Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  “No, I mean—there’s a man on board here who has accosted my sisters and myself, but now I can’t find him.”

  “Oh, well,” he said, and puffed up, “I am the person you need. I know ’em all.”

  “You’ve lost your French,” she replied, a small tease, then went on to describe the man in gray.

  She’d hardly begun when the young steward said, “Why, I know him, sure. He’s over this a’way.” He led her through the throng. “There you go,” he said, and pointed.

  The man stood with one foot up on the lower rail, at the stern of the boat, the tail of his coat hanging straight to his knee, and as if sensing their interest glanced over his shoulder at them. He was not so tall nor as thin, and sported a short red beard.

  “Ma’am?” he asked, and the voice was one she’d never heard.

  “No,” she told her guide, “that isn’t he. This man was much taller, thin as a sapling, and his eyes…” She could not find words to describe them. “He’d a wide white cravat at his throat, like a preacher might.”

  “Oh.” He scratched his head, then pushed back his cap. “No, I surely don’t recollect such a gentleman, and the way you set him, I think I surely would.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. But, that is, I might not have seen everyone who boarded?” He smiled sheepishly. “I did sort of concentrate my efforts on you ladies.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. He was very sweet. “Thank you for your kindness, sir,” she told him, and he tipped his cap and returned, fairly glowing, to his work.

  Kate circled the rest of the way around the pilothouse. She scanned this way and that but saw no one resembling her stranger, and by the time she reached her sisters again she had concluded in some ineffable way that the man in gray had never been among them at all.

  Two

  JEKYLL’S GLEN WAS THE FIDELIO’S last stop on the southern leg of its journey. Some passengers had disembarked at Lodi. Others would continue on to Dresden or, if they were aboard for a day’s excursion, ride all the way back to Geneva by day’s end.

  Amy was disappointed in her expectations of this new home. She’d anticipated something akin to Geneva or at least to the towns that had lined the Cayuga & Seneca, where the towns came right up against the canal. The town of Jekyll’s Glen was nowhere to be seen. The boat pulled in at a broad dock. Beyond it a dirt path curved around the shore and up a slope to the west. Where, she wondered, was the town?

  The only obvious signs of life were an overturned dugout that had been dragged out of the water and leaned against the base of the hillside, a flat ark anchored in the shallows, and the three carts waiting at the end of the dock. Three carts, three stevedores. Mr. Charter managed to secure the services of one of them.

  The stevedore loaded their trunks, two crates, and one of the dressers onto his cart. He could not haul all their belongings in one trip and would in fact need help to move the furniture, most of which belonged to Lavinia. She then insisted that she and Mr. Charter remain with her belongings at the dock while the girls went ahead with the first cartload and prepared the house to receive them.

  There was no room for them to ride on the overburdened cart, for which the stevedore apologized. He was about to remove some of the trunks, but Vern stopped him. “We shall walk,” she told him. He then explained that they could walk along with him, but the path was muddy in places—a fact borne out by the dirt clumped on his boots—or they could climb up. He pointed, and they saw that a narrow line of steps had been cut into the hillside beyond the dock. A small post had been hammered into the ground at the bottom. An arrow was painted on it, pointing up the steps. The hill was steep but the way much shorter. He would meet them, he said, at “the crossroads of the churches.”

  Vern opted for the hillside. No one asked Amy, who would have been more than happy to replace a trunk on the cart.

  Trees grew thickly up the hill. There were birch and beech here and there, but mostly pine. The hill was steeper than it looked, and the steps turned out to be flat stones of varying sizes. There wasn’t so much as a rope to use as a handrail. At first they climbed happily enough, with Vern and Kate commenting on the passengers ahead of them, naming trees and remarking on the spicy scent of the pines—how fresh and invigorating to be out in nature—but by midpoint they’d stopped talking to conserve their breath, and plodded up each step. Amy, who hadn’t taken part in the conversation, noticed the change in atmosphere first.

  She stopped climbing suddenly and said, “Listen.” The word seemed to die just beyond her lips, but her sisters heard her and paused in their ascent. The air seemed utterly lifeless. No birds twittered and nothing moved anywhere beneath the trees.

  Kate replied, “I don’t hear anything.” Her voice was dull, muffled.

  “No, that’s it. There’s nothing, nothing at all,” said Amy. “No sound.” She looked down at the lake, at the edge of the dock, at the smooth water. If this was wilderness, Amy thought, then wilderness was like being trapped inside a painting. “How do we know there’s a town anywhere?”

  Then somewhere overhead a branch cracked and a breeze from off the lake rushed upon them, so strong that they had to clamp their arms to their thighs to keep their skirts down.

  Vern smiled as if reassured. She turned and continued the climb. The cold breeze pushed them along.

  By the time they reached the crest, they were flushed and puffing, but no more than the other travelers ahead of them, some of whom leaned against trees and mopped at their faces with kerchiefs. Kate looked up at the sky and walked in a circle with her hands pressed into the small of her back. Vern fanned herself. Amy leaned forward, hands on knees, as much as her corset would allow, but if anything this made breathing more difficult, and soon enough she was imitating Kate.

  Some distance away she spotted two cabins that could not have been bigger than two rooms each. In one of them someone was cooking up bacon and the smell of it was almost sinful. Except for a biscuit that morning, they hadn’t eaten at all. The smell triggered a desperate longing in Amy for the home they’d given up, for life as it had been before—even life under Lavinia’s rule. Why did she have to be here? It wasn’t fair at all.

  Other than the cabins, there was no habitation in sight. What if Jekyll’s Glen turned out to be nothing but two tiny cabins in a dead forest?

  The people who’d preceded them soon set off on the path, and Vern gathered herself up and said, “This way, then.” She pointed to another arrow that was nailed in the side of one of the trees. Amy abandoned her fit of despair and fell in behind Kate.

  After a few more minutes, the trees thinned ahead. To the right in the distance, sharp edges of shadow appeared—corners and slats and window frames. Up ahead a horse went by, and then another hauling a curtained dearborn. The wheels knocked along a rutted dirt road.

  The trees ended abruptly, and they arrived at the edge of the road. To the left it ran straight as far as Amy could see, vanishing finally into forest gloom. To the right it led within a hundred yards to the houses that had appeared through the woods.

  They were clapboards, on the far side of a big whitewashed sign displaying the name JEKYLL’S GLEN. Beyond the sign the road curved away out of sight. With great relief, Amy saw that a graded and lightly graveled walk led past the houses, paralleling the road, to accommodate all the foot traffic from the steamboats.

  The sisters headed toward the sign. Not until they came around the bend did they finally, and with great relief, see the town.

  More houses around the bend gave way quickly to a main street of storefronts, but not many. Another wagon rolled past, the driver lean and scruffy, with a dirty child by his side. The child stared at them balefully. His father ignored them altogether.

  The first establishment was a tavern. Some of the men ahead had turned from the path already and gone in. Vern pretended it didn’t interest her, while Kate tried to peer inside the door. Amy scrupulously avoided looking. Taverns were sinful places
, and this one gave off a sour smell.

  The town proved to be so awfully small that they could count the different businesses on both hands. There was a carriage maker and wheelwright’s across the road; the wide doors were open and the frame of a wagon like a spidery skeleton squatted inside. An apothecary and botanical medical shop was followed by another tavern. There were two general stores, facing each other across the street. A sign in the window of one announced FRESH EGGS. The other had its own sign, which read WE SELL WATKINS MILL FLOUR. Then came a blacksmith’s beside a saddler and shoemaker, an unnamed shop with bow saws hanging on the wall, a cooper’s, and a tiny house with a physician’s sign hanging from a post in front of it. Finally, where a narrower road cut across the main one, two churches stood on opposite corners: a Methodist of stone on the left, and a shining white Presbyterian on the right. The latter had its own sign planted in the middle of the path leading to its double doors, proclaiming one word: TEMPERANCE! The road sign there identified the crossroad as MILL CREEK ROAD. Arrows below pointed the way south to the Watkins flour mill and to an unnamed grist mill.

  To the north, traffic moved along the Mill Creek Road—wagons and pedestrians, some of whom they recognized from the steamboat. A large black dog dashed into view from behind one of the wagons. Its breath steamed out of its nostrils and it ran across the main road as if in pursuit of something, disappearing within moments into the woods.

  They’d only been there a few minutes before their own cart appeared. The stevedore, walking beside his mule, tipped his cap as he reached them. “And where is it you ladies want your belongings took?” he asked as if only a moment had passed since they’d spoken.

  Amy thought it queer that her father or Lavinia hadn’t told him, although it might have been one of Lavinia’s tests, to see if the girls were paying attention. Vern at least had. She answered, “Our house is on the Gorge Road. It’s called the Pulaski house, I believe.”

  “That’s your residence?”

  “Why, yes.”

  He shifted his stance from side to side as if making up his mind how to proceed. Then with a solemn shake of his head he prodded the mule and headed farther out the main road. The girls followed close behind. A carriage raced around them. Its rear wheel hit a rock and jumped it precariously onto two wheels for a moment before it bounced down onto all four rims again. The stevedore muttered, “That fool’s breakin’ the speed limit. Somebody oughta ’rest ’im.”

  The graveled sidewalk ended just beyond the churches, but there was little traffic, and the girls flanked the cart—its wheels flung off bits of mud, and they quickly learned not to follow in its path. A few people rode by on horseback, heading toward Jekyll’s Glen. They looked the girls over, and the contents of the cart, but there was nothing welcoming in their faces. Amy looked at them with the foolish notion that she might spy someone she knew. Sometimes strangers could look familiar.

  They walked another half mile on the main road, which the stevedore informed them was the Catskill Turnpike. Already the town was lost behind them.

  The Gorge Road branched sharply off to the south. They passed only three houses on it, all of which sat well back from the road. As much as a half mile separated each from the other. Then there were no more houses and the cleared land was swallowed up in woods, and Amy began to wonder if the stevedore knew where he was going. Trees overhung the road, and though there was hardly a breeze now, the air took on a chill. Sunlight spackled them through the almost leafless branches, lacking any warmth. One wheel of the cart rolled through a hole, and it cracked a thin layer of ice so that the hole spat brown water. The girls shivered and pulled their cloaks more tightly around them. The civilized world had become a myth, a remembered story, and they’d been lost in wilderness their whole lives.

  Then, up ahead, a horizontal line emerged out of the dimness—a long, straight pole supported by two posts, one on either side of the road. To the right a kind of sentry box stood next to the pole. Amy expected at any moment someone was going to emerge from the sentry box to demand a payment from them. That was how it was on turnpike roads, and they hadn’t brought any money with them, at least she didn’t think so. But no one came to take their toll.

  A clearing came into view as they neared the pike. A house sat in the middle of it.

  The stevedore abruptly switched the mule, and drove the cart off the road and across the dirt lawn, right up to the flagstones surrounding the front door of the house.

  “What’s this?” Vern asked.

  “This would be the place called the Pulaski house,” he announced, “only the Pulaskis is not among us anymore, nor ’n’ those before them.”

  It was a catslide house, a two-story clapboard with a long sloping rear roof, double chimneys in the middle, and windows all around. Bare bushes showing their buds were planted to either side of the front door. On the southern side, dozens of trees had been cut to stumps to let sunlight reach the house. To Vern there was something ugly and dismembered about so many stumps, which tainted the house. Kate looked through the windows at the empty rooms and thought only that it was an unknown quantity, a question that couldn’t yet be answered. The air smelled of spring forest, wet and on the cusp of new possibilities. A breeze stirred the tops of the trees, and birds twittered and darted overhead. Amy was relieved that there was a house at all: a house where they might be happy if only they could forget that happiness would not be theirs for long.

  A hallway ran from the front foyer to the back of the house—or so it seemed at first. Further investigation proved that the door at the back let onto a kitchen that extended across the entire rear, like the top of a “T.” On each side of the hall was a single large room—one would serve as a parlor and the other, with its own door to the kitchen, would be a dining room.

  The cooking hearth in the kitchen was broad and deep, and though it still contained a pivoting crane for hanging pots over a fire—the way people had cooked for centuries—the lower half of the hearth was filled by a fine cast-iron stove, the sight of which put Amy at some ease. She had dreaded the idea of cooking like some old fairy-tale witch.

  Three lard-oil lamps stood on the mantel, and two half-used candles lay beside them. A door at the back of the kitchen opened onto a narrow spring room containing a pump. They would at least have water for baths, even in the cold. Outside the spring-room door was piled a full two cords of split wood.

  A rough-hewn wooden table stood opposite the hearth, its thick top scarred with cuts. An envelope lay there with their father’s name written on it in a long, sharp, masculine hand. They left it alone and continued to explore the house.

  The stevedore had piled their belongings in the foyer and pushed some into the dining room, as if he hadn’t wanted to come any farther than necessary into the house. Exiting the kitchen through the empty dining room, the girls had to shove the trunks aside to get into the hall again. The stevedore and his cart were gone.

  The stairway to the second floor began just past the doorway into the dining room. It took up half the width of the hallway, and led to a small triangular landing and three more steps up to the second floor. The second floor was divided into two long rooms separated by another hall. Each room contained a small fireplace near the back, where the ceiling sloped. One of these would become the girls’ room, but they must wait upon their father’s choice.

  While the first floor had been empty, the second floor conveyed the feeling of a house abandoned in haste. In one room two narrow beds stood at angles in the middle. There was a third bed in the opposite room, and all three had been stripped of bedclothes. Amy idly plumped up one of the mattresses, exploding dust into the air. She squeezed it and the mattress crackled. She decided it must be stuffed with barley straw—hardly the most comfortable of choices.

  Farther along in the second-floor hallway, a Hitchcock rocking chair with cane seat lay overturned as if it had skittered and fallen when its occupant jumped up. A layer of dust edged the legs and rungs, and light
cobwebs were strung between the stenciled rails of the back. The girls left it where it lay.

  At the bottom of a narrow stairwell to the third floor Vern paused. She made no move to go up. A trapdoor at the top was closed. She tilted her head as though listening to something, which drew Amy’s attention. She stood beside her sister and listened too but heard nothing. Her younger sister ignored their reluctance, pushed between them, and climbed right up the steps. She lifted the trapdoor and it fell back with a report so loud that Amy jumped.

  “Katie,” Vern started, “I swear one day, you’re going to poke your nose in someplace it doesn’t belong and get it cut right off.” She glanced at Amy as if for confirmation of this, and Amy nodded. But by then she was looking up Kate’s skirts as her sister stepped out of view. Her footsteps echoed down from the empty room—emptiness so much more noticeable when it was a different room than you were in, thought Amy.

  “Amelia, go see to her,” Vern instructed.

  “Me?” Her eyes cast to the ceiling just as a loud screech issued from above—not the sound of a voice, but of something being dragged on the floor. “I’ve no interest in going up there. It’s trespassing.”

  Vern sighed. “No, it isn’t. It’s our house, stupid girl. Lavinia’s anyway.” She climbed the steps far enough to stick her head through the opening. “Kate, what are you doing? Oh. Oh, my goodness,” and she climbed the rest of the way up.

  Amy had an active fear of being left alone, a complementary fear to her resentment at being left out of things, which manifested as suspicion whenever she found the other two girls conferring without her. They had secrets, and she knew it, even though they denied this and always provided an explanation for whatever they’d been doing. Her fear and suspicion compelled her up the tight stairwell after them. If they had entered some cursed chamber, she would go to her death alongside them rather than let them discuss her secretly in the afterlife.