Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (25 page)

The woman rose, went to the bed and leaned over the man. He opened his eyes.

She said: “I thought you were sleeping, Jemmy.”

“No—I'm hot, hot like fire. You reckon I need stay covered?”

The boy and the girl were staring at him now, with some curiosity and a little fear. The woman rested her hand on the man's forehead.

“Fever, Sarah?”

“No fever,” she smiled, then sat down on the bed beside him. But his eyes told her that he didn't believe, and she felt a strange, wilting fear. She glanced around the cabin. Josh was fooling with the musket. She said: “Josh, you leave that musket alone! You'll be the death of me yet.”

“Was there anything in the book to lead you on?” the man asked hesitantly. He twisted himself to face her, and then groaned with pain. He was a big, strong man, suffering doubly, the way a strong man does when strength suddenly leaves him. He had dark hair, but the same light blue eyes as the boy; his face was brown from the sun, but bloodless.

“There ain't a lot about gunshot wounds,” the woman told him.

“It said nothing about the bullet being inside?”

She shook her head.

“My pa, he fought in the French war, in Canada. He said a man could take his death, leaving the lead inside of him.”

“That ain't so!” she said.

At the word “death,” the girl began to cry.

The mother said: “You, Susie—stop that!”

“She ain't much,” Josh remarked.”She's plenty scared, all right.”

The baby was crying again. “I'll have to nurse her,” Sarah muttered. “I'm straight nervous, but I'll have to nurse her.”

The man whispered: “I don't want to be a load, Sarah, but I'm dreadful hot and thirsty. There's water?”

“Plenty of water.” She went to the water jug, and his eyes followed her. She held a pewter cup to the opening, but the water stopped flowing before the cup was full.

The girl screamed: “Maw—maw, gimme a drink of water!”

She had left the spigot open. A few drops trickled out, fell on the floor and were absorbed immediately by the packed dirt.

The man had seen; holding himself up on one elbow, he stared at the water keg with wide blue eyes. Then he dropped back on the bed.

Her face impassive, the woman brought the cup of water over to him. He shook his head.

“Please,” she begged, “drink it down, Jemmy. There's plenty more water. There's a pot of water I put away for boiling, and a pailful I was thinking to wash the children with.”

She lied well; she lied the way only a woman can, when the lie will save, but he knew that she was lying.

Susie began: “Maw, please—” and then saw her mother's face and shrank back. The two-year-old balanced himself over the crib, and the baby stopped her whimpering for a moment to stare into her brother's eyes.

Then, for that moment, it was very still, the only sound being the gurgling of the brook just within the shade of the forest.

The mother's voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper: “For God's sake, Jemmy, drink this.”

He didn't answer, only lay there with his eyes closed. The two-year-old had tired watching the baby, and was now poking gingerly at her ribs. The baby began to scream.

“Leave her alone!”

Susie's eyes were on the cup of water. It was late in the afternoon now, and she had had nothing to drink since the morning. She was very, very thirsty. She took a step toward her mother. Josh had stood up and was staring at the window. Now the gurgling of the brook seemed louder than ever.

The mother bent over her husband and touched his face. It was very hot, and there were little beads of sweat all over it. It was a face which she knew and had known for twelve years, every line upon it, every hard fold of the skin. The cheeks were high and the jaw was large and gentle at the same time. A stubble of beard over it. Yet the face was different, and for a moment she imagined that he was dead.

“Jemmy, Jemmy,” she pleaded.

Then he opened his eyes.

She held the water toward him, and even though he shook his head, she was relieved. With a few drops of the water she wet his face, and then she gave the rest to Susie.

At first, the girl stared at it and wouldn't drink; but the expression on her mother's face had changed. The woman was not beautiful, or even fair. Her face was too hard and too worn. But now the face was gentle with thankfulness.

The girl gulped down the water.

Josh said: “You let her drink—I don't get no water, but you let her drink.”

“Yer a boy. I reckon you can stand a few hours without makin' a pig of yourself over water.”

She went to the window, stood just to one side of it and peered out. There was no living thing out there, nothing but the wheat and the corn and the green wall of forest. That was what made it so hard, not knowing. Yet she knew what might be out there, and of the cunning and the patience of what might be there.

The sun had dropped low, and now it was just over the forest's edge, throwing a shadow onto the wheat. A wind had come up with the evening, stirring the wheat. But no life. She knew the way a wind stirred the wheat.

She stood there for a while, glancing back into the cabin every now and then and wondering how it would be. Sooner or later it would come to a head. They would leave the cabin—or what waited out there in the forest would come and investigate the still cabin. The musket would be fired once, and then it would be over.

The water didn't make too much difference. It aggravated the situation, but in the end it would be the same.

Her husband said: “There wouldn't be no sign of them, Sarah.”

“I know,” she shrugged.

She went over to the bed, lifted the cover and looked at his wound. She held herself so that the children wouldn't see.

Living this way, all in one room, it was a strange life. Not that she complained, thinking only that this was a way of transition, that some day this land would be like the land she had left behind in the East, on the other side of the mountains. Yet it was a strange life, all of them in one room, morning, noon and night.

The wound was in his side, toward the front. He had not coughed any blood, so there was a good chance that his lungs were untouched. Yet the large, gaping hole was red and inflamed. She had treated it the only way she knew, stuffed it full of wet tobacco leaf.

He said: “I hardly felt it at first, like being hit in the side with a bit of rock.”

Then, when he would have looked at it, she put back the dressing and covered him.

“It ain't no wound for a man to fret on,” he said. “I'll be up outa bed maybe tomorrow, maybe come another sunset.”

Then their eyes met. They trusted each other. She realized that trust was what had drawn them westward, where no sane persons would go.

He whispered: “Boone's stockade is west by north—sixty, seventy miles.” Then he closed his eyes, and she sat by his bed, wondering. West by north—sixty or seventy miles.

Josh and his sister had crept to the open window; they stood there, peering out and trembling with excitement.

His mother's hand caught him over the ear.

“I don't see no Injuns, maw.”

“You stay from that window!”

She began to set out things for supper. Some salted meat—that would make them thirsty. There was corn on the cob, which she had boiled the day before. She wondered whether to give them the meat. If the cow were only in the house, they could have milk for a day at least. But the cow had wandered away.

She gave them the corn and held back the meat. Some of the corn she mashed up for her husband, but he was asleep when she went to him. She didn't want to wake him.

Josh complained about the food.

“Eat it,” she said.

“Why can't we have meat, maw?”

“Time the school was getting out here,” she said. “It's a waste of a body's strength to live in a land without a school. You all need a taste of a schoolmaster's rod.”

The two-year-old ate with difficulty. He needed water, but he didn't complain. There was something solid about him, something that reminded her of his father. He had his father's name. Josh's mouth was swollen and dry.

She nursed the baby. She sat in the corner, just within the bulge of the fireplace. There was a sort of peace now, Josh and his sister sitting at the table, talking in low tones.

The baby gave up the breast and began to whimper again. Sarah realized that she was dry, all dry, inside and outside. Her mouth was like bad-tasting leather. If it was that way with her, how was it with the children? Before morning came, Jemmy would die. More than anything else, he had to have water.

She put the child back in his crib. Then she went to the window and stared out at the forest. All in the shade now; the sun was setting. A wide band of shadow bordered the forest.

She took down a wooden water pail, stared at it a moment and set it on the table. She could go herself—Josh was looking at her.

If I don't come back
—she thought.

She said to Josh: “If I sent you down to the brook for water, you'd come right back?”

He nodded eagerly.

“You know how with pa? Pa was shot. They're out there, waitin'. You know that?”

He nodded again.

She couldn't say any more. Her throat was tight inside and her heart was a heavy lump in her breast. She gave Josh the pail, all the while wondering what impelled her to do it. And then, at the last moment, she would have kept him back.

“Walk,” she said. “Don't run—walk.”

He nodded soberly. She opened the door, reached to touch him, and then held herself back. Now it seemed to her that this was the culmination of her life, and that more than this she could not be called upon to do.

A waving track in the corn marked his path. In the wheat, he showed again, head and shoulders, and then he was lost in the shadow of the forest.

Sarah felt the girl, close to her, ordered her back into the house. Then it seemed to her that she had been standing there for hours, in the doorway—waiting.

There were sounds from the forest now, where there had been no sound before. Or else it was her mind, making sounds for her to be afraid of.

The baby was whimpering again. Her feet were like lead when she went inside, soothed her. If Jemmy woke up and saw that Josh had gone—Josh was his first man-child, a thing to be proud of and called after Jemmy's own father.

She went back to the door. The shadow of the forest had crept out further; it was twilight now.

She saw him in the wheat, head and shoulders. Then she wanted to run forward and meet him; and somehow she held back. When he came out of the corn, he wasn't running—walking as she had said and bearing the pail of water carefully.

The shot from the forest was like the snapping of a dry piece of wood, not terribly loud, but ringing afterward, as if someone had fired again and again. The pail of water in the boy's hand shattered to pieces, splashing him. He ran forward to the house, and she bolted the door behind him. Then she was down on her knees, feeling all over him with her rough hand, which she tried so desperately to make gentle.

He was crying a little. There was a splinter in his arm, and he winced when she drew it out. His arm was bruised, but otherwise he wasn't hurt.

Jemmy was awake, staring at them. She couldn't be sure, because now the cabin was almost dark, but she imagined that there was no reason in his eyes.

Josh said: “I didn't drink, I swear, maw—I didn't drink at the crick.”

“I know, I know, child.”

“You want me to go back, maw?”

“No—no.” She was thinking of what Jemmy would say, knowing that she had sent Josh down there alone.

She went to the single window that was open, closed it, and bolted the shutter. Then she scraped flint and steel until a candle was lit. The baby was sleeping, and she was thankful for that. It was a wonder that she could sleep through it. The two-year-old sat on the floor, playing with a piece of wood. Susie was close to Josh, hardly knowing whether to cry or not.

Jemmy was awake. She saw his eyes as soon as she lit the candle, and she saw that he didn't know. Staring straight at her, he didn't see her. He was repeating what he had told her that morning, when he had come back to the cabin, all wet with blood and barely able to walk:

“I was breaking open that land down the crick bottom. I didn't hear a sound, only the first thing I knew there's a pain in my side, like someone threw a rock at me. Funny about not hearing a shot, just a pain in my side, and then the red devil running at me. I split him with the ax, but there's more. Reckon you kin count on there being plenty more of them holed up here. I got a mortal hurt, Sarah.”

The boy and the girl were listening, their eyes wide with horror. Susie crept up to Josh, and he put his arm around her.

She was crying a little, and Josh said: “That ain't no way to carry on.”

“Come to bed,” Sarah told them, just as if she had heard nothing, and when Jemmy moaned again and again, she made out that it was nothing for the children to be worried over.

The two-year-old slept thankfully and quickly, but it hurt Sarah to see how swollen his mouth was, eyes bloodshot. Josh and his sister slept together in the same bed. There, in the shadow, they became disembodied whispers. Sarah hoped they would sleep soon.

“It's a long way north and west,” Jemmy mumbled. “Boone's a fine man and easy to take in strangers. But long walking—for sixty miles. The canebrake ain't easy in summer heat.”

Sarah took up the candle and walked around the cabin, from window to window, making sure that the shutters on each were bolted. At the fireplace, she stopped, poking at the ashes. She had heard of a cabin on the River Licking, where they had dropped down the chimney to invade the place. It might be wise for her to start a fire, only in this heat it would make a furnace of the cabin. They wouldn't sleep with a fire in the cabin.