A Gathering Light

by Jennifer Donnelly

  I once asked my mother why Pa never spoke French, and she said, “Because the scars run too deep.” I thought she must have meant the ones on his back. Pa’s stepfather put them there with a belt. Pa’s real father died when he was six. His mother had seven other children and married the first man who asked her, because she had to feed them. Pa never talked about his mother or his stepfather, but Uncle Fifty did. He told us that the man beat them and their mother for nothing. Because the supper was too cold or too hot. Because the dog was in when he was supposed to be out, or out when he was supposed to be in. He did not speak French and wouldn’t allow it to be spoken in the house, because he thought his stepchildren would use it to talk behind his back. My father forgot once and that’s how he got the scars. Uncle Fifty said their stepfather used the wrong end of his belt and the buckle took the skin clean off. I try my best to remember those scars whenever Pa is harsh. I try to remember that hard knocks leave dents.

  Pa ran away from home when he was only twelve and found work as a chore boy in a lumber camp. He worked his way south, into New York, and never went back to Quebec. His mother died some years back, and his brothers and sisters scattered. Uncle Fifty was the only one he ever saw.

  Our uncle kept us entertained with his stories for hours. But around eleven o’clock, Beth got sleepy-eyed and Lou started yawning and Pa told us it was time for bed. As we were all standing up to say good night, Beth cast one last, hopeful glance at our uncle’s satchel. Uncle Fifty saw her do it and smiled. He opened the bag and said, “Well, I plaintee tired myself. I tink I get out my nightshirt now and . . . ba gosh! Wat is in here? Where you tink all dese present come from? I don’t reemembair to buy no present!”

  Beth jumped up and down. Lou squealed. Even Abby was excited. I was, too. Uncle Fifty always gave the nicest presents. Pa said he drove the peddlers crazy, making them unpack everything, choosing this and that, then changing his mind and starting all over again. He never gave horrible gifts, like handkerchiefs or mints. He always picked out something special. That night he started with Beth and worked his way up, always pretending he’d forgotten to get something for the next one in line. It was agony waiting for your turn and agony when it came. We didn’t get many presents and weren’t used to the drama and anticipation. Beth received her very own harmonica with an instruction book and loved it so much, she burst into tears. For Lou, there was a carved wooden box containing a dozen hand-tied fishing flies. Abby was given a gold-plated locket, which made her flush pink with pleasure. And then it was my turn.

  “Oh no! I forget someting for Mathilde!” my uncle cried, looking at me. He dug in his bag. “No, no, wait! I have someting . . .” He pulled out a dirty wool sock, which made everyone laugh. “Or dis . . .” Out came his red long johns. “Or maybe she like dis . . .”

  He placed a narrow ivorine box in my hands, and when I opened it, I gasped. It was a pen. A real honest-to-God fountain pen, with a metal nib and a silver-plated case and cap. It was as shiny as a minnow in its bed of black felt. I had never had a pen in my life—only pencils—and I couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to put words onto paper in rich blue ink instead of smudgy lead. I could feel my eyes welling up as I looked at the pen, and I had to blink once or twice before I could thank my uncle.

  Pa was next—he got a new wool shirt—then Uncle Fifty pulled out a fearsome hunting knife and a pretty beaded bag. “For Lawton. And your mamma,” he said. “Maybe you geev heem da knife when he come home, eh?”

  “But Uncle Fifty, he ain’t never . . . ,” Beth started to say. A look from Abby silenced her.

  “And maybe you girls can share da purse.”

  We all nodded and said we would, but no one took the purse and no one touched the knife. We thanked our uncle again, and hugged him and kissed him, and then it really was time for bed. I picked up all the brown wrapping paper, smoothing it out for another use, as my sisters made their trips to the outhouse.

  While I waited for my turn, I noticed the fire in the cylinder stove was low and went to fetch more wood for it. On my way back, just as I was about to push the parlor door open, I heard my uncle say, “Why you stay here squeezing cow teets all day long, Michel? Wat kine life dat be for a reevairman? Why you not come back and drive da logs?”

  Pa laughed. “And let four girls raise themselves? All that whiskey’s addled your brain.”

  “Your Ellen, she make you come off da reevair. Don’t tink I don’t know. But she gone now, and I tink da reevair be a better ting for you. You like dis farming?”

  “I do.”

  I heard my uncle snort. “Now who tell da tales, eh?”

  About ten years ago, my mother and father had had a terrible, terrible fight. We were living in Big Moose Station then. Pa had just come home from a spring drive. He had Ed LaFountain, another woodsman, with him. They got to drinking after supper and Mr. LaFountain got to telling stories and he told one about my pa working a bateau and how close he and his crew had come to getting swallowed up by a loosening jam.

  Mamma went crazy when she heard it. Before Pa had left for the woods that year, she’d made him promise he wouldn’t work the jams, that he’d stay on the shore. It was too dangerous, she said. Men were killed all the time. Jams tended to give way with no warning, and unless the oarsman could get his crew back into the boat and row clear in time, the boat would be pulled under. Pa apologized to her. He said he’d only done it for the money. Most woodsmen made less than a dollar a day, but a good oarsman got three and a half, sometimes four, and Pa was one of the best.

  Mamma didn’t want to hear any apologies, though. She was furious. She told him she wanted him to come out of the woods for good and work for her father in his sawmill. They could live in Inlet, she said, right in the village, near Josie. He’d make good money. The children would be closer to a school. Things would be easier for everyone.

  “Never, Ellen,” he’d said. “You know better than to ask me.”

  “Papa said he would forgive everything, Michael. He said he’d help us.”

  “He would forgive? Forgive what? Forgive me for falling in love with you?”

  “For us running away. For not . . .”

  “He’s the one needs forgiving, not me. He’s the one called me no-account French trash. The one who said he’d rather see you dead than married to me.”

  “What are you trying to do, Michael, make me a widow? I won’t have you on a bateau!”

  “I ain’t working for your father, and I ain’t—” Pa didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Mamma slapped him. Good and hard. My mamma, who never even raised her voice to him. She slapped him and put on her coat and made us put on our coats, and she put us in a buckboard at the train station and paid the man to take us to Aunt Josie’s.

  We stayed with my aunt for three weeks, and she refused to let my father in for two of them. But then one day, Pa came to the door and pushed her aside and got my mamma to go for a walk with him. Lawton cried something fierce; he didn’t want her to go. When they came back, Mamma gave Pa all her jewelry—all the pretty things her parents had given her before she married. Pa went to Tuttle’s, a secondhand store in Old Forge, the following day and traded it all for cash money. And the next thing we knew, he was clearing trees on sixty acres of land he’d bought in Eagle Bay. He built us a house from the trees he felled—a real house, not some pokey log cabin with hemlock bark for a roof. He had the trees milled into planks at Hess’s sawmill in Inlet, not at my grandfather’s mill or my uncle’s. He built a barn and a smokehouse and an icehouse, too. And though he did haul lumber out of the woods in the winter to make extra money, he never worked a river drive again.

  “And someting else,” my uncle continued, “why you don’t teach your girls to speak French?”

  “They have no use for it,” Pa said gruffly. “And neither do I.”

  “Dey be French girls, Michel. Dey be Gauthiers”—he pronounced it Go-chay—“not Gokey. Gokey! Ba jeez, what da hell is Gokey?”
<
br />   Pa sighed. “It’s the way they say it here. The way they wrote it on the tax rolls. It’s easier, Francis. I’ve told you all this before. Lord, but you’re a pain in the ass. You never let anything go.”

  “Me? You a pot who tell da kettle he’s black! She gone, Michel. Your Ellen, she dead.”

  “I know that, Francis.”

  “But you not let her go! You bleed for her in your heart. You make beeg sorrow. I see it in your face, in your eyes. How you walk. How you talk. She gone, but you still here, Michel, and your girls, dey still here. Don’t you see dis?”

  “Anything else you want to bust my nuts about, Fran?”

  “Yes, der is. Why your son leave, eh?”

  There was no answer.

  “I tink I know. I tink because you wan miserable son-bitch, dat’s why. I see dat you are. You never a barrel of monkey, Michel, but you better den dis. What da hell wrong wid you? Dose girls, dey lose someone, too. Dey lose der mamma, den der brothair. But dey not turn into miserable stinking ghost like you.”

  “You’ve had too much whiskey, Francis. As usual.”

  “Not so much dat I don’t know what I see.”

  “There’s plenty you don’t see.”

  Pa came out then, on his way to the outhouse, and I pretended only to be bringing the wood and not eavesdropping.

  “I am proud of you, Mathilde, for all dese test you take. Very proud,” Fifty said, as I opened the door to the cylinder stove.

  “Thank you, Uncle Fifty.” I was pleased that he said it, but his words made me sad, too. I wished my father could have told me he was proud of me.

  “What you do now wid all dese test? You be teechair?”

  I shook my head, put two logs in the stove, and closed the door. “No, Uncle Fifty. You need more schooling for that.”

  He thought about that, then said, “Why you don’t go for dis schooling? You plaintee smart girl. I bet you da smartest girl in da whole nord contree. Dis schooling, it cost money?”

  “The school doesn’t. But the train ticket and clothes and books do.”

  “How much? Twentee dollair? Thirtee? I give you da money.”

  I smiled at him. His offer was so kind, but I knew he’d spent most of his stake, if not all of it, on the supper and our extravagant presents. He probably only had five or ten dollars left to his name, all of which he’d need to get himself back into the woods to his next job. “Good night, Uncle Fifty,” I said, getting up to kiss his cheek. “I’m glad you’ve come to see us. We missed you.”

  “You tink I don’t have it, but you see,” he said, winking at me. “I don’t just tell de tale. Not always.”

  I was back in the kitchen when Barney started whining, so I opened the back door and let him out. “You stay out of the garden, you hear?” I told him. I waited till Pa came back in, then I made a trip to the outhouse myself. Barney was waiting for me by the shed steps when I’d finished. I got him settled, then made my way upstairs to my own bed.

  Lawton was the one who discovered that voices in the parlor carry right through the wall into the stairwell. The knowledge came in handy around Christmas, when we wanted to find out if there would be any presents. I could hear my father and uncle still talking as I walked up the steps.

  “Francis, you spent your entire stake, didn’t you? On the supper and the presents and this bottle here, and God knows how much whiskey wherever you were last night.”

  Pa’s voice was disapproving. Why, oh why is he always so sour? I wondered. A wonderful supper and presents, and he still can’t say anything nice.

  “No, I deed not.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well den, look here, Meester Poleeseman . . .” I couldn’t hear anything for a few seconds, then, “. . . a bankair’s draft for wan hondred dollair. What you say now, eh?”

  “A banker’s draft?” Pa said.

  “A banker’s draft?” I whispered. My goodness, he really does have the money, I thought. He has a hundred dollars and he’s going to give me some of it and I am going to college after all. I’m going to Barnard. I’m going to New York City.

  “Dat’s right. Da boss, he give us our money one-half in cash, one-half in dis paper.”

  “I’d say he’s looking out for you, Fran. You going to hold on to it for a change? Put it in a bank instead of pissing it all away in some Utica whorehouse?”

  “I have someting in mind for it. You be very surprise.”

  Silence. Then, “Francis, you didn’t go making any woman promises, did you? That gal up to Beaver River, the one you proposed to on your last spree, she still thinks you’re going to marry her. Asks me when you’re coming back every time I see her.”

  “You wait and see what I do. Dat’s all I say. In five, six day, I go to Old Forge and cash dis paper. Den you be surprise, indeed. Now, Michel . . . where is dat whiskey? Where da hell she go?”

  I nearly flew the rest of the way up the staircase. I hadn’t told anyone in my family about Barnard. I hadn’t seen the point, since I didn’t think I would ever get to go, but right then, I wanted to tell Abby powerfully bad. I couldn’t, though. We all slept in the same room. Lou and Beth would hear and they both have big mouths. One of them would tell Pa for sure, and I didn’t want him to know until I was ready to go. Until I was sure of a room in Miss Annabelle Wilcox’s home and I had my things packed and thirty dollars in my pocket. Pa had knocked me out of my chair for buying a composition book. He’d swung a peavey at Lawton. I wasn’t going to give him the chance to swing one at me. I pictured the look on his face as I told him I was leaving, and I was glad at the imagining. I was. He’d be furious, but only because he was losing a pair of hands. He wouldn’t miss me one bit, but that was all right. I wouldn’t miss him, either.

  As I burrowed down under the covers in the bed I shared with Lou, I realized it had been such a long, eventful day that I had completely forgotten to look up a word in my dictionary. It was too late now; I’d have to go all the way back downstairs to the parlor to do it and I was too tired. So I made up my own word. Recouriumphoration. Re for “again,” and cour for “courage” and a bit of triumph tacked on, too, for good measure. Maybe it will get into the dictionary one day, I thought. And if it does, everyone will know its meaning: to have one’s hope restored.

  fur • tive

  “How about wintergreen hearts, Mattie? Should I get those as well as lemon drops? Abby likes them, too. Lou likes the horehound candy. There’s bull’s-eyes, too; what about bull’s-eyes?”

  “Why don’t you get a few of each?” I said. “Just stand out of the way, Beth, so folks can get around you.”

  The two of us were on the pickle boat with a dozen other people, tourists mainly. We’d just dropped off four cans of milk and three pounds of butter. We’d received no money for them. Pa had bartered with Mr. Eckler for a side of bacon earlier in the week, and the delivery was payment against it. As I waited for Beth to make her choice, I watched the other people on the boat. A man was buying fishing line. Two girls were picking out postcards. Others were buying groceries for their camps.

  When I had bought my composition book from Mr. Eckler a few weeks before, I’d only spent forty-five cents of the sixty cents I’d made picking fiddleheads. I still had fifteen cents that I hadn’t given to Pa, and I was using it that afternoon to buy candy for my sisters. Abby had her monthlies and was feeling awfully blue. She’d had the cramp something wicked that morning and had to lie down until it passed, and Pa asked me why she wasn’t in the barn milking with the rest of us like he always does because he forgets, and then I had to explain and he got mad at me because it made him embarrassed. Cripes, it wasn’t my fault. What did he go and have four girls for?

  I thought some lemon drops would be just the thing to cheer Abby up. It would be a furtive purchase, as I really should have given the money to Pa, but after he’d hit me, I’d decided I wouldn’t. Furtive, my word of the day, means doing something in a stealthy way, being sly or surreptitious. Sneak
y would be another way of putting it. I did not wish to become a sneak, but sometimes one had no choice. Especially when one was a girl and craved something sweet but couldn’t say why, and had to wait till no one was looking to wash a bucket of bloody rags, and had to say she was “under the weather” when really she had cramps that could knock a moose over, and had to listen to herself be called “moody” and “weepy” and “difficult” when really she was just fed up with sore bosoms and stained drawers and the fact that she couldn’t just live life in the open, swaggering and spitting and pissing up trees like a boy.

  That fifteen cents was all the money I had in the world right then, but I felt I could afford to be generous with it. Uncle Fifty had left for Old Forge that morning. He planned to stay there overnight and return on the morning train. I’d have my thirty dollars by dinnertime the next day. He’d only been gone half a day, but we missed him already. It had been wonderful having him with us all week. He pulled stumps and rocks with Pa and helped us with the milking, too. The evening milking, not the morning one. He wasn’t very lively most mornings. His head usually hurt him. He perked up as the day went on, though, and at night he made us special desserts—tarte au sucre, which is a pie made out of maple sugar; or dried apple fritters with cinnamon; or doughy raisin dumplings boiled in maple syrup. After supper he’d sit down with his whiskey and pour himself glass after glass. The liquid leaped and sparkled as it left the bottles, and once it got into my uncle, it made him sparkle, too. He laughed loudly, and played his harmonica, and told us stories every night, like Scheherezade come to life in our parlor. We couldn’t get enough of him. I would watch him as he chased Beth around the kitchen—mimicking the snarls of an angry wolverine, or as he staggered back and forth, knees buckling under the weight of a phantom buck—and find it almost impossible to believe that he was related to my quiet, frowning father.