by Linda Little
LAUGHLIN’S NEXT MOVE SURPRISED ME ONLY IN THAT I HAD BOXED HIS behaviour into a contained pocket in our lives and I did not expect any significant contribution from him. Early one evening he came home from Scotch River where he had spent the afternoon playing cards in the hotel. At first I disregarded his chatter. Talk of war—there had been too much of this lately. The bloody Hun. I simply tried to turn a deaf ear to news of international machinations. But Laughlin grew serious. It was the absence of bluster that attracted my attention, the lowering of his voice rather than its customary escalation. He played his audience well. Duty. Democracy. The defence of small nations. He intended to enlist.
While I wasn’t taken in by his speech about duty (I saw every day his approach to duty), I think he had fooled himself into believing it. I looked over at Charity and found her gaping at him. I could hardly take in the words he spoke but his movements stayed with me. Like an actor on a stage he stood and propped one foot up on the seat of his chair, leaning forward, resting his forearms on his thigh. The serious pitch of his eyebrows I remember, and his sudden handsomeness. Then he left his chair and set his hands on Yoo-hoo’s shoulders in a manner meant to impress gravity on a child. He crossed the floor and stood behind Charity’s chair. He kissed the top of her head as she sat with their new baby girl fussing in her arms. Everyone appeared to be on stage or to have walked out of the pages of a novel, playing at a story that was not their own. He slipped the ribbon off Charity’s hair and ran his hands through her tresses. Charity started to cry and everything seemed false and unfamiliar. The boys remained motionless in their spots. For a flash I was back in the winter of the blizzard when I played Pride and Prejudice with Charity’s father. Then Samuel, sensitive to the emotional import of the moment if not the exact cause of it, joined his mother in tears. Yoo-hoo stepped towards his father and said with a note of admiration in his voice, “You’re going to be a soldier, Poppa?” As if on cue, baby Rachel shrieked like a banshee and shook her tiny perfect fists.
I WAS SEVENTY YEARS OLD WHEN LAUGHLIN SET OFF TO ENLIST. I was an old woman. I could no longer heft a sack to my shoulder and often I found myself hearkening back to the nostalgic days of my youthful strength. I was no longer a great horse of a girl and now I longed for what was lost. Nevertheless, after Laughlin left, life opened up, almost magically it seemed, like a lush valley before us. It was a trick of memory, I’m sure, but it seemed that within a week of Laughlin’s departure the baby stopped fussing, the neighbours became friendlier, the bread smelled sweeter, the kitchen windows let in more light.
I moved out of the tiny room off the kitchen and back upstairs. Charity claimed she could not sleep alone and so we went back to sharing the large bed in the master bedroom as we so often had in the years of Ewan’s protracted absences when she was a girl. I hired a young man from over by the Crossing to help me in the mill. Wesley Heighton paid attention. He fetched and toted and ran here and there to ensure I never had to strain myself. He never burnt a grist of oats or barley and he learned more about milling in eight weeks than my son-in-law had in eight years. Of course I had to pay him for his labour, but there was no more money-wasting, no more trying to guess and juggle and outwit.
Laughlin sailed for the battlefields of Europe. Now that Ewan was dead and not just away, now that Laughlin was off fighting for King and Country and not just lazy, neighbours edged forward to offer help to our temporarily fatherless family. John Sutherland collected our milk and carted it to the Scotch River cheese factory along with his own. He delivered our whey back to us in the same way. Harry Cunningham butchered our pigs. When the men were finished with their own hay crops they came for a frolic to put ours in the barn, which cost us nothing but the feast at the end of the day. The Gratto boys spent three days cutting and yarding firewood for the house. (The Gratto boys were a wonder to feed, the three of them going through five pies at a single meal.) One neighbour lad or another would be sent over to block up the stove wood and split it. Yoo-hoo would dance in frustration as he tried to master the bucksaw, as his little eight-year-old arms tried to match the strength of bigger boys who smirked and shook their heads, delighted to be admired for their manly strength and prowess.
I traded the quick but erratic horse Laughlin had recently bought himself for a sturdy little Morgan named Kelpie. Every week Charity and I and the children would harness Kelpie to the wagon for the ride to Scotch River. With the new co-operative dairy and cheese factory that had been established there was no more need to be standing over a pot of curd or pounding away at the churn. The first day I bought cheese from the factory I slunk away imaging the eyes of the village on me, the village tongues wagging—“too lazy to make her own cheese!” But this was ludicrous. I saw half a dozen other farmers there hauling home their whey in cans, each with a great chunk of cheese sticking out of their pocket. Indeed, why have a cheese factory if not to make cheese? Our family joined other families beneath the wide oak tree in the factory yard exchanging news and sharing bags of fresh salted curds. The boys ran up and down the main street of the village with sticks of penny candy every Saturday afternoon. They gawked at Hector MacKinnon’s new motorcar and ran their hands over it. Like other boys, they played at guns and soldiers, learned their sums and letters, and attended to their chores.
On school days Charity packed the lunch basket for the boys in the morning. I herded them through chores and washing up. Then the three boys and I set off together. It must have rained and snowed and there must have been days of bitter wind and biting cold. There must have been days when Yoo-hoo was recalcitrant and when Alec’s perfectionism tried my patience, when the cow stepped in the milk pail and Samuel was consumed by tears of frustration. There must have been lessons forgotten and battles of will and bootlaces untied but I remember it all as a single golden day: Yoo-hoo toting the lunch basket with one hand and swinging a stick with the other, out in front like a band major, Samuel skipping along beside me and chattering away, in charge of the little satchel containing their slates and lesson books. Little Alec with his hand in mine, always with some question, “What’s that bird called, Nana?”
Young Wesley would have the mill up and running early in the morning entirely without my direction or intervention; we could hear its rumble from the top of the hill. We descended the hill to the mill together, then the boys skittered off, over the dam and up the opposite bank towards the schoolhouse. Always they turned and waved to me calling out their goodbyes. I stood and watched them until they disappeared over the rise, my heart as light as a summer cloud.
Of course not everything was perfect. However much the neighbours pitched in to help with the household, generosity never carried over to the business. Neighbours who helped expected their grinding done for free; they expected gifts of oatmeal and sacks of bran for their horses and pigs. They expected to smoke their hams and bacons and fish in the kiln but when they brought kiln firewood it was meant as payment for a debt, not a contribution. They expected credit to be extended at their convenience. They often bought the new fine prairie flour now available at MacKinnon’s and brought their fodder to me for the less profitable work. The oatmeal business remained strong, but it was, by far, our most labour-intensive product and industry advances in production and distribution kept the price low. Meanwhile I paid top dollar for help in the grain fields in the spring and fall. Labour was in short supply and the thresher gave no bargains to the miller—man or woman. The boys worked like navvies in the spring, picking stones and shovelling manure, hoeing turnips and beets for the cows in the summer, stooking, piling straw and stowing grain in the fall.
One fall a new schoolteacher arrived at the Gunn Brook School. Maggie Everett was younger than Charity by several years and certainly younger in experience, but they warmed to each other immediately. Maggie hailed from out by Crooked Harbour. She had never been inside a mill and she expressed an interest in seeing it.
“You must come!” Charity said. “Come home with the boys after school to
morrow and we’ll have supper.”
Charity, with baby Rachel in her arms, met them at the mill and did her best to keep Miss Everett from the ravages of too much attention. Yoo-hoo pulled at her to come see the gears, Samuel tugged her out to the walkway over the dam. I was busy shelling oats but peeped out the window at the entourage clustered on the dam—Charity and the baby and the boys and the new teacher. With the mill running I couldn’t hear their conversation but I saw Charity lean back with her palm to her forehead in melodramatic fashion then watched both women dissolve in laughter. In that moment I glimpsed my young Charity with her scarves and ribbons and Romeo and Juliet in her girlhood kitchen performances.
Maggie, being from way out by the shore beyond Scotch River, knew and cared nothing for the now-ancient gossip surrounding Charity’s early marriage. She cared little for gossip at all. In Maggie’s eyes Charity was accomplished and wise and educated. Charity’s penchant for books, literature and drama captivated Maggie, whose aptitude well exceeded her education. It warmed my heart to see Charity looked up to, her talents recognized for what they were. In fact it was Maggie I credit primarily for re-energizing Charity’s interest in the outside world. The two young women began to devise the concerts and the Christmas pageants and the recitations at the schoolhouse. With Charity’s enthusiasm and superior knowledge and Maggie’s organizational ability they soon had the Gunn Brook Schoolhouse the buzzing hub of the area.
Maggie always stopped in at the mill on her way to the house to say hello and to “investigate the work,” as she would say. She always brought a laugh and left a smile. One busy day, when Wesley and I had several grists of oats backed up, Wesley halted in mid step on his way to a hopper. He set down his load and turned towards the door. I thought perhaps there was something wrong or I had not heard a customer arrive but when I looked over I saw Maggie waving to us as she passed the door. Wesley moved towards her even as she continued up the hill, stood and watched her until she was out of sight. Of course! I had almost certainly missed earlier signs of this. At five o’clock Wesley and I shut down the mill and we headed up to the house together for supper as Wesley intended to stay into the evening to finish the day’s second batch of oatmeal. The kitchen was teeming with excitement. It seemed Maggie had unveiled her idea of presenting a scene from The Mill on the Floss. Charity was to prepare the script. There were to be costumes and a set and playbills drawn up by the schoolchildren. All through supper they proposed and counter proposed which scenes would be best, who should have what role and who should wear what, and how the stage would be organized, and what music could be used to the best effect.
“I-I-I c-could make you a w-waterwheel,” Wesley managed to spit out in the middle of a discussion about stage design. “F-for the stage.”
Maggie turned to him and rested her eyes on his face as though for the first time. “Thanks, Wesley. That’s just what we need.”
“There should be a dog in the play!” Yoo-hoo cried. “And we can train Kip to do the part. He could be the loyal companion, couldn’t he, Mother? There’s always got to be a loyal companion—like a comrade in arms.”
Samuel jumped up from the table, threw his arms around Kip, and needed to be guided back to his place at supper. Wesley’s cheeks had taken on just the slightest hint of pink but the rims of his ears shone scarlet. I found myself smiling, ambushed by this evidence of us as a happy family. Even supper was delicious. Charity’s soup-making had improved several increments over the past months. I had failed to take notice before this, but it was true. Also she had baked a custard to go with the cherry preserves. And this time she had managed to beat the eggs adequately and had remembered to take it from the oven before it shrivelled to rubber.
WESLEY AND I WERE PROGRESSING WELL THROUGH THE HARVEST. Of course there were days when Wesley had to attend to his land, to the little farm he was struggling to build on his own. On these days I had to manage the mill alone, but when he was there Wesley was such an apt hand that I could wander my way through half the morning before I appeared at the mill door. Sometimes I would see the boys over the dam and off to school then return to the house to warm my bones by the stove and boil up the kettle.
One morning I puttered by the stove baking up hot biscuits and arrived at the mill mid-morning with tea and a basket of treats to warm the young man.
“Good morning, Wesley.”
He answered with a nod and a grin. He checked the oats then sat down to his tea. After contemplating the steam from his cup he eyed me tentatively, “D-do you think Maggie Everett w-would go to the dance with me?”
“Now, Wesley, I don’t know why she wouldn’t.”
“I th-think Marty Battist is going to ask her. Th-that’s what I th-think.”
“Maybe you should get there first, Wesley. It would be an awful thing for Maggie if she had to wait so long for you to ask that she finally had no choice but to go with Marty.”
“Marty is real h-handsome. I’d s-say she’d want to go with him.”
“Handsome is as handsome does. Which in Marty Battist’s case is precious little, from what I hear. What is Mr. Battist doing to better himself? Has he got himself a bit of land and a trade and a sense of direction? Look at you now, a hard worker with fifty acres all your own and a good horse and lots of promise. You’ve hardly a taste of jam on that biscuit, Wesley. Don’t be shy, for heaven’s sake.” Wesley looked doubtful of the praise but he helped himself to another spoonful of jam.
“I-I’ll finish up S-s-sutherland’s oatmeal today,” he said. “Th-then I can get Ma-MacKinnon’s order done.”
“Good. We’ll haul it to Scotch River on Saturday if the weather is fine.”
Wesley sipped his tea quietly. Eventually he ventured out again. “Another thing too is that M-M-Marty d-doesn’t stut-t-t…” He ears blushed bright red and he stopped speaking.
“Doesn’t what?”
“You know.”
“No, what?”
“St-st-stut-stutter.”
I took my time gathering up our tea mugs and sweeping the biscuit crumbs into the dustpan. “I have secret for you, Wesley, if you want to take the word of an old woman. There’s just one thing you need to get straight in your mind. What’s so great about Maggie Everett? Why would you care about her? Why would you want to work all day just to keep her happy? Why, Wesley?”
The question shocked him. He was unsure if I were insulting the girl he adored. “Sh-she’s…”
“Don’t tell me, tell her. If you can tell Maggie what makes her special and different so that no other girl will ever do, she won’t even hear you stutter. Don’t go trying to flatter her now, that won’t fool her. She knows what sets her apart. She’s just got to know that you know too. If you can do that, you could have green horns growing out of your head and she wouldn’t care.”
Wesley played so furiously with the button on his shirt I was afraid he might pull it off. Fussing like that, he looked not much older than Yoo-hoo and I had to stifle my impulse to lean over and ruffle his hair and kiss his cheek. He had no idea how insignificant his perceived shortcomings were. I left him to his troubles, went off to check the trout I had set to smoke in the kiln.
Charity watched the slow, delicate layering of Wesley’s love affair with Maggie. I watched her slip into Maggie’s experience and out again, each time altering her own recollections, bending her own past to suit herself. I saw her reshaping the sparse moments of attention she had enjoyed from Laughlin into a lingering romance, and dismissing months and years of indifference. I saw her bend the songs Laughlin had sung for his own amusement into serenades to her, his jolly jigs into elegant waltzes, his groping into embraces. It frightened me to see how easily this was accomplished. Of course I knew these slippery slopes well enough. Hadn’t my own life been shaped by tugs and slides into ridiculous fantasy? Charity was living proof, my constant reminder, my Pearl. My victory. Who more likely than Charity to have fantasy in her blood?
Of course I had never known th
e girlish drama and excitement of suitors and courting, but I had, without even noticing, imagined extended scenarios for Charity. I had assumed that she would be the object of much jostling for position. She was such a pretty girl, so bright and imaginative and for all appearances from a diligent family with both a farm and a trade. She ought to have had a stream of young men at her door. They ought to have fought for a chance to sit in the parlour with her. I ought to have been the one vigilant about decorum, alert to suitors who imagined the mill and the farm would devolve to the victor. Instead Charity had spent what ought to have been her courting years in a fog of melancholia and a howl of babies. How could I deny her the fun of vicarious courtship?
Maggie had many suitors. Farm boys buzzed around looking for a chance to take the schoolteacher to a dance. I heard about them all. Marty Battist certainly, but also Tom MacCarron, Alvin Joudrey, Willie DeYoung. Being from the shore she was a new face and slightly exotic with her high cheekbones and large eyes. She was neither pretty nor plain; rather her face was open and expressive and so she became what she felt. Happiness lit her face to radiance. In confusion she appeared to dissemble and I imagine that in sorrow she would twist pity from a cliff face.
“Alvin has the loveliest eyelashes,” Charity might report. On days when work exhausted me, her musing and mooning only reminded me of my failures and left me impatient.
“And when a man is paid by the eyelash won’t he be well set then?”
“Willie is as strong as can be and can twirl a full flour barrel above his head with only one arm.”
“Yes, strong as an ox and nearly half as smart.”
But most of the time I was amused by Charity’s animation with her speculations and judgments. Most of the time her perceptions reflected her new maturity. She noted which suitors demonstrated care, concern, diligence, ambition. She noted how they treated their horses, how they spoke to their neighbours. I loved to watch her holding each of Maggie’s beaus up to the light, examining the idea of them, testing their strength. Perhaps I was as guilty as Charity, seeing her enjoying the excitements that ought to have been hers. Certainly I was not the disinterested bystander I ought to have been. I wanted to see Wesley in the forefront of the race. Harnessed to his stutter, Wesley’s eyes would glow at Maggie’s lightning quips and I would sometimes spy him smiling to himself days later. I had no doubt he was reliving moments of her quick wit. He admired her devotion to those around her, her kindness, and her careful consideration that would mature to wisdom over the years.