“You never know, that’s the thing, you never know. Something.”
“A fire?”
“Maybe, or something no one can prevent or name. I don’t know what. I just don’t want you alone in the attic out here on Dark Marsh Road. If there’s one thing we’ll never run out of, it’s snowstorms. So I can come in early when you get too cold.”
But the following month went by without a flake of snow.
“I never thought I’d miss it,” Landish said, who had taken to gazing out the porthole in search of any sign that the weather might be turning hard. It did nothing but rain for a month. And then it turned much too cold for snow.
Landish had no gun, but some men gave him seabirds until, because they had so little ammunition left, they told him they could spare no more.
They walked past stores in which rabbits, though they were out of season, hung upside down in doorways. They passed a window showing apples piled in rows a dozen deep. When Deacon wasn’t looking, Landish stole two sweet oranges and some sugar-dusted cherries. He made a dessert for the boy, surprising him with a dish of orange wedges sprinkled with chopped cherries.
Soon, because of ice, no supply ships could reach the island. No fishing boats could leave it. Every port was cut off from every other.
The wealth inspector still came by, giving out fewer vouchers because the stores were running low on some supplies.
They tried to fish in nearby ponds. Landish didn’t have an ice auger and the ice was too thick for his axe. It was the same with the pools on the smallest brooks. The axe struck mud at the bottom of one hole.
Over the more distant, larger streams there formed shells of ice through which you could barely hear the tantalizing sound of running water.
Landish fished in the streams as he had when he was a boy, with a bamboo pole, a length of twine and one single-barbed, barely baited hook, baited with almost anything depending on how cold it was. There were patches of open ground, but he couldn’t break them with his axe to look for worms, so he had to fish with the eyes of trout he had caught the day before.
One day, though the footing was treacherous, Landish walked out onto a river and hacked his way to water. He told Deacon to stay back.
He had just dropped in a hook when the ice gave way beneath him. He went all the way under, briefly, then bobbed up in the hole he’d made. He heard himself breathing like a whelping seal. His heart made a mad bid to escape, battering the walls and floor and ceiling of his chest. He thrashed his way to shore, planks and squares of ice falling from his shoulders, his hair and clothing matted to him.
Deacon had thought Landish was gone. Engulfed. But Landish came up from the river like he lived beneath the ice.
Landish scrambled up the riverbank. Putting his hands on his hips and bending over, he breathed like Deacon did when he ran so fast he scorched his throat. He looked up at the sky and dribbled water from his lips.
“Landish.”
“We have to get home fast.”
Landish hoisted Deacon on his shoulders and began to run. His clothing froze, stiffened, rubbed against his skin. He reached one hand inside his hair and squeezed his ears until they burned. On the tip of his nose there was a frozen drop of blood.
“You all right, Deacon?” Landish said through clenched teeth.
“I can run.”
“No, you can’t keep up. It’s faster like this.”
Landish’s voice sounded like it did when Deacon drummed on his back with his fists.
“Fell in, did ya?” Hogan said. He was wearing a coat with the fur-fringed hood pulled up. Deacon couldn’t see his face even when Landish put him on the floor.
“He went right under,” Deacon said. “He went way down and came back up.”
“I haven’t got the stove lit,” Hogan said. “I’ll light it later on when it gets dark. I can’t spare no coal. I’m lyin’ dressed like this beneath the blankets.”
Landish lurched from side to side as he climbed the stairs. In the attic, he slipped out of his coat and let it fall on the floor behind him. The coat was coated. It stood up by itself, taller than Deacon who pushed it over because he didn’t like the way it looked.
“My follicles are icicles,” Landish said.
He clawed at his beard. His hair made a clicking sound when he shook his head. He took off his pants and fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. His collar had left a welt around his neck, his trousers another one around his waist.
He’d never fallen through the ice before, never been in winter water, salt or fresh.
Landish said his balls were in his belly and would stay in hibernation until May. There was ice in the hair above Dick and the happy couple, the former the size of a grub, and the latter like a single, purple plum.
“My toes are froze,” he said. He examined them for signs of frostbite. His big toes were rimmed with white, as were all his fingertips. White was better than red. He should never have ventured so far from home in cold like this. It could just as easily have been the boy.
They had two wooden tubs, the small one for Deacon, a larger one for Landish, barely big enough for him to sit in with his knees up around his chin. Landish, his hands a palsied pair of claws, his head a Medusa of icicles, half filled his wooden tub with water heated on the stove. He splashed his torso. He hugged himself to keep from shaking.
“You’re like this,” Deacon said, nodding his head and clacking his teeth as he spoke.
Landish cursed himself for having tried a stream that large so far from home.
He knew from his time on the Gilbert that he should be stretched out in a longer, deeper tub with nothing but his head above the water, which someone helping him should be keeping hot, and that upon emerging from the tub he should be rubbed with reeking blubber, made to drink mulled rum and mummified in heavy blankets.
Using his hand brush and his back brush, Landish scoured his skin as hard as he could stand it.
“You’re making yourself redder,” Deacon said.
“Good.”
“How long can a fish hold its breath?”
“Fish breathe with their gills.”
“How long can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you were a goner.”
“Did you know the way home?”
Deacon shook his head.
He had taken the boy too far into the woods, a couple of hours of daylight left. He had told no one where they were going. The boy would have perished too. They would have found Landish in the water and Deacon in the woods.
“Ask me more questions about fish,” Landish said.
“Why?”
“More questions.”
No, fish didn’t have ears, so they must be deaf. Did fish have noses? Maybe. He would closely examine the nose of his next fish. He wasn’t sure how fish did their pee. Or where. Somewhere private. That wasn’t where all the water came from, but yes it would be funny if it was. Yes, that might be why the ocean was so salty.
He had never seen a fish chewing food or throwing up.
Fish had no lashes, so they never blinked.
He gripped the edges of the tub, meaning to climb out, but nothing happened. He tried again and rose up streaming water. The room spun. If he overturned the tub, the water would run downstairs into Hogan’s kitchen, and Hogan would report it to the nobleman.
A fine ending for the Druken line, his father would have said. A child’s death, not a man’s. Nothing but a swimming hole named after him. The hole where Druken drowned. That wouldn’t get you the OBE or a dinner from the Board of Trade. He shook his head and counted his fingers. His eyes looked like they did when he was angry. Landish tried to clench his teeth. He splashed water on Deacon but didn’t laugh or say he was sorry. He closed his eyes, then opened them as if he’d heard a noise.
He got dressed and quickly heated for the boy a bowl of turr stew from the last seabird of the larder.
“Are you having any?” Deacon said.
&n
bsp; Landish said he didn’t feel like eating.
“What does the ice look like from underneath?” Deacon said.
He managed to say it was probably like when you took the pie crust off to see the other side. He heard the boy say he had never done that because he had never had a pie. He heard himself promising him a pie so that he could see what the under-ice was like. He said he thought he needed a nap. If he had been stronger to begin with—but he had eaten even less than usual every day for ten days.
He told Deacon he was going to climb into bed for a while. Deacon said it wasn’t bedtime yet. Just for a bit, Landish said, to get warm, just until the shaking stops. He said he wouldn’t go to sleep. Deacon could climb in with him if he wanted to, but he didn’t feel up to reading to him from a book or telling him a story. As he tumbled onto the bed, he heard Deacon say something about the kitchen.
Landish kicked the blankets off, thinking they were snow.
He folded his arms and drew his knees up to his chest. He wondered where the others were. They knew as well as he did what to do when you were lost and couldn’t find your way back to your ship.
But they were young and not as strong as he.
It was one thing to know you mustn’t run, another to resist the urge. Foolish things made perfect sense. Lighten yourself of everything that made it hard to run, encumbrances such as coats and boots. Shed your clothes so you could breathe. He knew he should be on his feet. His father said that if you fell you must get up, you must. Don’t sacrifice yourself for nothing. Don’t die just so that another man won’t have to die alone. Don’t die just to keep him company. Each man goes by himself to the place from which no one knows the way back home. Even the young, the weak, the blameless and the kind of heart. Don’t be like Carson of the Gilbert who stayed with his men even though they were already goners and he could have saved himself.
Deacon said his name and clapped his hands close to his face, but Landish never moved. He seemed unaware of him though his eyes were open and going slowly from side to side like they did when he thought so much he couldn’t sleep.
His undershirt, long johns, face and hair were as wet as when he came out of the river. But now they were wet with sweat. There was a yellow halo of it on his pillow. His face was red like when he dug holes in July. Deacon tried the window, but it wouldn’t budge. He thought of telling Hogan that Landish wasn’t right, but he had promised Landish he would never leave the attic by himself. And the nobleman might come or the nuns who were nurses too, so he threw some water on the fire and stabbed it with the poker until the coals went out.
He turned the lantern down until the flame was blue. His shadow stretched across the floor and halfway up the wall. He was afraid to turn his back on it. It scared him when he moved.
He put on his hat and coat and boots, took a chair from the kitchen and set it by the bed. He sat and looked at Landish.
When Landish shivered and clacked his teeth, he covered him with blankets that Landish pulled tight around him until he began to sweat again and threw them off.
At times, it sounded like he was speaking to someone. He spoke, waited, spoke again, but Deacon couldn’t understand a word.
You saw what wasn’t there. You looked straight through what was.
A man stood over him. He shook his head and walked away.
Now there were a man, a woman and a boy. What were a woman and a boy doing on the Gilbert? They must have fooled his father.
The boy sat on the man’s shoulders, the woman linked arms with the man. The three of them looked down at him.
The man said: “We can’t just leave him here.”
But the woman said the sun was setting and the boy was sick.
“He’s a goner, like the others,” the woman said. “There’s no point holding hands with goners. Let them hold each other’s hands.”
He filled a cup with water and brought it to the bed. “Sit up,” he said. “Please, Landish, sit up. Have some water.”
But Landish lay there, eyes darting about even as he smiled, too canny to be fooled by a voice that offered water.
Deacon went closer, held the cup to his lips, and tilted it slightly until some drops spilled out, ran down his chin onto his throat.
“Landish, wake up,” he shouted, and shook him by the arm.
Landish swung his arm and the back of his hand caught the peak of Deacon’s cap. He dropped to his hands and knees, grabbed his hat and crawled away from the bed. Landish rolled onto his side, his back to Deacon.
He moved closer to the bed but out of range of Landish in case he rolled onto his back and swung out his arm again. He looked at Landish and the massive shadow of him on the wall.
He lay down on the floor beside the bed.
There were no blankets. He’d been sleeping as he did on the warmest summer nights, covered by nothing but his long johns. He listened for the sound of horses’ hooves, but heard none. Evening, he guessed, unless today was Sunday.
Deacon was asleep on the floor. A kitchen chair that bore an empty lantern faced the bed. He could tell by the light at the porthole window that it was either early morning or early evening. It was so cold in the attic that he could see his breath. Long plumes of it each time he exhaled. Deacon lay on his side, dressed for the outdoors. Landish tried to rouse him. The boy woke momentarily but shook his head and curled up tighter as he always did when Landish came to wake him in the morning.
Landish sat up, swung his legs out over the bed and onto the floor. He picked up Deacon and barely managed to stand.
He laid Deacon in the bed and covered him with blankets. He removed his hat and boots but otherwise left him as he was. He put on his own clothes and went out to the kitchen.
Only minutes later, the boy came up behind him in the kitchen and wrapped his arms around him in a leg hug. Landish crouched down and gave him a hug, and upon standing became so dizzy that he lurched across the room. He caught himself from falling by grabbing the back of a chair.
“I’m not all better yet,” he said. He asked Deacon if it was Thursday, but Deacon shook his head and said he thought it was Friday but it might be Saturday. He said the last time he had eaten was when he finished the stew that Landish had made. The boy looked as if he had fought an illness of his own for the past two days and nights. Landish found some potatoes and fried them up with a block of fatback. He ate as much as he could stand to, then went downstairs, where Hogan told him it was Friday.
“I’ve been sick,” he said. Hogan looked at him as if he had last seen him lurching up the stairs with a bottle in his hand.
Landish remembered almost nothing of the past two days, far less than the boy did and would forever carry with him. He thought of the empty chair that faced the bed when he woke up. He could think of no illness against which the boy would have a chance.
“Where are you going?” Deacon said.
“Out.”
“Where? You said you wouldn’t leave me here by myself, especially at night.”
“Just this once, all right?”
He wouldn’t be long, he said, maybe an hour at the most, and all Deacon had to do was stay put and wait.
“Will you be gone a long time?” Deacon asked.
“Don’t leave the attic,” Landish said. “Don’t go near the lanterns or the fireplace or the stove, all right?”
Deacon knew by heart the things he mustn’t do. He didn’t even nod his head while Landish spoke. Landish wouldn’t look him in the eye. It was like he was talking to someone else over Deacon’s shoulder.
“I won’t be long,” Landish said. “I have to go where boys are not allowed so I can get some things we need, all right?”
Landish didn’t care that Deacon knew that none of it was true. “You might be asleep when I get back, so leave the door unbolted,” was the last thing he said before he closed the door and went downstairs.
Deacon threw a few coals on the fire, more because Landish told him not to than because he was cold. He felt like
going down the stairs as far as Hogan’s kitchen, knowing that Hogan would tell Landish if he did. If Landish’s book were on the table now, he’d throw it in the fireplace. Landish thought he couldn’t reach the closet shelf, but he could if he used his own bamboo fishing pole. He could get the sealskin hat and burn that too. He could burn Gen of Eve and he could burn the vouchers. He could get past Hogan if he wanted to.
He stared at the fire for a while. He bolted the door and went to bed instead.
He woke to the sound of Landish banging on the door and shouting, “Let me in.” He ran across the kitchen and stood at the door. Landish sang “London Bridge” in a voice so loud Deacon covered his ears.
He let Landish in. Landish was decks awash.
“My fair lady,” Landish sang.
“Go to bed,” the boy said.
“I told you not to bolt the door,” Landish said.
He sat down at the table, all but knocking the chair over. Deacon sat in front of the fire. He drank grog from green bottles and poured Deacon a glass of cold lemonade from a bottle so he could join the party. Deacon didn’t decline it even though he thought he should.
Landish sang “London Bridge,” but he changed some words.
“Landish Druken’s falling down, falling down, falling down, Landish Druken’s falling down, my bare lady. Take the key and lock him up … Bone so strong will last so long, last so long …”
Landish laughed as he sang and laughed even harder when he looked at Deacon.
“He disapproves of man fun,” Landish said. “He thinks that boy fun is better even if you’re not a boy. Deacon fun is good, but Landish fun is bad. See the way he looks at me. Like he really is a deacon.”
“Who are you talking to?” Deacon said.
Landish laughed.
“What’s man fun?” Deacon said.
Landish told him he was sorry, and he looked like he was, for a while. He poured Deacon another glass of lemonade. Landish sang “London Bridge.” He made up more new words. Deacon sipped his lemonade.
He sang another song, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” just like “London Bridge.” Landish slumped onto the table with his head between his arms.
A World Elsewhere Page 9