Longshadow's Woman. Bronwyn Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ into the field, appreciating the way she walked in spite of his irritation, amused at the way she squared her hat on her head, then lifted it to fork her flyaway hair from her eyes. It was a man’s straw hat, ugly, but useful for one with skin so fair it reddened each day from the sun and faded by nightfall, leaving behind light brown speckles. She began each day with the sleeves of her dress covering her arms, but before the day was half over, she would turn up the sleeves and unfasten the buttons at her throat.

      Gazing past the mule’s bony haunches, Jonah watched the way she moved, fascinated at how much a man could learn about a woman from the way she walked, the way she bent to chop at a stubborn shrub. Buoyed by hope and determination, she strode into the field each morning like a warrior riding into battle. Although he had to admit there was nothing at all warrior-like in the movement of her hips or the way her bosoms bounced under the thin covering of calico.

      By the end of each day she drooped like a flower that had been plucked and cast aside. Plodding in from the field, it was all she could do to keep the rifle from dragging on the ground. He would have offered to carry it for her, but he suspected she might misunderstand his motives.

      Irritating woman. Were all white women so contrary, or was it only this one small individual? The women of St. Augustine who had taught him to read and write had not affected him this way.

      The problem, Jonah told himself, was not this particular woman. He would have reacted the same way toward any woman between the ages of fifteen and fifty, having been without the comfort of a woman’s body for so long. His blood still grew heated when he thought of the way he had dropped his clothes before her, standing ankle-deep in her creek. He had done it out of anger, out of resentment, wanting to shock her, to frighten her.

      Instead, he had been the one who was affected. He’d had to turn away quickly and lower himself into the water.

      Steering the white man’s plow, he told himself that evening, was not as bad as he’d feared. He understood the mule. The mule understood him. They worked well together. As for the woman, that was another matter. She walked beside him every step of the way, from one end of the clearing to the other, sometimes moving ahead to chop down a bush, or falling behind to crumble a handful of freshly turned earth in her hand. They would stop at the far end, drink from the jar of water she’d left there in the shade, then set out again.

      “This is the first time I’ve tried planting a cash crop,” she confided. “Corn—well, everybody needs corn. Last year I had to buy corn. There’s still some left in the crib, but it’s old and buggy, and I have to grind it, and the grinder’s gone to blazes. It’s good enough for Sorry and the chickens, but with a decent harvest, I can take my corn to the mill and get it ground, and pay the miller with part of the crop. That’s the way we do it,” she said gravely, as if imparting a valuable tenet of her white man’s wisdom.

      Jonah reminded himself of his promise to Lieutenant Pratt, that he would help the first white person in need he encountered. The Adams woman needed help all right. She was weak, injured and alone, yet no one came to her aid. There were houses within a few miles of her cabin, yet no one visited. She had mentioned a friend, but the friend had not come to help her plow her field. It was becoming increasingly obvious that she was an outcast. Jonah knew what it felt like to be an outcast.

      “You might have noticed, I’ve been raking up leaves and piling them up out behind the chicken house.” She had fallen into the habit of conversing with him as if he were an ordinary, reasonably intelligent man. He had already learned two things about her. She was kind-hearted…and she was lonely. “Emma says if I can get me some oyster shells and dump them on the heap and then set it afire with some trash wood on top, it’ll make the sweetest kind of fertilizer. She says the land hereabouts is sour. It needs shelling, if I can find a Currituck fisherman willing to trade me a load of shells for corn or a few jars of wild honey.”

      She chattered the way he sometimes talked to his horses, only he rarely used words. His horses understood his thoughts, and he theirs. It was a gift he’d been given as if to make up for being two halves and never a whole.

      Soon he must leave, he promised himself, not for the first time. The hardest work was finished. She would use a planting stick in the month of the dogwood, and her corn would flourish. The land was rich, some of it was boggy, but all was fertile. He had read books on such matters once he had decided what he would do with his life.

      “Lordy, I’m starvin’, aren’t you?” she said, mopping her damp, sunburned face.

      “Lordy,” Jonah echoed solemnly, wondering why it was the white man called Indians redskins, when it was the white men themselves who turned red as his old Koitsenga sash from sunlight and whiskey. His own skin was more the color of a freshly tanned hide. Sun only deepened the color. Whiskey, he never touched, having seen what it did to his shipmates and too many of his own people.

      They had taken to sharing the evening meal. She had not allowed him inside her house again since treating his ankles, but when she came outside to lock up her chickens and bring him his supper, she would often bring her own and join him, sitting on a plank bench outside the barn while he squatted on the ground nearby. Now and then she would speak, and he would nod and grunt in response, or lift his shoulders as if he didn’t understand, and she would shake her head and sigh her impatience with him. He had come to enjoy the game, even though he was beginning to feel guilty, yet how could he break the silence now? It had gone on too long. She would be angry with him for tricking her.

      Angry enough to shoot him? He was all but certain the rifle was not loaded. Even loaded, it wasn’t much of a threat, for the barrel was so heavy she could hardly support it with her one good hand. She might shoot out one of her precious glass windows, but he no longer feared she would kill him, no matter what he did.

      So why didn’t he simply walk away?

      Jonah couldn’t answer. It was not the accommodations. The barracks in St. Augustine had been newer, cleaner and more comfortable, except for the mosquitoes. The food she provided, usually beans, sometimes greens, sometimes only cornbread soaked with bacon grease or honey, and on special occasions, a strip of fried side meat, was obviously the best she could offer, for she ate the same thing. It was filling and satisfying, but he would have enjoyed a meal of buffalo or venison, or even fish.

      “Moon. See, coming up over yonder woods? It’s called a moon.”

      The woman was not an idiot. Why did she insist on sounding like one?

      But he knew why, of course. It was because she thought he had less intelligence than one of those stumps he had cut free of the earth and burned. It made him angry, and that very anger was a reminder that he had stayed too long. He had given the woman her money’s worth. The sooner he retrieved his papers, the sooner he could clear his name and get back to his own land.

      And perhaps someday before he was too old, the gods willing, he could find a woman of his own. Another outcast, perhaps, who would not look down on him for his mixed blood.

      The Adams woman had not gone to a church-house since he had been with her, yet he knew she had a day of the week when work was forbidden. A day to rest, according to the Jesus Rules. She had used her last Rest Day to pull up the withered bean vines outside her door and scrub the privy. While she raked the dirt around her house, with the chickens following after to peck at any bugs uncovered, Jonah had worked on repairing the barn and enlarging the fenced paddock. Then he had propped his feet on a tussock under a giant oak tree and allowed the warm, sweet air to flow over his body. Freedom had a taste—a flavor and a scent all its own.

      Increasingly worried about his horses, Jonah knew he could not wait much longer. The mystery was why he had waited this long. He made up his mind to go СКАЧАТЬ