The Root Cellar

by Janet Lunn

  “Okay.”

  The door out of the kitchen led to a small yard very like the one at Mrs. Fiske’s. Rose sat down on the doorstep. The moon was high above the branches of the catalpa tree that stood at the back of the yard, and by its light Rose watched a thin, mangy gray cat walk along the top of the board fence that separated the yard from the one next door.

  Will came out and sat down beside her. He had two cups of tea in his hands.

  “Thanks,” said Rose. “Will, you have to give me some money.”

  “Some money?”

  “Have you got some?”

  “Yes, some.”

  “I want to go home. Susan won’t come without you. She’ll stay here.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  “Will Morrissay,” said Rose, “you’re a lot older than I am now, and you’re a soldier, and terrible things have happened to you, so I shouldn’t say it, but you’re being dumb. Or you just don’t know Susan at all. She won’t go home without you. She’ll stay here forever if that’s what you mean to do. But I don’t want to. I want to go home. I don’t want to be stuck back in time. I’m sick of being a twelve-year-old boy. I want to be myself, ordinary Rose with an ordinary Aunt Nan and an ordinary Uncle Bob and ordinary cousins. I don’t belong here. I thought I did but I don’t—any more than you belong in the United States. I want to go home to Hawthorn Bay. You know, I’ve just remembered something. A funny man on the road from Albany asked me where I came from. I said Canada, and I do now. Same as you. And I don’t see any way of getting there except to take the train and the boat, and I don’t have any money. I want you to give me some.”

  Will said nothing for a few minutes. He sipped his tea and watched the cat sharpen its claws against the fence.

  “Would you give me some money?”

  Will reached into his pocket and took out some bills. Rose took them and stuffed them into her pocket. “Thanks. Oh, and this belongs to you.” She pulled out the tiny cloth packet she had been carrying in her pocket since Susan had given it to her in exchange for her silver rose in the garden at Hawthorn Bay. “It’s your song.”

  “My song?”

  “The song you wrote about the bird the day you and Susan and I were in the orchard.”

  He frowned, took it from her, and opened it slowly. He stared at it as though it were the ghost of someone long dead and forgotten.

  “My song,” he said wonderingly, “my song.”

  Rose began to hum it as she had so many times to herself and to Susan. “I wish you had your flute,” she said when she had finished.

  “Flute,” said Will, in that same bewildered voice. He was looking at the worn, creased piece of paper. “Flute,” he said again. His hands were shaking. “I lost my flute. I lost it at Cold Harbor. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to play it anyway. I didn’t think there’d ever be any music in the world again except tramp-tramp-tramp and the dead march. After that I forgot. I forgot.

  “But I remember now. I remember that day I made the song. I wanted so bad to write it so I wouldn’t forget. I went to see old Mr. Lestrie down in Soames, who used to teach music there. I asked him if he could show me how to write it and he did. And he said he’d teach me a lot more if I wanted, but I never went again. I guess I was scared. I was a little feller. I thought you were wonderful.” He looked at her shyly. “And all them things you talked about. I thought a lot about all that after you disappeared and I couldn’t figure it out. Then one day I seen you, must have been a year or more after you’d gone. I seen you out by the road. I was going to go and talk to you, but before I could you was gone. You was gone the way a drop of water on a hot pan goes—just dries up and ain’t no more. It gave me the shivers, but then I done some more thinking and I figured that what you said was true, every word.”

  “But I didn’t stay gone,” said Rose and she felt happy. “I came back. And Will, remember what you said about belonging, that day in the orchard? Do you remember? You said, ‘It doesn’t matter where you come from.’ You said, ‘I guess what matters is where you belong.’ Well, I know now. I belong in that other time and I have to go back there.

  “I have to tell you something.” Rose looked at Will out of the corner of her eye and quickly looked away. “I thought you were wonderful, too. I decided I was going to marry you.”

  “What!”

  “I was. I was going to marry you. But I know now that it was silly because I’m not the one who is going to marry you, and anyway I belong in another time, and I have to go back even if I go by myself. I’m going to go down to the train station and go home.”

  “Go back to bed, Rose,” said Will, “and we’ll all go together by and by.”

  Rose did not let him see her smile of satisfaction.

  The Storm

  It seemed as though she had barely fallen asleep although it was an hour later when Rose woke to find Susan standing by her cot. When she saw that Rose was awake, Susan dropped to her knees and put her arms tightly around her.

  “You done it,” she whispered. “You done it. Like Will told you all that long time ago, you was good luck, the best luck a body ever had. Will told me what you talked about in the night. I love you, Rose.”

  Embarrassed by her own show of emotion, Susan stood up. “Matron’s give Will some money she figures he’s got coming to him for working here,” she said, “so with what I got, and what Will give you, we got enough for all our fares and one good dinner.”

  “What about lemonade?”

  They both laughed.

  “Will and I, we been out to the graveyard to say our prayers over Steve,” Susan went on, “and Matron says the morning train goes out of Washington at eight o’clock. So Rose, what we got to do is go get on the train.”

  “That’s so, Susan.” They grinned at each other. Rose leaped out of bed and got dressed hastily. They ate a quick breakfast, said goodbye to Matron, who said “God bless you” to them all but took Will in her arms as though she were his mother, adding “You have a good angel, you’ll be all right now,” and off they went. Rose wondered if Matron meant Susan or the other kind of angel.

  When the train stopped at Philadelphia, Rose bought Will a harmonica for ten cents. He played it hardly at all at first, but after an hour or two he played it softly all the time, trying out notes, remembering notes, completely losing himself in the music.

  Rose knew now that she wanted to go home to Aunt Nan and Uncle Bob and the boys, but when she thought about leaving Will and Susan, especially Susan, she felt sad. “You won’t forget me, Susan?” she pleaded.

  “I ain’t likely to.”

  Neither of them said any more about it, but thoughts of parting hovered over them throughout the journey. They traveled all day, all night, and arrived in Oswego just after noon the next day. Will stepped off the train behind Susan and looked around him slowly in all directions. He sniffed the air.

  “Looks like a storm’s brewing to the west,” he said. Otherwise, none of them said anything all the way to Mrs. Jerue’s house.

  Will knocked at the door. They stood three in a row and watched through the screen as Mrs. Jerue came toward them along the hall, her wide, flowered skirt bumping the walls. They saw her questioning look become a look of surprise, her surprise become a smile, and the smile fade as she realized that the tall soldier with Susan and Rose was Will and that Steve was not with them. She opened the door. “Come on along in, Will. Thanks be to God for your safe home-coming.” Then, though the tears began to flow down her face, she put her arms around Will and they hugged each other tightly.

  The children had come running at the sound of voices, and at first there was a hushed and horrified silence. But Mrs. Jerue took them into her grief as generously as she had taken them into her house. She listened, with the children, to Will tell stories about Steve in the army, some funny, some sad, and then they all told stories about him, remembering all the things he had done in his life. They laughed and cried together, and Mrs. Jerue made a huge meal for
them, after which she insisted on hearing the tale of Rose’s and Susan’s journey south. She scolded both for running off.

  “If you could have seen me.” She sighed. “You know I’m not as slim as I once was and I had some terrible time. When Charlie here come running to tell me you’d run off, I figured pretty fast (my brain’s not run to fat, you see) where you’d gone and we hightailed it down to the station just in time to see the train pull out.”

  “We saw you,” confessed Rose.

  “Why, you young scallywags!” Mrs. Jerue chuckled. “You sure gave me a runaround, but I suppose I wouldn’t have it any other way now. It might have been we’d none of us ever have seen our Will again neither, if it hadn’t been for you.”

  They spent a night and a morning at the Jerues’. The first night they bathed and Mrs. Jerue took away all their clothes. Early the next morning she came into the little room where Rose and Susan slept. She gave Susan a pretty pink-and-white flowered dress of Jenny’s, and when Susan had put it on, Mrs. Jerue said, “Now run on along, girl, and get your breakfast.” Then she sat down on Rose’s bed and fixed her with a steady gaze.

  “You come here with Susan and you spun us quite a yarn. Then you sneaked off. Where’d you come from, youngster?”

  Rose squirmed inside Charlie’s nightshirt that Mrs. Jerue had given her to sleep in.

  “I don’t much like being lied to,” said Mrs. Jerue.

  “I’m sorry.” Rose’s voice was very small.

  Mrs. Jerue frowned. She leaned over and inspected Rose closely, the way she might have inspected cabbages for holes or bugs. “What’s more, you ain’t a boy,” she declared.

  Rose felt very uncomfortable for a moment; then, suddenly, she felt as though a burden had been lifted from her. “I’m Rose Larkin,” she said. But how to tell Mrs. Jerue where she had really come from? She didn’t want to lie. So she said, “I’m a friend of Susan’s. I didn’t want her to have to go find Will by herself. So we thought it would be useful if I dressed as a boy. And I guess it was, too. But I’m sorry we made you run after us to the railroad station.”

  “That’s all right, Rose, it’s all in a lifetime, as I always say. Now, you stay put for a minute.” Mrs. Jerue left the room.

  In a minute or two, she was back with a dress over her arm and a pair of boots in her hand. “There, this ought to do just fine for you. Louisa’s grown out of it. It’ll be dandy with your red hair.”

  The dress was white with grass-green stripes. It had mutton-chop sleeves, a high collar, and an ankle-length full skirt, not as full as the skirts Mrs. Jerue herself wore—there was no hoop—but fuller than any Rose had ever worn. To go with it, there was a green velvet ribbon. “To tie up your hair, as it’s some grown out since you was here before.” Mrs. Jerue smiled, her tired eyes red from weeping. Holding the clothes tightly to her, Rose smiled back.

  She was left alone to figure out the underdrawers and the petticoat and to contort herself into impossible shapes as she struggled with the buttons at the back of the dress. She tied the ribbon around her head and smoothed the dress down carefully. “I like it,” she whispered to herself as she looked down at the edge of lace that revealed the petticoat peeping out from beneath the skirt, and the high, buttoned boots on her feet, which were only the tiniest bit too large.

  She went downstairs to where Will and Susan and the Jerue children were having breakfast. Will’s eyebrows went up but he said nothing. The children stood and poked each other and whispered but said nothing either—except for Charlie. His mouth hung open and then he said, “You mean you worked for that mean blacksmith and everything and you’re a girl?”

  Susan smiled at her approvingly. Rose sat down and ate her breakfast.

  Right after breakfast, Will went down to the wharves. He was back very soon. “The weather’s growing more chancy by the hour,” he told them, “but Jake Pierson’s going out in about an hour and he’ll take us if we want to go.”

  “If I was you, I’d wait out the storm right here,” said Mrs. Jerue. Rose said, “No. We can’t.” She had a sudden fear. Now, when she had discovered how much she wanted to get back, she was afraid something would happen to keep her from getting there, that the storm would keep them away. She could not bear to delay.

  “Jake’s a pretty sound man.” It was almost as though Will had read her mind.

  “And you’re pretty anxious to get on home.” Mrs. Jerue sighed and took Will’s hand. She offered no further arguments. She put on her bonnet, gathered her children, and set out down the street.

  The streets they walked were the same ones they had come along only three weeks earlier, but there was a nip in the air on this morning, although it was only September. The women wore shawls, and where they had ambled and sauntered before, they bustled and hustled along.

  The Sarah Maud had been unloading barley all night and was being made ready to turn right around and head back to Hawthorn Bay.

  “Jake Pierson’s place is right up to the head of our bay,” Susan explained to Rose, “so we’re mighty lucky to find him here.”

  The wind was growing strong. Captain Pierson greeted Susan briefly, nodded at Rose, and showed them where they could berth. It was a smaller schooner than the one they had come over on, a two-master, with a smaller cabin for sleeping and cooking, and a crew of two.

  “Frank March and Jim Bedell,” Susan told Rose, “and that Jim’s such a lazy one, Jake’ll be right glad to have Will aboard.”

  Mrs. Jerue hugged Will long when it was time for good-byes. “You be my boy, now, too,” she said. Then she gave Susan a big hug and a “God bless you, child,” but when she turned to Rose, she shook her head. “You’re a funny one,” she said. “There’s more to you than you told me, I’m certain sure. But if you ever come back this way, you remember Min Jerue. There’ll always be a place here for you.”

  Impulsively, Rose threw her arms around Mrs. Jerue. Then she shook hands with all the children.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said when she got to him. “I didn’t mean to spoil things for you.”

  “Do you want to be my girlfriend?” asked Charlie. Rose was so taken by surprise she nearly laughed, but she didn’t. “I’d like to, Charlie,” she said, “but I can’t because I live too far away.” Then she remembered something she had heard someone say in a movie and she told him solemnly, “I’m really much too old for you, Charlie. But I will always hold your love in my heart,” and she turned and went away without waiting to see what effect her words had had on Charlie.

  “Cast off,” the captain shouted, and Will and the other two young men let loose the lines and, pulled by the tug, they were soon out in the open lake, their sails set.

  “The wind’s from the south,” Will called to Rose happily, “so we won’t be no time at all getting home.” And it looked as though they would not be. The sky was gray but the heavy clouds were scudding across with the wind, like banners leading the way. Within six hours, they were within sight of the island shore. But then the wind shifted a little to the west, the clouds thickened and turned black, and the rain began. At first it was just an ordinary rain, but before a quarter of an hour was over it was pouring out of the sky like water over a fall. The wind heightened. It churned up the lake in twelve-foot-high waves. In shrieks and drawn-out wails it blew with such force across the deck of the schooner that no one could stand upright.

  Rose crept into the cabin where Susan was already crouched in a far corner murmuring prayers. Rose could not reach her because the ship pitched and yawed so furiously. She clung to the inside of the door jamb, watching terrified as the men moved about the deck, clinging to the ropes, the wheel, the bulkhead, anything that would keep them from being injured or blown overboard. She could hear their shouts, but the wind was so wild and shrill she could not hear anything they said. Once Will went past the door, crawling on all fours, and she heard him call out to someone, “… says ‘reef the mainsail’!”

  Seconds later the ship pitched into a
deep trough and the floor of the cabin stood almost straight up in the air. Rose, Susan, and anything that was not nailed down were hurled against the far wall. All Rose could see, looking straight out through the porthole, was water. The schooner hung suspended for what seemed like hours; then it righted itself. In a momentary lull in the tempest, Rose heard the captain shout, “Let out the sail!” Then the wind howled and the ship heeled over again.

  “Susan,” Rose cried, though Susan could not hear her, “did we go all that way and find Will just so we could die when we’re almost home? Aunt Nan! Will! I don’t want to die!” Then she stopped thinking about dying because, as the schooner righted itself once more, she was violently sick to her stomach. Three more times the ship pitched, until it nearly flipped over. Three more times it righted itself. Then, as suddenly as it had blown up, the gale was over. The wind veered straight around to the west and steadied. But the rain went on. In sheets and torrents it poured over them. Will came in and lit the coal stove that had gone out during the gale. Susan made coffee. Rose took buckets and washed herself and the floor where she had been sick. While one man took the watch and another the wheel, the captain came into the cabin to warm himself by the stove. He said quietly, “Well, I think we might better offer up a small prayer. It was just a week ago today the Laurie Jack and all hands went down within a mile of the dock at Soames.”

  It was not more than fifteen minutes later when Jim Bedell, who was on watch, shouted, “I see a light,” and Will said, barely containing the excitement and relief in his voice, “That’d be Soames.” It wasn’t ten more minutes before he said, in those same tones, “I expect that light’s Am Colliver’s place.” Captain Pierson shouted “Hard down! Hard down!” and the schooner headed into the bay. It sailed past Heaton’s dock where Rose and Susan had embarked for Oswego only weeks earlier, past their own house and docked at the head of the bay.

  “You might better stay the night with us,” Jake Pierson said to Will. It was still raining hard and the wind, while it was no longer a gale, was powerful. Night had fallen while they had wrestled out on the lake.