The Elementals (20 page)
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
But she was afraid she could not, any more than Liam could stop snoring.
In the morning, Liam went off to help the Burbanks mend a section of their fence. Johnny dutifully recited his letters for her, then Annie set him to work sorting strips of rag to be woven into rag
rugs. Each pile of strips was a different color, and he had to study the colors and match pale blue with dark blue, bright red with dull red. She gave Mary a sugar-tit and settled the little girl at a safe distance from the fire to play. Then she opened her book again.
rugs. Each pile of strips was a different color, and he had to study the colors and match pale blue with dark blue, bright red with dull red. She gave Mary a sugar-tit and settled the little girl at a safe distance from the fire to play. Then she opened her book again.
Annie sat close to the window, letting the dull light of a grey autumn day fall across the page as she read: “During the long and distressing war with the Indians it required all the energy of the people of New Hampshire to save themselves from utter destruction. But the glad return of peace brought with it a desire to develop the resources of the infant state.”
“Return of peace,” Annie muttered to herself, glancing out the window to a stand of pitch pine beyond the house. Pitch pine was a valuable commodity; tar and turpentine were manufactured from such trees. But Conway people did not cut pitch pines. According to local legend they were protected by the Indians, who would be angry. The Indians supposedly made some sort of medicine from them.
Annie stared at the trees and thought of the income they could bring, an income that would enable her to enroll Johnny in one of the new academies springing up farther south. “Learning is power,” had been one of Annie's father's axioms.
His words came back to her. She returned to the book. Perhaps within its pages she might find some sort of power to use against the persistent menace thatâin spite of boasts to the contraryâcontinued to influence life in parts of New England.
She had intended to read the book straight through, as was her custom. Books were scarce and expensive and each one a joy to be savored and prolonged. But now she found herself skimming through the pages, looking for something ⦠something â¦
Her eye was caught by an entry on page 172 and she stopped to read: “CONWAY, Carroll County.” Annie's eyes danced. “That's us,” she murmured to herself. “Right here in this book.” She read on, learning that Conway was 72 miles from Concord, and the Saco River in this region was about 12 rods wide and an average of two feet deep, though it had been known to rise 27 feet, and in a few instances 30 feet, in 24 hours. The largest collections of water were Walker's Pond and Pequawkett Pond, the latter being 360 rods in circumference. Pine, Rattlesnake, and Green Hills were the most considerable elevations in the town, situated on the northeastern side of the river.
Then Annie tensed. She put her finger to the exact line and read more slowly, her lips shaping the words. “On the southern side of Pine Hill is a detached block of granite, or bowlder, which is probably the largest in the stateâan immense fragment, but which doubtless owes its present position to some violent action of Nature.”
There it is, she thought to herself. There's the rock.
But the Gazetteer gave no further information, none of the strange and bloodstained history of the stone.
Annie's shoulders slumped in disappointment. But she read on. “Considerable quantities of magnesia and fuller's earth have been found in various localities. The soil is interval, plain, and upland. The plain land, when well cultivated, produces crops of corn and rye. The upland is rocky and uneven, and to cultivate it with success requires long and patient labor.”
Annie nodded. Indeed it does. A mn must be out from dawn till dusk, breaking his back with a mule and a plow and a sledge for the stones. And even then you can't be certain anything will grow. What if the spring is too cold or the summer too hot or the rains don't come? What if your crops survive, only to be destroyed before you can harvest them by an early frost or an early snow?
How did the Indians manage to do so well here? Annie wondered. They prospered effortlessly, compared to our endless labors. And they begrudge us the land still. This would be a good place if the soil was more fertile and the fields weren't full of stones and the forests didn't conceal lurking Indians.
“There are in this town 5 hotels, 10 stores, 1 lathe manufactory, and 1 paper mill,” she read on. “The Congregational church was established here in 1778. The Baptist church was formed in 1796. There is also a society of Freewill Baptists.
“On the 1st of October, 1765, Daniel Foster obtained a grant of this township on condition that each grantee should pay a rent of one ear of Indian corn annually.”
Annie shook her head. Daniel Foster's ancestor and namesake had been as tight with a penny as the current feed-store owner himself. One ear of Indian corn. Fine rent for a whole township.
“Number of legal voters in 1854, 458,” the Gazetteer further informed her. “Value of lands, improved and unimproved, $171,597. Number of sheep, 1017. Domestic stock, 1660. Domestic horses, 267.”
There ended the description of Conway. Annie gave a sarcastic snort. Five hotels, ten stores, and a paper mill sounded more impressive than it was. “It's easier to acquire a grand name than it is to keep freckles off it later,” Annie said to herself. “People who read this book and come to Conway expecting to find a city are in for a shock.”
She gazed out the window again, recalling how splendid the town had sounded when Liam described it to her during their courting days. But the hotel where they spent their honeymoon, which he had made sound like a palace, was cold and drafty and had one two-seated backhouse to accommodate all its patrons.
She had promised herself then that life would get better. She had dreams for herself and plans for the children she hoped to bear. “You'll have to push that young man of yours,” her father had warned her. “Liam has a good heart, but he's too slow to catch snails.”
Annie had pushed. She was still pushing. She urged Liam to consider new crops and new ways of planting them, she did her full share of farmwork and still found time to keep an immaculate house and braid bright rag rugs for the floors. She had persuaded her bemused husband to build an imposing pine bookcase for her growing collection of books.
She was not a woman to be intimidated by stony fields or lurking Indians. Or heathen idols disguised as boulders. No.
All at once, Annie was tired of worrying. She closed the book abruptly, stood up, and went to take her cloak from the peg.
“You, Johnny, mind your sister while I'm out. Keep her away from the hearth, and if she gets hungry give her a bit of buttered bread and some of that buttermilk.”
Annie slung the cloak around her shoulders and gave a last look around her house, making sure everything was in order as she always did before going out the door.
“Where you goin', Ma?” the boy asked.
“I'm going to look a problem in the face, so I'll know it's not sneaking up behind my back. Now, you busy yourself counting the dried apples in those baskets while I'm gone. When I come home I expect you to tell me how many tens of apples we have.”
The freckled lad nodded eagerly. He thought he was helping. Annie knew he was learning.
As she walked away from the cabin, she noticed the day was
relatively warm in spite of its overcast skies. “Almost like Indian summer,” she remarked to herself. But the phrase brought a chill. It referred to a season of terror, the warm dry days that often followed harvest; days when hostile Indians swooped down to slaughter hapless farmers and steal their provisions.
relatively warm in spite of its overcast skies. “Almost like Indian summer,” she remarked to herself. But the phrase brought a chill. It referred to a season of terror, the warm dry days that often followed harvest; days when hostile Indians swooped down to slaughter hapless farmers and steal their provisions.
“Such things wouldn't happen,” Annie's father had firmly believed, “if the white men had tried to establish amicable relations with the Indians from the first. We treated them badly, though, so how could we expect them to respond except with savagery and hatred? Hatred is too often the result of knowing only one side of another person, Annie. Remember that, and be tolerant.”
The only daughter of Jackson's only doctor, Annie had adored her father and taken his word as gospel. Then one spring day, two young men from the distant town of Conway arrived in the area to attend a weddingâand Annie met Liam Murphy and Ben Osgood. Within a year, she had left her father and Jackson behind.
How strange that such a trip, no more than a day's buggy ride, could make such a difference in one's life!
“Bad Injuns still come outta the forests to visit a big rock on Pine Hill,” Foster's frowzy wife Tabitha had confided to Annie at her first Conway quilting bee. “They bow down to it like a heathen idol. Don't you never go near it, and when your children start to come, don't let them near it neither.” She had dropped her voice to a whisper. “
That there rock eats babies.
”
That there rock eats babies.
”
Annie had responded with a burst of disbelieving laughter, making an enemy of Tabitha Foster.
In the years since, however, Annie had realized just how thoroughly locals avoided the boulder on Pine Hill. In time an amorphous fear had begun to infect her, as if transmitted subliminally; fear of the rock she never saw, fear of the close-crowding forests, fear of the wind howling with an inhuman voice from atop distant, brooding Mount Washington.
In a way no one could express, Conway seemed haunted by some malign montane presence as the village of Jackson had never been, though Jackson was a remote community high in the mountains and Conway was a bustling farming town in the Saco River valley.
Annie had grown accustomed to the local paranoia, yet some part of her mind never ceased to question and resent it. Annie McDonnell Murphy had not been raised to be a fearful person.
On this grey autumn day she was at last marching resolutely to
face what she perceived to be the source of the fear, and put it to rest. Her spine was ramrod straight with determination. She crossed two stubbled fields, climbed over a stile, then made her way along a meandering livestock trail winding through dense stands of brittle, dying sumac.
face what she perceived to be the source of the fear, and put it to rest. Her spine was ramrod straight with determination. She crossed two stubbled fields, climbed over a stile, then made her way along a meandering livestock trail winding through dense stands of brittle, dying sumac.
Pine Hill lay between the Murphy farmstead and Conway town. Deliberately avoiding the vicinity of the stone made the journey to and from town longer.
With the loving attention of one who is delighted by scenery, Annie had explored most of the area beyond the farm before her babies had started coming. But she had never visited Pine Hill. Still, she knew where it was: a short distance above the Portland road.
The path she was following disappeared in a trampled mire of dried mud and cow dung. She paused and cocked her head, relying on an inborn sense of direction that was her pride. “This way,” she decided, and set off again, briskly, whistling to herself.
Right where she expected it, Pine Hill rose above her, its slope crested with a mane of dark pines. She climbed the north side, picking her way through briars, and looked down from the top.
The boulder waited below. Its identity was unmistakable.
Annie stared down at it, impressed in spite of herself. The solitary stone had a presence. It appeared to be as tall as two men and as big around as a very large haystack. She started down toward it. She had stopped whistling.
The closer she got, the bigger it looked.
The boulder was as dull as the sky. Its weathered surface was grey and harsh, though as Annie picked her way toward it through clumps of sumac, she thought she glimpsed a lightning streak of quartz or mica, glittering.
“Nothing to be afraid of,” Annie said aloud in a no-nonsense voice. “Just a granite boulder, like the book says. New Hampshire's full of granite. What makes you special?”
But the question had been asked for the sake of hearing a human voice speak. Anyone, looking at that particular boulder,would think it was special.
The boulder stood in solitary splendor. No granite outcropping supported it. The earth at its base was beaten flat, devoid of rocks or even pebbles.
What had the Gazetteer said? “⦠doubtless owes its present position to some violent action of Nature.”
Not God, no. Nature. “Heathen idol,” Annie said scathingly. “God had nothing to do with you. Sitting there like Mount Washington itself, glowering at me. Ignorant savages might think you're special, but I know you're just a rock, and a rock can't do anything but sit.”
Emboldened by her own words she ventured closer, until she was standing beside the stone. The nearer she got, the larger it seemed to be. The surface of the boulder was abraded and pitted like an incredibly ancient face, but it was clearly inanimate. Harmless. Just, as Annie said, a rock.
Her lips quirked at the corners. “If that isn't like Conway people,” she remarked, as her father would have done. “Scared silly of a rock.” She could almost feel Dr. McDonnell standing beside her, though he'd been dead for five years. She could almost hear his practical, no-nonsense scoffing at pagan superstition.
Her mother, howeverâher mother with her Donegal-blue eyes and her fey sensitivity, her mother who secretly put a bowl of milk outside the door on All Hallows' Eve, for the “good people”âher mother would not have scoffed at the stone. Her mother would have signed the Cross the moment she saw the thing, something older than Protestantism rising in her. She would have known the stone for what it was: angry, aware. Malign â¦
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