More Than You Know (8 page)

left the room. Her father watched Claris, standing in the middle of the

room; she looked like a sunny day turning to squall.

“What?” she said, staring hard at her father. “Do you know some-

thing ill of Danial?”

“No, I don’t,” said her father. “And what I’ve seen for myself, I

respect.”

“Then,
what
? You have something against him. Or is it that you

have something against
me
?”

“Clarie.”

She turned around, surprised by tears. She was too shocked and

disappointed to let anyone see her cry. Why hadn’t she expected this?

Why didn’t she ever learn? No matter what she did, nothing was ever the

same for her as for the others.

“Clarie. Calm yourself. You’re of age, and you’re a fine, intelligent

girl. If Danial Haskell is truly the man for you, you know we will support

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you in every way we can, and pray daily for your happiness, as we always

have.”

She whirled around. “You don’t trust me! I know him—you don’t!

All you see is that he’s different from . . . from . . .” She made a gesture of

frustration. Even in her anger she couldn’t bring herself to say to her

father that Danial’s difference from all that she had known was what she

loved about him most.

Her mother came back in and closed the door behind her. In the

kitchen Mabel and Otis were noisily washing the supper things, while

Leander could be heard on the stairs threatening and cajoling the littlest

Osgoods up toward bed, while they shrieked in mock fear. Mother sat

down in the rocking chair near the stove and said, “Clarie, dear. Sit. We’ll

be as happy for you as you could want. Just let us talk it over quietly

together.”

Claris sat. Her cheeks were burning. She was furious.

Her father said, “This is a small village, Claris. We’ve known the

Haskells—I knew Danial’s grandparents well, and we both knew his fa-

ther.”

“I went to school with Elzina Haskell. Danial’s aunt.”

“It’s not a happy family, Claris. There’s a sour streak there. You’re

used to people who are happy and kind.”

“Oh!”
Claris almost shouted, but she damped her voice down at the

last minute. She knew her temper made her family look at each other

when they thought she didn’t see. “Danial is not his family. Danial is

Danial. I know him and you don’t. I never heard anything so unfair. Or

unkind, speaking of kindness.”

Her father looked troubled and stared down at his hands. His wife

leaned forward, though she looked as if she’d rather be anywhere than

here.

“He seems like a decent man, Claris. We both think so.” Claris

turned a little in her chair, a twitch of irritation. They had been talking

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him over. They had been waiting for this, talking him over, because they

didn’t like his parents. “Does he mean to keep on on the island?”

“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

They both seemed about to speak at once. Claris’s father shut his

mouth.

“More than you know, Claris. Island life is lonely. And the Haskells

are hard-shell Baptists—you don’t know what that’s like.”

“Danial isn’t.”

“He may not be now, but he was raised that way. And people

change with time. As the twig is bent, most often.”

“I’d feel better about it if he meant to move into town,” said her

father. “We’d miss you if you moved way out there. And I’m afraid you’d

miss us. Your cousins, all your friends.”

You don’t know me at all, Claris thought. You never have. You

think I’m just like you, and that’s the whole trouble. You think I should

be like Mary. Her heart burned to protect Danial from people who would

judge the boy by his father, by people who didn’t understand that love

can make everything right. She wasn’t afraid of quiet, or loneliness. She’d

never been so lonely in her life as she often felt in the midst of a crowd

of people. All laughing and talking and not one of them seeing a single

real thing about her. She believed Danial saw. Danial understood.

5 6

This is what happened the day that changed everything.

I had decided to go up to the library to see what I could learn

about the murder on Beal Island. It would give me a project for the

summer. What had made Sallie Haskell, a girl of almost my age, into

a murderer? I was intensely curious about her story, but the plan had

an additional advantage, which was that for some reason the subject

irritated Edith. I asked her if she’d ever heard of Sallie Haskell, and

she just flew at me, saying it was just like me to come to a beautiful

spot and find the one morbid thing there was to dwell on.

“Morbid. Okay. Fine,” is what my diary says for that morning.

I had hoped for newspaper reports of Sallie’s trial, but Mrs.

Pease said a squirrel came down the chimney one winter and made a

pretty good mess of the old periodical files. They would have copies

up in Unionville, but good luck trying to get Edith to drive me there

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and wait all day while I read through them. One amateur historian

named Phin Jellison had written up his version of events sometime in

the teens and published it himself. The library had plenty of copies of

that. It was a pamphlet with a horrible photograph in it of this big

bearded man in overalls lying on his back on a horsehair couch with

his head split open. It was pretty hard to look at. I wanted to know

what Danial Haskell had looked like when he still had a face, but I

never have found a picture of him. I wonder if he never had his pho-

tograph taken in life.

There was a disgusting description of what he had eaten for his

last meal, and much conflicting speculation on where the schoolteacher

Mercy Chatto was at the time of the murder, and the wife, Claris, and

the daughter, Sallie, and a boyfriend of Sallie’s called Paul LeBlond.

Mercy Chatto was a girl from the main, boarding with the Haskells

while she kept school.

Mr. Jellison was an enthusiast, but not much of a writer, so I

can’t say I learned a great deal more. It seemed none of the three

women who lived in the house would say a thing about how they had

spent the morning except to assent to what they would have done, or

usually did, of a Sunday. None of the women would have gone to

worship. Mercy generally did her wash. Sallie went to the barn to tend

her chickens and commune with the cow. Claris worked at her rug

loom or sometimes stayed abed reading the Bible.

Mr. Jellison’s money was on Paul LeBlond for the murderer. He

was a queer kind of fellow, according to Phin, an artist and foreign,

with a nasty temper.

When I exhausted the information in the library, I decided to

hitchhike out the Eastward road to see my grandparents. I thought

they must know something of Sallie Haskell. I was forbidden to

hitchhike, so I’d have to tell them Edith had dropped me at the end

of the road. I couldn’t tell them anything about how it was with

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Edith and me; Edith used to justify keeping us from my grandpar-

ents by claiming they didn’t like her, and I didn’t want to do any-

thing to make her right. Besides, my grandparents wouldn’t have

liked it. Children were not encouraged to criticize their elders in

those days.

We sat on the covered porch overlooking Grandpa’s sheep

meadow, which ran down to the edge of the bay and the great stone

hulk of the granite wharf. You could see right over to the north end

of Beal; it looked close enough to swim to. Mrs. Eaton, who helped

grandmother keep house, brought out lemonade and gingersnaps.

“So what have you been up to, Miss Chick?” my grandfather

asked.

“Nella B. told me about the murder on Beal Island.”

Grandfather roared with laughter. “Oh, you’ve gotten around to

that, have you?”

I felt myself blush. I suppose it
was
old hat to him. No doubt

everyone in town had had a lifetime of having tourists come upon it

all shiny and new and start asking the same questions.

“I knew about it before, sort of, I just didn’t know it happened

here,” I said, on my dignity. “Did you know Sallie Haskell?”

“Oh, yes,” they both said. Oh, yes, of course, we knew the mur-

deress.

“What was she like?”

Granny could see how much I wanted to know, and was sym-

pathetic. “Terribly sad. Kept to herself almost completely after the

trials, though she kept up with her Osgood cousins, and there were a

lot of them.”

“Haskell cousins didn’t truck with her though,” said Grandfather.

“No. They wouldn’t,” said Granny. “We used to see her out

walking on the Kingdom Road in the evenings. She was always pleas-

ant, always greeted you.”

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“Not much for chatting.” Grandfather would find this a good

quality.

“No. She had a little dog for a while, didn’t she, Ed?”

“Yes, some kind of terrier. Awful fond of it.”

“And what happened . . . something sad . . .”

“I think it bit people and someone shot it . . .”

“No, that was Ella Staples’s dog. I think Sallie’s was killed by

some animal. A raccoon. She was done up over it, and wouldn’t have

another. You know who Hannah should talk to, Ed? Cousin Amy Bell.

Amy Friend Bell, she’d enjoy a visit,” she said to me. “She always

spoke of Cousin Sallie.”

“
Cousin
Sallie? Was she our cousin?”

“Well, now . . .” Granny got a crease between her eyebrows

when she pondered, and suddenly I could see in her old face the girl

she’d been, with a beautiful smile and a sense of fun, a girl you’d

want to be friends with.

“I used to be able to keep all this straight. Now . . . my father

was Thomas Friend, and he had two brothers. The oldest one, Jona-

than, married Aunt Mary, who was an Osgood—I
think
she was Sallie

Haskell’s aunt. So my Friend cousins on Jonathan’s side were Sallie’s

first cousins, but we’re just cousins by marriage. Cousin Amy will

know. We’ll go as soon as I’m back on my feet.”

I’m still sorry that visit never happened.

“It’s a good thing I came from away,” said Grandfather, “or

you’d have too many cousins in town to keep track of.”

I could see my grandmother tired easily. She was mending, but

she needed to take a rest in the afternoons. Grandfather offered to

drive me home, but Jewel Eaton went home right after lunch, and I

knew he didn’t want to leave Granny alone in the house. I kissed them

each good-bye and said I would enjoy the exercise.

I was walking west on the gravel shoulder of the tar road when

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I heard a car bearing down on me from behind. I stepped off the

shoulder to let it pass. But it didn’t pass, and it wasn’t a car. It was

the strangest rattletrap truck—I learned later that it was a Model T,

one of the very first ones, with the backseat taken out. It was kept on

the road with ingenuity and spit, and it had one really distinguishing

characteristic: there was no fuel pump, so in order to get gas to the

engine when you went uphill, you had to go up backwards. On this

afternoon it had a half dozen lobster pots in the back. The driver was

a dark-haired boy with deep-set very pale eyes. He needed a shave.

In fact, he needed a bath. He pulled the truck off the road and came

to a stop so close to me that I thought at first there was something

menacing in him. He sat at the wheel looking at me.

“You could stand there staring,” he said, “or you could get in.”

I hesitated.

“They both got their points, but one’ll get you to town faster.”

I had to smile at that. He leaned over to open the door for me,

and I climbed in. He pulled the truck back onto the road.

“You the ones living in Fannie Hamor’s house?”

“How did you know that?”

“Saw you walking the other day. You aren’t any of the piano

tuner’s kids, ’cause I met all them, and those are the only other new

people up that road. Anyway, Jewel Eaton’s my grandmother.”

At that I looked at him again. “Are you Conary?”

“Are you guessing?”

“Not really,” I said. I had heard all about him, both from Mrs.

Eaton and at the library. I gathered he was an all-around wild seed. I

had the impression that Mrs. Pease and Mrs. Allen were crazy about

him.

Conary, driving with his left hand, gave me his right to shake.

He seemed pleased to think he had a reputation, and not surprised.

“I’m Hannah,” I said.

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He said, “Yeah, I worked that out. How you liking that house?”

I don’t know why, but I felt there was something behind the

question. I said, “It’s a beautiful spot . . .”

The way he said, “Well . . . yeah,” as if that was hardly the issue,

I knew there had been something behind the question, so I asked him,