The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel (26 page)

I am well, & John is well. We had a rough time crossing & met lots of men and Indians. I shot a turkey by myself & John cooked it. They are not as many black folk here, one I met was already free, which is how I’ll be soon. I get four dollars a week, just for carrying bags & now splitting logs for the house. It is almost done, just needs a roof. One room for John and one for me & we cook outside. There are other boys here same age & we swim tho’ the water is twice as cold. I was surprised to see the mountains, but now they are regular to me. When I get free, I will build a house next to John & plant corn. He don’t know if it grows here, but I said it would. We get plenty of rain. I know you was mad when I left, but now I figure you will be proud. You should see my arms, they are much bigger. You would like it here. Give a kiss to the baby & one for you. Your son always, Davy
.

On the back are two lines from John. He is well and encloses some money to give to Moll toward her freedom. He promises to write again. Asa looks at the date: March 3. It has taken more than a month for this to reach them. The money, of course, is gone, taken by some post boy on the road. At least they are healthy, and Moll will be pleased to hear from her son. What an adventurous boy. There is certainly something easier about sons.

It is past noon, but Asa is still full from his breakfast. The rain has slackened. He puts on a broad hat and leather boots and tucks the letter into his coat, along with a ten-dollar note from his own money box. He is nervous about approaching the quarters alone, so he makes first for Cogdell’s house, where he is welcomed by a dark woman in a white lace apron. He asks to see Moll, and she waits, as though he is about to say something else. He doesn’t, so she says, “I’ll get the master.”

Cogdell is grim. He stands in the doorway rather than inviting Asa inside. “She’s not here,” he says.

“How’s that?”

“Didn’t show up in the fields this morning. Husband hadn’t seen her. I was about to send over a note. She’s yours, of course, but since I’ve been hiring her out for the past few years, figured I’d send my own men after her.”

Asa concentrates. He had a conversation with her just yesterday, or maybe the day before, and the girl asked for her freedom. Now he has a letter for her, with a little money, that she’ll be happy to receive. Where is she? Certainly nowhere that warrants men with guns and dogs. He doesn’t remember her running away.

“No, no,” he says, “that’s all right.” He reaches out for Cogdell’s arm as a gesture of authority, but the tremor in his hand makes it seem instead like he is leaning on his neighbor. “I sent her on an errand. Asked her to get some things from New Bern.”

Cogdell lowers his arms, forcing Asa to release his hand.

“John left in the fall, of course,” Asa says, “and it’s been hard without the help. Just a few things I couldn’t get here. Some tools. She said I ought to ask you first, and I forgot. My own memory off to sea.”

“You sent her to New Bern.”

“New blades for the pine hacks. They do them better than the smithy here. No need to look for her.”

“Did you send her on a horse?”

Asa is reaching the limits of his imagination. Would he have sent her on a horse? He nods slowly. The lies are building with surprising speed, and he cannot find their origin. “She might stay over with a cousin. I gave her a pass for two days.”

“You did.”

Asa puts his hand on the pocket where the letter is. “Just came by to make sure she got off all right. I’ll send her over when she returns.”

Cogdell digs his fingers through a rough blond beard. He is a broad man, and younger than Asa. “She’ll be wet through,” he says.

Asa shifts his feet, leaving damp patches on his neighbor’s porch. He can no longer meet the man’s eye. “Should’ve told you sooner. It’s just my memory. No need to send anyone. My responsibility.”

He hurries home.

He would not free her, and now she’s stolen herself and will be caught and flayed or killed. Another child he abandoned. But this is not fair to himself; she was never his child, and he only obeyed his conscience. His urge to save her now is merely compassion for the guilty. If she had given some hint of her desperation, he could have counseled her. In his cold, empty house, Asa can think of a dozen wise phrases. He understands why holiness comes out of monasteries.

He would have told her there was grace in resignation. That happiness hard-earned was happiness twice over. That mortals have no eye for fate. That we are little chess pieces held by a glorious Hand. She would have shaken her head and wept and he would have put an arm around her and slowly they would have resigned themselves together. And now he can only wonder where she is. Vain to wonder. She is not his child. But still he reaches; still he is certain of his own responsibility.

All he can do is wait. He moves from room to room without sitting. He regrets now having chased the martin out. There are no longer any corners to hide in. He avoids the mirror in the dining room, Helen’s miniature on the mantel, the windows that reflect back the ocean. He doesn’t want to face himself. He takes the letter out of his coat and carries it to the fire. Crumples it, twists it, but can’t bring himself to burn it. One day he will hear of her capture—or he will hear again from John, describing how she emerged from the mountains like a mother bear sniffing out her son.

He misses supper too, and falls asleep in a slouch on one of the parlor’s armchairs.

It is half a year now & no word from you, but John says mail often goes lost. I think maybe you’re still sore at me for leaving, but then I think no, you’re my mother & would write me a letter no matter. I’m writing my address on this extra large so you can copy it out clear when you reply. There’s a school here now, just started this fall, & I go some days with the white boys and learn numbers. Also longer words that you would like. Rudimentary. Deliverance. Unconscionable, which I can never spell right so I had to look it up just then. I want to be a storekeeper, so I study ciphering & John is teaching me how to keep books. There’s a man here from New York, & he talks very highly of it, so that is where I will go. I’m more than halfway to freedom, since I’ve gotten some extra money doing jobs for the parson here, like teaching Sunday school to the smallest children. I knew you’d laugh at that. What do I know about Jesus? Well, I can read now, so I know a whole lot. They’re good stories, so I just tell them in my own words, sometimes adding a twist or two. Such as I had old Jonah cut up that whale from the inside out instead of waiting for God to save him. I acted it out, flailing my hands around in the little church. All the children were so excited they sucked their thumbs. It made a much better story. By Christmas I expect I’ll be free. John said he’d give me one of the mules, which are older than we thought, so it may be dead by then, but if not I’ll ride up to New York. Would you like to come? I wouldn’t mind, just tell me, I can come & get you, & anyone else who’d like to go, tho’ they would have to fit on Cinder’s back. I’ll have a store & sell everything you can think of and become a rich man very soon. They’ll put my name on buildings, DAVY!

When he’s awakened by the morning sun and the smell of drying grass, Asa is ravenous. He finishes off the bread, mostly stale now, with a slather of molasses. He’s still hungry, and thinks of the fishing pole in the shed that Helen used a few times as a girl. He will take the pole and the oars—he’ll sand them another day—down to the boat and catch himself a meal. He needs to redeem himself.

The rain has called out the bluets, which bloom in starlike patches on the sloping lawn. Birds hover and dip down for worms, but Asa cannot tell from a distance if one of them is his martin. By the shore, the boat’s rope around the willow has come undone; the dinghy bobs several yards out in the water, the knot in the rope having been caught in the reeds. If a little rain can dislodge such a stern knot, he should drag the boat onshore when not in use. He steps gingerly onto the beaten-down reeds and pulls the rope in, bringing the boat within reach. Once he has settled himself and his pole and his oars, he pushes out again. He heads west down the channel to town; he is still nervous about being carried away in a tide and having no one to call for. He reaches down to scoop out some of yesterday’s rain with his hands. In the puddle floats a scrap of cloth, a rough white linen. Asa doesn’t own any material so coarse, except for some old blankets Helen used to lay out in the chickens’ coop. It must have blown in on the storm, a small piece of someone else’s story. He is sentimental, so he squeezes the water from the scrap and ties it around his fishing pole. For luck.

It is Wednesday, and Front Street is busy with women and their baskets. Most of the fishermen are still out at their work, and Asa ties up along the dock without being observed. He stops first at the store, which looks like a strange mirror of something familiar. All the bones of the place are there: the shelves, the columns, the broad counter. But where the candies were now sit the skeins of yarn, and the flour has been moved to the back. Several new muskets hang behind the counter. Where are the candies now? He used to buy them for Tab. Asa asks the proprietor, a man who looks nothing like John, for a pouch of minnows for bait.

He should stop by the church. It’s been several weeks since his last visit, even though Dr. Halling came again to preach in March. It had been raining, and Asa was reluctant to see him. The door is unlocked, and Asa walks to the front pew and sits. The light coming through the windows is almost blue. He doesn’t know who to pray for. Those whom he would call beloved are now beyond his reach. He closes his eyes and tries to think of God. “Please,” he says. He has arrived at the dregs of his life, and he is hoping to be guided out with grace.

In the cemetery, bright green runners of grass have started stretching across the dirt of his granddaughter’s grave. A stone marker is planted at its head, but nothing is written on it. He should pay the mason to carve something, but this was John’s duty. At first, Asa thought there was a chance he’d return, that the Southwest Territory would be too cold or landlocked for him. But there is nothing left for him here.

Except look at this sweet grave. Asa places his hand on the warm ground. Think of what lies beneath this stone. What girl is curled in a barrel, her hair the color of the rum she floats in. She is still here, her fevered body finally cooled. And her mother, beneath the oak, laid out in a white gown ten years ago. Asa stands. On the other side of the church, close to the chancel wall, his own wife sleeps. A garden of women. He built Long Ridge for them, and they never came to claim it.

Moll too has left something for her son. Even if she is captured halfway to New Bern, she leaves an imprint of action that the boy will one day learn of. All Asa has done is accumulate. He has waited for his visions to bear fruit, and in the waiting, generations of the young and lively have sailed into the world with blind trust. Who is he to bestow freedom?

He will talk to Cogdell about selling the rest of the acres. They are worthless to him. A man without an heir is an absence—an almost-man. Better to submit wholly now to what is left.

The fishing rod is still in his boat when he returns to the harbor, the tie of coarse linen fluttering. He rows into the sound, his stomach more accustomed to the roll of the waves. The water is gray and blue and darkens as its bottom sinks away. He is out of the narrow creek, has slipped through the sandbars into the deeper water. Bogue Island and Shackleford Banks rise up on either side—the last solid ground before the ocean. This is the farthest he’s ever been from land. In the hollow between the great shoals, he pulls his oars in. His daughter and his granddaughter had seen this view and were not afraid. He has to believe they were not afraid.

He opens the bag of minnows. Some are already dead; others still thrash in the damp sacking. He reaches for his pole and discovers he didn’t bring a hook for his line. He is relieved. He takes a few of the minnows in his hand and sprinkles them on the water. He waits, and soon a larger fish rises to circle beneath them. The sun is beginning to drift toward the horizon. Its light cuts from the west and catches the lip of the waves and the white fish bellies. Mackerel and sheepshead gather, and the minnows disappear. When the feast is over, the fish slide away, leaving the dark water blank again. Asa could keep rowing, past the banks into the bottomless ocean, could grieve without witnesses, could surrender his body to the unseen. But he is hungry, and is sorry now not to have caught a fish. He turns the boat again toward shore. The sea will be here in the morning.

Parts of this novel are based on actual historical events, and several characters have borrowed the names of real people. These facts have been gently muddled to suit the narrative’s needs. For those interested in learning more about the history of this area, Charles L. Paul’s thesis “Colonial Beaufort: The History of a North Carolina Town” (1965) is an excellent place to start.

This book is a product of the Bennington Writing Seminars, where I finally grew into myself. My classmates, my workshop mates, my dance partners—this book is theirs.

I would like to acknowledge that David Gates, Amy Hempel, and Jill McCorkle are among the most generous of human beings, and that Bret Anthony Johnston and Paul Yoon are family to me, and beloved. I also owe a debt to my biological family. I have yet to deserve them.

I want to thank Bill Clegg for being a classic superhero and Terry Karten for being my ideal shepherd. I am endlessly grateful to be part of this business of imagination.

KATY SIMPSON SMITH
was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She attended Mount Holyoke College and received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has been working as an adjunct professor at Tulane University and has published a study of early-American motherhood,
We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750–1835
. She lives in New Orleans.