My Name is Resolute (20 page)

I got to where a great tree had fallen, its roots lifted from the bank, making a muddy slide. The goat’s hoofprints went there but it did not walk into the water; it kept going around the side. I heard the animal bleating softly. When I got behind the tree trunk, I could no longer hear the woodsmen chopping logs or the sounds of the community, people moving about, animals lowing and clucking. The water murmured at my feet; downstream, it rippled at a small waterfall. The tracks led on and I heard a goat bleat. On I went, listening and smelling the air for the bear. Still, I smelled nothing but the weedy smell that the bank of the stream always carried, and the whiff of a grown-up’s sweat. I wondered, since I had now been in love with a man, albeit a young man and a dead one at that, whether I had grown up enough to smell like Patience. “Nob?” I called. “Nob?”

I went down the stream until it turned again to the left. In parted grasses where the reeds had grown tall, Nob stood chewing, tied to a stick. “God’s balls!” I cursed. Why, who would play such a cruel trick? This could bring the bear just to eat the goat and, in turn, me! As if a cold blast of air took me, I wondered if Mistress were so cruel as to put the goat here and send me to it so I would be killed. I would show her a thing or two about bravery, I thought. With shaking hands I took his rope from the stick and turned to lead him home. I then let out a soft moan against the hand that wrapped around my mouth. The hands held me so tight I could barely breathe or move but I got the quick image of a dark man, wearing paint upon his arms and some strange pants, no shirting at all, with lines drawn across his face and chest. Beads rattled against his body as he held me tight to him. I smelled his skin as he nearly crushed the life out of me, and knew it was the grown-up sweating that I had smelled. I tried with all my might to scream and to fight away, but his strength was as two men and my voice stopped in my teeth.

My eyes searched the woods and stream and brushy green. From it, like plants thrusting up quick and brown, a hoard of dark brown men in feathers and paints and the strange pants arose. They made signals to each other with their hands, and began to move in the direction I had come, while my captor held me tight, my fingers snarled in the rope around Nob’s neck. The goat had not been tied by Mistress but by them.

The hand that gripped my face loosened enough to let me breathe. The man shook me and said a word, squeezed my face and said it again as he turned to look me in the eye. Quiet was what he wanted. I nodded. He lessened his hold and I remained mute. He took his hand from my mouth and said the word again. I nodded again. He held my arms with both hands then, and I dropped the rope. Nob nestled in the grass to chew cud.

I smelled smoke. It rose in billows across the tops of the trees, bringing with it the smell of fresh green wood and old dry planks and the reek of scorched flesh. Oh, la, Patience! Oh my soul, my sister! I stayed still as stone. A bird called and another. Birds do not sing when there is danger about; even a child knows that. I realized I had not heard a bird in all the time since I left the garrison for the woods.

As the sun began to lower, the noise of many people tramping through the grass frightened away the birds again. Here they came, Indians. Behind them in a line walked people from our village, finally more Indians. They came leading cows and one of the oxen. They came with Mistress’s goats. They carried two blunderbusses and bags of powder, bags of flour, salt, and dried corn. They laid them all in a circle and went over the stock of booty just as the pirates had on the ships. The settlement people who came to the green brush had blood and smoke and dirt smeared from head to toe. My heart pained me, wanting to cry out, Patey, Patey! My eyes searched each face, discarding each image until at last I saw her following Rachael, followed by another girl. An Indian man with a pole in his hand prodded her as they moved along. Mistress and Master, along with the Newhams, Reverend Johansen, and others I recognized, men and women and boys, were part of the second group. Birgitta was not there. I looked for her again, sadness and anger mingling in my heart. I grieved for a moment, but then I thought that the old wretch should have come with me to find the blasted goat. At least she would have been taken alive. Cursed be the merciless, I thought, changing the words from the Bible, for they shall receive no mercy.

The Indians bade us all sit by shouting orders and pushing people to the ground. Most of the people wept, even the men. Once all had sat upon the ground, the man who kept me led me to them and pushed me down amidst the younger girls. Other Indians arrived, carrying away all that they could from the houses. Iron kettles and bales of cloth, hats and coats and lengths of woven wool plaid I saw with surprise, for I had not seen such a cloth since leaving home. Ma had kept her lengths of plaid hidden between layers of linens. Just like my petticoat, Ma had always hidden things under other things, always kept those secrets that were dangerous, or precious, close at hand and yet hidden a breath away. I squeezed my legs together, taking pleasure as the hard corners of Ma’s casket bruised my thighs.

There were about the same number of Indians as there were of us, yet they were all men and we were more women and children than men, and they were the ones with hatchets and blades and arrows. I wondered that Reverend Johansen did not speak to them for he knew their tongue, but he was far from me and I could not ask.

The sun slid from its heights toward the treetops, and the Indian men, quick as any woman in a kitchen, started a fire and butchered three of the goats. Mistress Hasken flew at them, her fists raised, crying, “My goats. My goats! You heathen scourge!”

I saw an Indian raise his hatchet as she came for him and turned my head away. I heard the thud and I heard Master Hasken groan in anguish. Heard her fall to the ground. Others began shouting at the other captives. I knew without question that they meant for the people to be silent. I felt horror that Mistress Hasken was dead, yet it was because she had been stubborn and stupid that he had killed her. Why would anyone run against armed men who had already proved they had the will and more weapons than they needed to kill us all? Many began to wail and call out that we would all be killed.

One of the Indians stood before the lot of us and said, “Hello!” in a loud voice. “No more fight. No more die. Stay alive. No more fight. Understand?”

I nodded as if I had been instructed by a teacher. No lesson could have had more weight than Mistress Hasken’s corpse.

Jabbing parts of the goats onto sticks and stretching them across rocks placed before the fire, the Indian men roasted the meat in a way I had not seen done before. I dared to wonder whether they would give us something to eat. I knew enough of hunger aboard the ships that it had impressed me with the stern belief that to live or die was nothing compared to doing either with a full belly.

They boiled dried seed corn in a pot with the goats’ heads to make a porridge. When the sky began losing its last colors, two of the Indians took tin cups they’d stolen from the village and scooped them full of the porridge. One man chopped hunks of the open-fire-cooked meat into each cup. They lined up the littlest children first and fed them. I was one of the first.

Oh, what a glorious repast! Something in it was so filling and good with meat roasted instead of boiled, I could have eaten three cups of it. I handed my cup back to the bronze man who had given it, and smiled, saying, “Thank you, sir.”

When I sat down, Rachael said to me, “How could you eat from them heathen curs with Mother just murdered before our eyes? You must have no soul at all.”

I thought about turning away without answering her, or declaring I was glad Mistress was dead for she was an empty, clanging gong of a woman, but I said, “I was hungry and they fed me. It was a Christian thing to do and far better than I have been treated by some such as claim salvation.”

“It’s poisoned,” she said. “I hope you die screaming.” Then an Indian man came and said aught to her and she quieted, though she knew not what he spoke.

All the captives got the supper. Rachael put up her nose at it and would not eat. The man who offered her the cup passed it toward the next captive without even a raise of his brows, for he cared not whether she ate. The Indians did not eat of it but some of them prepared another dish, taking the goat liver, heart, and lungs to add to the corn porridge. They added some of the blood and cooked this a good while, and all of them ate it with such relish I wished I had a taste of it, too.

After all had been fed and there remained some of the stew in the pot, the Indians scooped up the last of it and held it forth, offering it with gestures to any who would have it. I gulped it with relish, even though the liver taste was strong. I had not felt so full and drowsy in as many weeks as I could remember.

The Indian who had spoken English before stood again. “No more fight. No run away. Warriors watch. Sleep now. Walk after sun come. No run away. Understand?” I settled in to sleep without much ado. Those among the group who felt terror at this captivity wept; some prayed aloud. As I closed my eyes my last thought was how I had exchanged places, indeed, with the women in the hold who knew how to be captive, who knew how to take anything offered without question. I felt grown-up. I even wondered if I looked as grown as I felt.

When the sun had barely greened the sky, they pushed us with their feet to awaken us, and distributed the cooking pots, sacks of corn, axe heads, and bolts of cloth among the captives. The men compelled everyone, even the smallest, to carry something. I was given a lidded iron kettle-oven with a handle, the kind Birgitta had called a spider, but then she called everything and everyone that when she was angry.

By noon all my fingers hurt. I switched the heavy iron pot from hand to hand, moving it from one knuckle to another, trying to favor the most sore places. I walked with a searing pain in my side, my legs trembling from exhaustion. Patience walked somewhere behind me. All stayed quiet. All walked in fear. We walked on without stop, walking until some of the weaker ones fell out, and the Indians put them upon their backs and carried them! I saw two girls and one grown man carried upon the backs of the warriors.

When they did that, the Indians also carried what the captives had carried, taking the boxes of sugar and bundles of tied onions. That evening followed almost the same as the one before it, with stew made from what we carried and two more goats. That night, even Rachael ate the porridge. The next day the Indians told the men captives, by demonstrating what they wanted, to carry some of the children. Master came to choose me, for I was the lightest burden, but I looked him in the eye and said, “I am not weary one whit, sir. Choose one of your own daughters.” I picked up my kettle and started down the path, pushing to the front of the column behind the Indian man who had first caught me in the brushes. I put my feet in his tracks.

It had never before occurred to me that there were better or worse ways to die. Perhaps Mistress Hasken’s death was merciful. At least, one quick fatal blow such as Mistress received would be preferable to the suffering agony Lonnie had endured. The first death I had known was Allsy’s. We were ill at almost the same time with the same disease, though I recovered. I knew, I thought, what her suffering contained. I had heard men fighting and cursing and beating each other aboard ships. Hangings. Whippings with the cat. A quick blow to the head was a kindness, indeed.

These Indians were a puzzle too large for my learning to sort, too complicated for my mind. I wanted to ask Pa what was to be thought of them, since I could not fathom it myself. I thought of Pa, floating in the bay, face to the sun, smiling as if in sleep, the way he did on a Sunday afternoon, resting from the week’s work in a hammock on the front promenade of the house. I thought of the crystal-blue waters of our bay, and the coral-lined coves, and the warm sun and balmy, fragrant breeze. Coffee flowers and roses, Ma’s gardenia, almost too strong to enjoy except at a distance, plumeria and cocoa blossoms. “Oh, la,” I said aloud. “When shall I get home again?”

An Indian came up behind me and said something that sounded to me like
“Kzomi mannossa,”
although I could not speak the word again. He knelt and motioned to his back, and took the iron kettle from me. I nodded and climbed upon him. As he walked I leaned against his back and wept for the first time in weeks. My feet burned with the relief of not having to use them. My fingers throbbed without the narrow handle of the iron kettle cutting into them. My heart ached and ached and ached with the lack of some new injury to it, as if all the others were enough, stored there, just now felt, like a thorn that had worked its way through the sole of a shoe.

Oh, Ma, I thought, when I see you again, I shall never cease being good and kind and forever look upon your dear face, my most trusted and loved life’s companion. How dear it would be to climb into your lap once more, held in that blessed peace.

We had traveled four days and slept in the forest three nights when on the fourth night, I awoke from a terrible dream of being in the Saracens’ hold. Instead of the wee Irish girl being pulled from the cell, the men had come for me. Patience, in the dream, was not there to keep me from them. Instead of taking me abovedecks to be fed but thrown overboard, one man pulled my arms, one pulling my head, one on each foot, until I came apart in pieces like a wooden toy whose threads had sprung. I lay awake shivering, for I was lying next to the man who had carried me, and rather than curling up around each other as the prisoners were wont to do, the Indians slept like logs, straight, as if they felt no cold and needed no warmth. I wiggled closer to him, putting my side against his arm.

I stared upward at the sky. The moon was bright again, MacPherson’s lantern, as it had been that night in Jamaica. I whispered toward it, “What have I done wrong to have ended in this place, O God?” Yet even as I said the words, I thought about Allsy and how I had been the one meant to die. How could I go back and trade my life for hers, even if I wished it? A person could not turn backward. Time went onward to tomorrow, and so if I were still alive as Patey said, and this was not Purgatory, it was still penance for having lived when others died. I sighed and raised my head above the man to look toward the place where the evening fire had been. The embers seemed alive, coursing red to black to red again, giving no light. I put my head back down. The man next to me snuffled a little.