“No. No, I just never thinks of the weather like that.” She shrugged. “Either it’s raining or it’s not. Coming straight down or at a slant.”
“Yeah, for sure. Hard knowing weather in bigger places, when there’s houses all around you barring it out. Now, a place like this”—he gestured toward the meadow—“you sees it all the time, especially summertime. Like youngsters, the way the wind plays with the grass. And the flowers, too.”
She nodded, drawn into his thought, his pretty words, watching as he ran his hand through the coarse, thick hair draping his brow, liking how it fell back again once his fingers left off.
“Yup, heavenly, for sure, this meadow. As good as straddling a boatload of fish. Well, almost, anyway,” he added with a grin. “Nothing as heavenly as a boatload of fish. Live and die in a boat, I could.”
There it was. The silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Barely able to restrain a groan, she turned from him, retracing her steps back along the brook. A window had just been opened for her into another world, a kingdom of princes and castles. And its vision was thrilling, staggering, even, during those moments when she gazed into his molten brown eyes. But no hooded eyes had she. Regal he might be upon his meadow, but it was all a disguise for the beastly fisherman reigning within, waiting, wanting to infuse her body with a dozen squalling infants. And who reigns then, huh? Who reigns in a houseful of shrieking, squalling babies?
Misery, she answered herself. Nothing but misery.
Yet here he was, catching up to her, his fingers strong and warm as they touched her arm, his eyes liquid soft as they invited her to come sit. He closed his hand around hers, all tender and firm as though it were a finch he held, and pointed toward a white speckled rock near the brook, wide and flat enough to sit on. She allowed him to lead her, but he might as well have been the fevered Apollo, for her back was like an oak as she sat, her heart shielded by bark.
Pulling away her hand, she sat, folding her skirt around her. “So, what makes fishing such a heavenly thing for you?” she asked, supplanting his nicely pressed suit with oilskins—a guarantee against forgetting that this was no prince sitting beside her, merely a fisherman, anchored to the sea, and the momentary lapse into fantasy back there, just that, a fantasy.
But it was nice, the quiet of the meadow, drummed into being by the falls extinguishing all other sounds except that of the birds flitting about and the wind playing with her hair. What harm then, given his unsolicited pursuit, to linger a while and loosen a few leaves for his laurel?
“You have pretty hair,” he said, stretching out on the grass beside her, reaching out to touch a strand that hung straight as flint across her shoulder.
“Don’t do that,” she said abruptly, and he pulled back, a deep flush darkening his face. She shrugged, as caught as he was by her reaction, and leaned forward, the fine strands slipping forward, screening her cheek. “Well, then, what is it about fishing you likes so much?”
He lay back, clasping his hands behind his head, squinting contemplatively into the heavens. “Hard to say any one thing,” he began after a pause. “It’s the whole thing, I suppose. Makes me feel worthy—rich, if you like. Yeah, that’s it—it makes me rich.” He grinned as she peered at his rubber boots. “Never mind a man’s boots. Not always money that makes a man rich. I suppose you’ll be buying all kinds of pretty shoes once the plant starts up.”
“I dare say it’ll be lots of fun,” she replied, “getting all dressed up and driving to Hampden, and passing everybody from Hampden all dressed up and driving to Ragged Rock.”
“Sounds like you hates where you live.” He rolled onto his elbow, his eyes all curious again, watching her. “Supposing, then,” he asked, as she shrugged a noncommittal reply, “a house was
so
nice that it made whoever was living in it joyful? If, say—well, you know,” he floundered at her puzzled look, “if it made a person
so
joyful, she then rested in God? What I’m saying,” he persisted, “is you don’t have to be keen on a place so long as you’re keen on your house.”
“Perhaps. If I could live all by myself somewhere.”
“Mother was always singing with the larks, and for sure she had a big enough crowd. Can be lots of room in a house. That’s what we always says of Mother, how she kept to herself—despite her brood—and was never surly, no matter how hard she was taxed.”
“Maybe it’s like you said—she never heard nothing, only bubbling water. Anyway, that’s probably what I’d be like,” she added, a mite contrite as his mouth tightened.
“Bet I knows what you’d like—the sound of all that money clinking and all them fine shoes and cars it’ll buy. That’s what you’d like to hear.”
She sniffed. “And is there room in your house for that?”
“In my house there will be many rooms,” he half quoted. “A man knows from the first when a woman needs a lot of rooms. From the proud way she holds herself and scorns them asking her to dance. Eb Rice’s, couple of weeks ago,” he replied to her questioning look. “I was watching you through the window.”
Her chin jutted out, a gesture of childhood defiance that had become as fixed a feature on her face as her nose. “No wonder you were always banished—sneaking and spying. Well, why’d you come asking me for a walk if you thinks I’m too proud for you?”
“I never thought you too proud for me. Like I said, I mightn’t have money, but I’m rich. And proud likes rich. That’s what all women aims for, isn’t it, to be a rich man’s wife?”
“Aiming for?” She gave an absurd laugh. “The only thing I aims for is to soak my hands at the day’s end.” And done with his insolence, she rose, brushing off her skirt.
“Hey, wait.” He scrambled to his feet as she flounced off toward his boat. “Look, I was just joking—I thought we was joking. Cripes, have you never said a foolish thing?”
“I don’t walk around thinking I knows what everybody else is thinking, that’s for sure—or calling myself rich.”
“Now, that part I wasn’t joking about.” He leaped ahead, planting himself before her like the spine of a black vir. “It’s not poor when you chooses the thing.”
Her face hardened. “Where I comes from, a cankered spud is a cankered spud, no matter you chooses it or not. Chooses!” She balked. “As if one chooses one’s lot.” Brushing past him, she ran down on the landwash, standing beside the boat, waiting for him. He hadn’t followed and she glanced back irritably, catching again that wretched curious look of his, and his hands curling by his sides like a youngster fevering to touch a forbidden toy.
“Rich,” she muttered. Yet no beggar was he as he shook out the knees of his finely pressed pants and started toward her with the slow, deliberate walk of a lord, despite his awkward gait and rubber boots. Leaning against the boat, she bit her lip in annoyance, begrudging him the truth of his words.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TRADING A MEADOW
S
HE KNEW HE’D BE CALLING
the following Sunday, and as decided as she was that she wouldn’t be accompanying him, she still found herself waiting for his knock. Cruel had been the fates, torching her soul with desire! And the following days as her hands moved mechanically through her chores, she revisited again and again that delectable cupboard of edibles she’d discovered within herself that kept sharpening her senses, igniting her being with the merest touch of cloth caressing a bared ankle, a strand of hair trailing her throat, the tautness of her belly pressed against the windowsill as she leaned against it, gazing outside. And at night, when all was finally quieted, darkness pressed upon her, taunting her with possible worlds and kneading her being with such longing she near cried out with the want of it.
But no matter the mystic murmurings of dreams bewitching her nights, no matter the sudden splashes of colour illuminating her grey fields of toil, she knew them to be barren, to be the passing glory of the blue iris, which blooms with such fever it withers on its stalk at the day’s end. But, Lord, how much greyer her fields looked after she had glimpsed a bloom, no matter it hadn’t rooted in her. She had seen its glory, had tasted the sweetened nibs of clover on her dream-torn bed.
Thus, when his knock sounded, her hands shook as she jammed the tablecloth she’d been folding into a drawer and dashed across the kitchen, chasing away the mob of younger ones cluttering her way. Her sisters, Ivy and Janie, stood giggling, peering out the window, and she whipped them a look of such evil they cowed, letting fall the curtain. Rooting through the pile of laundry waiting to be sorted, she pulled out her favourite sweater, shook out the wrinkles before donning it, and coaxing strands of hair behind her ears, she opened the door.
As though knowing when they parted the Sunday before that she most likely wouldn’t be accompanying him again, at least, not without good reason, he spoke with an urgency the second she stepped outside.
“There’s something you must see. Swear to God, I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“As long as you brings me back soon as I says.” And waiting not for his nod, she marched straight ahead to his boat, a tinge of guilt over the eagerness with which he followed her. She shrugged carelessly. Had she not bid him a firm goodbye last week? Yet still he came. Fine. By doing so, he buffered any remorse she might have in knowing that it wasn’t him she was seeking—at least, not the life he was offering—but merely another morsel for her cupboard.
In just a week, the meadow had changed from a water-soaked bog into a summer’s garden, the grass not yet tall enough to hide the sprinkling of daisies and piss-a-beds and buttercups, all swaying in the breeze, as intoxicated as she upon their nectar. And with the wind rustling through the aspens coming into leaf, and the falls more quiet with the spring runoff drying up, it was easier to pry her eyes away from its tumultuous waters and marvel at this bouquet of wildflowers brought to her by this fisherman. Undoubtedly, she thought, casting out her arms as if in dance and breathing deeply of the sweet, perfumed air, it’s a different wind that rustles the trees of Cooney Arm, carrying nothing of the salt of the sea, as though laundering itself through the running waters of the falls before folding itself over her.
“You mind if I walks for a bit—by myself?” she asked as he, his boat secured to a rock, came up over the land-wash, joining her.
“First, I wants to show you something up on the head.” He pointed to the far side of the meadow and a path leading up the wooded hillside and out on the cliffs of the headland and the neck. “Won’t take long,” he coaxed. “Come on.”
He took the lead across the meadow, buttercups, daisies, and clover strangling around his boots. Nearer the treeline, the land sloped upwards with a well-trodden path snaking through the woods. Her sweater hooked on a rotted piece of slab-wood nailed to a tree, the words “Widow’s Walk” more worm-chewed than chiselled across its front.
“Mother put it there after Father never come home,” he said, carefully checking that his pant legs were tucked inside his rubber boots before bending into the uphill climb. She nodded. Most outports had a similar high peak, one that afforded the best view of the sea, chance someone was late getting home, although none was ever marked.
“She’s never said why she marked it. She don’t talk about that time,” he replied to her thought, grasping branches and shrubs, pulling himself along.
She followed behind, waiting as he climbed up over a rotted stump. Reaching back, he took her hand, helping her alongside, then carried on with his climbing, glancing over his shoulder every so often to ensure she was still following, occasionally reaching down for her hand—as much to touch it, she felt, as to help hurry her along, for the path, whilst steep, was never that difficult. Still, she was grateful for her sturdy canvas shoes, and gasped for breath as the path became more steeply inclined and the wind more strong.
The trail and the evergreens enclosing it gave way to a fringe of junipers that been shorn for decades by screaming winds, till finally they naturally grew into the flattened, entangled brush of the tuckamores. She crouched amongst them, peering out onto the bald, rocky crown of the cliff that narrowed the neck, and at the gulls swooping below eye level, and at the ocean spreading out like an upturned sky, its sun leaking yellow across its surface, and the sporadic breaking of swells like scraps of cloud flung thither by the winds. Old Saw Tooth jutted up not too far off, foaming like a cyclone amidst the breakers crashing around it.
Sylvanus struggled toward the edge of the cliff, his pant legs flapping and his coat tails splayed out like the blackened wings of a cormorant drying itself.
“See there?” he shouted, and she shifted her tear-cut eyes toward where he was pointing and saw a moss-like shrub with numerous clusterings of bright yellow blooms matting the cliff top to the far side. He ducked back beside her, laying an arm around her shoulder, shielding her with his body as he helped her to her knees, this time pointing to a little ways beyond where he’d just been standing. She strained, seeing nothing more than a burrow scarcely visible in a tuft of grass.
“Carey chick,” he shouted in her ear, and grinned as she flinched. “Feeding time,” he said more quietly as she peered once more, seeing nothing of a bird, surmising the burrow in the grass to be a nest. His arm tightened around her shoulders as he steered her slightly to her right, pointing to another clump of grass nearer the cliff’s edge. “Kittiwake,” he yelled. “See the chick?”
No. No, she could see nothing, not with this wind moaning at her ears with the pitch of a thousand widows and swiping at her eyes as though spiteful of her tearless cheeks. Clutching the strands of hair whipping her face, she mouthed, “Can we go back now?”
Immediately his arm fell away. This time he followed as she hurried back amongst the tuckamores, through the woods, and with relief down the roughly hewn path.
“It—it was nice,” she said breathlessly, finger-combing her strewn hair behind her ears as they came out onto the meadow. “Really nice,” she added as he stared at her expectantly.