The Outsider (23 page)

26

Gabrielle was up before dawn. She hadn’t slept well. She hadn’t for weeks. The winter nights were long and she often tired of waiting for daybreak. This morning she’d slipped out of her bed and silently pulled on her clothes without lighting a candle to keep from waking her sisters. Then she’d slipped down the stairs and out the door before the rising bell rang to go to the schoolroom to prepare the day’s lessons.

The snow beside the paths sparkled in the moonlight. It was cold, but Gabrielle breathed in the air gratefully. Sometimes at moments like this when the rest of the village was sleeping or busy with their own duties, she wanted to throw out her arms and spin around and rejoice in being totally alone.

It was late January, and the elders and eldresses were allowing her to teach the young sisters again, although they often found occasion to step into her classes to be sure she wasn’t being too lenient with any of the little ones. They’d even lifted the constant supervision a few weeks early. An answer to prayer. She no longer had to endure the presence of Sister Helen by her side at all times.

Gabrielle kept waiting for her life to even back out. Each time she woke up, each time she went to meeting and labored one of the Shaker songs, she expected to surely recapture some of the peace she’d once known so abundantly, but her mind would not stop questioning, not stop remembering. Ofttimes uneasiness covered her soul like a thick morning fog.

The schoolroom was cold. She could see her breath in the air as she built a fire in the small stove, but instead of huddling there for warmth, she went to the window to watch the night sky give way to dawn. The fresh blanket of snow hastened the morning light. She tried to pray, but a whirling wind of confusion wiped away the words in her mind. The prayer died before it reached her lips.

She hadn’t been able to pray while Sister Helen was with her, not with all her spirit as she once had. She’d thought then that Sister Helen’s presence hindered her prayers and poisoned her spirit. In the long months they’d spent together, Gabrielle had never been able to feel even a small bit of affection for Sister Helen. She had tried. Many times. She knew it was wrong to harbor such ill feeling for one’s sister under God. But it would have been easier for her to learn to love a stone. Much easier.

During the last month of her supervision, Gabrielle wasn’t sure her own heart hadn’t hardened into stone. At the same time she had become meek and careful in her every answer until even Sister Helen had to admit Gabrielle had humbled her spirit as a true Believer should. Sister Helen had offered no protest when the elders had lifted the constant supervision even though she continued to watch Gabrielle with her hawk eyes whenever they were in the same room. She was waiting and ready to pounce if Gabrielle stumbled yet again.

Her sister was right to suspect her. Gabrielle hadn’t put her worldly thoughts behind her. They were in her mind, stronger than ever, and at night when she lay down, she pulled her thoughts of the doctor to her without shame. He seemed the only real thing in her life now even though he was miles away fighting a war she knew nothing about. Elder Caleb had not mentioned any news from the North for weeks. War had nothing to do with the Believers.

With a corner of her kerchief, she rubbed away her breath from the frosty window. The sun’s light was beginning to touch the horizon and stretching pink fingers into the sky. Her students would be coming into the room soon after they finished their breakfast.

Suddenly her heart began beating heavily as dread filled her. She tried to shake it away. She had no dread of the girls coming to class. She liked teaching them even though Becca’s memory often saddened her heart.

She shut her eyes and Nathan was there in the center of her mind watching her. He no longer wore Shaker garb but that of a frontiersman. His face showed none of the anger he’d had when she’d last seen him. Instead he looked sad and weary. His mouth moved, but she heard nothing in her mind.

She lifted her hands to reach toward him and bumped her hand into the cold glass of the window. Nathan’s image dissolved in her mind.

She opened her eyes and looked out on the quiet snowcovered paths, undisturbed by any foot and bringing a special peace to the village. Then all at once the snow was tinged with red in front of her eyes. She blinked and shook her head, but the red didn’t go away. It only spread.

She stared out at the snow. The familiar bushes, trees, and steps were gone. In their stead were houses she’d never seen before and men bleeding in the snow. Indians walked among the houses with tomahawks in their hands, but it was no battle. Men were dying in their beds. Gabrielle shuddered as a man cried out for mercy as the tomahawk fell.

Gabrielle closed her eyes to escape the vision but it mattered not whether her eyes were open or shut. Nathan was waiting there in her mind. He was no longer standing, but appeared to be sleeping. Flames rose up around him and Gabrielle cried out as if somehow she might awaken him. But his eyes stayed closed. Confusion rose inside her. Was she only reliving the earlier vision when the barn burned? But Nathan hadn’t been asleep in that vision. And why were there Indians with tomahawks? No Indians had ever been to their village.

Gabrielle opened her eyes and looked out again. The vision was there frozen in front of her, and this time she recognized soldiers. Soldiers wounded and unable to defend themselves. The vision was as clear as if she’d been standing beside the beds of the wounded men in the houses. She wanted to run from the sight of these men dying, but her feet would not move.

Then the doctor stepped in front of her eyes as he too watched the men dying. His face looked chiseled out of ice. Gone were the gentle lines of caring around his eyes and mouth as each line on his face stood out starkly while he watched the Indians carrying death from house to house. Again she raised her hands, this time to reach toward Brice, but as suddenly as it had come the vision was gone.

She had no strength to pull it back as she fell trembling to her knees. Even if she could have, she wasn’t sure she would want to. The darkness of terrible death spread over her soul.

“Eternal Father,” she whispered. “Do not turn thy face from this thy child. Put thy hand of mercy out unto thy children and lift them away from misery.”

The prayer welled up out of her heart and soul, and she prayed as she had not since Sister Esther had died of her own hand. She wanted to say “thy will be done,” but she couldn’t keep from praying, “Let Dr. Scott live. Have mercy on this thy child and let him live.”

She heard the rising bell as though it rang somewhere far in the distance. She made no move to get to her feet. Instead she huddled there on the floor in despair, for she could feel no answer to her prayer.

When the children came into the classroom, she rose from her knees and went to her desk. She assigned their lessons and listened to their recitations, but even at her busiest moments the sight of men dying flashed before her over and over. Always the same. She had seen the middle of the story but knew not the beginning or the end.

In Frenchtown, Brice knew the story beginning to end too well. The first Indians had come into town an hour after daylight. A sudden quiet had fallen over the town, and the few men who’d stayed with wounded family members and friends to help load them on the promised sleds stepped to the doors and windows.

It was over. No one spoke the words, but they were there just the same. No sleds would come. There’d be no need for them. Lives Brice had fought for through the dark hours of night would be wiped out with a quick blow of the tomahawk, and there was absolutely nothing any of them could do as more and more Indians came into the town.

A wounded major spoke to Brice from his bed. “Are they drunk?”

“They don’t seem to be, but I don’t think it will matter,” Brice answered truthfully.

“I never thought to die on my bed,” the major said as he struggled to his feet just as a group of the Indians came inside and demanded plunder.

They gave them everything they had, even their shirts and shoes, but it wasn’t enough. Without warning, one of the Indians swung his tomahawk and knocked down the major. Brice started forward, but stopped himself. He could not fight them all with nothing but a lancet as a weapon. Instead he slipped unnoticed out of the back door.

One of the Indians who spoke English was talking with the officer in charge. “Wounded all die. Others go with us,” he said. As if to prove the truth of his words, a wounded man was dragged screaming out of one of the houses to be tomahawked and scalped in front of them.

Brice stayed in the shadows and eased his way to the house where Nathan lay waiting for the sleds that were not coming. Brice felt inside a pocket of his shirt for the precious packet of powders he’d saved for this day when the men were to be moved. He would not let the boy suffer anymore.

Inside the house, men wounded too badly to move off their beds called out to him, but Brice could do nothing but shake his head. Those men who lay in death’s sleep were surely more fortunate than those who had no choice but to lie awake and await their fate.

Nathan wasn’t awake when he stopped beside his bed, but neither was he unconscious. When Brice put the cup holding the draught to the boy’s lips and raised his head to drink it down, he roused enough to recognize Brice.

“Doc? Is that you? Are we getting ready to move out?”

“That’s right, Nathan. I just dosed you so you won’t feel the jostle so much.”

The boy’s eyes cleared a bit. “Something’s wrong. I hear screams.”

“It hasn’t been an easy night for many of the wounded.”

Awareness finally came to Nathan. “It’s the Indians. They’ve come instead of the sleds. We’re all going to die.” He spoke the words quietly.

Brice didn’t lie. “I think you might be right.”

The boy tried to move off his bed, but he couldn’t. “My leg feels like an oak tree stump.” He lay back and swallowed hard. “There’s nothing I can do, is there? But you, Doc. You ought to make a run for it.”

“There’s nowhere to go, Nathan.”

Nathan drew in a shaky breath before he said, “I’d take it kindly if you’d just go on and shoot me, Doc.”

“I don’t have a gun. None of us do.”

“I guess it don’t matter then. One way of dying is the same as the next once it’s done and over.” Nathan shut his eyes. “You ever pray, Doc?”

“I suppose every man says a prayer at one time or another, but I never was too good at it.”

“Me either. That’s something the Believers just couldn’t teach me. I learned their songs and the steps to those crazy dances, and I bowed my head and folded my hands and said the words, but I never knew for sure whether anybody was listening or not.”

“They say the Lord always listens when we pray whether we’re good at it or not.”

“Gabrielle was good at it. I used to keep my eyes half open and watch her praying in the meetings sometimes. You could almost see the Lord reaching down his hand to gather in her prayers.” Nathan was quiet for a moment before he said, “She’s praying for us right now, Doc. This very moment.”

“What makes you think that, Nathan?”

“I don’t know. I just know. I always did. It was like she had reached out and touched me even when we were on opposite sides of the village.” The boy opened his eyes and grabbed Brice’s hand. “Promise me you’ll get her away from there, Doc. I know they’re not evil or anything, but she doesn’t belong there with them.”

Brice heard the sound of men dying outside the cabin. He had no reason to believe he would outlive the boy more than a few moments at the most, but he said, “I promise to never give up trying as long as I’m breathing.”

Nathan let go of his hand and lay back again. “That dose you gave me.” Suddenly he smiled. “Thanks, Doc. I guess you went the gun one better.”

Brice stood beside the boy’s bed until he was sure his sleep was deep enough that he wouldn’t wake from it no matter what happened. He looked so young there even with the hollow cheeks caused by their winter of starvation and his injury.

Perhaps Brice would have to pay for the boy’s life. He’d once told the Shaker elder the boy would have surely died if Brice hadn’t been there to treat his burns. The elder in turn blamed Brice for the boy leaving the Shakers, so in a way he’d just prolonged the boy’s death. Brice gently touched the boy’s head and whispered, “I’m sorry, Nathan.”

Outside, everywhere Brice looked men were dying, and he could do nothing but watch as the tragedy unfolded. He thought of the boy’s claim that Gabrielle was praying for them, and he began repeating a bit of the Twenty-third Psalm in his head.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

As he stood there and watched the snow turning red with the men’s blood, he knew a depth of helplessness he’d never known before and creeping in behind it was the bitter poison of hatred. No wonder Hope hadn’t wanted to surrender. A man should die with his gun in his hand. Not stripped of his clothes, pale and bleeding and as helpless as a baby before the Indian warriors who struck them down.