Davy Read online

  A little stream flowed from the woods into the ditch along the road. Toward this, from the thick bushes, a Katskil soldier was crawling, his bronze helmet slung over his arm. A thin gray-eyed boy, maybe seventeen. He was attempting to pull himself along by his arms, one leg helping. The other leg was gashed from hip to knee, and an arrow-shaft protruded from his left side.

  The dog was a poor slinking thing, but it could kill a helpless man. The boy saw the brute suddenly and his face remained blank, curiously patient, shining with sweat. I set an arrow and as the dog whirled at the slight noise to face me I sunk it in his yellow chest. He leaped and tried to bite his flank and died.

  The boy watched me, puzzled, when I said: “I’ll get you the water.” He let me take his helmet. It was hard for him to drink, his shaky hands no help. He rolled his head away and said: “I a’n’t nothing to ransom — the old man ha’n’t got a pot, never had.” The effort of speech brought a stain of blood to his mouth.

  “Will I lift you?”

  He looked at the water, wanting it, and nodded. I felt the splash of the first rain-drops on my head. At the touch of my arm at his shoulder I saw it was too much for him. I spooned water in my hand, and he got down a little but lost it in a sharp cough. The arrow may have pierced his stomach. He said: “Shouldn’t’ve tried it.”

  I took the rag from my head and tried to close up the long wound in his thigh. The rag was not long nor wide enough; trying to fasten it was a nightmare frustration. A bang and roll of near thunder almost covered what the soldier was saying: “Let it be. Be you Moha, that red thatch?”

  They have an odd speech in Katskil. I had heard it at the inn, though not much in the last two years when the war jitters were building up. They drawl in a pinch-nose way, leave out half their rs and any syllable that doesn’t happen to suit them.

  I told him: “I got no country.”

  “Ayah? You be’n’t with us, I know ever’ damn fool bum in the b’talion including myself.”

  “I’m alone. Running away.”

  “I get it.” The rain came then in a sudden and ponderous rush, soaking us, hammering my back. I leaned over him; at least my shirt could keep the downpour from battering his face. “Ran away once myself — tried to, I mean.” He seemed to want to talk. “Pa caught me filling a sack, believe me I got no forrader. He wa’n’t for me going into the A’my neither, said it was all no consequence. You killed that yalla dog real neat.”

  “Damn scavenger.”

  “Jackalaws we call ’em down home. Handle a bow real good.”

  “I been in the woods a lot.”

  “Tell by the way you walk.” His voice was reaching me with difficulty through the roar of water around us. “Running away. That ’ere gray — your ballock-rag — that mean bond-servant? Does in my country.”

  “Uhha.”

  “Look, boy, don’t let it bug you. I want to tell you, don’t let ’em tromp you or tell you where to go. They spit in your eye you spit back, see?… Nice country hereabouts, might be good corn land. Our outfit laid up all the night in the woods — under stren’th, the damn fool brass, the way they do things, one comp’ny split off yesterday for another job — hell with it. Wanted to say, I was noticing what a pile of oaks you got around here. Means good corn land, ever’ time. Last night was a real foggy sumbitch, wa’n’t it?”

  “I slept in a tree.”

  “Do tell. Raining now, a’n’t it?” Both of us were drenched, the water bouncing a stream from a crease in his shirt where I couldn’t shelter him, and pelting on his legs. But he was really asking, not sure of the world, his eyes losing me, finding me again.

  “It’s raining some,” I said. “Listen, I’m going to get you deeper in the woods where won’t nobody search, understand? Stay by while you heal up. Then you can come along.”

  “Sure enough?” I think he was seeing it, as I was trying to — the journeying, friendship, new places. We’d go together; we’d have women, amusement, something always happening. Above all, the journeying.

  I said: “We’d get along all right.”

  “Sure. Sure we will.”

  I never learned his name. His face smoothed out completely and I had to let him lie back on the earth.

  11

  I remember the rain. Not long after my friend was dead, it slackened to a dull beating on the earth. I could not hope to scratch a grave in the tree roots and wet clay. In any case I have never liked the thought of burying the dead, unless it might be done as they do in Penn, marking the place with nothing but a grapevine, and taking the wineharvest in later years with no sense of trespass or disrespect. If that can’t be, maybe burning is best. Does it matter? — all the world’s a graveyard, a procreants’ bed, and a cradle.

  I slipped away from the road into the bushes, sure now that there’d be no pursuit by men and dogs. In the dripping woods, however, I still moved softly. I was guessing my northeast direction accurately, for I had been on my way more than an hour when, off to my right where it ought to be, I heard a racket of hoofs galloping on wet road-mud, swelling loud, dying away into little taps like the noise a child can make by flipping a stick along a picket fence. A dispatch rider, probably, bound for Skoar. After that I heard only the diminishing sober discourse of the rain.

  I grew hungry, but wanted a fire for my hen — raw chicken is discouraging. The morning was spent by the time I located a good spot. An oak had blown over against a slope years before, its root cluster jutting out aslant and catching a gradual drift of leaves, thus creating a roof of sorts. From the pocket of earth where roots had once grown, rains had dug out a drainage gully. I grubbed under the surface of the forest floor and found tindery stuff to start a blaze in the shelter of that overhang. Soon the fire was comforting me while my hen browned on a green ash spit. I hung my shirt and loin-rag on an oak-root near the warmth, and squatted naked letting the harmless rain sluice off my back. For a while, except to keep track of my cooking hen, I can’t have been thinking at all. Rain lulls you out of alertness like someone talking on and on, explaining too much.

  The men came quletly. I was aware of them only an instant before the thin one said: “Don’t pull that knife, Jackson. We don’t mean you no ha’m.” His voice was firm but weary, like his long face under a bloody dark green rag.

  “Don’t be scared,” said the other man, a moon-faced giant. “Matter-fact I been called by the blessed Abraham not to do no hurt to no man, also—”

  The thin man said: “Hold up the mill, will you, whiles I talk to the boy? Jackson, the dang thing of it is, we’d like a snip of that ’ere, bein’ stinkin’ hungry is all.”

  He was about fifty, gray and quiet. The rag on his head gave the hollows under his smoky blue eyes a greenish tinge. Long grooves bracketed his mouth and nose. His dark green shirt lacked a section where his head bandage must have been torn out; a hunting knife at his belt very much like mine appeared to be his only weapon. His belt was broad like a sash, with fold-over parts that would be useful for carrying small things. His lean legs sticking out of a shabby green loin-rag were dark and bunchy as bundles of harness leather.

  The other man also wore the wreck of a Katskil army uniform; some kind of belt and rope-soled sandals. He carried a sword in a sheath of brass, a worthless thing in the woods. Both had at their belts long and rather flat canteens made of bronze that would have held about a quart.

  Stupid as you can get, I said: “Where you from?”

  The thin man gave me a good smile, dry and friendly. “Points south, Jackson. Will you share the meat with a man that fit your country yesterday and got a hole in his head, and a big old Jo that looks fit to scare the children but don’t want to fight no more?”

  “Kay,” I said. They weren’t crowding me; I almost wanted to share it. “Yesterday? Be’n’t you from that fight down the road by Skoar?”

  “Nay. When was it?”

  “Couple-three hours gone. I was up a tree.”

  “Couldn’t think of a finer plac
e with a fuckin’ war goin’ on.”

  “You Katskils done an ambush and got beat off.”

  He slapped his leg, mixed satisfaction and disgust. “God damn, I prophesied it. Could’ve told the brass, that’s what you get for splitting the b’talion. Comes to me though, the meat-heads never asked me.” He squatted on his heels beside me, giving my hen the gloomiest gaze any chicken ever got and no fault of its own. The moon-face jo stood apart, watching me. “I feel bad about this, Jackson, If’n it was just me and my large friend standin’ over theah in the rain so bungfull of the milk of human kindness a man can’t see where he’d squeeze in no more nourishment noway—”

  “Now, Sam,” said the big man. “Now, Sam—”

  But Sam liked to talk, and went on regardless, in his slow-drawly Katskil voice, amusement and sadness ex changing places the way clouds play games with the sun: “If it was only him and me and you, Jackson, we might make out, but the dad-gandered almighty thing of it is, we got one other mouth to consider which’s got itself a bumped knee but still suffers if it don’t eat good. You think that ’ere little-ass bird could do a fourway split?”

  “Well, sure,” I said — “two leg-hunks and two halfbosoms and ever’body arise from the God-damn table a mite hungry is good for you as the fella says — where’s the fourth?”

  “Off into the brush a piece.”

  “See like I told you, Sam? Boy’s got an open nature full of divine grace and things. What’s y’ name, Red?”

  “Davy.”

  “Davy what?”

  “Just Davy. Orphanage. Bonded out at nine.”

  “Now we got no wish to betrouble you, but maybe you a’n’t bound back wheah you come from?”

  Sam said :”That’s his business, Jackson.”

  “I know,” said the moon-faced man. “I a’n’t pushin’ the boy for no answer, but it’s a fair question.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “I’m on the run, ayah.”

  “Nor I don’t blame you,” says Moon-face. “Noticed that ’ere gray ballock-rag hangin’ there right away, and what I’ve hearn about the way they’ll always do the dirty on a b.s. in Moha, it’s a national disgrace. You keep y’ chin up, boy, and trust in God. That’s the way to live, understand? Just keep y’ chin up and y’ bowels open, and trust in God.”

  “You let him snow you, Jackson, you’ll start thinkin’ they don’t treat bond-servants like shit in Katskil too.”

  “Sam, Sam Loomis, some-way I got to break you of that ’ere cussin’ and blasphemin’. A’n’t no fitten type talk for a young boy to hear.” Sam just looked at me; I felt he was laughing up a storm inside of him and nobody’d ever know it except himself and me. The big jo went ofl kindly: “Now, boy Davy, you mustn’t think I’m claimin’ I a’n’t no sinner no more, that’d be an awful vanity, though I do claim a lot of stuff’s been purified out’n me like a refiner’s fire and things, but anyway — my name’s Jedro Sever, call me Jed if you want, we’re all democraticals here I hope, and sinner though I be I fear God and go by his holy laws, and right now I says unto you lo, I says, bond-servant or no, you be just as much a man and citizen in the sight of God as I be, y’ hear?”

  More casual, Sam asked: “Things got tough?”

  “You could say so.” Then somehow I was blurting it right out: “An awful accident happened. I killed a man accidental, but nobody’d ever believe it was so, anyhow not the policers.” I suppose I might have held it in if I hadn’t taken them for deserters, on the run as I was and not concerned about Moha laws.

  Jedro Sever said: “A’n’t no such of a thing as an accident in the sight of God, Davy. You mean, it happened without you intending it. God’s got his great and glorious reasons that a’n’t for such as us to look into. If’n you be truthful about it not being intended, why, no sin theah.”

  Sam was looking into me with a cool thoughtfulness I’d never seen in anyone, man or women. I don’t know how long it was before he let me off that hook — my hen was well browned, smelling just right, and the rain had slackened to a mere drizzle. “I’m taking your word,” Sam said at last. “Don’t never make me sorry I done it.”

  “I will not,” I said. And I don’t think I ever did. The confidence between Sam and me was a part of my life that was never spoiled. In the times that followed I often lost patience with him, and he with me, but — suppose I say it this way: we never gave up on each other. “Ayah,” I said, “I run off, and I’d be a sure thing for hanging was I caught and took back to Skoar. Kindly avoid hanging whenever I can see my way to it, that’s how I am.”

  “Whenever,” said Jed, unhappy. “Look, boy, if you was ever once—”

  “Joke, Jackson. Boy’s yoking.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Jed laughed uncomfortably, the way you might if you accidentally interrupted someone taking a leak. “You know the country round heah, boy Davy?”

  “Never come thisaway this far before. We’re near the Northeast Road. Skoar’s off west, five-six miles.”

  Sam said: “I was through these pa’ts yeahs ago, in peacetime — Humber Town, Skoar, Seneca, Chengo.”

  “Katskil border’s a few miles south,” I said.

  “Ayah,” said Jed, “but we be’n’t bound thataway. Understand, in the sight of God we be’n’t deserters. Me, I labor in the vineyard like on a mission, and old Sam Loomis theah, why, he a’n’t no sinful man ay-tall, spite of his bad talk. One day God’s grace is going to bust onto him like a refiner’s fire and things. I mean he merely lost his outfit in a scrimmage like anyone might. Same outfit I was with — I left sooner, beth’ called by the good Lord.”

  “Ayah,” Sam said. “I lost track of my comp’ny in the woods after a little trouble yesterday, up the road ten mile. What the A’my does with deserters, Jackson — I mean with people it thinks is deserters — well, what they do, they string ’em to a tree for bow and arrow practise, and then so’t of leave ’em. Saves a burial detail. Got my head busted and was knocked out a while, comp’ny gone when I come to, I don’t blame ’em for thinking I was a deader, but I don’t believe I got the patience to explain it all, was I to see ’em again. One comp’ny was detached from the b’talion, idea was to make a little show up the road, delay you Mohas and make you think it was all we had in the area. Then the main b’talion hiding down thisaway could clobber you. Cute idea.”

  “The Mohas a’n’t no army of mine. Got no country.”

  “Know what you mean,” said Sam, watching me. “I’m a loner by trade… Well, them no’th Moha apple-knockers, excuse the expression, came along nine hours late, after whoring it up around Humber Town likely, so after they brushed us off they squatted down to camp for the night. I should know, having damn nigh walked into ’em in the dark. Must’ve been rested and happy by the time the b’talion jumped ’em this mo’ning. We didn’t do too good?”

  “Not too. Mohas was too many. Two to one or more.”

  “Boy’s a gentleman,” said Sam, and rested his wounded head on his knees. “Ayah, the brass gets fanciful and the men get dead.” I’d spotted Sam Loomis for a woodsman; he had my habit of quick side-glances. He wouldn’t be caught unready by the unexpected stir of a branch or slither of questing life along the ground. Jed might be; his eyes did not look alert. Baldness had thinned even Jed’s eyebrows to pale wisps; it gave him the look of a great startled baby. “ Jackson , that little-ass bird’s near done.” As I took it away from the flame he added: “Maybe better slip on y’ bullock-rag, account that other’n off in the brush — I just damn-all f’got to mention it — well, see, she happens to be a female woman.” Then glancing up at Jed Sever’s disapproving mass, he said: “Moves around real peart for a young boy, don’t he?”

  When I had my rags on Jed called off thinly into the wet woods: “Oh, Vilet!”

  “Don’t fret,” Sam said to me under his breath — “I wouldn’t done it to you only she’s broad in the mind as well as in the beam.”

  Limping out of a nearby thicket, the woman said:
“I hearn that, Sam.” She gave him the small half of a grin, and the rest of us a challenging stare from under thick brows black as ink. Her dark green linsey smock left her knees bare, and the left one was bruised but not badly. She was anywhere in the thirties, a short slab-sided bigmuscled wench with no waist to speak of, but someway you didn’t miss it. Even with the slight limp she had a solid animal grace and sureness. She didn’t like being wet as a mushrat. “I did oughta ream y’ out, Sam, talking thataway about a tender blossom like me, hunnert and thirty pounds and all of it wildcat.”

  “A’n’t she the sha’p little thing?” said Jed, and I saw he’d gone all mush-mind and lover-dreamy.

  “Ayah,” she sighed — “sha’p as an old shovel beat out onto the rocks ten-twenty yeahs.” She slipped off a shoulder-sack something like mine, and tried to wring some of the water from her smock and pull it clear of her crotch and meaty thighs. “You men be lucky, them Goddamn loose shirts and stuff.”

  “Vilet!” No longer dreamy, Jed spoke like a stern grandfather. “None of that cussing! We been into that.”

  “Aw, Jed!” Her look at him was cocky, affectionate, submissive too. “You’d cuss, I bet, if n you couldn’t tell y’ clo’es from y’ hide.”

  “No I wouldn’t.” He stared her down, solemn as a church. “And ‘hide’ — that a’n’t a nice word neither.”

  “Aw, Jed!” She squeezed water from her black hair. It was short, and shaggy as if she’d hacked it off with a knife, the way soldiers do if there’s no barber in the outfit. She dropped into a squat beside me and gave my leg a ringing slap with a square brown paw. “Your name’s Davy, ha? Hiya, Davy, and how they hangin’, lover-pup?”

  “Vilet dear,” says Jed, mighty patient, “we been into all that. No more cussing, no more lewd talk.”

  “Aw, Jed, I’m sorry, anyhow I didn’t mean it like lewd, just friendly.” Her eyes, dark greenish gray with a hint of golden flecks, were uncommonly lovely, set in the frame of her beefy homeliness, violets in rough ground. “I mean, Jed, things keep slippin’ my mind and poppin’ out.” She pulled her wet smock out from her big breasts and winked at me, head turned so that Jed wouldn’t see it, but she meant her words too; she wasn’t fighting him. “You gotta be patient, Jed, you gotta leave me come unto Abraham kind of a gradual sort of a way, like I gotta creep before I walk, see?”