The Red Garden

by Alice Hoffman

In exchange for room and board, Ben worked on the cottage, which was in sad shape. He repaired the roof, cleared the wooden gutters, took down the dilapidated fence that was listing to one side, rebuilding it with the use of old slats and wire. In the evenings, Mrs. Carson let him wander through the museum, where he faithfully took notes. He described the wolf in a glass case, the ragged stitches crisscrossed through the threadbare pelt, the mouth pulled back in a snarl. He drew pictures illustrating the smooth, snail-like fossils that had been found in Band’s Meadow, made sketches of the founding families’ wagon wheels and pots and pans, and wrote descriptions of the bats that hung inside a glass case, yellow eyes forever open.

  Ruth did him the favor of making introductions in town. When he said he wanted “characters,” she did her best. She took him to the Jacobs, who lived behind the church. Ben took notes while speaking with Mrs. Jacob, who organized the food drives and the knitting and sewing circles, then he interviewed Mr. Jacob, who had fallen from his position of bank president to become church janitor and was now convinced the Lord had a lesson in mind: Money was the last thing he should think about. Redemption, he insisted, could be found in the churchyard, which he faithfully raked every morning.

  Ben thanked them and set off to go. As he was leaving, one of the Jacob sons, Calen, the bookish one, heard that the stranger interviewing his parents had gone to Yale. The Jacob boy followed and asked if he could walk Ben back to Mrs. Carson’s. On the way Calen told him there was a mermaid living in the Eel River and that for two dollars he could show Ben exactly where she could be found. Calen was an individual who knew what he wanted, and that included getting out of Blackwell and the church cottage. He disagreed with his father’s philosophy concerning money and redemption. Perhaps Yale was in his future as well.

  “Let me guess,” Ben said, thinking back to his encounter with Joshua Kelly at the bar. “The fisherman’s wife.”

  “Yes, sir,” Calen said.

  “Well, I don’t believe in such things, and I don’t have two dollars.” Ben Levy clapped the boy on the back. “Nice try,” he said, and kept walking.

  Ben had a busy schedule with little time for nonsense. That afternoon, after lunch, Ruth was taking him to meet Lillian Gale, a distant cousin of the Partridges, direct descendants of the town founders. Miss Gale, the oldest woman in Blackwell, lived up the hill with an assortment of animals she’d rescued. She had a raccoon that sat on a chair and drank tea from a cup, along with two hound dogs that had come wandering out of the woods one day, a tame crow, and a lynx, which looked like nothing more than a huge gray-brown housecat until Ben bent to pet him and he bared his teeth.

  Out in the barn Lillian Gale had chickens and two goats. The local children told her there was a stray donkey stranded in the woods. She planned to go out in search of it that very day, as soon as her company left. Miss Gale was starving herself in order to continue feeding her animals. On most days she had little more than two cups of oatmeal and a pot of tea. Ben was taking notes so fast his hand was cramping. Today their hostess was especially talkative and outraged because she’d taken the lynx, named Amos, down to the river on a long leather leash the evening before. In this way Amos could hunt for himself without running away. He was missing an eye, Ben noticed, and would probably not survive in the wild if set free. Miss Gale assured him that Amos was still hunter enough to take down rabbits, which he had for his dinner. When he was finished, she collected the bones and gristle to cook into a stew for the dogs.

  “Do you have a recipe for that?” Ben interrupted. His own mother hadn’t been much of a cook. Her specialties had been potato dumplings and potato bread, with a dried roast whenever she could get something on sale at the butcher’s. He couldn’t imagine her getting by on oatmeal, or being resourceful enough to fix a gristle stew.

  “A recipe?” The two old women looked at each other and laughed. “You cook it, add water, then you serve it. I’m not talking about a custard pie here, mister. Let’s just call it Whatever You Have Stew and leave it at that. The dogs like it, and so do I.”

  “I see.” Ben was wondering what was in the tea he’d been drinking, which had a faint yellow hue. It had probably been made with whatever, and that was worrisome since he’d had allergies as a boy. Later, he would ask Ruth what they’d been drinking and she’d tell him it was chamomile, but for the time being he only took a polite sip, then pushed his cup away.

  “Anyway, I decided to try Amos down at the river,” Lillian Gale went on. “I figured he’d be a pretty good fisherman, and the shad were running. There are always eels, as well, if you know where to look. We went down to the bank, and I sat down and let him have a bit of freedom. Amos traipsed on and stood in the water, still as a statue, waiting. That’s what fishermen do, I suppose, and it comes to him naturally. I guess I fell asleep because the next thing I know Amos is yowling and someone is shouting at him. He comes leaping back up the riverbank soaking wet with a gash in his head.” Sure enough, there was a cut above the lynx’s single good eye. “It was the woman who’d done it.”

  “The fisherman’s wife,” Ben Levy guessed.

  Lillian Gale nodded. “Something’s not right there. That’s all I’ll say.”

  “She always donates food for the poor,” Ruth reminded her friend.

  “She can donate till she turns blue, that won’t change the facts. My Amos has a scar on his head and I know who did it. And I know the reason why.” Miss Gale leaned forward. “She’s more fish than wife.”

  When they left, Ben gave Lillian Gale the last of the cash he had left—ten dollars he’d been given for train fare back to the city. “For your menagerie,” he said. “Wouldn’t want them to starve.”

  Miss Gale took his hand in hers and kissed it. “I don’t care if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ,” she announced. Of course the whole town knew Ben wasn’t a Christian, with a name like Levy and a hometown like New York. “You’re a fine man.”

  “That was a good deed you did,” Ruth Carson said as they set off on the winding road back to town. There were blackcap raspberries growing, which Ruth pointed out. They stopped to pick some so she could make a pie.

  “It’s called a mitzvah,” Ben explained. “It’s a person’s responsibility to help those around him.” He had no idea how he would get back to New York City now, not that he was in any hurry. “Whatever good you do comes back to you in some way.”

  “For instance, a raspberry pie after supper,” Ruth said.

  Ben grinned. “Something like that.”

  “I suppose you’ll want to talk to her as well.” Ben gave the old woman a look, not quite following. “The fisherman’s wife,” Ruth Carson said.

  “I don’t know. I’ve still got quite a few on my list. There’s the fellow who runs the apple orchard that you told me about. There are the Partridge sisters. Then I have to travel to three other towns, and make my way over to Hadley to interview the pastor there before I pick up the train in Amherst and head back to New York, if I can get the train fare together.”

  “You said you wanted a character,” Ruth Carson said. “Well, this woman is a mystery. No one knows where she came from or why she’s with that old man, Horace Kelly. If you find that out, maybe you’ll win your bet.”

  Ben had told Ruth about the Plaza Hotel, and the other folklorists, and even about the half a novel in his knapsack. He talked more out here in Massachusetts than he ever had in New York. That evening he almost told her about his brother, but since he’d never been able to get past that particular story and didn’t know what he’d find on the other side if he ever did tell it, he held his tongue and ate raspberry pie instead. Another recipe for him to write down, one he might actually try someday, if he ever found blackcap raspberries while walking in the woods.

  HE WENT DOWN to the river early Sunday morning with a lunch Ruth packed him just in case his wanderings lasted till nightfall. It was the end of August and the river was low, the green water murky and slow. When Ben spied the shack on
the riverbank, he stopped in order to describe it in his notebook. The ground was boggy, so he took off his shoes and socks, slipped them into his rucksack, then rolled up his pants legs. Ben had never walked barefoot through mud before and he thoroughly enjoyed it. His feet were black in no time. There was a gray cloud spiraling up from the smokehouse, but all was quiet. He peered in the window of the shack—there was a bed, a woodstove, a rough-hewn table and chairs, along with some clothes hung up on a hook, and a braided rug on the floor.

  After jotting down these details, Ben walked along the river for a while. He noticed a trail, not footsteps exactly, but some broken brush, so he followed along. He came to a spot that looked much like the bend in the river Miss Gale had described, where her pet lynx had been attacked. He put down his rucksack. Because he was alone, he took off his shirt and pants and folded them. Then he made his way down the bank, which was thick with ferns. He’d never gone swimming, but now he stepped into the water, wanting to experience the river. The shock of how cold it was surprised him and made him shout. He was glad none of the fellows he knew in New York City could see him, startled by a little cold water, standing in his underwear, his skin pale, his bare legs muddy. He went in a little farther. There were birds singing, but of course Ben Levy had no idea that they were meadowlarks. He didn’t know that the swirls of insects were blackflies or that the tiny mouselike creature running near the riverbank was a pygmy shrew, so light it could race across the water.

  He heard a woman laugh, then turned to see the fisherman’s wife crouched down in her black coat, wearing her heavy mud-caked boots, her long black hair wound up. He was already knee-deep in the river, just about naked, looking only the more foolish for what little clothing he wore.

  “I must look like an idiot,” he said, mortified.

  She nodded, laughed again, said, “Yes.” She rose and walked toward him. “Careful. The mud there is deep.”

  Ben Levy realized he was indeed stuck, as if he’d landed in quicksand. When he tried to move, he just sank in deeper. He let out a string of curses, and his pale skin turned red with embarrassment. The woman laughed again, then came to the edge of the water and reached out a hand. Ben gazed at her, puzzled. After all he’d heard, he had a moment of doubt.

  “I won’t bite,” she said.

  Ben Levy was surprised by how strong she was as she pulled him out, up toward the safety of the riverbank. He was slick with mud, a laughable fool, but she didn’t laugh again. He saw then how beautiful she was and how Calen Jacob might have mistaken her for a mythological creature when he’d spied her swimming in the river. Then and there Ben found himself envying Calen for what he’d seen.

  “I think I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t be. I’m a married woman.” The fisherman’s wife smiled, but only a little.

  “I’m a writer,” Ben told her. “I’m collecting folklore and oral histories.”

  “Is that what you were doing in the river?”

  They both laughed then. She turned around while he took up his clothes and got dressed. When he asked her to join him for lunch, she sat down and accepted one of the sandwiches Ruth Carson had made him, but she ate only the bread. He asked her a list of questions, the sort he asked everyone he interviewed. Where and when she was born, when had she come to Blackwell, when had she married, the simple facts of her life.

  “I don’t like to talk about myself,” she told him.

  She looked skittish and Ben didn’t want her to leave, so they spoke of other things, mostly about Ben. He found himself telling her about his brother. At last, he got past the part of the story where his brother cried out in pain while Ben hid in a closet so he couldn’t hear. He choked up afterward and had to turn away. That was at the other side of the telling, his great despair and loneliness. Perhaps it was because this woman had come upon him nearly naked that he felt as though she had seen through him already and was at last able to show the deepest part of himself. It was getting late, and the woman grew nervous as darkness began to fall. When he asked her to tell him one thing about herself, anything, she relented and told him her name. It was Susan. She laughed and said, “Don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.” He nodded, but she pressed him for a promise, so Ben crossed his heart.

  THAT NIGHT HE couldn’t sleep. He thought of his brother tossing and turning in his bed, fevered, losing consciousness. He thought about how beautiful the woman at the river had been and how he’d felt alive in her presence. The next morning he went looking for her again. When he found her, they sat together by the river. She was both intensely present and inaccessible. There, and yet removed. Once more Susan wouldn’t answer any of his questions. The day was far too short, and before they knew it the afternoon was gone. All at once she told him he had to leave. It was evening; the lack of sunlight panicked her once more. Ben, too, should hurry, she told him. He should run back to Mrs. Carson’s house before anyone else might appear. Indeed, Ben saw a boat coming down the river in the darkening light.

  “Your husband?” he asked, for there was old man Kelly, a lantern on the bow of his boat, not three hundred yards away.

  “You think he’s my husband?” Susan laughed and sent him off.

  That night Ben Levy went back to the Jack Straw Tavern. He needed some company.

  “Find yourself a character?” Joshua Kelly asked.

  “A few.” Ben nodded.

  “And did you meet her?” Joshua wanted to know. “My uncle’s wife?”

  “She says she’s not his wife,” Ben confided. He had been wondering if perhaps he should do something to save Susan. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Although he had never thought of himself as heroic, any man with half a soul would have begun to imagine he might rescue her and have her for his own.

  “Is that what she says?” Joshua gave Ben a drink on the house, since he was going bankrupt anyway. “Well, that’s what happens when you find your wife in the Brattleboro Asylum up in Vermont.”

  Ben Levy walked back to town in the dark, baffled by the way he felt. He had no idea why he couldn’t stop thinking about a woman who was a stranger and nothing more. It would soon be September, and the air was cool after the sun went down. He reached Ruth Carson’s house, but continued walking, through the woods and the low bogs, to the river. He felt confused, as if he had drifted inside a dream. Waking up was out of the question. He now understood himself to have fallen in love, like a stone dropped into a river. He was a man quite out of his senses. He went to the place where he had found her, and soon enough she came to sit beside him in the dark. They held hands. She told him that she was married.

  “You can come to New York with me,” Ben said. “No one will know you’re married.”

  “I’ll know,” Susan insisted.

  She stood up and took off her clothes. Her black coat, her boots, her dark dress. He held her there right on the ground, not thinking about the mud or the cool air. He felt the way a drowning man might, gasping, barely surfacing until they were done. At last she pulled away. “If I was yours,” she said, “I know you’d set me free.”

  She told him never to look for her again or to speak her name. Before he could argue with her, she went to the edge of the river and dove in, leaving her clothes behind. Ben ran after her, calling, but she was soon submerged under the water and quickly swam away. Ben ran through the woods, but when he reached the shack, he saw the fisherman at his door with his lantern. There was no choice but to make his way back to town.

  In the morning, he couldn’t eat the breakfast Ruth prepared for him. It was the date he was meant to leave and travel to the other Berkshire towns, but instead he sat on the porch steps thinking all day. He felt maddened by the crickets calling, by the faint watery air. He told himself he should go home where he belonged, get himself to Albany or Amherst and take the first train. At twilight he went back down to the river. There was the fisherman, Horace Kelly, filleting trout and tossing the fish into the smoker.

 
; “Are you looking for something?” Horace said when he saw Ben Levy in his good shoes with his shirt buttoned to the collar and a set look on his face. “I think you made a wrong turn at Wall Street.”

  “I came to talk to you about Susan.” Ben hadn’t planned to talk about her at all, but there it was. He’d said her name.

  “Susan?” Horace Kelly said. “So she told you her name. Well, she’s right there.”

  Ben looked around. There was no one.

  “Right over there.” The fisherman pointed to a rope stretched from tree to tree. On it hung a burlap bag that twisted back and forth as if caught in the wind. But there was no wind. It was a still evening.

  “Go on,” the fisherman urged with a laugh. “Tell her you want her to run off with you. That’s what you came here to say, right?”

  “I don’t think this is funny,” Ben Levy stated.

  “No,” Horace said. “You wouldn’t.”

  Ben noticed Susan’s black coat and boots in a heap near the smoker. He looked at the fisherman, who’d gone back to filleting his catch. Ben went over to the burlap bag. He took it down and opened it. Inside was a black eel struggling to get out. Ben shut the bag.

  “That’s her,” the fisherman said. “Still want her?”

  Ben went to sit in a chair by the smoker.

  “I caught her one night and I kept her,” Horace said.

  Ben understood that he was sitting with a lunatic. He wondered if it was the fisherman and not his wife who’d been incarcerated up in Brattleboro.

  “She was so beautiful I couldn’t throw her back,” the fisherman went on. “Even though she’s asked me to again and again. She says she has a husband, and that he’s waiting for her, and that she can only be true to him. I’ve caught thousands of eels, but I can’t catch him. I try every night because I know he’s right around here, trying to get her back. I’ve seen them talking. I’ve seen them do more than talk.”

  Ben Levy had a fleeting thought of Jerome Avenue, and the one kind of tree that grew there. He thought about his mother sleeping on the couch, and his brother’s funeral, and the night he stopped writing his novel, and the drinks he’d had on the train up to Albany. He felt sick at heart.