Traces by Patricia L. Hudson

Author:Patricia L. Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950564293
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

17

Jemima

Fort Moore was the nastiest place Jemima had ever laid eyes on. The moment she walked through the gate, she began counting the days till she could walk out again, which she knew couldn’t happen until her father returned from his mission of warning the surveyors in Kentucky. All manner of fetid odors wafted across the stockade. She covered her nose with the hem of her apron as she followed her mother and Susannah toward the tiny cabin they’d been assigned.

James would have laughed at their miserable surroundings and made up games to help pass the time—challenging her to sing as many verses of “Black Jack Davey” as she could in the time it took to draw a bucket of water from the well or having her count how many cow patties she passed when running an entire loop around the stockade. The world felt so empty without him. Night after night, she was startled awake by the fleeting belief that she’d dreamed his death and that if she turned on her pallet in the crowded cabin, she’d see his fair hair peeking out of a bedroll nearby. How can he be gone forever? How can it be that I’ll never see him again? Her grief felt bottomless, and it was mixed with a sense of guilt so profound that she couldn’t speak of it to anyone, even her mother. Deep in her heart, Jemima felt certain that if she hadn’t told James about her lost ribbon, he wouldn’t have volunteered to backtrack down the trace, and he would still be alive.

Just days after the massacre, her father had handed her the length of blue velvet.

“Squire found this tucked inside James’s shirt,” he’d said, his eyes hollow with grief.

She’d stood, frozen in place, clutching the ribbon as if it were her lost brother’s hand. Later, as she rolled it up to store in her cloth bag, she discovered a dark stain on the underside. Blood. Her hands shook as she tucked the ribbon away. After that, she could barely bring herself to touch it, though she’d have fought tooth and nail if anyone had threatened to take it from her.

She couldn’t share these feelings with anyone. She felt certain Susannah would only remind her there was nothing she could do to change things. Her father was gone, as usual, not that she’d ever felt comfortable confiding in him anyway. Most disconcerting of all, her mother was not herself. That, more than anything, left Jemima feeling utterly untethered.

As the weeks dragged on, her grief slowly changed into anger; anger at herself for her part in causing James’s death; anger at James for leaving her, however unwillingly; anger at her mother who seemed unable to notice that others were suffering too. The more Jemima thought about it all, the angrier she got, until she was slamming doors and snapping at the younger children.

“Jemima, you need to tell Levina you’re sorry for fussing at her like that,” Susannah said one night as they were readying the table for dinner.

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