“I needn’t tell you which one of us is after the brain,” Amy Joy said. Sicily pretended not to hear.
“I don’t wanna put anybody out,” Winnie was saying. “Is Amy Joy sure she wants me?”
“Of course she wants you,” said Sicily. “And every morning we’ll have breakfast, just the two of us, before Amy Joy gets up. Then we’ll sit in rocking chairs and stare down at the Mattagash River.” Sicily wondered, as they passed Betty Henderson’s door, if maybe Amy Joy would consider bringing her along too. But the short, swift way in which her daughter’s arms were now swinging as she walked changed Sicily’s mind.
“I ain’t seen the river in over a year,” said Winnie. She was still crying.
“You’re coming home with me now,” Sicily said. The word bounced lightly on her tongue, a sweet word, home. She patted Winnie’s shoulder as they tottered on down the hallway. “You just shush now, before Amy Joy changes her mind.”
“Praise God for Amy Joy,” Winnie noted. Eyes closed, she raised a flat palm up to heaven.
“That reminds me,” said Sicily.
“What’s that?” asked Winnie, and opened her eyes. She fumbled in her coat pocket for a Kleenex.
“Don’t you owe me twenty dollars?” Sicily asked.
MATHILDA FLIES AWAY: A RETURN TO MATTAGASH BROOK
Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.
—the Bible, Psalm 55
Tonight I’m all old memories, and they keep picking at my mind, sticking me like they’re pins. Me and this town was born at the same time, in the same year, so you might say we kind of grew up together. We been close as sisters. We seen a whole lot of changes come and go, as well as folks. I remember a time when there was a real deep sense of family in this town. We had ways of doing things that you don’t see no more.
One of them things we used to do was to burn the dead grass every spring. There was still snow along the edge of the woods, and on the floor beneath the trees, so the fire never got out of hand. You always had the river on the other side to stop the flames. But still we wet down old potato sacks and kept them nearby just in case. You needed to watch out for your buildings, not let the fire catch. It was something to see, I tell you. When dark fell and the grass was fairly well burned up, you could see that ring of fire, just an orange circle of flames around the field. There wasn’t anything quite so pretty. And the aroma of it! You could still smell the cold snow laying there in the woods, even though you couldn’t see it. That mixture of smoke and snow is something I can smell yet, here tonight, here so many years away from it. Us children used to run the ring of fire, while our parents stood and talked in them soft, old-timer voices. And when no one was looking, we broke off hollow reeds and lit them up like they was little brown cigars! Then the old spring moon would come up, a big white ball, and down below was that dying ring of orange fire. I ain’t ever forgot it. Or how the grass come up later, from beneath all that black soot, so green it hurt your eyes. You could turn your horses and your cattle out in it like it was a big painted rug. And before you knew it, that grass’d be dotted with bluebells, and orange and yellow hawkweed, and wild mustard. And we’d find buttercups to hold under our chin to tell if we liked butter or not. I mean real butter, that you churned by hand until your arm got sore, butter that made your taste buds pop to life when you put it in your mouth. And sometimes we’d eat the big pink tops of the red clover, little bursts of sugar on our tongues. When bladder campions grew around the field, with flower pods like little melons, we’d squeeze the pods shut, trap air inside, and then we’d pop them on our arms. They sounded like tiny guns going off. And there was other things come back to life in that field after the fire. After the fire, that field was like a thing born again.
We burned the grass every year like that, with little kids growing up to be the parents who stood and talked and leaned on rakes, while their little kids run like Indians in among the fire. Then somebody’s kid went off to college for an agriculture degree and he come back home in a huff, telling us it was wrong to burn the grass. “You’re killing all the organisms in the soil,” he said. “You’re killing the earthworms, too.” I don’t know if that’s how it started, but folks dropped off burning the grass each spring. You don’t see that too much anymore, not since Bradford Fennelson went to college. I suppose some changes is for the better.
And you don’t see too many mayflowers anymore, that little trailing arbutus that grows in peaty woods. In the spring my mother took me to look for mayflowers, way back in the woods beyond the field. We’d find them crouching there, small and whitish pink, like they was little teeth or something. There never has been a wildflower in northern Maine to fill up a house any more with the smell of perfume. I don’t know if there still is mayflowers out there. The more that new settlement of houses grew up, full of young people starting families, the more the mayflowers moved back into the woods. It was like they could hear civilization coming for them, and so they run. The last time I went looking for them must have been over thirty years ago. Imagine that. But there they was, way back on the hardwood ridge, crouching like they was hiding from something, their little petals soft as tissue. I tell you, I couldn’t pick a single one. They looked up at me like they was pleading for their lives. And all along that hardwood ridge I saw the leftovers of old fences, the split-rail kind, made by the first settlers, people come and gone before even I was born. I could hear the noise of logging trucks, on the roads the P. G. Irvine Company had made through the woods, places no white man had been before. And I could hear traffic down on the main road, cars coming and going. And I thought about them split-rail fences and them little fragile mayflowers growing in peace, and I wondered how long they had left. I wondered how long any of us had. I wondered how long before there ain’t any dark places anywhere.
Nowadays folks has got all kinds of notions in their heads. They ain’t looking down at the ground under their feet anymore, at the old-settler soil. They ain’t looking to nature for any answers. They’re waiting for the weatherman to tell them if it’s gonna snow or rain. They’re looking to television, and to the telephone, and lottery tickets, and automobiles for all their answers. A kid can’t add two and two without a machine telling him it’s four. A kid ain’t got no imagination anymore. There was a time we’d sit and watch someone make hand shadows on the wall and feel blessed just to see it. Nobody tells stories anymore. They got movies to watch instead. And nowadays folks are yearning to own more earthly goods than they got need for. There’s machines everywhere these days, even machines that keep us breathing, keep pumping food into our worn-out stomachs, oxygen into our tired old lungs, blood into our threadbare veins. They can keep us alive all they want, but they ain’t gonna save us. Machines will be the death of us, you mark my words.
Tonight I’m all memories, burning like that orange ring of fire. Tonight I’m all taste and touch and smell. Tonight I have the body of a young girl, light and in love, ready to bear all them children over again. Tonight I been rolling these eyes around in their sockets, looking for new squares of ceiling. I have turned the century of my face up to the doctors. I have turned the years up to them, the babies, the gardens, the snows, the wars, the barrels full of rainwater that I washed my clothes in. I’m remembering the north pasture tonight, the field we always intended to plow. There was a brook there, and an old barn—whose I don’t know—sagging in on itself. I’m falling in, too, my ribs breaking up like wood. I’m like fruit that’s turned ripe and then rotted, and is useless to everyone. Is this life, when the muscles and bones twist with pain, as though they’re trying to snap? Is it life, when it’s not death? If it is, then let me go. That’s what I want to say to the doctor who tends me like I’m some weedy garden. To the nurses who feed me with tubes. And now I see the reverend—or do I imagine this? I see the curtains with small red strawberries, flutt
ering in the old bedroom, and the reverend is like a heavy warm blanket pressing me down. I want to give him the last kiss, like it’s a little heart. My memories are all fire now, with the snow laying safe at the edges. But it isn’t the reverend, is it? It’s Foster, come like a dear friend, a face I’ve known for over a hundred years. A face like a brother’s. A face like a good solid home to me, one with a big front porch and a summer kitchen with a red roof. A home up by Mattagash Brook, where the crayfish hide under the rocks and the wild cherry covers the ridge. Old man, the time has come, tonight, to see the horse’s mouth foam with work. I want to watch the soil churning up rich and black behind the plow. There’s an ax we left rusting in a stump, up in that north pasture, where there’s still so much work to do. Listen, Foster, there’s a need now to take up the ax again, to swing it at something, a tree maybe, that’ll go into making a house. Now I’m all body, all dead weight. I’m all heart and nerve and memory. Old man, there’s a reason to go again to the spot where the birches bend by Mattagash Brook. I need to hear the shiver of leaves. I need to smell the sweet smell of pines. My ancestors’ pines. Now I can smell the mayflowers again, that rich perfume smell, so thick you could cut it. I can hear them opening their tiny petals. Now I’m all mayflowers breathing on the hardwood ridge. I’m Papa and Mama, and Ivy Craft, catalog woman. I’m Walter and Mary and Luther’s Jennie and the Reverend Ralph. I’m all the people that I ever loved. I’m the last turn in the old river, the last bend before home. Foster, can you smell the thick smell of pine? Listen! The whippoorwill has come back to his tree. Remember how, when the kids was little, we’d stand on the porch and listen? It must be night again, ’cause that’s the only time he’ll come. He sleeps all day, Foster, all day in the forest. And he looks so much like the leaves that you could step on him if you ain’t careful. Now I’m standing on the night porch, holding the lantern up to catch his eyes. His eyes are like the fire that’s burning up the spring fields. There’s a moon above the fire tonight, a big white ball. Everybody I ever loved is standing out there now, watching that field burn, leaning on rakes. This is it, Foster. This is the part where the fire is over and the moon is sinking. This is the lovely part where we tell the children good night, then lock the blessed door…
NIMBLE MOTS AT THE CROSSROADS: THE LAST BUS TO CANTERBURY
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one (from whence they came)
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.
—Master Francis Beaumont’s Letter to Ben Jonson
“Holy cow,” said Sally as she thumbed through a copy of People magazine on the bar. “Pretty soon all that’s gonna be left of poor Joe Namath is a big nose.”
“Let me see,” said Ronny Plunkett, reaching for the magazine.
“A dollar fifty at LaVerdiere’s Drugstore,” Sally said, and whisked the magazine out of reach. “Go get your own.”
“To hell with it,” Ronny said. “I’ve seen bigger noses than that anyway.”
“Yeah?” Sally was unimpressed. “Where?”
“In the Suez Canal,” said Ronny. “You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen some of the schnozzles over there.” Sally turned the page on Joe Namath. Sometimes it seemed that Ronny Plunkett had seen too much of the world for his own good. There were some things, Sally was sure, that you should always wonder about.
“I wish Maurice would get back,” Sally said. “Not knowing is driving me crazy.” She studied another picture thoughtfully. “Why don’t someone tell Donald Trump to prune them eyebrows of his? With that kind of money, you’d think he could hire someone to do that.”
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” said Ronny. He was talking about the messy condition of The Crossroads, not the one above Donald Trump’s eyes. “The women in this town get an idea into their heads and there’s no stopping them. And I hear there was a slew of cars at the gym all day long yesterday, right up until they closed the shower curtain at ten o’clock.” He had eaten the bowl of free popcorn until only the unpopped kernels were left. “Can I have some more popcorn?” he asked. “All I got left is old maids.”
“Poor Maurice,” said Sally. She closed People magazine and then slid it down the counter to Ronny. “I bet he tossed and turned all night long. You know how nervous he is anyway. I don’t know why they couldn’t have counted them votes last night and let us know then. They’re just trying to drag it out, is all.”
“With that bunch of women in charge of counting votes,” said Ronny, “you’re a sitting duck. Too bad George Bush couldn’t have sent some folks up here to watch the ballot box, the way he did for them Filipinos.”
***
It was just beginning to snow when Maurice sauntered unhappily into The Crossroads, dragging his artistic sign behind him. He had stood outside, in a wind filled with young snowflakes, and watched as his sign teetered on its chains. He’d had grandiose ideas, there where the two rivers met, where The Crossroads loomed. But a handful of women, growing larger every day, women snowballing into a mob, had brought him down. So Maurice had taken the aluminum ladder out of his Ford pickup, propped it up against the old building, climbed it like a Sherpa, hoisted the sign off its hooks, and then lowered it to the ground.
Sally looked up as the sign clunked against the Pac-Man machine, rocking the stuffed Canada lynx to life.
“Hey,” she said to Maurice.
“Hey,” said Maurice. He looked sadly at the lynx. Its marble eyes seemed watery with its own sorrow. Maybe Maurice would give it to Booster as a gesture of goodwill. Dorrie might like it for her living room.
“Where you been all day?” Sally asked.
“I slept in late,” said Maurice. “I went ahead and let them snores rip. I just said to hell with it. Wasn’t anything I could do anyway.” He took off his gloves and slapped them together, laid them gently on top of the sign.
“It snowing?” Ronny asked, although he wasn’t concerned. Now that he was retired from the military, Ronny Plunkett didn’t care if it never stopped snowing.
“I shoulda packed up ages ago and moved to Connecticut,” said Maurice. “Opened me a little bar down there.” He was thinking of the delicious sight of Davey Craft’s orange U-Haul as it had bounced past The Crossroads just the day before, headed south, its nose aimed toward adventure and acceptance along the paved streets of Connecticut.
“Not me,” said Ronny. “Now that everybody in town’s got a satellite dish, Mattagash is just like that Piccadilly Circus I visited over in London, England. We can sit on our asses up here in northern Maine and watch the whole damn world go by.” He snapped open the crisp body of a peanut and dumped the meat into his mouth.
“That’s easy for you to say,” said Maurice. “You got that pension coming in from the navy. But for those of us who try to make a living here, it’s a different story.” Maurice nodded to Sally when she held up a frozen submarine sandwich and gave him a quizzical look. Sally popped it into the microwave and selected the cooking time.
“Well?” she asked Maurice. She knew, of course, by the presence of the sign, now leaning against the wall, that the death knell had sounded among the snowy hills of Mattagash.
“Well, what?” Maurice said sadly. He popped the top off a Schlitz, early for Maurice Fennelson. “What do you think? Of course, they voted to close us. Would God and Prissy have it any other way?”
“Let me tell you something right now,” said Ronny. “And I know this to be a fact. God can’t stand that bunch of women. They ever turn up at the Pearly Gates, and there’s a real good chance they won’t, God’s gonna shuffle them right on in, right on through, and right on out the back door. God don’t want that muddle of women in his establishment.”
“Too bad they wouldn’t try to close him down,” said Maurice. He imagined lightning za
gs piercing down from heaven with names like Prissy Monihan on them. “This is the last night,” Maurice went on. “And now that they put the whammy on me, only a handful of folks’ll dare stop by. I might as well have one of them big Jewish stars on my door. I’m just running up my electric bill for nothing.”
“It’s gonna snow like a motherfucker anyway,” said Ronny. “You seen the sky out there?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Maurice. “If there is a God, he’ll make it snow so hard there won’t be any way in hell them women can have their big Thanksgiving dinner. They’ll have to sit at home and eat partial dinners.” He could see Prissy trying to content herself with a huge pot of mashed potatoes and a gallon of Jell-O. “Yes sir,” Maurice said again. “This is our last night.” He eyed the lovely sign leaning on its shoulder by the door, keeping the Canada lynx company.
“How’s Pike making out?” Sally asked Ronny. All kinds of rumors had abounded, with Pike even doing the shooting at one point, until the newspapers sorted it all out for everyone, and then everyone calmed down, satisfied that no one could add more to the mountainous heap now that it was all in print anyway.
“He’s still with me at Billy’s place,” said Ronny. His voice cracked a little, the Billy sounding sharp against the soft music of the other words. “And he’s having a hell of a time, needless to say.”
“Well,” said Sally, “I’ll tell you one thing. The blame for what happened is Pike’s. There now, I’ve said it.”
“The Crossroads ain’t to blame, though,” Maurice was quick to add.
“No, The Crossroads ain’t to blame,” said Sally. “We ain’t one of them big impersonal city bars where bouncers can tell folks they’ve had too much to drink. It wasn’t our fault Pike was drinking. Pike is always drinking.”
The Weight of Winter Page 41
