Calico Bush

by Rachel Field

  “If we had sweet oil or butter to smear on, ’twould help,” Ira was saying. “Here, Dolly, give her to me while you get what’s left o’ that salve.”

  But there was so little of it, and Debby’s burns were so many. They seemed to reach from head to foot of her little body. It was terrible to see her so swollen and blackened and to hear her moaning as the pain increased. Marguerite felt her own tears wet on her cheeks and to her astonishment she saw Caleb turn away from the rest as if he could not bear the sight.

  “It’s our fault,” Dolly was crying to her husband wildly. “Yours for bringin’ us to such a pass, an’ mine for not doin’ as Hepsa Jordan said. But I didn’t have the heart to brand her against the fire, an’ now look what it’s done to her! Look at her, Joel Sargent, just look at her!”

  He took the baby and began to pace the room with her in his arms. It seemed to ease the child a little for her cries grew fainter. Marguerite had never seen Joel Sargent look like this before, his face suddenly broken and twitching.

  Ira and Dolly were mixing water with a cupful of white flour that she had kept hoarded. They would spread this on the burns and make it go as far as they could. Jacob and Patty and the twins sat huddled by the settle, crying softly together in fright and sympathy.

  “Maggie,” whispered Becky between her sobs, “Debby ain’t goin’ to die, is she?”

  “Hush,” Marguerite told them, “you must not cry.”

  “But you’re cryin’ yourself,” put in Susan.

  “You must be very good and quiet,” Marguerite went on, “till I come back.”

  “But where are you goin’ to?” they asked her curiously.

  She did not wait to tell them. Instead she ran to Caleb, all her usual dread of him gone in the stress of the moment.

  “Caleb,” she said, “we must get Aunt Hepsa. She will know what to do.”

  He stared at her without speaking and she hurried on.

  “It is frozen over—all the way. They said the ice would bear us. Only today you heard them say so. Let us go. Quick!” Then as Debby’s moans grew worse again, “We must not delay.”

  “Yes,” he answered and she saw his eyes light up with determination, “we’ll go.”

  Marguerite never remembered how they got into their things and out of the house. She only knew they were making their way to the cove by the light of the winter stars and a lantern Caleb had lighted with one of the bayberry candles. It gave out a feeble glow, the light coming in points through piercings in the tin top and sides. She stumbled on a stump and would have fallen but for the hand he reached out to her.

  “You’d best keep a-holt,” he said, and she was glad to cling to him.

  They struggled on together in the teeth of the wind which swept bitterly down the frozen channel. It whipped at Marguerite’s cloak so that she was obliged to clutch the folds close with her free hand. It was the darkest time of the night, and their lantern made but shifting points of brightness to guide them over the ice, which had appeared flat from shore but which they found to be rough where the tides and undertow had broken up the earlier layers. They were continually scrambling over these jagged places, slipping and catching themselves, only to go stumbling again. Sometimes they had to work their way around gaps in the ice piles, or jump over hollows and frozen gullies. A fear that they might be going in circles came over Marguerite, for it was all so black she could not distinguish the outlines of either Sunday Island or their own shore. Then she saw Caleb’s head turned again and again to the sky. She knew he was following the tip of the Great Dipper, and she thanked God fervently that there was no sign of fog. If they could keep their footing and those stars directly before them they must reach the Island, unless—But she would not think of such a possibility. Ira had said the ice was solid, even in the middle where so long there had been a narrow passage of open water.

  They had not breath enough to speak to one another if they could have made themselves heard. The wind whistled in their ears, and there were terrifying creakings as the waters below strained against the ice barriers. Marguerite shuddered to hear it as they pressed on, her feet like frozen clods as she forced them forward, her hands numb and aching in her woolen mittens. Once they stopped to change places that Caleb might shift the lantern to his other hand.

  “We’re ’most halfway,” he shouted to her as he did so, stamping to try and bring back some feeling to his feet.

  Once more they were plunging on. Marguerite stumbled and fell to her knees, but Caleb pulled her up again. Her leg hurt where she had struck it; still she forced herself forward, her breath coming in short gasps.

  Now they were on a smoother stretch, where it seemed they could feel the tug of the tide under the ice. The lantern flickered feebly, and they could barely make out a foot-length ahead. Any weak places would be here, they knew. Instinctively they drew closer, feeling their way cautiously step by step. But it held firmly under them, and when they felt the rougher places once more they knew that the most dangerous part was past. On and on they toiled, now slipping, now righting one another, now stopping to gain breath enough to struggle on a few more yards.

  And so they came within sight of their goal. The sky to the eastward showed faintly gray, and no sight had ever seemed more welcome to them than the dark shoreline of Sunday Island.

  “We’re ’most there,” Caleb managed to gasp, but Marguerite had no breath to answer him.

  There was a dull pain about her heart, and every breath hurt her cruelly. She had long since ceased to have any feeling in her hands or feet.

  “I can’t go on. I can’t!” something in her seemed to be crying out. “Another step will be the end of me.”

  Then she would remember Debby’s crying and Dolly’s despair and press on. If it had not been for Caleb she could never have climbed the last steep pitch before they reached the Jordan house. But he half dragged her to the doorstep, where she sank in a heap.

  If they had been two ghosts Hepsa and Seth and Ethan Jordan could not have been more startled to find them there, Caleb beating with frost-numbed knuckles on the doorframe, and Marguerite by his side.

  “In God’s name,” the old woman was saying as she drew them in to the fire and began to pull off their outerthings, “how did you two young ones ever do it?”

  Marguerite was too spent to tell her. She had not even strength to help Caleb explain their plight. She knew he was telling them about Debby while the old woman rubbed her hands and feet and Seth and Ethan did the same to his.

  “So we came to you,” she heard Caleb saying, “to get you to come an’ help her.”

  “But, Hepsa,” Marguerite knew Seth was very serious, though she could not lift her head to see his face, “you can’t go out there across the ice. You give me what they need an’ Ethan an’ I’ll take it.”

  “I’m a-goin’ too,” she heard the old woman answer firmly. “I guess if those young ones could do it, I can. You get the wood sled out, Ethan, an’ I’ll be ready.”

  Presently Aunt Hepsa was bending over her, pouring something hot and stinging down her throat.

  “Carry her in to my bed, Seth,” she heard her say. “They’ll be safe here till we can get back.”

  She felt warm covers being wrapped about her. The iron screws that had been tightening with every breath she drew began to lessen and she felt a queer lightness and ease steal over her.

  “You will not let her die?” she whispered faintly.

  “I’ll do my best, child,” she heard Hepsa answer as she drifted off to sleep.

  But Aunt Hepsa’s best was not enough. Neither was Marguerite’s and Caleb’s.

  It was past noon before they returned again over the ice, the old woman on the sled with Seth and Ethan dragging it after them. Caleb was up, limping about the kitchen on frostbitten toes, and Marguerite had wakened faint and sore under the covers. They knew before any of the three spoke what had happened.

  “We done all we could,” Aunt Hepsa told them at last as she
stooped to warm herself at the fire Caleb had replenished, “but she was ’most gone when we got there.”

  “You mean she’s—she’s dead?” Caleb’s voice sounded thin and hollow as he put the question.

  “Yes, poor little mite,” Aunt Hepsa answered, “an’ I expect ’tis better so, for she couldn’t ever be cured o’ such burns as those. Only I can’t seem to reconcile it no way.”

  “But she was too little to die!” Marguerite’s tears were hot on her cheeks. “She was good and happy and—and she said my name, just yesterday she did, all by herself.”

  She flung herself face down among the pillows, crying wildly in her grief and weakness, while the old lady sat beside her, touching her heaving shoulders with a kindly hand.

  “Then ’twas all for nothin’,” she heard Caleb say slowly, “our comin’ across the channel an’ all.”

  “I’m afraid so, boy,” Seth answered. “Put on your things an’ I’ll haul you back on the sled. There’s plenty for all hands to do over there, an’ praise be the ice holds.”

  After the men had gone over again, Aunt Hepsa made a strong brewing of herb tea which she and Marguerite drank steaming from the kettle. That put new strength in them both, and when the old woman brought out a length of soft woolen cloth Marguerite was able to help her sew it into Debby’s last little dress.

  “I’d a piece o’ linen, too,” Hepsa Jordan said as they worked, “but some way I couldn’t bear to put that on her in this bitter weather. I expect we always think the dead go on feelin’ even when we know they can’t no more.”

  “Yes,” sighed Marguerite, “and she’d have looked so pretty in this. It’s almost white. She never had any but gray holland or linsey before.”

  Seth had fashioned a little box out of planks he had brought over, and Ethan helped Joel dig the grave in a cleared patch at the edge of the woods. It was hard work cutting even so small a place in the frozen ground. Their axes and spades rang out dully as if they were striking stone instead of earth. Marguerite heard them as she and Aunt Hepsa and Ira came over the ice next day.

  There were not shoes and wraps enough to go round, so Marguerite stayed indoors with the younger ones while the rest did what must be done. Caleb told her later that they had said a prayer, but that even Aunt Hepsa couldn’t raise a hymn tune, it was so cold.

  That night they were all too tired to talk, and even Dolly had no more tears to shed.

  It was only by the next afternoon that Marguerite could get her swollen feet into her shoes and limp as far as the little grave. It looked a very small mound, even for Debby, and she stood beside it to make a prayer of her own. Pumpkin had followed her out. He crouched beside the place, his tail drooping, his wise brown eyes sad, as if he too were mourning. When she had said all the prayers she could remember, she still lingered. The wind blew sharp from the sea and already what sunlight there had been was going fast. Once more Marguerite folded her hands that were still sore and frostbitten and sang the little lullaby she had so often rocked Debby to sleep by:—

  Do, do, l’enfant do,

  L’enfant dormira bientˆt.

  Do, do l’enfant do, L’enfant dormira tantˆt.

  As she turned to go back to the house with Pumpkin at her heels, she saw the sun going down behind the islands. Long yellow fingers of light were spreading over the western sky. Ira had come out to cut another notch on the post by the door.

  “Tomorrow’ll be the first o’ March,” he told her with one of his rare, slow smiles. “I guess we’ll none of us mind seein’ the last o’ winter.”

  * This old carol may be freely rendered as follows—

  I hear the heavens resound

  To such angelic song

  That trembling stirs the ground,

  While rolls the news along.

  The Heavenly Child is found,

  To Whom all praise belong.

  Oh! wondrous miracle,

  A God in his cradle!

  Yet must we wonder more,

  This King the heavens adore

  Must die upon a cross.

  PART 4 SPRING

  The Spring thaw was a long while in coming. In spite of Ira’s notches on the post it seemed there would be no end to snow and sleet and steady northeast blows. The ice had long since broken up in the channel, but crossing was now more difficult because of shifting masses of it and because of heavy seas. Ira had not seen Abby in weeks, and this irked him.

  “If there was any sort o’ trail blazed near shore I could make the Welles place easy in half a day’s walkin’,” he complained to Dolly.

  “You’d wear it into a road soon enough if there was,” she told him. “To hear you take on, anybody’d think that girl was goin’ to be gray an’ toothless ’fore you saw her again!”

  “Does seem like years since I set eyes on her,” he sighed and went back to the wooden bucket he was fashioning against sap-taking time.

  For a long while now they had been talking of the two sugar maples in the half-cleared land near the spring and of the fine syrup they could soon have to sweeten their hasty pudding.

  “My mouth fair hankers for a taste of it,” Ira told the children as he hollowed out wooden pegs to drive into the trees. “But I guess we’d best wait till the Line storm’s past. That’s due ’bout now.”

  It came as he had predicted. The log house rocked on its foundations to the winds that raged for upwards of two days and nights. Marguerite marveled to hear them tell of it and of how all this tumult meant that far away to the south the sun was crossing the equator. All this commotion that the days and nights might be of equal length, and then slowly the days would grow longer and warmer, and it would be summer again.

  “How marvelous is the sun,” she thought. “No wonder that people worshiped it in olden days as Oncle Pierre told me.”

  She found this tree-tapping very strange and mysterious. In Le Havre she had never heard of such doings. Her curious questionings amused Ira and rekindled Caleb’s scorn, which had been noticeably less since they had shared the dangers of that expedition over the ice to Sunday Island. She had to be reassured many times that it would not kill the maple trees to drive in the spouts and rob them of the sap.

  There was much excitement in the house when the day for this came round, for the melting snow and ice made walking difficult, and there were not enough shoes for all the young Sargents. The twins drew lots to see which should wear their one pair, and Patty was inconsolable over her lack of any till Marguerite promised to carry her there on her back. So off they set, a queer little procession in the noon sunshine, with Ira and Caleb at the head bearing hammers, pegs, and wooden pails. They began with the larger of the two maple trees. First Ira cut a place in the bark, then he drove an awl in nearly to the hilt.

  “Plenty o’ sap there,” he told the little group about him. “Give me a spout to ram in, Caleb.”

  When they were done with the tapping, two large wooden buckets hung from either tree, the sap beginning to drip with a steady tap-tap on the bottom almost before they were fastened in place.

  “Umm, it’s good!” cried Jacob, catching a drop on his finger and smacking his lips over the taste. “It’s as sweet as sugar water.”

  “Just you wait,” said Caleb. “It’ll be better ’n molasses an’ ’most as thick when we get it boiled down.”

  “It takes a powerful lot to make a pitcherful,” warned Ira, “so you young ones have got to come up here every so often to see it don’t overflow.”

  “Yes,” agreed Marguerite, “it would be terrible to lose one precious drop.”

  By the following noon the largest iron pot was full to the brim, ready to be set to boil over a fire that Joel had kindled between stones not far from the house. It was too heavy and hot work to be done indoors, and he had rigged up three stout poles, tent-fashion, from which the kettle might swing by its chain. Dolly came out to stir it with a wooden spoon which Ira had bound to a long piece of wood so that she need not come too near the heat or
have her face filled with smoke and steam. Already a cloud of this was rising as the sap began to boil, filling the air with a rich, yet delicate fragrance which tantalized the children, who had gathered on the nearby woodpile. They perched like brown birds or squirrels on the logs, watching with bright eyes; wrinkling their noses in eager expectation.

  Under Ira’s direction, Marguerite and Caleb filled a flat pan with clean, fresh snow from the woods, packing it down firmly into a solid mass. They set this beside the waiting wooden piggin, and when Dolly said the syrup was done, and Joel and Ira lifted off the kettle on a stout pole and set it aside, the great moment had come. Great ladles full of the seething brown liquid were now poured over the pan of packed snow, the syrup hardening in a fragrant, sugary crust, while the rest was poured steaming into the piggin.

  “Come on an’ help yourselves,” Ira bade the children, setting the pan down on the top log and breaking off a huge chunk for himself.

  Never, thought Marguerite, had anything tasted so delicious! After the months of salt fish, cornmeal, and turnips it seemed like some unbelievable magic fare with its sweetness and flavor. Even Joel and Dolly joined in the exclamations of pleasure at each mouthful, and the children soon were brown and sticky with all they had eaten.

  “It is well this is not summer,” laughed Marguerite at Jacob’s and Patty’s smeared faces and hands, “or the bees would be swarming about you, you are so sweet!”

  They chuckled at the idea, licking their fingers clean of the last bit.

  Afternoon was waning by the time they were done. Dolly marshaled the children indoors again, but Marguerite went with Ira to bring down the fresh sap from the maples. He carried the large bucket and she the smaller, and the trees showed dark against a pale yellow sky as they went up together.

  Involuntarily Marguerite stopped as they passed Debby’s little mound.