BLOOD AND WHISKEY

By Nicholas Trandahl

Illinois Territory

November 1810

It was afternoon. The birch woods were white against the rust-colored landscape of fallen leaves of dead undergrowth. The few brown leaves left in the trees shivered against the cold overcast sky. A one-room cabin stood on a hill above a dark creek, and a stone chimney seeped a ribbon of woodsmoke into the chilled autumn air.

A figure which could have been mistaken for an Indian of the Fox tribe, or perhaps a bear walking on two legs, lumbered along the creek and turned to climb the hill towards the small cabin. Shrouded in weathered hide clothing and a shaggy black bear skin, its head worn as a hood, the figure held a musket in its gloved hands, and on its broad back was a stuffed leather pack and rolled blanket. An unruly grey beard spilled from the shadows of the hood.

When he reached the cabin, the fur-clad traveler rapped the door of the structure with the stock of the musket. “Oliver Applesworth,” growled the man. “Are you at home?”

An antlered deer skull, still pink, hung by a leather cord from a nail in the center of the door. The animal’s light brown hide was stretched and nailed to the wall of the cabin to the left of the door. The traveler rapped the door again with his musket, and it opened a moment later.

At the threshold, the man that opened the door wore a wide-collared linen shirt, tan trousers, and thick wool socks. His golden-brown hair was shoulder-length and unkempt, and his strong chin and jaw sported a copper beard. Dark circles framed his weary hazel-colored eyes, and he held his hand gingerly to the side of his whiskered jaw.

“Clement, please come in,” the man, Oliver, muttered quietly, in obvious pain or distress. He stepped to the side to allow the bulky frame of the traveler entry into the cabin.

The single chamber that made up the cabin’s interior housed a stone hearth set into the north wall, directly across from the door. A cast iron cooking pot was set directly on the smoldering embers and the aroma of some sort of stew emanated from the vessel. On the east wall was a small window, and beneath it was a worktable scattered with a clutter of papers, books, dried herbs, jars, a white clay pipe with a darkened rim, and a leather tobacco pouch that spoke of Indian craftsmanship. Additionally, a bottle of whiskey that was about two-thirds full stood atop the table. In front of the table was a stool.

Against the west wall, opposite the window, a narrow bed was placed parallel to the wall’s rough horizontal timbers. A tangle of dirty quilts, furs, and linens were piled atop it. A musket and powder horn were mounted on the wall above the bed, and a wood-framed banjo that Oliver had brought with him from Virginia all those years ago leaned upright against the wall in a corner of the cabin.

The trapper, Clement, stretched his arms out to his sides with a deep sigh, and he pulled the bearskin hood back off his head. Above his unkempt ash-colored beard, Clement’s face was dirty and soot-streaked, especially along the deep lines that crisscrossed his face. His eyes, however, were bright and pale blue, the color of winter ice. The nostrils flared on the trapper’s round nose as he breathed in the aroma of the stew that cooked in the hearth.

“Venison stew?” inquired Clement in his gravelly voice, worn from decades of harsh winters, woodsmoke, whiskey, tobacco, and violence.

Oliver nodded. “Aye.”

“Would you care to share a plate with a weary traveler?”

“Of course, my friend,” answered the owner of the cabin. “In fact, I’m quite happy you’ve come.”

“That eager to part with your stew then?” guffawed the trapper, and he slapped the younger frontiersman’s strong arm.

Oliver, his jaw still in his hand, grimly explained, “No, friend, listen. I have a bad tooth. Everyone in this part of the Territory knows your skill with medicine. I need you to extract it.”

Clement squinted his eyes and stared at the younger man. It was only then that he noticed Oliver’s obvious pain. The big trapper moved closer to inspect the tooth. As Oliver fell into his shadow, he could smell Clement’s ripe odor of sweat, woodsmoke, and earth. “You know that I am no surgeon. I am no practitioner of regular medicine. I only am versed in the sort of frontier medicine to help those of us out here in the backcountry,” Clement explained. “But, let’s have a look at it nonetheless, and we shall see what can be done for you.”

Clement closed an eye and moved the other quite close to Oliver’s open mouth. “Ah,” growled the trapper. “There it is, the bugger. It’s rotted through. You will get sick if we don’t remove it right away. I knew a fellow during the war that died from a bad tooth.”

The burly older man stepped back and motioned towards the bed. “Have a seat, lad. We will have it out soon enough. Where do you keep your whiskey?”

Oliver dropped into a seated position on the side of his bed and motioned to his worktable with the hand that didn’t cradle his pained jaw. The trapper lumbered over the table and retrieved the glass bottle of amber whiskey. In the dim silver light that came in through the window, the fiery liquid harbored a resinous glow.

“Now, you take a long pull of this whiskey, lad. It will help with the pain and clean out your mouth.”

Oliver took the bottle, pulled the cork out, and took a long greedy swallow. When he was done, his eyes watered from the pain of the whiskey that washed over the rotted tooth and from the burn of the spirit as it made its way down his throat. He looked up into the weatherworn face of the old grizzled trapper that stood before him and nodded grimly.

Clement pulled a knife from a doeskin sheath at his hip. The blade was dark in the gloom of the cabin and covered with notches and scratches from decades of use. “Alright, lad. Open up now.”

Oliver had fainted when the tooth was twisted and cut from his gums. Clement laid the frontiersman belly-down on the bed, with his face over the side so that blood could drip onto the dirty wooden planks of the floor instead of the bedding. The trapper poured some more whiskey into the open mouth of the unconscious younger man. He watched as it ran out of Oliver’s mouth, mixed with blood, and splattered on the wooden planks of the floor.

Clement stood straight with a groan. He took a pull from the bottle. “Good,” he uttered to himself. “Good whiskey.”

He set the bottle back on the worktable, and he carried the stool over to the hearth so that he could check on the contents of the pot. He stirred the stew with a ladle, and his mouth watered at the sight of the browned pieces of venison, translucent white onions, carrots, and potato chunks that filled the broth, thickened with flour. The aroma of pepper and other herbs wafted up into Clement’s face as he stirred. He removed a doeskin glove, dipped a dirty finger into the hot broth, and tasted it approvingly.

“It’s done,” he grumbled to himself, and he removed a tin plate and a spoon from the wooden crate beside the hearth.

Clement ladled a generous amount of the stew onto his plate and carried it and the stool back to the worktable. He sat down and tucked into the meal. Occasionally he looked up from his plate into the darkening November afternoon through the window. The wind had picked up and more overcast clouds were drawn across the sky above the birch woods like a thick quilt. The little cabin on the hilltop groaned and rattled in the cold autumnal gales.

His plate licked clean, a groan and a whimper came from the deep shadows behind Clement, from the bed against the west wall of the room. The trapper wiped the broth from his beard and turned around. One the bed, Oliver had rolled onto his back, and he held his face in his hands.

“How are you feeling?” inquired Clement.

Oliver was quiet for moment, but then he answered in a feeble voice, “By God, there is still pain. But it’s a different sort of pain, sharper. Not that damned throbbing.”

“It will be much better in the morning, lad. It will pass. Come drink some cold water from your waterskin there and have a little of your stew. You need to keep up your strength. After you eat, drink some more whiskey to clean your mouth out so your wound doesn’t go bad.”

Oliver listened to Clement’s sound advice, and asked afterward, “Did you already eat?”

“Aye. I did.”

“Good. You were wasting away.”

Clement chuckled at Oliver’s dry joke and slapped his round belly. “That won’t be happening anytime soon. I’ve got reserves in me to see me through the coming winter,” the trapper joked, and he laughed heartily at his own words.

When he was done laughing, Clement rose and walked over to the bedside. “Come on, lad,” he said as he helped the copper-bearded frontiersman to his feet and sat him on the stool, still warm from the trapper.

The old man took the plate he’d used and ladled a couple spoonsful of stew onto it. He set the plate of stew in front of Oliver along with the spoon that he’d used to eat. The pained man leaned on his elbows on the tabletop, his face in his hands.

“You use my plate and spoon. There is not a lick of sense in dirtying more of your dishes,” remarked Clement. “Go on now, lad. Eat.”

Oliver turned his head and spit a mouthful of blood and whiskey onto the floor. Then, slowly and carefully, he began to take small bites of stew. To chew, he used the side of his mouth opposite where the rotted tooth had been extracted.

“That’s it, lad. That’s it.”

Night had fully fallen, and it was cold outside. A bitter wind continued to howl. Torrents of dead birch leaves were carried through the naked rattling trees, and occasional flurries of snow were also borne on the icy gusts.

The cooking pot had been removed from the hearth, empty of stew thanks to several more helpings by Oliver’s visitor, and a bright fire roared like a gateway to Hell itself. Orange radiance spilled out of the fireplace, illuminating the darkness of the room. Additionally, a candle had been lit on the table, and its wavering light danced in the shadows.

Oliver sat on the stool before the fireplace, his lit clay pipe in one hand, and he nursed the whiskey bottle, its contents nearly gone. He wasn’t concerned if he drank the rest of the bottle that night. His mouth still hurt something fierce, and there were a couple more unopened bottles of the potent liquor under his bed that he’d bought last time he was down south at Prairie du Chien to get supplies. He avoided town as much as he could, preferring to trade with the local Fox Indians instead, but sometimes it was unavoidable when staples were needed.

Though that settlement and the surrounding northern reaches of the Illinois Territory were considered American soil following the War of American Independence a generation ago, Red Coats had been slow to leave the area and still openly controlled the fur trade in that part of the frontier. Prairie du Chien, in fact, was made up of as many loyalists to the Crown as there were loyalists to America.

He placed the straight stem of his white clay pipe between his clenched teeth. The black cavendish tobacco in the bowl of the pipe smoldered red-orange as he drew in a mouthful of sweet pipe smoke and exhaled it in a blue-grey ribbon. The frontiersman watched as the banner of aromatic smoke drifted upward into the shadows of the ceiling.

Clement’s slumbering massive bulk was stretched out on the floor, boots close to the flames. His bearskin cloak served as a mattress of sorts. The trapper had drifted into a deep sleep, travelworn and weary due to his journey north from trading furs at Prairie du Chien. He snored loudly.

As Oliver gazed down sleepily at the old man and the rise and fall of his protruding belly, at the well-worn musket at his side and the knife sheathed at his hip, he thought of the Red Coats that Clement had killed in the war. He knew that three decades ago, the old man had marched on Kaskaskia and Vincennes. He also knew Clement’s toes still suffered numbness from the winter march back to Vincennes again to retake it from the British.

With all the Crown loyalists and Red Coats still in northern American territory all these years later, Oliver hoped that Clement wouldn’t have to take up his musket again in defense of his country. Things between America and the British Empire had grown tense again over the last few years, after the attack of the American frigate Chesapeake by a British vessel not far off American shores. The tension was strongest in the frontier, among the proud and independent Americans that settled there, especially since the Red Coats still openly patrolled the northern backcountry near Canada. It was also said that the British had begun to urge the local Fox tribe to menace American settlers and frontiersmen. That is what Oliver feared most, because he counted many members of the Fox Indians as his friends and trading partners.

Oliver rubbed his sore jaw. Then he took the clay pipe from his mouth and blew another cloud of pipe smoke into the shadows and firelight that danced in the cabin. He lifted the whiskey bottle to his lips and took a long drink, finishing it off.

Then the frontiersman spit a mouthful of whiskey and blood into the fireplace. There was a sudden flare of light as the liquor met the flickering flames. The firelight reflected from Oliver’s narrowed eyes in the darkness.