Katu

KATU

  P.L.Yizzi

  Copyright ©2011 Patricia Yizzi

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the author’s permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, businesses or locales are used fictitiously and are intended only to lend authenticity. Other than established historical reference to military action, all events and dialogue derive solely from the author’s imagination and are not to serve as historic fact.

  Cover Design and Editing: Jennifer Quinlan

  eBook Formatting: Nick Caya

  The noon hour sang from Renninger’s clock shop as I hurried from Philadelphia. That was some time ago. An hour, maybe more. Just the same, with a wary eye and an earnest clip, I’m making good time.

  October, ever the herald, is rustling its cold breeze through the oaks as I progress up Schoolhouse Road. Oh, what paper bells all around, chiming and falling into gold and crimson heaps, covering over this old Indian trace Grandfather’s ancestors wore bare. The trees are speaking, he would say. Perhaps it’s my youth or mixed extraction, but I can never hear what he hears. More than ever, I wish for Grandfather’s gift, that I too might know what my eyes can’t see.

  I look about—my heart pounding like a hungry beggar at the door; my innards clenched in an unforgiving fist—I am alone on this road with nothing more at my disposal than a generous supply of his blasted twine and an imagination rife with possibilities. Each noise of anonymous creation ignites a new luxe tale of horror to contemplate, provoking my already tattered nerves to the point I hasten my pace to near gallop, all the while wondering in which of these trees there is a muzzle pointed my way.

  This is no longer solely the problem of the pot stirrers in Boston. No, the enemy has at last come to our door. Yet today, even upon straining, I can hear no musket fire or guttural howls of the dying or cannons thumping the ground. Nay, only this creeping, eerie quietude whispering beneath the wind.

  “Stand strong. If we don’t back down, the King will be forced to,” Father’s friend, Carlton, once said. “He will never issue war against his own people.”

  Carlton is a filthy sot! For arrive they did, by land and sea, potent and bitter. These brethren we once called our own now exact against us their quintessential brand of genteel savagery. There is no turning back, for nothing can ever be the same again.

  Beset by such a sense of onerous portent given me by the quaking silence, I can scarcely continue any farther. But what choice has been given me? Peril in any direction is still peril. Just so, the city is behind me now, and I’ve not a pennyweight of blood lost or a pennyweight of lead gained. Almost there, I’m in my woods now, my chest puffed out and my hat tighter than when I set out this morning. I can’t help but snort Ha!, and it goes off like a shot echoing down the lane, aimed on any and all who might be lying in wait.

  Oh, the bravado that wails from the lucky coward!

  I would not have questioned or feared Grandfather’s request had the King’s regulars not invaded the city this past month and his procurements not set me so close to their reach. But I wonder, was that not his point?

  He was wise to ask of my assistance only after Mother had hurried off up the road to Cousin Sarah’s, who had been delivered of a new girl during the night. Mother would have never allowed my travel to the city alone. This he knew. But raised to abide an elder’s word, fast and afraid, I made my way to the spinner for his twine.

  Philadelphia was a blight of hopelessness. Shuttered dwellings slept aside cautiously occupied shops as riotous taverns screamed a joyous brutality from their hollows. This morning, there was much for the British to delight in.

  Patriots or rebels, be it whatever your prerogative to reference those brave fools, were nowhere to be seen, for I looked. I had thought it only I, a dreamer still believing in the might of little lead soldier men, who was bereft of hope. But amid the lofted spirits of passing loyalists—oh, they’re spotted quick-off—apprehensive glances from those too poor, stubborn, or indecisive to escape, making their quick steps through the mucked city streets, bade me their commiseration. Evidently, they too were wondering where those brave fools have gone. Or, unlike me, do they know?

  What has Father signed on to?

  This I gave much deliberation all the long way home from the city, looking this way and that like a cat up to no good, all the while nibbling half of the petite loaf of honey bread given me by the spinner’s wife. Up ahead, right around the bend, I can see it, home, a fine thing nestled between river and creek, and what a preponderant measure of relief it is in seeing all as I have left it.

  I look down at the pebble-strewn dirt road and kick the biggest stone my foot finds, emboldened. The road is not pocked by blood-soaked hoof divots. Ahead, the house is no wicked mess of smoking embers. Mother is not out wailing at Father’s lifeless form as it dangles from the same stout oak in the front yard I climb with assured regularity, nor is Mina battling as she is being carted away in a slaver’s wagon. I blink and look again. No, there is none of that. Everything is just as I have left it.

  I am shaken from my study as a streak of wet coughs issues from the direction of the creek. I stall in my steps, debating. Concern momentarily overrides my feeble state, and I turn from the road toward the creek.

  A flash of sun is glinting through the clouds, lighting the water amber. However, the illumination is brief, for once more land and sky darken with shadow, and our little creek again reverts to the shade of a dirty boot.

  With his heels teasing the edge of Whitpaine’s Creek, Grandfather unfurls his fishing net along the grassy bank like an artist stretching his canvas, dragging and pulling the humbled lattice until it begins to resemble its natural design.

  Pleased, he slowly straightens as much as his aged capability allows. Grandfather, by all accounts, is still tall and lean with that peculiar hunch to his shoulders, as if he’s spent his life exclusively in the company of dwarves. He stumbles back, hands on hips, huffing and puffing as though he’s just wrestled a bear—I speak with some authority on the matter as I once witnessed such a feat. The wrestler had not been Grandfather. In fact, the man was shorter, fatter, and many years his junior, but they are indeed both the same kind of man.

  Ties of red string mark off frays and small tears. The larger, seemingly irreparable apertures require no such glamour to be called to mind. Grandfather shakes his head before walking to the enormous flat-topped rock by the clutch of poplars. He picks up his dented old pewter tankard and takes a drink, glances back at the net, and then takes another.

  Atop the embankment, I shrink back from the bushes and onto Schoolhouse Road, looking for an escape from my day’s indenture. As I turn, I am confronted by the all-seeing eyes of my parents’ front windows, which seem to be glowering at me. I inch into the side yard as if the stiff breeze is directing me thus and it is all beyond my control.

  Behind the hulking fieldstone-and-timber monument to Father’s success, our small wood shed beckons me as I fritter away precious moments considering the feasibility of sneaking off there for a nap. However, my slothful aspirations are abruptly postponed when Mina plows through the kitchen door like a wayward bull. She charges into the side yard with a bowl of scraps in hand and lays eyes on me with the duration of another chicken counted before turning for the rabbit hutch. With a witness to my return, an errant, and if I do say well-earned afternoon rest proves too much the gamble.

  Low spindly stalks thwack the legs of my breeches as I push through the weeds to the precipice. Clear access is but feet away, if I were so moved with de
sire and not so overcome with weariness to walk it. Perhaps Father is right: sloth shall be the death of me.

  With a snort, I hazard down the slope of dry earth and loose stones with Grandfather’s splintered crate of bobbins slung at my waist like a street peddler at the end of a tiresome day, finally alighting on hard beach. The muffled purr of the waters coursing over the dipping creek bed rises in distinct presence before rushing on toward the bend.

  Before my eyes, that foul old net lays sprawled over mud, rock, and grass like a thread bare carpet splattered with blood, yet the macabre vision is but no more than direction for our afternoon’s labors.

  Grandfather grimaces as he squats. One hand is behind him, fumbling for the old woolen blanket he’s folded into a neat square. He locates it, slips it under his bony rear, takes hold of the net and pulls a corner of the woebegone thing over his lap. He stops for a few belabored breaths then pulls a short length of twine from the pocket of his ragged waistcoat and begins to knit.

  His back is to me, and he seems none the wiser of my presence, as if I am no more than a ghost denied. I place the crate on the green and gray mottled river stones at Grandfather’s side and wait.

  Now, restlessly stepping foot to foot,