“Supper’s on, if you wants,” said one, the elder by the looks of his crinkled eyes.
Sylvanus looked toward their houses. Gone were the little yellow suns. Up this close, it looked more like cold blue moonlight spilling from their windows.
“Nay, better get home,” he said. “Mother’s off her head by now.”
The younger one pointed at a cut in the treeline. “Over there’s the road,” he said.
Sylvanus nodded, wondering if they were the two who fished his brother out of the sea and brought him home. He turned to his boat, his fish. “Be back in the morning, I suppose,” he said. “Appreciate your help.” A last nod of thanks, and he set off onto the footpath that took him up over the hill and onto the old horse road that would take him near to the head.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EVA
S
YLVANUS WALKED HARD
, grateful for the light left in the sky and the trees sheltering him from the wind. He was cold. With the sluicing he’d taken, his pants and undergarments felt like wet blankets draped around him. The path steepened, and his legs, still quivering from fright of Old Saw Tooth, were now aching with fatigue. Was a long day since five o’clock this morning, he thought wearily, and raised his arms over his head, stretching, trying to shift about some of the wet clothing that was starting to chafe his skin. Ten, fifteen minutes of walking, then another five to ensure he was definitely over the head, he cut off the path into the woods. Fighting dead sticks and boughs, he held out his hands, shielding his eyes against the bared limbs, invisible in the near dark, snapping at his face. Cripes, he hated the woods.
Finally he broke through, his relief shortened by the wind lashing him back. Thank Jesus he judged it right and was on top of the cliffs of the head—the far side from the path leading down through the woods and home. He bent into the wind, and thought to drop on his knees and scuttle across the bald cliff top like the dog. And he might’ve, if not for a black shape sifting out of the woods and floating toward him. Already spooked this evening, he now froze, the hair rising on his neck. The wind snatched at the spectre, tearing back its shawl, and he cried out with relief to see his mother, her face severe in its anxiousness as she fought against the winds, trying to reach him.
“Jesus Christ!” he swore, leaping forward and grabbing her outstretched arms. “What the hell you trying to do, frighten the shit out of me?”
She crumpled against him, her thin arms holding tight to his waist, her face digging into the wetness of his garments. He hung his head, knowing full well why she wept.
“Jeezes, Mother, you knows I’m not going to stay on the water in a bad blow.”
She pulled back, raising her fist, shrilling like the she-devil. “But you did. You went off too far, didn’t you? And couldn’t get back in time!”
“You knows I got back in time. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“By the grace of God! By the grace of God, you’re here.”
“For God’s sake, Mother—”
“For my sake,” she shouted, and her voice fell, barely audible over the moaning of the wind as she pleaded, “For my sake, you stay off them open waters. Promise me you’ll stay off them open waters—else, go fishing on the skiff with Manny and Jake.”
He balked. “Oh, cripes, now don’t start with that—” But she was turning from him, bending into the gale, hobbling toward the edge of the cliff, her shawl flying off from her sides like darkened wings.
“Mother—Mother, where you going?” and he leaped after her, taking her roughly by the arm before she was blown off the cliff. She fell to her knees, her shoulders stiff to his touch, her hair all loosened and whipping about her face. He held tighter as she leaned forward, staring out over the cliff and down to the sea. The woods were fully dark, the sea, a leaden grey, its swells oozing greyish as they broke up on the backs of another and up over Old Saw Tooth.
“I saw him,” she whispered.
He leaned closer to her, wrapping his arms around her, trying to edge his body between hers and the winds squalling around them.
“Saw who?” he asked.
“Your father. I saw him. I was crouching here, watching—just as I was watching for you—and I seen it happen—his boat carried on a swell.”
“Oh, jeezes, Mother.”
“It capsized. They both went overboard—I saw them. Your father come back up, clinging to Old Saw Tooth. He was staring up at me. He was late. He knew I’d be here, watching. He saw me—I know he did—I held him—with my eyes, I held him. I would’ve held him for all eternity if he hadn’t looked away. But he had to look away—to search for Elikum—”
He struggled to breathe, his arms holding her too tightly, trying to shut out with his mind what his eyes had already seen.
“Elikum,” and she moaned. “I seen him—just once. His head come up, and then his hand, his arm—like he was waving goodbye to me—or else reaching out for me to save him,” she ended harshly. “Then he was gone. When I looked back, your father was gone, too.”
“God, Mother,” he choked, the wind colder against the tears wetting his face as he looked out over the sea, seeing his father clinging to Old Saw Tooth, and Elikum reaching up from his watery grave, grasping for the hand of a mother who could not save him. And she had stood here, this mother, reaching down from a wind-torn cliff, battling the sea with the strength of her eyes to heave back her man, her boy. And he heard her screams as Elikum sank beneath his last farewell, and he heard her screaming again as Old Saw Tooth grinned wickedly up at her, licking his chops over the feast of her man.
“I stayed a long time, watching,” she whispered. “Watching—and waiting—waiting for them to come back up. Pray to Jesus I never got to sit here, watching for you agin,” she ended bitterly, pulling back to lash her eyes onto him. But the light was nearly gone, and he caught just the faintest gleam of her tears.
“I won’t drown! Swear to God, I’ll never drown.” He wept, pressing his face against hers. She trembled and he held her more tightly, infusing her body with what warmth was left in his. “Lord, how could you keep this? You should’ve told me, told somebody.”
“Eva.”
The softly spoken name shivered through his ear like a snippet of wind, near jolting him out of his skin. It was Adelaide, kneeling beside him as if she’d been there for some time, her face barely discernible in the fallen light, her tone full of anguish as she spoke again,
“Eva,” and her voice caught on a sob. Reaching her arms around the old woman’s shoulders, she pressed herself against Eva, trying to warm her as he himself was doing. “You should’ve told somebody, Eva, you should’ve told,” she said tightly. “Carrying this all these years.”
Eva was still staring out over the sea, giving no indication she heard or was aware of the younger woman’s presence. Presently, her hand crept out of her shawl, patting Adelaide’s.
“Would’ve been harder for the boys.” She pulled away from them both, her tone surly once more as she looked to Sylvanus. “I only tell now to save you from your own foolhardiness—if only to spare your mother extra burden.”
Adelaide’s eyes were on him. “What were you doing out there? Why’d you wait so late to come home?” she flared. “Lord, Syllie, you keep your mother worrying like this.”
He touched her shoulder lightly. No matter her words. He heard the fright in her tone, and he felt her tremble as he had his mother. A shiver cut through him, more from the cold wet of what must’ve been his mother’s pillow these past years than from the night’s chill and his wet clothes.
“Let’s get home,” he said, and slowly unfolded himself, standing, buffering them both from the wind as they rose alongside him.
“I don’t know who’s the more foolish,” Adelaide admonished, tucking her arm through Eva’s and hurriedly leading her across the cliff toward the trees. “Certainly, it’s the both of you,” she chided, “for being out on a night like this.”
“Pay attention, Addie,” said Sylvanus as she near stumbled. Keeping directly behind, he held out the flaps of his oilskins like a tent, shielding them as much as he could. It was much darker in the woods, the path barely visible. “Here, let me get ahead,” he said to Addie, but she shushed him back.
“I’ve walked this way enough times,” she said, carrying on feeling out the path with her feet. She paused as Sylvanus, in his tiredness, tripped over a tree root. Cursing, he grabbed a branch, catching himself from pitching headlong and tumbling over them both.
“You’ll be the death of us yet this night,” cried Adelaide, reaching back to help steady him. Her hand was soft and warm as it found his, and he relished her squeezing his fingers for a second before relinquishing it and grabbing onto a branch to keep her own footing. He relished her chiding as well, for there was a warmth in it, like the relief of a distraught mother whose negligent children have wandered off and are found, cold but safe. And after they had reached the foot of the hill, he followed obediently as she ordered him home while she trekked across the footbridge with Eva.
He watched after them, worrying for his mother’s crimped figure leaning heavily against Adelaide. As if feeling his concern, Eva looked back. Waving him inside, she stood a little straighter—making herself look strong so’s he wouldn’t worry about her, he figured, as Adelaide tugged her along. “Cripes, Mother,” he groaned.
Trudging inside, he skimmed off his clothes and fell into bed, without washing, without supper. His eyes closed wearily, only to be emblazoned again with the images of his father and Old Saw Tooth, and of Elikum. And his mother—that she had seen, that she had seen. He listened now to the roar of the ocean crashing against the head, and for the first that he could remember, he hated this jealous bitch of a sea mother who would snatch babies from a land mother’s breasts and hide them in the massive rolls of her own. He turned, tormented, upon his pillow, trying to shut out her rumbling as she tore at the shoreline, and the moaning of her dead tucked into her bosom, forever fitful in their slumbers, forever rolling upon different shores, seeking the beach upon which they were spawned, and heralded by a wind endowed with the cries of their grieving loved one.
He drifted toward the sound of his mother’s voice calling to him. He raised his head, trying to see her, to answer her; but an explosion of water hit him, toppled him, and immediately the sea bitch was upon him, pawing him, dragging him under, muffling his mother’s screams calling him back. But he was too far afloat, too buoyant, with nothing to grab hold of, sinking, sinking, the sea mother wrapping him in her cold, wet blanket, heavy, heavy, the weight of it too heavy and cold, numbing him, sinking him—sinking—
“Syllie!”
He tried to breathe, to fight—couldn’t—couldn’t move. The cry sounded again, calling him back, holding him. He tried moving but couldn’t, couldn’t move, couldn’t move. The voice called again, more faintly now, and he strove harder toward it—just a bit, if he could move just a bit, a hand, a finger—the voice was weakening, weakening, drowning amidst the frightening roar of the sea mother.
“Syllie!”
He thrashed, jolted. Something had him, was tugging him, pulling him up. He gasped for air, his eyes, unseeing, his chest stricken with fear. The hag, the hag had him; her fingers, tentacles of cold, damp fog, encircling his throat, choking him, her face appearing before him, fused, twisting grotesquely behind the thin white membrane of a caul.
“Syllie, for gawd’s sake!”
It was Addie, his Addie, leaning across him, grasping at him, shaking him as he wrenched at the folds of her white cotton nightgown.
He sat up, his chest pounding, sweat running in rivulets down his face. He wiped it off, hating the wet, clammy feel of it. He tore off the blankets, hot all over, wanting nothing, nothing, touching him.
“You’re making me scared, Syllie,” Addie cried, and he was scared too, despite his eyes opened, despite his knowing where he sat, and he grasped the blankets back to him as if they were a buoy and he about to be swept away again.
“Syllie?”
He turned to her, her face wan in the partially lit room. She’d left the lamp burning outside their door, as she used to do when they’d first married. It softened her, the dim, gold light. Softened the room. He started breathing more deeply, slowly taking in the room, Addie. Holding his head into his hands, he let out a long, slow breath.
“Jeezes,” he croaked. “That was a bad one.”
“I thought you were dying,” she cried. “A heart attack or something, a fit.”
He pulled her to him, lying back down. “Nay,” he said. He tried to say more.
“I couldn’t wake you up. The sounds—you were making godawful sounds—not human, swear to gawd, Syllie, they weren’t human.”
He let out another long, slow breath, patting her, afraid to close his eyes, afraid of it coming back, the hag. “How’s Mother?” he asked, wanting her voice.
“You got us all scared to death this night, Syllie, damned if you don’t.”
“I never meant to.”
“You ought not to have scared her like that.”
“I never meant to.”
“But you did. She’d been coming back and forth all evening. If Manny and Jake weren’t off buying their new skiff, she would’ve had them on the water looking for you.”
“They would’ve known I’d put ashore.”
“You saying it can’t happen—you can’t drown? That old water’s always drowning somebody—for sure you knows that.”
Her tone was again that of a distraught mother. He turned his cheek to hers, gazing into her eyes, wanting to sink into their blueness as might a dying sun into the sea. He was afraid. Afraid of the dark, afraid of fear.
“She saw them,” he said to keep himself awake, to keep her talking.
“Don’t say it, Syllie. Oh, I can’t think of it—what she seen up there, watching.”
“Gawd, she saw them!” The tension from the day snapped, leaving him crumpling like a baby. She slipped her arms around his neck, cradling him. “Addie,” he whispered, the grubbiness of his cheek imprinting itself against the softness of her breasts, “Addie, I didn’t wash—I—”
“Shh,” and she cradled him tighter, her fingers stroking his hair, the back of his neck. “I’ll heat some water in the morning and pour you a tub.”