Thieving Forest (46 page)

“Two days? Or thereabouts.”

Boucherie left her water, she says, and a bowlful of porridge. Did Susanna see the little grave out front? She doesn’t know what happened, she found the dog one morning as stiff as the wood plank beneath him. A great misfortune. They need a dog. Everyone out here in this godforsaken country needs a dog, she says. And since Boucherie was setting out to buy more cornmeal for mash he thought he might as well get another pup if he could at the same time. That’s a good business, Penelope tells Susanna, making mash. But the rogue doesn’t want her to steal his money and run off, so he ties her up. Penelope speaks as though this is a most reasonable thing to do.

Susanna gives her a handful of pemmican to eat and some fresh water. “I saw a dead man near the river. I think he was shot by a gun. A native.”

“Kwase?” Penelope frowns. “That’s Boucherie’s partner. He went with him to fetch the dog. Did he have a broken nose?”

“I don’t know. The buzzards got at him.”

“A sour meal for them,” Penelope says with her old superior air.

“Hey-uh,” comes a deep voice behind them. “Who in Christ are you?”

Susanna’s heart jumps and she turns around quickly. A short, square-shaped man with a thick beard is standing in the open doorway. He is carrying a long black-and-white pup that looks too young to be taken from its mother and, over his shoulder, a sack of what Susanna takes to be cornmeal. He wears a rough woolen hat dyed red and a burlap scarf around his shoulders. But although he has never seen Susanna before, his face holds no look of surprise. The way he stands seems to project the conceit that he owns everything: the cabin, the air, even the thoughts of those around him. Susanna’s heart starts beating hard. She knows this kind of man.

“I’m Susanna Quiner,” she makes herself say calmly. “Penelope’s sister.” She holds out her hand but he doesn’t even glance at it. “You must be Mr. Boucherie.”

“My little sister,” Penelope tells him. For a moment she sounds almost normal. “We call her the princess.”

“What is that you’re wearing?” Boucherie asks Susanna. He speaks English with a strong French accent.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to your clothes?”

She forgot that she was wearing a hide dress. “I was a captive,” she tells him.

“Yes, we all were for a while,” Penelope says. “Although Susanna, you weren’t...you escaped?” Now she looks confused.

“Close your hole,” Boucherie tells her. He drops the sack of cornmeal on the floor and then the pup. The pup struggles to his feet and tumbles about looking for something—water, probably. He is panting.

“Ran off?” Boucherie asks. Susanna nods. “You came all this way without weapons?”

“A knife.”

“Let’s see it.”

She pulls Koman’s knife from its sheath and shows it to him. He brings it over to the uncovered window to look at it in the light, holding it at a strange angle. As he tilts his head Susanna realizes that there is something wrong with one of his eyes. When he turns back, she sees that a thin milky glaze covers the iris.

“
Bon
. Nice blade. But the handle isn’t to my liking. Too Indian,” he says.

Susanna puts out her hand but he doesn’t give it back.

“I’m not one that holds women should carry weapons,” he tells her.

Her face burns. She’s been tricked. She’s been tricked even though she knew from the start what kind of man he is. The kind who takes pleasure in showing another person up.

“I’ll need it for my return journey,” she tells him.

“Will you now.” Boucherie looks at her steadily. “Well. I could use a meal before you go. She’s not much of a cook, your sister. Nor much of anything else. A bad coin spent.” He wets his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. He is staring at Susanna. “But I’ll get my money back somehow, don’t you think?”

He pronounces “think” like “tink.” Susanna presses her palms against the sides of her hide dress. She tries not to panic. If she doesn’t return Seth and Meera will come looking for her. But in the meantime—what? Boucherie picks up the sack of cornmeal and takes it to a cupboard built into the far wall. After he throws it in he turns to face her again. Every movement feels aggressive. The way he is standing seems to highlight the strength of his arms. This is on purpose, she knows. He wants her to feel afraid. She can say this for him, at least: there is no pretense, his whole game has started up right away.

“Know anything about mash?” he asks.

“Not a thing.”

“That’s to change.”

The dog has found his way to Penelope, who lifts him onto her lap. “What will we name you, then?” she asks. She gets her own tin cup of water and lets the pup drink from it.

“Don’t spoil it, Docia.”

Docia?

Penelope says without looking away from the pup, “He calls all his wives Docia.”

“How many wives does he have?” Susanna asks.

Boucherie pulls off his red cap and runs his hand through his hair, which is as bushy as a squirrel’s tail. “Well let’s see. The first Docia, and then the one I replaced her with. And now that one there, your sister, that’s three. I like the name Docia. That’s why I picked the first one. Where did you get the knife?” Trying to catch her off guard. But Susanna is ready for this one, at least.

“I stole it. What happened to the other Docias?”

“Died in childbirth,” Penelope says evenly. “I’ll probably die too.” She doesn’t look up from the dog. She might have been saying, I like this one’s coloring.

“They didn’t have to die,” Boucherie says. “Squaws don’t die. They could be out in the middle of the forest when their pains start and an hour later,
bon
a healthy
fils
in their arms. The first Docia died out of spite. Second one, too. This one is probably too stupid to live.”

At that Penelope looks up and her eyes meet Susanna’s. For a moment, the old look of pride. But she says nothing. Susanna thinks of the bruises on her face. Restraint is a hard lesson for a Quiner.

“Where are the babies?” Susanna asks.

“One died being born,” Boucherie says. “The other I hated the sight of.”

Susanna’s throat goes dry as different scenarios involving the second baby fly across her mind, each one more gruesome than the last. Boucherie is watching her closely. He is like an animal before pouncing: assessing the situation, waiting for the right time to move. He breathes heavily through his mouth like a short, hairy wildcat with sideburns that become a beard and neck hair.

Susanna considers her words carefully. “I know you paid handsomely for my sister. It is my intention to reimburse you. And then I’d like to talk to you about what I can give you for her...” She rejects the word freedom as too incendiary. “What I can give you as payment so she can go home with me. We have a store. It is too much for me to take on by myself, but the two of us...Well, what do you say, what is your price?”

“Twenty-five federal dollars. That’s what I paid for her. You can give that to me now.”

She has that, at least, but not much more. Money she borrowed from Seth. She puts it on the little stool near the drying muskrat skin, not wanting to touch his hand.

Boucherie makes no move toward the money. “The rest I’ll take in work,” he says.

“How much work?”

“Couple of days, I’m thinking.”

“I was planning to leave today.”

“It’s too late for that,” he tells her. He grins. “You’re safer here with me.”

Trouble comes to those who bring it upon themselves, her mother used to say, and here is a man who carries that burden joyfully, hoping to bring it down at every turn. Susanna’s mouth feels gummy and she tries to swallow the stickiness away. He intends to keep them both.

“That’s settled,” he says, wiping his hands up and down his trousers. “Now. You make up a fire and cook my supper and clean up some. In the morning we’ll see—what is it you
yanquis
say?—we’ll see where we stand.”

Every instinct tells her that he will let neither one of them go, not ever, not until they both die in childbirth or he gets rid of them himself one particularly unlucky day. Koman’s knife is stuck in his waistband. The question is: will he kill her right now or make sport first? She is glad that she had the presence of mind not to mention Seth or Meera. But when will they start to worry? How many days can she last?

“What will we call you, eh? How about
la petite Docia
,” he suggests, and laughs. “Petite Docia. That I like.”

“Miss Quiner will do.”

“Go get that kindling Petite Docia, and then scrape something together for my supper.”

She says, “I won’t answer to Docia. I’m not your wife.”

Boucherie smiles with true pleasure. “
Bon
. I was hoping you’d be like your sister.”

The sudden silence in the room feels like a well with no bottom. Susanna doesn’t look at Penelope, only Boucherie. His expression says: I will enjoy winning this game. She thinks about Tako’s slingshot in her pouch. But she doesn’t have ammunition. From the corner of her eye she sees a few loose stones near the hearth and she takes a step in that direction just as Boucherie comes at her, holding Koman’s knife out like a spear.

She turns on her heel and pushes him toward the stone fireplace, where his head connects with a crack. Surprised, he makes a deep-throated noise. Susanna runs to put the table between them. Behind her is the cupboard with the cornmeal. She pulls the cornmeal out but he comes at her quicker than she thought, so when she heaves the sack at him it connects too closely without the weight she’d intended. The meal scatters everywhere.

“
Merde!
You bitch!” He pronounces it like the tree, beech, a soft landing like a snarl. The table is between them and they circle around it. His head is bleeding. The loose hearthstones are on the floor near Penelope, and Susanna tries to make her way over to them but Boucherie, as if reading her mind—he owns her, he owns her thoughts—gets there first. But instead of grabbing a stone as she expected, he turns toward Penelope and thrusts Koman’s knife at her belly.

Susanna shouts, “Penelope!”

Penelope turns but the blade still catches her in the side. Boucherie pulls it out with a grunt. He straightens up and makes no more moves toward Susanna. Indeed, he faces her with his mouth twitching. His version of laughter.

“
There
is your sister,” he says.

The blood from his head wound is running down the side of his face. He wipes his temple with the back of his hand.

“Now go make the fire.”

Penelope puts her hands on her belly. When she lifts them up her palms are red with blood. Wildly Susanna casts her eye about for something to use to stanch the wound, a rag or shawl, but all she can see are hard objects. She feels for her pouch and pulls it from her waistband. With a quick motion she empties all the contents onto the floor: the food, the remaining money, Tako’s slingshot. Then she pushes the pouch against Penelope’s wound. The cut is neither long nor deep, but there is a lot of blood. Meanwhile coins from the pouch begin rolling in every direction, and Boucherie looks around after them. But something else has fallen, too: her mother’s nail scissors. When Boucherie turns to follow a rolling coin, Susanna grabs the scissors and tucks them up into her sleeve.

She says to Penelope, “Keep pressing this against you,” and she pulls her sister’s hands over the pouch. She then turns to Boucherie, who is stuffing coins into his pockets. “Do you have anything I can make into a bandage for Penelope?” The dog is curled up against the wall near the door, shaking.

“Docia,” Boucherie corrects her.

Susanna swallows. “Docia. I need to bandage her wound.”

“First the fire,” Boucherie says. “Then my supper. Then you can look at her cut.” He makes a wave with his hand, mock gentlemanly, as he steps away from the doorway. “You’ll find kindling in a stack outside. If there’s none, get you more from the woods.”

“But she could bleed to death!”

Boucherie shrugs. “
Bon
. I have a new Docia now anyway.”

She looks at Penelope. Her hands are red with blood. Is she in shock? Susanna prays that she will at least keep her hands pressed against her wound so she won’t bleed to death before Susanna has a chance to wrap it. But Boucherie will delay her endlessly in this game of mastery, she understands this too well. Making the fire, cooking, cleaning up, and then...he’s made it clear that he thinks of her as his new wife. He would take her in front of Penelope and make it as gruesome as he could. Even now he is watching her with wet lips.

“I can’t help you,” Penelope says sadly.

“I know,” Susanna tells her.

Boucherie is still eyeing her in his animal way, and he returns Koman’s knife to his belt without looking down. Is he planning to grab her as she passes? Susanna moves toward the door warily, hoping she can keep out of his reach, but just as she’s about to pass him Penelope scrapes her stool back as if to stand up and Boucherie’s eyes flick toward the sound. In that moment Susanna pulls the nail scissors from her sleeve and plunges them into his good eye. She is surprised to feel the surface resistance, and surprised too at the vehemence and anger she feels the moment the blade touches his body, as if her emotions have been triggered by the act of her revenge and not the other way around.

Boucherie makes a guttural noise and puts his hand to his face. It takes only a second to pull Koman’s knife off his waistband, another second to step away as he blindly swings his arms out at her. Then she pushes him as hard as she can across the room. When her heart starts up again—it has stopped for a minute at least—she looks at Penelope, who is sitting very still but with her hands, thank God, still pressing the pouch against her wound. Boucherie’s burlap scarf has fallen to the floor and Susanna grabs it and wraps it around Penelope’s middle clumsily, still shaking. Her mouth is too dry to speak. But Penelope raises herself without direction, leaning hard against Susanna, and as Susanna takes her arm to help her it seems for a moment as though she is the older sister and Penelope is the younger one who needs her. She puts her other arm around Penelope’s waist and with their inside feet first they step out, a mirror image, toward the door.