Over the Misty Mountains (26 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Hawk’s Son

A cold snap had gripped Williamsburg in August of 1770, making everyone expect a cold winter was on the way. Mr. and Mrs. Spencer were sitting inside the parlor, sharing the warmth of a crackling fire. The pleasant smell of burning wood came faintly into the room, and the yellow and red flames danced in the hearth, sending sparks flying up the huge chimney.

Esther Spencer was knitting, and from time to time she looked outside the mullioned windows and watched the white clouds as they scudded across a dark blue sky. The brisk wind stripped the leaves from the oak trees in the front yard, then sent them tumbling madly through the air until they hit the streets, where they piled themselves into small mountains, only to be scattered again when another gust of wind came.

“Going to be cold. Never saw August so cool,” Mr. Spencer said. He was sitting across from his wife in a Regency style beechwood fauteuil, which had an arched, padded back and carvings of foliage and shells and was covered in a chocolate brown woolen moreen. Looking up from reading his Bible, he shook his head. “It seems like the times are changing. The next thing you know we’ll be having snow in the middle of August.”

Jacob Spencer, sitting across the room on a cushion, looked up at his grandfather. He was fourteen years old and had thick dark hair and the darkest blue eyes James had ever seen. He was a sturdy boy, tall and lean, but he would fill out one day to be a strong man. “Snow in August? That’s not possible, Grandfather!”

James Spencer laughed. “Anything’s possible, I guess, Jake. Not very likely, though, I will admit.” He looked over fondly at his grandson and said, “What are you reading now?”

“The
Odyssey
.”

“You’re getting to be quite a scholar.”

“Not really. I’m reading the English translation. I’d like to learn Greek, though.”

“Would you?” James Spencer cocked one eyebrow and looked at the boy thoughtfully. “I suppose we can arrange for a tutor if that’s what you really want.”

“I think it would be fun.”

“Well, you did like Latin . . . and you did well in it, too,” he said rather proudly. He winked at his wife and said, “What would you think if we had a lawyer on our hands, Esther?”

Esther looked across at the boy, her knitting needles clicking faintly in the room. “Would you like to be a lawyer, Jacob?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“What would you like to be? We’ve talked about this before. Pretty soon you’re going to have to make up your mind. You’re growing up fast.”

Jacob Spencer did not answer for a time. He was not a young man who spoke a great deal. There was a quietness about him, although sometimes with young people he would throw his reticence aside and join in with the frivolity of his peers. Now, however, in the quietness of the room, he thought of the question and shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’ll think about it, and as soon as I decide I’ll let you know.”

Again James winked at his wife and said, “Well, that will be good—” He broke off, interrupted by a knock on the front door.

The door opened, and Ellen, the maid, entered and said, in her quiet voice, “There’s a gentleman to see you, sir.”

“Who is it?” asked James.

“He doesn’t say. Shall I show him in?”

“Is he a tradesman?”

“I . . . I don’t think so, Mr. Spencer,” Ellen said.

Spencer studied the puzzled look in the maid’s eyes and said, “Well, have him come in, then. Bring him into the parlor where it’s warm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wonder who that can be? Ellen knows everybody in town, I think,” Esther said calmly.

“I can’t imagine.” He looked over at Jake, who had lost interest and was buried again in the book that he held on his knees.
It would take a blast of black powder to jolt that boy out of a book when he gets into it
, James thought. He had no time to think more, for he glanced up and his heart seemed to skip a beat. He stood up at once and found that his knees were not quite steady. Glancing over, he saw that Esther had risen also, then both of them moved forward at the same time.

“Josh!” James Spencer cried, and he heard his wife’s sobs coming quickly as they moved across the room. It had been almost fifteen years since they had seen their son, and this tall tanned man wearing buckskins could have passed them on the street unnoticed, but in this house, even though the years had thickened the wide body of their son and brought some creases into his brown face, they recognized him immediately.

Jacob looked up with astonishment, seeing his grandparents run across the room. The tall stranger opened his arms and put them around the two. He towered over them both, and Jacob suddenly found himself, for some reason, afraid. From the reactions of his grandparents, he realized that this man must be his father. The years of loneliness when he had not seen him swept over Jacob. It was a strange feeling for him. There was a longing to rush forward and join the little group, but he merely stood to his feet and held the book tightly in one hand, staring at the three. A hardness gripped him, and he remembered the years when he was a small child and he had wept silently in his bed night after night, longing for his father. And now he suddenly appeared—yet the man standing before him was a total stranger.

Hawk felt strange and uncomfortable. It had been a long time since he had been to Williamsburg. His parents, he saw, had grown almost totally gray, and as he held them, they seemed very frail to him. And then he looked over at the boy who was staring at him.
He looks exactly as I did at his age
. He detached himself from his parents and walked over to the boy. “Well, Jacob, look at you. Almost a man,” he said quietly.

Jake swallowed hard. He did not move but stood there stiffly. He could not think of a thing to say, and he could not bring himself to embrace his father. The only people he had ever embraced were his grandparents. Finally he said, “Good day, sir.”

Hawk blinked at the terseness he heard in his son’s voice, but the thought came,
We’re strangers, not father and son
. And that brought another streak of pain, for despite the strong resemblance to himself, he saw many of Faith’s features in the boy. Memories flooded back of that night Faith had died and he had walked out.

“Come and sit down. Tell us where you’ve been—what you’ve been doing.” Esther came and took Hawk’s arm. “Josh, you look so
brown
.”

“A man gets that way when he stays outdoors in the woods all the time.”

“When did you get in?” James asked.

“Just late last night. My friend Sequatchie is waiting outside.”

“Waiting outside? Well, go bring him in!”

“All right, but not everybody wants an Indian in their home.”

“I’m surprised you would say a thing like that!” James said. “Any friend of yours is welcome here. Go bring him in this instant!”

Hawk rose, opened the door, and went outside. “Come on in, Sequatchie.”

Sequatchie entered hesitantly, for it was he who had insisted on remaining outside. He was wearing his usual dress of fringed buckskins and moccasins. His single scalp-lock hung down his back, and he looked smooth and polished without lines in his face.

“This is my friend Sequatchie. Sequatchie, this is my father and mother, and this is my son, Jacob.”

Sequatchie greeted the family and said, “It is good to be in your home.” He looked over toward Jacob and studied the boy carefully. Turning to Hawk, he said, “You have a fine son. He looks like you.”

There was a moment’s embarrassed silence, and then Esther Spencer began at once, saying, “I must fix you something to eat. You must be hungry.”

Hawk protested, but he could tell that she really wanted to make him and Sequatchie feel welcome. They all sat down in front of the fire, and after his mother came back from instructing Ellen about the food, he said, “I’m sorry that I’ve been gone so long. Time just seems to have slipped by.” He wanted desperately to apologize, to tell them how hard it was for him to come back to this house. It was like a knife piercing his heart. The night that Faith had died here was still painfully vivid in his memory after all these years.

“We’re just glad you’ve come now, and we’re glad that you’re here, too, Sequatchie,” Esther said. “Have you known our son a long time?”

“Yes, we are brothers.”

“Sequatchie saved my life,” Hawk said, then he began to tell them how he had met Sequatchie, and how his Cherokee friend had given him a new name. “My name is Hawk on the other side of the mountains. I’m more comfortable with that, but it probably won’t be easy for you.”

“Hawk . . . well, that’s a strong name,” James Spencer said. “Now, tell us what you’ve been doing out there.”

Awkwardly Hawk began to speak of his life over the mountains. Sequatchie sat back, and finally when the food was brought in on a tray, he tasted it with interest. It was a fine white cake, and he did not wait for a spoon but picked it up in his hand and ate it.

Across the room, Jacob suddenly grinned, the first sign of life that he had shown. Sequatchie caught it and smiled at the boy. “Good,” he said. “You eat, too.”

Jacob had kept himself back out of the group, but now he reached out and took the plate that his grandmother had offered. Ignoring the fork, he picked up the cake with his hand and stuffed it into his mouth. “Good,” he said to Sequatchie, smiling.

Hawk saw instantly that the boy had a sense of humor, and he was glad that Jacob had made the gesture of friendship toward the Indian.

Time seemed to drag very slowly, and if it had not been for James, who had skillfully drawn Sequatchie out by entertaining them with his stories of Indian life, it would have been even more awkward.

Finally, James sensed that it might be okay to leave Hawk and Jacob alone, and he said, “Sequatchie, you come with me. Mrs. Spencer and I will show you how we live here. Then someday maybe I’ll come across the mountains and you can show me your home.”

The three left the room, and after a long silence in which neither spoke, Hawk finally said, “How have you been?”

“Very well, sir.”

Another long silence filled the room and Hawk thought,
This is not going to be easy. We have nothing to talk about
. “Do you like your studies?”

“Yes, sir.”

Politeness—that was all. There was a coldness in the boy’s tone, and Hawk desperately wanted to break through it, but the harder he tried, the more difficult the one-sided conversation became. He got up finally and looked out the window, saying, “Fine day outside. I could go around and see some of the places where I used to go when I was a boy. Maybe you could come with me.”

Jake was staring at his father, his eyes hooded. Abruptly he asked, “Why did you run off and leave me?”

There was such anger and pain in the tone of his son that Hawk could have taken an arrow in the back with less of a shock. When he’d first left, he had gone over this in his own mind many times, trying hard to come up with a good answer. Now, he went over to where the boy was standing and reached out and placed his hand on his shoulder. “I nearly lost my mind when your mother died, son,” he said quietly. He tried to explain how the loss of his wife had brought such pain that he could not bear to think of it. He related how he had fled, almost like a madman. “I . . . I know I was wrong to leave you,” he said. “But I was almost crazy. I would’ve been no man for a young boy to be around,” he said lamely.

“You didn’t have to leave!” Jacob said.

“Your grandfather and your grandmother have done a better job of raising you than I could have.”

Jacob’s eyes burned with bitterness, and he said, “You left me! Do you know what it’s like to be without anybody?”

“You have your grandparents.”

“I didn’t have a mother, and I didn’t have a father!”

Hawk had never felt exactly as he did at that moment. Guilt welled up in him. He knew he had been wrong, and finally he said, “Son, try to understand. I . . . I can’t live in a town. I have to be out-of-doors. I have to be moving or I’ll go crazy.”

“You could’ve taken me with you!”

Hawk felt the boy’s shoulder tense under his hand and he said quietly, “I couldn’t have taken a baby with me into the woods! I nearly died myself. The first few years I was out there, it was just a matter of trying to stay alive every day. I couldn’t have taken care of you!”

Jacob looked up, and his lips trembled as he said, “How . . . how long are you going to stay? A long time?”

Hawk cleared his throat. “Well . . . no. We’re leaving tomorrow to take a group of settlers back over the mountains—”

“Go on! See if I care!” Jacob slapped his father’s hand away and ran out of the room, his eyes bleared with tears. He almost ran into his grandmother. Dodging by her, he ran out of the house.

Esther came in at once and walked straight up to her son. “What’s the matter with Jacob?”

Hawk turned to her, his eyes glazed with pain and frustration. “There’s nothing the matter with him,” he whispered. “But there’s something the matter with me.”

“Are you going to stay for a while?”

“No, I’ve got to get away, Mother.”

“Josh, you’ve just arrived—and it’s been so long. You . . . you can’t leave—not now. Jacob needs a father.”

“He needs a better one than I am! Father can take care of him!”

“It’s not the same thing,” Esther said, her eyes pleading with her son.

“He’s a better father than I could ever be.”

“He’s getting old now, and he’s not well. Jacob needs you, Jehoshaphat.” She pronounced his old name, all of it, and the sound of it brought back many memories. Hawk turned away blindly and went to the window. He stared out but saw nothing. Seeing his parents and his son after all these years had deeply stirred feelings in him that he had tried so hard to avoid. His mother came over and put her arm around him. “You can’t run away forever, son,” she said.

****

Early the next morning Hawk and Sequatchie were preparing to leave. Hawk had tossed and turned all night. The previous afternoon and evening he had tried to get close to Jacob, but the boy had merely stared at him harshly, his lips drawn into a tight line.