by Linda Little
“Our sons will tend the kiln fire, work the sluice gate, sweep the floors. Then they’ll learn the stones.” So Ewan declared, his eyes coming to rest on my womb. “The mill will be their toy.”
On the first day of February, although my flour bin was half full and I had not asked for more, Ewan arrived home, emerging from the darkness with a small flour bag swinging at his side. He placed it on the table with a poof.
“From the new mill?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Ewan.” I dipped both my hands into the bag and let the whole-wheat flour run through my fingers. “It’s lovely.”
A stranger might have missed the glint in his eye, the twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll bolt a batch of that through the silk tomorrow. You’ll have white flour,” he said.
That night in his prayers he thanked God for his new mill. I felt the shape of his pride—a summer egg, protected with a shell of humility, wrapped in a transparent blanket of assurance, shielding the perfect orange yolk of pride. When I awoke in the morning the bed was empty beside me as usual. Ewan was back at work.
CHAPTER
FOUR
A YEAR AND A HALF HAD PASSED SINCE OUR MARRIAGE AND no sign yet of a child. A full journey around the sun and more—two springs, two summers, and soon two harvests. I counselled patience for myself but this advice grew increasingly difficult to bear. I heard Ewan at his prayers at night, kneeling by his bedside. During the first months of our marriage I had closed my ears to this moment of intimacy between man and God but soon shed my scruples. Clearly, these would be the only intimacies I would know. At first it warmed me to be included in my husband’s prayers but as time wore on I heard a different message.
“Make my wife worthy of Thy blessing. Show my wife the path of Godly labour. Forgive her sins and make her worthy of Thy service. Make her diligent. Reward my labours with a son.”
I delighted in Abby’s children, watched them grow, chatted with them as they passed my door on their way to and from school, gave them pennies or treats for small chores. Abby and I visited back and forth whenever our work allowed during the week and often on Sundays. The Browns provided tenderness and joy in my life but I could never come away from them without the tugging of that persistent ache for a family of my own.
When the leaves began to turn and the water ran high again, the fall crop began to arrive at the door of the new mill. Wagons lined up from early in the morning, farmers leaning against trees, smoking pipes, enjoying the holiday of talk and leisure and the luxury of the newest, most modern mill in the district. Determined to enjoy a walk in the fine fall weather I packed up my baskets for Nettle and set off down the road. I had several cheeses and a basket of eggs bound for Corrigans’ store and I expected to retrieve a spool of wicking, a can of kerosene and some new dyes I had ordered.
Nettle sat sunning herself on the stump outside her cabin and grimaced, as usual, in response to my greeting. Perhaps it was the fine day or my familiarity with our routine but seeing her there by her hovel, my curiosity bubbled out.
“How is it you came to be … in business for yourself like this, Nettle?”
“A body’s got to make their way in the world.”
“But out here … on your own. People say—”
“I’m no different from the rest of you. We’re all Fortune’s fools. One day I had a man and the next I didn’t.”
“A man? Are you a widow then?” I appalled myself with the surprise in my voice and immediately tried to cover my rudeness. “What happened to him?”
“You leave me to my worries. Tend to your own man.” She stared at my womb then into my eyes until I blushed in shame. There was nothing more to do but follow her into her shack where she bustled about, exchanging our parcels and calculating our business with no further interference from me. But as I turned to leave she spoke again: “I’m in the business of keeping things tight and passing them on, and I hold secrets close. Mine and others’. You never know when some bit of knowing will come in valuable.” She spit into the muddy corner of the shack, pulled a hank of flesh off a smoked fish hanging on the wall, stuffed the greater part into her mouth and passed the rest to her silent, waiting dog.
In spite of the birdsong and the brilliant autumn sky and the invigorating walk home, Nettle had unnerved me. All the more because I couldn’t precisely say why.
ON THE LAST DAY OF OCTOBER WE WOKE TO THE WHISPER OF drizzling rain on the dark windowpane. By dawn the drizzle had settled into a steady rain and the air was heavy with the assurance of a good long drenching. No grain would be coming in today. Ewan had been waiting for just such a day to tend to the cleaner above his shelling stone. It was too finicky, too likely to clog if not watched closely. Ewan had thought he had fixed the problem once before but when it re-emerged he took it as a personal affront. He trained his attention on the offending part. Because he would be back and forth to his shop, in and out all day with his mind occupied, he hired Donny Cunningham, as he had in the past when he was particularly busy, to mind the kiln.
And so Donny happily stayed home from school to earn fifty cents for feeding the fire and keeping an eye on the temperature in the kiln. No custom—no farmers, nothing rolling down the hill except rivulets of rain dashing for the millpond. I can imagine Donny stretching out into his day of solitary leisure punctuated only by Mr. MacLaughlin’s intermittent presence. The sack hoist was great fun. It was simply a rope on a winch. Two sets of trap doors, one directly above the other, opened up the vertical space from the meal floor in the basement all the way up to the top of the mill. The hoist could as easily carry a man as a sack. Indeed Ewan had ordered a little metal stirrup from the smithy, knotted it to the end of the hoist rope, for just this purpose. From down on the meal floor Donny could set his foot in the stirrup, and hang on to the rope like a sailor in the rigging. The mechanism that controlled the winch could be activated from any floor by pulling one of two light ropes that hung down the length of the mill. One engaged the winch and the other disengaged it. When Donny engaged the hoist, up he went, not fast, but still with the thrill of outside propulsion. With his free hand he could push open the first set of trap doors above his head and emerge onto the main floor. Onward and upward he would likewise fold open the second set of trap doors and then swing out onto the top floor, disengage the winch, send the hoist rope down, and run back down the two sets of stairs for another ride. Ewan would never have approved of swinging on the hoist for fun, for playing pirates—swinging from the rigging with a kindling cutlass capturing chests full of gold.
At first Donny would have kept a sharp lookout for his boss, but vigilance wanes. As the afternoon dragged on he likely lost track of where Ewan was. He tended his oats, set the broom aside and leaned back against the wall, watching the spur wheel rumble along on its perpetual journey. No doubt his mind wandered to some pretty girl he had had his eye on. In some clumsy scenario she smiles at him, picking berries maybe and beckons him somewhere unlikely—a make-believe copse by an implausible waterfall. However it was, at one point Donny reached up and grabbed the rope above his head. Intending what? Intending nothing. Intending only to swing his weight on it, idly. Only to hang on to it the way he might a low branch overhead. But he failed to look up, failed to note the creaking of the bollard far above his head announcing that Ewan was, at that very moment, riding the sack hoist from the ground floor to the upper floor.
When Donny reached up and so idly grabbed the rope that disengaged the winch, the wooden fingers that had been carrying Ewan’s weight through the air were released. The sky fell in a rush, in a smack that knocked Donny off his feet like a shot steer. Everything in a single unintelligible instant—a thunder of confusion, a scatter of pain, a snap like a floorboard giving way and a great weight pinning him to the floor. Sudden darkness and a bellowed curse from God himself. Donny must have scrabbled to extricate himself, scrambled to his feet, gawking as the heap of sudden weight reconfigured itself into his boss.
&nbs
p; “Mr. MacLaughlin!”
I was at my churn when Donny burst into the kitchen with no breath to speak but with eyes wild with terror. “…accident.” I dropped the dasher and tore past him not pausing for coat or bonnet, my skirts flying out behind me. I had no idea what state I might find Ewan in. The notion of Ewan diminished in any way was simply inconceivable. Donny trailed behind me, hobbling and gasping, clutching the stitch in his side. I flew down the hill, half sliding down the steep path over the bank, then the slap of my boot soles on the wooden step of the mill.
“Ewan?”
“God damn it to hell!”
I nearly laughed from the relief of his being alive, lucid and strong enough to bellow. And from the novelty of a shouted profanity erupting from the hole at my feet like Satan calling from the underworld. Ewan’s curse hauled me from panic down to a searing, rational fear. I thundered down the stairs and there he lay crumpled, his right leg splayed off unnaturally, his face scarlet, his eyes as fierce as the Devil’s. He tried to stand, got halfway up and toppled over.
“Don’t move, Ewan. Don’t! For God’s sake, stay down!” I gave instructions to Donny, now cowering at the top of the stairs. “Cut me two splints, this long. Bring me two long-handled tools, like a broom or shovel, bring me a stack of flour bags. Bring me cord or a rope of some kind. Run.”
Ewan had fallen two full floors. That his leg was broken was self-evident. There was a gash on his head and blood. I fashioned a stretcher out of flour bags, a gaff and an iron rod. I do not know how we wrestled the livid, railing Ewan and his twisted leg onto the stretcher and up the stairs. I know that by the time we reached the road Ewan had gone silent and where his skin was not crimson with blood it had drained as white as the flour bags he lay upon. I remember the sacks of pain where my lungs had been and the rhythmic hollow explosions of blood in my veins. Finally we reached the house and set the stretcher on the cot in the room off the kitchen.
“Saddle up Pride—she’s the faster. Go for the doctor. Go!”
We are all Fortune’s fools. For a moment I stood idle, unsure of my next step, but fear threatened to drown me. I fetched warm water and began dabbing at Ewan’s wounds. Blood had caked in his hair, stained the shoulder of his shirt, speckled out everywhere. A nasty bruise was rising on his forearm but no blood from the leg.
“Ewan?”
He would not look at me although his eyes were open. He blinked. His right hand he kept opening and closing in a fist.
“Ewan, can you hear me?”
“Aye.”
I wrung the blood from my cloth and wiped his face. He stared at the wall. Suddenly terror flashed in his eyes and his entire body tightened in a gasp. His mouth shaped into a shout but no sound emerged, as though he were falling all over again. Then he settled for a few minutes.
I eased the bloody shirt off him, used it to staunch the still seeping blood. A whispered chant seemed to rise out of him and hover. I lowered my ear, strained to hear. A request? A prayer? No.
“…second, their velocity is always in proportion to the time of their fall and the time is as the square root of the distance fallen, third, the spaces through which they pass are as the squares of the times or velocities, fourth, their velocities are as the square root of the space descended through…”
Mrs. Cunningham filled the doorway, clicking her tongue, as usual. “Always a foolish amount of blood from a head wound.” She was swift and efficient. “Scissors,” she said. “We’ll need to cut them trousers off him.”
When the doctor arrived he shooed us out of his way. There was barely room for one by the bedside in the tiny room. I stood in the doorway trying to gauge the frown on the doctor’s face as he checked the bandages then focused his attention on the injured leg. “He broke the bone for sure. But he didn’t break the skin. That’s a help anyway.” He straightened and looked around the cramped space. “We’re going to set that bone now.” He pulled a flask from his medical bag and held it out to Ewan. Ewan waved it away.
“Ah, you’d better,” the doctor said. “The hollering can upset the ladies.”
“Won’t upset me, I’m sure. Nothing I ain’t heard before,” Mrs. Cunningham said.
“I was thinking more of his wife.”
“Just set the damned thing and never mind,” Ewan ordered.
“I’ll just leave the bottle here then.” The doctor set the rum on the bedside table, beckoned to Mrs. Cunningham, and stationed himself at the foot of the bed. Then he turned to me. “Best you wait in the kitchen.”
I opened my mouth to argue but nothing came out.
“Shut that door behind you.”
“We’re ready,” I heard him say to Mrs. Cunningham presently. “Hold onto him tight.”
I waited for the screams of pain but none came—only the huffing of the doctor straining overlaid with the steely silence of Ewan’s will. Finally the doctor emerged from the room sighing and rubbing his shoulder. He seemed suddenly old and tired, worn down from the weight of decades of bearing bad news. “Alright. I need a fresh pail of water, then come in here and I’ll show you how to make a nice snug bandage.”
I stood at the end of the bed while the doctor splinted the leg and wove a soaked bandage around it all. Ewan stared straight up at the ceiling, his arms rigid by his sides and skin white as lime, while the doctor worked.
From time to time the doctor spoke to Ewan, gauging his responsiveness. Ewan answered in monotones. My fear crackled over everything and wooziness forced me to the chair.
Finally the doctor finished and called me out of the room with him. “He’ll be on his back for a while now,” he said. “He’s not to move. You watch for fever and call me if he gets hot. You can give him a couple of these pills every day. And a bit of rum for the pain if he’ll take it. Missus there,” he jerked his head to indicate Mrs. Cunningham, “she’ll likely have him doused up with twig tea and old roots before I get past the crossroads. See she doesn’t poison him.”
I untied the handkerchief I’d tucked into my apron pocket and held out several dollars in coins, willing my hand to stop its quivering. “I can get more,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow in surprise, perhaps taken off guard to see cash money up so far into the country. “This is plenty for now. Let’s see how he comes out.” Then realizing how this sounded he softened his tone in contrition. “Now don’t you worry, Mrs. MacLaughlin. I’ve seen lots worse than this. Bones heal themselves. We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to and it’s a good clean break. He’ll knit up, you wait and see. The thing is to keep him still. He’s not to move off that bed. He’s not to move in it, either.” The doctor fit his hat firmly on his head and bowed slightly. “I’ll call back up in a day or two.”
Ewan lay with his face to the wall. After a while I offered to read to him. A few passages from the Bible, perhaps? He would not hear the word of God but he allowed me to pass an hour or so stumbling through his Oliver Evans Miller’s Guide. The laws of spouting fluids. The laws of motion and rest. It seemed to calm him. He drifted in and out of sleep.
“THE SEVEN ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES OF BODIES: EXTENSION, figure, impenetrability, divisibility, mobility, inertia, attraction.” I heard him at it the next day, lists running like grain through fingers: simple, knowable, soothing. Not a prayer, not a plea, but an incantation, a touchstone, immutable and true. “Five kinds of attraction between bodies: gravitation, cohesion, magnetism, electrical and chemical. What are the eight laws of falling bodies? Number one: they are equally accelerated. Number two: their velocity is always in proportion to the time of their fall, and the time is as the square root of the distance fallen. Number three…” I listened to him clutching at this perfect world of the mind, reaching out to these absolutes.
IT TOOK VERY LITTLE TIME BEFORE EWAN’S INCAPACITIES TURNED him wrathful. Early mornings were the worst. I steeled myself before poking my head in the door. “How did you sleep, Ewan? Your tea will be ready in a jiffy. And your oatmeal.”
“Why
don’t you get out of bed when you should? There’s daylight all around. God’s not going to favour a lazy slattern! I never saw a woman sleep so much as you! Idler! Layabout! Barren as a mule and no wonder!”
It was the frustration of captivity that made him so wild, I knew. But this did not assuage the hurt. I knew there was an element of truth in what he said, not about my indolence, which I knew was an unfair charge, but true that he expected more of me. True that he blamed me for my childlessness, my failure to produce in good time.
“I see now how my seed falls upon stony places.” As soon as I was sure the fire had caught in the stove I grabbed my milk pail and fled to the barn where I wept into the flank of my gentle cow.
Twice each day I had to check Ewan’s brow for fever. It was like plotting to corner a pig. Approaching him set him off roaring, no matter that I had not even touched him. If it had been a painful thing, if I were required to bleed him, for example, I could imagine him thrusting his arm towards me impatient for the blade. But a touch, the heaping of the vulnerability of affection upon the vulnerability of incapacity was too much for him. Tea he would take, and cod liver oil. A hot potion of comfrey with a splash of medicinal rum he would accept from time to time, but the rum bottle by his bedside he never touched. I pulled back the curtains I had stitched for the little window only last year, rubbing the cotton between my thumb and fingers. Sunshine always strengthens the constitution, I meant to say, but as I turned to him the slash of raw pain that contorted his face as the daylight hit strangled the words in my throat. Daylight equals man plus work. The untouched porridge I had dished up for his breakfast hit the wall, splattered, the bowl smashed, milk dripping onto the floor.