LXV.
I rose in the night and stood silent as a ghost by the curtains that hid my parents’ bed. Where the old faded fabric had gone sheer in spots, I saw a beam of moonlight find my mother. There she lay on her side, curled into a bow, staring at the wall, and stroking my father’s pillow.
LXVI.
“Keep pounding, daughter, or you won’t make firm butter,” she used to tell me. “A goodwife’s arms and back are strong!” I knew hers were strong. Tight sinews tied her wrists to her elbows. When she rolled up her sleeves I watched the rare sight of her skin while her arms flew through their work. Her back stood straight and slim in dresses younger women might wish to wear, but there was nothing fragile about my mother. She was a hive of creation. She made things come alive.
Someday, I thought, I’d be just like her.
LXVII.
I wanted to tell her, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry I snuck out of bed to meet Lottie. Sorry I was gone so long and caused her pain. Sorry Father took sick searching for me. Sorry I’m like this now.
Ar-ee, sssshhar-ee. My gruesome sounds made Mother wince.
“Be still!” she’d say. “You sound idiotic.”
She told no one of my return for days, bound even Darrel to secrecy. When at last the secret could no more be hidden, she led me to the shed and said, “You’ve come back maimed. I leave it to God to judge what brought this upon you. But the village will fear you. They’ll call you cursed. Some men may try to take advantage of you. I know my duty to my own flesh and blood, and I will protect you. But you’ll mind me and behave as a maiden should. Utter one sound to our shame, and you’ll sleep here among the rakes and shovels.”
Where were the hands that embraced me when I came in from across the fields? Where were the eyes that smiled at my little bread loaves and crooked stitches?
“Know me,” she said, lifting my chin so I’d see her eyes. “Am I a woman of my word?”
I nodded, resisting the pressure of her finger on my chin.
“Well then,” she said.
LXVIII.
He sent me back with these words: “I spared you twice. Tell no one of me, or I’ll send Roswell Station to meet its maker. Blow it straight up to God. Heaven’s all they think of anyway.”
LXIX.
Roswell Station was never as agog as the day the news was known: Judith Finch had come home, alive but mute. Mother tried to hide me in the house, but Goody Pruett sniffed me out. She only had to hobble by in the morning, and her sixth sense spotted something different. She needled her way in for bark coffee. Needing no pretense, she pulled back the curtains where Mother had hidden me in her own bed. “Well, well, well,” she said. “If it isn’t little Judith, back after so long. And why would we keep such good news a secret?”
It was all over then. Nothing Mother could say would stop Goody Pruett from telling. I was glad of it. We might as well face the world.
A stream of curious visitors flowed by the house all day, till Mother sent me to bed and told the rest I was too weak.
You came that evening through your fields, alone except for Jip. I’d crept out of bed, dressed, and gone outside to sit.
Jip ran to me and laid his panting head in my lap. He got to me before you did.
You halted when you saw me watching you, and waved. You almost looked frightened. I waved back, and you came to me.
Two years had made you fully a man. I looked down at myself and remembered they had made me a woman, too, or nearly. I knew I should flee indoors, out of modesty or shame, but I couldn’t escape. Two years I’d nursed thoughts of you, and now you were here before me, different and the same. We were four people: the children we’d been, and grown strangers now.
You couldn’t look me in the eye. You watched Jip go bounding after a rabbit in the hedge.
I waited for you to speak. I wondered if you could hear the chaos inside my veins and bones that your arrival had awoken.
“Beautiful evening,” you said after an eternity.
I looked around. It was, indeed, and in so many ways, to me. “Mm,” I said.
You looked at me then.
My voice made you turn. Of course you would have heard my news. I lowered my eyes.
And then your words surprised me. “I knew you’d come back.”
You did?
Then you knew more than I did.
“People said you were dead, but I . . .”
I looked up at you then. Our eyes met.
What did you say when others said I was dead, Lucas? What did you wish?
I heard your breathing. I saw your sadness. I thought of my dreams of you, and wondered, did you ever have dreams of me? Now I have come back, but not quite all of me.
“I . . .”
Still, it was kind of you to be sorry for what had happened to me.
“. . . I’m glad you’re back.”
We watched two mourning doves chase each other.
LXX.
After I returned, the village elders summoned me to appear before them. The village was barred because of my delicate youth. Mother sat behind me in the front church pew. The elders sat on the platform, and I alone in a chair before them. They placed a small desk before me and gave me some paper and pen and ink. My stomach felt twisted with terror. Their staring eyes reminded me of his, those eyes that never left me.
Remember how I spared you twice.
“Miss Finch,” said Alderman Brown, “we must know. Where have you been all this time?” I twisted the quill pen awkwardly in my hand. My fingers were unsure of how to grasp it. I could barely write. My education was at Mother’s knee, and she was no great reader. Cooking, housewifery, and needlework were my training. Later, Roswell Station hired a schoolmaster from the academy, but by that time, I was gone.
I dipped the quill in the inkwell and tapped it against the rim.
I . . . dont . . . no, I wrote in large clumsy letters.
Alderman Brown’s beard wagged. “Do you mean you don’t know the name of the place, or that you have no memory of where you were?”
No memory. The words were like a rope thrown to someone at the bottom of a well. This could account for everything.
I shook my head sadly.
They shuffled in their seats. Alderman Brown cleared his throat. “Your tongue has been savagely taken from you,” he said. “Who is it who harmed you so grievously?”
This wasn’t pity, was it? My tongue, taken from me. As if it was a stolen purse.
I held up the paper I’d already used. A lie and a sin, but I did it.
“Did this person harm you in other ways?”
I sat like a stone, staring down at their boots.
“Miss Finch. It is vital that we know. You won’t be blamed. Did he take your maidenhood?”
The church’s dark beams loomed over, above me. The empty benches stretched behind, filled only with Mother, straining to know.
No, I shook my head. No. No. He didn’t take my maidenhood.
LXXI.
I am close now, pressing on through branches and trees. My quest is almost over, though the hard part has not yet begun. I never dreamed I’d walk the road back to him of my own free choice.And there. The hut. I clutch a tree. It’s there. Darker. Older. Smaller, or did memory make it large?
A thread of smoke winds upward. He’s alive.
LXXII.
His knife sinks into the tree next to me. I drop down to the ground and crouch, covering my head.I hear the door slam and his footsteps approach. I feel him standing there, feel the shadow that’s fallen over me.
I let my arms drop and look up slowly at him.
LXXIII.
“You,” he says, surprised.
He uncocks the hammer of his gun. Retrieves his knife. He is dark against the blinding afternoon sun that shines behind him. I shade my face with my hand.
He steps forward, raising his knife arm, and I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids I see your face, white-eyed with fear, spattered with red.
/> I open my eyes and stand. He steps back. The hawk afraid of its mouse, the bear afraid of its trout.
He looks the same, but longer, stretched out. His steelgray beard reaches his lowest rib, and the hair on his head hangs down to his hips. His flesh is more spare, but still gristly and strong, a man who hasn’t surrendered much to the passing of time. In his murky, yellowed eyes I see desire, and anger, and shame.
He looks around. “Who’d you bring?”
I shake my head. A breeze blows through the woods, chilling my sweating frame. He looks around, suspicious, as if this breeze and noise are proof I brought some treachery.
“What do you want?” His voice rasps in his throat. He moves around, lifting branches, searching for signs of a posse.
Mother’s rules can’t reach this far, and anyway he knows why I sound like I do. I try to grunt your name, to form my lips in the shape of the word. “Woocush.” The alien sound makes me cringe.
He scowls. “How’s that?”
“Woocush!”
He understands. Only the monster who made me a monster understands me. He frowns.
“Lucas? What about him?”
I seize an imaginary gun and fire it. Bam! Bam! “Woocush.” The pitiful sound I make is nothing like your sweet name.
“What’s going on with Lucas?”
“Home-wlanh-uhz.” I want to weep with shame at my helplessness. “Sships. Waw.”
He doesn’t comprehend. I could shake him.
“Waw!” I shout. My throat is unused to this exertion, and it pains me.
Homelanders! Ships, war! Understand me! Your ancient enemy returns, the one you battled so many years ago. Doesn’t that matter to you?
I blink away tears and squat down in the hard-pressed dirt. I think of writing but in my panic I can scarcely remember how. Perhaps “I dont no” are the only words I can still form.
With a stick I draw crude ships sailing up the river toward Roswell Station.
He watches me.
“Made you an artist, didn’t I?” he says. This strikes him funny, and he snorts a little.
LX XIV.
I turn to leave. He grabs my wrist.
“Wait,” he says. “How many ships?”
Wait?
Three, my fingers tell him. He nods, his eyes narrow, calculating.
“Homelanders.” It isn’t a question. I nod.
“So, they’re coming back to wipe out Roswell Station. About time.” His laugh rattles in his throat. “We sure sent ’em an invitation last time, didn’t we?”
I make a sound of protest.
“What, you want to be the hero now?”
The hero.
“Woocush!”
He shrugs, then laughs. “You sweet on that young whelp?
I’ll bet he fancies you, handsome girl you turned out to be.” The cruelty stings. We both know my face is plainer than
plain.
I stamp my boot on the scribble that is Roswell Station. “Good riddance to it,” he says. “They ain’t worth saving.
Why d’you care?”
I let my face show nothing. He leans closer, whispering,
his foul breath hot in my face.
“Bet they treat you real good now.”
I try to keep my face still, but he knows his dagger has hit
its mark. He knew exactly how they’d treat me when he sent
me home this way.
“Who among ’em ever did you right?” he says. “Name
one.”
LX X V.
“Sit a bit,” the colonel says. “I’ll brew you a cup.” I shake my head.
There is a rumble in the distance. Gunfire, not far off.
Each crack could find your breast.
He sniffs the wind like a hungry bear and turns to find the
source of the rumbling guns.
“Ahh.” He hears a sound he’s long waited for, the sound
that points a warrior toward his own true north.
I tug at his arm and point to the noise.
He shakes his head. “That’s got nothing to do with me.
Lucas is a man now. He can look after hisself.”
The eagerness in his eyes belies his words.
LXXVI.
What husk of a man cares nothing for his son?
He won’t go. Not for you. Not for revenge, nor for the carnal love of the hunt.
I can’t say I ever expected different.
I have come this far; will I go yet further? Do I have that kind of courage? Will I light the pyre that would burn my body at the stake like the French girl?
I’ve watched you open your door each morning, these two years since I came back. Watched your throat swallow cold creek water, heard your feet tread through the forest leaves, seen your hands steer your plow. Were all your labors and your living for nothing? All the beauty you brought into my life, shall it go unpaid?
I take hold of his jacket.
“You, go,” I say, clear as a bell. “Hepp Woocush. I shay heyah.”
He turns to face me. He strokes his beard, looking me up and down.
“If I go win Lucas’s little war for him, you’ll stay here?”
I can’t swallow. I nod.
“In what sense?”
Must he ask me that?
This is a word I can say. I’ve whispered it to myself a thousand times, when I’ve thought of you.
I whisper it now.
“How’s that again?” he demands, chucking my chin with his hand so I’ll look at him. “In what sense will you stay?”
I look at his filthy clothes, his leathered skin, his wire muscles over iron bones.
“Wife,” I say, as anyone might say it.
LXXVII.
His eyes awaken. He licks his lips. “Promise?”
When I don’t respond, he drags a lazy fingertip over the knob of his knife handle. “Doesn’t go well for folks that break a promise to Ezra Whiting.”
I think of your mother, and wonder, with dread, whether she reached her lovers’ paradise.
“Or for their families.”
Mother.
What have I said?
I am soaked in fear.
It’s too late to turn back. Yet it’s too late for any other help, either. This is why I came.
I nod to him and point toward the river. “Go!”
He grins, then scurries into activity. Should I be flattered? He leads a mare around the corner of his hut, one he didn’t have before. She’s dapple-gray and beautiful. I don’t remember hearing of a stolen horse in town. I stroke her nose, drawing comfort from her while I wait for him to harness her to a small cart. How could a horse have gotten through the crevice that leads here?
He disappears inside and returns with parcels and jars stuffed in sacks slung over his shoulder. He’s lashed on a belt that holds a knife, a pot, a flint, and other devices I don’t understand, his dark tools. He fills the cart with dark powder cases and guns. There’s more powder inside. I remember it. But he brings plenty.
How quick his movements, almost clumsy with excitement. My whole body is dissolving, pouring into my stomach.
He climbs a stump to mount his horse, then turns to me. “You coming?”
LXXVIII.
Guns report across the miles.
He can save you, if he will. If you haven’t died already. This will be my burning, my sacred sacrifice. I never heardany angel voice but yours.
LXXIX.
I ride behind him, his unwashed body leaning into mine. I swallow down an urge to retch.
He guides the mare away from the only entrance to the valley that I know. He leads us through thick brush and trees toward a shale wall to the north. I hold my breath. I can see no way out. Perhaps a young man climbing could exit, but no beast. But the horse steps from shelf to shelf, pulling her rattling little cart on a barely visible path, until I close my eyes in terror. She’s as nimble as a goat.
We’re trotting. I open my eyes. We’re out.
Marvelous animal!
We are only half a mile from the river, but each moment may mean we’re too late. Still the sounds ring out, sounds I dreaded but now they give me hope. The ambush isn’t over yet. Perhaps more riders came. With each shot I picture the battle, and now it’s Darrel’s face I see, and Mother’s, bending low to tend the wounded. Not you, please God, whatever god there be.
LXXX.
Take me away from this wretched saddle and bargain.
Anyone, anything, take me away. The horse’s gait, or my wayward mind, deliver me.
No. I’m glad to go to the battlefront. I have nothing to fear there except returning.
LXXXI.
I had another young friend, a playmate. Abigail Pawling, the tanner’s daughter. A quiet girl, like me. We used to play at dollies. I sewed a dress and bonnet for her dolly once.
After I’d been back a spell I wished to see her. I thought she would forgive my wretched sounds and try to understand me, for friendship’s sake.
I found her in her father’s pasture, watching their sheep. We gawked at each other and at how two years had stretched and changed us both. She’d grown womanly and plump; her eyes wanted not to recognize me.
I spoke her name, as best I could. She shrank back in horror.
It’s me, I tried to say. I’ve just been hurt, is all.
She ran, leaving her sheep to their own defenses.
I went home and waited for Mother’s wrath. But Abigail must not have dared to tell her parents that the cursed girl tried to talk.
Fever took her the next winter.
LXXXII.
“Here,” he says. “This is good.”