Page 116 of The Frozen River

“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.”

POLLARD’S TAVERN FRIDAY, MARCH 26

Cyrus stands before the table and faces all three judges. Once again the Court of Common Pleas has come to Hallowell with the honorable Obadiah Wood, James Parker, and John Hubbard presiding. As Judge North hasn’t been seen by anyone in the Hook since the end of January, he was automatically removed from this hearing.

Seth Parker stands beside Cyrus ready to assist in this legal matter. He has assured us that the court has no legal grounds to keep our son imprisoned, but I have a bad feeling about these proceedings. Cyrus’s case is the only one on the docket today. He has arrived freshly shaven and in his Sunday best. He looks more like his father than ever today. A man in his prime. But he’s got a cheeky air about him that leaves me fidgeting in my seat. Cyrus looks like he’s gunning for a fight.

“How do you plead?” Obadiah Wood asks Cyrus. “In the charge of murder against one Joshua Burgess in November of last year?”