OH, YES, FREEDOM
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1779
Scar breathes noisily, asleep beside me. I stare straight into the darkness of my eyelids, concentrating hard. At home, this sometimes works and I drop off to sleep. It isn’t working now, even though I’m so unbelievably tired. Probably because Scar is sleeping so … loudly. My father was also a loud sleeper. He would snore and toss and turn all night. I think we sleep like we live, and my father lived and slept noisily.
Reaching out, I pick up the sleeve of his hunting frock. I bring it to my nose and breathe my father in deep, shivering as I release my breath. My body is on fire, yet I feel colder than the water in a washbasin on a February morning. Why am I here? Why did I want to join this fight?
I remember the walk to the Littles’ on my way back from the fort the day of the raid. A tight bitterness pulls at my chest and I toss the sleeve to the ground. “This is not like your stories, Father,” I spit.
He answers me in the universal response of the dead—silence—and the rage at the sound of it nearly splits me in two.
I jerk my head from these thoughts and turn toward the Indian snoring next to me. Knotted scalp lock … dark lashes resting on sunken cheeks … lips turned down in a loose frown … Not a single line crosses his brow. He would be dying here alone in the woods had I not come.
The anger runs out of me like dry soil through my fingers. It’s no use now anyway, and I don’t have the strength for it.
Scar shuffles his legs, stirring up the leaves underneath. His eyes flutter and his eyelids open just a tiny crack. “Noah?” he whispers.
“I’m here,” I tell him. “Go back to sleep.”
His eyes close.
“Wait!” I call. All of a sudden I need to know. “Your name. What’s your name?”
I see his mouth turn up in a small smile. “Scar,” he mouths. Then the smile fades and he’s again lost in sleep.
I laugh, quietly. So like Eliza … he mocks me. And now the ball, the heat, the cold, the scratchy dead leaves, I feel none of them.
He’s snoring again, this time a little louder than before.
I listen to him sleep … and begin to drift off. I remember that he was my enemy once. Scar. A healed wound. His new wound is not going to heal. Do the wounds of war ever heal, leaving only a scar where we once all bled? My head feels thick and heavy, as though stuffed full of deer hair like my moccasins in winter. His real name. I need to know it. To remember. And feeling unhappy and confused, I pass from wakefulness to sleep.
I watch the plants produce new stalks, or “tillers.” The young wheat is strong and green. The moist days of late spring make the plants happy. A good crop can grow two heads taller than a man, and this one is on its way. It tickles my chin as I walk through the rows.