A Northern Light (26 page)

"...it's really too late to plant, but Pa said to buy half a pound anyway, plant it and see what we get. Whoa! Whoa, there!" Royal said, stopping the horses at the bottom of the road that leads to Minnie's. "Matt, I'm going to let you out right here. Jim's drive is a bit narrow for this old wagon. I'll be back for you in a couple of hours. I thought we could ride up and see Dan and Belinda's land. Forty acres they've got. Just bought it from Clyde Wells with the money Belinda's father give 'em."

Gave them, Royal,
gave
them,
I thought. "All right," I said, jumping down, careful not to hurt the posy I'd picked for Minnie.

He turned the horses around, talking as he did. "Wells charged them good for it, but still, forty acres."

"Royal!" I suddenly said. Too loudly.

"What?"

"Just ... don't forget. Don't forget to come back for me."

He frowned at me. "I said I'd be back in two hours. Didn't you hear me?"

I nodded.
I did hear you, Royal,
I thought,
but I don't believe you. I still don't believe any of this.
Not the boat ride on Big Moose Lake. Not the walks and buckboard rides since then. Not your promise of a ring. You'll forget all about me and I'll have to walk home from Minnie's and I'll see you on the way, riding with Martha Miller, and you'll look right through me and I'll wake up and realize that it was all a dream.
Please come back for me,
I said silently, watching him go.
Please take me riding. Because I like how everyone looks at us when we pass by. And I like sitting next to you in the wagon with your leg pressed against mine. And I don't even mind listening to all the characteristics of hybrid corn, because I want you to touch me and kiss me even if I am plain and bookish. Especially because I am those things.

The blackboard disappeared around the bend, and I turned and headed up the road toward Minnie's house. As I walked, I waved to the hired hands. They were building split-rail fences from the trees they'd felled to enclose Jim's land. I saw Thistle, one of the cows, grazing nearby. She was huge and would calve any day now.
Gravid
was my word of the day. It means pregnant. When I read it that morning, I thought it was the strangest-sounding word for pregnant. Until I'd read on and learned that it also means burdened or loaded down. Looking at Thistle, with her heavy belly and her tired eyes, it made perfect sense.

I smelled the flowers I'd picked for Minnie. I hoped she would like them. It had been so long since I'd seen her—weeks—and I had so much to tell her. Last time I went to visit, I'd just received the letter from Barnard, but I never got the chance to show it to her, because she'd been laboring with her twins. And then I was busy with the farm and Miss Wilcox's library, and then I'd gone to the Glenmore, and it seemed like ages since I'd really been able to talk to her. I still wanted to tell her about the letter, even if I wasn't going. I wanted to tell her about Royal, too, and the ring he was going to give me. I wanted to see if maybe she could help me figure a way to both be married to Royal and still be a writer, to be two things at once—like one of those fancy coats they have in the Sears and Roebuck catalog that you can change into a whole different coat just by turning it inside out.

When I got to her porch, the front door banged open. Jim greeted me sullenly, stuffed the remains of a sandwich in his mouth, and trotted down the steps to join the hired hands.

"Minnie?" I called, stepping inside. A nasty smell hit me. A sour reek of old food and dirty diapers.

"Matt, is that you?" a tired voice asked. Minnie was sitting on her bed, nursing her twins. She looked so thin and drawn that I barely recognized her. Her blond hair was greasy. Her clothing was stained. The babies were sucking at her hungrily, making greedy grunting noises. Her eyes darted around the room. She looked anxious and embarrassed.

"Yes, it's me. I brought you these," I said, holding out the flowers.

"They're so pretty, Mattie. Thank you. Will you put them in something?"

I went to find a glass or a jar, and it was then I noticed how filthy the place was. Plates and glasses crusted with food littered the table and counters, cutlery filled the sink. Dirty pots covered the stove top. The floor looked like it hadn't been swept in ages.

"I apologize for the state of things," Minnie said. "Jim's had four men helping him all week. Seems I just get one meal cooked and it's time for the next one. The babies are always hungry, too. Here, take them for a minute, will you? I'll make us a cup of tea."

She handed one of the babies to me, wincing as she pulled him off her swollen, blue-veined breast. Her skin, where the baby's mouth had been, was livid. Tiny droplets of blood seeped from a crack in it. She saw me staring and covered herself. She handed me the other baby, and in no rime flat, they were both screaming. They twisted and kicked. They screwed up their tiny faces and opened their little pink mouths like two screeching baby birds. Their diapers were soggy. Their cheeks were rashy. Their scalps were crusty. They stank of milk and piss. I was trying to settle them, so they'd stop screaming, so the wet from the diapers wouldn't soak into my skirt, when the next thing I knew, Minnie was standing over me, her arms at her side, her hands clenched.

"Give them to me! Give them back! Don't look at them like that! Don't look at me! Just get out! Go! Get out of here!" she shouted.

"Min ... I ... I'm sorry! I wasn't ... I didn't mean..."

But it was too late. Minnie was hysterical. She crushed the babies to her and started to cry. "You hate them, don't you, Mattie? Don't you?"

"Minnie! What are you saying?"

"I know you do. I hate them, too. Sometimes. I do." Her voice had dropped to a whisper. Her eyes were tormented.

"You hush right now! You don't mean that!"

"I do mean it. I wish I'd never had them. I wish I'd never gotten married." The babies struggled and howled against her. She sat down on the bed, opened her blouse, and grimaced as they latched on to her. She leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes. Tears leaked out from under her pale lashes and I was suddenly reminded of a story Lawton once told me, after he'd come home from walking a trapline with French Louis Seymour. Louis had caught a bear in one of his steel traps. A mother bear that had two cubs. The trap had broken her front leg. By the time Louis and Lawton got to her, she was mad with fear and pain. She lay on her side, keening. Her other side was gone. There was no fur there, no meat, only a livid mass of gore and bones. Her frantic, starving cubs had eaten her flesh away.

"You're just weary, Min," I said, stroking her hand. "That's all."

She opened her eyes. "I don't know, Matt. It all seemed so exciting when we were sparking, and then just married, but it isn't now. Jim's always at me..."

"He's probably just worn down, too. It's hard work clearing—"

"Oh, don't be dense, Mattie! I mean
at me.
But I can't. I'm so sore down there. And I just can't have another baby. Not right after the twins. I can't go through it again. Mrs. Crego said that nursing will keep me from quickening, but it hurts so, I think I'll go crazy with the pain. I'm sorry, Matt ... I'm sorry I shouted at you. I'm glad you came ... I didn't want to tell you all these things ... I'm just so tired..."

"I know you are. You lie there for a minute and rest. Let me make the tea."

Within minutes Minnie had fallen asleep and the babies with her. I got busy. I boiled water and washed all the pots and pans and dishes. I boiled some more and set the dirty dishrags and aprons to soaking. I filled the big black washing kettle with water, threw in a pailful of dirty diapers I'd found in the kitchen, and started a fire under it in the backyard. It wouldn't reach a boil for some time, but at least she wouldn't have to haul the water. Then I scrubbed the table and swept the floor. I set the table, too, thinking the men would be back in for supper before long, and put my flowers in the middle of it. When I'd finished, the house looked and smelled much better, and I looked and smelled much worse. Then I heard wagon wheels at the bottom of the drive. I looked out the window and saw Royal. Already. He and Jim were talking, but he'd expect me momentarily. I'd never even had the chance to tell Minnie about him.

As I quickly patted my hair back into place, it hit me: Emily Dickinson was a damned sneaky genius.

Holing up in her father's house, never marrying, becoming a recluse—that had sounded like giving up to me, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed she fought by not fighting. And knowing her poems as I do, I would not put such underhanded behavior past her. Oh, maybe she was lonely at times, and cowed by her pa, but I bet at midnight, when the lights were out and her father was asleep, she went sliding down the banister and swinging from the chandelier. I bet she was just dizzy with freedom.

I have read almost a hundred of Emily's poems and memorized ten. Miss Wilcox says she wrote nearly eighteen hundred. I looked at my friend Minnie, sleeping still. A year ago she was a girl, like me, and we were in my mamma's kitchen giggling and fooling and throwing apple peels over our shoulders to see if they'd make the initial of our true loves. I couldn't even see that girl anymore. She was gone. And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for.

I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't. And John Milton didn't, either, though he might have made life easier for untold generations of schoolkids if he had.

Then Royal hollered for me and I had to wake Minnie to tell her good-bye. When I got outside, the afternoon was bright and sunny, and Royal took my hand as we rode to his brother's land, and he told me we would have land, too, and a house and cows and chickens and an old oak bureau his grandmother had promised him, and a pine bed, too. He said he had some money saved up, and I proudly told him I had ten dollars and sixty cents saved up between money I'd had before I went to the Glenmore and two weeks' wages (minus the four dollars I'd given Pa), and tips. He said that was almost enough to pay for a good stove. Or maybe a calf instead. He pleased himself so much just talking about these things that he smiled and put his arm around me. It was the nicest feeling. Lucky and safe. Like getting all your animals inside the barn just before a bad storm hits. I nestled against him and imagined what it would feel like to lie next to him in a pine bed in the dark, and suddenly nothing else seemed to matter.

"Not another one, Weaver, damn it!" Cook shouted, slapping her spatula against the worktable.

"Sorry," Weaver said, bending down to pick up the pieces of the plate he'd just broken. The second one that morning. He'd also smashed a drinking glass.

"No, you're not. Not in the least," Cook said. "But you will be. Next thing you break is coming out of your wages. I've had it with you. Go down cellar and bring up some new plates. And don't you dare drop them."

It was Bill the dishwasher's day off and we all missed him terribly. We hadn't appreciated him enough. We never realized how quietly and graciously he went about his work. We did that morning, though, because Cook put Weaver—whose face was still as bruised and mottled as a piece of old fruit—on dishwashing duty and Weaver wasn't the least bit quiet or gracious about it. He muttered and grumbled, swore and complained.

Four whole days had elapsed since Mr. Sperry had put him on kitchen duty, long enough for most people to get their noses back in joint, but Weaver was still furious about it. Fran had tried to jolly him on several occasions and I'd tried to interest him in a few word duels, but neither of us had had any success.

I'd made an extra special effort that morning. I told him all about
saltant,
my word of the day. "It means dancing, leaping, or jumping, Weaver," I'd said. "Its root comes from the Latin
sal,
for salt. Isn't that interesting? You can see the connection, can't you? A bit of salt sprinkled over pork chops or eggs can make them dance, too." I thought my observation was fascinating, but Weaver did not. He continued to sulk, and fight with Cook, and generally make the kitchen a thoroughly miserable place to be.

No one was pleased with the arrangement. Fran and Ada and I hated it almost as much as Weaver did, for we all had to take turns waiting on table six. That horrible man grew bolder by the day. Ada had a bruise the size of a silver dollar on her bottom from his pinching fingers.

Cook was the unhappiest one of all. She didn't want Weaver in her kitchen any more than he wanted to be there. On the first day, she told him to season a huge pot of chicken soup and he'd oversalted it. On the second, she gave him a quart of heavy cream to whip and he'd turned it to butter. On the third, she'd told him to change the sticky fly tapes that hung down from the gaslamps and he'd dropped one into a pan of béarnaise sauce.

That's when she blew up at him. She yelled at him for being careless and clumsy, and then she told him he had his head straight up his ass and that he had a lot of nerve moping and carrying on when it was nobody's fault but his own what had happened. And that if he wanted to work in the dining room instead of the kitchen, he'd have to learn to stay out of fights.

"You brought it on yourself, Weaver, and now you have to deal with the consequences," shed scolded.

"I did not bring it on myself."

"Yes, you did."

"How? Did I call myself names? Haul myself down out of the wagon? Beat myself up?"

Cooks answer to that was to banish him to the back steps with a paring knife and four bushels of potatoes. It did not pay to fight with Cook.

I think Weaver would have kept up his surly behavior all week, and possibly have gotten himself killed by Cook or Bill or the rest of us, if Mr. Higby hadn't come by.