Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (5 page)

“Well, it's mighty nice feeling, inside of four walls,” Jim remarked.

“Set yourself,” Pa nodded, pointing to the table. “Fried pone and smoky ought to—” But Pa didn't finish what he was saying; he saw that Jim wasn't listening to him at all but staring at Rachel. She stood by the hearth, her face flushed and bright from the heat of the fire.

“Who's that?” Jim asked softly.

“That?”

“Her name's Rachel,” I said.

“Rachel,” Jim nodded.

Pa said hurriedly, “She's a bondwoman I bought from Matt Green. Had to have a woman round the place.”

“Sure.”

“Can't raise a boy—”

“Sure,” Jim said. “She a serving girl?”

“No.”

Jim never took his eyes from her face. “Kinfolk?” Jim asked.

“No.”

“Just a bondwoman?”

Pa stuttered, “Sure, Jim, bondwoman or no, Christian folk can't live together, man and woman, without taking in marriage.”

Jim smiled. “How y'do, Mrs. Harvey,” he said.

Rachel said, “It's the first time a—man called me that.”

I could see that Pa was worried about something; I could see it by the way he growled at me and by the way he set to working twice as hard as any man should work. It got worse and worse, until a week had gone by and Jim was still staying on.

Rachel had changed in that week. She seemed to get taller and straighter and prettier, and she laughed a lot. She never used to laugh before Jim came.

She fussed with things, too, setting fresh flowers around the house, and sometimes wearing a flower in her hair. Once Pa came in all hot and sweating with his work and saw Rachel standing in front of the cabin with a red flower in her hair.

“You look mighty pretty, Rachel,” Pa said curiously, looking at her the way he'd look at a stranger.

“Thank you, Mr. Harvey,” she said.

But Jim had more time for Rachel than Pa did, and it seemed to me that Pa was purposely staying away from the cabin more than he had to. Jim was always there, except when he went out to hunt; and Jim was a mighty fine and easy hunter, bringing in so much meat that Pa couldn't rightly complain about him staying on. When Jim wasn't hunting, he was hanging around the cabin, talking with Rachel and admiring her cooking and telling her his adventures way out in the deep woods. Even when Rachel gave me schooling, Jim hung around, explaining that he was sure in need of a little schooling.

Well, one day Pa came into the cabin when Jim and I were there by ourselves, Rachel having gone down to the spring for water.

It was a hot day, and after Pa had hemmed and hawed about not having cold water to douse his head with, he said to Jim, “This is a mighty nice long visit you paid us.”

“Sure is,” Jim nodded.

“Mighty long for a walking man with a itch to his heels,” Pa said.

“Oh, I got rid a' that itch,” Jim grinned.

“Never knew a walking man who could stop walking and root in one place.”

“Some can,” Jim said.

Pa scratched his head. “Yup,” he admitted, “I remember you saying how you were prepared to settle down. Well, Jim, wives don't grow on trees. You got to get out and go a hunting.”

“Don't reckon I got to do much hunting,” Jim said.

“How's that?”

Jim turned and nodded to where Rachel was coming up the hill with the buckets of fresh, cold spring water. “There's Rachel.”

“Rachel?” Pa said.

“She's a mighty fine, fair woman,” Jim drawled.

“How?” Pa said.

“Well, you bought her out for eighteen dollars cash and four owing. I got silver money in my pockets, and I'm prepared to pay you out thirty dollars cash.”

“Hell,” Pa grinned, “you're joking.”

“I ain't.”

Pa said, softlike, “She's my wife, Jim.”

“Is she? You don't treat her like men treat a wife; you treat her like a bondwoman.”

Still softly, Pa said, “Better be walking, Jim. I been ten years in the deep woods and I got thirty-five acres clear, but I ain't yet ordered folk off my place.”

“You ain't ordering me,” Jim said. “Leastways, not without Rachel. I offered to buy you out, fair and—”

I never saw Pa's face like that before. He muttered something under his breath, and then he let go at Jim like a wildcat springing. Jim was taller than Pa, but Pa was broad and hard.

Jim went down with Pa on top of him, and then they raised dust like two panthers, hitting and gouging and swearing.

I whooped it for Pa, but they were tangling so hard I couldn't rightly tell which was which. And inside of a minute from the time Pa had jumped Jim, Rachel was there, dragging them apart.

“Stop it, stop it!” she cried.

Somehow, with all their tangling, they heard her. She pulled them apart and to their feet, almost by main strength. Pa and Jim were both bruised and bleeding, their faces splotched and their clothes torn. Rachel stood between them, glaring first at one and then at the other.

“Men!” she said. “Oh, you fools!”

Pa and Jim Fairway just stood there, staring down at the ground.

“Making out a fine picture for Davey,” Rachel said. “Two grown men fighting like a couple of wild Indians. Why?”

Pa kept his eyes on the ground; so did Jim. Rachel turned to me and demanded, “Why were they fighting, Davey?”

“You shut, Davey,” Pa said.

“You speak up, Davey,” Rachel said, her voice very cold and even. The way she said it and the way she looked at me, I couldn't help telling her.

“Jim wanted to buy you with eight dollars' profit for Pa, and Pa told him to go to—”

“You shut, Davey!” Pa roared.

“He'll speak,” Rachel said, her voice trembling a little. “He'll speak all he wants to. And so will I.”

I never saw her like that before, her eyes blazing, her whole body tight with anger.

“Maybe that's best,” Jim said. “Tell him you're going along with me, Rachel.”

“Going with you!” Rachel cried scornfully. “So you can buy me and sell me, just as you please! So you could have a wife and a slave at the same time, just as he had!”

“Now, Rachel—” Pa said.

“You shut!” Rachel snapped, and Pa kind of folded back and stared at the ground again.

“I'll tell you where I'm going,” Rachel said. “I'm going back to the stockade. And if you think the work I've done here for you and for Davey and for that lazy, no-account hunter isn't worth eighteen dollars cash and four owing, you can warrant me with Judge Lang when he makes circuit. Only I wouldn't, if I were you. He's like to put the whole lot of you in jail.”

Rachel came out of the cabin with her two calicoes under her arm and a bag of smoky and bread. Without a glance at Pa or Jim, she strode off down the hill in the direction of the stockade. Pa and Jim watched her go into the woods.

Jim scratched his head.

Pa said, “Well, I'll be damned.”

Jim said, “Lazy, no-account hunter.”

Pa said, “Feels kind of strange with Rachel gone off.”

I felt that way too. For all that I had plagued Rachel, I felt that everything was kind of empty and to no purpose with her gone off.

Pa went out to the fields and came back, leading the horse. Then he went into the house and got his gun and pouch and horn.

He mounted and said, “Come on up, Davey.”

“Where you going?” Jim demanded.

“After her.”

“Can't see that you can do much without waiting for the circuit court and putting a warrant to her,” Jim said. “Unless you lay hands on her.”

“Never laid hands on a woman in my life,” Pa growled.

Jim shrugged.

Pa said, “I ain't bringing her back. If a woman's ungrateful enough to turn on a man who's bought out her indenture and married her legal, then I don't want her.”

“You don't?”

“Nope. Only I wouldn't let no woman walk in the dark woods without menfolk to see that harm didn't fall.”

“That's so,” Jim admitted.

“She might get lost.”

“I guess I'll come along,” Jim said.

Pa growled and spurred the horse, but when I looked back, I saw that Jim was running after us.

We rode hard for about three or four minutes, until we were well into the forest, and then Pa pulled up the horse and said, “Get down, Davey.”

“Why?”

“I told you to get down.”

We walked on, leading the horse, and in about ten minutes more, we saw Rachel in the woods ahead of us. Pa quickened his pace, so that I almost had to run to keep up with him. When we got to Rachel, she was standing still and facing us.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“Nothing; nothing, Rachel. Only I reckoned you might as leave ride, it's that long a distance to the stockade.”

“I walked it once before,” Rachel said.

“Here's the horse,” Pa muttered.

“Then ride him back and leave me alone.” And she turned and walked on.

Pa tagged after her. “I can't leave you walking alone in the deep woods,” he said.

Then Jim caught up with us, toting his long rifle and panting from his run. Rachel turned and faced them, her head caught in a long ray of sunlight, her eyes blazing.

“Leave me alone!” she cried.

But Pa and Jim kept following her, Pa. leading the horse.

That night there wasn't enough that Pa and Jim could do for Rachel. They made a big, roaring fire for her, but Rachel would have none of it and built her own fire about ten yards away. She set the smoky to cooking and the bread to warming. Pa and Jim had come away too quickly to think of bringing food, and they just sat in front of their fire, wrinkling their noses and sniffing the smoky.

When the smoky was done, Rachel said, “Davey, would you like something to eat?”

“I ain't very hungry,” I muttered.

“Just a little?” she said.

That smoky smelled terribly good. Pa and Jim were just staring into their fire as if nothing else interested them. So I went over to Rachel's fire.

I ate smoky and hot bread until I felt good and warm and comfortable. “Thankee,” I told Rachel.

“That's all right, Davey.”

I felt mean and small, thinking of the way I had acted toward Rachel. She put her arm around me, and soon I fell asleep.

When I woke up in the morning, Rachel was still sleeping, but Pa and Jim were sitting in front of the dead embers of their fire, just as they were the night before.

I called, “Pa, ain't you slept at all?”

He shushed me, pointing to Rachel. She woke up, stretching and yawning, smiled at me, and then let the smile go as she saw Jim and Pa. She cut cold smoky and bread for our breakfast.

“I guess they're mighty hungry,” I said.

“I guess they are.”

We set off again, only this time I walked along with Rachel. She was so nice to me, I couldn't lift up and light back to Pa. Jim and Pa followed along with the horse, about ten yards behind us.

Once, Rachel said, “Your ma must have been nice, Davey.”

“She was—but so are you.”

“I reckon you favor her,” Rachel said; “not your Pa.”

Noontime, we finished the smoky and bread. Jim and Pa built a fire again, but I helped Rachel make her own. They must have been awful hungry, because all morning they walked with their guns ready, like men hunting; only never a sign of a creature crossed our path, and I guess neither would go off to hunt and leave the other alone.

Noontime, Jim did say, “My, that smoky smells awful fine.”

But Pa never said a word.

It was some hours after noon, when we were walking along and getting near to the stockade, that I heard a turkey gobbler calling behind us.

“That's a turkey gobbler,” I told Rachel. “It would make mighty nice eating if Jim or Pa would go off and hunt it.”

“I don't think they will,” Rachel said.

The gobbler called again, and I looked back to see what Jim and Pa would do. For some reason, they had stopped and were facing the other direction.

Suddenly, Pa threw up his rifle and fired. There was a long scream, not the scream a gobbler makes.

Rachel put her arm around me.

Pa and Jim ran toward us, and without saying a word, Pa lifted Rachel and swung her onto the horse.

“Shawnees,” Jim said.

Pa threw me onto the horse. “Tell them at the stockade!” he cried, and slapped the horse across the rump. The old horse clattered through the woods, and when I glanced back, Pa and Jim were crouched down behind a fallen tree.

I guess we had gone a few hundred yards or so when Rachel seemed to come out of her trance. She pulled the horse up sharp and slipped down from it.

“Davey,” she whispered, “can you find the stockade?”

“Sure.”

“Then go there and bring them. Davey, I have to go back—I have to.” And she began to run toward where Pa and Jim were.

Well, it wasn't much to ride the five or six miles to the stockade and come back with Parson Jackson, Matt Green, Lem Thurley and four or five others.

Lem said he didn't believe the Shawnee story because there hadn't been Shawnees within a hundred miles for God knows how long. Sure enough, we weren't more than three quarters way back when we met Jim Fairway, walking along with his long rifle over his shoulder and whistling like there wasn't a Shawnee in the country.

“Hey, you, Jim Fairway!” Lem Thurley yelled.

Jim grinned and waved, and we rode up to him.

“How about the Shawnees?” Parson Jackson said.

“Lord, I feel free,” Jim said. “I'm a walking man and a hunting man. I got an itch to my heels and a load in my gun, and I ain't touched food in two days.”

“How about the Shawnees?”

“They was two, and they're dead,” Jim told us.

“Well, that's that,” Lem Thurley said. “I might 'a' known.”