Threads

by Patsy Brookshire

  The boys were glad to have me. They were only seventeen and sixteen that first winter. Willie especially missed the motherly nagging, though you'd never have known it to hear them talk. They loved being on their own and making their own pay. They blew half of their wages every Saturday night at the dance hall saloon in Seaside.

  Before I came they blew almost all of it. After a couple of bad weekends I made them give me half of it before they went to town. They didn't like it but it was the only way I could make sure we had food on the table and the rent got paid. After rent, food, savings for all three of us, and a wage to me, the rest was theirs. I marked three envelopes, one for Willie, one for Zack, and one for myself and put in three dollars a week in each of the envelopes. Zack never really appreciated it, especially the money I kept as wages for myself, two dollars a week.

  Naturally, he made the most work for me. Zack still thinks women were born to serve him, which is why he never got a women to stay with him for long. Our natures were never very sympathetic to each other. I fancied myself a suffragette and resented his attitude towards me.

  I have to admit this too, I liked my position as older sister. I made the most of the opportunity to boss Zack around without Mom there to interfere. He fought me, but because he had asked me to come, he had little ground to stand on. Not if he wanted dinner.

  Willie was different. He was grateful for everything I did for him. Zack was a terrible cook and housekeeper so Willie was delighted with the clean cabin and my apple pies, thick bean soups and the chowders I learned to make.

  The kitchen was mine. Not Mandy's or my mother's. Mine. I filled the windowsills with shells from the things we caught and that we found. There was a mist of sand on the sills from the wind through the cracks around the window frames. The stove worked best for me; the boys could never get it right. And then I would show them how to build the right kind of fire. It irritated them, which was of course why I did it. That was my most favorite kitchen, even more than David's. The boys were more than glad to have me take over.

  They taught me how and where to dig for the razor clams on the beach. And how to get the blue-shelled mussels that we steamed and dipped in melted butter. Mmm, so good.

  We got the mussels from the rocks and the tide pools at Haystack when the water was just covering them. Most of the time I could twist them off the rocks; sometimes I had to use a knife to cut them loose. Whenever the tide was right or I was tired of beans and smoked pork, I'd take my shovel and knife down to the beach and get mussels and all kinds of clams. The smell of salt in the air, the sun shining on my back, or the fog swirling around... I still miss it.

  We went fishing in the surf when it wasn't too rough. We had fish fried, baked, and in soup, until we were sick of it and glad to get back to bread and beans. Once in a while we took a little boat and went crabbing. I don't know who the boat belonged to. It sat up above the beach and we'd just put it back when we were done. Zack made a crab pot out of some wire and net he got from a fisherman friend. It was a round thing that you throw in the water weighted with some fishing lead. We'd tie some stinky fish to the net and throw it in the water from the boat, come back about an hour or so later and pull it up. One of my jobs was to dip the bucket we brought along into the ocean, leaning over the edge of the boat and scooping it about half full of water.

  Truth to tell, I loved going out over the waves onto the ocean. It was just scary enough to be fun, but I trusted the boys to be able to get us out and back. Didn't do it often 'cause the ocean was pretty rough most of the time.

  Getting crabs was fun, like a surprise party every time we pulled that thing up. They'd be scooting around in there trying to get out and Zack would just grab 'em and throw 'em in the bucket. I was scared they'd grab me. They'd scritch and scratch around in there until we got 'em home and put 'em out of their misery by throwing them in a pot of boiling water. Cooked in the salt water I'd got from the ocean, with a bit of nutmeg, they weren't bad but I never was crazy about them like the boys were. And David.

  Willie shot a deer just before Thanksgiving, soon after I came. What we didn't eat fresh I made into venison mincemeat, with raisins and pieces of apple with a good amount of vinegar to tart it up. It made great pies. I canned a bunch of it up. Some Sundays I'd make a couple mincemeat pies. Willie'd hang around to smell them cooking. But more, he did love it when I'd give him a big slice. I'd watch him eat it, smacking his lips. I maybe enjoyed it more than he did.

  Both the boys were rough. That was the way with all the men in our family, I didn't think much about it. Their manners were terrible. They belched at the table and never excused themselves. Their hands were callused and unclean looking from the rough road work they did. I made them wash for meals. They had to be reminded to comb their hair, except on Saturday nights, and the only clothes they had were work clothes, the red plaid shirts and dark work pants.

  On Saturday night, Zack, in particular, had a regular ritual of cleaning up. He washed his hands and face real good, changed his work socks for his nicer, dancing socks. Most of all, he polished his shoes, his special dancing shoes, something the other guys--certainly not Willie--didn't have. He'd get out his black polish and his special rag, and after cleaning off the stuff left on his shoes from the week before, he whip those dancing shoes into shape--you know, polish and spit, polish and spit. When he got done he'd put those shoes on and walk different. Careful not to get in any mud. He carried a piece of cloth in his pocket to spiff them up just before he and Willie went into the hall.

  There was a dance hall over to Seaside where everybody went. The boys had an old buggy that one of the guys from the road crew got from somebody. They'd all go over in that. I didn't much like the road, as it was close to the cliffs in a couple places, rough cut and narrow. They guys all had the same idea of a great time, going to the dance hall with plenty of liquor and dancing with the wild girls they met there.

  Sometime early in the morning one of the guys from Seaside would dance with one of the girls that belonged to a guy from the road crew and she would laugh too much at his jokes. The fight would be on. It was the same every Saturday night. Willing girls, too much whisky, wild dancing, then the fight. The ride home was a sobering experience with the trees leaning in close and who knows what out there in the dark. At least the horses only drank water so everybody always made it home in one piece.

  I know all this because I went with them. I liked the dancing, and yes, the drinking. The men all had strong arms and spared no expense at showing a fun-loving gal a good time. They were young and so was I. My hair was down to the middle of my back, and dark. Ebony-black David called it. I was taller then, five feet seven. A couple of inches, maybe, have disappeared. I was full-hipped, not just broad like now, and high breasted, and my waist was small so it narrowed-in nicely. The men liked to grab me around the middle and twirl me around. Even David liked to run his hands down my sides. "Measure the hourglass," he'd say.

  I was never especially pretty, but I was what they called then, handsome. But David said that when I laughed, I was beautiful.

  David lived in the house above us. It wasn't a cabin. It was a real house that David and his wife had designed and built themselves. They got wood from all sorts of places, some that washed up on the beach, some lumber they bought from Seaside, and then David had cut down trees up in the woods. The house was much longer than it was wide. It faced the ocean and was a two-storied affair with what they called a cupola on top, right in the middle.

  The cupola looked like a fancy chicken coop to me. It was glass all around, except for the wooden frame. You could open up the window front and back to let the air blow through. David loved to sit up there in the summer and paint. Painting was the way he made his living, and it was his passion. When he tired of painting he would turn to his telescope and watch the seals over by Ecola Bay.

  The second floor was their bedroom. There was also a smaller bedroom, which was meant to be a child's room, but, in their twelve years of
marriage, no children had come. They used it mostly for storing David's paintings.

  The downstairs was one big, long room. The kitchen was at one end and a big stone fireplace was at the other end. The fireplace had a double chimney that opened into their bedroom, too.

  There was a big window near the front door, with a long bench in front of it. The bench was painted yellow, and had a large Christmas cactus sitting on one end. The cactus brightened that corner with red blossoms at odd times throughout the year. I remember violets and geraniums in that window, too. All kind of plants new to me.

  My folks never had much use for plants in the house, things needed to be useful. This was my first experience that I could like things different from my family. The colorful plants were useful in cheering dark winter days, as was the large window that provided light for them. The plants did well.

  Most surprising to me was the bookcase. We didn't have much cause or time for reading at home, so almost a whole wall for books was odd to me. Against the back wall, it reached from floor to ceiling. The supports were hand-notched. In bare places were a few knickknacks, but mostly shells. Lots of shells.

  In the few feet of space not taken up by the bookcase was a small, paned window looking back over the property into trees. In winter, with some of the trees and bushes bare, you could see if someone passed by on the road above. Under the window was the sewing machine, beside which was a large humpbacked trunk, used for storing material and Amy's sewing stuff.

  Over by the front door was where everybody hung their coats and hats, and all sorts of other things: buckets, clamming shovels, a lantern. I've forgotten what all. David kept saying he was going to build a porch to hide it all proper-like, but he never did.

  I didn't meet David until spring came, but I saw him every day. A path led from his house to the beach and it passed within a few feet of our cabin. I didn't notice him for the first two or three days. I was too busy cleaning and cooking, but soon after I had the household setting into a routine, I noticed him.

  I was standing at the window watching the ocean. It was early, about 6:00 a.m. The morning light was just starting to show. It was stormy as I remember, not like it gets in mid-winter, but I'd lived inland all of my life and never seen any kind of sea storm so I was fascinated. Seagulls were out there flying into the wind, catching updrafts and in general just having a good time. When I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, I turned and looked.

  A man was walking slowly right by our cabin, carefully so as not to slip on the slick grass. Once in a while he would look down to check his footing, but mostly he walked with his head high. He was looking all around, feeling the wind and smelling the air, but when he walked past my window he looked away. So he wouldn't be staring in our place, you know.

  He was very polite, David was.

  5. Who Is That Fellow?

  I couldn't see his face because he was going away from me, but I looked him over careful. I was already twenty-two years old, remember, and I'll admit it, every man was a possibility. He wasn't tall--five feet eight and a half inches--and even dressed like he was I could tell he didn't have much meat on him.

  He had on a heavy oilskin coat like fishermen wear, and high rubber boots. The hood of his coat was thrown back but an old, yellow sou'wester protected his neck and ears from the wind. His pants were black, and lumpy, like he had another pair under them. His hands were stuffed in his pockets most of the time, 'cept when he took them out to steady himself. He looked like a fisherman but he didn't have a pole, so I wondered what he was doing.

  I watched him go down the path, slow and careful, until he disappeared 'round the bend. I went to the front window and kept watching. Pretty soon I saw him walk out on the beach, right toward the waves. I thought for a minute that maybe he was crazy, you know, going to walk right out there and drown himself or something, but then I thought, he's too dressed up for that, unless he wants to die warm. But he just walked at the water's edge for a long way down the beach 'til I got bored watching. I got the broom and started sweeping sand from the floor to out the door.

  The sand. Always sand on the floor. Nearly drove me mad crunching underfoot and clinging to my shoes and hiding between my toes so that I always had to wash my feet before climbing into bed at night.

  About an hour later I saw him coming back up the path. I stood at the window and watched him come. I guess I was kinda bold, but how else was I going to see his face if I didn't look at him? He was holding some shells, sand dollars I think, in one hand, and his poor hands looked cold and raw, and red. I didn't think he saw me, so I continued to stare at him.

  I put my hand up to smooth my hair and I guess the motion caught his eye 'cause suddenly he looked up, straight at me. And he grinned.

  He was no more than four feet away from me and that big grin just about turned my heart over. I didn't mind staring at him, but I didn't expect him to be bold right back.

  His eyes were blue--bright blue topped by wild, bushy red eyebrows--and his teeth were very white. He had a red mustache that curled on the ends, but otherwise he was clean shaven. His face was raw from the wind, especially his cheekbones. His face all over was almost too sweet, but the sharp cheekbones and mustache gave him a dashing appearance. I still don't know whether it was the smile or his eyes that did me in.

  I was so startled when he grinned at me that I was almost scared, but I couldn't help myself, I smiled right back. He nodded, then was gone past the cabin, up the path back to his strange house.

  From then on I watched him nearly every day. He was as regular as the clock. Down the path at six, an hour on the beach, then back past the cabin about seven. Always, unless I was out clamming, or something, I stood there and watched him go by. And always he looked in at me and grinned.

  He sometimes walked past near dusk but I usually ignored him then because the boys were there.

  I was like a fascinated thing. I could no more keep away from that window than I could stop breathing.

  I lived that winter on David's smiles. I thought of him during the day as I worked and I dreamed of him at night when I slept. I would be embarrassed to tell you about those dreams. When I got up at four in the morning, the thought that I would soon see him warmed me as I made the fire in the cookstove.

  The boys didn't suspect a thing. On Saturday nights I went to the dances with them and had a good enough time, but I was always hoping he'd be there. He never was, of course. He was at home with his wife.

  I didn't know he had a wife. I'd blocked the possibility right out of my mind. David had no wife in my dreams, except maybe me. I didn't know until one day, in late winter, when David walked past one evening when I was staring out the window watching some gulls argue over something on the beach. It would have been unnatural to have ignored the fact that a man was walking right by the window, so I casually asked the boys, "Do you guys know who that fellow is?"

  Zack looked up and snorted. "Sure, that's crazy Smithers."

  "Crazy Smithers?" My heart dropped. But I tried to sound casual, like it was just an ordinary conversation and I didn't care much.

  "Yeah," said Willie. "Some of the guys call him that 'cause he's a painter. But I don't think he's crazy."

  "A painter?"

  "Yeah, of pictures." He made a square with his hands like a frame.

  My relief was confused. I wasn't sure a painter was a "real man."

  You understand, don't you Annie?

  "Well," said Zack, "if he's not crazy he's probably...unnatural...which is just about the same thing."

  I was feeling rather queasy.

  "Naw, Zack," Willie said, "he's nothing... He's just different. He uses his hands to make a living just like we do, 'cept he paints with his. I saw him down to the beach a couple a times last summer, painting. He was painting birds and people poking around Haystack Rock and it looked real real, you know, almost like a photograph."

  "Yeah?" Zack gave Willie a funny look. "That proves it, only weird people mess
around drawing pictures when they should be working."

  "No, you're wrong, Zack. I know it."

  "Yeah? How?"

  "He had his wife with him," Willie answered flatly.

  My heart felt like a rock. I didn't know whether to be crushed, or relieved.

  "Yeah?" Women always interested Zack. "Is she a painter, too? What's she look like?"

  "I don't think so. She was just lying on a blanket in the sun. She's kinda frail looking. Short, blonde hair and big brown eyes. Little woman. There was something about her didn't seem too strong. She was sorta pale, like she didn't get out much. But she was real nice. Friendly. Sweet-like."

  "Humph." You could tell Zack was thinking it over. "Still, I wouldn't let the guys see you hanging around Smithers. They might get wrong thoughts."

  Willie let the subject drop but his mouth had the set look it got when he'd made up his mind he was going to do what he dang well pleased. But what Zack said must of stayed with him because next summer he avoided going down to the beach when he knew David was there.

  6. The Beach in Winter

  I wasn't idle that winter, though I certainly didn't keep a spotless house. That winter was not a problem of too little to do, but too much. Other than clammin' and fishing there was plenty of housework. Our water came from a rain barrel by the cabin, plus what the boys got from a well in town. We had a crude washing setup at the side of the cabin, with a couple tin tubs I washed and rinsed in. They'd put a rough roof over my wash area and strung up a couple clotheslines to a tree. I also had a couple lines in the house that I hung clothes on when it rained.

  After the work was done, the cabin cleaned and bread set to rise, I'd get to work on my quilts. One for Zack, one for Willie, and finally, one for myself. Zack and Willie's were traditional: a design of plain squares for Zack, 'cause he didn't like anything too fancy, and a star quilt for Willie. His was many colored, with even some flower pieces from old dresses. I wouldn't dare use flowers on Zack's. He'd a burned it up.