All True Not a Lie in It (5 page)

BOOK: All True Not a Lie in It
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I do not see Israel again until one evening late in the month, not long before we take the cows down to the farm again for the autumn. It is a hot thundery evening. Ma sends me home with the milk before the rain. I go down the valley side with the cans on their yoke over my shoulders, across the back of our place and round the side to the spring cellar door.

On the first step of the stairs beneath our house, I stand waiting for my eyes to wake to the dark. The yoke is heavy. The cold of the cellar hits my chest, the smell is slightly sour. Shapes press themselves out of the shadow at last and this is when I see my brother. I truly see him.

He has his gun propped against the wall and his bag set on the floor. A pelt hangs out of it, beaver or otter. His face is hidden from me. I see a hand is spread against the damp wall as if seeking relief there. It is not his hand, it is a girl’s, and Israel is bent with his forehead pressed against hers. My first thought is that this girl has an aching head and that Israel is doctoring her. Though I have never known him to show any talent for doctoring.

A whisper slides out from them, a wet hungry sound. The thought strikes me that they are thieving butter and gobbling lumps of it together in a hurry to be gone. Then I hear their catching breath. I see her white cap on the floor with its strings in limp circles. I see her shawl beside it. I see her dark hair down over her shoulders, and I see Israel’s bare thighs above his leggings as his shirt shifts upward. Her apron slides down to the flagstones. I do not move an inch. The damp ceiling weeps on my head. The damp floor weeps up through my shoes.

Israel’s hand hovers just above her breast. Now his fingers are on her, they move up to her collarbone and back down to her bosom. His mouth is against her cheek as he opens the top of her bodice. He says:

—Does it feel nice? I know it does.

I have never heard Israel speak so soft and so kind. His voice is strange and private, as if he has stolen it. Then he speaks some words I do not know. They are not English, they are Indian words.
Quetit
is one. She says something back in a gentle way. The words near knock me down though I do not know what they are. His hands are all up and down her. I feel myself shut off inside a clanking armour of milk cans. My legs shake. I want this, the touching and the sounds and the privacy. The want rises up high in my throat, I can never tell of it.

The girl gasps as the doe did in the fire. At once I think again of my little wife Molly Black, but she is dead. This girl is living and her arms are round Israel’s back. I drop the cans in the doorway, one clangs down the stairs and milk flies everywhere. I do not care. Full of my want, I am running. I want to go where you have been, but the only place I can go is back up to the pastures. The rain has begun but you do not come, Israel. I think of you in the spring cellar, you and the girl. You have everything you want. You have a gun and a free life and now this.

I know what you have been doing all this time. You do not know what I have seen. I have seen your wish for a secret life, your own life. My hope of going with you is finished. And I wish to have your life. I wish and wish for it all night. Israel, I am sorry for it now, perhaps I wished too hard.

The night is cold and wet. When Ma and I wake in the damp morning, Neddy appears at the cabin door. I say:

—Have you seen Israel?

Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he says with his sweet smile:

—No. Daddy says I have to tell you he will be a magistrate now, and Granddaddy is dead.

G
RANDDADDY IS
put in the Friends’ burying ground behind Meeting House and covered over without a marker, like everyone else. Daddy is in charge of the burial. He gives a proper nod to everyone who comes. But he is not made a magistrate yet and Granddaddy has not left him much. All his children want money. He leaves most to Aunt Sarah, who is alone now in the stone house and quite outcast without him. He does leave Daddy his carved black cabinet from England, very heavy and very old. When Daddy rumbles home with it in the wagon I say:

—You can keep your night pot in it and think of Granddaddy whenever you need it.

Daddy swats at me. To Ma he says:

—It will come. It will come right.

He is bright enough, striding home from the burying in the autumn sun. Uncle James walks along with him. He is a big man with a bald head and a wide red face and a schoolmasterish voice. With the money he does get, Daddy plans to buy another few acres to the south of our farm from him. All the burying party stops at our house to drink. I duck away from Uncle James but I hear him say to Daddy:

—You are planting yourself deeply here. Our old father would be proud, rest his soul. A good old man. He would be proud indeed.

Daddy sips his ale and says:

—Yes. Yes.

He looks as if he quite believes this, but I know Uncle James’s words are only a thing people say when someone has died. Uncle James gets up and looks out the window. He says:

—At times like this I confess to feeling as the people of the city of Troy must have felt in ancient times, waiting for the Greeks to attack and believing they would win.

Daddy laughs:

—Showing your learning again, Master Jimmy. Have the Indians been giving you wind of plans for a secret attack? Or have they joined up with the Greeks now?

Uncle James smiles and shakes his head and says:

—You ought to ensure your Daniel gets to school. He has more learning to do yet. He could do many things.

He wags a big finger in my direction. Turning back to the window he says:

—It is an odd feeling one gets after a burial, a sense of waiting for things to improve, and then to end.

Hill’s father comes over with his hand outstretched and takes Daddy’s. With his eyes shining, he says in his most earnest manner:

—Friend Boone, we know this world will end someday. We can only hope to improve ourselves while we are in it.

Daddy roars out a laugh now. He says:

—I will improve my children’s lot. They will all have part of the land my father and I settled. My Dan here will be a lawyer, I can see it in his hand.

Daddy sometimes lines us up and peers at our hands with his good eye, hoping to catch at a sign there. He takes my hand now, his breath damp in my palm. I snatch it away. William Hill, arriving beside his father, laughs and slaps my shoulder and looks me full in the face with his curious grey eyes as if he can read
my life there also. My heart falls down. He is going to ask for his gun back.

—Hello.

I turn, and it is Israel coming through the back door with the sun behind him. He has been gone again since I saw him breathing in the cellar. He missed the burial. His hunting outfit is a shock against all the grey coats and frocks. The beads on his shirt gleam when the light touches them. The cloth is streaked with dried animal blood. He has a rough beard, his hair is plaited up and greased and his moccasins are dirty. The talk in the room stops. He wipes his mouth and extends his hand to Hill’s father. He says:

—Well. Who is dead, aside from the deer I left in the yard?

Daddy hands him a drink and he raises his mug and says:

—I am alive. Are you?

Daddy nods, puffing himself up. Well we are all right. Until the next whore, who is worse, being a whore and Indian.

Winter comes, and it is not long before everyone knows of her. And how can I help staring? I am not the only one. The girl’s neck is thin and pretty below her cap. My body and legs ache when I see it. Standing at the centre of Meeting she looks at the door as though to say:
Deliver me from these apes
. She does not look at me.

It is cold. The snow comes down outside the window. Beside me Ma is fretful, this wedding is her doing, a real marriage in our own Meeting for the sake of the child, as she said. She wraps her shawl tight about her shoulders. We are a bad lot. Bad blood. Very bad now. The women Friends sneak looks at us, Ma keeps up her small smile that says:
We are harmless, we mean no harm
.

I see the girl’s knot of coppery hair and her warm brown skin. I know these parts, and more of her, from the cellar. I know Israel
has been with her there more than once, and elsewhere in the woods. I have seen him cross the river, stopping to spear some fish to take to her in the Delaware cabins. He has been giving her skins and pelts she can trade for money. She is part Delaware, maybe half, maybe more. I know her soft voice though she has said nothing here yet. Friend Jones on the bench behind me says low:

—A half-breed will produce what? Quarter-breeds?

This is meant to sound kind, it has a slow drip like jelly. But Jones is picturing the mixing of blood. And of other parts. This I know because I am picturing it also. I have many such thoughts now.

A heavy countrywoman says deafly to her husband:

—Blood will out.

This may mean the Indian blood, or ours. She is old, her old face says she knows all about Granddaddy. One of the boys who is not far from where I sit sings soft, but not so soft that I cannot hear it: Blood will out out out, blood will out out out. Hill turns and smiles at me with what he believes is a sympathetic face, though he looks as though he has a needle between his teeth. He mimes holding a gun up to his shoulder, he tugs his arm back and mouths
bang bang
. I see his breath puff out in clouds. I suppose he wishes to go shooting with me, I am miserable thinking about it. His gun has only tied me tighter to him.

Israel looks set to kill anything that comes near. His eyes snap. He is in usual clothing, not his hunting outfit, but he stands with his feet apart and easy, as if he were in his leggings and moccasins, as if he were quite at home. His fingers curl at his belt and then retreat. I wish I had my little knife or my bird club. I would need no gun to deal with anyone here.

My boots bite into my heels as I rock my feet back, the bad blood outs and wets my stockings. I am not fond of boots and I feel myself trapped inside a giant one, all stinking and chafing. Even Bets keeps silent but she has her eye on a bony fellow across the
room. I give Bets an elbow to the ribs but she is too flabby in spirit to jump. She sits thinking that nobody, bony or not, will marry her now, sprung as she has from this Boone family flower bed.

William Hill’s father calls for Daddy to come forward. His voice is like a bell ringing the same ring all the time, it makes the back teeth ache.

Daddy stands but moves no farther. His mouth is calm but I can smell his black humour. Hill’s father speaks:

—Friend Boone, you know a father’s duty. Correct your son and make your confession before the Friends gathered here.

The leader holds out his white hand. It puts me in mind of a drowned thing dredged up with its legs all splayed and limp. Who would take such a thing? Daddy stares with his brows locked until his bad eye slopes off to a corner. He breathes in as if to speak and then coughs too loud and spends a time seeking a handkerchief to drag across his mouth. Israel is not a good son, he does not listen, he does only as he pleases. But Daddy loves him, he is helpless with it, Israel is his favourite, his first boy. Looking upon him, Daddy sets his arms about his stomach as though he is the one with child.

Everyone is picturing fornication. I see all the pictures rolling and turning in all the heads. The silence grows fat. The snow keeps falling. Ma’s lips are tight, she is squeezing young Hannah who is fortunately not given to shouting. Neddy is slipping his hand into her pocket in search of sweets. Daddy’s front hair grows damp, but even his wandering left eye does not deign to wander in the direction of the boy singing about our blood. Do not give in legs or eye: so I think. And Hill’s father goes on smiling towards Daddy with his drowned hand out. The kindness that cannot be ignored.

Women begin to fan their faces faintly with their hands to show they are aware of the sweaty smell and that it does not come from them. Ma is nailing Israel in place with her smile, though he throws
back his head. Hill’s father keeps his hand out and speaks as if he knows everything and owns everything:

BOOK: All True Not a Lie in It
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