Authors: Noelle Carle
Summer had baked and
dried them, with above normal temperatures in July and August. Then abruptly,
as if a switch had been thrown, fall was upon them. Winds that had been a warm
caress two weeks before changed direction, bullying and chilling them. Alison
fumbled with her sweater as she started down the road. She held her
schoolbooks to her chest, half running down the Eliot’s long path into the
village. As the path met the main road, she sighted a figure ahead of her
carrying a couple of large bundles. Coming up closer behind him, she
recognized Aubrey Newell. They had heard him come in at the Eliot’s house and
leave shortly after.
“Where’re you going,
Aubrey?”
He turned. When he
saw her, he stopped walking until she caught up. In the fading light he seemed
to study her face with a bemused expression. Finally he answered, “I’m leaving
now.” He walked along beside her. She recognized that he held a worn leather
suitcase and a large canvas bag. She studied them as if they would reveal his
destination, then questioned, “Where are you going? Why now?”
“It’s time to go.
Mr. Eliot has all the help he needs. He just can’t see it. Besides, I’m going
to join up now.” He straightened as he said it. He was strong; his arms
muscled from hefting sodden wooden lobster traps up from the water and his back
limber from the work. He was tall and browned by the constant days on the
water. Alison somehow doubted his age. He’d been too many places and talked
quite knowledgeably of so many things. He spoke matter-of-factly of working at
the shipyard, of helping keep a lighthouse, of working in a cannery. There was
something about him that didn’t ring true. Still she had grown to like him.
He found that he shared the same fascination as Owen with mechanical
contraptions. He spent time with her brother studying the Cooper’s new
automobile. He had endeared himself to most of the Eliot children and pitched
in willingly with all the chores, even those considered to be women’s work.
She was sad to see him leave.
“How are you getting
to the train?” she asked him.
His steps slowed and
he shrugged.
“Maybe Mr. Cooper
would take you in his Ford!” she teased.
He smiled slowly as
he thought of that, but didn’t speak.
“No, really do you
want a ride? If you can wait till morning Remick could take you in our buggy.”
“No,” he shook his
head. “But…” he hesitated deliberately.
Alison peered up at
him through the deepening twilight. “What?”
“Would you…could I
show you something I’ve been working on?”
“Well, all right.
It’s getting dark. What is it?” She stopped, expecting to see him swing the
canvas bag off his shoulder and open it.
He shook his head,
smiling. “It’s not here. It’s up by the old fort. I couldn’t move it.”
Alison hesitated
now. She hated to go through the Eliot’s woods. She bit her lip indecisively,
but he seemed so eager. “It’ll be even darker in the woods,” she began.
“We’ll be fine,” he
proclaimed. “I’ll be with you.”
He stood the bag
beside the suitcase saying, “I’ll come back for these.” They turned back the
way they’d come, following the road until it edged Eliot’s wood lot and then
went through the woods on a faint trail. Aubrey said nothing but hummed a
little to himself. He held back the tree branches until she passed them, took
her arm to steady her over fallen logs or through thick brush. The light here
was shadowy and the silence so profound that the skittering of a busy squirrel
seemed to her the heavy shuffling of a bear. She held onto Aubrey’s arm and he
grinned down at her. She swallowed and smiled wanly. They continued for
several moments until they both stepped gingerly over an ancient rock wall.
The historical society was especially protective of that wall, for in sections
it was leaning precariously or crumbling away. Away from the trees and brush
it was lighter and Alison lost the smothered feeling she’d had in the woods.
Off to their right on
a high rise stood the crumbling fort, settled like a patient bovine on its
haunches. Another partial brick building stood closer to the woods, thought to
be either a barracks or a powder house. Down a gentle slope, closer to the
shore, lay a jumble of granite rocks. These were supposed to be the foundation
for additional battlements connected to underground tunnels from which guns
could be fired without being seen. The project was abandoned sometime after
the Civil War and the granite stood untouched; seemingly forgotten and
definitely too heavy to be taken.
It was to these rocks
that Aubrey led Alison. He went to the one farthest from the fort and brought
her around to see its end.
“Look,” he said,
grinning and pointing.
Alison peered at the
rock and gasped. Chipped away from its end was the clearly defined head and
shoulders of a man. She could see the rock chips and dust scattered around its
base on the grass, attesting to the hours of time spent here. “Oh my, Aubrey!”
she exclaimed. “It’s…it’s amazing!” Kneeling down she examined it more
closely. Despite its rough surface, the head was rounded and shapely. She
could make out features; the eyes downcast, the mouth unsmiling but somehow
determined, the jaw strong. “When did you do this? Where did you learn how to
do this?”
He shrugged. “I’ve
done it since I was a kid. Just takes a hammer and chisel and some good
stone.”
“But this must have
taken months!”
“Oh, aye. Granite’s
hard,” he nodded. He was studying her as she ran her hand over the shape of
it. “I tried to make it look like Sam, but his face seems kinda distant in my
mind.” He smiled apologetically.
Alison rose, stepped
back from it and brought her hands to her heart in a stricken gesture. She
turned to Aubrey, searching his face and whispering, “You did this for me?”
He dropped his gaze,
putting his hands in his pockets. A breeze puffed up off the water, brushing
his hair onto his forehead. He pushed it back. He blew out a slow breath. “I
felt real bad ever since that day I teased you. I just wanted to do something
nice for you. I was gonna let you find it on your own someday.” His words died
away when he saw tears in her eyes.
“You’ve been working
on this since May?” she asked, swiping the tears from her cheeks. She felt
such a quantity of gratitude and some nameless feeling crowding her heart that
she felt strangled. She stepped closer to Aubrey, lifted her arms and hugged
him closely. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” she murmured.
He stiffened at first
then he returned her embrace carefully. He’s taller than Sam, she remembered
thinking, and then he was kissing her. She drew away abruptly to meet his
eyes, seeing in them such desolation and longing that her heart moved with
pity. “I guess that’ll do for a thank you,” she said, smiling a little at him,
wishing she could change the sadness there.
His hand came up to
brush her forehead, move down her cheek and then over her hair. “You are so
beautiful,” he whispered. “I always have your face in my mind. I wish…” he
left off, swallowing hard.
“Oh, Aubrey,” Alison
began. “Don’t…” She didn’t know what to say. When she saw tears in his eyes
glittering in the near darkness she pushed up onto her tiptoes and kissed him
again. This time she lingered, realizing she didn’t want to stop kissing him. Steadily
Aubrey’s breath quickened and he covered her face and neck with kisses,
murmuring, “I love you. I love you so much. I don’t want to go now.” His
grasp around her tightened and Alison sighed. It felt so good to be held and
it made her miss Sam so much. Sam! His face loomed in her mind. She pulled
away, scrambled backwards, and sat down on the grass as her knees trembled.
She let out a shaky breath and patted the ground beside her. “Aubrey, come
here.”
He sat down heavily. He
crossed his arms atop his raised knees then lowered his head. “I’m sorry,”
came his hollow apology.
Alison tried to still
her breathing. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t know. I don’t think you really love
me.”
Slowly Aubrey raised
his head. “Don’t tell me how I feel,” he began grimly. But as he looked at
her his voice softened again. “You can’t know. You can’t know how from the
first time I laid eyes on you I wanted to hold you, to love you.” His last
words came out in a strangled gasp and his shoulders heaved as he made an
effort to restrain his tears.
“Aubrey!” Alison
laid her head on his arm and reached across his shoulders. “No, don’t.”
In one movement he
again enveloped her in his arms, laying her back on the ground and covering her
mouth with his. “Say it,” he whispered between kisses. “Say it to me.”
She grasped his head
and held it still, staring up at him in the half-light, finally questioning,
“Say what?”
His answered came
slowly with his ragged breathing. “That you’ll hold me in your heart and your
mind. That you’re going to think of me well and safe and whole.”
Alison gasped as she
remembered the words she’d said to Sam before he departed for his training.
She remembered also the footsteps they’d heard at the end of the wharf as they
had kissed. “Oh, Aubrey” she whispered, her quiet voice still conveying her
disappointment. “That was you? You listened to us!” She moved to sit up
then.
But something changed
in him. His arms tightened and he pushed her back, holding her with one arm
while he fumbled with the buttons on her shirt. “I know you love me. You kiss
me like you love me,” he said harshly.
Alison stiffened,
frightened and shocked, and her efforts to resist him were too feeble compared
to his strength. His hands were all over her. His voice repeated in her ear,
“Love me, love me,” until it roared in her head and it was all she could hear
for a long time.
Chapter Eleven
Ruthlessly Sent to the Bottom
When Alison came to
herself, it was with the realization that it was pitch black out, and Aubrey
was gone. She recognized disbelief and despair over what had just happened
hovering on the edges of her consciousness, but, as if afraid to touch a fresh
wound, her mind refused to dwell on this horror. She remembered Aubrey scrambling
away. It seemed she heard him crying and saying how sorry he was, then it was
quiet. However, minutes later he was back and incongruously, he pulled her
skirt down over her legs, and straightened her shirt over her chest. She
realized these things now; they were like a dream that she couldn’t quite piece
together. Mechanically she sat up, buttoning her shirt. Her eyes slowly
adjusted to the darkness. She could see the outlines of the trees against the
sky. She could make out the bulk of the fort over her shoulder. The piles of
granite blocks were just dark shadows set against the darker trees. She could
hear the steady splash of waves pushed in by a now gusty breeze. That breeze
soughed through the trees shutting out any other sounds.
How long she sat
there she had no idea. She was gripped by a disinclination to either think or
move. She realized that tears were dripping down her cheeks, but she felt
nothing except a dull coldness moving up her body until she was shivering
violently. She held at bay all the thoughts that were clamoring for her
attention; the pain in her body, the loss of her purity, the change this would
mean for her life, the contemptible selfishness of Aubrey Newell, and her own
sense of guilt over her intimacy with him. She focused on remembering what
happened with her schoolbooks. She found herself standing. Then she was
walking back over to the pile of granite. There they were, forgotten as she
had knelt to examine the sculpture. Being near it was akin to being near Sam
and she couldn’t bear it.
Alison snatched the
books up and ran across the lawn to the woods. Bears, bobcats or coyotes never
even crossed her mind as she ran. She must get away, get back home…home! No,
she couldn’t face them. She thought she couldn’t face anyone, for surely
they’d see; surely they would know to look at her that she was no longer the
Alison she was.
She burst through the
trees onto the road and ran all the way down to the center of the village where
she spied Remick approaching in the buggy. He pulled up next to her, asking
disinterestedly, “Where you been? We already ate supper. Figured you were at
Eliot’s.” He nodded up the hill.
Alison blinked,
wondering what time it was. She just stood there mutely, peering up at her
brother in the swaying light of the lantern hung from the buggy.
“What’s the matter
with you?”
Grateful for the
intermittent darkness, Alison spoke out the first thought that came to her.
“I’m going to Mrs. Reid’s, for the night. Tell Papa please.”