“Sure she is, Howie.” His father forced a smile. “The day’s been hard on her, is all. It’s over and done with now, and there’s nothing more to worry about. She’ll see that in the morning.”
“For certain, Papa?”
“For certain, Howie.”
Howie had a lot more questions about the day, but he could see Papa didn’t want to do much talking. He went about his chores, wisely leaving his father to himself and his thoughts.
Everything might be over and done like Papa said, but you couldn’t tell by the way he acted. His mind was still out in the high grove of trees and over the dark horizon. Through the long afternoon, he left Howie more than once to stalk about outside. Just standing, out on the porch or in the yard, his face matching the brooding sky.
Late in the evening, after they’d shared a cold supper, Howie went to bed by himself, leaving his father alone. And when he woke deep in the night, he went to the window and found Papa outside, a dark figure listening to the silence.
“
He woke smelling first dawn, heavy with sleep then suddenly awake, seeing his father there and feeling the strong hands on him.
“Howie. Don’t talk, boy, just listen.”
A cold chill gripped him. There was something awful in Papa’s eyes and he didn’t want to see it.
“Howie. I want you to get up now and go in real quiet and get your mother. Get her downstairs and out the back. Over the field, Howie, and you can’t make no noise at all. You see that? Not any.”
“Papa…”
“
“Papa. I can’t!”
“Howie…” Pap’s voice broke. “You got to!”
He felt the tears well up and Papa gripped him hard.
“I ain’t got time to explain, boy. I just
Howie moved without thinking. For a moment, his father was behind him, then he was gone. When his mother saw him and what he meant to do, her eyes went wide and full of fear and he knew she was going to cry out and he’d have to stop her.
She flailed against him; he pulled her along, hurting her, and not thinking about that, either. When they were halfway to the woods through the shallow ravine, he became suddenly aware of where he was and what he was doing. He didn’t dare look at her, then. If he had, he couldn’t have gone on doing what he had to do.
He heard the sound behind him and turned and saw them. Two men on horses coming fast, gray against the first raw touch of dawn. He knew there was nothing he could do because they were cutting the angle between the gully and the woods. He had a quick second to hear the hooves drum over soft ground and see the bright flash of fire at the man’s shoulder. He thought his mother ought to be there somewhere but he couldn’t be sure…
Chapter Nine
A long time later he’d go through it again and feel it just like it had happened and know that was the time he’d passed being a boy.
But this wasn’t the time. There was no feeling or understanding now. It was as if he stood just outside himself and watched another Howie go about his business and do the things that had to be done. Like a little piece of time had been neatly lifted out of the day and set aside on a shelf somewhere. All the minutes and seconds and hours staying just as they were until he was ready for them, the way tiny bits of seed and stone got caught in pond ice, and slept there until the Spring let them go.
The clouds were breaking up and moving away to the east when he opened his eyes. From the light he could tell it was nearly noon and that meant he’d been out at least four or five hours, maybe more.
When he sat up he felt the pain, sharp and clean like a hot knife. He touched his head gingerly where the rider’s bullet had creased a neat furrow across the side of his skull, taking away flesh nearly to the bone. His hair was crusted with blood. There was blood on his face and down his chest but it was all dried and the bleeding had stopped some time ago. He decided he must look pretty awful. Which was probably why they’d left him there and hadn’t bothered to make sure he was dead.
He pulled himself to his feet and stood in the ravine, holding to an old root until the nausea went away. He was tired and stiff all over. He stood there a long time just looking anywhere but toward the house. That was when something else took over in his head and, for a while, put everything behind him.
They’d gone quickly through the kitchen, mostly just breaking things and tearing up whatever they could find. There was flour everywhere and sugar grated under his feet. Pots were shattered and the pieces ground into the floor until you couldn’t tell what they might have been. He reached down and picked up something white and shiny. It was part of a cup, the one with the flowers painted on it that had been his mother’s favorite. He looked at it a minute, then laid it carefully on the table.
In the room upstairs where Papa and his mother slept he found her. Her clothes had been stripped away and her wrists and ankles were tied to the head and foot of the bed with coarse wire. The wire was buried in flesh and he couldn’t see it except where it wound around the posts. She had fought a lot, for a while, anyway. The blood made red bracelets around her wrists and ankles and the skin was torn and swollen there. There was blood in a lot of other places, too, where they’d done things to her. He couldn’t see all of her face because the long black hair was tangled about her features, but he could see the small dark hole in her forehead, ringed with a faint aura of blue.
He thought about cutting the wires loose and finding one of the sheets or blankets that hadn’t been torn too bad and covering her with that. Instead, he turned away and closed the door and went downstairs again.
Papa was halfway up the front steps. He still had on the heavy checkered shirt but his trousers were gone, and Howie saw them bundled up in the yard. He had crawled about ten yards over the hard ground and Howie could look behind him and see the trail he’d made trying to get to the house. He hadn’t used his arms, because his hands were pressed tight against his belly where he’d tried to hold everything in long enough to get there. They’d cut him badly. One raw slice across the bowels, deep, from hipbone to hipbone. There were other cuts on his thighs and between his legs where they’d taken everything away.
Howie looked at him, studying the expression on his face for a long moment.
In his own room, he reached up between the eaves and found his bow and quiver of arrows still there. He rolled up his extra work pants and another shirt and his jacket. Downstairs, he picked through the wreckage in the kitchen and added half a loaf of bread and some dried meat to the bundle. Outside he filled a clay jar with water and stoppered it with a dry plug. Then he walked to the grove of oaks where the War Tax goods had been stacked, squatted down, and studied the tracks of men and horses and wagons. He followed the wheel ruts and the hoof prints with his eye and saw they’d gone west, across his father’s land, toward the river road. That meant they probably didn’t mean to pick up any more goods just now, but were headed for Cotter, which was just outside Bluevale and used a lot by the army.
He looked back once at the house and the barn, then past them to the fields and the stock pits and the green shadow of the woods. There was no sign of old Jaro or any of the other hands. The stock pits were empty. They’d taken everything, as he’d figured. He guessed there were still goods in the barn—there was more there than you could carry away.
He turned and searched the horizon west. On horse a man could go faster, but they had the wagon, which was slow, and the stock to drive along. They’d just make the river, then. They’d have to stop there and rest the stock for the night, even if they felt like pushing on in the dark. He figured he could make it by maybe two or three in the morning. And that would be a good time to get there.
