Charlinder's Walk

by Alyson Miers

  "I have been curious, but I figured you'd tell me if you thought it was any of my business."

  "You've got manners, then. But if you can tell us about Bobby, you can hear about my son, too."

  "I'm listening. What happened with George?"

  "My husband, Dylan, died three years ago, and then George ran away," she began. "He never told me why he needed out, not in so many words, but I think I know what drove him out. He was always a good boy, but..." she shook her head, looking away towards nothing in particular, "being a good boy just isn't enough. We've got our own ideas of what kind of man a boy should grow up to be, and George was never going to be that kind of man. He knew it, everyone else knew it, and he couldn't get away from it."

  He wanted to hear it in her own words. "What kind of man do you mean?"

  "Surely you've seen it by now. We're a seafaring village, and that's our value to the whole coast, in fact much of the country. The other villages come to us with their goods, we put them on our boats and sail them to Iceland, trade for the Icelandic goods, bring them back here and spread them around. We take a cut of everything that comes through. The men who work on the boats are the only ones who count. They've got to be strong and rugged blokes who can build boats of that size, repair them, haul trees, wrangle horses bigger than mountains--Hell, you met them in the forest, right? You know what I’m on about. That's our idea of what a boy should grow up to be, and woe betide any lad who doesn't measure up. I don't even blame the boatmen, either. Heaven forbid one of them should get hurt and can't sail anymore."

  "What was George like, then?"

  "He was always a very sweet wee boy, but I think that was the problem, he was too nice. He was a clever fellow, but clever just isn't good enough for us. He kept coming home bruised and bloody because the other boys used him for a punching bag. Some of the girls would play with him, but they didn't have the spine to defend him. The worst part was he was never good enough for his father. You should have seen the way Dylan treated that poor child," she went on, then hesitated. "No, I'm glad you weren't here to see it."

  Marietta put down the rabbit she was checking for parasites and paused a moment to catch her breath.

  "I'm not proud of my part in it. All that time when Dylan thought he could beat some manliness into our son, and I never had the spine or the sense to tell him to...just stop doing this to him. No matter how much you beat and belittle him, I said, Dylan, it won't make the boy any tougher. It'll only make him bitter."

  "Did you fear your husband, or did you agree with him?"

  "I think part of me did agree with him, and it disgusts me to think about it now. Back then, I thought Georgy needed straightening out, too. I didn’t want to be seen as that mother whose only boy was turning out to be a pouf. I should have stood up for him. I'm sorry, now, that I didn't."

  "Sorry, what do you mean by a 'pouf'?"

  "I mean he wasn't interested in girls. I don't think those boys noticed it, but my daughters saw, and they warned him to watch out around their dad."

  "Okay, that might explain the hostility. Did you ever notice him lusting after any local boys?"

  "No, he said they were all imbeciles. But my Georgy just never felt at home around here. He couldn't feel safe outside in the open, and he couldn't feel safe here at home with his father. He could only rest easy when Dylan was out of the house."

  "If your husband was so hard on George, I'm curious as to why he waited for him to die before he ran away."

  "I think I can explain it. Perhaps he was afraid of what Dylan would do to him if he ran away and then had to come back. But, no, I think it was more that, with all the abuse he took, he had to do something to show he wasn't afraid. I think George felt like...if he could just take what his father gave him, then no one could call him a coward. He couldn't leave with his father thinking his son couldn't take it. Only after my husband died was George free to get shut of this place."

  "Forgive my presumption, but I don't think a boy should ever have to prove his courage against his own father, of all people. Children should be afraid of their parents; there's nothing shameful in that. Your husband abused his power over George. Your son shouldn't have had to prove his mettle against that."

  "There've been an awful lot of shoulds in his life, but they didn't help."

  "Well, did your son say anything to you before he ran away?"

  "He didn't let me beg him not to go, if that's what you're asking. After my husband passed, I could see him growing more distant, but all he would tell me was, 'They don't want people like me around here, and I don't care enough to prove them wrong anymore.' And one night he packed up his belongings and my best stud buck and we've neither seen nor heard from him since."

  "You say this was three years ago? How old was he at the time?"

  "Twenty-one."

  "That's old enough to fend for himself."

  "Of course it is, but as bad as it was for him here, how long would it take him to find somewhere any better?"

  "Sometimes a fresh start makes all the difference," he offered.

  "If you'd been here a few years ago," she attempted, managing a weak smile, "then he could have learned enough to write back and tell us he was okay."

  "Maybe he would have," Charlinder admitted, "but 'would' isn't much better than 'should'."

  "No, it isn't," said Marietta. "I just wish I knew where he was. I'd like to tell him I'm sorry."

  "I think he'd forgive you, if he hasn't already."

  "If he's forgiven me, then why hasn't he come home?"

  "It's possible that he's made a fresh start and doesn't hold the past against you. Wherever he is, he probably understands by now that most of the world is a really difficult place to grow up. The hostilities you've described to me aren’t unusual."

  "What about you, then? I don't see you acting like a brainless bigot."

  "I come from a pretty strange bunch of people."

  "Yes, about that strange bunch," said Marietta, "do I recall you telling me you lived with your uncle before you left home?"

  "Yeah, same one I grew up with."

  "I don’t think you ever told me about him," she remarked. "You said your mum passed some years ago, and that left just you and your uncle? Why don’t you tell me about him?"

  "You want to know about Roy?" he said. He wondered what she could possibly want to hear about his uncle after having just told him how much her husband had let her down, but she smiled encouragingly, so he went ahead. "My uncle is," he began, and he thought back those years in Paleola when Roy taught him how to mark and cut wood to just the right dimensions for what needed to be done, how to catch fish, how to shoot deer--though that part never really stuck, but Roy certainly tried--and was always there for him with good advice on whatever was bugging him at the time. "He’s great," he attempted. "You know, he was always there for me, and my mom and grandma when they were around, and he knows just how to deal with me. That’s not easy, either, because I’m a pretty odd duck even for that strange bunch, and I take after my mother in bull-headedness."

  "And if you fancied boys, would he still love you?"

  "Well, I already prefer knitting to hunting," Charlinder answered, at which Marietta laughed for the first time that day, "so if I also preferred the menfolk to the ladies, I’m sure Roy would be just fine with that."

  "I’m very glad you’ve had him in your life," said Marietta. "He sounds like a wonderful family man."

  "He’s a rock," said Charlinder. "I can’t wait to see him again."

  Springtime approached, and Charlinder stumbled onward with lessons. The warming weather meant the children had more chores to do outside of school, which meant they were all either especially anxious to get out of class or especially eager to stay. Charlinder kept the eager ones after class and taught them how to turn nasty old linen rags into paper. In fact the community had been using the same technology to make paper for maps and diagrams, so he used their existing equipment. He wasn't going to use it
in his lessons any time soon, but he would need to leave them something for after he left. It was during this time that the painful conversation he'd had with Marietta came up again.

  On a tepid afternoon in late March, Charlinder was outside in the back garden with Pauline and Francie, all attending to their knitting projects. It was a favored pastime now that the air no longer froze their fingers solid, and it was probably a mark of Charlinder's acceptance into their community that the neighbors knew about his enthusiasm for handicrafts and saw it as one of his eccentricities rather than a sign of deviance.

  "But something I'd like to know," Francie remarked to her sister, "is why Mum told Char all about George, when she never had that talk with us."

  "I certainly didn't ask her about your brother," he said.

  "I know you didn't, so why'd she need to tell you about him?" Francie explained. "Was she asking if you'd seen him on your way up?"

  "No, she didn't ask me about that. She seemed to have thoughts about your brother that were eating away at her and she needed someone to talk to."

  "She could have talked to us if it was eating at her so much," Pauline remarked.

  "Heh, that would have been a cheery little chat," Francie chuckled. "'Sorry, girls, your brother's run off, and I didn't try to make him stay.' Oh, I’m sure she would have loved to go there."

  "Now, that's not fair," said Pauline.

  "Do you blame your mother for George's running away?" Charlinder asked.

  "No, of course I don't think she's to blame," Francie explained, "but I can see why she'd think she is."

  "It sounds like you two and your brother were close."

  Pauline nodded. "George was the oldest, and he was good to us. He taught us really well with the critters, too." She glanced over at the cages where their livestock lived.

  "And I know what you're thinking, Char," said Francie, "as I've heard it from lots of people already, that there ain't nothin' special in knowing how to breed a bunny, right? I know, they're small, they're quiet, they stay in cages, they're easy to feed, and they're prolific, so the work nearly does itself, doesn't it?"

  Charlinder had never thought any such thing, though he didn’t dispute that some people would describe it that way.

  "But Georgy did it better than most," said Pauline. "He had just the right touch with them."

  "Right. He could get the most out of the critters, and he knew that to do that, he had to love them a little, but not forget they were going to die," said Francie. "He didn't get upset when it was time to sell them. There ain't no one in this whole village who ain't had one of our critters for supper, and they act like we're doing nothin' special."

  "It may be an easier line of work than some," Charlinder conceded, "but that doesn't make it any less valuable."

  "That's just about the story of our whole lives," Francie snorted, "ain't it, Paulie?"

  "Our lot as girls, you mean."

  "Well, sure. I don't know if you've noticed, Char, but having babies is about the only risk a girl's allowed to take. Everything else we do most of the year round is dull and constant and not too difficult."

  "Of course I've noticed," Charlinder pointed out. "You’ve seen I know how to do a lot of that work myself, and I didn't learn that by spending all my time around men."

  "Right, see, you know what I'm on about, and then we're supposed to believe we're not so important as the menfolk, since we don't do the exciting work."

  "As if we have a choice in the matter," Pauline put in.

  "That’s the real kicker, ain't it?" Francie remarked. "We're not allowed to do anything more impressive than take care of food and clothing, and how in the Hell does that make us the dependents, anyway? I think it's some bloody useful work that we do every day, so how does it work out to be the men supporting us?" she said to her sister.

  "I don't see any men supporting your family now," Charlinder pointed out.

  "There aren't any now," she said. "And we've been so much poorer since Dad died because his work was seen as so much more important than Mum's."

  "What kind of work did your dad do?"

  "He was a carpenter," said Pauline. "He made and fixed parts of boats."

  "And of course we like the stuff they bring back from Iceland," Francie continued, "though we mostly live without it since we lost Dad, but why was he the provider, while we and Mum were always bringing stuff that folks could eat?"

  "Well, it isn't just us girls, either," said Pauline. "Look what happened to Georgy."

  "Right!"

  "You know, why should anyone want to attack a boy who's good at breeding bunnies? And then look at Char here," Pauline went on, somewhat to Charlinder's alarm. "What's so shocking about a bloke who can make his own mittens? We've gotten used to it by now, but why was it so odd in the first place, to see a young man who doesn't need a woman on land to look after him?"

  "That's a good question, isn't it?" Francie agreed. "I think it's 'cause we're not supposed to use work as a way to treat men like babies, so when they start doing the dependents' sorts of jobs, then what does that mean?"

  "Fanny's your uncle and Bob's your friggin' aunt, I guess," said Charlinder.

  The girls looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

  "And we can't have that, now can we?" Francie laughed.

  "If you don't mind my playing Devil's Advocate," he began, at which the girls looked at him blankly. "I mean, let me argue just for the sake of arguing, perhaps the reason you're not allowed to take any risks outside of having babies is because childbirth is such an important risk to take?"

  "I might buy that," replied Pauline, "except nobody can stop with that. Nope, then they've got to keep telling us we're so much different, and not just our bodies, no, it's got to be our souls."

  "And how are your souls supposedly so different from men's?"

  "Oh you know, how we're so bloody compassionate," Francie sneered, "and we like to cooperate, and all that other soft and sensitive, dainty and delicate rubbish, spare me. All that’s supposed to mean we really don’t want to do anything besides tend to our husbands and raise our boys to make them proud. That is what’s expected of us."

  "And you know what?" Pauline continued. "Maybe we are naturally different, but then so what? If we're really so compassionate and cooperative, why's that got to mean we're always the dependents? Why can’t we also be heard?"

  "Yes, why not?"

  "Well, Belinda's already on the village council, isn't she?" Charlinder pointed out.

  "Yeah, she is," Francie answered, "and she's good at it, so why should we have to wait until we're her age to have our say?"

  "You shouldn't," said Charlinder.

  "Char, I'm sure you know more than we do about how the world was before the Plague," said Pauline, "but from what we've had passed down, it wasn't Heaven on Earth. I know folks back then had a lot more stuff than we do now, but they also had a lot more problems, am I right?"

  "It was...complicated," said Charlinder. "It sounds like, for the lucky ones, life was a lot better than we have it now. Not everyone was so lucky, though. It's really risky for us to talk about the pre-Plague world. We weren't there, and our records are sketchy at best."

  "Of course it's risky for us to talk," Francie admitted, "but is it wrong of us to say it was a man's world?"

  "That could mean a lot of things," said Charlinder. "If you mean most positions of power were under men’s control, then, yes, it sounds like that was the case in most of the world."

  "And some things never change," said Francie. "So, who knows how different the world would have been if women didn't believe they couldn't take part in running the show? I mean to say, if the ladies back then weren't so used to having their menfolk make the rules, there's no telling what kind of place it would have been. I can't say it would have been better, but...something different never really got a chance, did it?"

  "The world, pre-Plague, is in the past," said Charlinder, "and there's nothing you can do abo
ut it now. You can ask yourselves what you'll do about the future, for the society you're living in now."

  "Oh, we have been talking about it," said Pauline. "We're just not sure of what else to do."

  "Why aren't you two in my class, for instance?" he asked. "You might like to write your ideas down."

  "We didn't give it much thought when it was time to sign up, did we?" said Pauline to her sister. "I wish I was there now, though."

  "There's no reason you can't learn from the ones I'm teaching now. I wouldn't do it if I expected them to keep it to themselves."

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Voyage

  His time in the village was over before he knew it.