“Hoy!” Ben thought that was the tall girl; certainly she was the one who delivered that birdy whistle. “Looking for something?”
“Regret,” said Ben. “Spent ball, just had some. Otherwise pleased and proud, my word on it.”
Both laughed obligingly. The tall girl said: “Phew! Drunk as a lord and him na’ but a boy. Feel sorry for ’m, I do.”
“Someone else said that a while ago.” Ben spoke stiffly, wounded. “No occasion for it. Not worthy of sorrow in sight of God or man.”
“Drunk as a lord and running on like a canting parson. It wants ’a wipe its little nose. How they hangin’, m’ lud?”
But the small plump girl had stepped into Ben’s path, and Ben could see her smile was amiable, swimming and shifting in the cold light. She was young, he thought, and pretty. “Sorry. Another time.”
“Ay, but sha’n’t I walk a bit way with you? You’re rotten drunk, boy, and dressed so fine, someone’ll rob you.”
“No money. Few farthings left.”
“A stoodent, Lottie. Look at them books. Oh, do fetch ’em out, m’ lud. Read a girl bloody something, do!”
But plump Lottie said: “Leave me walk on a way with you, if you be going by Cornhill.” Not waiting for consent, she had his arm, ignoring some under-the-breath comment from her companion, which Ben also preferred to overlook. “That’s my way too. Come on—I won’t bite you, boy.”
“He can read the books,” said the tall girl—“between times, like.”
“You’re kind,” Ben said. “I’ve often marveled how kind people can be, I mean when one’s not expecting it. My mother and father were killed at Deerfield. I am, as you say, drunk and not speaking plain.”
Lottie was keeping step somehow with his long rambling legs, the other girl forgotten though she had sent after them a little miauling cry. Ben tried to shorten his pace; the legs were riotously disobedient; he could no longer think of them as trustworthy comrades; this was sad. “Drunk as a pig,” she said, and giggled warmly. “But you got a sweet face.”
“It’s merely a kind of good nature,” said Ben judicially, disturbed by the sin of vanity. “One can be too good-natured, now that’s no lie.”
“I’m good-natured too.”
“You think a man and woman ought to marry if they have serious ’ligious differences?”
“Ha? I don’t know. Walk easy-don’t give in to it, boy.… You’re to be married?”
“Not fitting. Do you believe in God?”
“Hoy, don’t talk so loud! You’re drunk.”
“Yes.… Can you make up for a hurt when there’s no way to turn back the clock?”
“Now it don’t do no good to cry. Come on. You can walk.”
“Of course I can walk. You don’t understand. It can’t be done, that’s the answer. It happened. It happened in the wilderness. It’s over. Goes away from you the way the spring goes and the summer too. You think I could cry when I saw my people killed? God damn it, if we wept for every sufficient reason we’d’ve all drowned long ago. What did you say, Lottie?”
“Nothing, boy. Come on.”
“No, you said something about marrying. Did you not?” He lurched against her and gasped an apology for clumsiness. “That’s not even been spoke of, I suppose I’m too young, but she—now pray understand, what I don’t understand is this: how a man could love a woman so much and nevertheless go and—go and—”
He stopped, embarrassed, realizing that she was undoubtedly a whore, and therefore he could not, without unkindness—through intricate labor of thought he heard her remark: “You’ll learn.…” The street was a forest, a wilderness where Ben could feel the power of snow on branches suffering for the coming of spring, and in this jungle he was now marvelously ready for the act of love, and had no money. “Come along, love, come along. You live here in Boston?”
“Nay, Roxbury.” He watched the pale flame of reason surviving the onslaught of another wave. Was this forest under the sea? A wilderness not of snow-burdened hemlock but of oozing weed, monstrous, ancient. Here monsters lazily glided above dead ships and men unburied, a wilderness where no spring had ever dawned since the beginning of the world. “I don’t know where he is, Lottie. The men from Hatfield buried all the dead they could find—later in the day, you understand, after the French were driven out, but I don’t know where he lieth or my mother. I’ll go back some day, but only if my brother wishes to go with me. Thou hast dove’s eyes.”
“What?”
“Thou art fair, my love.”
“You are drunk. I’ll see you to Newbury Street if you like—that’s your way to Roxbury.”
“Most kind. Oh, I wish—”
“You’re drunk, and no money—remember? I’m good-natured too, but not that good-natured. Now see can you walk without my hand.”
“Of course I can,” said Ben with resentment. “Was I not doing so when we met?”
“Not too bloody well,” she said, and laughed so cheerfully that he was obliged to join in it, knowing that for a while she still walked on beside him. At a later time, in the sedate quiet of Newbury Street, she was gone. Ben looked back and could still see her, turning a corner, more clearly visible than when she had been near to him. In gentle wonder Ben observed she was slightly hunchbacked, and not young, perhaps not much like the image his mind had drawn of her, that image no more substantial than the shadow of a bird in passage above the leaves in a wilderness of spring.
John Kenny said: “You might as well, Mr. Hibbs. I dare say he was invited to dine at the Jenks’, but he’ll have no lantern, and I don’t like it. Take Rob Grimes with you. Of course, Reuben, you may go with them.” Mr. Kenny winced at the pain in his foot which was his common evening companion. “He won’t have been invited to stay the night—a house guest would set poor Madam Jenks all of a doodah.”
“It’s my fault,” said Gideon Hibbs.
Mr. Kenny grunted in pain and impatience. “Do you also take that brace of pistols, mine and the one that was George’s, they’re in my bedroom cabinet. Won’t need them, but no harm in carrying them.”
Reuben turned from the window, the brightness of the dining room beating down on his mask. “I’ll fetch them, sir, and I think I’ll wear Ben’s knife, seeing he left it behind.”
Mr. Kenny relaxed enough to chuckle. “Heh, a small army!—I pity any malefactors in your path. Nay, ’tis only sensible. Well, go as far as the fort anyway. The road’s lighted well enough on the Boston side, but I pray you take care passing the Neck. If my God-damned foot wasn’t so horrid bad tonight—well, get along, gentlemen! Must you stay for my senile chattering?”
Gnarled, small, ancient and unexcited, Rob Grimes marched in front with the lantern, a pistol jammed in his belt absurd and piratical. Mr. Hibbs carried the other under his flapping great-coat. Eased by physical activity, Reuben’s own anxiety lessened: Ben was probably in no trouble, Ben with his wilderness eyes and other senses, and would be sure to relish the comic value of this escort. Presently Reuben was dubiously enjoying the gaunt majesty of Gideon Hibbs in a three-cornered hat, and elaborating comments for Ben’s later entertainment.
Mr. Hibbs was not amused. Reuben could feel in him the intense mirthless zeal of a sedentary soul obliged to take the responsibility for something athletic. Maybe, Reuben speculated, a walk in the dark on the Roxbury road did approach the borders of philosophy. He sniffed the east wind, its wild smell of sea-wrack and approaching rain. His hand touched Ben’s beloved knife and fell away.
“Said nothing to you, Reuben, about remaining late?”
Mr. Hibbs had asked that twice already. “No, sir.”
“’F I may make so bold”—the thick voice of Rob Grimes floated back on a beery chuckle—“some doxy be a-bouncing under him this ’ere moment. Boy’s had the look of a stud colt come
a year now—blarst it to Jesus, you can’t ’old ’em beyant a certain age.”
“None of that!” said Mr. Hibbs, who for courtesy would never have spoken so to Grimes in the presence of Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury. Rob grunted, uncrushed. “Reuben, hath Benjamin spoke any word to you lately to suggest a disturbance or over-concern with—hm—with—”
“With the mounting of smocks? No, sir.”
“Reuben, I await your apology. I remind you that your favored position doth neither protect nor justify you in assuming the conversation of a roustabout. From evil speech evil conduct. I am waiting.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Reuben, and discovered distractedly that he was, a little. Shocking Mr. Hibbs was too cheap a victory. “I’m truly sorry, Mr. Hibbs. I do speak heedless, and will try to mend.”
The great shadow of Gideon Hibbs grunted forgiveness. It almost always did. Uncle John, Reuben thought, is another who forgives much, and why did I never think of that before? It seemed to him that Uncle John, frail and gouty and gray, was somehow closely with them here in the dark. Some day, he thought, I shall be old—well, the devil with that! Why think now of poor old Reuben Cory?
Because Ben will go where I cannot? Because an old man must regret the flowers he never touched, mornings when he never saw the sun?
But if it is to be medicine—why, then I shall be going where he will not. “If I said, however, that living is a journey”—oh, Mr. Welland, what else could it be, and every morning a misty crossroads?
“Reuben—could Benjamin by chance have overindulged in liquor?”
“I doubt it, sir. Last Monday he did and so did I, but away from home I believe Ben would be careful.”
Rob Grimes snorted. Clearing his pug nose, maybe.
“You do reassure me somewhat.”
Rob Grimes was calling back: “Mind a puddle here! Och—too bad! Best go about, gentlemen!”
Reuben had already seen what lay under the glow of Rob’s lantern, the horrible bulge of the puffed belly, the straightened legs, the obscene pool of blood at the nostrils. “Still warm,” said Rob, kneeling, running a hand down the miserable neck, in pity or perhaps only regret at the waste of something useful. “Not of Roxbury,” he said. “Know every-each nag in the village. A chapman’s likely, some louse-eaten chapman bound he’d drag the last half-mile out of the poor old fart. Shit, look at them ribs! A’n’t had a fair meal in months.”
“Reuben! What ails thee, boy?”
“Nothing,” said Reuben, vomiting.
“Well”—Rob Grimes was ignoring the commotion—“well, the knackers’ll be along for ’m in the morning.” The old man strode on a short way to wait, his squat back shutting the lantern light from the corpse as he studied the windy night.
“Let me be!” said Reuben, wincing at the sympathy of Mr. Hibbs’ arm. “I can’t help it. It’s the blood, that’s all.”
“So? Why, only the other day you cut your hand, and bound it up yourself, no-way troubled.”
“That was my blood.”
“Mm. But—”
“Let me be! Will you go on, Rob?”
Grimes walked on, maintaining silence for which Reuben loved him. Reuben hurried, wanting to draw nearer that moving island of light.
“Sometimes,” said Mr. Hibbs gently, “I imagine I can sense it, when you have fallen to thinking of Deerfield.”
“I try not to think of it overmuch.”
“That’s best of course.” Mr. Hibbs sighed, as one whose overture of kindness has been rejected, and Reuben was ashamed. “As you know, I call myself a Seeker, the name I borrow from Mr. Roger Williams whose memory I revere; many would not even call me a good Christian. But I would venture to suggest, Reuben, that God is with you, his ways past finding out.”
“You are very kind, sir.” And Reuben thought in a continuing astonishment: As a matter of fact, he is.… He wished Rob Grimes would set a stronger pace, but his best intelligence told him that the old man’s sturdy plodding was actually not slow, considering the darkness, the need for sheltering the lantern and sending its light from side to side so that they might watch both the right and the left of the road. Maybe they were lost, the three of them, and always had been lost, lost but following some difficult thread of purpose in this windy dark. In a kindlier night they could have found the Great Bear slanting toward the North Star. In a kindlier night there would have been no cause to fear, as in this wilderness Reuben knew he was afraid.
“In my own life,” said Hibbs, “I have not seen much of violence. I cannot pretend to know how it was for you three years ago, except I know it to be a thing beyond words of comfort. Nevertheless allow me to say, Reuben, that your life, yours and Benjamin’s, is yet at the spring.”
Rob Grimes called: “Something ahead! I heard—”
The noise floated to them faintly, puzzling in the wind, a hallooing with an insane note of cheerfulness. Reuben felt a scattering coldness across his cheek—rain, or sea-scud torn by the east wind from the surface of Gallows Bay. Grimes mumbled: “Can’t hear it now—”
“Hush!” said Reuben savagely. Then: “It’s to the left.”
“You mean the marshes, boy?”
“Yes. Give me the light, old man!” Grimes yielded it without a murmur, and Reuben ran, unthinking, sure-footed, avoiding the hummocks and the marshy hollows, shouting: “Where are you? Where are you?” Then he could see his brother fifty feet away, upright in grotesque dignity on a small sodden peninsula of land not much broader than the spread of his feet. Between him and Reuben was a muttering of wind-tormented marsh water, and a smooth patch of featureless gray unaffected by the wind. Ben took a wavering step. “Don’t move, you damn fool! Look down!”
“’M a damn fool,” said Ben agreeably, and swayed back from the quicksand, grinning at Reuben’s light. “Fact ’m drunk.”
Reuben laughed. “That I know. Don’t move your feet. Stay as you are till I come to you.” Laughing still, he picked his way along the edge of the water and the foulness, to the narrow strip of solid ground that Ben’s luck had found for him in the dark. “Pee-yew!” said Reuben, and clutched a handful of Ben’s shirt. “With such a breath why walk? Why not float, friend?”
* * * *
“Was trying to. Was trying to find Polaris. Too dark. Besides I’m in a ’culiar condition.”
“Lean on me. Firm ground here.”
“Wherever thou art.”
“I shall remember that, and thou wilt forget it.”
“I forget nothing, Reuben. I was trying to find Polaris.”
“Well, a’n’t it the nature of the children of Adam to hunt for the North Star on a cloudy night?”
“Very sound. One of thine evenings. Yaphoo!”
“All evenings are mine. But don’t weep.”
“I’m laughing, boy. A’n’t I? Oh, Ru, I was so confused. I thought—I certainly thought—”
“What, Ben?”
“I thought it was wilderness.”
“That wouldn’t make thee afeared. That wouldn’t make thee weep.”
“I thought everything was wilderness.”
“Well, what if it is?”
Chapter Five
In the sunlight on Reuben’s bed sat two male images, the smaller one all orange-gold, the larger cross-legged and brighter than rippling gold and ivory, with brown hair, and a heartless voice saying: “This I was waiting to observe. Note, Mr. Eccles, the motions of the creature’s head, how they creak. Are these actual sounds of pain, or only noises of some mechanism which creates an illusion of animation?”
“Alas!” said Ben. “I am not fit to rise and murder you—yet.”
“It speaks. Note that, Eccles. Note the bleared eyes, how obscene! Will you go to the kitchen and fetch a pot of coffee for it?” Mr. Eccles yaw
ned and filed his yellow paws. “Unfeeling animal! Have you no pity? Must I wait on the needs of this moaning monster?”
“Some day when you feel like dawn on the battlefield, I’ll stand on your stomach and read aloud every word of Magnalia Christi Americana.”
“You heard that, Eccles?—how it appeals to my humanity and in the same breath threatens my life? I must act.” Ben watched the golden image rise, slip on a dressing-gown, and stand over him in the enormous light. “Puh, what a breath even now!” said Reuben, and stooped suddenly to kiss his forehead, and vanished out of the room.
Moving his head with care, Ben met the contemplation of Mr. Eccles, who had nothing to offer. Uncle John was accustomed to explain that the cat derived his name from a merchant Levi Eccles of Plymouth who looked and behaved just like him. But to the boys privately, after he had come to know them a little, the old man admitted this was an ex post facto invention. He took them into his study and opened his much-worn Bible; over Reuben’s shoulder Ben had read familiar words: For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. Ecclesiastes iii: 19.
Reuben was displaying a different mood altogether when he returned with a pot of the blessed stuff—quiet and no longer much amused, or at least not showing it. “Drink deep, sufferer, and tell all—if you wish.”
The coffee was a benediction; so long as The Head did not move suddenly, all might be well. “Oh, I ran into Mr. Shawn at Uncle John’s wharf—O my God! Uncle John! Why, he must have thought—”
Reuben shook his head casually. “Beyond a broad statement to the effect that boys will be boys, for the which he claimed no great measure of originality, I saw no sign of severe displeasure. When he insisted on helping me remove your smelly boots, he—chuckled: this I affirm. You may get a few instructions this morning, but without pain. Proceed.”
The Edgar Pangborn Megapack Page 83
