by Noelle Carle
Chapter Ten
Beyond the Pale of Law
Young William Eliot’s shoulders strained as he heaved on the bag holding his clothes. Aubrey Newell shifted the weight of Henry’s clothing and held out his hand. “Here, why don’t you let me?”
Willie scowled, his cheeks flushed and he swung the bag back over his shoulders and grunted.
Henry laughed, running ahead. He taunted his brother, “I’m gonna beat ya there!”
Willie just bent his head lower. His jaw was working and he fumed mutinously.
“Be glad the Spencer’s are taking you in,” Aubrey intoned. “You’ll be just across the cove from your father. Mighta gone to an orphanage instead.”
William’s footsteps slowed. He glanced sideways at Aubrey. ”You been to an orphanage, Aubrey?”
“Maybe, visiting somebody. Anyways, it’s just for a while, right?”
“But I want to go out fishing with you and Papa!”
“You’ve got to grow a little stronger. And go to school. Your father told you already.”
William stopped. “But you’re leaving too! I saw your stuff all packed.”
Aubrey stopped also and grabbed Will’s arm. He shook it lightly and asked seriously, “You didn’t tell no one?”
Young William, who was shaping up to be a replica of his father, pulled away, a negligent look on his face. “No, but who cares anyway. Except you’ll leave my father with just Henry to help. I’m stronger’n him!”
Aubrey smiled. “That’s my plan! When I leave, he’ll see how much he needs you and let you come work on the boat too.”
A grin lit up Will’s face, all thoughts of his education laid aside.
A shout from Henry urged them on to the Spencer’s where the boys were going to be living. A similar arrangement had been worked out with the Cooper’s. They would be caring for the two younger boys, Richard and Peter. The twins, Ivy and Isabella and baby Caroline were going to live with Mary Reid, with the baby going to Pastor and Mrs. Whiting’s care during the school days.
When the community learned of Reg’s plans to send the children away through Pastor Whiting, he had to turn people away who wanted to help. It was decided not to separate the young ones completely, so they were taken in pairs. Mary was so attached to the baby that she decided to take care of her and the twins.
Reg was relieved. Esther was distraught. But he had firmly answered each of her protests. When she assured him that she was capable of taking care of the household, he said she was meant to finish school, that it was her mother’s dearest wish that all the children be educated. When she protested that it wasn’t right to take the children away from their home, he asked her how she’d have felt with them going to Boston or Waldoboro. When she asked how long this arrangement would be in effect, his volume raised a notch and he shortly replied, “Until I say it’s done.”
He was torn by it though. As kindly as many in the village felt, there were others who thought it was too much to ask, that the world was too muddled with the war and rationing and modern contraptions coming to their very village without having to care for someone else’s children. Reg felt a sense of helpless frustration and fallen pride that he was unable to cope with his own children. He felt it when the girls clung to him after he carried their things to the teacher’s house and helped her set up a bedroom for them. He felt it when he stopped in at Cooper’s store and saw little Richard come skipping down the stairs with his arms held out. And Peter, his little scholar asking in his precise voice, “Shouldn’t we be returning home now, Father?”
On this day, he felt it most piercingly when it was time for Henry and William to move up to the Spencer’s. Not wanting to separate them, as Mary had advised, he asked the Spencer’s to take the boys together. Henry took it, as he took everything, as a grand adventure, but William was angry. He asked that Aubrey help them move their belongings and barely met his father’s eyes as they left the house. He understood the need for help with the little kids, but he wasn’t little any longer. He was thirteen, nearly as tall as his father, and strong enough to lift himself up on the apple tree branch in their back yard. This is what he told his father the night before, while his chin bunched and his eyes gleamed with tears. “It’s for their good,” Reg told himself. “It’s for Esther’s good.”
Alison had walked home with Esther and Cleo to the strangely silent house. She stayed awhile with them, watching Cleo defiantly cut four inches off her braid and throw it triumphantly into the woodstove. But as she watched her hair burn in the stove, Cleo grew somber and her mood soon soured. Esther began preparations for supper, complaining that she hardly knew how to cook for four people. Alison hurried home ahead of the darkness.
Summer had baked and dried them, with above normal temperatures in July and August. Then abruptly, as if a switch had been thrown, fall was upon them. Winds that had been a warm caress two weeks before changed direction, bullying and chilling them. Alison fumbled with her sweater as she started down the road. She held her schoolbooks to her chest, half running down the Eliot’s long path into the village. As the path met the main road, she sighted a figure ahead of her carrying a couple of large bundles. Coming up closer behind him, she recognized Aubrey Newell. They had heard him come in at the Eliot’s house and leave shortly after.
“Where’re you going, Aubrey?”
He turned. When he saw her, he stopped walking until she caught up. In the fading light he seemed to study her face with a bemused expression. Finally he answered, “I’m leaving now.” He walked along beside her. She recognized that he held a worn leather suitcase and a large canvas bag. She studied them as if they would reveal his destination, then questioned, “Where are you going? Why now?”
“It’s time to go. Mr. Eliot has all the help he needs. He just can’t see it. Besides, I’m going to join up now.” He straightened as he said it. He was strong; his arms muscled from hefting sodden wooden lobster traps up from the water and his back limber from the work. He was tall and browned by the constant days on the water. Alison somehow doubted his age. He’d been too many places and talked quite knowledgeably of so many things. He spoke matter-of-factly of working at the shipyard, of helping keep a lighthouse, of working in a cannery. There was something about him that didn’t ring true. Still she had grown to like him. He found that he shared the same fascination as Owen with mechanical contraptions. He spent time with her brother studying the Cooper’s new automobile. He had endeared himself to most of the Eliot children and pitched in willingly with all the chores, even those considered to be women’s work. She was sad to see him leave.
“How are you getting to the train?” she asked him.
His steps slowed and he shrugged.
“Maybe Mr. Cooper would take you in his Ford!” she teased.
He smiled slowly as he thought of that, but didn’t speak.
“No, really do you want a ride? If you can wait till morning Remick could take you in our buggy.”
“No,” he shook his head. “But…” he hesitated deliberately.
Alison peered up at him through the deepening twilight. “What?”
“Would you…could I show you something I’ve been working on?”
“Well, all right. It’s getting dark. What is it?” She stopped, expecting to see him swing the canvas bag off his shoulder and open it.
He shook his head, smiling. “It’s not here. It’s up by the old fort. I couldn’t move it.”
Alison hesitated now. She hated to go through the Eliot’s woods. She bit her lip indecisively, but he seemed so eager. “It’ll be even darker in the woods,” she began.
“We’ll be fine,” he proclaimed. “I’ll be with you.”
He stood the bag beside the suitcase saying, “I’ll come back for these.” They turned back the way they’d come, following the road until it edged Eliot’s wood lot and then went through the woods on a faint trail. Aubrey said nothing but hummed a little to himself. He held back the tree branches until she
passed them, took her arm to steady her over fallen logs or through thick brush. The light here was shadowy and the silence so profound that the skittering of a busy squirrel seemed to her the heavy shuffling of a bear. She held onto Aubrey’s arm and he grinned down at her. She swallowed and smiled wanly. They continued for several moments until they both stepped gingerly over an ancient rock wall. The historical society was especially protective of that wall, for in sections it was leaning precariously or crumbling away. Away from the trees and brush it was lighter and Alison lost the smothered feeling she’d had in the woods.
Off to their right on a high rise stood the crumbling fort, settled like a patient bovine on its haunches. Another partial brick building stood closer to the woods, thought to be either a barracks or a powder house. Down a gentle slope, closer to the shore, lay a jumble of granite rocks. These were supposed to be the foundation for additional battlements connected to underground tunnels from which guns could be fired without being seen. The project was abandoned sometime after the Civil War and the granite stood untouched; seemingly forgotten and definitely too heavy to be taken.
It was to these rocks that Aubrey led Alison. He went to the one farthest from the fort and brought her around to see its end.
“Look,” he said, grinning and pointing.
Alison peered at the rock and gasped. Chipped away from its end was the clearly defined head and shoulders of a man. She could see the rock chips and dust scattered around its base on the grass, attesting to the hours of time spent here. “Oh my, Aubrey!” she exclaimed. “It’s…it’s amazing!” Kneeling down she examined it more closely. Despite its rough surface, the head was rounded and shapely. She could make out features; the eyes downcast, the mouth unsmiling but somehow determined, the jaw strong. “When did you do this? Where did you learn how to do this?”
He shrugged. “I’ve done it since I was a kid. Just takes a hammer and chisel and some good stone.”
“But this must have taken months!”
“Oh, aye. Granite’s hard,” he nodded. He was studying her as she ran her hand over the shape of it. “I tried to make it look like Sam, but his face seems kinda distant in my mind.” He smiled apologetically.
Alison rose, stepped back from it and brought her hands to her heart in a stricken gesture. She turned to Aubrey, searching his face and whispering, “You did this for me?”
He dropped his gaze, putting his hands in his pockets. A breeze puffed up off the water, brushing his hair onto his forehead. He pushed it back. He blew out a slow breath. “I felt real bad ever since that day I teased you. I just wanted to do something nice for you. I was gonna let you find it on your own someday.” His words died away when he saw tears in her eyes.
“You’ve been working on this since May?” she asked, swiping the tears from her cheeks. She felt such a quantity of gratitude and some nameless feeling crowding her heart that she felt strangled. She stepped closer to Aubrey, lifted her arms and hugged him closely. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” she murmured.
He stiffened at first then he returned her embrace carefully. He’s taller than Sam, she remembered thinking, and then he was kissing her. She drew away abruptly to meet his eyes, seeing in them such desolation and longing that her heart moved with pity. “I guess that’ll do for a thank you,” she said, smiling a little at him, wishing she could change the sadness there.
His hand came up to brush her forehead, move down her cheek and then over her hair. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered. “I always have your face in my mind. I wish…” he left off, swallowing hard.
“Oh, Aubrey,” Alison began. “Don’t…” She didn’t know what to say. When she saw tears in his eyes glittering in the near darkness she pushed up onto her tiptoes and kissed him again. This time she lingered, realizing she didn’t want to stop kissing him. Steadily Aubrey’s breath quickened and he covered her face and neck with kisses, murmuring, “I love you. I love you so much. I don’t want to go now.” His grasp around her tightened and Alison sighed. It felt so good to be held and it made her miss Sam so much. Sam! His face loomed in her mind. She pulled away, scrambled backwards, and sat down on the grass as her knees trembled. She let out a shaky breath and patted the ground beside her. “Aubrey, come here.”
He sat down heavily. He crossed his arms atop his raised knees then lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” came his hollow apology.
Alison tried to still her breathing. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t know. I don’t think you really love me.”
Slowly Aubrey raised his head. “Don’t tell me how I feel,” he began grimly. But as he looked at her his voice softened again. “You can’t know. You can’t know how from the first time I laid eyes on you I wanted to hold you, to love you.” His last words came out in a strangled gasp and his shoulders heaved as he made an effort to restrain his tears.
“Aubrey!” Alison laid her head on his arm and reached across his shoulders. “No, don’t.”
In one movement he again enveloped her in his arms, laying her back on the ground and covering her mouth with his. “Say it,” he whispered between kisses. “Say it to me.”
She grasped his head and held it still, staring up at him in the half-light, finally questioning, “Say what?”
His answered came slowly with his ragged breathing. “That you’ll hold me in your heart and your mind. That you’re going to think of me well and safe and whole.”
Alison gasped as she remembered the words she’d said to Sam before he departed for his training. She remembered also the footsteps they’d heard at the end of the wharf as they had kissed. “Oh, Aubrey” she whispered, her quiet voice still conveying her disappointment. “That was you? You listened to us!” She moved to sit up then.
But something changed in him. His arms tightened and he pushed her back, holding her with one arm while he fumbled with the buttons on her shirt. “I know you love me. You kiss me like you love me,” he said harshly.
Alison stiffened, frightened and shocked, and her efforts to resist him were too feeble compared to his strength. His hands were all over her. His voice repeated in her ear, “Love me, love me,” until it roared in her head and it was all she could hear for a long time.
Chapter Eleven
Ruthlessly Sent to the Bottom
When Alison came to herself, it was with the realization that it was pitch black out, and Aubrey was gone. She recognized disbelief and despair over what had just happened hovering on the edges of her consciousness, but, as if afraid to touch a fresh wound, her mind refused to dwell on this horror. She remembered Aubrey scrambling away. It seemed she heard him crying and saying how sorry he was, then it was quiet. However, minutes later he was back and incongruously, he pulled her skirt down over her legs, and straightened her shirt over her chest. She realized these things now; they were like a dream that she couldn’t quite piece together. Mechanically she sat up, buttoning her shirt. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. She could see the outlines of the trees against the sky. She could make out the bulk of the fort over her shoulder. The piles of granite blocks were just dark shadows set against the darker trees. She could hear the steady splash of waves pushed in by a now gusty breeze. That breeze soughed through the trees shutting out any other sounds.
How long she sat there she had no idea. She was gripped by a disinclination to either think or move. She realized that tears were dripping down her cheeks, but she felt nothing except a dull coldness moving up her body until she was shivering violently. She held at bay all the thoughts that were clamoring for her attention; the pain in her body, the loss of her purity, the change this would mean for her life, the contemptible selfishness of Aubrey Newell, and her own sense of guilt over her intimacy with him. She focused on remembering what happened with her schoolbooks. She found herself standing. Then she was walking back over to the pile of granite. There they were, forgotten as she had knelt to examine the sculpture. Being near it was akin to being near Sam and she couldn’t bear it.
A
lison snatched the books up and ran across the lawn to the woods. Bears, bobcats or coyotes never even crossed her mind as she ran. She must get away, get back home…home! No, she couldn’t face them. She thought she couldn’t face anyone, for surely they’d see; surely they would know to look at her that she was no longer the Alison she was.
She burst through the trees onto the road and ran all the way down to the center of the village where she spied Remick approaching in the buggy. He pulled up next to her, asking disinterestedly, “Where you been? We already ate supper. Figured you were at Eliot’s.” He nodded up the hill.
Alison blinked, wondering what time it was. She just stood there mutely, peering up at her brother in the swaying light of the lantern hung from the buggy.
“What’s the matter with you?”
Grateful for the intermittent darkness, Alison spoke out the first thought that came to her. “I’m going to Mrs. Reid’s, for the night. Tell Papa please.”
Remick sighed. “Owen’s right. We should get a telephone! By the way, ask your teacher if she needs any potatoes. We’re going to have more than we’ll ever use.”
He turned the buggy around and left her standing there in the dark. Her feet led her to the teacher’s house where she saw the glow of a lamp in the kitchen. A gust of wind rattled a patch of dying sunflowers next to the house, sounding like dry chuckling. She rapped on the door and then leaned her head against the doorjamb. Shortly the door was pulled open to reveal her teacher, her kind face lambent with the glow of the lantern.
