All True Not a Lie in It (4 page)

E
VERY NIGHT
I want to follow my brother Israel, but the boys who follow me are out at night also. On and on they go in soft voices outside our window: You whoresbrother, you ape, you arse, you toadstool, you stew-brains, you shit-stew, you fathead, you wart, you cuckoo, you maggoty bastard son of a whore.

One night I throw a pot out at them. My teeth ache with hating, but we continue on in Exeter for five years after my sister Sallie leaves it with her fellow. At Meeting, the looks the Friends give are pitying. We might smother in pity and kindness. Daddy and Ma keep themselves sweet there. Daddy stalks about the burying ground, flattening the earth and making sure the grass grows over the newer graves so everyone is hidden for good. He says:

—We were here first.

He means the burying ground and the town. Daddy is never one to give up. He buys five more acres of rough pasturage up in the hills and puts up a sign with our name on it. Some of the boys scratch it out with
WHORES
. I scratch that into
HORSE
. I fight anyone until my ribs hurt and I laugh until it is the only sound in my head.

And now Israel vanishes for days at a time, bringing back meat and skins every so often. He will not say how far he goes or just where. I think of him finding a marvellous place where he is quite
alone and where all the birds and deer show themselves and say:
Shoot us, here we are
. In my mind I can quite see this place. Some days I try to track my brother up the hills and deeper into the woods, but I have no success. I will find my own place, I think. As yet I do not give it a name.

I do find new animal traces and very old Indian trails where the trees are blazed with signs. I find a worn-out hunter’s lean- to and have a talk with two old Catawba men there who tell me where they have seen beaver on one of the streams. We have a talk together though they do not speak many English words, and they offer me a smoke, but I say no thank you, and I go on. I practise with my club until I can get any bird at the first throw, even pheasants. Once I get a raccoon that is crouching to drink, it falls into the stream dead without having seen me.

I keep myself to myself. I keep right away from my Uncle James’s school and his lessons. I avoid the boys and Hill and his kindnesses, unless he has money or tobacco. Until he gets a new-made gun for his fourteenth birthday. It is a good gun, with a scene of lilies carved into its oak stock. He brings it to the house to show me. I say:

—Let me use it and I will let you watch.

With his usual grin he shoves his hair from his eyes and hands it to me. It has a good feel, it shoots straight. I tell him I will oil all the parts for him, but I take it and go to our summer pastures up the valley. I suppose I have stolen it, and I am sorry but not so very sorry. Hill does not come up here, he is keeping on with school to please his father, and his father does not wish him to be near me. I try not to think of Hill, but at times I think of the night he married me to little Molly Black, now dead of the fever. I think of my lip on Molly’s cheek. I am sorry she is gone.

With Ma I stay in the scratchy grassland for months while the rest of the family is at home. I look after the cows and take the milk and butter down the hills to the spring cellar at home for her.
I wheedle her to tell me her old Welsh story about wolves stealing into houses in the night and picking up babies in their teeth, then taking them off to their dens to live as wolf children. She does not like this tale, especially up here near the woods, but I do. Sitting at our fire we hear cold howls far away on occasion. Ma always goes into the little cabin then, but I wheel about slowly with Hill’s gun, looking into the trees with one eye shut. I would shoot a wolf if I saw one. Israel got one once after it killed a sheep and tore open the chicken house at Uncle James’s place. Its eyes were yellow. I did not like to look at it when he dragged it home, though dead wolves are worth quite a lot of money from a magistrate. Granddaddy is a magistrate still, even in his aged condition, but I will not go to his house alone again, even if I get a wolf.

Ma touches my shoulder as I sit beside her. She misses Sallie, her first child, and she thinks of the younger ones at home, Neddy and Squire and little Hannah. So it gives her pleasure to coddle me for a short time. She tells the wolf story and strokes my head and says:

—Such hair. Sweet Neddy got the rest. And now what have I left?

Her hair has thinned, it is full of white threads. I was born with a black thatch, thick as hers once was. Her favourite boy Neddy has the same. He is like me but with a sweeter countenance. The rest are like Daddy, paler and gingery, though Israel’s hair is a dark brown with red in it like embers, as I recall. We have not seen him in more than a month.

With my club I fell a red finch and then two more birds on their way to their trees. I pluck and gut them and cook them on a stick for Ma. The birds’ legs stand out straight, crisped in the smoke. She says:

—A pity to eat the little singers.

But she does eat them. The evening smells of warm grass and cows’ bodies. I can see the horseshoe-shaped valley below, the Schuylkill River at the end and the creeks running along like threads, and the house no more than a stump. I say:

—Ma, where do you think Israel is?

Without answering, she gets up to bring in the herd for evening milking. She calls:

—Ah. Here with you, you Ham.

I have given this name to all the cows. Ma humours me. The bells clank round her, she hums a flat little tune. She is worried about Israel and about what will become of us in Exeter, I know, though she keeps up a calm appearance. The corn and wheat did not come good this year, and Daddy says we must get fresh land for planting. For now I will stay. I will hunt and get her anything she wishes. So I think to myself. I am happy here alone with her in the fields, perhaps it is the happiest time of my life. Perhaps we get happy times to measure our unhappiness against later. Ma, I remember you.

It is September and cooler when a grey shape appears out of the higher hills across the pasturage. The sun is just coming up, Ma is still in the little dairy cabin fetching the pails. I stand up with the gun and aim. A sharp laugh comes:

—Do not shoot me yet. You do not even know who I am.

But I do know. Israel comes with his hands up and then sets his bag outside the cabin door. He grins through his beard and lies down in the grass with his gun beside him. He is wearing a breechcloth and leggings under his hunting shirt, which has tiny bright beads sewn all over it. His hips and thighs show bare. He kicks off his moccasins and a sharp smell comes from his feet. Another smell comes from his skin, a leafy smoky smell, the sort of tobacco the Indians use. Israel closes his eyes and goes limp as the pheasants and pigeons in his bag. I sit watching for quite a long time. When Ma comes out, he yawns in a great breath, as if his life is just starting itself. He sits up and asks what we have for breakfast, his hair
rumpled and wild and his whiskers piercing out from his skin. Ma embraces him and says he looks quite a warrior in his outfit. I say:

—Have you got any skins?

—Back in my camp. Traded some with the Delawares.

—For what?

—For the shirt.

He points to the beading on his chest. His mouth is full of the bread Ma gives him. She begins to spoon out some of last night’s stew and he eats as if he is starved. I say:

—Where did you find Delawares? I met some Catawbas. Where is your camp?

To Ma he says:

—Who gave you this meat?

He points the spoon at the bowl and Ma says:

—Our Daniel got it.

He looks at me properly. His eyes tighten. I say:

—Is beaver tail too fat for you now?

He begins to smile around the meat. He laughs and says:

—Well, well, the young master got himself a beaver. Got the pelt?

—Yes.

I do not tell him I shot the beaver and made a great hole in the skin. I have no traps as yet. He laughs again and chews off another great bite and takes another look at me. He says:

—You will have to come with me. We will get something else.

He sleeps all day in the grass. I help Ma but my heart is banging all the time. I want to go with him. I club a few squirrels and shine the gun and prepare my powder and shot. When Ma brings the cows in for the night, Israel wakes and stretches in the twilight. The moon is coming up already, a fat moon tonight. A wolf gives a yipping cry far in the woods. Israel finds a pitch-pine branch and makes a torch of it at the campfire. His eyes shine. He says:

—Coming?

He speaks as if he has not been asleep at all and does not much care whether I come along. I say:

—I am ready. Are you?

With our guns we cross the grass and go into the woods. I do not look back at Ma. The fire from the torch flips and shivers in the breeze. I am glad to be with him but I do not wish to show how glad, so I keep silent for some time until I cannot help myself, and I say:

—Are we going to your camp?

He says nothing as we hike up a hill. I say:

—Where is it?

He says:

—Anywhere I like.

He is silent again, I say nothing also.

When we reach a flat place with few trees about, he hands me the torch and walks on. I say:

—Is this it?

He does not answer. He gathers heaps of dried leaves and sticks and piles them as he walks about through the trees. For some time I do not see him, I only hear his light steps far off. I keep to where I am. It is darker when he returns. He takes the torch and says:

—Ever fire-hunted yet?

He touches the flame to the leaves at my feet. Fire runs along the trail he has made, a great circle a quarter-mile wide, snapping and leaping between the trees. We back up outside the round. The smoke is quick and heavy and stinking, my eyes run. He says:

—Now we wait. We might get a wolf or two. That would please Ma.

—Do you eat wolves in your camp? Do you not get anything else? We can have beaver all the time in the pastures, you know. I know where they are.

He is not looking at me. He says:

—Take the first shot. Anything that comes along. The fire will make it easy for you.

—I will take anything better than a wolf.

His teeth show in the blazing light as he grins. My heart bangs harder. I have no wish for a wolf, I do not like wolves. I feel Israel’s eyes narrowing at me. I raise my gun and I keep it steady.

A crashing begins, light at first and then furious. Something is running back and forth at the centre of the fire. The smoke is choking, I tighten my eyes to see through it. Israel throws an arm-load of branches before me, the flame jumps high as my face and I step back from the heat. But Israel is watching still, and so I move forward again with my hands tight on the gun. Now is a terrible sound, a weeping, like the sound of a woman. I look to Israel but he only squints. The weeping and crashing come closer. Perhaps it is a young wolf, perhaps it is trying to howl but can only weep in this unfair fight. I have the gun up but I cannot shoot. The fire gleams off two eyes ducking up and down behind the flames. Something breathes in, a wretched gasp. My finger moves on the trigger. And leaping straight through the fire, straight at us, is a big doe. I see the scorch marks on her pale underbelly and her tail as she leaps, I feel her gasp and I feel Israel’s watching. She is running. I turn and I shoot her through the neck and she goes down.

I feel your surprise, Israel. You did not think I could do it. You stand for a moment and you say:

—Easy.

It is too easy, it is a child’s game, and I am not a child. It is wrong. I pull myself up and I say:

—Where else have you been? Have you been farther than this?

He laughs and says:

—You want to know everything.

He takes my gun and has a look at it and runs his hand along the stock. I say:

—You can use it if you will show me where you go. You want to get out. You have found better places, I know you have. That is why you never come back here.

—Maybe.

—I can shoot. I could go with you. I want to get out too.

He smiles and says nothing. He only takes up the doe’s hind leg and cocks a brow at me. I take the other leg and we drag the animal back to Ma. I know I can do better than this, and better than you, Israel. To myself I say I will never fire-hunt again. I listen half the night for wolves while you sleep. And the next morning you are gone again without me.