Little Bird Lands

by Karen McCombie

  “And he must have decided yes?” I suggest.

  “Huh.” Jean gives a little laugh. “And then he told others, and the story took hold, growing and growing!”

  I break into a grin. Mr Nathaniel has let himself be tricked, like a boy duped in a schoolyard game of whispers, without Jean saying a single word…

  “Excuse me, Bridie?” I suddenly hear a voice call out urgently to me.

  Easter is hurrying towards us, Lachlan’s friends Henni and Matilde by her side.

  “These girls say your brother is gone to cause trouble at my master’s house,” Easter announces.

  “Lachlan?” I say disbelievingly.

  “Charlie said we must all go with him,” Henni babbles fast, “to look in the window of the manager’s house for the mistress, while no one else was home.”

  “We would not go, but he takes hold of Lachlan like this,” Matilde joins in, demonstrating on her friend, grabbing at her sleeve. “He says to Lachlan it is a dare. That he is a coward not to go.”

  “Yes, so Lachlan, he goes with him!” Henni adds.

  My blood begins to boil, thinking of Charlie’s teasing, of how very stupid my brother is to rise to it.

  “I don’t care for Mr Nathaniel’s son, but I reckon your brother is a good enough boy. So I thought I’d come to you and not Mr Eriksson,” says Easter.

  Handing her plate of biscuits to the younger girls to distribute, Easter turns to leave, clearly expecting me to follow.

  “Thank you,” I say, disturbing Odayan as I get up and hurry after her.

  The folk that are dancing and watching are having too good a time of it to take any notice of the two of us darting off among the jumble of cabins – our worn boots slithering and skittering across the lumpen, iced-up road – before hurrying down the way through the trees to the Eriksson’s place.

  “Can you see them?” I ask Easter.

  “No,” she says, looking from the front of the large wooden house to the clusters of tall pines standing guard on either side of it.

  “What can they be thinking?” I say in despair.

  “I don’t suppose they are thinking very hard at all,” says Easter, her deep dark eyes fixed more on me than seeking out the lads. “They are just come to gawp at the mad woman they suppose her to be.”

  “And she is not? Mad, I mean?” I can’t help but ask, as we get closer.

  “No. She suffers from melancholy, and her head pains her greatly – the noise of the stamp mill causes it,” Easter explains. “She takes a draught to help her sleep through the day, till the clatter stops as evening sets in.”

  Melancholy… I have heard of that. It is a wretched sadness of the soul, I think. I’d feel sorry for anyone suffering from it, even if they are a well-off young woman sitting at her ease in a fine house.

  “I hear your mistress is from England,” I say, as a suggestion comes to me. “Maybe I could call on her sometime, since I’m from Scotland, making us practically neighbours, back in Britain! Perhaps it would cheer her to talk of home?”

  “Think she’s too low and ashamed of her condition to have anyone visit her,” says Easter. “As for Mr Eriksson – he’s definitely ashamed of her. Can’t see him ever allowing visitors.”

  I want to ask her more, but as we come to the side of the house I hear a hissed conversation coming from around the back of the building.

  Naturally I ready myself to surprise and shoo away the boys up to no good. But then Easter quickly holds tight to my arm and holds a finger to her lips. For it is not my brother and Charlie who I nearly pounced upon. The voices are deeper – and troubled.

  “This is the only way. D’you hear me, Eriksson?” comes an unpleasant growl that is near all-American, but with a faint burr of Scots.

  “I just don’t know, Nathaniel…” we hear the mine manager reply in his more-halting Scandinavian accent. “It’s too risky. Perhaps we should do nothing. Maybe I need to wait and consult with the mining company in the spring.”

  “You’re saying you want to wait till the snows melts, to get a message down the coast to them?” I hear Mr Nathaniel ask sharply. “For gawd’s sake, Eriksson, by that time it’ll be too late! They’ll take one look at how little copper’s been mined here and shut the place down. You’ll be ruined, I’ll be ruined. And I’m too old and tired to start somewhere new.”

  “But the risk—”

  “But there’ll be no risk! I’ll train the fella myself.”

  “Yes, but who do you have in mind?” Mr Eriksson asks, a nervous edge of uncertainty in his voice.

  “Let me take care of that. I have my eye on someone…” Mr Nathaniel says darkly, sounding like a bear who’s spied a salmon and is about to scoop it from the river. “And in the meantime, be a man for once – just give me the money and I’ll make it happen!”

  There’s a silence, and from the lack of argument it seems the storekeeper has bullied the mine manager into his way of thinking – whatever that is.

  Then the silence is replaced by the stamp of feet and Easter and I glance at each other in dread and panic, knowing there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  Any second now the two men will discover us, thinking we’re deliberately listening in to their private conversations. And what that will mean for us, for Easter and her master in particular, I cannot say…

  But the crunching footsteps begin to recede and we realise – with shoulder-sinking relief – that Mr Eriksson and Mr Nathaniel have left around the other side of the house.

  “Come,” whispers Easter, pulling me around to the rear of the building, so that we are quite hidden, should either of the men choose to turn and look back upon the place as they walk down the path to rejoin the celebrations.

  “What was that about, do you think?” I whisper back, placing a hand on my chest to try and quiet my frantically beating heart.

  “I don’t know,” says Easter, looking upon the two cigar butts carelessly tossed on the ground near the woodpile, and kicking snow over their burning embers.

  And then a tiny movement catches in the corner of my eye. A movement inside the house. I turn sharply to look through the nearby window and see into a large parlour, as wide as the whole building. The movement is the flicker of a fire in the grate, but the light of it shows the figure of a woman reclining on a sofa, draped in a floor-skimming, colourfully patterned silk robe. She faces the window to the front of the house, waving reed-thin arms in the air in time to the jigs that can be heard playing down by the cabins. From this angle, I can’t quite make her out unless I move a little closer and squint so that—

  “I think you should go,” I hear Easter say sharply.

  Immediately, I feel my cheeks flush red. Who knows where my brother and Charlie have gone; perhaps they saw the men and thought better of their foolish plan. But now I am the one who is guilty of shamefully spying on the poor lady inside!

  “I’m sorry,” I say, gathering up my skirts and hurrying away.

  As I run, I realise I had hoped Easter and I might be friends. But it seems my curiosity just ruined the friendship before it even started…

  BOOM!

  My heart is having quite the time of it.

  Today is the first day I teach school. And mirroring the nerves I already feel, the ground now shudders beneath my feet as an underground blast from the mine loosens the rocks and their copper lode deep below.

  But I give myself a shake and hold my chin up. The blasting is done; there’ll not be another explosion for a few days now. As for teaching school, I can do this. Dr Spicer and Father have faith in me. I have faith in myself. And I have tied and pinned my hair up as neatly as I can, and wear my best skirt and jacket. Hopefully, this will make me appear more grown-up, someone children might listen to.

  But it seems my hopes are to be dashed.

  “Come away in,” I say to the three latecomers lurking outside the door.

  They stare at me, as if I have said something in a language they don’t understand
.

  “You know, you are very little to be a teacher,” Charlie Nathaniel challenges me as he hovers at the doorway of the store, showing off to the two lads by his side. It is clear from his swaggering manner that he enjoys the fact that he is a little taller than me…

  “And you, Charlie,” I say, as sternly as I can, “are a very big fellow to be so stupid as to leave the door wide open and let the heat slip out. Get inside, all of you, quickly.”

  To my surprise, Charlie and his friends do as they are told. And with the boys in and door slammed, we are all here. Most of the children already arrived are the youngest in the town, excited at the notion of having something different to do since every day in wintry Hawk’s Point is the same, with the deafening heartbeat of the stamp mill ticking away the endless minutes and hours.

  The younger children – who will be in my care – are seated at the long table placed closest to the heat of the stove in the corner. Of the older children to be taught by Dr Spicer, there is Lachlan, of course, as well as the two sweet German girls he used to call friends. Charlie’s Christmas Day plan to spy on Mrs Eriksson never happened because at the last minute Charlie decided it was more fun to try to steal ale with his other friends – but the damage was done. Sensible Henni and Matilde have not yet forgiven my brother after he chose Charlie and a prank over them and good sense. Lachlan has taken that badly, but he was at least relieved that Henni’s brother Oskar still takes time to ruffle his hair whenever he sees him.

  I frown at Lachlan now, seeing him yawn rudely.

  “Sorry!” he mouths at me. He has been up early, running morning errands for the miners before school. Even Mr Nathaniel had a task for my brother, giving him a package to take to Oskar and paying Lachlan with not a coin but with a piece of liquorice for his trouble. (I bet Charlie was too lazy to do it for his father – and not impressed with the payment of something he could help himself to anytime he wanted!)

  Still, I smile a little as I see some new black crow feathers tucked in the top pocket of my brother’s jacket; more for his strange collection kept in the pot on the shelf in our parlour! But then I am altogether distracted by some noisy clatter as Charlie and the two Irish lads settle themselves at another long table.

  “Settle down!” says Dr Spicer, as she writes her pupils’ names on a register.

  The three boys quieten, but only because they have noticed Jean sitting on a stool in the corner where he oils some piece of leatherwork, Odayan lying at his feet. The dog feigns sleep I think – he sprawls at his ease, yet his pale eyes are surely open very slightly, his ears twitching, almost as if he is listening to the sudden rustle of whispering coming from Charlie and his cronies. I cannot think that they will be saying anything good or kind about his master. Yet they have no idea that Jean is an invited guest. He told Dr Spicer that he would like to observe what the children learn so that he might add to his own knowledge, and she was more than delighted to have him in the classroom.

  “Welcome to school, everyone,” says Dr Spicer, standing between the two groups of pupils and bidding me join her. “Before we begin our lessons, I thought we should be properly introduced to one another. So I’ll start. My name is Dr Spicer, and I—”

  “Please!” says Morwen, a little Cornish girl, raising her hand. “Do we call you ‘doctor’ or ‘ma’am’?”

  “You can call me ma’am, if you wish,” Dr Spicer replies and seems about to continue when Charlie pipes up.

  “If you’re a ma’am and not a miss, it means you’re married. So where’s your husband?” he demands, looking around as if Mr Spicer might be hiding somewhere in the room.

  “He died shortly before I came here to Michigan, as a result of a riding accident,” Dr Spicer replies in her usual measured tone of voice, though I notice she seems to hold herself tighter and taller as the children gasp their surprise at how recent her husband’s loss is.

  It seems a kindness and a necessity to step in.

  “Dr Spicer is from Philadelphia,” I say brightly. “She trained at one of only two schools of medicine for women in the whole of America.”

  I expect the children to be suitably impressed. It seems they are not.

  “Yes … but you are not a real doctor, I think, ma’am?” says Matilde.

  “I certainly am,” says Dr Spicer, seeming to take no offence.

  “You can’t be, or you wouldn’t be teaching school,” Charlie butts in again.

  “I have decided to teach school for a short time till a proper teacher is appointed.”

  “And because no one will come to you for doctoring, seeing as you’re a woman,” adds one of the older Irish lads.

  “Well, that’s just stupid!” Lachlan bursts in. “’Cause Dr Spicer helped my sister get well from bronchitis, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but she didn’t fix her crooked hand or foot, or nothin’,” Charlie whispers to his friends behind his hand, though it is not a whisper at all.

  Heat rushes to my cheeks. I want to snap at Charlie for his ignorance!

  “Charlie!” I hear Dr Spicer say, but before she can say more my own tongue runs away with me.

  “There is nothing to fix when it comes to my hand or foot,” I announce, my blood practically at boiling point. “I was born this way, it causes me no discomfort and I manage very well, thank you.”

  “Well said, Miss MacKerrie,” Dr Spicer adds. “Now, let’s get on with—”

  “If you are a doctor, ma’am, why don’t you make Mrs Eriksson well?” Henni pipes up, innocently enough. “The lady is so poorly and does not ever leave her house.”

  In that moment, I feel my cheeks redden again at the memory of catching sight of Mrs Eriksson through her window.

  “I would certainly do my best to help Mrs Eriksson if she came to me as a patient,” I hear Dr Spicer reply diplomatically. “Anyway, let’s—”

  “My ma says she heard that the mine manager’s wife can’t walk or talk,” another of the little children interrupts excitedly. Another chimes in and then the voices become a torrent, overlapping each other.

  “She must have walked once. My ma remembers seeing her when they arrived last summer. Says she saw Mrs Eriksson sitting on her porch a time or two and then she disappeared.”

  “My pa heard she went quite mad and is strapped to her bed!”

  “My pa said she saw the ghost of the Indian woman that put the curse on the mine, and that’s what drove her mad with fear!”

  I look to Jean and see he gazes down upon his work still – but I make out his eyebrow arch at the mention of the phantom we both know exists only in the townsfolk’s fevered imaginations.

  “Well, my pa thinks Mrs Eriksson’s been murdered and buried in the garden!”

  “Children … be quiet. BE QUIET!” Dr Spicer orders them, and stillness comes back to the room. Till Charlie calls out again.

  “What’s she doing here?” he asks, pointing to the front of the store and wrinkling his freckled nose in what looks awfully like disgust.

  The door has been silently cracked open and Easter stands just a little way inside it, as if she is afraid she might not be permitted to enter.

  “Hello there, Easter!” Dr Spicer says brightly. “Would you like to join us?”

  Easter nods and slides her way in, closing the door soundlessly behind her.

  I have not seen Easter since the day of the Christmas gathering. Constant snowstorms have played their mischievous games these last three weeks, confining everyone to home that did not have to work outside of it. I am a little shy to see her, considering last time we set eyes on each other I was hurrying away from the Eriksson’s place, feeling foolish. But now she gives me the smallest of smiles and I wonder if I might consider myself forgiven?

  “Lachlan, make room for Easter, please,” Dr Spicer says to my brother. He dutifully moves up with a welcoming smile, letting Easter take her place beside him.

  “But she can’t be here!” Charlie blurts out. “She’s a-a—”

&nbs
p; “A girl who would like to learn? I think that’s what you’re trying to say, young man.” Dr Spicer challenges him.

  Charlie blushes. He wasn’t going to say that at all. He was probably going to say a word that Dr Spicer did not care to hear.

  “She’s a servant,” he grumbles instead, not wanting to be totally silenced in front of his snickering friends. “And I’ll not be staying if the likes of them are here…”

  With a sharp nod towards both Easter and Jean, Charlie swings his legs over the bench and takes his leave. Perhaps he hopes others will follow, but everyone – including the two Irish lads – keeps to their seat. The warmth and diversion of the makeshift school appears to hold their interest more than Mr Nathaniel’s sulky son.

  “Well, we’ve wasted quite enough time on nonsense,” says Dr Spicer, walking over and closing the door behind the departing Charlie. “So let’s dispense with the introductions and begin with our lessons. Bridie, will you hand out the slates and pencils, please?”

  Oh… I have been so in awe of Dr Spicer and her handling of the children that I have quite forgotten something. In fact, I have clean forgotten to collect the box of slates from the general store since the doctor first mentioned it all that time ago.

  “Sorry! I-I will run and fetch them now. I’ll be quick!” I apologise, hurrying to fetch my shawl from a peg on the wall.

  “That’s all right, we can practise some spellings aloud in the meantime,” says Dr Spicer.

  “Wait, I’ll help!” I hear Easter call out as she follows me outside, where feathery snowflakes are again beginning to flurry.

  “Are you sure you want to come over to Mr Nathaniel’s?” I ask her. “After what Charlie just said?”

  “Met plenty like him,” says Easter. “It hurts like hell but I’ll be damned if I let him see that.”

  I don’t usually like to hear cursing, but I think if anyone has earned a right to use words such as those, Easter has.

  “I’m glad you came to school today,” I tell her as we stand on the stoop, quickly fastening our shawls about us. “And I’m truly sorry if I seemed rude when you saw me last.”