The Hollow Tree (15 page)

“Deserters.” Joseph Heaton spat after them — once they were well out of earshot. “On their way to Montreal! A likely yarn! On their way to hide out ‘til the war’s over is more like.” He swore roundly, his jowls quivering with rage.

“Only deserters would behave like that.” Charity Yardly sniffed at Anne and went to pull together what was left in her cart.

Aunt Rachael had her arms around Anne for comfort, but Phoebe had seen the flush of pleasure that had brightened Anne’s cheeks. She couldn’t help hoping the soldier’s kiss would soften Anne’s coldness. It did not soften her coldness, but it did return her a little to her old self. She began to pay attention to how she looked. She found a bit of a ribbon to tie back
her hair, she found a kerchief for her dress. Complaining loudly, she washed, as the others did, by breaking the ice in ponds or putting her face into the fast-running brooks. As she always had, she managed to avoid all but the easiest chores. And she began to flirt with Jem. Phoebe’s charitable feelings towards her cousin suffered a serious setback when she noticed Anne’s flirtations. Why doesn’t she go looking for kisses from Thomas Bother? she thought peevishly. But then, glancing over at the gentle farmer with his baby son in his arms, she was ashamed of herself for having so monstrous a thought.

The others were certainly not as cheered by the visit from the British soldiers as Anne was. Wearily they trudged on. Now and then they would come across an old trail that would make an easier passage, but they were always on the watch for spies, scouts, deserting soldiers, and Indians. Every single stranger in their path became an instant threat. The story of Jane McRea, the beautiful Loyalist girl who, only a few months earlier, had been caught in a dispute between two parties of Iroquois scouts, murdered, and scalped, had brought old fears about hostile Iroquois into their hearts. The experiences they had had with their own lifelong neighbours-turned-vicious enemies were fresh in all their memories and, when they got lost once and found themselves near a small forest
settlement, they had slogged on all night to get a distance from it.

They all kept their muskets primed in case of enemies and in the hope of finding game. Phoebe had no gun, but she had more than once fired Gideon’s old Brown Bess, so she shared the watch with Rachael. Anne would have nothing to do with the gun, and, despite their clamourings, Rachael would not let the boys near the musket. Every night Jem and Thomas and old Aaron Yardley set snares made of vines. The old man insisted that, though he might not be as strong as he had once been, he hadn’t forgotten all his boyhood skills. Every morning they broke the ice on a brook or waded into a river to fish for trout or perch. Some days they were lucky and there were fish, or their guns would bring down a partridge, a turkey, or even a deer. Some mornings a porcupine or rabbit would be found caught in the snare. Now and then there were bushes with a few dry berries or chokeberries the bears or the birds had missed, but there were only ever enough to add a bit of flavour to the ever-thinning corn-meal samp.

Whoever had corn meal shared with those who hadn’t, although Joseph Heaton complained loudly that he saw no reason to “fill in for the improvidence of others,” especially since he had lost his salt pork to “those dad-blasted rebels and a sack of his meal to” — and he
glared at Anne — “those foreign deserters you took such a shine to.” Charity Yardley insisted that she had scarcely enough to keep her own, much less her father-in-law’s body and soul together. When Peggy Morrissay pointed out to her that Phoebe Olcott, who had nothing of her own, was looking after Charity’s son Jonah, Charity reluctantly dipped into her sack for a portion of meal. She was rigid with anger when old Master Yardley piped up that they could easily share the ham the soldiers hadn’t taken and some of their flour. It turned out, to the outrage of many, that provisions were in good supply in the Yardley cart.

Still, none of it lasted long with twenty-four people to feed, and soon there was so little that, on poor hunting days, children could be heard all over camp, whimpering in their sleep from hunger.

Then, the Andersons’ cart broke an axle and foundered in a brook at the foot of a cliff, and the company came to a halt. And that was where Jem’s sister Jeannie came down with measles.

Axle-Broke Brook

T
he morning the axle broke on the Andersons’ cart, Joseph Heaton told his wife, Lucy, loud enough for everyone to hear, that he wasn’t going to “wait up for no passel of Yorkers and strangers just on accounta they didn’t have the know-how to keep themselves goin’. Nor I ain’t a-gonna set around waitin’ for their kids to die of measles.” And with no more of a farewell than that, the Heatons started off across the brook, their cart creaking under its load of food, farm implements, and the scholarly books Joseph had inherited from his grandfather but could not read. They didn’t get as far as the other bank of the brook. The axle broke on their cart in a hole almost as deep as the one the Andersons had foundered in.

Phoebe told the children the name of the brook should be Axle-Broke Brook and made a
rhyme of it. At once Tibby began tramping around the campground, chanting, “Axle-Broke Brook, Axle-Broke Brook, if you don’t b’lieve it, you gotta come look.”

Joseph Heaton snarled at Tibby and cast murderous looks at Phoebe, but there was no stopping Tibby, and soon all the children had picked up the chant, even Jeannie Morrissay, shivering with fever, wrapped in her mother’s cloak, until there wasn’t an adult who wasn’t longing to duck them all in Axle-Broke Brook. At one point Jem threw down his end of the board he and Tom were trying to slide under Heatons’ cart in the freezing brook and marched over to where Phoebe was keeping the children busy gathering firewood. Nose to nose, he glared into her eyes. “If you can’t shut them up with that Axle-Broke Brook, I ain’t gonna jest duck you in it, I’m gonna drown you!”

Phoebe jumped out of his way, but she smiled. A wary friendship had developed between the two of them. Jem had never said anything about Anne’s accusations or about Phoebe’s father, but it was hard to be not speaking, always angry, as they trudged through the deep woods, up and down the never-ending hills, camping every night in the freezing November air with the mournful sounds of wolves in the near distance, and the rustling of myriad small wild animals close by. So they had made a kind
of peace. And now, on the bank of Axel-Broke Brook, she threatened, “I will sing you into the song.” He only grunted, but she saw that one corner of his mouth turned up.

While the carts were being made ready to move again, Thomas and Margery Bother decided to go on ahead.

“I’m right sorry,” Thomas told everyone. “I know you got a use for more’n one stout younger feller” — he looked apologetically at Jem — “but what with the baby due to be born in a few weeks and winter comin’ on so fast, we’re powerful keen on gettin’ to Fort St. John’s.”

The Bothers left with Zeke in Tom’s arms, Margery in tears. Hers was not the only sad face in the gathering that watched them go. But there was little time for the sadness of goodbyes. By the time the damaged carts were repaired, Betsy Parker, Jed and Noah Robinson, and Sammy Colliver had all come down with measles.

The brook beside which the refugees were camped, and which never lost the name Axel-Broke Brook, flowed north between a high clay cliff and a low wooded hill. At the spot where the Abenaki trail crossed it, the brook curled sharply around a bend in the cliff, leaving a broad margin of flat gravelly bank on either side. There were big willows and poplars along the banks, but they offered little protection from
the November winds that whistled and moaned down the watery path, a wild echo to the fevered moans of the sick children. The little fires, clustered there between the hillside forest and the ice-covered brook, seemed like no security at all from the dangers of the wild.

The children were too ill to be moved, and even Joseph Heaton did not leave, although he said every day that he was going to and he complained loudly about the “dad-blasted Yorkers bringing their filthy diseases into Yankee lands.” But he actually took his axe from his cart and bent his back to the work of lopping branches from the brookside willows and the pines from the woods to make rough tree-bough shelters against the bone-chilling cold and the worst of the wind and snow. Nothing could keep out the mournful cries of the wolves, and the growling and the snarling of the wolverines and the wild cats, nor the glowing eyes at the edge of the camp on dark nights, which only the carefully tended fires kept at bay.

Lucy Yardley wrung her hands constantly and whined that she would “surely die in this God-forsaken wilderness.” Anne told her mother she was sure to have measles, though she had had them and recovered years before. While Jonah kept her fire going, it was Phoebe who sat up most nights cradling the children, fetching them water, and feeding them spoons full of the
precious soup she had made from corn meal, fish, and the bits of ham the others brought her.

“I’ll see you get help with the vittles and somethin’ better to cook with than that old tin bucket of Bertha Anderson’s.” Abigail Colliver was as good as her word. She cajoled Charity Yardley into giving up one of her three cooking pots, and Phoebe felt well provisioned. Cooking pot! With the cooking pot she felt she had a real place in the camp, and she looked after the children with the same practical determination with which she had once looked after her father, had sorted Gideon’s forest gleanings, had set out to complete Gideon’s mission. She took Jed and Noah from Aunt Rachael because, she argued, “they might as well be fretful here beside me with the others.”

Measles, even in well-ordered homes in towns and cities where there were licensed doctors, killed hundreds of people every year. Phoebe had survived them at the age of four when her mother and her infant brother had died. Now, out in the woods, without even a quack healer in their midst, the refugees were terrified. They gathered every morning and every evening to pray for the recovery of the sick children and that no more of them would succumb to the disease.

One evening, a day or so after the company had made their camp by the brook, Jem came by
Phoebe’s fire with a couple of rabbits over one shoulder. “Here, you, Jonah. You handy with a knife?”

Jonah looked up from feeding twigs to the fire. “I guess so.”

“Come along then. I could use a hand skinnin’ these. For your pains you can bring back a hunk or two for your cookin’ pot. Unless Phoebe needs you.” He glanced in her direction and raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t.” She was so hungry at the thought of stewed rabbit she couldn’t say another word.

Jem was back the next morning — he had been lucky with his snares again, and held a porcupine by its hind legs. “I got us a nice fat quill pig,” he said cheerfully. “If I burn off its quills ’n’ skin it, will you cut it up? Half’s for Master Yardley, here, and half for you and Mistress Colliver. Ma’s still got rabbit from last night, and old Heaton’s shot hisself a partridge.” So Phoebe, Jonah, and Tibby ate bits of boiled porcupine while the sick children drank the broth.

Aunt Rachael, Abigail Colliver, and Jem’s mother, Peggy Morrissay, took turns nursing the children through the worst nights. Jonah’s grandfather, who hadn’t had another weak spell since that first one, came often to tell the children stories of his boyhood sailing out of Boston on the big ships. Most evenings Jem would bring some of whatever his gun, his snare, or his fishing rod
had caught. Some evenings there was nothing, but he came anyway, bringing his sister Jeannie to sit by the fire, listen to old Aaron Yardley’s tales, and drink the tea he made for them from the frozen mint or cress he found under the snow by the water’s edge.

Gradually Betsy, Jeannie, the Robinson boys, and Sam Colliver recovered from the measles, and Tibby and Arnie Colliver and Johnny Anderson came down with them. Arnie was happy as long as he could lie with his head on Bartlett’s flank. Tibby was sicker than all the others and much more demanding. Night and day she clung to Phoebe like a burr to a blanket, crying out in terror whenever Phoebe left her for a moment. Time and again Phoebe found herself grateful that Jonah had had the measles years earlier, because he not only kept the fire going, he fetched water from the brook, stirred whatever was in the pot, and, with the help of his grandfather, kept the convalescing children entertained.

Jem began to refer to Phoebe’s campsite as her family. Sometimes he would sit by the fire and talk after the children had gone to sleep and Jonah’s grandfather had settled down by his own fire. One evening he told Phoebe about growing up on the farm south of Wood Creek in New York. “It wan’t like this, not all thick woods,” he said. “When Pa bought the farm, it
was cleared, all fifty acres. We had a white frame house ’n’ a big barn. By the time we got kicked off our place, we had fifty head of cattle, a good team of Clydes, ’n’ a whole passel of chickens ’n’ ducks ’n’ geese.” Jem’s tone was bitter. “When the war come on, Pa went off to fight in the Royal Yorkers. I was set to go off with him ’n’ then he said, ‘Jem, you can’t come. I can’t leave easy without I know you’re here lookin’ after things.’ And then we was kicked off the farm by those thievin’ Sons of Liberty. And they took everythin’ but a couple of cookin’ pots ’n’ a handful of clothes ’n’ vittles. They even took Pa’s fiddle!” Jem’s voice broke. “And how that burns! Oh, Jehosaphat, that burns! Pa’s fiddle. When I think of that louse-covered, ham-fisted, no-good Gabe Jenkins scrapin’ away at Pa’s fiddle—” He broke off. Even in the dim firelight, Phoebe could see the anger on his face. She put out her hand, but drew it back, thinking he wouldn’t want her sympathy. But he surprised her.