Manroot (16 page)

Chapter 18

The pool at Castlewood, like everything the Judge touched, made money!
Soldiers came, handsome and young, with girls clinging to them, their eyes starry. It was a frantic time, with lovers leaving, and the club grew crowded with men in uniforms who stayed late on the summer nights to dance under the lanterns.

The pool closed on Mondays.
That’s when Elizabeth took Katherine and the year-old babies to enjoy the solitude of the place. After all, they owned it. Those summer days, Tom loaded up the car and drove the two women and children to Castlewood. He stayed in town and played cards and drank at the hotel, and only occasionally was it ever mentioned, the curiosity of the two women being together. The war, the excitement of the times – they were far more interesting topics than the two-year-old rape of the Judge’s whore.

Elizabeth
’s health was still pronounced delicate by the doctors, who heartily approved of the salt-water bathing. It would improve her constitution – they were sure of it.

The boys grew tan and sturdy, and their light hair was bleached almost white by the sun.
Their blue-gray smiling eyes, just like their father’s, looked deep into Katherine’s, and she was glad that nothing of her showed in their shining faces to link them with her. They had already taken to murmuring words; they pronounced Dada and Mama clearly, but when coaxed to say her name, they could not. One day, she was not sure which, proudly on small babies’ tongues, stumbling over the word Katherine, it came out ‘Kack,’ and she was called that ever after. Curious, her mother’s nickname repeating itself, one thousand miles away, and separated by seventeen years. Soon they both took to calling her in a sing-song manner, Kack…Kack…Kack…pleased with themselves and pleased with the word.

The summer came round when the twins were three years old. Elizabeth’s widowed sister, Jenny, arrived on the train from Cincinnati to spend the summer with them, bringing her daughter, who was almost the same age as the twins. April was a pretty child with fair skin, brown hair that curled, and clear blue eyes that leaned to violet. Elizabeth, the perfect hostess, had their room painted lilac and saw that they spent a happy summer. It became a ritual. Jenny came with the girl every summer. Elizabeth told the Judge that the girl’s presence would help the boys get some manners; she was unused to roughness and when they became too active, she looked for Kack to take them away and somehow settle them down.

Those summer
s the sisters played with their children Elizabeth never told Jenny of the boys’ unusual circumstances of birth. At times they even talked of their pregnancies, and Elizabeth could almost imagine their births. They compared term, and how easy or difficult, and Elizabeth spoke of her real pregnancies which, to her, had always culminated in the birth of these two boys.

She had shrunk from the biblical names that William had originally suggested, for they would have always reminde
d her… She purged the bulrushes from her mind and felt glad that her sons had been given modern names. Ryan and Kyle seemed to go with the times.

As the twins grew older, Kack moved back to her cabin.
She found time once more to gather herbs, to mix potions – and every fall she hunted the manroot. This life suited her. The woods turned up animals – hurt, sick, or abandoned, and she made cages of rush for them. Most times a creature was an occupant of one of the cages to be let go when it had healed or mended. Bradley was the boys’ friend who wished more than anything to be a doctor when he grew up. Often he even came alone to the cabin carrying some wounded creature, and implored Kack: “Make it well.” He watched as she brewed potions and applied compresses and left the patient in the rush cage, covered, explaining, “They feel safer when it’s dark.” But of her sons she knew them to be very different. Kyle had a touch for machinery; he got a camera for his eighth birthday. As he was left-handed, William had a custom-made camera sent all the way from the Orient. Elizabeth scolded the Judge, for she felt Kyle too young, yet he showed remarkable talent. He climbed the trees and took aerial pictures, and was often to be found in his darkroom in the cellar. Kyle was like the Judge; he had a presence. Everyone liked him, for he knew what to say, and he charmed with an aplomb far beyond his age. He was a sharp bargainer, too; he often sold or traded with Tom for things, and always got the best end of the bargain by far.

Ryan was more solemn, more at home with himself.
One time in the woods Katherine saw him, perched on one bended knee…while a foot away stood a doe frozen in motion. She knew the child was in communion with the beast. The doe’s large liquid eyes were caught in his spell, yet the animal did not tremble with fear; she knew him, and he, her. He had the magic.

Later, he had shown the picture he
’d painted in water colors of the doe, so life-like, the picture near breathed. Seeing his talent, Elizabeth sent for an art tutor. The man stayed for several weeks and accepted the exorbitant fee he was given, yet he knew that he had taught the boy nothing. Ryan already knew line, form and color, and shading, and of all media he preferred painting the creatures and catching their likeness, in a moment of time suspended. He made them live!

The summer Ryan was twelve he grew annoyed at his mother
’s bragging and would not pick up pencil or brush; he said he was no longer interested in drawing. Yet Kack saw him in the forest, lying on the branches of the oak above the river, some creature caught in his gaze…his eyes taking him within, to understand, to breathe, to be…

The locusts had come in a swarm that summer, as they did once every seventeen years, but aside from this event it was a typically leisurely June, and in a day or so the holiday visitors would arrive. The twenty-mile ride back from the train station at Castlewood was awkward and strained for the children. Elizabeth had reminded the boys at least a dozen times to mind their manners and had insisted they wear ties; now they squirmed in their seats in the car, shooting April dirty looks as if it were somehow her fault. The women chatted easily about clothes, child-rearing and even recipes, which Elizabeth knew nothing about. The children were all twelve that summer; there was talk of a combined birthday party. The Judge drove in silence, and outside the car, the persistent ‘zzz’ of the cicadas in the woods filled the soft dusk.

At the last turn, the house appeared as it always did, sitting atop the hill, majestic among the trees.
Jenny and the girl were given the same room; already the vacation was spreading itself, smoothing out the perpetual crease of worry on Jenny’s forehead. She had been ill of late; raising a child alone in the city was not easy. The war had been over for some time. It was impossible getting work that she could do, now that she had frequent asthma attacks. She felt grateful to her sister and the Judge for their generosity at Christmas and at Easter when they sent substantial checks which helped her raise the girl. To Jenny, it seemed as if Elizabeth had grown stronger, and that it was she who was delicate now. She survived on social security money and her late husband’s small pension. Although she knew that Castlewood with all its vegetation could bring on her asthma, she couldn’t deprive April. Here she could run and play in the sunshine with her cousins and have a wonderful vacation.

On arrival they were served a cold supper in their rooms as the long train ride had been exhausting.

They rose early the next day, and Jenny dressed April in blue jeans and a plaid cotton blouse. She was a beautiful child. Her dark hair curled about her peach-soft face; her blue, almost violet, eyes were very bright and alert, and usually smiling.

“
Mama, I wish we could stay here always,” she said as she flung herself into her mother’s arms.

Jenny held her daughter tig
htly. “I know, I know, but don’t go spoiling the summer wishing for things you cannot have. Child, be grateful we have three months…ninety glorious days!”

“
Oh Mama, I have so much fun here.”

“
That’s good, honey!”

Elizabeth
knocked softly, then came in. “What a beautiful sight, Jenny – you’re so lucky. Boys won’t let you hold them or hug them.” They laughed, knowing it was true, and absent-mindedly Elizabeth picked up a silver hairbrush and began grooming April’s hair, twirling the curls around her little finger. “I do so wish I had a precious little girl to fuss over,” she said, almost to herself. “Of course, I’m so lucky to have the boys.”

Then she gave April a kiss and hugged her hard.
“Run along, honey, the boys are in the kitchen waiting for you. Hannah’s made pancakes with blueberries.” It was difficult to tell the twins apart, as they were identical. Their hair had darkened since they were tow-headed babies. Now close-cropped, it was a very light brown. They had strong, square jaws, with deep blue eyes that seemed to change at times to gray; each boy had a sprinkling of freckles over his cheeks. They were handsome lads. At the table they gulped their milk and swirled the pancakes around in the syrup paying no attention to Hannah’s running dialogue. They ignored April, angry that their mother said she must tag along. After finishing breakfast, Ryan said sullenly, “Let’s go,” to her. Trying to act agreeable, April asked, “Where are we going?”

“
Fishing. We’re going to the river.”

“
Okay,” she answered, and skipped and hurried along after them, breathless. The pole they handed her caught in the bushes, and every so often she had to stop to untangle the line, again running quickly to catch up with them. The river seemed sluggish today; the murky water had scum atop it, and occasionally you could see a small eddy.

Kyle looked at his cousin and said, “
Don’t be going so slow. If you’re tired already, we’re not stopping. Ryan always picks the spot. He always knows where it’s good.”

April was patient with them; she knew it took a day or so until the boys stopped ac
ting so smart-alecky and would accept her. It happened every year…and then they would become fast friends, and at the end of the summer it was hard for them to part.

She trailed behind them to a narrow bend.
Ryan stopped by a sycamore tree whose soil had eroded. The tree tipped over at a crazy angle and grew horizontally above the water, its leaves touching the surface.

“
This is good,” Ryan stated. “Catfish almost always hang around here.” Taking the fresh night-crawlers that Tom had dug for them, they baited their hooks. Each child picked a spot and cast into the river, careful not to tangle lines with each other.

The sun beat down warmly on their backs; a bee buzzed in the air near them, and birds calling in the bush made it a typical summer day.
Within fifteen minutes Ryan shouted. He swung the pole behind him and a large catfish flopped on the bank.

“
It’s really a big one,” April said with admiration.

“
Watch it…don’t get too close. They can stick you real bad with their whiskers,” he warned.

Expertly he r
etrieved the hook and put the fish on his line. He allowed the catfish to slip back into the water, tethered. After a time, Kyle grew restless. He moved his spot twice and began whistling.

“
Shut up! You can’t whistle when you’re fishing, it scares ‘em away,” Ryan cautioned.

As he baited his hook and resumed his statue-like posture, squatting patiently on the bank, April imitated his rigid style, staring at her hook, which seemed to move, but it was only the motion of the waves.
An unproductive half hour passed. A persistent horsefly hovered around them, landing first on one, then another. They swatted at it, but it kept on returning.

Ryan pulled in his second fish
– another cat slightly smaller than the first.

Suddenly Kyle yelled at April, “
Watch it, dummy, you got a bite!” Too late, she jerked the pole up; her hook was bare, and she felt embarrassed.

“
You didn’t catch anything either,” was her retort to Kyle, who was growing bored and jealous of his brother’s catch.

“
Who cares?” Kyle answered.

Kyle didn
’t really like fishing very much. His brother always knew the best spots and always caught the most fish. Kyle hated losing, and whenever they finished, he felt he always lost. Although Ryan never made it a contest, it seemed like one to his brother. Twice, Ryan asked him to stop moving so much or talking so much, and finished by saying, “Why don’t you pick another spot?” Kyle moved away from them, but they could still hear the noise of him rustling through the bushes.

In a few minutes, they heard him holler.
They looked around, but didn’t see him. The annoying sounds continued. Finally Ryan spotted him. Kyle had crawled out along the trunk of the sycamore, and was way out in the flimsy branches which would have been the top of the tree if it had been upright. The branches dipped and swayed dangerously over the water.

“
Kyle, come back, darn you. Come back! You know about the river.”

“
I’m not scared of the river,” he taunted, glad now that he was the center of attention. And as he shouted, the branches bent lower toward the water.

“
Stop it! Come back right now.”