by Kate Hewitt
Ellen enjoyed the happy chaos of life at the McCafferty farm as much as school, although it did take some getting used to. Dyle McCafferty had greeted her by pulling her into his arms and swinging her around and around until she’d nearly lost her breath and Rose, laughing, told him to stop. Ellen could not remember the last time Da had swung her around like that.
“Well, Ellen,” he’d said, cramming his hat on his head and regarding her with a twinkling smile, “perhaps you can set us to rights. Goodness knows with five children and a father who is still trying to understand this farming lark, we need someone to straighten us out!”
Shaking her head with a smile, Rose patted her husband on the back and half-pushed him out the door. “Go on, now. The sun will be high in the sky before you get to the animals.”
It was quite clear to Ellen that Dyle McCafferty approached farming with a lightness of purpose that left the McCaffertys with just enough to get by. She hadn’t been at the farm for a week before she saw Rose counting out coins kept in a pretty blue and white jar in the kitchen, a frown turning down the corners of her usually smiling mouth. As soon as she’d spied Ellen she’d smiled again and put the jar back on the shelf above the range.
“There are never enough pennies, are there?” she said lightly, but Ellen thought she still saw a shadow in those faded blue eyes. Rose McCafferty was a cheerful woman, but worry and want dogged her heels. Ellen knew all about that, and she decided right then she’d do her best to help the McCaffertys as much as she could, whether Rose had meant for her to do so or not.
Quietly after school she would tidy the kitchen or finish a pile of ironing, dust the front parlor (which was hardly used anyway) or gather the eggs. When Rose found her completing some small chore she would give her a harried smile and a quick hug. “Bless you, child, bless you,” she said, and Ellen felt something inside her start to unfurl, like a tender shoot first finding light. She liked being useful, after all. She liked being needed even more.
One evening in early October Rose asked Ellen to deliver a chicken pie to the Lymans’ farm.
“Dear Maeve is poorly again,” Rose said with a sorrowful shake of her head. “She was never strong, and when the cold weather comes it always seems to go straight to her chest. Bringing a bit of dinner is the least we can do.”
Outside the air was chilly and crisp, and dusk was falling quickly, leaving the fields cloaked in a soft purple twilight. Ellen could hear the baleful lowing of the cattle in a distant field, although in the oncoming darkness she couldn’t see them. She hadn’t told anyone she was a bit nervous of cows—afraid, she decided, was too strong a word. Still she picked her way across the darkened fields with some care, making sure to keep a good distance from that mournful sound.
The Lymans’ farm was a tidy-looking place, with several outbuildings and a clapboard house painted in a cheerful yellow. Mr. Lyman answered the door, still wearing his muddy farm boots, the graying stubble visible on his chin. He looked tired, Ellen thought, and supposed that taking care of a farm and a sickly wife was hard on a man. She thought suddenly of her father, which surprised her, since she’d deliberately tried not to think of him for the last month, since he’d sneaked out at dawn and boarded that train to Chicago. She hadn’t heard a word from him, and sadly she wasn’t even surprised.
Now she wondered if Mam’s death had contributed to his decision to head out west. She and Da had never really talked about Mam dying, or how they’d felt about it. Ellen had known that wasn’t Da’s way. Yet now she remembered that awful, churning mix of guilt and relief when Mam had breathed her last, and she wondered if he’d felt that too. Ellen swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat. She still held a hard little kernel of anger for her father, but for a moment, staring at Mr. Lyman’s weary face, Ellen felt the shell of that kernel start to crack open.
She left the pie in the kitchen, and as Rose had requested, asked to pay her regards to Mrs. Lyman.
“I’m sure she’ll be glad for your company,” Mr. Lyman said, and led her upstairs to a room full of dark, heavy furniture, the curtains drawn against the night. Mrs. Lyman lay in bed, her slight form covered with a quilt, her face as pale as the sheets covering her except for a hectic spot of color on each cheek.
“And you are the girl Lucas has told me so much about,” she said with a faint smile. “Ellen, is it? It’s good of you to come. Rose always seems to know when I’ve taken a turn.”
“Is there anything else we can do?” Ellen asked. The antiseptic smell of the sickroom and the wheezy sound of Mrs. Lyman’s breathing made her think painfully of another sickroom, and another woman’s frail form and weak smile. Standing there, Ellen felt as if all she needed to do was close her eyes and she would be back in the smoky kitchen in Springburn with Mam. Her throat suddenly felt tight, and a wave of homesickness rolled over her, catching her by surprise.
She didn’t want to miss Mam, or Da, or her old life. She was happy here on the island, with the McCaffertys. She felt like she had finally found a home, or near enough. Yet for a moment, standing there with Mrs. Lyman smiling wanly up at her, she wanted nothing more than the familiarity of her own home, her own life. Her own parents.
Yet all that was gone forever.
“Not much to do, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Lyman said with a small smile. “But would you read a passage from the Good Book for me, my dear? Lucas has told me what a lovely reading voice you have.”
“Certainly,” Ellen said, and reached for the heavy family Bible of worn leather that Mrs. Lyman kept by her bedside. “Is there a particular passage you’d like to hear, Mrs. Lyman?”
“I’m always fond of the Psalms,” Mrs. Lyman said, and then her poor thin frame was so racked by coughs that Ellen half rose from her chair, wondering if she should call for help. As the coughs subsided, Mrs. Lyman waved her back down. “I’m all right, child, I’m all right. Just read for me.”
Ellen opened the Bible to the Psalms, unsure what to read. She didn’t read the Bible except when she had to in church or school, and she didn’t know what kind of psalm Mrs. Lyman wanted to hear. “Is there one you’re especially fond of?” she asked.
“Oh, you just pick whichever one you like.”
Hesitantly Ellen began to read Psalm 4, since it was where she’d first turned to. “Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness,” she read. “Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.” Mrs. Lyman closed her eyes and smiled as Ellen continued reading. “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.”
“That’s a comfort,” Mrs. Lyman murmured, and Ellen closed the Bible uncertainly. She was reminded of her mother’s dying words: He’s been good to me, Ellen. Don’t doubt it.
Mrs. Lyman seemed to think similarly, yet Ellen could not see how or why. The woman was in constant pain, sure to have her life ended too early. Where was her comfort? Ellen put the Bible back on the table, a strange tangle of emotions snarled up inside her: curiosity and desperation and hope, and a little anger too. Have mercy upon me. Where had been the mercy in her mother’s life? Or even Mrs. Lyman’s?
Quietly Ellen rose from the chair, for Mrs. Lyman seemed to have drifted off to sleep. “Goodbye, Mrs. Lyman,” she murmured, and left the room.
Back in the kitchen, Lucas sat at the table, his stockinged feet propped on a chair, a book in his lap. He glanced up at Ellen in smiling surprise.
“Hello there! What are you doing here?”
“Visiting your mam,” Ellen said, and Lucas’ smile faltered.
“That’s good of you.”
Ellen ducked her head. “It’s no trouble. She’s sleeping now.”
“She’s not always so poorly,” Lucas said in a low voice. “Just the other day she was up and about, making an apple pie.”
Ellen just nodded. She knew how painfully slow the progression from illness to death could be, yet she didn’t want to say any of it to Lucas. He’d discover it soon en
ough for himself, for as Ellen had seen upstairs, Mrs. Lyman reminded her far too much of her own mother.
He’s been good to me, Ellen. Don’t doubt it.
Suddenly she heard a low, long, keening wail from the direction of the barn. It was such a miserable sound, it set the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck prickling. “What was that!”
“That was Maggie.” Lucas shoved his hands in his pockets. “Jed’s hunting dog. She tangled with a raccoon and came out the worse for wear.”
From upstairs a fit of coughing could be heard, and then the heavy tread of Mr. Lyman on the stairs.
“Lucas! You’re needed!” Mr. Lyman shouted from the hall, and then he came into the kitchen, ducking his head when he saw Ellen. “Thank you kindly, Ellen Copley, for your visit... and thank Rose for the pie.”
It was a dismissal, and Ellen could understand why. There was something hard and humiliating about outsiders witnessing your weakness, and the Lymans, with their prosperous farm and well-tilled fields, wouldn’t want her seeing the underbelly, the illness.
“Yes, sir,” Ellen said and bobbed a half-curtsey before letting herself out the back into the kitchen yard.
Another wail, almost ghostly in its sound, rose up from the barn, now shrouded in darkness. Ellen hesitated, and then, without thinking too much about what she was doing or why, she crossed the dirt-pecked yard and slipped into the shadowy barn.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the soft, sweet-smelling darkness; barns had a smell Ellen liked, hay and animal and old leather. She turned a corner and saw Jed kneeling by his dog, the glow of a lantern creating a halo of light around the pathetic scene.
Ellen hesitated, feeling as if she was intruding as much, or more, as she had been in the farmhouse. She was tempted to leave before Jed could see her, and had already half-turned away when he lifted his head.
“What are you doing here?” Jed’s voice was as surly as ever, and Ellen twisted her hands in her apron.
“I... I heard...”
He shrugged away her words, one hand reaching down to stroke Maggie’s matted coat. The dog thumped her tail once and whined, a terrible, tiny sound, Ellen thought. It sounded like a plea of mercy. “Raccoon ripped her belly open,” Jed said in a low voice. “Pa says she won’t last the night.” For a moment his features twisted with grief, and Ellen took a step towards him.
“Oh, Jed, I am sorry.”
He hunched a shoulder, his expression closed and sullen. “It’s the way things are,” he said. He paused, and stroked the dog again. “But she was—is—a good dog.” The silence stretched on as Ellen searched for something to say, yet no words of sympathy seemed enough.
Then Jed looked up suddenly, and Ellen saw a spark of anger in his eyes. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he demanded. “Aren’t you needed somewhere—back where you belong, Miss Bossy? Although where is that, I wonder?”
Stung, Ellen took a step back. “I was just—” she began, but Jed had already turned back to his dog, and feeling far more hurt than she knew she should be by his unkind words, Ellen turned and ran out of the barn.
By the time she reached the McCafferty farm, the moon was a lonely crescent in an inky sky, and the lights twinkling from the farmhouse windows were a welcome sight.
Ellen pushed her jumbled thoughts about Jed to the back of her mind, and as she entered the comforting chaos of the McCafferty kitchen, with several children eagerly pulling on her sleeve, she forgot about him completely—almost.
One afternoon at the end of October, Ellen took the children for a tramp through the woods, down to the pond that separated the McCafferty land from the Lymans’. It was a cool, clear day, with the leaves in full crimson and gold glory, some of them drifting lazily down.
Ellen tucked her sketchbook and pencils under one arm. She’d been so busy settling into her new life, dealing with children and school and the unfamiliar bustle of a large family, that she had yet to set pencil to paper, and she ached to draw the many scenes dancing through her head, from her first glimpse of wild-eyed Peter to the sunlight glinting off the lake.
The children danced around her as they made their way across the fields to the woods, the leaves crunching under their feet, the sunlight filtering through the branches and filling the meadow with a hazy light.
Ellen watched them with a strange sense of satisfaction, as if she were somehow responsible for this happy little troop. Peter forged ahead, batting back saplings and brush with a switch he’d made from a fallen hickory stick. Caro was determined both to catch up with him and not to care when she couldn’t. Behind Ellen, Sarah was wandering slowly through the long grass, weaving a wreath of yellow birch leaves and humming to herself, as dreamy as ever.
A small hand slipped into Ellen’s, and she gazed down at Ruthie’s bright, button-like eyes. The little girl leaned her silky head against Ellen’s side, and something in her heart filled and then swelled.
She was happy, she realized. Happy. More than surviving, more than content, even. Happy. The thought made her smile, and then she even laughed aloud.
Ruthie glanced up at her, her little forehead furrowed. “What’s so funny, Ellen?” she asked.
Ellen smiled and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, “and everything.”
They were soon settled by the bank of the little pond, with Peter and Caro setting about making a den out of some fallen pine boughs. Sarah and Ruthie were given the chore of collecting leaves and twigs for a make-believe dinner, everyone busy and industrious.
Ellen leaned back against a stand of birch trees, their pale yellow leaves casting a golden shade. The sunlight was warm on her face, and after a moment of simply enjoying the beauty around her she turned to her sketchbook.
The cover of the sketchbook was thick and stiff, the pages creamy and blank. Uncle Hamish had given her a new book as a going away present, slipped to her on the sly when Aunt Ruth wasn’t looking. Now Ellen ran her fingers along the first blank, perfect page and felt a small, surprising pang of homesickness for Seaton, for what perhaps could have been if she’d stayed.
Since her arrival on Amherst Island Aunt Ruth had written once every week, long, information-filled letters about all the goings-on in Seaton so Ellen was completely up to date on Orvis Fairley’s toothache and Hope Cardle’s failed piano lessons. Artie Dole’s mother had had a sixth baby and the Presbyterian church was getting a new organ. Ellen knew she should appreciate her aunt’s letters and yet somehow they still somehow smacked of duty. Even Aunt Ruth’s signature, ‘Your loving aunt’, made Ellen bite her lip and try to suppress her uncharitable thoughts. Aunt Ruth had rarely seemed so.
Sighing now, pushing the thoughts away, she reached for her pencil and began to draw. She made sure not to lose herself so completely in her work that she couldn’t keep an eye on the children, and every few minutes she would look up to check that they were all playing happily in their newly constructed lodge.
Yet as soon as her head was bent once more, she lost herself in the lines upon the page, and the fire they ignited in her imagination. It felt so good to draw again, to feel the pencil firm and strong in her hand, the images that had been dancing through her mind now finally put to paper and given life in quick, sure strokes.
Her head bent over her sketchbook, Ellen was unaware that anyone had approached until a shadow suddenly fell over her, and she looked up in surprise to see Jed gazing down at her with his usual surly glare. Still nursing a bruised pride, she hadn’t spoken much to him since seeing him in the barn several weeks ago; Lucas had told her that Maggie had died in the night, just as their father had predicted. Jed had buried her in the field behind their barn, where she’d liked to hunt.
“What have you got there?” he asked now, jerking a thumb at her sketchbook. He was wearing his farm overalls, a cap jammed low on his head, his expression the same as ever, something between a smirk and a scowl.
Ellen shielded the sketchbook with one hand. She didn’t want to show h
er drawings to anyone yet, and certainly not to Jed, who would most likely laugh at them. “Nothing.”
His interest now piqued, Jed leaned forward. “Come on. Show me.”
“No,” Ellen snapped. “Why should I?” She was gratified to see Jed look surprised and even a little hurt by her tart reply, but before he could answer Lucas strode through the long grass up to them.
“What’s going on?” he asked, smiling, and Jed, giving Ellen one last, sharp look, grinned back.
“Ellen’s got a secret.”
“I haven’t,” she protested, but she clutched the sketchbook to her chest all the same, her fingers curling around its edges.
Jed made a grab for it, as she knew he would, and Ellen scooted back, lurching to her feet before he pounced again.
She suddenly had a horrible, panicky feeling that if Jed saw her drawings and made fun of them, nothing would be the same. She couldn’t articulate the thought further than that even in her own mind, yet she knew she couldn’t bear it if Jed laughed at her for her drawing. He’d laughed at her for just about everything else, but her drawings were precious. Private. Sacred, even, and she wasn’t ready to share them with anyone, not even someone who might admire them. Jed wouldn’t.