River

Gregor’s

“Think Samuel will find him?” he asks me silently as we leave the stables.

“It is not unlikely. Ben has had only one day to walk. Presumably at least some of that time has been spent in resting. As long as Ben keeps to the Trace, and Samuel follows it on Issoba, he should be able to overtake him.”

“I’ll bet we won’t find out until tomorrow,” he thinks, walking back down Under-the-hill to join his crew. “I’ll have to disappoint Rosalind when I tell her that Samuel couldn’t join us for dinner after all.”

I remain silent as he contemplates ways to make up for the disappointment. Their intense ardor has led to some very interesting escapades in their bedchamber over the last few nights, and he is speculating about what they might do tonight. They have both been quite obsessed for the last few days with their private activities. It is amusing and enchanting.

As he reaches the construction site, he forces himself to focus. More or less.

He is pleased to see, upon arriving at the expanding dock, that David is already hard at work, and has resumed his habit of chatting with the other men as he labors. “David is missing Ben, of course,” I tell him, “but his natural disposition has resumed. He has resigned himself to the absence of his friend, and although worried for his safety in traveling the Trace alone, he anticipates seeing Ben again in a few months when he inevitably returns on another flatboat.”

“Well, with any luck, he’ll see Ben much earlier than that.”

“Indeed.”

After laboring with his men for several hours, Gregor calls a halt to the days’ work. They disperse, either to the boarding house or to the taverns and brothels nearby.

Before returning home, Gregor wants to see something. “Where’s Ben’s grove?” he asks me.

“Walk north, past the docks, until you find a small footpath worn into the underbrush,” I tell him.

He soon finds the little clearing. He rests on the large rock in the center, looking around himself, imagining how it was used by David and Ben, then more recently by Mason. The bedding is scattered, with some of it lying close enough to the edge of the river that it is partially covered with mud. There are a few dishes and utensils, and some garbage that Mason had left behind from the meals that were provided to him by Stu.

“Well, if Samuel succeeds, I imagine they might want to come back here, so I can’t leave it in this condition.”

He begins moving about the grove, picking up all of the trash, the dishes, the bedding. He simply wishes to destroy these things, since Ben witnessed much of it being used by Mason and would most likely never want to touch it again. He considers burning it, but not all of it is flammable, such as metal utensils. So, he wraps it all into a bundle within a blanket, ties off the ends, and carries it back to the dock area. He deposits the bundle into the refuse pile there. He has had his crew collect the refuse on a few occasions and use wagons to take it out of town to dump it, and considers that it might be time to do that again.

After these activities, he heads towards home, contemplating how he might go about replacing Ben’s items with those not sullied by Mason’s touch.

When he arrives, he goes into the kitchen and apologizes to Nadine and Rosalind that his planned guest was unavailable to attend. Then he whispers to his wife, “I am sorry for disappointing you, darling. How can I make it up to you?”

She glances at him archly, clearly making plans for later tonight, and he is immediately aroused, looking forward to it.

Their pleasure in each other is such a delight.

Ben

I am more lonely without David than I could have imagined. I didn’t really mean it when I told him I would prefer to have a nice quiet journey. I have never minded his chatter. I realize now how much I miss it. With only the sound of my own footsteps along the road, there is nothing to divert me but my unhappiness.

I didn’t stop for long last night, and I am exhausted already. A day and a half into my journey is far too soon to be feeling this disheartened and weary. I did try to sleep for a while, off the side of the road a ways. We never do waste our money on inns unless we have to, and the weather is fine, so there is no reason.

I scoff at myself, thinking about what “we” do. It isn’t “we”. It’s just me.

I’m not looking forward to tonight, though, as tired as I am. Last night I not only couldn’t sleep, for longing over Samuel and loneliness over David, but the strange smudge in the night sky that I first noticed weeks ago is growing ever more ominous and threatening. I swear that it looks like it has split, like an unnatural tadpole with two tails, like the forked tongue of a snake. I hate having it looming over me up there while I am trying to sleep, no roof to shield me from its baleful glare.

I still won’t go to an inn tonight, though. I have a pack full of provisions that the boarding house cook insisted on loading me up with, so I don’t need to stop for food. The sky is clear, so I’ll just keep on walking even after the sun goes down. I think there will be enough moonlight to get me further up the road.

The further, the better. I just want to leave my pain and heartache behind me.

This clearly isn’t far enough yet. Even though every step I take gets me further away from the source of my pain, it also seems to make the pain worse. My heart is still breaking, I still have to keep wiping tears away every time I think of the last time I saw Samuel, walking up the stairs with David, ready to lovingly tend to him even though he knew that he had been on the Trace too.

He’ll take care of a patient no matter what. But he can’t love a liar and a bandit.

So here I am, fleeing from my heartbreak but unable to escape it. I have to wipe my eyes again.

Ugh, I’m so pathetic. Am I ever going to get over this?

I doubt it.

So I just keep walking.

Stu

Did I think I was in hell before?

Pfsh.

I spend half the time thinking that I have to be asleep, this has to be some kind of horrible nightmare, because obviously this isn’t real.

I can’t really be carrying Mason’s head in a sack, at gunpoint, walking back towards Natchez where this whole disaster started.

I almost feel like I can see into the sack, see his eyes rolling at me, hear his mocking laughter. I had to carry him all the way from Natchez, and now I am having to carry him all the way back.

It must be a dream, right?

But no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I can’t wake up from it.

We’re walking fast, much faster than I was able to go with Mason after he was shot. We’ll get to Natchez tomorrow at this rate.

I have to find a way out of this. They know me in Natchez. I was seen with Mason. There is no way that I can be there when they try to collect the reward.

I’m not even bothering trying to talk Little out of this. He is clearly a maniac and there is no convincing him. I don’t know about James, he just seems like he is following along with whatever Little wants. But I am not going to waste my breath with him.

My play here can’t be to talk them out of it. I know that would never work. You can’t reason with the unreasonable. I have to get away from them.

I’ve been lugging this stained sack the whole way, which seems to get heavier and more disgusting with every step, with one or the other of them constantly pointing that pistol at me.

It’s not easy to hit someone with a bullet from a pistol, but if that little woman could do it, I am sure Little or James could. After watching what Mason suffered from his bullet wound, I am not risking it. I am just walking along, silent and compliant.

And trying to plan.

I know the area closer to Natchez. I am hoping that we can get close enough that the terrain is familiar to me before Little decides to stop for the night. Surely we will stop, right? Then I have to figure out some way to get away from them, maybe while they are sleeping. There has to be a way for me to escape this.

But I can’t do it yet.

So I just keep walking.