“Nay. When was it?”
“Couple-three hours gone. I was up a tree.”
“Couldn’t think of a finer place with a fuckin’ war goin’ on.”
“You Katskils done an ambush and got beat off.”
He slapped his leg, mixed satisfaction and disgust. “God damn, I prophesied it. Could’ve told the brass, that’s what you get for splitting the b’talion. Comes to me though, the meat-heads never asked me.” He squatted on his heels beside me, giving my hen the gloomiest gaze any chicken ever got and no fault of its own. The moon-face jo stood apart, watching me. “I feel bad about this, Jackson, If’n it was just me and my large friend standin’ over theah in the rain so bungfull of the milk of human kindness a man can’t see where he’d squeeze in no more nourishment noway—”
“Now, Sam,” said the big man. “Now, Sam—”
But Sam liked to talk, and went on regardless, in his slow-drawly Katskil voice, amusement and sadness ex changing places the way clouds play games with the sun: “If it was only him and me and you, Jackson, we might make out, but the dad-gandered almighty thing of it is, we got one other mouth to consider which’s got itself a bumped knee but still suffers if it don’t eat good. You think that ’ere little-ass bird could do a fourway split?”
“Well, sure,” I said — “two leg-hunks and two halfbosoms and ever’body arise from the God-damn table a mite hungry is good for you as the fella says — where’s the fourth?”
“Off into the brush a piece.”
“See like I told you, Sam? Boy’s got an open nature full of divine grace and things. What’s y’ name, Red?”
“Davy.”
“Davy what?”
“Just Davy. Orphanage. Bonded out at nine.”
“Now we got no wish to betrouble you, but maybe you a’n’t bound back wheah you come from?”
Sam said :”That’s his business, Jackson.”
“I know,” said the moon-faced man. “I a’n’t pushin’ the boy for no answer, but it’s a fair question.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “I’m on the run, ayah.”
“Nor I don’t blame you,” says Moon-face. “Noticed that ’ere gray ballock-rag hangin’ there right away, and what I’ve hearn about the way they’ll always do the dirty on a b.s. in Moha, it’s a national disgrace. You keep y’ chin up, boy, and trust in God. That’s the way to live, understand? Just keep y’ chin up and y’ bowels open, and trust in God.”
“You let him snow you, Jackson, you’ll start thinkin’ they don’t treat bond-servants like shit in Katskil too.”
“Sam, Sam Loomis, some-way I got to break you of that ’ere cussin’ and blasphemin’. A’n’t no fitten type talk for a young boy to hear.” Sam just looked at me; I felt he was laughing up a storm inside of him and nobody’d ever know it except himself and me. The big jo went ofl kindly: “Now, boy Davy, you mustn’t think I’m claimin’ I a’n’t no sinner no more, that’d be an awful vanity, though I do claim a lot of stuff’s been purified out’n me like a refiner’s fire and things, but anyway — my name’s Jedro Sever, call me Jed if you want, we’re all democraticals here I hope, and sinner though I be I fear God and go by his holy laws, and right now I says unto you lo, I says, bond-servant or no, you be just as much a man and citizen in the sight of God as I be, y’ hear?”
More casual, Sam asked: “Things got tough?”
“You could say so.” Then somehow I was blurting it right out: “An awful accident happened. I killed a man accidental, but nobody’d ever believe it was so, anyhow not the policers.” I suppose I might have held it in if I hadn’t taken them for deserters, on the run as I was and not concerned about Moha laws.
Jedro Sever said: “A’n’t no such of a thing as an accident in the sight of God, Davy. You mean, it happened without you intending it. God’s got his great and glorious reasons that a’n’t for such as us to look into. If’n you be truthful about it not being intended, why, no sin theah.”
Sam was looking into me with a cool thoughtfulness I’d never seen in anyone, man or women. I don’t know how long it was before he let me off that hook — my hen was well browned, smelling just right, and the rain had slackened to a mere drizzle. “I’m taking your word,” Sam said at last. “Don’t never make me sorry I done it.”
“I will not,” I said. And I don’t think I ever did. The confidence between Sam and me was a part of my life that was never spoiled. In the times that followed I often lost patience with him, and he with me, but — suppose I say it this way: we never gave up on each other. “Ayah,” I said, “I run off, and I’d be a sure thing for hanging was I caught and took back to Skoar. Kindly avoid hanging whenever I can see my way to it, that’s how I am.”
“Whenever,” said Jed, unhappy. “Look, boy, if you was ever once—”
“Joke, Jackson. Boy’s yoking.”
“Oh, I get it.” Jed laughed uncomfortably, the way you might if you accidentally interrupted someone taking a leak. “You know the country round heah, boy Davy?”
“Never come thisaway this far before. We’re near the Northeast Road. Skoar’s off west, five-six miles.”
Sam said: “I was through these pa’ts yeahs ago, in peacetime — Humber Town, Skoar, Seneca, Chengo.”
“Katskil border’s a few miles south,” I said.
“Ayah,” said Jed, “but we be’n’t bound thataway. Understand, in the sight of God we be’n’t deserters. Me, I labor in the vineyard like on a mission, and old Sam Loomis theah, why, he a’n’t no sinful man ay-tall, spite of his bad talk. One day God’s grace is going to bust onto him like a refiner’s fire and things. I mean he merely lost his outfit in a scrimmage like anyone might. Same outfit I was with — I left sooner, beth’ called by the good Lord.”
“Ayah,” Sam said. “I lost track of my comp’ny in the woods after a little trouble yesterday, up the road ten mile. What the A’my does with deserters, Jackson — I mean with people it thinks is deserters — well, what they do, they string ’em to a tree for bow and arrow practise, and then so’t of leave ’em. Saves a burial detail. Got my head busted and was knocked out a while, comp’ny gone when I come to, I don’t blame ’em for thinking I was a deader, but I don’t believe I got the patience to explain it all, was I to see ’em again. One comp’ny was detached from the b’talion, idea was to make a little show up the road, delay you Mohas and make you think it was all we had in the area. Then the main b’talion hiding down thisaway could clobber you. Cute idea.”
“The Mohas a’n’t no army of mine. Got no country.”
“Know what you mean,” said Sam, watching me. “I’m a loner by trade… Well, them no’th Moha apple-knockers, excuse the expression, came along nine hours late, after whoring it up around Humber Town likely, so after they brushed us off they squatted down to camp for the night. I should know, having damn nigh walked into ’em in the dark. Must’ve been rested and happy by the time the b’talion jumped ’em this mo’ning. We didn’t do too good?”
“Not too. Mohas was too many. Two to one or more.”
“Boy’s a gentleman,” said Sam, and rested his wounded head on his knees. “Ayah, the brass gets fanciful and the men get dead.” I’d spotted Sam Loomis for a woodsman; he had my habit of quick side-glances. He wouldn’t be caught unready by the unexpected stir of a branch or slither of questing life along the ground. Jed might be; his eyes did not look alert. Baldness had thinned even Jed’s eyebrows to pale wisps; it gave him the look of a great startled baby. “ Jackson , that little-ass bird’s near done.” As I took it away from the flame he added: “Maybe better slip on y’ bullock-rag, account that other’n off in the brush — I just damn-all f’got to mention it — well, see, she happens to be a female woman.” Then glancing up at Jed Sever’s disapproving mass, he said: “Moves around real peart for a young boy, don’t he?”