A Heart Made Hatchet -1

I've never seen a baby so merry as Martha... They say March newborns are bellwethers for blissful Springs Mary... Hannah, Haverhill has been a hard place to call home I'm sorry about Elizabeth's hanging, Thomas has honored you with every ounce of his heart, eight of your children have survived the birth storm... Mary, I'm grateful for your gritty grace, you've become the sister to me that Elizabeth can no longer be, we have the seed, the soil and the sun nothing will eradicate the community we've begun... Your husband has been a careful constable, he's kept families fair and the Iroquois honest even the wampum and rum traders give him tribute... Thomas knows how to hold fire and how to hear hearts... Well, I hope that you haven't forgotten how to hold the cows and churn the butter because your children can gobble like gremlin goats... Ha, my soul aches for farm ways and my body prays for how it pays... Good, it's been six days since Martha's delivery, and we need to get you movin like a swan on a smooth pond... Do you see how the water pools in the east field like a widow's teary eye we can transfer loam from the west along wih fireplace ash and make it suitable for legumes, I wanna kettle at least 500 bricks from the ditch clay by early May... Dad! Dad! painted tawnies are in the tree line!... Christ!, grab Abygail and Christi and run to the blockhouse! run! run #########!!!, Jacob get the barn axe and use a barrel cover for a shield, go with them now! run!!, I'll catchup with the horse and cover the road once I fetch your Mother, Go now!!!... Hannah, Mary, tawnies are on the warpath get up!... Thomas we won't make it together, oh my God, I can barely move, use the gun and horse to protect the children... I can't, I ca... You need to go now Tom!!! Go!... Stay alive Love, stay alive... Put the knives down Mary but keep them close by, we have a better chance of being hostages if we're unarmed... Oh my God Hannah, you've heard the stories of other raids, the captivity, the cruelty... If we stay smart and unemotional then they'll see us as objects of trade rather than animals or threats, baby Martha may save us Mary... Where's the muskets, powder!!! Where!, where's the lead and liquor you white witches! Where!... Akando put the tomahawk down... These white women lie, they have more than cornmeal and blankets... They'll be worth their weight in lead and powder to the French or Mohawk, let's get this village fated and move out like sparks from fire... Listen up English!, we need to reach blue creek by sundown, we're going to butcher anyone who slows us down, we can't allow your weakness and whining to be a wind against us, you keep up or you get ripped up... Hannah that Indian with the black and white dotted face keeps menacing me and the baby, it's the same ####### that scalped James, my feet and hands are numb as stone... We've gotta keep movin, just keep movin Mary and keep Martha quiet, keep her close and quiet, the snow is cutting my toes... No, no! oh my God you god damned savage what are you doing let go, No... Mary no, don't let him take her... Back off white witch, too much noise this white rat makes... smack...smack...smack... tree makes baby sleep for good, haw!... You killed my baby...you Killed my baby.....you killed my baby....... J.A.B.