Shades of Mercy

by Anita B. Lustrea

  But Mr. Pop’s upbringing made him who he was. He knew what it was to be hungry, to be poor. He knew the humiliation and blessing of living off the kindness of neighbors, churchgoers, and strangers. He knew loss and desperation. He knew heartbreak. But he also knew second chances, hard work, and a good God, he would say.

  “And,” he’d tell me, “I know what I’ve got to do with what I know.”

  His friends tried to talk him out of this all the time. God couldn’t really expect this from him. If God did, would He have made the Maliseet so different? Most people in town assumed God had meant Maliseet to be with Maliseet. The white folks to be with white folks. And French-Canadians to stick with French-Canadians. But Mr. Pop wouldn’t accept that. At least, not on his fields.

  So even now—I watched Old Man Stringer weave through the rock pickers and stagger up to Mr. Pop, eager for any work that would get him invited to our porch where we’d eat our sandwiches and have our fill of Mr. Pop’s ice cold well water. And for any who forgot lunch, Mother always had a morsel or two ready. Mr. Stringer was counting on it. In less than an hour, I knew Mr. Pop would oblige him. After all, what others called “drunk,” Mr. Pop called “wrestling demons.” And that, he said, doesn’t make you less of a man or less worthy of lunch.

  Mr. Pop, Ellery, Bud, and I headed in to the bountiful table Mother set every dinnertime. A time to rest our bodies and replenish them, that’s what farmhands needed at midday. A twinge of guilt passed through me as I eyed the beef roast, green beans that were canned from last harvest, and the pickled beets. Homemade bread capped off a dinner fit for royalty. Farm life was simple but abundant, at least last growing season was.

  “Mercy, men, better be headin’ out again,” Mr. Pop said. “Lots to do before we knock off this afternoon. Need to finish the side field and start pickin’ rocks down back.” We followed his lead as Mr. Pop shoved his chair back from the dining table.

  “How’s your boy Glenn liking work at the mill?” Old Man Stringer asked. Maliseet conversation froze. Mick’s eyes lifted across the room to meet mine. We’d built a friendship and started a romance based on our ability to read expressions undetectable to others. But I couldn’t read this look.

  Newell Socoby cleared his throat and brought the napkin to his mouth, preparing to answer.

  Mr. Pop chimed in. “Nelson tells me Glenn’s doing real well over there. Like he was born for mill work.”

  “Yes, sir. Glenn’s doing well.”

  “Not just well,” Mr. Pop said. “He got a promotion, I hear. We’re real proud of him. Though we miss him here.”

  “We miss him too,” Newell said. “Doesn’t get home as much as we’d like. He’s staying busy in Millinocket.”

  I smiled at Mr. Socoby and at Mr. Pop, then tried to catch Mick’s eye. His head stayed bent. “Just hope Mick doesn’t follow his footsteps,” Mr. Pop said. “Would hate to lose another of my brightest young workers. Unless it’s to a university, of course. Then I’ll be happy to lose him.”

  Mick smiled and nodded at Mr. Pop. But this time I understood the expression I could read in Mick’s eyes as they drifted, then landed on mine. It was something like horror.

  “Mick, wait!”

  He stopped just shy of the truck and turned to me. I kicked my steps into a run to catch up to him before the others got there. Mick glanced to the wash bins. The men stood laughing and drying their hands and faces on rags Mother handed out with a smile. We had only seconds.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Mick said, turning back to the truck. “Come early. Meet me back at our spot.”

  I was relieved to hear the “our,” but my heart beat faster as he jumped up into the truck bed.

  “What’s going on?”

  Without glancing back, just knowing his father and uncle, Bud, Ellery, and my own father were just steps away, Mick said, “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, indeed!” Mr. Pop slapped Mick on the back as he walked toward the truck. “One last field to clear so we can get these seeds planted. Let’s just keep our eye on that promise.”

  The rest of the men jumped back into the bed. Old Man Stringer tripped toward the cab and gave the door a hard yank. Mother stepped beside him with her basketful of rags and tugged it for him. She offered her hand as he stepped up.

  “You okay, there?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Old Man said. “Thank you. Another delicious lunch.”

  “Any time, Mr. Stringer.”

  Mother cleared his sleeve from the door’s path and slammed it, tapping the door below the window to give Ellery the all clear. Then Mother waved me back around.

  I couldn’t move. I knew I had to get the other basket of rags, bring it around back to the shed. I knew they had to be scrubbed on the washboard, hung to dry on the line before I went in to wash up myself and help with dinner cleanup.

  But as the truck rumbled away, fluffing up dust in its wake, I could only watch and wonder. As Mother passed by, placing her hand on the small of my back, I wondered if she could feel the small tremors that shook inside.

  Chapter Three

  The morning in most ways was the same as all the others. Mother called up the stairs for me, and my stomach growled as I imagined the food awaiting: a plate of biscuits, butter beside it along with boysenberry jelly; fried eggs, dusted with salt and pepper; bacon fried crispy, with a hint of maple. All spread across the claw-footed dining room table, covered in our breakfast linen.

  And like every morning, I knew what else awaited: my father in the same olive wool-blend work shirt and work pants, sitting at the head of the table, his worn Bible cracked open to today’s passage. His hands were calloused from hard work, and his slight frame had hands to match. Though they weren’t big hands, they were stronger than most men’s. I’d seen the potato barrel hoist fail once last year, and Mr. Pop grabbed the barrel with his bare hands, pulling it up onto the truck bed. I’d always thought Mr. Pop could do just about anything. After that I knew he could.

  Mr. Pop would have already prayed that God would use those words to bless his family—to bless us. To bless our work. To bless the workers.

  It was the unknown that awaited me, like whatever was going on with Mick that kept the tremors coming as I stepped into the dining room.

  “Morning, Mr. Pop,” I said, bending down to kiss his cheek.

  “Mornin’, Mercy,” he said.

  I sat to his left—my usual spot. He patted his Bible and breathed deep.

  Mother pushed through the swinging door with her hip. “Goodness, Mercy! Sitting there like the queen of Sheba. Come give me a hand with the rest of the dishes. Bud and Ellery are joining us in here this morning.”

  “For breakfast? In here?”

  I looked at Mr. Pop. He nodded and went back to his Bible.

  I rose from the table and followed Mother back into the kitchen, hoping she’d go all the way back near the door so I could ask her. I hated surprises. She stopped short at the stove.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “Not now,” she said. “You’ll hear soon enough.”

  Her hands shook a bit as she handed me the baking dish wrapped in our old red-checkered kitchen towels.

  She followed me back into the dining room and set a second plate of biscuits next to my dish of eggs. Bud and Ellery hesitated at the dining room door before Mother waved them in.

  “Come. Sit. Please.” She smiled at them, pointing to their chairs. No one did hospitality like Mother. You’d never know from her behavior that farmhands—even trusted, beloved ones like Bud Drake and Ellery Burt—had never sat for family breakfast with us.

  They all rose again as Mother and I sat, so that we took our seats together. I wasn’t used to the noise—the dish clattering and chair scooting. It sharpened the silence that followed.

  We all looked to Mr. Pop, who stared back at his Bible, took two deep breaths, and said, “Lord, have mercy on us. Amen.”

  His sudden prayer caught us all off guard. As did its
brevity.

  “Please,” Mr. Pop said, waving his hand across the dishes in front of us. “Eat.”

  As we passed plates and buttered biscuits, we made small talk. Bud asked me, rather awkwardly, about Molly. In the last year Molly had grown into a shapely beauty like her sister. Where our friendship had once been easy conversation between adults and me, now men stammered over mention of her name.

  I opened the conversation. “I bet Molly’ll follow her sister’s footsteps and enter the Potato Blossom Queen pageant this summer.”

  Mr. Pop cleared his throat. Mother smiled and offered more eggs.

  “I think she’d do well,” I went on. “She’s prettier than anyone.”

  “Also, it’d be nice for her to get to go to that fancy hotel with that bathroom,” Bud said.

  The way Mr. Pop shifted in his chair, I thought he might respond. When he didn’t, I simply said, “Indeed. That sounded like some place.”

  When Molly’s sister, Marjorie, won last summer, Marjorie got to go to Bangor and stay overnight at the Bangor House Hotel. Ellery called it a “grand old palace of a place” and told me of the special guests like Teddy Roosevelt and Gene Autry who had stayed there through the years. According to Marjorie, the hotel had a bellman who carried your bags and a maid who did up your bed and brought fresh towels. But her favorite part—the part that amazed us all really—were the bathrooms. Each room in the hotel had its own toilet and tub and sink. Marjorie’s bathroom had been painted blue like the Maine sky, trimmed in white tile squares. When she came back and sat on the front porch telling us about it, Bud’s eyes were like saucers. For a man who had never traveled outside Watsonville, for this man who scrubbed himself clean with cold water in a galvanized metal tub set smack-dab in the middle of his one-room cabin, this luxury must have sounded like heaven. “You know that you’re always welcome to use our tub, Bud,” Mother said. “It’d be no trouble.”

  “Thanks for the offer. But I could never accept, Mrs. Millar. Just doesn’t seem right. Besides, I hate to wait in lines.”

  We all laughed. Mr. Pop too—though he kept his eyes on his plate.

  “You all do Henry Ford proud,” Ellery said. “Assembly-line bathing every Saturday night.”

  We all laughed again except, this time, for my father. “When you’ve been given much,” he said instead, “much is expected.”

  We had heard that passage recited by him about almost everything over the years. About our need to share our money, our food, our fields, and our indoor plumbing—something many people in Watsonville still went without. So if someone needed a warm bath, we could share that, as we often did.

  “Much is expected,” he repeated. Then cleared his throat and shifted again. “Which is why I’ve asked you to join us for breakfast before Mercy leaves to get the men.”

  “Paul,” Mother whispered, “are you sure that’s a good idea? Considering?” Mother rarely questioned her husband, certainly not on farm matters. But he nodded along with her question.

  “I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. But I’m sure it’s the right thing.”

  Mother looked down. And no one met my gaze. We all just put down our forks and waited for Mr. Pop to continue.

  “Frankie Carmichael stopped by last night. Perhaps you heard him.” He finally looked at me now. I had heard Mr. Carmichael, but it didn’t strike me as unusual. Folks came by our farm to visit any old time.

  “The man was a mess,” Mr. Pop said. “Broken apart. Seems his Marjorie has run off.”

  “Run off?” I asked. “I don’t …”

  “With Glenn Socoby.”

  I gasped and brought my hand to my throat. Now it was Mother’s turn to look straight at me. My mind went back to Molly scurrying away from my truck, ignoring my calls, and to Mick, doing the same. They had known, of course. Why couldn’t they have told me? Bud wiped his face with his napkin and shook his head. “Poor Frankie. Poor girl. Is she … um … ?” He wouldn’t go on, not with Mother and me in the room. But I knew what remained unspoken. If she wasn’t … um … why else would she go off with a Maliseet?

  “Frankie doesn’t know,” Mr. Pop said. “But whether or not she’s with child doesn’t seem to matter as much as what people are saying.”

  “So what does this mean for us?” Bud asked. “For the workers?”

  “This is what I wanted you to hear: It means very little. It means that Mercy is still going to leave after breakfast to pick up Ansley and Newell and Mick and whoever else wants to come and work. It just means people around here are not going to like this. Even more than usual. But I’ve been praying all night about this, and God doesn’t seem to have changed His mind about how we’re to treat our Maliseet neighbors.”

  That morning, I drove the potato truck down one of the back roads. In my years of picking up Maliseet in the early mornings, Mr. Pop had me keep to the main road, Main Street, actually, and head straight through town. For one, he’d say, traveling back roads looks like you’ve got something to hide. No shame in giving people work, according to him. And for another, the back road, the border road, with its tight turns that wound and wove up and around the farthest outskirts of town, past the Meduxnekeag River, past the woods where the hobos camped out, was as treacherous as it was alluring. Bud once told me that the back road wasn’t the sort of place a young lady wanted to get stranded, if the truck were to break down.

  “I’m not afraid of the bears or the moose,” I had joked back.

  But Bud hadn’t been joking. “It’s not the animals you need to worry about there, Miss Mercy. It’s the hobos jumpin’ trains. Not all of them are out for adventure. Some are out runnin’ from the law.”

  Indeed, this was the road lying just a quarter mile from the Canadian border, that the sort who wanted to roam from country to country, province-to-state, town-to-town without being seen or heard or would travel down in search of quick food or drink or another night out of jail. The one murder the town of Watsonville had ever counted happened on that road, right there, where Mt. Katahdin first comes into view, rising up from the trees, stretching into the clouds.

  But still, today, Mr. Pop decided this road was safer than the border. Main Street. Molly and the Carmichaels had no choice but to take Main Street everywhere. Their house, a beautiful, white clapboard Victorian with a big wraparound porch, sat just off it. The Carmichaels took Main Street to school, to church, to the shops, to visit friends. Marjorie had probably gone down Main when she ran off with Glenn, probably ran right past Fulton’s, her father’s hardware store, spreading her shame.

  Mr. Pop hadn’t said much about Marjorie and Glenn. But he didn’t need to. I could figure in the rest. I’d seen this sort of thing before. Once news spread—and the gossip had surely trailed behind Mr. Carmichael even as he drove out to our farm last night—I knew what this meant for our community; I knew what it meant for the Carmichaels and for Molly and the Maliseet, and for Mr. Pop.

  And I knew what it meant for Mick and me.

  Mick was waiting for me, not at our spot but at the base of the dump. When he saw the direction my truck came from, his jaw tightened. He turned his head back up to the Flats and then ran over toward my truck as I slowed and pulled over.

  “You took the border road?” Mick asked. It always surprised me to hear him call it this as the Maliseet hated that we called this a border road, as the Maliseet border was nowhere near here. The Maliseet spread into Canada without any acknowledgment of crossing a border.

  “Yes.”

  “So you know?”

  “I do.”

  “Your pop told you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This morning. He told me. But you should’ve. When did you find out?” I hadn’t come to accuse. I hadn’t even known I was angry at Mick. But I was. Together we kept our own secret, but it didn’t seem right we should be keeping other people’s from each other.

  “I wanted to, but when could I have?” Mick asked sharply. “I only found out yesterday in the truck on the
way to the farm. And I didn’t know much. Just that Old Man Stringer saw Glenn’s car the night before. He saw Newell Socoby at the tavern and asked about him, thinking he was here. Next morning, Mr. Socoby heard Marjorie was gone. She left a note, I guess. Old Man Stringer told us that too. Came back here to warn Mr. Socoby.”

  “A note?” Of course, there’d have been a note. But I was stunned. I hadn’t figured that. I realized then how few questions I’d asked Mr. Pop. How little I knew, and how much I wanted to know. I wondered who found it. Molly? Marjorie would’ve left it on their bureau. Molly would’ve had to deliver that news. A wave of nausea rushed through me. Poor Molly. I wanted to sit—or throw up. But instead I just stood there, staring at Mick.

  Mick held his head straight, high. His thick black hair dipped behind his shoulders. His arms hung stiff at this sides, hands clenched into fists. I realized how much I wanted to reach for him, to run my hand along the plaid of his shirt, to feel the strength of his arms before weaving my fingers through his. But I couldn’t. The tears started when I realized I may never be able to again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m being stupid.”

  Mick’s body softened. His hands unclenched, and he took a step toward me before stopping.

  Though his cursing was mumbled, I still heard.

  “Mick!”

  “No, forget it.” Mick breathed in. “Meet me.” Then he took off running, side-stepping tin cans and hurdling logs as he disappeared into the forest.

  I waited a bit, then ducked under branches to reach our spot, and snuggled in beside Mick on the ground he had cleared free of brambles and loose dirt and pinecones. For me. Mick’s arm felt heavier than I remembered; his hand pressed tighter into my arm.

  “Why’d you take the border road?” he asked after several minutes of our sniffly silence.