Fire Along the Sky
Page 78
When supper was over she sent Gabriel over to the other cabin to spend the night and even then she said nothing. While she wiped dishes and put them up, measured out beans and put them to soak, rubbed bear grease into moccasins and trimmed candlewicks, looked through schoolbooks and marked pages for the next day's lessons, through all of that she was so uncharacteristically quiet that Nathaniel could hardly sit still.
Elizabeth in a fury was something he knew how to deal with; he could ride that storm until it wore itself out and she was ready to pull reason back around her shoulders like a warm blanket. Until then he would keep his opinions to himself.
But this was something rarer, this quiet white anger that pinned her down and gagged her. What end it would take, even Nathaniel couldn't predict. He watched her from his spot near the hearth while he cleaned his rifle and then sharpened his knives, poured lead into bullet molds, refilled his powder horn. These were things he had done every day of his life, the movements as natural to him as breathing, and he could do them in a quiet cabin or with a battle raging around his ears. What he couldn't do, what he couldn't imagine, was what she might say when the power of speech came back to her.
It wasn't until they had banked the fire and gone to bed that the last of his patience was spent. Lying next to Elizabeth in their marriage bed, he studied the back of her head for a while and then he said the first thing that came to mind.
“You could go put a bullet in the man, Boots. It wouldn't do him any harm and it might make you feel better.”
A tremor ran through her and then another and another, a tide that she was determined to hold back. And still it took her as easily as a dog took a rabbit, shook her playfully until she was limp and couldn't protect herself or run. Nathaniel let her weep, one hand on her shoulder, and tried to remember the last time he had seen her like this.
It took him back a long way, to the summer they were first married. Trouble with Todd had driven them into the endless forests, the summer she had fought for his life and her own, fought Richard and Jack Lingo, that old devil, fought the bush and the weather and terror and her own weakness. She had faced all of that down and the strain of it had carved a hollow in her.
Nathaniel thought of those days, oddly as clear and bright in his mind as the things he had done this very morning, and then found out she had followed him back through the years to the very same place.
“I should have done it back then,” she said. “I should have killed him in the bush and left him to rot. Think of all the heartache it would have saved.”
The weeping came over her again, harsh as a scouring snow. When the worst of it was over he pressed himself up against her back, draped his arm around her shoulder. He cradled her against him and stroked her hair until she slept.
He slept too, and woke in the dead of night to find her sitting, her arms looped around her knees and her hair flowing around her shoulders like some witchy woman from one of Jennet's stories.
She said, “I won't let Ethan go away. He is my only brother's boy, and he should be here near us, where we can keep an eye on him.”
There were things he could say, rational things that she would not try to deny in the light of day: that Ethan was a man grown, with a mind and will of his own. That this day had been coming for a long time and they had all known it, even if they never spoke of it.
The truth was, Ethan wanted to leave Paradise and had not known how to do that. Richard had only given his stepson what he could not bring himself to ask for. Ethan would go off to study at some college in New-York City or Boston or Philadelphia, and in two years' time, if Richard had his way, he wouldn't remember why he had ever hesitated to leave Paradise, or why he might want to come back.
Nathaniel could say all those things that Elizabeth knew anyway, or he could leave it all and say something even truer: this had less to do with Ethan moving away than it did with their own Daniel, gone now for more weeks than either of them wanted to count, and no word for the last month.
It was something they lived with minute by minute, each of them, and did not discuss: what it might mean, if the worst had come to pass.
In the faint light from the window he saw her expression harden, as if he had spoken those words, and more.
“Damn you, Nathaniel Bonner.” Her voice trembled, close to breaking. “Damn you, you're going to let Richard win. You'll see Ethan off and build the schoolhouse and let your daughter take over his practice. You're giving Richard Todd everything he ever wanted.” Her eyes flashed at him, tear-filled and furious.
He had been holding his anger tight and small and close to him, but now it began to run like sand from a clenched fist. He swallowed hard and met her eye, saw the challenge there.
“He never got you, did he? He never got you or Hannah, and by God, Boots, what the hell do I care for the rest of it, so long as I kept hold of what matters most?”
She trembled and then broke like a branch in a high wind, falling toward him, back bowed, and he caught her as he always had and always would as long as he lived. He caught her up against him and rocked her, whispered soft things against her hair and touched her gently, his fingers tracing her jaw and the line of her lip and the widow's peak that carved her face into a heart.
“He'll come home in the end,” Nathaniel said. “He will come home safe.”
That was what she needed to hear and so he gave it to her, against his better judgment. She did not press him for names, for times and days, as she would have done as a younger woman. She was satisfied, right now, with in the end.
Elizabeth in a fury was something he knew how to deal with; he could ride that storm until it wore itself out and she was ready to pull reason back around her shoulders like a warm blanket. Until then he would keep his opinions to himself.
But this was something rarer, this quiet white anger that pinned her down and gagged her. What end it would take, even Nathaniel couldn't predict. He watched her from his spot near the hearth while he cleaned his rifle and then sharpened his knives, poured lead into bullet molds, refilled his powder horn. These were things he had done every day of his life, the movements as natural to him as breathing, and he could do them in a quiet cabin or with a battle raging around his ears. What he couldn't do, what he couldn't imagine, was what she might say when the power of speech came back to her.
It wasn't until they had banked the fire and gone to bed that the last of his patience was spent. Lying next to Elizabeth in their marriage bed, he studied the back of her head for a while and then he said the first thing that came to mind.
“You could go put a bullet in the man, Boots. It wouldn't do him any harm and it might make you feel better.”
A tremor ran through her and then another and another, a tide that she was determined to hold back. And still it took her as easily as a dog took a rabbit, shook her playfully until she was limp and couldn't protect herself or run. Nathaniel let her weep, one hand on her shoulder, and tried to remember the last time he had seen her like this.
It took him back a long way, to the summer they were first married. Trouble with Todd had driven them into the endless forests, the summer she had fought for his life and her own, fought Richard and Jack Lingo, that old devil, fought the bush and the weather and terror and her own weakness. She had faced all of that down and the strain of it had carved a hollow in her.
Nathaniel thought of those days, oddly as clear and bright in his mind as the things he had done this very morning, and then found out she had followed him back through the years to the very same place.
“I should have done it back then,” she said. “I should have killed him in the bush and left him to rot. Think of all the heartache it would have saved.”
The weeping came over her again, harsh as a scouring snow. When the worst of it was over he pressed himself up against her back, draped his arm around her shoulder. He cradled her against him and stroked her hair until she slept.
He slept too, and woke in the dead of night to find her sitting, her arms looped around her knees and her hair flowing around her shoulders like some witchy woman from one of Jennet's stories.
She said, “I won't let Ethan go away. He is my only brother's boy, and he should be here near us, where we can keep an eye on him.”
There were things he could say, rational things that she would not try to deny in the light of day: that Ethan was a man grown, with a mind and will of his own. That this day had been coming for a long time and they had all known it, even if they never spoke of it.
The truth was, Ethan wanted to leave Paradise and had not known how to do that. Richard had only given his stepson what he could not bring himself to ask for. Ethan would go off to study at some college in New-York City or Boston or Philadelphia, and in two years' time, if Richard had his way, he wouldn't remember why he had ever hesitated to leave Paradise, or why he might want to come back.
Nathaniel could say all those things that Elizabeth knew anyway, or he could leave it all and say something even truer: this had less to do with Ethan moving away than it did with their own Daniel, gone now for more weeks than either of them wanted to count, and no word for the last month.
It was something they lived with minute by minute, each of them, and did not discuss: what it might mean, if the worst had come to pass.
In the faint light from the window he saw her expression harden, as if he had spoken those words, and more.
“Damn you, Nathaniel Bonner.” Her voice trembled, close to breaking. “Damn you, you're going to let Richard win. You'll see Ethan off and build the schoolhouse and let your daughter take over his practice. You're giving Richard Todd everything he ever wanted.” Her eyes flashed at him, tear-filled and furious.
He had been holding his anger tight and small and close to him, but now it began to run like sand from a clenched fist. He swallowed hard and met her eye, saw the challenge there.
“He never got you, did he? He never got you or Hannah, and by God, Boots, what the hell do I care for the rest of it, so long as I kept hold of what matters most?”
She trembled and then broke like a branch in a high wind, falling toward him, back bowed, and he caught her as he always had and always would as long as he lived. He caught her up against him and rocked her, whispered soft things against her hair and touched her gently, his fingers tracing her jaw and the line of her lip and the widow's peak that carved her face into a heart.
“He'll come home in the end,” Nathaniel said. “He will come home safe.”
That was what she needed to hear and so he gave it to her, against his better judgment. She did not press him for names, for times and days, as she would have done as a younger woman. She was satisfied, right now, with in the end.
