by Stephen King
But that wasn’t the main thing, and Susan knew it. Quite simply put, the two of them had had enough of each other. The money was only one of Aunt Cord’s disappointed expectations; she had counted on having the house at the edge of the Drop to herself this summer . . . except, perhaps, for the occasional visit from Mr. Eldred Jonas, with whom Cordelia seemed quite taken. Instead, here they still were, one woman growing toward the end of her courses, thin, disapproving lips in a thin, disapproving face, tiny apple-breasts under her high-necked dresses with their choker collars (The Neck, she frequently told Susan, is the First Thing to Go), her hair losing its former chestnut shine and showing wire-threads of gray; the other young, intelligent, agile, and rounding toward the peak of her physical beauty. They grated against each other, each word seeming to produce a spark, and that was not surprising. The man who had loved them both enough to make them love each other was gone.
“Are ye going out on that horse?” Aunt Cord had said, putting her bowl down and sitting in a shaft of early sun. It was a bad location, one she never would have allowed herself to be caught in had Mr. Jonas been in attendance. The strong light made her face look like a carved mask. There was a cold-sore growing at one corner of her mouth; she always got them when she was not sleeping well.
“Aye,” Susan said.
“Ye should eat more’n that, then. ’Twon’t keep ye til nine o’ the clock, girl.”
“It’ll keep me fine,” Susan had replied, eating the sections of orange faster. She could see where this was tending, could see the look of dislike and disapproval in her aunt’s eyes, and wanted to get away from the table before trouble could begin.
“Why not let me get ye a dish of this?” Aunt Cord asked, and plopped her spoon into her oatmeal. To Susan it sounded like a horse’s hoof stamping down in mud—or shit—and her stomach clenched. “It’ll hold ye to lunch, if ye plan to ride so long. I suppose a fine young lady such as yerself can’t be bothered with chores—”
“They’re done.” And you know they’re done, she did not add. I did em while you were sitting before your glass, poking at that sore on your mouth.
Aunt Cord dropped a chunk of creamery butter into her muck—Susan had no idea how the woman stayed so thin, really she didn’t—and watched it begin to melt. For a moment it seemed that breakfast might end on a reasonably civilized note, after all.
Then the shirt business had begun.
“Before ye go out, Susan, I want ye to take off that rag you’re wearing and put on one of the new riding blouses Thorin sent ye week before last. It’s the least ye can do to show yer—”
Anything her aunt might have said past that point would have been lost in anger even if Susan hadn’t interrupted. She passed a hand down the sleeve of her shirt, loving its texture—it was almost velvety from so many washings. “This rag belonged to my father!”
“Aye, Pat’s.” Aunt Cord sniffed. “It’s too big for ye, and worn out, and not proper, in any case. When you were young it was mayhap all right to wear a man’s button-shirt, but now that ye have a woman’s bustline . . .”
The riding blouses were on hangers in the corner; they had come four days ago and Susan hadn’t even deigned to take them up to her room. There were three of them, one red, one green, one blue, all silk, all undoubtedly worth a small fortune. She loathed their pretension, and the overblown, blushy-frilly look of them: full sleeves to flutter artistically in the wind, great floppy foolish collars . . . and, of course, the low-scooped fronts which were probably all Thorin would see if she appeared before him dressed in one. As she wouldn’t, if she could possibly help it.
“My ‘woman’s bust-line,’ as you call it, is of no interest to me and can’t possibly be of any interest to anyone else when I’m out riding,” Susan said.
“Perhaps, perhaps not. If one of the Barony’s drovers should see you—even Rennie, he’s out that way all the time, as ye well know—it wouldn’t hurt for him to mention to Hart that he saw ye wearing one of the camisas that he so kindly gave to ye. Now would it? Why do ye have to be such a stiff-kins, girl? Why always so unwilling, so unfair?”
“What does it matter to ye, one way or t’other?” Susan had asked. “Ye have the money, don’t ye? And ye’ll have more yet. After he fucks me.”
Aunt Cord, her face white and shocked and furious, had leaned across the table and slapped her. “How dare thee use that word in my house, ye malhablada? How dare ye?”
That was when her tears began to flow—at hearing her call it her house. “It was my father’s house! His and mine! Ye were all on yer own with no real place to go, except perhaps to the Quarters, and he took ye in! He took ye in, Aunt!”
The last two orange sections were still in her hand. She threw them into her aunt’s face, then pushed herself back from the table so violently that her chair tottered, tipped, and spilled her to the floor. Her aunt’s shadow fell over her. Susan crawled frantically out of it, her hair hanging, her slapped cheek throbbing, her eyes burning with tears, her throat swelled and hot. At last she found her feet.
“Ye ungrateful girl,” her aunt said. Her voice was soft and so full of venom it was almost caressing. “After all I have done for thee, and all Hart Thorin has done for thee. Why, the very nag ye mean to ride this morning was Hart’s gift of respect to—”
“PYLON WAS OURS!” she shrieked, almost maddened with fury at this deliberate blurring of the truth. “ALL OF THEM WERE! THE HORSES, THE LAND—THEY WERE OURS!”
“Lower thy voice,” Aunt Cord said.
Susan took a deep breath and tried to find some control. She swept her hair back from her face, revealing the red print of Aunt Cord’s hand on her cheek. Cordelia flinched a little at the sight of it.
“My father never would have allowed this,” Susan said. “He never would have allowed me to go as Hart Thorin’s gilly. Whatever he might have felt about Hart as the Mayor . . . or as his patrono . . . he never would have allowed this. And ye know it. Thee knows it.”
Aunt Cord rolled her eyes, then twirled a finger around her ear as if Susan had gone mad. “Thee agreed to it yerself, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty. Aye, so ye did. And if yer girlish megrims now cause ye to want to cry off what’s been done—”
“Aye,” Susan agreed. “I agreed to the bargain, so I did. After ye’d dunned me about it day and night, after ye’d come to me in tears—”
“I never did!” Cordelia cried, stung.
“Have ye forgotten so quick, Aunt? Aye, I suppose. As by tonight ye’ll have forgotten slapping me at breakfast. Well, I haven’t forgotten. Thee cried, all right, cried and told me ye feared we might be turned off the land, since we had no more legal right to it, that we’d be on the road, thee wept and said—”
“Stop calling me that!” Aunt Cord shouted. Nothing on earth maddened her so much as having her own thees and thous turned back at her. “Thee has no more right to the old tongue than thee has to thy stupid sheep’s complaints! Go on! Get out!”
But Susan went on. Her rage was at the flood and would not be turned aside.
“Thee wept and said we’d be turned out, turned west, that we’d never see my da’s homestead or Hambry again . . . and then, when I was frightened enough, ye talked of the cunning little baby I’d have. The land that was ours to begin with given back again. The horses that were ours likewise given back. As a sign of the Mayor’s honesty, I have a horse I myself helped to foal. And what have I done to deserve these things that would have been mine in any case, but for the loss of a single paper? What have I done so that he should give ye money? What have I done save promise to fuck him while his wife of forty year sleeps down the hall?”
“Is it the money ye want, then?” Aunt Cord asked, smiling furiously. “Do ye and do ye and aye? Ye shall have it, then. Take it, keep it, lose it, feed it to the swine, I care not!”
She turned to her purse, which hung on a post by the stove. She began to fumble in it, but her motions quickly lost speed and conviction. There was an oval of mirro
r mounted to the left of the kitchen doorway, and in it Susan caught sight of her aunt’s face. What she saw there—a mixture of hatred, dismay, and greed—made her heart sink.
“Never mind, Aunt. I see thee’s loath to give it up, and I wouldn’t have it, anyway. It’s whore’s money.”
Aunt Cord turned back to her, face shocked, her purse conveniently forgotten. “ ’Tis not whoring, ye stupid get! Why, some of the greatest women in history have been gillys, and some of the greatest men have been born of gillys. ’Tis not whoring!”
Susan ripped the red silk blouse from where it hung and held it up. The shirt moulded itself to her breasts as if it had been longing all the while to touch them. “Then why does he send me these whore’s clothes?”
“Susan!” Tears stood in Aunt Cord’s eyes.
Susan flung the shirt at her as she had the orange slices. It landed on her shoes. “Pick it up and put it on yerself, if ye fancy. You spread yer legs for him, if ye fancy.”
She turned and hurled herself out the door. Her aunt’s half-hysterical shriek had followed her: “Don’t thee go off thinking foolish thoughts, Susan! Foolish thoughts lead to foolish deeds, and it’s too late for either! Thee’s agreed!”
She knew that. And however fast she rode Pylon along the Drop, she could not outrace her knowing. She had agreed, and no matter how horrified Pat Delgado might have been at the fix she had gotten herself into, he would have seen one thing clear—she had made a promise, and promises must be kept. Hell awaited those who would not do so.
3
She eased the rosillo back while he still had plenty of wind. She looked behind her, saw that she had come nearly a mile, and brought him down further—to a canter, a trot, a fast walk. She took a deep breath and let it out. For the first time that morning she registered the day’s bright beauty—gulls circling in the hazy air off to the west, high grasses all around her, and flowers in every shaded cranny: cornflowers and lupin and phlox and her favorites, the delicate blue silkflowers. From everywhere came the somnolent buzz of bees. The sound soothed her, and with the high surge of her emotions subsiding a little, she was able to admit something to herself . . . admit it, and then voice it aloud.
“Will Dearborn,” she said, and shivered at the sound of his name on her lips, even though there was no one to hear it but Pylon and the bees. So she said it again, and when the words were out she abruptly turned her own wrist inward to her mouth and kissed it where the blood beat close to the surface. The action shocked her because she hadn’t known she was going to do it, and shocked her more because the taste of her own skin and sweat aroused her immediately. She felt an urge to cool herself off as she had in her bed after meeting him. The way she felt, it would be short work.
Instead, she growled her father’s favorite cuss—“Oh, bite it!”—and spat past her boot. Will Dearborn had been responsible for all too much upset in her life these last three weeks; Will Dearborn with his unsettling blue eyes, his dark tumble of hair, and his stiff-necked, judgmental attitude. I can be discreet, madam. As for propriety? I’m amazed you even know the word.
Every time she thought of that, her blood sang with anger and shame. Mostly anger. How dare he presume to make judgments? He who had grown up possessing every luxury, no doubt with servants to tend his every whim and so much gold that he likely didn’t even need it—he would be given the things he wanted free, as a way of currying favor. What would a boy like that—for that was all he was, really, just a boy—know about the hard choices she had made? For that matter, how could such as Mr. Will Dearborn of Hemphill understand that she hadn’t really made those choices at all? That she had been carried to them the way a mother cat carries a wayward kitten back to the nesting-box, by the scruff of the neck?
Still, he wouldn’t leave her mind; she knew, even if Aunt Cord didn’t, that there had been an unseen third present at their quarrel this morning.
She knew something else as well, something that would have upset her aunt to no end.
Will Dearborn hadn’t forgotten her, either.
4
About a week after the welcoming dinner and Dearborn’s disastrous, hurtful remark to her, the retarded slops-fella from the Travellers’ Rest—Sheemie, folks called him—had appeared at the house Susan and her aunt shared. In his hands he held a large bouquet, mostly made up of the wildflowers that grew out on the Drop, but with a scattering of dusky wild roses, as well. They looked like pink punctuation marks. On the boy’s face there had been a wide, sunny grin as he swung the gate open, not waiting for an invitation.
Susan had been sweeping the front walk at the time; Aunt Cord had been out back, in the garden. That was fortunate, but not very surprising; these days the two of them got on best when they kept apart as much as they could.
Susan had watched Sheemie come up the walk, his grin beaming out from behind his upheld freight of flowers, with a mixture of fascination and horror.
“G’day, Susan Delgado, daughter of Pat,” Sheemie said cheerfully. “I come to you on an errand and cry yer pardon at any troubleation I be, oh aye, for I am a problem for folks, and know it same as them. These be for you. Here.”
He thrust them out, and she saw a small, folded envelope tucked amongst them.
“Susan?” Aunt Cord’s voice, from around the side of the house . . . and getting closer. “Susan, did I hear the gate?”
“Yes, Aunt!” she called back. Curse the woman’s sharp ears! Susan nimbly plucked the envelope from its place among the phlox and daisies. Into her dress pocket it went.
“They from my third-best friend,” Sheemie said. “I got three different friends now. This many.” He held up two fingers, frowned, added two more, and then grinned splendidly. “Arthur Heath my first-best friend, Dick Stockworth my second-best friend. My third-best friend—”
“Hush!” Susan said in a low, fierce voice that made Sheemie’s smile fade. “Not a word about your three friends.”
A funny little flush, almost like a pocket fever, raced across her skin—it seemed to run down her neck from her cheeks, then slip all the way to her feet. There had been a lot of talk in Hambry about Sheemie’s new friends during the past week—talk about little else, it seemed. The stories she had heard were outlandish, but if they weren’t true, why did the versions told by so many different witnesses sound so much alike?
Susan was still trying to get herself back under control when Aunt Cord swept around the corner. Sheemie fell back a step at the sight of her, puzzlement becoming outright dismay. Her aunt was allergic to beestings, and was presently swaddled from the top of her straw ’brera to the hem of her faded garden dress in gauzy stuff that made her look peculiar in strong light and downright eerie in shade. Adding a final touch to her costume, she carried a pair of dirt-streaked garden shears in one gloved hand.
She saw the bouquet and bore down on it, shears raised. When she reached her niece, she slid the scissors into a loop on her belt (almost reluctantly, it seemed to the niece herself) and parted the veil on her face. “Who sent ye those?”
“I don’t know, Aunt,” Susan said, much more calmly than she felt. “This is the young man from the inn—”
“Inn!” Aunt Cord snorted.
“He doesn’t seem to know who sent him,” Susan carried on. If only she could get him out of here! “He’s, well, I suppose you’d say he’s—”
“He’s a fool, yes, I know that.” Aunt Cord cast Susan a brief, irritated look, then bent her attention on Sheemie. Talking with her gloved hands upon her knees, shouting directly into his face, she asked: “WHO . . . SENT . . . THESE . . . FLOWERS . . . YOUNG . . . MAN?”
The wings of her face-veil, which had been pushed aside, now fell back into place. Sheemie took another step backward. He looked frightened.
“WAS IT . . . PERHAPS . . . SOMEONE FROM . . . SEAFRONT? . . . FROM . . . MAYOR . . . THORIN? . . . TELL . . . ME . . . AND . . . I’LL . . . GIVE . . . YOU . . . A PENNY.”
Susan’s heart sank, sure he would tel
l—he’d not have the wit to understand he’d be getting her into trouble. Will, too, likely.
But Sheemie only shook his head. “Don’t ’member. I got a empty head, sai, so I do. Stanley says I a bugwit.”
His grin shone out again, a splendid thing full of white, even teeth. Aunt Cord answered it with a grimace. “Oh, foo! Be gone, then. Straight back to town, too—don’t be hanging around hoping for a goose-feather. For a boy who can’t remember deserves not so much as a penny! And don’t you come back here again, no matter who wants you to carry flowers for the young sai. Do you hear me?”
Sheemie had nodded energetically. Then: “Sai?”
Aunt Cord glowered at him. The vertical line on her forehead had been very prominent that day.
“Why you all wropped up in cobwebbies, sai?”
“Get out of here, ye impudent cull!” Aunt Cord cried. She had a good loud voice when she wanted to use it, and Sheemie jumped back from her in alarm. When she was sure he was headed back down the High Street toward town and had no intention of returning to their gate and hanging about in hopes of a tip, Aunt Cord had turned to Susan.
“Get those in some water before they wilt, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty, and don’t go mooning about, wondering who yer secret admirer might be.”
Then Aunt Cord had smiled. A real smile. What hurt Susan the most, confused her the most, was that her aunt was no cradle-story ogre, no witch like Rhea of the Cöos. There was no monster here, only a maiden lady with some few social pretensions, a love of gold and silver, and a fear of being turned out, penniless, into the world.
“For folks such as us, Susie-pie,” she said, speaking with a terrible heavy kindness, “ ’tis best to stick to our housework and leave dreams to them as can afford them.”
