A Gathering of Light

considered what needed attention first, while he cut the rope from her wrists.

  The first injury he noticed was a head wound. There was a large lump over Sarah’s ear; the hair on the side of her head was matted in blood over it. The blood had run across her face as she lay, dripping down across her eyes and forehead. Her scalp was torn along the crown, where she had apparently been dragged by her hair. The only clothing left to her was her chemise, and it was torn to shreds. She had deep, bloody wounds on her neck, her belly, her arms and even her breasts. They were bite wounds: human bite wounds. The front of her shift was soaked in red.

  The insides of her thighs were deeply bruised and she was bleeding there, too. Hixson could see bruised finger prints on her legs, where they were forced apart. He tried not to think about it just yet.

  Sarah was bruised on her arms and legs, her lips were cut and one eye was swollen shut. Even her bare feet were bruised. Her wrists were ringed with abrasions from the rope they tied her with.

  There were several places along her rib cage that looked especially bad. The bruises there were profoundly black. Hixson felt sure she had broken ribs, and quite a few of them. He thought it looked as if she had been kicked. He worried about moving her, afraid a broken rib might puncture a lung. He tried to see what other wounds she had, without taking that chance.

  Her nails had been torn from their beds, and the knuckles on her small hands were bloody with broken skin. She had put up a good fight. Hixson took Sarah’s gun from the pegs on the wall and went outside, firing into the air three times. He hoped Emma would get the message and come running.

  He decided to clean her wounds where she lay. His hands shook as he cut away the rags of her garment so that he could tend to her injuries. He washed the blood and semen from her, realizing at last that’s what he had smelled when he first came in. The heat in the room made it worse. Even though it was nurse work, Hixson was embarrassed. He covered her with his shirt and was washing the blood from her face when Emma opened the door.

  Emma saw at once what had happened. She had seen the dead dog outside, and approached carefully. She was not sure what the gunfire meant, except trouble. Peeking through the window, she had seen Hixson and figured it out. She knew before she came in what she would find. She did not dare to give in to her tears yet: once started, they might not stop. Instead, she got the sewing basket out and selected a needle.

  Sarah thrashed some when Emma began to sew up her torn scalp. Her eyes opened, but Sarah was not in them. Hixson straddled her chest and held her face firmly while Emma stitched. Sarah struggled and mumbled but it was only reflex. Hixson supported Sarah’s head over a basin as Emma washed the blood from her hair. It took many pitchers full before the water finally ran clear.

  Hixson felt he was about to lose his composure. As the blood was washed away, he could see more clearly. She was covered with bruises, scrapes, cuts and bites. Dozens of bites. He couldn’t quite get his mind around it. What kind of person would bite like that?

  They carefully turned her over, and found a raw wound on her shoulder blade, prickling with splinters of painted wood. Some of the broken furniture, no doubt. Sarah’s shoulder was dislocated and swollen. Her back was bruised and scraped from nape to tailbone. Hixson cleaned and salved the smaller wounds on her back while Emma pulled the splinters from the biggest one.

  Emma reset the joint of Sarah’s shoulder, and carefully bound her arm to her chest in a sling. It was tricky to find a way to tie the sling without aggravating any other wound.

  Hixson’s mind was racing as his hands worked to help Sarah. He tried to piece together what had happened. The mental picture that was forming nauseated him. There had been more than one man, he was sure. The destruction in the room, the amount of the blood and the number of wounds added up to a very violent attack, he thought. It must have been horrific for her. He forced his mind away from the picture with an effort.

  Hixson held on to his calm, fighting to keep himself together until Sarah was tended to.

  “I think she has broken ribs, Emma. Should we wrap them?” Hixson was not sure what to do for broken ribs.

  “Sarah doesn’t believe in wrapping broken ribs. She says they heal better without. The doctor always did, but a lot of those people got pneumonia. Sarah’s people never do. Let’s not. I have more faith in her opinion than I do in mine or the doctor’s, either one.” Emma said.

  Emma made a compress for the lump on Sarah’s head, and tied it on. She would have liked to brush out the girl’s hair, since it was so tangled from the washing. But with the stitches, Emma decided to wait. Brushing her hair could separate the wound again.

  Hixson lifted her from the floor and carried her. He was surprised at how light she was, she really was a little bird, he thought. At last Sarah was laid in her bed and covered with a sheet. That was for modesty’s sake; it was still dreadfully hot in the room.

  Emma turned and started to scrub the many blood stains from the floor. Hixson began to right the furniture. There was blood on the tabletop. It had run down into a small puddle on the floor. Her blood. He wondered briefly if any of the blood belonged to them. Finally, he kneeled on the floor at the edge of Sarah’s bed and laid his hand on her arm, watching her. His heart was pounding and the tears pooled, unshed, in his eyes.

  Emma scrubbed the plank floor. She cleaned up the mess they’d made in treating Sarah. She tried to clean the bloodstains from the planks, but without much success. She sat back on her heels and looked at the stains. She was trying to think how to remove them. The moment her hands stopped moving, the ugliness of what happened there overtook her and the tears began to flow.

  Hearing Emma’s sobs, Hixson collected himself and went to comfort her. He convinced her to sit outside a while, away from the smell of the blood and the men’s violation of Sarah.

  It was only mid-afternoon, and the day was very warm. But it was nice in the shade of the porch. They opened the door and windows wide to air out the room.

  Emma had cried herself out, both for Sarah and for bitter memories. After some time, she regained her voice, and turned to Hixson. “How did you happen to be here, Hixson? I thought you must have gone home.”

  “I did go home. But I had unfinished business here. Oh, if only I would have gotten here sooner.” He was on the verge of breaking down. He was holding himself together with sheer will, knowing he couldn’t manage much longer.

  “No point in thinking that way, Hixson. What happens, happens. If you had been here, maybe they would have killed you like they killed old Towzer, poor girl. Then where would Sarah have been?

  “I was getting ready to go to me Mother’s for a while and said my goodbyes here a few days ago. I don’t know how long they were here, but it looks like a while. She probably would have died in there.” Emma’s voice cracked.

  “Will she live?” Hixson asked, terrified that he already knew the answer.

  “We’ll need to watch her. That knock on her head is a bad one. She’s lost a lot of blood, and those broken ribs are a worry. If she lives through the next few days, she’ll be a long time healing, I think. I just hope she was already knocked out before they all....” Emma started to cry again.

  Hixson cleared his throat. “You think there was more than one? I thought so, too.”

  “Yes, there had to be, I think. There was too much... well, on the outside, too. My word. I can’t even bring myself to say it. How is she going to live through it? And I never seen anybody bit like that before. What kind of a fiend would do that?”

  Thinking about the bites, on top of everything else, pushed Hixson beyond his limit. It was the most heinous kind of violence. He bolted for the edge of the porch and vomited. His resolve was gone and he began to cry like he had never cried in his life.

  He was shocked at how unhinged he felt. He had seen some terrible things in the war, but this was not an act of war. Crouched on all fours, shaking and sweating, Hixson veered between sobbing, reeling and vomiting.

 
Young Caleb stood across the yard, in the doorway of the barn, with a canvas tarp in his arms, watching. His mother had told him to stay out, tend to the animals and don’t dare come inside. She had used her don’t-dare-argue voice and he had done as he was told. Nobody in his right mind would cross purposes with Emma when she used that voice.

  He dug a grave for Towzer out beyond the barn in the shade of the trees. He had gone to the barn to find something to wrap her in. Standing there, watching, Caleb thought that Sarah must surely be dead, too.

  Emma brought a cool cloth to Hixson and wiped his brow and his mouth. “Hixson. Hixson? Get up now, darlin’. Get up and help to bury old Towzer, won’t you now?” Emma figured that busy hands would help Hixson, and it was too warm to leave the dog in the sun. She motioned to Caleb.

  Caleb walked over, and the look on his face told Emma what he was thinking. “She’s alive, son. But she’s hurt. You help by taking care of the chores, you hear?”

  “I will, Ma. But there’s one other thing.” Caleb took a deep breath. “There’s a dead man over by the woodpile.”

  Emma and Hixson spun on Caleb and stared. A dead man? What could it mean?

  “It’s true. He’s been dead a little while, I think. But I ain’t sure. It’s a stranger. Never seen him before. You coming to look?” Caleb asked.

  Emma