The Root Cellar (25 page)

She was left alone to figure out the underdrawers and the petticoat and to contort herself into impossible shapes as she struggled with the buttons at the back of the dress. She tied the ribbon around her head and smoothed the dress down carefully. “I like it,” she whispered to herself as she looked down at the edge of lace that revealed the petticoat peeping out from beneath the skirt, and the high, buttoned boots on her feet, which were only the tiniest bit too large.

She went downstairs to where Will and Susan and the Jerue children were having breakfast. Will’s eyebrows went up but he said nothing. The children stood and poked each other and whispered but said nothing either—except for Charlie. His mouth hung open and then he said, “You mean you worked for that mean blacksmith and everything and you’re a girl?”

Susan smiled at her approvingly. Rose sat down and ate her breakfast.

Right after breakfast, Will went down to the wharves. He was back very soon. “The weather’s growing more chancy by the hour,” he
told them, “but Jake Pierson’s going out in about an hour and he’ll take us if we want to go.”

“If I was you, I’d wait out the storm right here,” said Mrs. Jerue. Rose said, “No. We can’t.” She had a sudden fear. Now, when she had discovered how much she wanted to get back, she was afraid something would happen to keep her from getting there, that the storm would keep them away. She could not bear to delay.

“Jake’s a pretty sound man.” It was almost as though Will had read her mind.

“And you’re pretty anxious to get on home.” Mrs. Jerue sighed and took Will’s hand. She offered no further arguments. She put on her bonnet, gathered her children, and set out down the street.

The streets they walked were the same ones they had come along only three weeks earlier, but there was a nip in the air on this morning, although it was only September. The women wore shawls, and where they had ambled and sauntered before, they bustled and hustled along.

The
Sarah Maud
had been unloading barley all night and was being made ready to turn right around and head back to Hawthorn Bay.

“Jake Pierson’s place is right up to the head of our bay,” Susan explained to Rose, “so we’re mighty lucky to find him here.”

The wind was growing strong. Captain Pierson greeted Susan briefly, nodded at Rose, and showed them where they could berth. It was a smaller schooner than the one they had come over on, a two-master, with a smaller cabin for sleeping and cooking, and a crew of two.

“Frank March and Jim Bedell,” Susan told Rose, “and that Jim’s such a lazy one, Jake’ll be right glad to have Will aboard.”

Mrs. Jerue hugged Will long when it was time for good-byes. “You be my boy, now, too,” she said. Then she gave Susan a big hug and a “God bless you, child,” but when she turned to Rose, she shook her head. “You’re a funny one,” she said. “There’s more to you than you told me, I’m certain sure. But if you ever come back this way, you remember Min Jerue. There’ll always be a place here for you.”

Impulsively, Rose threw her arms around Mrs. Jerue. Then she shook hands with all the children.

“I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said when she got to him. “I didn’t mean to spoil things for you.”

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?” asked Charlie. Rose was so taken by surprise she nearly laughed, but she didn’t. “I’d like to, Charlie,” she said, “but I can’t because I live too far away.” Then she remembered something she had heard someone say in a movie and she told him solemnly, “I’m really much too old for
you, Charlie. But I will always hold your love in my heart,” and she turned and went away without waiting to see what effect her words had had on Charlie.

“Cast off,” the captain shouted, and Will and the other two young men let loose the lines and, pulled by the tug, they were soon out in the open lake, their sails set.

“The wind’s from the south,” Will called to Rose happily, “so we won’t be no time at all getting home.” And it looked as though they would not be. The sky was gray but the heavy clouds were scudding across with the wind, like banners leading the way. Within six hours, they were within sight of the island shore. But then the wind shifted a little to the west, the clouds thickened and turned black, and the rain began. At first it was just an ordinary rain, but before a quarter of an hour was over it was pouring out of the sky like water over a fall. The wind heightened. It churned up the lake in twelve-foot-high waves. In shrieks and drawn-out wails it blew with such force across the deck of the schooner that no one could stand upright.

Rose crept into the cabin where Susan was already crouched in a far corner murmuring prayers. Rose could not reach her because the ship pitched and yawed so furiously. She clung to the inside of the door jamb, watching terrified as the men moved about the deck, clinging to the
ropes, the wheel, the bulkhead, anything that would keep them from being injured or blown overboard. She could hear their shouts, but the wind was so wild and shrill she could not hear anything they said. Once Will went past the door, crawling on all fours, and she heard him call out to someone, “…  says ‘reef the mainsail’!”

Seconds later the ship pitched into a deep trough and the floor of the cabin stood almost straight up in the air. Rose, Susan, and anything that was not nailed down were hurled against the far wall. All Rose could see, looking straight out through the porthole, was water. The schooner hung suspended for what seemed like hours; then it righted itself. In a momentary lull in the tempest, Rose heard the captain shout, “Let out the sail!” Then the wind howled and the ship heeled over again.

“Susan,” Rose cried, though Susan could not hear her, “did we go all that way and find Will just so we could die when we’re almost home? Aunt Nan! Will! I don’t want to die!” Then she stopped thinking about dying because, as the schooner righted itself once more, she was violently sick to her stomach. Three more times the ship pitched, until it nearly flipped over. Three more times it righted itself. Then, as suddenly as it had blown up, the gale was over. The wind veered straight around to the west and steadied. But the rain went on. In sheets and torrents it
poured over them. Will came in and lit the coal stove that had gone out during the gale. Susan made coffee. Rose took buckets and washed herself and the floor where she had been sick. While one man took the watch and another the wheel, the captain came into the cabin to warm himself by the stove. He said quietly, “Well, I think we might better offer up a small prayer. It was just a week ago today the
Laurie Jack
and all hands went down within a mile of the dock at Soames.”

It was not more than fifteen minutes later when Jim Bedell, who was on watch, shouted, “I see a light,” and Will said, barely containing the excitement and relief in his voice, “That’d be Soames.” It wasn’t ten more minutes before he said, in those same tones, “I expect that light’s Am Colliver’s place.” Captain Pierson shouted “Hard down! Hard down!” and the schooner headed into the bay. It sailed past Heaton’s dock where Rose and Susan had embarked for Oswego only weeks earlier, past their own house and docked at the head of the bay.

“You might better stay the night with us,” Jake Pierson said to Will. It was still raining hard and the wind, while it was no longer a gale, was powerful. Night had fallen while they had wrestled out on the lake.

Rose peered anxiously into the dark and the rain. She was more afraid than ever that something was about to go wrong.

“Please, Will,” she said, “let’s go now. It’s all right for you and Susan. You’re home. But it isn’t all right for me. Please.”

Will took one look at her frightened face. “Okay. We’ll go. It’s only a mile and a quarter. Susan, you stay here. I’ll go up the road with Rose. You come along in the morning when the rain ain’t so fierce.”

“I’m coming,” said Susan. “Rose come along with me every step of the way to find you and I aim to come along with Rose.”

Rose smiled gratefully at Susan, but Jake Pierson shook his head warningly at them.

“Bad night,” he said. “Black as the inside of a cat and wet as Niagara.”

Jake Pierson was right. It was black. There were no shapes of houses or barns to guide them. With Will in the lead they put their heads down against the onrushing wind and the stinging rain and marched along as fast as they could, their boots full of water, their clothes heavy and clinging.

I wish I had my jeans
, thought Rose. She pulled the long skirt away from her legs, rolled it up around her waist, and held it there.

“I hear the creek.” Will’s voice was raised against the wind, but it sounded relieved. “I know where we are now, just about to our bridge.” They went on about twenty paces when Rose heard a thrashing around as if someone
had fallen. Will swore, then he shouted, “Stop! Don’t come on, the bridge’s washed out!” Susan grabbed her hand and they stopped.

“You all right, Will?” cried Susan.

“Yep,” came Will’s voice as he suddenly loomed over them. “But I don’t know how we’re going to get across that water without we can even see. I don’t remember the creek ever flooding like this. There’s no sign of the bridge at all, not one stick. She’s gone and the water’s like a millrace. It’s up higher than my waist and rushing so fast it pulled me right over. Standing in it, I couldn’t tell which way was east nor which was west. It’s only by your voices I knew to come this way. We’re going to have to go back. There ain’t no other way we can get to the house and the root cellar except over the creek—and that’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not going back.” Rose was desperate. “You go. I’m not going. I can swim. I’ll get across. I have to!”

“We ain’t leaving you,” said Susan.

“Wait here then,” said Will. “I’ll try again.”

“Let me come.”

“Nope.”

Rose waited. Over the sounds of the wind and the rain she heard Will splashing. In a few moments, he was back.

“It’d be up over your head and you couldn’t ever swim. If you climb on my back
and hang on tight, I think I can get you across.”

Will squatted down and Rose hitched up her wet skirts again and climbed up to sit on his back.

“Hang on tight,” he shouted. Will slipped and stumbled across the rocky creek bed, the wind and rain pushing against him. Rose clung desperately around his neck. Once they nearly fell, but his feet found the other side and he knelt down to let Rose off to clamber up the slippery bank while he went back to get Susan.

It seemed to Rose that she was waiting forever. When they reached her side, she took their hands and together they fought the wind. It was a walk that would have taken three minutes on a calm day. It took them twenty—an agony of time for Rose. She couldn’t tell when they had reached the front yard of the Morrissays’ house.

But Will could. “Here we are,” he said. There was quiet jubilation in his voice.

They turned into the yard and inched their way around to the back, feeling for the back porch, the stone walk, and the root cellar.

“I think I found the creek,” said Will. “My foot’s struck water.” He stumbled and let go of Rose’s and Susan’s hands to right himself.

“No, it ain’t. This here’s the creek.” Susan was down on her hands and knees. “I can feel the old hawthorn tree and I know the creek goes in this direction from it.”

“So what’ve I got my foot in?” demanded Will irritably.

“It’s the root cellar,” cried Rose. “It’s the root cellar, and it’s full of water.” And she grabbed Will’s hand, put her foot forward, nearly fell, pulled back, put her foot forward more cautiously, and felt around until she found a step.

“It
is
the root cellar!” she gasped. Without another word, without really thinking about what she was doing, her feet groped for the slippery steps. She held her nose and pushed herself down under the muddy water, grabbing at vines and weeds with her hands, until her feet found the floor. She stood there for as long as she could hold her breath, grasping at the edge of the steps for something to cling to. Then she rose to the surface. “Oh, please,” she thought desperately, “let it happen.”

It was still dark, still pouring rain, the wind was still howling. It hadn’t worked. She was not home.

Her disappointment was so intense she nearly fainted. She climbed up from the last step and reached out for Will or Susan for support.

“Will?” she said faintly. “Susan?”

“Is that you, Rose?” It was Sam’s voice. “Where are you? You shouldn’t stay out in a storm like this. It’s awful.”

“It is an awful storm, Sam,” said Rose shakily. “But I’m all right now.”

Home

R
ose stood in front of the fire, her teeth chattering, her heart thumping, streams of muddy water dripping from Louisa Jerue’s green-and-white striped dress.

Sam stared at her. “How come you’ve got on that funny dress? And you’re purple with cold.”

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

“I might.”

“Do you want to hear?”

“Sure. Do you want some tea or something?”

“Yes! And a grilled cheese sandwich and a bath. What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“Is it today Aunt Nan had the accident?”