I’m working on my own garden now. I’m the only one who can find it without being invited in. It’s an English kind of garden, like the gardens in books I loved as a child. It has a stone wall with a low door in it, a little central lawn, and a perennial border full of foxgloves and Sweet William and Michaelmas daisies. Veronica blooms in the cracks of the wall, and periwinkle carpets the beds where old-fashioned fragrant roses nod heavily to every passing breeze. There’s a small wilderness of rowan trees, and a neat shrubbery embracing a pond stocked with fish as bright as copper pennies. Among the dusty-smelling boxwood, I’ve put a statue of a woman holding a basket planted with stonecrop. She’s dressed in a jacket incised with flowers and vines and closed with three buttons shaped like parrots. The fourth button sits on her shoulder, clacking its beak companionably and preening its brazen feathers. I’m thinking of adding a duck pond next, or maybe a wilderness for Kim’s menagerie.
Witches don’t have to worry about zoning laws.
Land’s End
The Land’s End Light flashed out into the pale gray dawn. Forty-second beam. Twenty-second eclipse.
Aboard the clipper White Goddess, the lookout shouted, “Land ho!” and the men of the watch raised a hoarse cheer. It did not penetrate to the cockpit, where Joshua Saltree dozed and woke and dozed again.
The sleeping was better than the waking, for the pain wasn’t so troublesome when he was asleep, nor the dead weight of his leg, wrapped and tied like a broken spar. He groaned in protest when the ship’s surgeon woke him to give him a dose of laudanum and the news that land was in sight.
“We’ll make port by noon. Captain’s going to look after you.” Dr. Coffin’s voice was dry as a ship’s biscuit. “He’s that grateful. See you’re grateful back, Joshua Saltree; that’s all I have to say.”
Grateful? Saltree couldn’t think why. The laudanum eased the pain some, but slowed his mind and his tongue terribly. He wanted to tell Dr. Coffin that Joshua Saltree wasn’t dependent on any man, that he had a place to go and a few dollars laid by. But all he could get out was, “Rooming house.”
Dr. Coffin laughed. “Mrs. Peabody’s a sight too busy to nurse a man hurt bad as you are,” he said. “Drink up.”
“Don’t hurt,” Saltree protested, but he drank the bitter stuff down, and a moment, or maybe half a day later, he opened his eyes to find Captain Mayne and Dr. Coffin hanging over him.
“Well, lad,” said the captain heartily. “Time to go ashore.”
Saltree tried to sit up, found himself prevented by Dr. Coffin’s hand on his shoulder. “Damn young fool,” the surgeon snapped. “Bones’re near sticking out your shin, and you want to walk ashore. Try it and be damned to you, but don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning with no leg at all.”
“It’s splintered; no, s-splinted, devil take it.”
Captain Mayne sighed louder than he needed to. “You’ll be carried on a litter from here to my house. . . .”
A woman’s voice finished the sentence: “And that is an order, Mister.”
“Mary!” Captain Mayne’s teeth flashed through his beard, and he turned away from the berth as fast as his bulk and the narrow space would let him.
“Seth.” A woman’s white hands slid around the captain’s neck and pulled down his head. Saltree closed his eyes in shame and almost drifted off again, but a cool touch on his forehead brought him around.
Mrs. Mayne was bending over him, smiling. “Well, Mr. Saltree,” she said. “This is a fine state for a sailor to be in.”
Saltree frowned at her and feebly twitched his hand away from the tickling fringe of her shawl. He should be looking down at her, not up, should be saluting her from the rigging or standing by while the bo’sun piped her aboard, not lying here useless as a torn sail. She was a pretty woman—or had been, twenty years ago. Saltree smiled. A very pretty woman.
Most of the crew hadn’t the first notion that the White Goddess’s figurehead was the spitting image of the captain’s lady. Oh, the carver had given the figurehead greeny brown hair and draped a fancy white sheet under her round, high breasts. But anyone looking close at her face would see Mrs. Mayne’s straight nose and dark, long-lidded eyes. Stuck out under the bowsprit as she was, hardly anyone’d notice. But he’d noticed right away. He was a noticing sort of man, was Joshua Saltree.
On calm days he used to scramble out the jib guys and stare out over the sea with one arm around the Goddess’s sun-warm shoulders. He liked listening to the thutter of the bow over the swell, and watching the water glitter and foam under the keel. Ahead, always ahead, were ocean, weather, unknown shores, and he liked the way she breasted them with her carved lips parted and smiling. Why was she frowning now? Saltree moaned and closed his eyes.
Time passed in a blur of pain, heat, fear, and strange dreams. Occasionally, Saltree was dimly aware of lying propped in a wide bed in a large room fitted with windows and curtains and gentle hands that brought him water and tended to his needs. But mostly he swam a pathless ocean, buffeted by storm. Lightning pulsed; sharks looked at him hungrily out of the eyes of dead sailors and rolled to snap at his feet. Saltwater clogged the air, crushed his chest so that he gasped and flailed. A ship loomed—at her prow, the White Goddess, decked out in seaweed. Her face was shadowed; her naked breasts rose and fell with the ship’s breathing; her eyes streamed salt tears.
“Man overboard!” Saltree shouted; and she reached down her carven arms to him. Sometimes he caught her fingers—slick and cool as varnished wood—and sometimes he did not, but in either case he always woke wheezing and coughing and retching like a man hauled in from drowning.
It was deep night when finally he opened his eyes to see a fire burning in the grate, and a woman sewing by a shaded lamp. He felt light-headed and all his limbs were limp as rope yarn. A glass and a pitcher stood on a table nearby, with a brown bottle, a spoon, and a tin basin.
“Thirsty,” he said, and was startled to hear how rusty his voice sounded.
The woman got up and came to the bed, her skirts hushing. “I’m not surprised to hear it, Joshua Saltree, for you’ve been sweating like a pig all night.” She touched her hand against his forehead before pouring a glass of water and holding it to his lips. “The fever’s nearly gone. You’ll sleep quieter now.”
When Saltree had swallowed the water, the woman busied herself plumping the pillows and smoothing the sheets. As she moved around the bed, the firelight fell on her face: dark, long-lidded eyes above a straight nose. His heart began to race.
“Goddess?”
“Don’t try to talk now. You’ve had pneumonia and ship fever and I don’t know what all else, and very nearly died. You’re in Captain Mayne’s house, and I’m Mrs. Mayne, as you’ll remember just fine when you’re feeling better. Go to sleep now. That’s right. Sleep.”
The next time Saltree woke, Captain Mayne sat by the bed, sucking on an empty pipe and regarding him gravely. “Glad to see you back with us, my lad,” he said.
“The Goddess?”
She’s up in dry dock, getting overhauled as good as new, if not better. A new mainmast’s the heaviest expense, but eight members of the Pioneer Mining Association of Auburn’re taking passage to San Francisco at fifty dollars a head, so she’ll pay for her repairs and more soon enough. Owner’s glad we brought her home at all, and he’s real grateful to you in particular, as well he should be.”
Saltree frowned. That’s not what he meant. A broad hand gripped his arm, lying helpless on the white counterpane. “Don’t you remember the storm?” asked Captain Mayne kindly. “Well, well, that’s no loss to you. Never you worry, lad; the Goddess is safe and sound. You sleep now.”
Once the fever was gone, Saltree was not long mending. The White Goddess had made port on the second of May. By the end of the month, Saltree could hobble from the bed to the window to the fireplace and back again; in the second week of June, he asked respectfully whether he better not be moving on.
“You’ve been dreadful
kind—kinder than there’s any call for,” he said awkwardly, fearing to seem ungrateful.
“Nonsense,” said Captain Mayne. “We’re glad to have you, Mrs. Mayne and I. You mayn’t remember going aloft with Tom Harris when the mainmast started to crack, but I do. The pair of you saved my ship, lad, for which I’m grateful; and my hide, for which Mrs. Mayne is grateful. Now Tom’s dead and gone: we can’t show him our gratitude. So let’s hear no more of you leaving, at least not until you’ve got someplace better’n Mrs. Peabody’s rooming house to leave to.”
What could Saltree do but thank him and work out his restlessness in learning to walk again. His leg had healed twisted and gaunt. It bore him, with the help of two sticks, and Dr. Coffin promised he’d be able to dispense with at least one of them in time. But it would keep him off a ship, except perhaps as purser or ship’s cook—a comedown in the world, and no mistake.
As the spring days passed, despair gathered over Saltree like a thunderhead. To be a cripple, only twenty-five years old and condemned to live ashore like an old man--it hardly bore thinking on. Mornings, when he pulled his pants over his twisted leg and his shirt over arms wasted by fever, Saltree ground his teeth and envied Tom Harris from the bottom of his heart.
Mrs. Mayne did her best to amuse him, and Saltree knew she meant it kindly. But whenever he saw her approaching with her hands folded around a fat black Bible, such rage swelled his breast that he liked to have burst from the force of it. Her motherly smile, her knitting, the hint of a double chin overlapping her lace collar—all were wormwood and gall to him.
He didn’t know why he should have taken so strongly against the captain’s wife, who’d nursed him like a mother. All he knew was that he didn’t like being beholden, and he didn’t know how he could stop being beholden, and what with one thing and another, he began to look near as peaked as he had when he was knocking at death’s door.
Mary Mayne told her husband she feared Mr. Saltree might be sickening again.
Captain Mayne shook his head. “I doubt it’s his body, my dear. It’s hard on the lad, being land-bound at his age with no prospect of shipping out again.”
“You’d think he’d be glad to be safe ashore and quit of storms.”
“Saltree, well, Saltree’s a queer bird. A fine seaman, but a queer bird nonetheless. He likes climbing masts, and he fair loves storms. The higher the sea, the better he’s pleased; and the nearer he comes to death, the more he laughs. Tom Harris and he were a fine pair of fools, racing up the mainmast when anybody with an eye in his head could see she was cracked. But if they hadn’t managed to cut loose the topgallant and trim the storm sails, we’d’ve run slap bingo into Bermuda Island.” Seth Mayne sighed. “A fine seaman. It won’t be easy to find him a living won’t be the death of him. I’ll have to stir my stumps.”
And stir his stumps the captain did. One fine June morning, he drove all the way to Portland to see a friend he thought might have some pull with the Lighthouse Board down Washington way. Two days later he returned like a cheerful gale, blowing down Main Street and into the garden where Saltree was hobbling back and forth between two fruit trees.
“Ahoy there, Mr. Saltree,” shouted the captain. “Double grog for all hands and plum duff for dinner.” He took the astonished Saltree by the hand and pumped vigorously. “I’ve news for you—the best. It seems Elisha Tully, who keeps the Land’s End Light, is wanting an assistant. I told my old shipmate Captain Drinkwater about you, leg and all, and the long and short of it is that you’ve the job if you want it. Nobody’s saying it’s a ship, but it’s the sea and plenty to do in a storm.” Captain Mayne clasped his hands behind him, very pleased with himself. “It’s a good life by all accounts—time to think and time to work and a dry place to lay your head off-watch. When my sailing days are over, we might like to keep a light ourselves, Mrs. Mayne and I.”
No more than a week later, Saltree sat on his sea chest on the public pier, waiting for Elisha Tully to row in from Land’s End Rock to fetch him. Piled around him were boxes of provisions, a keg of rum, and a small wooden crate marked “Chimneys: Fragile.” Round about midmorning, a fat, red-faced man in a torn navy blouse clambered up onto the pier. He stared at Saltree, his sea chest, his groceries, and his “Chimneys: Fragile,” and tongued a wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other. “Name of Saltree?”
“Ayuh.”
“Elisha Tully. Lighthouse keeper.” Tully bent and heaved Saltree’s sea chest onto his shoulder. “Dory’s below.”
They loaded the dory, Tully handing down crates and Saltree disposing them neatly along the gunwales. When all were stowed, Saltree sat himself down on the rower’s bench.
Tully, still on dock, spat thoughtfully into the gray water. “Thought you’d had ’newmony.”
“Ayuh,” said Saltree, and unshipped the oars.
Tully coiled the bow line and climbed down into the stern. “Not much of a hand at nursemaiding,” he remarked.
“No call for it.”
“Sure?” Tully squinted doubtfully at him.
“Sure.” Saltree pushed off from the pilings and turned the dory around with two economical strokes, then set off slow and steady. He was blown before he’d gone a hundred yards, and by the time they made Land’s End Rock, he felt like he’d been flogged. But when they landed, he hoisted the “Chimneys: Fragile” onto his shoulder and carried it over the rocks, steadying himself with his stick. Twisted leg or no, he’d be damned before he gave reason to say that Joshua Saltree was a helpless cripple.
“Keepers used to live in the Light,” said Tully. “There was a room below the watch room, all right and tight. But the new revolving gear took up the watch room, so two, three years back, they built the house.” Tully glared for a second at the comfortable shingle house and the horse weather vane trotting bravely on the roof. “Good nor’easter’ll snap it into matchsticks one day. Matchsticks!”
Tully lugged Saltree’s sea chest inside and led him up a wooded ladder to the assistant keeper’s room. Its window looked out onto the light tower and headland beyond. Saltree could see sky in plenty, but no water. He shrugged. He was a landsman now, not a sailor, and he’d best get used to the sight of land.
Downstairs again, Tully led Saltree through a short, roofed passage to the iron-bound door of the light itself. There were windows cut in the walls, but they were sealed tight with wooden shutters, and the tower was black as a ship’s hold. Groping in the gloom for the rail, Saltree laid his hand on the pitted wall and brought it away chilled and glistening with damp.
Tully’s boots clanged upward, and his voice echoed flatly between iron and stone.
“This here’s the old tank, and this here above it’s the watch room.” Tully opened a manhole into a wilderness of tables and boxes and tools piled higgledy-piggledy on every flat surface. The watch room reeked as strongly as the forecastle of a bad ship, with an unfamiliar metallic tang mixed in with a general stink of sweat, wet wool, and neglect. Saltree frowned.
Tully spat in the direction of a spattered, stinking bucket. “It ain’t so bad, really,” he said defensively. “Needs a bit of tidying, is all. Man can’t keep everything shipshape when he’s all on his own like I been. I can put my hand on what I need when I need it.” Poking through the flotsam, he found a bull’s-eye lantern, lit it, and hung it from a hook on the wall, where it smoked sullenly.
“Extry chimneys’re there and there. Wicks, scissors, tool case for the clockwork, clock oil, tripoli, spirits of wine, chamois cloths, brushes, oil carriers.” His grubby forefinger stabbed into the shadows, seemingly at random. Saltree stood and watched until at last Tully said, “What the hell. You’ll find all that when you need it. Light’s up here.”
Slowly, for his leg was aching fiercely, Saltree followed Tully’s ample rump up another steep stair to a door leading onto a circular gallery. Tully slapped the inner wall. “Lantern base.”
They mounted a last, flimsy curl of steps.
Remembering how the
sun dazzled on the water, Saltree squinted cautiously before stepping into a warm, golden fog. He blinked. The whole dome was swathed in cloth: yellow shades blinded the windows; a linen cover shrouded the lens. With a professional twitch, Tully unveiled a thing like a glass cage, tiers of long, louver-like prisms held in place with iron clips. Even in the dim light, it sparkled.
“Sunlight’s not good for her,” instructed Tully, “So we keep her covered, days. She’s all ready to go. Lighting her’s nothing. Real work’s in the morning. You’ll see.”
Saltree did see, the next morning and every morning after. Tully’s idea of training was to have his assistant do all the cleaning, polishing, oiling, and adjusting while he, Tully, sat on a crate with his feet on another and nursed a mug of strong coffee laced with rum.
“Not a speck of dust, now,” he’d say. “Dust is hell on clockwork. Dust’ll throw off a fly-governor faster’n rust, and that’s saying something. Have you oiled the carriage rollers yet? Well, hop to it, boy. It’s gone twelve noon, and you ain’t even drained the oil cistern.”
Unless there was a storm, Tully insisted on keeping the night watch alone. He’d light the lantern in the evening and eat a plate of hardtack and boiled beef in the kitchen. Come about nine o’clock, he’d get up, scratch in his thick beard, and take the bull’s-eye down from the chimney piece. “There’s a wreck, I’ll wake you,” he’d say, and disappear aloft.
Alone, Saltree would smoke a pipe, maybe put an extra polish on a brass oilcan, darn a sock, look at a newspaper if they had one, and then go to his attic room and watch the light pulsing its forty-second beam, twenty-second eclipse. The light, gathered and refracted by those hundred carefully ground prisms, cut through the night like lightning—its illumination self-contained, unrevealing. Beam. Eclipse. Beam. Here are rocks, it seemed to say. Here is harbor. Beam. Eclipse. Beam. Here. Am. I.
Young Woman in a Garden Page 18
