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Savanna Storm

By Kit Hawthorne

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North Carolina, 1774.

A voice rang out through the sharp-scented pines, clear and true, singing in the Gaelic. Catalyn stopped in her tracks and let out a sigh that turned into a groan. From the sound of things, Alan must be helping in the turpentine orchard again today.

Why, why hadn’t she sent one of her sisters with the switchel jug instead of bringing it herself? It wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough to do at home. But the woods were so sweet today, washed fresh by yesterday’s storm. She’d jumped at the excuse to go out—and tucked her sketchbook into her pocket.

She rounded the last bend in the forest track, and there was Alan, emptying a resin-filled bucket into the big barrel on the cart. Her father and brothers waved when they saw her coming, but Alan ignored her so pointedly that he must be doing it on purpose.

If only he would ignore her all the time. If only he’d stay at his family’s sawmill and stop coming here to work for her father. If only he’d accept that she thought of him as an old friend, almost another brother, and nothing more.

Alan’s song ended on a melancholy note. Catalyn didn’t know the Gaelic—her father was an Ulster Scot, not a Highlander—but Alan’s family spoke it at home more than they spoke the English. Most of the songs were about love or death, or both.

Father took off his hat and fanned himself. His damp sandy hair stuck to his head. Catalyn uncorked the jug and handed it to him.

“Thank ye, lass,” he said, and drank.

Alan took off the linen smock that protected his shirt and waistcoat from pine resin, no doubt to give Catalyn a chance to look at him. He was well worth looking at, tall and strong and broad through the shoulders. His waistcoat hung open at his sides, and beneath the knotted neckerchief, the slit in his shirt revealed a sliver of bare chest.

His crumpled smock was dark with grime and sweat. A wicked smile flashed over his face, and he made as if to throw it at her. She dodged. He laughed, far more loudly than necessary.

Father finished drinking. Alan reached for the jug, but Father didn’t hand it over, just gazed eloquently at the wadded smock in Alan’s hands. Archibald Shaw preferred to rule with a light hand, but he would be obeyed.

Smothering a grin, Alan put on the smock, and Father handed him the jug.

Catalyn’s brothers waited their turn. Liam was Father all over—fair, freckled, blue-eyed. Fergus, like Catalyn, had their mother’s dark hair and eyes.

Alan handed the jug over to Fergus and looked at Catalyn. “Come with me. There’s something in the woods that I want to show ye. Just a few yards off the track, sir,” he said to her father.

“I need to hurry home,” she said. “The storm blew the wash off the line and I must get it rehung.”

“’Tis something for your sketchbook.”

“What is it?” she asked.

He smiled. “Ye’ll have to wait and see.”

Catalyn looked at Father. Alan did too.

“Be quick,” Father said. “And dinnae soil your gown.”

He was fussy about his girls—afraid, probably, that he’d miss something a mother would have caught.

Alan led Catalyn down a gentle slope away from the orchard. Pine trunks surrounded them, lance-straight, ranging in thickness from massive columns to the thinnest of penciled lines. But when she tilted her head back, they made a starburst of tapers pointing to a patch of open sky.

A fallen log lay ahead, with forest litter banked against the near side. Alan knelt, leaned over the sheltered hollow, and pointed to a little rosette of a plant with seven leaves radiating from its center. Each leaf blade ended in a pair of hinged lobes, yellow-green on the outside, faintly red within, and lined with straight sharp things like teeth.

Catalyn sank to her knees. “Venus flytrap!”

“I told ye ye’d like it,” Alan said, as smug as if he were personally responsible for the flytrap’s presence.

She pulled her sketchbook and pencil from her pocket. “I never saw one around here before. There’s a good-sized colony in the bog near your place, but this one’s all alone.”

“Let me sharpen your pencil for ye,” Alan said, reaching for it.

“Nay, ’tis sharp already. I keep it so.”

Then she forgot Alan altogether. Details stood out sharp and clear—the newest leaf working its way up from the center, the teardrop shape just below each hinged trap, the irregularity of size among the leaves showing eldest to youngest like brothers and sisters. Her eyes darted between plant and page, and the copy took shape beneath her hand.

When she’d finished, she sat back with a sigh. Alan was watching her, stretched out with his chest resting on the fallen log, looking lazy but powerful with one arm still extended towards the Venus flytrap and the other folded under his chin.

“Thank you for showing me,” she said. “We’d best get back.”

Alan swallowed hard and licked his lips. He was getting ready to say something, and whatever it was, Catalyn didn’t want to hear it. She stood in haste, dropping her sketchbook. It fell open to the previous page.

Alan goggled down at it. “What in heaven’s name is that?”

Catalyn reached for the book, but Alan was quicker. He picked it up and stared slack-jawed at the sketch Catalyn had made on her way to the orchard that day.

“Catalyn Shaw! When did ye get close enough to an alligator to make this?”

“I wasn’t very close, and I didn’t stay long. ’Tis only a quick sketch. Give it back.”

She tried to grab it, but he sprang to his feet and held it out of reach, high above her head.

“This monster could kill a yearling calf with one snap of its jaws. What if it had come after ye?”

“I told you, I kept my distance. It didn’t see me, and if it had, I could’ve outrun it.”

“What if ye’d tripped?”

“I wouldn’t. And I didn’t! Give my sketchbook back right now.”

He handed it over, giving her that superior look that she detested. “Och, Catalyn. Ye fret like a broody hen over the children’s scrapes and splinters, yet think nothing of pulling a daft stunt like this. Be sensible, lass.”

Catalyn bit back a reply. She didn’t fret, she wasn’t daft, and he was a fine one to talk of being sensible when he hunted five-hundred-pound feral hogs for sport.

Father’s voice rang out, making Alan jump. “Catalyn! Alan!”

“Coming!” Alan called. He hurried off without a backwards glance.

Catalyn looked at the alligator on the page—the small shrewd eye, the open jaws, the lazy S-curve of the spine. She’d found the creature lounging in a mucky spot below the path—an old hog wallow, probably, made by descendants of swine left in America two centuries ago by Spanish explorers, and swollen to a small pond by the storm. She’d never seen an alligator so far inland before. The river must have overflown its banks and sent the creature this way.

Hoofbeats rumbled away to the south. Catalyn put the sketchbook in her pocket and cleared a little rise back into the orchard to join the others.

A horseman was coming at a smooth canter along the road from Wilmington.
The wide spacing of the trees and the level straightness of the land meant there was plenty of time for everyone to watch and speculate.

“Isn’t that Angus MacLeod?” asked Liam.

“Nay,” said Catalyn. “Angus is taller and doesn’t sit so well in the saddle.”

“That looks like the shipwright’s dapple grey,” said Fergus.

“Aye,” said Father. “But that isna the shipwright in the saddle, nor his journeyman.”

“Whoever he is, he rides well,” said Catalyn.

She mentally traced the invisible line through ear, shoulder, hip, and heel. All was perfectly aligned, elegant but unaffected, upright but not stiff, and so easy that she wondered if he’d first learned to ride bareback.

He slowed to a trot, then a walk. When he reached the orchard, he sat deep in the saddle and spoke a command in a low voice. The gelding stopped with no need for rein pressure, and the rider’s hand touched the horse’s neck in an automatic caress.

The full skirts of his threadbare coat flared in graceful lines over the horse’s back. The lean strength of his thighs showed through the coarse osnabrig breeches, as did the shapely calves in poor linen stockings.

He looked at Father. “Archibald Shaw?”

“Aye.”

“Gordon Currie sent me. He wants two barrels of tar.”

“Lost some stores in the tempest, did he?” asked Father. “And who might you be?”

“Mr. Currie’s new apprentice.” The rider’s mouth twisted as if the words had a bad taste. His accent was like Alan’s.

“A bit old for a new apprentice, are ye not?”

“I’m nineteen.”

Same age as Catalyn, and old indeed for a new apprentice. Perhaps Mr. Currie had bought his service from another shipwright—apprenticeships were transferred when a craftsman sold his business. But if so, the other shipwright could not be a local man, for Catalyn had never laid eyes on this lad before.

“What’s your name?” asked Father.

“Tavish MacGregor.”

The name meant nothing to Catalyn, but she saw Alan’s chest swell and his hands
curl into fists. Another Highland grudge. She didn’t know how he kept track of them all.

“Ye have payment?” Father asked.

Tavish dismounted and pulled a slip of paper from his waistband pocket—a chit, no doubt, for the sum owed for two barrels of tar. Gordon Currie was unusually close even for a Scotsman. He’d pay, but only after keeping the money in his own till as long as he decently could.

Father took the chit. “Catalyn, show Mr. MacGregor to the tar shed.”

“I’ll do it,” Alan said, an edge in his voice.

“Ye’ll keep your bahookie right here and finish your task,” Father said. He told Catalyn, “Be on the lookout for the kye. They’re skittish since the storm.”

“Ye keep cattle, sir?” Tavish asked.

“Why?” asked Alan. “Are ye planning to steal them? Or would ye like Mr. Shaw to pay ye protection money to leave them be?”

Catalyn didn’t know what this meant, but plainly Tavish did. He didn’t speak, but the look he gave Alan sent a shiver down her spine.

“Alan, that’s enow,” Father said. “I’ll not have ye airing your Highland grievances in my orchard. This is Carolina, laddie, not Scotland.”

“But—”

“Wheesht! Catalyn is my daughter, and this is my land. I pay ye wages to work for me, not to give me orders.”

Alan’s face darkened, but he said no more.

The track to the tar shed was broad enough for two. Tavish tucked his hat beneath his arm, took the horse’s reins in his hand, and walked beside Catalyn.
The sun stood high above the longleaf pines, casting a thin shade on the forest floor. Light sparkled in pools of standing water left by last night’s storm. High overhead, branches curved in long hooks that dipped and rose like candelabra hung with clusters of tight green cones. Fox squirrels gnawed the cones for unripe seeds, sending dry scales pattering in a gentle shower to the needle litter. The only other sounds were the gelding’s footfalls and their own crunching steps.

Through quick sidewise glances, Catalyn pieced together a youthful profile with a short straight nose and pinched mouth. Tavish matched his pace to hers, but she sensed a thread of restless energy in the bullish set of the lowered head. One of his shoe buckles had been mended with twisted wire, and the felting at the corners of his cocked hat was frayed.

He turned to her. “Miss—Shaw, is it?”

He had a broad brow, dented with a red crease from his hat and framed by twin crescents of dark hair that had sprung free from the ribbon in back. His eyes were wide-spaced and blue—a dark, hard, steely blue like the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

“Aye, I am Miss Shaw,” she said. “Mr. Shaw is my father.”

“But the other is not your brother.”

“Alan? Nay.”

“What clan is he?”

“Colquhoun.”

“Ah,” he said grimly, as if that explained it.

The Carolina forest was as bright and open as a meadow. The lowest branches of the biggest trees hung a good twenty feet from the ground, higher than the roof of the barn at home. Berries and wildflowers thrived in the sunny space; grass and forbs grew abundantly enough for cattle to graze among the trees. The land was forest and grassland both, a pine savanna.

Today the wildflowers lay in flattened shreds, and pale scars on tree trunks marked where limbs had been shorn off.

“How did the town fare in the storm?” Catalyn asked. “Was there much damage done?”

“A sloop ran aground. It tore up the pier, and some barrels and hogsheads were lost. Dock Street is littered with roof tiles.”

“Is that all? Good. I’m glad ’twasn’t bad.”

He darted a glance at her. “I dinnae ken what ye call bad, but that was the worst storm I ever saw.”

“Nay, that was naught but a little nor’easter. A tempest is far worse—flooding, cyclones, houses and trees knocked flat. Sometimes the wind masses the water into a wall and pushes it over the shore.”

He shook his head. “Why anyone would want to live so near the sea is beyond me.”

She made an indignant sound. “The coast is a wonderful place! Sea birds keening overhead, clean salt breezes, fresh fish.”

“Ye can get fresh fish inland from rivers and lakes. If I had my way, I’d be no less than fifty miles inland and surrounded by mountains.”

“Surrounded by mountains! With the sun late to rise and early to set, and a garden not much more than sprouts, and grass so thin your stock has to rove for miles to find forage! Not to mention great hulking masses of earth and stone frowning down on you from all sides.”

“They dinnae frown! They’re friendly, friendlier than people, and old and wise.”

There was something forlorn in the words. Catalyn wondered which mountains had roused such depths of feeling in him. The Highlands of Scotland? The Carolina backcountry?

“Have ye ever been through a tempest yourself, then?” he asked her.

“Aye, in sixty-nine. The wind was so strong I could feel it through the parlor floor. My brother Rory was just a bairn. My sister Morna cried.”

“Did ye cry?”

“Nay, I was fourteen. I couldn’t cry in front of the young ones.”

She’d huddled under the heavy woollen blanket with her brothers and sisters, trying to wrap her arms around them all at once, wanting to comfort them but unable to do more than blindly cling and tremble. The shutters were closed against the lashing rain and wind, blocking whatever light might have penetrated the cloud cover. The storm tore at the walls, trying to claw its way inside. And no matter how hard she wished to keep the children safe, and Father too, she couldn’t. She couldn’t do a thing.

Then she’d heard a voice raised against the din. Peeking past the blanket’s edge, she looked through the parlor doorway and the narrow center passage and saw Father standing at the open front door, facing the storm, singing.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

For a moment it had seemed that the song was stronger than the storm and that Father’s faith was a shield keeping him from harm, though she’d known well enough that brave good men could be struck down as well as craven ones.

“Some think the storm in The Tempest is based on a hurricane that hit an English fleet sailing to America,” Catalyn said. “The flagship was stranded in Bermuda for months. Father thinks Prospero’s island is based on America, too.”

“Whose island?”

“Prospero’s. In The Tempest.”

Tavish looked baffled.

“The play,” said Catalyn. “William Shakespeare?”

He shook his head. “I dinnae ken who that is.”

“Oh. Well, Shakespeare wrote plays, and The Tempest is one of them. ’Tis about a magician who conjures a storm to shipwreck some people on his island.”

“Why does he do that?”

“To bring the truth to light and punish some men who’ve wronged him.”

“Och! A storm like that one last night, ye can well believe ’twas a conjurer’s work.”

“Nay. Even a hurricane is a natural occurrence that follows natural laws. ’Tis like a top, spinning on the floor. The spinning is like the hurricane’s winds, always going round and round. But the hurricane also moves from place to place, just like the top. You cannot tell where ’twill go next or how long ’twill keep on.”

“But what starts it spinning to begin with? A giant hand? A magician’s spell?”

“Hot air in the tropics, I think.”

“Then what starts the hot air? God?”

The final syllable was hard with bitterness or fear.

Catalyn thought of the catechism. “God uses all things to work his will—”

“Uses? Or causes? Mr. Currie said the storm was God’s chastisement for the Sons of Liberty.”

“That’s absurd. He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust—aye, and tempests as well.”

Tavish didn’t answer. Perhaps he was a Loyalist, like Mr. Currie.

They walked in silence, the gelding plodding behind, until Tavish stopped short and gazed into the distance.

He pointed. “Yon’s your herd.”

His eyes must be uncommonly sharp. It took her a while to make out the shapes of the lean, rugged cattle grazing in the shaded hollows.

Catalyn counted quickly. “Hmm. Only twenty-two. Some of the calves and cows are missing. I hope they haven’t bogged down somewhere in standing water.”

“I count twenty-six. Twelve cows, twelve calves, a steer, and a bull.”

She took his word for it. “That’s the whole lot, then.”

Tavish kept his eyes on the herd as they walked past. “And they just run wild, do they?”

“More or less. They do well enough, but there are times when ’twould be good not to spend half a day searching for them.”

“Tie them to their feed troughs at night and give them some beet pulp. They’ll soon learn to come home of an evening on their own.”

They passed several huge clay-covered mounds, twelve feet high and nearly thirty feet across.

“Ye must have monstrous gophers in North Carolina,” Tavish said.

She chuckled. “Nay, those are the kilns where tar is made. You fill them with pine wood and burn it over the winter months, then pour the tar into barrels and take them to the tar shed.” She pointed to the long, low building farther ahead. “We keep pitch and turpentine there too. When we have enough to sell, my brothers take the barrels down that west track to the river shore. They lash them into a raft and float it south to Wilmington.”

Some of the barrels were sold to shipwrights in town, but most were loaded onto ships bound for England. But if tensions between England and the colonies kept building…well, surely Parliament would come to its senses soon.

Past the tar shed, the track continued northward to the carriage house, then curved eastward to the house and on to the road. The footpath Catalyn had taken to the orchard led south from the dooryard gate. From a distance Catalyn could see Dougie, the Shaws’ lanky black-and-white dog, guarding the gap the storm had made in the dooryard fence.

In the shed, Catalyn drove sticks through two tar barrels with the ends protruding, forming an axle. The sticks were hitched to the horse, one behind the other, and the barrels rolled on their own hoops.

“Clever,” Tavish said.

He put on his hat and mounted the gelding. A longleaf sapling stood close to the track, its crown as high as the top of Tavish’s head. Its branches were absurdly small for its height—a protection from fire, naturalists said. The young tree had to put all its energy on upward growth to stretch its tender tips out of reach of forest flames. It would keep on that way to a height of twenty feet or so.

This one had a tiny branch high on its trunk, with needles nearly a foot long. Leaning in the saddle, Tavish stretched out his hand, plucked off a shoot, and tucked it into his hat.

He bade Catalyn a good day and rode off, proud and graceful in the saddle, with the barrels of tar rumbling on the sandy track behind him.

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