Between building, Jacob and Cullah hunted. We ate more often with Goody Carnegie than not. I was glad of her presence. More than once I had come outside to do some little chore and found the both of them working without shirt or hat, clad only in breeches and heavy boots.
Cullah lost no chance to shed his coat as he worked, and after he had asked me to bring him water more than one time, he crafted a bucket to keep at his side. As wood dust and flecks covered him, he often took the dipper and washed himself. I had never seen so much of a man, his body, his skin, other than swimming with my brother and sister. Even then, August was a boy with spindle legs and a narrow build, a pointed chest like a bird. Cullah was of some age I could not guess and did not dare ask. What I knew was that his body rippled in the sun, dripping water. Dark hair made a diamond on his belly and coated his arms, catching the sawdust and wood chips so that he looked as if he wore a feathered armor. His long hair he bound carelessly with a leathern thong. Though he shaved his face almost every day, a dark beard as menacing as his father’s threatened his countenance by evening. He was altogether vulgar in appearance. A brute to be used as one would an ox. Across his back and one arm a band of white scar no wider than a good thread lay, testament to some old wound.
Jacob caught me observing it one time as I stood behind Cullah as he poured water over his sweating back while I held another cask of water. Jacob said, nodding at his son, “Fell from a tree, he did. As a lad. Means nothing.” Hundreds of scars, like those on his face, webbed Jacob’s back. He’d been mercilessly used.
Yet, as I crawled into my bed, just a blanket on the floor by the loom, I fingered the tiny scar I had on my left hand, remnants of the nail holding grapevines crucified under a full moon. I thought of no way a fall from a tree would produce a fine line that stretched across a man as if he’d been caught in a warp thread. Jacob’s scars were a different thing altogether. I wondered if he had suffered as did the man beaten to death under August’s eyes. I thought of Foster, killed by a bear, and others I had seen with scars. I remembered Patience lovingly bathing the wounds of the Indian man.
That night and many that followed it, I fell asleep thinking of Cullah. What meaning his odd name might have, whence he had come before Lady Spencer knew him, what his age might be, and whether he were really the son of Jacob, who was nearly as brawny as Cullah. The third evening of thinking thus, I had a mysterious dream of home. Rather than Allsy running, holding my hand, the hand I took was rough and large, attached to an arm with a scar upon it that matched mine, yet the faceless person to whom it belonged was lost in some sort of mist.
The next morn, I hummed softly as I prepared our food and began my day’s work. To my surprise, Jacob heard me, and with Cullah both knew all the verses to “O Waly, Waly.” The two burst forth in song as if the need of it had been held, steaming, under a lid, waiting for release. For some reason, it made me feel so homesick to hear a man’s voice the way Pa’s would have done, carrying on with his work, a tune on his lips. Then Cullah sang another, all in some tongue I knew not, a melancholy melody that made the heart ache and tears rise. It fair took away the hours and my hands upon the bobbins worked as if by magic, disembodied, as I felt the tunes course through me.
The sky threatened rain early in the afternoon. Goodwife Carnegie walked my path. Only when she called to me did I wonder at having it seem “my” path. Strife drew her face into a frown. “It comes. The rain,” she said.
“I know. Please, Goody, stay in my home and run not through the forest. I fear much for your life when you do that.”
“I cannot. I cannot.”
Jacob frowned and worked his chin with a grizzled hand. I offered him the water bucket, but before taking it he said, “There’s much to fear in the woods, lass, but sometimes there is more to fear in the mind.”
Goody looked upon him, trembling helplessly. “It is neither memories nor ghosts, the phantasms haunting me. They are real. They come for me when the wind blows.”
“I would keep them away, if you stay with me,” I said. “Whoever follows you through the storm will feel my wrath.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Cullah smile. “Aye. I’ve known it, lady. A firm redoubt it is.”
Goody said, “I came to see your progress, whether you can stay during the rain, but I see you have no shelter yet except over the loom. Come you all to my house. Follow quickly before it arrives.” Then she hurried in the direction she had come.
Cullah peered at the sky and sniffed deeply, then said, “It looks to be a killing storm, Pa.”
Jacob wiped his face. “We’ll see your loom is covered, and get the animals in.”