SelfSame (4 page)

“I will not give you details, but I will tell you this: the colonial army will eventually prevail and win their freedom from the crown.”

He studied her face. She felt that all her knowledge of the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government over the course of the next 240 years was there for him to see. But he nodded, waved the warrior forward and allowed the younger man to seat him on the smaller of the two saddleless horses.

“This is my brother’s youngest son, Joseph,” the medicine man said, and kicked his horse into a trot.

Before Enid realized what was happening, Joseph hoisted her up on the other horse as if she were a weightless sack of barley. He mounted behind her with as little effort; it was clear he was an accomplished horseman. As they began traveling back the way she had come, she braced herself for the same uncomfortable sensations she’d experienced riding with Jedediah. Sitting sideways in front of Joseph with her hands tangled tightly in the horse’s mane and her torso twisted to face front, it proved impossible to hold herself away from him. Within minutes of trying, she gave up and allowed her hip and back to settle against his body as much as the jostling motion of the trot would allow.

To her surprise, he smelled only faintly of sweat; not the overpowering tang of body odor coming off of Jedediah. His voice in her ear startled her. “What is your name?”

“Enid,” she replied. “You speak English very well. Where did you learn?”

“From my parents, same as you.” He sounded annoyed. “Your grandmother is Mahican?”

“Yes. My mother as well.”

“Is your father English?” She felt him tense a bit as he waited for the answer.

“Irish.”

Joseph grunted, and she took it to mean ‘same difference.’

They didn’t talk after that, because the path evened out and Bear Talker urged his horse into a canter. Joseph followed suit. The children were out front playing when they arrived. They stared as Enid and the two Indian men went into the house. Through the window, she saw Bess and Aggie hanging wet linens on the line out back. The house smelled of cooked cabbage, which meant Bess had probably used the last of the pork in a stew for the mid-day meal.

Enid asked Bear Talker to wait for a moment while she went up to prepare Elizabeth. Her grandmother was sleeping, however, so she came back down and held up one of her homemade surgical masks.

“This will prevent the disease that is killing my grandmother from transferring to you.”

Bear Talker’s lips puckered in his raisin face. “Is this magic from the future?”

Enid thought about taking the easy way out and saying yes, but the specter of the thousands of Native Americans killed by diseases brought over by Europeans made her say, “No, it is not magic. In the future, many truths are known. One of them is that there are tiny creatures, too small for the eye to see, that travel through the air or water or by touch to make a well man ill. You should never breathe the same air as that of someone dying of disease, and be sure to wash your hands with lye soap after touching them.”

The medicine man allowed her to fasten the mask over his nose and mouth. Through the cloth, he said, “Creatures, evil spirits, what is the difference? But I will remember the advice you have given me.”

He went up to see Elizabeth then, leaving Enid and Joseph alone in the main room. Joseph looked around, his discomfort evident in the small, nervous movement of his fingers against his thighs.

“You may sit if you like,” she offered.

He shrugged a little, but sat in a chair by the door and rested the ever-present musket on his knees. He was a very incongruous presence in the little house. She sat across from him and to keep her hands busy as she waited, pulled Elizabeth’s needlework, abandoned for some weeks since she took to her bed, into her lap.

“It is true you have two spirits?” Joseph asked after a while.

Enid looked up from tucking and pulling the thread. He wasn’t a handsome young man, but when his face wasn’t scowling he looked almost approachable. “Your uncle says I have one spirit split in two.”

A fleeting smile crossed his lips. In an echo of his uncle’s words, he said, “What is the difference? Do they both not live inside you?”

She shook her head but didn’t clarify. From upstairs came the sound of low chanting and the repetitive shoosh-shoosh of Bear Talker’s rattle. She closed her eyes and prayed that Elizabeth would find peace before her suffering ended. A creak of the floorboards alerted her and she opened them again.

Bess and Aggie hovered in the doorway from the kitchen. The children were practically hidden in Aggie’s skirts; they had probably informed her of Enid’s arrival with their unusual guests.

Enid set the needlework aside and rose to her feet, unsure of the proper etiquette. Sorcha would introduce everyone and expect them all to get along as if class wasn’t a distinction. Enid was all for that, but the rest of them would find it odd to say the least.

Bess said, “They’s a stew on, Miss.”

Enid glanced at Joseph, who definitely looked interested.
Ah, to hell with it
, she thought.

“Why don’t we all eat, then?” she said.

They had no table in the common room – Enid’s father had only ever invited into the house the kind of hard men who ate with their fingers and wiped their hands on their clothes. She’d served them at the small kitchen table as they drank ale and talked of the rebellion, staying well clear of their wandering hands.

There were only four chairs that were soon occupied by Enid and Joseph on one side, and Sarah and Ezekiel, whose chins barely cleared the height of the table, on the other. Bess and Aggie made sure Enid had everything she needed and left to eat their meal on the back porch.

The children ate quietly and with perfect manners, except for the fact that they stared at Joseph with wide, blinking blue eyes the entire time. He ate rapidly, ignoring them. Enid twice attempted to start a conversation, but the children were too shy to even reply and Joseph only offered monosyllabic responses. It was a very awkward dynamic.

When Bear Talker came into the kitchen, Enid excused herself and took the stairs two at a time, unconcerned that she’d essentially abandoned the children with two strange Indian men.

Elizabeth was asleep; her stringy grey hair spread over the pillow and her breathing as labored and rough as it had been that morning. The room smelled of burnt sage. Whatever the medicine man had accomplished, it wasn’t a cure. Enid held her grandmother’s limp, arthritic hand, crying softly for an hour or so as memory after happy memory played vividly in her mind. When she ventured back downstairs, Bear Talker and his nephew were gone and the children and servants waited for their instructions.

Sorcha

For perhaps the first time since she’d been aware of the differences between her worlds, Sorcha didn’t want to be in this one. As soon as she opened her eyes she wanted to go back to Elizabeth. Her last glimpse of Enid’s grandmother had been when she left her sleeping fitfully, drugged into unconsciousness by something Bear Talker had left for her. Enid hadn’t wanted to frighten Aggie and Bess if they tried and couldn’t wake her, so she confessed to them that she was afflicted with a sleeping sickness and that they should respond if Elizabeth needed help in the night. She left them with instructions to keep water in the iron kettle hanging over the fire, and told them how to aid her grandmother should she suffer a fit. Since the children were sleeping in her room, she’d retired to her father’s freshly made bed reluctantly, afraid that on the morrow Elizabeth would be gone.

Sorcha took a long, listless shower, trying hard not to cry. For some reason, her fragmented thoughts kept returning to Joseph and how much he reminded her of Ben even though the two were nothing alike physically. Joseph was around the same height, but stockier than Ben, his muscles more compact; and Ben’s facial features were more refined, especially the narrow curve of his jaw. Compared to Ben, Joseph was…blunt, was the most accurate word that came to mind – like comparing a hammer to a knife. The only thing the two young men had in common was their Native American ancestry.

As she dressed in loose-fitting jeans and three lightweight layered t-shirts, she knew it would be impossible to push Enid’s world behind her usual barrier. She had a big history test she hadn’t studied for, but couldn’t muster up the slightest bit of concern over the dismal grade she was about to get.

Overnight a stiff wind had stripped most of the leaves from the old oak. The sky was heavy with dark rain clouds, a fitting atmosphere for her mood.

Paula greeted her cheerfully with, “Hey, no Loony today,” and it took Sorcha a moment to realize she meant Luanne.

She got into the car and removed her history book from her backpack. They were studying the Civil War, a time period Sorcha was only marginally familiar with. Paula glanced over at her and said, “You okay?”

Sorcha thought about telling her about Elizabeth, but figured Paula’s sympathy would break the fragile dam holding back her tears. “Fine. You ready for the test?”

It was the only class they had together. Paula chuckled and said, “No. You?”

“I might get a ‘D’ if I’m lucky.”

A few fat raindrops hit the windshield, so Paula switched on the wipers. Within seconds the drops changed to hail that bounced off the car. Paula was forced to slow down as the hail began coming down heavily, significantly reducing visibility. By the time they got to the school’s overflow parking lot, the downpour had stopped.

Sorcha was glad she was wearing her faux-fur lined windbreaker and waterproof boots as she forced the car door open against the wind and stepped out into a slushy mud puddle. She and Paula walked a meandering path across the field to avoid more puddles. Paula was watching the ground, so she didn’t see what happened, but Sorcha did.

On the paved parking lot up ahead, Ben rode his bike past Paula’s crush, Dalton Boyle, and three of his friends. She saw Ben swerve close to the group in order to go around a huge puddle, but his tire hit the edge of the puddle anyway and sent a fine spray up onto the lower half of Dalton’s jeans. Dalton looked down at his pants and sneered in disgust, his teeth flashing white in his dark-skinned face. He shouted an obscenity after Ben, who stopped to look back – only to get a face full of the slushy-snowball Dalton had hastily scooped together from the back of a nearby car. Ben got off the bike and thrust it angrily to the pavement.

“Oh, no,” Sorcha murmured.

Paula looked up and asked, “What?” But the scene spoke for itself as Ben stalked over to within about a foot of Dalton, who stood his ground, flanked by his friends. Sorcha wanted to look away, but couldn’t. The young men exchanged angry words, most of which Sorcha couldn’t make out since they were blown away on the wind. As she and Paula got closer, Ben looked over at her. She shook her head faintly, pleading with her eyes for him to back down.

To her surprise, he did, taking a step back and relaxing his clenched fists. She clearly heard him say, “It was an accident, man.” Dalton didn’t look appeased; in fact, he seemed to become more confident of his superior advantage. His arm shot out and he thumped Ben in the shoulder with the heel of his hand.

Before Ben could respond, Paula astonished everyone present by screaming, “Dalton Boyle, you leave him alone!”

The words were quite possibly the first Paula had spoken to Dalton in years. He turned to her, anger and disbelief on his face. “Mind your own damned business!”

Paula had two flaming patches of red on her cheeks and her eyes were dark with fury. “It’s everyone’s business when it’s four against one! Man up, Dalton.” She spit his name out with all the contempt four years of being ignored by a guy can produce.

Dalton looked as if she’d slapped him. His jaw was clenched tightly as he glared at Ben and back again to Paula. “Yeah, whatever,” he snapped.

He began walking away, but made sure to bump Ben roughly with his shoulder as he went past. His friends were less subtle: one boy pointed a finger in Ben’s face and said, “Watch yourself.” Another said, “Next time your little girlfriend won’t be around to protect you, Webster.”

If Paula thought Ben was going to stick around and thank her, she was mistaken. He merely tossed Sorcha a look she couldn’t decipher before picking his bike up and riding off. Paula did exactly what Sorcha expected her to do: burst into tears. Sorcha put her arm around Paula’s shoulders and steered her away from the prying eyes of random students attracted to the disturbance. They ended up back in Paula’s car, where they stayed until Paula got control of herself and had fixed her runny make-up.

Sorcha was late for first period, but didn’t particularly care. As soon as she sat in her seat, her thoughts flew back to Elizabeth. Later, when she went to her locker to get her sack lunch, there was a note from Paula.

“Sorry, Sorch, but I’m going home sick and you’ll need to find another ride. Talk to you later. P.”

Paula’s ‘sickness’ probably involved her heart more than anything. Sorcha wished she could smack Dalton for sending her friend’s self-esteem into another tailspin.

Sorcha’s parents, Michael and Amelia, commuted into the city together for their respective jobs, almost a hundred miles one way, so not only did she rarely see them, but she couldn’t count on them for a ride. She called her grandmother and left a message, but it was Wednesday, the one day of the week Fay wasn’t home – she spent each Wednesday pitching in at a homeless shelter in Poughkeepsie.

By the end of the school day when Fay hadn’t returned her call, she resigned herself to taking the bus, but then she went and took too long trudging to the bus stop and missed it. The schedule mounted under plastic on the inside of the dirty, graffiti-defaced bench shelter told her the next bus would be an hour coming. If she walked, she’d be halfway home by then, so she zipped her jacket, tightened the strings of the hood against the wind and set off.

If she thought the unaccustomed exercise would take her mind off Elizabeth, she was mistaken. The wind blew the clouds across the sky, reminding her of one of Enid’s favorite childhood games. She and Elizabeth would sit in the grass, weaving baskets and watching the clouds, calling out when they saw a recognizable shape: “Look, there’s an eagle. A bunny! A mushroom!” Then Elizabeth would tell a story about all the shapes they’d seen, but said it was really the Cloud People who were telling it; they sent the shapes as a message to anyone below who could interpret it.

Today she saw a whale, a hook-nosed man’s profile and a coffin.

She made it out of town and had almost reached the dirt path that paralleled the highway when the driver of a truck ahead of her performed a screeching half-donut in the street, sending up stinking puffs of burnt rubber and leaving black tire marks on the road. She could see there were four occupants, but the truck shot past so fast she couldn’t make out any of their faces.

“Wow, impressive,” she said to nobody, shaking her head. She’d seen the jacked-up truck before, parked at school. Whoever was driving was either in some kind of major hurry, was immaturely showing off for his friends, or both.

She crossed the street and ducked through the tear in the chain-link fence that had been erected to keep pedestrians off the privately-owned land all along one side of the highway. The landowner had long ago stopped mending the fence, probably because it had become a losing battle. The popular path was several feet wide with well-packed dirt. Sorcha had walked it many times, but never alone.

The first thing she saw was a bicycle lying on its side in a patch of wild grass. Right away she recognized it as Ben’s. She looked around for him, doubting he was just sitting somewhere taking a break. The ground showed multiple deep footprints, many with long streaks plowing through the mud, evidence of a violent scuffle. The driver of the truck hadn’t been showing off; he’d been beating a hasty retreat from the scene of a crime. Sure enough, she saw a prone body several yards off the path, almost hidden in the wild grass.

She ran, slipping in the mud and falling to her knees next to him. Grasping his shoulder, she heaved him onto his side; terrified by what she would find when she saw his face. Ben groaned and tried to elbow her away, but she said, “Knock it off, I’m trying to help you.”

He struggled to a sitting position and muttered, “I’m fine. Go away.”

She ignored him, taking stock of his injuries. His left eye was swollen and he had a fat, bloody lip, but otherwise it seemed as if the worst of it was the knuckles on his right hand, which looked as if he’d pulverized them against a wall. She took his hand and he gasped and snatched it away.

“You need to see a doctor,” she said.

He scoffed. “Yeah, that’s gonna happen. What the hell are you doing here?”

She ignored the question. “Were you unconscious at all? We should call the police.”

His uninjured hand shot out and stopped her from reaching around to her backpack. “I was just taking a nap. No doctor, no cops, nothing – understand?”

He got to his feet and staggered to his bike. Sorcha stood and watched as he straddled it and fit his foot to the pedal. A drop of rain hit her cheek.

She fully expected him to ride off and leave her, but he said, “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

She walked over to him. He’d just gotten jumped and beat up and was worried about her.

“Should I be watching out for your homeless relatives here, too?”

He laughed and immediately winced. With his good hand, he gently probed his lip. “Do I look bad?”

Her eyes dropped to his feet and back. “You mean the face or the mud?”

He smiled, winced again and requested, “No jokes, okay?”

She made a cross-your-heart motion as he got back off his bike and began pushing it.

She walked next to him. “Where’s your backpack?”

“Bastards took it.”

“Was it Dalton’s buddies? And don’t lie, because I recognized the truck from school and it’d be easy to figure out who drives it.”

“It wasn’t them,” was all he said. It was sprinkling now. “How far to your house?”

“It’s a ways.”

“I’ve never seen you walk before.”

She sighed. “Paula’s never bailed on me before.”

He glanced over. “She kinda went nuts this morning. She and that Dalton kid have history?”

Sorcha had no idea why she said it, but the words, “Only in her fantasy world,” slipped off her tongue. She was instantly appalled that she’d given away her best friend’s deepest secret, and revealed it to a virtual stranger, no less. A young man who’d spent the last two years in juvenile hall – and quite possibly the last person she should trust.

He didn’t respond; just gave her an inscrutable sidelong look. Stunned by her betrayal, she walked woodenly next to him as the occasional car whizzed by on the highway.

The rain began in earnest and after about ten minutes of slogging through it, her pant legs were soaked. With no warning, Ben cut across her path and said, “Come on.”

He led her away from the highway down a barely discernible path to a copse of pine trees planted in a rough circle. Someone had trimmed the lowest branches to several feet above her head. The afternoon clouds made the day dark and it was darker still under the trees, but they provided perfect cover from the downpour; only a stray drop or two reached them. Ben leaned his bike against one of the trees and kicked the thick layer of ground cover away from the base of another. When he’d cleared a good patch, he sat down, rested his forearms casually on his knees, and looked at her expectantly. Even with the black eye and fat lip; even covered head to toe in mud – he was gorgeous. His casual assumption that she would sit next to him made her heart skip a beat.

Suddenly, there wasn’t enough air under the trees and her feet felt firmly planted to the spot. To stall, she fumbled with the ties of her hood and pushed it off her hair. Before he noticed her reluctance, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “How did you know about this place?”