Cape Cod by William Martin Page A

and the others. “If you care for this man’s soul, quiet him.” Then he took Priscilla by the elbow and started down the hill.
    “Go!” screamed Jack. “Go back and watch more of ’em die, and pray in their ears while they do. Then pray over their meat when they’re dead.”
    “Pray for yourself.”
    “God damn you Ezra Bigelow, and God damn your prayers.”
    “Quiet yourself,” urged Simeon. “Think of the boy.”
    “I do think of him, all the time.” Jack strode to the top of the hill and shook his fist at the moonlight. “I do think of him, ‘cause God won’t, God damn him.”
    “Blasphemy.” The word rushed out of Ezra Bigelow as though Satan were crushing his chest. “Blasphemy!”
    “I blaspheme the blackness!” shouted Hilyard.
    “Quiet afore the whole colony suffers!” Ezra cried.
    “How much more can the colony suffer?” Hilyard looked again at the sky. “God damn thee, thou cold, heartless, hidden bastard of a God.”
    “No more of this!” cried Ezra Bigelow in a voice as terrifying as Hilyard’s own.
    “God damn thee for lettin’ us think thou hear our prayin’ whilst the best of us”—Jack’s voice cracked—“the best of us”—he dropped to his knees—“whilst the best of us goes into the ground.”
    Jack’s blasphemy was finished, and the terrible pain of faithlessness now poured forth in great gulping sobs. The others were running up the hill to comfort him, but Ezra went no farther than the grave mouth. He knew that God would not hold the grieving words of a Stranger against the colony, though Ezra would hold them against the Stranger himself.

iv.
    By the time the sun was up full, its light dancing like quicksilver on the sea, Jack Hilyard and his son were four miles south of the settlement, on an Indian trail that curved along a high bluff. They carried what they could of blankets, clothes, a hammer and saw, some dried beans, and a greasy duck. The boy wore Jack’s cutlass, and Jack kept a match smoldering in the metal box on his belt.
    He had decided he could pay no heed to love or sentiment. He had good friends in the colony, for certain. They had comforted him in the night, given him what beer they had, and stayed with him until he slept. But they could not protect him or the boy from the sickness. And while Kate’s last request had been for them to stay with the colony, Jack believed the sickness had clouded her mind. In health, she would have told him to heed the voice inside him, especially when God left him to his own devices. After last night, Jack expected little help from God, and even less from those who held regular conversations with him.
    He wondered if God had bothered to tell Ezra Bigelow where sickness came from or where it went. God had offered no answers to Jack on the matter. He could think only to get himself and his son away. Better to chance savages and starvation than scurvy and the coughing death.
    He looked over his shoulder. Christopher was striding steadily along the path, his hand on the sword hilt, his head tilted slightly to keep the boil on his neck from rubbing against his collar. The boy was acting the brave soldier and Jack’s chest filled pride.
    Christopher had not spoken since they slipped away. That was not unusual. He was a quiet lad, and any twelve-year-old with any sense listened more than he spoke. Indeed, anyone of any age who had seen what Christopher had might have been struck dumb as a stone. But there was strength in youth, and even in the worst of times, Christopher watched and listened and sought to understand what passed before him.
    He now had no mother, no confidence in God, and no community beyond his father and the stunted pines along the path. His sense of the uncertainty of things was great. But he found meaning where he could, and like all boys, he seized on physical things, on the pain of the boil, on the weight of his pack, but most of all on the cutlass hilt in his hand. His father had shown confidence