SelfSame (17 page)

Luanne picked Ben and Sorcha up in her brand-new pickup truck. She proudly drove to the opening in the gate that led to the path along the highway. Someone had torn down a bigger section of the fence, and Luanne drove up over the curb and onto the path.

“Don’t worry. We couldn’t say anything before, but this is WPS land.”

Dozens of cars and trucks lined the field that surrounded the copse of trees where Bear Talker’s longhouse used to be.

The first time Sorcha had attended a WPS meeting, the mood had been festive. Now it was nothing short of jubilant. When she appeared in the circle hand-in-hand with Ben, a ragged cheer rose up, startling the birds from the trees. Everyone was grinning and clapping each other on the back. Even the sunshine seemed to agree it was a worthy day to send its rays down upon them. Each happy face only sobered long enough to wish Sorcha well and to express, in one form or another, how sorry they were that Enid had died. A few of them had the temerity to ask her what it felt like, and to them she replied, “Someday you’ll know.”

She finally had the opportunity to meet Sarge, a big man with the enlarged and reddened nose of a chronic alcoholic, who pumped her hand up and down and boomed, “Damned glad to meet you, girl.”

Paula hadn’t come along. She and Dalton had made plans to go see a movie. “I’ll tell my mom my car wouldn’t start just in case she talks to your mom, okay?”

“Have fun tonight. Don’t, uh, do anything I wouldn’t do,” Sorcha said.

“When you get off from being grounded, we can double-date.”

Sorcha hoped by then the idea would appeal to her more. It was hard to summon the proper enthusiasm while the wound from losing Enid was still so fresh.

It was hard, in fact, to listen to the Webster family celebrate. Someone had set up tables and a portable grill and the smell of cooking meat reached her. She hadn’t eaten her lunch, but the scent failed to stimulate her appetite. Still, when someone brought her a plate heaped high with charred chicken and beans, she nibbled at it before abandoning it on one of the tables.

Ben was glued to her side. “This is too much, too soon, isn’t it?”

She looked around. Children, absent from the first meeting, shouted and laughed and ran around. “No, I’m glad I got to see this.”

Sarge stepped up onto a plastic chair and raised his arms for silence. The adults closest to him began to shush those around them, and silence moved through the crowd like a ripple in still water. Sarge’s arms slowly lowered and he spread them expansively, as if inviting everyone there to come give him a hug.

“Two hundred and thirty some-odd years ago,” he said, his deep voice projecting across the clearing with seemingly little effort, “an old Mahican medicine man lived on this very spot. His name was Bear Talker and his nephew was Joseph Webster.”

Murmurs of appreciation spread through the crowd.

Ben linked his fingers with Sorcha’s.

“One cold fall day,” Sarge said, “Joseph met a young woman named Enid who would change his destiny. When a party of Mohawk warriors met with Bear Talker, they came under the pretense of peace. But Bear Talker was suspicious and sent Joseph on a false errand in case the Mohawk were lying. It turned out they did have an ulterior motive, and when Bear Talker refused to tell them where to find Enid, they tortured him.”

Sorcha gasped and looked up at Ben. He squeezed her hand.

Sarge continued. “Joseph came back from the errand to find his uncle’s longhouse engulfed in a raging conflagration. He was too late to help Bear Talker, whose last words to him were, ‘Save her.’ And so Joseph rode his horse through the fields and arrived at Enid’s house before the Mohawk.”

“I didn’t know,” Sorcha whispered. “Poor Bear Talker.”

“But Joseph didn’t save her,” Sarge said, his voice full of sadness. His eyes briefly met Sorcha’s. He didn’t have to say it: the reason Joseph didn’t save Enid, couldn’t save her, was because she fell asleep.

“Instead,” Sarge’s voice boomed out, “the Mohawk caught them, and they cut out his tongue to silence him. When Joseph was lying staked to the ground, choking on his own blood, he vowed to find her. Soon after the Mohawk took her away, the household slaves came out of hiding and released him from his bonds. Joseph barely allowed them to tend to his wounds before he set out.”

Sorcha remembered the crude stitches to the base of Joseph’s tongue and sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Bess and Aggie. It was good to know they had survived.

“The Mohawk were easy to track. Joseph followed them to a large Haudenosaunee village. On the outskirts, he released his horse and snuck as close to the village as possible. But his thirst for revenge was not strong enough to overcome his injuries. He might have died there, hidden away so near to his goal of carrying out his uncle’s final wish.”

Sarge smiled then, his cheeks contracting in dimples very much like Ben’s. “But don’t despair! Because Enid...” he looked at Sorcha with raised eyebrows and mouthed the word, ‘you,’ before going on, “Because Enid found him and nursed him back to health, and he found a better reason than revenge to go on.”

Several people in the crowd said, “Love.”

“Love!” Sarge shouted. Then more quietly, “Love. And it was this love that made it possible for our family to not just survive the last two-hundred and thirty some-odd years, but to exist. If it were not for Sorcha, who stands before us less than a day after dying, after giving up half of herself...for love...we, every single one of us standing here on this glorious day, would have winked out of existence without any evidence that we had ever walked the Creator’s earth.”

Sorcha had been so caught up in Sarge’s speech it startled her when Ben leaned down and said quietly in her ear, “See? I told you he had charisma.”

She laughed self-consciously. “He’s got everyone in the palm of his hand, hasn’t he?”

But Sarge wasn’t finished yet. “There is nothing we can do or say to convey the depth of our gratitude. And there’s no way we can make it up to you: the loss of Enid. How could we? Still, thanks to you, Joseph had a lifetime to think about it, and I know this is the last thing you may have expected, Sorcha, but he made sure your investment advice would benefit you, too.”

Sorcha looked at him, appalled.

Sarge said quickly, “That’s not to say he thought money would in any way compensate you. He wasn’t one to put a price on life, none of us are.”

Sorcha’s eyes found John, who lurked on the fringes of the group, just as Harry had at the last meeting. He shrugged and gave her a crooked smile, as if to say, “Not all of us, anyway.”

“And with these final words of heartfelt gratitude to you, Sorcha, I hereby declare the Webster Protection Society dissolved!”

A deafening “Hurrah!” rose from the crowd, and to Sorcha’s surprise everyone around her set off little hand-held confetti cannons. Bits of sparkling paper rained down like brightly-colored snow.

The merriment got a little crazier after that. Skip brought out a case of champagne and corks began popping. Someone handed Sorcha a plastic champagne glass brimming with the clear bubbly liquid. She sipped it once to be polite, immediately disliking the taste. It ended up next to the discarded plate of food.

Ben must have seen the glazed look in her eye, because he gently steered her away from the frenzy to the tree he’d sat under that first day. He knelt down and gave her the same expectant look he’d given her then. She laughed and sat within the circle of his arm. They watched the Webster family celebrate their good fortune.

It had never occurred to Sorcha that they would give her any portion of the money. She didn’t want to think about it now, didn’t want to sully Enid’s memory with thoughts of what her life had been worth.

It did make her think about how the lives of these people would change. Not only had the specter of their sudden demise disappeared, but their money worries were gone as well. But everyone knew money didn’t guarantee happiness. It wouldn’t bring back Ben’s father, whose loss had been the catalyst for Ben going to juvie, and had sent his uncle Harry into homeless seclusion.

She scanned the crowd until she spotted Harry, talking with Luanne not far away.

Sorcha looked at Ben. “Harry is John’s real father, isn’t he?”

Ben took in a breath before saying, “How’d you guess?”

“Process of elimination. I think if he were your brother, you’d treat him differently, so it couldn’t have been your father. He’s not Sarge’s son, and Skip’s not the kind of guy to sleep with his brother’s wife.”

Ben laughed. “Well, I don’t know about that, but yeah, from what I understand, Harry’s the culprit. Um, speak of the devil…” Ben nudged her and nodded.

She turned. Luanne was leading Harry by the arm, tugging the coarsely-dressed man in their direction. Luanne looked excited, and not just in response to the general merriment, but as if she had discovered something.

When Sorcha saw the tissue paper charcoal rub of the words on Sarah Murphy’s gravestone in Harry’s rough-skinned hands, her heart skipped a beat. Ben helped her up and she brushed her fingers down the seat of her pants to remove the dirt and leaves.

“You are not going to believe this!” Luanne was practically shouting. She pushed Harry forward. “Go on, tell them. Tell them what it says.”

The people in the near vicinity quieted down to hear. Harry lifted the tissue, made a phlegmy sound, like a harrumph, and looked down at the words.

He read: “One Soul Becomes Two.”

Sorcha blinked. Her lips moved as she silently repeated the words. As their meaning struck her, she turned to Ben and cried out, “Enid!”

Ben’s face was alight with the same wonder she felt. He swept her off her feet and swung her in a dizzying circle. She bent her neck and gazed up at the tops of the trees as they spun around, the weight on her soul lifting with each beat of her heart.

A white shaft of sunlight slanted in through the wavy window glass. Her eyes focused on myriad tiny dust motes floating lazily in the cold air of the small, unfamiliar room. She’d awakened from a deep, black nothingness some time ago and tried to get up, but had been overcome with dizziness and nausea. Now she waited in the strange bed for someone to come.

When the door finally opened, a man brought in a tray and set it on a chest by the bed. He appeared to be older than her by several years, dressed in plain homespun, dark hair pulled into a stub of a ponytail under a tricorn hat.

“Good, yer awake,” he said, removing the hat. “Do ya speak English?”

She realized he thought she was an Indian. “I am English…I mean American.”

“Ah. Well, ye’ll forgive me if I assumed otherwise. Ya were dressed like a native and living among them. Name’s Charles Murphy. How do ya feel?”

“Alive?” She hadn’t meant for the word to come out as a question.

He laughed. “And just barely, at that. What’s yer name?”

“Did you…did you rescue me?”

“Aye.” He looked down at the hat in his hands. “And me captain weren’t none too happy when I brought a half-drowned chit back ta the garrison.”

“I am sorry to have caused you any trouble.” She sat up. The dizziness was still present, but milder. At the moment, the hunger pangs gnawing at her stomach were more urgent. Without waiting for an invitation, she reached out and took a hunk of bread from the tray. It was stale and tasted as if the cook had added no salt, but it was food.

“Oh, please,” he said, gesturing to the bread in her hand. “You must be…”

He seemed more flustered than a man who’d forgotten his manners should be. She noticed him staring in the vicinity of her chest and glanced down. The buckskin dress was gone and she was wearing a man’s shirt. It was so big the neckline hung halfway off her shoulder. She tugged on it and looked up into his red face. He had pale, lightly freckled skin and green eyes, like Sorcha’s.

“How did you rescue me? The last thing I remember was...” she trailed off as the horrific memory of dying in the cold sparkling water assailed her.

The corners of Charles Murphy’s lips turned down. “Truth be told, me patrol had been watchin’ the village fer days. The current brought yer body right to us. I saw ya save that child and it struck me that yer method was sound. Who would have figured I’d have the opportunity to use it on ya?”

Who indeed? She finished chewing and reached for a tankard that turned out to be filled with milk. It was warm, and unlike the bread, fresh. After gulping half of it down, she cradled the tankard in her hands and stared into it self-consciously. She wanted to ask him who had dressed her, but decided against it. Something about the way he looked at her, like he knew her intimately, told her all she needed to know.

As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “I, uh, took no liberties, Miss. All the men in me patrol are respectful.”

To hide her embarrassment, she took another bite of the stale bread.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miss, but I do need ta know yer name. We’ll be wanting ta contact yer people.”

She chewed slowly to delay her answer, looking up into Charles Murphy’s earnest face. When she finally replied, her words were softly spoken, but filled with determination.

“I have no people. My name is…Sarah.”

The End.