Lily's Story (13 page)

“
I felt terrible,” he said
in a lower, different kind of voice. “I felt she’d abandoned me.
When you’re only twelve, somethin’ like that seems like a betrayal.
You put all your trust in one person an’ then, like that, it’s
gone.”

The mosquito perished in its own blood. Papa
drew the blanket around Lil’s head. She snuggled close again,
gripping his left hand with both of hers.

“
It was two years later, Ma
was quite sick, an’ this letter arrives addressed to her. We all
recognize Birdie’s writing. She was a beautiful writer. She taught
me to read, as best she could. So I read the letter, after Pa had
headed for one of his meetins’, of course. Bridie was in a place
called Toronto, Upper Canada. She was well. She was goin’ off to a
town somewheres in the bush to work as a domestic and as a tutor to
some little boy. She didn’t name the town. She said we wasn’t to
bother tryin’ to find out, she loved all of us dearly but she just
had to do things this way as it was the only way for her. When I
grew up, I knew what she meant. Back then, I hated her even
more.”

The moon slipped out from behind one of the
high, breezy clouds – feigning interest in the world’s affairs.

“
When your Mama an’ me come
out here some years later, we made no attempt at findin’ her. As
you’re gonna see soon, this is a big country. But nobody ever put
one over on Bridie, not even Pa with all his political shenanigans
and bluster. Just after you was born we got a letter hand-delivered
from Port Sarnia. From Bridie. She welcomed us to the county an’
said we was welcome in her house anytime. We always intended to go
up there but your Mama was never well enough. We thought it best,
for a while, not to get your hopes up. Then things just went on as
they often do, an’ nothin’ ever really gets done. Some important
things just don’t get done, ‘cause we go on as we are, day after
day.”

He poked at the smudges, scattering the
swarms.

“’
Course that’ll all be
rectified soon. You’re gonna see your Aunt Bridie and Uncle Chester
at last, you are.” Papa gave her an extra squeeze. And the little
boy? She thought.

“
Yes, my precious, you’re
gonna have the time of your life up there. We’ll help out Aunt and
Uncle for a while, then we’ll buy ourselves a chunk of that cleared
land with the cash we get for the homestead, an’ before you know it
we’ll have a white clapboard house to live in. We’ll only be a mile
from the town, too, with stores and mills and meetin’ halls. First
thing I’m gonna do is take you into town to Cameron’s emporium and
buy you your first store-bought dress – calico or lawn or kendall,
take your pick, you’ll be as pretty as a butterfly in a flax field
in August.”

Papa squeezed again. Lil gripped his hand to
let him know she was still awake. The main fire was in its mellow,
amber phase.

“
Naturally your Aunt
Bridie, bein’ an’ educated woman herself, will want you to have
some proper schoolin’. They’ve got a school in Port Sarnia where
anybody can go to learn readin’ and other things. You’re gonna grow
into a genuine young lady, I reckon: there’ll be no stoppin’ you
once you reach that town.”

Are there lots of Scotsmen there? Lil wanted
to ask.

Papa took his arm from her shoulder, shook
the fire vigorously until the flames jumped again, and then reached
into his pack. In his hands he held something small and leather. A
book.

“
I don’t want your Aunt
Bridie thinkin’ your Mama an’ me didn’t bring you up properly,” he
said, as Lil for the first time looked directly up into his face
where the flame-induced shadows fluttered irresolutely. “This
here’s a New Testament, a Bible. It was a gift, long ago, from my
mother. I wrote an inscription to you in the front cover. My
spellin’s not too good so I had Mr. Millar write down the actual
words. Someday real soon you’ll be able to read it, an’ the Bible,
too. I want you to keep it an’ treasure it, no matter what happens
to you in this awful, tryin’ world.”

Papa had to stop to clear his throat. Lil
reached out and took the Testament, its covers carrying the warmth
of Papa’s hands into hers.

“
I’ll tell you what it
says, for now,” he went on. Once again he cleared his throat like
an actor before an entrance. “To my dearest princess, the Lady
Fairchild, from your Papa who loves you forever.”

Lil tucked the precious object into her
secret pouch, and slipped drowsily into the care of Papa’s arms.
Tiny tremors shook her, gently, to sleep.

She dreamt that Mama and Papa were seated on
a scarlet sofa before a roaring fire: Papa was talking and talking,
and Mama – curled beside him – listened with love.

The sun, well above the tree-tops, woke Lil
with a start. She was not in the least surprised, however, to look
over and see that she was alone.

3

Papa had left her the food,
water and utensils. And a note. On folded, thick, yellow-white
paper. Lil did not open it.
I can’t read.
I can’t read
. But another voice said:
you’re grown up now; the new road is a twenty-minute walk across a
blazed trail; there will be travellers on that road; they will
help. Mrs. Partridge is five miles up that road; she will remember.
Everyone in Port Sarnia will know who Bridie is. I have nothing to
fear. Papa loves me; he expects me to go to my Aunt
Bridie.

But then maybe he’s gone off to scout the
new road? Besides good folk, there are pedlars and bounty-hunters
to beware of. It would be terrible if I wandered off and Papa came
back to find me gone. He’d be so worried, he’d be so disappointed
in me. I must stay here till he comes for me. That’s why he left
the food and water. He thinks I’m sick. He loves me. It says so in
this little book, it’s written there, forever.

When she finished the last of the water, Lil
began to worry. It was past five o’clock. Papa was not coming. (It
would be much later before Lil would learn that the abolitionist
man – who had rowed Papa to safety across the River and who was to
return before dawn to lead her north to Port Sarnia – had got
caught in a whirlpool on his way back, ran aground and lay
unconscious for half a day before he awoke to find his leg broken
in three places.) He expected her to get to that road and find the
Partridges. Still feeling dizzy and very weak (what was wrong with
her? she thought), Lil gathered her belongings and looked westward
for the next blaze. The shadows were massing even now, and it was
not easy to pick out the year-old slashes from trunk to trunk or
the modest impressions left on the trail by its mocassined patrons.
An hour or so later Lil admitted reluctantly that she was lost. She
was not scared of being alone in the woods; she never had been. The
mosquitoes were bad but she had matches, she could make a camp of
sorts. What concerned her was that she didn’t know where she was.
Nor would she be able to find her bearings in a terrain bereft of
familiar landmarks. Desperately she tried to keep to the westward
by the sun but it disappeared, even as a hovering light, for
minutes at a time in the closed canopy one hundred and fifty feet
overhead.

When she stumbled into a beaver meadow, she
looked up and saw in despair that it was now fully night-time. The
stars winked invitations at her. Then she saw the dipper – the
Silver Gourd – shining clear in its northern berth. She turned due
left into the mosquito-fed darkness. Ten minutes later she emerged
from the dense forest onto the roadway. The fresh planking hummed
beneath her feet. Inside she hummed too and did a little jig. She
looked northward up the forty-foot width of the highway. She was
exhausted. A sort of numbness was starting to spread up the calves
of her legs. She couldn’t make it to the Partridges. She really
couldn’t.

She was also very thirsty. She knew she
shouldn’t sleep without drinking. Then she remembered: this was the
River Road. To her left she saw that the bush was thin and
intermittent, smallish pines in a sandy soil that glittered in the
starlight. She listened, forcing her breath in. Though the night
was still, her River poured its restless, endless energy onward.
What a wonderful sound, Lil thought aloud. Slowly but with more
certainty than she had felt all day, Lil eased her way through the
pine grove towards the beckoning music of the great waterway. There
would be some breeze there, and open space: she could sleep
undisturbed in the sandy bank. In the morning everything would be
all right. Papa would be proud of her.

Just as the muted roar of the River was
beginning to build in her ears, Lil came to a tiny feeder stream.
Bending, she scooped the fresh, chill water to her face, drinking
and cleansing simultaneously. The breeze off the water ahead was
cool on her cheeks. She could see the moon plainly through the last
trees between her and her goal. She was about to step out onto the
sandy bank when she froze. The first warning she had of danger was
the waver of firelight above the shoreline; then came the smell of
burnt meat; then the voices; and their unmistakable accents.

In the shimmering glow around her, Lil saw
that she was standing, still hidden by the pines, slightly above a
sort of cove where the stream entered the River, a gravelly
indentation really that formed a beach four or five feet below the
main line of the bank. A pit-fire was in full bloom; two figures
were seated on stumps, roasting something that might have been
rabbit. A longish bundle of something lay rumpled in the shadows
behind them. On the point formed by the cove, tied to a boulder, a
row-boat rocked and complained.

“
Goddammit, I figure we
oughta haul his black arse across while the gettin’s
good.”

“
I’m hungry. So are
you.”

“
Hungry for two thousand
dollars, I am.”

“
Besides, I don’t like that
moon. It’s gonna cloud over afore midnight. Eat.”

“
This shit’s all
burnt.”

“
Suits you then, don’t
it.”

Without realizing it Lil had backed off so
that she was fully shielded by a tall pine. Neither man was looking
in her direction; they faced the south-west where the moon sat,
unclouded. Something icy and alien gripped her. She could not flee;
she could not even close her eyes. Hence, she was the first to see
the rumpled bundle flinch, stretch, and assemble itself. Solomon
was sitting up, his hands bound behind him with rope. Another rope
dangled loosely from an ankle. Somehow he had worked his legs free.
Without once taking his eyes off the backs of his captors, he rose
to his full height without the slightest sound and edged towards
the boat fifteen feet away.

“
Sometimes, Sherm, you talk
to me’s if I was no better’n that nigger.”

Sherm let the opportunity pass.

“
Matter-of-fact, think I’ll
feed some of this here charcoal shit to him right now. Cain’t have
him lookin’ too lean an’ all, can we?” Beau turned. “Christ! He’s
after the boat.”

Both men jumped instantly, but Solomon was
already there. He placed one foot over the gunwale, the other on
the rock next to the painter, and gave a tremendous shove. Lil
could hear the whoosh of air leave his lungs as he did so. The
painter rope popped free and the boat shot out into the swift
current. Solomon fell face-down into the aft section with a clatter
of wood and bone. Unruddered, the boat spun slowly – caught in a
momentary eddy.

“
What the fuck you doin’,
you stupid nigger! You cain’t row that thing with your hands tied
up. Come on back here!”

“
We’ll get him downstream,”
Sherm said, already heading back for his gun. “If not, he’ll end up
on the other side. They always do.”

But Beau wasn’t listening.
“Oh
Jesus! Jesus!
”
he screamed as if his soul had been seared. “He’s goin’
over!”

Solomon was standing upright; his powerful
six-foot frame burned black against the pre-harvest moon behind
him. He was standing on one of the thwarts staring down into the
current that was just catching the boat and swinging it, it seemed,
southward to safety, and freedom. But Solomon leaped high and
northward, as if his fugitive eye lay still upon the gourd of the
North Star. His figure, abandoned by the boat, arced across the
horizon and entered the welcoming water face-first. The eddy of
bubbles, which was all that marked his exit, was soon swept
away.

“
I never seen the like o’
that,
never
. Did
ya see the stupid fucker, Sherm. Jumps right in there an’ takes our
two thousand bucks with him. I tell ya, I’ll never figure out a
nigger if I live a hundred years.”

Sherm was throwing water on the fire and
gathering their things together. “We better get lookin’ for another
boat. This ain’t exactly friendly territory, you know.”

Beau continued to stare out over the foaming
torrent, wild with the weight of the glacial seas behind it, and
yelled to that portion of the universe he could see: “Why’d ya go
an’ do that, ya stupid, ignorant son-of-a-bitch?”

“
Why?
”

No echo came back.

“
Maybe we can get the
body,” Sherm said.

4

Long after the bounty-hunters had left –
their fire doused, the sky clouded over and menacing, the wind
rushing to keep up with the river’s urgency – Lil stood where she
was and wrestled with the dark angels of her imagination. Once
again she saw Solomon hunted through the unending nights, fleeing
further and further into the forest. Later in her life she would
know that he fled not because he feared capture or bondage or
humiliation – these he had known and borne already – but because he
needed to find, in these woods, a nightmare more horrific than his
own, to stare it straight in the eye, and whisper oblivion to
it.