Into the Wilderness (99 page)

"Oooowwww!"
came another screech.
Elizabeth
stuck her head out of the window to see Nathaniel pinning Liam Kirby to the
wall.

"Leeeemeegoo!"
howled Liam, arms and legs flailing.

The
children had raced out of the door as soon as she had turned her back, and they
appeared in a crowd at the corner of the building.

"Look
here, Boots," Nathaniel said. "You've got a Peeping Tom."

"His
name ain't Tom," offered Ruth Glove cheerfully. "That's Liam
Kirby."

"He
knows that," Dolly hissed.

"A
Peeping Tom's somebody who looks in at windows where he don't belong."

Liam
was squirming but Nathaniel held him fast, leaning with all his weight on the
fistful of hair pulled up hard and taut against the wall. Pinned like a bug,
Liam sputtered and squeaked and sent
Elizabeth
pleading glances.

Elizabeth
turned her attention to her students. "I don't recall giving permission
for you to leave your seats. Please return to them at once.

Sheepishly,
with lingering last looks toward Liam, they retreated the way they had come.
Elizabeth
waited until
she heard the door close and heard them talking inside the classroom behind
her.

"What
are you doing here, Liam?"

"Nothing,"
he spat, earning a smart cuff above the ear from Nathaniel.

"Oooww!
What was that for?"
 

"For
your sweet manners and courteous ways," Nathaniel said. "Remember
it." Then he looked at Elizabeth. "It ain't the first time. I was
watching today because I saw his tracks here."

Elizabeth
considered the red—faced boy, trying to assess the source of his discomfort:
anger, or embarrassment.

"Do
let him go, Nathaniel, before you snatch him bald—headed."

With
a shrug, Nathaniel stepped away and then made some considerable show of wiping
his hand on his leggings.

"Liam,
I wonder if you'd like to come back to school."

This
earned her a raised brow from Nathaniel, and a scowl from the boy.

"Don't
know why I should want to come back here," he mumbled sullenly, rubbing
his sore scalp.

"I
don't know why either, exactly," Elizabeth said. "But it seems as if
you do. Why would you spend your valuable time listening at the window, if you
did not?"

Nathaniel's
sour grin told her that he approved of her tactics, if not of her purpose.

Elizabeth
said, "There's an empty desk if you'd like it. Now if you'll please pardon
me, we have lessons—" She stopped, remembering Ephraim's dilemma. A quick
glance over her shoulder showed her all of the children still gathered in a
tight circle, heads bent in utter fascination.

"Give
era yank, Rudy," came a decisive female voice. "You're the
strongest."

"Holy
God!" cried
Elizabeth
,
bumping her head on the window frame in her hurry to get into the room.

"Children!
Wait!" As she pushed through the circle around Ephraim, Nathaniel and Liam
came in the door and joined her.

Nathaniel's
mouth twitched at one corner and then the other. He looked at
Elizabeth
and then quickly away.

"It's
all swoll up," Ephraim announced piteously. "Won't budge."

Elizabeth
coughed, and covered her mouth to cough again. She turned away to bury her fit
of coughing in her handkerchief. When she turned back, Nathaniel was down on
one knee in front of Ephraim, surveying the situation.

"Don't
suppose there's any lard to hand," he said. "Wonder who can run the
fastest and fetch me some."

In a
second, the room had emptied of all the children except for Hannah, who retired
reluctantly to the front step at
Elizabeth
's
suggestion.

At
thirteen Liam was more than twice Ephraim's size; he had to squat down on his
haunches to get a better look. He rubbed the ginger—colored down on his upper
lip while he considered the dangling ink pot

"Lordy,
you don't need no lard for that job." He squinted up at Nathaniel. "What
you need is a hammer."

Ephraim's
head jerked up, and at that moment there was a soft
pop
! and the bottle fell to the floor with a clank. It rolled away
under a desk, trailing a long comma of ink.

"What'd
I say?" Liam looked from Nathaniel to Elizabeth and then at the small
blue—stained appendage curled so innocently in Ephraim's lap. "How'd that
happen?"

"You
scared the piss out of him." Nathaniel laughed, slapping Liam on the
shoulder.

"I
did not piss!" Ephraim protested, blushing this time to the tips of his
ears. He crossed his hands over his lap.

"Yes,
well." Elizabeth took on a soothing tone. "It looks as though school
is out for today. Why don't you go home and—”

“
Wash
up," supplied
Nathaniel, the corners of his mouth curling uncontrollably upward.

"In
the future—"
Elizabeth
continued slowly, trying to ignore Nathaniel and find the appropriate tone.

"Keep
your breeches buttoned." This from Liam.

Elizabeth
scowled at him, and he dropped his gaze in reply. She sighed. "I suppose
that does sum it up. Best get along, Ephraim. And tell the others that school
is out for the day."

The
look of confusion and utter embarrassment on the boy's face was replaced
instantaneously with one of unmitigated joy, which gave Elizabeth momentary
pause. "I do trust we will not have any repetitions of this unfortunate
event, Ephraim Hauptmann. No matter how beautiful the weather."

His
face went very still. "No, miss. "Course not." He paused, and
shrugged philosophically. "Didn't feel very good, anyway."

They
managed to control themselves until he was safely out the door, and then they
laughed until
Elizabeth
's
ribs ached with it.

Hannah
appeared at the door. She sniffed, and raised a brow in unspoken criticism.

"Are
you coming back to school?" she asked Liam when he had managed to stifle
himself.

He
ducked his head in sudden seriousness. "I suppose so," he said. "Until
my brother finds out and takes a switch to me."

"Good,"
said Hannah. "We need another boy for games at recess. And you need to learn
to read." And she disappeared into the sunshine.

"Miz
Bonner?" Liam paused at the door on his way out.

"Yes?"

"I
ain't got any money to pay tuition," he said. "But I can chop
wood."

She
was careful not to smile. "That would be a very acceptable arrangement,
Liam."

Staring
at his own bare feet, the boy spoke up again.

"It
weren't my idea, you know. About
Albany
,
and the court. I wanted to tell you I was sorry about that."

Nathaniel
squinted at her, his skepticism written in the downward curve of his mouth. But
Elizabeth
remembered Liam as a willing and eager student, good—natured and hardworking,
if not especially talented. She was willing to give him the benefit of the
doubt.

"Thank
you," she said. "I am much relieved to hear you say so."

The
boy nodded, kneading his cap as if he hoped to wring the right words from it. "If
you've got a taste for duck, well, then come down to Half Moon late this
afternoon. Most everybody will be there." He cast a sidelong look toward
them. "Could always use another canoe."

Nathaniel
hesitated so long that
Elizabeth
grew uncomfortable.

"Thank
you kindly for the invitation," she said.
 
"We'll try to come."

* *
*

"I
don't see why we should not go, Nathaniel. If they are making an effort to
include us—”

“You're
sure that's what's on their minds?" he said, gruffly.

Elizabeth
stopped to pick a handful of pink milfoil. She crushed one of the gray—green
leaves and inhaled the spicy smell while she weighed her response.

"Do
you think it's some kind of trap?"

He
looked around for Hannah, who had hung back on the trail to examine a dead
firebird. She was folding and unfolding the wing, studying the way the joints
worked. With one part of her mind, Elizabeth wondered if Nathaniel noticed his
daughter's preoccupation with the workings of living creatures: if it was
unusual, or the normal way of Kahnyen’keháka children. But his thoughts were
elsewhere.

"They
ain't quite that dumb, or desperate. Not yet. But then we ain't turned anybody
off the Wolf, yet."

"Then
why should we not?" She heard the impatience in her voice, and then tried
to modulate her tone. "Please tell me why we should not go to the village
for the duck hunt, Nathaniel."

"You
tell me first why we should." His own tone bordered on the edgy.

"Because
my students will be there, with their families. Because it would be good to see
the Hauptmanns, and I need to talk to the McGarritys—”

“You
need more society." He came to a halt in the path, for they had lost sight
of Hannah.

Elizabeth
laughed. "Society? Now you are being silly, Nathaniel. But it does seem to
me that we need to show our faces in the village, once in a while. We must live
among these people, after all."

"Your
father will likely be there, and Julian."

"Father,
at least," Elizabeth agreed. "I will not hide from my father, and I'm
surprised that you would want me to."

Nathaniel
let out a great rush of air, a sound of surrender that
Elizabeth
had learned to recognize. He was
not convinced, but he would no longer oppose.

"I
don't want you to hide from anybody, Boots." He brushed his knuckles along
her cheekbone. "But I'm afraid you're in for more than you bargained
for."

She
caught his hand and kissed it. "I won't be there alone, will I?"

He
smiled, finally. "Never for a moment."

They
came down to the village at dusk, stopping just above the lake to survey the
shore. Nathaniel remembered fishing the lake as a boy. At dawn or dusk, wading
in the shallows or out in the canoe he had felt like an intruder in a world
crowded with fish and birds and wild of all kinds. That was before the village
took hold and started to grow like a new kind of animal, jealous of its space
and food.

Where
now a crowd of children fed deadwood into a growing bonfire, he had once
watched a hawk and an eagle wage a screaming battle over a mallard. Asleep on
the shore, he had come suddenly full awake to see a bobcat drinking not twenty
yards from him, all gold and sliding muscle.But now the shore was crowded with
canoes and dugouts and anything that could be paddled, even a makeshift raft. Men
paced back and forth, their movements jittery with excitement. Their voices
rose like a buzzing on the wind.

"Like
warrior ants, on the move," said Chingachgook beside him, and Nathaniel
grunted in agreement.

"I
don't see any guns," commented Elizabeth.

"Don't
need any, for fledglings," Hawkeye said. "The wood ducks can't fly
now, not the hens or the young."

He
pointed out the long, marshy stretch on the opposite side of the lake, just
above the village. There, reeds and cattails, cranberry bushes and drowned
trees wove themselves into a watery fortress of a good half mile in length.

Elizabeth
squinted into the sky. "Those are drakes, are they not? They seem quite
irritated."

Mergansers
sporting white ruffs like cocked hats circled above the lake, rousted from
feeding by the commotion on the shore. Nathaniel felt their agitation whirling
and swirling like a rising storm. He put a hand on Elizabbeth's shoulder.

"It
ain't pretty, this kind of hunting."

"Is
any hunting?" she asked, surprised.

"By
God, yes," said Hawkeye decisively. "There's a beauty to be found in
tracking a deer and taking her down clean. She might outsmart you or outrun
you. There's a challenge to it, and a skill."

"Perhaps
I can go out with you sometime, and see for myself." Elizabeth had long
been curious about Hawkeye's hunting absences.

"You
make me an apple pie, I'll take you out tracking," he promised.

"Ah."
Elizabeth smiled. "I knew there would be some condition."