The Hunger(84)

Now that she had been with Thomas, she had thought she would feel different, but other than an ache lodged high between her legs, she felt nothing but a deep contentment, as if in becoming a woman she had fallen into a sleep untroubled by dark dreams. It had been her idea; she’d asked Thomas to meet her last night at the wagons. No one went out to the wagons anymore. It was dangerous being out at night, even with the bonfires. There were always at least two men patrolling with shotguns, and in the shadows they might be mistaken for one of them.

She had brought a blanket, though she didn’t dare bring a candle or a lantern. Thomas appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. He knew how to be practically invisible; they were alike in that way.

When Thomas climbed over the backboard and saw that she had made a makeshift bed for them, he turned to her. “Are you sure this is what you want? Think about it, Elitha. Your family will not let you be with me. Once we are down from this mountain, they will not let us be together.”

There was no sense worrying about the future. She would be Thomas’s woman, if only for one night. And she would go to her grave without regret.

They would all be going to their graves soon enough.

Kneeling now on the thick frozen surface of the creek, Elitha heard a whisper behind her and paused to listen. The hairs lifted on her neck. The whisper kept going, a susurration like the hiss of wind.

The voices. They were coming back. She couldn’t make out the words they said but they were there, clawing at the edge of her consciousness like a sick headache. Some of the voices were new; that meant more people had died. She tried to close her mind against it.

Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her. It was like being visited by a ghost, like a dark shadow stepping across her mind. She spun around and saw Keseberg, coming up the ridge, his breath steaming in front of him. “Well, lookee here,” he said. He grabbed Elitha by her shoulders before she could scrabble away and lifted her to her feet, as if she was a doll. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

“I’m not by myself,” she said quickly.

Keseberg grunted a laugh, as if she’d said something funny. “I know. You got your Indian sweetheart. What a shame, a nice girl like you just gonna throw yourself away like that.”

“We love each other,” she blurted out. She didn’t know why. It seemed important. Where was Thomas? She wanted him to save her, and she wanted him to stay away, all at once.

Keseberg pulled off a glove and put his bare fingers against her cheek. Her blood froze at his touch. “You think them savages even know what love means? They don’t love the same way as a white man,” he said, as though it were a fact. Elitha pictured Keseberg’s wife, Philippine, a slight woman with light brown hair, usually with a bruise somewhere on her face. She’d never heard Philippine speak. Did Keseberg love his wife? Had he ever loved anyone? Elitha was pretty sure she knew the answer to that.

“I’m gonna yell.”

He backed her up against a tree. She focused on a bead of mucus hanging from the tip of his red nose because she didn’t want to look into his eyes. “If you cause trouble for me, I’ll make trouble for your boyfriend. You know I can, too. Ain’t nobody gonna help no Indian.”

She felt the truth of this in her bones. She pressed her spine into the tree trunk, steeling against the first touch of his hand. Wearing so many layers of clothes, she knew that even if he put his hands on her breasts he wouldn’t be touching them, not really. Still, the thought made her shiver. She remembered how Thomas had stepped close, nuzzling her neck, only last night.

But Keseberg wouldn’t do anything serious, the girls had said. She tried to calm herself with that thought, even as her stomach seemed to have lodged itself somewhere in her throat and her whole body went rigid in protest. He was just going to touch her. She could stand that and Thomas would be safe. She almost wished he would hurry up and get it over with . . .

Keseberg grabbed the front of her coat and yanked it open, yanked the front of her dress open, too, exposing the bare skin of her throat and sternum. She cried out in surprise. But he got one hand around her mouth. His fingers tasted filthy. She thought about kneeing him but she was worried that wouldn’t stop him, it would only make him angrier. He seemed like the kind to hit you if he got angry; his wife, Philippine, was proof of that.

“You ain’t as pretty as some of the other girls,” he said, in a low voice, as he pushed one knee between her legs, parting them, “but you’ll do.”

Too late, she realized that he wouldn’t just touch her and be done with it. Too late, as he moved his hand to undo his belt, she realized he intended something far, far worse. A voice in her head yelled run, run, run. Was it one of the dead? It didn’t matter; her legs were rigid with fear.

Then, suddenly, a terrible force struck them both, knocking Keseberg away, driving her into the snow. She tasted blood in her mouth where she’d bitten down on her tongue. A horrible screaming echoed through the woods. At first, she thought it was one of them.

But it was Thomas. He and Keseberg were on their knees, grappling in the snow. Thomas had surprised him but Keseberg regained the advantage quickly. She scanned the ground for a rock, for a branch, for something to use as a weapon.

Keseberg finally pushed Thomas off him, sending the boy to the ground. He stood up, heaving, shaking off the snow—like some horrible shadow, doubling and redoubling as the sun set. “You think you can fight me, boy? You think you’re going to save her?” He put a boot into Thomas’s side, hard. “Well, the joke’s on you. She’s a whore. She wants me. She wants me to make a woman of her.”