Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

He watched her.

  “I have to go. Good luck with—” She hesitated.

  “Starting life over? I guess you know something about that.”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “I’m trying to think of it as building a carriage. I work at it piece by piece, the early pieces utilitarian, the later ones decorative, the final ones the touches that say this is a Henry Barstow, this is a thing of—” He stopped.

  Value. Integrity. Beauty. The words might have flowed out of Ida’s mouth a month ago, but not now.

  34

  September and it rained. And rained. It rained so often and so much that the edges of everything blurred—sky into sea, sea into sand, sheep into ground—and yet the livestock auction loomed. All summer Ida had been eyeing the flock with the sale in mind; she’d mentally marked a handful of the best ewe lambs to be kept for breeders, pegging all the ram lambs for transport—they were just too much trouble. The rest of the ewe lambs and the ewes who were too old for breeding or producing decent wool she also marked for sale. But now the breeding stock would be Lem’s to manage, so Ida and Lem stood silent and dripping in their oilskins side by side as he picked and chose. Or she tried to stay silent.

  “Not that one,” Ida said, pointing to Betty, as Bett shed her into the sale pen.

  “She’s too puny for breeding.”

  “She’s the one Oliver fed. She’s his pet. Take her price out of my sale money if you have to.”

  Lem shook his head but ordered Bett to shed her again and return her to the field shelter.

  “And not that one.” Ida pointed to Benjie. “That one Oliver delivered. Castrate him and keep him to settle the ram.”

  Lem shook his head again, but Benjie too was shed from the sale pen.

  Not a half hour after Lem had ridden up the hill to Ruth’s—and Hattie’s—the sky cleared, and Ruth strode down the hill to check out Lem’s selections. Ida understood how things would work from now on: whatever she did or said with Lem went straight to Hattie, and from Hattie to Ruth, and God knew how many others in town. But Ida had no reason to object—it wasn’t her farm, and Ruth seemed so old, so distracted; she had been since the truth about Ezra had become known.

  Ruth pointed to one of the lambs both Lem and Ida had selected for sale, a sturdy thing with a single spot of dark wool that hung on her chest like a jewel. “Keep that one back. I want to give it to Oliver.” She pointed out two more. “And those for Lem and Hattie,” Ruth said, seeming to forget they’d all be Lem’s and Hattie’s soon. She peered at Ida for a time, returned her gaze to the sheep, pointed to one that had bolted across the pen and attempted to climb the wall. “That one will be yours.”

  “Thank you, Ruth, but I’ll have no use for a sheep in Boston.”

  Ruth looked at Ida blankly, as if she’d forgotten what Boston had to do with it. “You’ve made note? That one for Ezra, those two for Hattie and Lem?”

  “You mean Oliver. Oliver and Hattie and Lem. And if you don’t mind my suggesting, Oliver would probably like that one over there better. Betty, the one he bottle-fed. That way she’d be right here at the farm when he comes to visit.”

  “Visit!”

  “Hattie told me the grandparents are ready to have him home.”

  Ruth whirled and headed toward Ida’s house. “I need tea.”

  The minute the tea hit Ruth’s lips, she became talkative in a way Ida hadn’t heard in a while. She rambled on with tales of the farm, conflating Ezra and Oliver first, her father and grandfather next, growing angrier as she spoke. No one knew the farm the way she did. It should have been hers when her husband died. For generations it had been kept from her.

  Ida spoke carefully. “This is why women need the vote.”

  Ruth snorted. “A bunch more nincompoops voting. What good will that do?”

  Ida decided to leave that subject there. When she next saw Rose she would tell her how her own sex continued to disappoint her, but even if Hattie didn’t want her to, Ida was going to attempt to protect her interests there. “The farm is yours now, Ruth. You can do with it as you choose, and you choose to give it to Lem and Hattie, so that’s wonderful. It stays in the family. But think how that deed is worded. Make sure what happened to you doesn’t happen to Hattie.”

  Ruth stared blankly at Ida, or perhaps at nothing, it was hard to tell. At last, after a few more sips of tea, the old Ruth surfaced. Or rather, a new one.

  “I haven’t been kind to you.”

  “Well, Ruth, I don’t suppose I’ve been all that kind to you.”

  “You came here with him, such a fancy thing, so above us all, you didn’t seem to appreciate how magnificent he was, how much you were intruding.”

  “I thought he was magnificent too,” Ida said. “For a while.”

  “And the way you talked to him. Good Lord, if my mother had ever spoken to my father in such a tone!”

  “I got tired, Ruth. I got tired of having no one listen, of doing nothing but listening, of listening to nothing but lies. Can you understand? You who so enjoy speaking your mind?”

  Ruth appeared to consider that, head tipped, brows furrowed, eyes piercing the air between them. “You were right. He wasn’t magnificent in the end. What he did to that boy. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to put all the money from the livestock sale into a college account for him. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Ida sat still, waiting for Ruth to come to it on her own, that she couldn’t give Oliver all the sale money because 20 percent of it was Ida’s.

  “Of course we won’t make what we made last year. You lost a lot of lambs, you know. But that sale money could be a nice start for the boy.”

  “That sale money less my twenty percent.”

  Ruth slapped her hand flat on the table. “Do you mean to say you’d take money from that boy’s mouth?”

  “Ruth, be fair. We signed a paper. I’m going to need that money to—”

  Ruth attempted to bolt out of her chair and stumbled. Ida leaped around the table and caught her arm. “Come, I’ll walk you home.”

  “Leave me alone. You never cared a pin for me. I said you were right about Ezra. I don’t blame you for talking to him that way. But that boy, what did he ever do to you? He deserves that money. Those folk of his aren’t even going to be alive when it’s time for him to go to college.”

  She’s old, Ida told herself. She’s confused. She’ll forget all this in the morning. She held her tongue, eased the old woman out the door, up the hill, and into her house with much trouble, in part because Ruth continued to carp at her all the way, in part because Oliver had run out to meet them and was attempting to escort them inside.

  As they came through the door, still arm in arm, Hattie looked at them wide-eyed.

  “She’s tired,” Ida said.

  “I’m not tired,” Ruth snapped.

  “Well, I am,” Ida said.

  “I’m not,” Oliver offered.

  Ruth turned to stare at the boy. “Young man, it’s time you went home. We can’t keep feeding you forever, tripping over you at every turn.”

  “Mother, please,” Hattie said.

  “No, Harriet, you please. Write the boy’s grandfather and tell him to fetch him. I want him gone now.”

  Oliver banged out the door.

  Ida had set out her supper and was looking forward to it—fish stew, cornbread, a baked apple, and a piece of cheddar so sharp it burned—when the phone rang.

  “We can’t find Oliver,” Hattie said. “Is he with you?”

  Ida pushed away the stew bowl. “No.”

  “He went out to dig in the yard. He digs for hours. I didn’t think of him again till I went to call him for supper, and he was gone.”

  “Not gone,” Ida said. “Just off somewhere else. He likes that tree off the east—”

  “He’s not in that tree. Lem looked. He’s still looking in the woods. Oliver might have gotten lost. I want you to look around there. He loves those foolish sheep,
and your dog, and—”

  “The ox. I’ll look,” Ida said. “You hold on.”

  “He was crying,” Hattie said. “When Lem came by he was crying. Lem asked why he was crying, and he said he wasn’t crying.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything! I was making supper and Mother was storming about and Lem came in and she started in on him, how if he’d agreed to manage the farm in the first place none of this would have happened, you wouldn’t be trying to take money from a little boy—”

  “Was Oliver in the room then?”

  “No, I told you! He was digging in the yard!”

  “You’re sure?”

  Pause. “Yes. Sure.”

  “You looked out and he was still digging?”

  “Of course he was still digging. He’s always digging. He—”

  “You looked out. And he was digging. Or you just assumed he was digging.”

  “He’s always digging,” Hattie whispered.

  Which meant that Hattie hadn’t looked, that Oliver could have been gone a long time by now.

  “You hold on,” Ida said again, and returned the phone to its hook with Hattie’s voice still echoing off the walls.

  Oliver wasn’t with Bett, or the sheep, or with Ollie in his stall. He wasn’t in the hayloft. Ida let the dog out, remembering the time one of Ezra’s dogs had led her safely home, but when Bett flew off after yet another squirrel, Ida wasn’t hopeful. Not knowing what else to do she looked in all those same places again; only on the second trip to the pasture gate did she realize that Betty was gone. Boy and sheep missing seemed better than just boy missing, although Ida wasn’t sure why. She stood and tried to think like a small boy. Where would he go with a sheep? Why? Ida hadn’t a clue. She set out to circle the pasture. Again.

  Dark had begun to drop down and the soft, slushy lump of worry in the middle of Ida’s chest had frozen into a solid cube when she spied four disparate shapes coming up the track: tall, thin man; small, tired boy; dogged sheep; sheepish dog. The lump in Ida’s chest exploded with love for them all.

  “He was looking to play a little chess,” Henry said, “but I told him Bessie—”

  “Bett-ee,” Oliver said.

  “Betty was tired and wanted to go home.”

  “Is she going to die soon?” Oliver asked.

  “Who, Betty?”

  “Ruth,” Henry said. “She seems to be out of favor just now. I tried to excuse her on the grounds of advanced age—”

  “She’s a mean old witch and I want her to die soon!”

  “Oliver,” Ida started, but she had no other words. She looked at Henry.

  “It would appear someone doesn’t want to go home,” he said.

  They had reached the house. Ida penned sheep and dog and when she turned around Henry and Oliver had settled onto the stoop.

  “Can you wait?” Ida asked. “I should call.”

  Henry nodded.

  Ida went inside and called. Into the whoops and crackles and echoes on the line as Hattie tried to ask Ida questions and answer Ruth’s at the same time, Ida said, “I’m giving him some cocoa, then I’ll bring him home.”

  Oliver and Henry sat at the kitchen table while Ida stood over the stove, waiting for the milk to scald. When the first steam rose she added the chocolate and sugar and stirred, listening to the man and boy chatter: Betty, of course, and how he’d taken her because she was hungry; really, really hungry, and there wasn’t any milk in the barn, never mind that Betty had been weaned off milk with the rest of the flock the month before.

  There Henry waded in. “Did you think I’d have something to feed her?”

  Oliver thought. “She likes chess,” he tried.

  “You like chess.”

  Oliver nodded.

  Ida turned around and met Henry’s eyes; the eyes no longer looked as solemn or as bitter as they had the last time Ida had seen them. She looked away.

  Ida carried three cups of cocoa to the table and sat down in the chair next to Oliver. It was a symbolic gesture: I’m on your side, she wanted to say.

  “Here’s the problem,” Ida began. “You did a wrong thing, running off. I know you didn’t plan to worry your aunt Ruth—”

  “I did plan it! She’s mean mean mean!”

  Henry looked a question at Ida. “Ruth said a few things,” Ida explained. She returned her gaze to Oliver. “But you did wrong in running away. So we’re going to walk up that hill and you’re going to apologize to your cousin Hattie and your aunt Ruth, and you’re going to promise them that you’ll never do it again. Agreed?”

  Nothing.

  “Oliver.”

  Oliver looked at Henry. Henry said, “It sounds like the best way out of this mess to me.” Oliver thought a good long while, but in the end he gave Ida a nod so small it could have been a twitch and looked away from her to the wall.

  “All right,” Ida said. “We’re done with that subject. Now tell me. Why don’t you want to go home?”

  Oliver continued to face the wall.

  “You can come back, you know. If Aunt Ruth can’t take you, you can come visit me. You can stay in my extra room.”

  “When?”

  Too late, Ida remembered she was moving to Boston. Soon. She clawed ahead. “Let me talk to your grandfather when he comes to get you. I’ve never met him. Tell me something about him.”

  But something was clearly too vague a term. Oliver kicked the chair in silence; she listened to the steady tick tick tick of his boot heel against the rungs and realized she’d probably have to touch up that paint, but somehow the thought gave Ida a hopeful feeling, as if she were looking for more things to do to the farmhouse, which she wasn’t, since she was leaving it.

  “He lives in New York City?” Henry was asking now.

  Oliver nodded.

  “What kind of work does he do? Or is he at home?”

  Oliver thought. “He’s famous,” he said.

  “Really? What did he do to get famous?”

  Oliver thought again. “He built a giant castle. Out of gold. And that’s where I’m going to live when I go home.”

  Ida sighed. She’d thought she’d done the boy some good, thought she’d given him some real stories about his father to counteract the old fables, and those fables had indeed died off, but now here they were again, only with the grandfather this time.

  Ida’s fable fatigue must have shown, or maybe Oliver just heard—and read correctly—that sigh. “Don’t you believe me?” he asked.

  Ida scraped her chair around to face Oliver head-on. She took him by the shoulders, aware of a frightening intensity in her grip that she only halfheartedly attempted to tamp down. “Oliver. I want you to listen to me carefully. In life, we only believe the people we trust. Do you know what trust is? It’s knowing that a person isn’t going to tell us lies. Most of the time, people know or find out when someone lies, and once they know, they don’t trust that person anymore. They don’t believe that person anymore. Do you want to be someone like that, someone people don’t trust?”

  Again, Oliver thought. “It’s not all gold,” he said. “Just my room.”

  Ida stood up. “Come along.” They walked in subdued silence up the hill, but the kitchen they entered was subdued too, Hattie red-eyed, Lem holding her hand, Ruth, thank God, not in the room.

  “Oliver?” Ida prompted, pushing him a little closer to Hattie.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And?”

  “I won’t do it again.”

  “Well, thank Heaven for that,” Hattie said, and grabbed Oliver in what started as a hug and turned into a shake and ended in another hug, which Oliver seemed to know better than to dodge.

  Ida entered her own kitchen to see the three cups rinsed and drying on the sideboard and Henry gone. She was relieved—there were still no words for him—but even so, she’d expected to find him there and finding him not there was unsettling. It put her off-kilter. It forced her to peer around corn
ers as if he might still be lurking. Fool.

  35

  Ida invited Hattie to tea; she wanted to keep the conversation from old and young ears. She’d assumed that a quiet word to Hattie would settle the matter of the livestock sale money; it wasn’t that she didn’t want Oliver to have it, it was just that she couldn’t afford to give it away. It seemed this was something that Hattie would understand. She began by attempting to pick up on an old conversation.

  “You said to me not long ago that everything ends terribly. But now you’re to be married. You can’t be thinking that will end terribly?”

  “Of course not. I told you. I was tired that day. This is what you asked me here to talk of?”

  “No, not entirely.”

  “You’ve never asked me to tea before.”

  “I know.”

  “But then, I’ve never asked you. I never thought you’d imagine it a pleasure. My mother—”

  “I know.”

  “So what else do you want to talk about?”

  It wasn’t starting well. What the devil, then. “I wanted to ask you if you could talk to your mother about my money. The money I’ve earned and signed a contract for, that she now wants to give to Oliver. You see, don’t you, that she can’t do that?”

  “You want me to talk to my mother about the money? Really?” Hattie looked so shocked Ida wondered for a minute if somewhere somehow she’d gotten something wrong. She had worked the sheep all year. She had signed a contract. Oliver could have the other 80 percent; he could go home to a family that wanted him and cared for him.

  But Hattie kept on. “You know she’s not . . . well.”

  “If you mean confused, yes I know. This is why I’m talking to you. Unless you’re confused too—” Ida said it with a laugh, but even to her own ears it didn’t sound chock-full of funny. At a later time Ida was going to have to give some thought to why it was that Hattie had begun to annoy her so.

  “I don’t think giving money to a boy to start a college fund is—”

  Ida cut her off. “Ruth can give him her money. She can’t give him mine. This seems like something I shouldn’t have to ask my lawyer to explain to you. I wonder if Ruth has a lawyer. Do you know?”