Lost Nation (17 page)

It was Emil Chase and two other men, his brother Peter and Isaac Cole. All wore hats and Sunday clothing. They swiveled their horses to a refined calculated stop before the tavern door.

As a young man Blood had enjoyed cigars, one in an extensive list of things he’d long denied himself. Still there were times and this was one of them when he craved a long ash-tipped cigar to dab the air with. Instead he just sat silent and sipped his tea and waited. There was nothing of these men that demanded or deserved a pleasantry.

Emil Chase spoke. “We’re riding to Lancaster to confer with the high sheriff. Enough is enough. You’ve breached every convention of decency. A man free of scruples cannot be expected to understand that, and you Mister Blood, or whatever your name would be, are such a man. But that fact doesn’t compel us to sit idly while you corrupt this small outpost of humanity. In truth just the opposite. Action is called for. You own no discretion, no moral guide. So it must be imposed. Tis the nature of civil society.”

Blood did not hesitate. “Your man Hutchinson is welcome. Bring him on. I’ll enjoy speaking with him. As you should know, I tend to be quiet and mind my own affairs. But because I don’t flap my tongue doesn’t mean I close my ears. I’m sure the high sheriff and I could spend an interesting afternoon together. To be blunt, I feel the lack of intelligent conversation.”

“Blood,” said Chase. “You continue to needle me with words that could be taken as threats. Do you seek to provoke me further?”

“Why not at all,” said Blood. He tilted back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other to study the sky. Then looked at the robust miller and said, “It’s sure a pretty day for a ride, idn’t it.”

The party whipped their horses at a strong clip down the road and then pulled up sharp and sat conferring among themselves. Peter Chase had his hat off and was flagging flies away from his horse’s head. After a time he turned and trotted back toward the tavern and a moment later Isaac Cole followed. Blood rose to stand in the doorway. Emil Chase watched his departed comrades a moment before booting his horse forward down the empty lonely road. Blood pushed the door shut and heard the two riders go by. They did not stop and he did not expect them to. He went to the kitchen hearth and blew up the coals there and got flames and began breakfast. He thought he’d do well to send Gandy with the oxen and cart
over to the mill at Canaan, Vermont, and purchase a winter’s worth of meal. And while he was at it, he might as well get enough to offer some in trade. There were plenty of first-year pitch holders and trappers who raised no grain so that Chase’s practice of milling for shares would offer nothing. Blood could otherwise beat his price. He’d even be willing to lose a little, although with the trappers there would be no loss unless the winter was poor. He felt no misgiving should Chase grow more peeved. Him and his high sheriff: Fuck them both.

He stirred a bowl of batter for griddle cakes. And resolved that day to hike up Perry Stream to the farm of the big-bellied Dutchman Van Landt. The only man in the territory who passed as a livestock dealer, possessing a motley herd of milk and beef cattle and some half-dozen or so riding and dray horses. While Van Landt enjoyed the public house as much as any other Blood sensed a reserve about him that no others owned—as if Van Landt recognized or respected something of Blood the others did not. Perhaps it was only sharing something of the outcast about him—not just his heritage but also the fact that he dealt in necessities and so was resented by those that needed him. Blood thought he would see if the man had some pullets and a rooster. Blood was desperate for an egg.

Van Landt was pleasant if spare with words. Blood recognized this was the man’s nature and not personal. They haggled briefly over poultry and in this exchange Blood, who was not inclined to argue even if the price was high, so badly did he want the chickens, also learned something of the man. Van Landt’s being tight lipped was also in a sly way a measure of his scorn for the place he’d found himself in and the men around him. As if the Dutchman was amused at his own predicament.

As Blood was preparing to leave, the pullets and rooster trussed and dangling in groups either end of a pole to carry over his shoulder, Van Landt tilted his jowls toward Blood and said, “Some sort of frolic to your place last evening I hear.”

Blood said, “It was a wonder. The men enjoyed themselves. I’d not thought they had it in them.”

Van Landt studied the bounty of his barnyard and then looked at Blood. “These people,” he said, his thick lips wrapping the words with distaste.
“They know little of what’s in them. Perhaps they fear to know themselves too well. One thing certain, it don’t stop them judging others.”

Blood took up the pole, balanced it over his shoulders. A chicken feather came loose and floated in the air. He said, “Too little sleep and a ringing head always make a man contrite. It don’t last.”

“Perhaps,” said Van Landt. “Perhaps.”

In the long summer twilight Blood was in the never-used pig stockade fashioning a perch platform from interwoven poles when he heard the tired trot of a horse coming along the road. He ducked his head out of the low door, hidden in barred shadow to watch Emil Chase ride slumped toward the mill. The man plainly exhausted from his day’s travel. As well, Blood guessed, as from his interview with the sheriff. Blood went back among the skittering chickens. He thought Of the two of us, I’d hazard mine was the more productive day. But he was tired himself and there was little satisfaction in the thought.

On Sunday August twelfth, a day on which no-one was sailing, no-one at all, Blood rose mid-morning and wrung the neck of one of the dozen pullets, dressed the bird and plucked it and roasted it bound tight in string hanging at the edge of the coals, all this before Sally came sleep-struck from her room. Hair tangled, wearing the old shabby shift she slept in when she slept in anything at all, places around her neck and shoulders worn through so it was almost less a garment than none at all. She looked at Blood hunched before the coals, turning the chicken back to front toward the heat. “Is that another partridge?”

“No,” he said. “It’s a roasted chicken.”

“You just got em and you’re killing em off?”

He turned to look at her. “It’s for your birthday.”

“Oh my,” she said. “I forgot.”

“Well that’s good. It’s becoming for a woman to forget her birthday. Even though it was a little quick in your case.”

She walked across the room and looked out the open door upon the day and turned back. “I didn’t forget. I just wasn’t awake yet. We going to eat that bird for breakfast?”

“No we’re going to eat fried potatoes for breakfast, with some green onion cut into em. This chicken we’re going to let cool and wrap up in some clean sacking and carry with us. I thought we’d walk up Perry Stream and then go up one of the little feeder brooks until we find a nice pretty place and have our dinner there. Put up a closed sign. Take the day off. You wanted something nice. I thought a picnic might fit the bill.”

“A picnic?”

“Yes.”

“I ain’t never been on a picnic.”

“Well,” said Blood. “We’ll change that.”

“I’m getting sick of fried potatoes.”

Blood nodded. “A few more days, those pullets settle down, they’ll commence to lay. Then we can have eggs. Fried alone or mixed in with the potatoes. That’ll be good.”

She said, “I never et an egg.”

“Sally,” he said. “There’s plenty you haven’t had yet in this life. There’s no need for you to announce everything new.”

“What if I don’t care for em?”

“I imagine you’ll like em just fine. And if you don’t, you’ll just eat up anyway and be glad there’s hot food for your belly. Now why don’t you go wash up and get dressed.”

“You going to be grumpy on my birthday?”

“Not if I can help it. Go get dressed, however you please, pretty or plain. It don’t matter to anyone but you today.”

She took up the washbasin and a rag and started for the door and then stopped and looked back at him. “Well, I want to be pretty. I want to be pretty for you. There’s no need for you to spend the day with a frump.”

He stood and put his hands in the small of his back and stretched, kneading the muscles there. He said, “Go on now.”

They passed a pleasant afternoon, settled in a dell of soft wild grass between the boles of ancient spruce where the headwaters of a trifling brook ran, bordered both sides with rocks mossbacked and marked with lichen both yellow and orange, the water in spurts of spatter and backsplash before running through a narrow channel into a slight pool
deep enough to hold small trout. A bright circle of sunlight slid in crescent motion around the opening as the sun crossed the sky and the rest lay in dapples of shade. The air was pungent with the fernbank that grew across the brook and the scent of fresh water erupted up newborn out of the earth. They ate and lolled in the speckly shade close enough to the full sun so they were warm not hot. Blood napped a little. Luther stalked silent up the small brook after trout that flared ahead of him, some few throwing themselves into the air to scramble over rocks to the next layer up. While Blood slept Sally sat out in the heat of the sun with her dress hiked high onto her thighs and her bodice open as she leaned back on her elbows so her face was turned back for the sun full upon it. When he stirred she sat upright and did the buttons on her front but made no effort to pull the skirt down her legs. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen all of her anyway.

Blood rose and walked a hundred feet downstream where there was a larger pool at the base of an overgrown hemlock, roots of the tree great bent knees forming the backside of the pool. He was not gone but screened. He undressed there and slid down into the water which when he was seated rose up around his belly. Then he inched back and found the place where the water ran into the pool in a thick rush between smoothed rocks and settled himself so the thrash of water struck directly on his shoulders and the back of his neck. His legs stretched straight before him; his heels dug into the fine gravel so the loosed pebbles ran and struck and fled over his toes. After a time she came down and stood looking at him. He did not move. She said something to him but all he heard was the water jargon breaking at his back. Perhaps louder than needed he told her he couldn’t hear her. She studied him a moment and then began to take her clothes off. When he saw this he stood upright in the pool, the water scarce to his knees. He made no effort to cover himself.

He said, “There’s not room but for one. Scooch yourself up like I was so the water hits your back and shoulders. It’s the best thing. Like a hundred sweet little hammers working at every muscle.”

He clambered out with as much grace as a naked middle-aged man could muster before the eyes of a naked girl. He shook himself and gathered his clothes.

She said, “Don’t get too far away. I don’t want no one coming upon me here.”

He said, “I thought I’d just go up a bit and if that dog hasn’t terrified all of em, see if I might catch a batch of these little trouts for our supper.”

“I’m still filled up with that chicken.” Standing right next to him, naked and sunburned.

“You set in that water a time, your appetite will come back. Go on, get in there now.” And he turned and walked a little sideways around the hemlock and paused and dressed. Heard her gasp as she settled down into the brook.

He got his handline out of his pocket and pulled some cartilage from the chicken carcass for baits and told the dog to stay where he was sleeping in the sun, stretched out full on his side. The size of him like a prone pony, some beast of the veld. Luther raised his head and blinked at Blood. Blood tossed him the chicken carcass. The dog began to eat, champing the bones as a man might biscuit.

Blood caught a dozen little trout no larger than the palm of his hand. He cleaned them by opening the vent and prying free the gore with the point of his knife and then dug with his finger for any missing parts. He rinsed the trout in the brook and carried them back down to the opening. He could just see the whiteness of Sally under the heavy hemlock boughs. He made a small fire and impaled each trout on a crotched twig. He sharpened the other end of each stick and ringed the fire with the upthrust fish, as if a circle of them were swimming up toward the sky. He sat and watched them cook, time to time reaching with a piece of wood to rearrange the coals or add some small dry stick to the fire. He carefully turned each fish on its stick to roast the other side. The skin of the cooked side was just black, blistered, the black still showing some residue as a shadow of the trout’s speckling.

After a while Sally came up from the pool, her clothes settled upon her as if the effort to dress had been near too much, her gait languid, all her movements slow as if the water had drawn something from her and left something else altogether new. She squatted away from the slender smoke-rise of the fire and grinned at him.

“You were right,” she said. “That water emptied my belly out.”

“Eat some trout?”

“I could.”

“They’re ready.”

She looked at him and said, “This was nice. This was purely nice.”

He began to pull the cooked fish away from the fire. Without looking at her he said, “That’s good.”

She said, “So what do we do now?”

He turned to look at her, a savage bouquet of trout gathered in one fist. “What do you mean?”

“Well. I guess what I mean is, I guess we eat and then walk down and get back to work. Idn’t that so?”

He studied her a moment. He wanted to know what she wanted but hesitated.

And abruptly recalled the date, the demon-thinking squelched thus far and the night still before him. He thought Give over and see what happens. What he said was,

“There’ll be men thirsty for a drink after a long Sabbath afternoon I expect. And it could be a party. We could announce your birthday. How’s that sound?”

She said, “It’s already cost a fair bit of business, this afternoon. It’s your money we’re talking about here. So that’s all right.”

He held out the fish until she took them. Then he turned back to the fire and gathered up the remaining fish, his own supper. With his back turned he said, “But what would you like? Money aside. How would you like to finish this seventeenth birthday of yours?” And did not move to look at her but waited. Keeping busy with the fish.