Riding Shotgun (19 page)

She wondered if the black fox, the bear, the rabbit, all the animals living alongside of her, ever took notice of her other than to get out of the way. Did other animals perch motionless to watch the human animal? Were we worth watching or did we stink too much? Humans throw off a strong scent that no amount of perfume can disguise. Add tobacco and
whiskey to that natural odor and the scent must be overwhelming.

Once, when she was fourteen and Grace was twelve, they’d dozed off under the big oak tree in the middle of the hay pasture. A rustling awoke them. It stopped just as she opened her eyes to behold a woodchuck staring right back at her. Both human and animal stayed still for a moment, each wondering what the other would do. Finally the woodchuck waddled off. As there was a light breeze, it blew their scent away. That was the closest Cig had ever come to a wild animal other than Fattail. She and her sister had laughed over it.

Even at twelve Grace showed signs of that beauty which would mature into a kind of perfection. She used to coach her older sister in how to conquer men.

“You talk to boys like you talk to me. You can’t do that.” Then Grace would demonstrate. “Make your voice go soft, and go like this, see?” She ended the sentence with a rising note, a form of asking a question.

“Gross.”

“It works!” Grace would say. “And you have to lower your eyes and then raise them. They love that.”

“I’m not doing it. It’s fake,” Cig would reply.

“It’s not fake. You can’t be honest with boys, Cig, they aren’t honest with us. The whole thing is a big, fat, stupid game but you’d better learn how to play it or you lose,” Grace would counsel.

As Cig pressed her fingertips to the cold pane of glass she wondered how her younger sister could be so wise in the ways of the world at such a young age. Grace wanted the upper hand and she got it. How was immaterial to her. Furthermore, she didn’t fret over her charade. She had no desire to have her husband or any man really know who she was, really understand her. She used to say that Cig was the only person who understood her. Did she say that to throw Cig off the track or did Grace really believe it?

How could Grace have lied to her like that? The fact that Grace had slept with Blackie was painful enough but the lying hurt more. Not that Grace had outright lied, she never
said
anything, but she must have scrambled to cover up the affair. Had Cig ever come close to walking in on them? Had Grace burned letters or hidden telltale gifts? Were there love letters in the glove compartment of Grace’s car, all those times Cig had ridden in it? How could she not have known? Then again, how
could
she have known? How many women suspect their sisters of sleeping with their husbands?

If Mother were alive, would I go to her? Cig thought. How could I tell her what happened? It would shock Mother as much as it shocked me. And she’d harpoon Grace. God, what a mess. Hell, what a mess without Mother.

Who could she tell and what good would it do? Number one, why burden others? Number two, why should they care? People liked her well enough but she couldn’t imagine any of them wanting to be part of this sordid story. Then again, she never gave any of them a chance to show if they truly did care. She’d seen enough human blowflies feeding off the meat of dead romance to want to avoid telling anyone. The only person Cig confided in was Grace. The times she’d cried over Blackie’s cheating in the beginning of the marriage… just thinking about crying in front of her sister made her want to spit. Once the tears had run dry her confessions were more in the nature of reporting bad weather. “Blackie’s storming over Jennifer Garland, Blackie’s raining sperm on Paula Biancouli,” etc. Grace would tell her to keep on keeping on. It reached the point during the end of the marriage, those last five years, when Grace would ask, “Who’s the latest?”

Grace was the latest.

“My God, how could I be so blind?”

Even the kids knew their father ran around. She certainly never told them. Hunter had cornered her one night in the library two years ago. He’d heard stones at school. Cig’s heart had snagged in her throat. Whatever Blackie’s faults, he did love his children, and no matter how much pain she’d swallowed over the years she didn’t want to turn a vulnerable fifteen-year-old against his father. She picked her way through an emotional minefield, trying to explain that
while husbands and wives can have rough times, the children come first. Hunter asked good questions, some that she had never thought of. “Does Dad have any other children?” was one zinger. Cig replied that she didn’t know. Hunter cried because his father had hurt his mother. She held him and told him no matter what, she was fine and his father loved him. She beseeched him not to judge his father. When he himself was a man he would understand these temptations. Hunter cooled toward his father after that but as far as she knew he never confronted him. She reached a point where she surrendered trying to monitor that relationship, too. It was their relationship, not hers. They’d have to settle it themselves. It seemed that the last decade, an agonizing lesson in not being able to control anybody or anything, had finally collapsed in on her like an old brick wall. Now she couldn’t even control time.

Was Cig, the 1995 Cig, dead? Was she a bunch of disconnected molecules? Was she in heaven with Blackie posing as a cavalier? If she was dead then how could she feel? Or maybe when you died you got packed off to another time, a kind of purgatory. Your time zone depended on your life, reverse karma.

She couldn’t be dead. Mother and Dad were dead. She wished Grace were dead in a savage burst of jealousy. If she wasn’t dead she had to press on. If there was a God, she believed she would get back to Hunter and Laura. What if she got back but it was 2015? What if her children didn’t know her? What if Grace had died and she hadn’t had the pleasure of knocking her teeth down her throat? Oh, what if!

A movement at the edge of the woods caught her eye. The frost on the windowpanes distorted her vision. She shut one eye for a better look. A big animal, crouched like a bear, stood up. Cig held her breath. It wasn’t an animal but a painted Indian. She threw off the blanket, ran downstairs and grabbed Tom’s musket. She didn’t know how to load one of these ancient things but she hoped the sight of it would scare off the intruder.

She flung open the back door, the blast of cold air stinging
her eyes. She hurried outside in her bare feet. All she saw was his back disappearing into the woods.

Shaking, Cig sprinted back into the house. She shut and bolted the door, then bolted the front door. Tom hurried down the stairs, his nightshirt flapping.

“Indian!” Cig gasped.

Tom grabbed the musket from her hand, quickly poured in powder, rammed down the ball and they both unbolted the door and dashed outside.

“Margaret, stay inside!” Tom shouted.

Cig pointed in the direction in which she’d seen the figure. “Over there.”

“Are you sure he was alone?”

“No. But I only saw one man.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“Yes.”

They stood in the heavy frost in their bare feet, their ears straining. A huge owl swept over their heads, swooped down as if to attack them and then passed over. It startled both of them.

“Let’s get inside,” Cig suggested.

They were chilled to the bone. Margaret had stirred up the fire while they were outside. “Did you see anything?”

Tom shook his head. He carefully hung the loaded musket on the wall. “Pryor, what did he look like?”

“His face was half red and half black and he wore a mantle of feathers. I’d guess he was middle-aged. I didn’t see any weapons.”

Tom sat down heavily. “A priest, I reckon.”

“How do you know?”

Tom stared at her then Margaret spoke. “The priests of the Algonquin tribes paint their bodies half black and half red. They are as powerful as the Weroans, the chiefs. It’s the priests who decide whether a tribe or indeed the whole confederation goes to war.”

“But I thought all this was behind us.”

Tom crossed his leg over his knee. “As far as the tribes here, yes, it is settled. The Powhatan, Accomac, Arrohattoc have withdrawn to lands west and south of here. We seem
to be at peace with all the Algonquin peoples, but they are enemies of the Iroquois tribes, and the Sioux tribes could raid and push them back.”

“What’s to stop the three big tribes from making common cause against the whites?”

“The same thing that keeps France and England from making common cause against Spain,” Tom answered.

“Is it still possible for small groups to raid us?”

“Yes,” Tom replied, “it’s possible.”

“It’s been almost twenty years since they’ve attacked here,” Margaret added. “There’s trouble upriver. I certainly wouldn’t venture too far on the other side of the Falls.”

“Then what’s an Indian doing here?” Cig asked.

“Hungry, maybe, or just curious,” Margaret answered. “They’ll travel to Jamestown to trade occasionally. Maybe he was passing through.”

“Priests don’t usually travel alone.” Tom stood up and stirred the fire.

Cig shivered again. “You’d think, given how big Virginia is, we could learn to get along.”

“They can’t get along with one another. Why should we get along with them?” Tom said.

Margaret handed her a piping cup of tea. “We’re so different from one another I don’t see how we can live together.”

Cig wanted to argue, to convince Margaret that cultural divisions like European versus Indian, Christian versus Muslim, could be overcome. She wanted to brag that great progress had been made in her own century. Great progress had been made in the service of hypocrisy. Few people would say “redskin” or “nigger” or “infidel” but such verbal niceties didn’t prevent them from killing one another should the occasion arise.

Cig swallowed hard at Margaret’s straightforward assessment of the situation. Such honesty was rare—in Cig’s time.

A web spun by a black-and-yellow banana spider swayed in the early morning breeze. The dew hung on each perfect strand like diamonds. The huge spider sat perfectly still at the edge of her wide web. Banana spiders wait at the center or the edge of their webs. When an insect falls prey, they strike with blinding speed. Although usually gone by the frosts, occasionally one will survive a few days longer, to be revivified when temperatures rise.

Cig hadn’t stopped to watch a banana spider in years. As a child she used to take twigs and lightly touch the fat abdomen of the spiders. Other times she’d tap the web to watch the spider rush to the side only to become furious that no lunch was forthcoming. Then the banana spider would sit in the web bending and unbending her legs until the web swung like a trampoline.

Cig and Margaret were walking to the family gravesite on a high hill overlooking the James. The sky, robin’s egg blue, heightened the exploding color on earth: fiery orange oaks, poplars as yellow as tulips, maples scarlet orange, with dogwoods pure red.

“The end of Indian summer,” Cig said, a basket of spring bulbs over one arm.

Margaret also carried a basket. “That’s a good term for this time of year. The Indians have a story that their great god blew the southwest wind, which cleared the skies. The trees donned their most festive clothes to honor him. When he had exhaled all this wind then the god from the north would blow. Winter is sure to follow.”

“Let’s hope the southwestern god has a little breath left.”

“Sometimes he can blow deep into November.” Margaret hummed as she walked, swinging her basket in time. Puffs of dust attended each step.

They reached the crest of the hill. A large square surrounded by a two-and-a-half-foot wall of river stone marked the graveyard. A white gate, the top cut in a crescent, hung on huge iron hinges. Margaret opened the gate.

Two large stones, beautifully carved, marked the graves of Charles and Elizabeth Deyhle. Elizabeth’s read:

Next to her rested Charles Richard Deyhle:

She noticed the smaller marker.

“Who was Braxton?”

“Your brother.”

“How did he die?”

“The sweating sickness.” Margaret knelt down and began digging the small holes for the spring bulbs.

“Poor fellow. So young.”

“And gifted. Had he lived your father would have sent him to Hannover to study music. Braxton wanted to go to Vienna but Charles said Hannover housed temptations enough.”

“Why Hannover?”

“Your father had friends there who assured him there was a fine organ master.”

Cig surveyed even smaller stones. “Babies?”

Margaret nodded.

“Where are Charles’s parents buried?”

“In England. After the Restoration they returned to London to petition King Charles for help… help in the form of cannon and soldiers. Your grandmother’s lungs gave way. Shortly thereafter your grandfather died in a duel. They say he grew intemperate after Priscilla’s death. Someone bumped into him one night leaving Court and he drew his sword. Your grandfather was a fine swordsman but he had the misfortune to pick a fight with the king’s blade.”