Mother Lode (7 page)

“Don’t have time to hear it now, Earl.”
George McKinney clipped the end of his cigar. “That’s what hearings
are for.”

Earl took that for agreement, but bristled
that George had once again found reason to school him in his own
line of work.

He was never sure when his audience with the
judge was over. “If that’s settled, then, I’ll see you tomorrow
night.”

“Bring money.” George McKinney grinned as he
held the light to his cigar.

Earl left, scratching his elbow. His
psoriasis was back, ever since this whole debacle started. He
didn’t look forward to reading more of the diaries, and he didn’t
relish his next task either—going down to the jailhouse.

Jorie awoke, sat up
abruptly on the edge of his cot. There was that dream again, of
walking through the blizzard with his mother, drowning in the
snow.
Why were they out in that
storm?
He knew at least part of the dream
was true. He
had
taken his mother for a ride, and they had walked through the
snow in the woods. Yes, he’d reported all that to Mr.
Foster.

People were saying he’d
murdered his mother!
Why would he do that?
He loved her!
They’d had arguments—mostly
about where he was going to college. She wanted him to stay at home
and go to the mining college in Houghton; he wanted to go the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And he would, too, as soon as
he got the money his father had promised.

Mr. Foster said he’d gone
to see a lawyer named Olsen. Yes, he remembered that now. But why?
There was more, there had to be. What recesses of his mind were
holding this information? What happened that day in the woods? He
willed himself to remember. Yes, some of the fog was clearing. He’d
found a man on the road, and together they went back into the woods
with the lantern, looking for her. Yes, he
had
tried to find her, he knew he
had!

Mostly housing disorderly drunks from both
sides of the lake, the jail hadn’t been designed with murderers in
mind. Probably it wouldn’t be too hard to escape, Earl mused.

It was dusk when he descended into the
bowels of the courthouse. Fetid odors came to him as he took the
keys off the peg on the wall— a combination of urine and cleaning
solution. The formula varied from one day to the next. Sometimes it
was the smell of feces that dominated. Or vomit.

He found Jorie’s cell door open, the boy
lying on his cot.

“O’Brien, where the hell are you?” he yelled
down the hall.

The jail keeper, wounded forty years ago in
the civil war, loomed out of the darkness and limped toward the
cell.

“Just dumpin’ the prisoner’s chamber pot,
sir.”

“The door of his cell is open!”

“I was only gone a minute. He was
sleepin’.”

“Never leave an occupied cell unlocked.”

“No, sir.”

Jorie sat up when Earl entered.

“You weren’t asleep?”

“No, Mr. Foster.”

“Did you know you could have run right out
of here?”

“How far would I get?”

Earl straddled the only chair, resting his
arms on its back. “Were you thinking of leaving here?”

“No, sir.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Jorie’s blue eyes pierced Earl’s. “Just now?
I was watching that spider in the corner there.”

The sheriff looked around at the dirty cell.
“I could have O’Brien clean this place up for you.”

Earl watched a cockroach scuttle across the
dark edge of the cell, and disappear into a crack in the wall. The
interior partitions of the cells had been plastered and painted
light green a long time ago. But years of abuse from enraged and
drunken prisoners had left the surface marred and broken, exposing
the skeleton of narrow wooden slats of lath. Battles had been lost,
nightmares had triumphed here. The ghosts of former inmates marched
across Earl’s mind.

“You’ve had some time to think things over,
lad. I hope your mind’s cleared up.”

Earl picked at a sore, waiting for the young
man to respond.

Jorie frowned. “How’s my little sister?”

“Mrs. O’Laerty is taking fine care of her.
Look, I don’t like this situation any better than you do. I’ll be
honest with you. Now if this is true, Jorie, and you cooperate with
us, I’ll try to get the sentence reduced.” He waited.

Jorie looked at the sheriff, then gazed out
the window at the lightly falling snow. Finally, he shifted on the
cot. “You said I went to see a lawyer.”

“Mr. Olsen over at Dollar Bay.”

“Did he say why?”

Earl searched the boy’s
face.
Didn’t he know?
“He said you wanted to commit your mother.”

“
Commit
her?”

“That’s right.”

Earl watched the color creep up the side of
the boy’s neck. He leaned forward. “The hearing’s coming up soon.
Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

“Where does Papa go every day?” Jorie asked
as he got ready for bed.

“Tomorrow we’ll walk up the hill and I’ll
show you. Now, what story would you like?”

“The flying horse one, Mummy.”

The Greek myth
Pegasus
was his favorite
story the summer of his fifth year.

“I don’t think I know it,” she teased, as
she tucked him in.

“Yes, you do. Peggythis and Belly.”

“Oh,
that
one.”

Catherine heard her step-son coughing in the
hallway. Walter frequently hung around the fringe of their story
time. She had no quarrel with his listening in the parlor, but
bedtime was her special time with her son, the one hour she wanted
just for the two of them. Besides, at twelve, she thought Walter
too old for such stories; he should be doing his lessons.

“Don’t tell the bad part, where Belly loses
Peggythis and gets punished because he flew up to the house of the
gods, when he wasn’t supposed to.”

“I won’t need to—you just did,” she
smiled.

Again she heard her step-son cough.

“Walter, go to the kitchen and help Helena
with the washing up, there’s a good boy.”

Catherine held Jorie close, while she spun
the tale once more.

When she had finished, Jorie said, “I can
call my rocking horse Peggythis.”

“That would be a good name.”

Jorie yawned. “He’s flying, flying way up in
the sky, Mummy.”

“Yes, Darling.”

“The stars are his friends. Here we go, here
we go home!”

She lay beside him as he slipped into sleep.
When she rose to leave the room she could hear Walter scuttling
down the stairs.

What a difficult child he was, always
hanging in the shadows. She had not been able to trust him since
that awful incident in the ice-cream parlor when Jorie was a baby.
In the crowded room, the baby carriage had been placed in the
corner, where it had been tipped over. Catherine was convinced that
Walter had done it, though he wouldn’t admit it, nor would Thomas
punish him. Later various unexplained bruises had appeared on
Jorie’s arms and legs.

She kissed her sleeping child, and went
downstairs. By the time she reached the kitchen, Walter was busy
helping the Irish housekeeper.

The next day Catherine took the boys for a
long walk over the hills behind the house. A favorite vantage of
Catherine’s, she could see the lake, as it wound like a silver
ribbon around the bend, and Houghton on the far side. But today the
spring winds were cold, and she kept her back to the view as they
climbed the sodden hills.

When they reached the plateau at the top she
surveyed the dreary landscape. Pulling Jorie’s scarf tighter she
said, “Look, I want you to see this. Do you know where we are?”

“I don’t like it here.”

“It’s Papa’s mine.” She pointed to the large
stack reaching toward the sky. “That’s the chimney, puffing out big
clouds of black smoke.”

“Like the dragon in the story.”

“Do you know that right under our feet there
are hundreds of men working deep down in the earth— like little
ants?”

“It isn’t pretty here, Mummy. Where are the
trees?”

For miles around the landscape had been
denuded by the voracious appetite of the steam engines. No more the
forests of hemlock, pine, beech and maple that once had graced the
land.

“The trees are inside the mine.”

“Why?”

“To hold up the walls so they won’t cave in
and bury the miners.”

Walter added his two cents worth, “But
there’s still cave-ins. Happens all the time. Miners are buried
alive and can’t get out. Or they get kilt when they set off an
explosion.”

“Don’t frighten him, Walter.”

"I wouldn’t like to work down there," Jorie
said.

A shiver went through her. “No. And you
won’t. You won’t ever have to work in a mine, I promise. That’s a
horrible way to spend your life—underground.”

“My brothers do. They’re shaft
captains.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Papa—” Jorie added.

“Papa works in an office on the grass. Way
over there where the buildings are. He only goes below once in
awhile, to check on things.”

“It’s pitch black down there,” Walter
informed.

“Don’t they get scared?”

“Some of them do.” Catherine said. “They
have to go way, way down in the earth.”

“The man-car goes straight down to the pits
of hell,” Walter whooped.

“Walter—”

“They call it that ‘cuz it’s so hot.
Sometimes the miners get pushed off the car, or fall off it. Then
they fall and fall a whole mile through a black tunnel! Just like
falling out of the sky, only worse, cause it’s so dark—”

“Walter, enough!”

“—And at the bottom, they get killed. My
brothers told me.”

“Walter! I said stop! You’ll frighten
him.”

Walter looked up innocently. “Sorry,
ma’am.”

In the afternoon, Catherine sat on the sofa
with her arm around Jorie, ready to read a story. She looked up as
Walter entered the room.

“No, you may not listen today. You disobeyed
me, continued to rant on about the mine when I told you not to. Go
to the kitchen now and work on your sums.

“Your ma bleeds!” Walter announced with
devilish certainty.

“She does not!”

“She does. Want proof?” He backed the
younger boy against the wall in the upstairs hallway.

“You’re lying. There’s nothing wrong with
her.”

“Wanna bet?”

From behind his back Walter pulled out a
soiled rag. He dangled and twirled it in front of the cornered
Jorie like a wiggling snake.

“See? See? I told you. It come from between
her legs. Her whole insides is bleedin’ out. You won’t have a ma
fer long. Nope, she’s gonna die.”

“It’s not true! She’s not dying.”

“Tis so. I found it in her room.”

“Did not.”

“Did too. There was five of them, all
smashed down in a lard pail she hides under her bed. She don’t want
you to know, see.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Come on, I’ll show you the others. It’s
hard to get the cover off the pail, but I’ll do it for you.”

“No!” He ran downstairs, but was afraid to
report this news to his mother.

For two days he worried that perhaps it was
true. Why else would she bleed? He imagined a constant flow of her
life energy leaking out— mostly at night, he supposed— until she
was so sick she couldn’t get out of bed. And then she’d die, like
Grandma.

The horror was too much to bear. He lost his
appetite and Catherine thought he was sick.

When she came to his room, she found him
curled up in a ball, making a sort of choking noise.

At first he wouldn’t tell her why, and
squirmed away from her. “I’ll get in trouble if I tell.”

“Trouble? With Papa?” She forced him to face
her.

“No,” he cried. “Walter.”

“Walter!”

He burst out, “Walter says you’re going to
die!”

“What?”

“Like his ma did.”

“That’s a terrible lie.
There’s not a bit of truth to it. Do I look
ill
to you?”

“No, but. . .”

“But what?”

It was hard to say. “He showed me a bandage.
And there were more he said.”

“A bandage? What kind of bandage?”

“There was blood on it.”

“He’s just trying to frighten you again, my
darling. It must have been someone else’s, a filthy thing he picked
up in the road.”

Jorie shook his head, and buried it in his
mother’s lap.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“He said it came from under your bed,” he
eked out.

Jorie felt her stiffen and push him away. He
saw the color first drain from her face, and then come back,
darkening to the shade of red plums. He had never seen her so
angry.

“He is a wicked, wicked boy to fill your
head with such frightening falsehoods.”

Her hands were tight little fists. A vein on
her forehead was sticking out.

Blood comes out of veins. Maybe this one
will pop open, and blood will come out of her head too.

“Jorie, look at me.”

“Then you don’t have bandages under your
bed?”

Catherine took a deep breath. “You wouldn’t
understand, Jorie. But it’s nothing to do with dying. It’s
normal.”

Normal.
How could bleeding be normal?

Walter was soundly punished.

Three days later, Jorie went out to play.
But when it was suppertime, he did not come in.

“Have you seen him, Walter?”

“No, ma’am.”

Thomas was not home. She said to Walter,
“Help me look for him.”

“I’ll go this way, and you go that way. All
right, ma’am?”