Gabriel's Story (32 page)

They worked slowly, the two of them. After tending the sow, Solomon led Gabriel around to the newly constructed chicken coop. It was a thing hardly resembling a manmade structure, a motley conglomeration of posts and sticks and curving loops of wire that held the chickens only as long as they consented. Solomon looked at the structure sadly but cautioned Gabriel against disparaging it. “Ben built it hisself, and he right proud of it,” he said. He tried a smile, but Gabriel nodded and considered the coop without a hint of humor. They let the nervous birds loose and tossed out feed to them.

As Gabriel showed no inclination to speak, Solomon filled the silence with his own halting string of words. He told of the work of the summer, what crops they had planted, where and why, which things grew well and which didn't grow at all. There had been a scare in late July with the appearance of cinchbugs in some of the corn, and later, in early August, they'd watched the crops bake under a cloudless sky. But the Lord protects, as Hiram said. Nothing truly came of the insects, and rain did fall in time to save most of the crops. While those to the west were ravaged by fires, some to the south by drought, and many pockets all around the plains by locusts, they had fared well. “I been telling them we need to harvest what we got fore we lose it,” Solomon said, “but Hiram and your mother are the most patientest types you'd come across. Almost seems like they were waiting for you to show up. Myself, I told them they best not wait.” The man bent to examine a piece of wire that stuck out in a ragged loop from the chicken coop. He studied it intently. “I don't mean to sound coarse, Gabriel. I'm happy to have you home, and I thank God you're safe. But I do wonder . . . I wonder how long you're staying for, whether you come to work or whether you just passing through.”

The boy's eyes tried to hold on to the man's face, but as Solomon spoke, they grew wearier and wearier, until they eventually floated away and settled on the dry earth. There was a cringing tension in Gabriel's face that both accepted and sought to deny the man's questions. He felt a whole host of words tumbling around within him. He wanted to let them out. He wanted to shout and make it clear how much he wanted to stay, how he'd learned from this journey and come back different and would prove it with time. He wanted them all to understand him completely, to read him like a slate before them so they could know the things he'd been through while permitting him never to say them out loud. But each claim seemed anchored to a refuting fact, denied by his own words, damned forever by actions taken and untaken, choked to silence by them all.

Solomon straightened and watched him for a few moments, giving him time to speak. But when the hush went unbroken, he sucked his lips and patted the boy on the shoulder. “Come on, let's get us some breakfast. Figure your mother will make her best for you.”

IT WASN'T UNTIL THAT EVENING that Gabriel found himself alone with his mother for more than a few minutes. He sat across the table from her, both of them shucking corn. The green richness of the husks was thick in the room, temporarily covering the damp smell that had so disturbed Gabriel in the early days out here. He wrapped his fingers around the cornhusks, pulling them away with a satisfying ripping sound. He ran his fingers down the firm white kernels, finding a pleasure just in the touch of them, in their neat near-uniformity, in the way they fit so tightly together. He tried to think about them only, to feel the pleasure of this work, the close comfort of the soddy, and the nearness of his mother. But from one moment to the next, his mind would wander. He would find himself staring blankly at a space on the wall. He was not sure how long these lapses lasted, and he was not sure just what images were tugging at his mind's eye. But one came up time and again.

“Sometimes it helps to talk, Gabriel.” The boy was suddenly aware that his mother had been staring at him for some time. “I see you got a confusion in you. Sometimes it helps just to say it out loud. I don't know what it is, son, but spit it out to the world. Having a tortured rememoration ain't no different from taking a bit of some spoiled fruit. You spit it out fore you swallow it. Cause if you swallow it down, it'll be a long time fore it passes.”

The boy looked as though he would disdain the comparison, but instead he said, “There was a girl.”

Eliza waited, but the boy stared at his hands. “Yes? Tell me about her.”

Gabriel shook his head. It didn't seem possible. He turned from her as if he would rise from the table and move away. Somehow this motion helped him. The slight angle at which he'd turned away gave him strength, although it looked as though he were ready to flee. “There was a girl,” he repeated, and slowly, haltingly, this segment of his untold story emerged. He spoke of the family, describing their homestead with a certain pained detail: the fir trees shimmering in the breeze, the tiny creek, and the fields that lined it. As he began to speak of the father, he paused. He retraced something in his mind and met his mother's eyes. He dropped them and moved on, skipping forward and leaving things unsaid but thereby conveying the substance of the events clearly enough. He had known all along what the men were doing. He had watched them beat down the father and mother, bind them, and defile their daughters. He had seen them lead the girl off each evening and heard the lewd words with which they bragged. And yet he'd done nothing.

Lines of frustration furrowed his brow, crept down the bridge of his nose, and tightened around his eyes as he continued. “She fed us. When we was on the run and didn't have any water . . . She had some canned tomatoes, and she would feed them to me and James. Even after all of that.” He looked at his mother as if she might understand this act and render some meaning back to him. She smiled sadly and simply waited. The boy finished his story, leaving the girl once more astride her horse in the desert.

Eliza listened through it all, watching her son and sometimes closing her eyes. In the end she walked around the table and hugged him. She told him he was a good boy, a good man, and he shouldn't take the guilt for other men's crimes too much to his heart. She said that such things can rarely be explained, even using the lessons of the church, and that sometimes things must simply be lived with. “Men will do awful things without laws to bind them. Even with laws to bind them. They say that all men are good at heart until Satan gets within them. But I don't know if I believe that. It's awful hard for me to separate the sinner from the sin. So what do you do? You go on. You be the person that you are, but be stronger for the things you seen. Know that the Lord let you live for a reason, and don't let him down.”

She loosened her grip and studied her son from a different angle. “Us mothers, we always want to save our children from the awful things we seen, and we want to give them a future better than anything we seen. Looks like I ain't more than half accomplished it on the first count. The things you seen are part of my life too. You hear? There are things that happen in a life that aren't fit for a mother to tell a son. I got my own share of rememoration, and some of it awful bad. That's as plain as I can make it.” She paused when the door opened. Ben peeked in, hesitated a moment, then smiled. Eliza motioned for him to enter, then said, “I haven't saved you from seeing evil at work, but I'm still here with you. And I'll be here as long as you need me. You gonna get to see them good things I never did. You gonna find this life is a good thing, a gift that just humbles you to think on. Maybe that girl knew the same thing.”

Later that evening a number of things were decided. The gold and the pistols were to be buried deep in the earth on the far side of the cornfield. The family voted with one voice that they could see fit neither to spend nor to discard the bullion, so let it be buried and see if time couldn't make something of it. They'd see if they couldn't trade Marshall's saddle at market next weekend, along with any saddlebags and accouterments that had adorned the mount. The rifle they'd keep in the soddy for security, and the dun horse would remain, for the time being, in the barn with Raleigh. This was the hardest decision. They knew the horse might bring unwelcome attention, but it was the horse that had brought Gabriel home to them, a beautiful creature with no guilt for her master's crimes and with nobody in the world with more claim to her than the boy.

GABRIEL WAS HOME, and there was work to be done. Before he knew it, he was adjusting once more to the patterns of farm life. He was up in the morning with Ben, tending the animals and walking from the chill of the night into the first rays of sun. It was harvest time, and the corn needed to be cut by hand. The brothers took turns swinging the long knife that served as harvester. It blistered his hands, as did the rough stalks that they piled into bundles to dry, but he welcomed these blisters. They were so different in their feel and function from the worn patches of skin he'd developed from holding the reins.

After supper, Hiram still read from the Bible. To Gabriel, listening now with an attention he had never given before, the stories were vividly evocative of his life-and-death struggles. He understood the words now in a way he never had before. Yes, the hand of God was in it all, but he acted only through the deeds of humans. The boy couldn't help wondering if that hand directed or followed. Was it there to guide, or was it there simply to witness with shame the beings God had created? And also he thought it strange that the crimes of man had never really changed. These were stories of murder and betrayal, of avarice and lust, and of lives lived with and without faith. Those Biblical times were not so different after all.

One Saturday afternoon the two boys saddled the horses and rode along the creek together, Ben on the dun and Gabriel once more on calm old Raleigh. At first they talked of simple things: the weather and the coming of fall, horses and saddles and the colored church that had sprung up on the prairie north of Crownsville. It was a long way to go, and the congregation was little more than a handful of families, but there was something special to it all the same. Ben spoke of new friends he'd made there: a boy named Kip, his brother, Eustace, and a girl named Jessica, about whom Ben had more than a few words to say. It was only after this flow of conversation slowed and the horses drew to a halt and munched the grass beneath them that Ben asked his brother more about his travels.

Gabriel spoke without looking at Ben much. His gaze studied the rippling water of the creek next to them or watched the clouds that were floating in from the north, high and silent. Ben didn't push him too long or too hard. He let up when tension showed on his brother's face, and he found other things to talk about. He told of his experience with the wolf, how it had scared him to the very core and yet he'd felt a need, a destiny almost, to hunt the beast. And he described the first time he'd shot an antelope, hinting at the emotions he felt and watching Gabriel to read his reaction.

“You ever kill anything while you was out there?” he asked. “That's a couple times now I've shot something. Least I think I shot the wolf—never did find it, though.”

Gabriel threw his leg over the saddlehorn and slipped to the ground. Raleigh shied to the side, surprised by the sudden movement, but Gabriel tugged his reins just enough to reassure him. Then he kneeled down beside the shallow stream and answered. “Naw, I didn't really need to hunt. Had supplies . . . bacon and that.”

“Oh.” Ben nodded. He looked down and wrapped the dun's coarse hair around his fingers. “This a fine horse, Gabe. Damn. I didn't think I'd ever ride a horse like this. You think we could breed her? That's a good business, don't you think?” He laid out a plan of breeding and horse-rearing. His scheme tumbled out so quickly it must have been long held and mulled over. He spoke of a hundred head of horses, all bred for particular purposes, trained by himself and Gabe, if he was up to it. He said he'd seen a book about it in Howe's shop, and when he saved up some money he was gonna . . . He stopped in mid-sentence, staring at his brother as if he'd just been struck dumb by a thought.

Gabriel noticed the look and had some inkling of the boy's thoughts. “I don't know,” he said. “Truth is, I don't really think she's my horse.”

“Whose is she, then? I'll claim her. Slap a brand on her, gentle-like, but—”

Gabriel cupped a handful of the cool water in his palm, raised it, then let the moisture slip through his fingers. “Ben, I was lucky to get away. I could've died out there. Wouldn't've been the only one.”

“You seen people killed?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Bad folks or good?”

Gabriel looked at his brother and then away. “They were just people. Don't know what good or bad had to do with it.”

“Well . . . Hiram says that's all there really is in the world. Good, bad, and runction they cause fighting each other.”

“I don't know. Maybe in Bible times it was like that.” Gabriel stood and pulled Raleigh close to him. He looked into the horse's eyes and touched his muzzle. “Nowadays the devil's an iron horse.”

This raised Ben's eyebrows. It was obvious he wanted to ask more, but Gabriel mounted and squeezed Raleigh with his ankles. Gabriel knew a statement like that would only fuel his brother's questions, but he couldn't help uttering portions of the thoughts that plagued him, just as he couldn't help keeping other things hidden. He hoped—he believed—that time would bring it all out. This story needed time to unfold, and Gabriel wished nothing more than a long lifetime to tell it slowly, to heal himself among these people.

Behind him, Ben let the dun follow of her own accord, watching the sway of his brother's back before him.

IT WAS A TUESDAY MORNING. The family was just up and beginning breakfast when Ben burst through the door, slops bucket splashing his leg and spilling onto the floor. “Two riders,” he said.