Scar (2 page)

                        
And wrestle till the break of day;

                        
With Thee all night I mean to stay
,

                        
And wrestle till the break of day
.

My father entered heaven clean.

I rise, ignoring the flash of pain behind my ribs, and stir up the floor of the forest searching for another dressing. Dumping water onto it from my canteen, I begin to wipe at the boy's dirty forehead. He squirms to avoid me. But I will not be put off. I think my mother would enjoy seeing me do this. It would please her.

The Indian surrenders quickly and allows me to scrub
at him without a fight. I'm more or less smearing the black powder and paint this way and that across his wide face and pointy chin. Although a bit of it seems to be sticking to my dressing. He has closed his eyes.

“It's good to be clean.” Again, my own voice sounds so out of place here. I'm only twenty miles upriver from home. Every hemlock and birch looks the same as the trees in the small wood where I've lived my entire life without ever wandering farther than a whisker. But I couldn't feel more separated from my mother and sister right now if I were sitting on one of the stars just turning up in the sky.

I draw in a long, slow breath as I work. The smoke from the musket fire still hanging in the air stings my throat. Pouring more water from the canteen onto the dressing, I wipe at the Indian's cheek and uncover a long, jagged scar running from under his eye down to his jaw. He looks so young, maybe my sister Mary's age, thirteen. It's easy to imagine this boy playing hide-and-seek in the high grass along the river with the other children of his village. I used to love to do that.

I set at washing his neck, but the hooting of an owl has my eyes moving in and out among the dark tree trunks, searching for the movement of an enemy. The thought of finding a comrade doesn't even occur to me. We lost so badly today that I know not to hope for help. Everyone I know is either dead or has long run off.

I think back over the last three days. The memory of Tuesday morning's raid assaults me—hiding under the laurel
branches while my home, with its graying pine wood and perfect mud chinking, burned to the ground. Followed by the militia's endless march upriver after our attackers. And finally, I hear it again—that single shot of the musket that started the battle. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to drive away all thoughts of what happened next.

I guess I could have taken off with the colonel at the battle's end, headed for the river like so many others. Why didn't I? Again, that final scene at the ledge plays in my mind—the approaching chants, the burst of painted faces into the clearing, Dr. Tusten's command, the screaming, that hatchet.

My eyes spring open and scour the deep blackness of the forest all around me, searching for men with hatchets. There is no one.

I breathe, trying to quiet the pounding of my heart's blood in my ears. I look down at the Indian boy beneath my dirty dressing. He looks back at me. I can see thoughts moving through his eyes. What is he thinking? Is he afraid? Can he tell that I am? Does he know that he's dying in the woods with only a sixteen-year-old crippled farm boy to wash his face? Can he tell that's all I am—a crippled farm boy wondering what to do next?

I look away as the last question burns in my stomach next to the musket ball …

What am I going to do next?

       
CHAPTER TWO

     
WOMEN

       
TUESDAY, JULY 20, 1779

“Noah!”

My mother is forever shouting at me. She has no patience.

“Noah!”

And I must show myself and answer her, no matter if I'm in the middle of something important or not.

“NOAH!”

I stumble out of the privy, tripping over the daylilies my mother insisted on surrounding it with, and head toward the cabin.

“I'M COMING,” I shout. After my father died, I thought I would be the man of the house, but my mother took the job.

“Noah, look at the crib. We're almost out of wood. And we're right in the middle of boiling lye water and pig's grease for soap.” She stands in the door, hands on her hips. Her hair is pinned up but falling down in wisps around her face. She is pretty. It always strikes me as odd that someone with so sweet a face can be so … competent. “After you fill the crib, wash up. It's almost dinner time.” She turns and enters the cabin in a sweep of buntlings.

My mother never stops moving, unless perhaps she's taken up her quilting or is shelling walnuts, but even in those instances, her hands continue to move.

I sigh and turn toward the woodpile. I'm so bone-weary from my long walk yesterday. I walk every evening after my chores. I do it to prove that I can. When I was three years old, a visiting neighbor's horse stepped on my foot, crushing all its bones. My father wanted my foot amputated to save my life. But my mother wrapped it tightly and nursed me through a two-week fever. People said I wouldn't survive. Then they said that I wouldn't walk again. They were wrong on both counts. Or rather, mostly wrong. I do walk, but with a limp. When Mary was a child, she would constantly ask me if it hurt to walk. I told her it didn't. I told her this because it's what I told myself. It did not hurt and I could walk … and so I do walk … every day.

I walk to the same place, a part of the woods that I call my “farm.” A small clearing about a mile southeast of our cabin, which is halfway between our farm and Van Auken's Fort. It's a good spot, closer to the Neversink River than our farm. The land is level and well-drained. The color and depth of the soil are perfect. And as to location for water, it could not be better. The Neversink is a smaller river than the Delaware, but it's filled with trout and bass and carp. It's just a good spot.

I hide a yawn. And then a second one.

I can't look like I'm dragging or my mother will frown the next time I head out for my walk. She has never liked my
walks. She knows I walk just to prove I can, and believes that if I'm to tax my foot, it should be in her service, and not for proving points. Not that she has ever allowed me to use my foot as an excuse to get out of chores—just as she doesn't believe in proving points, she also doesn't believe in excuses. Unless of course that excuse is one she favors, because she believes it's perfectly fine to use my foot as an excuse to keep me from joining the war. We never speak of these things, we just frown at each other.

But my walks are mine and I will not give them up. The only time I have my head to myself is on my walks. At least, that used to be the only time. Now, of course, Eliza Little is always sitting at the fork in the path waiting for me. It's like there's a woman everywhere I turn.

“Noah,” my mother complains, “we need the crib filled today, not at some point this year.”

I load faster. What my foot lacks in strength I more than make up for with my arms. And if I am exhausted, I'm determined that neither my sister nor my mother will see it.

Mary comes to the door of the cabin. Her corset is loose and the sleeves of her white shift are rolled up past her elbows. Her dark hair is pulled tightly up under her cap and her cheeks are bright red from the heat of soap-making. She watches me load. “You look tired today,” she says.

Zounds! I cannot hide anything, living with two women. They are always looking straight through me. I miss my father. He would ruffle my hair like I was just a child and
shout at the two of them to let me be. Even last year, when I was fifteen. But I never minded it.

“I am not tired,” I scowl. “I'm actually full of energy on this beautiful summer day, Mary Elizabeth Daniels.”

She laughs at me as she turns back to the iron cooking pot and her soap. Mary is a combination of both our parents. She has the drive and beauty of my mother and the comical spirit of my father. A happy and content girl who sees no reason why everyone else should not be the same. She also sees no reason, even though she is almost three years younger than me, why she shouldn't tell me what to do and when to do it. I throw myself into my chair at the table and smile as broadly as humanly possible. I will
not
let women rule my life.

“Eat,” Mary commands, as she places a loaf of rye bread, a tankard of bee balm tea, and a bowl of cornmeal mush in front of me.

And I eat.

       
CHAPTER THREE

     
SCAR

       
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1779

I look over at the Indian. His breathing is ragged, but steady. I return to staring out at the dark edges of our circle of moonlight. Except for a warm trickle of blood running from my wound, nothing is moving.

I should have run. I should have run for the river like the others. I can't stop searching the woods surrounding us, hoping that I will see someone. But then I dread who that someone might be, and begin to fear any potential movement through the trees. Although after a brief moment of watching and listening, I again wish for anyone to emerge. Yet there is only darkness and the chirping of crickets.

The Indian turns his head to look at me. He's awake.

“Are you thirsty?” I ask. The heat is unbearable. If it would just let up a little, I might be able to think straight. I roll over to search for the canteen and am met by a stabbing through my middle so horrible that my stomach rises right into my throat. I can taste the vomit. I stay on my knees, holding it back. Praying for it to pass. Slowly, too slowly, the pressure in my head and chest releases, the nausea falls away, and I'm able to look about for the canteen.

Finding it, I crawl back to the Indian. He's watching the night sky. I follow his gaze and am struck by how many stars are out. There is more twinkle than there is black sky, the same sky I left at home yesterday morning. But there's no comfort up there. The brightness of the stars has always seemed cold to me. I frown and look back at the boy who has become my patient. The white light of the moon catches on the shiny scar running down his cheek … Scar. I will think of him as Scar.

My father named everyone. He rarely called people by their given names, but instead by names he created. The more he liked you, the more names he'd forge. Even our cow had several, since she had both good udders and a quiet temperament. All of my sister's names were of the soft variety: Lamb, Duck, Mouse. I also had many names, but most often I was Cluck, the sound made by our old rooster. My mother had the longest list of us all. But his favorite name for her was “my sweet Wag,” which always made my mother smile, for
wag
means “one with a mischievous humor,” which she is not.

Kneeling, I once again help Scar raise his head to drink from the canteen. He barely sips at it before he lets his head fall heavy in my hand. “Come on, a little more, try again,” I rally. I know his disinterest isn't good. I shake the canteen. We have plenty for tonight, but I'll have to run down to the river at first light for more. I only drink a little, as if in solidarity with him, then close up the canteen and set it down by my side.

But even with the throbbing in my belly pulling at me, I'm not ready yet to retire back to the hot hemlock needles. I spot the emptied knapsack and begin picking everything out of the leaves and dirt, and placing it back inside the sack. As I close it, I'm reminded of how neatly Dr. Tusten had packed it, and I wonder if I, too, will never open it again. I shiver, sending a wave of pain through myself, and I cry out.

Scar looks up. I scoot back to him with the knapsack. His breathing sounds wet. It's not a pleasant sound, and the more I listen to it, the more it seems to fill the quiet woods.

“Everything's fine,” I tell him. But my voice is flat and I don't even believe myself. I pick pieces of dead leaves out of his scalp lock and tuck the frock around him. He winces when I move nearer to his wound.

“Let me check it.” I lift a corner of the frock. I can see a small dark spot soaking through the middle of the dressing. “I'll rewrap it in the morning. By then the bleeding will have stopped and I'll clean it out well and put fresh linen on it.”

His eyes seem to say something. It's the same look that my father's eyes held when he watched me struggle with my schooling. Does he understand me? The Indian turns his head back toward the sky.

“Try again to drink,” I tell him, and move for the water. I see him shake his head no. I smile. He does understand me. The Indians we trade with often speak English. And since the Mohawk have been living cheek-by-jowl with the Colonists for over a hundred years, many of them speak it well. “We'll wait on the water,” I say, swallowing a groan as I half fall, half
roll to the ground next to him. “We should be careful with it, anyway, because I can't get us any more until morning.”

This time he doesn't respond, but lies as still as a turtle on a log in the sun, under my father's frock.

That frock … My father had been away up north, fighting with General Gates at Saratoga, and had been gone for three months when I saw him walk out of the woods wearing that frock. It was the color that caught my eye, a faded blue, like the sky on a cold winter's afternoon. I screamed for Mary and my mother, and at the same time, took off in my lopsided gallop to greet him. He dropped his load and ran toward me. When we came upon each other, my father jumped into my arms, and under the surprise of his great weight, my legs gave out and we tumbled off the path and into the long grass. I remember shouting at him that he could have smashed my good foot under his large backside. And he just laughed and took my head in both his hands and placed a big wet kiss on my forehead. I told him that he looked like a fat blue sow. That had him howling with laughter. His face was so red and his frock so blue.