Hoggee (6 page)

“People fall sick,” Laura said. “It wasn't your fault.”

“It
is
my fault that I ended up cold and hungry instead of warm and fed at my mother's house, and that's what weakened me so the sickness could come over me.”

“Well,” said Laura, “I'm glad you got sick.” Her face reddened. “We should never have known you if you hadn't.”

Howard, unaccustomed to kind words, turned his head toward the wall.

“I don't want to meet Jack,” said Gracie.

“Gracie,” said Laura, “that's not nice to say.”

Gracie frowned. “I think Jack ain't very interesting, being always right.” She shrugged. “We won't meet him, anyway, on account of Sarah.”

Howard pushed himself to sit up. “What do you mean?”

Laura frowned at Gracie and turned to Howard. “Grandfather and Ma don't like to have people around us because Sarah is the way she is. They say folks will point at her and make fun.”

“What's wrong with Sarah, Laura?” he asked. “You can tell me.”

“We're not supposed to talk to you about her,” said Laura. “Gracie shouldn't have mentioned about your brother not meeting us. We've got chores to do,” she said. She got up from her chair, took Gracie's hand, and pulled her little sister behind her.

Gracie looked back at Howard, and she made a funny face.

Howard stared after them. When he got a chance, he would ask them again. If Laura wouldn't tell him, he was pretty sure Gracie would.

They did not come back until after supper. When he opened his eyes after a nap, Gracie sat cross-legged on the mattress beside him. “You been missing that mule Molly a good bit,” she said, her round blue eyes dancing. “So I've been going down to the big barn, and learned to sound just like her.” She put back her head, screwed up her face, and let out a bray.

Howard laughed. He had not laughed for a very long time. The sound rang strangely in his ears, but with Gracie around he became used to laughter. One evening he was awakened from a nap by a rush of cold air. He sat up. The windowpanes were open, and cold
air was coming into the room between them. Howard didn't think he could stand up to go to the window. He remembered that Gracie had lifted the latch that held the two side panes together earlier to open the window for a minute. He supposed she had forgotten to put the latch back securely, letting the wind blow the window open.

“Gracie,” he called, thinking he would ask her to come back into the room to close the panes.

“Yes,” her voice answered from outside the window.

Then a snorting sound came through the window. Something bumped against the glass, and Howard, thinking the little girl had found something to climb up on, expected to see Gracie's head poke into the room. Instead, a brown muzzle with a strip of white on it appeared in the window. Then Molly's whole head appeared.

“Molly!” said Howard, and he crawled across his mattress, pulled himself partly up with a pantry shelf to steady him, and stretched up his hand to pat the head.

“Ma had a conniption when I tried to bring Molly in the house,” Gracie said from below the window. “Ma is real persnickety about mules and houses.” Howard was too weak to pet Molly more, but he smiled all evening.

Even with Gracie to entertain him, the days were long. He missed making the notches in Molly's stall. He was better now. The coughing had almost gone, but he was weak still. He could sit up for a short time, leaning against the wall beside his mattress, but he could not stand. He wondered how long it had been since he had been transported from the barn on that small wooden cart.

One day when old Cyrus brought him a cup of milk, Howard asked, “How long have I been here?”

“Umm, let me think now.” He sat down on a kitchen chair and scratched his beard. “It's been a good while now, two fortnights maybe.”

Howard put down the cup he had started toward his lips. “That's a month! Is it February already?”

Cyrus rubbed his chin. “Well,” he said, “maybe. I mostly let the canal and the trees tell me the time. Not a trace of spring to be seen. That's a fact. When the ice starts to break up a bit and the green things first bud out, the hoggees will come drifting back to work. That will be spring.”

“I'll be strong enough to go back to the barn soon,” said Howard. “Tomorrow I'm going to try to stand, and I'll try walking.”

“There be no hurry, boy. We're mostly used to you now.” Then he laughed. “Molly, though, she misses you a good bit. Looks behind me, she does, when I come in, and shakes her head in disgust.”

Howard spent a lot of time worrying about the money. He wanted to go back to the barn. He wanted to see if the money was really under the hay. Sometimes he thought finding the purse in the snow had been part of the strange dreams brought on by the raging fever. He wondered what he would do with the money. It was not his, and he knew he should return it, but to whom?

Finally, he decided he would take just enough to buy a little food until spring. The rest he would return to Mistress O'Grady. She would know what to do with it. He felt better.

The next day he did stand. Laura and Gracie helped, one girl holding to each of his arms as he pushed himself up against the wall. His breaths came heavily, and his knees shook.

“Ma says it's being in bed so long makes you weak,” Laura said. “She says you'll get your strength back a bit at a time.”

He nodded, then let his body slide down against the wall. “Thank you for helping,” he said when he had caught his breath. He stretched across the mattress. “I'd like to try again, later, if you could help me again,” he said.

They said they would, but Howard grew tired of waiting. He decided to try by himself. He rolled to the wall, sat up against it, and began to struggle to push himself up. Something made him look toward the door. Sarah stood there in the doorway, watching.

“Hello,” he said.

The girl said nothing. She looked at him for a moment. Then she came toward him, walking across his mattress. She took his arm and began to pull upward until he was standing.

“Thank you, Sarah,” he said.

For a moment she stared into his eyes, then she turned and ran from the room. “Sarah,” he said. “Sarah, wait.” She did not look back.

The next day it happened again. He had just started to push himself up when he felt her eyes upon him again. “Sarah,” he said. He spoke softly, hoping not to scare her away, but then Laura appeared beside her. She took Sarah's hand and pulled her away.

He stood leaning against the wall for a moment and
had just started to slide down when Laura came back. She stood in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. “Leave Sarah be,” she said. “I told you Grandpa would be fit to be tied was he to find you bothering her.”

Howard let himself slide down to sit on the mattress with his back to the wall. “I wasn't bothering her,” he said. “She just stopped in the doorway, and I spoke to her. That's all.”

Laura let out a deep breath. “You can't talk to Sarah,” she said, “and she can't talk to you.”

“Why?”

“She can't hear, and she can't talk.” Tears began to well up in her eyes and run down her cheeks. “She wasn't born that way. Ma says it came on her after a terrible fever when she was about a year old. They didn't know she couldn't hear until our da accidentally dropped a big crock on the floor behind her. He yelled, too, but Sarah just sat there in front of him and never looked his way. She's lived most of her sixteen years now never hearing a thing. Grandpa says folks would poke fun at her if we was to take her places, and he don't like company to come into our house. You're the first one ever.”

“Deaf and mute,” said Howard.

“Yes,” said Laura, “now you know. Ma has taught her how to work some by pointing and such, but that's it. She ain't right, that's all, and you've got no call to be worrying her by trying to talk to her.”

Howard nodded. “I won't try to talk to her again.”

“Good,” said Laura. She turned and left the room.

That night Howard woke to a strange sound. It
came from the main room, and after a moment he realized someone was crying. He crawled to the door, pulled himself up in the doorway, and looked out into the dark room.

Someone sat on the kitchen bench that had been moved to be beside the window. Moonlight came through the window, and Howard could see that whoever was crying was too big to be Gracie; it had to be Laura or Sarah. The sobs were loud and strange, and he realized they came from Sarah.

He had never heard such a sorrowful sound, such desperate crying. He wanted to go to the girl. He wanted to comfort her, but how could he?

Leaning against the wall, he made his way to the kitchen table. He would hold onto it and be able to walk to the bench where Sarah sat.

Howard breathed hard. He lifted his feet as little as possible, saving his strength. Knowing she could not hear him, he tried to think how to let her know he was there so she would not be frightened when she saw him. He looked around the room. A broom stood near his door, and he made his way back to get it. Then when he had inched forward enough, he held the broomstick out to touch Sarah's shoulder.

She turned to see him. Howard thought she might run, but she didn't. She sat very still and watched him move toward her. She had stopped sobbing, and she wiped at her eyes with her hand. She wore a heavy flannel nightgown and a white ruffled cap like the one his mother wore for sleeping.

There was room for him on the bench beside her, and he almost fell onto the spot. For a moment they sat
quietly. Then Sarah scooted away from him and began to cry again. Howard reached out and touched her hand. She turned to look at him, then got up and hurried away into the bedroom she shared with her mother and sisters.

For a while Howard sat on the bench and stared out into the night. The heaviness he so frequently felt inside had grown. Now he no longer felt sad for himself. Sarah's sorrow was so much heavier.

Two days later he went back to the barn. Old Cyrus had made him a walking stick, and he leaned heavily on it when he had to stop to rest. Laura and Gracie walked with him. Gracie carried a lunch of bread and cheese she had tied up for him in a cloth. Laura stayed close beside him in case he needed help, but he was able to walk alone.

“It will be strange, you not being in our pantry,” Laura said when they were inside the barn door. Gracie made a face, and he laughed.

Molly was glad to see him. He went to her and stroked her neck. “You don't scratch a mule's ears,” he told Laura and Gracie. “Horses like that, but not mules.” The girls did not stay long. As soon as they were gone, Howard thought of the purse. First he dug under the straw. There was the pebble that marked the spot. He took his knife from his pocket, opened it, and used it as a digging tool. In a moment his fingers touched the material of the purse, and he could feel the money inside. He covered it again with a little dirt and the pebble, put the straw back on top, and stretched out on it for a nap.

When he woke, he took one of the small boards
from the stack. Words pushed up from inside him, and he used his knife to release them. After he had written about Sarah's grief, he expected to feel better, but he didn't. He sat leaning against the boards in Molly's stall, remembering the sound of Sarah's crying.

They were, Howard thought when he had carved them, magnificent words. Words he had never supposed would be said of him, and he carved them with absolute joy.

For two days he had stayed in the barn or at least close by. Using his walking stick to help, he moved about until he was exhausted, then fell into the straw to rest. Laura and Gracie brought him food. The first afternoon they stayed. After he had eaten, Gracie went off to play in the haystack. Laura and Howard stretched out in the straw, and Howard told her about his life on the canal. “We've been hoggees for three years now. I was eleven and Jack thirteen when we started. I never took to the canal the way Jack has. He loves it, but I'd find another way to live if I could. Still, I think the canal is interesting. We've walked on every mile of the towpath, all three hundred sixty-three of them between Albany and Buffalo, through mountains and valleys and swamps. Sometimes when they first open the locks in the spring, I stick my hand in the water that's come down from Lake Erie. I watch the water separate and go around my hand. I think how the same water that touched my hand will keep going
till it gets to Albany. The water will go all the way down the river to New York. Then it will go into the ocean. Water that touched my hand will go into that great sea.”

“Oh,” said Laura. “That makes you part of the ocean, sort of. I would love to see the sea.”

“Me, too,” said Howard. “I surely would love to go with that water that touches my hand.”

The next afternoon he read to them from his book about George Washington.

“Was he a friend of yours?” Gracie asked.

“No, he lived a hundred years ago,” said Howard.

“Oh. Want to see me stand on my head?” Gracie asked.

“Gracie,” said Laura, “you know Ma told you to stop standing on your head. She says your brain will get topsy-turvy. Besides, every bit of your pantalets would show. It's not nice to show your pantalets to boys.”

Grace nodded her head and stared at Howard. “Oh, that's right. Howard is a boy. You're the first boy we've ever talked to.”

“I'd like to be able to read and write,” said Laura, and she reached out her hand to touch his book. “Do you think you could teach me?”

Howard bit at his lip, wondering. He wasn't sure how a person went about teaching someone to read, and there was another problem. “Do you think your grandpa would object?” he asked.

Laura nodded. “He will object, but mayhap I can persuade him. He doesn't want me going to school because he thinks it's a waste of time, but you teaching me wouldn't take so much time away from my chores. I've heard him talk of the brothers he left in Ireland when he
came to this country. I'll bring them up, tell him that if I can write, I'll send letters to see if any of them can be found. Grandfather can sometimes be softened, and I believe Ma would be made glad by me learning.”