Spider in a Tree Read online

  He preached a sermon on the theme that select persons and not the mixed multitudes were fit to judge causes. God, he said, had proved with Moses that he knew judgment to be a difficult business, often attended with intricacy and need of great exactness to judge aright of persons and things. Moses himself had complained that it was very hard, difficult work, but he had not left it to the congregation in common, because he had known that such a company was not fit for it.

  Listening from her bench among the sweaty congregation, Sarah saw Mr. Root, who had recently given up walking out during hymns, raise his eyebrows at Bernard Bartlett. With a pang of apprehension, she watched Mr. Bartlett lean over to whisper a comment in return. She rested her fan in her lap while a rivulet of sweat traced a vein in her neck and faces hardened all around her. Fit or not, she feared that the congregation seemed more than ready to judge.

  Elisha began to spend time with one of the half-wild dogs that lived at the camp. He had first spotted her guarding a pile of entrails from a deer and was taken by the way that she turned and snarled at bigger dogs but came when he called her to drink the water he poured from a skin into his hand. They were both ready for something to trust. Elisha had Joseph and Rebekah, but Joseph was much distracted by Mercy Lyman, a young woman who lived in Brookfield. Rebekah wrote to Elisha that Mercy had a face like a toasting iron. She wrote, too, that his old barn cat, Sister, had wandered away one night and never came back.

  The dog was small and black, with a white patch shaped like a bell on her low, broad chest. She had skinny legs and was quick to crouch, hackles raised, at the sight of a strange dog. The pack she ran with lived off the soldiers’ leavings.

  Elisha named the dog Delilah and kept a bowl of water for her outside his room. Every day, she followed him as best she could, staying clear of the hooves of the horses and the boots and moccasins of the men. She was quick and footsure even on hills, so he let her come with him on supply runs.

  Elisha had been excommunicated by the Northampton church, but Joseph was hopeful about a reversal. Reading his letters with the rumblings of hunger in his belly, Elisha felt far from the world in which such things mattered. He had heard that a great army was fitting out in Canada to be directed against Albany, Schenectady, and possibly also Massachusetts. He got word from Stockbridge that not more than a bit of wheat could be transported until the roads were better, even that not in wagons, but on soldiers’ backs (provided that they brought their own knapsacks). Pay for the soldiers was expected daily, but it was brutally slow to come.

  Every day he sent two men to the top of the mountain called the Height of the Land, between the Deerfield river and the Dutch town of Hoosack. They had to set off in the morning and make a good camp on the mountain, then climb a tree at sunrise to search for smoke. If any were seen, one was to report to Deerfield, and the other to Fort Massachusetts. Smokes had been seen.

  Elisha, Delilah, and about forty men were just back from a run to Deerfield on a parched day in early August. The stores had been scant, diminished by the drought, but he had hogs, flour, and salt, which would do them all good. Colonel Williams, his commander, was at the fort, which always made Elisha restless. After unpacking for half the afternoon in the relentless sun, he gave the men a respite and grinned when he saw Delilah crawling under the palisades. He needed to fill in that gap in the fence, but she was off to swim in the river, he was sure of it. Wishing he could join her, he climbed a watch tower, greeted the sentry, and sat down on the platform in hope of a breeze. None came, but he leaned back and looked over the high, sharp slats that protected the fort to search for Delilah’s dark shape against the grasses.

  He spotted her, but instead of loping toward the river, she was in a crouch, moving slowly toward an edge of woods halfway between the fort and the water. He expected her to flush out some quail or a possum surly with sleep, but instead she suddenly dodged to the right as a shot came from the woods.

  Elisha jumped to his feet and sounded the alarm, as, to his horror, he saw a small group of his own men away from the fort with their guns out, firing at the woods. They had gone, without permission, to the river, and their fire was being returned. Shots were coming heavily now, and as Elisha pounded down the ladder, Colonel Williams came running out of his quarters.

  “With me!” the colonel shouted. “Form your ranks!” To Elisha, he muttered, “They must have followed our scout.”

  Elisha joined the men who marched from the fort, but as soon as they were out of the gate, a crowd of Abenaki from Scaticook surged from the woods, firing and making an ungodly noise. The men from the fort were outnumbered, but reached the small group of men who had been caught outside. The group found themselves cut off from their right flank, and so fought their way back to the fort.

  Elisha, who had seen Ezekiel Wells shot in the hips, was running numbly back toward the gates when he felt a burning pain in his calf. He went down, but two of his men stopped to drag him to the fort. He limped back to his room to staunch his wound with a sheet and found Delilah waiting by the door. She was unharmed, and sat shivering beside him as he listened to the cannon and tried to pick buckshot out of his leg for an hour and three quarters by the glass. Then the Abenaki fell back and the shooting stopped.

  There were three casualties. Elisha, Ezekiel Wells, and Samuel Abbot, who had been shot below the navel and was not expected to live.

  As soon as she heard that Elisha was wounded, Rebekah went to her garden and started picking herbs to grind for a salve. The plants were shriveled and close to the ground, but succulents, which were best for wounds, fared better than others in drought. She felt profoundly calm, as if there was only one thing to do in this moment, and she was doing it. The buckshot had missed the shin bone, and Elisha’s life had been spared. If he were near her, she would have made him stay in the house, safe from all manner of miasmas and dangers until he was well-healed, but, as it was, she was grateful that his calf was all he had sacrificed to keep their people safe and restore his own good name.

  Once Joseph saw that Rebekah was well-occupied, he went out and marched in the road, beating a drum, until he had gathered a group of twenty-nine men: Seth Pomeroy and his regulars along with others, like Joseph, who were hot to scour the frontier.

  Saul heard the drumming while he was pouring water in the troughs for the Edwards cattle and came running to King Street, where he found himself standing in front of the house beside Mr. Edwards, who looked grim.

  Saul put his bucket down and said, “Can I go and fight?”

  Two young missionaries able to do chores were staying with the Edwardses that summer. Mr. Edwards, who saw the hand of God in every battle, also saw the spark of life back in Saul’s eyes. He said, simply, “Yes.”

  Later, Saul came back to the house for food to carry with him. Ever since Leah died, he had worn her pocket around his neck, so he now had a place to stow his knife, knocking gently against her piece of shell. He gave Leah’s carved box with the books to Bathsheba, who came running down the road to hold him close. For safekeeping, he said. He spoke gently to the children, respectfully to Sarah, and nodded to Rose, accepting prayers and blessings.

  At that first moment on King Street, though, he fell in to march with nothing like a second glance.

  Joseph wrote to Elisha from Deerfield with the troops:

  I rejoice greatly and desire to praise God that your wound is in a healing way. I pray you to consider of special obligation upon you to live to him who thus preserved you and is saving and healing you. Mother is pretty much concerned about you but not so much as I feared she would have been. If things should so open that we should think we may be as serviceable in going to your fort as anywhere, I shall be set to see you, but don’t expect it much. Mother has given me some salve to send you, which she thinks best to put above your wound to prevent the humours from falling into the wound as she imagines you will
be inclined to stir a pretty deal.

  Joseph’s troop was out for more than a week. Saul found that there were two other men from Deerfield, Cato and Cesar, who were also slaves sent to fight. They knew each other well and welcomed Saul into their company. He joined them by the fire at night, and they all shared food, but Cato and Cesar knew the country the troop was traveling through, so they scouted in front of the main group, while Saul was in back with the pack animals.

  They did stop at Fort Massachusetts. Joseph embraced Elisha and examined the wound in his leg, as he had promised their mother he would do. It was healing well, and, along with less pleasant scents, smelled faintly of her garden. They had a meal together, then stayed up late, drinking rum and telling stories: first Elisha’s recent experiences, then Joseph’s Louisburg days, then gossip from home. They avoided some of Northampton’s most heated rumors, which concerned Elisha himself.

  Joseph slept that night on a pallet in Elisha’s room. After they blew out the candles, Elisha lay awake in his cot as his calf throbbed. Finally, he spoke. “I’m sorry that my sins have caused so much trouble for Mother and you.”

  Joseph raised his head. It gave him great relief to hear the surge of remorse in his brother’s voice, which bode well for his soul. He rested his chin on the pallet. “No need to speak of it.”

  Elisha said, “Thank you, brother.” Then he muttered, “Although you could stand to be a little less arrogant, yourself.”

  Stung, Joseph whipped his blanket at him. Elisha caught it before it hit the floor, wadded it up, and threw it back, harder. One corner snapped across Joseph’s cheek. They stared at each other’s outlines in the darkness, then both of them started laughing as if they were boys bunking together in the attic again. When they were finally quiet, Joseph felt calmer than he had in months. He lay down, pulling the blanket over him, and said, “You know I’m right.”

  “About everything?” Elisha snorted.

  Joseph’s cheek burned and his eyelids were drooping. All he said was, “Mmm.”

  Then they both slept.

  In the morning, Delilah licked Joseph’s hand as gently and fervently as if it were a puppy. She barked after the horse when he rode off with his troop.

  The militia headed home after ten days, having sighted no one to fight or subdue. Crops were sparse that summer, but it was time for harvest. They were needed at home and, most of them, ready to be there.

  On the last night out of Deerfield, making camp near the river, Saul felt dry as the hambone he had already used for soup three times. He was unwrapping it to chew the last shred of gristle when Seth Pomeroy—who had a runner from Deerfield waiting on a written report to carry into town before they arrived—rode up beside Saul, dismounted, and said, “See to my horse.”

  Saul looked at the fine roan gelding, which was crusted with dried sweat and exhausted from the long days of travel. And so thirsty. Saul, tired himself, took hold of the reins and led the horse toward the river.

  He had already taken care of the pack animals and, except for Major Pomeroy, who came and went as he pleased, had been traveling last, so he was setting out alone. Soon he and the horse were well out of the light thrown by the fires being lit by men leaning over them with tinderboxes. It was late, and night was coming hard. Saul tripped over a root, and then a rock.

  “To blazes,” he said, and, with some difficulty, mounted Major Pomeroy’s horse. He didn’t have a confident seat. The roan walked slowly, grazing in the dark, but when Saul pulled on the reins, it stopped for a moment, then went along faster. They could smell the river.

  The air seemed heavier than it had been, saturated with heat, but Saul felt a little cooler riding than he had walking. He got out his bone to chew as he rode, and unfastened his waistcoat and shirt to bare his chest to any hint of breeze. He didn’t feel that he was making a decision, but pulled on his long shirttails until they were flapping free of his britches. This annoyed the roan, which switched at them as if they were a swarm of biting flies. Thinking of flies, Saul shifted the reins to one hand and held the shirt together to cover his chest. He didn’t button it.

  There was a mild bank that led to a good place to water, but Saul let go of his shirt to guide the descent at a steep angle. The roan, eager to drink, took it too fast and stumbled a little as he reached the water. Saul threw up his arms and fell over the horse’s neck into the river.

  He went under, hitting something hard and sharp with both knees, but came up quickly, gasping. The water was colder than he had expected. Low as it was, the river had a strong current, and he had to move fast to strip his shirt from his arms, thinking of a story he had heard of a woman held underwater by the weight of her skirt. He tossed the shirt to catch on scrubby bushes on the bank, where, he hoped, it would mark the spot that he must have drowned. There would be no sign of him having stepped foot on the bank.

  The roan had looked up and scrambled partway back up the bank as Saul fell, but it was cautiously approaching the water again, head lowered to drink. Saul was panicked and tempted to fight his way to the bank. Instead, he thought of Leah and her lessons, and began to stroke with his arms. He had once seen a strong current spin a sodden log. The other slaves, he thought, would not speak first, or track him down. The others might come looking for the horse, might search for him a little, but, he thought, not much. He could be, perhaps, a casualty of the war, taken by the river. He would go looking for those who might admit a stranger such as him to their fights, and, even, maybe, if he were lucky and patient, to any ways they had of living with hard losses. He never wanted to see Northampton again.

  Saul said no prayers in the water, but as he swam, the drought broke. When he climbed out of the river and set out for the mountains, he was in a world of rain.

  Mr. Edwards was chopping wood at the old stump when he saw Joseph riding up King Street. He stopped and watched as the solemn young man—built sturdily, like his father—dismounted with a soldier’s briskness and held the reins rather than tying them to a post. Not staying long.

  Mr. Edwards leaned on the axe handle and said, “Welcome back, Mr. Hawley. Are you ahead of the troop?”

  Joseph, who had been putting on airs ever since he had come home to be a lawyer, seemed awkward this morning. He sighed before he spoke. “Bad news, sir. We lost your Saul.”

  Mr. Edwards felt it like a blow. He stood very straight. “Dead?”

  Joseph nodded. “Drowned.” He told the story: wandering horse, river, Saul’s shirt.

  Mr. Edwards listened with twists of feeling he did not try to understand. His heart had been wrenched dry by Jerusha’s death, Brainerd’s, and, he knew, also Leah’s. “May God sanctify this loss.” He hit the head of the axe on the side of the stump, feeling constrained in grief by his duties. “Perhaps I should not have let him go. He wasn’t trained to be a soldier.”

  Joseph put a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “He was in the militia. He was a good servant, skilled at his work.”

  Mr. Edwards wanted to sit down on the stump and weep, but he couldn’t, not in front of Joseph. He thought of the light in Saul’s eye the last time they had spoken, suddenly there after months of dullness. It gave him hope that the man had died in an awakened state.

  Joseph cleared his throat and spoke again. “I am sorry to say that I do not think that there is any likelihood of compensation from the government in Boston in these circumstances.”

  Mr. Edwards stared at him. He saw the little boy running out of the woods to tell him about his own father’s grievous, self-inflicted wounds, and he saw the young man trying to act as if the rules of human society were enough to guide him through the ravages of life.

  Joseph looked at his boots. He had known Saul most of his life. “Regarding the loss of property.”

  Mr. Edwards flinched under the obscene practicality of this observation. Before the rain th
at had swollen the river which had washed Saul away, Northampton had been in a drought of the land and was still in a drought of the spirit. He had preached about how desperate starving people could get in a drought, forced to feed on each other’s carcasses, sometimes even to devour their own flesh. The rain had brought some respite from the drought of the land, but he felt the horror of spiritual drought rising in him. When he spoke, it was to quote scripture to sanctify Saul’s death. “For I that is will pour water upon him thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.”

  Joseph bowed his head, then rode away.

  Mr. Edwards picked up his axe. He clove nearly half a cord of oak. He kept chopping—sweating and crying in full view of King Street—long after nature urged him to drink.

  Chapter 21: December 1748 – July 1749

  Rose knocked crisply, then led Simeon Root into the study. She shut the door on her way out. Mr. Edwards let Simeon stand there for a moment, crumpling the brim of his hat in his fist and shifting from foot to foot. Simeon, once a notorious rowdy, was now a respectable young man, formal at the moment in his coat and cuffs. He seemed to take the inspection in good spirits, bowing when Mr. Edwards motioned him into a chair. He took a deep breath and said, happily, “Sir, I wish to join the church.”