فصل 07

Chapter seven

Two Women

Inman followed the yellow man’s map through what the people of the area called hill country. Nights were cool and the leaves were beginning to change color. There was too much open ground to feel good about walking by day, and by night the roads were so full of dark riders that Inman spent as much time hiding in bushes as walking. As soon as he could, Inman left the dangerous roads of the valleys and took a narrow path that aimed north toward the mountains. He climbed for part of one day and all of the next, and there was still a wall of mountain rising in front of him.

Late in the afternoon cold rain began falling, and it was past the middle of the night when he came to a big tree with a large hole in it. He climbed inside, glad to find a dry place, and fell asleep.

He woke soon after dawn, feeling tired, ill and stiff, with the wounds in his head and neck burning hot. All the food he had left in his knapsack was a cup of cornmeal, and it was too wet to make a fire. He sat for a time on a rock, and then got up and walked all morning through the dark woods. The path went up and up, and Inman had no idea where it was leading.

Near midday he came around a bend, and saw a tiny person leaning over a bush. When he came closer, he saw that it was a little old woman, who was putting food in a bird trap.

Inman stopped and said, “Hello, ma’am.”

The little woman looked up at him. She was quite old, that was clear, but her cheeks were as pink and fine as a girl’s. She wore a man’s hat, and her thin white hair hung to her shoulders. Her full skirt and blouse were made of animal skins and she had a gun in her belt.

“I’m wondering if this road goes anywhere,” Inman said.

“It goes west, I believe,” the woman said.

“Thank you,” said Inman.

The woman looked at Inman. “Those look like bullet holes in your head,” she said. “You look faint. White.”

“I’m fine,” Inman said.

“You look like you could eat something. I’d be glad if you’d take shelter and dinner at my camp.”

“Then I’d be a fool to say no,” Inman said.

Inman followed the woman as she climbed to a bend, and from there they left the forest and walked on great rocks along the side of a mountain. A river gorge stretched blue and purple far below them. Then they entered a narrow path cut into the mountain and soon came to a dark cove with a little stream running through it. A small caravan stood in a space surrounded by trees. Birds walked on the roof of the caravan, whose sides were painted with colorful scenes, and plants had twisted themselves around the wheels.

The woman stopped and shouted, “Hey!” and about two dozen goats came out the woods, their yellow eyes bright and smart, the bells around their necks ringing. The woman disappeared around the side of the caravan and the goats followed her. Inman found her building up her cooking fire, and when it was burning well, Inman went to it and put out his hands to warm. A little brown and white goat came to the woman and she stroked it and scratched its neck until it lay down. Inman thought it was a peaceful scene. Then, with one smooth movement, she took a knife from her pocket and cut deep into the animal’s neck. The little goat’s body shook as she continued to stroke it until it lay still.

Inman watched the old woman as she cut the goat’s body into pieces, some of which she put over the fire to cook. Other pieces she put in a pot with water and vegetables.

“By dinnertime we’ll have a good meal,” she said.

Later, the rain started again and Inman went into the caravan and sat by the tiny stove. There was a table piled high with papers and books and on the walls there were drawings of plants, some colored, with a great deal of tiny writing around the edges of the paper.

The woman fried some bread and gave it to Inman, together with some meat. “Thank you,” said Inman, eating it fast. While he ate, she began making cheese from goat’s milk. When she was finished, she handed him some of the milk. Then she sat in a chair by the stove and took her shoes off.

“Did you run off from the war?” she asked.

Inman showed her the angry cut at his neck. “Wounded and sent home,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure,” she answered.

“How long have you been camped here?” asked Inman.

She thought for a minute. “Twenty-six years,” she said.

“Never married?”

“Yes, I was, though I guess he’s dead now. I was a stupid little girl and he was old. He’d already had three wives who’d all died. There was a boy I liked but this man had a nice farm and my family sold me to him. He treated me like a slave. I got up one night and rode away before dawn on his best horse. I’ve been alone since then. There’s a little town about a half day’s walk away. I sell cheese there and medicines that I make from plants.”

She looked at him carefully “Those new wounds in your head are not so bad. When they heal up, the hair will cover them and no one will know they’re there.”

Then she said, “Listen, I don’t care that you’ve run off from the war. It’s dangerous for you, that’s all.”

He looked her in the eyes and saw that they were full of kindness. For a long time he had not met anyone who he trusted the way he did this goatwoman, so he told her what was in his heart. The shame he felt about shooting the Federals, men like him, who ran at guns and died. Then he told her how that morning he had found a bush of dusty blue berries. He had picked them and eaten them for breakfast and watched as some birds had flown across the sky toward the south. At least nature doesn’t change, he thought. Inman had seen only change for four years, and guessed that people fought wars because they were bored. But sooner or later you get tired of watching people kill each other. So that morning he had looked at the berries and felt happy, knowing that nature continued unchanging.

The woman thought about what he had said, then got up and took a bottle containing a thick liquid from her cupboard. She went to Inman and rubbed the liquid on the wounds on his head and neck. When she had finished, she handed the bottle to him.

“Take it with you,” she said. “Rub it on thick until it’s gone. And take these, too. Take one a day, starting now.” She took some large pills from a purse and put them in his hand.

Sometime in the evening they ate the roast meat and the food in the pot. They sat side by side and listened to the faint rain come down in the woods. To Inman’s surprise, he started talking about Ada, describing her character and her beauty, and his realization that he loved her and wanted to marry her. Then they sat for a time without talking while the rain came down harder.

“It must get cold in winter up here,” Inman said.

“Cold enough. I keep the fire hot and the blankets deep, and I’m careful not to let my ink and paints freeze.”

“What is it that you do in those books?” Inman asked.

“I draw pictures and write.”

“About what?”

“Everything. The goats. Plants. Weather. I keep a record.”

“And you’ve spent your life this way?”

“Until now, I have. I’m not dead yet.”

“Don’t you get lonely?”

“Sometimes, yes. But there’s plenty of work.”

The rain began falling harder and they stopped their talking, and Inman went on his hands and knees under the caravan, rolled up in his blankets, and slept. He rose at dawn and packed his things.

“I need to go,” he told the old woman. “But I’d like to pay you for the food and medicine.”

“You could try,” the woman said. “But I wouldn’t take it.” “Well, thank you,” Inman said.

“Listen,” the woman said. “If I had a boy, I’d tell him the same as I’m telling you. Watch out for yourself.”

“I will,” Inman said.

He turned to walk out of the caravan, but she stopped him. She said, “Here, take this with you,” and she handed him a square of paper on which was drawn in great detail a branch of blue-purple berries.

Inman wandered the mountains for days, lost in the fog and rain that never seemed to stop. He used the goatwoman’s medicine until it was gone, and the wounds in his neck and head had healed. His knapsack became empty of food. At first he hunted, but without success. He tried fishing, but there were few fish in the mountain streams. He felt like a wild animal, almost mad with hunger. God, if I could grow wings and fly, he thought, I would be gone from this place. I’d fly far away and watch the world from a high rock.

Then, just as he thought that he could go no further, he came to a lonely little one-room cabin set above the road. The windows were pieces of paper. There was a pig making noises by the fence. Inman stepped up to the gate and shouted, and a young woman, a girl really, came to the door and looked out. She was a tight skinned, pretty little thing, and wore a light cotton dress that did not suit the weather. She looked at him for a minute and then said, “Well, come in.”

“I’ll pay for what I eat,” said Inman.

“I have very little, but I won’t take money. There’s cornbread and beans, that’s all.”

She turned and walked into the house. Inman followed. The room was dark, lit only by the fire, and though there was very little furniture the room was clean. A small baby lay warmly wrapped on the bed.

The woman pulled one of the chairs to the fire and pointed to Inman to sit, and in a minute a faint steam had begun to rise from his wet clothes. She served him a plate piled high with beans and bread. Inman started eating loudly and fast, while the woman sat watching him with some disgust.

“I’m sorry. I’ve not taken actual food in days,” he said.

“There’s no need to be sorry,” she replied.

Inman looked at her closely for the first time. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Eighteen.”

“Name’s Inman. Yours?”

“Sara.”

“Why are you here all alone?”

“My man, John, went off to the fighting. He died some months ago. They killed him up in Virginia. He never saw his baby, and it’s just the two of us now.”

Inman sat silent for a minute. “Do you have any help here?” he said.

“None.”

“How do you manage?”

“I use a little plow to grow corn and vegetables. And there are a few chickens for the eggs. That pig is our food for the winter. I have to kill it soon, but I’ve never killed a pig before.”

Listening to her, Inman thought that she would be old in five years’ time. He saw all the world hanging over the girl like a trap, ready to drop and destroy her.

“I could help,” he said.

“I couldn’t ask it. I’d have to do it as an exchange. I could clean and sew up the holes in those clothes of yours. And you could put on clothes my man left. He was about as tall as you are.”

She left the room and returned with a pile of folded clothes, a clean pair of good boots, and a bowl of water and soap. He stepped outside, took off his clothes, and washed himself. Then he dressed. The dead man’s clothes fitted quite well, and the boots were perfect. When he went back indoors, he felt like the ghost of her husband.

They sat quietly by the fire for a time. Then she said, “You’ll have to sleep in the henhouse.”

He walked out and took his knapsack and went to the henhouse. It was almost freezing and he rolled himself in his wet blankets. He had only just fallen asleep when he was woken up by the girl.

“Come inside, please,” she said. And she turned and walked away. When he went back inside she was in bed, her hair spread thick across her shoulders.

“If I asked you to lay in bed with me but not do anything else, could you do it?” she said.

Inman looked at her and wondered what she saw looking back. A stranger filling the clothes of her husband. “Yes,” he said. He went over, pulled off his boots, and climbed under the bed covers. They both kept absolutely still. Then she started to cry, her chest shaking. After a time, she sat up and started talking about her husband. She just wanted Inman to listen to her story, and every time he tried to speak she silenced him. When she had finished talking, she reached out and touched the cut in Inman’s neck. She rested her hand there for a moment before taking it away, then rolled over with her back to him and soon fell asleep. But tired as he was, Inman could not rest. A woman had not touched him like that for so long that he hardly saw himself as human. He saw his life now as a dark mistake and did not even think it possible to pull Sara to him and hold her close until daylight.

Inman was woken by Sara shaking his shoulder and saying urgently, “Get up and get out.”

It was gray dawn and the cabin was freezing cold, and there was the faint sound of horses coming up the road.

“If it’s the Home Guard, it would be better for both of us if you were not here.”

Inman pulled on his boots and rushed out the back door to the line of trees beyond the stream. There, he hid behind a bush that gave him a view of the front of the house. He could see Sara run across to where the pig slept. She was driving the animal toward the woods when there was a call from down the road.

“Stop right there.”

Blue jackets-Federals. Inman saw three men on horses, all carrying guns. One of the men went to her and told her to sit on the ground. The pig sat on the ground beside her. The other two men went into the house and there was the sound of things breaking. When the men reappeared, one of them carried the baby. It was crying, and Sara begged them to give her the child but they would not. Then Inman could hear that they were asking her about money, where she had it hidden. Sara told the truth, that she only had what they could see. They asked again and again, and then led her to the porch and tied her to it. One of the men took the baby’s clothes off and lay the child on the frozen ground.

Inman could hear one of the men say, “We have all day,” and then he could hear Sara scream.

The men searched the yard, hoping to find money or jewelry buried in the earth, but they found nothing. Then the leader walked to Sara and pointed his gun at her. “You really don’t have anything, do you?”

One of the men gave the baby to her. Then they gathered up the chickens and hung them on their horses. When Sara saw the leader taking the pig away, she shouted, “That pig’s all I have. Take it and you’ll kill us both.” But the men climbed on their horses and went down the road, leading the pig behind them on the end of a rope.

When they had disappeared, Inman ran to Sara. He said, “Warm up your baby and then build a fire as high as your head and put a big pot on to boil.” And he ran down the road.

He followed the Federals, wondering what he intended to do. They did not go far before they built a fire and tied the pig to a tree. Then they killed two chickens and put them to roast on the fire.

Inman circled the area, and in the rocks near the camp he found a shallow cave. Returning to the edge of the men’s camp, he climbed a big tree. In just a minute one of the men walked under the tree and stopped.

Inman said, “Hey!”

The man looked up and Inman shot him. The bullet entered at the shoulder and left through the stomach. The man fell to the ground immediately.

“Did you hit it?” one of the men in the camp called out.

Inman climbed down from the tree, circled the camp, hid behind a bush, and waited. Soon, the men went to find their friend. Inman followed them. Discovering that he was dead, they stood for a time and talked about what they ought to do. They decided to look for the killer. Inman followed them, moving nearer and nearer. When he shot them, he was so near he was almost touching them. They fell in a pile.

“If you’d stayed home, this wouldn’t have happened,” Inman said.

He dragged all three bodies to the cave and sat them up together. Then he led the horses far beyond the cave and shot them in the heads. It was not a happy thing to do, but he knew that if he left them free, people would come looking for their owners. Finally, he returned to the camp, picked up the cooked chickens, and led the pig back down the road.

When he returned to the cabin, Sara had built a good fire in the yard and there was a big pot of water boiling over it. They had an early lunch of the cooked chickens and then started work. Within two hours the pig had been killed, skinned, and cut into sections. They worked until dark, using all the parts of the pig and salting the meat.

Then they washed and went inside and Sara cooked.

After dinner, Sara said, “You’d look better if you shaved.”

So Inman shaved in front of a metal mirror. The eyes that looked back at him had a look that he did not remember, a look that was more than just food hunger. It was a killer face, with eyes that looked at you sideways. But Inman tried to believe that this face was not him in any true way, and that it could in time be changed for a better one.

When he came back in, Sara smiled at him and said, “You look part human now.”

They sat and looked at the fire and Sara held the baby in her lap. It would not sleep, so she sang it a song, a song which expressed such loneliness that it hurt Inman to hear it. The sound was of an old tired woman, and Sara was so young to sound that way. For the rest of the evening they hardly talked, but sat side by side in front of the fire, rested and happy, and later they again lay in bed together.

The next morning, Inman ate the brains of the pig before setting off on his journey again.