DR. COLEMAN’S STORE         

The ice is thickest in the shallows, near the riverbank. Toward the center of the Kennebec, however, it creaks beneath my feet. Like old floorboards. Like old bones. And even though I know it will bear my weight, I proceed carefully, medical bag in one hand and the other outstretched, each footstep purposeful, listening for popping sounds, feeling for shifting and sinking beneath my feet. Sam Dawin is not the only man to have fallen through the ice, though he is one of only a handful to survive. The river is at least four hundred feet wide in most places, deep in the middle, with a ruthless current and, at this time of year, lethal temperatures. If you go under, you are gone. And if they find you, it is usually bobbing in a Boston boatyard weeks later, your skin and clothing torn to shreds.

After attending to Melody Page, I am the kind of exhausted I used to think impossible. In my youth, when I first took to this profession, it was not uncommon for me to spend multiple days rushing from one birth to another. I could function on minimal sleep and sporadic meals. But something shifted once I turned fifty. My body started rebelling at the inconsistent schedule. And now my entire physical being protests the long night. The combative conversations with Dr. Page and Mrs. Hendricks have left me drained. My neck is stiff, and my eyes are dry. My bones feel loose at the joints, but my muscles tight. I am hungry.

“Home soon,” I mutter as I traverse the midpoint of the river.

It takes an effort not to hasten my steps, but I continue the careful, methodical passage until my right foot lands on firm ground. It is a short hike up the bank, and then I stomp my feet on the boardwalk, knocking the snow from the soles of my boots.

The moon is bright, and the clouds are wispy and low, making the sky look like an oyster shell, striated with shades of gray. I will be home in an hour if I am lucky, and then it’s a cold dinner and my own bed. But first I must collect Brutus from where I left him stabled at the tavern. Though the residents of the Hook are comfortable walking back and forth across the river, few of us are brave enough to ride a two-thousand-pound steed over the ice.

I am turning toward Pollard’s when I see that the lanterns are lit in Coleman’s Store. Odd. He usually closes shop by six o’clock. The front door is only a few steps away, so I go left instead of right and try the knob. It turns easily in my hand, and I step inside to the sound of bells tinkling merrily above my head.

Samuel Coleman looks up from his place at the counter. “Who’s there?” He asks, milky eye squinting at me.

“It’s only Martha.”

“Ah,” he says. “You’re out late.”

“I’ve been at a birth across the river.”

“And who’s the new parent?”

I laugh at the absurdity. “Dr. Page.”

“He called for you?”

“He most certainly did not. And I can honestly say, his is the first child I have ever delivered against my will.”

“But all is well?”

“It is. No thanks to him.”

“All’s well that ends well, I suppose. But that does not answer why you’ve brightened my doorstep this evening.”

“I saw the lights were on.”

“And you were worried about me?”

“Only curious what has you up so late.”

Samuel Coleman lifts his ledger. “This. Going over it again. Making sure I’ve gotten my accounts right. It gets harder every day.”

On my way to the counter, I make sure there is no silver fox pelt among those for sale. As I have every time I’ve entered for the last few months, I breathe a sigh of relief upon finding nothing but rabbit, stoat, and beaver. The occasional raccoon. And the one red fox.

“Are ye looking for a skin, Mistress Ballard?”

“No. I’m looking to make sure one isn’t here.” When Coleman tips his head to the side in curiosity, I add, “There’s a silver fox that roams our land. I think she’s made a den under the old live oak down by the creek. To be honest, I’ve grown fond of her.”

“A pelt like that would fetch a pretty penny. Traders from Russia and China in particular value them. A single one is worth twenty dollars. Sometimes thirty if it’s in good condition.”

“But would you pay that?”

“I’ve never had the chance.”

I lean closer. “But if one were offered? Let’s say, by one of those trappers who come in on occasion. Would you buy it?”

He pulls at the corner of his mustache. “Would it matter? Since the wee beast would already be kilt?”

“It would matter to me.”

“Then I reckon the answer is no. But I get the impression that ye dinna really want to talk about pelts.”

“No. I had no reason other than curiosity for coming in. But now that I’m here, I thought I’d ask you about Sarah White.”

“I barely know the girl.”

“But do you dislike her?”

“Not at all.”

“But would you dislike having her around?”

“I dinna want another wife, Mistress Ballard. And I am too old for her besides.”

I laugh, long and loud. I cannot help myself. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. “Gracious, no! That is not at all what I mean.”

“Then explain what ye do because I canna fathom what it might be.”

“You told me that you were looking to hire a shop boy. Someone to work the counter and keep the books. I think Sarah would do well, and it would give your eye a break. Not to mention the rest of you.”

“Yer saying I am old and feeble?”

“You basically said so not two minutes ago.” I am glad to see the flash of humor in that eye, the bobble at the corner of his mouth that suggests a smile he’s trying to hide. “You are nearing seventy. You have one eye and a grand total of six fingers spread between both hands. I am saying that having help in the shop a few days a week would be no great burden to you. I think you should consider Sarah.”

“That is an interesting suggestion, Mistress Ballard,” Coleman says. He leans across the counter and squints at me in such a way that his eye seems to disappear inside his face altogether. “And I do wish ye’d brought it to me sooner.”

“Why is that?”

“Because just yesterday I accepted an offer on the store from a man in Boston.”

“You’ve sold it?”

“I will have, next month, when he arrives with payment.”

I am sorry to hear this—for more than one reason. I will miss Coleman, and I tell him so.

“There’s nothing to miss. I’ll be staying on to help the man until he’s up and running. Ye’ll see me often enough.”

Coleman winks, and it is both endearing and macabre. It makes me curious again, how he lost the other eye. I have always feared that it would be an insult to ask, but I’m emboldened by my disappointment in losing this chance to help Sarah.

“What happened?” I ask. “To your eye? Your fingers? I have always wondered.”

“You dinna take to the theory of piracy? That’s the rumor I’ve heard whispered most around here,” he says with a jolly rumble in his chest. “And do ye ken that no one has ever come out and asked me directly?”

“You do cut an intimidating figure,” I say.

“Pfft. Nonsense. Being scarred and being scary are not the same thing.”

I wait, not wanting to prod him any further in case it’s an answer he does not want to give, but after a moment, he lifts his hand and turns it in the air. Waves those stubby fingers.

“It was during the Battle of Signal Hill. And wouldn’t that be my luck? To get maimed in the last battle, after being at war and unharmed for seven years.” He looks at me. Smiles. “I still consider myself lucky. I just lost bits and pieces. Some men lost their lives. And others? Well, Joseph North fought too, and he could tell you what it’s like to lose a soul.”

He says it so cavalierly. As though a soul is something you can lose as easily as a game of chess.

“What do you mean by that?”

There are great depths to that one milky eye, and I watch them settle over me as he ponders how to answer the question. When he finally speaks again, I worry he’s lost the thread of our conversation.

“She had beautiful hair, you know,” he says.

“Who?”

“My wife. It was bright. Shiny. Like a copper coin left in the sun. We’d been married three months when a Huron brave cut it from her head. I was told later that”—here he must clear his throat—“that it was sold to a Frenchman for thirty francs. They were going for head-count, see. Proof of a dead English enemy.”

This is the part no one talks about anymore. Not in civilized company at least. When a war is over, you stop discussing the cost. The reality. The blood-soaked soil or the grave markers or the collateral damage. The ways we kill our enemies in order to claim victory. History is written by the men who live. Not the ones who die. But I’ve heard these stories myself. I know it isn’t so easy as the French were bad and the English were good. Ha! The English? No. You’ll never hear me defend their methods. My people came from those shores because they had no options left.

“The English weren’t innocent of that either,” I say.

“No. They weren’t. Much to their shame. But to them, the taking and selling of a human scalp was optional. Yet that option made Joseph North a very wealthy man. By the time war was officially declared in 1756, an Indian male scalp was worth one hundred and thirty pounds to the English. A female, less. Always worth less, the women.” I cannot tell whether that last bit is an apology or an observation. “They fetched fifty pounds. And how do you think Joseph North built that fancy house on the hill? How do you think he hands out loans like candy?” Coleman asks and looks me dead in the eye. “Like I said. Lost his soul.”