Lost Nation (27 page)

She sat on the dried grass of a hummock and hiked her skirt to her thighs and leaned back on her hands and tilted her face toward the sun. A flock of red-winged blackbirds swarmed the marsh, cutting and swerving each one but also all together as a group. She wondered how they did that. She sat in the sun until it was as warm as it would be that day and the grass around her was dry and then lay back upon it with her hands under her head. She did not close her eyes but looked into the open sky that was spread with high thin clouds made from the morning lake mist. This was the only thing outside of herself that she kept from Blood. It was important to have; it someway made what else she kept from him more substantial.

The blackbirds roved over her. She thought it must be fine to be a bird. To go wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted to. Then again, noting how they moved each in some relation to the others, she wondered if it was not that way with all creatures—all can fly but only so much as allowed by their fellows, as if each was born to fill a slot allowed in the world. It was a mystery. A girl is all I am, she thought. And wondered what was a woman for? A wheel on the cart of man is what it felt like, and she snorted out loud. Yes there was that brief time when she knew how a man worked. At least until he rolled off and got his breath back into him and was already gone from her. It was a mystery all right. And decided if it was a mystery made by God then she wouldn’t like Him very much. Maybe just another man was all He was. The Head Man—the Boss of them all. She didn’t know. She didn’t know much about God and didn’t really want to. From what she could see God
wasn’t much more than a torment to men. Women too. Maybe women even more.

She watched the birds, the slashes of redwing markings when they turned. The two times previous she’d climbed up here there had been far fewer of the blackbirds and she marveled over the number now. Then studied again the color on the few trees changed from summer green and realized the birds were gathering to travel southward, away from the coming winter. She wasn’t even sure how she knew this—some mention sometime by someone regarding the changing of the seasons, spring to summer, summer to fall, the movements of the birds. Remembering the great flocks of geese and ducks and pigeons she had seen the spring before while traveling here with Blood. She did not know where the birds went. Some great distance. Some place she did not know.

She considered what she’d told Blood: that she wasn’t going anywhere soon. A small lie, since she was here at the marsh when he clearly meant for her to stay at the tavern, but a larger lie also. Not that she had a plan. Plans, she thought, were what other people had. She’d seen her share of those plans fizzle to air. And what use was a plan when she barely knew where she was? What she had instead was a notion, a notion tucked tight, hidden like a coin in her boot. It was very simple: to pay attention to what was passing around her and watch for that opening, wherever, in whatever form it might take. Most likely a stranger. But nothing like Blood, nothing even close.

What of her own tenderness for Blood? This the greatest danger of all, she thought. A tenderness mostly of proximity, of knowing one another, sharing in fortune, fate even. No. It was not that simple. She cursed him. Her tenderness for him was genuine—she cared for him. She cursed him again, cursed herself. Because she was no fool. She was not a girl smitten and there were two things she believed certain of Blood. The first being that it wouldn’t last and that however it ended Blood would abandon her altogether, even if that abandonment were only to relegate her solely to whoring again. Although she suspected that if Blood soured upon her he would sour thoroughly. She had a moment where she saw him sending her off to winter with Gandy or one of the other trappers, a meanness pure and simple: Blood’s revenge. And revenge for only being herself. Whatever she was to Blood, she thought, didn’t have all that much to do with who she really was. She guessed he
saw her as something he might make amends to, amends for a fester tracked back to before she was even born.

The second was less simple to parse. Opportunity, when it came, would demand she notice it first and lock it tight before Blood even guessed it might be coming. The idea sent a shiver through her. To outsmart Blood. All of this and to make the right choice. It was almost too much to consider. But it was within her now and not something to be cast off. It was not just paying attention. It was about how smart she was. Blood was the first person to make her feel smart. Again, the shiver of doubt. Against it, out loud she said, “I guess maybe I’ve learned a thing or two. On my own. It ain’t all from Blood.”

The trick she thought was to be patient. But not too patient. She could patience herself right into the ground, she wasn’t careful. An important fact in this was that things weren’t working out for Blood the way he’d hoped—he hadn’t told her directly but it was clear that whatever it was he’d attempted between Chase and Hutchinson had failed. And perhaps even diminished Blood someway. She sensed it from the men around the tavern. It was nothing obvious but a slight loosening on their part, as if they feared Blood a little less. Or discounted him some other way. If he saw this she could not say. Again, she told herself, It idn’t all that much about me. In its way this only impressed further the need to jump. To pick and choose carefully. Because when she jumped it would be all the way.

She thought If people could see their future all the world would be different. But it didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. Try was all she had. That and a sockful of money. And perhaps, the lies of love. A different sort of whoring. She could do that. She looked down at her thighs, white in the sunlight, tight and strong. She pulled her skirt down to cover herself and sat upright and watched the birds circle and cry, the light glancing off the still ponds, the sweet smell of the moist earth. Something was possible.

She called the dog over and he sat beside her. Gazing off into the day, his brown eyes as liquid and unknowable as the marsh water. She put one arm over his shoulders and pressed against him. The dog did not break his gaze to look at her but allowed her to hold him so. They sat that way awhile. The day had lost a little of its warmth. There was a breeze breaking in short gusts over the marsh. The yellow birch leaves flipped over and some few came loose and tended toward the earth.

* * *

By noon Blood was far up Perry Stream. He crossed over Otter Brook and then left the waterside and began to work the triangle of land between the two streams, thinking this time of day the deer would be bedded but not up too high—it was warm enough so they would stay near the water. He moved slowly, working his way back and forth between the streams to cover the ground thoroughly. A bedded deer would stay right where it was unless he was close enough to alarm it. Especially a young one, what he was after. The spring fawns would be gaining size and weight but would still be with the does. The woods were big here: old trees, hardwoods. High enough so there were stretches where he walked with ease. It was the blowdowns and otherwise fallen trees he was hunting toward. In the scant openings there would be new growth of alder or larch or popples or hemlock. Good cover.

He was back alongside Otter Brook making his way upstream toward a hillside thick with young alders when he saw a flash of dun movement. Low to the ground. Something springing up and away. Even as the powder smoke burned his eyes he could smell the blood and the part of his tongue that ran direct from his stomach to his imagination could already taste the roasted young meat.

So he pressed hard up the slope through the stinging whips of young trees and found the egg-eating Indian thrown back on his side in the brush. The hole in his chest as neat as if made by an auger. His back was blown apart where the ball had gone through. His eyes strange blanks. One hand pressed just below the hole in his chest as if he’d reached but missed the mark. His hand covered with the flow of blood. His loincloth was twisted aside from his crotch. Closeby, from where he’d toppled, was a thick spatter of loose stool.

Blood, panting with the effort of his climb, recharged his rifle. Then bent low to the ground and squatted there, watching the woods around him. After a time the squall of a gray jay came and went, came again. Some crows. Smaller birds. Beyond sight the first cries of southward geese. Blood watched awhile longer. Then stood. Looked once a long time at the dead man.

Blood said, “I warned you against those eggs.” Then went down to the brook and knelt and drank quickly with one cupped hand, the other holding his rifle. Between weak sips he continued to watch around him. With some water in him he rose and hiked downward along the brook.

* * *

The body of the Indian was carried south and hung from a limb overlooking the road to serve as warning for any party passing the blazes that marked the northern boundary of Coos County, indicating entry into the Indian Stream country. Blood had argued it to be needless provocation but would not say whom he feared provoking. So it was displayed and the small patrols that skirted back in the woods near the border to watch for men coming into the country could smell it as it twisted slowly on its rope and daytimes the ravens came to perch on the shoulders and eat out first the eyes and then the rest of the softening flesh of the face and at night when the air stilled and the frost came down the smell ran through the air in a broad grope of putrefaction. On the fifth dawn when the patrol arrived to relieve the chill-stiffened men lurking in the underbrush without benefit of fire, it was the newly arrived who discovered that during the night the body had disappeared. There were no footprints but the rope was cut and left dangling. None of the night-party had heard any disturbance, all swore to wakefulness.

Blood went to Emil Chase. “It was his own people got him you know. It was what I feared.”

“Feared they’d take him or feared they’d find out what happened to him?”

“Feared that with it done every man we know is going to be jumping out his skin at the least sound in the woods. If it’s just a stray ox gets shot we’ll be lucky.”

Chase held his chin with his hands. His wound had healed. “It pleases you to be right, don’t it Blood?”

Blood said, “There’s no pleasure in this.”

“I wonder how that sheriff’s leg is serving him.”

“It was a bad grinding he took. Could be he’ll not walk again.”

“Perhaps,” Chase said. “Do you think that’d keep him off a horse?”

As if the death of the Indian had conceived a final severance of faith, two nights later the five families of Canadian habitants loaded their carts and departed soundless in the dark up the track that led toward Halls Stream and the Canadian frontier, leaving behind crops and the
houses and outbuildings of logs that once empty immediately seemed derelict, cobbled roughly, as if they had ever known their fate would be thus. The remaining habitant was the bachelor Laberge who had been in the country as long as any other man and who moved with the established gait of a man who knew no other land, wanted no place but the one where he stood. Of his own now-fled people he would only say that the turmoil was nothing more than the excuse all had been seeking to return to the townships and impose themselves upon already straitened brothers or fathers or in-laws. “It’s the women,” Laberge said, “who suffer the burden most. It’s them will hear the talk not so careful hid. I’m lucky, me. No woman, no talk, no fear to stay right here.”

It was evening of the day the abandoned pitches had been discovered and the tavern was thick with men. One of the young men, Burt or Bacon, wondered aloud if those departed men hadn’t held some private knowledge of intent of invasion by the Crown or provincial forces and Blood looked up to watch Laberge remonstrate, “You damn fool why’d they run off if that was coming? They’d be the roosters over you little hens, that was to happen.”

It was Bacon. “You greasy fucker I’ll cut your nuts off and see who’s the hen, you want.”

Blood stood. There was an old reek in the room, the sweat-stink of anxiety like filings of some bright hard metal. It had been there all night. Blood thought it was his own.

Laberge was a grim small man who smelled of sawdust, wood sap. His smile was a bright rind of white against the plaited flecked wires of his beard and upper lip hair. “Don’t talk so to a man. You a boy yourself. Just barely discover your own nuts, eh.”

Bacon started forward and Blood began to go around the counter with the little lead bludgeon but Sally came off her perch which slowed him down and when they both came through the opening of the counter they saw Bacon snake one arm out lazy and slap at Laberge’s face and come away leaving a sickle of white showing through the beard that then filled with blood. As Bacon stepped back Laberge groaned and brought both hands up before him and Bacon came back toward him and Laberge stooped swiftly and side-kicked one boot out and snapped Bacon’s elbow. The knife skittered onto the floor.

Bacon howled and Sally surged past Blood, running across the sudden opening toward the door to the house side. Laberge also was moving, bending to scoop the knife, a spray of blood tossed off his thrown-back head as he came upright. Bacon went sideways and dropped his broken elbow, bellowing. But with his good arm he snatched Sally by the waist and drew her against him, so she faced the advancing Laberge. Blood stopped.

Laberge glanced around the room. He smiled. His mouth filled with blood and stained his teeth and dripped into his beard. He said, “Aw fellers. Look at this.” Then he spoke to Sally captured by Bacon. He said, “I never did no dirty work upon you girl. Never harmed you. Don’t plan to start now.” And bent again as if to study the knife blade in his hand. Blood stepped toward him but like a wejack Laberge lunged forward and with one hand grasped the top of Sally’s head and pulled it down and with the other swept the knife across Bacon’s throat.

Blood caught up to him and bludgeoned the lead just behind the man’s right ear. Bacon was dead on the floor and Laberge caved sideways. For a moment Sally stood between the two, her dress wet with the shower of blood. Blood spoke her name. She looked at him and then with one hand lifted her skirt hem a few inches and stepped over Laberge and went from the silent room. All watched her. All heard her go through the kitchen side to her room and the bar fall after she shut that door behind her. Blood looked at the ruins on his floor. He tapped his thigh with the lead and looked at the men in the room. No one spoke. Stunned, but not for long.