The Collective

by Lindsey Whitlock

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Not with Mother gone.’

  ‘That was ten years ago, Whim. I know your dad isn’t crazy about me. But he loves you. He’ll come around. He’ll understand. I can’t let you just stay here, trapped in the same life, doing the same things year after year. Stuck someplace where only this tiny sliver of things are possible for you.’

  ‘I’m all he has, Elwyn. And this place is all any of us have.’

  Elwyn looked down. He picked at the dirt with his finger. ‘I wish you weren’t such a good person, sometimes.’

  They were quiet. The space between them seemed to grow.

  ‘Do you remember when we were kids? We said we’d buy Old Finchy’s house together,’ Elwyn said. ‘I’d get the right side, you’d get the left.’

  ‘And you had plans to build a toboggan run from the roof for winter, and a swinging rope for summer. Just because Finchy would hate it,’ Whim said.

  ‘We always promised we’d do everything together.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s leaving, Elwyn,’ Whim said. The wistfulness had left her eyes. Elwyn opened his mouth, but he found he didn’t have anything he could say.

  ‘We aren’t kids any more,’ Whim went on, looking out at the creek. ‘We each have our place in the world, Elwyn. We need to take the course laid out for us.’

  That was something Elwyn didn’t believe, not even a little. But he knew that when Whim got philosophical, the conversation was over. Elwyn picked himself up off the riverbank, unsettled and unhappy. But when he arrived back home, he slept well. And he woke the next day with only a shadow of regret and the full lightness of that unquenchable feeling that his life was just beginning.

  CHAPTER 3

  Bird and Badger

  THAT NIGHT, Whim dreamt that the passenger pigeons returned. Only they weren’t passenger pigeons at all. They were locusts, covering the town, devouring everything. And in the dream, while woods were being eaten by the insects, Elwyn was walking away. Whim could see him, and she called and she called, but no matter how many times she yelled his name, he never heard her. He never turned around.

  She woke long after dawn, which she never did. That day of all days. With a sense of urgency, she pulled on her long coat and ran outside, past the budding gardens, a honking herd of Canada geese. The familiar faces of people tending plots or taking their sewing outside turned to ask where she was going. She didn’t stop for any of them. Corker’s bicycle, the only bike in town, was leaning against a tree. She hopped on and started to peddle away, yelling back to Corker that she would pay him later. He charged half a penny a ride.

  The bicycle was rickety and the six-mile road from Badfish Creek to the Kegonsa train station was riddled with roots and rocks. Whim’s jaw rattled as she peddled faster and faster, hoping desperately that she could make it there before Elwyn’s train left. She felt deep in her bones that something was about to happen. That Elwyn needed to stay.

  The train was already at the station. Whim dropped the bicycle and ran onto the platform, scanning the station for him, then scanning the train’s windows. Her heart was in her throat. The roar of the locusts in her dream was still in her ears. Everything else was a blur, everything but the shape of Elwyn’s face, which she caught sight of through the dirty window of the passenger car.

  Elwyn noticed Whim moments after she noticed him. But when Elwyn turned towards her and his eyes brightened, Whim’s heart lurched. She swore it actually leapt out of her, tearing her chest as it reached towards Elwyn. And then her heart returned to its place. The packed-dirt station and the few people around it came into focus. Whim came into focus herself. And she knew, then, that she couldn’t ask him to stay. She had only had a dream. It just seemed urgent because it was about Elwyn. And she wanted him to stay. So much.

  Elwyn smiled as he opened his window and leant out. He was on the sunny side of the train, and the sun seemed to shine on him especially. That was the way it was with Elwyn. Being around him felt like standing in the sun.

  ‘You changed your mind,’ he said, grinning.

  Whim shook her head, swallowed hard, and forced a smile. ‘No. I just came to say goodbye.’

  Elwyn’s face fell, but only a little. The gleam was still there, the shine. In Badfish Creek, people said Elwyn was born twice-lucky: he was born in May, the luckiest month, and he was born a dark-skinned boy to two pale parents. This, according to the older Foresters, was a mark of good fortune. Elwyn had never put much stock in that; the younger generation wasn’t so attached to old wives’ tales. But as Elwyn leant out the window, Whim thought maybe he had been born lucky. Not because of the month of his birth or the colour of his skin, but because of the unquenchable optimism that seemed to dwell inside him.

  ‘Mam wouldn’t let anyone come down to the station with me. She said there was enough fuss already, and too much work to be done. You know how she is about goodbyes. Only Teilo snuck down.’ Elwyn waved to his youngest brother, who was sitting quietly on the dirt platform with his pet chicken, a runaway from some distant farm. Teilo was a reticent kid and didn’t wave back. Elwyn chuckled.

  Further down the train, the conductor carried a final crate onto the freight car. In it were deer pelts, barrels and a few bottles. Whim realised she could jump in after the crate was on, before the conductor closed the door of the freight car. She could hide behind the crates, peek through the holes to see when they arrived in Liberty. She could send word with Teilo that she had gone. Her father would be heartbroken, but he would find his own way in the world. Maybe we all needed to find our own ways in the world. Maybe Elwyn was right.

  But Whim didn’t believe that. She believed that we are bound to each other, by strings of love and duty. The moment passed, and the conductor closed the door.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Elwyn said. He stretched it out to her, his body half out the window. It was his favourite sling. Whim reached up and took it, her fingers not touching his. She looked at Elwyn quizzically.

  ‘I packed my old one, but I figure I’m not going to need two any more,’ he said. ‘It’s all books and business and proper stuff like that for me now. For a while anyway. And who knows? You might run across some Goliath that needs slaying.’ Elwyn’s eyes twinkled teasingly. Whim knew Elwyn thought it was funny to think of her in any sort of battle, peacemaker that she was. ‘Besides, if I leave it at home, Dewey will get ahold of it, and he loses everything,’ he laughed ‘You’ll take care of it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’ll practise using it?’ he said, this time with a wink.

  ‘That I can’t promise.’ Whim smiled almost sincerely.

  The train began to pull away. Whim started to walk alongside Elwyn’s window, as if she were tied to it.

  ‘If you change your mind, Whim, you know where I’ll be,’ Elwyn said, his smile broadening as the train picked up speed. ‘Come and find me!’ he shouted before he turned away from her to face the wind. And then, in only a minute, he was gone. Out of sight.

  The loud train left a hush over the station. The stationmaster, also Kegonsa’s store-owner and innkeeper, swept the dust that settled in the train’s wake. The comfortable sounds of bristles on a dirt path, the click of two men playing checkers under the store’s eaves, the strange little throat sounds of Teilo’s chicken: these familiar noises were an unspeakable comfort at a moment that seemed to tear Whim apart. And as always, there was the sound of the trees. The sound of the wind stirring leaves as loud and constant as a river.

  ‘Do you want to ride home?’ Whim said. Teilo was only six and still a little round in the cheeks. He didn’t say anything as he hopped on the back of Corker’s bike.

  ‘Do you think Elwyn will buy me a cow when he’s rich?’ Teilo surprised Whim by asking when they were about halfway home. Whim was wiping stray tears from her eyes.

  ‘What would a cow eat in the woods?’ Whim managed.

  ‘Acorns.’

  When Whim returned home, she was s
urprised to find her father Aelred there, with a late breakfast set on the table and a little bouquet of wood violets in the centre. They were the flowers her father always said reminded him of her; they were quiet, but fragrant, and did everyone some good.

  He didn’t ask where she had gone. But when they had sat and begun to eat, he looked up at her and spoke.

  ‘You are a bird, little Whim. Singing your songs. Building your nest. He’s a badger. Made for wandering widely, building burrows and abandoning them.’

  ‘I know what I am,’ Whim said. ‘But sometimes, just for a little while, I wish I could be something else.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Liberty

  ELWYN HAD SEEN LIBERTY BEFORE, but not in person. A moving panorama show once came through the forest towns, setting up in the main room of the Kegonsa station, the only place big enough. Heavy shades were drawn, and a light shone on a massive painting that moved between two scrolls. It seemed as long as the creek itself.

  Everyone scraped together money to go. It was collected by the young boy who turned the crank that moved the scrolls. A man with oiled hair and crooked teeth spoke in a musical voice about the images that passed by. The panoramas of natural disasters were the most popular: a hurricane over Carolina sea islands; double tornadoes on the Laurentian Lakes; the grass fire on the Flatlands. And there was also the mile-wide Messipi, a natural wonder near enough that the Badfishians felt some ownership of it, though none of them had ever travelled there. People talked about these images for weeks.

  The panorama show never came back to the woods. Maybe it was too hard to lug the giant scrolls down overgrown roads, or maybe the showman was a part-time crook disappointed to find everyone’s pockets empty. But the images stayed with Elwyn. If he’d had the money, he would have watched the show over and over, sitting open-eyed and perfectly still in the darkness. There had been a few brief scenes of the Hill towns along the Wisconsin river, including Liberty. The railroad and riverboat traffic made them popular getaways for moneyed Messipi traders and old Franco-Indian merchant families; they said that the ancient rocks and soil were good for people’s health. Some of the Foresters had booed those images and jeered the man to move on to something more exciting. But Elwyn still remembered the wide stone streets, the shops built into the hillsides, the horses pulling carts. There was a grassy park by the river with a single tree and several benches, and everything appeared so tidy and prosperous and pretty. That was Liberty. That was where his aunt lived.

  Elwyn looked eagerly out the windows of the train as it neared town. Bicycles sped down streets, horses trotted ahead of wagons, white steamboats chugged along the river. Everything was moving. It pulled at him almost physically – he felt that if the window weren’t there he would lean so far forward, he’d tumble right out onto the grass.

  The train arrived at Liberty Station an hour late, and Elwyn practically jumped out of his seat onto the platform. He was carrying a large cake box and dressed in the starched, many-buttoned clothes purchased by his mother. His shirt was the pale green of coneflower dye with a stiff bow at the neck, and it was unlike anything he saw worn by the people there. As he wandered through the crowd, people turned to look at Elwyn. It wasn’t just his clothes they were staring at, it was all of him, from his way of moving to his hair to the shade of his skin. The people in Liberty were almost all pale, pale even compared to people like Elwyn’s mother, who had darkened after years in the sun. He made an effort to stand tall and be lively as he searched for his aunt and uncle. But he felt uncomfortable in the gaze of the people passing by, and discomfort wasn’t a feeling Elwyn was used to.

  He could not find his aunt and uncle on the platform, so juggling the cake box and slinging his deerskin bag, Elwyn went inside the station. At the far wall was a wooden bar where a few people sat on velvet stools and lunched. The thick air was redolent of roasted roots and beef. Elwyn’s stomach growled; he had already eaten the salted game and acorn bread packed for the half-day’s journey. Someday, that will be me, Elwyn thought. Taking a break while I travel, sitting on a stool and eating steak and drinking beer.

  A man behind the bar was chatting with a customer and chewing a toothpick. Elwyn moved the cake box to his other arm.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Elwyn said. ‘I’m Elwyn. Elwyn Bramble. Is there someone waiting for me?’

  A few people glanced sidelong at Elwyn, then averted their eyes, but the man behind the bar looked from Elwyn’s face to his clothes to the cake box tied with home-woven lace he held under one arm.

  ‘The Blackwells?’ Elwyn tried again, when the man said nothing. ‘A man and a woman?’

  ‘Farms have all the hands they need around here. Try again come harvest,’ the man said.

  ‘Oh, no. I’m not here to work on a farm. I’m here to learn. To study. Prepare for my future. I’m staying with my aunt, Piety Blackwell.’

  The man moved the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and watched Elwyn through narrow eyes.

  ‘Maybe you could give me directions,’ Elwyn suggested. ‘1434 Citizen Street.’

  ‘You’re not in the right place.’

  ‘This is Liberty Station, right? It says so on the sign,’ Elwyn said.

  The man took the toothpick out of his mouth and inspected the chewed end. ‘I said, you’re not in the right place.’

  The people at the bar were staring at Elwyn. Normally, Elwyn was someone who liked attention, who thrived on the eyes of others. But this time the gazes made him shrink away. He became uncomfortably aware of the way he stood, the darkness of his skin, the bows on his clothes, the odd colour of the fabric.

  ‘I’ll go look someplace else, then,’ Elwyn said cautiously.

  They watched him as he stepped back out the door. The smell of hot grass was in the air, and hot metal and steam and smoke and stone. Elwyn shielded his eyes from the sun to look for his aunt and uncle once more before he ventured to find their house himself. The road was in front of him, as bright as before; the stones were hot below his feet. He hoisted the cake box onto his shoulder and began to walk.

  1434 Citizen Street was an address Elwyn had known since he was a child, written on envelopes in his aunt’s tiny lettering. He had read and re-read those old letters from Aunt Piety, entranced not just by their words, but the weight and whiteness of the paper, the smoothness of the ink, the sound of the address. Badfish Creek didn’t have street names; there was something thrilling about the idea of towns with so many houses that people needed numbers to keep them straight. What an interesting place!

  But Elwyn didn’t know how to navigate by address. He turned down whichever streets looked the most promising and became distracted by shop windows full of shining cow-leather shoes, dark blue suits, tall cakes, copper pots, pens, greenhouse flowers, ice cream. It was wonderful and almost painful to see the possibilities strung together down the streets like pearls on a string. Bicycles sped past, and horses snorted. Men yelled from their carts for him to move out of the way.

  It was all new to him, and as thrilling as it was disorienting. Elwyn was hot and hungry when he finally found his way to Citizen Street, way out on the west side of town. It was quieter there, and he looked up at the wooden road sign with a flood of appreciation when he felt a tug at his sleeve. A ugly grey goat was behind him, making a snack of his shirt.

  ‘Shoo,’ Elwyn said. But the goat followed closely, nibbling the cloth where he could. By the time Elwyn reached the Blackwells’ door, several buttons were missing and sweat pooled and dripped down his back.

  The front door was white and, like the skylights and the windows, was built into the grassy hill in accordance with the old Hill custom. For generations, the house had belonged to his uncle’s family, who Elwyn knew little about except that they were quite rich. He couldn’t quite tell where the house ended. Little windows and skylights dappled the mown grass a long ways.

  Elwyn was eager to see what was inside, and to meet the family he had thought so much about all the
se years. He knocked and tried to smooth his hair while he waited – everything around him was so trim and neat, it threw his own rumpled appearance into relief. He tried to catch his reflection in a window when the door opened. He had wondered if there would be a maid, but instead the door was answered by a boy about Elwyn’s age. The boy had a pointed chin, a sour-looking mouth.

  ‘Hello. Is this the Blackwells’ house?’ Elwyn said. The boy didn’t answer, but as they stood there, Elwyn recognised something in the lines of the boy’s nose and eyes that reminded him of his mother’s. ‘Are you Boaz? My cousin?’ Elwyn said, a smile spreading over his tired face. The boy’s face was unchanged. ‘I’m Elwyn. Elwyn Bramble. I’ve come to stay with you.’

  Again, the boy just stood.

  ‘Boaz? Who is it?’ a man called from inside. ‘You’ve been excused to leave the table, but manners dictate a prompt return.’

  The boy slipped away, leaving the door open and disappearing somewhere into the halls. Elwyn followed. It took a while for Elwyn’s eyes to adjust to the dim light of the under-hill house. The air was sweet with the smell of old paper, wool and wood polish, but there was something else in the air, too. Lunch. The thought of food consumed Elwyn, distracting him from the grandfather clocks, the portraits on the wall. He followed the smell.

  ‘Boaz?’ the voice called again, now louder.

  ‘Let him be,’ a woman said as Elwyn turned the corner into a dim dining room decorated with pewter and paintings. A bearded man sat at one end of the long table, his plate full of peas and butter, cheese and bread, white slices of chicken. At the other end, with a more modest plate, was a woman who could only be Aunt Piety. Her face was like Elwyn’s mother’s, but leaner, less worn. Her eyebrows arched as she looked at Elwyn, and he felt silly with his torn clothes and a large cake box in his arms, a cake he would have been tempted to try if he didn’t fear the wrath of his mother.