Lost Nation (41 page)

He was at the table, naked from the waist down, a blanket wrapped about him, his wounded leg stretched toward the fire, clean bandages wrapped around the thigh. A wad of stained and bloody rags lay on the hearth. On the table was a much-diminished basin of water run red with blood alongside a pitcher of water and two tin plates stained with egg yolk. She was sorry to see the plates; the odds were against Blood offering her food. She was hungry from the uneasy night and the cold hike down.

“If you came back to get that sockful of money you missed your chance, leaving it like you did last night,” Blood said. “Although it seems a bit light anyhow. You bring my keys back?”

“I got three gold pieces stuck aside. I meant to buy horses with em but never made it even halfway to Van Landt’s. There was soldiers all over this country yesterday. But I bet you know that.” She reached into her blouse and took out the pouch of keys and dropped them on the table. “The lockbox is in the storeroom.”

He studied her, as if smelling for honesty. Then he said to Gandy, “Leave us be some time. Don’t drift off, just leave us be. Go milk that cow.”

“I can’t milk a cow.”

“Don’t be a goddamn fool. Of course you can milk a cow. I need to talk to this girl private. Get yourself another dram of that rum and go
sit beside the cow and drink the rum and think about it. You’ll figure out how to get it done.”

“I ain’t sure I should leave you with her. Why wadn’t she here in the first place, tending you?”

“You’re considerate,” Blood said. “But you don’t want to know too much of my business, idn’t that right?” And held his eyes on the little trapper.

Gandy looked back at him and then took up the dram cup and went into the tavern and came out again and said, “You need me, holler. I’ll come quick.”

Sally stepped toward the pair of rifles against the fireplace. She said, “Get. Or I’ll shoot you too.”

He drop-jawed. “It wadn’t you shot Blood, was it?”

“No,” she said. “But I shot a wolf once. Next to that, you’d be nothing.”

When he was gone Sally walked close and studied Blood’s leg. She said, “That don’t appear too bad. It went right through?”

“It did,” Blood said. “I’m touched you came to check on me. What is it you want?”

“Don’t be nasty. What happened wasn’t nobody’s fault but your own. You’d knocked and called out instead of trying to brain that boy you might not be happy this morning but most likely you wouldn’t have a hole in you. All those boys wanted was to talk to you. Nobody planned to shoot you, not as far as I know.”

He studied her. “You know more about it than I do.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“You might tell me what you know. That one boy in particular, he’s a mystery to me.”

She said, “Is there eggs left?”

“Not unless Gandy missed some in the coop. We ate what he brought in. Are you trying to make a trade with me?”

“No,” she said. “I’m hungry is all. I got nothing to trade. Those boys, that’s business between the three of you.”

Blood studied her. After a time he said, “I know the one. It’s the other has no place in my mind. You know the one I mean. I only had two sons and one’s long dead. As you know.” He paused, perhaps meaning to
remind her of other, bolder intimacies. Secrets shared. He said, “There’s meal if you care to turn out some quick bread.”

“I come to make sure you was all right. And to get some of my things. I ain’t got time to make bread.”

“You’re abandoning me when there’s little I can do about it. Perhaps when I need you most.”

“Blood,” she said. “I ain’t sure what I’m doing. But I can’t be two places at once. I can’t be setting here tending you cause I’ve thrown my lot in otherwise. I made a choice. Could be it’s strange the way it happened but I always knew someway I’d leave even if you didn’t. You think about it, it idn’t that strange how I went to them. I learned something from you Blood. Maybe you have ideas about what that might be but I don’t want to hear em.” She paused, tightened her face with thought and said, “Opportunity. Not to miss when it comes. I never seen it much before. All I know, those boys are like nobody I met before. The one, that Fletcher, he’s tender to me, a way no man has been. Not even you.” She made a small grin. Not altogether without regret. “I don’t forget the ways you been kind to me. But neither do I forget all the rest either.” Before he could respond at all she looked away from his face, not wanting to see him and said, “Excuse me.”

She went into her room, leaving the door open. She was hiding nothing. Saw the mess where Blood had slept the night before. She took down from pegs her winter clothes and her best summer skirt and bodice and blouse and made them all up into a bundle on the bed. Then took the cleanest of the blankets and wrapped it around her clothing and tied the corners in a rough knot together to make a handle of sorts. Dug under the tick mattress and pulled out her neckerchief knotted over her own money and hefted it and took the bundle up in the other hand and went back into the room. Blood was right where she left him, had been watching her through the door. He ran his eyes quick over her burdens.

“Sally,” he said.

She said, “Those gold pieces of yours is up to the camp. You hadn’t shown up last night we was going to buy horses and come searching you this morning. I bet Gandy told you but yesterday this country was filled with soldiers that left it near a shambles. Still is, best I can see. Just so you know. I can bring em back to you or we can set and you can count
through this,” and she lifted her own money, “and see if it adds up to that much or more. I’d trust you.”

“Why?” he asked, his voice extraordinarily simple.

“Because I got no reason not to.” And then added, “And I druther not have one.” Then she looked away from him and back. “Blood?”

“What is it?”

“With everything I seen and heard, this whole country was burned or torn up. A load of men was killed, more arrested. With all that, how come nobody bothered this place here?”

Blood rubbed his face with his hand. Sat silent. After a time he said, “It’s complicated. Most simply there was a deal made that wasn’t kept. A deal I knew nothing of. More than that you shouldn’t know. It’s safer you don’t know.”

“Safer for me? Or your boys?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Even if you weren’t with em. Safer for you all.”

She considered this. Then her face softened and her voice was low. “It’s true that when the boys and I made our way down here last dusk, the place weren’t touched. The front door was open but nobody’d been inside. But they killed Luther. He was dead in the yard. He died fighting em. There was a torn shred of coattail in his jaws.”

Blood just looked at her. His face somehow the best reflection of her own feelings. She simplified, not wanting to name anyone. “He’s buried. Up behind near the stream. Where there’s a little birch.”

Blood only nodded. His face gathered back, near a sneer. As if he assigned private blame. She didn’t want to know if that involved her but guessed not.

She looked away, at the fire coiling in the fireplace. And saw the new rifle leaned beside Blood’s own. The double set of pouches on the wall peg. She set down her bundle of clothes and took down the new set of pouches and slung them. Then picked up the strange rifle and said, “This don’t belong to you. I’ll just carry it along with me.”

“You’re a hard girl, Sally.”

Her mouth twisted. “You know better. You want to settle the money now or wait on the gold brought back?”

Blood shrugged. He said, “It idn’t nothing to me, either way.”

“You mean to tempt me? Or bribe me someway?”

“I speak the God’s truth. It just doesn’t matter. Do what you will.”

“Blood,” she said. “I never thought you this sort of man.”

“Long ago I gave up on whatever sort of man I was.”

She said, “I already heard that story twice. One time from you, another version more recent.”

He said, “The one shot me. That’s my son, Cooper. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. That wet night they both first come in. But it’s the other’s the puzzle. Last night, when I was laid out on the floor, Cooper called him his brother.”

“I can’t help you, Blood.” She shifted her load around to accommodate the long gun and then went close to him, standing right up against his chair. Then she said, “Both of you, Fletcher and yourself, you’ll be laid up a span. You wanted, time to time I could slip down here, see if you was all right. I ain’t much to nurse but I seen my share of bad things. You want to keep that wound dressed clean.”

“No.” Adamant, almost angry. “Gandy told me where you’re pitched. It’ll be a hard job just to keep him quiet. I got no idea what faces me. But you three keep tucked tight, you hear me?”

She was quiet then. Her face pinched tight with new knowledge. She said, “Oh Blood. God damn.” A sad voice.

He made an effort of a smile. He said, “You was to wait a minute more that useless Gandy would at least have some fresh warm milk to fill you up.”

“I ain’t so hungry anymore. I got to get on.” She leaned then and touched his forehead and stood away, looking down at him. A long look. Then went with her load toward the door.

Once more he called to her. “Sally.”

She said, “I ain’t quit the country, not yet. You’ll see me again. I’ll bring that gold back to you, the time comes.”

She opened the door. Gandy was bent low, leaning up against it. A bucket a third full of milk was behind him and he jumped back, knocking over the milk. It spread a white sheet over the frost, then pooled in the furrows of the hard ground. She turned back and looked at Blood. His torso was twisted in the chair to watch her, his face blemished with the effort.

She said, “I was you, I’d get other help. This one’s near useless.” She stepped down onto the grass.

Again his voice came. Even stepping away she knew it would. Her name as a plea: something she’d not heard before from Blood, not once, not at their most joined. Plaintive, it stung her. Old debt raw and true.

She paused. The air was hard, thickened, drawn close and shivery with cold. She turned once more. “Fletcher’s mother. Her name was Molly,” she said. “There. You got it out of me. Maybe I was just born to betray. I certain hope not.”

Then she turned away and walked. Past Gandy and the milk spill. On toward the fog and then into it. By the time she reached the road it was as if the tavern was altogether gone. She went down the road over the bridge and turned up the trail along the stream. Her bare feet making no sound in the drawn-down morning. The only noise, harsh as a sailor’s Jew’s harp, was her own breathing.

When she came into the marsh and the camp the fog had thickened to the point where she thought it could start to snow and there would be no way to know. Cooper was up, squatting by a low fire with a couple of long alder switches strung with young trout stretched over the fire. He looked at her as she came in, watched her place the rifle against one of the tent-poles and hang the pouches but did not speak. She went under the fly and set down her bundle, bent to look at Fletcher. He was sleeping, flat on his back, his face composed but through his open mouth the passage of his breathing had the faint hiss of pain to it.

She went to the fire and took up her boots and stockings undisturbed from the rock and sat across from Cooper. She hiked her skirts to her knees and began rolling the stockings up first one leg then the other. She felt him watching her.

She said, “I brought that other rifle back. It got left last night. If I’d thought I’d of asked Blood for a pitcher of rum to help ease Fletcher but I didn’t.” Then she pushed her skirts down and while working her boots on and hooking the lacings, she looked up at Cooper.

Cooper looked away from her out at the trout and fiddled a bit with the sticks and then looked back at her. “He’s better off without it anyway I think. He’ll sleep through the first part of it, the hardest part. Then we’ll just have to see. It was a smart thing, getting that gun back. We’re all going to need food but that boy’s going to need meat the most of all.
But I’d of hated traipsing off on a hunt and leaving you two without a weapon to speak of. This country’s quiet now but it idn’t going to stay that way long.”

“I’d be nervous, you going off shooting, after yesterday. People’ll be edgy to the sound of a gun.”

He said, “That boy needs fat meat. It’s cold enough, if I was to get a deer or young bear, the meat’d keep. I’ll be way up in the woods anyway and fog like this a gunshot don’t travel far. Just hope I get that shot, that’s what you should be thinking. How’s he doing anyhow?”

She glanced back. Fletcher still slept. “He looks peaceful enough.”

“I meant the other one.”

“Blood? He’s a little worn. But he’s all right. Took some of the vinegar out of him, at least for the time being.”

Cooper nodded. Then uprooted the alder switches and brought the trout over and with his belt knife shucked them like so many ears of corn into the tin pot they used to boil water. He laid aside two on a stone and covered the pot with its lid and settled it into the ashes where it would keep warm.

He said, “These two is for you and me. The rest make him eat when he wakes. Even if he says he doesn’t want em. And get plenty of water into him. Can you shoot?”

“I can.”

“I’m not looking for anyone to bother us three today. But you never know who’ll come along.” Cooper stood. Got into his blanket coat and took up his rifle and pouches and then leaned and handed her one of the trout. Stood over the fire eating the other. She ate slowly, watching him. When he was finished he went to the other gun and checked the priming and set it in under the fly.

He said, “It’s dry.” He turned to look in after his brother and then came back out and stepped around the fire close to her.

“Cooper,” she said.

“I just want to say,” he said in a rush, “I’m sorry to’ve mistrusted you. You stuck clean with us last night. And that other business, when we was all going to sleep, I don’t want you to think the wrong thing of me over that.” He held her gaze, his face flourishing blood under his skin.

Her lips were suddenly dry. She wet them with her tongue.