Follow the River (37 page)

Mary lay in total darkness remembering dying; before the blankness had come she had been thinking that that was the experience of dying, but now she knew that she had not died, but had only gone unconscious, because now she was alive, had just now been awakened by a dream of wolves and could hear them now outside, far away, howling in the cold. And in a way she was disappointed that she had not died, because death had seemed like a rather fair place after all, certainly better than what she had been enduring for the last four or five weeks and had yet to endure for another week or two.

But no, she thought now, I don’t really want to die so far away from Will, I don’t want to die without Will knowing whether I’m alive or not or where I am. I don’t really want to die at all while Will’s still alive because I’m his wife and he counts on me. Nay, she thought with a long sigh, I don’t really want to die at all because I’m young and Will’s young and we have to beget us another family to go on in place of our three tads them bloody savages has cost us; Will wouldn’t be happy atall if they was no Ingles children t’ reap what he’s sown.

He might find another wife if I was to perish here, she thought. Now I don’t like the thought o’ that hardly atall, so let’s just not have any more thoughts of this dyin’ business …

Mary’s breathing was slow and steady now and her heartbeat was thumping along steadily, not fluttering like a candle in a draft as it had been, and she could hear that Ghetel’s breathing was all right too.

Oh, Dear God, but we come near enough t’ have a peek at you this night, I swear we did. Ghetel and me both.

She remembered that after the crossing of the cold fast stream they had been too chilled and exhausted, desperately hurting all over, to say anything to each other. Ghetel had simply followed her and they had hollowed out and padded up this crevice they were in, and Ghetel had crawled in beside her, and maybe Ghetel had thought she was dead, too.

Old Ghetel got sane again after that crossing, Mary thought. Guess she was just too miserable t’ think any more about killin’ me. An’ now here we are sleepin’ close as a man and wife do. After her takin’ after me with th’ tomahawk and me thrashin’ her with that hickory pole. Oh, God, don’t it beat all!

Somehow during the night, after they had gone unconscious, instead of their hearts stopping, instead of the cold creeping the rest of the way in and snuffing out their hearts, their hearts had driven the cold back, driven it back out of their torsos and their limbs and finally even out of their feet, and the warmth of their blood had eventually reached to their skin; then the warmth of Mary’s skin had reached the warmth of Ghetel’s and Ghetel’s had reached Mary’s and they had been heating each other the way a hot stone warms your feet when you step off the cold floor and slip into bed. They had warmed each other so well that even the damp blanket felt dry now. The utter numbness had gone out of Mary’s feet and they ached in a dull way now, even, from time to time, felt as if they were being struck with thousands of little needles, which would make her legs twitch, and she was glad she could feel them. It was not truly what one could call warm here in this blanket, but it was not terribly cold, and where the two women’s bare skin touched, there actually was warmth.

It’s a miracle what’s happened while we slept, Mary thought. Thank ’ee, O Lord in Heaven, for another little miracle. I reckon I’ve thought some unworthy thoughts your way from time to time since last July; still don’t quite know why y’ve done me th’ way you have, but y’ do seem to come around an’ look after us now and then after your fashion, so I must guess you haven’t forgot us altogether.

Now I admit Will and me often forgot our prayers, sometimes for days at a time, as they’s so much t’ do when you live out here this side o’ th’ mountains and have to make and do everything, just
everything
, for yourself, so we often forgot, it’s true, and maybe that’s why’ y’ brung th’ Shawnee savages down on us. As that horseback preacher said last spring, might be y’re a jealous an’ wrathful God, and need reg’lar devotions from us thy mortal children—like Will hisself needed it a lot from Tommy an’ Georgie—but Lord, Lord it don’t seem fair what y’ve done to us.

Or maybe all this misery is just random, she thought then, and God has nothin’ t’ do with it. It seemed for a moment a more charitable way to consider God, but soon she was ashamed of herself for having thought that anything could happen without God’s intervention.

I wonder me what Ghetel will be like on th’ morrow, Mary thought. Back to herself, I pray. I figger there’s a hundred mile more to go, provided we don’t lose our way, an’ more if we do, and I surely can’t go a hundred mile while a-fightin’ a crazy woman every step, now can I?

Mary was drowsy again and her limbs were buzzing with the sleep feeling, but she wanted to run the succession of landmarks up out of her memory one more time, because the difficulties of the last few days had rather befogged them.

There weren’t many landmarks left. They had come back past most of them. The next one she could recall was the big creek where the Indians had washed the paint off of themselves and had painted the trees. That was the creek where they had made a camp and the chieftain Captain Wildcat had playacted the birth of a Shawnee baby. Let’s see, she thought. We was ten or twelve days—twelve, if I remember correct—down from Draper’s Meadows when we come down out o’ that crick, an’ I remember we crossed th’ New River there at a shallows to th’ other bank there.

She could remember that, and was sure she would recognize it, but beyond that the prospect became quite bewildering, with hardly a landmark. She could remember that they had ridden for several days north along a high-level ridge without a glimpse of the New River. Lordy, she thought, a shiver of awe running down her flanks, I can’t guide us up
that crick and up that ridge because I was half out o’ my head when we come down it and it’s all either blank or dreamy. I couldn’t find our way back the way we come those few days; I got to keep us right along the New River. I das’n’t get us away from the New River.

She wondered, as she had wondered before, why the Indians had left the New River and gone up that mountain ridge. The only reason they take a way, she thought, is ’cause it’s most passable. That’d likely mean we came down over the mountain way because the New River for some stretch in there was too rough f’r good travel.

Her heart sank and she felt even more hollow than she had been feeling all these hungry, tiring weeks. God knows what we’re a-gonna find the valley like after we get above that painted-tree creek, she thought. God help us. Lord, she thought, I hope y’ve had your fill o’ punishin’ me, for I’ve a feelin’ I’ll need all y’r kind aid and guidance to get through this next week or two.

And then Ghetel groaned and shifted in her sleep, one of her legs drawing away from one of Mary’s, leaving it cold where it had been almost warm, and Mary lay there in the blackness in the old woman’s stink and her own, hugging her still with one arm, this old woman who had tried to kill her, and it was strange, the strangest thing ever, because after trying to kill and beat each other they had needed each other so much that Mary had lingered waiting for Ghetel to come along and Ghetel had come along the ravine crying for Mary. They had needed each other because it was more than one could bear to be out here in this land alone.

But Mary knew, even as she held the sleeping hag for the warmth of life, that she would have to be on guard every minute Ghetel was awake, and that she must never sleep while Ghetel was awake.

I’d better just stay awake now till morning so’s she won’t wake up afore me, Mary thought.

And that was what she was thinking when the wooliness move into her head and she went to sleep.

In Philadelphia when she was a little girl, Mary had taken pity on a pariah dog she had seen sniffing for slops in the gutter; there had been something wordlessly good in its dark brown eyes when it had looked up at her, and she had gone into the house and taken a blood pudding from the pantry, stolen it out past her parents and given it to the pariah dog. Then she had gone back in the house thinking about the dog, and that night the dog had scratched at the door. Mary awoke now to a sound of scratching, dreaming about the dog.

She started awake. It was early dawn. Ghetel was sitting up, half out of the blanket, her legs still covered, doing something that made that scratching sound, and Mary was instantly defensive, angry at herself for not staying awake. Stealthily, she extricated her arm from the blanket and reached behind her to grasp the handle of the pointed pole which she had placed in her side of the hollow the night before.

Ghetel was clawing at the rotten bark on the underside of the big fallen tree that sheltered them. Bark debris and wood-punk kept falling on the blanket. Ghetel, a silhouette against the half-light, would scrabble in the decaying wood for a moment, then pause and put something to her mouth.

Th’ poor thing’s eatin’ punk, Mary thought. She’s a-goin’ to kill herself yet to fill ’er guts. Mary herself was nothing but a tremendous craving hollowness; the blood pudding of her dream was still tantalizing the back of her mind, even though she had never liked blood pudding.

“Enough o’ that, dear,” Mary said wearily, and at the sound of her voice Ghetel jerked around like a child caught stealing. But then she said, in a voice that sounded actually cheerful:

“Nah, May-ry. All’s well.”

“Please don’ eat wood. Y’ make me ill.” Hauling against an enormous weariness, Mary crept out of the blanket and stood up outside the shelter in a frost-covered world, squatted on pain-wracked legs to make steamy water, shivering and surveying the weather and trying to get her bearings. It was still gloomy in the ravine, and the fast stream they had crossed last evening rushed and gurgled nearby. The sky above the ravine was pinkish-blue and the leafless trees on a ridge far downstream caught the early-morning sunlight and gleamed a soft rosy yellow. Promise of a fair day but cold. It would be hours before the sun could mount high enough to light these deep valleys.

And us with one blanket a-tween us now, Mary thought. One and t’other of us’ll have to go naked in turn.

Nay, she thought then, angrily: She lost
her
blanket.
She’ll
go naked.

Forgive me, she thought then. Of course we’ll take our turns. If the old thing’ll cooperate we will. I think she be a-needin’ a lecture.

She heard footsteps above; over the noise of the stream she heard leaves crushing. She stood and turned, hoisting the spear.

A deer came down between two mossy ledges of rock, going toward the creek. It was a buck with fine antlers. It sensed her presence, paused to look at her, then went on down to the stream. It was too far away for her to throw the spear at it. She took a few cautious, wobbly steps toward it, her skin in gooseflesh, frost biting her bare feet, her breath condensing. The buck raised its head from drinking and bounded away up the bank. The white under its tail disappeared in the brush.

Ah well, Mary thought. Nothing lost. No expectations for that’n.

She went back and peered under the log. Ghetel was sitting in the dim cranny, the blanket up over her shoulders, a mass of wood-rot in her upturned palm. She was probing in it and putting things in her mouth. She was too intent to see Mary loom over her. Mary bent down and looked closely, then
shuddered violently. Ghetel was picking little dark beetles out of wood dust and eating them.

Ghetel became aware of Mary, raised her eyes and suddenly hid her hands in the blanket. She looked angry. “Not enough for both us. You find a tree.”

Mary’s mouth gaped. She saw a blaze of red behind her eyes. She reached in and grabbed the edge of the blanket and jerked it with all her might, dragging it off Ghetel and dumping her over.
“You
find a
blanket,”
she snapped. She flung the blanket around her shoulders, took one hard last glance at the awful-looking bundle of baggy gray skin and protruding bones floundering to sit up under the log, then stalked away down the creek bank. About thirty yards farther on she stopped, stood looking at the cliffs, took a deep breath and sighed it out, and waited until she heard Ghetel’s neck-bell and querulous mutterings coming along behind her. She turned and watched her catch up, meandering as if drunk, kicking up leaves as she stumbled forward, her baggy skin flapping as loose as the rags of her dress, holding something forward in her palm.

“Forgif?” she said plaintively, drawing near. “Here. I bring you some …”

“I’ll not eat bugs! Ghetel, hear me, I must tell you how it’s to be if we go on together … Listen!” Ghetel stood there twitching and trembling with the cold, eating the rest of the beetles, then dusted the wood punk off her palms, and waited, ruminating on her revolting cud, staring ingenuously at Mary with her bleared hazel eyes, waiting for admonitions she perhaps understood were deserved.

Older’n my mother, Mary thought, yet I must now scold ’er down like a nose-pickin’ child.

“Ghetel, I come away ’cause I got a pinin’ for a faraway place and my husband who needs me. That, dear, is why I’m not t’ be stopped, by starvin’, nor sickness, nor any kind o’ hurt. Nor’ll I be stopped by a woman who grudges me my purpose.

“I know your purpose is weaker, as you’re goin’ t’ no one. And Lord knows y’r gut rules ye more’n mine does me … Mercy! One who’d eat bugs!

“Many ways, I know, y’re stronger’n me. Oh, aye! How you took that whuppin’ at the Shawnee town! Now, I’d’ve died I’m sure! I admired that more’n you could know.

“But now, dear, having purpose,
I’m
the stronger one. And though I need ’ee quite some, why, I sh’ll just go on alone if ’ee ever serve me as bad as ’ee did yesterday! Aye, leave ’ee back, and a good riddance, too! Now, are we agreed, eh?”

The old woman had swallowed her bugs. She nodded and stood hugging her bosom and shaking. “Aye, aye. Vat I done yesterday I don’t remember. But I don’t hurt you again, May-ry. Oh, I am
cold!
”

“We must get a-movin’ or we’ll seize up frozen. Now, listen, Ghetel, I sh’ll give ’ee this blanket now and then, in turn, but only if ’ee promise to give me it back when I say. A promise?”