Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  Mr. Charter picked up the topic of redemption, embellishing upon what he’d said on the trek home, now that he’d had time to reflect. “Cotton Mather is right,” he told Lavinia, “when he says that children are all fountains of evil. I was lax in my…my life before with my—our—girls.” He was forever stumbling over his pronouns, and part of the reason his preaching failed to convince Kate was that he never quite seemed to know what he was about to say.

  “They don’t recognize their own innate sinfulness,” to which Lavinia nodded, casting them all distrustful glances. “Katherine, you provoke people with your questioning and doubting.” The rebuke stung her and she looked back at her father with hurtful eyes, but he didn’t meet her gaze, speaking again to Lavinia. “She attempted to engage in religious discourse with a nonbeliever. I fear that for all its nearness to Harbinger, Jekyll’s Glen may not be persuaded of Reverend Fitcher’s rightness.”

  “Many will not be swayed before the day of reckoning, husband,” Lavinia said. “And still others will not resign from their sinful ways even then. That’s what He has told us, and so it’s to be. Some’ll wait until the sky opens to swallow them. But it’ll be too late then. The door will have closed and no entreaties will persuade.”

  “I’m persuaded, ma’am,” Amy said. “I want to be saved.” She cast a trembling sidelong glance at her sisters.

  Lavinia nodded solemnly. “The easiest room in hell awaits children,” she said.

  Amy quivered with guilt, but the other two sat stiffly, a defiant wall against these familiar words. Children could all expect to occupy that room. Children had been visited by the devil early, before their parents could intercept and protect them. The devil came into their rooms, into their cribs, to breathe his foul breath upon them before they’d grown enough to have any will or knowledge with which to combat his evil. He breathed sin into them. Being the devil, he hid his intervention even from their memories.

  They knew this speech by heart, and may have believed in their wickedness after a fashion, each with her own interpretation, her own response: Vern choosing to examine her sinfulness; Amy accepting it all; Kate awaiting better proof. The catalogue of sins might well drag on for hours.

  Vern and Kate finished their tea and offered to clean up. Their father smiled grimly to his wife and gestured as if to say here was proof that his words had had an impact on their wretched souls.

  Vern soon excused herself from the kitchen and went out the back door to the privy. Kate put away the cups and the pot, then found her way outside as well.

  Her sister awaited her in back of the privy. Immediately she set off into the woods, keeping the shed between her and the kitchen door, Kate following close behind her.

  “If anyone asks, we decided to hunt for berries to make a tart,” she said over her shoulder.

  “There aren’t any berries so early,” Kate replied, but she knew her sister knew that. Finally Vern stopped and turned to her. They stood beside a big birch tree, its roots like knucklebones clutching the earth.

  “What is it?” Kate asked.

  Her sister glanced about, although no one could have sneaked up on them there, not even one of Fenimore Cooper’s Mohawks. Vern’s gaze was so intense that Kate was compelled to follow it back to the house. There was nothing there she could see.

  Finally, at the point where she had begun to think her sister was stalling just to provoke her, Vern told her what had happened.

  Four

  NO DOUBT VERN WOULD HAVE appreciated the morning a great deal more had she not been saddled with the company of her stepmother.

  They’d avoided the hawker sharpening knives on the street, crossing behind the line of customers who, sporting their various tools and blades, looked like an incipient mob.

  Lavinia took quick short steps when she walked anywhere, which reminded Vern of a spider; the quick little movements let her dart past anyone who might have tried to confront or greet her, or establish a conversation. Before they could get a fix upon her she had moved and moved again. Even so, her defense failed her when, having avoided the queue, she stepped onto the walk on the far side of the road only to be confronted by a nicely dressed couple, who, passing just at that moment, wished them both a pleasant good morning. Lavinia flicked her head, a twist to the side, the slightest sign of acknowledgment. Unprepared for the inconvenience of courtesy but unable to escape, her eyes darted to their faces as her own face pinched into a wince of a smile and she dodged around them. Not bound by similar misanthropy, Vern tilted back her parasol and with a smile replied with sincere pleasure, “Good morning.” She gave the parasol a little spin. The man tipped his hat and the woman returned her smile. They were slicked up as if for going to church. Even if they were, it wouldn’t be the “true church,” as Lavinia would have said.

  Right behind them came another man. Lavinia managed to elude his outstretched hand, but he blocked Vern’s way for a moment and presented her a handbill. Then, tipping his hat, he walked on. She glanced at the bill—it was an advertisement for a demonstration of mesmerism. Looking back, she saw that the man had caught up with the couple, and was offering them a handbill, too. He had a sheaf of them pressed in one armpit.

  Vern folded the handbill to carry with her. She saw Kate across the road, still waiting for their father to come out of the cooper’s. Lavinia called her name impatiently. She hurried on, collapsing the parasol before she passed through the front of Van Hollander’s General Store.

  Lavinia’s stated purpose in coming to Jekyll’s Glen had been to purchase candles if any could be had. Failing that, they would have to make their own.

  Back in Boston, chandlers had been plentiful and candles easy to come by, although Vern had once helped her mother make bayberry ones for some special occasion, Christmas most likely. Bayberry gave off a lovely scent, but it had been hateful work. Before adding the bayberries, her mother had melted mutton tallow, which stank so in its hot liquid state that she’d smelled its ghostly traces throughout the house for days afterward. It seemed to have bled into her skin. She hoped the store would have plenty of candles for sale.

  Van Hollander didn’t know them, and when they walked in, he was busy assisting some other people. Vern turned her attention to idly inspecting the dry goods he offered. He had large burlap bags of flour, cornmeal, dry beans, and of ground feed for animals and bags of potash for making soap. There were some bonnets, beside a stack of folded shirts all of simple muslin. Pre-made clothing was so new a product that the shirts here were all of a single size, which looked to Vern large enough to fit most men. There were bolts of calico in plain dark colors and stripes, glassware and china, jars of maple sugar and syrup and horehound candies, a small barrel of eggs in lime water, bottles of blackstrap and flax seed oil, shovels and leather fire buckets. Her foot slipped at one point, and she looked down to find that she’d stepped in someone’s spit tobacco. The dusty floor everywhere seemed to be spotted with the stuff. It had been thus in Boston, too, but more on the streets than indoors. The habit disgusted her. At least her father had never taken up spitting.

  While Vern made her circuit of the store, Lavinia pulled out a purse and began to count half and quarter eagles, as if to see how much she would be able to buy. She counted her money openly, making certain that Van Hollander heard the clinking and saw the coins. Vern noticed first. Lavinia seemed to the girls to have an infinite supply of money, the source of which they had thus far failed to locate.

  The dour-faced Van Hollander lit up like a lantern at the sound and sight of those coins. Vern imagined that he was more often paid in less reliable currency—probably bungtown coppers and useless State Bank notes, and maybe even a pig in a place like this. He concluded his transaction with a desperate haste and fairly flung himself in Lavinia’s direction. She introduced herself and Vern, and explained where they were living. If the name Pulaski meant anything to him, Van Hollander knew how to mask it. “Mrs. Lavinia,” he said, immediately intimate, “what is it I can d
o for you today?”

  “Candles. We need some candles.”

  He blanched. “Mrs. Lavinia, I so regret that the very first thing you ask of me I don’t have. The great truth of it is, I sold the last of ’em to the folks at Harbinger yesterday late, quite unexpected. I could have some for you by Thursday if that’s consolation. And it’ll do you no good going across the road to Eggleston’s, as they bought up all of his, too. It’s a big place they have to light out there, with all them buildings and people. Are you familiar with the estate of Reverend Fitcher?”

  “Yes, I am acquainted with it,” she said dryly, and Vern had to restrain herself from laughing aloud at her stepmother’s obfuscation. “I believe if you have spermaceti for sale, we will solve our lighting problems for now.”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “That I do have, in buckets. And I’ll cut you the price, as I can’t fulfill the other.”

  Lavinia nodded. “Then we’ll make do. I believe we have the rest of the ingredients for candles.” She cast a glance at Vern for confirmation.

  “We have beeswax, yes’m. We could use alum.”

  Van Hollander said, “And you’ll be needing wicks then?”

  “Vernelia?”

  “We’ll need some. I don’t believe we have any.”

  Van Hollander collected the items. As he placed the wicks on the counter he asked, “What else might I get for you?”

  “Some salted pork or beef if you have it. Some butter and preserves. And can you tell me where one might purchase vegetables?”

  The answer it turned out was from him. He had a back room to the store where he kept potatoes and onions, cheeses, raisins, and coffee beans along with barrels of pork and beef in brine. They bought some of most everything he had and he loaded it into a burlap bag; Lavinia even consented to bring with them a little maple sugar candy as a treat for the girls. She paid for it all with a half eagle. Van Hollander could hardly keep from trembling.

  There were other customers waiting, but he took the time to usher them to the door and wish them well.

  The two women lugged the spermaceti bucket between them all the way back home and never shared a word. Vern had to tuck her parasol under her arm to carry the bag as well. She dropped it twice. Lavinia gave her the standard glare of disapproval but said nothing. Vern wondered if Kate would be home first, but as it happened she wasn’t.

  Amy had hung out the washed clothing and was resting. When she realized that they were intending to make candles, she busied herself with the items they’d brought back rather than get drawn in. Vern could tell she was pretending not to know what to do with the food.

  Lavinia studied the cast-iron pots and settled on the largest of them. “Have you the molds?” she asked. “I know they were shipped.”

  Vern said yes, she knew where the molds were. She hurried up the stairs into their room.

  The molds were tin, a set of six tubes fixed to a flat base. The family had three of them, and even though they hadn’t been used in forever, Vern had to concede the wisdom of bringing them.

  She rooted through the crates they’d stacked in the corner next to Kate’s bed. Naturally, the molds were in the bottom one.

  She had just found them when the wall beside her head gave a loud crack, as if a board inside it had snapped. She jerked up in surprise. For a few moments she stared at the smooth plaster and wondered what she’d heard. She leaned forward and touched it. It was cool under her palm. Then the wall cracked again beneath her hand and she sprang back.

  At that point Lavinia shouted her name. Vern glanced warily back at the wall. “Come on, girl, this is no time to be lazing!” Lavinia complained. “Get those molds down here.”

  She hurried from the room.

  “What did you do, fall asleep up there? Well, set them down, child.” Then she added, “We’ll have to wait on them till tomorrow in any case now,” as if by staying upstairs for more than a minute Vern had made it impossible for them to continue. “We got two up here on the mantel and the lamps are full. That’ll tide us over. Right now get the stove stoked up for your father’s tea. He’ll be back any time.”

  Vern fed wood into the stove, then pumped some water into a kettle and set it on top. She found a tin of tea and shook leaves into the teapot. When the water had boiled, she removed it from the fire.

  Everything had been prepared when she went out the back and walked around to the side of the house.

  She gazed to where she thought the sound had come from. The white slats were unblemished, unbroken. It was absurd anyway—the spot was more than twice her height. She looked around, nevertheless. A few old chestnuts lay scattered, but the tree they had fallen from stood far from the house. It would have taken a strong wind to fling chestnuts—a strong wind or a strong arm…She walked around to the front of the house and mulled over the suspicion that Amy might have thrown nuts at the outside of the house; but even as she considered it, she admitted it was absurd. How could Amy have known Vern was in the room just then?

  Vern carefully opened the front door. She could hear Lavinia in the kitchen. She crept inside, closed the door without a sound, and made her way up the stairs.

  In the room it was silent and still. Dust motes floated in the sunlight spilling through the side window. She walked to Kate’s bed again, and rapped her knuckles on the wall. It sounded dull and thick. Then she pressed her hands against it and pushed. It didn’t flex at all. Where the sound had emerged, the wall was solid.

  Half in frustration, she slapped it. The wall snapped back like an angry dog. She jerked her hands away.

  After a moment, tentatively, she said, “Hello?” Nothing happened. “Hello, is someone here?”

  Silence, and then the crack repeated, softer now.

  Vern threw off a shiver. “Say again.”

  Tap, came the noise.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she said, and sat on her sister’s bed. Her mind whirled with implication. Among the many consolation artists who’d passed through their Boston home over the years had been those who described communicating with the departed as “table rapping.” It was precisely thus. Even at the time the idea had excited her beyond the mere notion of contacting her mother. She’d tried once or twice, in secret, but had always felt foolish doing it, the more so for failing to get any response.

  She wanted to run downstairs and call Amy, but she stopped herself, knowing that Amy was the last person she should tell.

  After a while, she said, “Do you live here?”

  Two taps sounded.

  “Does that mean no?”

  One tap.

  “So one means yes and two means no? Rap once if that’s right.”

  Tap.

  “All right, you don’t live here. But you are here. Are you passing through this house, bound for some other place?”

  Two raps. No.

  “You’ve come for a reason?”

  Yes.

  “Did you—did you die in this house? Are you here to tell me how you died?”

  Two raps. No.

  She had been so sure that was going to be the answer. Confused, she asked, “Do you know who I am?”

  One. Yes.

  “Do you know my sisters?”

  Yes.

  “Do you see us here?”

  Yes.

  She blushed with false modesty at the thought of this spirit having seen them all naked in this room. How would she ever undress again? Even as she asked it, the side of her that defied restraint and teased propriety imagined disrobing in the secret knowledge that she was doing so for an admirer. Her admirer.

  “Am I the reason you’re here?”

  Yes.

  Her heart trip-hammered. “Are you seeking me out?”

  Yes.

  A thrill ran like an electric current through her. The ghost—for it must be a ghost—was here just for her. “Do you have something to give me?”

  Yes.

  “Can I tell the others?”

  No.

  “O
h, my.” She folded her hands, as if in prayer. “Tell me, then. What is it, what’s the message?”

  Silence. She had asked a question that tapping couldn’t answer.

  The tapping had become softer and softer with each successive question—the disembodied words “Yes” and “No” had slithered in behind and around the taps, but Vern had been too focused on counting the number of taps.

  Now, unable to disengage, she repeated, “What’s the message?” even as she realized that she was getting no reply because it wasn’t a proper question for this mode of communication, and she muttered, “Stupid girl,” and was about to frame the question another way, when into the silent interval a soft seductive voice insinuated a whispered: “Save you.”

  A tiny cry of terror barely creaked from her throat. She scrambled back off the bed, got up and ran.

  Five

  KATE DIDN’T BELIEVE VERN She listened to the interminable story, and at one point while Vern was explaining the noise, she even took a few steps back toward the house to look at the side of it. As her sister said, there was nothing to mark that spot, nothing out of the ordinary. A few branches of the chestnut tree might have been close enough to drop chestnuts onto the roof, and maybe that’s all it had been. Vern was scared, but Kate reasoned that she’d scared herself: She certainly had the presence of mind to tell all about Van Hollander’s store and the walk back to the house.

  Kate was pragmatic in a way that neither Vern nor Amy was, and no doubt it was because of her elder sisters’ individual fatuities that she’d become so. She didn’t think of herself as superior or smarter; only, she often found her opinion sought by both of them. Vern couldn’t entrust Amy with any secrets because Amy had too often told on her, sometimes unintentionally. Amy just had no common sense when it came to knowing what you said and what you withheld. And she often explained things to Kate, the little sister, even after Vern had done so, as if feeling it essential that she be listened to, too—as if she wanted to be in Vern’s place, acting the surrogate mother for the household. That, Kate suspected, was why Amy had worked so hard to learn to cook. It was something she could do better than Vern, a way she could perform as mother. Amy also approached Kate and not Vern if she thought she was being left out of something. That Vern had even for a moment attributed the noise in the wall to Amy cutting up a shine made Kate smile. Amy would never have fabricated such a tease.