King's Oak by Anne Rivers Siddons

Author:Anne Rivers Siddons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter nine

Hilary’s school did not start again until the Monday after New Year’s, and the college did not reopen until two weeks after that. For the first time since we came to Pemberton, my daughter and I had an unblemished stretch of free time together, lying before us like a clean snowfall. I spoke of shopping for school clothes, visiting museums, attending concerts and galleries, taking Hilary back to the stables to catch up on her dressage classes and ride Pittypat.

“Goat Creek. You said.” Hilary did not even look up from the book on archery she had checked out of the Pemberton library.

We went.

“Did you guys have a good Christmas?” Tom said, kissing Hilary’s cheek and giving my shoulder a casual squeeze. He wore Earl like a fur piece around his neck; the weather had brightened again, and turned cold. Missy pattered bleating behind him, and broke into her rocking-horse scamper when she saw Hilary. Frost-white breath puffed from her patent-leather nose.

“Very good, yes,” I said.

“No. I missed you,” Hilary said. “What did you do? Did you have turkey? Did you and your sons shoot bows and arrows?”

Did you shoot my bow and arrows? hung unsaid in the hard, bright air.

“I did indeed have turkey, wild turkey,” Tom said. “But the boys couldn’t make it after all. So Scratch and Mr. Carmody and I ate up all their turkey and had a fine time.”

“I’m sorry, Tom,” I said, red anger at Pat Dabney thumping in my chest.

“Me, too,” he said. “But I went in and saw them for a while Christmas night. And I took them to the airport in Atlanta, to catch their plane back to school. They hated missing the woods as much as I did; Pat is essentially a stupid woman. When they’re old enough to choose, they’ll come here as often as they can. I can wait. She’s going to be a lonely old woman.”

“Meanwhile there’s me,” Hilary said.

“Meanwhile and always, there’s you, Princess Hilary,” Tom said, hugging her hard around her thin shoulders.

“Okay. Go in the house and get those fatigue jackets on the back of the sofa. The Dabney floating school of woodcraft begins now.”

We went back to Goat Creek every morning that week, and each day he taught us new things about the woods and waters of the Big Silver. Mornings were for field trips; on one of them, he taught us how to identify and gather and cook plants that would sustain life in the wild, and how to make rope and utensils and even clothing from their fibers. We built a pit for steaming and roasted amaranth, wild asparagus, bulrush bulbs and stalks; burdock roots; cattails.

“You could just about survive in the wild with a good stand of cattails,” Tom said. “You can eat the roots, shoots, seed heads, and pollen. The leaves are great for weaving, and the down from the head makes good insulation for blankets and sleeping bags. It’s the perfect survival plant for the river swamps.”

We had tea from wild rose hips and pemmican from Tom’s pockets.

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