The Trees (20 page)

“Well, I didn’t look for seein’ that one here today.” Mrs. Covenhoven spoke out suddenly.

Sayward sat up and her eyes beaded a little as she caught sight of Jake Tench crossing the grove with Portius Wheeler. It perked her up to see how close he looked like he had in her dream. When last she saw him he was a dandy and no mistake in a ruffled shirt and his young face shaved smooth as a Quaker’s. Now he wore a tangled beard and woodsy britches and his roram hat looked wooly as the coonskin cap with three brass rings she saw in her dream. Here, she told herself, might be a body to write her letter. Could anybody sharpen up a quill and make it scratch down sightly dabs and curleycues, it should be a Bay State lawyer.

By this time the woods were winking with pan flashes and echoing with small thunder. Those that had fowling pieces were shooting them off with as heavy charges as they durst. Powder smoke floated through the woods like a black fog. This was Independence Day for sure. Old Man Steffy marched
around playing “Who’s Afeared?” on his fife like they played it at Bunker’s Hill, and those that had seen soldier service stood up plenty straight, sniffing the black powder like war horses. It spited Sayward that Genny wasn’t here when they joined in singing. At places where the others held back, Genny would have sailed on clear and true as a redbird.

Buckman Tull and George Roebuck talked long and mighty earnest to the Bay State lawyer. Then Buckman quieted and addressed the crowd.

“We’re lucky to have a speaker this Independence Day. I don’t know as I need make you acquainted with him, but I’ll call his name. It’s Portius Wheeler, Esquire, and he hails from Massachusetts State, the same as my sister and me.”

He and George Roebuck helped Portius up on the butt of a big log, and Jake Tench grinned from ear to ear as he stood handy by to catch him if he swayed too far and fell off. But once the Bay State lawyer was up, he stood steady as a brown forest hawk watching from some high chestnut stub. Only a burning in those gray-green eyes showed the brandy. Across the clearing Sayward saw the gaze of some Indian hangers-on fixed on him like on a chief’s face.

“Patriots! Friends of the republic!” he began in a voice astonishingly deeper and stronger than his size. “I see a few soldiers present. I judge it
only fair to warn them —” here his eye flashed around — “that the subject of my oration will be, Hail to Civil Law, and Death and Damnation to Military Domination.”

Buckman Tull flushed up and some of the older soldiers scruched around on their logs or from one foot to the other. But Sayward felt a little tremor run through her. Oh, he was “afeard” of nothing! There he stood daring and double-daring most all the men in the grove, for the biggest part of them had seen army service one way or another and were prouder of it than a savage of his scalp stick.

“Some of the military say,” Portius thundered, “let’s take Canada by arms. God forbid! If our American eagle wants to scream, let it scream over the fields, forests and workshops of its own white and red peoples for civil equality and justice!”

Oh, he could fetch out things that made the hair tingle at the back of your neck. Before he got half way through, some were firing off their rifles and fowling pieces already to show that they were with him, and Jake Tench had stopped grinning and was yelling loud as anybody.

Never had Sayward the chance to get a long look at Portius Wheeler up to now, and today she looked her fill. Of all the humans in these woods he was the strangest. What was he doing away back here where it had no call for lawyering? He didn’t tramp the woods to hunt or fish. He didn’t give a lick to
trade. All he asked, they said, was to be left by himself in his cabin of buckeye logs that were easiest for a greenhorn to cut to length, out near the Fallen Timbers.

Once in a new moon, the bound boy told, he used to come down to George Roebuck’s to ask for a letter that had never come. He didn’t come any more, and what was to be in that letter and whom it was to come from, not even George Roebuck knew. Some thought the Solitary looked for money and some for pardon of a crime done back in the Bay State that preyed on his mind like the killing of a brother. But most believed that if that letter ever dropped out of the furry cap of some Ohio settlement runner, it would come in a woman’s “handwrite.” And this was Sayward’s notion.

Today as she looked over his tangled young beard and woodsy britches and the bitter look in his eye, she thought that whoever that Bay State woman was and whatever she might be like, with her fine rings, her store scents and whalebone stays, it was time she sat down and wrote Portius Wheeler his letter. And she better do it soon.

What he said in the rest of his speech she didn’t recollect for thinking of him and her letter. But she minded his toast. Speechmaking done, they had all hunted logs for their dinner. The women said the men hadn’t done so bad with the meat. Anyhow
they had plenty for all, venison, bear flesh, turkey and pigeons. Jake Tench went around with a jug for toast drinking. Sayward felt glad he didn’t call on one of them. A Luckett would have hemmed and hawed and come out with some foolishment.

But you could tell George Roebuck had done this before.

“Long corns and short toes to the enemies of the republic!” he called out, and the men whooped and whistled.

Buckman Tull gave the shortest.

“The flag!” he said. Most every body yelled the hardest for that, especially the young ones, and Billy Harbison pulled on the rope till Old Glory and its fifteen stars waved fit to kill.

But Portius Wheeler gave the best, Sayward thought. He held up his wooden bowl and she reckoned how he looked like Captain Loudon who lived in the brick mansion house between her granmam’s and Lancaster town.

“Northwest Territory!” he spoke, quiet as could be. “May we love her as a wife, but our home state as a mother!”

Most of the grownup faces went bleak at that, and plenty eyes watered as if here in these strange dark woods they could see for a minute the sunlight of those faraway places where they had been born.

It was the middle of the afternoon before Genny came. Sayward made them out first on the path, Louie ahead and Genny humble on behind as a woman should. Sayward had been getting her dander up against Louie, but now she was so glad to see Genny she didn’t hold it against him any more. She watched her lovingly as she came over where the married women sat.

Genny gave her oldest sister shy greetings with her eyes.

“You got here ahead a me,” was all she said and sat on the log beside her and let herself be stared at by two little girls going by who stopped stock still like she was some white flower of the woods to look at.

“You missed a good dinner, Ginny,” Mrs. Covenhoven said.

“I ain’t a hungry,” Genny murmured. “The days go so fast out’ar, Louie and me plumb forgot what day it was till noontime.”

Oh, Genny would never complain it was Louie who wouldn’t fetch her in, either here or to Sayward’s cabin. No, when Wyitt went by out there with the cows she would always call after him to tell Sayward they’d be in one of these here days. And never would she come. Sayward would go out, but if Louie wasn’t home, as happened mostly, he claimed she came to carry tales behind his back. Once when Wyitt stopped off after such a time,
Genny tried to hide black and blue marks under her shortgown.

What all Louie had against her, Sayward wasn’t certain. But it was plenty. He couldn’t abide her, that she knew. And it didn’t help any that he had to keep his woman’s sister and family in meat. He wouldn’t fetch it in the cabin any more but hung it on a dogberry back where none could see him when he came. They’d find it when one would go behind the cabin to see. Bad as she needed the meat sometimes, Sayward felt like taking it out and throwing it back in his face. But that would make it all the harder for Genny.

The sisters didn’t talk much today. It felt good just to sit side by each. After a fitting time, Sayward told her the news from Worth. Genny didn’t say anything. Her eyes were watching them clean off rotten logs for a dance ground. Her cowhide shoes tapped to the fast time of Old Man Steffy’s fife and Billy Harbison’s fiddle.

Jake Tench came up and asked Sayward to jig one off with him.

“Give the rest a chancet, Jake,” she said.

What she wanted was some body to ask Genny. Heavens to Betsy, it was nothing out of the way for a man to jig or shuffle out in front of everybody with some other man’s woman. That gaunt woman from Kentucky gave her babe to one of her young ones to hold and swung off with old Jude MacWhirter
till her shortgown blew out like hogshead hoops and her black eyes glowed deep in her hollow sockets. Truth to tell, it had plenty who would like to ask Genny but they held back on account of Louie. Louie could fly up and get ugly over no reason at all. The bound boy stood around with his eyes bleeding on Genny and yet, even with Jake to back him, he didn’t want bad feelings with Louie Scurrah.

Louie didn’t take Genny out either. The only one he reeled with was Achsa.

“You don’t many times see folks so brother-and-sister-like,” Idy Tull had to go and say sweet as sap that has stood too long and started to work.

Nobody said anything to that, for they hadn’t need to. Achsa hopped around with her sister’s man as gaudy as a poppinjay in her blue shortgown. So that, Sayward thought, was why she had plagued for a kettle of burr oak dye. Sayward had told her red would look better on a dark-complected body like her. But Achsa had said, if Genny could wear blue, she could, too, so she could. Yes, any color would do for Achsa so long as it was blue, like Genny was married in.

After while, when Sayward looked around, her eyes couldn’t light on Achsa or Louie, either one. Wherever they went, they stayed a long time. Achsa came back to the grove first from one side of the bush and Louie some time after from the
other. Oh, Sayward’s face kept tolerable calm but the set of her cheek bones warned Idy Tull she better make no more cracks now.

The day was at its short end when the frolic broke up. Those that had a long ways to go lit shellbark or candlewood at the coal pit so they wouldn’t have to make fire for light on the way home. Genny caught sight of Louie waiting. He wouldn’t come up where Sayward was but stood off by himself with a touchy face.

Genny slipped down off her log.

“Well, I expect me and Louie’ll have to skedaddle for home.” Her eyes met Sayward’s for a moment.

“When are you a comin’ in?” Sayward asked for something pleasant to say.

“Oh, Louie’ll fetch me in some time I got the time. Why don’t you come out? It’s moughty nice out’ar. I sure like my cabin.”

Achsa stood by hard as blacksmith nails, not saying anything. Wyitt had his shocked head down gravely. His eyes peered up like he was staring away out through the dark woods where his married sister had to go.

“Look fur me out’ar tomorry — if the cows come thataway!”

Genny flashed back a radiant face.

“Goodby to you!” she called.

Sayward said no word to Achsa on the way home.
When they got to the cabin the fire was out. Down under the ashes and all. The hearth felt stone cold.

“I won’t make a fire till mornin’,” she told them shortly. “You kin go to bed in the dark.”

To herself she said she would like to take Achsa out and beat some sense in her. But that would do little good all around. No, it would only dare Achsa and double-dare Louie. Some you could talk to. Achsa would close up her face like a squaw. Even Worth couldn’t get anything out of her then. Worth could be glad he was out in the French Settlements, not knowing anything about this.

Come to think on it, she guessed she wouldn’t write him a letter after all. Let him go on thinking Genny was still single and things were all right in here. They didn’t need anything, did they? No, they could make out. When she lay down in her lone bed she recollected her dream. Yes, that was all over with. She would have no excuse for striking up acquaintance with Portius Wheeler now. Well, it just went to show. She never had much for this telling fortunes anyhow.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE EVER HUNTER

W
YITT
wished he had him a brother. He had one once, with the fairest hair they ever saw, but it never drew breath. Sayward slapped its little naked backside till her young hand stung, but this babe wouldn’t squall or suck in any of the world of air just waiting around for living things to breathe on it.

That brother would come in handy now. He could tramp along through the woods listening for cowbells or help devil Tull’s hogs when they ran across them wild as bear rooting up mast on the hills or anise root in the bottoms. He’d be company going out before daylight to the snares and fish baskets. At night on the loft they could lay on their backs together and make out what far parts they’d run off to. A brother stuck closer
than a cockle burr. If some wild beast or human picked on one, he’d have to fight them both.

But the only brothers he had living now wore shortgowns. When his sisters were little he didn’t know it had much difference betwixt a boy and girl except to look at. Achsa and Genny could race him, wrestle him, fight him any day. But once they got around twelve or thirteen, something came over them. They had to run the haw comb through their hair or wash their feet or oil up their feathers like gabby birds. They didn’t even look at you the same any more. No, they knew they were girls now and you were a boy, and that’s all there was to it.