“And Mother’s last prayer was not answered. She prayed, ‘Deliver us from evil.’ And mine have never been answered.”
“But we can’t know that.”
“I can’t say that I know anything, anything at all, except that I’m here with you, and the air has turned warm, and the Bay Path road must be somewhere a mile or so over yonder, and tomorrow we shall try for Roxbury.”
“And that thou hast killed a wolf.… Ru, if I didn’t see that carcass under my nose—”
“I never lied to you. Oh—tales for your fancy now and then.”
“I know that. What did you do with the hide?”
“Flung it out to the cannibals. The entrails too, and the head. They were delighted.”
“Puh! What’s this part I’m eating now and enjoying so?”
“Have you swallowed it, Mr. Cory?”
“I have, and you needn’t try to make me puke.”
“A puppy. She was carrying young—six. I had one whole, when you was still in the fever.”
“Ow-ooh!”
“Oh, ay, your ears’ll turn furry any day now. I say, Ben, when we’re dirty-rich and famous, let’s keep a few wolves on hand—you know, so to have roasted pups for guests of distinction.”
“Now you sound like yourself.”
“Do I?… Ben, I—something happened that night, Friday night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know whether I can tell it.… When I dragged the carcass to the fire I was crying like a fool, I don’t know why. Sat there crying with her bloody head on my knees, some-way I couldn’t make it seem she was only a piece of meat. Later I could, later it didn’t matter. And then—well.…”
“What is it, Ru?”
“I found my britches were wet. Nay, not what you think, and not her blood neither, though that’s dried all over ’em and I declare we both smell like the Devil’s own. Remember you told me how some time soon, whenever it happened, I’d be spending the seed?”
“Oh—of course.”
“Ben, I didn’t know it when it happened. It must have been the moment when I was killing her. I didn’t know it could happen that way.”
“I didn’t neither.”
“Is something wrong with me?”
“No, no.”
“You see, I already knew how it feels. I did confess to you about that—long ago, remember? That was the time when you told me, about the change, and the seed.”
“Yes. Well, they say it’s a sin to bring it on, but I think it must be venial, Ru, for Jesse said once that every man’s vessels are alway in need of it. The dreams don’t help. Nothing’s wrong with you.”
“But why didn’t I know it when it happened?”
“Oh, the excitement—why, you must have been white-hot, to stand up to a wolf with nothing but a little stick. I didn’t know it could happen that way, but I think it’s not so strange.”
“Jesse Plum.… Why did Father never speak of those things?”
“I don’t know, Ru.”
“Did he to you?”
“No, he never.… Look: I remember I spent once, merely from lifting a big rock. And—oh, tree-climbing, things like that. So you see—anyway there’s nothing wrong with you, brother, nothing.”
“Do you have those dreams much, Ben?”
“Not too often. You?”
“Oh, they.…”
“You will. You’ll be dreaming about girls, and—”
“I … You’ll be strong enough to go on tomorrow, Ben. One thing: we needn’t fret now about anyone following from Springfield. That snow will have covered everything. I hope they found the turkey blood before it began a-falling. We can go slowly, rest as soon as we come to another fair shelter. This morning might be the start of another thaw, even an early spring—only look at the tears of that spruce, how they fall in the sun! We’ll find more food some-way, now that you’re well. There must be towns between here and Roxbury, where we could work for a few meals, a few nights’ rest.”
“Why, sure, we’ll make it.… What happened to your jacket?”
“My—oh, the wolf.”
“But the wolf did not reach you, brother.”
“I dragged her.”
“And so got your jacket torn and muddy on the inside? But I found it wrapped around my legs yesterday when I woke with a clear head, and you slipped it away, but I knew. Last night when it turned a little colder you put it around me again, thinking I was asleep, and I was silent, wishing to speak but too stupid.”
“No need. You’d have done the same. Don’t speak of it now.”
“Very well. But—”
“Thou owest me nothing. I’ve been forced to think of these things—so many hours, Ben, when I—nay, but how could there be any owing or standing beholden between thee and me?”
“I think I owe thee everything.”
“No! Pray understand, Ben. It’s not a thing to be measured—why, it’s not a thing at all, but—oh, like a region one travels through, an area of light.”
“Love, a region?”
“What else? Can you own it or give it or take it? It came to me, Ben, that we only dwell in it, as in the sun, or this morning air.”
PART TWO
Chapter One
Ben Cory searched the bay, his eyes ardent for greater distances. Here at the wharf the ships relinquished wakefulness and power, becoming boxes of cargo for the calculations of landsmen: the harbor is not the sea.
“Watch, Ben—he’ll take in sail presently.” John Kenny was holding his dwarfish body erect to make the most of it, ancient head slanted so that he might look down his nose even at Boston Bay. He thrust his gold-headed cane against a crack in the wharf—his wharf, and smiled at the boy—his boy. “Luck of the Artemis, this breeze. When she nears the wharf Jenks will haul his tops’l to set her aback. You’ll see her reach the piling a-tiptoe, a lady, all whisper and dignity. Didn’t I say she’d be the lucky thing, when I took thee and Reuben up the Mystic to watch her a-building on the ways?”
“Yes, Uncle John.” The mild westerly breeze fluttered Mr. Kenny’s gray coat and the gray owl-tufts above his ears. It woke the dance of whitecaps under April sky, and seventeen is a kind of April. “She’s a fair ship, sir.”
“Hoy, mind your terms! A ship is all square-rigged, commonly a three-master. Two-masted, a ketch, is Artemis—well, a loose name, seeing we use it also to mean small harbor craft. But with her fore-and-aft mizzen you mustn’t be calling her a ship. I wish Reuben had come. He’s missing a pretty sight, and all to go strolling in the woods.” Ben winced inwardly, knowing that the old man, for all his understanding, had been hurt by that. He ought to know by this time, Ben thought, how when the black mood came over Reuben there was nothing to do but let the boy alone, let him go walk in the woods or whatever else he wished. Ben himself did not know whether it was the flame of Deerfield that attacked Reuben at such times; had not been able to learn, in all the three years since they came to Roxbury and Uncle John had opened heart and home to them. “Artemis is near three hundred ton, Ben. That’s not big, but she could sail anywhere in the world.”
The lonely man, blue-eyed and gaunt, who stood at the outermost end of Kenny’s wharf, swung about to gaze at the old merchant. Ben had not until now observed the stranger’s face, motionless as a boulder in a patch of grass against the raised collar of a shabby green coat. Grave, Irish maybe, handsome in spite of a signature of smallpox from jutting cheekbones to the edge of an angular jaw. Under a battered tricorne hat Ben saw coal-black hair and a forehead high and pale. The mouth was thin, the upper lip compressed. Hands projected immensely from frayed sleeves, a sailor’s hands broadened at the knuckles. Others on the wharf had been watching Artemis; discouraged by the chill of the breeze, they had abandoned th
e airy region to Ben and Mr. Kenny and the blue-eyed man.
Anchored in the near waters or drawn up to the many docks, an orderly jungle stirred to the bay’s mild motion—stem masts, steep bowsprits, nervous bodies of the drowsing wind-wanderers. To Ben’s eyes, Clarke’s Wharf over yonder hardly dwarfed Mr. Kenny’s single squat warehouse and three hundred feet of pier. All around Ben spread an apparent confusion of ropes, tackle, mooring-posts, more meaningful than when he had first stumbled through it three years ago, but still a confusion to one whose hand had never yet felt the lurching sting and thrust of a working rope across the palm.
Woolgathering, Ben had missed some remark about Artemis’ rigging. “She owes much to that fore-and-aft mizzen. Fore-and-aft or square, either’ll bring you the service of all the winds, but the way of the fore-and-aft is a woman’s way, Ben, seeming to yield, winning by yielding. Your squares’l is male, standing up to wrestle the sky breast to breast—nay, but he can drive almost as near the wind’s eye—point or two less, what’s a point or two in a long journey? Artemis don’t roll too much. I’ve been aboard her under sail only the once, when we tried her out. She didn’t roll much, for all Mr. Jenks tempted her to it so to learn her paces. Fast she is, Ben. You can feel it even now when she’s picking her way slow as a dream.”
“Sir, if I—supposing I might ship aboard—”
“You?” Mr. Kenny jabbed his cane at the planking, his crinkled face gone blank. “Ben, boy, you must stick to your studies. You’ll have sea enough when Mr. Hibbs brings your Greek far enough on to read the Odyssey. Better to drown in poetry than salt water.”
“Still, Uncle John, the sea—”
“Now let me tell you a thing: never admit to a sailor that you love the sea, if love is the word. He’d despise you for a landsman. A sailor may love a ship, if she be fair and not vicious. Not the sea, not the old blind murdering bitch-mother.”
“No, I think love is not the word, but—nay, I don’t know.”
“You think I don’t feel it? Didn’t I take ship as a common seaman when I was twenty? I ran away, Ben. My father’s blood was partly cold vinegar—something of that you felt in your day with my good sister. My brother George’s and mine was red, and hot. Well, I had but a few years of it, he too. Not for me with my piddling strength. We went into trade, we prospered, and I’m a landsman—but I know her. Sometimes if my bad toe’s a-troubling or I go to bed with too much drink in me, I dream I’m fathoms down in the cold, the green dark. I see their faces, I mean those of the dead, men I knew who own no grave except the sea. They float by me orderly, no crowding—hoy, you learn not to crowd a man in the neighborhood of live ropes! They go by me one by one—Amyas Holt maybe, that was first officer of the ship Marigold and would never sing except he was stone cold sober, but I have heard him sing, marry have I. Went down with the Marigold off the Bermudas—all hands.… Isn’t the land fair, Ben? Full of good things? Good work, women, children, warmth of an earned fireside? And the time of year that’s coming now?—but maybe you suppose an old man don’t notice the spring. Is not the land fair?”
“Yes, Uncle John,” said Ben, and turned his face away.
“Sometimes I see Danny Roeder too, laughing boy, ready for anything, dead of the scurvy when we stood thirty-four days becalmed south of the Line, a run to Recife in the ship Providence—most of his teeth fallen from puffed purple gums, not laughing then.… I’ve but now remembered, Ben, this is the first time you’ve seen Artemis afloat. When she left the ways last August you and Reuben were a trifle indisposed.”
Ben grinned weakly in acknowledgement. Last August he and Reuben had had the measles. After a day or so of misery they had grown busily critical of each other’s spots, the despair of Mr. Kenny’s housekeeper Kate Dobson, who tried to make them mind the orders of Mr. Welland the doctor and stay covered up in bed. Plump Kate did not frown on pillow fights in principle. She suppressed a few nobly, knowing her massive rear to be prime target, because she believed the boys were in a rarely tender condition. Kate had heard that measles could become the lapsing fever—whatever that was, and never mind that Mr. Welland rumbled and chuckled and took snuff and said it wa’n’t so. Kate had sniffed pointedly and severely about Mr. Welland of Roxbury, asking after his gentle departure how a head under such a Lord-help-a-sinner wig as he wore could hold knowledge of the healing art or in fact anything else.
More than a year in building and the pride of Mr. Kenny’s ancient years, Artemis took to the water—tide and wind and season won’t wait on the measles—with no help from Ben and his brother. By the time Mr. Welland decreed they could leave the house, she was gone, with half a cargo, mostly hardware and woolens from England. She slipped down to Newport to fill her hungry hull with flour and cheese; on to Virginia for a quick turnover; then with tobacco and what remained of the Yankee hardware—anything you like from frying pans to thimbles—she was for Jamaica in the warm seas. At Kingston she ran into a bit of trouble; Captain Jenks sent word of it by a homeward-bound. Tropic fever and smallpox had played hell with his crew, and he was delayed seeking replacements. He would not put out in late winter even on the Kingston-Boston run with nothing better than a passel of louse-gnawed Jamaican monkeys who’d die like Caribbee butterflies at the first breath of a northerly and anyway couldn’t tell the head from the hawse-holes. Jenks ripped out other comments, cramped by the need of setting quill to paper, concerning Jamaican speed in loading his logwood and molasses while the remnants of his good crew were too sick or drunk to lend a hand. “They doe labour a Moment,” he wrote, “and falle into a most sweete bloudie Slummber.” Snorting over that letter in the company of Ben and Reuben, John Kenny remarked that he couldn’t picture man, monkey or butterfly winning much sweet slumber when Mr. Jenks spoke in his natural voice—the which, said Mr. Kenny, was the secret of Mr. Jenks’ virtue, for by raising that voice to strong conversational pitch he could lift you the father and mother of a typhoon out of a flat calm.
A clop of hoofs, a grind of halting wheels—Ben heard that above the mutter of small waves fumbling the piles of the wharf, and turned to see the coach drawing up near Mr. Kenny’s warehouse. A dark woman stepped out, doll-size with distance, helping two others alight. The breeze snatched at full skirts; an arm flew up restraining a blue bonnet; Ben heard a ripple of remote laughter, and the women consulted, bonnets grouped like the heads of little lively fowl. Plainly not working-women nor dockside sluts, they must have some errand at the warehouse, and would not be coming out here into the raw smell of tar, fish, sewage-corrupted water and salt air. Mr. Kenny, with slightly dulled hearing, was unaware of them. Ben looked again to Artemis.
“Watch, Ben! Wouldn’t you think he was bearing down smack onto the bow of that three-master? She’s a New Yorker, by the way. Hoy!” Mr. Kenny danced a stiff caper. “Like an old woman threading a needle! But if the watchman on that Mannahatta tub pissed his britches, no shame to him at all. Watch!”
The lonely blue-eyed man was watching too, in the curve of his long back something hawk-like.
Mr. Kenny relaxed, chuckling. “Ben, I recall you’ve never met Mr. Jenks. When he’s ashore he never visits around, damn the dear man, not even to Roxbury. There’s a reason—never mind. Had he a contrary wind this afternoon he’d likely bring her in anyhow. Once I watched him fetch my wallowing old Hera to this wharf. Filthy little northeast blow, and she about as comfortable to handle as a bull on ice. I thought he’d drop anchor alee of Bird Island and wait. Not Jenks—brought her in like a homing dove. Knows every inch and instant of the tides as they’ll never be known by your landside chart-makers, noticed it a thousand times. I don’t mean he’ll take foolish risks. With Hera that time—to him it was a nothing, did it easy as a milkmaid strips a cow. Hera went down off the Cape—’d I ever tell you?—seven years ago in a fog. Floating hulk stove in her la’board side. Filled in twenty minutes, no fault of Jenks, and didn’t he bring off every ma
n alive in one boat and one damned little dory? Not a soul lost.”
He had told of it before. Ben never found it difficult to hear Uncle John’s repeated tales as if new. In a way they were, since Ben knew he had probably missed something in the earlier telling.
Wharf hands slouched from the warehouse, taking command of the space where soon the figurehead under the low-slung bowsprit of Artemis would gaze inward toward her homeland, if that grave white face, something less than a woman’s and something more, knew any homeland now but the one she shared with Mother Carey’s chickens. The men busied themselves over ropes and fenders, with raucous horseplay. The blue-eyed man certainly noticed them, but never turned from observing Artemis with the intentness of a schoolmaster or a lover.
The roustabouts brought a stench of cheap taverns, rum, tobacco, sweat. Bulky short-worded men, some tattooed and wonderfully scarred, their noise slightly restrained by the presence of an important merchant and a well-dressed boy. The boy envied their carelessness. To watch them you’d think the homecoming of Artemis from her maiden voyage was a trifle, worth no more than a shot of spit off the jetty. Ben saw a leather-hided giant twiddle free a length of rope and try it on the legs of a companion who yelped and grappled with him harmlessly.
Behind Ben a crystalline voice abruptly asked: “Will she anchor, Mr. Kenny, or come in to moor direct?”
“Direct, my dear.” Mr. Kenny was beaming, a hand on the girl’s arm. “Did your father ever make me pay lighterage if he could help it?”
“What a pert breeze! I vow I’m brave to be out in it.”
“This little air? Why, Faith, it would scarce raise a kite for a running boy. Anyway ’twas no breeze put the brier roses in your cheeks, you was born with those, well I remember.”
Mr. Kenny’s back was turned to Ben. Ben was standing quite alone, hearing yet the long murmuring of the water, as he fought away the dead weight of shyness and discovered the April grace of her, dressed in shining blue, wind-clasped; looked again, and encountered a wounding sweetness of blue eyes.
The Edgar Pangborn Megapack Page 73