Belle Cora: A Novel (23 page)

By some unspoken agreement we began talking quite pleasantly about miscellaneous trivial matters. Jeptha was one of those rare people who have already in childhood much of the personal force that will fall to their lot as grown men, and his mind was agile, and when we were talking I felt smart. We discussed the city and the country, oyster barges, canal boats, and steamboats, the funny way his four-year-old sister Ruth had looked after a harmless mishap, and a remark that his sister Becky had made when a potato had come out of the ground with the face of George Washington, and then, after asking me if I could keep a secret, but otherwise very casually, as if merely to explain more about Becky, he told me why she walked the way she did. When she was three years old, Jacob (drunk, frolicsome) had tossed her so high that her head hit a rafter, and after that she limped but she did not know why; she had forgotten; and I was not to tell her or anyone else. Then not giving me time to respond to this he said that he had become very interested lately in the art of following bees to locate their hives, and that was what he had been doing today (having convinced Jake that they could make a good profit on the honey at the general store). “And that was what I was up to when this tree came by.” Then he looked around and said it was pretty here, wasn’t it?

I said without thinking, “I pray every night that tomorrow someone will come to take me back where I came from.”

And he shot back, “I’m going to pray twice as hard the other way,” just as quickly, testifying not merely to the rapidity of his thought processes but to the settled nature of the feeling he had just expressed. And just like that, I was home, as if my grandfather had come for me after all and placed me in this tree, which was home because this boy was in it.
That was the moment Jeptha said, “Let’s never keep any secrets from each other,” and I nodded vigorously and agreed, though I knew that at some time in the last half-hour, whether it was when he had asked me what an omnibus was, or said that he pitied my uncle’s family for their inability to appreciate me, or when he had applied his mind to the problem of finding the current owner of my books, or told me about how his father had hurt his sister, or maybe just before that when he had mentioned the potato with the face of George Washington, I had come to love him, and I would wait for the right time to tell him, and it might not be for years.

I felt that it was all going to come out right. I had been worried and anxious for no reason, because it turned out that I was lucky—some people just are!—and in the end good things were going to happen to me.

A balmy breeze arose, bearing summery scents of grass and pine and unseen unnamed herbs and making the leaves hiss and the branches sway. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again there he was, looking down at me, his lank black hair fallen over his brow again. I saw that he was taking pleasure in the sight of me. That’s right, I thought, I’m pretty. I’m so glad that I’m pretty.

We stayed in that tree, away from our chores long enough to be scolded when we got back, and there was a moment at parting when if we were older there might have been a kiss. But instead our hands brushed for a second, and I went home with my face flushed and my heart telling me that it was there, right there in my chest, and it had been there all along.

At night, on my straw bed, and at milking time and when I was weeding the garden, I went over our conversation again and again, until it was worn out, like an old rag. Weeks became months, and I did not see him again. There was no school, and in three seasons out of four, Jeptha spent all day and much of the evening at his work. The hour in the tree had been a stolen one. On Jake’s farm, half the land was good only for rye, which did not fetch a high price even when times were good. Year by year, he fell a little further in debt to the miller and the storekeeper, who were beginning to treat him as if he were their shiftless employee, and whom he hated more than anyone else in the world. To free himself from this bondage, he made barrel staves and butter firkins, cleared other men’s land, broke their oxen, and did other piecework. He drove himself like a dumb brute, and Jeptha worked beside
him. Whenever Jeptha took a moment for himself, his father would tell him that, thanks to his selfishness, they might lose the farm; and it was very nearly true. Every ounce of effort the family could put forth was necessary.

I grasped some of this at the time—I knew at least that Jeptha had to work a great deal—but I still wondered why he didn’t make more of an effort to see me again.

Perhaps it was Mrs. Talbot. My aunt sometimes sent Agnes on errands to the Talbots’ farm, and once, when I asked if I could go along, Agatha said, “Better not, Arabella. Mrs. Talbot hates you like poison.”

THAT SUMMER, LEWIS ATTENDED SCHOOL
in town with the younger boys, one of whom, Andy Miller, said, “Your pa jumped from a roof and is burning in hell for it.” They fought, and Lewis won decisively. However, as I have already mentioned, there were several Miller boys, each one larger than the next. When you beat one, you had to face the next older one. A few days later, Tom Miller waited outside the school to fight Lewis. Tom should have won, because Lewis had no more meat on him than a sparrow, but the fight ended with Tom on the ground yelling “uncle.”

The following Sunday, when we were singing hymns in semi-darkness, sweat streaming down our faces, a murmur arose among the congregation. From a message passed by whispers, I learned that a crowd of children and a few grown-ups had gathered outside the church, and they included the whole Miller clan, waiting for us to come out so that John Miller, the next older Miller boy, could beat the tar out of Lewis. I touched my brother’s elbow. He made a little frown of indifference, as though it would be light work for him to beat this boy three years older, a head taller, and thirty pounds heavier than he. I said, “Well, I guess you’ll have to take your licks,” feeling bitter that every Miller got to be a bully just because he had five brothers.

A half-hour later, we stepped, squinting, through the doorway. The sun pressed on my head like a hand. A boy sitting on a stump said, “This’ll be quick,” and another boy said, “If John lets it be quick.” Elihu squeezed Lewis’s shoulder, and Lewis, not looking up, nodded—they both knew Elihu could not interfere. The boy who had spoken last continued, “John likes to stretch these things out.”

Then Matthew stepped beside Lewis and spoke, twice as loud as anyone else had: “Does he? What a coincidence. I’m like that, too.”

There was an odd formality to the scene, like a historical painting of a probably apocryphal encounter of kings or generals, as the little mob made room for John to meet Lewis and ask him if he was “man enough.” And Lewis said, “Anytime.”

Matthew said, “He was man enough to lick two Millers so far. Hey, Tom,” he called out to John’s brother, “how’s that ass you fell on twice, does it still hurt?” Children not of the Miller clan dared to laugh. “Did your ma make you a plaster, Tom?” Lewis was laughing, too.

John said, “Go on, laugh, you little shit. Soon it won’t be funny.”

Matthew said, “He’s little compared to you, John. But you’re little compared to me. And you know me, I like to leave a mark.”

Agnes and Evangeline went home with my aunt and uncle in the wagon, but I couldn’t abandon my brother, so I followed the crowd to the field behind the livery stable.

For a while it was a fight, with Matthew yelling out advice and encouragement to Lewis, but then, since no miracle occurred, it was just a beating, Lewis struggling helplessly in the older boy’s grip, and John pounding him in the ribs—“Laugh now. Ha ha ha!”—and grinding his face into the mud. “This will learn you to respect a Miller.”

“Stop them,” I said to Matthew. I hit him in the arm. “Stop them. He’s licked.”

He looked at me blankly, then turned and shouted, “That’s enough!”

John didn’t stop. Titus and Matthew walked toward them, and Matthew yanked John by the hair. The other Miller boys moved in, snarling. “He’s licked,” said Matthew, putting his face next to John’s. “You can meet me here next Sunday, and since you made my brother taste the mud, you’re gonna eat it. You’re gonna chew it and swallow it.”

“My brother,” he had called him. That was new.
My brother
.

“Go on and make me,” said John, but he did not look confident.

“No, you’re tired now,” said Matthew, helping Lewis up. “In a year or two you’ll whip him,” he told Lewis, and he mounted a stump and addressed the gathering. “What’s Lewis got to be ashamed of? Not one thing. John’s got fifty pounds on him, but did he complain? No, he stepped up like a man. So … that’s settled. Now let’s talk about John. I’m
giving John a week to get his strength back. Next Sunday, rain or shine, I’ll be here to make him eat mud. Bring your friends. Bring your folks.” There was excited murmuring from his audience, and Lewis, oblivious to the dirt in his mouth and the blood running down his face, looked up at Matthew worshipfully.

FROM THAT MOMENT ON
(and thus well before Matthew made himself into a legend by beating John Miller and every older Miller boy, including the seventeen-year-old), Matthew and my brother were inseparable. Matthew taught Lewis to shoot, and with Elihu’s gun the two of them pursued the bounty the town put on rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and other such small enemies of the farmer. On rainy days they played marbles. “Damn you to hell, you little thief!” Matthew would say. “Titus, look what he’s doing to me; tell me how he’s cheating!” Lewis generally won, and Matthew would howl in outrage and my brother would laugh as he used to when I tickled him.

It had been noticed by this time that Lewis had remarkable eyesight and dexterity. He could hit a bottle with a stone from twenty feet. He could thread needles more easily than any of the women, and he used to do us this service until Matthew wondered out loud if we would succeed in making a girl of him.

When the winter school session started in November, Matthew walked in with his arm around Lewis and said that they probably all knew Lewis had licked Tom Miller, almost two years older than him, but maybe they didn’t know that in addition he had the sharpest eyes in the county, and if anyone doubted it, come tomorrow with some marbles.

Lewis began to eat more and to fill out and grow again. He spent less time with me. I despised his new hero—I found Matthew unpleasant personally as a bully and a braggart, and I disliked him on principle; I associated him with everything I hated about the farm. But I could not deny that Lewis was better off. New York City, Bowling Green, Mama, Papa—if he could forget all that, why should I stop him?

XVI

HE COULD FORGET. I COULD NOT
—or would not, if there is a difference. Years went by, and still I refused. Anything good in this place was an exception: exiled here, like me. True, Jeptha was here, and he was good. But he was mistreated and made to work like a beast. That proved me right. I preferred Melanchthon’s farm to my uncle’s farm, any town to any farm, Patavium to Livy, Rochester to Patavium, New York to Rochester, and Paris to New York. I was not always consistent in these views, but when I remembered, these were my convictions. I preferred the rich to the poor. “We’re just as good as they are” was the motto of my uncle’s family. I hoped it wasn’t true.

Like the slender paths etched by rain as it slides randomly down a hill, which numberless later storms carve into gullies, ravines, and canyons, the little choices of the first year gave a lasting shape to our lives. As 1838 gave way to 1839 and 1840, Lewis drew closer to Matthew, who was permitted to run wild; so Lewis ran wild, too, and heeded me less and less. Agnes and I worked side by side, hating each other and mooning over Jeptha, and the grown-ups laughed at our feelings. “What do you
want
from that boy?” my aunt inquired of us both. Once—in a sort of pitying tone, as if she were trying to cure me of a delusion—Agnes explained to me that I couldn’t possibly love Jeptha, it made no sense, because I did not love what he loved. I did not love this place. I came here ruining all their innocent fun with my distaste. With my mind twisted by my city upbringing, I noticed only the ugly side, the trivial blemishes of honest, simple things. This idea hurt, because there was truth in it. Agnes and Jeptha had lived here as long as they could remember, and they had deep feelings for every little island in the pond, every gnarled old tree or old gray shack collapsing into the stream. I wished I could feel that way. I wished that Jeptha could make me feel such things.