Seed - Time and Summer

She was there again. He saw the black circle of her eye, inside the brown circle, as it

appeared to widen and narrow, widen and narrow. He looked at the pinkness coming into the light skin of her cheeks, the way it comes into the skin of Englishwomen. As usual, he couldn’t see the color of her hair, which was hidden by the black hood of the cloak. The closer he looked at her, the farther she moved from him, growing smaller. From here he could see how the dark hood fell to her shoulders and how her shoulders curved down to the her arms and how the right arm was held forward, the sleeve dropping open at the wrist. Her palm was up and flat out and on it sat the small, perfect fox. He took a step toward her and she was gone. Good. He turned with relief and saw the snow, its whiteness in the moonlight. He had been born in winter, and knew its secrets. Winter would protect and shelter him. Above his head, so cold now on the snow, he saw the trees standing tall and mute. They held out their branches and welcomed him, naked as he was. The white eyes of the gods glinted from every branch and they hailed him. Again, the brother gods came to him, bringing the two names. They were tall, both of them, and looked like twins, though, as usual, he couldn’t see them so clearly as he did the woman; they were more like presences at his sides, right and left. “Here,” said one, “this name is for peace.” “And this,” the other said, “this name is for war.” He opened his mouth to say “I want both.” But they didn’t hear him and only leaned down, their long arms dangling, to clothe him in the two names. He was safe again, from the woman. 

In the summer woods he opened his eyes. The world did not appear. He raised his head but there was no sign of daybreak. Mist blew about his face. Beyond the pines the tidal river flapped like a great heart beating. Nearer, he heard the sounds of hundreds of men breathing as they slept. But he didn’t know who lay beside him. He must be more careful. He had flung himself down carelessly, the death dance beating in the soles of his feet.

The three would die today.

Was that an eye? Something glowed in the darkness to his right. He raised his good hand and moved it through the space that separated him from whatever was glowing. It didn’t blink. Then he remembered: silver. A silver coin had been tied into the hair of one of the brothers who had come to him on horseback from the town out on the plain. Their father had been of the people but had long ago cut his hair and gone to live among Englishmen and plant wheat. The sons were returning: “We have come to fight in your war.”

His war!

The bitter river flapped against its banks. He sat up. He could make out the shapes of trees, but nothing of color. It might start today, his war. At daybreak, when the three men would be hanged in Plimouth. If any of them spoke his name as the ropes slid around their necks, the war could begin. By sunset the soldiers would be here. Jerked by the neck on ropes, that’s what Englishmen did with those who had murdered. Betrayers of the people they split into four parts and took the head to ram onto a pole.

“For the murderer, I use the club,” he had explained in the rum houses, sitting in the big chair his friends always gave him. His friends, their green eyes wide, leaned forward to hear him. “A murderer kneels at my feet and opens his mouth to sing. I raise my club and sink it fast down through the hard bones into the softness of the brains. If the murderer does not cry out, the people cheer. Now, for a traitor I use the long knife. I make a shallow cut here, at the wrist, and pull the skin down and peel it over the fingertips. He sings. If he does not, the people come laughing with their torches to burn him. But,” he had added last time, fingering the frill at the wrist of his English shirt, “No man has yet betrayed me.” That trip to the rum house had been when the ice was on the rivers. When it broke, the purpled body of John Sassamon washed up on the shore at Assawampset.

It must be near daybreak. He stood. He made his way through sleeping forms toward the cedar path, his feet familiar with the way, even in darkness. From the ground came the soft, sluggish call of the brown dove.

John Sassamon. The round, wide faces of the people of the hill appeared behind his eyes. The wide-faced Sassmon had cut his hair short and learned to speak Englishmen’s words as fast as they spoke them. And Sassamon had learned to take the words out of the air and flatten them into signs for the eye. Sassamon called himself John and sang to the Englishman’s god. Sassamon came down from his own people and spoke of the Englishman’s god among the people of the lake. Sassamon had betrayed the people over and over. Sassamon had whispered of the war to Englishmen.

It was right that Sassamon be killed.

So he had sent the three men to the lake as his long knife, telling them to make it appear to be an accident. But when Sassamon’s body washed up, bruised and empty of water, the Englishmen at Plimouth had found witnesses and taken the three men off and boarded them up in a house and judged them.

Judged them! They were his to judge!

He reached the start of the uphill path.

Someone was watching him. He turned his head slowly: half the world lies behind a man’s neck.