Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

Author:Charles Frazier [Frazier, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
Publisher: Sceptre
Published: 2006-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

I FLURRIED ABOUT, always a-saddle. Letting constant motion stand in place of actual achievement, everything done half-assed, both tending to business and to the heart. Back and forth on the daylong ride between Valley River and Wayah. The roads were filled with uniformed Federal soldiers and heavily armed Tennessee mercenaries dressed like bandits and hired just for the summer by the Government to roust out Indians. The bandits’ cook pots hung behind their saddles, clashing like unpleasant bells as they coursed along the roadways. They were all draped about their chests and shoulders with powder horns and shot pouches.

I rushed to Cranshaw, after I heard Featherstone was gone, and found Claire bitter amid the wreckage of packing crates, slaves milling about directionless, fields untended, ragweed knee-deep among the cornstalks, suckers overwhelming the tomatoes, squash and pumpkins and melons growing tiny and pale as babies’ fists in the shade of rampant chickweed. What to say to her other than Love me, love me. Don’t go. Stay with me.

She would not even accept an embrace in the dooryard but stood all rigid and looking off toward the river with her hands clasped tight behind her back.

At the fort, the growing population of prisoners, many of whom I had known since boyhood, sat in the dirt of the stockade drinking liquor bought from a cart one of my clerks tended just inside the gate. People drank deep to achieve immediate stupor. And why not? Who was I to deny them comfort? Denial was what the Army was for. If you can’t get drunk when your entire world comes crashing down around your feet, why did God make alcohol to begin with?

And then back outside the Nation in Wayah, I found Bear awake long nights in his townhouse, plotting out the organization of a new miniature world in the pattern of the vast old one. Divisions of governance no bigger than cove bottoms but assigned the names of lost clans. And not even all of them, only Long Hair, Paint, Wolf, and Deer. Also, Bear was pensive and mournful over the state of his troublesome marriage to Sara and her grievous sisters, and the two endeavors, politics and love, were part of each other, both necessary in his attempt to rebalance a world gone wrong, to try to get back his time again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.