Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Duncan found his hand absently rubbing his neck. If Reverend Arnold or Hawkins were at the mission, he could be in an iron collar by dusk. He became aware that someone was speaking to him. “Did you?” the stranger in the white shirt was asking, switching between German and English. “Did you think it too long?”

“I could find no fault with it,” Duncan offered.

The German worked his tongue in his cheek as he weighed Duncan’s words. “In a month I will depart for Saxony to recruit new settlers to join us. My father, the Reverend Zettlemeyer, says they will expect me to offer a sermon about faith in the New World. If we are to pay for their passage, then we must be certain they are committed to our missions.”

“This is Reverend Zettlemeyer’s mission? The Moravian mission?”

The German confirmed with a nod.

“I came about the boy.”

“We have four boys.”

“The boy with the ox.”

“Ah. He’s not a-” It almost seemed the German was going to say Alex was not a boy. He pushed the long blond hair from his brow and settled his hat on his head. “That one’s not right in the brain. I am afraid that’s all you can do, is see him.”

“He lived with the Iroquois.”

“And something of him died with them. His soul. My mother says an old Indian named Tashgua ate his soul.”

“If I cannot speak with him, I will be satisfied to have him listen.”

“We’ve tried things, for months we have tried things. There are secret ways, from the old country,” the Moravian continued. “Last month my mother read the Book of Job to him, backwards,” he added in a meaningful tone. The young Zettlemeyer surveyed his audience of stumps, offered them a mock bow, and gestured back toward the buildings. “My sisters bake bread today,” he said, and then extended his hand. “I was christened Martin.”

Duncan, shouldering his pack, reached out and took the hand that was offered, introducing himself by his Christian name only. He studied the little community as they walked toward it. “An impressive enterprise, for you to be able to pay for new settlers,” he ventured. Moravians were known for their missionary zeal, not their wealth.

Martin laughed softly. “Never a profit from our hard-scratched fields, nor even the furnace. Father has arrangements,” he said, then waved and called out to the milkmaid.

Ten minutes later Duncan sat in the shadow of the cowshed, drinking from a ladle of fresh milk as the freckled adolescent girl who had been tending the cow, one of Zettlemeyer’s younger sisters, blushed at his side. The Moravian village, consisting of ten buildings other than the furnace, seemed a world away from the bark mill. All the inhabitants he encountered as he wandered along its paths-a soot-stained man on the bank above the furnace who fed charcoal down its chimney, two woman doing laundry in a wooden tub, the children in the garden-seemed peaceful, even contented. But the graveyard by the little chapel held over three dozen graves, a third of which appeared to have been dug in recent weeks.

He walked among the graves, most of which were marked with crosses of hewn wooden slabs, whitewashed and lettered in an ornate hand, many only in German. As he straightened a leaning cross, anchoring it with a stone, he saw half a dozen markers set apart from the others, not new but perhaps only months old. Private Albert Simpson, he read, then Corporal Robert Griffin, and Ensign Bernard Atwood. Soldiers. There were some old moccasins at the base of one of the six identical crosses, a faded green cap on another. Not exactly soldiers. He had found the rangers who had been murdered the year before. As he paced along the graves, he trod upon a long, unyielding object obscured by a clump of wildflowers. A narrow slab of precious iron. He paced the graves and found four more, all embedded in the ground. Someone, a Highland Scot, had protected the graves with iron pigs, straight from the furnace.

He tidied the graves of Woolford’s men, then sat in the shade of an old maple at the edge of the cow shed, watching the track from the bark mill for signs of the ox and his keeper.

“They have a wagon to fill by the morrow,” a voice suddenly said, stirring him from a half sleep. “So they will work until the light fails. Come eat with us. You failed to mention you knew my father from Edentown.” Martin Zettlemeyer helped him to his feet, and Duncan hesitantly followed him to dine at a table of planks set on barrels under a tall tulip poplar tree. He had deliberately not mentioned it, had hoped to avoid the elder missionary, the only person in the village who could put a full name to his face, who could name him as a fugitive.

The Moravians engaged in polite conversation at their hearty meal of sausage, boiled potatoes, maize pudding, and fresh bread, carefully avoiding personal questions. But clearly they had been informed about Duncan’s intentions at the mission.

“He has lost all the talents of society, the young one,” declared the solemn, gray-bearded senior Zettlemeyer. “He faithfully performs his duties and sits through all our worship services. That has to suffice, and perhaps that is the way it will always be. When Herr Weiser comes next month, we will send the boy back with him.”

“Mr. Weiser?” Duncan asked.

“Conrad Weiser, of Berks County, in the Pennsylvania colony. He comes on errands for the government, to speak with the tribes. Conrad will know a farm safe from the war that needs an honest hand. The boy is no trouble.”

“He is nothing but a beast of burden,” Duncan said.

“In the eyes of the Almighty,” Reverend Zettlemeyer opined, “we are all beasts of burden. If we can each find the particular burden we are destined to carry, then it is a blessing.”

“Find our true skins you mean.”

Duncan’s words stopped all conversation at the table. Everyone looked toward the old reverend, who worked his tongue against his cheek, as Duncan had seen his son do. The Reverend cast an oddly pained glance at Duncan, then, too loudly, asked for the potatoes.

Duncan insisted on helping to clear the meal, carrying the empty dishes to one of the tubs where the Zettlemeyer daughters worked with scouring rushes and hot water, singing a spirited hymn in German. Still the ox stall was empty. As he carried his last load to the washtub, one of the women appeared with another bucket of hot water. But when he turned from his task, she was gone-and the bucket hadn’t been emptied over the dishes. He found no sign of her as he circled behind the buildings, but discovered behind the woodshed a makeshift laundry line of white linen strips, pieces of old bedding torn into bandages.

From the shadows he studied the buildings with new interest, rubbing the head of one of the mission dogs that had followed him. The furnace and charcoal shed. The neat cabins that housed the inhabitants of the mission village. The cow shed, a wagon shed, the summer kitchen. A large springhouse with the door slightly ajar. Why would the woman take hot water into the building used for cold storage?

Duncan broke off a small piece of the sausage he had saved from dinner, wrapped in a leaf, coaxed the dog to follow him, and tossed the morsel into the open door. He slipped in behind the dog, hugging the inside wall. From behind a blanket hung on a rope at the rear, the woman gave a half-hearted reprimand to the dog, but did not rise from her work. As the dog nosed the blanket open, a sturdy hand reached out and patted its head. But the woman did not look away from her patient.

The man lying on the straw pallet was a few years older than Duncan, with long reddish hair clubbed at the rear. His face was puffy, his jaw clenched against pain as the woman lifted a poultice and began washing an ugly, oozing wound on his right calf. On the wall behind the man hung a black leather cartridge box, beside a knife sheathed in deerskin.