by Sam Starbuck
"No need to wait," said a new voice, and I glanced up to find Tommy standing in the hall too, watching us. He shrugged and grinned. "Not much on churchgoing. I can take you back now if you want."
Lucas glanced at me again, looked down, nodded. I stepped back and let Tommy pass between us. He slapped Lucas on the shoulder so hard he almost fell over.
"I'll get him home, Saint. You just worry about that bunch in there," he said, jerking his thumb at the sanctuary door as he led Lucas away. I sighed, decided I could give the rest of the service a miss, and sat down outside the door to wait for the closing benediction.
When the christening was over I slipped back in and found myself walking Christopher to his truck, surrounded by a veritable honor guard of the Friendly. They offered to take me up to the cottage, but I thought it was probably wise to stay away for the night. Tommy would make sure Lucas was settled, and I didn't think he needed any more disturbance just then.
I don't know if people talked about it the night it happened, though I know nobody talked to me about it. The next morning the story was all over town, but not with the usual exuberant flair that gossip had in Low Ferry. People whispered about it to each other, compared notes, spoke quietly in the cafe. Charles came in to tell me they were calling it a miracle, and Paula came in to tell me they were calling Lucas a witch.
"Not that anyone cares," she added.
"Nobody wanting to burn him at the stake?" I asked. I was joking. Mostly.
"They'd have to go through the Harrisons first, and nobody'd dare. I heard Nona went up to get some groceries today and told Bert at the store she got her first good night's sleep since the birth."
"And the twins? What do they say about that?"
"Well, I don't know. I haven't listened. I mean, I never believed a word of it," Paula assured me, a little too thoroughly.
I grinned at her. "Of course not."
Chapter Eight
So it went – quietly, circumspectly, and in hushed tones. Lucas didn't come into town the next morning, which wasn't exactly surprising, but Tommy stopped by to let me know he'd seen him and all seemed well. I didn't start to fret a little until the following day, when Lucas still hadn't come in to town, and the day after that I started making a plan to go out to The Pines. I could stop and get some groceries, maybe bring him up a book or something –
Which of course was when he showed up, knocking snow from his boots on the door-frame before stepping inside.
"Afternoon," I said, and he looked up at me with what could almost be called a grin. "I've been wondering when you were going to turn up."
"Couldn't stay away forever. I've got tutoring. I snuck in," he confided.
"Probably for the best. Get one of the Friendly to give you a lift?"
"You didn't hear?" he asked, frowning. "They left last night."
"Ah – what a shame, I thought they'd stay another week or two. Still, can't blame them – the weather's good and the next town over has better roads."
"I'm surprised they didn't come down to say goodbye to you," he said, looking puzzled.
"Oh, they never do if they don't have to."
"They didn't really make a fuss about it," he said thoughtfully. "If I hadn't seen them leaving they probably wouldn't have told me, either."
"It's just their way," I said. "You get used to it. Hey, school won't be out for a little while yet. I haven't eaten yet – want to go to the cafe?"
"I did, actually," he agreed. I got my coat and turned the sign to closed, following him across the street. Inside, Carmen waved at us from the kitchen and gestured for us to pick our seats – the lunch rush was well over and the place was nearly empty in mid-afternoon, just one or two people at the counter reading newspapers. We took a pair of menus and sat at my usual window-table in companionable silence.
"You hear the news?" I asked Carmen, when she emerged. "Friendly took off."
"Yeah, someone mentioned it this morning, I thought you knew," she replied. "You hear they did a headcount at the school? Just in case, y'know. What'll it be? Meatloaf's good today."
"I thought the meatloaf was good yesterday," I teased.
"Well, it's good on a sandwich today. Fresh bread!"
"Sold. Some of that," I said. "And hot cider if you have it."
"Lucas?" she asked, giving him an especially winning smile. He looked at her, confused, and then down at his menu.
"Uh. Soup?"
"Chowder or chicken?"
"Chowder – and some water."
"Comin' up. Seeya, boys," she said, and walked back to the kitchen to relay our order.
"Why would they do a head-count at the school?" Lucas asked, still looking at Carmen in bewilderment.
"Making sure nobody's missing," I said.
"Missing?"
"You know, because the Friendly left."
He gaped at me. "They don't really think the Friendly would grab a kid, do they? They've got more than they want already."
"Most people don't think that about the Friendly, but these are practical folk. Why wonder, when ten minutes with a roll sheet can give you the answer?" I said. "We're a clannish little place, we don't trust outsiders."
"But you're an outsider."
"Well, to a degree," I said. "I own a store in town, I've been here for a few years now. Though I guess it'll be another decade or two before they stop calling me the city boy when they think I can't hear." I grinned at him. "To be honest I'm surprised the Friendly didn't spirit you off with them."
"Oh, no. My rent's paid through spring, and I don't think I could live like that. Too many new people to meet – thanks, Carmen," he said hesitantly, as she set our drinks down. He waited until she was gone before continuing. "And there's no good way to set up a workshop like mine in a trailer."
"I suppose not," I agreed, blowing on my cider to cool it.
"Gwen did say," he said slowly, staring out the window, "that she'd like to marry me if I'd come along with them."
"Marry you!" I laughed into my drink.
"That was what I thought. She's nice enough, and she thinks I'm nice, but that's not exactly a basis for commitment."
"Gwen loves easily," I said. "They might never stay in one place, but they're even closer to each other than we are in the village. If she wanted you to go with them, she wanted you to be securely fastened to someone. You could do worse."
"I'm not sure they actually wanted me for myself," he murmured, turning his water-glass around and around.
"You think they think you're a witch. The people in town do," I said.
"So I heard."
"You're not upset?"
He shrugged. "They leave me alone."
"Maybe, but they've been talking about you," I said. He didn't look up. "About the night you laid hands on the Harrison twins."
"That's a pretty dramatic way of putting it," he said.
"Well, that's the way they see it."
"And you?"
"I don't know what to think, to be honest," I said. Carmen returned with his soup and my sandwich, smoking hot, and gave Lucas an extra packet of crackers. He smiled a little and tapped them with his fingers.
I took a bite of the sandwich – Carmen was right, still pretty good – and then set it down. "Listen...it wasn't the time to ask, that night, but..."
"Yes?"
"How did you get them to be quiet like that? There must have been some kind of trick to it."
"I guess you could call it that." He was doing it again, drawing little spiral patterns in his soup, only now and then taking a taste.
"What was it?" I asked.
"I just thought..." he looked up at me. "There was probably a reason they were blamed. She died a couple of hours after they were born, not the minute they started breathing. And...I think a lot of people are scared of their children at first. You know, doing something wrong or whatever. But you're not supposed to be afraid, are you? So I'd find a reason, like the midwife dying."
"Yes, but...that doe
sn't explain what you did."
"They're only babies, they don't really understand emotion, they only know what they want," he continued. "Their parents are afraid of them, nobody else wants to go near them – just in case. Richard's pretty smart, that's why he called on you. He knew you'd say they were just babies."
"He knew I was a skeptic," I said, licking some sauce off my thumb.
"And you saying what you did probably would have worked, eventually, but it was easy enough to make them stop crying so that everyone would be sure."
"How'd you do it?"
"They want to be loved," he said quietly, setting down his spoon. "That was all I did, really. Just touched them without being afraid of them. They were just upset because everyone was scared of them. Now their mother thinks they've been blessed or cured or something. She thinks they're special."
I studied him as he took another bite of soup. "Psychology."
"What does it matter? They're safe now, as safe as anyone in the world is."
"Well, that's a point," I said. We were silent for a while as we ate.
"Christopher, I'd rather not lie to you," Lucas said suddenly. "That isn't the whole truth. It's just that I can't tell you the whole truth, not here. And not quite yet."
"Lie to me?" I asked. "About what?"
"Lies of omission, nothing more," he said hurriedly. "There's something I have to tell you, and I don't quite know how yet. If you can wait..."
"Well, I wouldn't even have known if you hadn't told me this much – yes, I can wait," I reassured him. He was starting to look truly anxious. "It's fine, Lucas. Really."
He nodded. "Good. That's good, then – and there's school letting out," he said, glancing out the window at the children who were beginning to wander down the street in little groups and gangs. "I should be going."
"So should I. I'll pay – you can buy next time," I said. He accepted awkwardly, as he always did when I paid, and wandered out into the street where the boy was leading a cadre of companions towards Dusk Books with an intent look in his eye. I hurried to pay the bill and open the shop once more while Lucas distracted them by, somewhat uncharacteristically, starting a snowball fight.
Watching him with the students, I wondered what in the world he could have been lying to me about. Lies of omission, something he hadn't told me...I didn't know what it could be but of course my mind immediately set to work coming up with possibilities. Something related to Abe and Noah Harrison, or to the church, or to the Friendly perhaps?
He had never spoken much about his parents or what he'd done in Chicago before coming to Low Ferry. I didn't know if he'd had a girlfriend or even a wife. I didn't know if he had children himself. I did wonder if that could be it – if his way with the Harrison babies had been because he was a father. But at the same time I couldn't imagine Lucas falling in love or marrying. I couldn't imagine him wanting children.
No, actually, I could imagine him wanting children, small helpless things that he could love, that wouldn't laugh at his awkwardness or expect him to act in ways he didn't understand. I just couldn't imagine him wanting them enough to find someone to have them with. And certainly I could never imagine him abandoning his children to come to Low Ferry and live in the middle of nowhere.
I am certain that the village as a whole must have noticed that I was distracted and aimless in the next few days, my thoughts always elsewhere than the task at hand. I think it likely that they chalked it up to bad health and didn't dare ask me for fear I'd collapse again. Lucas was too busy to come to the shop, tutoring the boy and, according to some of the students, two other children as well. Exams were coming up, and the boy wasn't the only one worried about his grades.
At any rate, this deep in winter the village had bigger problems to deal with. There was snow to be shoveled and pavement to be salted. We had to fill evening hours normally spent watching television, as the signal was still out, and make sure we could keep our homes warm during the blackouts that came with the high winds. Christmas was coming, and there were decorations to be hung on the street and in the stores, not to mention plenty of shopping.
In a small community it's hard to keep Christmas gifts a secret. Carmen's boyfriend, in particular, was the talk of the town when he bought the one diamond ring in the little jewelery case at the department store, and asked me to make him a fake hollow book to hide it in when he gave it to her. I picked a copy of The Joy Of Cooking that had been gathering dust on the shelf since before I bought the shop. He thought that was pretty funny.
While I cut the middles out of pages and glued them together and sold books in-between tasks, the rest of the town was also paying a certain amount of attention to Sandra, of the infamous Bank Love Triangle, and what was being bought both by and for her. Nolan and Michael seemed to have declared some kind of cease-fire, but neither of them appeared to have been chosen or to have staked a permanent claim.
"Now, if she's buying a present for a boyfriend," Paula said to me one day in mid-December, "she's keeping it pretty general. She did buy a scarf yesterday."
"Nothing from the hardware store?" I asked.
"Don't tease."
"Well, what about Michael and Nolan? Either of them buying shiny toys a girl like Sandra would enjoy?" I asked.
"If they do, it wasn't in Low Ferry. Didn't Nolan ride up to Dubuque a little while ago for something-or-other?"
"Couldn't say," I said. "I know Michael went hunting last week, but it's not like he's going to give her an elk for Christmas."
"Did he shoot an elk?" She looked horrified. "Season ended in September!"
"Relax, Paula, I don't think he shot anything. Not really that surprising, this time of year," I said. "Hiya, kid," I called, as the boy entered the shop, eddies of snow following him inside.
"My cue to get back to work," Paula said. "Seeya, Christopher. Find out about that elk!"
"Elk?" Lucas asked, as he passed her on the way in. She gestured at me, and he gave me a confused look.
"Long story," I said. "Come in, defrost yourself. Buying today or just browsing?"
"Browsing," Lucas said, already hidden behind a shelf. "The boy wanted to come in – not that I didn't!" he added, leaning around briefly. The boy smirked at me.
"You buying?" I asked him.
"Maybe," he said, peering at the assortment of bookmarks in a little display on my counter.
"Christmas shopping?" I asked in a low voice.
"For Lucas," he whispered back.
"Get him this one," I said, pointing to a thin brass bookmark with a bent top that would clip over the edge of a page. He examined it, checked the price, and nodded. I put it quickly into a bag for him, took the cash he handed me, and passed him the change without so much as a jingle. Lucas was either indifferent to the silence from the front of the shop or studiously ignoring it because he knew exactly what we were up to.
"Lucas said he'd walk me far as the south junction towards home," he said, when we were finished. "Said you might want to come along."
"I can offer you dinner and a stiff drink of something," Lucas told me. He looked pale, and as anxious as he had the day I questioned him about the Harrison twins over lunch. I realized he was offering me the chance to hear a confession from him – those lies of omission he'd talked about. It didn't take me long to get my coat and turn the front-door sign to Closed.