Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (10 page)

       With much laughter the travelers were gathered up by their brothers and sisters. Molly protested feebly as her sisters half led, half carried her back to their room.

       By the end of the first hour, life in the boat had become routine. The shouts had been lost in the distance and there was only the quiet river and the silent woods and fields and the regular splash of oars.

       For weeks they had been in training, and now all six were hardened and worked well together. Lewis, who had designed the boat, stood forward on guard against unexpected hazards. Three of the brothers and Molly rowed in the first hitch, and Ben sat forward, behind Lewis.

       There was a covered section forward, with the canopy down now, and a permanently closed-in rear section with four bunks. The forward section could be closed as snugly as the rear. Every available inch of space had been used, mostly for food, extra clothes, medical supplies, and waterproof pouches folded neatly, to be filled with documents, maps, whatever they found of value.

       Molly rowed and watched the shoreline. They had left the familiar section of the valley, with its cultivated fields; the land was changing. The valley narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again, with steeply rising cliffs to the left, wooded slopes on the right. In the silent morning the trees were unmoving; there was no sound except the splashing of oars.

       Her sisters would be in the food-processing kitchens this week, Molly thought, as she watched the oar dip into the clear water. Laughing together, moving together. Perhaps they missed her already . . . She pulled steadily, lifted the oar, watched it dip again.

       "Rock! Ten o'clock, twenty yards!" Lewis called.

       They shifted course easily to give it a wide berth.

       "Nine o'clock, twenty yards!"

       Thomas, in front of Molly, was wide-shouldered, his hair the color of straw, and as straight as straw. A slight breeze lifted it and let it fall over and over. His muscles moved fluidly, and perspiration glazed him. Molly thought he would make a fine drawing, a study in musculature. He turned and said something to Harvey, across the boat from him, and they both laughed.

       Now the sun was higher and the heat was in their faces, along with the breeze they created moving through the water, slowly, but steadily, smoothly. Molly could feel sweat on her upper lip. Soon they would have to stop to put the canopy in place. It would offer some wind resistance, but they had decided the pluses were greater than the minuses; the trip was planned to provide the maximum of safety and comfort, and neither was to be sacrificed to speed.

       Others had gone down the river as far as the juncture with the Shenandoah. There were rocks ahead, then a smooth, long slide into the broader, and unknown, river. And that afternoon Molly would relinquish her place at the oars and start her real mission, a pictorial diary of the trip, including whatever changes in the maps were necessary.

       They tried to use the sail, but the wind in the valley was capricious, and they decided to wait until later, perhaps on the Potomac, and try it there. They stopped and set up the canopy and rested, then returned to the oars, and now Molly sat alone, her sketch pad and the river maps on the seat beside her. Her hands felt stiff and she was content to sit quietly. Finally she started to sketch.

       They came to the first rapids later that afternoon, and navigated them without difficulty. They joined the Shenandoah and turned north, and when they rested, they were all subdued and even Jed had nothing to laugh about, no jokes to make.

       They slept in the boat, riding gently on the water. Molly thought of her sisters, now in their narrow white beds, the mat rolled up and put away. She fought down tears of loneliness. A high breeze stirred the treetops and she imagined they were whispering. She longed to reach out and touch one of the brothers; it mattered little which one of them. She sighed, and heard someone whisper her name. It was Jed. He slipped into her narrow bunk, and with their arms wrapped tightly about each other, they fell asleep.

       On the second night they all paired off and comforted one another before they were able to sleep.

       The next day they were forced to a stop by rapids and a waterfall. "It isn't on the map at all," Molly said, standing on the bank with Lewis. The river had been wide and easy, the valley heavily overgrown with bushes and low trees where once corn and wheat had grown. Then the cliffs moved toward the water, which narrowed and deepened and ran swifter, and sometime since the maps had been printed one of the cliffs had shuddered and dropped massive boulders and debris that now choked the river as far ahead as they could see. The water had spread, filled the valley from side to side. They could hear the thunder of a waterfall ahead.

       "We should be nearly at the juncture of the north and south branches of the Shenandoah," Molly said. She turned to look at the cliffs. "Probably a couple of miles at the most, over there." She pointed up the cliff that overshadowed them.

       Lewis nodded. "We'll have to go back until we find a place to get the boat out of the water, go overland."

       Molly consulted her map. "Look, this road. It comes nearly to the river back there, then goes over a couple of hills, about three miles, then back down to the river. That should clear the falls. There's nothing but cliffs on this side between us and the north branch. No road, no trail, nothing."

       Lewis ordered lunch, and after they had eaten and rested they turned the boat and began to row against the current, keeping close to shore, watching for a sign of the road. The current was fast here, and they realized for the first time how hard it would be on the return trip, fighting the current all the way home.

       Molly sighted the break in the hills where the old road was. They pulled in closer and found a spot where the boat could be hauled out of the water, and prepared for an overland trek. They had brought wheels and axles and axes to cut trees to make a wagon, and four of the brothers began to unpack what they needed.

       Folded neatly away were heavy long pants and boots and long-sleeved shirts, protection more against scratches from bushes than cold, which was not expected while they were gone. Molly and Lewis changed clothes hurriedly and left to look for the best way to get through the scrub growth to the road.

       They would have to sleep in the woods that night, Molly thought suddenly, and a shudder passed through her. Her sisters would look up from their work uneasily, exchange glances, and return to their chores reluctantly, somehow touched by the same dread she felt. If she were within reach, the others would have come to her, unable to explain why, but irresistibly drawn together.

       They had to turn back several times before they found a way the boat could be taken to the road. When they returned to the river, the others had the flat wagon prepared and the boat lashed in place. There was a small fire, on which water was heating for tea. They were all dressed in long pants and boots now.

       "We can't stop," Lewis said impatiently, glancing at the fire. "We have about four hours until dark, and we should get to the road and make camp before then."

       Ben said quietly, "We can start while Molly has tea and cheese. She is tired and should rest." Ben was the doctor. Lewis shrugged.

       Molly watched as they strapped on the harnesses. She held a mug of tea and a piece of cheese the color of old ivory, and at her feet the fire burned lower. She moved away from it, too warm in the heavy pants and shirt. They were starting to move the boat, four of them pulling together, Thomas pushing from behind. He glanced back at her and grinned, and the boat heaved over a rock, settled, and moved steadily to the left and upward.

       Molly took her tea and cheese to the edge of the river, pulled off her boots, and sat with her feet in the tepid water. Each of them had a reason for being on this trip, she knew, and felt not at all superfluous. The Miriam sisters were the only ones who could remember and reproduce exactly what they saw. From earliest childhood they had been trained to develop this gift. It was regrettable that the Miriam sisters were slightly built; she had been chosen for this one skill alone, not for strength and other abilities, as the brothers had been, but that she was as necessary as any of the others was not doubted by anyone.

       The water felt cooler to her feet now, and she began to strip off her clothing. She waded out and swam, letting the water flow through her hair, cleanse her skin, soothe her. When she finished, the fire was almost out and, using her mug, she doused it thoroughly, dressed again, and then began to follow the trail left by the brothers and the heavy boat.

       Suddenly and without any warning she felt she was being watched. She stopped, listening, trying to see into the woods, but there was no sound in the forest except the high, soft rustling of leaves. She whirled about. Nothing. She drew in her breath sharply and started to walk again. It was not fear, she told herself firmly, and hurried. There wasn't anything to be afraid of. No animals, nothing. Only burrowing insects had survived: ants, termites . . . She tried to keep her mind on ants—they were the pollinators now—and she found herself looking upward again and again at the swaying trees.

       The heat was oppressive, and it seemed the trees were closing in, always closing in, yet never getting any closer. It was being alone for the first time in her life, she told herself. Really alone, out of reach, out of touch. It was loneliness that made her hurry through the undergrowth, now crushed down, hacked out of the way. And she thought, this was why men went mad in the centuries gone by: they went mad from loneliness, from never knowing the comfort of brothers and sisters who were as one, with the same thoughts, the same longings, desires, joys.

       She was running, her breath coming in gasps, and she forced herself to stop and breathe deeply a few minutes. She stood leaning against a tree and waited until her pulse was quieter, then she began to walk again, briskly, not letting herself run. But not until she saw the brothers ahead did the fear subside.

       That night they made camp in the middle of the rotten roadway deep in the forest. The trees closed over them, blotting out the sky, and their small fire seemed feeble and pale in the immensity of the darkness that pressed in from all sides and above. Molly lay rigidly still, listening for something, anything, for a sound that said they were not alone in the world, that she wasn't alone in the world. But there was no sound.

       The next afternoon Molly sketched the brothers. She was sitting alone, enjoying the sun and the water, which had become smooth and deep. She thought of the brothers, how different they were one from another, and her fingers began to draw them in a way she never had drawn before, never had seen before.

       She liked the way Thomas looked. His muscles were long and smooth, his cheekbones high and prominent, neatly dividing his face. She drew his face, using only straight lines that suggested the planes of his cheeks, the narrow sharp nose, the pointed chin. He looked young, younger than the Miriam sisters, although they were nineteen and he was twenty-one.

       She closed her eyes and visualized Lewis. Very big, over six feet. Very broad. She drew a rocklike form, a long head and a face that seemed to flow, rounded, fleshy with no bony framework, except for his large nose. The nose didn't satisfy her. She closed her eyes and after a moment rubbed out the nose she had drawn and put one back that was slightly off center, a bit crooked. Everything was too exaggerated, she knew, but somehow, in overdoing it, she had caught him.

       Harvey was tall and rather thin. And great long feet, she thought, smiling at the figure emerging on her pad. Big hands, round eyes, like rings. You just knew, she thought, he would be awkward, stumble over things, knock things down.

       Jed was easy. Rotund, every line a curve. Small, almost delicate hands, small bones. Small features centered in his face, all too close together.

       Ben was the hardest. Well proportioned, except for his head, which was larger than the others', he was not so beautifully muscled as Thomas. And his face was merely a face, nothing outstanding about it. She drew his eyebrows heavier than they should have been, and made him squint, the way he did when he listened closely. She narrowed her eyes studying it. It wasn't right. Too hard. Too firm, too much character, she thought. In ten years he might look more like the sketch than he did now.

       "Rocks! Twelve o'clock, thirty yards!" Lewis called. Guiltily Molly flipped the sketch pad to a clean page and began to draw the river and its hazards.

       Ben was bringing his medical notes up to date. Lewis was finishing his daily log. Thomas sat in the rear of the boat and stared back the way they had come. Ben had been watching him closely for the past three days, uncertain what to expect, not liking the change in attitude that Thomas wasn't even trying to hide any longer.