Sowing Poison (14 page)

She giggled and shook her head.

“Ah, I thought not. You look exceedingly deaf to me.” McFaul spent the rest of the short drive letting the little girl help him drive the trap, and then most obligingly deposited both her and Lewis at the doorstep of Temperance House.

Lewis's day still started at dawn. In his long years of riding the enormous circuits assigned to Methodist ministers, he had nearly always been saddled up and ready to set off each morning just as the rays of the rising sun were lightening the eastern sky. There was no reason to jump out of bed with first light now, but he found it hard to shed a habit that had been so firmly entrenched.

His first task for the day was always to feed the stove so the room would be lovely and warm when Betsy and Martha woke. He would soon have the kettle boiling and he would take a cup of tea to Betsy while she was still in bed. This slow and gentle easing into the task of getting up and dressed gave her stiff joints a chance to limber up, and as a result her limp was far less pronounced, during the morning hours at least. When again they inevitably began to protest, Betsy now had the option of spending the afternoon in a comfortable chair, passing the time of day with Susannah. It was a soothing rhythm they had fallen into, and Lewis could see the benefits of it in the gradual improvement in his wife's colour and the lessening of the tight lines at the corners of her mouth.

Often he poured two cups of tea and took a few minutes to sit on the edge of the bed before he roused Martha. He began to realize that he had missed the gentle companionship of everyday living in all those years he rode the trails, and now he prized this morning time, when he could simply be with his wife before the duties and tasks of the day called him away. Some mornings few words passed between the two; sometimes they had particular items to discuss.

Today Betsy was already wide awake by the time the water had boiled. Today was a discussion morning, he realized. It was Saturday – he could let Martha sleep awhile so his wife could have her say. Betsy waited until he had perched beside her and taken the first few sips of his milky tea.

“Have you noticed anything between Sophie and Francis?” she asked him.

“Like what?” As far as Lewis was concerned, the two of them seemed to be getting along just fine, and the work went all the smoother for it.

“Well, it's just a feeling I have, but they certainly seem to go out of their way to be in the same room at the same time.”

He was puzzled for a moment, and then he realized what Betsy was hinting at. “Do you really think so?”

“They always sit side by side and Sophie blushes a little when I catch them doing it.”

Betsy had always been far handier at reading these sorts of signals. It was Betsy who had known that Rachel Jessup, the girl who had been murdered in Demorestville, had decided on her choice of husband, although poor Rachel didn't live long enough to realize a marriage. He thought back over the last week or so and realized that Betsy was right. Nearly every time he happened upon Francis in an idle moment, Sophie was nearby, and vice versa.

He wasn't sure how he felt about this. He hadn't liked Francis Renwell much when he was courting his daughter Sarah. His dislike continued when the two were married, and only intensified after his daughter's tragic death. He had warmed to the young man since, but this was guilt more than anything else. The notion that he might be thinking of courting Sophie seemed like an act of treachery, a dishonouring of a daughter's marriage that had been a love match from the beginning, no matter the dreadful things that had happened afterward. But Francis was still a young man, and when Lewis stopped to count up, he realized that it had been seven years since Sarah had been taken away — a very long time for anyone to be alone. Perhaps it was time to let go and let things take their natural course.

“Well, I must admit, I'm a little taken aback,” he said. “But Sophie seems like a nice girl, and, as you know, I've completely changed my opinion of Francis.”

He could tell by the look on Betsy's face that he had somehow completely missed the point of what she was trying to say.

“Oh, I agree, Sophie's a grand girl,” she said. “And it would be nice to see Francis settled down somewhere. But have you thought about what this might mean to Martha?”

He hadn't. Trust Betsy to go directly to the heart of what was important for her nearest and dearest.

“Sometimes she seems more like my child than my own did. I'd hate to lose her now.”

“So would I.” Just the thought of it caused a choking sensation in his throat. The little girl was so much like her mother that losing her would be like losing Sarah all over again. “Do you think they would take her, if what you suspect is right?”

“Francis would take her in a minute. You can tell by the way he looks at her. He desperately wants to be a real father to her, to make up for all the time he's lost.”

“And Sophie?”

“Sophie seems to be very fond of Martha, as well, and I'm sure she'd go along with whatever Francis wants. The problem is that I don't see how we could object. He's Martha's father, after all, and if he finds himself in a position to make a good home for her, I don't think there's anything we could do about it. We're both old, Thaddeus, and I'm sickly. How could we argue that Martha's better off with us? Sophie would make a wonderful mother for her, but that doesn't mean I want to see it happen.”

It was a conundrum, and Lewis realized that if he were honest, he would have to admit that Martha would be far better off with her father and, apparently, a new mother. Perhaps even a new family, with brothers and sisters and the bustle that attends the households of the young. But he didn't want to be honest. He wanted to be selfish and keep Martha forever.

It was too bad that Francis Renwell was nothing to them, really. Just an in-law. Related not by blood, but my marriage, and now that the marriage no longer existed, they had no claim on him. If he had been one of their own sons, Lewis might have been able to engineer a solution that included him and Betsy, although his one previous attempt at putting all of his family under one roof had ended in acrimony. He could scarcely ask Francis to assume that kind of responsibility, especially since Lewis's ability to contribute to the household was limited.

But that could change, and it was high time it did anyway. The hotel was running smoothly now, and it wouldn't be too long before Susannah would be up and about again. He had no illusions about his effectiveness as an assistant innkeeper — Sophie, and even Francis, were far more help than he, and it wouldn't take Daniel long to realize it. Lewis had earned his keep so far, but if he and Betsy were to stay in Wellington, he would at some point have to offer his brother-in-law at least some kind of nominal rent for their little house. That had been the plan from the beginning, but it had been derailed by Susannah's accident. It was time to start looking seriously for a job.

Preaching was the obvious choice, but all of the nearby Methodist meetings already had ministers they were quite happy with. They would not be likely to turf someone out on his behalf; nor, he thought, should they. School teaching was an option. It had been his first career, and he had gone back to it when he was recovering from his plunge through the ice, but it demanded regular attendance for a large part of the day, and he couldn't leave Betsy alone on her bad days. He couldn't ask Susannah to step in; once she was well again she would have her hands full at the hotel. He needed something with more flexibility. He resolved that he would find something to do in the village. He would build up his funds as much as possible. And then, if Francis took Martha somewhere else, he would have the wherewithal to follow.

Horatio had become fascinated by the Holey Man. After he'd got over his initial fright at the unexpected meeting, he had wanted to go back the next day and find the strange being; and every afternoon since, whenever he and Martha were deciding what they should do, his first suggestion was always that they should play down around the shore.

Martha didn't mind catering to him at first. A couple of times they had taken the homemade sled back to the dunes and tobogganed again. Once they walked along the lake, kicking at the thin ice that had formed along the shore. Once they had played hide and seek in the warren of fishing reels and dry-docked boats that clustered around the wharf. But all the time they played, Horatio would sneak glances out over West Lake, and Martha knew he was hoping to catch a glimpse of the shuffling creature that had scared them so.

As the year grew old, daylight faded quickly in the afternoons, so on schooldays Martha and Horatio stayed closer to home and amused themselves by playing marbles or tag with the other neighbourhood children. But that Saturday Horatio's mother didn't need his assistance in the afternoon, so after the noon meal they headed straight for the shore.

They ventured farther along the sandbar than they had ever been before, nearly reaching the place where the shore started to curve around the lake and the sand hills spread into a wilderness of cedar forest. At one point there was a narrow channel that connected the two lakes, but this seemed frozen enough to walk on if they went carefully. It was here that they caught a glimpse of the Holey Man off in the distance.

“What is he doing?” Horatio asked as they spotted the raggedy figure rowing a skiff slowly around one of the small islands that dotted West Lake.

“I think he's checking his traps,” Martha replied. “I'm pretty sure those are muskrat lodges along the shore there. I bet he's a trapper and that's why his clothes are so funny-looking. He probably just tans the hides at home and makes them into clothes.”

“But where is his home?”

Martha shrugged. “I don't know. I didn't even know he was here until he scared us that day.”

“Do you think your grandfather would know where he lives?”

“I don't think so,” she said. “We haven't been here long enough to know stuff like that.”

“What about your uncle?”

Again Martha shrugged. She hadn't mentioned the Holey Man to her grandparents. She wasn't sure why, but she had a feeling that if she did, she might be forbidden from going down to the sandbar, and since that was just about the only thing Horatio ever wanted to do, she had no doubt that he would simply go without her.

“What do you suppose he eats?” Horatio asked.

“Well, there's lots of fish. And squirrels and rabbits. And if you can catch beavers, their tails are good roasted. I guess that would be enough food for anybody.”

“Let's go look at his traps.”

Martha hesitated. “He might get mad if he thinks we're fooling around with his traps.”

“I just want to look at them, that's all.” He scanned the horizon for a few minutes, but the Holey Man had moved on and was no longer visible. “Let's go across to the island.”

What appeared like a very short distance when you were just looking at it suddenly seemed much farther with the prospect of walking it, and Martha was uneasy about going so far on the ice.

“I don't think we should. I'm not sure the ice will hold us. Why don't we just look along the shore here? There's plenty of muskrat here, too.”

“There's nothing here but a bunch of reeds and grass,” he said.

“No, those mounds are where the muskrats live,” Martha said, pointing to what appeared to be nothing more than a jumble of vegetation. “Down underneath. And you can see where he put a stick to mark where the trap is.”

Horatio went to where she was pointing and scuffed away the snow. A trail of air bubbles frozen in the ice betrayed the entrance to the animal's den. They could just see a small piece of chain above the surface. Horatio grabbed it and started to pull.

“Be careful,” Martha said. “It's probably set. You don't want to get your hand in the way.”

The trap, when Horatio finally hauled it to the surface, proved to be little more than a few wires twisted together, but it was enough to have caught and drowned a fat, glossy muskrat.

“I thought it would have bigger teeth,” he said, “Don't they gnaw on stuff?”

“You're thinking of beaver,” Martha said, “Their teeth are a whole lot bigger,” although she wasn't by any means sure of this.

Horatio held the trap high and let the muskrat corpse twirl in a dripping circle. “How does the trap work?”

“I think it catches them by the leg and then they can't get away.”

“It doesn't kill them?”

“I don't think so. I think it drowns or the trapper has to come along and bash it over the head or something. That's why they check the traps all the time.”

“Well, don't that beat the Dutch,” Horatio said. “I'd like to see that!”

Martha wouldn't, and she hoped that the occasion would never arise. In fact, she hoped that now that they had had a chance to look at a trap closely, Horatio's fascination with the trapper would wane.

They lowered the trap back into the water and tried to brush the snow back around the foot of the den, but at this they were not very successful. Martha was sure that the Holey Man would know that someone had been at his traps.

When the pair headed back toward the harbour, it was already starting to get dark. It would soon be suppertime. As they wandered along the path, Horatio tried to imitate the Holey Man, shuffling and snuffling along, but he stopped when he saw someone standing by one of the boats. It was Mr. Gilmour from the hotel.

He nodded at them as they went past, but continued staring across the water toward the marsh.

No business near 'em, no business at all
. The Holey Man mumbled to himself as he shuffled along checking his traps. He had seen the two kits haul the trap up. They hadn't seen him, not then, even though he knew that they had been watching him.
They're only kits, young 'uns and you leave those alone
. Old Man had beaten that into him —
don't trap when the critters have kits and don't take the young 'uns
. Old Man had told him a lot of stuff, but he'd never been able to remember all of it.
Don't eat anything unless it's in the trap or you seen it die. Don't eat dead stuff you just find lyin' around in the woods
. He remembered that one. He'd found the remains of a fawn that the coyotes had taken down. Something must have scared them away — they'd probably heard him coming — and only the crows were there when he'd arrived in the clearing. He'd been hungry, oh so hungry, although he didn't know the word for the gnawing ache in his belly that happened when Woman hadn't filled his bowl for a few days. He'd grabbed a haunch and begun to gnaw. He liked venison. But then Old Man had been there, coming along behind him and had ripped the meat out of his fist and smashed him across the face with it.
You don't eat dead stuff, boy
.

He'd thought that maybe the young 'uns he'd seen were hungry, too, but they hadn't taken the fat, glossy she-muskrat that had been in the trap. They'd looked at it and poked it with a stick, but then they lowered the trap back down into the hole they'd made in the ice, muskrat and all. He'd gone and retrieved it later, after they'd gone, and he'd taken the carcass back to the shack. There he had carefully peeled off the pelt with his hands, the way Woman had taught him, so there wouldn't be any nicks or cuts in the hide. He'd pegged it down and set it to dry in the wind. Sometimes, when Old Man had taken down a deer, Woman would do something different with the hide. Something that needed a lot of grease mixed with the deer's own brains, but he'd forgotten what it was exactly that she did. He saved all the grease he could anyway, in a big tin, just in case he someday remembered what it was he was supposed to do.

He had quite a big stack of rawhide pelts, muskrat mostly, but some mink, as well. Now that Old Man was gone, he didn't know what he was supposed to do with those either. Old Man had taken them to where the big shacks were, crowded along the water opposite his woods, but he had never gone along to see exactly which shack you were supposed to go to. After Old Man came back there would be flour and sugar and tea, and sometimes potatoes; he remembered that all right, but he had no idea how you went about turning pelts into potatoes.

He set the dark red muskrat meat to soak overnight in some salt and water, just like Woman had always done. He'd boil it up the next day if he didn't catch anything nicer. He didn't like muskrat much, but he'd used up all of the good meat from last winter. He didn't know what this good meat was called, but it had a lovely sweet taste and there was a lot of fat under the skin. The pelts were difficult to get off, but they were easy enough to dry. It had been cold enough by then to freeze meat solid, so he had simply chopped the carcasses up and put the pieces in the meat barrels. He'd rolled the barrels back behind the cabin to the stone hut built into the side of the dune, and made sure the heavy door was firmly shut so the coyotes couldn't get at the meat. The coons had somehow got in anyway and gnawed at the sides of the barrel, but he'd set traps for them. The big ones, Old Man had told him, were for bears, even though he'd only ever once seen a bear, but Old Man said they were plentiful once. He'd caught three coons. The traps kept his meat safe, but he'd eaten it all up before winter's end, and then there was nothing but muskrat and rabbit, squirrel and fish, for a long time.

He'd found good meat again in the marsh, not long ago, on one of the little hummocks of solid ground that stuck up here and there among the cattails.
Don't eat stuff you find dead in the woods
, Old Man said.
Only if you seen it die
. But he'd eaten the other sweet meat and it had been good. Maybe dead sweet meat was different from other dead meat.

He'd tied a rope around the critter's feet and hauled it into the skiff. When he got it back to the cabin, he skinned it and cut it into pieces just like before, but he knew that it was not yet cold enough to keep for any length of time. He knew that Woman had packed salt all around the pieces she put into barrels, but he had hardly any salt left. He'd packed it anyway, but after a week or so he could tell from the smell that he'd done something wrong and that it was turning already. He'd only really got a few good meals from the whole carcass and now he was back to eating muskrat again.

He wished he could take some venison, but he would need the gun for that, and he wasn't sure how to use it. Old Man had always done the shooting. There was no powder left anyway; Old Man hadn't got any more and then the shack had fallen on him.

Most of his traps were empty, the bait still rotting in them. He wondered if the smell of the young kits had scared everything away. He sniffed the air. The wind was shifting around a little to the north, and that always brought colder air. Maybe that would blow the smell of them away.

He shuffled around the shore of the island that was closest to the woods, and then rowed the skiff across to the sandbar. It was a good place for traps. The muskrats liked to burrow into the sandy banks.

The first trap he checked yielded only a mink. It, too, had been looking for muskrat. He tossed it aside. Old Man would have treated it carefully, its pelt a prize, but it was no good for eating, so he didn't bother with it.

He pushed farther along the shore. Nothing. And nothing again. The gnaw in his belly grew as he worked his way along. He had circled the lake and was nearly back at the cabin and still he had found nothing. He would row back out into the lake and try for some fish, he decided, despite the fact that his net was full of holes and his hands didn't seem to have the knack of fixing them. The best he could do was to fish with a pole, but it took a long time to pull in only a fish or two. He would use some of the spoiled sweet meat as bait.

He pulled the skiff up on shore and shuffled past the cabin to the clearing behind, panting heavily as he climbed over the dune that screened the root cellar from view. As he crested the hill his eye caught a glimpse of something that was a strange colour, a colour that didn't belong here in the woods. He didn't know what it was called, just that it belonged to no critter that he knew of. He crept closer. It was a piece of cloth and it was lying beside a bear trap that he had set underneath one of the bushes that screened the door to the stone hut. Whatever had been caught in the trap had managed to free itself and had left the cloth behind.

The critter had made a distinct trail as it left the clearing, easy enough to follow, up over the dunes and down again. At the top of the third rise it must have fallen and gone sliding down the sandy slope. It would be hard walking these dunes with an injured leg. The trail led toward the smaller lake, but the critter had never reached the shore. There, lying face down in a small clearing, was more sweet meat.

He approached cautiously, but the critter didn't move. He could see that it must have hit hard when it fell down the hill. There was a large gash on one side of its head and quite a lot of blood in a pool underneath it. He found a largish branch to poke it with. It moved then, and opened its eyes, and when it saw him it tried to scramble away, but it was too weak to move far. This would be very good meat, he could see. The critter was fat and, most important, it wasn't dead yet.
Don't eat the dead meat. Just what you find in the traps or what you seen die
.

He settled back on his haunches. He would wait patiently until it died, just like Old Man said to do, and then he would eat well again.