Lily's Story (11 page)

If he wants to go, Lil thought,
nothing will keep him there.

S
he knew exactly what
she ought to do. Papa often got home just before dark. The sun was
just about to sink below the tree-line, which left about two hours
of hazy daylight. Lil ought to act the full measure of her eleven
years and drag that man’s body into the brush. She ought to throw
dirt on the blood and mess to hide it. She ought to bring the
donkey to the empty hut reserved for Bert and Bessie. She ought to
fetch the fowling gun and have it ready for use. She ought to be
able to stop the treachery of her own body which would not cease
its shivering.

She did none of these. She
hobbled, hopped and crawled into the undergrowth where the new
South Field would be someday soon, and hid herself. She closed her
eyes tight enough to squeeze even the dreams out. But the image
persisted of the pedlar prone in their dooryard in the stiffening
afternoon breeze, the eyes jammed shut, the blood oozed from his
clamped jaw like an adder’s tongue skinned and raw in the dust.
Around her, shadows strengthened, the haze lost heart, the
whippoorwill’s cry was inconsolable. Owl unshuttered the moons of
his eyes.

Papa would not be home. She
knew it. She thought she knew why. She couldn’t stay here. There
was just enough light left for her to see the outline of the cabin.
From that direction came a sudden intermittent moaning. Terrified,
she strained through the dusk to see a corner of the cellar shed on
the north side of the cabin. The moan grew louder, but it wasn’t
coming from the cellar. Lil turned in time to see the dead man
raise his head a few inches off the ground, groaning piteously all
the while. In a moment he propped himself up to his elbows so that
he could peer anxiously, inquisitively, about him. He appeared to
be trying to think. Lil never moved a hair. The pedlar flopped to
the left; Lil was about to cry out but he was just turning over so
that he could sit up and get his bearings. Then he did a strange
thing. He put two fingers to his lips and whistled softly. To Lil’s
surprise, Bobby, pulling free from his loose tether, stepped
leisurely over to the pedlar, now evidently returned from the dead.
The pedlar pulled on the halter, Bobby sank shakily to his knees,
and his gravely injured master with a scuff and rattle of pans
rolled onto his loyal back. Then donkey and burden moved into the
near-dark where the north-road lay. They turned neither north nor
south, however; instead they continued due west, probably following
the ancient deer-trail that wound its way eventually to the
River.

Lil waited until the mosquitoes
had become unbearable before she inched her way, the wrenched ankle
still tender, to the cabin. She no longer shook. She was, rather,
consumed by a dread that was worse than any feeling she had felt
before: a silent, impending apprehension that would not name
itself. The image she carried across the clearing at that moment
was a strange one: Maman LaRouche’s pudgy-strong grip ripping
turnips out of the stunned ground, her sickle slicing green from
root before the plant could gasp, as Maman’s sturdy foot, surging
forward, buried itself cosily in the unresisting gash.

5

A
ll that night Lil sat
at the table facing the window and door on the south side, the
fowling piece lying before her, cocked and expectant. When she had
first entered the house, she had rapped in code on the far wall and
heard, after a while, the mutually reassuring response from Solomon
somewhere below. Determined to remain awake to face whatever grim
retributors might appear, Lil – fast asleep – dreamed she was
awake, and very brave.

What woke her was the
sound of horses. She recalled that peculiar atonal drumming from
the races that day on the Reserve. Never had such sounds penetrated
this far into the bush. With a start she came fully awake. The gun
jumped too but held its peace. Though muffled by the heavy foliage
and the heat haze above it, the pounding was nonetheless deafening
as it moved towards the spot occupied by Lil. Forgetting the
weapon, she ran to the door and flung it open. In the disfiguring
light of the false-dawn, Lil saw three mounted creatures, two of
them already in the dooryard, the third frozen behind them in the
opening before the road. The horses snorted and jangled – bloated
and blurred and sweating. Lil felt the pent-up power in them as the
wave of their heat washed over her.

The two men dismounted with a
certain practised grace. Behind them, unsuccessfully camouflaged by
the brush, Lil noted the third arrival: still mounted, the swath of
bloody bandages on his head beaming like a Turk’s turban across the
clearing.

“
Mornin’,
ma’am,” said the taller of the two in a strange accent, mellifluous
as honey on green apples. “Beggin’-your-pardon for disturbin’ you
this early in the day, but we’re-all here on pressin’
business.”

The other one nodded but said
nothing, glancing nervously around.

“
What’s your
business with us,” Lil said, trying to shake the sleep out of her
voice. She wished she’d brought the gun with her.

“
Your Papa and
me’s made a certain transaction, ma’am.”

“
What kind
of...transaction?” Shorty was edging towards the north-east corner
of the cabin, holding his hat in his hand, nodding and trying to
look casual.

The tall one brought out a
leather purse; Lil heard the clink of coins inside. Her heart
froze.

“
My job is to
bring you this here payment in return for certain goods you have in
hand.”

“
This ain’t a
store,” Lil said. Shorty had slipped around the corner.

The tall one put the purse into
Lil’s hand and as he did so grasped her gently but firmly by the
wrist. “No need to get riled up, missy. We ain’t in the habit of
hurtin’ decent folk. Beauregard and me are businessmen, that’s
all.”

Lil was about to attempt a knee
to the groin when Shorty’s voice pierced the dead-quite of the
pre-dawn. “The son-of-a-bitch’s gone! He’s flown the coop!”
Breathless, he reappeared from the rear of the cabin.

“
You sure?”
snapped his partner, tightening his grip.

“
Goddam right.
The door’s busted half off. They had him holed up like a polecat
back there, but he’s done beat it to the bush!”

“
You let him
out, gal?”

“
Fuck no, I
tell ya, Sherm, the door’s lyin’ in pieces. That big buck just blew
outta there!”

“
Cut the
cursin’,” Sherm said, more calmly. He loosened his hold on Lil’s
arm. “No call for that. Either your Daddy’s cooked up this little
treachery or that nigger’s lit out on his own. Either way, we’re
gonna get him.” He pulled the purse from their mutual grip. “You
won’t have need of this no more.”

“
We goin’ into
the bush after the nigger?”

“
Yes, we are.
Tell that pedlar to vamoose. We don’t need him no more.” He turned
to Lil. She saw in the growing light that he had the kindly face of
a father but one that could change, with little warning, to that
fierce, inexplicable parental anger she had suffered in her own
childhood. “You tell your Daddy to stay out of our way. Nobody’s
out for revenge so long’s we get our hands on the nigger. Good
mornin’ to you.”

They mounted and cantered as
far as their enswaddled accomplice. Sherm spoke sharply to him, and
Bobby wheeled and loped southward, towards Chatham. They watched
him for fully ten minutes, then circled and headed north in the
direction they assumed Solomon had fled after brushing aside the
hingeless door.

I
t must have been
mid-morning when Papa came home. Lil had returned to her vigil at
the table, the gun an inch away but untouched. She was no longer
scared. Her ankle no longer hurt. The dread which had so possessed
her had finally divulged it names, and her soul longed for some
relief beyond dreaming.

Lil didn’t know how long Papa
had been standing in the doorway when at last she looked up and saw
him there. He turned his face away wearily and slumped on the stool
before the spent fire. His flesh appeared to be too heavy for his
bones.

“
He got away,”
Lil said.

“
They hurt you
any?” he asked, rising and taking the hunting rifle from its place,
not looking at Lil.

“
None.”

“
An’ that
pedlar?” His sudden stare burned through her.

“
Solomon, he
run him off. Then he went, too.”

Bullets clicked coldly in
Papa’s pouch.

“
I turned my
ankle just a bit.”

“
Keep an eye
out,” Papa said. “I’ll be back.”

After him, in
a voice that made her skull-bones hum, Lil shouted
Why? Why? Why?
Papa of course did not hear. He had turned south.
Towards Chatham.

I
t was dusk when he
came home once again. Lil had dreamed of something farther than
death. She opened her eyes to catch Papa’s face bending towards
hers. It was sad; she saw her Mama in it.

“
I’m sorry,
princess. We’re gonna have to leave this place.”

5

1

S
even days later they
were packed and ready to go. Papa of course had planned to get away
at dawn, but he hadn’t counted on the goodbyes that needed to be
said. Maman surprised everyone by not weeping openly. Instead she
braved a smile for Lil, hugging her fiercely as if she might
transfer to those sapling limbs some of the bruised strength from
her own decades of travail. She may have seen in the sad, trudging
reluctance of departure some sign of her own leave-taking, so close
at hand. The Frenchman and his boys touched their caps and
mumbled
au voir
with exaggerated politeness, except
for Luc whose heart was irreparably broken and shamed itself with
silent, unconcealed tears.

Lil knew it was pointless to
ask Papa why they had to leave, but she was certain it was due to
more than their troubles with the Scotsmen and the pedlar. Papa
would not give up the homestead, would not abandon Mama’s grave to
the winds and seasons, would not tear his little girl away from the
only life, the only world, the only people she had ever known – not
for a mere Scotsman or a pedlar with a cracked head. Somehow – she
did not know how – it had more to do with Solomon and the look Papa
gave her when she woke to find him staring from the doorway, the
shed door in back of them protesting as it swung on one precarious
hinge.

“
We’re goin’
to live near Port Sarnia,” was all he said, “with your Aunt
Bridie.”

Who was news to Lil. From
Mama she had gleaned a little now and then about her relatives –
enough to conclude that Papa came from a large family, her own
being mostly dead, but never had she put a name on any of them
though it was obvious she sometimes wished to. Instead she told
stories only about long-gone relatives, all of whom apparently were
squires or beauties or gawains of the first order. Mama’s stories
were like her songs – a kind of lullaby. Bridie was no lullaby. She
was a real, living aunt with a name as durable as a fieldstone. Lil
wanted to ask about an uncle for Bridie but restrained
herself.

“
I wrote her a
letter a while back,” he said some days later, seeing Lil seated
near the ripening wheat of the East Field and staring across its
tender, involuntary undulations towards the red-blue granite on
which one of Old Samuels’ nephews had chipped the name ‘Kathleen’.
“Chester and her been wantin’ us to come up there ever since your
Mama passed on.”

Chester? Lil came out of her
brown study.

“
Land’s mostly
cleared up there. We’ll help ‘em out at first. Then get our own
place.” Lil wanted so badly to believe the enthusiasm now in his
voice. She wanted to ask about Chester but held back, hoping for
more.

“
We’ll bring
your Mama up there, too; some day,” he added with effort, his hands
trying to be light and consoling on her shoulders.

Mama
wasn’t
up
there
, Lil knew, but could
find no words to help Papa understand. She’s here – in these trees,
the wheat, the undug stones, in the birdsong enticing shadows
towards dawn, in the wind that lives in these special places only,
in that part of the sky she shared with us and that brings such joy
to the guardian gods. Lil’s quiet weeping made Papa’s hands shake,
and he turned back to the cabin, confused. Lil licked her own tears
with her tongue, savouring them.

I
t was a regular road
now running abreast of the line of a dozen farms north of theirs.
The new neighbours, above Millar’s, came out to watch them leave:
whole families lined up at the edge of their land and waved
curiously, tentatively, uncertain of the meaning of what they were
witnessing. When Lil and Papa passed the last farm – with only its
doorway cleared, and stumps and tree branches smoking behind the
unchinked log hut (where the new road abruptly became the old
slashed trail again) – Lil did one of the things she promised
herself she would not do on this day: she glanced back. Standing in
the middle of the road a hundred feet behind them were the
unmistakable silhouettes of Old Samuels and his favourite nephews.
A few days before all three had materialized one morning,
unannounced, and stayed the entire day, helping Papa with some of
the packing and dismantling but never once mentioning the fact of
their leaving. Sounder chattered and laughed, Acorn smiled with his
soft eyes, and Old Samuels puffed his pipe and talked exclusively
to Lil in Pottawatomie. “White Mens always coming and going,” he
said several times, unprompted, “Attawandaron stays.” Once he
added, not without charity, “’Course, White Mens still young, got a
lot to learn before this world ends.” At dusk they left, saying no
formal goodbyes but carrying Papa’s old sow in their arms as
graciously as they could manage. Lil knew she wouldn’t see them
again.