“No,” Joseph said. “I’ve got to go up. I’ve got to see.”
“I’m coming too,” Mother and I said in unison.
Mr. Pop didn’t object. In fact, I assumed he never thought we’d actually listen to him. He was warning us to assuage his own sense of duty.
But coming with proved easier said than done. While climbing the side of the dump had always been a challenge even for the sure-footed, that day, reaching the Flats needed more of an upward crawl than a walk. With each step forward, we slid back when our feet didn’t sink altogether. We grabbed on to anything to help steady ourselves, including one another. And somehow, we made it to the top, covered in mud and who-knew-what else.
Louise Polchies was the first to see us. She ran toward Joseph and rocked him in her arms. “My baby, my baby,” she said again and again.
“I’m all right, Ma,” Joseph said. “It’s okay.”
Ansley joined us, patting his son on the back before reaching out to shake Mr. Pop’s hand.
“Good of you to come,” Ansley said. “Hadn’t gotten a chance to thank you proper for your help with Mick.”
“You sent a letter,” Mr. Pop said. “And the basket. Was more than proper. All I did was call my brother. But for all this … tell me what you think you need and we’ll see what we can do.”
Ansley’s jaw tightened.
“I assume your house is still standing,” Ansley said.
Mr. Pop nodded.
“And the folks in town? Frankie’s home, still okay?”
“Well,” Joseph started to say before Mr. Pop hushed him with a look.
“You all have homes or at least a place to go if you don’t,” Ansley said. “You all have food stocked up and stored. Your kids all accounted for; your babies not crying, not running around without their pants on, screaming because they haven’t eaten in days.”
Mr. Pop nodded and looked straight at his former playmate as he spoke.
“You all put us out here,” Ansley said. “You left us exposed where we could have died. And now along comes Edna and you ask what you can do? You’re a good man, Paul. Always have been. Nice of you to put us to work when no one else would. Good of you to call your brother and to sit on that council to discuss the what’d you call it? Indian trouble? Did even one Indian get asked to have any say in what you talked about? But I’m not going to tell you what I think needs to be done. I’m not going to tell you how you can help us. Because you, along with the rest of them, wanted us here, like this.”
Ansley waved his arm across the destruction, the mess of garbage and tin roofs and toilet seats and soiled and soaked mattresses laid bare, a stain on the beauty of the Maine woods.
“Frankie’ll say we had this coming,” Ansley said. “That this is God’s wrath. His judgment on our wicked ways. Maybe he’s right. Maybe this is how your great God does feel about us. But then we’ve never needed your God, and we don’t need Him now. Roger says things are changing. Negroes in the South are changing things. They’re going to change for us up here too, Roger tells us. We’ve been too passive for too long. But things change now, Paul. It’s time for things to change now.”
Ansley turned to walk away. Joseph stepped toward him.
“But Dad,” Joseph said. Ansley stopped. “What if this isn’t God’s wrath? What if it’s something else?”
Ansley laughed. “And what’d that be, son?”
“What if it’s His mercy?”
Ansley looked at me questioningly.
“Not that Mercy,” Joseph said. “God’s mercy. Like, His love.”
Ansley shook his head. “That’s right. I heard you’d been going to church. So now you got religion? Found Jesus now, have you? Well, if this is God’s mercy, I’ll take His wrath, I guess.”
And Ansley walked away.
“Don’t mind him,” said a voice.
We all turned. Mick. Mr. Pop thrust his hand forward, and when Joseph rushed toward him the brothers clasped hands tightly. Mother squealed delight in seeing him safe and sound. I felt dizzy. All during the climb to the Flats and during Ansley’s speech, my eyes had scanned Hungry Hill in vain for a sign of Mick. I was trying to listen carefully as Ansley spoke, but all I wanted to know was if Mick was okay.
Throughout the greetings, Mick’s eyes stayed on me. Even as he held his brother, Mick looked at me like I was the only person in the world.
“Mercy,” Mick said as he stepped forward toward me. He held his arms out, just as I’d longed for them to be those weeks before. And in front of Mr. Pop, Mother, Joseph, and the throng of Maliseet that were now aware of our presence, Mick brushed my hair away from my face and kissed me.
Around us, the world faded—the people, the mess, the destruction, the confusion melted away, becoming nothing that mattered in light of us together.
“Can I show you something?” Mick whispered in my ear.
I nodded, and he grabbed my hand.
“We’ll be back in a minute,” Mick said. I thought Mr. Pop would send Joseph with us as a chaperone. But he let us go, let us head down toward the backside of the Flats unaccompanied.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The trail toward the woods was still in decent shape. Edna had sent water and debris toward the road instead of the woods. Though branches and limbs and even whole uprooted trees crisscrossed the path, one might have guessed it was merely a rough thunderstorm that passed through. The vast forest protected this side of the dump.
“You need to see this,” Mick said as he pulled me closer to where our little lean-to stood. I was sure Edna would have blown it away. But I was wrong. Through the trees, I could see the charred side of the yellow doors of the place we’d hoped to sneak away and plan our future and near the place where not long ago Mick had told me we had no future after all.
“It withstood,” Mick said. “Everything else—my house, the Socobys’, the outhouses, the sheds—those are all gone. But this stood.”
“You came down and found this?” I asked.
“No, I stayed here throughout the storm.”
“You stayed here? In our fort?”
“Dad was stomping around raging about white folks having nice places to weather the storm. Ma was rampaging about Joseph not being here. I just needed to get away. To find some quiet. And to feel near you.”
“But I didn’t think you wanted to be near me.”
“I’m sorry, Mercy,” Mick said. “Come here.”
Together we bent and crawled back into the space below the trees. Immediately Mick pulled me toward him and kissed me again.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to be near you,” Mick said. “It’s that I thought we couldn’t. I thought that we had no foundation for a future. But somehow, when I was sitting in here as Edna roared all around me, as I heard the shacks blowing around the Flats, and I heard people yelling and kids crying as they huddled between trees in the woods, I was shaking harder than the walls of the fort. But I wasn’t just terrified for myself. I worried about you, about Joseph, about those kids I could hear crying up in their shacks, afraid of the sound of the wind. I was angry, even angrier than my dad is now. I called out to Gluskap, asked him what we’d done to upset nature so. I cursed the white folks for messing up this forest with your garbage and making us live on it. And for bringing on Edna and her winds. But after yelling all this, I felt nothing. Except more terror.”
Mick ran his index finger along my hand, tracing my fingers with his. He took a deep breath and looked straight at me.
“And then I called out to your God,” Mick said. “I said the same thing again—cursing white folks, asking what we’d done to upset nature, to bring this on. But I couldn’t stop there. I asked why, if He’s as good as your Mr. Pop says, why He allowed me to be thrown in jail, why we gotta live out here, why my dad has to drink so much, why my mother never kept us safe, why the kids had it so hard here, why I just couldn’t be with you. I raged to your God until I could barely breathe from crying so hard. But I just
kept talking.”
I nodded.
“And then the strangest thing happened. I felt completely safe. Like someone was here, with arms around me. You’re going to think I’m crazy, Mercy, but I heard a voice saying: I am with you. I heard whispering even through the noise of the storm. I am with you, I am with you. And even though the fort and the trees blew and shook so hard and even though I thought I would die out there, somehow, I felt comforted. I fell asleep.
“When I woke up, the storm had passed, and I could see that the Flats were leveled, but I was safe. Our little fort made it. Someone was with me, protecting me, this place, and somehow giving me a new view of the future. Of someday. I realized for the first time, this mess, this garbage I tried to push you away from isn’t permanent. Or it doesn’t have to be. I don’t have to grow up and be the same kind of man as my dad. My kids don’t have to grow up like this. And, in the strangest way, I felt like the Flats being taken out like that was, I don’t know, like us being given a fresh start, like what Joseph said up there. Like—what was that?”
“A mercy.”
Mick stared ahead into the forest. I wondered if he’d heard me. But then he turned back toward me and nodded. “Exactly,” Mick said. “A mercy.”
Branches crackled and snapped behind us.
“So here’s where they hide,” Mr. Pop said.
“Or think they hide,” Joseph said. “We all know about their fort.”
The knock on the roof set us both crawling out of our lean-to. But not before I stole one last kiss.
“Mick, Mercy,” Mr. Pop said, “we will talk about this and other places you may and may not go with each other later. But we’ve got to head back. We’ve got to round up shelter. Plus, Joseph wants to check on his patient.”
“His patient?” Mick asked.
“Not my patient,” Joseph said, visibly nervous for Mick to hear what he’d done. “Just some guy I helped in town.”
“Newell’s riding to town with us,” Mr. Pop said. “Want to come too, Mick?”
“Let’s go,” Mick said. And he grabbed my hand and led the way.
This time the receptionist let all of us in, albeit with a warning that the patient had just woken up and needed rest. However, she said, he had told her that when we came by, he wanted us to stop in. So Mr. Pop opened the door slowly.
“Frankie,” he said, peering in.
Mick stopped and grabbed my arm.
“Wait,” he said. “Who are we seeing? I thought this was Old Man.”
“It’s Mr. Carmichael, Mick,” I said. “He’s Joseph’s patient.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just come in.”
Mick followed me into the room where Mr. Carmichael lay bandaged and sleeping on a bed. Molly rushed up from her chair toward me, past where Mrs. Carmichael already stood shaking Joseph’s hand so hard I thought his arm might come off.
“You saved his life. Thank you. Thank you,” she repeated as she swayed with an uncomfortable Joseph.
Molly gave me a quick hug and Mick a surprised glance.
“Dr. Sahmby says he should be okay,” Molly said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d found him like that. But I couldn’t have gotten him out. Not like Joseph did.”
I turned to Mick, thinking he’d be ready to hear the rest of the story, of just how his brother came to save the life of Mick’s enemy. But Mick just stared at the bed. I realized that the last time he’d seen Frankie Carmichael, Mick had been at the accused end of Mr. Carmichael’s long, pointing finger.
“Visiting time is up, everyone,” the nurse said too soon. “Mr. Carmichael can’t rest with everyone in here.”
“He seems to be sleeping just fine with all of us,” Mr. Pop said. I smiled. Mr. Pop was getting good at questioning authority.
“Goodness’ sake, Paul,” Mother said. “She’s looking out for your friend, and you come in with a sass mouth? All right everyone, let’s scoot. The man needs to rest. Molly, Muriel, we’ll be praying. And I’ll send someone back with some supper for you. If you want to come stay at the farm, just let me know. We’ll make up a room right away.”
Mr. Pop walked over to the bed, mouthed a quick prayer, and then followed Mother out of the room. Mrs. Carmichael walked them out, her arm still around Joseph’s shoulders. She was promising him gifts and her famous butter cookies as a reward for his kindness.
“You don’t know what this means to our family, Joseph.”
Mick approached the bed. For a moment, my heart froze as I wondered what he’d do. Alone here, except for me, next to the man who tried to destroy him. But Mick reached out and touched his head first, just below where the bandage left off, and then touched his hand.
Mr. Carmichael flinched, his eyes fluttered and his fingers circled around Mick’s hand and squeezed.
I gasped. But Mick stood still, just staring into his face.
“He’s just a broken man,” Mick said. “Just like the rest of them. Weak and sad and broken. But I don’t have to end up like this. Do I?”
I shook my head. “Of course not,” I said.
Mick nodded and pulled his hand away from Mr. Carmichael’s.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Let the man find some peace.”
Mick put his arm around me and we walked out of the room and back into life.
Mr. Carmichael woke up completely two days later. He had no memory of the accident or of being saved. Publicly he rejected the story of Joseph having much role in saving his life, preferring the version where Chef was the hero and Joseph more of a sidekick.
But when at the next Wednesday’s prayer meeting, Pastor Murphy said we’d be joining Second Baptist in holding a special offering to build new housing for the Maliseet, my ears perked up. Fulton’s, Pastor Murphy said, had offered to donate the nails and provide the rest of the building materials at cost. The Maliseet wouldn’t be sleeping under blanket lean-tos for much longer.
Mr. Pop laughed out loud when he heard this news. “I’ll be—” was all he said.
“What’s this mean?” I asked Mr. Pop.
“It means the rumors I’ve heard that Mrs. Carmichael wrote Marjorie and Glenn, asking them to come home for a visit once the baby comes might be true after all. Or sooner if they can make it.”
I stepped through the crowd who’d gathered at our home to pray and eat and gossip and walked out onto the porch.
I looked across the fields, toward the other farms. The floodwaters had receded enough that harvest would only be pushed back another week, though no one expected much from the crops. Predictions were that as much as half of the potatoes would have rotted before we could get to them. Even still, we gathered that night to thank God for His past abundance and His protection from the storm and to pray for His provision. One thing farmers knew for sure: we did what we could, but ultimately, growing potatoes was God’s business, not ours.
The potato truck pulled into the driveway as I sat on the front steps. Ellery stepped out first, followed by Mick.
“I didn’t think you were coming back here,” I said.
“If you think I’m going to let this boy sleep in that horrible beamy Widow Nason’s place one more night, you don’t know beans,” Ellery said.
“Ellery invited me to stay at his cabin tonight,” Mick said. “And he’s right. I’d had enough of that big feather bed and Widow Nason’s claw-foot tub and hot water. Her stacks of hot cakes with butter and bacon, her hot coffee and cold milk in the morning was getting real old.”
Mick winked at me and I giggled.
“Sounds horrible, Ellery,” I said. “Thanks for rescuing him.”
“Well, it’s only for one night. That woman says she wants him back tomorrow. Her roof won’t fix itself, she says.”
Mick said, “That’s not all she wants. Mrs. Nason said I could stay here with you so long as you joined us for dinner and a game of Scrabble tomorrow.”
“Ayuh. She did say something to that effect. Well, tomorrow then. The
door’ll be open for you, Mick. ’Night, Miss Mercy.”
I’d never seen Ellery blush before and because it was twilight I couldn’t even be certain that he did. But he certainly turned away fast enough, and his slight smile and shuffled walk back toward the direction of his cabin betrayed what I imagined was a blush.
Mick stepped closer toward me. I reached up to wrap my arms around his neck and to let him kiss me. Which he did, though quickly and with his eyes on our front door at all times. He grabbed my hand and led me toward the chicken coop.
“Let’s go check on the girls,” he said. I knew, with a houseful of Baptists asking for help with the harvest, the front porch wasn’t a place he’d want to sit with me. Even if Mr. Pop had given us a blessing, of sorts.
“Uncle Roger called today,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Looks like Edna whipped up some roaring in Augusta. Seems like the governor wants to see to it that the Maliseet have some real land to build some permanent homes on. News of the Flats reached New York papers, I guess. Caused a real embarrassment for him. Embarrassed politicians are the best kind, Uncle Roger says. They’re usually the ones you can work with.”
“Well, that’s good to hear, I guess. Though, who knows? Think any farmers are going to be willing to give up their land?”
“Mr. Pop says it might be forest land. State-owned.”
“Ah.”
Mick grabbed a handful of feed and tossed it toward the hens. They crawled over themselves trying to reach it.
“Think you’ll come back to school after harvest break, Mick?”
“I don’t want to. But Mrs. Nason says if I’m to stay with her, I’m to go to school. So unless Ellery’s cabin proves to be much comfier than I’m picturing, I guess I’ll be back.”
“Has it been okay with Mrs. Nason?”
“She’s okay. Kind of a funny one. I guess she’s taking guff from the women at her church for housing me. They think it looks bad,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Oh, so I’ve got some competition, do I? What do you think, girls? Am I going to have to fight Mrs. Nason for Mick?”
Shades of Mercy Page 22