Storyteller (13 page)

I didn’t look back; I took quick glimpses at bodies on the ground, some moving, others entirely still. Breathless, I looked at faces, at clothing, at boots and legs, searching for Father, for John. Even if their faces were covered or gone, I’d know their hands
.

And Miller’s hands. I remembered Miller breaking off a mushroom, and in a few quick strokes with a nail on its surface, he’d drawn Stout Lucy, the cat
.

I thought then that if I saw any of them on the ground, I might not be able to keep to my own feet
.

Miller
.

Imagine
.

What had he said that long time ago? I will draw you a hundred times, Zee, a thousand. I saw Miller tearing strips of bark from the birch tree, chunks of charcoal in his fingers, to squiggle lines and shapes. Drawing Stout Lucy, the trees, the river. Drawing me
.

And I’d never given it a thought
.

Above me was the sound of rumbling. A cannon? The sky darkened as if it were night, split through with jagged streaks of lightning. The rain came; huge drops spattered the blood-soaked leaves of the trees, pounded on the bodies that lay on the forest floor, puddles forming in their clothing, in the crooks of their arms or legs
.

The firing died away and left only the sound of thunder rolling across the sky, and the moaning of those who were wounded. There would be no fighting, no firing, while the storm lasted. The gunpowder had to be kept dry
.

As I reached the high ground on the other side of the ravine, I saw that Herkimer had been wounded. Someone propped his saddle against a beech tree, so he could direct the battle when the storm was over. He sat, pipe in his mouth, pointing, telling the men, “Stay together, two by two, back to back, one to load, one to fire.”

I held my face to the rain, my mouth open; the water bathed
my face, but only for a moment. A man stood alone, holding a musket. I jostled his arm. “If you show me,” I said, “I can load that.”

He looked at me and nodded
.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. The war cries began again, along with the sound of the muskets. But now Herkimer’s men were in better control
.

I stood against the back of that man I had never seen before, so close I could smell his fear, closer than I’d ever stood next to anyone. I tamped down the powder, working slowly with my stiff hands, working endlessly
.

Then the man was on the ground, and someone pushed my head down. “Stay there. Do you want to be killed?” Not a voice I knew
.

I darted away from him, not thinking about anything. Everything was color: the orange of the sun, the shiny green of the washed leaves, the red of the blood everywhere
.

Father lay against a log, and I knelt next to him, my arms around him, until I was sure he was gone. I rested my head against his chest
.

I saw them at home, John in the field, Mother turning the cheese pans
.

And Father. Father. I held him tight
.

I heard a new call. “Oonah, oonah,” an Iroquois shout, repeated over and over. And someone said, “It’s their call to retreat.”

Was the battle over? Was this the end of it? Father dead, and so many others lying in the ravine around me, gone forever, or wounded so badly they’d never stand again
.

How could John and Miller have come through this? Nothing was left. Who could tell whether we’d won or lost?

Someone pulled me to my feet. “We’re going back toward Fort Dayton,” the voice said. I realized it was the boy I had ridden with in the wagon the day before. “My father’s gone,” he said, “and the wagon.”

I raised my hands helplessly. I had no energy to move
.

“We can’t bury the dead,” he said. “The ravine has become their cemetery. Come with me.”

“But my father—”

“Go along without her,” a voice said
.

I closed my eyes. It was Miller, alive
.

Miller
.

Fort Stanwix spreads itself out in front of Elizabeth and Harry. Inside the information building, open now, a plump woman wears a Revolutionary War–era dress. She loops a strand of hair back into a Zee kind of cap. “Do you have a question?”

“I know about the ravine, and the terrible ambush …,” Elizabeth says. Her voice trails off with embarrassment.

And now a group of kids surrounds them like a flock of chicks, waiting to ask the woman something. One even pulls at Elizabeth’s sweater.

She looks at Harry helplessly. He rocks back on his feet, smiling, first at her, then at the woman, whose name tag reads
Jane
.

Harry smiling? Harry proud?

The woman leans forward. “I bet you’re the smartest girl in your class.”

Elizabeth steps back.

“Of course she is.” Harry sounds so definite, so positive, that she feels her face flush.

They let the kids have a turn talking to the woman, and sit on a leather bench to watch a film about the battle of Oriskany.

Elizabeth thinks of what the woman said about her, of what Harry believes. That she’s smart. Her throat begins to burn as she turns to Harry. “My father says I don’t think,” she says slowly. “I’m actually pretty useless.” She raises her shoulder. “There isn’t anything I do well.”

Harry stops watching the film. “Tell me about Zee,” he says, “or Oriskany. Or the fort. Tell me one thing.”

She’s silent.

“I want to hear just one fact,” Harry says again.

Elizabeth searches her mind. From the fort window she sees the flag rippling in the wind.

She begins. “Colonel Gansevoort was in charge of the fort. He was not much more than a boy, and his father had told him to defend Stanwix even if it killed him. He was ready to do that, he was strong and brave, but he wanted a flag to wave over the fort, something that stood for what they were. He remembered the flag they were talking about down in Philadelphia.”

Elizabeth leans toward Harry. “They ripped up the scarlet sleeve of someone’s coat, the blue from someone’s jacket. They cut stars from a sheet, uneven stars, but still stars, and sewed it together. It was such a makeshift thing, but when they looked up at it, they told each other they were fighting
for that, a new flag, a new country …” Her voice trails off. “I read a little about it.”

“Oh, Elizabeth,” Harry says.

Her face is hot; her hands go to her cheeks.

“My mother told me,” he says, “that everyone has something. Some of us are good at a lot of things, some of us are good at only one, but everyone has something.”

A line of children pass, going from one room in the museum to another. She wonders about them. Which one is good in math? Good at hitting a ball? Good at singing? She has a sudden thought of Pop and his carvings, which everyone seems to admire, although she can’t exactly see why.

Harry’s hand is on her shoulder. “And you …,” he says.

She looks up at him, and he runs his finger across the tears on her cheek. “Ah, Elizabeth,” he says, “you’re all story.”

For a moment she doesn’t know what he means.

“I asked for a fact. What you gave me was so much more. Your head is filled with story.” His mouth isn’t steady. “How lucky you are. I’d rather have that than almost anything I can think of.”

She reaches out and puts her arms around Harry. She can’t even believe she’s doing it.

Filled with story.

She’d rather have that than almost anything, too.

So much of what she knows about Zee has to do with story: what has been passed down to Libby and Harry, and now to her. And she has added to it. Those bits and pieces that she’ll tell Pop, and maybe her own children someday.

Story.

Late in the afternoon we sat together in an old woman’s house, John on one side of me, Miller on the other. We filled her kitchen, the smell of battle still on our skin and clothes, coughing from the acrid smoke of muskets in our lungs
.

The house was without windows, so the only light came from the hearth. I stared at the flames, wondering that anyone would have built up such a huge fire in August. I was shivering, though, and its warmth gave me comfort
.

The woman passed out a cup of fermented cider, which we shared, each of us taking a mouthful. She had cut cheese from rounds and slabs of bacon, but I wasn’t hungry. Would I ever be able to swallow food again?

John’s face was filthy, his sparse beard matted, and his eyes closed, pale lashes clumped with tears
.

Miller’s head was back against the wall. He looked as if he was too tired to sleep. “They’re sending General Arnold from Fort Dayton to help,” he said. “He has about nine hundred troops.”

“Will that be enough?” I thought about Father and the ravine and bodies piled like cords of wood on the marshy ground
.

John opened his eyes. “I’ll go with General Arnold. And yes, those of us who are left will be enough. This is the turning point. Look around you. We’re toughened now, we can face anything. After today, we’ll never give up.” His eyes closed again, and he slept
.

I watched the flames, sipping at the cider as the cup came around to me
.

Miller stood up. “Come outside.”

In the doorway I blinked at the sharp light. We walked along a path that wandered around the edge of a stream
.

“I’m not going to Stanwix with General Arnold,” Miller said slowly. “There’s the mill at home, and a harvest waiting. I’d rather fight, but our army will need food, and I’ll give everything I have to keep them going.” He touched my shoulder. “Don’t think I’m a coward.”

I smiled at that. “Who could ever think you’re a coward?” I said, echoing what he had said to me that morning. Only that morning?

“Oriskany will not be the end of the war,” Miller said. “It’s still the beginning. It will be years, Zee, but John is right. We are going to win.”

I thought about going home, but there was no home
.

“Come with me, Zee.”

I turned to look up at him. I saw him building the henhouse, nails in his mouth. I saw him swinging me in the snow, laughing. How had I not seen what he was like? Who he truly was?

“Someday,” he said, “I’ll draw you standing outside the house we’ll build.”

I held out my scarred hands
.

“Ah, your hands,” he said, and then I could see he was trying to smile. “Perhaps you’ll ruin the soap, and burn the bread. You may leave the gates open so the animals will wander free, and I’ll draw all of that. But I’ll draw you with strength in your face, because no one has more.”

I thought of the drawing of Stout Lucy and the day I’d seen him work on it
.

“If I had something, I’d draw you now,” he said
.

I reached under the handkerchief at my neck. The map was
still there, and I gave it to him to use the other side. “But I have no cap,” I said
.

He smiled. “Do you think I can’t remember?”

I sat there watching
.

I had to go on to Fort Stanwix. I had to do my own part in this fight for our freedom. I wouldn’t tell him that yet, though, not until he finished the drawing
.

Harry pulls his dusty truck up to an equally dusty storefront in Utica. “This place has been here for as long as I can remember.”

Elizabeth glances at the window. There are stacks of chipped plates, an ancient jade plant in the center, and a pair of lamps with rosettes twirling around their bases.

“Everything stays the same,” Harry says. “I don’t think they’ve sold anything in twenty years. How they stay in business is a mystery. I stop in sometimes and wander around.”

Inside, there’s a musty smell; motes of dust dance across the back window.

Harry nods at the owner and takes Elizabeth’s elbow; they wend their way around old furniture to the side wall, where paintings in curlicue frames hang in uneven lines. “Not these,” Harry says, “it’s the drawings I want you to see.”

He’s excited. Elizabeth’s heart picks up. What has he found?

They walk past paintings of stiff women and bearded men, and in the very back are the drawings. “Do you remember”—Harry smiles down at her—“the mark on Zee’s drawing?”

“A bundle of sticks, tied in the middle.” She looks at the drawing in front of her. It has the same marks. “The same artist,” she breathes.

The owner comes up in back of them. He looks as old as the store itself, with gray hair to his shoulders, tiny glasses. “That’s a sheaf of wheat,” he says. “It was his mark. I don’t think he could read. Miller Wheeler was his name.” He waves his hand toward the wall. “I have two of his drawings. There are others in a museum in Albany.”

Elizabeth looks up at them. The first is a field, and two boys are fighting, rolling on the ground, drawn with just a few lines, but she can feel the movement, the energy of it. Looking on is a girl. And in back of them is a river. The Delaware River, of course. Is it Zee? Only her profile is visible. “Are they her children?”

“I don’t think so.” The owner shrugs. “She looks younger than the boys who are fighting, doesn’t she?”

Elizabeth leans forward. “It might have been before the war,” she says, “before Zee went to Oriskany. A warm day, maybe, and they’ve been planting. They stop—”

“You like to tell stories,” the owner says, and she feels that burst of happiness in her chest.

“It’s the next one you’ll want to see,” Harry says gently.

Elizabeth takes a step; her hand goes out. It’s Zee,
Elizabeth would know her anywhere: that button nose, those apple cheeks. But it’s an older Zee, a laughing Zee. She stands at the edge of the same field, holding a toddler, and two boys stand next to her. If it weren’t for the old-fashioned clothes, they could be standing there today.