The Quill Pen

by Michelle Isenhoff

  “Can I bring you a glass of water, ma’am?”

  “Don’t coddle me. Just help me downstairs. I reckon we’re done for the day.”

  Micah propped her up and guided her down to the first level where she settled on a horsehair sofa. She had been so stalwart all day. It frightened him to see her leaning wearily against the cushion, displaying every one of her years.

  “Shall I fetch Dr. Buford?”

  The widow snorted. “That old quack? I wouldn’t let him touch my cat! Just get on with you. Come back day after next and we’ll knock a bigger hole in that mess.”

  When Micah turned to go, she added, “Mind you drop that pile of clothes off to Father Holcomb, you hear?”

  He ran back up to the attic and gathered the armload of clothing. Then he slipped the quill pen out of his shirt and hid it beneath a woolen shawl. He could hardly wait to get it home and examine it more closely.

  Micah planned to sneak the feather up to his room, but his father stopped him just inside the door of the untouchable house. “You’re late. Did you finish?”

  Micah shook his head. “Not even close. She wants me back in two days.”

  “Hmm.” Gerald frowned and stared down at the dust of the road as though his thoughts might be written there. “That could be a problem. I need you to mind the store for a few days. With shipping charges what they are, I’ll be heading to the city myself to restock. And it has to be soon. You leave in ten days.”

  Micah closed his eyes with a grimace. It wasn’t the sort of leaving he dreamed about. “There’s enough clutter in that attic to stock an antique store,” he said.

  That turned his father’s attention. Micah could almost count the dollar signs flashing behind his eyes. After a moment, Gerald gave a short, firm nod. “You’ll be there. In the meantime, I have need of you. What’s that rubbish?” He indicated the bundle of clothing.

  “A donation for the church.”

  “Pitch it. There’s work to be done.”

  Arms still full, Micah followed his father across the street, up the wooden steps of the shop, and onto the covered porch where two elderly gentlemen were playing checkers. The longtime residents were known as Hank and Jeb, and their names went together around those parts like ham and eggs. Both widowers, they tinkered at odd jobs during the day. But every afternoon found them faced off across their favorite board game.

  Hank was dressed in the garb of a common fisherman, but Jeb still displayed the battered blue coat of a privateer in the Revolution. His days as Captain Jebediah Reece were long over, and he’d passed the title down to his son and grandsons, along with a successful shipping business. But he proudly maintained his old uniform.

  “Well, Micah.” The captain cackled and pulled off an ancient cocked hat to rub at his forehead. What remained of his hair was worn uncommonly long and pulled back in a queue, as in his glory days. “I hear you been working for old lady Parsons. Mule of a woman, ain’t she now?”

  “Hello, Jeb,” Micah greeted. “Hank.”

  “No time for conversation.” Gerald dragged his son inside. He snatched away the clothing and dropped it, feather and all, in a heap behind the counter. Then he handed Micah a notepad. “I want you to finish the inventory while I run over to the mill. Here’s the list. Count them all and fill in the amounts right here.” He made a mark with a lead pencil that he tucked behind his ear.

  The little store carried a variety of merchandise. Staples like flour, salt, and sugar lined the wall behind the counter, along with cheese and eggs, coffee, baking soda, and bottles of elixir. Items for the home, such as graniteware and cloth, were grouped in the front of the store, and the back housed hardware: tools, nails, plows, rope. There were clocks, lanterns, suspenders, barrels of crackers—just about anything the townsfolk might need. In addition, one whole aisle was devoted to marine items.

  Familiar fingers of suffocation crept over Micah. He wanted to scream, to run back into daylight, but he forced himself to enter the stockroom. He’d start big. Plows. There was only one, as spring planting was long past. He found the item on the notepad and looked around for a pencil. He checked behind the counter and glanced at all the surfaces where one might have been laid, but came up empty. His father had taken the only one with him.

  Then he remembered the quill pen. He retrieved it from the tangled heap and wrote a number in the column.

  Next, butter churns. Three. Plenty. He wrote it down.

  The afternoon dragged along slower than a jellyfish caught in a back current. Micah counted and marked, marked and counted, pausing now and again to serve customers. When his list was completed, he organized merchandise and dusted shelves, tracing and retracing his steps until he feared he’d wear out the floor and fall through.

  An image of himself doing the same tasks at age forty flashed into his mind. With a muffled moan, he dropped his dust rag and staggered to the front steps. Clutching a roof support, he gulped in air like a netted fish.

  “Crown me, Hank,” Jeb demanded, moving his piece with a flourish.

  “Gladly,” Hank complied. Then, chuckling, he jumped three times across the board.

  Seeing his hopeless situation, Jeb threw his hat at the board in disgust. “Micah, don’t ever let me catch you playing against this wily, two-bit son of a serpent, you hear? He don’t play fair.”

  “Just watch who you call two-bit, you sniveling jackanapes.”

  Micah grinned. It happened the same every afternoon. When the men finished their accusations, each produced a pipe from his trouser pocket. Then they both tipped their chairs back against the storefront and smoked contentedly. Jeb opened a newspaper and gave half to Hank.

  Micah inhaled the scent of tobacco and breathed it out again. “What was she like when she was younger?”

  “Who’s that?” Jeb asked, rustling the paper.

  “Widow Parsons. What was she like in her youth?”

  Jeb let out a low whistle. “She was the prettiest lass this side of the Atlantic.”

  Hank nodded his agreement. “Every boy in town set his cap for her, but we were mostly a sorry lot of water rats and she’d have naught to do with us. No sir, she chose Simon Parsons, attorney-at-law.”

  Micah had a high respect for the town’s hardworking watermen. “Why would she snub you like that?”

  “Because of the danger,” Jeb replied. “There’s not a family in this village that hasn’t sacrificed to Neptune. Her family has lost someone to the sea in every generation. So she gambled on a landlubber.”

  “But her choice came back to haunt her,” Hank added. “Simon died of diphtheria seven years into her marriage. Left her with two little ones to raise. The boy never reached manhood, and the daughter ran off soon as she was old enough. Merle’s been living in that big house alone all these years.”

  Micah felt new pity for the barb-tongued old woman.

  “She’s a strong lady, Merle is,” Jeb said. “Don’t you be sassing her, you hear?”

  “No, sir,” Micah agreed.

  “Look sharp, lad. Your father’s coming.”

  Micah sprang into the store and snatched up the notepad, slipping the pen under a bolt of calico. Outside, his father thumped up the wooden steps.

  “Gerald,” Jeb called with a rustle of paper, “what do you think of these newfangled steam power locomotives?”

  “I rode on one five years ago, Jeb.”

  Hank laughed, loud and high-pitched. “Everything’s newfangled when you’re as old as Jeb here.”

  Jeb muttered something indistinguishable, then, “You’re a brave man, Gerald. Says here they travel twenty-five miles an hour! And the way they’re always blowing up or jumping track, you were taking your life in your hands.”

  Hank put in, “It’s a silly new toy. When enough people get killed playing with them, they’ll fizzle out and sensible people will go back to the old ways. Horses have been pulling us around nicely for thousands of years.”
r />   “I disagree,” Gerald replied. “Rails are stitching towns together all over America. Eventually they’ll even find their way here. You mark my words, Hank. One day machines will render horses obsolete.”

  The fisherman snorted. “Don’t sell your livery just yet.”

  Micah had once seen an illustration of an iron horse. It was said to blacken the sky and shake the ground, sending livestock fleeing with terror. He imagined what it might be like to ride on one, to feel the rumble beneath his feet. To travel to the next town, and the next, and the next.

  And never once look back.

  Micah heard the flip of a page and Jeb’s low whistle. “Says here the government’s giving away land for a dollar twenty-five an acre. Some new policy or another. Calls it the Preemption Act.”

  “Frontier land,” Gerald snorted. “There’s no economy past the mountains. Only way to survive is to eke out a living off the land. No thank you, gentlemen.”

  Heavy footsteps sounded outside the stockroom. “Micah, you finished in—” His father cut off abruptly. “Where’d all these bonnets come from?”

  At the same moment, Micah became aware of a variety of ladies’ hats scattered all over the stockroom. He’d counted only three before joining the men on the porch.

  “You dig all these up?”

  Micah didn’t know how to respond. He nodded weakly.

  “Then I reckon we won’t need to reorder.” His father picked one up and examined it before tossing it carelessly onto a table. “We’ll place them on special this month. Come along. It’s time for dinner.”

  ***

  The man struggled, but the ropes gripped his wrists tightly. Too tightly. They cut off the flow of blood. Cut off feeling. If only they would numb his fear as well.

  His toes dangled, barely touching the deck, barely supporting his weight. He could sense the eyes glancing at him, cutting into him as cruelly as the ropes. Sullen glances belonging to men with no wish to hear his warnings. Men who would silence him.

  He had spoken too forcefully. He was to be made an example of. This he did not fear. He had known pain before.

  But for all his efforts, the gift remained.

  5

  _______

  After dinner Micah locked his door and retrieved the quill pen from the desk drawer in which he had hidden it. Before leaving the store, he had checked the ledger. He knew he’d written a three next to bonnets, but when he examined it, he noticed the space beside oxen yoke was still empty. A single yoke leaned up against the store’s back wall, and he thought he had marked the pad accordingly. He must have written it behind the three. On the bonnet line.

  Had his clerical error somehow resulted in the overstock?

  Micah rubbed his temples where they were beginning to ache. He knew what he suspected, but he didn’t want to say it out loud, even to himself. Gabby, he imagined, would tell him the unexplainable, the mystical, belonged only to old legends. Someone must have delivered the extra hats through the store’s back door while he was out front.

  But even as he considered logic, the image of a stormy night flashed like lightning before his eyes. The rolling clouds. The whipping wind. The driving rain. The dark figure pacing high above his head. He’d nearly let the uneventful hours in the mansion’s attic bury his memory of the widow’s walk. Micah held the pen to the window where it burned orange in the light of the westering sun. Could there be a connection?

  A knock sounded at his door. He shoved the pen beneath the coverlet of his bed and unlocked the door. “Come in.”

  The serving maid entered bearing a glass of milk and a slice of chocolate cake on a silver tray. She set them on his bedside table. “I noticed you didn’t eat much at dinner. I thought perhaps you’d like a snack before I go home for the night.”

  “Nancy, you don’t have to wait on me. I’m not like my father.”

  “Which is exactly why I don’t mind.”

  “Well, stop it,” he demanded. Then he grinned. “But it sure looks good!”

  She started to back out the door.

  “Wait!” He opened the night stand drawer. “I just finished The Deerslayer, the last book in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. You can borrow it if you’d like. I know you read all the others.”

  She slipped the book into her apron pocket. “Thank you, Micah. I will.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You surprised me. I didn’t think a girl would enjoy adventure stories.”

  “Oh, but I do!” For just a moment, her lips curled into a genuine smile. “Heroic characters, exciting plots, romance, drama, the frontier—I’d love to live one of the stories. Because then I wouldn’t be here.”

  Her smile faded. “I’m sorry, Micah. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Don’t be,” he shrugged.

  “I’m thankful for this job, truly. But it’s been so hard since Papa died. These books, they’re my escape.”

  “I know exactly how you feel,” he said, a bit wistfully. He often fantasized about running away to the wilderness. He was only a few years younger than Natty Bumppo, the Deerslayer. With an ax and a rifle, he could live off the land just like the hero. Both items could easily be stolen from the stockroom. In fact, before leaving the store, he had snatched the land article from Jeb’s discarded newspaper. It was hidden in his desk drawer right now.

  But as quickly as the thought would surface, he’d lose courage. He was standing again on the shore with his toes in the water—looking, looking—and planting his feet in the sand. He might just as well resign himself to inventorying guns and axes.

  “Micah.” His mother’s voice sounded from down the hall.

  Nancy stiffened, her face sliding into its usual sober mask. “Can I get you anything else before I leave?”

  “No, nothing, Nancy. Have a good evening.”

  She dropped a curtsy and scurried from the room just as his mother entered.

  “I wish you wouldn’t be so informal with the kitchen help,” Anna admonished, fastening a light shawl around her shoulders.

  “With Nancy? We were schoolmates.”

  “All the same, it isn’t proper now.”

  Noting the shawl, he asked, “Library meeting?”

  “No, our historical society is honoring Judge Ruby’s father, the senior Judge Ruby, with a luncheon tomorrow. He served in the Revolution, you know. I’ve been asked to help with a few last-minute details.”

  “He’s dead. What good will it do to honor him?”

  “His son will be very pleased.”

  “You should have chosen Captain Jeb instead. He was a real patriot, with a boat sunk beneath him and everything. He served in 1812, too. Old man Ruby was only let into the army because they needed the gold he paid for his commission.”

  “Nevertheless,” she frowned, “he was a full-fledged colonel, and the society finds his service more admirable than that of some glorified pirate.”

  “You mean they admire Judge Ruby’s money,” Micah muttered.

  Anna pulled on her gloves and pretended she hadn’t heard. “I just came to say good night before I leave. And to tell you your father went back to the mill. Lusa’s downstairs, but you must be responsible for yourself tonight.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Mother, the servants don’t need to tend me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine. Goodnight, then.” And with a kiss on the top of his head, she rustled from the room.

  Micah could hear her full skirts brushing the walls all the way down the hall, but only when the screen door slammed did he turn his attention back to the feather. Pulling it out, he attempted again to unravel the mystery, but it was like trying to untangle crossed fishing lines. Sometimes you just had to give up and cut away the net.

  Crossing to the desk, he laid the pen down and pulled a leather-bound journal out of the top drawer. Long ago he had found that jotting down his thoughts sometimes helped him make sense of them. The pages of the little book had bec
ome a chronicle of his personal history, full of the problems and triumphs of boyhood.

  He opened the journal to a blank page and unstopped the ink well, but his hand lingered above the bottle as his eyes were drawn again to the lovely feather. Almost reluctantly, he picked it up and wrote the date at the top of the page, marveling once more at the smooth red marks. He kept writing.

  “I have in my hand the most beautiful feather I’ve ever seen. It has the ability to produce lettering of its own accord, which seems to affect surrounding events. Could it possibly be magic?”

  The stormy widow’s walk slipped back into his mind. For just a moment he let the familiar, delicious trembles wiggle up his spine, then he resolutely pushed them away. He’d worked inside the mansion and found nothing unusual. Undoubtedly, the mystery of the bonnets would be cleared up in the morning. He moved on.

  “It seems there’s to be a party in loving memory of Colonel Ruby, stuffed-shirt prig that he was. If only someone would look beyond station and judge character, the town would find much greater reason to esteem Captain Jeb, a genuine hero.”

  With a sigh of resignation, he closed the journal and replaced it. Then he set the quill beside it and closed the desk drawer.

  Leaning on his elbow, he saw the sun still promised an hour of daylight. With both parents away, this was a perfect opportunity to slip out to the swamp unnoticed. His father had never expressly forbidden a friendship with Gabrielle Ramesh, but he judged it safer to keep a secret.

  He stuffed pillows under his blankets in case someone checked in on him, then tiptoed down the steps. Within minutes he reached the edge of town and entered the salt marsh, where the river’s broad mouth spilled into the harbor. The open space offered him a clear view of Jackson’s Shipyard nestled across the bay—or what remained of it after the old fellow had died.

  Micah picked his way across carpets of cordgrass and sea lavender, each footstep finding solid ground. He frightened a curlew that high-stepped away through the shallows. With every stride that led away from town, his heart lightened till he felt as free as the sparrows darting overhead.