The Phoenix by Ruth Sims

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BlACKWATER SPIRIT

Ruth Sims

Jody Freeman lit out from home in the dead of night. He was eleven, the tail end of a half-dozen boys, and he was fed up with being beat on by his brothers and Pa, too. Only one there who didn't hit him was Ma.

He headed up into the hills, with just his patched shirt and britches, a pig-sticker knife, a bag of throwing stones, and some skillet bread wrapped in a kerchief. His too-large shoes, throw-downs from an older brother, hurt his calloused feet but there was way too many poison snakes, too many sharp rocks and too many deep-cutting thorns and briars for him to leave them off. He paused and looked back. In the moonlight the cabin looked lonesome without him. Wish I could've told Ma goodbye, he thought, almost bawling.

Copper-haired Jody was small for his years, with the quickness and cleverness of a red fox. Four days he followed deer trails through the woods, with all his senses alert for the presence of silent-footed bobcats or snuffling bears, always aware of watching eyes and scurrying paws. Whenever he was too bone-weary to put one blistered foot in front of the other, he curled up under a tree and slept like dead. Four days and three nights later he didn't know how far he'd gone or where he was.

His throwing arm went blinky and he missed two squirrels in a row. His empty belly snarled like a rabid coonhound, and a field of cotton seemed to be growing on his tongue.

All of a sudden he come on a clearing, and smack in the middle of it was a pond. All around the rim of the pond nothing grew. Nary a tree. Nary a blade of grass. Nary a flower. The water was motionless and black, but nary a drop of scum did he see. His scalp tickled with the strangeness of the place.

As he knelt to fill his cupped hands with water something unseen suddenly whipped from the water and stung him. Hard. Like the biggest yellow jacket in the hills. He yelped with pain. But the water hadn't moved a bit. Carefully he reached out again. And the thing he couldn't see stung him again.

He scrambled to his feet, rubbing his hand. Furious he threw a rock, but the rock fell short and thunked into the dirt at the water's edge. He wanted to cuss but couldn't work up enough spit.

Lifting his nose like a coonhound, he sniffed. Wood smoke! He trudged on his way, following the smell until he found a cabin with a lone female figure sitting on the edge of the sagging porch. He waved to her; she didn't wave back.

"Ma'am," he called, going closer. "I'm powerful hungry and tired and awful thirsty. Can I do chores for somethin' to eat and drink?"

As he got closer he saw she was as dark and wrinkled as hickory bark. White nappy hair made an untidy halo and a corncob pipe poked from her mouth. Her feet, brown and bare, showed beneath her faded skirt. When she didn't answer he thought she might be deef.

Jody gasped in startlement when a strange bird, shiny black like a raven but with the size and face of a hawk, swooped down from nowhere and lighted on her shoulder. It glared at him like he was a ground squirrel ready to be snatched up and gobbled.

"That critter dangerous?" he shouted as loud as he could. She shook her head, wiggled her fingers at the bird and it flew away.

"Ma'am," he shouted again, "can I do chores for food and water and a place to light for a night or so?"

She took the pipe from betwixt her lips. "Stop bellerin' like a wounded goat, Jody Freeman," she said. "I heard you the first time."

Shocked to hear his name, too tired to move any further, he dropped to the ground. "How you know who I be?"

She fixed him with her little blackberry eyes and chuckled, a dry huh-huh-huh. "I got the Gift of Sight, boy," she said. "I knowed you was comin'."

Uneasily, he figgered she was crazy like the mad wolf his Pa shot. "You--you gonna go foamin' at the mouth?" he asked.

"Nope." She crossed her arms over her knees and spoke around the pipe. "Ain't never seen nobody with hair that color," she said finally. "Red as a cardinal bird. Boy, you ain't no bigger'n a scrap of lye soap. What chores could you do?"

"Chop wood and tote water. Kill squirrels and rabbits and frogs and 'possums for food. And I can gut 'em, skin 'em, fry 'em up, and sell the hides."

"What about your kin, Jody Freeman?"

"Ain't gonna know I'm gone."

"You Momma. She will." She seemed to be thinking on it whilst she sucked on the pipe. "Well. Might be I could use help. I be mighty old and flimsy."

"Yes'm. You are for certain sure."

The seams of her skin folded together till her eyes almost disappeared and she laughed till tears ran down her face. Jody didn't know what was funny. She reached out one hand and he shook it. Her hand was dry and bony as the claws of a bird. "They call me Old Widder, boy."

"No foolin'? Funny name."

"Had another. But I been called Old Widder so long I misremember it. You stay. Do my chores. I'll teach you your letters and how to cipher."

"Don't see much use to that," he said.

"If you know how to read and do sums you can rule the world."

"You ain't rulin' the world."

Her lips twitched. "Rulin' my world." She got to her feet. "Come in and set. Supper's ready. They's a place at the table for you."

Nobody come looking for him. He didn't care, except he missed Ma. Several times a year he walked back down the hill to Little York, not far from where his kin lived. There he bartered skins for coffee, flour and sugar--Old Widder had a real love of sugar in her strong coffee--and necessaries like nails. One summer he had enough skins to buy a one-eyed, knock-kneed mule named Amos. Amos was ugly as home-cooked sin but he was steady and smart.

As Jody grew older he fixed up the cabin, chinked the cracks to keep out the wind, put on shutters to keep out the rain. He built pens for chickens, geese, pigs, and two goats. He helped plant and harvest the food and small tobacco crop.

The queer black bird was a daily visitor. It perched on Old Widder's shoulder and ate from her hand while she confabbed with it like it was another woman.

After the work was done she book-learned Jody from the same Bible her pappy had taught her from. She taught him ciphering, said he was sharp. She told him stories of the dark pond, tales of magic. Sometimes in the midst of a story she stopped suddenly, and her eyes would go all flat and shiny, like she could see something way beyond the hills. It gave him shivers. But she never told him what it was she saw.

One day he admitted he'd long ago tried to drink from the pond and got stung. She looked hard at him. "That be powerful magic, Jody. Powerful! Ain't nobody can drink from it."

"Hogswallop. It's just water."

"Hush you mouth, boy," she said. "It be magic. Water's always fresh...but where's it come from? And why don't nothin' grow round about the water? And why did the Blackwater Spirit smack you when you tried to drink? He's waitin' to plant somethin' special there someday."

"What?"

"Don't know." She grinned, showing toothless gums. "Do I look like the Blackwater Spirit, boy?"

"Well," he said, grinning back, "you black enough. And you older'n God."

She cackled with laughter and whapped him with her shapeless bonnet. "You ain't got no manners a-tall. That ain't nothin' t'say to a lady."

III

As time passed, Jody needed a better hunting weapon than his throwing stones. On one journey to Little York he sold enough beaver skins to buy a bow, quiver, and a handful of arrows at the general store.

The owner, Ab MacAfee, handed them to him and said, "Them things been around here since Heck was a pup. Nobody wants 'em no more." He took a shiny, long-barreled gun from the wall and held it out. "Now this here is what you need. Bring down a doe quick as spit. A fox, a 'coon, whatever you need."

Jody held it, handled it, stroked it, longed for it. Handing it back, he said, "My pa had a gun. Bullets are wasteful. And you got t'buy powder. You keep it. I'll take the bow. It'll do for what I want."

Just then a big man stomped into the store and stared at Jody. "Jody?" he said. "You Jody Freeman? From down the holler? Gotta be. Ain't no other head of hair like that."

"Who wants to know?"

"Paul. Your big brother. Lookit you! All growed up." He showed chaw-stained teeth in a fierce smile.

Jody's mouth dropped open. "Paul?" The last he'd seen of Paul the top of his head was even with Paul's chest. Now they was eyeball-to-eyeball. And Paul was gray-headed and old like Pa. He swallowed. "Are you really--how's Ma?"

"Passed over year after you lit out. Her and the baby girl what never got borned."

"And Pa?"

"Clawed up pretty bad by a bear 'bout a year gone. Ain't worth much no more. Just a old sack of bones sittin' around waitin' t'die. All the boys but me be in the army, beatin' the balls off the Yankees and Abe Lincoln."

"Who's the Yankees? What army?"

"Why, the Army of Robert Lee, that's what army! Where you been livin' that you don't know that? They say the Yankees tryin' to tell us what to do and we ain't havin' it. They say we got us a whole new country now and to hell with the Yankees. I ain't in the army on account of my stiff knee. Can't march. So I be stuck here, lookin' after Pa and the other boys' wives and young'uns." When Jody volunteered nothing about himself, Paul said, "We figured a bear or bobcat got you when you was still in shirttails. Ma was heartbroke. Where you be livin'?"

Jody shrugged. "In the woods. Up the hill a piece."

"You fixin' to join the army, now you know about it?"

"It ain't no never mind to me, Paul. Don't know no Yankees, and don't know Robert Lee." He looked coldly at his brother. "Don't know you, neither."

"Aw, Jody...Don't be so hard. At least come see Pa, give the old man a holler. What say?" Paul stretched out his hand.

Jody flinched. That big hand had slammed him around plenty. "I don't have no Pa," he said. "The old man can go to hell, for all of me."

He pushed past his brother, and as he rode home he kept his eyes cast forward. Not until he was deep in the woods did he stop Amos and sit a spell, crying like a lost nursling. "Ma..." he said brokenly. "Oh...Ma...I'm sorry."

When the oaks and maples were crying with color, Jody killed a young bear and instead of toting the hide to the village to sell, he made Old Widder a bearskin cover. And he promised her that come Spring he'd pluck the geese one more time and they'd have enough feathers to make her bed soft, to cushion her aching old bones.

Sometimes, when he sat alone on the porch or meandered through the woods, he thought about lighting out, finding a girl who was peart and strong. They'd get hitched and he'd carry her back to Old Widder's and they'd all live together. He'd build onto the cabin, and him and the girl would have young'uns. Old Widder would be like a granny to them, for all that she was a Negra. A sigh always followed on the tail of the dream; no peart girl would want the likes of him. And he didn't want young'uns because what if he was mean like his pa and brothers? Better to stay where he was, be what he was.

Whenever Jody went to town all the talk he heard about was the war. Ab MacAfee told Jody three of his brothers, Ephraim, Zack, and Bert, had all died in the fighting far away in Tennessee and nobody knowed if the other one, Bo, was alive or dead. Jody wished he could remember what they looked like.

Going to the village had been useless. There wasn't any coffee, sugar or flour to be had. "The army bought it all," Ab growled. "Paid with Confederate scrip. Might's well have stole it." Then he added, "If I was you, boy, I'd make myself scarce for a while. They got conscription now and they'll snatch you right up."

"Don't know what conscription is."

"Lord, you don't know nothin', do you!" He pointed to a sign on the wall, half-hanging by one nail. "Want me to read it to you?"

"No," Jody snapped. He read it aloud, still not entirely understanding. " 'All persons re...resid...residing within the Con...Con...feed...erate states, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five years shall be held to be in the mil'tary service..." He stared at Ab. "What's it mean?"

"It means they gonna drag you kickin' and screamin' into the army, that's what."

"I ain't goin' to be in no man's army."

"They'll take you, boy. Stick a gun in your hand and make you fight."

"Like hell."

The man nodded toward the door as if somebody stood there. "Bunch of 'em was just here, lookin' for dodgers. That no-good brother of yours, Paul, told 'em to look up the hill a ways. Told 'em they was a husky young redhead up there and gave 'em your name. They paid him." The man chuckled. "In scrip. A whole lotta good it'll do him."

"Do you reckon they went lookin' for me?"

"Don't know. Some of 'em left with the supplies. The rest rode off in t'other direction."

Fear cramped Jody's belly. If they found the cabin, might be they'd wait and drag him off to fight in their army. If they found the cabin, might be they'd hurt Old Widder. He thanked Ab and ran out.

He smelled the stink of charred wood a long time before he saw the ashes of the cabin. Old Widder sat on a tree stump, unmoving. Her back was bowed, and her skinny neck look like it couldn't hold up her head. "They took 'em," she said. "The pigs. Goats. Geese. Ham from the smokehouse. Broody hens. Even the old rooster. Ain't got nothin' now."

"Old Widder..." he said, looking over her head to the burned carcass of the cabin. "Why'd they do it?"

Her voice was as dead as the cabin. "Lookin' for you, boy. Said they been told they was a young, strappin' white man lived here what ought to be in the army." She shook her head. "I shoulda seed it was comin'. I shoulda seed it." She looked up then, with tears streaking her face. "You go hide out. If you don't, they catch you. They send you to the lowland and you be killed."

"I ain't leavin' you here alone."

She jumped to her feet and beat his chest with her fists, sobbing. "You git! Go on, git! I don't need you, I done just fine b'fore you come! Better! Don't want you. Don't need you. You nothin' but trouble since the day I clapped eyes on you!"

He put his arms around her and rested his chin atop her white hair. "Old Widder, you the worst liar I know. I'm stayin'."

Each day from then on was like living on the back of a porcupine. Old Widder jumped every time a nut fell to the ground. Jody built a lean-to for shelter for her, and he slept on the ground. Nary a word was said betwixt them about the soldiers.

VII

They heard them coming through the brush before they saw them. Old Widder made him grab his bow and arrows and run to the woods. "Blackwater Spirit be with you, boy," she said.

As Jody climbed high into an oak tree, the soldiers came into sight--a half dozen foot and one mounted officer. From his perch he could see plain as day and hear right smart as the men confronted her.

"You. Mammy. Where's that coward?"

"Nobody here but me."

"You built the lean-to all by yourself, huh? We ain't got time to play games, Mammy."

Another voice chimed in, laughing. "Take her to Charleston. Sell her for a soup bone."

"Come on, Mammy. Make it easy on yourself. We're gonna find him anyway."

"Don't know what you talkin' about," she said.

They laid hands on her and shoved her, stumbling, from man to man, laughing and yelling at her to tell them where he was. Calmly Jody notched an arrow and sent it flying swift and silent, right through the officerÕs throat. He gurgled, spewed blood, and fell from his horse. A second arrow buried itself in the heart of a foot soldier. Terrified, they shoved Old Widder to the ground.

"We'll be back!" screamed the one who was now in charge. "Somebody'll be strung up for this!" Dragging the two bodies, they fled back the way they had come.

Jody shinnied down and ran to Old Widder. As he helped her up, she said, "You got to light out now. You ain't got no choice. They'll come back. More of 'em."

"But Old Widder--"

"No buts. You git."

"I will. Later."

She clutched his shirt and cried, "You the mule-headedest white boy I ever did see."

"Catched it from you, old woman," he said, smiling.

VIII

At daybreak a few days later, something poked Jody awake. He looked up at a circle of whiskered faces and gun barrels. A grim sergeant snarled, "Boy, you got two choices. You fight for your state and your country. Or hang for murder."

Jody got to his feet and glanced over at the lean-to. Old Widder had woken up and was coming out, her hands clasped together. "I'll-I'll join your army. Just leave the old woman be."

"She's nothin' to us," the sergeant said. They surrounded him and moved away, the sergeant leading. Jody reckoned he'd never see Old Widder again At a sound overhead, he looked up to see the black bird high against the pale morning. Suddenly it shrieked like a lost soul, dropped straight down and struck the sergeant with talons, beak, and wings. He screamed and tried to beat it off.

Jody broke and ran for the woods, crouching low. Behind him there was a gunshot. Something like a red-hot poker slammed into his shoulder. A second one ripped into his back. He fell, got partway up, and half-ran, half-crawled deeper into the woods. The bird screamed, once more high overhead.

Old Widder didn't need to watch the circling bird. She knew where it was going and what it was telling her. Hurrying quick as her old bones would take her, she found Jody sprawled face down on the bank of the pond, one hand hanging over the edge, dripping blood into the still water. From back in the woods she could hear the voices of the soldiers.

"Ain't much time, Spirit," she said, falling to her knees beside Jody. She turned him over, and drew his head into her lap. "You crazy boy," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Wake up." His eyes opened partway, then closed. "Wake up, boy. You got to drink the water."

"Can't," he whispered. "Tried to. Won't let me."

"Try again!" She scooped up a handful of water and held it to his mouth then another and another. The soldiers' voices were closer. "Spirit!" she cried. "Hurry!"

Jody gave a weak cry of agony. She twined her reedy arms about him as he jerked and twisted all over in a violent fit. The black bird swooped overhead and then dropped to the ground beside them.

The soldiers burst into the clearing and spread out, searching. The bloodied sergeant strode to the old woman, who sat calmly beneath the willow sapling that grew at the water's edge.

"Where's that murderin' draft dodger, you old fool?"

"Gone," she said, with a soft, chuckling huh-huh-huh. "He never be seen again." The screeching laughter of the high-flying black bird pierced the morning.

THE END