Thieving Forest (30 page)

“We will not starve.”

“We’re starving now.”

“After you eat some more meat, you’ll feel stronger,” Meera says. “We’ve been hungry for too long.” She stops and lifts her chin. “What’s that? Do you smell that?”

Susanna turns her head and catches the faint scent of hickory smoke. Another illusion? But Meera smells it, too. It’s coming from the east where the trees are ancient and thick, mostly bur oaks with cracked lined faces like old men watching everything but keeping their thoughts to themselves. They walk toward the smell and Susanna is surprised to find that the bur oaks do not lead to more trees but instead form the outer edge of a little clearing. A grassy brook runs along one end, and above that stands a large garden encircled by a wattle fence. But where is the cabin or hut? The smoke is coming up from the shade.

“Who’s there?” a voice calls out in Delaware, although Susanna could have sworn they’ve made no noise. She follows the sound of the voice to an old squaw standing between two great elm trees with a reed mat in one hand and an English hunting rifle in the other. She is Crow, Susanna guesses, or part Crow, with a wide nose and full lips. When Susanna begins to walk toward her she switches to English. “Don’t come any closer.”

“We are travelers in need of food,” Susanna says. “Will you help us?”

Silence.

The squaw is wearing a long deerskin tunic painted with decorations—deer antlers and a moon—over a pair of English trousers. Her hair is long and dark and frayed at the ends, worn loose. She might be fifty, sixty, seventy years old. It’s hard to tell with natives. When Susanna takes another step the squaw drops the mat to hold the gun in her two hands, not pointing it directly at her but not too far off, either.

“I am Susanna Quiner,” Susanna says. “From Severne, Ohio, and before that, the city of Philadelphia. And this is Meera.”

“She your slave?”

“Not my slave. My...” What is she? “We’re traveling together.”

“Tell her to put down the weapon.”

Meera places her knife on the ground between her feet and shows the squaw her open palms. “
Welankuntawakan
,” she says. Peace.

“We’re traveling north,” Susanna explains. “We got lost.”

“Of course you got lost. You shouldn’t have come.”

Does she live here by herself? Susanna wonders. But that is impossible. Her husband must be out hunting or tending to the—what, pigs? Sheep? Hard to imagine sheep in a swamp, but it is equally hard to imagine an old woman standing with a hunting rifle in front of a large, well-tended garden. A noise as familiar as Aurelia’s voice makes Susanna turn her head.

Chickens.

“Are those Dominicos I hear?” she asks, taking a chance.

The squaw shifts her rifle. “You acquainted with Dominicos?”

“My sister raised them. Said they were the best breed for intelligence and hardiness.”

“Fine mothers, too. Not all raise their young so unselfishly.” She cocks her head at Susanna and rests the butt of her rifle on the ground. “All right. I’ll give you some food and one night’s sleep, but then you must be on your way.”

“Thank you, grandmother,” Meera says.

The squaw snorts. “I’m not your grandmother. I’m English. You can call me Omie.”

Nineteen

Back in Severne Penelope often told her sisters a story in bed at night, either true or made up, but if she ever conceived of telling a story about a white woman living alone deep in the maze of the Great Black Swamp who hunted on her own, built whatever needed building, and needed no man’s help (Susanna can imagine how such a story would appeal to Penelope), she probably would never have dreamed up a woman so talkative as Omie. Once Omie puts down her rifle it’s as if a spark has been touched to dry sticks, and the flow of words begins.

“Grow my vegetables there,” she tells them, showing them the garden first. “Some are under those vines to keep the birds off, see that? And over here just flowers. Inside you’ll set your eyes on a beautiful sight, all my little darlings in pots and jars, some growing wild around here, some I put in from seed. You found me by my smoke, no wonder. When I first came I took more pains to be invisible but I’ve grown less careful with fires as I like my meals to be hot each one. No one around anyway, I’ve not seen a person since...” She stops to think. “Don’t know, actually.”

Although Susanna is looking for it, she does not see Omie’s hut until they are ten paces away from it, surrounded as it is by trees and undergrowth. Its outer walls are lined with bark, and it has a straight, well-formed chimney constructed of small gray stones no larger than a child’s fist.

“Every autumn I pull new bark for the walls,” Omie tells them. “I do love that smell.”

She directs Susanna and Meera to wash themselves using a bucket of water by the door and hands them a sliver of soap so dry and rutted that Susanna has to work it a full minute before it gives up any lather. Afterward Omie gives them each a cloth to dry themselves with. For a moment Susanna just holds hers. It has been a long time since she’s held anything so dry.

Inside, it’s true, flowers stand everywhere: daisies, swamp roses, purple coneflowers, and clusters of what her mother used to call turkey-foot grass. They are arranged in hard clay jars on the floor all around the room like wallpaper that starts at ground level and grows to life against the log walls. The cabin is undivided, just one large room that smells like green plants and smoke. Three windows without glass bring in the light, and Susanna notices clever shutters on hinges to close them up. A rough three-legged stool stands by the hearth, and that is the beginning and end of the furniture.

Omie sits down on the stool and stirs the fire embers with iron tongs and then pours a bit of water into a standing kettle. She tells them to eat slowly and not too much at first. “You look near death.”

Clearly she came here from somewhere carrying iron tools and supplies, but where, and how long ago? As Susanna puts the soupspoon to her mouth she feels a sigh escape her like it’s from her whole body. Squirrel. For a while she forgets her questions and just eats. Meera, sitting across from her on the floor, is holding the bowl up to her chin and Susanna can see she is also trying not to gulp it down in one swallow. Susanna bites into a boiled potato and then with her tongue presses it into a warm grainy mash on the roof of her mouth. She’s almost forgotten that sensation.

“I’m no stranger to hunger,” Omie is saying. “Back some years, before I came here. Famine of ‘90, but ye’ll not remember that. All we had was sap porridge, that’s cornmeal and maple tree sap. After that was gone we ate snow.”

“Where was this?” Susanna asks politely.

“I’ll not tell ye,” Omie says sharply. “I’ll not go back.”

She glares at Susanna. Then she abruptly changes again. “Let me give you a touch more.” She tips half a ladle of stew into Susanna’s bowl, the rest into Meera’s. “My father gave me a hundred acres of land as a wedding gift, all hills and rocks. From
his
parents, two sheep. Look at this.” She takes from the mantel a pair of hand millstones. “When I left I packed them out with me. Grind my own grain. Ever have johnnycakes fried in bear oil? A little honey on top. I like honey. Just follow the bees back to their home when I see them, I can’t be bit nor stung. That’s why I don’t get swamp fever.”

“You don’t ever get swamp fever? I don’t either!” Susanna says. Until now she thought she was the only one. She is strangely pleased to find something in common with this odd woman.

“Can insects bite ye?” Omie asks.

“Not mosquitoes. But swamp fever comes from plants, you know, not insects. It comes from their gases.”

“Gases from plants? Puh!” Omie scoffs.

After they’ve eaten, Omie takes them to the side yard to show them her chickens.

“Here my lovelies, here my own,” she calls.

It’s here that Susanna begins to realize why Omie still has the habit of speech: she talks to her hens. No doubt, when alone, she talks to her flowers as well. Each hen has a name and curious markings painted on their feathers like the markings on Omie’s tunic: rings, purple moons, a star. Only the two roosters are left unmarked. They perch on top of a henhouse made of boards pulled from crates or barrels or both and then nailed and roped together. The door is made from barley straw.

“Aye, it looks a mishmash but it holds,” Omie says about the henhouse, holding one chicken loosely in her arms. “Good scratch about. Times I give them a little crushed grain too, if I have it.”

“My sister mixed wood ash into their feed,” Susanna tells her. “Said it made their shells stronger.”

“That interfere with the hatching?”

“She’s lost only two chicks in the last two years.”

“How many does she have now?”

“She doesn’t...she recently died.”

“Then who’s taking care of her hens?”

“I don’t know.” Susanna feels a pang of guilt. Aurelia asked her to do that. But isn’t it strange, she thinks, that Omie is more concerned over the fate of Aurelia’s chickens than Aurelia? Later Susanna tells herself that Omie is a woman without kindness.

Omie has brought out with her a large knotted net, tangled and full of holes. She sets her hen down and shakes out the net. “Help me with this. And you too, Little Pea,” she says to Meera. Last night she saw a flock of passenger pigeons fly overhead and she figures more are on their way.

“Like to catch some for supper. But I have to mend my net or they’ll fly right through it.”

She spreads the net on the ground, and Meera and Susanna help her to untangle it. When it is lying straight out they begin to mend it with odd bits of string and rope.

“How is it that this land isn’t wet?” Susanna asks her.

“Limestone not too far underneath,” Omie tells her. “And it’s on a little rise as you can see. I chose the spot smartly.”

She takes up her knife and cuts a worn piece from the net, measures it against her thumb, and then cuts a new piece to match it from her scraps. She makes a pile of the worn pieces, perhaps intending to mend them later, while Meera and Susanna tie the new pieces to the net with small tight knots. All the while Omie talks and talks, sometimes to Susanna and Meera, and sometimes to her birds.

“My father raised flax to sell but kept some back for our clothes. I had a new dress every year. A little bit of cleared land, that’s all we had, and right beyond was the wilderness. Hard to imagine now, but how I feared it as a girl. Hated to go into the woods even for kindling. Father worked the land with a hand hoe. My husband, he mostly talked down the neck of his whiskey bottle. It was his right to beat me but he took on that responsibility a deal too often.”

Is this why she came to this lonesome place, Susanna wonders? It seems a hard thing to have to live alone like this. She never would.

“Why do you paint your birds?” Meera asks.

“For the powers. Stars for might, moon for understanding, rings for their ability to heal the cramp. I mostly use pokeweed berries but there’s a lichen I sometimes mix in, cuts a nice shade.”

“Can you tell if a venture is unlucky?” Susanna asks her.

“I can tell your venture is,” Omie says with a laugh. “Else you wouldn’t be here.”

But she shows no curiosity about them or why they have come. She sits on a little tree stump with her knees spread, the part of the net she is working on pulled up onto her lap. Her fingers are thick but nimble, and her hair webs around her shoulders like a shawl. When the net seems good enough, Omie puts her hands flat on her thighs and pushes herself to standing.

“At sunset is when the birds fly,” she tells them, shaking the net out. “We’ll catch a few then and make us some good pigeon pie.”

They set out just as the last line of bright sun is sinking out of view, Omie leading the way with her gun broken over her arm. Where does she get her gunpowder, Susanna wonders as she follows her. For Omie is preparing to shoot the birds as well as net them. The sky is filled with flat, distant clouds outlined in pink and purple, and the air smells like wet leaves.

“See that pair of sour gums yonder?” Omie asks. She points to a pair of trees on a little rise. “The birds like to fly right between them. I set the net among the lower branches because my climbing days are past, but if you could get yourselves up top we could affix the net higher and catch all the more.”

The branches of the two trees extend toward each other like people holding out their arms before an embrace. Susanna climbs one and Meera, holding the net, climbs the other. When they get high enough Meera throws Susanna one end of the net, and they pull it to stretch it out taut between them.

“Tie it fast, now,” Omie hollers up. “Pick a good bough. Then climb down a ways and fasten up the middle same as the top. I’ll get the bottom.” She sounds happy. “Yuh! Don’t sway so, you’ll break yer neck!”

Susanna feels tree sap stick to her fingers. She is still not strong and she worries about Meera, who is climbing down even more slowly than she is. On the ground, Omie hands each of them a long stick with a blade tied to it, a kind of spear. As she examines the tip a sound swells in the distance, or maybe just the feeling of a sound, and she looks up to see a dark cloud of birds coming into the clearing. They make no noise save their wings, which are long and elegant, and they lift slightly as they approach the trees like a preacher making the start of a slow blessing. The first of them fly well above the branches. But as the flock thickens, some of the birds are forced to fly lower down until at last one flies right into the net.