Thieving Forest Page 8

  Yesterday at the evening service a Delaware with thick lips and pockmarked cheeks stood to give testimony. Last winter, before he came here, his wife froze to death and his infant son starved. Only the blood of Jesus could have saved them, he said. Then he said, I saved myself, but I wish it them.

  Beatrice’s blood seemed to stop in her veins when she heard that. A few minutes later her hip sent out its old pain. She shifted on the bench but it didn’t make a difference. It never made a difference. She closed her eyes. When comforts flee, abide with me she prayed, and prayed again, and again. And then, just as the young girls were coming around with the honeyed buns and the coffee, the pain disappeared. For the first time in her life she made it disappear.

  She thinks about this the next morning when she wakes up to the chapel bell and makes the decision to stay with Susanna instead of going to the morning service, a decision she later regrets. She touches her hip gently with her fingertips. She feels nothing, no pain.

  The fire in the Birthing Hut’s little fireplace is down to embers and someone—probably Sister Johanna—has put a new dress and apron and cap over the little chair near the bed. She must have come very early. The memory of Naomi’s messy braid floats into her mind and she pushes it away. There are things she cannot think about. That she cannot tell Susanna. This she knows for sure. When comforts flee, abide with me. Naomi disappears.

  The new clothes are for Susanna, and Susanna makes a face at how ugly they are.

  “Better than that split skirt,” Beatrice points out, which is still damp and smells like a river. Susanna looks just the same. She slept late and had to be told to help tidy the room. As they make their way to the Bell House for breakfast, Beatrice can feel Susanna staring at the people they pass without any sense it might be rude. Beatrice knows Gemeinschaft is a strange sight at first. All the women, both native and white, wear the same gray linen dress and white cap that Susanna and Beatrice are wearing. White men walk along the path arm in arm with native men, chatting sociably. Many of the natives wear European clothing, and some of the white men wear leather tunics and braid their hair. Beatrice still finds it strange to see a white man with a long blond plait. But they do it to affirm their unity with each other, she explains.

  “Moravians believe we are all one family.” She opens the door to the Bell House, where women are finding seats at the long tables. There is a strong smell of soap and wood and, fainter, the scent of hot ashes from innumerable fires. The fireplaces on either end of the room are huge, and native women bend over them, ladling up oatmeal from six or seven large copper pots. “The name Gemeinschaft means community. We work together, we eat together. We sleep side by side. There is no distinction between races.”

  Susanna looks skeptical but after the grace is said she tucks into the hearty breakfast: oatmeal and honey and dried berries and thick slices of bread with butter and even one small pork chop each. They are sitting on a narrow bench in front of a long oak table covered with a simple brown cloth. If Beatrice looks to her left or right she sees a row of identical white bonnets like buttons down the row. Young native girls serve them from large baskets, and one carries a coffeepot wrapped in cloth.

  “Where are the men?” Susanna asks.

  “They eat breakfast earlier. We don’t share any meals together. We only see them at chapel or walking about, but we are not allowed to converse with them.”

  Susanna scrapes more butter over her bread. “How old-fashioned!”

  Beatrice tells her no, on the contrary, the Moravians are very forward thinking. “They don’t carry weapons. They don’t drink alcohol or swear to any oaths, even to the government.” But as she hears herself talk their habits begin to seem more and more archaic. She cannot explain it right.

  “The food is very good,” Susanna says. It is the only compliment she gives.

  “The Moravians believe feeding the body is just as important as feeding the soul.” Beatrice feels sure that Susanna will like that at least, as someone who has always been, in her opinion, greedy about food. She tells Susanna how much work they all do, good work, not only preaching the gospel but farming and scutching flax and tanning hides, weaving, cooking, washing clothes for so many.

  “Ohne Fleiss kein Press, as the brethren say. No reward without toil.”

  But she has gone too far. Susanna makes a face and says, “We must talk about how to get home.”

  Why can’t Susanna see what she sees? This is a new kind of society where whites and natives live in harmony. The natives are settled and happy, industrious, friendly, with no face painting and no battle scars.

  “We’re safe here. And you should rest after your fall.”

  “What do you mean, safe?” Susanna asks. She looks at Beatrice more closely and closes her mouth, as though deciding not to say anything more. But after a minute she can’t help herself.

  “Don’t you think it’s funny to see a man wearing two blond braids?”

  Beatrice says, “Of course not. It’s perfectly fine.” But she feels herself blush.

  That afternoon Susanna meets Sister Consolation, one of Gemeinschaft’s founding missionaries. A woman of high principle, Beatrice whispers to Susanna as they see her approach, and Susanna can see that in the way Consolation holds her head up over her very straight spine. She is tall and fair, Danish perhaps, with a patrician nose, high cheekbones, and the teeth and skin of someone who has always had enough to eat. They stand in the path while native women with baskets move around them, on their way to the cookhouse or washhouse or the fields.

  “You must be Sister Susanna,” Consolation says, putting her hand on Susanna’s shoulder.

  The touch feels forced, as though Consolation understands that people do this to show compassion but has not yet mastered the technique. Although she wears the same gray linen dress as every other woman here, her dress is...what? Better tailored? Perhaps she just stands well.

  “How are you faring, my dear?” Consolation asks. Susanna’s linen dress scratches her arms and the cap feels too tight, but it turns out that Consolation is referring to her fall from the horse. She tells Susanna that the Indians here at Gemeinschaft are very good at what she calls the healing arts. She calls the Indians “our natives.”

  “You must try the sweat hut,” she says. “It is quite cleansing.”

  Beatrice says, “Thank you, Sister Consolation. In fact, Sister Johanna is meeting us there now. Thank you.”

  Susanna looks at her sister in surprise. She sounds like a puppy. This is a new Beatrice: subservient, a little in awe. No sign of the know-it-all. Susanna has to admit that Consolation is a formidable woman: beautiful, taller than either of them, and she does not smile even in greeting. She is wearing a dark shawl, and when she turns away Susanna can see small shards of mirrors sewn into the cloth, the largest the size of a deer hoof. There are a dozen or more of them glittering in the sunlight. Why has Consolation sewn them onto her shawl? Like the Amish, the Moravians do not believe in vain ornaments.

  “They serve as a reminder,” Beatrice tells her as they start down one of the many paths crisscrossing the wooded village.

  “A reminder of what?”

  “We must put our vanity behind us,” Beatrice says, and gives Susanna a significant look.

  As they walk down the winding dirt paths, all of them shaded by heavy overhanging trees, Beatrice points out various buildings: the kitchens, the washing huts, and the two-story dormitory where the single men sleep, called a choir. All the structures are made from the same rough lumber and have bark roofs the color of barn owls. The sweat huts sit in a clearing near the flax fields: two low domed structures covered in skins. As they get closer Susanna can smell boiling roots and tree bark. Two men are tending a huge kettle over an outside fire and Sister Johanna is standing nearby with three small iron kettles at her feet.

  She gives Susanna one of the kettles and smiles. Her manner seems to say, You will enjoy this and I will too. She has a wide mouth and round cheekbones and
her teeth are very white. Susanna likes her. She is as good-looking as Sister Consolation but in an opposite way—dark where Consolation is fair, and expressive where Consolation is frozenly refined.

  The men ladle the boiling root water into their kettles. Then they shout, “Pimook!” Go to sweat! Two other men are heating rocks the size of turnips, which they carry in hide slings into the sweat huts. When everything is ready, Johanna leads the way into the women’s hut. The doorway is low, a covering of deerskin, and inside Susanna looks around. Under the pungent skin walls a complicated structure of willow branches makes up the frame. Benches circle the walls and the hot stones are in the middle. Although there is room for six or seven women to sit, at the moment they are the only ones there.

  “Women partake of the sweating much less than men,” Johanna is saying.

  “Why is that?” Beatrice asks.

  “Men have more ailments.” Johanna smiles. “Or so they think.”

  She tips water from her kettle onto the mound of hot rocks. Immediately a spray of steam shoots up and fills the little room. Some of the steam escapes through a hole in the roof.

  “Oh,” Susanna says, her face suddenly flushed. “That feels good.” A moment later: “You know who would like this? Naomi.”

  Beatrice frowns, looks down at the ground, and touches her hip. Susanna immediately feels bad for bringing up a painful memory and she casts around for a new subject.

  “Your English is very good,” she says to Johanna.

  “I’ve lived with the brethren for most of my life,” Johanna tells her. “First in Pennsylvania, and now here.” She tells Susanna about the natives who live in the village, mostly Delaware but a fair number of Shawnee like herself, and also some Huron and Chippewa. Any native who wants to adopt this life can live here.

  “We clothe them, we give them food, we teach English to their children, but they must give up their weapons and finery. We value what is simple and plain.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” Susanna says. Personally she thinks that the buildings are plain to the point of ugliness, and the dresses unbecoming. Johanna pours more water over the hot rocks. Susanna can feel her hair stick to her forehead. But she doesn’t mind heat, it is mud she dislikes.

  “You know, Beet,” she says, “Seth Spendlove traveled with me here. I wonder if he might escort us back to Severne.”

  “Seth Spendlove—here?”

  “Maybe he can hire some horses from the brethren, a cart.” Susanna looks down at the steaming rocks. If Seth can hire a cart they could ride in it following the Blanchard River, which meets up with the track to Severne. But if that’s not possible, they can walk. The journey would take only, what, a day and a half? Two days? Two days, that’s not so bad. But just as this plan is solidifying in her mind she becomes aware that Beatrice is proposing a different plan altogether, a plan with the words brethren and Christians and Indians and work. Above all, the word work seems to hang in the air.

  “They live in simplicity, they deny themselves many conveniences, but in this way they achieve a state of communal feeling,” Beatrice is saying. “A new kind of family. You consider yourselves one family, isn’t that true, Sister Johanna?”

  “Yes, we call each other brother and sister.”

  Susanna is slow to catch up. “You want to stay here longer?”

  “We can do good work here.”

  “But our store...” Susanna still feels behind.

  “We’ll sell it to Amos Spendlove. He’s always wanted it.” Beatrice’s voice rises in a familiar way—she’s just had a good idea! “And now you tell me Seth is here—so easy, we just send along a letter with him! Think of it, Susanna, we can work here together running the brethren’s store, seeing to trade and supplies, ordering whatever is needed from Cincinnati. You always liked that.”

  “You’re wrong. I never cared for ordering. And besides, we’re not missionaries.”

  “Well of course right now I’m just a ghost, like you, but in time...”

  “A ghost?”

  “A guest. In time we will feel more comfortable, we’ll accustom ourselves to their ways. In fact, I can already...”

  Susanna has caught up at last. “You want this life! You want to be part of this...this experiment!” For what else is it? Educating Indians, teaching their children English and stories from the Bible. No white settler outside this little enclave believes it will last. The farmers laughed, in fact, some of them, when they first heard the idea. Of course, Susanna reminds herself, the farmers are fools. She is conscious that Johanna is looking at her.

  “If Penelope were here...” she begins.

  “Penelope!” Beatrice’s face is very red. “Penelope! There’s no Penelope, Susanna, there’s only us.”

  Of course: only us. But what can Susanna say to that? In all likelihood Beatrice would not have chosen Susanna out of all their sisters as a companion, but here they are.

  “What happened, Beet?” She can’t help asking. She feels certain there is something that Beatrice is not telling her. “Please tell me what happened.”

  Beatrice stiffens. “I already told you. They were killed. They weren’t saved, and I was. Don’t you see, I can’t just return to Severne. I have to give something back.”

  “You have to give back your life?”

  “No. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t just go home.”

  Noises come from outside the hut, and then a man calls in to them.

  “They are here to change the rocks,” Johanna says. “Do you wish to stay longer?”

  Susanna stands up, more than ready to go. She is confused and concerned and solicitous all at once. Also annoyed. She feels sure that Beatrice is protecting her from something, but she doesn’t need protecting. Beatrice suddenly looks at Susanna’s feet.

  “Why are you wearing those moccasins?” she asks sharply.

  “They’re comfortable. And I think of Aurelia when I wear them.”

  “Susanna, that’s morbid. When we get back to the Birthing Hut you must take them off. Surely we can find you new boots.”

  “I don’t want new boots.”

  “How can you wear them knowing what happened?”

  Susanna looks down. She can imagine one of the brethren thinking that she is, like them, adopting Indian ways on principle. But she isn’t principled. She doesn’t want to be equal with anyone. She just likes how the moccasins feel.

  Nine

  Brother Graves says, “Mr. Spendlove, if you are done there, I was hoping I might talk to you about the iron trade. We’ve had quite a time of it lately with some merchants from Detroit.”

  Seth is crossing the barn floor on his way outside. The smell of dry hay, tied into bales and stacked on either side, surrounds him. There are a few pieces of farming machinery in the corner near a long trestle table, where just a few minutes ago Seth was seated mending an iron jacklight for Brother Lyle, who likes to go eel fishing at night. The horses, stabled underneath—the barn is partially dug out of the ground and the horses are in the lower level—have just been fed, and Seth can hear the smacking of their huge lips. Through a chute in the floor he sees a bay mare with her nose in a feed bucket.

  “Shall we walk together to the chapel?” Brother Graves asks. Although he isn’t actually smiling, he looks, to Seth, as though he might as well be, so gentle are the lines of his face. “The midday service begins shortly. Perhaps you would like to attend with me.”

  Although this is not really what Seth has in mind on such a beautiful, fresh morning, it occurs to him that chapel is the one place where he might see Susanna, since both women and men are allowed to attend any service. He has not seen her since he helped her off his horse two weeks ago, and has had no way to communicate with her. In Gemeinschaft single men and women are not allowed to meet or even exchange letters.

  “I’d be glad to,” he says.

  They walk out together through the wide barn doors and into the daylight. A copper-colored horse blanket is hanging
on a fence post to dry, and the flies are very interested in that. Seth walks beside Brother Graves while he talks about the cost of iron goods, the labor involved in making them. In Seth’s opinion, could the brethren import raw materials and begin to forge their own?

  Seth is glad to offer his advice. He has been here for a fortnight, and even to himself he has to admit that he is dawdling with no set purpose. He has done virtually nothing to earn his keep except help out in the stable or mend bits of equipment.

  As they pass a rosemary bush Brother Graves pulls off some needles and holds them up to his nose. An unlikely sensualist, Seth thinks.

  “The country here is beautiful,” Brother Graves says. “As the years go on I find myself more and more unwilling to leave, even just to buy supplies.”

  “Some think the land too flat.”

  “But the trees give it depth, don’t you agree?”

  Seth can smell a pervasive scent of cut green wood and he watches a thin plume of smoke rise above the trees. Although he too likes this country, he would not choose Gemeinschaft as a place to live. Ohio, yes, but not this place. Something about it sits uneasily with him. Perhaps it is all the mission Indians dressed like Europeans and carrying around Bibles, their little daughters wearing white aprons. Or is he just being closed-minded? Back in Severne most of the farmers distrust Christian Indians, even Old Adam who has lived among them for years. Equally so they distrust the missionaries. Well, they do not have complicated opinions, those farmers. Whites should be whites. Indians should move elsewhere. Small wonder that Amos hid his Potawatomi blood from them.

  At a pause in their conversation Seth says, “I have been meaning to ask you about Susanna Quiner. Is she well? And her sister? I would like to offer them my services back to Severne but I don’t know how I might approach them.”

  Brother Graves assures him that they are both well. They are working hard and going to services. He does not say where they are working. He rubs the bit of rosemary between his fingers again and then lets it drop on the path. “Do they wish to leave?” he asks.