A Northern Light (19 page)

It was a quaint notion and one he soon dispelled.

"Skunk et all my chicks last night," he said. "Guts and feathers all over the yard. They were mine, those chicks. Planned to raise 'em and sell 'em come fall."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Royal."

He sighed. "At least I've still got the hen. She oughta breed again, and if she don't, at least she'll fatten up nice. Make good eating."

"I'm sure she will."

"I'll miss that money, though. I'm saving up, trying to put some money aside for when I'm out on my own."

"Are you? What do you want to do?"

"Farm. Land's getting dear up here. A man's got to have a few dollars behind him nowadays. I'd like to have a going dairy concern. Maybe even my own cheese factory someday. A man could make a living out of cheese. It keeps."

He was silent for a few seconds, then he said, "You couldn't give me enough land, Matt. I'd want fifty acres just for my dairy herd. Fifty more for sheep. Twenty for corn, twenty for potatoes, and twenty for fruit. Why, you could keep every camp on the lake swimming in berries all summer long."

"Yes, you could," I said, trailing my hand in the lake. I shook the water off and shaded my eyes so I could see him better. He was leaning forward with his arms crossed over his knees. His face was in profile, but then he turned and smiled at me, and my breath caught and I wondered if this was how it felt to be pretty.

"You ever go berrying, Matt? I like to go in the evening, when it cools down and the crickets start singing. You ever notice how good everything smells then? I've been watching for the wild strawberries. Won't be too much longer now. Cultivated ones from the plants I put in a couple years back won't be ready till the end of June. Got tons from those plants last year. My pa took 'em with him on his milk rounds. Cook at Dart's said they were the sweetest she ever had. I'm going to use the money I make on 'em this year to buy more chickens. It's free money, the berry money. It's not even a chore to pick when you can be out in the fields at dusk..."

I realized that Royal Loomis was talking a blue streak. In fact, I'd never heard him talk so much in all the years I'd known him. I guess I never had him on the right topic. Start him off on farming and he waxed downright poetical. For the first time, I saw what was in his heart. And I wondered if he might ever want to look deep enough to see what was in mine.

When he finished talking about chickens and cheese and berries, I took a turn talking. I talked about my exams and the grades I'd gotten, but I could tell he was bored. I talked about the book I was reading, but that bored him, too. So then I talked about Barnard. And how even though my aunt wouldn't loan me the money and my uncle had broken his promise to me and I knew I couldn't go, I still wished I could.

"You going to?" he asked me.

"I want to..."

"But why? Why would you want to do that? Go all the way to New York City just to read books?"

"So maybe I can learn how to write them someday, Royal. I told you this already," I said, suddenly wanting him to understand. Wanting it desperately. But he didn't even hear me; he was too busy talking.

"Why can't you read books right here? School's a waste of money and New York City's a dangerous place."

"Oh, never mind," I said crossly. "I wish I'd never told you. You don't even listen."

He moved forward in the boat until his knees touched mine. "I heard what you said, it just don't make sense. Why do you always want to read about other people's lives, Matt? Ain't your own good enough for you?"

I didn't reply to that because I knew my voice would quaver if I did. Turned out I didn't need to, because he kissed me. Even though I'd told him earlier that I didn't want him to. He kissed me and I kissed him back and that was reply enough.

Plain old kisses at first and then a real deep one. And then he put his arms around me and held me to him as best he could in a rowboat, and it felt so good. No one had so much as hugged me since my mamma died. I wished I had the words to describe how I felt. My word of the day,
augur,
which means to foretell things from omens, had nothing to do with it as far as I could see. I felt warm in his arms. Warm and hungry and blind.

He moved his hands to my breasts. He was more gentle this time than the time before, and his palms against me made me feel breathless, but I still pushed him away because it is so hard to always, always want the things you cannot have.

"Stop it, Royal. I'll jump out of the boat if you don't, I swear I will."

"Let me, Mattie," he whispered. "It's all right for a boy and girl to do that ... as long as they're sparking."

I pulled away from him. "Sparking?" I said, shocked. "That is news to me, Royal."

"Why else would I have taken you boating? And why did I kiss you in the woods when your cow got out? Why did I plow your field for you? For someone who reads so many books, you're awfully damned stupid."

"But, Royal ... I thought ... People said that you and Martha Miller were an item."

"People talk too much and so do you," he said. And then he kissed me again, and I tried to tell myself that none of this made any sense. He'd never shown a bit of interest in me unless I counted that one kiss he'd given me when Daisy got out, and now we were sparking. But his lips were sweeter than anything I'd ever tasted and his hands felt like comfort and danger all mixed up and I knew I should stop them, stop him, find my voice and tell him no. But then the warmth of him under my own hands, and the smell of him all soap and sweat, and the taste of him, overwhelmed me.

And so I closed my eyes and all I knew was his nearness. And all I wanted was my own story and no one else's.

And so I said nothing. Nothing at all.

"Lou, stop."

"'...then comes Junior in a baby carriage "I said stop...'"

"'...sucking his thumb, wetting his pants, doin' the hula-hula dance..."'

"Lou!"

"You're blushing, Matt! You're sweet on Royal Loomis! I know you are!"

"Nobody's sweet on anybody. And stop saying so."

Lou started singing her stupid song again, but then something appeared up ahead of us on the road that interested her far more than tormenting me did. An automobile. It could only be some well-heeled tourist driving it, or Mr. Sperry, or Miss Wilcox. No one else could afford one. The driver saw us and leaned on the horn. The car veered across the road, directly toward us. I grabbed the back of Lou's coveralls and pulled her into the grass.

"Let go, Matt," she whined. "I want to see it."

The driver pulled up and cut the engine. It was our teacher. She tossed the cigarette she'd been smoking and removed her goggles. "Hello, Mattie! Lou!" she bellowed, her cheeks pink. She wore a tan cluster, gloves, and a flowered silk scarf over her hair.

"Hello, Miss Wilcox," we said together.

"Where are you two off to?"

"We're on our way home from Burnap's. Pleasant, our mule, cracked his bit. We had to get it repaired," I explained.

"I see. I, myself, have been for a drive. Up to Beaver River and back. First one since the fall. The roads are finally dry enough to allow it. It's beautiful up there! Such freedom! I'm famished now, though. Driving always gives me an appetite. Why don't you two hop in? We'll go back to my house and have some lunch."

I was frightened of Miss Wilcox's automobile. "I think we'd best get home, ma'am," I said. "Our pa will be looking for us. He needs the bit."

"Oh, come on, Matt! Pa won't mind," Lou pleaded.

"I'll tell you what ... come for lunch and then I'll drive you home. It'll save some time."

"Pleeeeeease, Matt?" Lou begged.

"I guess it's all right," I said, more for Miss Wilcox's sake than Lou's. For all her giddy, breathless excitement, she seemed a little bit lonely. And I was curious, too. I had never seen the inside of my teacher's house. She had such nice clothes and jewelry, and a real automobile, so there was no telling what she might have at home.

Miss Wilcox got out, crank in hand, and started the engine again. It coughed and sputtered, finally caught, then fired off what sounded like cannon shot. I jumped out of my skin. Miss Wilcox laughed at me. Miss Wilcox laughed a lot. I knew she was wealthy, and wondered if money made everything funny.

"Hear that, Matt?" Lou whispered, giggling. "Just like Pa in the outhouse!"

"Shut up, Lou!" I hissed, hoping Miss Wilcox hadn't heard. "Go get in the back." She did, but not before she'd stooped down, quick as a weasel, and picked up the remains of Miss Wilcox's cigarette. I put my hand out for it, but she shoved it in her pocket and stuck her chin out at me.

When we were seated, Miss Wilcox engaged the gears and we were off. "It's a nice car, isn't it?" she shouted, turning toward me. "Brand-new. I had a Packard before. When I lived in New York. But a Ford's better for the country."

I nodded and kept my eyes straight ahead. One of us had to.

"It's wonderful here in the woods," Miss Wilcox said, swerving to avoid a squirrel. "Such freedom! You can do whatever you like and no one minds."

No, but how they talk!
I thought.

Glean,
my word of the day that day, is a good word. It is old and small, not showy. It has a simple meaning—to gather after the reapers—and then meanings inside the meanings, like images in a prism. It is a farming word, but it fits people other than farmers. Aunt Josie never bent her back in a field one day in her life, but she is a gleaner. She combs other people's leavings—hints, hearsay, dropped words—looking for nuggets of information, trying to gather enough bits together to make a whole story.

Miss Wilcox drove us out of Eagle Bay and a mile and a half up the road to Inlet. The old Foster camp on Fourth Lake is a two-story log house with a stone foundation. Dr. Foster was a retired bachelor doctor from Watertown who loved the North Woods and built himself a large camp here. The word
camp
means different things to different people. To Pa and Lawton, it means a lean-to. To city people, it means a real house with all the comforts but tricked out like a cabin. Aunt Josie once told me that Mr. John Pierpont Morgan has crystal champagne glasses in his camp on Lake Mohegan, and a Steinway piano and telephones in every room and a dozen servants, too. And Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt has solid-gold taps on his bathroom sink at the Sagamore. Dr. Foster is dead now. His sister inherited the house and rents it out. Usually only in the summer and to big families with enough children and grandparents and aunts and uncles to fill up all the rooms and crowd the porch, but my teacher had been living in it all year and had it entirely to herself.

Miss Wilcox pulled into the driveway, which curves around in back of the house in a horseshoe shape, and then we went inside. The camp has a real doorbell and Lou asked if she could ring it, then kept doing it until I pulled her away. It was cool and dark inside and smelled like oil soap. There were carpets everywhere and wainscoring halfway up the walls and velvet curtains thick and heavy enough to shut out the whole world. There were pictures of deer and trout on the walls, and mirrors in frames, and pretty blue-and-white plates. It was very beautiful, but most of all, it was quiet. So quiet you could hear a clock ticking from two rooms away, and boards creaking under your feet, and your own thoughts inside your head. It was never that quiet in our house.

Miss Wilcox led us out of the entry past rooms that looked as if no one ever stepped into them, filled with furniture that looked as if no one ever sat on it, to an enormous, spotless white kitchen that looked like no one ever cooked in it. There, she set about fixing us dainty little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and tiny iced cakes from a box, and tea. I tried to help, but she wouldn't let me.

"Don't no one else live here, Miss Wilcox?" Lou asked looking all around at the spotless stove and the shining floor and the painted cabinets with no fingerprints on them, or broken knobs.

"Lou...," I said, cautioning her.

"No, Lou. Just me. And it's
doesn't.
Doesn't anyone else five here."

Lou digested this, then said, "Were you bad, Miss Wilcox?"

Miss Wilcox's knife clattered to the counter. She turned to look at my sister. "'Bad'?" she said. "Lou, how ... why do you ask that?"

"When I was bad, my mamma used to make me sit in the parlor by myself. For an hour. With the door closed. It was awful. Are you being punished? Is that why you have to live here all alone?"

Miss Wilcox's hand fluttered to her throat. Her fingers twined themselves in the circlet of amber beads there. "I like living alone, Lou," she said. "I like the quiet and the solitude. I have a lot of reading to do, you see. And lessons to prepare during the school year."

Lou nodded, but she didn't look convinced. "If you ever get lonely, we could bring Barney by. Our dog. He could keep you company. He has gas, but he's still a nice dog. He wouldn't pee on the settee or anything. He don't see well enough to find it—"

"Lou!" I hissed.

"What? Oh, jeezum ...
doesn't.
Doesn't. Doesn't. Doesn't. He doesn't see well enough."

I could see Miss Wilcox was trying not to laugh, but I didn't find it funny. Not one bit. Lou knows better than to ask personal questions or talk about Barney's gas. She knows what good manners are. Mamma taught her same as she taught all of us. Lou is hungry for attention, though. Any kind. She and Pa used to be inseparable, but now he looks right through her. Through all of us. I know it hurts her, so I try not to be cross, but sometimes she goes too far.

"Shall we take our lunch into the library?" Miss Wilcox asked, her eyes moving from me to Lou and back again.

"Where? On the pickle boat?" Lou asked, looking confused.

I didn't scold her for that because I was wondering the same thing.

This time Miss Wilcox did laugh. "No, right here in the house. Come on."

She put the lunch on a tray, along with some plates and napkins, then led us out of the kitchen, down a different hallway, and through a set of tall pocket doors.

What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed.