Finest Kind

by Lea Wait

  “So you can have a chance to beat me the next time we race!” answered Jake.

  This time Tom’s face reddened. He must not have told Ed that Jake had bested him.

  “Tom’s the best runner here,” said Ed. “He’ll beat you, easy.”

  “We’ll see,” said Jake. “You can’t be the best if you have no competition.”

  “Guess we don’t need any dead bodies in the river,” Tom said. “It would stink up the place. We’d better help him.”

  Tom and Ed climbed down the rocks toward Jake, and Chester happily followed, stopping at the edge of the mud. Tom walked a few yards along the shore through the deep grasses. He picked up a long gray sea-smoothed branch, headed back to a spot where the land was still solid, and stretched the driftwood toward Jake. “You hang on to the end, and we’ll drag you out.”

  Jake took a deep breath, hoping this would work. He needed Tom’s help, even if that meant listening to his taunts. Jake stretched and wriggled, and finally got one of his hands around the driftwood branch.

  Tom pulled and pulled, but Jake didn’t move. “Ed, you help too. Jake may be skinny, but he’s as heavy as a whale.”

  Ed put his arms around Tom’s waist, and they pulled with both of their weights. Chester tried to help too, pulling Ed’s sweater as though they were all playing at tug of war.

  Jake wiggled more, managing to increase the amount of mud covering him.

  “Don’t fight the mud,” Tom advised, as sweat poured down his face. “Lift yourself slowly out of it.”

  Gradually Jake’s mud-coated body began to emerge from the flats. Slowly Jake got closer to Tom and Ed, and to solid land.

  Tom stopped pulling. “Here,” he said, tossing the driftwood to Jake. “Use this to balance yourself, and see if you can stand up. The mud shouldn’t be as deep where you are now.”

  Jake stuck the stick into the mud. Tom was right. He could pull himself up. Using the driftwood for balance he carefully walked the few steps left to the high grasses. Safe! “Thanks! I thought I’d be in that mud forever!”

  Chester, disappointed the game was over, was sniffing a tide pool farther up on the ledges.

  “If you’re stupid enough to walk on the flats again, stay in areas outside the channel line,” said Tom. “You’d still sink up to your ankles, but you’d probably survive.”

  Jake nodded. “I’ll remember.” He turned to the other boy. “Hello, Ed. Pleased to meet you. And thank you!”

  “Welcome to Wiscasset,” said Ed. He was shorter than Tom, but his added weight had no doubt helped provide the force to help Jake emerge from the mud. “My father’s the schoolmaster. Shall I tell my father he’ll have a new boy in class for the winter term?”

  “Do you think the genius is going to attend classes with us foolish country boys?” asked Tom.

  Jake ignored Tom and answered Ed. “Tell your father I hope to attend his school.” Jake tried to rub the drying mud off his trousers and legs. Perhaps he’d been foolish to think Tom would be his friend, but Tom had pulled him out of the mud. And if Ed’s father was the schoolmaster, he had better be polite. “When does the term start?”

  “Just before Thanksgiving. Stop in to see Pa, and he’ll tell you what supplies you’ll need,” said Ed.

  “No school until late November?” asked Jake. How much did this school cost? And what supplies were needed? Could he use the books he’d taken to classes in Boston? He had no money for others.

  “Don’t you know anything? No one’s free for lessons until the harvest is in, the cider is made, and the butchering is done for the winter,” said Tom. “Then we have classes until we’re needed for sugaring off, in March.”

  “Is it different in Boston?” asked Ed.

  “Yes,” said Jake. He didn’t want to talk about the differences between private classes and public schools, city schools and country schools. Boston schools didn’t have to wait to start until the butchering was done for the season. “Tom, your mother said you were looking for oyster shells, and maybe oysters.”

  “I’ve already filled my sack,” said Tom. “Then I saw Ed and went to talk with him. That was before we saw a beached Boston whale.”

  “I was playing with Annie,” said Ed. “She’s my sister, who’s five. Margaret’s the baby. She’s two. I get tired just having girls around, so I left them with Mother. Do you have a sister?”

  “No,” said Jake, hoping Ed wouldn’t ask if he had a brother.

  “You’re lucky. Little sisters are the worst. They follow you around and always want to do what you do. And they’re mean, too! Annie took my sea stone collection and buried it where I can’t find it, just because I wouldn’t play dolls with her. I hope Ma’s next baby is a boy.”

  “Good luck!” said Jake. “Can you tell me where to find oysters?”

  “Oyster shells get caught between the sea grasses, where the tide has washed them in, or lie on the rocks, where gulls have dropped them,” said Ed.

  “What do you want to help him for?” asked Tom, turning his back and starting up the rocks. “Let him figure it out himself”

  “And live oysters?” asked Jake.

  Ed shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced at Tom before he answered. “They grow underneath rockweed, on rocks and logs. You have to cut them off. Seaweed keeps them damp at low tide, so they don’t die.”

  “Come on, Ed,” said Tom. “We have to take my shells back to the barn to grind them.” He paused. “And we’ll take this bag and knife back to Ma, just in case she’s missing them.” He turned and ran back into the woods. Chester bounded after him. Ed took one more look at Jake, shrugged his shoulders, and followed.

  Jake felt very wet, very dirty, and very foolish. And he had no oysters for dinner.

  This time.

  12

  Jake found two eggs under the leaves of a large prickly thistle plant, and three in a corner of the lean-to, where a hen had squeezed between two loose boards. They made a scant, but tasty, supper. Finest kind, Jake thought, remembering the phrase Cousin Ben had used. After supper he nailed the loose board on the lean-to and made a good start on building a henhouse out of boards pried from the crates they’d brought from Boston.

  Night fell earlier and earlier each day, and there wasn’t light enough to finish the henhouse that evening.

  He’d washed the mud off as best he could when he’d returned home, but his hands, already cut from the broken shells in the mud, were now also swollen with thistle prickles and one badly aimed hammer blow. Mother sat at the table in the light of the oil lamp, sewing a patch on her petticoat. It had caught on the pump handle.

  “Soaking in warm water will help those hands,” she said, seeing him wince as he picked up his copy of Twice-Told Tales from the sideboard. “There’s water left in the kettle.”

  Jake poured some of the water into the small basin Mother used for rinsing off tableware, and put his hands in. The cuts stung.

  “You’ve done so much today. And I’ve managed to wash some clothes.” Frankie’s clean clothes were hanging on ropes stretched across the room. “Tomorrow I’ll see if I can get the mud off yours.”

  Jake nodded. He’d left his muddy clothes outside to dry on the low limb of a tree.

  “I saw the chicken house you built. Using the crates for wood was a good idea.”

  “There’s a lot more to do,” said Jake, flexing his fingers and gently rubbing spots that were still dirty. “Tomorrow I’m going back to the river to find oyster shells for the chickens. And, I hope, some oysters for us to eat.”

  Mother smiled. “What would Frankie and I do without you, Jake?”

  Jake was glad Mother was pleased with what he’d done. But he wished Father could be home more often, and that they could depend on him, too. He wished he had time to walk in the woods, or read. He longed for one day of freedom, when he didn’t have chores that kept him busy from first light to last.

  The next morning while the chickens were exploring th
eir new house, Jake took a knife and a sack and again headed for the Sheepscot. He started toward the Neals’ farm to find the way he’d followed yesterday, but was relieved to see another path leading in the direction of the river. A closer path meant a shorter walk. And today he didn’t want to run into Tom and hear his insults.

  The tide was about halfway out. Or was it halfway back, Jake wondered. He’d have to learn about tides, too. All he cared about now was that the rocks, tall grasses, and seaweed above the mud line were exposed.

  He carefully made his way down the rocks and walked through the grasses. Sure enough, when he looked carefully, he found broken oyster shells caught in the high sea grasses, just as Ed had said. More were half-buried in the shallow mud. He rinsed those that were muddy in a tide pool between the rocks.

  And that was where he found his first live oyster, attached to the side of the tide pool, under a curtain of rockweed.

  He carefully pried the oyster up, and then cut the few threads that attached it to the rock. He put the live oyster on top of the shells in his sack, and then covered it with rockweed to keep it moist and alive.

  After he’d found one oyster and knew where to look, he saw others. Some were only two inches long. He left those to grow. But others were six or seven inches long, and he happily harvested those from under the rockweed, mermaid’s hair, and kelp that hid them. By midmorning he’d filled his bag and headed up over the rocks toward home.

  13

  That Saturday afternoon Father arrived bringing wheat flour, dried corn and beans, salt pork, and whale oil.

  “Salt pork!” said Mother. “What can I do with that?”

  “All the men from the mill were buying it at the grocer’s,” said Father. “It’s said to give baked beans good flavor.”

  Mother made a face. “It will flavor soups, and I’ll try it with the dried beans, but next time could you buy us beef instead?”

  “I bought what we can afford,” replied Father as he walked to the fire to heat water for washing up.

  “You’re limping!” said Mother. “What happened?”

  “It’s just a bruise,” replied Father.

  Mother looked at him, shook her head, and went to tend to Frankie.

  Everyone was more relaxed later as they dined on baked oysters, eggs, and fresh bread Mother had made. And roasted squash, of course.

  “Millwork is hard. The saws run day and night,” said Father as he sat at the table after supper. “I’m earning wages, true, but I’m not used to moving heavy logs and boards and piling up shingles.” The blisters Jake had noticed on Father’s hands the week before were becoming calluses, and Father, never a large man, had lost weight. “I worry about the three of you here alone, but you seem to be managing well.”

  Jake and Mother looked at each other. Neither mentioned the days they were hungry and exhausted.

  After supper Father admired the chicken house, and the two flat rocks Jake was using to grind oyster shells for the chickens.

  “With only four chickens we won’t need too many shells,” Jake explained. “But if we have a sack of ground shells for the winter, I won’t have to be looking for oysters under the ice in December.” He hesitated. “When the grasses are covered with snow, we’ll need more corn and wheat or oats for the chickens.”

  Father nodded, but clearly his mind was not on chickens. He went to sit with Mother on the granite step outside the house.

  “How is Frankie?” he asked her.

  “The same,” said Mother. “Good days and bad. It’s hard out here, with just Frankie for company most of the day. I miss my friends in Boston, and having you to talk with.”

  “I wish it were otherwise. My pay isn’t as much as I had hoped. But wives of the other men at the mill seem to make do.”

  Jake turned and walked toward the back of their property. He didn’t want to hear Mother and Father talking about how hard times were. He already knew.

  Soon they would have eaten all the squash, and even the pumpkins. Father brought them food each week, but hardly enough for now; certainly not enough to put aside for winter. Massachusetts winters had been long and cold, and Maine was farther north. October was not far away. There wasn’t much time to prepare.

  Jake wandered into their small orchard. The apples were almost ripe. He’d have to find out how to store them for the winter. The pumpkins, too, if they didn’t eat them all first.

  He picked a low-hanging apple and bit in. Immediately he spit it out; it was sour and grainy.

  He heard giggling.

  Turning around, he glimpsed a small figure slipping behind one of the apple trees on the far side of the orchard.

  “Violet?” he called.

  More giggles. She dodged behind another tree as Jake ran toward her.

  She ran around the tree several times as he pretended to try to catch her. When he did, she held one hand behind her back. He spoke sternly. “Violet! Did you take one of my apples?”

  “I didn’t steal it. I found it on the ground.”

  “Here, have another one.” Jake reached high above his head, picked the reddest apple he could see, and handed it to her.

  “Could I have one for Zeke, too? And Nabby? And Ma? We all like apples.”

  “Violet, don’t be greedy. We don’t want to take their whole orchard,” scolded Nabby, from where the orchard met the meadow. “Thank Jake and come over here.”

  “It’s all right. Really,” said Jake, picking several more apples and following Violet. “The apples are still ripening; I just bit into a sour one. I hope these are good. I don’t know what to do with so many apples anyway.”

  Nabby held out her apron as he piled the apples in. “Roasted apples. Cider. Apple dumplings. Apple butter. Dried apples. Applesauce. Apple jelly.”

  “Do you know how to do all that?” asked Jake.

  “Of course. Everyone does.” Nabby smiled.

  “In Boston we bought such things. Could you teach me? I’ll share the apples with you.”

  “Doesn’t your mother know how to cook?”

  Jake hesitated. “She’s learning.”

  Nabby didn’t seem surprised. “My ma isn’t much help either. I’ll tell you what to do with the apples.”

  Her ma wasn’t much help? If she’d lived here for some years, wouldn’t she know how to cook? Jake let it pass. No doubt Nabby thought it strange his mother was just learning to cook now.

  “I’m worried about provisions for the winter,” Jake confided.

  “What do you need?” Nabby asked.

  “Almost everything, starting with food for ourselves and our chickens. Father brings us some food when he comes home each week, but that only helps for the moment.”

  “Our father brings things home too,” said Violet. “Sometimes.” She took another bite of the apple.

  Nabby looked at her, shook her head slightly, and turned back to Jake. “In winter your father may not be able to come home every week. After mid-November, roads are often deep in snow. Last winter the snow was higher than the first floor of the house. Some used second-floor windows as doors. We dug stairs through the snow so we could climb up onto the frozen drifts, didn’t we, Violet?”

  Violet nodded, her mouth full of apple.

  “Do you know how to find or preserve anything?” Nabby asked.

  Jake had never thought that Father might not be able to come every Saturday, bringing some of what they needed. Without Father’s help he and Mother and Frankie would be in even worse shape than he’d thought. But his pride wouldn’t let Nabby know how little they had.

  “I can gather oysters,” Jake said.

  “That’s a beginning, and not one many folks here think of. Gather as many fresh oysters as you can, layer them with rockweed and cornmeal, and put them in your cold cellar. If you wet the pile twice a week, they’ll last.”

  “For how long?” asked Jake. Mother and Father wouldn’t mind having to eat oysters.

  “They’ll last through most of the cold w
eather if you keep them wet,” Nabby declared. “They’ll freeze, of course, but they’ll still be good. You just can’t let them dry out. And there are other things from the sea you can put aside for winter too. Mussels. Periwinkles.”

  “Did your mother teach you all that?”

  “No. Granny McPherson did. When times are hard, she knows what to do.”

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  “Most boys are scared of Granny,” Nabby said seriously.

  Violet finished her apple, core and all, and threw the stem on the ground. “Granny McPherson’s a witch,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”

  “A witch?” Was Violet serious? He didn’t want anything to do with a witch.

  “That’s what people say,” said Nabby. “But she’s kind, and she knows more than most folks about getting along.”

  “Does she live nearby?”

  “Beyond your place, a ways off the Alna Road.”

  A black squirrel dropped from an apple tree and ran just in front of Jake. “What was that?” he said, jumping back. “A cat?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen a black squirrel?” asked Nabby.

  “I’ve seen gray squirrels and red squirrels. I didn’t know there were black squirrels.”

  “Only a few are born each year. They’re slower than their gray cousins. Other squirrels ignore them, or fight with them, so they live alone. But they’re squirrels just the same.”

  “Are they bad luck, like black cats? That squirrel ran right in front of us!” He didn’t need any more bad luck.

  “Good luck, I think. Rare things are good luck, aren’t they?” said Nabby. “Like precious stones.”

  “That makes sense,” Jake agreed, looking after the black squirrel.

  “If you’ll share your apples, I’ll show you what to do with them. But you must share our meat, then,” said Nabby. “I don’t take charity.”

  “I didn’t mean the apples to be charity,” Jake said. “I meant to trade them for advice.” But—meat! “Don’t you need all the meat you have?”

  “I can spare some,” Nabby said, and smiled. “If my traps keep working this winter, we’ll have rabbit, coon, and sometimes squirrel.”