Father, forgive me. It’s been too long.
19
Tessa navigated the humid, briar-ridden woods, hardly batting at the insects bedeviling her. ’Twas not yet noon, and though Ma had wanted to leave the fort at peep of day, her brothers had business at the store and then with the colonel, delaying them further. But she was barely mindful of the time or the fretful arch of Ma’s brow.
Despite repeated, secret talking-tos, she could not find her way past her romantic musings. Ever since that muster-day cake, Clay had kissed her not once but a hundred times in memory. It hadn’t helped that he’d stood at the gate when they rode out. She’d allowed herself a last look at him, enough to see him give a tug to the brim of his hat as they filed past.
Oh, how his respectful distance vexed her. He seemed mildly interested at best. Was it wrong for a woman to woo a man? Did she dare? If he had no sweetheart, had he no hankering for one? Her brothers certainly did, though they took care to hide their feelings. Likewise, Clay was another question mark in britches she might never figure out.
Though Jasper usually forbade any woods talk lest they draw notice, Ross leaned near enough to say, “Ever since the colonel kissed you, you’ve looked pleased as a fox in a henhouse. But today, nay.”
“Shush,” she replied, still pondering her plan. To woo or not to woo?
Near their own clearing, their caution ebbed and talk turned to the coming harvest.
“Colonel Tygart’s set a guard for each farm to bring the crops in,” Jasper told them as he dismounted. “Won’t have to work and watch our backs.”
Lemuel nodded approvingly. “I reckon we’ll get fifty bushels of corn to the acre in half the time then.”
“I say eighty bushels,” Zadock countered, igniting a full-blown discussion of the matter.
Ross went to round up the cows and horses, the faint tinkle of their bells heard in the direction of the river, while Tessa fetched a wood sled from the barn. She pulled it with a hemp rope, the slither of the runners reminding her of a snake. She and Keturah started toward the fields to gather melons grown so large they’d likely need help hauling them.
Chary of her steps in the tall grass, she noticed Keturah wore that distant, faraway look. Since meeting with Clay in the blockhouse, she’d seemed uncommonly quiet.
Her high spirits were so at odds with Keturah’s own that she asked, “Are you downcast, winkalit?”
“The Blackcoat, he comes.” At Tessa’s questioning look, Keturah added, “A holy man among the True People.”
Bewilderment took hold. Moravian missionaries? Hester had spoken of these faithful men and women in years past. “To Fort Tygart?”
“Pìshi. To talk. Këshkinko told me so.”
Këshkinko. Tessa committed the odd word to memory. Was this Clay’s Lenape name? Keturah was called Yellow Bird. Wisawtayas. It suited her somehow, sounded almost poetic, and surely spoke to her Dutch paleness. Once again Tessa felt on the outside looking in. So many questions, so few answers. And a wide chasm of misunderstanding between their Indian world and her white.
Had Clay returned from captivity near the time Keturah had been taken? How oft she’d wondered but never asked. “Did you know Këshkinko when you were Yellow Bird?”
“Mata.” No. The firm word removed all doubt. “Much talk—of him. He made many afraid.” She gestured to her eyes. “Nataèpia.”
“His eyes?”
Keturah nodded. “They gave him power among the People.”
A glimmer of understanding dawned. Clay’s eyes, so striking to her, might be especially fearsome to the Indians. “How so?” Tessa asked gently, afraid Keturah would turn silent as she sometimes did.
“Ghost Eyes—Këshkinko—he is called. His blue eye, it sees heaven. His brown eye, earth.”
The small storm of words ended, leaving Tessa wide-eyed in the aftermath. Never had Keturah spoken so, with vehemence and a sort of reverence. Indians oft attached extraordinary significance, a heightened mysticism, to the simplest things. Had Clay been protected somehow by his unusual eyes? Hedged from harm? And did this explain Keturah’s noticeable regard of him, that respectful awe, if not affection?
“So you only heard of him during your time with the Lenape.” Tessa’s quiet question brought a nod of affirmation. “But never met him.”
“Këshkinko took a separate path,” Keturah said at last.
In silence they walked on to the heart of the cornfield, unmindful of the cry of a buzzard and shrill chorus of cicadas, their reward an abundance of round, shiny melons beneath tall, tasseling stalks.
Keturah marveled. Had she no memory of melons? The three sisters were known and beloved to her—the Indian maize, squash, and beans. When Tessa thumped a watermelon, Keturah laughed.
“Tasty. Sweet,” Tessa told her as they stepped around twisting vines and loaded the ripest onto the sled. Once cooled in the springhouse, the fruit would be savored till the juice ran down their chins. “When we were small, we’d have a contest and roll them to a finish line. The boys usually bested us. Remember?”
