Varina(32)

Delrey said, Ma’am, we’re in South Carolina. Who knows their standards?

—How fast are they traveling? Burton asked.

Biddle said, Not fast. They’re branching off, talking to people, beating the bushes. They’re searching, not riding hard. But they’re coming faster than you’re going. Maybe they’ll get bored and head on home.

—Maybe, Burton said. Thank you for the information.

—If you’re heading to Florida with the rest of us outlaws and you make it to Scrub Pine City down near the Suwannee River, the Biddle place is easy to find, assuming it’s still there.

He tipped his hat and rode on.


THAT EVENING as they made camp Ellen sent the children to fetch deadfall for tinder from under a gathering of big oaks. Maggie, being oldest, supervised. Jeffy and Jimmie and Billy picked up sticks and tried to stomp bigger limbs into shorter pieces. Then they got bored and started having saber fights with long, curved pieces of limbs. Soon they were throwing sticks at each other and dashing around yelling and chasing and wrestling until Maggie joined in, whacking at the boys with a switch until they all laughed and screeched. They finally came back to camp with armloads of pencil-thin kindling to throw on the fire and watch flash up and instantly burn away.


THE NEXT DAY was brilliant spring weather, pastel blue sky and new green leaves on oak trees. The diminished fugitive band spaced out along a hundred yards of muddy South Carolina roadway. Mules and horses plodded heads-down, and the wagon wheels squeaked for grease. They camped out of sight in the woods by a creek. Burton and Delrey went opposite directions looking for food and came back later with little to show.

—Ma’am? Delrey said. Our foraging didn’t turn up much. Or let’s be straight and call it begging and bargaining and stealing.

—Yes?

—I bought a sack of biscuits and a jug of milk. There wasn’t even a chicken to be had, never mind pig meat. And the people selling wanted a dollar each for a biscuit and a cup of milk, and even then they only sold them paired. Cup of milk and a biscuit, two dollars. But not two cups of milk and a biscuit. Or two biscuits and a cup of milk.

V interrupted and said, I understand the terms. Let’s split what we have and eat around the fire.

—There’s more to it, Delrey said. There’s been smallpox aplenty all around here. So we need to know who’s been inoculated. Or else already had smallpox and lived through it, but I guess we’d know that by the scars.

V said, Everybody but Jimmie and Winnie.

—I’ll get on it, Burton said.


AN HOUR LATER he returned to camp, a black boy riding behind him. Nine or ten, tall and skinny and hungry, his finger joints and elbows and knees rising like flower bulbs under the skin. He wore his hair cropped close, almost shaved. The boy stood before them neither scared nor comfortable. He watched all of them, wary and calm. Scattering all down his neck and arms and legs, a hundred fresh pox scars. Each one like the touch of a hot poker, a hundred healing burns, dimpled and silver with a starlike print at the center. Across both cheeks, patterns of scars the Greeks would have connected to make constellations.

He’d fought it off well. People who died had a thousand blisters and scabs wrapping their bodies, overlapped like reptile scales. Now, down around the boy’s calves and ankles, only a few brown dry scabs remained.

V said, What is your name?

The boy looked off to the woods line, judging distance. He said, I don’t have one.

—Yes, you do, Ellen said. Is it John? Benjamin? Samuel?

—No, ma’am. It’s Bobcat.

Ellen shrugged and went back to the fire.

—Well, Bobcat, V said, I’ll take your word on that. I see you’ve been sick.

He looked her in the eye and raised his chin and said, Better now.

—Yes, you are. You’re going to be fine and live to be a hundred. You’re strong. But those last scabs down your legs could help keep my children from dying. I’d pay you for a few of them.

The boy looked down at his scabby legs and bare feet and then looked up, more wary than before.

—They fall off in the dirt. Glad to get shut of them. But you want to buy them off me?

—It would be a favor, V said. I’ll give you three biscuits or three dollars for three of them.

Bobcat thought a second and said, Both. Three biscuits for now and money for later. Hard money, not grayboy paper.

V said, Three big dry ones and we have a deal.

Bobcat squatted and picked around at his shins and ankles until he found loose scabs, domed and puckered and brown, gritty as sandpaper. They lifted from the pink scarred skin underneath with the first pull of a fingernail. He held them in his cupped palm.

V reached out her hand, but Bobcat stepped back.

—We trading or what? he said.

—Yes, we are trading.

Bobcat looked around at the white faces aimed his way.

—Then fill your hand too, ma’am, he said.

V stacked the biscuits in her hand and held them out to Bobcat.

He shoved them in his pockets but kept his fist clenched around the scabs.

—Yes? she asked.

—I gotta have my money, he said.

V said, Of course. I apologize for my forgetfulness.

She counted out the coins and reached them to him.

Bobcat grabbed the money and dumped the scabs into her hand and took off running fast for the woods.