Jesse caught him up. Reuben fought in dumb fury, but Jesse held him fast
ignoring that, and rushed through the woodshed, opening the door at the
far end with a thrust of a horny foot. "Stay close, Ben!" They were
stumbling across snow trampled by the flight of others, in the shadow of
their own house that stood between them and the fires; then out of that
shadow toward a beginning of winter dawn. Men and women were running
about here, unrecognizable in wounds and terror and nakedness, people
Ben had known all his life, swept into the panic of a crushed anthill.
The east wall of the stockade rose cruelly high. There Jesse set Reuben
down. The boy swung about mechanically, walking back toward the fires.
Ben grabbed and slapped him; he only stared.
Jesse snatched off the wreck of his nightshirt and twisted it into a
cord, running it through the belt of Reuben's breeches. "Go first,
Ben--I'll h'ist you."
Ben swarmed up somehow. Jesse yelled: "Drop! You must catch him." Then
Jesse was up too, clutching the palisade with his knees, hauling on the
makeshift rope before Reuben's groping hand could discard it. Jesse
gained a grip on Reuben's armpit, and Ben flung himself down. "Ready,
Jesse!" But instead of letting Ben catch his brother, the old man leaped
with him, turning in mid-air so that he fell under Reuben, who sprawled
free and ripped loose the cord.
Ben grabbed the boy's arm. Jesse reeled up on his knees. "Get to
Hatfield! I'm undone. The filthy papists've done me in."
Reuben had at least delivered himself from his witless trance. He tugged
to free his arm and wailed: "Let me go!"
"Get up, Jesse! You can't sit there so."
Jesse shook his head, a stubborn child. "I stink. There's men fail at
everything--you don't understand." He whimpered, trying to cover his
crotch. "I be naked, can't you see? You go on. I'm done."
"Let me go, Ben! Let me go back! Let me go, damn you!"
Ben's eyes were watering from the cold and from a billow of smoke the
wind flung down on them. "God damn it, Jesse, you think we'd abandon
you? Get up!"
"Plague and fire...."
"_Get up!_"
"Oh, I--I will, Ben. It's the old liquor rising up in me. Ben, I
couldn't help that, it was on me to drink. Leave me gather my wits. O
Lord Jesus, is it coming day already? I will get up, Ben, don't fret."
And he did, jerky in motion like an ill-made doll, willing to follow....
Some confusion of battle still fumed by Captain Wells' fortified house
beyond the southeast corner of the palisade. Ben heard gunfire, the
heart-cracking sound of a woman wailing unseen. Leading, gripping
Reuben's wrist, Ben avoided that fort, plunging into the woods and
white-packed underbrush to circle it and come out well to the south on
the Hatfield road--unmistakable, familiar, over there on his right under
enormous morning sky. Others in flight had marked the road with the
signature of bloody drops, clear against white now that the sun was
surely rising.
Reuben pulled back continually. Ben's right knee throbbed, he couldn't
think why. He knew Jesse was following. Impossible to run in this white
muck. He could push on, the sun at his left hand, and not look back. He
was aware not of time but only of breathing, of driving forward in pain
against the sodden snow and retaining his hold of Reuben's wrist; yet
time was moving too, as it would forever, and the sun advancing.
He realized that for some while now he had heard no gunfire. They had
surely not come so far on the Hatfield road as not to hear it, for the
morning was still. It must have ended. The wind had dropped, the air
becoming sluggish, almost warm. Drowsy....
Reuben struggled abreast of him and beat feebly at his shoulder. "Ben,
you must let me go back. Mother----"
"Ru, thou knowest she is dead."
"You never loved her or you could not say it."
Ben faced about, feeling the sun of March, seeing on the backward trail
nothing familiar, only a rising faraway smoke. That must have been
Deerfield. Nearby, the quiet world of snow was lightly patterned with
tracks of forest life; no wind at all now to disturb the shadowy trees
and undergrowth. Ben knew his brother was nearly sane, already ashamed
of the words just spoken. Jesse had halted, swaying and mumbling in his
cold nakedness, looking back. "I loved her, Reuben. Now save thy breath
for walking."
More time unmeasurable passed in the dreary plodding. Small shadows down
the trail became large, large shadows became men--angry men from
Hatfield, some of them soldiers. A blunt-faced sergeant of militia
shouted to Ben: "They still there, boy?"
"Yes," Ben wheezed--"I think so."