Northern Borders (7 page)

“Well, buddy,” my father said to me, “what do you think? You like it up here in Siberia?”

Suddenly I was overcome by tongue-tied shyness. I'd never been away from home for more than a night or two before. Now I was about to betray my father altogether by announcing that I wanted to defect from our home in White River and remain with my grandparents.

I think Dad understood my dilemma. He gave me an affectionate hug and suggested that we take a quick tour of the Farm before dinner. This was just the ticket to get us back on our old confidential footing, and a minute later we were joking together.

We visited the chickens and the barn and walked down through the pasture to the river where Gramp and I fished together evenings after supper. Then my grandmother was ringing the dinner bell. It was time to eat.

Like most countrywomen of her generation, my grandmother was an excellent cook. Her fried chicken and mashed potatoes with chicken gravy, fresh peas, homebaked bread and homemade butter
were never less than superb; but today every eye was on my father and grandfather, who were separated from each other only by me.

My grandmother sat at the foot of the long dining room table, at the opposite end from my grandfather. For a moment the room was totally silent. Then she said, “Go ahead, Tut.”

This was my cue to say Sunday grace, which I detested, the more so because, instead of bowing his head, my grandfather watched me the entire time. He knew that I was squirming and he delighted in my mortification. For a panicky moment I drew a complete blank.

“‘Our Father,'” Aunt Freddi prompted softly, “‘bless this . . .'”

In one great gulp, the words barely distinguishable from each other, I gasped: “Our-Father-bless-this-food-to-our-use-and-us-to-thy-service-amen.”

“Amen,” said my grandmother and father and little aunts.

But before the word was out of their mouths, and before I had the faintest notion that I was going to do it, I'd finally thought of the one personal request Preacher John Wesleyan Kittredge said I could make if I wanted to, and blurted out: “And help Dad and Gramp see eye to eye!”

“Amen!” Uncle Rob said, and burst out laughing.

“Brother!” my father said.

“Amen!” Little Aunt Klee said out of the side of her mouth.

“Je-sus!” my grandfather said. “Did they put you up to saying that?” He pointed his fork at my grandmother.

Even Freddi was smiling behind her napkin.

But my grandfather was genuinely mad. He was mad at them, meaning my grandmother, since he imagined that she had been responsible for my pathetic little supplication for family harmony.

“Pass the chicken down this way,” he growled at her. “Some of us around here work for a living and don't have time to spend all day praying and jabbering.”

“Austen works,” Little Aunt Klee said, nodding at my father, her eyes shining with mischief.

“Austen!” my grandfather said indignantly, as though he'd never heard my father's name, though it was his and mine as well. “Austen's a schoolteacher. Schoolteachers don't know what it is to put in a day's work.”

“Stop inciting trouble, Klee,” my grandmother said sharply, to which my little aunt replied, in a crisp offended voice, “Very well,” and got up from the table, as straight and regal as her haughty Egyptian namesake, and disappeared into the kitchen not to return.

Across the table from me Rob mouthed a word or two, I couldn't tell what. Freddi leaned over and whispered, “Don't worry, Old Toad. Klee does this at every family dinner.”

My grandmother sighed. She looked down the table at my grandfather and said, “Mr. Kittredge, your son is not a schoolteacher. He's a headmaster. What's more, he's the headmaster of one of the finest schools in New England.”

My grandfather had paid no attention to Klee's outraged departure. Very deliberately, he put down his fork. Staring straight at my grandmother, he said: “Saying a headmaster isn't a schoolteacher is like saying a trout isn't a fish. A fish may be a trout. But all trout are still fish and all headmasters are still schoolteachers. That's as certain as the sun coming up over the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the morning and setting behind the Green Mountains of Vermont at night.”

My grandmother, who had not served herself a morsel yet, glared back at my grandfather. “That,” she said, “is one of the most peculiar declarations I've ever heard in my life.”

“I'll tell you what's peculiar,” my grandfather said, pointing a long arm toward my grandmother's sitting room-bedroom, Egypt. “That, by God, is peculiar.”

My father set down his drumstick. “Okay, I can't stand any more of this,” he said, and took his plate out to the kitchen. He was immediately followed by Little Aunt Freddi, who burst into tears on her way out of the room.

Rob kicked me under the table. This time I caught what he mouthed at me. “Three down.”

“Now even you must be satisfied, Mr. Kittredge,” my grandmother said. “You've driven three of your four children away from their Sunday dinner.”

“By Jesus Christ, I haven't driven anybody anywhere!” my grandfather barked out. “The next time you hear from me, I'll be in Labrador.”

And he, too, was up and gone.

My grandmother nodded grimly. “Once a sashayer, always a sashayer,” she said. “His Waterloo looms nearer, Tut.”

Across the table Uncle Rob was holding up four fingers.

At exactly the same time, as though to immortalize this awful moment in my memory, the dining room clock began to strike twelve, in a wild, frenetic manner, followed at irregular intervals by all of the other clocks in the house both near and far.

Rob grinned. “Well, Buddy,” he said, helping me to another piece of chicken, “dig in.”

When I looked up from my plate again, I just caught out of the tail of my eye the dark swish of my grandmother's skirt, retreating into Egypt.

“That's five,” Rob said cheerfully. “Welcome to the Kittredge family, kiddo. Hope you like chicken.”

 

After dinner, Rob and Dad and I played flies and grounders in the cut hayfield beside the house while the women washed those few dishes that needed washing. Then while my father visited with my grandmother in Egypt, Little Aunt Klee and Little Aunt Freddi spirited me up to the cupola for a Sunday School lesson. They had just finished washing their hair with the soft rainwater from the big cistern outside the kitchen door, and they wanted to dry it in the sunshine and breeze coming in the cupola windows. Aunt Klee appeared to have gotten over her peeve and Freddi was as enthusiastic as ever. In fact, it seemed to me that with the exception of my grandfather, off in Labrador, nobody in the family acted as though anything much out of the ordinary had happened.

No sooner were we ensconced in the cupola than Klee and Freddi confirmed my impression that such domestic brush-ups were not at all unusual. “That was a wonderful grace that you said, Old Mole,” Freddi said. “I'm sure it made all of us Kittredges stop and think how much we really love each other.”

It occurred to me that if Freddi was right about the effect of my prayer, the Kittredges had a strange way of showing their affection; but I said nothing.

“That's how nearly all our Sunday dinners break up,” Klee said
with a certain note of pride. “Should the Sunday School lesson today deal with Dad and poor Austen, Freddi?”

“Mother certainly wouldn't want it to,” Freddi said. “On the other hand, if Mole's going to be heard from, won't he need to know?”

Klee nodded. “The sooner the better, I think. Listen closely, now, Austen. The reason your grandfather and your father don't see eye to eye has nothing at all to do with the fact that your father is a schoolteacher. It's that secretly, way down deep, he and your grandfather are too much alike.”

“In other words, proud,” Freddi said.

“Yes,” Klee agreed. “They are both very, very proud.”

“And very, very stubborn,” Klee said.

“Oh, yes,” Freddi said happily. “Which accounts for the feud.”

“You see,” Klee said, “your father is fifteen years older than I am, and I'm the next oldest. So for years and years he had to bear the brunt of your grandparents' quarreling all by himself.”

“That's why he can't stand an argument of any kind to this day,” Freddi said. “He heard so much arguing growing up.”

“He tended to side with Gram,” Klee said. “Not that we blame him. Your grandfather can be a regular Tartar when he wants to be.”

“Grief, Klee, not a Tartar. The old boy isn't that bad. Don't make him out to be Attila the Hun. Imagine what it must be like to be lawfully married to a woman with an official paper forbidding you to touch her.”

“There wasn't any such paper until years later, Fred. Not until after Uncle Rob nearly killed Mom being born.”

“At any rate, Austen, your father never said much to your grandfather, but when it came time for him to go to the university—” Here Freddi's voice began to quaver.

“Do you want to have a good long cry, Fred?” Klee said savagely. “Go ahead. I'll wait while you have your bawl.”

“I'm not going to cry, Klee. It's just all so sad. You know it is. What happened, Old Mole, is that—”

“—off he went and didn't come back for four years!” Klee ended triumphantly.

“Kittredge pride,” Freddi said.

“And Kittredge stubbornness,” Klee said in a fatalistic, delighted voice.

“Hey, you up there, Buddy?” It was Uncle Rob, calling from the foot of the attic stairs. “You're wanted down here, kid. Your dad's getting ready to go back down the line.”

“Ah,” Klee said. “The moment of truth has arrived. Flee while you can, Old Toad. Flee before you become consumed by Kittredge pride and stubbornness, like the rest of us.”

“That's silly, Klee. How can you tell him such drivel? He's just a boy visiting his grandparents.”

“Fly away, fly away!” Klee cried melodramatically, though I had the distinct impression that she did not want me to leave the Farm, any more than I wanted to.

Just how I would tell this to my father, however, was more than I knew. I wasn't at all sure I could tell him, and I dreaded the awful moment when I would have to announce my decision more than I had ever dreaded anything in my life.

 

They were waiting for me in the kitchen. Dad, Rob, and my grandmother. “Well, Bud,” Dad said, “what do you say? How do you like it here?”

“I love it,” I said, “but I miss you.”

He grinned. “That's natural. I miss you, too.”

Everyone was looking at me: my father, Rob, my little aunts, who'd followed me down from the cupola to be on hand for my big decision. Most of all, though, I was aware of my grandmother's presence. She was standing at the table putting the best silver back in its chest, and she was watching me intently with those sharp, dark, kind, and eternally expectant eyes. Yet if it was my grandmother I was most aware of, it was my father who best understood my predicament and how to make this momentous decision easy for me.

“Austen, would you like to stay on with your grandparents for a while longer this summer?”

You bet I would! Staying on for
a while.
That was the operative phrase. Now when my grandfather returned from Labrador he would find me here. I could atone for my terrible blunder after the grace. But the fact of the matter is that I desperately wanted to stay
on at the Farm with my grandparents. I knew I would see Dad frequently in any case.

After arranging to come back in a couple of weeks, and to have me spend a few days at home with him later in August, Dad left for White River. Soon afterward my little aunts rode back to the village with Uncle Rob. My grandfather appeared for evening chores and seemed neither surprised nor particularly pleased to discover that I was still there. He said nothing to me while I grained the cows, and returned to Labrador again as soon as he finished milking.

During supper my grandmother sighed frequently, and spoke very little herself. But after the dishes were done and dried and put up, and she'd swept and mopped the floor, she looked at me earnestly and said, “Today was one of the most mortifying days of my life, Tut.”

“I know, Gram,” I said. “I'm sorry about the grace.”

“You, Tut, have nothing to be sorry for. Your grace was very fine, very fine indeed. If you weren't destined to become a great archaeologist, I'd say you were cut out to be a renowned clergyman like Mr. John Wesleyan Kittredge. No, all the blame for today can be laid directly at your grandfather's doorstep.”

I scarcely knew how to respond to this assertion. Fortunately, though, neither my grandmother nor my grandfather ever seemed to expect much response from me at such times. And after spending the remainder of the evening reading with my grandmother in the kitchen, I went up to bed feeling that the day had been pretty successful despite all the turmoil.

Still, I lay awake for a time, turning over in my mind some of the ineluctable mysteries of the dynasty that Sojourner Kittredge, my forward-looking ancestor, had founded in Lost Nation so many years ago. Even at six, I sensed that there must be more to my father and grandfather not seeing eye to eye than Aunt Klee and Aunt Freddi had told me. Nor was I any closer to understanding why my grandparents themselves didn't see eye to eye. How had Uncle Rob nearly killed my grandmother, and what was this mysterious paper in my grandmother's possession? And why was my grandfather so insistent on reminding me that he was the meanest old bastard in Kingdom County and that I had heard this first from him?

Although I was not very sleepy, I was dog-tired. I shut my eyes
and imagined that I was descending into a dark Egyptian tomb, down and down, until I fell into a restless sleep. But the unpredictable events of that unpredictable day were still not quite over.