by Linda Little
“Do you like being married?” I whispered in the dark.
At first he did not answer.
“Ewan, do you like being married?”
Finally he responded, his words spare and thrilling like ginger on the tongue, “Yes. It is God’s will.”
THE NEXT DAY EWAN ROSE IN THE DARK WELL BEFORE DAWN, breakfasted on the stove-back porridge, harnessed Billy and Pride and, in the dark, the three of them made their way across to the clearing at the far edge of the field. They waited, hindered by darkness, in the morning chill. Ewan, like everyone else, was waiting for the fields to dry sufficiently to be worked. Until then he was busy pushing back the boundaries of the wilderness, hauling out the stumps of the trees he had felled for lumber. I could imagine him sucking his teeth, trying to draw first light over the horizon, enough so he could see to fasten his chain. At the first ray of dawn the horses leaned into their collars, their shoes digging into the earth, kicking up little chunks of mud. Ewan put his shoulder to the stump straining as hard as the beasts, hollering, “Haw there, up there, get up. Up!”
When I brought him his dinner at noon I suggested he might like to come back to the house to warm up, but he met this idea with scorn. “There’s no greater sin than the waste of good daylight,” he said.
That evening I waited for him to come in for supper. When the biscuits were done I wrapped them in a towel and set them in the warming oven. From the window of the west bedroom upstairs I could just glimpse the silhouette of the horses against the fading pink of the sunset. An hour later I still had not heard them return. Wondering slipped into concern, then worry. Just as I became convinced of a calamity I heard the jostle of horse and chain in the yard. Then the glow of the stable lantern pricked a hole in the darkness. By and by I heard Ewan scrape his boots and I felt the brisk breath of evening as he came into the kitchen.
“You must be hungry. You must have had a hard time seeing out there—I was just about to go after you with a light!”
He hung up his coat and pried off his boots while I poured a dipper of warm water into the wash basin for him.
“The horses will be glad of their blankets and their oats, I would say.”
The stew had filled the kitchen with its fragrance. Truth be told I would have been happy to fill my bowl long ago. I set a bowl before Ewan and put the biscuits beside the butter Delilah Cunningham had provided. “We’ll have our own butter soon enough,” I said cheerily. “I hope you like the stew. I haven’t much in the way of herbs but there’ll be lots this summer once I get the garden in.”
Ewan tucked into the stew and biscuits well enough, which was its own sort of compliment.
“You got a good day put in today.”
“Stop talking.”
I thought perhaps he had heard a noise outside and was listening to hear it again. I listened too but heard nothing. I waited expecting him to resume conversation but he did not. Finally I asked, “Did you hear something?”
“I’ve heard nothing but your yattering for the last two days.”
“I beg your pardon?” I stared at him; hurt puddled below my heart and indignation rushed in to battle it. But I thrust my intellect forth to intercept my feelings. Ewan did not recognize the harshness of what he had said. He needed help to refine his everyday manners. I raised my eyebrows and placed my hands on my hips hoping to give him clues he could pick up on himself. But he simply continued eating.
“What could you possibly mean by that, Ewan?” I kept my voice as even as possible as though I were asking where the garden hoe was stored.
His brow wrinkled in annoyance but still he said nothing. I cast about for clues. Could he possibly have taken my comments about the butter and the herbs as criticism? “Have I said something wrong? I’m sure I didn’t mean to.”
“Silence at the table. That’s God’s way. With quietness they work and eat their own bread.”
God’s way? He got what he asked for. Confusion trumped my sense of affront. I would need time to consider my response. Immediately after he finished his dinner he stood and left the kitchen. I cleaned up the table and the dishes while I waited for him to return, but he did not return. Eventually I ventured out looking for him and found him in his shop hunched over his workbench with a mallet and chisel. Two lanterns burned above him, dispelling any shadow. He looked up, slowly took in my presence as though his eyes had to travel a great distance from his workbench to me.
“I wondered where you’d got to.” He said nothing. Blank stare.
A sullen farm boy! All of a sudden I was back in my classroom facing down some smirking lout who had been sent off to school to keep him out of trouble after the farm work was done. I did not try to hide the pique in my voice. In fact I turned on my no-nonsense tone. “How much more work do you intend to do? When will you be coming in?”
“I will finish three more cogs after this one. I expect the time will be approximately 10:35.”
He returned to his work, once again completely absorbed. I opened my mouth then closed it again. He did not respond to my annoyance, neither invited me in nor dismissed me. But he had answered my questions. This information I carried back to the kitchen with me and I sat by the stove with it while I hemmed the new curtains I had measured and cut that day. I had been a good teacher. I attended closely to my craft; I learned and grew in the thirteen years I spent at this occupation. After a few years I was able to teach children who I would have despaired of earlier. I believe most young people left my care not only better scholars but more open and confident in their dealings with others. Surely I could learn to understand and guide one man. To explore and comprehend, this was my first task. I would not waste my time worrying over my own over-sensitive feelings. I sat plotting my course until it was time to set the porridge oats to soak, bank the coals and retire.
I WAS SURPRISED BY HIS DAILY DEVOTIONS. As I sat at my dressing table each night combing out my hair Ewan knelt by the bed, his eyes closed and his hands clasped like a child’s, and he prayed in a low rolling voice. The first night I saw this I felt the perfect heathen. Occasionally I would sit in contemplation of the Lord for a few minutes at the end of my day but I had not kneeled by my bedside since I had left my childhood home. More surprising yet was finding Ewan unprepared for church on our first Sunday morning as man and wife. He changed into clean Sunday clothes after he fed the horses but then he simply took down his bible and sat by the window with it open on his lap. After he had been so diligent in seeking my opinions on church doctrine it had not occurred to me to ask him about his religious habits. Despite his apparent piety and his asking about my allegiance, Ewan never attended the little Presbyterian church we had passed down on the Coach Road.
“Gossip and vanity,” he said. “People minding other people’s business. Ladies contemplating their neighbours’ new hats rather than the gospels.” He would have none of it. “Go if you want,” he said to me but in my confusion and disappointment I did not. I had imagined that on Sunday I would be making my first foray into public society on my husband’s arm. I would see in broad daylight the homes and farms we had passed in darkness on our wedding day and I would be able to take stock of the people who made up my new world. And of course, they would all see the miller’s new wife. Suddenly the distance to the church seemed too great a journey and more than I could manage on my own. Perhaps later on when I’d got my bearings—next Sunday or the week after. As I sat with my own bible I found myself thinking of the new gloves I had bought for my trousseau and my regret at not being able to wear them now. Perhaps Ewan was right. Vanity and gossip. And what foolishness to dwell on trivial disappointments. I rallied my spirits and decided to use the leisure of the day to attend to neglected correspondence, to send my thanks to the Reverend and Alice for their help in our wedding arrangements. At the end of the missive I signed my new name, still a stranger to my own hand—Mrs. Ewan MacLaughlin.
CHAPTER
THREE
ABBY’S PETER ARRIVED AFTER BREAKFA
ST FIRST THING ON Monday morning. He was bright eyed and befreckled. I pegged him at about six years old. He stood at my door armed with his introduction and his instructions.
“My name is Peter and I’ve come with a message. My Mam says the baby’s born and it’s a wee girl and fine as the spring. And she said for me to come ahead to you before school and bring the news ’cause it’s not every day a fellow like me gets a brand new baby sister to look after.”
“Why thank you, Peter. How thoughtful. Come in, come in and tell me all about her.” Peter and I were fast friends by the time the two older Browns, Frankie and Harriet, showed up to pull him away to school. We all introduced ourselves before I tucked some extra molasses cookies into their lunch basket and waved them off. Then I set off in the opposite direction, up the road to see the new baby for myself. I passed Mrs. Cunningham on her way home. Frank must have gone for her help sometime during the night.
Delilah Cunningham shook her head in the same resigned fashion she used to welcome me on her visit those few days ago. “Whatever else may be her sins Abby don’t dally about squawkin’ when it comes to having babies. Tie the cord and make the tea and home for breakfast.” She gave me a self-satisfied nod and brushed on by.
Abby’s sister was there and busy with the toddler and the breakfast dishes. “Go on up,” she said, indicating the stairs. Abby looked exhausted but glowing.
Frank sat by the bed holding the infant. I stepped back, embarrassed to intrude, but he stood, beaming. “Come on in. I’m just on my way off to the fields. I’m embarrassed into it with all the work Abby’s done already this morning.”
This was my first meeting with Frank Brown and it formed the image of him that always stayed with me. With a pleased-to-meet-you he set the babe in my arms and was gone. The baby, with her full head of hair, lay washed and shiny and snug in a bundle.
“Meet Lily,” Abby said.
In the following days I often dropped up to the Browns’ for an hour or so in the afternoon to see what use I could be. Abby drew all her children to her, gave them all turns sitting with and holding their new sister. “What’s good advice to give to her?” Abby asked them all. “Could be your best chance to have her listening.”
“Don’t stand right behind a horse, ’specially if you’re hollering.”
“Always do your schoolwork.”
“Don’t try to drink sap out of a cold pail.”
“Kiss Mam every day.”
“Always be good.”
“The best food is warm bread with strawberry jam.”
“If it’s really cold, put your clothes on under the covers before you get up.”
“She don’t need to put clothes on—she’s a baby!”
“Yeah, but this is advice for later when she’s bigger, right, Mam?”
“Don’t throw rocks.”
This was the sort of family I wanted for myself. Ewan might need more coaxing and cajoling, more careful thinking and delicate handling than an ordinary man, but seeing the Browns I was sure we could build a home as strong and warm ourselves. Once we had children Ewan would learn along with the young ones how to be loving and caring.
Abby had begun to wash the spring fleeces before her labour began. The tubs were all out and the first batch of fleeces set to soak. As she resumed some of her regular tasks around the kitchen Harriet and I picked up the fleece-washing job where it had been left. I had never done this work before which made Harriet the teacher and delighted with her elevated status. She was a serious girl with big brown eyes and a high forehead. The raw fleeces stuck to my fingers, gritty with dirt and oil. “Pull out all the dirt you can, Mrs. MacLaughlin, and take out the second cuts—they’re nothing but a torment later on.” We picked away and piled up the fleeces waiting their turn in the soaking tub, rinsed and re-rinsed those in the rinsing tubs and prepared the clean ones for drying. “You mustn’t be stirring the water up into a tempest now, nice and easy does it,” she told me as we submerged the wool. Abby came over to admire our work once we had all the wool set out on the racks to dry. After a quick cup of tea and a moment with the little one I set off home filled with confidence and optimism to make Ewan’s supper.
It was my job to try to make Ewan all he could be. His old habits would have to be altered now that he was a married man. I would work with him firmly and gently. I would begin by giving him a choice: would we speak during dinner or afterwards while he drank his tea? We would be a family and I would see to it. Over the next week I set out a series of experiments to probe my new husband’s conversational potential. My initial observation proved telling. Ewan would answer a question put to him directly. The more specific and concrete the question, the more readily the answer was forthcoming. For example, how much land did you clear—twenty-seven square yards. How many stumps did you pull to accomplish this—nine. Questions about the future could come back in the form of a prediction based on past experience or some apparent law but not in the form of wondering, dreaming or imagining. But his tolerance for conversation of any sort was low. And his desire was lower yet.
“How much land did you get seeded today?”
“Open your eyes and look if you want to know what I’m doing.”
“You’ve been too solitary, Ewan. You need to practise a little conversation. We can start by sharing our days. Five minutes, then ten, then fifteen—soon we will have a rudimentary conversation.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“You may not speak to me like this, Ewan…”
But he was up and gone to his workshop and I was left stewing.
He was captive during his noon dinner at least. He could hardly leave the field the way he could the kitchen. I decided to try to broach the subject of a small flock of sheep. His eyebrow lifted in interest.
“How many do you want?”
That’s all he said. Before I knew it I had half a dozen bright big ewes in a pen by the cow. See how receptive he can be, I told myself. How many women would love to have such a husband! By the time the spring grass was up I had seven pretty lambs cavorting alongside their mothers. Within a month of my marriage I was as busy as any farm wife in the province. What had I done with my time in town, I wondered as I bustled around tending to cow and calf, chickens, sheep, and my new garden.
I WAS NOT TO DO BUSINESS IN SCOTCH RIVER. I had not been forbidden to do anything since I was a child. Even as my hackles raised, I gathered all my patience and restraint and focused my attention on the source of the Scotch River problem and away from my awakened temper. Apparently the merchant there had insulted Ewan in some profound way that Ewan would not elaborate upon. I tried to cajole the story of the insult from him thinking I might be able to mitigate the problem, to clear up misunderstanding or negotiate around hurt feelings. But no. No truck nor trade, no buying or selling from his household would flow in that direction. Furthermore, it was Ewan’s opinion that strolling about the streets of town was a shameful waste of time and the providence of wastrels and gadabouts—throwing good daylight back into the face of the Lord. I tried to reason with him. There was no profit in my keeping a cow if I couldn’t sell my butter. Scotch River lay only a few miles to the east whereas DesBarres was a three-hour plod in the opposite direction. It simply wasn’t practical. How could I sell my eggs? How could I pick up everyday articles, a wooden spoon, a pound of raisins?
“I’ll make you a wooden spoon,” he said.
“And the raisins? Will you make them too? And sugar. And linen when you need a new shirt?”
“Corrigan can send them up the Coach Road.”
“Not all that way! What do you mean?”
“Nettle,” he said. “And no more about it.”
I was to call on the woman simply named “Nettle.” The woman was so like a nettle in every way the moniker seemed more of a taunt than a name. Her voice was raspy and sharp as nettles and her eyes, just as pointed, glared from under a rat’s nest of hair. It was impossible to say how old she was, her skin deeply pockmarked wi
th scarring, a drooping eye and her right hand no more than a claw (burnt away, according to some accounts).
What I knew of her came from Abby and what Abby knew of her came mostly from the mists of rumour. She was the sole survivor of a house fire that had taken her parents, all of her siblings, her looks and her right hand when she was a girl. The fire had been spectacular, flames leaping so high above the trees that the parson called out to pray for their souls could not approach for the heat but could read scripture by the light from three farms away. Men sailing a sloop across the strait had seen the blaze thirty miles off. Flaming bodies were seen falling from the upstairs windows like so many flankers. There was no end to the tales: the family had kept a goat in the house; they had kept a crow in the house. There had been smallpox caught from carousing with Indians. The mother had spoken a foreign language, beguiled a neighbour’s horse and made it lame. Nettle had escaped the blaze because she had second sight. No, because she had kindled the fire herself. No, she had been meeting a lover by moonlight on the night of the blaze and had not been there at all. There had been unpardonable evil in the house; the house had been full of turpentine, full of rum, full of straw where they all slept in a pile, full of sin. The shack she lived in was where she ran to on the night of the fire and had refused to budge since. No, she had built that cabin herself from stolen lumber, from lumber bought from the avails of unspeakable acts. She had given her right arm for it. No, she traded her arm for the second sight. She had been a beauty once. A woman alone—well, how do you think she lives? Carters and drivers stopping day and night. Her large black dog could curse you with a look.
What I knew to be true was that she lived in a ramshackle cabin—little more than a shed—and that her personal history was regarded as a canvas for the communal imagination. The shack was tucked in behind a scraggly line of scrub alders and spruce, a quarter mile beyond the church. A dog met all visitors with neither a growl nor a wag but with a clear, cold gaze and if necessary, one sharp bark. I learned, just as Ewan promised, that for a small fee Nettle could see any letter or parcel or bag or barrel of goods transported in or out, up or down. It was true that many carters and drivers stopped here. She knew them all.