The Seekers (21 page)

There were new developments in France. By means of a coup, a military leader had seized power. The soldier named Bonaparte was a man of vast ambition, it was said. As first consul of his country, he announced his intention to deal with the United States in an amicable way—no doubt to prevent an American alliance with France’s traditional enemy, Britain.

Bonaparte’s avowed friendship might end the hostilities between American and French naval forces. People in the east were suspicious of the new ruler, though. Didn’t he openly express his dream of a worldwide French empire? Might he not press the Spanish to recede the vast Louisiana territory—including the port of New Orleans—in return for France’s surrender of portions of Italy? The anti-French faction east of the mountains claimed such negotiations were in fact under way in secret. Ultimately, Bonaparte could endanger the use of the Ohio and Mississippi as commercial routes for the western part of the country.

Philip hardly touched on these matters. Abraham heard about them from men gathered around Clapper’s cracker barrel. When the recent, extremely brief letter arrived via pack train, Abraham at last understood his father’s silence on more general subjects.

Philip wrote that in late February of this year, 1800, Peggy Ashford McLean Kent had died of a wasting disease that shriveled her body and tortured her senses for six months before death gave her release. Since reading the letter, Elizabeth had lost her appetite, gone listlessly about her chores, paid little attention to Jared and less to her husband.

They still slept side by side. But Abraham hadn’t touched her in a month, sensing her unspoken wish that he refrain. As a result, he often felt angry with her. His anger found an outlet in Saturday visits to the settlement. She seldom felt strong enough to walk with him. He usually came home more than a little drunk—

“Elizabeth!”

This time he shouted. The echo rolled away through the trees and died under the murmur of the wind. Invisible in the brush that screened part of the riverbank, someone answered.

“Papa?”

Exhaling loudly, Abraham hurried forward. “Jared, you stay right there—”

What in hell was the child doing outside, unattended?

Abraham clambered noisily down through the brush. He heard Chief’s feeble bark. The bulldog was ancient now, barely able to walk.

Once more Abraham searched the woods and the portion of the riverbank visible to him. Still no sign of Elizabeth. Fear turned to wrath again as he parted a screen of low branches and discovered his son.

Moccasins off and feet dirty, Jared was seated on the ground, alternately scooping dirt from a hole and building it into a small mound. The boy looked up with bright blue eyes—the Fletcher eyes he’d inherited from his mother. Chief, lying a few feet away, lolled his tongue but made no effort to rise and greet his master.

Jared’s tawny hair hung matted over his neck. His hide shirt showed rips at the elbows—more indications of Elizabeth’s neglect. Almost fearfully, the boy continued to stare up at his stocky father.

“Why did Mama leave you alone, Jared?”

Although Jared was only two, Elizabeth had been able to teach him to use rudimentary sentences. He answered with one. “Don’t know.”

“Where did she go?”

The boy looked away. “Down there.” A grimy hand pointed.

Abraham scowled. “The river? Whatever for?”

“Don’t know. She said to play. Then she left.” As if to show that he’d tried to do as he was told, he glanced down at the mound of dirt.

Abraham started to say something. A faint sound from the bushes behind Chief brought his head snapping around. His hand turned cold on the stock of his rifle.

Eyes fixed on the brush concealing the source of the rattle, he said, “Jared; listen. Get up. Come to me.”

Jared frowned. “Want to finish—”

“I said
come to me!
”

Abraham’s palms were slick with sweat. He dared not look away from the brush for an instant—

Tears appeared in Jared’s eyes. But he rose obediently and walked to his father—moments before the head of the snake jutted from the underbrush.

“Get behind me, Jared!”

The boy was gazing up at his father. He didn’t understand the reason for the harsh command. The snake coiled out of the shadows, rattling—

The snake was sixteen or seventeen inches long. Its brown ground color was blotched with black. Its puffy head darted a few inches to the right, then a few inches to the left—

Abraham stepped around his son, jammed the rifle against his shoulder and fired.

Chief barked, struggled to stand up as Abraham’s ball missed the head of the pygmy rattler, blasting up a shower of leaves and dirt. The rattler’s fangs glistened as its head shot forward. Chief yelped when the rattler bit.

By then Abraham had lunged forward. He drove the rifle’s brass butt plate toward the front part of the snake’s body. The snake whipped its head back a moment before the rifle struck. The blow cracked the snake’s skull.

Using the rifle stock as a kind of shovel, Abraham hoisted the snake and hurled it away. On his belly, Chief tried to turn his head far enough to lick at his wound. The old dog was too stiff; his tongue wouldn’t reach.

Jared clutched his father’s leg. “What—what was it?”

“A snake.”

“What?”

“
Snake,
Jared. Dangerous. Hurt you.”

“Didn’t see it—”

“I know you didn’t. That’s the reason you should never play out here alone. That’s why Mama should never leave you here alone!”

The boy pointed to the floundering bulldog. “Chief’s hurt.”

Abraham doubted he could do anything for the animal. The bite of a pygmy rattler was seldom fatal to a grown man. But the venom might affect a dog—or a child—differently. He seized Jared’s hand, pulled him away.

“If we leave him alone he’ll be all right. Come with me and we’ll look for your mother.”

The wrath in Abraham’s weary eyes made Jared obey without complaint.

“Baby? Baby, where are you—?”

Elizabeth’s voice!

Running, he broke from the trees twenty feet from the riverbank. When he saw her, a lump thickened in his throat.

He halted. Surveyed the area to be sure it was safe. He saw nothing to threaten the boy. He leaned his rifle against a maple, said, “You wait here while I speak to your mother, understand?
Wait here.
”

Fidgeting, the boy nodded. Abraham turned around, grief-stricken at the sight of his wife wandering aimlessly through the reeds along the shore. The wind blew her dirty hair around her cheeks. Her plain, patched dress was soaked and mud-spattered from the knees downward.

Abraham deliberately made noise as he approached. She didn’t seem to hear. Her fatigue-ringed blue eyes darted back and forth across the shallows.

“Baby? Baby, I know you’re here. Don’t hide from me.”

“Elizabeth!”

The loudness penetrated her daze. She faced him, a peculiar half-smile curling her mouth. She hardly resembled the bright, fiery-spirited girl he’d taken into his bed in Boston. Barely into her twenties, she had become a pale, sagging old woman—

But she recognized him. “Oh. Abraham dear. You’ve come back from the settlement.”

He splashed toward her, his moccasins soaked in an instant. On the far bank of the Miami, the autumn-colored trees shimmered and flamed in the wind.

He gripped her arm. “Why did you leave Jared by himself? It isn’t safe!”

“Please let go.” She pried at his fingers with a cracked and reddened hand. “Please, Abraham. I only left him. for a short time—”

“I shot a pygmy rattler up there. Right where the boy was playing!”

“Shot?” She shook her head. “I didn’t hear any shot.” Again that pleading smile. “But I’ve been busy searching for the baby.”

His spine crawled. “What baby?”

“Ours, Abraham. Our baby—the first one. I don’t remember the baby’s name, but all at once, up in the cabin, I remembered the baby was lost on the river.”

“You lost the baby on the Oh—” Sick and stunned, he couldn’t continue.

“Please help me look, Abraham. I know the baby’s here somewhere. Help me look before it’s too dark—”

Tears started in the corners of his eyes. He fought to hold a rein on his emotions—the self-hate, the sadness.
How had this happened?

He knew Elizabeth had been growing weaker and more distant month by month. But what had pushed her into this delusion? This retreat into a world of phantoms where the miscarried infant somehow cried out to her? Her mother’s death? The hardships of the land? Both—?

Empty of anger, he curved his arm around her and tried to speak gently. “It’s growing dark. We should go back to the cabin.”

“The baby’s lost, Abraham!”

“I’m sure we’ll find the baby tomorrow, when the sun’s up. I’ll help you search then if you’ll come with me now.”

She eyed the reeds and gleaming river. Then, with a sigh, she leaned against him. “All right. I am tired. I would like to rest. I’ve been searching an hour or more.”

In utter despair, he comforted her against his shoulder as they worked their way out of the shallows to solid ground. They walked up the shale slope to the tree where little Jared watched, white and wide-eyed.

The man, the woman and the boy plodded toward the cabin. Elizabeth’s voice grew fainter in the shadows lengthening among the trees. She murmured sadly, absently, about the lost child that needed finding—

Abraham lighted one of the wall candles and tucked Elizabeth into bed. He got the fire going in the hearth, and then he and Jared left the cabin.

They hunted for Chief. They found him dead where he’d fallen. Abraham dug a shallow trench in the loamy soil. They laid the bulldog’s body in it. Crying, Jared helped cover the grave with handfuls of earth.

They finished the work in almost total darkness. Abraham sheltered the weeping boy against his side on the way back to the cabin. He could feel little sorrow about the dog. Chief was old. Elizabeth was young. And she was dying too.

He knew some of the reasons: grueling work for which she wasn’t suited; loneliness; the absence of amenities with which she’d grown up. Women grew old too soon on the frontier. Abraham saw such women every time he visited the settlement. Women of twenty-five or thirty with lusterless eyes, leathery hands, browned, foul-smelling teeth. A few, like Edna Clapper, were hardy enough to thrive. Those who weren’t hardy, the land destroyed.

And I brought her here so she could be killed,
Abraham thought as he approached the cabin. That was the moment he first admitted the land had beaten them.

He would not—
could
not—permit them to go on living as they were living now.

The unseen trees hissed in the wind, almost like laughter. He made up his mind that he’d find them a means of escape as soon as possible. He hated being defeated almost as much as he hated the land—

But accepting defeat was better than seeing his wife destroyed.

The next day was the Sabbath. Abraham opened the cabin door as soon as he got up. Elizabeth woke a few minutes later. The sight of the sunshine spilling onto the cabin floor seemed to put her in good spirits immediately.

She had been restless during the night. But she greeted him normally enough, making no reference to the incident on the river.

As they ate their morning meal, Abraham read a few verses from their Bible. Elizabeth listened with a cheerful expression. Yet he remained tense. At any moment he expected her to recall his pledge to search for the lost baby.

Nearly an hour went by with no mention of it. The nervousness persisted. He went for a stroll in the sunshine, kneading his knuckles against his chin as he walked.

God, what he’d give to be able to share the excitement and optimism reflected in the Saturday talk at Clapper’s store. A few months before, a whole new century had opened. The successful settlers in the district discussed it with high hopes. President Washington’s death the preceding year at age sixty-seven seemed to bring one era to an end and set a new and better one in motion.

A new president would be elected before this year was out. Many around Fort Hamilton predicted that Federalist John Adams was finished; would be replaced at last by a less aristocratic candidate—one who recognized the growing importance of the west and acted accordingly. The ideal man, of course, would be Mr. Jefferson.

Already there were sixteen states in the union. More would certainly be organized and admitted as the tide of migration swept on west beyond the Ohio country. The future looked splendid indeed—

Until you brought it down to a personal level, Abraham thought as he walked back into the cabin.

Elizabeth welcomed him with a smile. She was busy tending a skillet over the coals. Preparing the johnny-cake they’d eat for Sunday dinner even though they’d already eaten the same thing for breakfast. Jared sat silently in a corner, building bits of stick into a cabin. Abraham bent down to watch. The boy accepted his father’s presence silently, without a smile.

Soon almost two hours had passed, with no reference to yesterday. Abraham relaxed a little. Apparently she’d forgotten—or, more correctly, the memory had somehow been locked away again in the recesses of her mind.

Still, he had been thoroughly shaken last night. He didn’t intend to forget his silent vow to change their situation.

How he’d do it, he didn’t know. As a first step, he’d ask advice from his friend Daniel Clapper. During next Saturday’s visit to the settlement.

Having decided just that much buoyed him a little; it was a positive step. Out of it would come an eventual answer.

Not too late, he hoped.

“It’s your business how much you slosh down,” Daniel Clapper said the following Saturday night. “But Daniel Junior’s off at the camp meetin’ with the girl he’s courtin’, an’ I’m damned if I want to carry you home.”

Abraham tilted the jug and poured more whiskey into a small earthenware cup.

“I’ll make it fine on my own, Daniel.”

Clapper looked skeptical.

Abraham had already consumed two cups of whiskey while waiting for the other man to close up the store for the night and join him behind the curtain that separated business from daily living.