Davy Read online

  “A’n’t got a pass, sir. You know how it is.”

  “Don’t give me that. You know everybody got to have a pass now, with a war on.”

  “War?” I’d grown so used to the yak about possible war with Katskil I’d given it no more heed than mosquito-buzz.

  “Declared yesterday. Everyone knows about it.”

  “Not me, sir. Lost in the woods yesterday.”

  “Likely tell,” he said, and we were back where we started. If war had been declared yesterday, wouldn’t Emmia have spoken of it to me? Maybe she had, while my wits were wandering. “Kay, so wha’d you do at this ’ere wha’d you say the God-damn name of the place was?”

  “Bull-and-Iron, sir. Yard-boy. You ask Mister Jon Robson. Mister. Member of the City Council too.”

  I didn’t blame him for not being impressed. Misters are a nickel a pair. Even Esquires don’t have the important shoulder-tattoo, and Esquire was the biggest Old Jon would ever get to be. The guard’s foot rolled me from side to side, hurting and churning. “Hear tell they’s lots of redheaded scum in Katskil. No pass. Doing a sneak-in. And bearin’ down on this crap about Mister like I needed a sumbitch like you to teach me manners, little snotnose fart that a high wind’d blow away. Aw, even if you a’n’t lyin’ you got to be reamed out some. Take you to the Captain is what I got to do. By him, being Mister Jon Whosit’s pansy a’n’t helping you.”

  I called him a bald-assed son of a whore, and now that I look back on it I believe that was almost the wrong thing to say. “Give y’self away then, Katskil. You be a Katskil spy. No b.s. is going to talk thataway to a bejasus member of the city gov’ment. Git up!”

  He had become an obstacle between me and Emmia, just that, hardly anything more. He’d told me to get up, but his foot was still grinding me. I grabbed it, heaved, and he went flying ass over brisket.

  My beef does get underestimated because of my pidlin size and natural-born goofy look. His brass helmet slammed the palings, a bone snapped in his neck, and when he spread out on the ground he was dead as ever a man needs to be.

  No pulse at his throat; his head flopped when I shook him. I caught the death smell — the poor jo’s bowels had let go. Not a soul near; shadows lay heavy, with only one dull lamp down the street. The noise of the helmet on the logs had been small. I could have climbed back over the stockade and been gone for good, but that’s not what I did.

  As I knelt staring at him the universe was still full to bursting with the hunger for Emmia that had drawn me back. There seemed to be some connection as I looked at the dead guard, my love-rod stiffening like a fool, as if he’d been a rival. Why, I’m no rutting stag that needs to crash horns into another male to make himself ready for the does. I wasn’t heartless either. I recall thinking there’d be others — wife, children, friends — whose lives would be jolted by what I’d done. That pale brown fitfully illuminated thing beside my knee was a human hand, with dirty fingernails, an old scar in the crotch between thumb and forefinger; maybe it could play a mandolin once. But it was dead, dead as the mue, and I was alive and hot for Emmia.

  I left him, not hating him at all, nor myself too much. Nor did I think once, as I stole across the city, of the Eye of God beholding every act, the way the church teaching had told me it does, and this seems curious to me, for at that time I was by no means free for any clear thinking.

  Nobody was abroad now except the watch, a few idlers and drunks and fifty-cent prosties, all of whom I could avoid. In the more respectable region where the Bull-andIron stood there wasn’t a cat stirring. The only light at the inn was in the tap room; I caught the drone of Old Jon talkmg along to some polite guest who likely wanted to go to bed. The moon was fairly high. I saw glints of light from it on the jinny-creeper leaves. I climbed softly, easily, and let myself over the sill.

  The moonlight gave me faint shapes: a chair, a bit of angular darkness probably a table, and a pale motion near at hand — why, that was myself, my image in the wall mirror by this window. I watched the image slip off shirt and loin-rag and lay the knife-belt on them, and stand naked as if held fast by its own quietness. Emmia stirred then, murmuring, and I went to her.

  My own shadow had been hiding her from the moon. As I moved, the light displayed her; she might have been glowing in the dark, her warmth like a touch as I bent over her and my hand made contact with tender silkiness. She was lying on her side, her back to me. The sheet was at her waist, pushed down because this night was heavy as the rose-season of summer.

  My fingers brought the sheet gently further down, barely touching the swell of her hip. Lightly also I touched the dark mass of her hair on the pillow and the dim curves of her neck and shoulder, and I wondered how she could sleep when my ungentle heart was so quickly and heavily drumming. I let myself down on the bed. “Emmia, it’s just me, Davy. I want you.” My hand roved, astonished, for my liveliest imaginings could never have told me how soft is a girl’s skin to a lover’s fingers. “Don’t be scared, Emmia — don’t make no noise — it’s Davy.”

  I felt no waking start, only a turning of her heat against my thigh, then answering pressure of her hand to tell me she was neither angry nor afraid. Later I wondered if she might not have been awake all the time, pretending sleep for a game or to see what I would do. Now she was staring up at me from the pifiow and whispering: “Davy, you be such a bad boy, ba-ad — why, oh, why did you go away again today? All day? So wild and crazy-like, what’ll I do about you at all?” — calm, soft talky-talk as if there was nothing remarkable about the two of us being on her bed naked as eggs in the middle of the night, my hand curling over her left breast and then straying downward bold as you please and she smiling.

  Yes, and so much for last night’s instructions on virtue and mustn’t-kiss-me-again. Gone like late-staying oak leaves when the spring winds lose patience, for I was kissing her now for sure, tasting the sweet life of her lips and tongue and nibbling her neck and telling her there was a right way and a wrong way and this time we’d bejasus do it the right way because I was going to have it into her come hell or hi-ho. And she whimpered: “Ah no!” — in a way that couldn’t mean anything except: “What the devil would be stopping you?” — and twisted her loins away from me, only to remind me I must use a little strength in this game.

  I was also driven to say: “Emmia, I did go off to do something difficult and honest — done it best I could, only it’s a thing I can’t tell you of, not ever, Spice. And I got to run away.”

  “Nay.” I don’t know if she heard anything truly except the “Spice.” I was at her ear again, and kissing the funny tip of her breast, and then her mouth. “So bad, Davy! — so bad!” Her fingers wandered now and demanded, as mine did, and mine found the little tropic swamp where I’d presently go. “Spice yourself!” she panted. “Tiger-tom. I won’t let you run away from me, Tiger-tom, won’t let you.”

  “Not from you.”

  “You be all man now, Davy. Oh!”

  I did want to say I loved her, or some such message, but speech was lost, for I was over her, clumsy and seeking, understanding for the first time the mimic violence that a loving heart can’t allow to go beyond the bounds of tenderness. She who had maybe always understood it, resisted me enough so that I must hold her down, overcome her, until presently the hot sweaty struggle itself was binding us together, as closely as our lips were bound whenever our mouths met and clung in the strife. Then, no longer resisting, her hands helped and guided me toward the blind thrust that took me into her.

  I could imagine myself her master then, while she was locked fast to me and groaning: “Davy, Davy, kill me, I’m dying, my lord, my love, you damn big beautiful Tiger-tom — keep on, oh, keep on!” — but all in a tiny voice, no outcry, mindful of our safety even when my world blew up in rainbow fire. So now I am fairly sure, years later, that in the first embrace I can’t have satisfied her completely. Kindness Emmia possessed. I think that to some extent, that first time, she acted a part out of kindness, well
enough so that a green boy could feel happy and proud, emperor of her shadowplace, a prince of love.

  It’s not true to say there’s only one first time. My first was Caron who understood what game the grown-ups played, and we played it the witless childhood way, maybe better than most tumbling whelps because in a more-thanchildhood way we did honestly cherish each other as people. But you may come to the first time with another as though the past were swept aside and you the same as virgin, entering a garden so new that all flowers taken in the past seem to belong to young years, smaller passions. I don’t suppose this could be true for the men who are driven in a mischancy race from one woman to the next, never staying long enough with one to learn anything except that she has — what a surprise! — the same pattern of organs as the last. Nor could it be true of the female collectors of scalps. But it’s true for anyone like myself to whom women are people, and is probably true for a woman who can see a bedmate is a friend and a person, not just an enemy or a child substitute or a phallus with legs.

  Emmia smoothed my hair. “Mustn’t run away.”

  “Not from you,” I said again.

  “Hush then.”

  I was finding a clarity like what may come with the ending of a fever. The world receded, yet grew sharper in lucid small detail. The dead guard at the stockade, the gleam of my golden horn, the mue become food for the yellow ants — all keeenly lit, tiny, perfect, like objects seen in sunlight through the bottom of a drinking glass. In the same vision I could find the fact of Emmia herself, that big-thighed honeypot deep as a well and shallow as a ripple on a brook, whom I now loved unpossessively.

  She whispered: “I know what made you a big lover alla-sudden. Found you a woods-girl out wilderness-way, one of the you-know, Little Ones, and she must be purtier than I be, and put a spell onto you the way no girl can say no.,,

  “Why, an elf-girl’d take one look and say poo.”

  “Nay — got a thing or two about you, Davy. Some time I’ll tell you how I know you been next to an elf-girl.” Emmia was laughing at the fancy, half-believing it too, for elves and such-like are real to Moha folk, as real as serious matters like witchcraft and astrology and the Church. “Nay, own up, Tiger-tom, and tell me what she did. Feed my boy one of them big pointy mushrooms that look like you-know-what?”

  “Nay. Old witch-woman, terrible humly.”

  “Don’t say such things, Davy! I was just fooling.”

  “Me too. Kay, tell me how you know.”

  “So what’ll you do for me if I do? I know — scratch my back — ooh, lower — that’s it, that’s good — more… Kay, here’s how I know: what happened to your luck-charm?”

  My brain banged into that one head-on. I was sitting bolt upright, scared frantic. I knew I had cut that fishing cord, strung the charm on it, and worn it. And not touched it since — or had I?… That I did not remember, and could not… Had it worked loose when I climbed the jinny-creeper? — hnpossible: I’d gone up like a slow wisp of smoke. The stockade then? — no. I’d done that too with great caution; besides, the logs were set so close you couldn’t shinny up — had to work your fingers into the cracks and your toes too, climbing with your body curving out; my chest wouldn’t have touched the palings. But when the guard clouted me I’d fallen face down and rolled, and his foot came down on my middle. My charm must have been torn loose when he roughed me, and I too mad to notice. Presently I couldn’t believe anything else.

  “Davy, love, what’d I say? I was just—”

  “Not you, Spice. I got to run away.”

  “Tell me.” She wanted to pull me back down to her, taking it for granted my trouble was only a boy’s fret, something a kiss would fix.

  I told her. “So it must be back there, Emmia, in plain sight. Might as good’ve stayed to tell ’em I done it.”

  “O Davy! But maybe he—”

  “Sumbitch is dead as shoe-leather.” I must have been thinking till now that I could run or not as I pleased; now I felt sure it was run or be hanged. Sooner or later the policers would find out whose neck the charm belonged to… “Emmia, does your Pa know I took off today?”

  “O Davy, I couldn’t cover for you today — I didn’t know you was gone. Ayah, Judd wanted you should take the mules out for to turn the vegetable patch — and found you gone — went and told my Da, and he said — my Da said you better have a real fine entertaining pile of — well — I mean, he said—”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I can’t. He didn’t mean it, he was just running off at the mouth.”

  “Just say it, Emmia.”

  “Said he’d turn in your name to the City Council.”

  “Ayah. To be slaved.”

  “Davy, love, he was just running off at the mouth.”

  “He meant it.”

  “No!” But I knew he’d meant it; I’d tried his patience too far at last. Having a bond-servant declared a slave for misconduct was too serious for even Old Jon to make flaptalk about it. “Look, Davy — they wouldn’t know the charm was yourn, would they?”

  “They’ll find out.” I was out of bed and hustling on my clothes. She came to me, distracted now and crying. “Emmia, is it a fact the war’s started?”

  “Why, I told you that last night!”

  “Must have been while I was light-headed.”

  “You stupid thing, don’t you ever listen to me?”

  “Tell me again — no, don’t. I got to go.”

  “Oh, it was that town off west — Seneca — Katskils went and occupied it and then declared war, a’n’t that awful? There’s a regiment of ourn coming to Skoar to see they don’t try no such here — but I told you all that.”

  Maybe she had. “Emmia, I got to go.”

  “O Davy, all this time we been — don’t go!” She clung to me, tears streaming. “I’ll hide you.” She wasn’t thinking. “See, they’d never look for you here.”

  “Search the whole inn, every room.”

  “Then take me with you. Oh, you got to! I hate it here, Davy. It stinks.”

  “Abraham’s mercy, keep your voice down!”

  “I hate it. Home!” She was trembling all over. Her head swung away and she spat on the floor, a furious little girl. “That for home! Take me with you, Davy!”

  “I can’t. The wilderness—”

  “Davy, look at me!” She stepped into moonlight, her hair wild and breasts heaving. “Look! A’n’t I all yourn? — all this, and this! Didn’t I give you everything?” Nay, I’ll never understand how people can speak of love as if it were a thing, and given — cut, sliced, measured. “Davy, don’t leave me behind! I’ll do anything you want — hunt — steal—”

  She couldn’t even have climbed the stockade.

  “Emmia, I’ll be sleeping in trees. Bandits — how could I fight off a bunch of them buggers? They’d have you spreadeagled in nothing flat. Tiger. Black wolf. Mues.”

  “M-m—”

  “In the wilderness, yes, and don’t ask me how I know, but those stories are true. I couldn’t take care of you out there, Emniia.”

  “You mean you don’t want me.” I hitched on my knife-belt. “You wouldn’t care if you’ve give’ me a baby — men’re all alike — Ma says — don’t never want nothin’ but put it in and then walk off. I despise you, Davy, I do despise you.”

  “Hush!”

  “I won’t, I hate you — screw you, did you think you was first or something? All right, now call me a whore!”

  “Hush, darling, hush! They’ll hear.”

  “I hate the whole mis’ble horny lot of you — you dirty lech, you boy — so proud of that stupid ugly thing and then all’s you do is run off, damn you—”

  I closed her mouth with mine, feeling her need of that, and pushed her back against the wall. Her fingers were tight in my hair, my knife annoying where it hung between us, but we were locked in the love-seizure again, I deep in her and not much caring if I hurt her a little. She responded as if she wanted to swallow me alive. By good
fortune my mouth still held hers closed when she needed to scream. Exhausted afterward, and desperate to be gone, I said: “I’ll come back for you when I can. I love you, Emmia.”

  “Yes, Davy, Spice, yes, when you can, when it’s safe for you, dearest.” And what I heard in her voice was mostly relief. In both our voices. “I’ll wait for you,” she said, believing it. “Always I’ll love you,” she said, believing it, which made it true at the time.

  “I’ll come back.”

  I’ve wondered how soon she understood we’d both been lying, mostly for decent reasons. Maybe she knew it as soon as I was climbing down the vine. Her face, like a faded moon, vanished from the window before I turned away down the street. Nothing in life had ever drawn me with such wondrous power as the unknown road ahead of me in the dark.

  9

  A thickening fog was turning moonlight to milkiness. As I passed the pillory in the green I said under my breath: “I had her twice, once in bed and once against the wall.” Wonderful, as if no one had ever laid a woman before. True, the small sound of my own voice scared me, and I continued along the empty street in a more slinky style, like a cat retiring from a creamery under trimmed sail with a cargo in the hold. But I still felt proud, and knew also an unfamiliar charity toward the whole big fat world and everyone in it except maybe Father Clance.