Chapter Thirty-Three
In the long weeks after Abel Walker’s murder, as they march south across the Barrens, shabbily equipped and poorly provisioned, John Shaw, who has always taken pride in his strength and vigor, begins secretly to wonder whether his once mighty physical powers might at last be declining.
The muscles, bones, and sinews that had never failed, however much he strained or challenged them in the past, undeniably begin to falter.
He finds to his dismay that he cannot lift as much or walk as quickly, and at the end of each day he feels an unaccustomed languor and weariness, as if the blood in his veins has clotted and turned sluggish.
Despite these daily torments, he continues to maintain, as best he can, an outward appearance of calmness and good cheer until they reach the woods, but once there, when they make their first camp in a glade, he lies down exhausted and sleeps for a day without stirring.
When he wakes again in the bewildering light of a golden noon, still stiff and lightheaded, he takes a careful inventory of his physical condition and concludes reluctantly and with a certain bitterness that he is changed in a way that will not easily be reversed.
His appetite and his will, he realizes, are just as strong as they ever were, but his ability to impose that will upon others has been terribly weakened by his recent ordeal.
When we get back to the Fort, I shall just have to change my ways, he thinks morosely.
Live more by my wits, as Magnus does, and less by the power of my arm.
But after so many years, how can I do it?
The arrival of Ministik as their new guide, although it coincides with these unwelcome contemplations, seems at first to have no direct bearing upon them.
The lad will do his duty, Shaw assumes, and get them home, and if his ways are perhaps a little queer, then so be it.
Quite soon, however, the sheer brusqueness and oddity of the youth’s behavior begins to grate upon him.
In different circumstances, he might have tolerated it as the price to be paid for a safe passage home, but preoccupied as he is by the accumulating evidence of his own frailty, he feels every new slight as a subtle challenge to his manhood.
It is worse, he thinks, than a lack of decorum or social polish—such haughtiness and arrogance amounts to a deliberate and continual show of disrespect.
Does this stripling look at me, he wonders, and see a man he can easily outmatch?
Is that how I appear now to the eyes of the world?
When he warns Hearn that the boy has become intolerably insolent and something must be done, Hearn, in his usual fashion, counsels caution.
But Shaw takes no notice, and the next time the youth ignores his opinions, instead of grumbling or gritting his teeth, he grabs him by the collar, pulls him in close so that their faces are barely an inch apart, and warns him to mind his manners from now on and do exactly as he’s told or else he’ll be given a beating he won’t quickly forget.
Keasik, who is watching as this confrontation happens, sees a flash of resentment in Ministik’s eyes and thinks for a moment that he will rise to Shaw’s provocation and the two of them will come to blows.
But as quickly as the look appears, it disappears again and the youth, once Shaw has released his grip, merely tugs at his tunic where it has been pulled askew and checks it isn’t ripped, then turns away without speaking.
She remembers Nabayah’s fight with Shaw in the camp at Ox Lake, the one that drove a wedge between him and his father, and how the fury seemed to take him over so there was no room in his mind or body for anything else.
Nabayah wanted to be brave and strong but really was so full of shame, she thinks, that he couldn’t bear the slightest insult.
Later on, when she asks Ministik about what happened, he says that Shaw has grown short-tempered because his strength is failing.
“He knows he’s getting older and doesn’t like it, so he looks for someone else to blame and chooses me,” he says.
“How do you know that?”
“Watch him sometimes as he walks; see how he winces when we go downhill and groans and rubs his knees each time we stop to rest.”
“I thought there was going to be a fight, but you kept your temper.”
“He’s not important, so why should I fight? Once I have the gun and the other things, I won’t see him again. I don’t care about Shaw.”
“Some men get angry over little things. My husband used to.”
“If I’m not like your husband, then I’m happy.”
They have talked about Nabayah several times.
Keasik has explained all about Crow Lake and how he could never forgive her for what happened there and how that bitterness led to his death, but Ministik, although he’s always listened attentively and patiently, has never until now offered a strong opinion about the rights and wrongs of it.
No, she thinks, you’re not like him at all.
You’re cleverer than he was and in your own way, you’re kinder too.
“He was just too proud,” she says. “That was his problem.”
She pulls the copper charm from underneath her tunic and rubs it absentmindedly between finger and thumb.
“Is that helping you?” he asks.
“I think so. I feel better now than I did before. I don’t see the awful pictures in my head.”
“You still call out in your sleep sometimes. You did last night.”
“What did I say?”
“Mother, where are you? Over and over again. You sounded scared.”
“I suppose I’m lonely. It’s hard to be apart from my family, and the baby coming only makes it harder.”
Ministik nods but doesn’t answer right away. These sudden silences confused her at first, but now that she is used to them she finds them strangely reassuring.
“You want to go back to your people,” he says eventually. “You want to go back home, so you’re not alone or surrounded by strangers when the baby arrives.”
He’s only telling her what she already knows, but to hear him say it, to have her own tangled thoughts expressed by someone else and made to sound so clear and simple, still takes her by surprise.
“You’re right,” she says, “that is what I want more than anything else, but I don’t expect you to help me get there. You have your own business to take care of here. You made a promise to the Englishmen.”
“A promise like that doesn’t matter very much. My father told me if I ever got tired of them, I should walk away. If it wasn’t for you, I’d already be long gone.”
He looks serious when he says it, almost stern, as if their new friendship is too important to be taken lightly. Perhaps I shouldn’t trust him, she thinks, but he seems so different from Nabayah, so much better and calmer, that I can’t help myself.
“My people spend the winters near Goose Lake,” she says. “That’s ten days south of here, I think, or more, perhaps. I’m not exactly sure.”
“I’ve been there once, so I can find the way. If you want to go back, we should wait a few more days until the moon is full, then we can leave in the night when the Englishmen are sleeping. By the time they wake up, we’ll be far away.”
Keasik imagines being reunited with her mother and her sisters, hearing their voices again and seeing their familiar faces.
She has imagined the reunion before many times, but it’s never felt so close or possible as it does now.
It’s as if I’ve been torn in two all this long time, she thinks, and now he is offering to stitch me back together.
“Will you stay at Goose Lake until spring,” she asks him, “or go back to Black Mountain?”
“I’ll stay as long as you want me to.”
I’m damaged, she thinks, in my body and in my mind as well, but he doesn’t seem to notice it, so maybe that means I’m not really damaged at all.
She spreads her fingers wide, looks again at the angry red lines scored across her palm, and tries to remember how it felt to cut herself on purpose.
She can picture it happening and remembers each action she took—the first pain, then the second—but the urge that compelled it is gone, and compared to the pulsing brightness of this present moment, the two of them sitting together side by side in this quiet grove, the memory that remains feels frail and deceitful like a face etched in firelight or some weird, twilit creature made only of shadows and fog.