Northern Light (9780547542881)

by Donnelly, Jennifer

  Mr. Sperry disappears down the hall and Mr. Morrison busies himself at the reception desk, opening his mail and sorting telephone messages and checking the telegraph machine. I stay put on the landing.

  A few minutes go by, then Mr. Sperry reemerges with a bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. "Andy," he says quietly. "She was so young. Just a girl."

  Mr. Morrison doesn't seem to hear him. "Dwight, look at this," he says, coming out from behind the desk.

  "What is it?"

  "A wire from Albany. From the chief of police. About Carl Grahm."

  "What's it say?"

  "It says there's no such person by that name living in the city."

  The two men look at each other, then they go out on the porch. And I run back to the attic and shove Grace Brown's letters back under my mattress and climb into bed and squeeze my eyes shut and press my hands over my ears and pray and pray and pray for sleep to come.

  tott • lish, frowy, blat, meaching

  "Mattie, honey, you fixed all right for dust rags?"

  "Yes, Aunt Josie."

  My aunt never worried over how I was fixed for anything,' and she never called me honey.

  "I'm having the Reverend Miller for tea tomorrow; you'll make sure those figurines are sparkling, won't you?"

  "Yes, Aunt Josie."

  She wasn't concerned about her figurines. She just wanted to keep me up on my step stool dusting, and away from the parlor door, so I couldn't hear what she was saying or see what she was doing. The door wouldn't close all the way. It had rained for two days straight and the dampness had swollen the wood. If I bent my knees and craned my neck just so, I could see my aunt and Alma Mclntyre through the gap. They were sitting at the kitchen table. My aunt was holding an envelope up to the light.

  "This is stealing, Josie," I heard Mrs. Mclntyre say. "We're stealing Emmie Hubbard's mail."

  "It's not stealing,' Alma. It's helping. We're trying to help a neighbor, that's all," my aunt said.

  "Arn Satterlee gave it to me right before I closed for lunch. I've got to put it into the outgoing mailbag by two o'clock or it won't get to Emmie today."

  "You will, Alma, you will; it'll only take a minute..."

  My aunt said more, but her voice dropped and I couldn't hear it. I got down off the step stool and moved it closer to the door.

  "You all right in there, Mattie?" she hollered.

  "Yes, Aunt Josie. I'm just moving the step stool."

  "Don't come too close to the door with it. The floor's uneven right around there and the stool's tottlish. I wouldn't want you to fall, dear."

  "I won't, Aunt Josie."

  Tottlish means tippy, and is used mostly to describe boats. Miss Parrish never let us use words like tottlish in our essays, but Miss Wilcox did. She said words like those are vernacular. She said Mark Twain had a pitch-perfect ear for the vernacular of the Mississippi River and that this talent of his changed writing forever by allowing a wild, truant boy to sound like a wild, truant boy, and an ignorant drunk to sound like an ignorant drunk. I decided tottlish would be my word of the day even though rectitudes what the dictionary had given me. I wasn't sure I'd find tottlish in the dictionary. Or frowy either, which describes butter that has gone rancid. Or blat, which means to cry—the loud, whiny kind of crying Beth gives out with when she doesn't get her way. Or meaching. Which means skulking or slinking, and can describe a certain kind of expression, too. Like the one that must've been on my aunt's face right then, when Mrs. Mclntyre suddenly yelped, "Josie, don't you dare!"

  "Hush, Alma!"

  "Josephine Aber, I would ask you to remember that I am a bona fide government employee, duly sworn to uphold the laws of this land, and tampering with government property is in direct violation of those laws!"

  "Alma Mclntyre, I would ask you to remember that our great government was made for the people and by the people, was it not?"

  "What's that got to do with anything?"

  "I am the people, Alma, therefore I am the government, too. It's my tax money that pays your wages and don't you forget it."

  "Well, I just don't know."

  "Land's sake, Alma, I never took you for an unfeeling woman. Don't you care what happens to a poor, helpless widow with six children and a baby? Don't you care at all?"

  I rolled my eyes. My aunt didn't give a hoot what happened to Emmie Hubbard; she just wanted to know her business.

  "Of course I care what happens to her!"

  "Well, then."

  "All right, here. But hurry."

  I heard the sound of water running and the kettle being filled, and I knew that the two of them weren't making a pot of tea. From their conversation I had figured out that Arn Satterlee was sending Emmie Hubbard a letter, and since it was Arn sending it, and Emmie getting it, it had to be about her taxes.

  "Alma, look! Oh, my goodness! Arn Satterlee is auctioning Emmie Hubbard's land!"

  I stopped polishing.

  "He isn't!

  "He is! It says so right here! He's auctioning it to recover the back taxes. She owes twelve dollars and seventy cents and hasn't paid a penny of it."

  "But why, Josie? Why now? Emmie never pays her taxes on time."

  "Because she's 'habitually derelict'...It says so right here, see?"

  "Oh, nonsense! This year's no different from any other. Am gives her a warning or puts a lien on the property if the county makes him, but he never goes so far as to put the land up for sale."

  "Look, Alma, look right here," my aunt said, "it says there's an interested party."

  "Who?"

  "It doesn't say. It only says something about 'confidential inquiries made by an interested party.'"

  "But who'd be interested? You think it's one of her neighbors?"

  "Don't see how it could be. She's only got the three. There's Aleeta Smith, and she wouldn't do a thing like that to Emmie. Michael Gokey wouldn't, either. And even if they would, they couldn't afford to. Neither of 'em has a pot to piss in. That only leaves Frank Loomis, and I doubt he has the money, either. Not after paying for those new horses, and poor Iva going around in that same tired linsey dress every day of the week."

  There was a pause, then Mrs. Mclntyre said, "He wouldn't want Emmie gone, anyway."

  Their voices dropped way down low then. I stretched my neck as long as a giraffe's, but I couldn't hear a thing. Only "...disgraceful, Josie..." and "...I wouldn't tolerate it..." and "...fills her belly, all right..." I couldn't sense their meaning but thought they must be talking bad of Emmie like most everyone does.

  They were silent for a minute or so, then my aunt clucked her tongue and said, "Alma, I'm sure as I'm sitting here that no local person would do a thing like this. It's a city person, I just know it. Some low-down, no-good, sneaky wheeler-dealer from New York, I'd bet, looking to buy himself cheap land for a summer camp."

  "Oh, Josie, this is terrible! What will happen to those children?"

  "I imagine the county will take them."

  "Poor little things!"

  "I mean to find out who's behind this, Alma."

  "How?"

  "I'll ask Arn Satterlee."

  "You can't. He'll know we opened the letter if you do."

  "I'll wait a few days, then. Give Emmie time enough to open the letter and start carrying on to the whole county about it. But I'm going to find out, Alma. You mark my words."

  I had heard enough. I got down off the step stool again and dragged it all the way across the room to the fireplace. The mantel was covered with figurines. An ormolu clock sat in the middle of them. I polished it viciously, for I was upset.

  Where would Emmie get that kind of money? I wondered. I knew the answer: She wouldn't. Any one of her neighbors would've loaned it to her if they'd had it, but no one did. Aunt Josie did, though. She had twelve dollars and seventy cents, and plenty more besides. And if she really cared about Emmie Hubbard and her children, she could have given it to her. And if she'd really cared about me, she could
have helped me get to New York City. But all she cared about was her damn figurines.

  Emmie would lose her house and land, and the county would take her kids. I couldn't bear the thought of her children being taken and separated and farmed out to strangers. Especially Lucius, the baby, who was so small.

  It was one more hard and hopeless thing, and I was tired of hard and hopeless things.

  I finished polishing the clock and picked up one of the figurines next to it. It was in the shape of an angel and on the angel's gown were printed the words: ALMIGHTY GOD, GIVE US SERENITY TO ACCEPT WHAT CANNOT BE CHANGED, COURAGE TO CHANGE WHAT SHOULD BE CHANGED, AND WISDOM TO KNOW THE ONE FROM THE OTHER.

  What if you couldn't do that? Couldn't change things and couldn't accept them, either?

  I took hold of the angel's head and snapped it off. And then I snapped one wing off, and then the other. I broke his arms off, too, and then I asked him how serene he was feeling now. I put the pieces in my pocket.

  That got rid of most of my anger. I had to swallow what was left.

  au • gur

  "We could walk to Inlet and look in the window of O'Hara's," Ada Bouchard said. "They've got some pretty summer fabric just come in."

  "Or hike up to Moss Lake," Abby said.

  "Or Dart's Lake," Jane Miley said.

  "We could go visit Minnie Compeau and see the babies," Frances Hill said.

  "Or sit under the pines and read," I said.

  "Read? On a day like today? You need your head checked, Mattie," Fran said. "Let's draw straws. Short one decides what we do."

  We were all outside, clustered at the bottom of the Uncas Road. We were off on a jaunt, we just had to decide where. It was a warm and glorious spring afternoon, a Saturday. We'd all managed to escape chores and parents and little brothers and sisters, and we wanted to talk and laugh and be outside for a few hours.

  Fran broke off some twigs from a bush, and made one shorter than the rest. We were about to start drawing them when my choice was suddenly made for me. A buckboard pulled up, one drawn by two bay horses.

  "Well, Royal Loomis! What brings you this way?" Fran asked. She and Royal are cousins but look nothing alike. She has curly carrot-red hair and eyes the color of molasses. She is tiny. In the same way that a stick of dynamite is tiny.

  I saw Ada tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear and Jane press her lips together to redden them.

  Royal shrugged. "Went out for a ride and ended up here," he said.

  "Come to gaze at the lake?" Fran teased.

  "Something like that."

  "How romantic."

  "Ain't you got any work to do, Fran? Any children to scare or kittens to drown?"

  "Well! I guess I know when I'm not wanted."

  "Hardly. Hey, Matt, you feel like taking a ride?"

  I almost fell over. "Me?" I said, shading my eyes to look up at him.

  "Get in, will you?"

  I looked at my friends, not quite sure what to do. Fran winked. "Go on!" she whispered. Jane looked at me like she'd never seen me before.

  "Well ... yes, all right," I said, climbing up.

  Royal snapped the reins as soon as I was settled. Jane leaned over to Ada and whispered something in her ear. I realized I would be a topic of conversation amongst my friends for the rest of the day if not the rest of the week. It was a strange feeling—worrisome and exciting all at once. Wexanxilicious?

  Royal didn't say much as we rode west toward the entrance of the Big Moose Road. Nor did I. I was too busy trying to figure out what this sudden appearance of his was all about.

  "Want to go to Higby's?" he eventually asked me. "Man who works at the boathouse is a friend. They're getting the boats ready for the season. He'll let us take a skiff" for free."

  "All right," I said, thinking that this was all very odd. If it were some other girl, I'd have said Royal was sweet on her, but it was only me and I knew better. Then I had another thought. "Royal, don't you think you can kiss me again, or ... or anything else. I won't have it," I said.

  He looked at me sideways. "All right, Matt, I won't. Not unless you want me to."

  "I don't want you to. I mean it," I said. I'm not your batting practice, I thought. Someone to get it right with before you go see Martha Miller.

  "Hey, Matt? How about we just go boating, huh?"

  "All right, then."

  "Good."

  When we arrived at Higby's, Royal unhitched his team and put them in the corral. His friend let us have our pick of boats, and Royal rowed us out onto Big Moose and didn't do anything stupid or show-offy, like trying to stand up in the boat, and I sat facing him and let the perfection of a spring day in the North Woods take my breath away. When Royal got tired of rowing, we drifted awhile under some shaggy hemlocks leaning out from the shore. He didn't talk much, but he did point out a family of mallards, a pair of mergansers, and a blue heron. I watched him as he watched the heron take flight, his eyes never leaving it, and wondered if maybe I'd been wrong about him. I'd always thought him inarticulate, but maybe he had a different sort of eloquence. Maybe he appreciated things other than words—the dark beauty of the lake, for example, or the awesome majesty of the forest. Maybe his quietness masked a great and boiling soul.

  It was a quaint notion and one he soon dispelled.

  "Skunk et all my chicks last night," he said. "Guts and feathers all over the yard. They were mine, those chicks. Planned to raise 'em and sell 'em come fall."

  "I'm sorry to hear that, Royal."

  He sighed. "At least I've still got the hen. She oughta breed again, and if she don't, at least she'll fatten up nice. Make good eating."

  "I'm sure she will."

  "I'll miss that money, though. I'm saving up, trying to put some money aside for when I'm out on my own."

  "Are you? What do you want to do?"

  "Farm. Land's getting dear up here. A man's got to have a few dollars behind him nowadays. I'd like to have a going dairy concern. Maybe even my own cheese factory someday. A man could make a living out of cheese. It keeps."

  He was silent for a few seconds, then he said, "You couldn't give me enough land, Matt. I'd want fifty acres just for my dairy herd. Fifty more for sheep. Twenty for corn, twenty for potatoes, and twenty for fruit. Why, you could keep every camp on the lake swimming in berries all summer long."

  "Yes, you could," I said, trailing my hand in the lake. I shook the water off and shaded my eyes so I could see him better. He was leaning forward with his arms crossed over his knees. His face was in profile, but then he turned and smiled at me, and my breath caught and I wondered if this was how it felt to be pretty.

  "You ever go berrying, Matt? I like to go in the evening, when it cools down and the crickets start singing. You ever notice how good everything smells then? I've been watching for the wild strawberries. Won't be too much longer now. Cultivated ones from the plants I put in a couple years back won't be ready till the end of June. Got tons from those plants last year. My pa took 'em with him on his milk rounds. Cook at Dart's said they were the sweetest she ever had. I'm going to use the money I make on 'em this year to buy more chickens. It's free money, the berry money. It's not even a chore to pick when you can be out in the fields at dusk..."

  I realized that Royal Loomis was talking a blue streak. In fact, I'd never heard him talk so much in all the years I'd known him. I guess I never had him on the right topic. Start him off on farming and he waxed downright poetical. For the first time, I saw what was in his heart. And I wondered if he might ever want to look deep enough to see what was in mine.

  When he finished talking about chickens and cheese and berries, I took a turn talking. I talked about my exams and the grades I'd gotten, but I could tell he was bored. I talked about the book I was reading, but that bored him, too. So then I talked about Barnard. And how even though my aunt wouldn't loan me the money and my uncle had broken his promise to me and I knew I couldn't go, I still wished I could.

  "You going to?" he asked m
e.

  "I want to..."

  "But why? Why would you want to do that? Go all the way to New York City just to read books?"

  "So maybe I can learn how to write them someday, Royal. I told you this already," I said, suddenly wanting him to understand. Wanting it desperately. But he didn't even hear me; he was too busy talking.

  "Why can't you read books right here? School's a waste of money and New York City's a dangerous place."

  "Oh, never mind," I said crossly. "I wish I'd never told you. You don't even listen."

  He moved forward in the boat until his knees touched mine. "I heard what you said, it just don't make sense. Why do you always want to read about other people's lives, Matt? Ain't your own good enough for you?"

  I didn't reply to that because I knew my voice would quaver if I did. Turned out I didn't need to, because he kissed me. Even though I'd told him earlier that I didn't want him to. He kissed me and I kissed him back and that was reply enough.

  Plain old kisses at first and then a real deep one. And then he put his arms around me and held me to him as best he could in a rowboat, and it felt so good. No one had so much as hugged me since my mamma died. I wished I had the words to describe how I felt. My word of the day, augur, which means to foretell things from omens, had nothing to do with it as far as I could see. I felt warm in his arms. Warm and hungry and blind.

  He moved his hands to my breasts. He was more gentle this time than the time before, and his palms against me made me feel breathless, but I still pushed him away because it is so hard to always, always want the things you cannot have.

  "Stop it, Royal. I'll jump out of the boat if you don't, I swear I will."

  "Let me, Mattie," he whispered. "It's all right for a boy and girl to do that ... as long as they're sparking."

  I pulled away from him. "Sparking?" I said, shocked. "That is news to me, Royal."

  "Why else would I have taken you boating? And why did I kiss you in the woods when your cow got out? Why did I plow your field for you? For someone who reads so many books, you're awfully damned stupid."

  "But, Royal ... I thought ... People said that you and Martha Miller were an item."