The heart’s bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear
Silence, but not submission; in his lair
Fixed Passion holds his breath, until the hour
Which shall atone for years; none need despair;
It came, it cometh, and will come, - the power
To punish or forgive – in one we shall be slower.
Lord Byron
Child Harold’s Pilgrimage,
CXLII.
Sam
Noah mumbled, “Hi, I’m Noah.” Seemingly unsatisfied, he tried it again. This time, he held out his hand, corrected his posture, and repeated, “Hi, I’m Noah.” He started to pace. “No, no, no.” Then he abruptly stopped and said, “You don’t know me, but I’m Noah.” He sighed and lowered his head, “I’m Noah. And your name is?”
“What are you doing?” I blurted.
Noah sprung at least a foot off the ground. Hand to his chest, he spun around. I could practically see his heart beating through his eyes. “Jesus, Burke. Don’t be sneaking up on me like that.”
“I wasn’t sneaking. You were too busy introducing yourself to that tree to hear me coming.” I moved toward said tree. “It’s pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” I did a show of inspecting it, walking all the way around it. “I think it’s blushing.”
Noah snatched his fishing pole and his pail of worms from the ground and said, “Let’s go. Adam’s waiting.”
“Nuh-uh,” I said, trying not to laugh. “Tell me what you were doing.”
“Adam is waiting,” he repeated.
“Adam can wait a minute. Spill.”
Noah clutched his pole tighter. His cheeks were red. “Nothing. I was just . . .” He blew out a breath. “I was practicing. All right?”
“Practicing,” I repeated. Noah nodded. I waited for further explanation. When none came forth, I asked the only logical question there could be. “Who’s the girl?”
Noah wiped a hand over his mouth, keeping his eyes on the ground, and said, “Her grandfather owns the bake shop on Water Street. I met her a couple of weeks ago when I went in for Mama, and she was there. I don’t know her name. I just know I’d like to know it.” His eyes met mine. “I’d really like to know it, Sam.”
I took a step toward my friend, all joking aside. “Do you want me to go with you or do you want to do this alone? I mean . . .” I waved my hand at the tree. “You seemed really nervous about introducing yourself. I can . . . I don’t know . . . introduce you?”
“I can do it,” he said.
“All right. How did you glean she was the baker’s granddaughter?”
“Mr. Salvador, the baker, he’d asked me to be patient when I had to wait for the cake Mama wanted. He explained his granddaughter had recently moved here and was still learning. She had gotten behind and would be right out with it. Apparently, Washington Cake was a favorite among his customers, and he’d run out.” Noah shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t think anything of it, and I’d made myself busy wandering around his shop. When I heard someone call out, ‘Mr. Hallison,’ I looked up, and there she was—flour on her face and in her hair and all over her dress, despite the fact she was wearing an apron.” Noah laughed. “She was a mess. A beautiful mess. And I just—knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I just knew, Sam. I knew I had to meet her.”
Chuckling, I said, “Then why didn’t you introduce yourself?”
“Mr. Salvador came out from the back and began apologizing for making me wait. I tried to tell him it was no bother, but he kept cutting me off. Then he told his granddaughter to get back to work because they had too much to do, and she was gone. I never had a chance.”
“And you haven’t stopped thinking about her,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I already knew the answer.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about her,” he repeated. “Not in the two weeks since I first laid eyes on her.”
“Why haven’t you gone back?”
“I almost have. Several times. I get about ten feet from the door, and I turn around.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Sam. She probably won’t even remember me.”
“If she doesn’t remember you, make her.”
Noah scoffed. “How?”
I leaned my shoulder against the tree Noah had been practicing with and said, “You’re Noah Hallison. Just being yourself is enough.”
Noah smiled, showing me his pearly whites. “That’s true. I can’t really argue with that.”
I put a palm to the bark of the tree and gave it a pat. “I’m just glad we cleared this up. I was beginning to think you had something going on with this hickory. You normally don’t bother with the formality of names before you pluck their leaves.”
Noah grinned and did just that, plucked a leaf. “Could you imagine how much time I’d spend introducing myself.”
“No, I couldn’t.” I laughed.
“Sorry, tree,” Noah muttered as we walked away. “Nothing personal.”
“You’re an idiot,” I said.
“An idiot you love.”
“Yes, yes. Come on. We’ve made Adam wait long enough.”
Several weeks later, I found Noah sitting underneath the same tree. His head was in his hands, knees drawn up to his chest. When I called out his name and he looked up, I could see there was no cheer to greet me. There was no joking. There was only anger, sadness, bitterness, disappointment. Heartbreak, staring back at me.
“What happened?” I asked, sitting down beside him. “What’s wrong?”
Noah stared off in front of him. “After you and I finished the saddle we were making yesterday, I went to the bake shop to see Abigail. I was going to wait for her to finish her work and then I was going to give her a carriage ride home—if her grandfather allowed it. I think he would have. I’ve been coming in to see her every day.” Noah wiped his eyes as a tear slipped down his cheek. “What’s it been . . . six weeks?” I nodded and he grew silent. I waited for him to continue.
“Mr. Clive came into the bake shop. He saw me talking to Abigail—saw me holding her hand.” At the mention of Mr. Clive’s name, my nostrils flared and my stomach rolled. “He called Mr. Salvador from the back and told him how he should keep me away from his granddaughter—how I was no good—how my family was no good.”
“What did you say?” I asked through a clenched jaw, not recognizing my own voice. My heartbeat was in my ears.
“Before I could say anything, Mr. Salvador told Mr. Clive to get out. He said it was none of his business who his granddaughter courted, and he knew very well who the Hallisons were and he was wrong about us. Abigail . . . she . . . gripped my hand tighter.” Noah wiped his face. “I thought—finally—someone other than your family was going to stand up to this man.”
“It sounds like someone did,” I said, thinking I was going to visit Mr. Salvador and shake his hand posthaste.
He nodded. “Mr. Clive got angry, though. He called Mr. Salvador and Abbie,”—Noah swallowed—“he called them dirty Jews and said he would have them evicted from the shop. It was Mr. Clive’s building, and Mr. Salvador was leasing it. I saw the look on Mr. Salvador’s face, Sam, when Mr. Clive made that threat. The bake shop is their livelihood. And Mr. Clive was threatening it.”
I closed my eyes. I knew how this story went. I’d heard it before. “Mr. Salvador had no choice. He had to cave to Mr. Clive’s demands.”
Noah sniffed. “Actually, he didn’t. After the initial shock wore off, Mr. Salvador stood his ground and looked Mr. Clive in the eye and said, ‘Evict me.’”
My eyes popped open. “What?”
“He told Mr. Clive to evict him. At first, I thought Mr. Clive was going to have a conniption. He blinked like an owl and his cheeks puffed out before turning an angry red. But then you should have seen the snide smile that slithered across that cretin’s face, Sam. H
e told Mr. Salvador he had two weeks to get out.”
I looked at Noah. The joy I’d had that someone had stood up to that evil man instantly eroded because I knew Noah, and knew he wouldn’t just stand there and do nothing.
“You didn’t let it happen,” I said. “You didn’t let Mr. Clive evict the Salvadors from their shop.”
“I c-couldn’t.”
“What exactly did you do, Noah?”
He swallowed and closed his eyes. Another tear fell. “I promised to stop courting Abigail if he wouldn’t throw them out. Mr. Clive just shouted, ‘Two weeks, Salvador!’ as he marched toward the door. I panicked. I couldn’t let him take the bake shop from them. So, I—I said, ‘I promise to never see Abigail again. I’ll never darken their doorstep after today. Please! Don’t do this!’”
Noah stood and stared at the ground, at his feet.
“And . . . what did that monster say?”
Noah dropped his voice and said, “I always wanted to hear you beg, Hallison. Mr. Salvador, you can stay.’ After that . . . he pushed the door open and left.”
“And Abigail?” I asked, softly.
“I broke her h-heart.” Noah’s bottom lip quivered.
“And your heart? How does your heart fare?”
“I have no heart,” he whispered. “I left it with Abbie.”
Noah said nothing else. And I didn’t know what to say, for there were no words. A long stretch of silence pulled around us. After a while, Noah said, “I think I’m going to go home.”
“If there is anything I can do—”
“There isn’t.”
“I know. But I wish there was.”
“Me too, Sam. Me too.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Noah said. “Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow came and went. As did the next day and the next. But Noah was withdrawn. He became a silent creature, one I didn’t recognize. Noah without a heart was a Noah I didn’t know.
We worked side by side during the day, though he said very little and only words that had to do with our work. He’d stopped going fishing with Adam and me, and after a month of Noah not showing up for our party of three, Adam was missing his friend.
I was missing my friend.
So, after church one Sunday, I went to Noah’s house and walked up the stairs of his front porch. He answered the door. “What?”
I blinked in surprise at his surly tone. “Adam misses you,” I said, choosing to ignore his icy glare. “We would like it if you’d come fishing with us today.”
He leaned his head outside the door, looked side to side. “Where is he?”
“I haven’t gone to get him yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“I’ve told you, Sam, I don’t want to talk.”
“All right. We won’t talk. We’ll just sit on the bank and fish. Just you, me, and Adam. Like we used to.”
“Sam—”
“I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to. I’ll just be there. We’ve always been there for each other, Noah.” I pleaded with my eyes—don’t shut me out.
Noah said nothing for the longest time, but he looked positively frustrated with me. Which was fine because I was positively frustrated with him too. But one of us had to make the first move. When he refused to come out of his house, I figured I had lost that day’s battle and turned away from him and started down the stairs, thinking I’d try again tomorrow.
“I don’t want to fish,” Noah murmured. He stepped onto the porch, closed the door behind him, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I don’t want to do anything anymore.”
“I know,” I said, turning to face him. “Do it anyway. Because if you stop living, Noah, you’re dead.” His eyes found mine and held. “What’s it going to be?” I asked. “What do I tell Adam?”
“Tell him nothing.”
I nodded. “All right,” I said, feeling like I was losing my best friend. “Fine.” I stepped off the porch and started toward my house. My chest hurting. We’d never been like this before, and it was killing me inside.
“I’ll tell him myself when I go pick him up,” he called. “Meet us at our usual spot.”
I stopped, turned, stared.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never meant to take any of this out on you.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I just—God—I just—” He looked off to the side, his jaw working side to side. “I’m kind of hating life right now.”
“I know.”
He looked back at me. “You’re right, though. I can’t hide from the world. Meet Adam and me at our usual spot. We’ll be there soon. It’ll probably do me good to spend some time with him again.”
“All right,” I said, the corner of my lips inching slowly into a smile. “Our usual spot it is.”
I grabbed the old wooden crates that Noah and I had brought with us some time ago. We kept them underneath a copse of trees—three of them, one for each of us to sit on while we fished. I flipped one of them over and sat, setting my fishing pole beside me. I didn’t want to cast my line without them, so I waited. However, waiting meant thinking, and thinking inevitably led to missing. At least I wasn’t thinking about missing Lucy. Well, I was always missing Lucy. But this time, I was thinking about how I’d missed Noah this past month. And even though the ache was different, it was still an ache.
I knew Noah was hurting. I also knew there was nothing I could do to help him. But there had to be something I could do about Mr. Clive. He couldn’t keep ruining people’s lives—threatening people. I’d told Papa what he had done to Noah—to the Salvadors. He had been sitting behind his desk and had taken off his spectacles and rubbed his hands over his face. I think he was just as tired as me about the snake that slithered through our town, eating at people’s souls.
“I can’t get Noah to talk to me, Papa. I don’t know what to do.”
“Give him time, Son. Just give him a little time.”
“Time,” I said aloud, pushing a stick around in the dirt. It seemed it always came down to a thing I couldn’t touch or wrap my hand around. Time. Would time ever announce that I’d had enough and release its hold over me? Over all of us? How much time needed to pass before I stopped missing Lucy? How much time did Noah need to get over the hurt of losing Abigail?
Time, it seemed, was a cruel albatross around the heart of those who loved and couldn’t have. Time always seemed to be saying . . . not yet . . . wait . . . wait . . . wait.
I knew I was being irrational, illogical. I didn’t want to stop missing Lucy. That wasn’t what I wanted. I was just tired of yearning and aching and damn it—this was why I needed to stay busy.
I threw the stick and listened to the splash it made in the water and then reached for another. I shoved those ridiculous thoughts back down and made lazy patterns in the dirt until the crunching of leaves at my back brought me out of my foolish mood. I smiled a genuine smile, truly glad for Noah and Adam’s company.
“Finally,” I said, standing. “I was beginning to worr—”
I was unable to finish that sentence. A flash of something caught the corner of my eye and light exploded on the right side of my head. I stumbled, fell. Pain blackened the edges of my vision. There was a ringing in my ears. Then my ribs screamed in agony when something hard struck my left side.
I curled into a ball, I think. Someone grabbed my hair, yanked my head back. I saw a face. “I’m going to kill you, Burke. You understand? But I’m going to make you suffer before I do.” I tried . . . I tried to fight back. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Something cold and hard slid down my cheek. “Feel that?” Everywhere he’d touched my skin it felt as though he’d left flames behind.
He shoved my face in the dirt and proceeded to kick me in the gut and ribs until I dropped to my elbows. Then I got kicked in the back. At some point, my left arm got pulled over my head. I wheezed. My ribs were broken. He snapped my arm. And jus
t when I thought he was done torturing me, he broke my right leg, and then my left.
I don’t know if I screamed. I was drowning in pain.
I felt myself being dragged. I felt water crawl at my skin. And I thought about time and what I’d said about it before. I closed my eyes, regretting it all.
“Hey!” someone called, “Get away from him!” Their voice sounded far off, distorted, like they had fallen down a well. Or maybe I was the one in a well and no one was ever going to find me. It was dark where I was. And wet. I closed my eyes and listened. All I heard was the trickle of water at my ears.
“Sam! Sam!” I blinked my eyes open. They felt too heavy. “Sam, don’t you dare die on me! Sam!”
“S-Sor-ry, No-ah.”
“No, Sam, no. No!”
I felt the albatross around my heart loosen, then let go. I suppose time had spoken after all. And it had said—enough.
My eyes shot open, gasping for breath, and another searing pain spread across the apex of my chest.
Noah’s eyes were wild and frightened and staring down on me like he was going to burn the world down. “You listen to me, Samuel Burke. You are not going to die. You are not going to die because I’m not going to let you.” He lifted his clenched fist off my chest and stared at his trembling hand before looking down at me again and trying to school his features. But it was too late. I saw his fear. “Adam has gone to get help. You’ll be all right.” He smoothed his bloody palm over my chest. “You’ll be all right,” he repeated, his voice broken, shattered, destroyed. Like my body. “You’ll be all right.”
But I wasn’t all right. And we both knew it.
I closed my eyes again and tried to imagine Lucy and me on the dance floor. I swallowed and tried to hum. I couldn’t. I coughed. It hurt to cough.
“Shh,” Noah said. “I’ll do it. I’ll hum for you.”
“It’s our l-last d-dance.”
“No, it isn’t,” Noah said, tears falling down his face. He took my hand and held it firmly in his. “I’ll hum until help gets here. You dance with my s-sister. That’s your only job. All right?”
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