The Haweaters

by Vanessa Farnsworth

  George thumps back. “I’m absolutely certain the opposite is true. I just haven’t heard about it yet. Consider this your punishment for that. Now go.”

  Annie looks like she’s going to raise a ruckus, but her brother beckons her to follow. On the way out, he turns back to his father, confusion lighting his face. “Excuse me, Father, but since when do we bring in the horses at night?”

  “Since tonight. Got a feeling something is brewing over at the Bryan place. Something not in our favour. Want to limit their options for mayhem. Don’t ever question me again.”

  Laban doesn’t move from the doorway. So George decides to move him. “Send Ellen in on your way out. I want that tea on the table in the next five minutes or she’s going to find herself out on her backside with no letter to recommend her.”

  George leans back as his son disappears through the doorway. Then he leans forward and bellows at the empty doorway. “Don’t even think of heading for those fields without that revolver.”

  7

  THE TREES BACKED THEM UP

  Eleanor spits blood into the corner of the room. “You’ll have to do a far sight better than that.”

  No, he won’t. Despite her bravado, Eleanor is nearing her breaking point. A few more strikes and the truth will come pouring from her like water from a pump. Bill can almost taste it.

  As he tightens the strap around his knuckles, Bill contemplates his wife. What a tragedy she turned out to be. The polar opposite of the angel she’d been in her youth. The moment Bill set eyes on her, he knew she was the woman to cure his sorrows. Strongest feeling he ever felt. Thought it would last a lifetime. Lasted a couple of years. Maybe three. Now she brings his soul to ruin.

  Bill slathers birch syrup on a hunk of stale bread and stuffs it into his mouth. Then he licks his fingers. The bitch still hasn’t answered his question and he’s growing tired of waiting. “Well?”

  Eleanor’s back is to the wall and her knees are tucked tight against her chest. Her voice is an anvil. “I can hardly say as fact a thing I know not to be so, husband.”

  Still with that. Is she really going to force him to beat her a third time?

  By the looks of it, yes. Eleanor’s eyes are fixed on the door. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out she’s plotting to make a dash for the woods the moment Bill lets his guard down. So guess what he isn’t going to do? “No good will come of you pretending ignorance, woman. You know when Amer is going to show his deceiving face next or you have an idea. Tell me and this whole thing ends now. Keep speaking coy and your bones will break as surely as winter twigs under my boots. Your choice. Make the wrong one and you’ll be lucky to see the light of the moon. Art too.”

  That got her attention. Eleanor flicks her eyes loft-ward. Bill follows the flick and glimpses Art peeking over the edge of the raw boards. It’s not like he didn’t know the boy was there. Art had scampered from under the table like a frightened squirrel the moment Bill began striking the strap against the wall. Coward. Just like his momma. Well, a few months out in the fields will toughen the boy up. Toughened all the boys up. Gave them the fire they need to survive in this world filled with villains and traitors and English. Was his duty as a father to make sure that happened.

  Now it’s his duty to make sure other things happen. Bill catches the flash as Eleanor signals to the boy to duck out of view. Just as well. Bill can’t deal with them both and his insolent wife is presently the one in greatest need of correcting. He leans down and bellows. “You’re really going to make me come at you again, aren’t you? You and your wicked ways. Not even the sense to save yourself. Well, so be it. A secret kept is a whipping earned.”

  Eleanor locks eyes with her husband. “I have not a single secret worth calling by that name, not from you nor anyone else I should think.”

  Liar. “You can protect yourself or you can protect Amer, but you can’t protect you both. Neither of us is going anywhere until you speak true. So say it straight and say it now. Can’t save you from your wickedness if you hold back.”

  Eleanor snorts, but says nothing. Damnable woman. Bill grabs the bowl of steaming fish from the table and cradles it in his arm. He raises his eyes to the ceiling. An hour from now, moonlight will flood through the gaps between the planks, striping everything silver and black. The colours of doom. Christ. What’s become of his life? “Was lies that brought me here.”

  Bill presses fish into his mouth and looks down at his sad excuse for a wife. A thick ribbon of blood streams down her forearm. And she’s snarling like a cornered weasel. “That’s not down to me, husband.”

  “Did I say it was?”

  Bill crams more fish into his mouth, chewing and speaking and swallowing more or less simultaneously. “They promised me work if I got on that ship in Londonderry. Knew it was a lie. Had the feel of it. But I could see no other way to get away from that vile stench. And I needed to get away from it. So many bodies rotting in ditches and fields and roads. Couldn’t walk a mile without tripping on another. Putrefaction was everywhere. Couldn’t escape it without leaving Ireland behind.”

  And that was like leaving his soul behind. Bill tries to cough the thought away. Eleanor, for her part, tilts her head like a confused dog. “This again? How many times have I heard this same sad story? I would surely not be speaking false if I were to say it’s been a thousand or even ten thousand times. Nor would I be risking damnation if I were to hazard that it’s every blessed time whiskey hits your sinner’s tongue. Such a man you are, always moaning about the past like somehow the famine and the corpses and the despicable English were about you now. I recall not a time when you blamed the sky for your troubles, but I’m as sure as the Lord is merciful that’s yet to come.”

  Harpy. It’s clear she’s not getting what he’s saying. Never has. But then how could she? She would’ve had to have witnessed the horror firsthand to know what he’s talking about. Even then it’d be hard for her to understand what he himself could not. That God had turned on the Irish. Struck them in the one place not even the English had dared. Broke them. Crushed them. Not a single prayer answered. “Every potato we pulled from the ground was the finest any of us had ever seen. We were proud as kings. But then those potatoes – the ones that were going to feed us and clothe us and pay our rent – turned black on the ground like nuggets of rotting coal. Couldn’t believe our eyes. Or our fate.”

  “Ah, yes, the potatoes. I nearly did forget the high place those dastardly vegetables have attained in your drunkard’s tale. We grow them year after year, mind you, and eat them more regular than most everything other than fish, not to mention selling the excess to whatsoever neighbours will have them. You don’t never moan about the blessed potatoes when they’re lining your stomach or your pocket. ’Tis the drink that makes you speak ill of them now.”

  Bill picks at a fish bone lodged between his teeth. What kind of woman listens to such misery and doesn’t offer a soothing word? The sort his momma warned him against. Should’ve known from the outset Eleanor’s beauty was a trap, but he’d made the mistake of thinking this woman was an angel. A lie his eyes told his brain. And look where it’s led him. Exactly where it leads all men. To ruin. Might as well say it bold. “Was lies that brought me to this island.”

  Eleanor digs her fingers into the dirt floor like some feral beast preparing to thrust itself into the air. Once again she spits, this time in Bill’s direction. “It was no such thing as that.”

  Her voice is a club. It knocks Bill sideways, but only for a moment. He hurls the now empty fish bowl at Eleanor’s spiteful head, missing to the left. The bowl thuds to the dirt floor where they both stare at it as if expecting it to move on its own. It’s Bill who breaks the spell. “Was a lie all right. Biggest one ever told.”

  Eleanor digs her fingers even deeper into the dirt. “By who? Speak the miscreant’s name or say no more on the matter.”

  “The governme
nt, that’s who.”

  Eleanor looks relieved. Clearly she’d been expecting him to land the accusation on her. And, to be truthful, that’s what Bill had been planning to do. Only then his thoughts had swerved like a stream rounding a boulder. And his mouth had gone with them. “We’d still be farming that parcel in Erin had it not been for that infestation wiping out our crops. Couldn’t barely earn enough to keep up the lease on the land let alone afford the basics. Said it was a midge that caused all that devastation. A midge, can you believe it? Sounds like a low-bred woman.” Bill wipes his palms his shirt and smiles to himself. “Acted like one, too.”

  Eleanor doesn’t acknowledge her husband’s joke. Not a half-hearted chuckle. Not a raised eyebrow. Not a suppressed grin. Nothing. Instead she looks bored. Like she’s heard this all before. Like she’s lived this all before. Like she’s not in the mood to be living it again now. Well, that’s too damned bad. “Then the government promised cheap land on this here island. Looked like the break we needed. Felt like it, too. The advertisement clearly said ‘farmable’ like it was proven fact. Was no such thing. Filthy lie. And the trees went along with it. I ask you, since when do maples not mean good ground?”

  Eleanor releases the floor. “So you’re saying the trees lied to you, husband?”

  Damnable woman. “No, woman, I’m saying the government lied and the trees backed them up.”

  Eleanor snorts.

  To think he’d once thought her an angel. Is this a sound an angel makes? No, and neither are the next sounds that emanate from this definitely non-angel’s mouth.

  “That’s more ridiculous than most things you say, if the truth is being told. I myself have been on this planet near to fifty years and not once has a tree ever said a single word to me. Should that ever happen, I pray that the Good Lord grant me the wherewithal to head into the bush and trouble my family no further.”

  Bill punches the tabletop, but Eleanor forges ahead. “Poppa did often say that whiskey and a low mind were the most dangerous of combinations. There’s no better proof of that dear man’s wisdom than the nonsense that’s just now spewing forth from your lips, but since you’ve started in with the spewing of it, tell me, my wise and whiskied husband, what did those talking trees say that could possibly have led you so far astray?”

  “Not a goddamned thing and you know it. They lied by growing in poor soil when they only ever grow in good soil damn near everywhere else in this godforsaken country.”

  Eleanor spits on each of her fingers in turn. “The trees can hardly be to blame if you read their meaning wrong.”

  “You saying the blame is mine?”

  Bill watches Eleanor spit-clean the dirt from her fingers. There’s a thud up above and Eleanor’s gaze shifts briefly to the loft, then back to her husband. “I’m saying not a single farmer worked this land ahead of you, so it was down to you to determine through your labours if the ground beneath you could be passably worked, husband. If that speculator had been prone to falsehoods, he would’ve demanded a far greater sum to compensate for his devious portrayal and then where would we now be? Up north of the island in bush so thick it’d take a day to clear an inch, that’s where.”

  Eleanor, as always, is missing the point. The only real question is, is she missing it on purpose or is she missing it because she’s not capable of getting it? Whichever it is, she isn’t cutting him an inch of slack.

  Eleanor leaves off cleaning her fingers. “If the truth is being told, husband, this here today is typical of you. First you hit the bottle and then you get to feeling sorry for yourself. Granted, this is the first time you’ve ever blamed trees for your own fool decisions, but it’s nice to know that fate and God and the English don’t occupy the entirety of your thoughts. The only lies in any of this are the ones you tell yourself daily as if a billion lies could somehow ever equal the God’s honest truth.”

  Eleanor has a way of placing daggers in her words and aiming them at arteries. Still, it’s Bill’s choice whether he allows himself to bleed. “And exactly which lies would those be, woman?”

  “The ones where you tell yourself each and every day you’re not a failure at the only thing you ever set about doing. You must surely admit that’s a pretty big one.”

  And that’s a pretty familiar accusation. There was a time when it would’ve gotten him riled. More than riled. It would’ve sent him over the moon. But not now. Now Bill deflects her words like bats in the night. Just Eleanor being Eleanor. Which reminds him. Bill turns towards the smoky stove. “Fair guess the potatoes are ash by now.”

  Eleanor tears a strip of fabric from the hem of her apron and uses it to bind the wound on her arm. “A wise man would’ve considered that before starting in on me.”

  Bill should haul Eleanor to her feet. Make her clean up her mess while berating her for the waste. But there’s little point. She wouldn’t accept the rebuke. Nor would she take steps to set things right while he remains in the room. So he stomps over to the stove and slaps the pot sideways. It hits the floor with a satisfying sputter. Bill clucks his tongue as he turns back to Eleanor, only to catch sight of her inching towards freedom. No bloody way. He snatches the crate from where it lies abandoned under the table and plunks it against the door. He’ll sit here like a sentry if he has to.

  Eleanor backs away. As she should. She’s not the one in charge here. Best she remember that. Bill lifts his foot and peels off a disintegrating sock. He hurls it at Eleanor. “Darn this.” He switches feet and yanks off the other. This he also chucks at his wife. “Both by tomorrow.”

  Eleanor doesn’t bother deflecting the poorly aimed missiles. Not when she can let loose another dagger. “If I had but a needle I would do it right now. Alas, the last one I had flew from my apron when you were swinging that strap. There is little hope of locating it, for a needle in the dirt is no easier to find than one lodged firmly in a haystack. Charlie will have to fetch another the next time he ventures forth to Michael’s Bay. If the Lord is truly our Saviour, the mill boys will take some mouldy oats in exchange for it. That, husband, may be the only way we can afford such a luxury as that.”

  Bill slaps the tops of his knees. Does this woman never quit? “Plough needs a new blade and you’re talking to me about trading grain for a needle? Would that be one kernel or two?”

  Bill hears the hysteria in his voice. The things this woman says. Incredible. It’s like arguing with poultry. “You need a needle, woman, you borrow one from a neighbour.”

  Eleanor guffaws. “From which neighbour do you propose? Eliza Porter seems a proper candidate, I suppose, if you don’t mind it getting around the neighbourhood that you can’t so much afford the price of a needle. Or what about Anne Amer? I shouldn’t imagine that a high-status woman such as that would ever deny a request for charity, although I could be wrong in my thinking. Maybe I should confirm the truth of it with her husband the next time he stops in.”

  Bill launches himself at Eleanor, the strap raised high above his shoulder. This bitch has tested him for the last time. And she knows it. Eleanor scrambles for the ladder and starts hauling herself up to the loft. She doesn’t make it. The strap comes down full force on the back of Eleanor’s legs, causing her calves to spurt blood and her feet to slip from the rungs. She dangles from the ladder as Bill gathers the back of her dress in his fist. It rips when he tries to pull her off so he grabs her skirt instead. It remains intact. That clinches it. Eleanor won’t be getting away from him. Not this time. This time he’ll finish what she started.

  Only then the cabin door bursts open, sending the crate flying towards the far wall. Charlie rushes in, his eyes darting every which way. When he spots his poppa, he blurts the reason for his explosive return. “Poppa, Amer’s horses are in our back field.”

  Bill stops in his tracks. He absorbs what his son has said, then lowers the strap. “How many?”

  Charlie’s eyes continue to fl
ick around the room. “Just the two, Poppa. But it’s the best two. The ones he brought down from Little Current this past month and paraded along the government road like they were made of gold.”

  Bill releases Eleanor’s skirt and steps towards his son. The answer to the next question is critical. “In the leased field or the other?”

  “The other.”

  Just as he was hoping. Bill nods slowly. It’s not often he gets the upper hand on Amer, but he surely has it now and he’d be a lunatic not to press his advantage. He tightens his fingers into fists. “Then the villain is stealing our grain by way of his horses’ stomachs and we have the right to claim those thieving animals as our own.”

  It’s clear Charlie has been thinking the very same thing. He points his thumb over his shoulder. “Do you want me to fetch the horses? I could hide them in the bush or maybe lead them down to Boyer’s for safekeeping until this thing with Amer plays out.”

  Bill is shaking his head. “Got the sickness at Boyer’s place. Best not to lead anything that way until someone catches sight of Boyer’s kin either out on the road or stuffed in a box.”

  Charlie’s eyes snap to the loft. It doesn’t take much for Bill to guess that Art is once again peeking over the edge. A signal passes between the two boys that Bill doesn’t know the meaning of. He could demand an explanation, but no. There’s no time for distractions. Not when a battle is about to begin. “No question of you fetching the horses. The law allows for it. But let me think through the particulars so we can stay in control of this thing for as long as possible. Know already that Amer will go for the law just like he did the last time his horses were in our fields. No, we must act against him before he acts against us. Let him be the one assessed a fine.”

  Bill presses his fingers to his temples. There’ll surely be consequences to any action they take beyond leaving those horses be. Big ones. At least Charlie had the rare good sense to seek counsel before snatching the unexpectedly snatchable horses. Any other day he would’ve grabbed them, only admitting to what he’d done after hellfire started raining down.