Lost Nation (33 page)

He rolled onto his side and made his way up onto his knees and like an animal crawled around the enclosure. The inner walls were reinforced
with planks like those on the door and buried well into the hard earth. There was a small pile of coarse marsh hay such as would be used for animal bedding in one corner. With the darkness it was already cold but he would not sleep in hay. He moved down the wall and sat with his back against it, his knees drawn up and his hands together down before him. Other than the pound of blood in his head he could hear nothing except the faint settle and tramp of the horse in the stall behind his back.

Some time later someone worked the iron bolting the door and the sudden pale lantern light near blinded him. Two men stood behind the light. Blood could see only their boots and legs. One held the light and the other advanced. He came only to the threshold and set down a tin plate and a pair of tin buckets, one of water and the other empty.

The trooper squinted at Blood. “Compliments of the lieutenant. If you drink all the water take care not to shit or piss but in the other bucket.” Then the door closed and the men were gone. Although for some moments Blood still saw them etched before him, his eyes refusing to let the memory of the light go. Then a darkness even greater than before.

Blood crawled cautiously toward the door, toward the lode of food smell, a richness so vast it displaced all other senses. With his linked hands he carefully judged the water bucket and moved the empty slop bucket off to a corner and came back and lifted the water bucket and drank. Then very slowly and carefully outlined the rim of the plate with his hands, grazed the surface with his fingertips and then dug them in and lifted a wet portion of the food to his mouth. It was a stew of dried pease and ham, still hot enough so that he cooled the first mouthfuls on his fingers. After those mouthfuls he scrabbled around so he was squatting and brought the plate up to balance it on one knee and so ate his meal. Using his first and index fingers to pare up the last traces. Drank again and then shifted the bucket against the wall beside the doorframe. A place he could find in the dark if he moved prudently.

He still believed this was temporary. Whatever the magistrate was after could not include confinement of this sort for any length of time. It was a matter of waiting out the night. The morrow would bring all manner of light. There returned the question of what purpose he truly served being here. What master had approved this, brought it to fruition? It was apparently simple—Blood was the one who could answer
most clearly what happened to Laberge. But there lingered the image of the lounging and unconcerned Peter Chase and Isaac Cole. To witness his arrest as something expected. There the mystery deepened. And Blood with no choice but to wait.

He scratched his wrists, the irons rattling in the utter black silence. Even the horse in the stall beside had stilled to equine sleep. For long moments he found relief pondering what dreams a horse would have—what dreams would visit a warhorse with no war? Carnage or pastures verdant everlasting? Would a horse, once shut into a stall, wonder if it would ever again be set free? Could it forget the expected routine of life and tremble over some horse-notion of being forgotten? Of rotting some slow death, away from all fields, those of war and those of browse as well?

The girl would arrive in the morrow. Sally and Van Landt. Blood was confident both would come. There was enough money, Blood was sure of that. Even as he calculated how much Van Landt might overcharge for the horses and his time, how much he could skim off Sally with her threatened to silence. But there was enough. Blood had done nothing that money could not smooth. He knew he could drip money out by the shilling, dollar, or pound until whoever had to be appeased was satisfied. The mystery of it all be fucked. Worst, he thought, I consign the tavern to Van Landt and walk out with only Sally and Luther alongside to start some place anew. Great God it would not be the first time.

In the enveloping darkness he was washed with sudden longing for the girl. Sally trusted Blood and depended upon him. She would resent him though, if not now then soon enough. But she would never be free of debt to him. The older she grew, however she ended up, he knew this was true. And the Dutchman was the only man he’d met in the Connecticut Lakes who was even close to an equal with himself—the only man who comprehended life as capriciously as Blood and so chose to stand apart from his fellows, to make of himself what he would or could and leave the rest to their own misconceptions and expectations. He would come. Blood could almost see him, Van Landt with nothing of pleasantry about him. Interested only in solving the problem before him, turning that solution directly to his own favor. What more could a man ask for in another?

* * *

Some uncountable hours later there was a visitation. What Blood had long since trusted to be mercifully unattainable. If it began in the familiar nightmare it continued unabated long after he was sweating upright strained against the stockade wall—some moments or even hours returned from that locked black closet of his brain between the long-gone New Bedford gin-house and his own home there, now within that home, in the entry hall as he fell against the wall trying to remove his boots and fell again until sobbing he got them off by kicking like an Indies juggler lying flat on his back with his feet up in the air and in this way recaptured a brilliant crystal energy, upright again, sock-footed, his mouth a web of drought, his brain luminous and distinctly attuned to nothing more than whatever lay before him, whatever now he might seize, to swallow of the old life and so suspend if not outright rend forever, casting himself already out, the old self out, destroyed.

So was wavering his vision-led feet toward the candle-lit but empty sitting room where his wife and son should still be in their caskets when he looked up and saw his lovely Betsey not dead at all but cringing halfway down the stairs, her hair tangled evermuch as always but not tangled enough, not the way he wanted it to be. Oh she was so lovely trembling in her soft nightdress and his head swung back and forth like a weight, like a bull with its throat cut but yet still standing and then cried out her name and went up the stairs as if his feet were only born for this and caught her as she turned away from him, Betsey drawing him on as always by her feigned shrieks and he tore the flannel from her and clasped her to him and then it was his own daughter Sarah Alice naked against his chest and beating at him with her fists as he carried her upward, her small breasts there just short inches from his mouth and his one arm scooped under her thighs feeling the heat of her run through into him and so when he reached the top of the stairs it was not accident but a deliberate thing that he turned left not right and carried her down the hall where he kicked open the door of her own bedroom and threw her on the bed and closed the door behind her—standing there as he removed his clothes watching her scurry back and forth over the bed trying to cover herself even as he worked his breeches off, not taking his eyes from her and then paused, watching her face turn up to him pleading her mouth silent as it worked and her eyes not able to not go between his face and his dreadful penis as he advanced upon
her and then that last glorious wrestle around the room where he destroyed any objects she thrust in his path as if to prove himself beyond doubt to her and then that most perfect moment when he caught hold of her and her body arched away under the lock of his arms, the slow exquisite spell of his strength and then felt her succumb. Her body collapsing, failing, floor-bound. He kissed her hair as he lifted her and carried her to the bed, knowing she had to say those words, the way every one human has to deny what they truly desire. Papa Papa No No No—

Ripped sweating in the cold pitch night, the stink of manure and old hay, the visitation as cruel as the nightmares, vivid, actual, the moment of his life one second before him in each full realm of each exerted sense
for now as ever before as he entered her she faded, became some fluid greater than water, then gone, all lost
.

He found the water bucket and drank from it. Then vomited hot hard curds into it. On hands and knees again. The manacles clashing as to break bone. He swayed over the bucket. Retched and puked again and felt something splash blistering against his hand. Rocking back and forth. His stomach seethed and rumbled. He leaned forward and butted his head against the door. A too-small flower of pain spread red around him. He lifted his hand and smelt his vomit. Wiped the backside of the hand in the dirt, the iron bracelet cracking hard against his wrist. Then slowly fell onto his side and rolled away from the door to put his back to the wall. Got his back against the wall, his knees up before. So whoever might open the door in the morning would find him facing them. It was important to do this.

At dusk the three of them carried a stick of gilled trout down along the brook to Perry Stream and followed that as the twilight came on until they were in the moosewood bushes under the hemlocks across from the tavern. They crouched there in shadow some time, the tavern dark, silent, the chimney cold. They hunkered until past full dark when the owls began to call from their perches back in the woods. If anyone was in the tavern they had neither light nor fire—if there was anyone watching they had not revealed themselves.

Finally Sally left the boys and went down to the road, across the bridge and up to the tavern, approaching the gnarling threat from the dog within. She spoke his name and the sound changed to his greeting of low rumbled delight. She stepped in and made her way in the dark to the fireplace, stooped to blow up some coals and bring a splinter to tender flame and lighted the candle-lantern. It was she insisted if they were not to go on to Van Landt’s then they must return to the tavern, to see if any mischief had transpired and to guard it against the night. Whoever the boys might be, and whatever might happen on the morrow, whatever chance or opportunity came her way she still was determined, until that final second when she broke from him, to give Blood no reason for rage against her.

She opened the door and held one hand on Luther’s head and called in the boys. As they approached into the dim spread of light the dog snarled and she told him to hush and he did. As the boys entered the dog sniffed at each one and then Sally took her hand from his head and told him to go on and he trotted out into the night to prowl and paint his patrolled ground with urine.

“Can a one of you milk a cow?”

She and Fletcher went to the barn with a bucket and basket for eggs and left Cooper to build the fires up and fry the trout in the spider. And, Sally figured, poke around wherever he wanted or could. She still had the key pouch around her neck. She threw hay to the oxen and cow, disturbed the already night-roosted chickens for their eggs and shut them in. Went back to the stable to find Fletcher standing beside the stool with a half-bucket of milk while the cow switched her hindquarters at him, lifting first one foot then the other.

“I guess my touch idn’t what she’s used to.”

“It’s all right. You got enough so she won’t burst before tomorrow.”

They ate the trout with old bread toasted on forks over the coals and drank tea touched with rum. The dog stretched on the hearth, his eyes traveling from one boy to the other and back again. They had the bar on the door but no one came knocking. Sally guessed everyone knew Blood had been taken. It irked her none of the men beyond Peter Chase had come checking on her. Frightened her a little also. As if not only did all know what had befallen Blood but cared not what happened to her. For the first time she doubted Van Landt. But then he was not the
sort to come but wait to be sought. He was also, she realized, save the odd trapper, the one man who might know nothing of these past events. Which made her wonder where Gandy was. He should be bothering her, trying to get free drinks for dreamed-up reasons. For the first time she was truly afraid.

As if he knew her thoughts Cooper said, “It’s awful quiet. You’d think men’d be clamoring to learn what happened.”

“Seems like maybe they all know.”

“Some kind of deal was struck?”

She shook her head. “It seems so. But I wouldn’t know what sort.”

Cooper nodded. “Think Blood knows?”

“If he did he didn’t show it.”

“Maybe he does by now. Where he is, you said it’s a half day’s ride?”

“I ain’t sure. It’s how it sounded.”

“A hard tramp.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means we leave the Dutchman and his horses out of it altogether. Just go afoot ourselves and see what we can see.”

“No,” she said. “Blood idn’t going to like it, I don’t do as he says.”

“It don’t seem to me he’s in a position to like it or no. We don’t even know what trouble’s upon him. Surely more than he’d guessed at when they come after him this morning.”

She poured herself more tea. “How do you plan to explain to him just why it’s you two instead of Van Landt?”

“We just say the Dutchman wouldn’t come. And we come along and found you distressed.”

“What happens when we get back here, he learns different?”

Cooper was quiet a moment. Then, his voice level he said, “Well. Horseback or shanks-mare, it’s a fair piece of rough country to travel between there and here.”

She said, “What is it you got planned for him?”

“I don’t know. I won’t know until I’m up alongside him.”

“All these years, you don’t have a plan made?”

His eyes flicked off her. “I’ve got lots of ideas. But until I’m face to face with him and he knows me I don’t know exactly what I’ll want to do. So, I ain’t going to bother myself with a plan except to see what happens.”

It was quiet awhile. Then Cooper said, “What we ought to do is bed down. If we got to walk we need to leave well on before first light.”

“We ain’t going to walk,” Sally said. “I’m going up to Van Landt’s first thing and get whatever horses he’ll have to let.”

Cooper said, “What makes you think you should come along on this?’

She gazed hard upon him. “Seems to me you got that question backwards.”