Lost Nation (13 page)

“Today.”

“What?”

“It’s already today.”

Chase nodded. “I guess that’s right. Ain’t it always, somehow?”

Blood said, “It’s all right with me.”

Blood slept a scant time and had been awake less than an hour when Chase and three other men on horseback arrived: his brother Peter Chase and Isaac Cole and young John Burt, who did not look as if he’d slept at all. None of the party were rested, and they had the edgy tempered look of men unhappy but bent on their work. When Blood carried out the powder keg with Wilson’s head the horses snorted and
thrashed in the road, backing and sidestepping. They tried to rig a sling of ropes to carry the keg slung between two of the horses but one or the other would spook sideways when brought close upon the load. Finally Peter Chase whipped his horse up and raced to the mill and came back towing a hand sled. They lashed the keg to that and the party went up the road finally with the freight some distance behind, the keg a small squat lonely burden centered on the sled. Blood stood out in the road watching them go, recalling that other morning when Wilson’s head went the other way atop a similar sled.

It was only when he went back inside that he realized the Deacon had left while Blood slept. There was no sign of him but the wet bloody rag left on the floor. And the cut-away rawhide lacings. Blood built a fire even though it was a warm day already and burned the debris and then heated water in a kettle suspended from the crane and used old sacking to scrub the room. Walls, the plank bar and finally the floor. When he was done he opened the door to let in fresh air to help dry and purify the room. He built the fire high and then let it die. No men came for their morning rum and he expected none, would’ve turned away any so bold. He went out and dug some potatoes to boil for breakfast and started them cooking.

He was milking the cow when he heard Sally scream. He tipped over the milk bucket getting off the stool and ran for the house. She was sitting upright in bed with the blanket wrapped around her, her head down, rocking back and forth. Her screams had stopped but she was sobbing, her delicate shoulders wracking in hard shudders. The dog Luther lay on the bed against her thigh, his head lifted sideways to gaze upon her, his eyes deep and sad as any creature’s could be. Blood knelt on the flimsy mattress and held her by the arms and talked to her until she would look at him. Once she finally lifted her head she turned her ruined eyes full upon him. Her face was bloated, her nose running, her hair wet where she’d sweated before waking. She’d had a bad dream. Her arms locked Blood’s neck, her head sank so her cheek was flat against his chest and she would not let him go. He knelt like that holding her, patting her back a long time. One of his feet fell asleep and he felt the needles of pain, waiting for it to cramp but still he held her. There was nothing else he could do. He put his nose against her hair, smelling her. She smelled like someone he knew.

* * *

At midday Emil Chase rode up alone and called Blood out into the yard. There had been no one come by all morning and now with the noontime upon them Blood had begun to wonder how long this might go on. It was not so much that he was losing money but he understood men fell in and out of habits and he worried now how many might leave this particular habit be, how many might have considered the entire episode to reflect someway upon them personally. So when Chase called him out he did what he would not otherwise have done. He went out to meet him.

The horse was lathered from its morning’s work, having glimpsed and smelt things no horse should. Chase sat the saddle a little heavily but command radiated down his arms as if his hands themselves gripped the bit, with the reins mere extensions. He did not attempt to keep the horse stationary but let it pivot and swirl and thus controlled it even as it spent itself.

Chase did not greet Blood but spoke. “The cabin was burnt to flinders when we got there. Still smoking and somewhat of a fire remained but the house was gone. It was the heathens’ doing all right—there was an owl wing and three raven feathers bound up together hanging from a nearby tree. Out where you couldn’t miss em. We got no idea if they took Wilson’s body out of there or burnt him with the rest of it. But the way them fellers described Wilson it’s my bet the savages left him right where he was. It’s got the men all worked up, those savages around as recent as last night. There’s no telling where they are or what they’re up to next. If they valued Wilson so much as to do Crane the way they did they might feel they’re not done with the rest of us yet. There’s men called for a meeting at the mill this afternoon to divide themselves up into patrols and elect officers and such.”

“What’d you do with the head?”

Chase looked at him as the horse swung away and rode the horse around in a circle to face Blood again. His hat was jammed on his head, over his ears. Blood guessed he’d had some hard riding.

“His head? I’ll tell you what we did with his head. My brother and I stretched it out between us on a pair of ropes and set it down in the middle of what was left of the cabin. We pushed up the rest of the half-burned timbers and threw what remained of their woodpile on and got
the whole thing going again. That young John Burt was stalking around with his musket, peering off left and right and swiveling around quick to check his back. Then, when the fire caught and started up good again you could smell that head burning and he threw down his gun and bent over puking. We got him onto his horse and rode out of there. So I’m afraid your keg is gone, Mister Blood.”

Blood said, “I wouldn’t have wanted it back anyhow.” Chase was angered over more than his recounting, the anger seeming to gain as he spoke. It appeared he blamed Blood for all that had occurred. As if Blood’s enterprise was seeping over the surrounding countryside and the endeavoring inhabitants, their modest aspirations, perhaps mocking their efforts—Blood’s gains the very sweat and festered blisters of their labor. Blood was mildly provoked, but also ambivalent. He had no wish to be drawn into some other’s vision of himself.

Then Chase said, “You shouldn’t ever have done that poor idiot the way you did. Humiliated him that way. I hold you as much to blame as what those heathens did to him.”

Blood stepped close and caught the noseband of the bridle and spoke to the horse in a low tone, soothing chanted monosyllables. Then looked up at Chase and said, “Whatever are you talking about?”

“Just what every other man, woman, and child’s been talking about. How you brought that girl out here in the road before a crowd of men and humbled that poor fool, that holy idiot, that man whom nobody knew where he came from or what happened to soften his brain the way it was. But was tolerated because he was all those things, and you knew it too. You had to’ve known it or you never would’ve done what you did. In some ways it wouldn’t have been as bad if he’d been an eleven-year-old boy. In some ways it was worse.”

Blood ran a hand up the horse’s head over the crest between the ears and the horse dropped his head so Blood could look square at Chase. “I leave every man to his own opinion. Of myself and my doings. But I won’t tolerate being accosted directly. As far as what I did with that fool they call the Deacon it was only what part of him wanted. If it had been any other man saying the things he was I would not have been so thoughtful.”

“Are you threatening me, Mister Blood?”

“Why no,” Blood said mildly. “I’ve got no need, that I see.”

Chase said, “You’re a confident man, Blood. That can be dangerous, taken too far.”

“I’m not dangerous to any man,” Blood said, “that leaves me be.”

Emil Chase spat to the side. He said, “Well the Deacon won’t be bothering you no more. We came back from the trapper’s cabin and found him floating facedown in the pool below the millrace. So it’s two events this afternoon, the mustering and a burial. I don’t know which will be first. The burial I expect. He’s awful to look at.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Blood said. “But not surprised. He’s better off.”

“None of em should’ve died the way they did. But there is no promise as to one’s own end. Still, three’s a lot of men in gruesome death, such a short time.”

Blood said nothing.

Chase said, “Release the horse. I’ve things to attend. I don’t expect we’ll see you for the burial or the mustering, either one.”

Blood held onto the bridle. He said, “I didn’t have anything but pity for the feller, regardless of how you see it. I’ll surely walk up to see him laid in the ground. But no, you’re right—that mustering business just sounds like so much play to me.”

“You might feel different, those savages choose to come after you next.”

Blood recalled the wild man eating his peas. He let go of the bridle and stepped back, still looking at Chase. He said, “Anybody wants to come after me, I expect I’ll be ready for them my own self. I look to no others for help.”

Chase said, “That’s the right attitude for this country.” His voice shivery with contempt.

“Why yes,” said Blood. “This and all others. But I’ll walk up there and help bury that man. I’ll be along as soon as I wash myself.”

“Do as you choose,” Chase said. “Just leave your whore to home. There’s decent women and children will be there.”

He jerked back on the reins and brought the horse’s head around and let the horse circle hard upon Blood once in the road. Blood did not move. Chase backhanded the reins against the horse’s neck and they went furious up the road toward the mill. Blood watched them go, the churn of dust thrown up screening all but a sense of man and beast. Beyond that he could see the waters of the lake, black and shimmering
under the noonday sun. Then he turned and walked to the house for the bucket and went down to the stream after fresh water. Coming back he paused by the garden. There remained half a row of English peas. Pods filling. Near ready. He thought to have them for supper. Better eat them young and sweet than not at all.

To his surprise she did not argue or question but washed herself and dressed in her best outfit—that is, skirt and bodice all the same moss green rather than mixing the colors as she was wont to do—and again without prompting despite the warmth of the day wrapped her shawl over her shoulders and upper arms and drew it together before her so it covered her breasts in the thin bodice. Stood patient as he brushed out her hair and did not complain when he pulled it back to her nape and gathered it there with a string. He came before her and pulled the hair a little loose from the string so it was full around the sides of her face. She waited while he sat and worked cooking grease into the chapped and cracked leather of the buttonhook boots she’d not worn since March. Her feet, although brown and hard-calloused, were no longer swollen and slid easily into the softened leather. She stood rather than sat while he put on his one decent shirt and newer breeches.

They went up the road together. Starting out, she stumbled in the unaccustomed shoes and grasped to steady herself against him. Once her balance regained she took her hand away but he retrieved it to tuck into the crook of his elbow. So together, side by side, they made their way up to the mill and beyond that to the fresh raw cemetery and the group gathered there on a small open hillside above the lake. There was a mound of earth to mark the hole and a roughboard coffin rested on planks over the hole and they stood not away from the group but off to one side and back a little, present but not intruding upon their neighbors. All of them thus waited in silence until it was clear that those coming had arrived. The Chase brothers and two other men stepped forward and lifted ropes either side of the coffin and an appointed boy came forth and slid the planks away from the hole and they lowered the Deacon soundless into the earth. Then Emil Chase read briefly from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians. Blood was surprised at how poorly he read, without pause or inflection but all the words running together as if any
one word was the same as another. Chase looked to the hole again and bade farewell to the man whom not one present knew by any true name and commended his soul to Christ. Again, wordless, the four men took up spades and began to fill the hole. And the people remained watching a short time before commencing to speak among themselves and so formed small groups and clumps that soon began to drift, not one alone but all together down the hill and away from the man who would have a plain unwrought stone and within a generation would be forgotten completely, or if recalled at all only for the way he died.

Blood and Sally stood a time longer. Not until the work was done but until the rest of the people were gone from the hillside. Most but not all had gathered at the mill to await the men laboring over the grave and thus get on with the rest of the afternoon, with the martial business at hand, with the prospect for adventure, the tingle of danger. Halfway down the hill Blood spoke to Sally without looking at her. “Take my arm.” She did and so linked they passed by the group outside the mill, mostly men but some women too who would wait by their men until the meeting started and then repair to the house with the miller’s wife for tea to await the outcome.

Blood and Sally walked by them, Blood looking straight ahead until he was abreast of the party when he turned and looked the men over slowly, letting his eye linger here and there as if judging them for abilities yet untested for their undertaking. He raised his hat and bid them a good afternoon. Replaced his hat and walked with the girl close beside him down the road to where his tavern stood open and untended, knowing they were watched all the way. He did not pause in the yard or look back but strode inside with Sally behind him. Shut the door and barred it. He was not open for any business. Although he knew that late afternoon, when the sun diminished and evening slid long over the land, he would open the door and light his fires and hear then all he needed or desired about the plans made that afternoon. But for now he wanted only to be alone. He was hungry. There was most of a smoked ham taken in trade he could cut slabs from. There were potatoes. There were the rest of the English peas. He decided to pick only half the peas and chance the rest. He loved peas. Once gone, summer would in some way be over. He decided they would sup early. Then he might take a nap. He was tired from it all. He felt as if he’d been standing at attention for hours
and hours, for days. He would’ve loved a tub and hot water and a bath. A nap would do.