nothing. But I stupefy myself. I sink my thoughtsinto Rebecca and our bed and anything that takes my mind from the plough.
Do not think of the army or the French or the Indians. That life is not for you. This is life
.
This I hear in Ma’s voice. I stop and bend to clear away a speckled chunk of rock. The horse throws back its head.
Do not think
.
But it is easy enough to think of the French and the Indians. They are closer to Carolina again and more unhappy than ever with those settled here and those pushing farther to the south and the west. And now the British, that is to say the true British in the old country, want to tear us up by the roots. We are still Britons, our settler militia flies the King’s flag, but we are not subjects enough, it seems. We go too far, we get in everyone’s road, we interfere with their fur trading and their treaties, planting ourselves here wherever we like, moving into places they do not want us. It is all a game, all cats and mice. At any rate I find myself neither cat nor mouse.
I stand and look in a circle about me, checking for sound or smoke from anywhere. A pair of Bryan’s slaves is at work far up in one of his fields, talking now and then. Their voices carry, slow and easy. The house at the end of the flats is quiet, closed in on itself like a basket with Rebecca and the children in it, Jamesie and my own little Israel now, as well as Jesse and Jonathan. The other Bryan houses are not so far off. The fences are up. The cows look stout enough, and cows can kill, as you know, poor Jezebel. Surely happiness is some protection. It is natural to feel so. But I feel also that if I could stand on a clifftop and look down, the farm would be a tiny rough island in the darker ocean of wilderness. All the toil of hacking down trees, dragging out stumps, clearing away brush, for this.
I want to look into the dark.
I sigh, which I do not like to do. I want to run off. I throw down the plough. The horse snorts and sets to work tearing up a clump ofthin grass. I close my eyes and think of last winter, when I crossed the Blue Ridge for the first time after a slave herding cows in the mountain pastures showed me an old trace. His name was Burrell, and he had a broad face and a thin neck. I gave him a few swallows of my whiskey for his help. He said there was more he could show me, but I had no more whiskey. So I followed the trace west myself for two days. I found many creeks and springs and a lot of ginseng, which I took to sell, and the game was very good. In my mind I can see every tree, every nick in the bark, every plant, every animal shit, every sign.
But I had to come back. And now it is spring, there is no end to this work and this place. The wind in the trees has a sound like waves. When we wanted a real story, Ma always used to tell us of her own mother’s crossing of the ocean. Her poor little Ma from Wales, going off to a fearsome new world. She was certain the ship would fall through a hole in the water straight into Hell but was glad enough to think of any end to being so seasick.
The wind drops, the sound lessens. I am still here. Well. I sit and lie back and strike my head on another small stone. My head throbs. Now I foresee myself turned under in the Bryan burying ground or in this very field, pressed flat with a cartload of the red soil, my face mashed by a spadeful of it.
A soft rushing sound comes, like the breath of someone running along lightly. Something is coming for me. My heart sets to beating hard. I have not felt them for a time, the dead ones who trail along behind me. I am alive, I have Rebecca, I have children. But here also are the dead. I feel their coolness and their interest once more.
They will dig me up: so I think. I laugh and the laugh goes flat in the dirt.
I get up. Nobody is here. The horse sees me and lays its ears flat against its head. I still have the speckled rock in my hand, and I am sighing again.
Fate hands me another exit. Though
Do not think of the army or the French or the Indians. That life is not for you. This is life
.
This I hear in Ma’s voice. I stop and bend to clear away a speckled chunk of rock. The horse throws back its head.
Do not think
.
But it is easy enough to think of the French and the Indians. They are closer to Carolina again and more unhappy than ever with those settled here and those pushing farther to the south and the west. And now the British, that is to say the true British in the old country, want to tear us up by the roots. We are still Britons, our settler militia flies the King’s flag, but we are not subjects enough, it seems. We go too far, we get in everyone’s road, we interfere with their fur trading and their treaties, planting ourselves here wherever we like, moving into places they do not want us. It is all a game, all cats and mice. At any rate I find myself neither cat nor mouse.
I stand and look in a circle about me, checking for sound or smoke from anywhere. A pair of Bryan’s slaves is at work far up in one of his fields, talking now and then. Their voices carry, slow and easy. The house at the end of the flats is quiet, closed in on itself like a basket with Rebecca and the children in it, Jamesie and my own little Israel now, as well as Jesse and Jonathan. The other Bryan houses are not so far off. The fences are up. The cows look stout enough, and cows can kill, as you know, poor Jezebel. Surely happiness is some protection. It is natural to feel so. But I feel also that if I could stand on a clifftop and look down, the farm would be a tiny rough island in the darker ocean of wilderness. All the toil of hacking down trees, dragging out stumps, clearing away brush, for this.
I want to look into the dark.
I sigh, which I do not like to do. I want to run off. I throw down the plough. The horse snorts and sets to work tearing up a clump ofthin grass. I close my eyes and think of last winter, when I crossed the Blue Ridge for the first time after a slave herding cows in the mountain pastures showed me an old trace. His name was Burrell, and he had a broad face and a thin neck. I gave him a few swallows of my whiskey for his help. He said there was more he could show me, but I had no more whiskey. So I followed the trace west myself for two days. I found many creeks and springs and a lot of ginseng, which I took to sell, and the game was very good. In my mind I can see every tree, every nick in the bark, every plant, every animal shit, every sign.
But I had to come back. And now it is spring, there is no end to this work and this place. The wind in the trees has a sound like waves. When we wanted a real story, Ma always used to tell us of her own mother’s crossing of the ocean. Her poor little Ma from Wales, going off to a fearsome new world. She was certain the ship would fall through a hole in the water straight into Hell but was glad enough to think of any end to being so seasick.
The wind drops, the sound lessens. I am still here. Well. I sit and lie back and strike my head on another small stone. My head throbs. Now I foresee myself turned under in the Bryan burying ground or in this very field, pressed flat with a cartload of the red soil, my face mashed by a spadeful of it.
A soft rushing sound comes, like the breath of someone running along lightly. Something is coming for me. My heart sets to beating hard. I have not felt them for a time, the dead ones who trail along behind me. I am alive, I have Rebecca, I have children. But here also are the dead. I feel their coolness and their interest once more.
They will dig me up: so I think. I laugh and the laugh goes flat in the dirt.
I get up. Nobody is here. The horse sees me and lays its ears flat against its head. I still have the speckled rock in my hand, and I am sighing again.
Fate hands me another exit. Though
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