A Gift Upon the Shore

by Wren, M. K.

  The shelves along the walls are crowded with pots and trays filled with damp, dark earth in which green miracles are occurring. Year after year the miracles occur as they have for millions of years in different shapes and forms. The tart scent of the tomato plants, warmed by the sun, blends with Bernadette’s herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—and how I wish I could remember all the words of that old song—chamomile, basil, borage, marjoram, peppermint, goldenseal, pennyroyal, hyssop, hepatica. And even a little cannabis.

  This early in the year, the plants, except for the perennials, are miniatures of their once and future selves and charged with potential. But today many of the vegetable seedlings are leaving this sunny womb to survive—or not—in the true outside world in the garden. Bernadette is, aptly, midwife of this process.

  Bernadette’s hair—short and curly, entirely white now—flies wildly around her head. She has become even smaller with age, but she’s still quick and impatient, still like an inquisitive squirrel with her sun-browned face, her gray, questing eyes, her small hands constantly busy. She is saying to Esther, “That flat there—yes, the cabbage. That goes. Then there’s more broccoli and these two cauliflowers.”

  I’m at the worktable on the north wall stacking the slitted tarpaper squares that will go around the cabbage seedlings to discourage cutworms. The squares are much the worse for wear, and I’m not sure we have more tar paper in the storeroom. I look up at Stephen, who waits to carry one of the flats with its precious cargo. Esther places it in his hands, tells him, “Now, just watch where you put your feet on the way.”

  “Esther, I never have dropped one.” He seldom calls her Mother, nor do Miriam’s children call her Mother.

  I put a stack of tar-paper squares under my left arm and take up my cane. “I’ll walk up with you, Stephen.”

  He smiles at me, leads the way, then pauses while I open the sliding glass door. We walk past the deck and the north wing of the house, then up the gentle slope to the garden. The grass is starred with dandelions and tiny, white English daisies. Stephen concentrates on keeping his load balanced. He doesn’t look up as he speaks. “Mary, I haven’t finished Treasure Island yet.”

  He’s slated to report on that book in school. “There’s no hurry, Stephen. Besides, I’ve given you quite a lot to read lately.”

  His mouth tightens. “Miriam says I can’t read at night. It wastes candles.”

  I am jarred by sudden anger at that. There are always enough candles for reading. I try to keep the anger out of my voice. “Well, you’ll just have to finish it when you can. Do you like it?”

  He glances up at me, grinning. “Yes. It’s really exciting.”

  And what more can a teacher ask? Yet I wonder how much of the world of Jim Hawkins makes sense to Stephen, who would find the world that existed only thirty years before he was bom incomprehensible. But so would Jim Hawkins.

  A cascade of laughter distracts me. Little Mary and Jonathan are running toward us on their way to the greenhouse. Jonathan shouts in passing, “Hurry up, Stephen. They’re waiting for more seedlings.”

  Stephen retorts, “I’ll get there when I get there!”

  When we reach the garden, they are indeed waiting; that is, Miriam, Grace, and Enid. Isaac has been detailed to hoe chopped kelp into the soil at the east end of the garden, and little Rachel is ostensibly helping him. She looks around at me and grins, and her small, fair face reminds me, as it always does, of Rebecca. But there’s no pain in that reminder, perhaps because Rachel is so replete with life and laughter and the unaware innocence of all young things.

  This end of the garden is—like the seedlings the women are planting in its plowed, hoed, fertilized, raked rows—beautiful in its potential, and already the carrots have put up lacy plumes, and the first umbrella leaves of squash are unfurled. Miriam stands near the gate. She gives Stephen a cold look as she takes the flat. “About time.”

  I put in, “About time for the tar paper, too. Sorry to be so slow.”

  She shrugs. “Put them down. We’ll take care of them later.” Then she turns away, takes the flat along the row to Enid and Grace.

  I prop the squares against a fence post, take a deep breath of the musty perfume of the earth, and remember the seasons I’ve spent here coaxing out the green miracles with hard work. This was Rachel’s garden. This was my garden. Yet now I am unnecessary here.

  I start down the slope toward the house. Stephen joins me, walks silently beside me for a while, then at length he speaks. “Miriam says you hate her, you know.”

  Startled, I stop, search his face. He said it so matter-of-factly, so indifferently, yet what I see in his hooded eyes is bewilderment.

  “Stephen, did Miriam tell you that?”

  “No, not me. I heard her talking to Grace yesterday in the garden.”

  Of course. If it can be said that we have a gossip in our community, it is Grace. And if one wishes to convey anything to the community without doing so personally, one has only to tell Grace.

  I turn and continue toward the house. Miriam is experimenting in manipulation and propaganda. She isn’t subtle, but here she doesn’t need to be. Damn her.

  “Mary?” Stephen kicks at dandelion heads as he walks.

  “It’s all right, Stephen. Don’t worry.”

  “Do you hate her?”

  And that’s the question I asked myself only hours ago, but my feelings aren’t as simple as an affirmative or negative would indicate.

  “I wonder why Miriam would say that, Stephen. And how she feels about me.”

  We have no further opportunity to discuss the matter. Little Mary and Jonathan are coming around the corner from the house, each carefully balancing a flat of seedlings. Stephen says, “I’d better hurry and get another flat up to the garden.”

  “Yes, you go ahead.” I watch him jog toward Mary and Jonathan, stop to exchange a few bantering words with them. They part laughing.

  By early afternoon the last rain clouds have vanished, the sun is striking rainbows on every blade of rain-dewed grass, and the air is as clear as a drop of water. I’ve draped the chairs on the deck with blankets. The wood is still damp, but I don’t want to sit inside now and waste this crystalline afternoon. Shadow curls napping at my feet, and Falstaff, the old yellow tabby, has taken up residence in my lap, purring while I stroke his broad, amber back. He seldom plays the lap cat, but apparently he finds my lap in this sunny place acceptable.

  I listen to the omnipresent rumble of the surf, watch the foam-laced breakers curl and spill in white avalanches, but I’m thinking about Miriam, about rumors of hate, about candles for reading. There’s so little time for the children to read, especially in spring and summer when the tasks necessary to survival take up most of the daylight hours. If Miriam won’t let Stephen read at night by candlelight, he’s left only a short time after evening services before he goes to bed.

  And Miriam is well aware of that. She doesn’t want him—or any of the children—to read. Except the Bible. For her that one book is the fount of all wisdom. It is all she will tolerate in the way of wisdom.

  The other adults are more tolerant, but it is the tolerance of indifference. They follow Jerry’s lead in that. He sees no harm in my teaching the children, nor is he particularly interested in what I teach them. He did, after all, give his word.

  But if it ever comes to a choice between me and Miriam—rather, as Jerry will see it, between me and peace in the family—I wonder how tolerant he will be.

  And the family peace is fraying. I felt it at midday meal. Uneasy pauses in the conversation, uncertain glances exchanged.

  Or is that only a projection of my own tension? Certainly Jerry was his usual ebullient self, eating heartily of chicken stew, peas, and potato cakes thick with butter, while he talked about the cedars he found up the Styx, which will provide g
ood lumber for the addition to the north wing.

  Shadow lifts her head, looks northward, and I see Stephen and Isaac coming around the corner of the house. They don’t bother to go to the steps at the south end of the deck, but climb over the railing. Stephen waits to offer Isaac a helping hand, then as they approach me he says, “Miriam said Isaac should rest for a while. Is it all right if he stays with us for the lesson?”

  No doubt Miriam is making Isaac her innocent spy. “Of course, it’s all right. Isaac, why don’t you go in and get a chair.”

  He boosts himself onto the railing. “This’ll be all right.”

  Stephen gestures toward the empty chair. “You sit there, Isaac.”

  Isaac shrugs, gets off the railing, stops to pet Falstaff. The cat rouses, annoyed, and leaves my lap, venting his choler with a swipe at Shadow’s nose as he departs. Shadow only draws back and growls, then resumes her nap. Isaac laughs, and that brings on a spate of coughing, which he ignores as he settles in the chair.

  Stephen winces at the dry hacking, then turns to me. I think he’d like to talk about Miriam, about my feelings for her, hers for me, but he is constrained by Isaac’s presence. He asks, “Did you and Rachel ever go on another journey to look for survivors?”

  I would also like to finish our discussion about Miriam. I don’t like to leave it unresolved in Stephen’s mind, but I’m equally constrained. “No, Stephen. That one trek was lesson enough. It taught us our limitations and forced us into certain decisions.”

  “You mean like preserving the books?”

  “Yes. Our legacy.”

  Isaac asks, “What’s a legacy, Mary?”

  “Well, it’s a sort of gift. A gift to future generations.”

  Stephen perches on the railing. “Jeremiah said when Grandpa Luke was on his deathbed he told him Rachel had a divine mission to save the books.”

  I nod, thinking how deceptions stick like burrs to your skirts. Luke held the secret so many years, but I encouraged Jeremiah to divulge it. It served my purposes.

  “Rachel and I considered it the most important thing in our lives. Yet it was so slow. Time, that’s what we were shortest on. And wax. The bees only produced so much every year, and we needed most of it for candles.”

  “Wax?” Stephen asks. “How did you use wax?”

  “To seal the books. First we wrapped each one in aluminum foil—we had a lot of that from our scavenging—then we covered the foil with melted beeswax. We applied it with Rachel’s bristle brushes, the same ones she used for her encaustic paintings.”

  “Oh, yes.” Then he adds: “I don’t think I really understand some of her pictures.”

  “You mean the abstracts. Maybe because they aren’t pictures; they’re paintings. I think what she was trying to say is that things aren’t always what they seem, but they’re all interrelated.”

  “I think the pictures are pretty,” Isaac insists.

  Stephen laughs at that, then: “Mary, what did you do after you covered the foil with wax?”

  “Well, when the wax was a quarter of an inch thick, we wrapped each book in another layer of foil to protect the wax. Our packaging was at least watertight. We experimented with a couple of duplicates.” I look north toward the vault. Its brick and stone and cedar seem so solid, so steadfast, but time and weather can destroy mountains.

  Stephen asks, “Will you ever open the vault, Mary?”

  “Me? No. It can’t be opened until your children, or their children, rediscover how to make paper, so they can copy the books and learn from them and preserve the knowledge for their children.”

  Isaac pulls his legs up, sits cross-legged. “How many books are there in the vault?”

  “Nearly ten thousand, Isaac.”

  His eyes go wide, and Stephen sighs. “It would take forever to copy that many books.”

  “A long time, at least, but the more people there are who can write, the sooner they’ll be copied. Or even printed. A simple printing press wouldn’t be so hard to build.” Then I laugh wearily. “Oh, Stephen, we can’t predict the future. That’s what Rachel said. We can only try. And hope.”

  He studies me, and sometimes his eyes seem as fathomless as a night sky. At length, he nods, as if I’ve answered a question for him.

  I shift in my chair, seeking a more comfortable position. “Anyway, sealing the books was a long, slow process. Of course, at first we didn’t have the vault, so we kept the sealed books in the basement. And one reason we were so slow is that we usually read, or at least skimmed, the books before we sealed them. With each book . . . it was like sending a baby out on a river in a reed basket, hoping a princess would find it.”

  “Like the baby Moses!” Isaac says eagerly.

  “Yes, Isaac.” I don’t point out that Moses was only one of many infants in mythology sent out on such river voyages. “The hope kept us alive and . . . yes, I’d say happy. Surviving still meant hard work, and we were always learning new skills, but there was satisfaction in that. We took pride in our strength and resourcefulness. The old griefs never quite died for us, but we were surviving as human beings, not simply as organisms do, without cognizance, without a frame of reference. We didn’t surrender our humanity.”

  Stephen nods, and there’s a shadow of sadness in his eyes. “But how did you keep going when you were so . . . alone?”

  “Well, we kept busy, Stephen. We had no choice about that. But it wasn’t all work. Sometimes in the evenings we entertained ourselves with card games or Scrabble. That was Rachel’s favorite game.”

  “I like Scrabble, too,” Isaac puts in.

  I use the Scrabble set as a teaching aid now. No one here is equal to a real game of Scrabble. “Yes, it’s a good game, Isaac. But there was one entertainment we missed sorely. Music. It was a part of our humanity that was denied us. The records—oh, those silent disks. Rachel had hundreds of records, a sampling of the best music of five centuries, but even if we’d had electricity, our stereo had been destroyed by EMP. I wonder how many centuries it will take to reinvent the symphony orchestra, and if . . .” Both Stephen and Isaac are gazing uneasily at me. They don’t understand what I’m talking about. Or what they’ve lost.

  Isaac smiles tentatively, and I want to touch the soft contours of his cheeks. But I only return his smile and go on. “At any rate, our life here at Amarna was quiet and even satisfying for eight years after our trek. We had problems and small disasters, but we managed to deal with them. We lived and worked from season to season, rather than from year to year. Now, when I look back, it seems those seasons passed quickly. Then one day—the first of April, in fact—nearly half a year after the tenth anniversary of the End, everything changed for us at Amarna.”

  Now Stephen smiles, too. He thinks he knows the nature of that change, thinks it was the change that Rachel and I had longed for, the answer to our hopes.

  So did I, on that April Fool’s Day.

  Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON, LETTER TO W. SHORT, April 13, 1820

  I seem stark mute, but inwardly I prate,

  I am, and am not, I freeze and yet am burned,

  Since from myself my other self I turned.

  —ELIZABETH I (1533–1603), FINIS, ELIZA REGINA,

  ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM MANUSCRIPT

  The last two weeks in March had been gray with cold rain that beat down the seedlings in the garden and made the pasture a swamp, but this, the first day of April, dawned clear, the sun drawing a mist of steam from the rooftops and fields.

  When the morning chores were finished, Mary took a bucket and chisel and set out for the beach. The tide was unusually low, exposing the rocks—and the mussels growing on them—at the base of the Knob, and tonight they would feast on mussel chowder. Yorick fol
lowed her, and she didn’t discourage him, although he had a tendency to wander. She took the silent whistle; he always responded to that. Yorick was the image of Sparky, one of the litter born to fey Ophelia last fall, the last litter Sparky had fathered. The last Ophelia had mothered.

  At the foot of the path Mary climbed over the logjam of driftwood cast up by the winter storms, then paused to savor the sun on the sea. The wind blew out of the east, throwing rainbows of spindrift back from the massive avalanches of the breakers, and as she watched them she remembered music she hadn’t heard, even in memory, for many years. Beethoven. One of the symphonies. Which one, she couldn’t be sure.

  Yorick ran out to the water’s edge, chased a gull that casually lifted into the wind and hovered out of reach, while Mary struck out for the Knob, her shadow stretching before her. Lean and vigorous, that shadow figure, and it reflected the way she felt today: in tune with her world, blending with her surroundings, tan chino pants the color of the light sand, blue-gray jacket the color of the heavier, dark sand.

  Abruptly Yorick stopped his dance with the gull, faced south, ears forward, and began barking. Mary turned, alert, but not yet alarmed. Something was moving on the beach about two hundred yards away. She wondered why she hadn’t seen it before, but it was close to the piles of drift. Maybe it had been hidden there.

  It. Why was she thinking it?

  What she saw was a human being.