I find you at Maria’s house, in council with her father and the elders of the village. Leon and Jud and all the able men are there.
I find Maria in the woods, huddled on a tree stump.
She sees me.
Her enchanting eyes are red and fat with crying.
I don’t understand the desire I feel to do something for her. I pluck the reddest apple I can find off a nearby tree and place it upon her lap, in the cave of skirt that falls between her knees.
As I walk away I hear her pearly teeth bite into it.
XLIV.
Preacher Frye stands on the stoop of the village church, telling an audience of women to believe in God’s deliverance. All sorts of miracles are possible. The river could freeze. A malady could overtake them all. Fiery darts from heaven could rain down upon the ships. We should pray. The women, usually rapt at the sound of Preacher Frye’s voice, slip away one by one, until only I stand to listen in the middle of the dusty street.
The preacher fills his lungs and then sees me. He empties them again, turns, and disappears inside.
XLV.
I pass your silent house. You’re still in council with the men. I’m carrying my pail of grapes, so I push your door open and tiptoe inside. It’s as neat as if you had a goodwife already. So yellow, the beams you’ve split to build anew on a burnt foundation. The scents of sweet pine and old smoke mingle. My little surprise for you has been spoiled by this evil news. Nevertheless, I reach for a pan hanging from a rafter and scoop handfuls of grapes from my pail into it. My fingers are purple with crushed grape skins.
Something rubs against my ankles. I smile to see Jip wagging his docked tail for my benefit, and bend to scratch behind his ears.
Then I hear a footstep, and freeze. You come around the post of your bedroom door and see me.
You jump, and yelp, and drop the boots you carried.
A squeak of terror escapes my throat. I set your pan on the shelf and turn to flee.
You’re naked. Half naked. You wear only trousers, with the brace straps dangling over your shoulders.
You catch me by the hand at your doorway.
“Wait,” you say, then you start to laugh. You hand me my abandoned pail. “Thanks for the grapes. I’ll eat them before I leave.” Your laugh ends when you remember why you’re leaving, heading off to battle.
If I don’t run now, you’ll see my eyes fill with mortified tears. Your bare body is inches away from my face. I haven’t seen your skin like this since you were a boy swimming in the stream. Nor will I again.
Here you are, and you don’t mind me here. As though Maria Johnson were never born, and I, never taken. As though there’ll be no war tonight.
I can’t stay, and I don’t know how to leave.
You reach your arm high to pull your musket from its shelf, and with it, a wooden box. Letters are stamped in black paint on the side. I am leaving, leaving now, but the box makes me pause. I frown at the letters.
You notice me studying the box, and wonder at it.
It’s far past time for me to leave, so at last, with all my strength, I do it.
XLVI.
P. O. Some other letters. R. The box. The back of the box. I remember that box, and many more like it. Stacked in heaps, facing the wall of my cell, so I never saw the letters on them.
P , O, something, and I think the next letter was a D. I hadn’t seen it clearly.
P, O, something, D, something, R.
He brought them in, early one morning, before I awoke, and stacked them around me like prison bars. “Don’t touch these,” he said. “And don’t light any candles if you want to see tomorrow.”
I obeyed him, even though tomorrow held nothing to interest me.
P, O, D, R.
Candles.
Powder.
XLVII.
The word has come. The men will march to Roswell Landing, four miles east, at river’s edge. There they’ll wait for fighters who’ve been summoned by the riders—boys with messages sewn inside their shirts. At Roswell Landing, they’ll hold invaders back for as long as rocks and guns will last.
The smithy forge roars through the night as Horace Bron melts every scrap of metal he can find into musket balls. Women bring pans, and men bring nails and tools and horseshoes.
Women must gather the children in and march them through the night to Hunters Ferry, eight miles south and west, where it’s hoped homelanders will not go—at least, not until spring breaks through winter snow.
Darrel will travel with the men, and Mother, she’ll stay behind to tend to the wounded. My mother is a brave woman. It may be that homelanders will reach her before any wounded villagers do. She is neither young nor old, and she is strong. If she would smile, she would still be handsome. I fear for her.
I am forgotten, free to do as I please.
No one eats. No one sleeps. You bring Jip to our house and tie him to a tree. He whimpers half the night, until I go outside and let him curl up in my lap.
Morning comes. I milk the cow. Her bag is full and aching, swaying. She’s been forgotten, too. War can do that.
I skim the cream, then find the last autumn blueberries in the woods and fill a bowl for Darrel. Sugar, too. Why save it now?
I run to find him. He’s in town, waiting for the army, as they’ve taken to calling it.
I tap his shoulder. He jumps and spins, hands braced to fight. But it’s me. He slumps, shaken. I offer him the bowl.
He looks at me. He covers his eyes with his hand. I see his lips are trembling.
Underneath new ginger whiskers, I see a soft face I once washed and kissed.
I want to say, don’t go, little brother. Stay. Flee. You can play soldier another day.
He drinks the cream and berries, smacks his lips, and kisses mine. I thump his back, and take the bowl, and send him off to battle.
XLVIII.
You are there among the would-be soldiers, organizing them in ranks. Your gun is slung over your shoulders, your sacks of powder at your hip. You move the men and guns around— how do you know how to do this? Your jaw is set with confidence but I see the concern in your eyes. I memorize your shape, your stance, your walk, your nod, the way your eyebrows rise and fall to animate your speech.
You are our leader now, and Roswell Station worships you. Propriety abandoned, women touch you, wishing you Godspeed and blessings as you lead their men to war. Might I dare to touch you, too? My heart pounds inside my chest. Only a few short steps and a tug on your sleeve. No one could censure me for that today.
But you whistle on your fingers, and the ranks form into rows. The women call good-byes, and you lead the men away. Women sob aloud, embrace each other, and turn back toward their homes. I run away, fleeing down the street, so my tears can fall in privacy.
XLIX.
Darrel once read to Mother the tale of a girl in France who heard angel voices telling her to save her people from the English. She dressed as a man and spoke with fire and eloquence. She raised an army and defeated the invaders, all for love of her motherland. For her courage and her passion, she was later burned to death, called a witch and heretic.Do I love you less than she loved soil?
I have no words to save you.
L.
This day they’ll come. This day you’ll die.
This day we wait in agony.
Mother makes me gather wood all morning. Fires, fires
for washing, steeping herbs for bleeding. Remedies. All the wood in all this forest will not stew from all its herbs the power to give a bleeding heart its beat back.
But we must be doing.
I forage for wood, glad to be moving. Rotting chunks of falling logs, damp with mold and thick with beetles. Won’t burn well but it’s all I find. Darrel has the hatchet.
The town is quiet. Quiet is all we have to hold on to.
Women gone, and children, and the aged who could travel. The rest wait at Horace Bron’s smithy, a stronghold. Eunice Robinson went into the wood
s with her sisters and her cousins. Maria stayed. She is brave, or reckless, too.
My wishes stretch across four miles to where you sit—up in a tree? behind a stone? within a bush?—and watch long hours slide by, slapping mosquitoes, waiting, desperate for riders, dreading sails around the bend.
LI.
Goody Pruett finds me gathering sticks near the track. Her dried-apple face is lined with years of weather. Her spine curves like a shepherd’s staff. Not even the homelanders frighten her. Nothing frightens Goody Pruett. Not even my missing tongue.
“Why’re you still here?” she asks. “Why hain’t you gone on with those wagons? Goody Pruett’s old, but you got your whole life ahead of you.” She talks that way, always calling herself by name.
I tap my lips with the side of my finger.
“Foolishness,” she says. “Run and catch up to a wagon.” I shake my head.
“Your mother’s staying, too,” she says as if I should be
ashamed. “And your half-grown brother’s gone off to the fighting. Your family ain’t idiots but they’ve got no sense. And you can tell your mother Goody Pruett said so. Wait. No, you can’t, or so they say. Well, good mornin’ to ya.”
LII.
Jip whines and claws at the bark on the tree. I try to appease him with milk, but he has no appetite. He watches for your return through mournful, cloudy eyes, peeping out through tufts of overhanging gray hair. Poor dog, he doesn’t know you won’t come back.
LIII.
How can I search for wood while you go to your doom? I find Father’s rock and stand upon it. I breathe in, wanting to taste life as long as I can.
While you live, is there nothing I can do?
Deliverance. If not from God, then where?
Father, my father who lived and died—speak to me here,
if you can, if you’re able.
A swarm of images unbidden: Powder. Boxes. His knife.
His face.
The arsenal. The town’s lost arsenal.
An explosion that would leave no trace. A colonel in hiding who coveted power.
The mind for warfare, now armed with the means. A stolen arsenal. And I lived for two years trapped in its
bowels.
I sink down, trembling, to my knees.
LIV.
So there is a way.
If someone can find and purchase it. If someone’s devotion and courage are sufficient to die for it.
LV.
This isn’t courage. This is choosing a death that could help you.
You’ll die, then I will. That’s one end to suffering. If you survive, you’ll marry, and how can I pass your house each day and see Maria there? Shall I overshadow your new life with my unwelcome presence? You must live, even if your marriage means my heart’s death.
I could let the river take me as it eventually took Lottie, and you’d be dead before nightfall.
But if anyone could save you—save the town—I know who he is, and where. And I may have something he wants.
LVI.
In hours, all I know will be consumed.
All that have mocked me, ignored me, spat upon me since my return. They were once my neighbors and friends, even if I am no longer theirs.
Even they are worth a sacrifice.
LVII.
I must hurry before it’s too late, before fear changes my mind. But when I pass by my willow tree I pause, climb into its lower branches, and remember.
Lottie knew to find me here, and I her. It was our safe hiding place, where we could whisper. I showed her a perfect robin’s egg; she showed me a comb she’d stolen from her dead mother’s things.
When she first disappeared, I knew she had run away. Both nights I waited for her here. I knew she’d come to me to tell me about her fella. I waited because I was worried about her, and because I never did figure out which boy in town was hers.
She was coming to meet me here the night it happened. I watched from this tree, watched the man whose face I could not see. I’ve watched since in nightmares, sometimes taking Lottie’s place.
When it was over, I climbed down to see if anything could be done. Coming down from this tree was the last free thing I did.
I climb down once more and retrace the steps I took that night.
LVIII.
I follow the stream to where it meets the river. I turn west, far upstream from where you wait.
I reach the rapids, where the river spreads wide and dashes itself upon rocks, rocks that I must step my way across.
I listen through the gorge but hear only rushing water, wind on dry leaves, and geese flying south. No roar of musket fire yet.
LIX.
I don’t believe in miracles, but if the need is great, a girl might make her own miracle.
Even if that means enlisting the devil’s help.
LX.
A miracle: your face, sun-warm, green eyes gold, drinking in the wind as it dances across your wheat. Your hands, encircling a new-foaled lamb, wiping away the caul.
A miracle that can never be: your face, your hands, pledged to me.
LXI.
Geese wing south, honking to each other as they leave the river valley to follow the sun. Invaders hold no threat for them, only the marksman’s aim, and they are spared the need to fear it. Freedom is theirs until the moment life ends. No lingering in pain or loneliness or dread.
Squirrels scurry on crackling leaves and disappear into holes. Rabbits sniff the air and vanish. A fox darts across my path.
Then nature stills. The ground vibrates. Hoofbeats coming fast. I swing into the lower branches of a red maple, none too soon, for riders thunder by, swift and grim. Through thinning purple-brown leaves, I count: twenty-three, following the geese, heading south to Roswell Landing.
I close my eyes and see you. Your heart will lift to see these riders. Your spirits will flag when you count how few there are.
I would leave this errand, follow the horses, and fly to your side. If you’d let me, I’d kiss away your fear, and let you rest yourself upon me, and I, I would die beside you and count myself lucky.
Would you? Fear of death drives men to stranger things, unlikelier comforts.
Shall I die satisfied while you die yearning?
I slide down, scraping my wrists and face on rough bark, and press on.
LXII.
I think of the river bringing the enemy ships to you. The river brought Lottie home, but Lottie didn’t die in the river.
That much I know.
LXIII.
Closer now. I dread his face. I could not, would not picture it, over all this long-forgotten trail. Could be he’s dead. Once that thought would have brought me peace, but now, God help me, I need him. Him! Everything’s changed, the trees thicker, the shrubs overgrown, yet I recognize the slim defile, the crevice in the rock that ought to lead to nowhere. It’s the doorway to his little vale of tears, the reason he’s been undiscovered all these years.
I duck my head and push through the gap. Now his face appears before me, set and hard with one intent. I blink away the image. Clench my fists. Take a rock from the dark cave floor in each hand. All my anger and all my need must not fail me now.
The taste of blood, the cry of pain, the last clear words that passed my lips, the sight of eyes yellow with drink, the suffocating size, weight, smell, the hands that clawed at my mouth and sliced away my voice.
The tunnel ends, and daylight blinds me.
I can still turn back, but I would only find ruin now.
LXIV.
The night I stumbled home, I entered a silent house. Mother wouldn’t speak. Darrel hovered, like a frightened animal. A strong smell of liquor hung in the air, reminding me more of the colonel than of home. Father wasn’t there. I pointed to his chair. Darrel shook his head.
I waited.
“Died,” Darrel said.
Not Father. I didn’t think death could ever claim him. All that time away I thought it was I who would die. My father
, dead. My mother, stunned. An emptiness in
his chair, his bed. The eyes that watched me seemed to say, you had a hand in this. “Died of grief,” Darrel said, his face full of blame. “Wouldn’t stop looking for you. Took sick.”
How often had I prayed he’d look for me? But I knew he would look. I prayed he’d find me.
“They found your things by the river,” Darrel said. “How come they were there but you weren’t?”
“Hush,” Mother hissed, and Darrel, surprised, obeyed.
Father would have welcomed me differently, and now I would never feel his embrace again. In truth, I never expected to see any of them again.
There was food on the table. No one offered it to me. I picked up a chunk of bread and bit into it. They watched me, horrified. I’d already forgotten how young Judith ate before, when I didn’t have to chew like a cow to grind and wet my food to mush. I turned my face away.
Mother put blankets on my bed. She’d been using it to hold sacks of fleeces. She followed my gaze to the corner where bottles of cider and whiskey sat on shelves. Once a home brew, now her livelihood. She would not look at me, but turned back the sheets, then pulled the curtain that led to where she now slept alone.
There in my old trunk were my former clothes. They called to me from a sweeter time, when I had both a father and human dignity. That they were still here was a testament to hope. Mother hadn’t gotten rid of all of me yet. My eyes were wet as I struggled into an old nightshirt, too tight for me now, lay on my bed, and watched the moon out the window.