Traces, page 29
On an August morning in 1782, Israel sat on Susannah’s porch, bouncing her newest baby, Willie, on his knee. Israel had spent the previous week in bed with a fever that had left him too weak to go to the fields with the rest of the men. During his convalescence, Susannah had put him to work helping her with chores around the house—snapping beans, rolling skeins of yarn, telling her stories to help pass the time. This morning, when he’d declared himself fit enough to take up a hoe again, she’d plunked Willie on his lap and said he needed another day’s rest.
Around noon, her father hurried in from the fields and stopped at the edge of the porch. “The militia’s been called out,” he said. “The Indians have Bryan’s Station under siege. Get your rifle, son, and pack a few supplies.”
“Israel’s still not well,” Susannah said.
“We need every rifle we can muster.” Her father gave Israel a pointed look and hurried off to spread the word.
Israel stood and handed Willie back to her.
“I should go, Suzy.” He touched a finger to her lips as she sputtered in protest. “Mama’s folks are in trouble. Besides,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “if you take a deep breath you’ll realize somebody needs changing.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “I believe I’d rather fight Indians.”
All that day and the next, Susannah walked about with her nerves strung tight. Not only were her father and Israel in harm’s way, but her mother’s parents, brothers, and a bushel of cousins were as well. As usual when her mother was deeply worried, she retreated into silence, but Susannah noticed that she and Aunt Martha sought each other out even more than usual, as if their Bryan blood drew them together. They sat in the shade during the heat of the day to shuck corn and break beans, the youngest children playing in the grass at their feet. Besides Susannah’s son Willie, there was Jemima’s John and her mother’s youngest, Nathan, filling the air with their chatter. But despite the children’s noisy play, the women’s faces were grim, and a heaviness of spirit filled the stockade.
On the day her father told her Israel had been killed at Blue Licks, Susannah ran. She spent the rest of the day and far into the night pacing back and forth across the stockade, stone-faced, cradling her disbelief to her chest as if it were a child, ignoring the procession of worried faces and gentle hands that urged her to come inside. She could see their mouths moving, but all she could hear was Israel’s voice, saying over and over, “I won’t leave you.” He had said those words to her father during the battle, but they echoed in her head as if they were meant for her.
By the next morning, she’d made up her mind that Israel wasn’t dead. He’d been wounded, she told herself, and was recovering in some distant cabin; soon he’d make his way home. She avoided her family’s pitying eyes and clung to that thought; it was all that enabled her to put one foot in front of the other.
Several days after the battle, Susannah was hoeing the bean field when she looked up and saw Israel’s horse cantering up the road toward the stockade, his thin figure silhouetted in the saddle.
“I told you,” she shouted to Jemima, who was working a few rows over, “he’s alive!”
Susannah dropped her hoe, lifted her skirts, and began to run, feeling the weight that had sat heavily on her shoulders lift and soar like a bird taking flight. When the rider spotted her running down the dusty row of beans, he reined the mare in and waited.
“Israel!” she cried.
Even in her excitement she had the presence of mind to slow as she drew near, knowing the mare was easily spooked. The horse stamped a foreleg as Susannah reached the road and rested her hand on the mare’s velvety shoulder. Susannah looked up just as the rider took off his hat.
“Good morning, ma’am. I was told this mare belongs to someone from Boone Station. She’s a fast one—saved my life at the Licks. I found her with her reins dragging and . . .”
Susannah screamed, then felt Jemima’s hands gripping her shoulders from behind. She fought, desperate to escape, to run from the realization that her beloved brother was gone forever.
35
Rebecca
Rebecca shuddered inwardly each time someone mentioned Blue Licks. Her son had lost his life there, and the battle had cost her a daughter as well. Rebecca watched helplessly as Susannah withdrew into herself in the days after Israel’s death; she moved silently through her chores, her eyes lifeless.
One morning, Suzy was churning butter alongside Rebecca, and the motion of the dasher caused her shift to slip off her shoulder. Rebecca gasped at the sight of horrible bruises across her daughter’s upper back. Suzy let go of the dasher and jerked the fabric over her shoulders, then crossed her arms over her chest and refused to look up.
“I should have known,” Rebecca said.
“There’s nothing you could have done, Mama. In the beginning I even hid the truth from myself. But Israel . . .” Susannah stopped as though his name burned her tongue. After a moment she tried again, her voice choked: “Israel began looking after me, and Will stopped. There really wasn’t anything to tell for the longest time, but now . . .”
She didn’t have to go on. Israel was gone, and their family’s surveying business, which Will had taken such pride in, was in shambles due to lawsuits over contested claims. Recently he’d begun drinking more than ever.
That night, when Rebecca told Daniel what she’d discovered, he went in tight-lipped search of his son-in-law. Will received no pity from anyone when he appeared the next day with an eye swollen shut and his jaw the color of rotten apples. In the months that followed, Rebecca made sure their entire family closed ranks to protect Suzy, but despite their vigilance and the love they showered on her, she remained just a ghost of herself. As weeks went by, Rebecca was forced to accept that her daughter had become a world-weary woman whose only interest in life was plodding through her days and shielding her children from their father’s anger. Her bold, bright Susannah was gone.
Rebecca had always heard that losses came in threes. Not long after they’d lost Israel, and then Susannah, they lost Boone Station as well. In the rush to settle Kentucky, surveys had been done so hurriedly, and claims filed so haphazardly, that no one was certain where their own land ended and their neighbor’s began. Folks spoke of Kentucky being “shingled over” because claims overlapped as badly as shingles on a roof.
She was hardly surprised when another claimant with enough money to hire a lawyer challenged her family’s title to Boone Station and won. All over Kentucky, folks who’d risked their lives to settle in the wilderness were stripped of their property by men back east that sent their attorneys into the backcountry to secure contested tracts of land.
“Kentucky’s plumb ruint,” lamented one of their neighbors when it was clear he was going to lose his farm, just as they were. “This place used to be a paradise, but first came the preachers and then came the lawyers, and since then there ain’t been a bit of peace for nobody.”
It was during this dreary time that Simon Kenton, the big scout they’d last seen at Boonesborough, reappeared in their lives. He’d aged considerably in the intervening years, having been captured by the Shawnee and subjected to brutal treatment. But when Rebecca looked into Simon’s eyes, to her surprise, the haunted expression he’d worn as a younger man was gone.
“I spent years believing I was a murderer,” he explained. “Turns out the fellow I thought I killed didn’t die after all. Now I can go by my real name and marry without living a lie.”
Simon’s presence was a comfort to Rebecca—one lost son who’d managed to return and begin life anew. Since his escape from the Indians, Simon had made his home on Kentucky’s northernmost edge, not far from the Ohio River.
“Boat traffic on the Ohio is growing,” he told them. “There’s ways to make a living in those parts besides hunting or farming.”
Daniel looked thoughtful. “Game’s getting scarce. It might be time to think about a change.”
Though Rebecca doubted he meant it, Daniel surprised her by scouting out a place along the Ohio River at a tiny outpost called Limestone.
“I’m nearly fifty, Becca,” he said. “Reckon it’s time to do something other than hunting. I figure we’ll start up a tavern by the river.”
“A tavern?” she said. “What do you know about running a tavern?”
He grinned. “Nothing. I’ll leave that to you and the girls.”
In the weeks leading up to their move from Boone Station, Rebecca did her best to savor each day, saying a silent goodbye to this place she’d come to love. The outside world had left them largely alone here. Surrounded by family, she and the girls had endured no gossip, never having to wonder what was said behind their backs. All that was likely to change now since Daniel’s plans meant they’d be living in a small, but growing, community, operating a tavern whose lifeblood would depend on welcoming whoever walked through the door.
“We’ll miss this water,” Rebecca said as she and Martha knelt on the grass beside the spring and dipped their buckets into the cold, clear depths. “I doubt there’s a spring as tasty as this where we’re headed.”
Martha didn’t answer. When Rebecca looked up, she saw that her sister was biting her lip.
“So,” Martha began, “there’s a nice plot of ground for sale not too far from here.”
Rebecca sank back on her heels. “You’re not going to Limestone with us.”
“The boys are trying so hard to fill Ned’s shoes; they want to take care of me and the younger children. It will take all of us to get a farm going.”
Rebecca nodded, unable to find her voice. Another loss. Not only would it mean the end of working side by side with her sister, but she could guess what Martha’s future held: living first with one grown child, then another, never again the mistress of her own home. Such was the lot of widows and spinsters.
“I’m blessed tired of saying goodbye to folks I love,” Rebecca said at last. She took hold of Martha’s hand, thinking back across the years that she and Martha had been separated by the rumors that refused to die. Those lost years made it so much harder to say goodbye now. “You know you can always come live with us.”
Martha nodded, her eyes damp.
“I need to warn you, though,” Rebecca said, doing her best to smile, “you’ll be stuck running a tavern.”
36
Rebecca
In the quiet hours just after dawn, Rebecca stood on the banks of the Ohio, watching the river flow past. The rising sun lit the riffles, making them sparkle, and the swishing sound of the waves washing against the tangled tree roots at her feet was soothing. She came to the river almost every morning. She loved the way the water bent wide just below Limestone, breaking up the currents and making the whitecaps dance. She felt a kinship with the flowing water and the unseen shadows that moved beneath its surface, shadows that mirrored the ones in her heart. Something had broken within her when they’d departed Boone Station, as if all the years of losses had finally added up to a weight too heavy to carry.
Having lived so long on one isolated homestead after another, she found the task of running a tavern burdensome and unnatural. Folks came and went at all hours, and her ears felt assaulted by their constant chatter.
She and the girls offered meals and sold supplies to the steady stream of settlers who traveled the Ohio, their belongings piled onto rough-hewn flatboats. She prided herself on serving tasty food, though most folks fresh off the river would pay whatever price she asked for anything hot. Outwardly, she tried to be a good hostess, but what she really wanted to do was climb into her bed and pull the quilts over her head. A few stolen moments each morning were the only time she had to herself all day. At forty-six, she was as worn and ragged as the workday apron she hung on a peg behind the tavern’s bar each night.
Most of the travelers they served arrived by floating down the Ohio because it was physically easier than taking the overland route through Cumberland Gap. But the river route bordered Shawnee territory, and more than once Rebecca had seen boats floating into Limestone with arrows bristling from every surface, the dead and dying sprawled across the decks like rag dolls flung down by an angry child. One image that haunted her was of a woman lying pale and cold with an unharmed infant latched to her breast, desperately trying to nurse. Despite such horrors, folks kept coming, all of them searching for something they hadn’t found back east: riches, adventure, second chances.
Rebecca was bent over the fire, stirring a pot of stew, on the day a stranger in travel-worn clothes stepped through the tavern door and asked to speak to Daniel. The man reminded her of a heron, thin and long legged, his movements hesitant.
“It appears you’ve journeyed a long way, sir. The stew’s nearly ready—that is, if you’ve a stomach for possum.” She gave the pot a final stir and straightened up from the hearth, just in time to see his nose wrinkle in distaste. Well, possum was all she had, and if he wouldn’t eat it, there’d be plenty of others who would. Soon the river men would drift up from the docks for their midday meal, and whatever they didn’t eat would be finished by travelers tying up their flatboats for the evening.
A swirl of wind swept down the chimney and blew smoke into the room as the stranger continued to study her, his riding crop tapping a rhythm against a dusty leather boot. She knew well enough what he saw: a tall, dark-haired woman—a tavern keeper’s wife—with a trace of gray in her hair and a grease-stained apron, scraping out a living in the back of beyond.
“My name’s John Filson,” the man said at last. “I’m told Colonel Boone has stories of Kentucky’s earliest days; it’s my intention to put them in a book.”
Her heart began to pound. Print their stories? The whispers that had followed her like a stray dog skulking in the shadows had grown muted over the years, and she’d begun to hope they’d disappear for good. What if it starts all over?
Despite her deep misgivings, Filson boarded with them for several weeks, asking Daniel endless questions and making the rounds of the men who lived nearby, gathering stories wherever he could find them. Though she and the girls washed Filson’s clothes and grained his horse and emptied his chamber pot, he never once asked to hear their side of the stories.
Each night, while Rebecca sat with her mending, she watched Filson’s quill scratch across the paper’s face in the candlelight and sensed, deep in her bones, the danger bound up in those little black marks. Those marching, ant-like rows held her family’s stories. It made her palms sweat to think about it. What’s written down takes on the seeming-ness of truth, she thought, but truth is a slippery thing—one’s lucky to catch a glimpse of it, like the silver flash of a brook trout just below the water’s surface.
A little more than a year after Filson had saddled his horse, stuffed his papers into his saddlebags, and headed back east, Daniel placed a copy of Filson’s book, The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, in her hands for the first time. It was a small book to carry such a load of pain and anger and gladness between its covers. It sat on the mantel, unopened, while she went about her chores that afternoon. She had the odd sensation that the book was crouching there, shoulder high and ready to pounce, like an angry housecat.
After supper, Daniel scooted his chair close to the fire, book in hand, and began to read aloud, the light catching the hints of gray threaded through his hair. Her chair was in its usual place, opposite Daniel’s, close enough to the flames so she could see to do her mending. It didn’t take more than an hour for Daniel to read Filson’s story to her from beginning to end. Filson had written the book as if Daniel was telling his own story, but the words he’d put in her husband’s mouth made him sound like a pompous, long-winded preacher. It surprised her that Daniel didn’t seem to mind; every now and again, he looked up and said, “Filson got it right. He stretched it here or there, but there’s not a real lie in it.”
She sat tensely as Daniel read, waiting to hear her name. She’d made it into Filson’s pages as “wife” a time or two, and even “beloved wife” once, but when she realized Filson had said almost nothing about her—that he hadn’t even bothered to record her name—the tightness in her chest began to ease. She sat in silence, letting Filson have his say, until she saw Daniel was ready to close the book.
“Read that last part again,” she said.
Daniel ran his finger down the final page. “I now live in peace and safety, enjoying the sweets of liberty and the bounties of Providence with my once fellow-sufferers in this . . .”
His voice faltered as she began to laugh. She laughed so hard her tears dampened the stocking she was darning. The absurdity of Filson’s words, coupled with her own relief, made her shake with laughter. Daniel sat silent, the book open on his lap. After a few moments she saw his lips twitch and knew he was struggling to keep his face solemn.
When she finally caught her breath, she leaned forward so he could see her face in the firelight and said: “ ‘I now live in peace and safety?’ Did you really say that? You know full well we still aren’t safe.”
Daniel shrugged. “I told Filson we hadn’t seen a Shawnee war party on this side of the Ohio in nearly a year; I expect that accounts for the ‘peace and safety’ part. As for the ‘sweets of liberty’—everyone knows what a tangle my land titles are in—soon I won’t have an acre to my name. I suppose that’s liberty of a sort.” Daniel was smiling now. “You can hardly blame the man, Rebecca. What kind of book ends with the hero propertyless, penniless, and legging it out of Eden just ahead of his creditors?”
“A truthful one,” she said.
Susannah looked lost in her own thoughts as Daniel read Filson’s book to the rest of the family. Rebecca thought her daughter was barely listening until Daniel began reading the section about cutting the trace.
“I undertook to mark out a road in the best passage from the settlement through the wilderness to Kentucky,” Daniel intoned. “Soon I began this work, having collected a number of enterprising men, well armed.”
