Sarah Bishop (12 page)

I cooked him a strip of venison for his supper. He ate all of it and asked for more, which I took to be a sign that he was getting better.

"My wife, Verna," he said, "she was my first wife, had a way of fixin' venison that you might like to hear about someday. It's vinegar that makes the difference. Not that yours warn't good, but bein' young and jest startin', it might hep you to catch a husband. Nothing like tasty vittles to soften a man's heart and innards. I know that for a fact, miss. I'm feelin' it now." He gave me a wink.

At dawn I went down to the lake and picked up Goshen's musket. It had a charge in it, which I poured out on the ground. I took his powder horn and did the same with it. I hid his musket in the grass.

It was snowing by then, feathery flakes, but by nightfall it was coming hard. In the morning, early, the snow
turned icy. Goshen hobbled to the door and went out, using the crutch.

"Looks bad," he said when he came back. "Looks like it might sleet all day. Lucky we got good fires burnin' and plenty of grub to fill ourselves."

I had put away food for the winter, planning everything carefully, and here I was, saddled with an extra mouth to feed. He had a big appetite now, sick as he was. What could it be when he got well?

"We don't have plenty of food," I said.

"You're forgettin', miss, that I'm a hunter." He lay beside my fire, not his, and raised his hands, as though to aim a gun, and made a clicking noise that sounded like a trigger going off. "I can shoot you a deer before you ever blink an eye."

Yes, a hunter, I thought scornfully, who gets himself caught in a bear trap. But I kept the thought to myself. I was deathly afraid of rousing his temper. I had seen none of it, but I was certain it was there, hiding behind the eyes that never looked straight at you, but around.

"You're a hunter," I said; "you must be acquainted with John Longknife."

Goshen thought for a moment, bending over. His hair grew in patches, and between the patches I could see the bones on top of his head. There were three ridges of them running front to back. In the firelight they didn't seem to fit each other.

"Longknife," he said. "Tall. Wears hair on his face?"

"No, he's an Indian," I said. "He was here last week with his family."

"Longknife," Goshen said. "Yes, I recall. No-good Indian. One of the Titicut tribe."

"He's coming back. He said today. I guess the storm held him up."

I tried to make the lie sound natural.

Goshen got on his feet and put the crutch under his arm and went back to his own fire. He asked for more wood. After I brought it, he said,

"Me and Longknife don't get along too good. Claims I owe him for two beaver pelts he got off me in a trade. Claims I said they was prime and they warn't."

He said no more about John Longknife, but I could tell he was thinking. It would make him think hard if there was a chance that the Indian might come up the trail and find him causing trouble.

I
FIXED SUPPER
again for us, roasting two trout in the coals and making flour cakes. While we were eating there
was a scratching, and the muskrat wandered out of the hole he had been living in since I brought him home. His chewed paw was pretty well healed, but he had a limp as he walked and a list to one side.

Goshen, who had not seen him before, stopped eating. "Hell and high water," he sputtered, "where did you find that?"

"In one of your traps," I said.

Firelight shone on the animal's glossy coat.

"Prime pelt," Goshen said. "It'll bring good money."

"It's not for sale," I said.

He didn't hear me. "Buy you a length of linsey-woolsey," he went on, "a ribbon for your hair, and a comb with sparklers in it."

The muskrat went back in its hole, frightened, I think, by the tone of his voice.

After supper I got out the Bible and started to read. He asked me if I would mind reading out loud.

"Haven't heard the Holy Book since I was at my dear ma's knee."

I had turned to Proverbs. I read while he leaned forward and cupped his ears.

"'As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honor is not seemly for a fool.'"

"Makes powerful sense," Sam Goshen said.

"'A whip for the horse,'" I read, "'a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back.'"

"Right smart talk," Goshen said. He looked around
for the muskrat. "Fine pelt, that one. I'll catch me a few when my leg's aworkin'."

There was no sign that he understood what I was reading or why I was reading it. I decided to try another part of the Bible, the story of Jael. He waited impatiently for me to turn the pages.

"'And the Lord discomfited Sisera,'" I read, speaking slowly, "'and all his chariots.'"

"How many chariots?" Goshen broke in.

"Nine hundred, made of iron," I said.

"And who's this Sisera, anyway?"

"He was the captain of the armies of Jabin, King of Canaan."

"Go on, miss."

"'The Lord discomfited Sisera,'" I said, "'and all his chariots, and all his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak; so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet...

"'Howbeit Sisera fled away ... to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite ... And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her in the tent, she covered him with a mantle.'"

"Why for?" Goshen asked.

"To protect him," I said, "or so Sisera thought."

"Some womenfolks are sly."

I read on. "'And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink; for I am thirsty. And she
opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him. Again he said to her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, when any man doth come and inquire of thee, and say, Is there any man here? that thou shalt say, No.'"

"I'm listenin'," Sam Goshen said.

"'Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.'"

I stopped reading. Goshen waited with his mouth open. I closed the book.

"That all there's to it?" he said. "She kilt him?"

"Dead."

"With a nail?"

"With a long nail in his temple."

Sam Goshen stared across the fire at me with his cruel little eyes. He pawed at his own temple with two fingers. "A nail. That would hurt a man bad," he said. "No tellin' what some womenfolks'll do if they get riled up."

"No telling," I said.

He started to laugh and then started on a rambling story about one of his wives who got mad and hit him on the head with a length of sycamore wood. But I think he knew why I had read him the story of Jael and Sisera. Whether it had done any good or not, I didn't know. It might have stirred him up to harm me.

He didn't see the white bat until days later, although
it had been hanging there above his head all the time he was nursing his leg. He was eating a bowl of morning mush when he happened to glance up and see it. It made him jump. He forgot he had a bad leg. He scrambled to his feet and picked up his crutch.

"Bad luck!" he cried. "A white one, too. They're the worst."

He raised the crutch and took a swipe at the creature. Before he could raise his hand again, I grabbed the crutch and threw it into the fire. I didn't say anything.

He pulled the crutch out and wiped it off on his sleeve. "I guess you think I don't need it no more. True enough; not much around the house here, but outside, that's different."

He put on his heavy coat and his flap-eared cap. He opened the door and glanced out.

"'Pears to be a good day for huntin'," he said. "I think I'll go and shoot us a deer. You don't mind if I take your Brown Bess along?"

I held the musket in my hand. I never put it down anymore.

"You have a musket of your own," I said.

Mr. Goshen smiled, showing his mouthful of yellow teeth. "So I have, so I have," he said. "But I plumb forgot where I done left it. With my fever and all. It makes a man forgetful, fever does."

"Your musket is down on the shore," I said. "Where the bear trap is."

He put the crutch under his arm and tried his weight on it. He teetered back and forth and looked pained.

"Still hurts," he said. "But I'll bring you back a deer or die atryin'."

I opened the door and watched him hobble off. It was a bright day, with the sun glistening on the snowbanks and blue drifts piled up along the lake. He was halfway down the slope when he disappeared behind a thick stand of mountain laurel.

After a while I caught a glimpse of him on the far side of the lake. He had dropped his crutch and was trotting along nimbly. Then he disappeared again.

I got hold of the muskrat and took it out in the sun and let it go. Or, rather, I gave it a push and made a noise I thought would urge it on. But it took a few steps, looked over its shoulder, and came back to the doorstep, where it sat the rest of the day in the sun until I took it in.

It was close to nightfall when I saw Sam Goshen coming up the hill. He had the crutch under his arm again and was picking his way slowly between the rocks.

I closed the door and set the bar. I waited for his knock. When it came, I didn't answer.

"I seen deer," Goshen shouted through the door. "Seven fat ones, trailin' along pretty as you please. But somebody done took my powder horn. Couldn't find my musket, neither. It might be that good-for-nothin' Longknife." He paused and I heard his heavy breathing. "'Course, it could be someone besides him."

I kept quiet.

"Now who'd ever do a thing like that?" he asked.

He sounded pitiful, but wasn't. He was mad. I could imagine his face through the thick wooden door, glaring and ugly. "Can't see who'd be so low-down mean." He cleared his throat and spat. "It wouldn't be you who done it, would it be, miss?"

"Yes, it was," I said. "And if you don't leave me alone, I'm going to do worse. A lot worse. I'm going to shoot clean through the door and maybe kill you."

There were no sounds for a while. I thought that he'd sat down to wait me out. Then I heard a lot of curses. Afterward, I heard footsteps going fast down the trail. I didn't look out. I stayed up all night, thinking he might come back. I heard every sound—wolves howling on the hill beyond, the lake cracking and booming, the wind in the winter trees, the cry of a bobcat, and, far away, a night owl calling.

But I heard no footsteps. Dawn came before I went to sleep.

I slept all that day, as closed to the world as Gabriel the bat. When I opened my eyes I lay and looked at the creature hanging upside down, wrapped in its silken wings. I closed my eyes, thinking that it would be nice if people, when things got bad, could wrap themselves up and go to sleep.

The fire was out when I woke up near midnight, and I had to build a new one, using powder, which I was short
of. (At home, if the fire went out you could go to neighbors and borrow some coals.) But it was wonderful not to look over and see Sam Goshen lying in the corner. I hadn't realized how scared I had been all the time he was there.

I opened the door and looked out. A few stars glittered far down in the south. But northward the sky was black and a north wind blew hard.

I
WORKED ON
the dugout that night. I had hollowed out a good part of the pine log by fire, and now I chipped away at the rest with the ax. It was beginning to take on the right shape, at least the shape I had in mind from what John Longknife had told me.

My reading of the Bible to Sam Goshen was only the second time I had opened the Holy Book since my father's death. I brought it out again and leafed through it, reading from whatever I happened to turn to. First it was Judges. Then Chronicles. Then Daniel and Hosea. Lastly, it was from the Book of Esther.

"And when these days were expired, the king made a feast unto all the people ... white, green, and blue, hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to
silver rings and pillars of marble: the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black, marble."

When I was a child my father used to read this part of Esther's story to me. He was a frugal man, frugal because we were poor and by his own leanings, but he always liked these words and the scenes they pictured. I liked them, too. I would ask him to read again and again about Ahasuerus, the king, who reigned over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, from India as far westward as the land of Ethiopia, who gave a grand feast for all his servants and nobles and the princes of Persia and Media in that marvelous palace of Shushan.

As I sat there by the fire, I read out loud to myself. The words made strange sounds among the stone walls of the cave and the soughing of the bitter wind, not the warm and exciting sounds I remembered as a child.

The north wind blew all night, and at dawn it began to snow and snow fell for five days, never stopping. When I opened the door, a wall of piled-up snow loomed before me, shoulder-high. I dug a path through it and away from the mouth of the cave. The earth was white as far as the eye could reach. Along the ridge above the cave the pine trees looked like white candles.

A herd of deer came to the edge of the path I had cleared. I think it was the same herd that I had driven away. Their eyes were half-closed with ice. They were cold and starving.

I went out and cut through the snow where it was thinner under the trees, down to within inches of the earth, close enough to the dry grass for the deer to feed. It took me three days, working half a day at a time. As I carted the snow aside and cleared a place, the deer came along grazing behind me.

The wind blew again, this time from the east. The smoke hole in the roof was covered with brush but the wind found its way in. It scattered ashes everywhere. The cave was freezing cold. I bundled up in the rush mat I used on the floor and huddled against the log fire. I sat and thought about the tavern in Ridgeford and how warm it would be in the kitchen and how good bread with real flour in it would taste.