at the time I do not wish to take it.
Rebecca is boiling over with fear of attack, and her fear is pointed straight at me. It is late spring now, and everything is bone dry. It has hardly rained in a month. The Cherokees and Iroquois have raided settlements up and down the Yadkin Valley too many times in the last weeks. Not enough food, as the new-planted crops are drying up. And more settlers are coming in all the time, claiming more of the land. Some are thieves looking to take anything they can get. They stole a young girl from Halseys’ over the creek. We gathered the militia and got her back before they could hurt her, but Halsey said she did not speak for a week. Now the Halseys have gone. So have others.
Rebecca pulls me out the door when the children are asleep. The insects are fiddling at a high pitch. The fat-lamp sizzles and spits inside. She is listening hard to every sound and she has a twist of my shirt in her fingers.
—Do you really wish to stay here? Do you?
Her black eye is sharp and her voice is soft. She knows how to pierce me through. I know she is foreseeing my death and possibly her own. Or capture and imprisonment. Her eyes flood with a rush of pictures of the children captive or dead, but she pushes them down. She cannot think of them so—who can think of their children dead?
—Daniel.
The withering fields, the corn and wheat failing. The endless work. I look out towards them through the dark. The dull home militia training, marching back and forth with a straggling group of farmers. Now Rebecca grips the back of my neck as if I were a pup and she trying to shake me out of this. Her hand says:
Am I wrong to want a peaceful life? No
.
—Daniel, even some of the Indians are leaving now. I saw a group of Catawbas going north with all their things. They want no part of the fighting. Why would you want to stay?
The week before, I went on my militia duties with Squire to patrol a pair of the far backcountry farms. We found Jennings and his son and slave lying face up in their wheat, all shining and buzzing, black and green, cloaked in suits of flies. Their scalps gone and their eyes also by that time. The boy was some thirteen years of age. I could hardly bear to look at him, I was so sorry.
The body of a Cherokee was face down outside the door of their cabin in its own buzzing suit. Someone had got one shot in. We buried all of them, though some leave the Indians out in the air to rot. I did not tell Rebecca, but she knows. There was no one inside the house, but I saw a woman’s gown on a hook and a child’s cap on the bed.
She turns her back to me now and says:
—You smelled the smoke.
—You smelled it first.
A stupid joke. I did smell it, we all did. It travelled in the dark from the north last night, probably one of the Carters’ places, too much smoke to be burning brush. Too tarry and black, with too much stench, the kind that sticks to skin. Rebecca looks at me, her eyes fill with tears in an instant and she blinks them away. We do not bring up the smoke again. She moves back and forth like a switch in the air, and then goes inside.
She only wants to be gone. Her body has lost all its trained stillness. Daddy is the same, unsettled all through, worn down by Ma and age, his Carolina dream collapsed. So has the dream of Rebecca’s grandfather. In spite of all his land here in the Yadkin Valley, he has brushed the dirt from his hands and stood up to go. The retreat is sounding.
—Daniel. Danny.
Rebecca’s voice drifts from the doorway. I say:
—You know I never turn down a fight. Not even one against corn.
Again my words are stupid ones. I exhale through my teeth, a sigh by another name. I say:
—My Daddy will sell me six hundred of his acres, and we can have a better house. I know you would like that. Clapboard and an oak floor.
I do not think much of this idea, but perhaps she will. One of the children, likely Jamesie, breaks out of sleep with a cry, and Rebecca goes
Rebecca is boiling over with fear of attack, and her fear is pointed straight at me. It is late spring now, and everything is bone dry. It has hardly rained in a month. The Cherokees and Iroquois have raided settlements up and down the Yadkin Valley too many times in the last weeks. Not enough food, as the new-planted crops are drying up. And more settlers are coming in all the time, claiming more of the land. Some are thieves looking to take anything they can get. They stole a young girl from Halseys’ over the creek. We gathered the militia and got her back before they could hurt her, but Halsey said she did not speak for a week. Now the Halseys have gone. So have others.
Rebecca pulls me out the door when the children are asleep. The insects are fiddling at a high pitch. The fat-lamp sizzles and spits inside. She is listening hard to every sound and she has a twist of my shirt in her fingers.
—Do you really wish to stay here? Do you?
Her black eye is sharp and her voice is soft. She knows how to pierce me through. I know she is foreseeing my death and possibly her own. Or capture and imprisonment. Her eyes flood with a rush of pictures of the children captive or dead, but she pushes them down. She cannot think of them so—who can think of their children dead?
—Daniel.
The withering fields, the corn and wheat failing. The endless work. I look out towards them through the dark. The dull home militia training, marching back and forth with a straggling group of farmers. Now Rebecca grips the back of my neck as if I were a pup and she trying to shake me out of this. Her hand says:
Am I wrong to want a peaceful life? No
.
—Daniel, even some of the Indians are leaving now. I saw a group of Catawbas going north with all their things. They want no part of the fighting. Why would you want to stay?
The week before, I went on my militia duties with Squire to patrol a pair of the far backcountry farms. We found Jennings and his son and slave lying face up in their wheat, all shining and buzzing, black and green, cloaked in suits of flies. Their scalps gone and their eyes also by that time. The boy was some thirteen years of age. I could hardly bear to look at him, I was so sorry.
The body of a Cherokee was face down outside the door of their cabin in its own buzzing suit. Someone had got one shot in. We buried all of them, though some leave the Indians out in the air to rot. I did not tell Rebecca, but she knows. There was no one inside the house, but I saw a woman’s gown on a hook and a child’s cap on the bed.
She turns her back to me now and says:
—You smelled the smoke.
—You smelled it first.
A stupid joke. I did smell it, we all did. It travelled in the dark from the north last night, probably one of the Carters’ places, too much smoke to be burning brush. Too tarry and black, with too much stench, the kind that sticks to skin. Rebecca looks at me, her eyes fill with tears in an instant and she blinks them away. We do not bring up the smoke again. She moves back and forth like a switch in the air, and then goes inside.
She only wants to be gone. Her body has lost all its trained stillness. Daddy is the same, unsettled all through, worn down by Ma and age, his Carolina dream collapsed. So has the dream of Rebecca’s grandfather. In spite of all his land here in the Yadkin Valley, he has brushed the dirt from his hands and stood up to go. The retreat is sounding.
—Daniel. Danny.
Rebecca’s voice drifts from the doorway. I say:
—You know I never turn down a fight. Not even one against corn.
Again my words are stupid ones. I exhale through my teeth, a sigh by another name. I say:
—My Daddy will sell me six hundred of his acres, and we can have a better house. I know you would like that. Clapboard and an oak floor.
I do not think much of this idea, but perhaps she will. One of the children, likely Jamesie, breaks out of sleep with a cry, and Rebecca goes
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