“Me again?” said Will.
“Go ahead, you’re the expert now.”
This time the cane flew in a narrower spiral and cleared the three hundred yards of the river and appeared to come down in a blackberry patch.
“Whoa” went Will “did you see that!”
“I’ve got an idea” said Daniel Charlie. They went back into his workshop. He had a few plastic buckets of bent and rusty nails. He got his hammer and took a three-inch nail and straightened it on a concrete block. Then he flattened the head to make a half-moon shape, with the curved edge at the top. He found a cane that was straight. He pushed the nail into the pith in the larger end of the cane, with the flattened head protruding. He tapped it softly twice with the hammer. “They need weight at the front. We’ll get a little less distance but more accuracy. We don’t have time to add feathers.”
Frost said “It’s more than a stick now. With that nail.”
They went back to the river. Daniel Charlie looked to Frost for permission. Frost hesitated, then nodded. Daniel Charlie gave the nail-tipped arrow to Will, and Will shot again. This time the arrow only dodged and jogged a foot or two off its trajectory. It cleared the river but did not make it to the blackberries.
“It’s fine” said Frost. “It’s perfect. We don’t need accuracy. We need distance.”
Daniel Charlie said “They’ll fly farther when they’re dry.”
“And we need quantity. Better get a few hundred more.”
Will sagged. “I’m tired, Grampa.”
“I’ll send a someone to help” said Frost. “But you’ve got to show them where the best picking is.”
Daniel Charlie said “Can you send someone here to do the nails?”
“I’ll send Granville” said Frost.
“The addict? Is he up and runnin’?”
“Pretty well” he said tiredly. “He wants to be useful.”
19
When Grace entered the apartment Frost did not look toward her but shifted in his hammock and turned his back. It was almost noon. From outside drifted the distant, excited sound of men’s voices. Frost stared into the fire, where a battered and blackened aluminum pot simmered on embers.
Grace said “Are you ready, Will?”
Will sat on a narrow plastic-covered mattress under the window, leaning back against the wall, with his knees up, reading Principles of War. He put the book down and got up, glancing at his grandfather as he stepped past the hammock. He went to Grace. She bent her head, and Will whispered “Grampa’s not feelin’ well. He needs to rest. Maybe we should go without him.”
Noor was seated at the table. With a single curling yellow thread from a length of twine, she was stitching a cloth patch onto a pair of canvas trousers. The two women exchanged a look. Noor said “Up you get, Grampa. Will needs your help. So does Grace.”
Grace whispered to Will “He’ll feel better if he comes.”
She went around the hammock and crouched between Frost and the fire. She stroked his hair and laid her hand on his cheek and said “Come on. Come with me. It will be good. Come on now.”
Frost’s dull eyes had not moved. They had not been looking at the fire, and now they were not looking at her. She stood and lifted Frost’s legs over the edge of the hammock. “Will” she called. She and the boy managed to hoist the old man to a sitting position. Will handed Frost his glasses.
Frost said, barely audibly “Okay.” He let Grace and Will help him to stand.
Noor now stood by the door. In one hand she held three pairs of oiled scissors, which she put in a small plastic bag and handed to Grace.
King was waiting outside the door. Frost ignored him, but the dog wagged his tail and touched Frost’s hand with his nose. It was a cloudy day but it had not started to rain yet. Frost went down the steps and headed west, hatless, in his wool poncho, dragging a large empty plastic bag . He had olive green rubber boots. He did not hurry but did not wait for Grace or Will, and did not turn to see if they were following.
Grace had a rabbit skin poncho and hat and a wool kilt and black rubber boots with red soles. Will had his sweatpants and wool poncho and one black rubber boot and one olive, which was bigger than the black one and had a tear down the side. He and Grace walked behind Frost without talking, carrying their own empty bags.
A wheeze of sawing came from Daniel Charlie’s workshop, and the tap of a hammer on metal.
In the mud near the barns eight or ten men and three or four women were standing around a steer that had a rope around its neck, and a blindfold. There was a tall tripod of doubled two-by-fours, with a block and tackle. Among the crowd flowed a loud, formless and animated exchange of opinions. Except for Deas the field boss, the men were white haired or grey haired, but the women were younger. The one-armed woman, Salmon, was there but not her daughter. Wing was there. Old Brandon was there. Old Ryan. Old Justin. Old Joshua.
Grace said to Will “They all think they’re needed to kill a cow.”
“A steer” said Will.
“To kill a steer. Gathering cattails is beneath them.”
“I don’t think Grampa would want them around, anyway.” Suddenly Will stopped. He said “I should watch.”
Grace also stopped. “Watch…? What…?”
“I should watch them kill the steer.”
For a few seconds Grace paled. She stuttered “Why… Why do you want… I don’t think…”
“It will help me to be ready. For when the battle comes.”
“Battle? Oh lord, Will.”
Grace reached to pull him to her but he backed away a step. He said “I’ll catch up. I need to see the blood. I need to be ready.”
Grace made a sound, a brief low moan, and turned toward Frost, but Frost was walking steadily away from them. Grace closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Finally she said evenly “Your Grampa needs you, Will. It would make him sad if you stayed behind. He wouldn’t want you to watch. I think you know that. Come along now.” She stepped forward and reached toward him again, but once more he stepped back.
Grace looked again toward Frost. Seeing her do so Will also looked. Frost had stopped and turned. He was waiting. He had a hand near his face, palm outward, as if to shield his eyes from a bright light. But there was no light. There was just the business with the steer, and he seemed not to want to see it. Will shrugged unhappily, and they walked on.
When they got to the bed of cattails, not far from Fallen Bridge, King did not want to go into it. Grace handed Will and Frost a pair of scissors each, and King watched anxiously as the three people headed in among the plants, each in a separate direction, and were lost among the pale, bent and disordered winter leaves. The plants were taller than Will. He watched his grandfather disappear, the white hair and beard resembling the fluff that adhered in stubborn uneven clumps to the old tails. Will’s feet sank a little in the soggy ground, and an inch of water oozed up around his rubbers. He listened to the dry scraping of leaves as Grace and Frost proceeded in opposite directions, deeper into the patch. He felt a drop of rain on his wrist.
He studied the canes that surrounded him. There were several straight ones. He snipped the burst tail off one and let it fall. Then he bent down and cut the cane off near the base. He held it up to the dark sky and sighted along it. He put it in his bag. He cut the tail off another one. He heard the snick of Grace’s scissors, maybe fifty feet away. He said “They have to be straight.”
Grace answered “Yes. I see that many of them are not.”
A gust of wind roused the leaves of the cattail bed to a sudden hiss. Will said “We should work fast. It’s startin’ to rain. Right, Grampa?”
There was no reply. He could hear neither Frost’s scissors nor the scrape of leaves that would mark his passage through the dry, spent plants. Will left the crooked canes standing and stepped forward to search out more straight ones. He squatted and sighted through the plants in the direction he thought his grandfather had taken. He moved his head left and right, but there was no sightline through the leaves. All he saw was more plants.