Scattered Seeds (24 page)

Chapter 39

Pennsylvania refused to release her grip on autumn. She bared her belly to the sun, and three days later, the snow disappeared.

Henry unearthed his moccasins and a single rehydrated fish fillet. Everything else remained buried under muck or carried off by animals that peppered the landscape with their countless tracks. The scavengers had no appreciation for the time and work Henry invested in their windfall, nor did they care that the loss of it left its gatherer in dire circumstances. Such was the law of the forest.

The seed not only survived the deluge and first snowstorm; it erupted from the sodden ground in verdant rows. Henry stood at the field’s edge admiring their brilliant shade, one that conjured up memories of Ireland and gave him hope. They weren’t beaten yet, by God!

He sat on a fallen log, his eyes watering at the memory of his father stumbling behind the emaciated ox, his hands bleeding on the plow’s hickory handles, day in and day out. How unfair that Henry should see the fruits of his labor first.

He longed to share the victory with his father, but that man had yet to awake.

Father lay in the cabin on a bed of hemlock boughs, having taken little nourishment since falling ill. He’d unconsciously made a mess of himself that morning. There being no one else, the job of cleaning him up and laundering his clothes fell to Henry, who vowed never to reveal the indignity.

Henry rose and trudged across the waterlogged flood plain, practicing the lie he would use should Father wake without his clothes.

Ye sweated clean through e’ery scrap ye had on ye.

It was plausible, he thought, sidestepping through a copse of saplings.

He found the ox nipping leaves at the swollen creek. The animal fared better than its masters, growing fatter by the day on plentiful mast and browse. Long hairs in its dense hide shivered in the breeze, yet another sign that the province would soon surrender to winter.

Though the creek returned to its banks, it roared, muddy and foaming in eddies, sweeping limbs and even entire logs downstream as though they were blades of grass. Henry glowered at the enraged water. There would be no trapping fish for a while, or gathering mussels or clams.

He patted the ox’s flank, then sat on a stump to untie his bandage to expose his sore arm to sun and air. There was no stench of infection, but redness persisted around the wounds’ edges, and every so often, an itchy pain pricked the deepest parts of their ravines. He was careful to keep his arm clean and moving in spite of the soreness, and he boiled and dried his bandages between uses. It was respite his body needed, and good food. Until he got them, he would continue to weaken, and unless Father recuperated soon, he would probably die.

He re-covered his wounds, then pressed his arm close to his chest inside his father’s cloak. Still aching from his fall on the ground, he hobbled upstream to check the snares. All remained empty.

His stomach growled miserably as he stooped to gather up a few chestnuts missed by squirrels and deer. Wormholes speckled the nutshells, but desperate men could not afford to be picky. He placed them in his sack, eyed a tree fungus, and decided against adding it to his collection. Some of those were poisonous, and he didn’t know how to tell one from another.

Honking geese flew past at shoulder height. If only he had a fowler. Damn all pride, Alexander MacFarlane even offered one! And eternal hellfire upon the sleekit bastard who stole the rifle Uncle William intended for them. If he got his hands on that man, he’d—

What? What would ye do? Ye can barely put one foot in front of the other.

The raucous geese flew up the center of the creek and out of view. Henry wondered how roasted goose would taste. He’d seen and smelled only one, when Uncle Sorley summoned them to discuss the unpaid rent. He’d been on the verge of starvation then, too, with nothing but a blighted potato in his belly for two days. His father ate even less, he recalled now. Oh, how he’d stared at the goose on the fancy table, licking his lips and imagining a bite of its flesh. Centered on a bed of cooked apples, it had been baked to golden perfection and slathered with brandy and a gooseberry glaze. During the entire visit, the bird remained untouched, with Uncle Sorley neither taking a bite nor offering one.

Uncle Sorley craved gold that day, not goose, he knew now. The bird’s sole purpose had been temptation.

He parted a veil of weeping willow branches blocking his way, remembering Alexander’s mention of them in one of his letters.

They make a pain tonic out of the willow bark here.

Henry snapped off a few branches, and some birch twigs, too, sniffing them to make sure they were the right variety. Birch bark made a flavorsome tea, especially when boiled with the leaves and berries of wintergreen, a plant that grew in abundance underneath the pines. He added dandelion plants, roots and all, to his sack. They would be almighty bitter, but Alexander claimed no plant in the New World could nourish a man better than the humble dandelion.

It wasn’t much, but with the pine nuts inside the cones on the downed branches, it might get them through until the creek settled down.

He stooped to pick a wintergreen berry for an offering to his cavernous belly, and a bout of dizziness forced him to lean against a tree. It passed quickly, but it left him weak and trembling, with a half-chewed berry in his mouth and his bowels rumbling as if he, too, were in danger of soiling himself. He couldn’t conceive what was in him to expel. Nothing solid, certainly.

He shouldered his sack, his spirits plummeting at the lightness of it, and made for the cabin. Sweat trickled past his temple, and he doffed his father’s cloak. Three strides later, with his teeth chattering, he put it on again. He was in real trouble, and if he was in trouble, so was his father, and so was Mary.

He leaned against a beech tree to catch his breath, hot in his chest.

“Mary,” he whispered.

There, he’d said it aloud. The word floated up from the trees and joined the velvety clouds racing across the sky. Perhaps in their eastward journey to the sea, they would rain that name upon its rightful owner, along with the love Henry still felt for her.

Sorrow tightened a noose around his neck as he closed his eyes to picture her. He did not know where or even if she lived, but for some inexplicable reason he saw her at a fireside, darning a sock and wondering why he never came for her. She looked older, unkempt . . . broken, with sadness pulling at the corners of her mouth.

He shook his head, dizzying himself again, then staggered toward the cabin, sliding clumsily over the pine boughs still scattered around the smokehouse. Staccato puffs of smoke from the chimney meant the fire was dying. He aimed for the firewood stacked next to the cabin door, but a shadow there stopped him in his tracks. His hand found the neck of his tomahawk before his next breath.

What is it? An animal, certainly.

Meat.

He eased the tomahawk out of its loop and waited, growing faint and losing his balance. His legs failed him, and in his panic, he used his injured arm to cushion his fall. His yelp sliced through the pines and echoed off the ridges. He rolled, groaning and clutching his arm. Through his tears, he saw that the shadow remained.

He tottered to his feet, gasping, with his tomahawk heavy and shaking in his grip. Something familiar rested on top of the shadow.

My knife!

But that was impossible. He’d stuck that knife in a bear’s belly.

He cocked his head and stepped closer. The shadow was no animal, at least not anymore. It was a fresh, folded bearskin.

He whirled around, steadying himself against the woodpile, and sought the man who had placed it there. His scrutiny of the surrounding landscape revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The breeze rattled the umber leaves of pin oak saplings and coaxed milkweed seeds out of their pods. A hawk soared overhead. Nothing else moved.

Father.

He grabbed the knife on his way into the cabin.

Father looked peaceful under his blanket.

Henry slammed the door and pulled in the strings, locking out any would-be intruder.

What was the meaning of this? Did someone want them to know he watched them? Henry often suspected someone—or something—observed them from afar. Gunshots boomed up the creek occasionally, but he never saw or sensed anything close to the cabin.

I should have brought in the bearskin. I should have looked for footprints.

Their visitor would have left some. He cracked open the door, jumping when he caught movement.

It was only the ox, which followed him back from the creek. The animal meandered into a sunny clearing, sank to its knees, and then dropped its rear end onto the ground for a leisurely chew of its cud. More vigilant than a dog, the ox shared none of his concern.

The bearskin’s musky scent wafted up to Henry, who saw no tracks but his own. With his good arm, he pulled the heavy bearskin into the cabin. After he rebolted the door, he took four pine knots from a basket. These he lit on a flat stone in the middle of a table made out of William’s bedframe.

With the crude candles blazing, Henry unfolded the sticky pelt. A slab of venison rolled out of it and onto the floor at his feet. He stared at the sinewy meat, unable to trust his eyes. Wasting no time and considering nothing more about it than how good it would taste, he skewered it on the spit and suspended it between the andirons.

Flames licked at the roast while he stretched out the bearskin. He burrowed his fingers into its plushness, which, fully spread, extended nearly from wall to wall. It pressed a silhouette of its former wearer against the floor, flawless except for the lack of its head and paws . . . and a slice in the fur that once covered its belly. Henry brushed a hand across the hole in the pelt, knowing his knife put it there. The skin belonged to the damnable culprit that robbed them of their winter stores and gashed open his arm.

But who reduced it to a pelt? Did someone truly watch them from afar? What sort of man observed another in secret? Was the gift his way of introducing himself? Would the onlooker present himself now, rap on their door on the morrow? The questions brought no answers, only more questions, and then, when the roast began to fill the cabin with its savory scent, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was there was meat . . . and a knife to cut it.

Chapter 40

Father recovered as suddenly as he’d fallen ill.

“Something smells good.” He sat up on the bed of boughs, nearly causing Henry to jump out of his moccasins. Henry had been stirring a pot of broth. Some of it now sizzled in the coals, where he’d slung it in his shock.

Father’s blanket fell to his lap, exposing his bare chest. Rooster tails sprang up from his stringy hair. Stubble deepened the shadows of his gaunt face.

Henry gawped, the dripping spoon still in his hand.

“What is the meaning of this?” His father brushed hemlock needles off the peaks of his shoulders. “Where are my claithes? And why are ye wearing your good shirt?”

Henry rapped his spoon against the pot, then set it on the mantel. He crushed the desire to run and embrace his father. Instead, he retrieved the sick man’s clothes and delivered his rehearsed line. “Ye sweated clean through e’ery scrap ye had on ye. Here. I washed them.”

Father opened the fresh shirt.

Henry said, “I thought for a while ye were nae gonny make it. Ye were mighty sick.”

“How long was I oot?”

“Six days by my—”

“Six!” His mouth fell open, and he dropped the shirt.

“Aye, I think the lump—”

“It’s gone.” He’d been feeling for it. “What happened to your arm?”

“There was—”

“What in the name of . . .” He noticed the bearskin and then looked at the hearth. “Is that meat I smell?”

Henry nodded.

“Meat! How’d ye come by it?”

“It’s a long story. Ye see—”

“I’ll bet it was the snare up by that old chestnut tree.” He threw on his shirt and bobbed to his feet, then closed his eyes and braced himself on the table until an apparent bout of dizziness passed. “I knew that snare would be a lucky one.” He laced up his shirt, which, given the thinness of his legs, resembled a billowing sail on twin masts.

“I snared naught.”

“What happened to your arm?” Father asked again, hopping into his breeches.

Henry retrieved the spoon from the mantel. “Are ye gonny shut yer yap long enough for me to tell ye?”

Father grinned as he buttoned. “Forgive me. Go on.” He sat at the table.

“A lot’s happened since ye fell ill.” Henry scooped venison broth into a bowl and slid it across the table, then sat and recounted the events of the prior week while his father ate.

When Henry had finished, Father said, “Ye could have been killed.”

“And ye could have died, but ye did nae.”

“Mayhap I should have a look at yon arm.”

“It is healing well. Naught but a touch of soreness left in it.” Henry turned to the fire and scooped out a big lump of venison for his father’s bowl. “Go easy on that. It’ll wreck your guts if ye eat it too fast.”

“Ye speak like a man who knows.”

“My arse is raw.”

Father blew on the venison. “The ox, how’s the ox?”

“Getting fatter by the day.”

“And your auld shirt. Did ye—”

“I saved it, of course.”

Father set down his spoon and fell silent for a moment. “Sounds like ye did a fine job of looking after things.”

Henry flushed, too embarrassed to admit how close he’d come to failing them both. Had it not been for the mysterious benefactor dropping food at their door, they would have died.

He herded his thoughts in a more positive direction. “Father, wait until ye see our field.”

Father held his stomach as if pained. “We’ve lost the seed?”

“Nay, it’s up. The seed is up.”

“It’s up? All of it?”

“All of it.”

Father closed his eyes. “We’re made, Henry. Made.”

Henry decided against reminding him that the wheat had a whole season to endure, and a long journey to market, before they were “made.” He witnessed winter’s first blast. His father hadn’t.

Father belched into his fist. “It must be Lemuel Tanner who brings the meat.”

“Tanner would knock.”

“Aye, he would. And it’s e’ery day, ye say?”

“E’ery day, ‘bout this time.”

“Shh.” Father looked wary. “Did ye hear something?”

Henry cocked his ear and cursed the door’s lack of windowpanes. He could hear nothing, which meant they would have to open the door and expose themselves to danger. Come hell or high water, he would bring a pane of glass from Philadelphia next year.

Father stood to lift the axe off the wall. Still weak, his arm quivered. “Open the door.”

Henry shook his head and put his finger to his lips. He sunk to his knees and peeked through the door’s stringhole.

Outside, a shock of black hair snaked from under a fur cap. It rested on deerskin covering a man’s broad shoulders.

He caught the scent of bear grease. “It’s an Injun.” Their benefactor was an Indian? It made no sense! And then it did.

They’re fattening us up, waiting for our hair to grow.

“Open the door and ask him to come in.” Father returned the axe to the wall.

Henry’s voice went shrill. “Are ye mad?”

The man heard. He lifted his face to the stringhole. The fear in his eyes—and their color—nearly knocked Henry against the far wall.

The man dashed out of view.

Father hobbled to the door to push Henry aside. “For God’s sake, Henry, invite the man in.” He opened the door. “There’s nobody here.”

“He ran o’er that way.” Henry pointed to the west, where he saw no creek and no pines. He saw nothing at all but those wild, darting eyes.

Am I mad, or were they blue?

“Look.” Father pointed to a blanket-wrapped bundle at their feet. He picked it up and carried it to the table. While Henry re-bolted the door, his father peeled the blanket away from a dressed goose and a beaded feather.

Henry was still considering the savage’s eyes.

“A goose!” Father picked up the feather and examined the beads, then shook it at Henry. “I hope this teaches ye to not judge a man by the color of his skin.”

“Father, his eyes were blue.”

“But ye said he was an Injun.”

“He
was
an Injun.”

“Then ye must be mistaken. Injuns have black eyes.”

“They were as blue as yours and mine, but that man was an Injun or I’m John the Baptist.”

“Only one way to find oot.” Father raced to open the door. “Pray, come back!”

His words echoed off the ridges, but yielded only the ox, which trotted out of the brush and up to the barn door, where it waited for someone to let it in for the night.

“Come back!” Father shouted again.

“Ye may as well save your breath. He will nae come back.” Henry lifted the cloak from its peg and whirled it about his shoulders.

“How can ye be sure?”

“No one that feared is gonny stick around.”

Henry was so confident in his assessment that he wasted no time in going outside to bed down the ox for the night.

An Indian with blue eyes, he thought, as he headed for the barn. It was possible, wasn’t it? Why, hadn’t Duncan Fitzpatrick’s bitch whelped a pup with one blue eye?

He opened the barn door, and the ox, habituated to the evening routine, sauntered in without protest. Henry tossed some acorns and nettles into its trough. When he turned to hang up his scoop, movement in the barnyard caught his eye. There, faintly silhouetted against the waning daylight, stood a man dressed and smelling like an Indian, with eyes the color of the Irish Sea.

The scoop dropped out of Henry’s hand and clattered under the ox.

Words failed him as he regarded their visitor standing in that proud Indian way, with his arms folded across his chest and his nose aloft. He wore no hat now, leaving his partially shaved head and mutilated ears exposed. Though his skin was as leathery as an old shot pouch, he looked to be in his twenties. A tomahawk hung from a colorful belt near his midriff.

“
Bezon
,”
he said, noticing Henry staring at his weapon. He held up his palms, slowly reached for the tomahawk, then dropped it on the ground.

Worried that the Indian was trying to trick him and steal the ox, Henry stepped outside and closed the door.

“I . . . I am Henry.”

The man nodded, dipping the spiky shock of hair on his crown and all the feathers in it. He patted the deerskin fringes at his chest. “Magi.”

Magi. Big Turtle’s son. Brother to Black Snake and the murdered Yellow Hawk.
Had he come to avenge his brother’s death?

Henry pointed toward the cabin, where his frail father stood in the doorway.

“Edward. My father. Come.” He walked toward the cabin, where he could at least lay his hands on their axe if he needed it.

Magi looked fascinated as he crossed the threshold.

Father offered him a chair close to the hearth.

The Indian ran a hand over the chair back as if he’d never seen anything so strange.

“Here.” Father patted the seat. “Sit.”

Their visitor obeyed with a grin, revealing alarmingly worn teeth, then offered a quick, approving nod.

“Your frock, sir.” Father extended a hand, but eased onto another chair before the Indian could digest his words. “Forgive me. I’m a bit dizzy.”

“No wonder. Ye’re just oot of your sick bed.” Henry turned to their guest. “Your frock, sir.”

Magi nodded and stood again, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling beam, for he was easily six feet tall. He untied his colorful belt and frock and handed both Henry, who hung them on a peg.

“His name’s Magi. Look at his shirt.” It was of European design, better than any Henry could ever hope to own.

“Probably a gift from one government or another.”

“Or, he stole it from some poor soul who no longer needs it.”

“Mind your manners, son. He’s no Injun. Look at his hair.”

Henry noticed copper tints. “It is nae black.”

“This man is as white as we are.”

“Tanner says all of them understand English.”

Magi sat again. From his seat, he examined every square inch of the cabin, but it was the cupboard, or more accurately, the item sitting on top of it, that held him rapt.

“He’s looking at the cross I made.” Father retrieved it.

A shadow of sadness chased the wonderment from Magi’s eyes. He reached out to caress the face of the cross.

Father handed it to him. “Let’s see what he remembers. Our Father, who art in—”

Magi met his gaze. “Heaven.”

Father laughed and smacked the wild man’s back. “By Jaysus, Henry, he’s one of us.”