin stamped the terrapins, and when I stopped they were all smeared on the ground.

The sugar bowl had spots and specks inside it, like fly specks on a ceiling. I washed it out on the back porch until it was shiny inside. When I finished cleaning the bowl I saw Mama watching me at the back door. Because she was so worried about spiders I decided not to tell her what I had found. But later, when I thought about it, I saw the spiders couldn't have gotten into the sugar bowl with the lid on. Someone had put the spiders in there. Someone had gathered up the spiders still alive and put them in the sugar bowl. And it had to have been Mama that did it.

T
HE EDGES OF
M
R
. G
RIFFIN's
back healed up. The scabs got hard and started crumbling off like brown sugar. And where the scabs
came off the skin was red, tight and red, but it wasn't broken. And after a few days the redness started going away and it got white and began to turn slick and puckered a little in scars.

The little places were all healed up, but the deep places in the middle of his back were still runny. I rubbed salve on the sores where the skin was red. I'd heard of letting maggots eat the corruption from a wound, but didn't have any maggots. I kept the places covered so the flies couldn't blow them. I guess flies might have blown their maggots in the wounds if I'd let them.

I
T WAS SOME MONTHS
after the beating when Mr. Griffin was up and around again. He was more familiar than ever with me. He told me to finish shucking the corn. I hated to go back in that crib, and I looked at him hard.

“Let bygones be bygones,” he said.

I didn't even answer him. I didn't know what to say to answer him.

“Don't be a stubborn lass,” he said and pulled me to him.

“I'll be whatever lass I choose,” I said.

“You'll break me poor heart with your stubborn ways,” he said.

No sooner was he up and about than Mr. Griffin tried to fondle me. When Mama wasn't looking he grabbed my shoulders and tried to touch my breasts. I slipped away and ignored him. Sometimes I tried to tease him, to make it all seem just a silly game. After all, he'd been beaten. And he was my stepdaddy. Mama didn't seem to notice a thing. I knew she didn't want to notice anything.

I
T WAS THE NEXT YEAR,
in October of 1780, just after the great battle at Kings Mountain a few miles to the south and west. We heard rumors of the awful fighting, how John Sevier and the Overmountain men killed Maj. Patrick Ferguson and all his soldiers. We heard Mr. Pritchard was there, and the other men that came with lanterns and
whipped Mr. Griffin. We heard it was a great victory for Colonel Sevier and the patriots.

“They'll pay for it,” Mr. Griffin hissed between his teeth. “The blackguard traitors will pay for it.”

I had grown as tall as Mr. Griffin and I was almost as strong. I looked at myself in the piece of mirror in my room. One day, to get off by myself, I walked in the pine woods beyond the field. I had to get away from Mama, and I had to get away from Mr. Griffin's eyes on my bosoms. I had to get away and think what I was going to do. Mama acted so strange it scared me. I didn't want to be strange that way. We lived in terrible times and in murderous times. It was only a matter of time before they came and burnt us out.

The pine woods were cool and damp. I liked the musty smell of the rotting needles and the sweet smell of the resin. There was a place where the needles were thick as a pillow on the ground. I could sit there and listen to the wind in the tops of the pines. It sounded like an ocean up in the sky. I shivered and listened to the moan and wondered what was going to happen to me. When the wind stopped and the woods were quiet, I could hear needles dripping off the trees, hitting limbs and twigs like little splinters, sprinkling on the ground.

I knew I had to get away from Mama's house, because something awful was going to happen. One way or another, because of the war, because of Mr. Griffin, because of Mama's blindness, something terrible was about to happen. I sat on the pine needles until one of my legs was almost asleep. And when I finally stood up I had to wait while my leg itched and buzzed and got its feeling back.

“So this is where you hide?” somebody said. I whirled around and saw Mr. Griffin. He was standing partly hidden by a sweet shrub bush. He must have been watching me for a long time. His face was flushed a little. I took a step toward the field.

“Don't be afraid, lass,” he said. “You know I'm sorely fond of ye.”

“You ought not to have followed me,” I said. My mouth was dry and there was a catch in my throat.

“I thought you might be lost,” he said, a little short of breath. My heart jumped, for I'd never been alone with him in the woods before. I took another step back. I turned and pushed a limb aside. My leg was still mostly asleep.

“There's something I wanted to tell you,” Mr. Griffin said.

“You can tell my mama,” I said.

“Don't concern your mama,” Mr. Griffin said.

As I stepped through the pine trees he followed. I didn't want to look back. As I stepped faster he speeded up. “I wanted just a word with you,” he said.

I figured if I could get to the edge of the field, to the open field, I'd be safe. If I could get close enough to the house, Mama would see me and hear me if I hollered out. Limbs slapped my face and twigs hit me in the eye. Mr. Griffin touched my shoulder and I ducked down. He was a little bigger than me and stronger than me.

“Just a word,” he said.

I crashed against limbs and slammed into a tree when I looked back. I stumbled and Mr. Griffin grabbed me by the waist. I twisted as hard as I could and lunged in the direction of the field. He stumbled and lost his grip and I began running again, limping as the feeling came back into my leg.

But as I reached the edge of the woods I saw I'd gotten lost in my panic. Instead of the field right behind the house, I came out near the branch, down where the hogpen was. We had two shoats in a log pen down there, far enough from the house so you didn't smell them.