Read More Than You Know Online
Authors: Beth Gutcheon
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Romance, #Contemporary
lovely island meadow, spending his days outdoors tending his boat
and his animals and his children.
“I don’t know that I see the point of looking all over when
you’ve already seen what you want.” As he said it he looked right at
me. “A gadder comes to grief,” he added. “That’s what they say.”
Of course, gadding was what we were doing to a fare-thee-well,
but I had never felt more flooded with joy in my life. Whatever grief
there might be waiting for us seemed to belong to some other universe.
That perfect, heartbreaking day. We thought we would store it in our
brains and bones for the long separation that was coming. That was
how I justified it, anyway. We weren’t doing any harm, and it would
give us so much strength for what was to come. As if I knew what
that was.
It’s lovely driving in the open air, because you aren’t looking
through the windows at a picture; you’re in the air, part of the picture,
able to feel the slight change of temperature on your skin in the shade
of tall pines, able to smell the sun on the earth, the spicy scent of
gardens, the aromas of farmyard. You could see into people’s lives as
well, the swings beneath the trees, the open parlor windows with filmy
curtains blowing, the clothes out back on the line. Most farmhouses
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were built close to the road so as to be easier to dig in and out of after
snow. Nowadays those old houses are often falling to ruin, unfashion-
ably near the road, but in those days when traffic was light, the road
was entertainment and company. People came to the window to see
what was passing.
Many working farmwives and playing children stopped to stare
as we sailed by. A car like the one we were driving was not as rare
as a circus wagon, but it was far from a common sight. We waved,
like royalty. At noon Connie pulled into a farmer’s yard and went to
the kitchen door to ask if we could picnic in their field. The farmer
came to the door in his overalls; he stared out at the car, gleaming
under his shade tree, incongruous as a runaway train. He looked Con-
nie up and down and then stared at the car some more. When Connie
came back to me he had a pint bottle of cold buttermilk and a plate
of fingerprint cookies filled with homemade jam.
“I told them we were on our honeymoon,” he said sheepishly.
“I tried to pay her, but she wouldn’t let me.”
“You are a terrible person.”
“So my daddy tells me,” he said, opening the door for me. Then
he opened the trunk of the car and took out a plush maroon blanket.
I saw a thing like a wicker suitcase in there too; Connie said it was
full of plates and cups and knives and forks and spoons, all packed in
special compartments and strapped in with little leather belts. We
looked at each other, tempted, but decided against it. What if we lost
or broke something?
We spread the blanket in the sun in a copse back from the road.
I produced the limp brown bag that held the lunch I had packed. It
suddenly looked rather modest. Sandwiches and bananas.
Conary took a bite of his sandwich and stopped to look at it.
“What’s in this?”
“Maple sugar.”
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He started to laugh.
“Well, I couldn’t find the jelly and I didn’t like to ask,” I said.
Conary tried to look solemn. “Good thinking,” he said and then
burst into laughter again.
It was true, I didn’t know much about cooking then, but I thought
these sandwiches were rather a success, and I said so. Conary passed
me the buttermilk, and from time to time through the rest of the meal
erupted in laughter again. I still don’t know what was so funny. Later
in life I came to put both the maple sugar and the bananas into one
sandwich. My children swore by them, and it made one less thing to
carry on a picnic. I’d put anything you could name into a sandwich if
I could hear Connie laugh like that again. I guess he wasn’t used to
girls who weren’t brought up in the kitchen.
The cookies were delicious. We washed the plate and bottle in
the stream and left them on the kitchen porch, and got back into our
chariot, fairly sure that everyone in the house was at one window or
another, memorizing the details of our equipage. It was a new expe-
rience for both of us to be the envy of anybody, and it was fun. I was
amazed at how much fun.
Once the story was told to the farm couple, it became our truth
for the rest of the day. We were on our honeymoon. We had done the
trick somehow, gotten cleanly away, with only sunlight and tipped
hats and purring engines and happiness before us. It was only a won-
derful joke, we knew that, but that made it better. We spent that af-
ternoon as if we believed the sun would never set.
We could see Bangor in the distance. It was the first city I’d
seen besides Boston. Bangor was very different from Boston; it had
grown up rough, a true boomtown, the market loggers boomed their
timber down the Penobscot. On the outskirts we passed huge white
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houses with wide porches and widows’ walks, and carpenter ginger-
bread all around the eaves, built by lumber barons and shipping mil-
lionaires in the great days of sail. I wanted to go explore the wicked
downtown, to see where Baby Face Nelson was gunned down by
G-men, but Conary wouldn’t take me. The fair was on the near side
of the river, and he said that was as close to the big city as he was
going, in that car anyway.
The fair, of course, was magic enough for one afternoon, or for
many of them.
We parked our car in a field in a long row of others. Men from
the sheriff’s department directed traffic. I was momentarily worried
they would take one look at us and the car and arrest us, but they just
tipped their hats and called Conary “sir.” There were a few Cadillacs,
and even another Packard or two, but nothing so fancy as ours. Along
the rows of Model T’s and A’s, of farm wagons and trucks, that car
began to draw a crowd as soon as we left it.
“Will it be all right?” I was fearful that someone would harm it,
or steal my lavender-scented gloves.
“Don’t worry. The sheriff will watch it. Mr. Britton just walks
off and leaves it. He always slips them something when he comes
back, though.” Conary had clearly learned everything he could from
the way Mr. Britton dealt with the world.
“Will you do that?”
“Depends how much money we have left.”
Money! Fairs cost money, of course. I knew that, but had for-
gotten it, since I’d never actually been to one.
“Do we have any?”
“You forget—I am the fastest blueberry rake in the county.” But
his blueberry money—I thought he had to turn that over to his father.
I decided not to ask.
Conary took my hand as we walked toward the gates to the
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fairground. Inside we could see rows and rows of sheds and stalls for
I didn’t yet know what, and beyond that the shrieks and music of the
rides and the grandstand and, crowning it all, the Ferris wheel.
We were in a different country. Nothing from the past could
follow us here. We were different people, beginning the future we
would live together. No darkness from Edith Gray or Tom Crocker or
anything else could have anything to do with where we were going.
That was the point of being in love. It washed you clean, made you
new, gave you a blank slate to write your life on.
Conary paid our way in, and as we started for the midway, bark-
ers began to call to us. There was a shed near the entrance with big
painted pictures on boards of what you would see inside.
“Con—look!” I was pointing at a picture of a baby with two
heads. One head was wailing, and the other, smiling and cooing. “Can
we see it?”
“No, it’s terrible. It’s not alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s in a jar. Pickled. It never was alive.”
He was marching me past the shed, but I found it hard to look
away from that picture. Now
there
was wickedness. The barker was
chanting, “See the amazing two-headed baby,” and a family with three
little girls in party dresses was paying for tickets.
We passed the hootchy-kootchy tent, where men were lined up
waiting to go in. There were paintings of beautiful girls dressed en-
tirely in feathers, or in highly colored silk veils. The barker there was
crowing about Seleema the Oriental Wonder.
“Are they in jars too?”
“No, but by Oriental they mean Skowhegan.” He put his arm
around me and the barker didn’t even bother trying to tempt him.
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We came to a row of games. Games of skill, games of chance,
Try your luck, little lady, Show the little lady how strong you are,
Duck the clown, Step right up.
Conary stopped at a game where you threw baseballs at wooden
milk bottles. “My wife wants to try,” he said, handing the man a coin
and receiving three baseballs, which he handed to me.
I wound up and heaved. A miss. I threw again and again, two
hits. The pitchman whistled as the milk bottles trundled along on a
little motorized track as if in a miniature dairy. Conary paid for three
more balls, and this time I scored all three.
“Any prize from the top shelf, take any prize you choose,” toned
the pitchman, not quite as pleased as before. I chose a teddy bear in
denim overalls.
“Our firstborn,” said Con as we walked away.
“Yes, and it’s a bear.”
“I don’t care, I always wanted a son with a lot of hair.”
“What shall we call him?”
“Earl. How are you at darts?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m wonderful at them. Let’s try for a daughter.”
We stopped at a booth where you threw darts at water balloons.
Connie bought us three darts apiece, but my aim was poor and he said
I threw darts like a girl. He bought himself another round and won us
a daughter in the shape of a pig.
“Do I get to name her, since you named Earl?”
“Of course.”
“Eleanor, then.”
“She has very nice eyelashes,” said Conary. “I like that in a
pig.”
He bought me some fried potatoes in a newspaper cone, sprin-
kled with salt and vinegar. We carried our babies over to look at the
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sheepdog trials, and then to the prize pigs and goats and rabbits.
“Don’t worry,” Conary whispered to Eleanor, “we’ll never put you in
the county fair.”
I said, “Conary—let’s run away.”
“We already have.” He put his arm around me and walked me
toward the grandstand.
“I mean—let’s not go back.”
He stopped walking and turned me to face him.
“Let’s not go back. Let’s leave the car at the train station and
go west. We can send a telegram to Mr. Britton telling him where
it is.”
We walked again. I was frightened now of what I had said be-
cause I didn’t know if it was part of the game or not. Anyone in the
village could have told you, you shouldn’t dare Connie to do a thing
if you didn’t want it done.
“Where would we go?”
I had no idea. I’d never been anywhere. I said, “Idaho.”
Connie laughed. “Idaho! What’s in Idaho?”
“Potatoes.”
“Oh great, potatoes! Do I look like a potato farmer?”
“Why not? You’re from Maine.”
Conary pulled me into the shadow of the grandstand and kissed
me. He kissed me for so long it was like a conversation. I could feel
yes, and no, and why not, moving from him to me, and I could feel
it through my body down to my knees. When finally he ended the kiss
and looked into my eyes, I waited and waited to know which choice
had won. And what did I hope for?
“Why not?” said Connie. And then we both laughed and
laughed. I could think of ten dozen reasons why not, and I knew he
could too . . . and yet . . .
We didn’t speak for a while after that. Connie led me around to
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the side of the track where the trotters would race at sunset. They had
an ox pull going on; oxen pulling wooden sledges loaded with boul-
ders. The driver would crack his whip and shout and the oxen lean
into the load and drag it down the track with the owner yelling and
yelling, trying to get them to keep it up, trying to keep them pulling
straight. When they stopped, three officials with tape measures ran
onto the course and measured the length of the pull. The strength and
patience of the animals was amazing.
Connie watched me watching. He liked it that I cared about farm
animals as much as about house pets. I was trying to imagine clearing
a meadow with such oxen, myself a farmwife going into the dark barn
made fragrant and warm by the animals’ breath in winter. We’d have
a barefoot daughter who could throw a baseball or drive a team, and
a son to go fishing with Conary.