But since that Saturday morning when her mother had left to clean the church, the complaining had stopped. Shortly after, her mother had moved into the front room, placed in a temporary box, curtains tightly drawn. And while neighbours came, sat with Amos and Percy, Stella would not enter the room. “Disrespectful,” Stella had heard her father say, but he did not force the issue.
When it came time to go to the funeral, her father pinned a black armband over the sleeve of her dress, and told her to lace up her shoes. He began to fold his black-bordered handkerchief, and while his back was turned, she had run from the house. At the back of the shed, she dragged out just enough flat stones piled against its base, and shimmied underneath. Tucked among cobwebs and scuttling mice, she watched her father’s feet, stomping past her, his curse words drifting down, scalding her. She had never seen him so angry, and he had not spoken to her since.
No matter the consequences, she could not bear it. If Stella were to see her mother like that, in a state of perpetual stillness, she would be forced to accept that her mother was not coming back. Instead, she tricked herself into believing that her mother was still at the church, piling prayer books, dusting pews, poking at the intricate woodwork of the altar with a damp cloth over her finger.
But the kitchen, the very room, threatened to end the deception. When Stella walked from corner to corner, she confirmed that the proportions were identical, the furniture and cabinetry untouched. But something had changed. She sensed that the room was suffering. From absence. And if Stella acknowledged it, allowed the awareness to seep in around her young heart, she would surely suffer too.
“Yes, Mrs. Hickey,” she murmured. “A grunt. That would be right nice.”
Grief rolled up with waves of boundless energy. As soon as Delia was in the earth, Percy’s muscles twitched relentlessly, and he started work on the hardest task he could fathom: clearing his land. Every twig, tree, and bush was severed, hacked into bits and stacked behind the shed. Roots were ripped away, and he followed their tangled paths, barely blinked as flecks of soil flew into his face, collected in the moist corners of his eyes. The remainder was gathered in a pile, burned, leaves and needles, sawdust, red boughs cackling as they melted into ash. By late summer, his land was transformed from a fairytale forest into a stark patch of dirt and stubble. Standing on the back stoop of his home, he surveyed his work, ignored the empty sense of conclusion clinging to the pit of his stomach.
She would be happy now, he thought, sunlight touching every plank of wood on their home. His home now. He sat down, looked around his clean yard, then rubbed his raw palms over his face. There was no work left to do, none of his precious trees left to destroy, and he feared what was coming next. The questions, no doubt, they arrived at lightening speed. What was happening to Delia? Did she miss them? Was she cold? Should he have put her wool sweater on over her dress? Was the coffin strong enough to keep out those nasty critters that wanted to consume her? If only he could have her back, just for a short while, he would tell her things. Lots of things. He couldn’t think just now. But he would have taken better care of her. Such better care.
Percy went to the kitchen and sat in Delia’s rocker. Stella was there, as she often was now, making something out of the flour and sugar from Fuller’s General Store. Eggs from Miss Allan’s, milk from Charlie Carrigan’s cow. Nothing any of them would eat, and he resented the fact that the house smelled differently. Sweeter. More like a home. And that shouldn’t be the case. Not when his wife had just died.
Stop it, he thought. Quit your cooking. Your messing around. But Stella didn’t hear him, or else she ignored him, he couldn’t be sure.
Sometimes he wondered about the girl’s mother, what was she like? There was betrayal there, he knew, considering Miriam Seary in that fashion, but he couldn’t help it. Delia’s ailment had been too consuming for her to nurture a child. He should have recognized that, never proposed to take in the dense woman’s baby. In hindsight, desperation drove him. He so badly wanted to be a good husband, to pacify her, soothe her itchy spirit. But instead of succeeding, instead of enriching her life, he likely greased the very planks on which his wife was teetering.
“I needs berries for the morning,” Stella said. “But ’tis dusk. Should I go?”
Percy never responded, just stood, plucked the tin pail from a bent nail in the porch and walked out the door. As he made his way up the lane, facing the low sun, lines began to lengthen. He twisted around when he heard two children giggling behind him, shook his fist in the air when he saw that they were taking turns stomping on his shadow head. Beggars.
Early evening tossed a blanket of lavender haze over the cove. Percy ambled along. Though it felt aimless, his body knew where it was going. Without thought, he wound his way along the old road, up across the barrens, then off onto the cliffs where partridgeberries grew. Midway to the edge, he lay down atop a soft covering, ran his fingers over the moss and lichens, mountain laurel and Labrador tea. Squashed berries may have stained his clothing, but he gave it no mind. He had heard people complain they were scarce this year, anyway.
So soft in his mountain bed, and he wanted to rest, but the sandman avoided him, would not spare a speck of mysterious dust for his weary eyes. But that sandman hadn’t hesitated with Delia. No. Reverend Hickey had explained to him that she was in a state of eternal rest. And who had put her there? The sandman. Dumped a whole load from his satchel in her pretty face. Percy knew the truth. This was not the gentle visitor he had told Stella and Amos about at bedtime when they were children. Not even close. The real sandman was a hunched crippled creature. When Percy was a child, he had no choice but to listen to the taunting of his brothers. In the pitch black of their room, they described a sinister old man who blinded drowsy folks then stole them away. Delia might be with him now, in his distorted nest, her nose transformed into owl’s beak, speechless as he plucked out her bloodied eyes.
Percy filled with helpless anger, boxed the night sky with flailing fists. Grinding against the rock, his back and shoulders started to ache, and he melted into the mossy underbrush, breathing heavily. How he yearned to control his mind, impose a penalty for any weaving or wandering, and limit its ability to torture him. Looking up, he watched the dark clouds clumping, handfuls of damp wool sheared from the dirtiest sheep. Something pleasant, please God, he whispered, let me think of something pleasant.
And his prayer was answered. When that little drawer at the base of his brain slid open, the sweet memory of their first meeting emerged. She was a nameless girl then, crouched beside a tin tub in a backyard, rubbing laundry up and down a sudsy washboard. Her arms moved efficiently, water sloshing over her apron, and he wondered if she might catch a chill from the breeze that drifted off the ocean. But she showed no signs of distress as she snapped the clean clothes, tossed each piece over a line stretched between home and shed, fixed them with a jab of a clothespin.
Percy stood under an old dogberry tree, hidden in the shade. This was the first time he had ever spied on a girl, honest, and he wished he were wearing his brown shirt so that he might blend with the trunk of tree. When she nearly finished the laundry, Percy felt nervous, suddenly threatened by the solid walls of the saltbox home beside her. What if she disappeared behind them? Should he emerge, introduce himself? He had no idea if she would smile, turn away, or slap him in the face. Sometimes he wondered if he were actually invisible, and if she might not notice him at all.
While he watched, the occasional animal roamed past him. That was the way it was during spring and summer months. All animals in Bended Knee roamed freely, grazing wherever they chose. Small fences were constructed around vegetable gardens and work areas to keep animals out. And in the early fall, they were collected, sorted by the symbol branded on their rumps, and housed for the winter.
Percy sighed as he watched her, drove his hands deep in his pockets. From behind, one fat mother goat came up, bit on to the seat of his trousers, tugged. “Get,” he murmured. �
�Get.” As he turned, intending to knock the goat on its head, he lost sight of the girl, she had moved behind a layer of sheets. Percy pointed towards a set of tanned ankles, dusty slippers, then looked the goat in its gunk-encrusted eyes, said, “Now see what you’ve done.”
With that, the goat released its hold on Percy, darted over near the girl, and started butting against the little fence that blocked its passage. Percy saw its full udder shaking each time it struck, as though it was filled with milk for a missing kid. Hole quickly accomplished, it scampered in, headed straight towards a piece of laundry, nipped it with its teeth, yanked, and bolted away. Zigzagging haphazardly towards Percy.
The girl screamed, “You little beast,” and came bounding after.
At Percy’s feet, the goat deposited a pair of damp cotton undergarments. He saw the strings that might tighten the bloomers around a delicate waist, the strips of ruffled lace that would encompass each slender calf. Percy wanted to run, but he was pinned to the tree, the goat ramming him with its steely head. Only when he bent to retrieve the garment did the goat relent, and by that time, the girl was beside him, slapping the animal on its backside.
“You little devil,” she screeched, and the goat kicked up its back heels, missing her by a hair, and scampered up the lane.
Percy held it out to the flustered woman, the white ball of fabric, green grass stains from the goat’s gnarled teeth, streaks of dirt where it had been dragged.
“Sorry,” Percy managed.
“Is she yours?”
“Who?”
“That nanny goat.”
“No, miss.”
“Well, she deserves a good trouncing. Ruining my few bits of clothes.”
“Yes, miss.”
Then, as Percy held her underwear in his hands, he dared to think, Seems she’s trying to tell you something.
The woman blushed immediately, grabbed it. Yes. Brazen old goat.
Her voice arrived inside his head, a flurry of tinkling bells; he had recognized it at once. And by the way she eyed him warily, he knew she had heard him as well. Then she turned on her heel, flounced home (he recorded every shift in weight), annoyance in her stride. Her head never wavered; she stole not a single peep back. But, for once in his life, Percy felt undaunted. Her coy voice, still flitting about in his mind, divulged that she was enticed. She wanted to know his name.
As Percy lay on the moss, the clouds cracked open, drifted off in different directions, and he reflected on those voices. Over the years, he and Delia, communicating effortlessly without words. Their secrets, so intimate, it was a blessing not to have to actually say them. But recently, those voices were hushed, and Percy could not think of when they stopped or why? It was not abrupt, so that either would notice, more of a subtle deterioration. Their connection slowly breaking down. Percy was reminded of an innocent leak that once gurgled at the bottom of his skiff, and before he knew it, the water was up over his boots.
In the early years of their marriage, he had worked to understand her, listening to every breath, working to see life from a woman’s perspective. But her experience escaped him, she never appeared pleased, and as she got sicker and sicker, his efforts to relate to her grew trivial. Endurance was all that mattered. Her survival.
What Percy thought next nearly crushed him, as though a soaked log fell from the heavens, landed right on his chest. Rolling over onto his side, he spooned his torso around the cold tin bucket, began to shiver. How had he missed something so simple? Something that would have enriched his wife’s life untold times over. And as this new consciousness flooded through him, he longed for his biblical brothers to appear on the rocks, deadly stones tucked inside their palms. Mete out justice for blatant neglect. While working so hard to take care of her, to keep his wife healthy, somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten to continue loving her. And with no love to keep her alive, how was that different than already being dead?
When the harvest moon clung to the sky, Percy arose, set about the task of picking a cupful of berries for his daughter. Squinting, he saw the berries glisten, and he crept sideways on hands and knees, plucking every one. Whether hard, overripe, white underbellies, or perfect, he tugged them from their healthy stems, listened as they clanked against the bottom of his bucket.
Almost full now, and he crouched for a moment, crammed a handful in his mouth, filled his cheeks. Chomping, he accepted the shudder that moved through him. How sugar could transform those tart little globes. But there was no sugar available, and he leaned to the side, spit them all out.
Percy was tired now, as he was often, as though his body suddenly realized just how old it was. But before starting the ramble home, he stood, leaned his head back, stared up at the night sky. He wasn’t seeking anything in particular, was not so delirious as to believe Delia might make her presence known with a twinkling star or a dancing constellation. Nothing even close to that. From his height on the cliff, the view of heaven was stunning, and he simply wanted to witness every inch of it. He gazed out over the vast ocean, then scanned the high skies, but as he was viewing the horizon, he noticed a single wild cherry tree with its extensive network of fingerlike branches, growing out of solid rock. Percy could not see through it, and when he tried to shift his perspective, he forgot himself for a moment, took a single deep step backwards.
In that split second of descent, there were no scrambling limbs, no flashes of cold fear, no bloodcurdling screams. Instead, he remained silent, kept his body ramrod straight, arms pinned neatly to his sides. A soothing sense of relief enveloped him. Striking the rocks beneath, a kneecap popped, thigh bone splintered, and the brilliant red berries spilled over his face, in around the collar of his shirt. When the weight of his body crumbled in on itself, a sigh was forced from his lungs. The constant dread that had embraced him since he was married, since the children arrived, was beginning to ease.
“He’s fine, he’s fine. Don’t worry, you.”
A young man named Leander Edgecombe found Percy just after midnight. Whenever anyone or anything was missing, Leander was invariably the locator. A gimpy leg hindered his pace, but he had the tracking ability of a hound dog. People would always say to his mother, Leander was born with something extraordinary, and her eyes would automatically travel to that shriveled foot, even though she knew that’s not what they meant.
“He’s going to be fine, they’s saying,” Leander said to Stella. “Just beat up is all.”
Stella turned her back towards him, stared at the water. The sea was blackness, and though she couldn’t see a single ripple, she sensed it was moving. It always moved, never calm. Sometimes, when she was younger, she imagined it was giggling, one enormous delirious shoreline, but as she grew, its action felt more menacing. Standing there now, she considered that its steady bottomless seething was like torture. Enough to drive a person crazy, if they thought about it. And how could someone not think about it? Everyone was attracted to the sea.
“Looks like an accident,” Leander continued. “That’s what the men was saying. No one with either bit of sense would jump over with a bucket of berries in their hand. Though I reckons if you’re going to jump, you got to be missing something upstairs anyways.”
Tugging her shawl tighter around her shoulders, she drove her fingers in through the crocheted holes. She didn’t understand this covering. Don’t keep the cold out or the warm in. It really served no purpose. Maybe a little purpose in a garment was too much to expect.
“’Tis a good thing that ledge was there, else he’d been lost for sure.” Shuffling sounds, then, “Sorry. Me running my mouth again. Guess you don’t want to be thinking about that stuff.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Stella watched Leander jump a little in his place. Then he leaned hard to one side, his weight appeared unbalanced, as though he didn’t trust his bad foot to keep him upright.
“No need to be worrying yourself. We all knows Mr. Abbott’s as strong as a horse.”
Her cheeks flushed, and sh
e was surprised to detect shame among the tangle of emotions within her. So many times when she’d fought with Amos and lost, her father would take her aside, offer up his own definition of strength to her. Explaining that muscles were only a single element, true strength lived within a person, cradled inside his ribcage. Amos is a good boy, he’d say, but ’tis only foolish to squabble like you does. You got to be strong for your mother, Stella, not be bickering with your brother. And she would look up at him, see commitment in his sharp jaw line. How she strived to be like him. Even though his eyes reminded her of a stranded seal, she thought he was the strongest man in the world. But she was wrong.
It was late afternoon several weeks ago when Stella saw her father in his shed. She had been washing up the counter of bowls and cups and wooden spoons that always resulted from a visit with Mrs. Hickey. Above the sink there was a small window, and she stared out into the yard, counted the dandelions, heads bobbing as she rubbed the cloth round and round the inside of the pastry bowl. As the afternoon wore away, the backyard filled with shadows, cloaking the red shed where her father often built small pieces of furniture. But as the low sunlight crept along the wall of the shed, striking a window, at once the entire contents was illuminated. And there he was, leaning against the doorframe, his entire body clearly shaking, face distorted with pain. She could not stand to witness his anguish, focused instead on bits of dough still clinging to the hairs on her wrists, the murky water of the washbasin, and how her hands disappeared when she pressed them only inches beneath the surface. Seeing her father weeping that way, so weak, she felt disgrace, and even though it was terrible, she knew she would never feel quite the same towards him.
One of the men came up to Stella, said, “Best get on home now, maid. We don’t need no more mishaps this evening.”
The Seary Line Page 9
