An Undisturbed Peace (5 page)

Over the next week, they worked side by side to create a series of traps at the edge of the woods around her cabin, traps that would make significant noise when they did their work and so function as a warning system as well as restrain the unwanted. They were ingenious, Abe found, requiring the weight of a man or a horse, or a bear, to set themselves off, leaving the area safe for whatever lighter creatures might approach. When they were done, Marian created a ring of warning around all, using rocks and feathers in designs that looked random enough to Abe but that, she told him, would sound a loud and eloquent alarm to any of her people who came across them. “If,” she said, “they have not forgotten everything their ancestors taught them.”

It was not five days later that she gave him the boot. “Leave,” she said. “You must make your route or you will bring attention to me.” He wanted to argue, but he couldn't. He managed to wrest a promise from her that he could return when his rounds were complete and he'd reported back to Uncle Isadore. It would have to do. The next morning, he packed up his wares, gave her a parting gift of all the gunpowder he could spare, and rode Hart off to the farms on his list with a heart heavier than any load of staples and trifles any peddler anywhere could possibly carry.

Tobias Milner's Farm, Two Days Later

A
be and Hart rode all day to the northeast and slept that night on a bed of pine needles beside a waterfall. It was a hard bed for both after the comforts of their stay at Marian's, but a safe one. Abe was disturbed by fitful thoughts of Marian's failure to recognize that he was the ultimate love of her life, but that was the worst of his discomforts. No marauding mercenaries or vengeful Indians molested them. They rose at dawn. Abe offered thanksgiving that he'd got up in one piece, then washed in a chill cascade of mountain water while Hart munched at a breakfast of Marian's grains. He dressed in the best shirt and trousers he carried, broke camp, and tacked up his horse, packs and all. They set off at a pace that would guarantee they'd arrive at their destination near the northernmost corner of North Carolina, close to the border of Virginia, by afternoon; that is, at the farm of Tobias Milner, one of his best customers the previous year.

Sales volume and his devotion to Marian aside, Abe looked forward to visiting the Milner farm on account of the Milner daughters, three blossoming, buxom beauties near his own age. If their father didn't buy a nail, he'd still look forward to stopping there. Last year, they'd welcomed him into their home as if he were a wandering prince in disguise. They were all fluttering eyes and blushing cheeks. They hung on every word of his sales pitch and invented sly excuses to cozy up to him while examining his products. The oldest, Bekka, asked him to tie a ribbon on the end of the long, tawny braid that fell halfway down her back so she could see how it looked in the parlor mirror before she purchased it when her sisters were right there able to help. Their mother had gone out of her way to make a pointed remark that single young men were scarce in these hills and single young men with a secure future were scarcer still. She'd announced that the son, or even nephew perhaps, of one of the county's most successful industrialists was the answer to a mother's prayer. She was unconcerned whether prospective grooms for her girls were Lutheran or not. She dismissed lineage as something the family could work around. Abe knew well that in the old country, in Alsace, the Milners' forebears might have whipped a young Jew who even glanced at her daughters. But this was America, the New World. Here, in the lonely hinterland that was the Milners' little corner of the foothills, coerced at a great cost of blood and sweat into domestication, he got the clear message that a mother would take what she could get.

This year, his heart was heavy at leaving Marian. After only two days, he missed her dreadfully and worried that she'd cool to the idea of him before he managed to return. He knew he would love her forever, he nursed hopes that she would come to love him over time but for now, at least, he could do with a little feminine attention from someone who made him feel desirable—a catch, even. A harmless afternoon with the Milner girls fit the bill.

It was their father who rushed from the house to greet him as he rode up to their front gate. Calling for his stable boy to relieve Mr. Sassaporta of his mount, Milner took up the packs Abe unloaded and carried them himself into the house, chatting excitedly all the way.

“We've been waiting for your visit for so long, lad!” he said. “The women of the house have been on the lookout for you day and night. I confess, it approached annoyance.” The man paused before the front door for a wink and a nod. “I'm not certain they need so many trinkets and notions!” His voice dropped to a near whisper as if the women in question were huddled on the other side of the door, listening. “Just two days ago, they moaned and moaned at dinner yet again. ‘Where is that handsome young peddler,' they said, ‘and why has he not yet come on his spring call?' Tired of it all, I muttered that a coyote or a bobcat must have eaten you and suggested they hunt for your remains. What a tumult erupted! My wife knocked on the table three times and threw salt over her shoulder while denouncing me for making dire predictions sure to attract evil to our own hearth and home. At the same time, the girls covered their eyes and wailed as if they'd just discovered the indigestible bits of your body in the herb garden.” Milner stopped to puff up his chest to underscore how firmly he'd been required to react. “I pounded the table, first with my fist and then with my hobnailed boot, to quiet them. The next night none would speak to me at dinner. My meat was burnt and dry and two nights in a row, my wife failed to warm the sheets on my side of the bed. The girls would not so much as bid me good night. Had I not spied your fat pony riding up the road this morning, I would have thrown myself at their mercies. Anything to end that silence! I'm telling you, lad, there are few conditions that can unman a fellow faster than a houseful of disappointed women!”

Abe was not sure anymore if he was excited or afraid to enter the house, a well-kept structure of milled lumber with paned glass windows, evidence of Milner's modest success. He half expected to be devoured by ravenous harpies. But as they entered the foyer, all he saw of the girls was the backs of their skirts as their mother, Esther, shooed them into the kitchen, presumably to allow the men to conduct their business and so clear the way for the more important social congress that lay ahead. When the former was accomplished, Tobias Milner raised his voice loud enough for the entire household to hear, saying, “Let's shake on it then.” Within seconds, his daughters appeared and swept into the chairs awaiting them while their mother offered tea. The charm of their flowery scents and the soft rustle of their skirts filled Abe with bittersweet sentiment. All this trouble for me, he thought, while Marian treats me as if I could be replaced in a heartbeat and in the next, forgotten. He rose from his chair briefly to greet the women with respect.

“You will, of course, spend the night with us?” Tobias Milner asked. “You could give all the news from Greensborough.”

“Thank you for your kind offer,” Abe said “But I must be off before dark, Mr. Milner. I lost a week or two coming here for various reasons. I need to make up for time lost.”

The three Milner daughters were sitting across from him in a row of precisely equidistant straight-backed chairs. Colored ribbons threaded through the braids of their hair, their cheeks were pinched pink, and their hands were folded demurely in their laps. Despite their studied similitude, each delivered protest to his leave-taking in her own manner. Bekka, the plump pretty one, tapped her little feet lightly against the floor and whispered, “No!” Judith, the serious one, furrowed her brow and shot him a wounded look from her great blue eyes, fluttering a delicate hand over her breast and going so far as to feign the blinking back of tears. Hannah, the youngest, grabbed a lock of her auburn hair and stuck it in her mouth to stifle an anguished cry.

“I never would have marked you as a cruel lad, Abrahan,” their father said, knocking his pipe out against the fireplace. “My daughters have such little company. You cannot deny them the pleasure of yours for a mere evening.”

From out the corner of his eye, Abe spied their mother at the doorway of her kitchen. He pretended not to notice as she mimed instructions to her daughters with a desperation explained only by the fact that no matter how fresh, how dewy their cheeks, neither Bekka, Judith, nor Hannah were getting any younger. In the old country, it would have been scandalous to have them unmarried so long. Scowling, she communicated to the plump pretty one she must sit straight without fidgeting her feet, to the serious one she should turn up the corners of her mouth posthaste, and to the youngest to get her hair out of her mouth. Her hand then rested over her chest as if her mother's heart twisted there on their behalf.

The room turned still while Abe took his time to formulate a polite response to the farmer's insistence. Breath was held all around. He opened his mouth to speak but no sound emerged. Tobias Milner pouted pleadingly, nodding encouragement. “Yes? Yes?” he said, softly, sweetly, as kittenish as his daughters. A multitude of considerations swarmed through Abe's mind. On the one hand, if he delayed his rounds to stay overnight, that was one more night before he could return to Marian in the end and how he ached for her! On the other hand, if he stayed, Tobias Milner would be pleased and perhaps increase his invoice. These were Hart's first days back on the road. Surely a horse coming back from injuries might welcome a solid night's rest in cozy shelter. Cooking smells from the kitchen also enticed. It had been an American era since he'd eaten anything that resembled an old-fashioned family meal. He could ride harder and longer the following day, perhaps knock more than two farms off his list, if both he and his mount were better fed and slept well overnight. The three doting, squirming young women who leaned toward him in unison in a melting mass of feminine anticipation, waiting for an answer, pulled at him. How often had he the chance to immerse himself in not just womanly, but gentile attentions? He had to admit there was a dose of exotic spice added to the proposed dinner. Such an invitation would never have been extended back in London.

He capitulated.

“Indeed,” Abe said, nodding to the women with as much grace as if he had a plumed hat to doff and sweep in their direction, “if my poor company can brighten the spirits of three stars of the firmament which …”

The ladies' shoulders rose in expectant unison. Encouraged, Abe colored his many-hued phrase with a splash more purple.

“… already glimmer so impossibly as to near blind me. Yes, I shall stay on the single night, though I must be gone before the dawn or risk eternal bedazzlement!”

Parental eyes widened, filial sighs sang. Abe congratulated himself on his sophistication.

After the sisters occupied him by selecting various items out of his wares—a small brass candlestick for one, a paperweight of pressed daisies under glass for another, and a brush with a tortoiseshell handle for the last—dinner was served. The meal was as fine as he'd hoped. It was difficult to believe the family had not spent days preparing for him. The table sparkled with their treasures in crockery and cutlery. Esther troubled herself with a holiday roast although it was only a Wednesday in the middle of an unremarkable week. Besides the beef, she served mushroom soup and airy biscuits for sopping it up. There were carrots, turnips, and a tangy fruit stewed in the juice of the meat. When Abe complimented Esther on her expertise, she shared credit with her youngest. “Hannah's the baker in this house,” she said. “She made the biscuits, and the honey cake that's coming too.” Abe rephrased his compliments for the daughter in question, who grinned from ear to ear, then dropped her head in belated modesty.

After dinner, the older girls got to shine. Bekka played a fiddle reasonably well, and Judith recited of a psalm of David, delivered with dramatic gestures and facial expressions. Despite the delights of being an object of desire, Abe found himself struggling to stay awake until Tobias Milner brought up the legend of an Indian woman who, it was rumored, lived in the woods thereabouts though few had seen her.

“You could run into Dark Water out there, if you happen to meander off established tracks,” the farmer said. “And if you do, pray to the Lord for deliverance is my advice. She's more than fearsome to look at. The sight of her can freeze the blood of the bravest man. To hear her war cries is to hear the howls of hellhounds. It's a sound that'll ring in your ears the rest of your life.”

It took Abe time to catch on. At first he thought Tobias Milner was surely speaking of a child's nightmare, an old crone, a barbarian witch, no doubt a harmless creature made shibboleth to frighten children into good behavior. Why his host would juggle fairy tales in the air was inexplicable. He affected a bemused interest.

“Might she steal my soul?” he asked, the joke playing visibly about his lips.

“She'll steal your life without thinking twice,” Tobias Milner said. “Just ask Teddy Rupert. Are you headed his way?” Rupert was the owner of a vast plantation half a day's ride west at the very boundary of the Cherokee Nation. Abe nodded. Milner harrumphed and continued. “He lost a son to her flaming arrows. Now, Billy was a selfish boy and fairly impolite. I've no doubt he likely insulted her, as the story goes. But she cut him down for it, didn't she, and for a Cherokee woman to murder a white man in peacetime and in such a cruel manner. Well, there's no excuse. No excuse at all.”

“Flaming arrows, sir?” Abe asked in disbelief.

“Oh, yes. Ones soaked in Injun pitch. They're thicker than the usual, you know. More like pegs or stakes. And once they pierce the flesh, the poor devil pinned by them cannot move while the flame devours his flesh. I'm telling you, these natives are savages. You can cover their nakedness and teach them English, stick a plow in their hands too, but they remain as malicious as Amalekites and as godless as the people of Sodom whom the Lord saw fit to destroy.”

“Husband, please!” With two words, Esther put an end to the conversation. The two older girls had gone pale and trembling in the hearing of it while the youngest seemed eager for more details.

While the talk drifted into safer realms, Abe wondered if his Marian knew this Dark Water. It hardly seemed likely the wilderness round about teemed with Indian women living on their own. In the previous year he'd come across only the one.

Before he retired that night to a cozy makeshift bed of pillows and comforters set up in the kitchen on a wide shelf usually reserved for the larger pots, Abe went to the stable to check on Hart. On entering, he stepped over the sleeping stable boy, a youth worked hard enough from dawn to dark caring for three cows, four goats, and two horses; the structure that housed them; as well as the chickens and geese kept separately that he did not stir from his slumber, not even when Abe stumbled over a bale of hay in that odorous dark and banged into a stall door, rousing every animal the Milners possessed. They lowed, bleated, and neighed alarmingly, although at his insistence, they quieted soon enough. Hart was calm throughout, nodding his great head from over a stall door at the end of the aisle. He nickered softly at Abe's approach. “How are you, my friend?” he asked the horse, petting his neck in long strokes once he'd entered the stall. Hart poked his nose along the length of Abe's trunk, sniffing in his pockets for a treat. The peddler could not help but laugh and hug the beast's head uselessly in an effort to make him stop.