SCAR
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1779
I look over at the Indian. His breathing is ragged, but steady. I return to staring out at the dark edges of our circle of moonlight. Except for a warm trickle of blood running from my wound, nothing is moving.
I should have run. I should have run for the river like the others. I can’t stop searching the woods surrounding us, hoping that I will see someone. But then I dread who that someone might be, and begin to fear any potential movement through the trees. Although after a brief moment of watching and listening, I again wish for anyone to emerge. Yet there is only darkness and the chirping of crickets.
The Indian turns his head to look at me. He’s awake.
“Are you thirsty?” I ask. The heat is unbearable. If it would just let up a little, I might be able to think straight. I roll over to search for the canteen and am met by a stabbing through my middle so horrible that my stomach rises right into my throat. I can taste the vomit. I stay on my knees, holding it back. Praying for it to pass. Slowly, too slowly, the pressure in my head and chest releases, the nausea falls away, and I’m able to look about for the canteen.
Finding it, I crawl back to the Indian. He’s watching the night sky. I follow his gaze and am struck by how many stars are out. There is more twinkle than there is black sky, the same sky I left at home yesterday morning. But there’s no comfort up there. The brightness of the stars has always seemed cold to me. I frown and look back at the boy who has become my patient. The white light of the moon catches on the shiny scar running down his cheek … Scar. I will think of him as Scar.
My father named everyone. He rarely called people by their given names, but instead by names he created. The more he liked you, the more names he’d forge. Even our cow had several, since she had both good udders and a quiet temperament. All of my sister’s names were of the soft variety: Lamb, Duck, Mouse. I also had many names, but most often I was Cluck, the sound made by our old rooster. My mother had the longest list of us all. But his favorite name for her was “my sweet Wag,” which always made my mother smile, for wag means “one with a mischievous humor,” which she is not.
Kneeling, I once again help Scar raise his head to drink from the canteen. He barely sips at it before he lets his head fall heavy in my hand. “Come on, a little more, try again,” I rally. I know his disinterest isn’t good. I shake the canteen. We have plenty for tonight, but I’ll have to run down to the river at first light for more. I only drink a little, as if in solidarity with him, then close up the canteen and set it down by my side.
But even with the throbbing in my belly pulling at me, I’m not ready yet to retire back to the hot hemlock needles. I spot the emptied knapsack and begin picking everything out of the leaves and dirt, and placing it back inside the sack. As I close it, I’m reminded of how neatly Dr. Tusten had packed it, and I wonder if I, too, will never open it again. I shiver, sending a wave of pain through myself, and I cry out.
Scar looks up. I scoot back to him with the knapsack. His breathing sounds wet. It’s not a pleasant sound, and the more I listen to it, the more it seems to fill the quiet woods.
“Everything’s fine,” I tell him. But my voice is flat and I don’t even believe myself. I pick pieces of dead leaves out of his scalp lock and tuck the frock around him. He winces when I move nearer to his wound.
“Let me check it.” I lift a corner of the frock. I can see a small dark spot soaking through the middle of the dressing. “I’ll rewrap it in the morning. By then the bleeding will have stopped and I’ll clean it out well and put fresh linen on it.”
His eyes seem to say something. It’s the same look that my father’s eyes held when he watched me struggle with my schooling. Does he understand me? The Indian turns his head back toward the sky.
“Try again to drink,” I tell him, and move for the water. I see him shake his head no. I smile. He does understand me. The Indians we trade with often speak English. And since the Mohawk have been living cheek-by-jowl with the Colonists for over a hundred years, many of them speak it well. “We’ll wait on the water,” I say, swallowing a groan as I half fall, half roll to the ground next to him. “We should be careful with it, anyway, because I can’t get us any more until morning.”
This time he doesn’t respond, but lies as still as a turtle on a log in the sun, under my father’s frock.
That frock … My father had been away up north, fighting with General Gates at Saratoga, and had been gone for three months when I saw him walk out of the woods wearing that frock. It was the color that caught my eye, a faded blue, like the sky on a cold winter’s afternoon. I screamed for Mary and my mother, and at the same time, took off in my lopsided gallop to greet him. He dropped his load and ran toward me. When we came upon each other, my father jumped into my arms, and under the surprise of his great weight, my legs gave out and we tumbled off the path and into the long grass. I remember shouting at him that he could have smashed my good foot under his large backside. And he just laughed and took my head in both his hands and placed a big wet kiss on my forehead. I told him that he looked like a fat blue sow. That had him howling with laughter. His face was so red and his frock so blue.
And I laughed with him, despite my anger. I had missed him.
I miss him now.
When he returned from Saratoga, he talked of nothing but freedom and revolution. My father was a great Patriot. My mother was not. She kept her head bent over her knitting or ironing—working even harder than she usually did. It was November, two years ago now, and there was plenty to do with winter coming on. While my father split wood and spun his stories, she stayed far away, collecting chestnuts, drying beans and peas, and plucking goose feathers. She hated this talk.
Mary and I loved it. My father’s tales would whip up his spirit like cream in a butter churn … the declaration of our independence, the battles, the bravery and honor.
Lying here, home and that November day seem so far away.
As does my father.
I can’t believe that only two days have passed since I grabbed his frock on my way out of the cabin. How foolish to have gone back for it when I could smell how close the danger was. But I couldn’t leave it.