The Marriage Cure (9 page)

By the time they reached the banks of the great Mississippi River, winter brought more trouble
.
It was so cold that the river froze and they could not cross it
.
The ice was too weak to bear their weight so they camped on the banks, sleeping on the bare ground, most without even a thin blanket
.
Light died on the second day, frozen, her body taken with many others but they did not know where
.
Johnny mourned her loss but he was preoccupied for James was now sick.

The lad struggled to breathe and burned with fever, lung fever some said but no one could help
.
Davey and Johnny took turns trying to keep him warm with their own failing body heat
.
They supported his head so he could breathe and brewed willow bark tea but he slipped away, cold one morning in their arms
.
Even worse, when they went to beg a blanket or cloth to wrap his body in, they could not get one and his body vanished while they were gone.

Johnny and his brother trailed onward, hope dying
, sick in body
, and bellies empty
.
Fort Gibson proved to be no promise land, instead nothing but a desolate post nicknamed “Charnel House” because death visited daily and without discrimination
.
They were two among the thousands of displaced Cherokees
swarming the fort,
unwanted by General Arbuckle
.
The Old Settlers, Cherokees who came of their volition a decade earlier, did not want them and the soldiers had few provisions to share, the same rough food of the trail
.
Johnny built a brush shelter for them in the hills above Gibson but they almost starved
.
Indifferent now, taciturn to the point of almost perpetual silence, they trusted no one else and eked by, day by day
.

Davey turned to the
wisgi,
powerful rotgut whiskey that dulled his senses and relieved his pain
.
Far removed from the fine, aged water of life Seamus Devaney praised, the
wisgi
was rank, bitter, and tainted
.
More than one man went blind from drinking the home brew; others suffered other ills
.
Johnny would not drink it after the first two times but he could not keep Davey from it.

He did odd jobs around the fort for crumbs, emptying chamber pots running over with reeking diarrhea, and helping to bury the dead
.
Sometimes he took one of the laundresses and rutted with her, relieving his body but never touching his soul.

After a few weeks, he could not bear Fort Gibson any longer
.
His skin and hair crawled with lice, the daily insults and taunts to the “dirty Injun” were too great, and there was nothing here
.
He decided to leave, to head back up into the Missouri country where the terrain reminded him of home.

“Come with me,” h
e begged his brother but Davey, drunk and past caring, would not listen.

He went alone, walking along the rivers after he talked with several scouts to get an idea of how to reach the Ozark land
.
Before leaving, he smeared his hair with bear grease and stole a wooden comb
.
Three days gone, he combed out the dead lice from his hair, and then washed in the river with soap root until he felt cleaner than he had since home
.
He did not know it then but he carried with him the illness that robbed his laundress of her life.

From that point on, Sabetha knew his story and so he stopped, his breath ragged in the dark with tears he could not shed, tears from remembering the
nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi
wet on his face in the darkness.

Sabetha Mahoney Trahern

His voice was so soft as he spoke that she strained to hear it, even lying next to him in bed
.
Sabetha listened, holding his hand to offer what measure of comfort she might
.
In the dim light, she could see the outline of his face but not the expression but it did not matter; she heard his anguish in his tone.

“After that, ye know,
” Johnny said, after a lengthy silence
.
His voice cracked and she relinquished his hand so that she could put her arms around him
.
Johnny turned to her and she held him.

He buried his face against her shoulder and wept, cried all the tears he could not shed on his long trail
.
She stroked his hair and spoke to him, although she doubted that the words reached him through his sobs
.
Sabetha prayed that as he wept he released all the hurt, the bitterness, the grief, and pain that he had held.

“
Och
hone, och hone,
”
she
crooned to him
.
“Let it all go,
mo chroi.
”

His body convulsed in her arms as he spent his emotion
.
After, he lay quiet, then whispered,

“Thank ye, Sabetha
.
I'm
ashamed
to cry so but ye're a comfort, woman.”

“Ye needn't be,
”
Her fingers moved through his hair, stroking and consoling
.
“Ye needed to keen yer dead and weep for them.”

He sighed, hard
.
“Aye.”

“Will ye sleep now,
mo chroi
?”
Her eyes ached and she longed to close them.

“Aye, I think I can now.”

His weeping spell must have drained his strength for soon he relaxed in her arms and she knew he slept
.
It was then
she wept for him, slow, silent tears for all he had suffered and tears of joy that he had found his way to her.

In the morning, he said nothing of either his tears or his tale but he seemed well, better in some way she could not quite name
.
Whe
n he rose, he rejected the cast
off shirt he wore during his illness and donned his buckskins
.
They were clean for
she had washed them and dried them on the bushes near the spring
.
He looked fine in them, far better than in Henry's shirt, but because he lost pounds during his illness, the buckskins swam on him, swallowed him up until he looked like a boy trying on his father's clothes.

“What do ye think?” Johnny asked, holding up the leggings so they would not fall down
.
“I don't suppose ye can take them in?”

Sabetha shook her head
.
“I can't, not the tanned leather
.
I've not a needle that will do it
.
Ye can't wear those, Johnny.”

He grinned. “What would ye have me wear then? My skin?”

Laughter erupted and she giggled like the girl she had been not so long ago
.
He laughed too, a warm chuckle that made her laugh harder with delight
.
Laughter was better than tears, any day.

“I've some of my
late husband's breeches put up,
” Sabetha said
.
“And one or two shirts.”

He made a face
.
“I'd rather not dress in your dead man's clothes but I've little choice
.
Let me see them.”

The breeches–or breeks–were clean and fit him close enough
.
He tugged at the breeches until they hung the way he wanted and strapped his knife around his waist
.
Before he asked, she handed him his moccasins, worn thin over many miles and when he put them on, he smiled.

“I feel near myself again,” h
e said.

“Ye look fine, man,
” Sabetha told him, unable to resist fingering the shirt and adjusting the collar
.
“Ye would look well and hale were ye not so pale.”

“Aye,” h
e sighed. “I know I'm still weak as a puny wane but ‘tis good to wear clothes again
.
Are ye going to the cornfield this morning?”

She would rather not venture near the field but by now, it would be ankle deep in weeds and if she did not go soon, there would be no point.

“Aye
.
Will ye bide here, then, till I'm back?”

He shook his head
.
“No, I'm coming with ye
.
I'll hoe a row or two if I'm able, then I'll watch ye.”

“Ye're hardly out of bed!” Sabetha cried
.
“Johnny
, man, are ye sure ye feel up to it?”

“I do.” His cocky grin melted her objections
.
The smile lightened his features and was still a novel expression.

“Then come with me but ye'll stop if ye get tired, won't ye?”

“Aye
.
I'm no fool,
” Johnny said
.
“I've no wish to be back abed.”

Despite his bravado, the walk to the cornfield winded him and he slowed to catch his breath
and
take a rest beneath a tree at the edge of the clearing
.
His face shone with perspiration and Sabetha wiped his face with the edge of her dress.

“Will ye do?” s
he asked, mouth quirked with worry.

“Aye,” h
e gasped
.
“
Ta tart orm.”

She held the water jug she carried up so he could drink and he did, gulping the water so fast it spilled onto his clothing.

“Here, ye'll
founder,
” s
he scolded as she took it away
.
“Sit and rest for a minute
.
I'll hoe and if ye feel like it, ye can soon enough.”

He nodded
.
If he was pale before, he now looked very white but she didn't worry much
.
He was out of bed just two days earlier; walking so far exerted his feeble strength
.
She thought she might let him hoe a row or portion of one, attacking the first row of weeds with the hoe
.
As she got into the swing of the tool, her mind drifted and she enjoyed the day, the feel of the sunshine slanting through the trees onto her bare head, and the songs of the birds
.
From time to time, she peeked at Johnny but he looked well enough
.
He wasn't so white, now, and he looked content as if he enjoyed being outside as well.

Although it was slow work, the morning passed more quickly than when she worked alone
.
He often called to her, a comment or question as she hoed but he startled her when he appeared at her side
.
He snatched the hoe out of her hands and said with a toss of his head toward the trees,

“Go sit down
.
I'll hoe now.”

Perplexed, she stared at him. “What are ye doing?”

“Don't you hear?” h
e said, his voice harsh with urgency. “Someone's coming.”

She cocked her head and listened
.
Behind the bird songs, the wind in the leaves, and the other normal sounds of the forest, she heard what he heard
approaching hoof beats.

His face was a mask, stern and formidable
.
She obeyed him without question.

****

Johnny Devaney

It wasn't just the walk that sapped his strength; it was being in a cornfield again
.
The last time he stood among the neat rows of growing corn his life changed forever in moments
.
His father bled into death among the new growth and nothing had ever been the same
.
Johnny never thought it would bother him, not until he saw the corn stalks knee-high and waving in the slight breeze
.
Memory hit hard and he stopped, short of breath from walking and soul sick from remembering.