“Jeannot.” Franklin’s voice cracked weakly. He stumbled forward, a strange bundle in his arms. “Jeannot.” He thrust his arms out, and my grandfather instinctively took the package. It was not until he was already holding it that he realized it was a baby, my father. The child was quiet and sleeping.
“Where’s Martine?”
Franklin shook his head. “She didn’t …” He gulped air and my grandfather saw that Franklin was crying.
Rebecca touched Jeannot on the shoulder. Her voice was strangely calm. “She threw the baby just now. To Franklin.”
My grandfather shoved my father back into Franklin’s arms and turned to the house. He had taken only a few steps when Pearl brought him to the ground.
It took Pearl and three other men to hold him, Jeannot punching and screaming and writhing under their weight. The flames threw themselves into the house with a stunning fury to match Jeannot’s, the fire shooting into the sky like it wanted to ravage the stars. Even the men who stretched in a line to the river, passing bucket after bucket, moved back from the blaze.
Twice Pearl and the men relaxed their grips on my grandfather, and twice my grandfather tried to rush into the house despite its devastation. They held on to him until even Jeannot gave up hope that Martine might still be alive. The bucket line had long turned toward dousing the neighboring buildings to keep them from being taken under by fire as well. Franklin hectored several men into helping him wet down the store, though it was far enough away to clearly be out of danger.
Once the men released him, Jeannot stepped as close to the edge of the house as he could stand. He saw his ax lying on the border of dirt and ash, a burning piece of wood lying across the handle. He reached for it and grabbed the blade in his hand, not thinking of its proximity to the fire, and my grandfather held the metal for a moment after he felt the searing pain of the heat. The top of the blade struck a rock as it fell from his hand, ringing into the night. He shook his burned hand, and with his other hand he carefully touched the handle of the ax. Though it was hot and scarred, he was able to pick it up from the ground and carry it over to the steps of the brothel.
The madam cleaned and bandaged my grandfather’s burns. Inside, she told him, some of the women were busy tending to Xiaobo. They had thought the Chinaman would die: he had been pulled from the edges of the destruction, badly burned over half his body. The fire had neatly bisected him, carving a straight line up the center of his body, burning the right side, but leaving the left side untouched, the skin smooth and undamaged. His right side was devastated, however, his hair burned to his scalp, his breath coming ragged like his mouth was held underwater.
BY DAWN, MY GRANDPARENTS’ HOUSE was only embers. A cabin next door was partially burned, a few logs eaten through by flames so that the curious could peer through to see the owner—a saloonkeeper who had spent the night hauling buckets of water—sleeping inside. On the banks of the river, Pearl and a few of Jeannot’s men worked to sort through the lumber. In the standing eddies and where the gravel met the river, soot and ash stained the water. The men’s clothing was blackened and in some cases sparked with holes. Many of them had beards or hair that had been eaten away by the flames like Pearl’s.
Rebecca came to the brothel, neatly dressed and wearing a silk faille dress trimmed with white velveteen and blue satin, as if nothing had happened, as if she were headed to a party, though she had a child in either arm. She stood above my grandfather, who was slumped in a low chair, and in the gentlest voice she could manage, my great-aunt said, “Franklin and I will watch Pierre as long as you need, Jeannot. You know that.” Jeannot looked up wordlessly and simply stared at the woman before him, looking from Julia to Pierre, like he did not know which was which, until the madam stood up and shooed Rebecca away.
Father Hugo, wearing his boots and thick gloves to protect him from the lingering, buried heat in the ashes, sifted through the wreck of the house with a shovel. He occasionally stopped to remove something from the fire—a partially melted clock, an oddly untouched painting of a bowl of fruit, a full place setting that rested on the ground—but seemed to be searching for something more specific. After a while, he stopped, left his shovel on the edge of the lot, and went down to the river. He returned with Pearl, both men carrying planks, and together they hammered together a small, neat box. Father Hugo returned to the fire, and with Pearl’s help brought out what was left of my grandmother’s blackened, heat-split body, still smoking from its ravages, dropping it into the box with a sickening finality. They carried the box over to the building owned by the rat-eyed farrier who passed for an undertaker.
THEY DID NOT HOLD the funeral that day or the next, or even the third day after, because they could not find my grandfather. He had left his ax on the steps of the brothel, but no other sign of him remained. Finally, on the fourth day, Father Hugo decided that they would wait for Jeannot no longer, and he presided over the interment of the sealed box.
The smell of smoke and burned flesh hovered over the cemetery. Franklin came to the funeral dumb stumbling drunk and mumbling, crying furiously like he was not a man. By the end of the following week, however, Franklin seemed to be the same shopkeeper that he had been before, working furiously to fill orders for the new Havershand lumber company—cobbled together as a patchwork concern, the previous owner disappearing as surely as Jeannot—and fussing over Julia and his nephew and ward, my father. He directed Pearl and the other men asking after the half-burned lumber on the banks of the Sawgamet to leave it alone. He had sold it to the Havershand Company, he said, and they would take it from there.
“AND YOU,” I ASKED my grandfather when he finished speaking, “where did you go?”
“Where do you think I went, Stephen? You may only be eleven, but even you are old enough to know. I went after Gregory. Man or ghost or monster, I tracked him down and killed him a second time, but this time I kept the bones where they could not get away from me.”
ELEVEN
Sweet Like Water
I CANNOT REMEMBER ANYMORE if my grandfather told me the story of that long winter and the death and burning that followed before or after he found me on the banks of the river, barely escaped from the monsters in the water. Which came first, I wonder, the qallupilluit dragging me under the ice, my grandmother begging for my life and then telling my grandfather to bring her light, or my grandfather telling me the story of my grandmother’s death? Does it matter?
What I know for sure is that only a few days after my grandmother told Jeannot that she needed him to bring her light he disappeared again. He left Sawgamet sometime during the night and did not return for a month, until only a few days before Christmas. He came back on foot, as he had first come to Sawgamet.
“I’ve what I need,” he told my mother and stepfather the night he returned, over dinner. “And for you,” he said, looking at me and my cousin Virginia, who had joined us, “I have a surprise.”
The next day, while my mother walked an afternoon snack over to my stepfather at the church, Virginia and I sat around the fire with my grandfather.
“But why won’t you tell us why you left again?” Virginia asked, handing my grandfather a cup of tea. Steam poured from the cup into the air, a sign that I should add another log to the fire. I cut the wood for my mother—which might have been why she was so generous with its use—and when she returned from the church she would be disappointed if I had let the house grow too cold. Truth be told, I liked chopping the firewood, enjoyed the chance to handle my father’s ax.
My grandfather’s hands trembled a little as he took the cup and saucer from Virginia. I did not think he was so old—I knew several men who were older than my grandfather who still worked in the cuts, rode the float to Havershand—but something seemed to have been sapped from him in the month he was gone.
“Have I told you of the night you were born?”
Virginia sat down and looked suspiciously at Jeannot. “You weren’t here then. How do you remember that?�
��
“Ah, perhaps you’re right.” Jeannot grinned. “Why don’t you tell me about the night you were born, then?”
“Really? But how am I supposed to remember the night I was born?” Virginia turned to me. “He’s joking, isn’t he?”
“Of course he is,” I said, though I was never sure with my grandfather.
“Yes, Virginia, I’m teasing at you. How about, instead of talking about why I left, I tell you why I came back?” He grinned. “They are one and the same. Would you like to know what surprise I’ve brought back for you?” He stood quickly and stepped over to the mantel, pulling one of a pair of lanterns down. He peeled a string of wood from a log and dipped it into the stove and then touched it against the wick of the lantern, watching the flame burn for a moment before setting the lantern down at the end of the table.
“Are you going to play with the shadows, like my mother?” Virginia asked.
“No. Look here,” my grandfather said. He nested his hands into a round and then placed them against the glass of the lantern. “What do you see?”
“A wick,” I said.
“A flame,” Virginia said.
“No,” my grandfather said. “What I’ve brought back is none of those things, though you are close.”
“Jeannot,” my mother said, her voice surprising all of us. Despite the cold air that must have leaked in through the door with her, we had not heard her enter. She stomped her feet and then loosened the shawl that covered her hair. “I thought we agreed that we’d save that for Christmas night.” She turned to Virginia and me. “You can wait four more days, can’t you?”
My grandfather looked abashed and then put out the lantern, trying to turn our attention instead to the story of a moose that hunted wolves, but of course, my mother’s words had only stoked our curiosity.
THE NEXT DAY, SATURDAY, he took us from the house after a late breakfast. He made us bundle ourselves tightly against the snow, told me to take my father’s ax, and asked my mother to prepare a parcel holding lunch for the three of us.
As soon as we started walking, we began with the questions, trying to ferret out his surprise.
“Have you captured a fairy?” Virginia asked.
“No,” my grandfather said. “But I’ve seen them out in the woods. Don’t let anybody tell you differently, and don’t believe that all fairies are friends. There are many that will lead you into danger.”
“Is it a spun-sugar castle? Is that what you have for us?” I asked. “Tommy Rondeau saw one in Havershand last winter, and he said it shone like there was a fire inside.”
“I knew his grandfather. Good man.”
“Is it spun-sugar? Is it?” Virginia bounced against him as we walked through the trees.
Jeannot looked back at her and shook his head. “Now, stay behind me or you’ll be worn out.” He broke trail through the snow—knee-high for him—and we followed. We had been walking for near an hour already, and I thought it would have been easier to walk along the river itself. The snow was scoured clean off the ice from the wind, but then again, that same wind cut hard like knives across the open floor of the valley. Though we had to wade through the snow, the trees grew like a wall toward the river, opening to let us pass but keeping tight enough together that the wind was dampened. “No,” my grandfather said, glancing back at us. “How could I carry a spun-sugar castle without it breaking?”
“Is it—”
Jeannot cut me off. “It is what it is and you’ll see it in a few days.” He turned abruptly to face us. “Enough now. All morning you’ve been asking, and all morning I’ve been not answering.” He gave a sly grin. “Besides, I think we’re here.”
Virginia and I looked around, staring at the ground and turning in circles. Finally, Virginia looked at my grandfather. “Where?”
“May I have the ax?” Jeannot reached out to me and I reluctantly surrendered it.
“See this?” My grandfather reached up with the ax and pointed high up on a tree where a pair of deep gashes rode near each other. “That blaze used to be near my knee last time I was at this creek.” He looked down again and shuffled his foot, feeling for something, and then he used his foot to brush snow back from the ground. “Stand back,” he said, and then he swung the ax against the ground.
When it hit, the ground shattered and buckled. Virginia and I both gasped at the violence before we realized that my grandfather had smashed through ice, not dirt and snow. He stumbled a little, and for a moment he looked like he was going to pitch forward into the hole that seemed to be growing at his feet, but then he scrambled back to where Virginia and I stood.
“Hadn’t expected it to buckle so easily,” he said, and as the words came out of his mouth the hole suddenly elongated and the ground opened like a thread pulled from a seam, racing in both directions through the woods. The sound of the ice breaking and crashing into the running water below was a cracking shock that made Virginia cover her ears.
We stood and watched, and even my grandfather seemed impressed with what a single swing from the ax had wrought. “Here’s your ax,” he said, handing it back to me.
“My father’s ax,” I said.
My grandfather glanced down at me and then nodded. “Of course.”
We watched as chunks of ice washed clear, until a creek seven or eight feet across flowed before us. The water moved quickly, urgently, rushing down through the woods and to the river below, though I wondered what it would do when it reached the Sawgamet. Would the water spill over the surface of the frozen river, or would it find its way beneath the hard covering and add to the dark swirling below?
My grandfather pulled a polished wooden bowl from one of his coat pockets and then crouched by the river. “Come here before it starts to freeze up again,” he said, and then he dipped the bowl into the water. He took a sip, laughed, and then handed it to Virginia.
“It’s sweet!”
“I told you it would be sweet,” my grandfather said. Virginia handed the bowl to me and I took a sip for myself.
“But it’s like syrup,” I said.
My grandfather rocked forward so that he was kneeling and shook his head. “I know. Do you think I would have had us walk for an hour through the snow just for the same water we could have taken from the river by your house?”
He dipped the bowl in again and drank it down, and then filled it for Virginia and then again for me. My cousin and I started to laugh, and so did Jeannot. We drank and laughed, making so much noise that at first we did not realize that the laughing excitement we heard from behind us came from something else.
My grandfather pulled the ax from my hand as he turned, and the creature stopped, only a few steps away. I felt the sharp fear of my cousin’s hand pulling on my coat and heard my own gasp.
The creature’s laugh turned into a maniacal giggle. Its blue eyes, looking through thin, greasy hair hanging over its face, were almost as pale as its ice-colored skin. Tattered scraps of cloth hung from its waist, and it stood barefoot in the snow. It tapped its fingers against its legs, calling attention to its hands. I—and I was sure my grandfather and my cousin—fixated on the gleaming fingernails that jutted from its long, thin fingers.
I heard my grandfather’s voice, a low whisper, speaking to us. “A mahaha. The tickler.”
Virginia let out a quiet sob, and I knew that she was thinking of the stories her father had told us of the mahaha.
It took a step forward and started to reach for Virginia until my grandfather’s voice caused it to stop. “The water,” my grandfather said. “It’s sweet. You should taste it.”
Jeannot handed me my father’s ax and then pushed Virginia and me behind him, moving forward and spreading his hands in a gesture of munificence. “I’m just trying to be fair. I brought the children all the way out here just so they could taste this water. It would be a shame if you didn’t try it yourself.” Keeping his eyes on the mahaha, he knelt down, cupped a hand in the water, and then brought it to his lips. �
��Cold,” he said, “but it’s sweet. Like syrup, like candy.” He rose to his feet again and motioned to the water. “You should try some.”
It gave a low cackle and then stepped toward the water. As it bent over, it placed its hands on the ice that rimmed the edge, the claws sending up shavings of white.
My grandfather waited until the creature’s lips were almost touching the water before he gave it a hard shove. It let out a laughing scream as it fell into the water, and almost immediately it was swept along in the current and disappeared into the trees.
My grandfather touched me on the head and then picked up Virginia. She was crying, hard, gulping sobs, and he held her tight against his chest. “There, there,” he said. “As long as you know how to handle them, they’re more stupid than scary, really. Ask them to take a drink, give a little push, and away they go. Your father’s father told me plenty of useful things about what comes in these woods.”
I spun the ax handle in my hand, the blade turning and catching the midmorning light that filtered through the tops of the trees.
Virginia slowly stopped crying, and my grandfather put her back on the ground.
“There used to be more of them,” my grandfather said. “There was a time when mahahas were almost common, but like I said, they pan out on the dumb side. They’re a kind of snow demon. They tickle you until all your breath is gone. Leave you dead, but with a smile.”
Virginia started to sob again, a loud howling, and Jeannot gave me a look of surprise and then he tried to quiet her. “Hush,” he said. “It’s gone and won’t be back, I promise.”
Touch Page 20