Scar

Text copyright © 2016 by J. Albert Mann

All rights reserved.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact
[email protected]
.

Although this work centers on historical events, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual incidents or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Calkins Creek

An Imprint of Highlights

815 Church Street

Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-62979-465-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-62979-559-1 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953545

First edition

The text of this book is set in Sabon.

Design by Barbara Grzeslo

Production by Sue Cole

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For Judith Brashier, my plucky mother-in-law
,

who read my book in its first draft and announced

it was the best book she'd ever read
.

Your kindness knew no bounds
.

     
C
ONTENTS

Chapter One: Three Days

Chapter Two: Women

Chapter Three: Scar

Chapter Four: The Frock

Chapter Five: Somehow I Can Change My Fate

Chapter Six: The Story of Eliza Little

Chapter Seven: One Field of Corn

Chapter Eight: The Longest Night

Chapter Nine: I Will Go

Chapter Ten: Oh, Yes, Freedom

Chapter Eleven: Men of Flint or Eaters of Men

Chapter Twelve: Tired

Chapter Thirteen: It's A Dangerous Thing that We Propose To Do

Chapter Fourteen: Don't Let Go

Chapter Fifteen: The March North

Chapter Sixteen: Nothing

Chapter Seventeen: A Shot Cracks the Silence

Chapter Eighteen: Keep Your Promise

Epilogue

About the Characters

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

An Interview with J. Albert Mann

About the Author

       
CHAPTER ONE

     
THREE DAYS

       
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1779

Their screams blind me. I run. Fast. So fast that I run right through my limp. There is nothing I can do for them now—not for Dr. Tusten, not for Mr. Jones or Jon Haskell, not for any of them. Even as I dodge a blur of trees and rocks and branches, the scene under the ledge replays in my mind, Dr. Tusten shouting at me to run, that hatchet …

My lame foot catches a rock and I meet the ground. Hard. The musket ball in my stomach shoots searing pain straight up into my teeth.

This can't be happening.

I dig my forehead into the hemlock needles and suck in the familiar smell of soil—I wish I could go back three days in my life, just three days …

Something snaps.

I jerk my face from the dirt. There is an Indian half buried in the leaves, lying on his back not more than a yard from me. His chest rises and falls in quick motions. His face is wet from sweat and his clothes are stained with blood.

We stare at each other.

Then I stumble to my feet, looking everywhere at once,
to make sure there are no others pointing muskets at me from behind the pines.

There's no one else.

He raises his hand and swipes at my knees with a hunting knife. His attempt is feeble. Even now, he fights. He looks half dead and yet he lifts that knife, tries to kill. I reach out and snatch the knife away from him. An ache sprouts in my chest like a twisting black vine, wrapping its dark branches around my heart. It is hate, coiling, choking hate. I hate everything. I hate everyone. I hate Dr. Tusten with his knowing eyes. I hate Colonel Hathorn for leaving us. I hate my father for not telling the truth, for not telling me about the blood and the screaming. I hate these woods. And I hate this Indian.

Gripping the knife, I lunge at him. It seems to be what he expects, and he doesn't move to protect himself. Instead, he closes his eyes and waits for me to plunge it into him.

“You fool,” I spit, whipping the knife into the dirt. And using my good foot, I kick him as hard as I can. Again. And again. His soft, squirming body hardens everything inside me into cold iron. In my mind I see my fellow soldiers, my neighbors, my friend Josh. I see them lying in these woods, death staring up at the blue sky through the old hemlock branches. I kick and kick and kick … Anger runs out of my eyes and nose, it steams out of my skin, specks of it spew from my mouth.

“This is it. This is what I wanted,” I cry. “Not to be digging ditches to keep in the chickens on a dusty farm,
but to be in Washington's war, to be a Patriot, to be like my father, to be killing, killing, killing.”

Dark blood spreads across the Indian's shirt. He lies with his eyes closed, moaning for something or someone, maybe his mother, for he looks like a child curled in the leaves with his hands balled into fists under his chin. What have I done? What have I just done?

I drop to my knees and cover the bloodstain on his shirt with my hands. He moves to push me away, but he's too weak. My head feels like it's filled with flax. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” I whisper. The blood won't stop. It keeps coming. I press harder.

The Indian breathes in short, dry gasps. His blood oozes out around my blackened fingernails. He moans small and quiet. His eyes are tightly shut. I need the knapsack.

I stumble to my feet and spin in awkward circles, searching the ground for the doctor's knapsack I'd been carrying before I fell. Behind the rock …

As I rip open the bag, the neatness of its contents freezes me. Dr. Tusten had placed each item in so carefully. What a waste of time. But how could he have known that he would never open it again?

I dump the entire bag onto the ground, letting the bottles of iodine and salt roll off into a patch of partridgeberry. I reach for a roll of bandage and a dressing—the very same items I'd climbed to the top of the ledge to find for the doctor. They are so clean. I hesitate, hating to soil them.

The Indian moans.

I grab the bandage and dressing, retrieve the knife, and head back to where the Indian is lying. His eyes are open now, and they follow me. He again says something to himself, like a prayer. I glance down at the knife in my hand. “I'm not going to hurt you,” I tell him, but I don't know if he can understand me.

He lies without moving. I pull the muslin shirt from his sticky skin using the beading sewn to his collar. The smell of blood forces itself up my nose and down my throat, gagging me. His stomach is whole.

I search higher, finding the wound, a thin, deep cut of a knife running about the length of my thumb up near his ribs, almost under his armpit. The blood flows faster now that I've freed it.

I wad the square cloth of the dressing the way Dr. Tusten taught me and place it over the pulsing slice in his skin. I think about the iodine lying under the partridgeberry, but decide that cleaning the wound can wait; the blood needs to be stopped. I apply my weight to the balled-up dressing. “I'm stopping the bleeding,” I tell him. But I can see from his clenched teeth and tightly shut eyes that he isn't listening, even if he could understand me.

Finally, the blood begins to darken and my dressing is holding back the flow instead of soaking it up. I wait ten counts and decide it has slowed enough that I can crawl out to where I dumped Dr. Tusten's bag. I pluck the rest of the bandages off the forest floor, shaking off the needles and cockleburs stuck to them.

Ripping his shirt in two, I unravel most of it from his body and toss it aside, so I'm able to wrap his injury properly. His shirt resembles mine, except for the red beading sewn to his collar.

He grunts in pain when I lift him to slide the bandage around his body. I need to wind the cloth over his wound, looping it up and behind his other shoulder like a strange spider web. This will keep up the pressure so the bleeding doesn't return. He's looking off into the branches, but I can tell he's watching me. I pretend not to notice as I wrap and listen to the whistles of the chickadees stripping the hemlock cones overhead. I take my time, because when I'm done with this task, I'll have no other.

He shivers. The July sun is finally on its way down, but the air doesn't feel any cooler.

Water. In the fading light, I remove the wooden canteen still strapped to my side that I've been carrying for Josh since this morning. When we were first separated in battle, I'd worried that he would need it, but the musket fire soon made me forget about Josh and his thirst. The water stings my throat and makes my eyes tear. I sit back and drink more. When I'm finished, I slide over to the Indian and raise his head in the growing darkness and bring the canteen to his lips. He tries to help by holding up his head. I push the jug against his mouth, feeling his dry lips with my fingers. He gulps at first, and then, with his thirst mostly quenched, he drinks slowly. I pull the canteen away and he draws in air with less difficulty than before. He
shivers again, which makes him moan in pain.

“Are you cold?”

My voice sounds like a stranger's. He doesn't answer. I still have no idea if he understands English. I'm almost sure that, like his commander, Joseph Brant, this boy is Mohawk. But all I can say in Mohawk is
niá:wen
, which means “thank you.”

Pushing the peg back into the canteen, I set it down and remove the filthy hunting frock of my father's that I've been sweating in all day, and place it over him. I see his eyes move down me, landing on my shirt. I follow his gaze. The red stain surprises me. I'd forgotten I'd been shot. But now that I've recalled it, I wonder how the terrible sting of the lead could have ever escaped me. I lift my shirt and run my finger over the tiny hole in my stomach where the ball gored its way in. It's still wet in the center. I peel off my shirt and wrap it around my middle, tying it on the opposite side of my wound. The hot air folds itself around my skin. “I wish there were a breeze,” I say.

Again, he says nothing.

Moonlight begins to sprinkle the forest floor around us. He looks so small, covered in the frock with only his head and moccasins sticking out from either end. There are pieces of dead leaves and hemlock needles tangled in his scalp lock—the long, thin ponytail that is his only hair. The rest of his head is shaved clean. I can barely make out the features on his face through all the musket powder and war paint.
If only my mother were here sitting next to this Indian boy, she'd wash him good.

Whenever one of us became ill, my mother insisted on washing us using her cracked leather bucket and rag while we lay in bed. She said it was proper for the sick to be washed. The night my father died, she balanced on the broken stool next to his bed with her beat-up old bucket and sang his favorite hymn, “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown,” while she scrubbed his tan, bearded face and glowing white arms.

                        
Come, O thou Traveler unknown
,

                        
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!

                        
My company before is gone
,

                        
And I am left alone with Thee
.

                        
With Thee all night I mean to stay
,