The Quill Pen

by Michelle Isenhoff

  Passing the farthest reach of floodtide, the marsh vegetation gave way to freshwater reeds and fluffy cattails. The river gathered itself inside shadowy banks, and Micah spotted signs of muskrat and raccoons in the mud. He even caught sight of a long-bodied mink scampering along the water’s edge.

  He crossed to the opposite bank to avoid his father’s mill and ducked into the darkening trees. In passing, his fingers caressed the bark of oak and maple, chestnut, pine, cypress, all old friends. Ten more minutes of fast walking brought him to a crooked little shack in a swampy estuary. He could hear the honking of Canada geese somewhere nearby, though the flock remained hidden from his sight.

  Sanjay Ramesh sat on the rickety porch. Coming across a dark-skinned man from India in those parts was rather like finding an oyster in a wheat field. But as Sanjay was an old waterman himself, Micah found the differences between him and the rest of the townsfolk only skin deep.

  “Micah!” the man called cheerfully. He was powerfully built, with a face impossible to pin an age to. He sipped coffee out of a tin cup, and the greasy brown smell of pork fat hung heavy in the air.

  “Hello, Sanjay.” Gabby’s parents had long ago ordered him to dispense with formal titles. Adult names tasted smooth and slimy on his well-bred tongue, like an overripe banana, but he soon grew accustomed to it.

  “Have you come to see Gabby?”

  Micah grinned. “She ordered me to.”

  Sanjay let out a throaty chuckle. “Persuasive, isn’t she?”

  Micah dropped down beside a black and white mutt that poked its face between the slats of the porch steps. “Hello, Jade.”

  The dog’s whole body wriggled. She had followed him home from his ramblings one day, thin and ragged and sickly. Micah brought the dog to the swamp, where she had been warmly received. Micah scratched her ears. She licked his face appreciatively.

  Just then a black-haired melon of a woman pushed out the screen door, pausing at the sight of the boy. “Micah, what a surprise!” She spoke with a bumpy accent, rolling out words that had knobs all over them. “Gabby!” she called into the house. “Micah’s here!”

  Maria Ramesh eased her round frame into a rocking chair beside her husband, and Jade jumped into her lap. The woman laughed and patted the dog fondly. “She is a loving one, no?”

  “For certain,” Micah agreed.

  “It shines out of her eyes. Not like people. She judges only by the tone of your voice and the heaviness of your hand.”

  Sanjay leaned over to run a hand down the dog’s silky back. “She has more sense than most people.”

  The sailor’s extended position emphasized the tattered stated of his trousers. They hung only midway past his knee, showing skin so dark it matched the stain he used in his woodshop. They also revealed a tattoo of flames in the shape of a bird’s wing. Micah had asked him about it once, but Sanjay would only say it was a remnant from his days at sea.

  At that moment, Gabby flew through the door. “Micah! Let’s go! I want to show you the garden before it gets too dark to see!” Already the clearing was shrouded in deep shadow.

  “Slow down, girl, and let the boy take a breath. He just got here,” Sanjay said.

  “Oh, Papa.” She planted a kiss on the man’s cheek then bounded down the porch steps and across the weedy yard.

  “Shouldn’t you grab a shawl?” Maria called from her chair. “It’s getting cool at night.”

  Gabby pretended not to hear, only slowing after they had rounded the end of Sanjay’s workshop. She rolled her eyes. “Mama always worries.”

  “Because she loves you.” Micah appreciated the easy affection the family shared, even if Gabby didn’t. He sometimes felt like a brooch his family adorned itself with. He’d much rather suffer the bumps and bruises of a well-loved teddy bear.

  “Look at the size of these pumpkins!” Gabby exclaimed, towing him into the cultivated patch. “The corn is ripe, so are the beans. The turnips are wonderful smothered in the sauce Mama cooks up, and you’ve never had such good bread as what Mama can make with a squash.”

  Micah followed her up and down the rows, glad now that he had risked sharing a few vegetable seeds. The gardener had never even missed them.

  They came to a bed of fragrant, low-growing plants. “These are Mama’s herbs. She knows all sorts of remedies, and she’s begun teaching them to me.” Gabby pointed out a few varieties. “Peppermint controls nausea. Comfrey relieves pain and heals bones. Chamomile will break a fever. Dandelion root helps a stomach ache. Evening primrose—”

  “Slow down,” Micah laughed. His bookshelf at home had a notebook full of wilderness remedies he had collected over the years, just in case he ever worked up the gumption to leave civilization, but he’d never heard of some of these. “What was this one?”

  As she recited the names and uses, he thought of the worthless elixirs stocked in on the store shelves. “My father might be interested in buying some of these,” he offered. He knew how Maria stretched the meager income Sanjay brought in.

  “They aren’t for sale,” Gabby told him with an emphatic shake of her head. “Mama says I have the gift of healing just as she does. These plants are free for those in need. With them, I intend to help folks cheat death whenever I can.”

  He plucked a peppermint leaf and chewed on it. It was spicy, hot and cold on his tongue all at once. “You did wonders with Jade,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t know she was the same dog.”

  “Jade needed love and attention more than she needed medicine.”

  Micah knew it was true. Before bringing Jade to Gabby, he had tried to keep the dog for himself. But his mother lamented the mess in her house, and his father wouldn’t even consider keeping an animal that wouldn’t earn its own keep. The neighbors three doors down probably heard Gerald’s arguments:

  “A dog can’t be ridden. They’re worthless for pulling. You can’t even rely on them to keep the squirrels out of the garden. Get rid of it!”

  As much as Micah desired Jade’s company, he knew the dog would never be happy in his parents’ house. So he brought it to Gabby.

  “You’re right, of course,” Micah agreed. “She needed a home that appreciates a dog for just being a dog. A family who would accept her the way she was made and wouldn’t try to change her into a horse or a wolf.”

  Or a shopkeeper.

  Blue and purple shadows had washed out the other colors in the clearing. Edges had grown mellow and indistinct, merging with the woods. Micah sighed and murmured, “I wish I lived here, too.”

  Gabby snorted. “You can’t mean that. Most people in the village would sooner turn us out than shake our hands. Just because we’re a little different.”

  Too many differences. Yes, that was the problem in his house, too.

  6

  _______

  The next morning Micah arrived at the shop early. He hoped to deliver Mrs. Parsons’ cast-off clothing to Father Holcomb and return before his father arrived. But Gerald already stood behind the counter looking over the inventory.

  “Micah, I’d like you to prepare a list of merchandise that needs to be purchased. Consider that we will have only the space of one wagon. I’ll go over it with you when it’s completed.”

  Micah scooped up the clothing that still lay in a heap in the corner. “I have to deliver these items to the church for Mrs. Parsons first.”

  Gerald glanced at the armload in disgust. “You are being paid to clean her attic, not run her errands. Throw them out.”

  “And what if she learns of it?”

  The man scowled impatiently. “All right, but don’t dally. We have much to accomplish before we attend that cursed luncheon this afternoon.”

  “I have to go to that?”

  His father grimaced. “It’s very important to your mother. Besides, we’ll be in good company. Every influential family in the county will be in attendance.”

  “All the more reason to skip it,” Mica
h muttered as he stepped out into the wakening village.

  He traveled up Main, which was actually the stage road. It ran due north until it turned inland at the harbor. There, it jogged west for a quarter mile and passed the schoolhouse before turning north again to cross a bridge near his father’s mill where the river narrowed.

  The stage connected the village to the rest of the country. Transportation was improving all the time, pulling the states together and shrinking the countryside. He thought of the growing network of railroads and his father’s predictions and shook his head a little sadly. He missed the way the docks used to teem with activity on those rare occasions when large ships moored.

  As the highway gradually replaced the port in importance, it had been broadened and the town’s most respectable commerce relocated along it. First in line stood his father’s store, then the county courthouse with the little stone jail just beyond. Next came the ladies’ library, then the post office where the stage stopped at three every Tuesday and Friday. Slocum’s Hardware lay beyond.

  Across the street stood Shelby’s Boardinghouse, his father’s livery, the doctor’s office, another boardinghouse, the bank, and an attorney’s office. Between buildings, a few secondary roads crossed Main at perfect angles and petered out among businesses and private homes.

  At the northernmost corner of town, just before the highway veered west, stood the ancient Anglican church, with its massive bells that tolled the hour every day at noon. It marked the corner of Water and Main, the point where the old and new sections of town converged.

  The heavy wooden doors took all his strength to open. The church wasn’t huge like a medieval cathedral, but it was the grandest, oldest building in town. The first settlers had sacrificed much to have a beautiful place of worship, and its completion had taken years. Stone walls rose up three stories, and the vaulted ceiling boomed with even the faintest scuffle. And when the sun shone, tall stained-glass windows cast all the jeweled colors of heaven onto the worshipers below.

  Micah stepped between the rows of box pews, shivering slightly. The interior stayed cool during the summer. In winter, it was freezing.

  “Father Holcomb?” he called.

  A door opened to one side of the dais. “Micah, you’re up early this morning. Aren’t you supposed to be on summer holiday?” The priest smiled.

  “My father doesn’t believe in holidays.”

  “Hmm.” The man’s eyebrows wriggled up and down like bristly gray caterpillars. “I suppose I haven’t known him to take many days off. Does it bother you to be driven as hard as he drives himself, or do you favor him in that regard?”

  Micah paused, debating how to answer the priest truthfully. “I don’t like to sit around and let others do for me what I can do myself, if that’s what you mean.”

  The priest looked pleased. “Idle hands do no one any favors. Your father has done well by you.”

  Micah couldn’t stop the scowl that leaped to his face. Father Holcomb noticed, and the caterpillars arched like question marks. “You don’t agree?”

  “I don’t mind hard work, Father, but I’d prefer work of my own choosing.”

  “And given a choice, what vocation would you choose?”

  Vocation? That made it sound so formal, so fixed, so…indoors. For a moment, he envied Gabby her healing garden and her direction. “I—I don’t know.”

  “Hmm.” The priest grunted. “Well, you have time. When you’re ready to make your own way in the world, you will know. Until then, ‘Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all thy strength.’”

  “Yes, Father.” Once the priest began quoting Scripture, Micah knew the subject was closed. Sure enough, Father Holcomb moved on with a pointed look at the load in his arms. Micah held it up. “Mrs. Parsons asked me to deliver these for her.”

  “Thank you. Place them there on the pew and let her know her kindness is greatly appreciated.” And the priest turned back to his private room. The meeting was at an end.

  Micah scuffled all the way to the door, listening to the echoes bounce down from the ceiling. Outside, he rounded the corner of the building and slammed into someone. The impact pitched him backwards and knocked his glasses askew. Righting them, a mop of untidy red hair swam into focus, then a dirty spray of freckles and a leering grin.

  “Glad to see me, Randall?” asked a voice that scratched like beach sand.

  Micah groaned. He could do without meeting Magnus McKinley any day of the week. The boy’s temper was permanently as frayed as the hem of his overalls, and he’d sooner knock out someone’s teeth than take a bath. If he attended the schoolhouse with any regularity, he would have been in the same grade as Micah. Instead, he had to sit in the front with the younger students, more to their pity.

  Around adults, Magnus put up a front as false as the one on Tom Slocum’s store. Grownups found him polite and agreeable, if somewhat ingratiating. But in the unsupervised moments after school, someone always went home with torn or bloody clothing.

  And there were no adults around now.

  “I think you owe me an apology, Randall,” Magnus growled. “You need to pay attention to where you’re going.”

  Micah bit his lip and said nothing.

  “Maybe you just didn’t see me,” Magnus suggested, snatching Micah’s glasses.

  “Give those back!” Micah lunged for them, but the boy held the lenses just out of reach.

  “Apologize,” Magnus demanded.

  “No way!”

  “Apologize!” He leaned in close and grabbed Micah by the collar of his shirt. Micah’s flailing arm caught him hard across the face.

  Magnus’s eyes popped wide before narrowing to two fiery slashes. He drew back his fist—the one holding the glasses. Micah cringed as he waited for the blow.

  Behind them, the church door opened.

  The hold at Micah’s throat loosened, and Magnus let out a squeaky chuckle. “For heaven’s sake, Randall, you really should look where you’re going. But no harm done, I suppose. Oh, hello, Father.”

  “Hello, Magnus. Everything all right here?” he asked, eyebrows dancing between them.

  Magnus waved him off. “Just a little collision. Randall got his glasses knocked off, but I retrieved them.” He made a show of giving them back.

  Micah snatched them away and scooted beyond the bully’s reach.

  The priest gave them each a stern glance. “Well then, I have a call to make. Have a nice day, boys.”

  Micah pushed past Magnus, but the boy grabbed his arm and snarled in his ear, “I’ll be seeing you again, Randall.”

  ***

  The luncheon was held in the courthouse, the only building other than the church large enough to house it. Swathed in castoff red, white, and blue banners from last month’s Independence Day celebration, the structure looked as overdressed and overheated as its patrons. Micah waded through a sea of bell skirts and lace to reach the buffet set up in the foyer. His mother had ordered him into his best manners and his most unfriendly clothing and made him wait until most of the guests had been served. Finally, he helped himself to a lonely dish of carrot sticks and some cucumber sandwiches that looked naked with their crusts pared away. All the peach and blueberry pies were gone. Only rhubarb remained.

  He hated rhubarb.

  Pressing farther into the courtroom, he noticed the benches had been pushed aside. He also observed that he was the youngest one in attendance by fifteen years. Tugging resentfully at his noose of a collar, he wished himself at the beach and as freely dressed as his sandwich.

  At the front of the room he could see Judge Ruby in animated conversation with Dr. Buford, the town’s round-stomached physician. Behind Ruby, propped against the judge’s bench, was a portrait of his esteemed father. Micah grimaced. He remembered the old man well. Pompous, obese, and intolerant, the man had once cracked Micah across the bottom with his cane just for walking by on the sidewalk. The bruise lasted two weeks.r />
  After forty minutes, each as long as an ocean horizon, Dr. Buford stepped to the bench and rapped on it with a gavel. “Order, order!” he joked in his booming voice. “This court will now come to order.”

  A ripple of laughter flowed through the room, but the noise of the gathering stilled as every eye fastened on the doctor.

  “I was asked by the historical society to present our own Judge Robert Ruby with a plaque honoring his father, our former judge, Colonel William Ruby, and I accepted with pleasure. Thirty years ago, when I first came to this town, an uncertain young man fresh out of school, Colonel Ruby was the first one to welcome me. After treating me to a wonderful dinner in his own home, he took me on a tour of the town, which was much smaller then, and shared his vision with me. ‘A medical physician is just what we need to help turn this fishing village into a proper county seat,’ he said.

  “Colonel Ruby’s first concern was always for the individual—his health, his rights, and his freedom—which is why he volunteered to join the Continental Army back in 1777. He served for four years, until a musket ball in his thigh forced him out of the service only months before Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.

  “And so it is with the greatest honor that I present Judge Robert Ruby with this plaque in honor of his father, our hometown hero, Colonel William Ruby.”

  A smattering of applause broke out as Judge Ruby accepted the plaque and a firm handshake from the doctor. “Thank you. Thank you all. On behalf of my father, I extend my humble appreciation for this honor. I know he would be well pleased.”

  “Of course he would have been pleased,” a voice barked from the back of the room. The crowd murmured and moved aside as the stern figure of Mrs. Parsons pushed her way to the front. She showed no sign of the weakness that had plagued her yesterday, and she carried a folded paper in her hand. “He was well pleased with any attention he could garnish for himself. That’s why he joined the service in the first place. Well, that and to escape the scandal that was about to break around him.”