Winterbound

by Margery Williams Bianco

  How could anyone want to live anywhere but in the country, she wondered, her eyes resting on the valley below her, on the long roof of the old house set among its yellowed maple trees and on the smaller gray roof below it, with smoke curling up from its chimney, a gray wisp on the clear air. Out here it was as though the city did not exist, and so far as Garry was concerned it could cease to exist forever, for she had none of Kay’s hankerings for city life and comforts, and it never cost her a moment’s concern whether the daily paper arrived by the noon mail or not, except for the one day in the week when it had gardening news.

  If Garry had any definite ambition beyond the present it was to be a scientist like her father, to go on expeditions, to explore, Central America or anywhere else, it didn’t matter, so long as it was wild. She devoured travel books whenever she could get them and liked to pore over the Atlas. But she was interested in live things, not so much in prehistoric ones or the remains of dead civilizations. She saw life, the whole world as it were, stretching out immeasurably in all directions, radiating from that one tiny unimportant focus which was herself, Margaret Ellis. It was all there, she was just at the beginning of it. There was no hurry at all. It was a play which might begin at any moment. Sooner or later things would happen. Meantime she had the happy faculty of being able to live in the moment and to become very thoroughly engrossed in present interests. Gardening was the chief one. She liked things that she could touch with her hands, plant and tend and make grow. She liked to dig in the earth, handle stones, drive nails into wood, and whatever she did she did thoroughly. It was a family joke about Garry that at nine years old, having been given a small skin horse for a birthday present she had taken her weekly dime to the secondhand bookstore she passed on the way to school where in one of the outside bargain boxes lay a pile of remaindered copies of a veterinarian handbook entitled: The Horse: Its Care in Sickness and Health. The old bookseller, who had noticed her poring over this work more than once, was so amazed by her choice that he gave her a copy and refused the ten cents for it, and for months after the six-inch steed was housed, fed, groomed, and tended strictly according to the advice in the paper-covered volume, enjoying more sickness than health in the process; for the book contained so many interesting accounts of disease and accident that Garry put him through all in turn, including spavin, glanders, and wrenched shoulder.

  Later it was always Garry that the younger children turned to when baby sparrows were picked up in the park, when the guinea pig had colic or the kitten got a bone stuck in its throat, for she kept her head in emergencies and if she didn’t always know what to do concealed it by a competent and reassuring air which, with common sense, went a long way towards saving the situation.

  With a comfortable stretch she picked up her basket now and set off for the grapevine. The thick tight clusters hung in profusion, dead ripe and beginning to shrivel, sharp and rough to the tongue but filling the air with their wild heady perfume. There were plenty of briars too growing near, and Garry’s bare brown arms were scratched and her shirt torn by the time she had forced her way into the tangle to reach the last dangling bunch that the basket would hold. There were still plenty left to be reached by a little climbing and yanking; she would have to come back tomorrow and bring a bigger basket, although this one was pretty heavy by the time she had packed all the grapes in and pressed them down.

  The shortest way home was to follow the stone fence for a little distance till she reached the gap, and then down across the orchard behind the big house. The long grass under the apple trees was strewn still with fruit —none of it very good, Garry decided as she picked up an apple here and there, bit into it and threw it away. The trees needed pruning; they had been neglected for too long.

  As she neared the house she remembered what Martin had said about the unfastened window. She set her basket down under one of the big lilac bushes by the kitchen door, deciding to investigate. All the windows on this side seemed tightly closed; she could see nails driven on the inside, just above the lower sash; the old country way of securing an empty house when there are no window locks. A lean-to woodshed barred her way at the end but the door stood ajar. She pushed it open. An old chopping block, some empty paint cans and a barrel, odds and ends of rusted iron—the sort of litter that seems to remain in the woodshed year in, year out, though families come and go. And at the farther end, another door.

  Garry never expected it to give to her touch, but it did.

  “That’s one on Martin,” she thought triumphantly. “This was probably open all the time!”

  There is always a queer feeling about a house that has stood empty for long, especially an old house. The silence in it is deeper than the silence outdoors. One feels the hush not only of the room one is in but of all the other rooms as well, as though the house itself were listening. Without meaning to, Garry found herself treading on tiptoe as she moved.

  This was the kitchen, with the big old pantry off it. The living room was beyond, across an entry where stairs went up. There was the paneling, just as Martin had said, and the queer cupboard high in the wall at one side of the big fireplace where a blackened crane still swung below the chimney. How Kay would love this room, and the smaller parlor off it, with its built-in painted corner cupboard! Garry knew enough to tell that the iron latches and hinges on doors and closets were as old as the house itself, and that the irregular split-looking nails which held them in place were the old “butterfly” nails, handmade like the latches themselves.

  Kay must come up here sometime, but meanwhile Garry was determined to explore every corner first herself. Such a chance might not come again. She tried another door, and found a twisting staircase that led to a wide landing. More rooms up here, all opening one from another, built around the enormous chimney that took up the whole center of the house. The last one in the chain led back again to the landing, but there must be others beyond, and Garry was just wondering what door she might have overlooked when to her horror she heard footsteps downstairs, and the sound of voices.

  She moved as noiselessly as she could to a front window and peered out. Yes, there was a car, and a girl of about her own age in a white sweater and beret just turning back from it, a parcel in her hand. Probably they had all been out in the garden when she entered the house, and coming from the back she had never seen the car; the house would have hidden it. Just the sort of fix I would get into, Garry thought, as she backed cautiously away and stood listening, wondering just what chance she had of slipping out again unnoticed. Mighty little; these old wide floor boards were sure to creak and it seemed to her that one could have heard a pin drop from one end of the house to the other.

  The light measured footstep below sounded startlingly clear now, and a woman’s voice, with an odd foreign lilt to it, exclaimed: “Yes, it is all beautiful, but my poor Charles, you were crazy! You will have to spend a fortune on this place to fix it up. Think of all there is to be done!”

  “But Gina, think of the swell time we’ll have doing it!” returned a deeper voice, evidently that of poor Charles.

  “Look—I ask you just to look—at that ceiling! The plaster is ready to drop.”

  “Look at those old latches!”

  So someone at least appreciated the latches. Remembering her mother’s remark—funny how Penny was so invariably right—Garry felt a sudden liking for poor Charles, invisible below her.

  “Yes, all that is lovely,” Gina went on. “You are really very lucky, Charles. Not a thing here has been spoiled. You know, sometimes you find an old house like this and everything in it has been taken—everything. And now that there is this rage for old things and anyone will buy, you just cannot trust these country people. They are all the same, everywhere you go. If it were me I would lock this house very well when you leave.”

  “You would, would you!” Garry reflected. “Nice for me! And what do you know about country people, anyway?” Poor Charles might be all right, she decided, but this Gina, whoever she was,
had altogether too much to say.

  “We’ll go round all the windows, just to please you, before we close everything up.”

  “Even the latches they take, and the hinges off the closet doors. Anything that will bring a price. I am quite serious. Amy Vankirk, who just bought a house in the Berkshires, told me.”

  “Yes, all one needs in the antique business these days is a light truck and a house wrecker. I’ve thought of going into it myself, some day.”

  “You laugh, but even you wanted to steal an old rusty lantern hook the time we picnicked in that barn, only it wouldn’t come out.”

  “Set a thief to catch a thief! I shall have to search you, Gina, before you leave these premises.”

  “Ah, but I have no pockets—see?” Her laughter was swift and musical. Again Garry heard her pacing the floor. “Your old furniture will go nicely here, and there is good space for your pictures.”

  “There’s space for dancing, in this room. These boards would wax all right.” That must be the younger girl. “We ought to have parties here, and lots of people. The fireplace will be grand to sit around. Let’s have a big Halloween party here next year!”

  “If your friends ever arrive to see you, up that hill. Never will Uncle Maurice forget that time that you stuck in the ditch like two sillies, and the people had to pull you out with horses! He talks of it yet.”

  So the snooty man was Uncle Maurice. Well, served him right; he shouldn’t try to bring expensive cars up back roads in the spring.

  “Well, it wasn’t so bad today. And the town should do something towards that, another year. I’ll have to speak about it,” Charles decided.

  “I like country roads, they’ll be splendid for riding. Charles, we ought to have saddle horses here! There’s the barn to keep them in.” It was the easy happy voice of a girl who had never had to worry or wonder where money came from, and Garry felt her first little twinge of jealousy, for riding was one thing she had always longed to do. “I wonder what sort of people live around here?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. You can find that out for yourself.” Charles sounded cheerfully indifferent. “I expect to be too busy to bother about them. There’s a family down the road.”

  “You mean the small house you have rented—the contadini house?” This was Gina’s precise voice. “That will be so close to us, here! Tell me, what sort of people are they?”

  “I don’t know. Roberts rented it to them. There’s a bunch of kids, I believe. Some family from the city that wanted a cheap place.”

  Listeners hear no good of themselves, Garry reflected, edging none the less a little nearer to the landing.

  “Cheap city people . . . but that sounds detestable. You should never have left it to him, Charles. I would prefer that they were really contadini—what you would call peasants.”

  Cheap city people! If anyone were detestable, Garry thought, it was this Gina woman. But Charles’s voice broke in:

  “I would do nothing of the sort, and if you go talking of peasants around here, my dear sister-in-law, people will probably think you mean something to shoot.”

  The younger girl giggled, but Gina returned calmly: “At least you can get rid of them quite easily; you have only to say that you need the house.”

  Garry’s ears were burning but it was her own fault, she told herself grimly; if she didn’t like what she heard it was just too bad. But that “cheap city people” still rankled. If only they would go outside again, and give her a chance to escape!

  “Jane, where is Suzanne? She has run off again. Go and call her; we must go, Charles, it is hours to drive! But I just want to look at the upstairs once more.”

  “That settles it,” said Garry to herself. “Might have known I wouldn’t get a break. Wants to make sure where they’re going to put the tiled bathrooms in, I suppose. How about just stepping out and saying I’d dropped in to look over the house? But I’d never get away with it; not with that Gina woman. Better beat it, quick!”

  But where? Suddenly she remembered the woodshed ell. There must be a room somewhere at that end. Her feet crunched loudly on some fallen plaster, but it was too late to worry about that as she sped on tiptoe, making for the far end of the house. By luck she found what she had hoped for, a small room with a window giving on the woodshed roof. The window was nailed, but insecurely; in a moment she had wrenched it loose, pushed up the sash as noiselessly as she could, and slipped through.

  As she dangled for an instant, her legs over the edge of the shingles, she heard a peculiar and smothered sound below. A small snubby face, with bat ears and bulging scandalized eyes, stared up at her, undoubtedly the missing Suzanne. There was a moment of suspense; then the yelp that had been visibly gathering died in Suzanne’s throat. Evidently the sight of Garry’s overalled legs, hanging as it were from heaven, struck terror to her small-dog soul. She gulped and fled.

  Garry let herself drop, snatched her basket, and dodged through the overgrown bushes to the orchard. A moment later, the basket on her arm, she was strolling with careful indifference down the road past the house.

  Turning her head, she could see the young man standing by the car, his back turned to her. Too bad; she would have liked to see at last what poor Charles really looked like. Gina was still invisible, but Suzanne was there, still suffering under a sense of outrage and yelping hysterically at the girl in the white beret. But small dogs fortunately can tell no tales.

  The children returned from their expedition at dusk, Martin carrying a gallon jar of new cider and Caroline a smaller brown demijohn to be put aside for vinegar, gifts from the Rowes. They were full of all they had seen on the drive, Martin especially. They had gone through the famous swamp, they’d stopped at a house where an old man had two tame coons in his corncrib; they had watched the apples being crushed, and the mill was worked by a gas engine like the one Neal used to saw wood, and they had drunk the fresh juice in tumblers as it ran from the press. It was good, Martin said, but not very fizzy yet. Neal Rowe had said it couldn’t hurt anyone, it was just like drinking fresh apples.

  Nevertheless it became evident, from Caroline’s increasing air of aloofness, that all was not entirely well within; she refused supper, let Martin do most of the talking, and only roused once to say with an injured air:

  “Shirley drank just as much cider as I did, and I don’t see why she hasn’t got just as worse a stomach ache as I’ve got!”

  “How do you know she hasn’t?” Kay asked.

  “I know she hasn’t, because I asked her coming home on the truck.”

  “I expect she is more used to it than you are,” Mrs. Ellis suggested.

  “If you ask me, you’re both of you little pigs,” said Garry with sisterly bluntness. “Martin hasn’t got any stomach ache.”

  “Martin’s a boy,” Caroline returned, as though that settled the question. “It don’t matter what boys eat an’ drink!”

  “If I did have I wouldn’t talk about it, anyway,” Martin told her, conscious of an uncomfortable tightness about his own waistband but unwilling to admit it. “If you aren’t careful, Caroline, it might all turn to vinegar inside you, because that’s what cider does when you leave the cork out.”

  “Then I should think you’d some of you might have told me about it before I went!” Caroline sniffled, and was led off to bed with a hot water bottle for comfort.

  “The new people were up at the house again today,” Kay announced as the two girls were washing supper dishes. “Mrs. Rowe saw them drive by.”

  “Yes? I thought I noticed a car there, coming home.”

  “What’s the joke about it?”

  “Oh, nothing. Sometime maybe I’ll tell you.”

  And that was all Garry would say.

  Across the Road

  AFTER Thanksgiving the weather turned suddenly cold—a sharp businesslike cold, with an air of having come to stay. “Nearly an inch of ice on the rain barrel this morning,” Garry would announce cheerfully, warming he
r chilled fingers as she watched through the window four bobbing heads in woolen caps—Shirley and Caroline, Martin and Jimmie—hurrying down the hill to catch the school bus. Big Bertha did her duty nobly, though her huge stomach seemed to consume as much wood as might run a locomotive until Mary Rowe, slipping over one morning to borrow some coffee, gave them a lesson in the proper setting of drafts.

  “Wood stoves are all right,” she said, “but I guess you’ve got to be brought up with them to know their ways. There—now your heat’ll go where it belongs, not all up the stovepipe.”

  “Does it often get much colder than this?” asked Kay, who was the shivery one of the family.

  “Colder?” Mary Rowe laughed. “It hasn’t started to get cold yet! Why, I haven’t even looked out the children’s heavy underwear. You wait a bit!”

  She looked anything but wintry herself, with slim bare ankles above her keds and only a thin windbreaker over her cotton house frock. “I guess this house ought to be pretty comfortable for you. It was when we lived in it.”

  “I never knew you lived here,” said Garry.

  “Two years, before we bought our place. Before Shirley was born; Jimmie was a baby. The hill keeps the north wind off, but you’ll get it from the south, and that’s a mean wind in winter. How are your windows, pretty tight?”