The book of spirits, p.43
The Book of Spirits, page 43
Yes: I bled. What was it seized me? Surely there was no forethought, nothing but the surrendering to instinct…. Simply: I saw Fivekiller’s knife strapped to his hip; for he stood before me on our crossing, with the maroons at the raft’s fore. The blade was exposed, and so, too, was the steely tip. And as I turned from its glinting edge to look down through Glass Lake itself, suddenly—as though I saw the scene played out there upon its white sand bottom—I knew what I would do to defy and deny the witch I was leaving behind.
I opened wide my right hand and fast, fast I slid it the length of Fivekiller’s knife. Opening a gash three, four inches in length. At first it did not show, and I wondered how could I have failed? O, but then the pain and the blood came in sickening unison.
The raftmen knew not what I’d done. Fivekiller, of course, did; but he turned back to me slowly, so slowly I’d already knelt to set my bleeding hand in Glass Lake.
Red trailed the raft, red diffused down. I wondered were these the same waters that fed Sweet Marie’s font? Did these waters rise from a common spring? The answer was readily had: pain; and sudden scarring. This was not the same pain I’d known in Sweet Marie’s hut, no. Rather, it was alike in kind, but lesser in degree. And so: yes, this too was springwater…. I’d succeeded. At what, exactly? I’d not know for some months more.
Upon the lake’s far shore we were traded for the ill-fated cattle. The maroons knew not what had happened; for I hid my ruined hand and the blood that might have betrayed me had dried on Fivekiller’s blade, where it would arouse little suspicion if seen.
Fivekiller blindfolded me, using a colorless length of muslin that reeked of rotten fruit. “They watch,” whispered he, as apology. So it was I’d leave that clearing as I’d come: sightless. “She watches,” added the Indian. “Somehow she sees.”
Fivekiller led me into the woodland on foot; for we were not granted a mount. But as soon as we put the maroons behind us, my guide relieved me of the blind and asked, “What have you done? We must now run. Run to the sea. By sunset.”
Could Sweet Marie already know what I’d done? I cannot say, even now; but neither Fivekiller nor I wanted to wait for an affirmative answer to come in the form of her cats.
The sun was setting, bending to the Gulf, when finally we broke cover of the green. Of the scratching, clawing, smothering green. Onto open beach.
I suppose I’d anticipated a canoe or simple dugout; for otherwise I cannot account for my joy upon seeing Fivekiller drag from the thicket a fishing smack rigged with sail. Now we’d the wind to assist us in our escape; for so it had come to seem: an escape.
Sweet Marie had said I’d find Celia at Okahumpky—Micanopy’s town—one hundred-odd miles northeast of Fort Brooke; which information was grudgingly gotten from her. To Tampa we’d sail, Fivekiller and I; and at Fort Brooke—situated where the Hillsborough River debouches into a bay of the same name—we’d marshal our needments, hire horses, and proceed overland, into the Nation proper. Or so I supposed. And not even the distance ahead daunted me; for I knew, knew Sweet Marie had spoken truly of Celia—the cruel are oddly attuned to the truth, and wield it well—and that finally I’d find her. Simple, it seemed; to one as naive as I was.
Northward, the territory showed signs of autumn or earliest winter as the days drew in; but still there came the occasional heat-breaking, summerish storm, when late in the day the sky putrefies—the clouds necrotizing from white to gray to a gangrenous green—and seems to die, with thunder its throes and lightning its last will and testament, scribed into the sky. Rain cords down, coldly; and the stricken earth steams. Then come the frogs, nonplussed, seeming to call for sustenance: fried bac-on, fried bac-on…. Or so it sounded to me.
“Skin-co-chaw,” said Fivekiller, one such rain-sodden dusk. We’d found dry land on which to bivouac, and sat listening to the inland chorines thusly identified. Frogs less hearty let go whistles and trills; one sounded like a fingernail run the length of a fine-tooth comb.
Thereafter, I asked questions; for I saw that Fivekiller could not help but teach, taking for his text the green and gold and blue book of the world. In so doing his eyes nearly shone, but I cannot aver they did shine: for fixed was his face, no matter his heart-state.
He’d offer identifying words and such, yes; but conversation this was not. Fivekiller was proficient in Spanish and English, which latter he refused and would not willingly speak, not at first, seeming to fear it would sully his tongue. Me? I struggled with the Indian language, so unlike any I’d learned; but some words he taught me I retain; such as:
“Hey-a-ma,” said my companion. It was deepest night, our second day out. We sat shoulder to shoulder upon the sand, gazing seaward, skyward. “Kot-zesumpa eparken.” I understood when Fivekiller unfurled six fingers, and pointed with a forefinger: up. The Pleiades, there, with six of the seven-sister stars visible. Too, there was Aldebaron and the scintilla of Orion’s belt, to both of which the Indian introduced me.
We sat stargazing a long while; till finally:
“Nochebuschee,” said Fivekiller; and he rose, ascended to the dunes, and stood amidst the tall grasses. He set his gaze southward. He’d keep first watch. And I’d sleep in the firmer sand just above the tide line; for he’d told me to: Nochebuschee.
The sidereal show faded, and the sea’s song proved a lullaby: sleep came.
It was the risen sun woke me, warmly. Of course, I’d kept no watch. And now I wondered how long Fivekiller had been standing there in the surf, gazing southward, waiting, ready to sail.
Fivekiller had made the trip to Fort Brooke before. He knew the sinuations of the shore—such as no map can show—and sailed us with cunning. He knew where to put ashore, where to pile palmetto and moss for a shade-blessed respite. I needed the shade; for the sun, the constant sun, stunned me: sunstruck, I was. Indeed, I burned as the sun struck me twice: once as it fell, a second time as it glanced off the glass of the Gulf.
It seemed the shoreline had been gnawed by the sea’s offset teeth: there were coves and swamps and piney islets. Mangroves hugged the coast…. O mangroves: which ought not, cannot grow as they do, thriving in that brine that smothers aught else; which have only the land they make as they float freely, searching out their like and letting fall their common roots; till, in time, an island rises. (When solitude descends, and loneliness seems my lot, I think of the persisting mangrove.)…Too, pinewoods rose amidst the palms, all of them leaning this way and that, as the wind led them. Shore-birds cried and rode the air currents as best they could. Upon the ivoried strand, heron pecked fiddler crabs from their pinhole caves. In the surf, they guzzled guppies and such. To this sea-show I succeeded in surrendering my fears; until our fourth day out.
With the main of our journey behind us—now we’d only to cross the bay of Espíritu Santo to Fort Brooke: a sail of some duration, still—we went ashore, onto a key; for the bay showed itself tufted in white, and our sail was too full for safe passage. It was on Mullet Key—so called—that I found fears anew; for:
Inland we came upon a hammock grown o’er with fern and scrub. And a charred circle of earth, none too cold. It seems to me now that the fire was smoking still; for I’m inclined to fancy that the pirates who’d laid the blaze had sailed not an hour before we’d come. O yes: pirates, brigands, bad men…call them what you will.
They ply the western shore from Cape Sable northward, loosely allied to the Indians or to the Cuban fishermen with whom they sometimes trade, from whom they sometimes steal. But far greater is the loot to be had off those hapless craft that run aground on reef or shoal, the crews of which willingly trade their wares for their lives. These pirates are Bahamian, by tradition, though truer it is to say the lot of them are landless, and lawless. And so: bad enough it would have been, this coming upon a pirates’ camp; but Fivekiller—was that a layer of fear I saw, rising to his too-stolid face?—explored a bit more; and what he found only disquieted me further:
A bottle palm had been blazed up its seaward side: burned, yes; but only to the height of a man’s hips. Behind it, on the ground, we found rope: evidence enough for Fivekiller to pronounce that “bad work” had been done upon the site.
“Burned, do you mean? A man was…burned?”
The Indian made no answer, and instead searched to find:
…a silver fork, hinged for folding away; iron shot, such as is fired from the swivel guns of the lesser (and faster) vessels the pirates prefer; feces—clumped quite near the fire—which he identified as human by means which I shan’t describe here…. O but nothing was as bad as that act testified to by the ropes and the blazed tree; at the base of which Fivekiller found no bones but plenty of blood, dried to black and beset by ants. Ants which I trailed to behind the bole, where not far from the rope I found a large land crab, rather peaked in aspect and seeming frozen in its crawl; and which, as I approached, fast assumed its true and rightful shape: a human hand, this was.
I reeled back from the thing, which Fivekiller prodded with first a reed, then a finger. I begged him not to take the relic up. Falling into a crouch, I sought some means of defense; for I knew, knew we were ringed by wreckers, pirates, or whatnot: trapped. Ambush was imminent…. It was not; and so I set down the coconut I’d taken up. O, but still Fivekiller failed to persuade me we were safe. Said he, no pirates would return to a campsite so recently the site of such summary, sea-born justice. This was no permanent base of operations we’d found; but rather a place some piratical types had come to impart a lesson—as concerned thievery, I supposed—to one of their own. Regardless, I insisted we sail off at once.
“No,” said Fivekiller, flatly; and his only concession was this: we’d encamp far across the key. Still I protested. Finally Fivekiller spoke his detested English, saying:
“No pirate is more powerful than you.” This he followed with words of Muskogee. Something rhetorical seeming; for he shook his head, and tsked his tongue. Were I to venture a guess as to what he said, it would be this: How does this witch not know her worth, not see her strength?
Owing to dreams of piracy, I slept not well upon the key.
Waking at dawn of our fifth day away—grateful I’d not been desexed, spitted like a sow, or otherwise used by men rum-drunk and depraved—I cast a fast eye for Fivekiller, who I hoped had readied our boat for the bay crossing. But no:
There he sat in the shade of a pine some ten, fifteen feet distant. From a haversack of his own he’d taken provender—my breakfast of bread heel and salt beef, beside which he’d set a treat: a coconut, its side stove in to access its meat and milk—as well as a thing I’d seen before, but knew only as some tool of his simple toilette: a bundle of deerhide; which now he untied and unfurled, as though it were a pennant. There, by first light, I saw aglint that amber glass I knew too well. Into this pouch there’d been sewn many pockets, each of which fit one vial. Within it were ten bottles, sitting five to a side in finger-like array. Fivekiller uncorked a full one. I watched as he threw back all, all of the elixir within. Time served at Glass Lake had shown me that such a dosage was extreme. Even the worst-mangled men had had their medicine doled out by the drop, not the bottle; and certainly none had drunk from the Spanish well daily. I counted five vials of the elixir left. Feigning sleep, I calculated thusly:
We were five days from Glass Lake. We’d gain Fort Brooke by nightfall, if the winds were kind; but there he’d leave me. Fivekiller could go no further: he’d have to depart immediately in order to make his way back to Sweet Marie by the eleventh day. Otherwise he’d exhaust his supply and…
What? Begin to die?
Only then—with a sickening twist within—did I begin to wonder what fate I’d loosed upon the men of Glass Lake.
54
Arrival at Fort Brooke
After an eastward sail of some twenty-odd miles, we’d passed o’er Espíritu Santo and into its lesser sister, the bay of Hillsborough. Some ways northward we found the fort; and a welcome sight it was.
It was midafternoon; or leastways it was bright and hot. We sailed with land not far off to port. Before we gained sight of the fort, there’d been but blueness; for the sky was devoid of cloud, and all about us there spread the great bay. I sat aft, watching sea creatures breach the bay wholly or in part: mullet skimmed the surface as skimmed stones will, once, twice, three times before sinking; and there came the wing tips of rays, the fins and blue backs of dolphins, the muzzles of manatees…
The coast wore its mangrove fringe; and the sun played off the mollusks trapped therein: they glinted and shone amidst the trapping roots, and called to mind men I’d seen with droplets of beer adorning their beards. In New York, that must have been. At some portside sink. Such thoughts recalled the Duchess, dead and oft-mourned Eliphalet, Adaline, and all the scattered sisters. O, but here I was, sailing to Celia; so I cast off the past, and grew heart-strong.
…And finally: Fort Brooke:
Which is young enough to bear the name of a man still living. Built not a decade past, it sits well acred amidst live oak and hickory. Its walls of tall timber triangulate toward the northeast, toward the Seminole Nation, the boundary of which sits some eight miles distant; its third wall is shoreline. Within there sit pine-hewn barracks, storehouses, stables, smiths…: things needful to a hundred-odd men living far from any brethren.
The fort was then an open place. Settlers hadn’t moved within it: still they manned their riverside shanties and stores. Slatterns, some of them were, in service to the soldiers; but others—the foreign-born, men on the lam, young families: frontier types—had come to begin anew. Only later would they abandon their stakes to camp in the fort’s shadow; and eventually seek the safety of its interior. But fear was unfounded when we arrived that winter of ’33–’34; for war—yes: war—had not yet come.
Arriving at the wharf, we were met by an indolent-seeming corps of soldiers whose rifles were employed as walking sticks. From far away I saw their sky blue slacks; nearer, I noticed their uniforms were lax, in concession to the sun and heat of their posting: shirtsleeves rolled or ripped away, kerchiefs tied at the neck and wetted with water or sweat. Their welcome was a mixture of curiosity, civility, greed, and mistrust.
Curiosity: who were we, sailing up the river to their cantonment?
Civility: such as Americans observe.
Greed: what had we on hand?
And mistrust: the peaceable years of coexistence with the Seminole were passing; and we were welcomed as we’d not have been months later…. We: a willowy white man with a blond braid hanging down his back, fashioned to appear part pirate, part Seminole; and in his company a stoical red man standing to an equal height but seeming much, much stronger. In response to the soldiers’ queries, I told a story the details of which I cannot recall; but it had its effect: we were let onto land. And when I remarked the way these men looked at Fivekiller—taking him in fearfully: his body, yes, but more so his face—I heard myself say, “He is sick.” And only then did I know he was.
The second day at the fort—after having met the striped-shouldered men in charge, who kindly granted us board and beds, albeit in the hospital ward—Fivekiller and I set out alone in a canoe to see what we could, and find food of our own; for thusly had we been advised, strongly so. Fivekiller had not been out of my sight all that morning; and so it was I turned to him as he sat behind me in the dugout. “Your morning drink,” said I. “What of it?” He’d not had his water. Had he forgotten? No: I knew he hadn’t; so doubtless my question came well freighted.
“No more,” said he, turning to show a profile hard and sharp as honed steel.
Nothing more was said of the matter. Instead, we took to the bay, seined for redfish, and returned with a surplus catch that earned both our keep and the approbation of the soldiers. The next day Fivekiller pegged a turtle, which yielded steaks for ten. Thereafter, his skills—at sea and on land—were sought.
I sat out such excursions, keeping to the fort’s hospital and doing what I could therein whilst planning—with lessening patience—the search for Celia. I assisted the fort’s surgeon: a melancholic—name of Gatlin—who was unpopular among the men (as the Keepers of Leeches so often are). Far from overworked was this Dr. Gatlin; still he gave o’er to me what work there was. And I earned my keep by swabbing brows, salving scars, rewrapping wounds…: none of which I much minded. (Hadn’t I seen much worse?)
Whilst I nursed what few patients there were, and whilst the hundred-odd soldiers of Fort Brooke saw to duties of the fatigue sort—repairs requisite to keeping the several outbuildings standing in so corrosive a climate—Fivekiller was asked to join a party setting sail for Anclote Key. They’d hunt, fish, and frolic; though, officially, I suppose, they were on the watch for pirates. I was unhappy when he nodded his assent; for now we, or I, would have to delay our setting out until his return, some ten days hence. But if I was angry and confused when he left—for still I knew not if he planned on accompanying me; or what toll his sudden disdain of the Spanish waters would take; or if Sweet Marie’s coprophagous cats could track us as far as Fort Brooke; or…—stay, and let this suffice: I was naught but sympathy upon Fivekiller’s return; for it was irrefutable: he’d begun to die.
Fivekiller returned from Anclote Key with the fleet of low-drawing craft—smacks laden with venison and fish already salted; but in the catching of same, he’d assumed the first signs of aging. His black hair now showed gray; and an excess of new growth—whole inches—had come in coarse, so brittle it broke beneath the brush. Patches of scalp shone through. Still his eyes were stony cold, his face set; but his body had begun to change at a rate all out of keeping with any natural process. Rather, this was the natural process of aging—was it not?—which the Spanish waters had retarded.
On that excursion, Fivekiller suffered the first of many broken bones. He’d been drawing in fish by main force, alongside three soldiers, when suddenly there was heard a snap, akin to the clap of a gator’s jaw (or so I had it from a witness). Fivekiller had not felt it at first; and only knew he’d broken the bone of his forearm when another of the men pointed to it, breaking the skin like a just-cut tooth. Thusly did he return to Fort Brooke with his arm splinted; but never to heal. In time other bones broke. The smaller ones of his hands and feet snapped like matchsticks. His hands swelled terribly, seemed bags of splintered and splintering bone. The feet were worse still; they, too, surrendered their shape as the nails grew too thick for tending. Within six, seven weeks of our arrival, Fivekiller’s hands were inutile and he could not stand.
