Northern Light

by Jennifer Donnelly

  I look at it—I can't help myself—and the questions I've kept penned up all day rush at me thumping and squealing like my pa's pigs at feeding time.

  Why did Grace Brown give me her letters to burn? Why had she looked so sad? And Carl Grahm—was he Carl or was he Chester? Why did he write "Carl Grahm, Albany" in the register if Grace called him Chester and addressed her letters to "Chester Gillette, 17½ Main Street, Cortland, New York"?

  I pull the letters from my pocket. I shouldn't do this; I know it's wrong, but so is that wound on Grace Brown's forehead. I slide the top letter out from under the ribbon, open it, and start to read. My eyes winnow out lines about friends and neighbors, travel plans and dresses, searching for my answers.

  South Otselic, N.Y.

  June 19, 1906

  My Dear—

  I have often heard the saying, 'it never rains but it pours,' but I never knew what it meant until today ... When I got in Cincinnatus and just as we are starting for home I heard my sister was very ill. When I reached her home I sent my trunks and the carriage home and here I am. The house was full of friends and relatives crying and talking in little groups. I have a new niece, but the doctor has given up all hopes of my sister being up and strong for a year at least...

  I lean back in the chair and feel relief flooding through me. Grace Brown was sad because her sister was ill. And she and Chester had had a spat about the chapel and maybe she was still miffed at him and she wanted to burn the letters out of spite. And I don't know why he put a fake name in the register, but I don't care because none of this is any of my business. And then a line a bit lower down catches my eye and I'm reading again, when all I meant to do was fold the letter up and be done with it.

  ...Chester, I have done nothing but cry since I got here. If you were only here I would not feel so badly ... I can't help thinking you will never come for me ... Everything worries me and I am so frightened, dear ... I will have my dresses made if I can and I will try and be very brave, dear ... Chester, do you miss me and have you thought about everything to-day?...I get so lonesome, dear. You won't miss me as much on account of your work, but, oh dear—please write and tell me you will come for me ... Please write often, dear, and tell me you will come for me before papa makes me tell the whole affair, or they will find it out for themselves. I can't just rest one single minute until I hear from you

  I look out the open window. I can smell the pines and the roses and the lake on the night air, but even these sweet, familiar smells can't comfort me. Why did Grace want him to come for her? And why was she so frightened that he wouldn't? He had, hadn't he? He'd brought her to the Glenmore. And why do I care? Why?

  Once, when I was eight years old and it was early December, I went out on the ice of Fourth Lake, though Pa had told me not to. "It's not solid yet," he'd said. "It won't be for some weeks. Stay off'n it." But it had looked solid to me and I wanted so much to play on it. So I did. I went running and sliding across it, going farther and farther out with each slide. When I was about thirty feet from the shore, I heard a long, shivering crack, and I knew that the ice was breaking under me and that I might well drown. There was no one to help me. I had sneaked off by myself, knowing that if Lawton or Abby found out where I was going, they would tell. I could see the Eagle Bay Hotel and several other camps from where I stood, but they were boarded up for the winter. I was all alone, and what I'd thought was firm beneath my feet was not. I turned around slowly very, very slowly and slid one foot toward the shore. For several long seconds nothing happened, and then there was another crack. I gasped and stood perfectly still. Then I slid my other foot forward. Nothing, then two more cracks, as sharp and sudden as gunshots. I sobbed out loud and peed down my leg, but I kept going, one small, sliding step at a time. When I was about six feet from the shore, the ice gave way and I fell into the frigid water up to my knees. I crashed through the remaining few feet of ice and ran home as fast as I could, dreading my pa's strap, but dreading frostbite more.

  I feel like that now. Like there is nothing solid beneath my feet, like the ice is breaking all around me.

  re • cou • ri • um • phor • a • tion

  "Pa! Pa, come quick! There's a monster in the manure pile!"

  "Stop shouting, Beth."

  "But, Pa, there's a monster! I thought he was dead, but he's not! I poked him with a stick and he growled at me!"

  "Elizabeth Gokey, what did I say about telling fibs?"

  "I'm not, Pa. I swear! You've got to come and kill him. Quick! So we can get his sack of gold. He's got a sack of gold with him!"

  I heard all this from the milk house, a room off the cow barn. I was pouring buckets of warm, foamy milk through a length of cheesecloth to strain out flies and bits of hay. I wiped my hands, clapped Pansy and her kittens out from under my feet, and went into the barn itself to see what the commotion was all about. Pa was walking toward the door. Abby was already outside. Lou was up in the hayloft, tossing down bales.

  "What's going on?" I asked her.

  "Beth's telling tales again," she said. "I hope she gets a licking."

  I followed my family outside and around the back of the barn and saw, to my shock, that Beth was not telling tales at all. There was a man, a very dirty man with long, wild black hair, lying facedown in our manure pile. He was wearing dungarees, suspenders, and a plaid wool shirt. There was a large sack near him and a pair of Croghan boots with their laces knotted together.

  Beth still had her stick. She prodded him with it. "Mr. Monster?" she whispered. "Mr. Monster, are you dead?"

  The monster groaned. He turned over on his back, opened his bloodshot eyes, and winced at the light. "Ba da holy jeez, yes. Yes, I tink so," he said.

  "Uncle Fifty?" Abby whispered.

  "Uncle Fifty!" Beth shouted.

  "Damn it, Francis!" my father barked. "Get up out of there!"

  "B'jour, mon frère, b'jour. Tais-toi, eh? Ma tête, elk est très tendre..."

  "C'est pas assez que tous que tu dis c'est de la merde, François? Tu veux coucher dans la merde, aussi?"

  Only my uncle Fifty, my fathers younger brother, can make him angry enough to speak French.

  "Mathilde, allez à ma chambre—, "Pa said to me, before he caught himself. "Go to my bedroom and get him some clothes. Don't let him in the house until he washes. Make him some coffee, too. Abby, go back in and finish straining the milk." He looked at his brother one more time, spat, then returned to the cows.

  "Come on, Uncle Fifty, let's get you cleaned up," I said impatiently. By the time I got water boiled for a bath and got the nits and tangles out of my uncles hair, I'd be good and late for school. And Miss Wilcox was giving the last of the Regents exams.

  Lou came running out. "Uncle Fifty!" she shouted. She looked at him and her smile changed to a frown. "Uncle Fifty, why are you sitting in the manure?"

  "Because da manure, she warm," he said, getting to his feet. "I come last night, very late, Louisa. I don't wake up da whole house, no? So I sleep out here."

  "You smell terrible!" Lou said, pinching her nose.

  He did, too. Manure and whiskey fumes made an unholy combination.

  "What? I smell sweet as da rose! You give your uncle Francois a beeg keese!" He put out his arms and staggered toward her, and she ran away squealing and laughing.

  "Uncle Fifty ... what's in that bag?" Beth asked, eyeing his satchel hopefully.

  "In dere? Oh, noting. Just dirty clothes," he said. Beth's face fell.

  "Uncle Fifty, you come on," I said. "I haven't got time for this. I've got important tests to take today."

  "Test? What kine of test?"

  "For my high school diploma. The last exams are today. I've been studying for months."

  "Ba da holy jeez, Mathilde Gauthier! You wan smart girl for to take dese test. You go on to school. Your mamma will help me wid da bath."

  "Oh, Uncle Fifty, where have you been? You haven't heard, have you?"

  "Heard what? I been on da Saint Lawr
ence for wan year and den da Ausable and da Saint Regis, too."

  I sighed. "Come on. Lets get the kerosene. There's lots to tell you. And none of it good."

  I had Lou to help me, so I was able to get my uncle seen to quicker than I'd thought. I had to sit with him and hold his hand for a while, though, after I told him about my mother and brother. Uncle Fifty doesn't hold much back. When he's happy he laughs, and when he is heartbroken—as he was to hear my mamma had died—he cries like a child. Pa says that's because he is one.

  I got to school two hours late. Classes were over for the rest of the students; it was just Weaver and myself going then. Miss Wilcox was standing outside the schoolhouse looking for me when I arrived. "I thought you weren't coming, Mattie! What happened?" she asked. "Weaver's on his second exam already."

  I explained everything, settled myself, and started my tests. Each one was two hours long. We'd taken two yesterday and were taking three more today. When we finished, I felt pretty confident that I'd passed them. They were my best subjects, though—composition, literature, and history. Yesterday's—mathematics and science—had been harder. On the walk home Weaver told me he thought he'd done quite well on mathematics and history and fairly well on literature and science, but he was worried about composition. It would be another week until we found out our grades. I wondered again, as we walked, why I even bothered. I still had no way of getting myself to New York.

  By the time I got home, it was nearly six o'clock. I had been so wrapped up in my exams, and in rehashing them with Weaver, that I'd forgotten all about my uncle. Until I smelled cooking. And heard music from a harmonica, and laughter. And saw lights blazing in the kitchen. It didn't smell, nor sound, nor even look like my house. Not at all.

  "Ba cripes!" my uncle bellowed when I came in the door. He was clean, his hair was shorter, and his beard had been trimmed. He was wearing a fresh shirt and trousers and my mother's apron. "Where you been? Da supper, she ready since two weeks!"

  "I'm sorry, Uncle Fifty," I said. "I had a lot of exams."

  "You pass all your test?"

  "I don't know. I hope so. I think so."

  "Good! We make a drink to you den..." He poured a short glass of whiskey, handed it to me, then lifted his glass. My pa was sitting by the fire with his own glass of whiskey. I looked at him uncertainly, but he nodded at me. "To Mademoiselle Mathilde Gauthier ... da first wan of all les Gauthiers to get a deeploma!" my uncle said, then knocked back the contents of his glass in one go. My pa did, too. I took one swallow and coughed myself breathless. It burned like the dickens. Poor man's vacation, Pa calls it. I'd never had a vacation, but if that's what one was like, I'd just as soon stay home. My sisters laughed at me and cheered. Beth blew on Uncle Fifty's harmonica. Uncle Fifty whooped. I felt my cheeks burn with whiskey and pride.

  "Come on, Mattie, wash up, would you? We're starving!" Beth said. Only then did I notice the mess—the pots and pans on the stove, the sink full of bowls and dishes, the flour all over the floor, and Barney in his bed, gnawing on a big greasy bone.

  Uncle Fifty had cooked a feast for us—a real lumberjack supper. He made us all sit down at the table, then he started pulling dishes out of the warming oven one after another. We could barely believe our eyes. There was fried pork and milk gravy speckled with bits of crackling, potatoes hashed with onions, baked beans flavored with smoky bacon, maple syrup, and mustard, hot biscuits, and a towering stack of pancakes stuck together with butter and maple sugar. There was not one green vegetable. Lumberjacks are not fond of them.

  "Uncle Fifty, I didn't know you could cook," Abby said.

  "I learn dis past weentair. Da cook on da Saint Regis job, he drop dead. Bad heart. All da lombairjock have to take turn cooking. I learn."

  "You learned good, Uncle Fifty," Lou said, shoveling beans onto her plate. "You get an A-plus. Will you teach Mattie how to cook? She can only make mush and pancakes. And a pea soup that's so bad, it's more pee than soup."

  Uncle Fifty roared. My sisters laughed. Especially Lou. Pa raised an eyebrow at her, but that didn't quiet her. She knew she was safe because our uncle was laughing.

  "Don't mind them, Mattie," Abby said, petting me.

  "You like my pea soup, don't you, Ab?" I asked, hurt.

  She looked at me with her kind eyes. "No, Mattie, I don't. It's awful."

  My family laughed harder then, even Pa cracked a smile, and I laughed, too, and then I ate until I thought I would burst out of my dress. And when we were all so stuffed that we were groaning, Uncle Fifty took a huge rhubarb pie out of the oven and we ate that, too, doused with fresh cream.

  When dinner was over, my father and uncle went to sit in the parlor. Uncle Fifty took his whiskey bottle, his satchel, his Croghan boots, and a tin of mink oil with him.

  Beth's eyes never left his satchel as he walked out of the room. "Do you really think he's got dirty clothes in there?" she whispered.

  "I think the dishes need scraping," I said. "Get started."

  We washed the dishes, wiped the table, and mopped the floor just as fast as we could so that we could go sit with our uncle. His visits were rare. He mostly lived in Three Rivers, Quebec, where he and my father were born, and only showed up every two or three years, when logging jobs brought him near.

  By the time we settled ourselves in the parlor, Pa had made a fire in the cylinder stove. He was mending Pleasant's bellyband—he was always mending something Pleasant had broken—and Uncle Fifty was oiling his boots. My uncle is a riverman and a riverman's boots are his most prized possession. The soles, studded with calks—metal points—help him keep his footing as he walks on floating logs. The best ones are made in Croghan, New York. Pa used to tell Lawton never, ever fight with a riverman in the winter. If a man gets kicked by a frozen Croghan, he is a goner for sure.

  Uncle Fifty drank his whiskey while he worked, and he told us stories—which is what wed all been waiting for. He told us how a bear got into his bunkhouse a month before and all the jacks ran out except a man named Murphy, who was sleeping off a drunk. As the rest of the jacks watched through the window, the bear sniffed him, then licked his face. And Murphy, still sleeping, smiled and put his arms around the bear's neck and called him sweetheart. He told us about the raging glory of the river drives, when the ice went out and a dam was opened and thousands upon thousands of logs were sent through the sluice and downriver, churning and rolling, crashing against rocks, plunging down falls. He said the noise alone would take your breath away. He told us about the jams and the danger of breaking them up and how he'd been on a jam when it suddenly gave way and then had to ride a log half a mile down the Saint Lawrence before he could leap to safety. And how two other men didn't make it and how their bodies looked when they were finally pulled out, all twisted and smashed. He told us that he was the number one champion birler on the Saint Lawrence, and that he could knock any jack off any log, any jack at all. Except for one—my pa.

  It had been years since Pa worked a drive, but I could tell from the look on his face as my uncle talked that he missed it. He flapped a hand at the stories and tried to seem all disapproving, but I saw the pride in his eyes as Uncle Fifty told us that there was no one more skillful with a bateau, no one faster or more fearless. He said my pa was the most surefooted riverman he'd ever seen, that he stuck to logs like bark. He said he'd seen him dance a hornpipe on a log once, and do a cartwheel and a handspring, too.

  They were whoppers, my uncle's stories, every one. We knew it and we didn't care. We just loved the telling. My uncle has a beautiful North Woods voice. You can hear the dry bite of a January morning in it and the rasp of wood smoke. His laughter is the sound of a creek under ice, low and rushing. His full name is Francois Pierre, but Pa told us his initials really stand for Fifty Percent, because you can only believe half of anything he says.

  Pa and Fifty are four years apart in age. Pa is forty and my uncle thirty-six. They have the same rugged faces, the same blue eyes and black hair, but that is whe
re the resemblance ends. Uncle Fifty is always smiling and my father is always grim. Fifty drinks more than he should. Pa only drinks on occasion. Fifty sounds like the Frenchman he is. My father sounds like he was born and bred in New York and has no more French in him than Barney the dog does.

  I once asked my mother why Pa never spoke French, and she said, "Because the scars run too deep." I thought she must have meant the ones on his back. Pas stepfather put them there with a belt. Pas real father died when he was six. His mother had seven other children and married the first man who asked her, because she had to feed them. Pa never talked about his mother or his stepfather, but Uncle Fifty did. He told us that the man beat them and their mother for nothing. Because the supper was too cold or too hot. Because the dog was in when he was supposed to be out, or out when he was supposed to be in. He did not speak French and wouldn't allow it to be spoken in the house, because he thought his stepchildren would use it to talk behind his back. My father forgot once and that's how he got the scars. Uncle Fifty said their stepfather used the wrong end of his belt and the buckle took the skin clean off. I try my best to remember those scars whenever Pa is harsh. I try to remember that hard knocks leave dents.

  Pa ran away from home when he was only twelve and found work as a chore boy in a lumber camp. He worked his way south, into New York, and never went back to Quebec. His mother died some years back, and his brothers and sisters scattered. Uncle Fifty was the only one he ever saw.

  Our uncle kept us entertained with his stories for hours. But around eleven o'clock, Beth got sleepy-eyed and Lou started yawning and Pa told us it was time for bed. As we were all standing up to say good night, Beth cast one last, hopeful glance at our uncle's satchel. Uncle Fifty saw her do it and smiled. He opened the bag and said, "Well, I plaintee tired myself. I tink I get out my nightshirt now and ... ba gosh! Wat is in here? Where you tink all dese present come from? I don't reemembair to buy no present!"