I knew, beyond a doubt, that if I were to throw the letter aside I would perish, and perish in agony. I likewise knew (with that ream-certainty which defies logic or reason) that if I strayed from the letter’s path that my fate would be the same. There was a hideous inevitability to it all, a sense of being trapped, penned, and tormented by some predestined appointment or condition.
***
The train’s whistle was a reprieve. I jerked from my seat and seized my personal effects.
In my pocket, the envelope approved of this destination and gave me no further pain or grief, real or imagined. I was quivering under my clothes as I adjusted my hat and stepped down onto the platform at the station.
I arranged for a horse to take me the rest of the way, even though I wasn’t dressed for one. The roads that go back to the valley aren’t easy on carts or wagons.
***
I did not push the horse, which was a pretty brown mare I’d acquired at a reasonable price. Why press it forward? I hadn’t the heart to command it any faster over the jutting hills and along the flaking, clattering limestone paths.
The sun was harsh on my shoulders, but it was harsh on everything and I did not feel singled out for abuse.
Everything was the same as last I’d seen it. There were almost no people, and no proper roads. No signs of electricity, or indications of community-serving public works. The valley was much as I’d left it, isolated and dreary, and this year it was also dry. None of the scenery ever achieved the vibrant, rich greens of other parts of the nation, and I’ve been told it’s because of the clay which packs the soil. All the trees, all the grasses and plants—they leech up the brown-blood red and it dulls their natural hues.
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s as good a reason as any for the look of half-death the place perpetually wears.
In my pocket the letter throbbed, or my heart was only pounding from nervousness. A whiff of someone’s cooking fire tickled my nostrils. Off around the bend, I heard the steady whacking blows of someone cutting firewood.
My throat began to close up, and my hands squeezed the reins so hard that I was cutting myself with the leather strips. “I can’t do this,” I told the horse, but she didn’t care. “I can’t do this, I can’t come back.”
But by then it was too late. I’d been spotted.
A boy perhaps ten or twelve years old leaped up from behind a tree. I think he must’ve been hunting, or maybe—if I flatter yself—keeping a lookout for me. He gave a little shout that was part greeting, part announcement, and he tore back over the hill. o there was no giving up, turning tail, or running. Not now.
The horse whinnied and I leaned my heels against her flanks.
Forward was the only way. It was the only direction I could manage, forward, and on to Heaster Junior’s place. I didn’t know where else to go. I hadn’t spoken with my nearer relations in decades; I couldn’t impose upon their hospitality, if indeed they had any to offer.
This too gave me a pang of terror. Where would I sleep? How would I eat?
I remembered all too clearly the four naked, cracked, and drafty walls of the shanty in which I’d been raised. Surely it couldn’t still be standing, I thought. Though even if it’d been replaced in my absence, any newer structure was unlikely to be an improvement.
I had brothers, yes. And they must have their own homes here. I wondered after Abraham, with whom I’d been…not close, precisely. Well, he’d seemed to hate me the least. And once I had been so blunt with myself about the nature of our affections, I understood that no, I couldn’t approach him either.
Heaster Junior had a big place, for a relative value of such things. Or now his widow did, if one survived him.
I would’ve hated to impose on the hospitality of a widow, but I was running out of ideas and in truth, it must’ve been weeks since the old man had died. It was a gruesome thought, but I could muster no others.
When I came around the final bend before Heaster’s old place, the sun slipped immediately and sharply down a ridge behind me and—fast as that—I was shadowed. It was as if I was riding through a box and someone had shut the lid. Only then, when the blinding hot afternoon rays were snatched away, did I feel the chill seeping through the seams of my clothes.
As always, as forever—the valley is small, dark, and cold. And if I were less kind, I might use it to draw some parallel between its appearance and the minds of its residents.
But they were almost on me. The boy came back around the hill with a man who might have been his father and an older woman with a knobby, hickory cane that somehow failed to make her look weak or frail. I felt like I should know who she was. Her stance was familiar, and her reliance on the cane did not look new to me. remembered her as a caricature of herself, slim and straight.
***
One of Heaster’s daughters, I concluded, but her name was lost to me. The one he broke with the butt of his rifle.
Was it because she’d tried to run?
***
“John Coy,” she said to me, and I was a little ashamed that I couldn’t return the specific salutation.
“Yes ma’am,” I replied instead and it sounded solid enough. Inside, I feared I was coming apart at the seams. I continued talking because it was easier than sitting on top of the horse and shaking. “I received your message, and I’ve returned, as you asked.”
“You got it from the lawyer in Lexington,” she corrected me. “I knew you wouldn’t come back if it was one of us what asked you. But you’re here now, and in the morning, we can all get started.”
“Get started?”
She lifted her cane and used it to point over the next hill. “Started. Daddy left you a task.”
“He did?” The prospect of it baffled me. I’d barely known Heaster Junior, except as the almost mythic figure who lived in the big house built into the hill. I knew I was kin to him, same as the rest of us within twenty miles.
She nodded. “It would’ve been your momma, maybe. Or one of your brothers. But since David died, you’re oldest so it falls on you.”
I bit my tongue to keep a string of words from spilling past my teeth. My oldest brother had died? When? How? Why didn’t anyone tell me? I bit my tongue a second, third, and fourth time.
The old woman was watching me, reading me more easily than I daresay she ever read a book. She didn’t smile, and she didn’t offer to answer any of my unasked questions. She just waited for me to compose myself, and when I still couldn’t find anything neutral to ask her, she pointed her cane in another direction—towards the trees to the west.
“What kin you got left here is pressed for space, and it’ll be turning late ’fore long. Take yourself up to your nephew’s spot. Used to be your half-brother’s place. He’s been gone since around the time you left, and his wife’s gone too. Now it’s the boy’s, but he don’t live here any more than you do.”
My mind raced, trying to calculate which half-brother. I’d had my three full brothers, but my mother died and my father remarried, three times all told, and a younger one on every occasion. When I’d left, my youngest half-sister was still in a cradle.
Again, the woman was watching me, observing my calculations and knowing I needed help with it. This time, she obliged.
“I mean your brother Everett,” she said. “The boy’s Meshack.”
“Meshack,” I recognized the name, and an image of a barefoot boy with jutting ribs was raised to match it. But that image was twenty-five years old. The boy would be nearly thirty now.
“He’s already settled in. Got here this morning sometime. Came down with his cousin. You know the place I mean, where that house is?”
“Yes ma’am, Granny Gail.” Her name burst out of my mouth, spoken before it was properly recalled. Abigail, yes. One of four—all girls, to Heaster’s undying aggravation. “I know the place.”
“All right then.” She put her cane back on the ground beside her foot and walked away. The man and the boy followed
her. They might have been her son and grandson, but I didn’t recognize either of them well enough to say for certain.
While I rode the next half mile or so out to Meshack’s, I tried to reconstruct my mental map of how the family looked. It’s not just an important thing; for most of the people who live in the valley, it’s the most important thing. Knowing where you’re placed on the family tree tells you who you are, what you’re for, and where you belong. It tells you where you came from, and where you’re likely to end up, too. It explains why some people live on this side of the valley and some people live on the other side, and it accounts for who you don’t talk to unless you’ve got a big stick in your hand.
The family map doesn’t mention the feud, but you could see it all over.
In my head, I drew the lines as best I remembered them. Heaster, his four girls. Two girls married brothers from the Coy family, two girls married brothers from the Mander family. I think that’s where it began, or how it split. And heaven knows, we’re all related in some fashion. All of us are cousins, anymore.
I tried not to wonder how we’d made so many generations here. I knew there was some mixing, here and there. Once every blue moon, someone would filter in from outside and become trapped here; but mostly, there was too much blood marrying close for anyone’s own good.
I tried not to think about it.
Instead, I spent those minutes between Granny Gail and Meshack trying to dissect my instructions, trying to sort the old woman’s words and wring more meaning from them. Meshack didn’t live here either. He’d come home too.
So I wasn’t the only one who’d left.
But David was dead, and I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t feel grieved by it, not like a man ought to, I don’t believe. It was more that I felt a sense of shock. I suppose I honestly thought that the valley was a place where time stopped for everyone who entered it. No one died, no one was born, no one grew up. I saw it as a blank place, terra incognita on a chart with no lines and no arrows. And Everett? Half brother or no, I’d only known him in passing.
The horse led herself to the shack at the end of the way, up the gravel trail.
The sun had another half hour before vanishing, but there in the shadow of the trees and the hills it was dark already. A small ight burned in one of the windows. While I watched, the light oved from room to room as if the man who carried it was looking for something.
I wondered if Meshack knew to expect me. I hated to surprise him.
I tied the horse and unloaded her, and I promised I’d return to care for her in a moment. Then I went up to the house and stepped with caution up the rickety stairs. I did not think they should hold me. Under each step, I heard a cracking, splitting noise that warned the worst.
The glow inside stopped exploring, and gathered itself to come to the door when I knocked.
A lanky man opened the door. He’d grown into the tall, slim frame that was common to the Coys, but he no longer looked as if he got that way by starving and stretching. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and I saw healthy, harness-tight ropes of muscle there. The sun had painted his face a permanent shade of ruddy bronze which was only accentuated by the fire from the lantern in his hand.
“Meshack?”
“Yes sir,” he said. In those two words, I liked what I heard. Oh yes, he had gotten out.
I held out my hand, and he returned the gesture so we shook. “I’m your Uncle John,” I told him. “I hope they warned you that I was coming, and I regret the imposition.”
“It’s no imposition. This isn’t my house. Near as I can tell, nobody’s lived in it for awhile, and both of us can squat here.” He held the lantern up and swung it around. “It’s not much. Not much to see, or to sleep on. I must apologize for the condition of the place.”
I objected to his apologies, and I told him so. “No, please don’t. You said so yourself. Not your house. Not anyone’s house. I grew up here too.”
Whether he remembered me or not, he knew what I meant by “here.” He nodded, as if he wasn’t sure how to respond. Finally he said, “You did grow up here, didn’t you? You were one of them too, once.”
“Once,” I agreed. “I was one of them. But not anymore,” I said, knowing it was a risk. I didn’t know how strongly this man still identified with the clan. I didn’t know if it would offend him to hink I no longer wished to be considered part of the family.
But he did not appear offended. He exhaled, as if the news was a great relief.
“Not anymore,” he repeated. “Me either, not anymore. And thank God for it.”
VII
Chosen, and Missed: Reflections from the Road, Daniel Boone, 1775
We were only another two miles from the water, and when we reached the river, we were done. We could have finished it in just another few days, though it would’ve gone quicker if we’d had our full strength and we’d been sleeping better. But knowing the job’s end was close made us all work harder. Knowing it was near, and there was an end in sight…it made us all eager, even as exhausted and harried as we were.
***
Sometimes I swear, I don’t know why we bothered to set up camp anymore. It’s not as if anyone could sleep, but our bodies would’ve given out on us if we didn’t rest. It was hard, though, with her always watching and hanging close. It was hard, with us getting hungrier every day and there being less and less game to shoot.
Even with our numbers reduced, it took a lot of grub to feed twenty men. And our stores, what stores we had, were mostly ruined by that thing. She’d shit on whatever she couldn’t steal, like if she couldn’t have it, nobody would. It was malicious, is what it was. And it scared me, I don’t mind admitting it. It scared me because until I cut that road and met that thing, I’d never seen outright hate from anything on earth except for man.
But she could be outsmarted, I knew that for sure—because she almost got the better of me, but she didn’t.
***
We set up our camp in the middle of the road we’d cut, because it was the only spot where there weren’t any trees creeping right up on us. We didn’t leave her anywhere to hide from us, and she didn’t have any good way to sneak up on us, either.
It took over an hour to get our fire burning huge and hot, but when it was lit and blazing, I bet you could’ve seen it from the moon. To hear tell of it, you might think we were inviting trouble; but the fire was our only defense. It gave us light enough to see her by, and it gave us a circle we could cling to, where she wouldn’t or couldn’t reach us.
My shirts were pocked with holes singed by flying embers, and my skin was stung in little blisters where the coals burned through. I started wearing my buckskin coat all the time, even when it was so warm, so close to the fire—that I thought I’d faint dead away if I stood there another moment. But it was better than getting licked by the fire, and it was better than getting nicked by that thing up in the trees.
So we made our fire and we sat in the middle of the spot we’d cleared and we did our best to rest.
The sun was going down and we were toppling with it. We sank around the fire, all of us crouching as close to it as we dared, and we turned our backs to it so we were sitting in a circle—facing out. Always, we were facing out, and facing up.
What else could we do?
We’d gotten a little more confident, since she’d skipped us the night before. We thought maybe there was a chance she’d leave us alone. Maybe she wasn’t hungry anymore, or maybe she had gone her own way, looking for easier prey. That’s what we told ourselves, and those are the possibilities we talked about around the fire; but we weren’t dumb enough to believe our own talk.
It’s just what you do, when you’ve got a big bunch of people who are all scared shitless, but who don’t want to look bad in front of each other. You talk up how you hope it’s going to go. But you brace yourself for how you think it’s going to go.
We thought she’d be back, and we were right.
She was too me
an to go away easy, or that’s how we felt about it; so when the night got all unnaturally quiet again—and when the fire kicked shadows in funny shapes all the way to the treetops on the outside of our circle…we knew she was coming. The whole forest knew it.
The trees cringed back and sank against their roots. The bugs, and bats, and mice alike all quit scurrying and hid in their holes. I imagined them burying themselves in deep, and closing their eyes against the night.
***
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests—but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head.
***
The old verse came to mind, and it made me think of us. Not that I’d ever compare myself or my men to Christ, but the sentiment rang true all the same. And wasn’t that the whole point of sending a Christ in the first place? He came here to be one of us, and to live like one of us. That’s the task and duty of a caring God, to better understand His creation.
So He knew what it was like, somehow or another. He’d been where we were, lying out on the ground with no shelter and no safety.
I want to say it comforted me, remembering the words from my old grandfather’s Bible, and maybe it did for a bit. But as soon as she came down, bigger than a bear and winged, and taloned with claws bigger than any hawk, I don’t mean my faith flew away…but it sure did jump up with fright.
She swooped over us, low enough that we could see her breasts all swinging and swaying, but too fast for us to get off any good shots. With her wings all spread out she glided fast, blocking out the moon for several long seconds. She cast a shadow that shocked us with its size. The air burst up underneath her, her wings pumping like bellows and fanning the fire up hard.
First she gave us a pass. It was one long swoop that woke us up and had us all on our feet faster than she could turn around and come back for a second dive.
By then I had my musket out and it was already packed and ready to fire. My other five men with guns were all ready too, just the same—and when she made a second swoop down across the campsite, they did good. They all held steady, just like I told them, until she was close enough we could count her toes.