He was surprised to find so many people reading Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, and the lot, although I don’t know why. A lot of western folks were readers, and books were precious things, hard to come by and much treasured.
“Miss Sackett? Do you read? I mean for pleasure?”
“Of course.”
“You have books in your home?”
“Mighty few. Pa used to lend books, and somehow they never seemed to come back. My Uncle Regal, he took to Scott. When I was no bigger than a button he was always reciting Lochinvar or something from Mannion.”
“From memory?”
“Of course. We Sacketts all have good memories. Part of it comes natural, part of it is from learning. When folks don’t have many books, they have to learn their history by heart. We learned the way ancient people did, like the bards of the Irish or the Welsh.
“It is a good deal like traveling across country. A body lines up on a peak or a tree or something in the way of a landmark, then as he walks, he checks the backtrail, which always looks different. We learn to pick out a tree here, a rock there, or something of the sort to guide us. Once seen, we don’t forget it.
“Pa, he started teaching us that when we were youngsters, as his pa did before him. It was the same with history or the folks in our family. We learn about the principal Sackett of a time, and all the folks connected to him. You mention any one of the family back three, four hundred years and we can tell you who he or she was married to and what happened to their get. Their children, that is.”
“I never heard of such a thing!”
“You mention Barnabas, now. He was the first of us in this country, and any Sackett can tell you what ship he crossed on, who his friends were, where he settled, and how.”
“It must have been some such means that was used by the druids.”
My eyes were wide and innocent. “I suspect so.” I purposely sounded vague. I had talked as much about that as I was going to.
Dorian asked me many questions, and I noticed he was listening carefully. From time to time he glanced at me curiously, as if wondering about some of my answers. Ginery Wooster was setting back in his chair, seeming to pay us no mind, but he was listening, too.
“We all remember that way, after a fashion,” I said. “Somebody says ‘George Washington,’ and right away you think of Mount Vernon, of 1776, of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Valley Forge and all that, and each one of those things tips you off to another set of memories.
“Well, we just extended that, a-purpose. We didn’t just kind of do it by happenstance. We sort of extended it out further and further, and as youngsters we were taught not just to learn something but to learn something else that went with it. Pa, he used to say that no memory is ever alone, it’s at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.
“There’s nothing very remarkable about it, or even unusual except that, like I said, we do it a-purpose.”
“But there must be limits!”
“Maybe, we just never found one yet.”
Dorian, he pushed back his chair and got up. “Miss Sackett? There are many lights in the sky. Can you come and tell me their names?”
“Well,” I said, “I can start you off right. That big round white one is called the moon. Does that help any?”
14
Bright was the moon upon the narrow waters, black and silent the shores except for the occasional lights from a settler’s cabin, blinking feebly from the trees or some meadowed bluff. There was no sound but for the chugging of the engines, yet we were not alone upon the deck, for others had come from the main cabin to enjoy the night.
Essie Buchanan was there, accompanied by a heavy-set man with muttonchop whiskers. Was she watching me?
“I had not realized the Ohio was so large a river,” Dorian said aloud, but under his breath he whispered, “I wish they’d all go to bed!”
“We must wait them out,” I said, not at all unhappy about it. Then I added, “The step to the bow is right behind us.”
“Archie will be down there waiting for us,” he said softly. “He has your carpetbag hidden there.” After a moment he said, “I still believe we should stay aboard until Cincinnati.”
“They are waiting for us there,” I said. “If we move now, there will be fewer of them. We may even get away unseen.”
“If there’s trouble,” Dorian said, “stay out of it. Leave it to Archie and me.”
“Maybe I could help.”
“You? You’re just a girl. What could you do in a fight?”
“Probably not very much,” I agreed meekly, “but I could try.”
“Stay out of it. I do not want you hurt.” Then he took the fun out of it by adding, “Uncle Finian would never let me hear the last of it.”
There was a rustle of water about the bow, the low murmur of others’ voices.
“Are you going into law like your Uncle Finian?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I haven’t decided. I’ve thought of raising horses. I like the country life.”
“You will see some beautiful country in the next few days. Not the best of Kentucky, but some of it. If you wish to raise horses, there’s no better place to go.”
“Maryland,” he objected, “Maryland or Virginia. Who would wish to be out in this wilderness?”
“But it isn’t wild anymore. Only in the mountains.”
He turned his back to the rail and rested his elbows on it so he could see what the others were doing. “But some of the people even live in log cabins!” he protested.
“I live in one. I love it.”
He was astonished. “You? In this day and age?”
“My grandfather built our cabin. It was the third one built on the spot or close to it. The first two were burned by Indians during the War of the Revolution.”
“A log cabin? In 1840?”
“It is warm and snug and we have a beautiful view of the mountains.”
He glanced at her face in the moonlight and the slight glow from the main cabin windows. She was pretty. But living in a log cabin? In these modern times?
“We have a log barn, too, and we churn our own butter, bake our own bread. Mostly we make do with what the land provides, barrin’ a few things from the pack peddler, like needles an’ such.”
“But don’t you ever want to get away? Don’t you think of leaving? Coming to the city?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve thought of it, and talked of it, too, with Regal. Only we Sacketts have lived in the mountains for quite a spell.
“You’ve got to wake up of a mornin’ with the clouds lyin’ low in the valleys between the mountains, the tops of the peaks like islands. You’ve got to see the mountains when the rhododendrons are all abloom, or the azaleas or mountain laurel. We don’t have much in worldly goods, but we’re rich in what the Lord provides.”
“Have your family always stayed in the mountains?”
“No, I reckon not. There was Jubal Sackett, a long, long time back. He taken off to the west, crossin’ the Mississippi. He returned once, but when he left the second time, it was reckoned he’d never come back. Jubal had the Gift.”
“The ‘Gift’?”
“Second sight. He often knew things before they happened.”
“I don’t believe in that.”
“Some don’t. I never had the Gift, but it runs in our family.”
“It’s superstition.”
“I reckon so, but it has played a big part in our family story.” Glancing around, I whispered, “They are going in.”
“But we shall have to wait. From the sketch you showed me, it must be some distance yet.”
“An hour or more, with the current.” I hesitated, then added, “When the stage is lowered, we must go ashore at once, before anybody will think to watch.”
“We’d be better off to wait for Cincinnati,” he protested. “We will be better off where there are people.”
No use telling him I wasn’t used to people caring for me. Where I came from, a body took care of himself and did not look to other folks for protection or even help. If it came, and among mountain folks it often did, then you accepted it and returned the favor when you had the chance, only you did not look for it or expect it.
Once we got ashore along the Big Sandy, I could make myself mighty hard to find. Out there where the forest brushes the sky, that’s my kind of country.