An Undisturbed Peace
Published in Issue #17(Excerpt from a Novel)
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The Piedmont, North Carolina, 1828
“Wait.”
He put out a hand to grab her wrist and pull her back to the bed with him but she easily eluded his grasp.
“Be patient,” she said. “I’m not going far.” She knelt by his side where he lay, sated and drowsy on a pile of animal skins. Tilting her head with its full, curled lips and raised eyebrows as if asking a question, she removed a small wooden box from the chest by the side of the bed. The box was studded with bits of river glass on its sides. A bird in flight was carved into its lid, the bird’s long brass beak formed its latch. Sticking a stone pipe in her mouth, she opened the box, then waved it around the close room so that the air filled with the sweet scent of wild tobacco. She filled her pipe and lit it with a thin bundle of twined straw she stuck in and out of the oil lamp’s center. She inhaled, exhaled, raised her big black merry eyes to the heavens while muttering some kind of incantation, then passed the pipe to her chosen lover of the moment, Abrahan Sassaporta, a peddler who had wandered by her cabin offering packets of seeds, scraps of lace, and tin utensils.
Abrahan puffed on the pipe in a fog of wonder. He could not believe his good luck. Four hours ago, they’d been strangers. Abrahan was a fresh immigrant on his virgin sales expedition for his uncle’s business....
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