The Red Garden (2 page)

William Brady laughed at her when she set off. He said women weren’t hunters and that she’d freeze her fingers off in the cold, but she went out into the snow, the poorly made door wobbling on its nailed hinges as it slammed shut behind her. She was patient enough to catch trout in the creek that she had decided to call Dead Husband’s Creek. It was just a wishful thought on Hallie’s part, and it always made her and Harry laugh as they fished together.
How many dead husbands could you fit in the river? Oh, one would be just enough
. When the trout were fried in a black cast-iron pan they were delicious, even though there was no salt or rosemary to use for flavoring.

At night Hallie slept next to Harry. She suggested that the child might need the heat of her body to warm him or he would freeze to death. That was most likely true—Harry was a somewhat delicate child—but this excuse was a way to avoid her husband, and it did the trick. William Brady was so exhausted from the never-ending work in their settlement he didn’t bother to argue and claim his wife for himself.

I
N THE DEAD
of winter, the drifts were eight feet high. There was very little wood to keep the fire burning. The women on the expedition stopped talking. They had nothing to say. They were starving to death. Elizabeth Starr’s hair turned white, even though she was still a young woman. Susanna Partridge, Harry’s mother, had a ghostly look in her eye. The men could no longer remember how on earth William Brady had talked them into leaving Boston in the first place. He’d said something about owning all the land they wanted, everything for as far as the eye could see, but that didn’t seem so appealing anymore. What they saw was the country of their own demise. Two of the horses and one of the mules had died, then had been eaten, by wolves, it appeared. The last two horses, one black and one roan, were kept inside with the families, in a dark, fenced-off section of the shelter. Once, Hallie thought she heard them crying, even though she knew that was impossible; horses weren’t like foolish rabbits. But in the morning the roan was dead.

Hallie took that as a message from their savior: Those who didn’t move forward were condemned to their miserable fates. That morning Hallie put on all of the clothes she owned. She slipped on William’s high boots. She wore mittens and a shawl
that the hatmaker’s wife had given her when she’d left England. That man who had thought Hallie belonged to him had been wrong, and his wife must have prayed that the same had been true for herself. She’d whispered that she wished she was going to Boston as well.

“Those are my boots,” William Brady said when he saw his wife ready to go into the woods.

Hallie already knew her husband was not a generous man. “What’s the difference?” she countered. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

William Brady was in a fog of regret due to his bad choices. He’d rather be sitting in debtor’s prison than be trapped beneath the western slope of Hightop Mountain. He wasn’t about to pull on his boots and go in search of his own cold death.

“No.” Hallie nodded when he backed off. “I thought not. You’ll just sit here and die.”

She took a rifle from the shelf. When the other women told her she was mad to go—surely she’d freeze before she reached the meadow—she said she didn’t care. She would rather die trying to live than simply give up like the rest of them. It was still snowing and the wind made a creaking sound. Yes, it was cold, but as soon as she left the shelter Hallie felt better. Being alone was a huge relief. She couldn’t stand the people who’d come here to the Berkshires. They were fearful and small, ready to leap into their own graves. It was a while before Hallie realized that Harry had sneaked out, following in her wake, leaping from the pressed-down snow of one of her boot steps to the next.

“Go back,” Hallie told him.

Harry shook his head. He kept thinking of those rabbits they’d found, broken and boiled in the big cast-iron pot, and
how, when he closed his eyes and pretended they weren’t rabbits, they had tasted delicious.

“Fine,” Hallie allowed. “But you’d better keep up.”

They went through the meadow and into the woods. It was easier to walk in the wilderness. Much of the snow had caught in the boughs of the pine trees. They took a path through the brambles, where the drifts weren’t as high. The world was white and peaceful and quiet. A squirrel ran up a tree. Hallie aimed and fired, but she missed it. A bundle of snow dropped from the tree she had hit.

By dusk they were lost. It was the hour when the ink began to spread across the sky, only the dark was dotted with white flecks as snow speckled down. Hallie wrapped her shawl around Harry’s head so that he looked like a little old woman rather than a frightened six-year-old. Hallie gazed at the falling snow and the endless woods. She was not yet eighteen. She thought that when she made it back she would name this area Dead Husband’s Woods. She didn’t think she would laugh at a name like that. She would think herself lucky to get out alive.

A star shone and flickered. Impossible since it wasn’t yet fully dark. Hallie picked up the boy and carried him toward the flickering. She thought about the way the Israelites were led out of the desert. She decided she would simply put one foot in front of the other in her husband’s heavy too-big boots. Because of this she was led to Hightop Mountain where the jagged cliffs were riddled with shimmery mica. Each bit of mica was like a shining star. Salvation was mysterious, wasn’t that always true? There was a cave at the base of the mountain. Hallie thought about manna, how you had to be ready to receive what you were given. She went in without any fears of possible dangers. She
had made her choice. Despite everything she did not wish to be back in the hat shop in Birmingham, plucking feathers from the corpses of peacocks and doves, fending off the attentions of the owner.

Harry was exhausted and freezing. He’d fallen asleep on her shoulder. That was lucky for him. He didn’t see the bear in the cave. Hallie stopped. Her breathing was quick. Her choice was to go back out into the snow and die with Harry, or lie down beside the slumbering bear to warm their nearly frozen bodies. She chose the latter. The big bear seemed dead even though it snuffled. It didn’t move and its eyes were closed. Alongside were two cubs, one dead, the other alive and nursing.

Hallie rested Harry Partridge up against the big bear and urged him to drink its milk. In a half sleep he did as he was told, still caught up in his dreams. The little bear who nursed alongside him mewled and pushed at the interloper, then concentrated on feeding. Later, Hallie, too, drank from the bear. She had never tasted anything so rich and delicious as its milk. She felt warmed to her soul. While Harry and the bears slept she stood at the mouth of the cave looking out. The snow was falling lightly and the world seemed a fairyland. Hallie felt enchanted. She felt as though anything could happen.

She brought the little dead bear home, dragging the frozen carcass through the snow. It was difficult going because she had to carry the sleeping Harry as well, hoisted upon her shoulder. She was stronger than she looked in many ways. But she refused to assist when they skinned the little bear and readied the meat. Instead she stood outside and gazed at the mountain. She hated the house and those people. She hated their weakness and their hunger. Harry woke from his dreams and came to stand by her.
He didn’t remember much of what had happened, only that they had been lost and then had found their way home.

The next time she went to the cave, Hallie made certain to leave Harry at home. She cared for him as if he were her own, but she didn’t want him accidentally telling the others where she’d gone. She brought along a bucket for the milk. She would lie to the members of the expedition, insist she had found a cow wandering the forest. They would be hungry enough to believe whatever she said. She didn’t want those fool men setting out to kill a slumbering mother bear and her cub.

Now when she took the gun no one said anything about a woman not being able to hunt. On the way through the woods she heard a crunching sound in the snow. She thought about wolves. Her throat tightened, then she saw clearly and her fear abided. It was a man making camp, setting up a tent, whistling to himself. Hallie had dealt with his species before. She held up the rifle and cocked it. The stranger turned when he heard the sight click. He was a trapper. He threw up his hands and shouted to her in French, a language she recognized but didn’t understand. He reached down to a stone circle he’d made in the snow where he kept his belongings, then held up some skinned rabbits, offering her several.
Pour vous
, he said.
Ici
. As if she knew what that meant. But she knew what she saw. The rabbits would keep them fed for days. Hallie approached. She felt like an animal herself, drawn to the scent of blood. Her shawl fell off her head. That was when the trapper realized she was a woman.

Hallie took the rabbits. She didn’t believe in something for nothing. In return she gave the man her wedding ring. She’d lost so much weight it was slipping off her finger anyway.

“Go on,” she said when the trapper seemed puzzled. “Take
it. It’s real gold. Now go away.” She slapped her hands together in an attempt to make him understand. She felt a wave of protectiveness, not for the people in the cold wooden house, but for the bears in their den. “Go back where you came from. You can’t camp here.”

The man nodded. His name was Flynn. He’d only spoken French because most of the trappers in these mountains were down from Canada and he’d assumed this woman belonged to them. He himself was from Albany and clearly understood every word Hallie said.

He pretended to leave, but instead hid behind some pine trees. Sheltered by their branches, he watched Hallie go inside the cave, then come out later with the bucket of milk. He thought it was curious. And yet he was enthralled despite the cold and the strangeness of the day. He felt the sort of desire for her that a man might feel for a creature he had never before sighted.

Hallie told her husband that her ring must have fallen off when she was milking the cow she swore she had found loose in the woods. In fact, Flynn was just then studying her ring, biting on it to see what it was made of as he stood beside the ravine near the frozen waterfall Hallie called Dead Husband’s Falls. It was definitely gold.

The next time the trapper spied Hallie, he followed her. When she turned to see him and asked him what he thought he was doing, he looped his arms around her, pulling her close. He forgot his life in Albany. Hallie was not like any other woman. She was tempted, lonely. But before he could have her, she made him promise he would never shoot a bear. He laughed but she insisted. She had already come inside his tent and was slipping off her coat, so what could he do? It was a foolish request, and
like a fool he agreed. He slid his hands inside her clothes, his body into hers. As soon as they were done, and he had turned his back, Hallie left him. She was quiet as she took the path up to the mountain. The mother bear was sleeping in the cave. The cub came to curl up beside Hallie. He recognized her and had waited for her. She petted him and sang to him, and for a time she could forget everything that had happened to her and everything that would happen to her still. No wonder Flynn found he was jealous when she left him. When he’d turned to find her gone, he’d wondered who it was she truly loved.

H
ALLIE
B
RADY SAVED
her neighbors from starvation that winter. But instead of being grateful, they seemed to grow afraid of her, as if they were mere humans and she was something more. The women stopped speaking when she came near. The men made certain to avoid her, including her own husband. She didn’t complain or seem put out. She took every chance to escape their company. Her life had veered off into the mountainside. She had found the place where she was sheltered, where the reaches of the next kingdom seemed close enough to touch. Soon she could find her way to the mountain in the dark.

When Harry turned seven, Hallie made him a little cake out of cornmeal and bear’s milk. It was almost spring. The snow had begun to melt and where it did there was swamp cabbage that was edible if you boiled it for hours and held your nose when you took a bite. There were baby eels gathering under the melting ice, tender when cooked in their own skins. The first stalks of wild asparagus appeared in the marshland that Hallie told Harry was called Dead Husband’s Swamp.

One day Flynn was waiting for her just beyond the clearing. He had never before come so near to where they lived. All winter they had lain together and each time she had run off afterward, leaving him wondering about her true nature. On this day he told her it was the season when the bears were waking. That meant it was time for him to go back to Albany, where, he now admitted to Hallie, he had a wife. He had loved Hallie, truly, but the mountain was only a place to hunt, there was no life for him there. Flynn wouldn’t be back and she knew it. Albany was far, and there were other, better places for a trapper to spend the winter. Hallie didn’t look at him when he said his good-byes. She already knew something was different inside her. And why would she beg him to stay? When she thought back to the winter they’d spent together, what she would miss most of all was the bear.

That night Hallie got under the blankets with her husband. He was surprised, but he didn’t turn her down. She hoped Harry over in the corner wouldn’t hear him grunting, but she was glad that William was loud enough to cause Elizabeth Starr to hush them from the loft where the Starrs slept. Hallie prayed this one time would be enough so when the baby came, everyone would be convinced it belonged to William Brady.

H
ALLIE WENT BACK
to the cave once more. She saw footprints and pools of blood. She sat down and wept. The mother bear had been killed and skinned right there at the mouth of her den. There were bits of bone on the ground. Hallie felt that her heart had been broken. Like a fool she’d trusted Flynn’s promise. He
was a liar, like most men. She had worked so hard all winter to survive, but now she wished winter had never ended. As she was leaving, Hallie saw the footprints leading away from the cave, those of a small bear wandering off alone. She sank to her knees, grateful that the cub was out there somewhere, still alive.