A Wild Yearning (37 page)

He bracketed her face with his hands, tilting it up to meet his eyes. "Then tell me you don't love me."

That's what she would do. She would tell him she didn't love him and then he would leave her alone, to suffer in peace. "I... It doesn't matter. I'm married. I—"

His mouth came down to capture hers again, but this time she wrenched her head aside at the last moment. His hand splayed her neck, lifting her chin. His thumb rubbed along the column of her throat, slowly, agonizingly...

"Let me go," she pleaded.

"What if I don't? What if I carried you off with me right now? Deep into the wilderness where no one could ever find us."

Her blood was a roar in her ears, sounding louder than the ocean breakers at their backs, so loud she could barely hear her own breathless reply. "Y-you wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't I?" His thumb continued to move, up and down. His mouth was close to hers again, only a breath apart. She thought she might faint. "An Abenaki savage would steal you away and to hell with your white man's laws and morality," he went on, as relentless as his stroking thumb. "I'm part savage, remember? Maybe all savage when it comes to you. And what's more, from the way you kissed me I'd say it's what you want, Delia-girl."

She twisted her head away from his grasp, backing up a step. "I'd fight you, Ty, every step of the way. I'd fight you until I escaped." His face tightened, but it was with hurt this time, not anger. Tears flooded her eyes. She seized his hands, clinging to him. "Oh, Ty, why am I fighting you? It's killing me inside to have to fight you..."

His fingers tightened around hers. "Then come away with me."

She turned from him, pressing her knuckles hard against her mouth to catch a sob. Her cheeks were drenched with tears. "Please, please don't ask this of me. I can't. I can't."

He pulled her back around. His fingers brushed the wetness from her face. "Ah, love, love... don't cry."

"I can't leave them, Ty. I made a promise, to Nat and to his girls. A promise before God. You think that because I'm a woman I have no honor, but I do."

Pain flickered in his eyes. "But I thought you loved me."

She gazed up into his beloved face. "I love you. You've always known how much I love you. But what of Nat? He married me in good faith. He entrusted his children to me. And the girls, Ty, they've come to care for me. How cruel it would be for me to walk out of their lives like that, so soon after they've lost their ma. How could we be happy, knowing they were suffering? I just couldn't live with myself if I betrayed my honor in that way. And if I can't live with myself, how can I hope to live with you?"

He cupped her cheeks, staring deep into her eyes, letting all that he felt show in his own. "Delia, my wonderful, wonderful Delia. Your honor, your dignity, your strength—they're all the reasons why I fell in love with you."

"Then you understand..."

His hands fell from her face. "Ah hell, I understand." He flung his head back, gazing up at the sky. Pain twisted his lips and drew taut the cords of his neck. "But, Christ, I love you so damn much. Without you, I—" He swallowed, shuddered. His eyes fell to hers. Never had she seen such pain. "I
need
you, Delia."

She couldn't bear it. She ran away from him, back along the beach. And he let her go.

He turned toward the sea. He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again the ocean was still there, wide, blue. Empty.

"The answer is no and that's final!"

Delia cast a look over her shoulder at the girls cowering together in the keeping room. She followed Nat out the front door, shutting it behind her. He had sat down on the stoop to pull on his golo shoes—the loose canvas boots with short tops and woolen soles that he wore for muddy work. He was going to the logging camps that day.

"Nat, it'll only be for a few hours every morning."

"No." He stood up, awkwardly stomping his heels down into the boots, wincing at the pressure he put on his stump.

"But all the other children in Merrymeeting will be going to the new school," Delia said, trying to keep her voice low and reasonable. "They'll feel left out."

He took off his hat, ran his hand through his straw-colored hair, then jammed the hat back on his head. "They're only girls. What do they need book learning for? And, besides, I can't spare them. There's too much work around here. Maybe if you..." He didn't finish, but Delia knew what he'd been about to say.
Maybe if you were better able to pull your own weight.

Nat picked up his felling ax and started across the clearing. His tall figure, in his bright blue woolen fly coat, stood out in stark contrast against the blazing fall foliage.

She ran to catch up with him. "Remember what the reverend said about it being a Christian parent's moral duty to teach their young to read the Scriptures?"

He turned to glower at her. "You teach them, Delia. Or have you managed to learn anything during all those hours you've spent up at the Bishops',
supposedly
learning your letters." He set off again, blue coattails flapping around his thighs.

Delia's chin took on a stubborn jut. "I'm taking them, Nat!" she hollered after him. "With or without your permission!"

He swung around, his clenched fist raised. "Goddamn you, woman!" It was the oath more than the fist that caused her to take a step back. It was the first curse she'd heard come from Nat's mouth. "My Mary never gave me such aggravation in ten years as I've had during three months with you. I wish to God—" He cut himself off and turned on his heel, starting fo the third time down the trail.

Again, she ran to catch up with him. She had to grab his coat sleeve and spin him around. "You wished you'd never married me," she finished for him, her face taut with controlled emotion.

She had given up her love and all hope of any real joy in life because of a promise she had made to this man. She was determined now to see the promise fulfilled. She would
make
their marriage work. "But the fact is we
are
married, Nat," she pushed on. "And the sooner you come to accept that I'm not your Mary, maybe the easier it'll be for both of us."

"Mary is—"

"Dead!" She grasped his arms, shaking him. "She's dead, Nat. But I'm alive and I'm your wife now and I need you... We need each other."

There was a chill to the October air that morning and in the lumber camps, deeper in the hills, it was even cooler. The countryside was a rainbow of colors. The lime-green and tawny gold of aspen and birch, the smoky purple of ash, the orange and brilliant red of maples—all were set off to dazzling perfection by a background of deep, rich evergreen.

But Nat Parkes never paid much attention to the beauty of nature. He saw nature as a thing to be bested, a field to clear, a tree to chop down. As he looked at the stand of majestic pines stretching before him, he saw only a lot of hard, blister-popping work.

On that day the men of Merrymeeting were joining up with cutting gangs from two other settlements along the Kennebec to clear a mast road for the coming logging season. During the next couple of weeks, a great swath would be cut through the forest. Then, in the deep winter months, the tall pine masts would be chopped down and hauled on big sleds over this snow-packed road to the riverbank to await the spring drives. Once the river ice melted sometime in late March, the masts would be floated down the Kennebec to Merrymeeting and there shipped to England to be fitted onto the King's ships. Logging was how Maine farmers supported themselves and their families between the October harvest and the first planting season in April.

Under Colonel Bishop's direction, the men were broken up into cutting crews. Normally, men from the same settlement worked together, but that morning Nat found himself attached to the group from Topsham, who were one short because a man had fallen off a hayrick just that morning and broken a leg. For a cutting partner, Nat chose a young man who reminded him of a youthful version of himself. They both had the same tall, rangy build; they even had the same thatch of straw-colored hair, although the boy's face beneath the thatch wasn't nearly as battered and rugged as Nat's.

They started up the trail. "You hurt your leg?" the boy asked, noticing the hitch in Nat's stride.

"Ay-up," Nat responded, not bothering to explain. If he did the boy would only want to see his wooden foot. As Delia had that first day. Delia...

The boy, Nat noticed, was wearing only a thin linen hunting shirt and he was shivering. "You should have worn a coat," Nat said out the corner of his mouth, panting slightly as they hiked up toward the stand of trees that had been alloted to them.

"Didn't figure on it being this cold up here," the boy answered, smiling in spite of Nat's scowl. "That coat of yours certainly looks good and warm."

"My wife made it. She's good with the wheel and the loom." Nat had developed a trick of forgetting for whole minutes at a time that Mary was dead. He was thinking, anyway, that he wore the coat not so much to keep warm, but because its bright blue color made him stand out in the woods. It was easy to get killed working the logging camps. A tree could split or topple in the wrong direction; a dead branch, called a widow-maker, could slip lethally from above; logs could roll off the sled to crush or maim a man. Oh, there were plenty of ways to die in The Maine. A woman, he thought with a sudden bitter, piercing pain, could get the throat distemper and be gone within a week.

Nat selected a tree by notching it. His muscles bulging like thick strands of rope, he swung the felling ax, taking the first bite. Then he was joined by the boy, who cut at the opposite side, swinging in counterpoint. Because of his wooden foot, Nat had to put most of his weight on his good one, which made his swing awkward. It was effective nonetheless; he was pleased to see his cuts went deeper than the boy's.

The sound of the ax thwacking into the wood echoed in the still air. The ax took pie-sized chunks out of the pine, and the men's swings were fast and steady. When the tree was close to toppling, the boy stood back to let Nat finish it off. The tree shuddered and swayed against the sky, then fell with a sharp crack like thunder, filling the air with debris.

Silence descended and the dust settled. In that moment the sudden quiet was pierced by the sharp, prolonged wail of a wolf. The boy shivered.

"I told you you should have worn a coat," Nat said, although he himself was now sweating after the work of swinging the ax.

The wolf howled again, sounding closer this time, and Nat frowned. Another way to die, he thought. Get pounced on and eaten by a pack of wolves.

Elizabeth and Delia walked side by side, following the ruts in the cart trail as it led to the farm. Beside them the dying, empty cornstalks rustled in the breeze. The corn had been harvested the week before and now the ears hung by braided husks along the rafters in Delia's kitchen, long rows of gold and maroon. They'd had a bee for the husking, but although Ty had been invited, he hadn't come.

Delia glanced sideways at her friend. Elizabeth was five months along now and she was blooming with it. She had a habit of every few minutes rubbing her rounded stomach, as if assuring herself the baby was still there. She did so now and it made Delia smile.

"It's good of you, Elizabeth, to come all the way out here to teach me how to work that blasted spinning wheel."

"Oh, I don't mind." Elizabeth's face was bright and relaxed. Oddly, Delia thought, the pregnancy seemed to have done a lot toward reconciling the young reverend's wife to life in the wilderness. "Each wheel has its own peculiarities," Elizabeth explained. "That's why it's best I show you on your own."

"It's Mary's wheel."

"Yours now."

Nat wouldn't agree, Delia thought, although she didn't say so. As they passed the orchard, she noticed that last night's wind had knocked down a lot of apples from the trees. She took Elizabeth's hand. "Let's gather up some apples and roast them while we're spinning. It will make a nice treat for the girls when they come home later after their first day of school."

"You're good with those girls," Elizabeth said, laughing as she allowed Delia to lead her toward the orchard. "I imagine you and Nat are anxious to have one of your own."

Delia looked quickly away so that Elizabeth wouldn't catch the sudden rush of tears that filled her eyes. She would never have a baby as long as Nat slept on the shakedown in the linter. She didn't want Nat's baby anyway; she wanted Ty's.

Delia made a basket of her short gown and they began to fill it with the shiny red fruit. Elizabeth joked that her skirts were too full of baby to find room for apples. Their laughter rang in the clear October air.

A bevy of migrating ducks flew by, so many that for a moment they blotted out the brassy autumn sun and the flap of their wings sounded like a windstorm. It seemed dark and suddenly cold, and in the distance they heard the cry of a wolf.