The Endless Forest
Page 160
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Martha said, “This will go on all day, won’t it? Unless somebody gets hurt.”
“Even then,” Susanna said. “When they are in the grips of the game, they hear nothing else.”
“Runs-from-Bears is as fast as any of the younger men,” Jennet said. “And Nathaniel is faster still.”
“They are a joy to watch,” Elizabeth said. “I have never tired of it, even after so many years.”
“I doubt that I will either,” Susanna said.
Martha turned toward her. “How did you and Blue-Jay meet? I don’t think I’ve ever heard the story. If that isn’t too personal a question.”
Susanna said, “There wasn’t very much to it. One day when we had been here a few months, Ben came to our Seventh-Day Meeting. Ben’s sister-in-law is a Friend, and he sometimes went to Meeting with her when he lived in New Orleans. He was homesick, I think. Blue-Jay asked to come along with him to see what it was like.”
She put her head back to study the boughs overhead.
“My father met them at the door and directed them to the back bench, though there were spaces enough at the front.” Susanna closed her eyes and then she sat up straight and looked directly at Martha. “Thou must understand. If Daniel or Lily or someone like thee came to a Meeting, my father would be gracious and welcoming, and room would be made at the front.”
“Oh,” Martha said, clearly unhappy to have raised the question.
“Yes, oh,” Susanna said with a grim smile. “I was shamed by my father’s lack of charity and fellowship. And so I went to sit with Ben and Blue-Jay on the back bench. And that was the first time we spoke, though I had seen him before in the village. Thy expression, Martha. Have I surprised thee?”
“Yes,” Martha said, “a little. So that’s why you don’t come into the village? Because of the way your family treated the Mohawk?”
“Every day I pray for an opening,” Susanna said. “For a way to forgive my father and my mother too, for taking his part in what happened at Meeting. In the meantime, I have made my home with Blue-Jay at Lake in the Clouds, and I want no other.”
Martha turned her attention back to the game, which had not slowed down at all in spite of the afternoon sun. Backs and shoulders, knotty with muscle, glistening with sweat. Martha’s eyes tracked Daniel and Elizabeth was struck with the memory of the first days of her own marriage. The powerful hunger, the strangeness of it all.
To see Daniel playing was to see him truly happy. So much had been taken away from him, but here was one thing left from childhood that he could still do, even one-armed. He leapt into the air brandishing the bagattaway stick Hawkeye had made for him when he was a boy, and scooped the ball out of the sky into the net at its end. With a flick of his wrist he sent it flying again.
When Elizabeth looked at him she saw her firstborn son, who had come back to them when she had begun to give up hope.
Martha said, “I worry about being so happy.”
None of the others had anything to say to that, because they knew too well what she meant. Rather than give her false assurances, Elizabeth covered Martha’s hand with her own.
“Thank you,” she said. “For my son, I thank you.”
Chapter LV
For Martha the last week of spring and the first of summer seemed to spin by like a top.
She learned to rise at first light, to have that quiet hour with Daniel. As soon as Betty came up from the village with fresh bread and new milk, the day would begin.
To Martha’s great relief school came to an end without any terrible missteps on her part, but the newly free hours were filled straight away. She helped Curiosity make soap and Lily organize hundreds of drawings and paintings accumulated over the years. The little people came to visit and she fed them all pancakes while they told her their newest stories. When Hannah went into the woods to find the herbs and roots and barks she needed for her medicinals, Martha came along and paid attention until things she had once known began to come back to her.
She helped Annie and Susanna in the cornfields at Lake in the Clouds, so that her hands blistered, the blisters broke and then came again until finally she had calluses enough to protect her, and the hoe felt solid in her hands. Though she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, her freckles multipled by the hundreds, much to Daniel’s interest and amusement. His own skin tone deepened until the green of his eyes stood out and took on a silver cast, so striking that she sometimes found herself unable to look away from him.
After Martha had watched her new husband shave himself a few times, an awkward process he had trained himself to do with one hand, she offered, hesitantly, shyly, to be taught. At first she thought she had offended him, but the next day he showed her how to sharpen the razor on the strop and to beat soap into a lather and then, step by step, how to scrape the stubble from his cheeks and chin, from his upper lip and finally from his jaw and throat. She loved his neck for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, and running the razor down its length unsettled her in a way she would have found odd and disturbing, if she had not seen the same reaction on Daniel’s face.
Betty looked after the laundry and the cleaning, while Martha found other ways to look after Daniel. Sometimes she washed his hair out in the open, Daniel on a chair tilted back and propped against the pump while she rubbed soap into his scalp and then rinsed it. Water ran in rivulets over his arched neck and down his chest, and it often took all her concentration to stay focused on the job at hand. As if she had set him a challenge, Daniel took over the brushing of her hair in the evening. It was her turn to sit in the chair, and she found herself looking forward to it at odd moments during the day.
“Even then,” Susanna said. “When they are in the grips of the game, they hear nothing else.”
“Runs-from-Bears is as fast as any of the younger men,” Jennet said. “And Nathaniel is faster still.”
“They are a joy to watch,” Elizabeth said. “I have never tired of it, even after so many years.”
“I doubt that I will either,” Susanna said.
Martha turned toward her. “How did you and Blue-Jay meet? I don’t think I’ve ever heard the story. If that isn’t too personal a question.”
Susanna said, “There wasn’t very much to it. One day when we had been here a few months, Ben came to our Seventh-Day Meeting. Ben’s sister-in-law is a Friend, and he sometimes went to Meeting with her when he lived in New Orleans. He was homesick, I think. Blue-Jay asked to come along with him to see what it was like.”
She put her head back to study the boughs overhead.
“My father met them at the door and directed them to the back bench, though there were spaces enough at the front.” Susanna closed her eyes and then she sat up straight and looked directly at Martha. “Thou must understand. If Daniel or Lily or someone like thee came to a Meeting, my father would be gracious and welcoming, and room would be made at the front.”
“Oh,” Martha said, clearly unhappy to have raised the question.
“Yes, oh,” Susanna said with a grim smile. “I was shamed by my father’s lack of charity and fellowship. And so I went to sit with Ben and Blue-Jay on the back bench. And that was the first time we spoke, though I had seen him before in the village. Thy expression, Martha. Have I surprised thee?”
“Yes,” Martha said, “a little. So that’s why you don’t come into the village? Because of the way your family treated the Mohawk?”
“Every day I pray for an opening,” Susanna said. “For a way to forgive my father and my mother too, for taking his part in what happened at Meeting. In the meantime, I have made my home with Blue-Jay at Lake in the Clouds, and I want no other.”
Martha turned her attention back to the game, which had not slowed down at all in spite of the afternoon sun. Backs and shoulders, knotty with muscle, glistening with sweat. Martha’s eyes tracked Daniel and Elizabeth was struck with the memory of the first days of her own marriage. The powerful hunger, the strangeness of it all.
To see Daniel playing was to see him truly happy. So much had been taken away from him, but here was one thing left from childhood that he could still do, even one-armed. He leapt into the air brandishing the bagattaway stick Hawkeye had made for him when he was a boy, and scooped the ball out of the sky into the net at its end. With a flick of his wrist he sent it flying again.
When Elizabeth looked at him she saw her firstborn son, who had come back to them when she had begun to give up hope.
Martha said, “I worry about being so happy.”
None of the others had anything to say to that, because they knew too well what she meant. Rather than give her false assurances, Elizabeth covered Martha’s hand with her own.
“Thank you,” she said. “For my son, I thank you.”
Chapter LV
For Martha the last week of spring and the first of summer seemed to spin by like a top.
She learned to rise at first light, to have that quiet hour with Daniel. As soon as Betty came up from the village with fresh bread and new milk, the day would begin.
To Martha’s great relief school came to an end without any terrible missteps on her part, but the newly free hours were filled straight away. She helped Curiosity make soap and Lily organize hundreds of drawings and paintings accumulated over the years. The little people came to visit and she fed them all pancakes while they told her their newest stories. When Hannah went into the woods to find the herbs and roots and barks she needed for her medicinals, Martha came along and paid attention until things she had once known began to come back to her.
She helped Annie and Susanna in the cornfields at Lake in the Clouds, so that her hands blistered, the blisters broke and then came again until finally she had calluses enough to protect her, and the hoe felt solid in her hands. Though she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, her freckles multipled by the hundreds, much to Daniel’s interest and amusement. His own skin tone deepened until the green of his eyes stood out and took on a silver cast, so striking that she sometimes found herself unable to look away from him.
After Martha had watched her new husband shave himself a few times, an awkward process he had trained himself to do with one hand, she offered, hesitantly, shyly, to be taught. At first she thought she had offended him, but the next day he showed her how to sharpen the razor on the strop and to beat soap into a lather and then, step by step, how to scrape the stubble from his cheeks and chin, from his upper lip and finally from his jaw and throat. She loved his neck for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, and running the razor down its length unsettled her in a way she would have found odd and disturbing, if she had not seen the same reaction on Daniel’s face.
Betty looked after the laundry and the cleaning, while Martha found other ways to look after Daniel. Sometimes she washed his hair out in the open, Daniel on a chair tilted back and propped against the pump while she rubbed soap into his scalp and then rinsed it. Water ran in rivulets over his arched neck and down his chest, and it often took all her concentration to stay focused on the job at hand. As if she had set him a challenge, Daniel took over the brushing of her hair in the evening. It was her turn to sit in the chair, and she found herself looking forward to it at odd moments during the day.
