The Unnameables (27 page)

The entire Shepherd-Shearer clan jumped up and bolted for the door. Farmers, Cobblers, and Watermans stood and shouted. Glazers, Weavers, and Candlewrights hunkered down on their chairs and covered their heads with their arms.

Deemer gave Medford a full, jumble-toothed grin. Then he stalked out the door.

He was no sooner out of sight than the world went quiet again. Islanders stopped shouting when they noticed that the wind was silent and the broken windows were the only damage. For a Goatman-induced breeze, Medford thought, it wasn't much. But a glance at the Council table confirmed that the timing couldn't have been worse.

Three and a half bloodless faces confronted him. The half belonged to Comfort, who had her arms up protecting her head.

The crowd had had enough. No one who was standing sat down again. Everyone who was sitting stood up. "Get rid of that thing," Millicent Brewer called out.

Verity's mouth was a fissure across her face. "I agree," she said. "I move that the horned man spend tonight in the jail. Tomorrow morning he shall board the boat he came in and be towed to sea to find his way to Mainland. All those in favor?"

She raised her hand. So did the other Councilors. Even though their votes didn't count, most of the Islanders in the audience raised their hands, too.

"Done," Verity said. "Medford to stay, the horned man to go, the name Runyuin to be considered. I move we adjourn."

Chairs scraped. Floorboards creaked. Fishers, Watermans, Shepherds, and Shearers crowded to the door. Twig joined them and so did Boyce, the Alma carving cradled in his arms. Clarity tried to talk to Prudy, who got up and walked away. Clarity stared after her for a minute, then put her arm around Essence and steered her toward the door.

Numb from brain to toenail, Medford sat down and watched them all go. He should be elated. He could stay. He—and his carvings—belonged to Island now. But he owed it all to a smelly man with horns.

Who would be towed to sea in the boat he came in.

"Guess we gotta take this fellow down to the jail now, Medford," Ward said, grabbing the Goatmans arm. "I'm sorry about it all." Ward's eyes were red and watery.

"I'm spending the night in the jail, too, Ward," Med-ford said.

"Me, too," Earnest said. "And Prudy will, too."

I am right pleased with the wall I built for Mistress Farmer. We seldom talk of Beauty, but that's what this is: Fitted for its Purpose, each Rock in its proper Place.

—Journal of Birch Mason, 1799

B
AILEY SHUT
the door to the jail cell, but he didn't lock it.

The Goatman made himself a nest of blankets and fell noisily asleep. Medford, Prudy, and Earnest sat down and stared at one another.

"I forgive you, Prudy," Medford ventured at last.

"For what?"

"Tuh. For betraying me to Deemer."

"I didn't." She'd never lied to him before. Had she? He tried to think.

"I didn't," Prudy insisted, looking like she might cry again. "I decided not to, but I couldn't live with
two
secrets. So I went to tell Deemer about Cordelia's Unnameable Object. But he already knew about you, so I didn't tell about Cordelia after all."

"But ... Earnest said you told Deemer..." Medford tried to think what Earnest actually had said. "
She went to see Deemer Learned this morning. She didn't tell Pa she was going.
" Nothing about what she'd told Deemer, as a matter of fact.

"I did tell about the Goatman," Prudy said. "That wind came up and knocked everything over and I thought ... well, I thought it was best."

"I might have done the same," Medford said. "But who told about me?"

"I don't know. I thought it might have been Arvid; maybe he'd seen something when he visited you. But I pressed him hard when the chairs were being set up and I truly don't think he did it. What in the Names is wrong with you, Earnest?"

Tiny screwdriver in hand, Earnest was attacking his pocket watch in a fever. He had the cover off and was detaching a wheel. "I did it," he told the watch innards.

"Did what?" Medford peered down at the watch.

"Told Deemer. About your carvings."

They stared at him as he pulled out the wheel and palmed it.

"Sorry," Earnest said.

"Earnest," Prudy said. "What were you thinking?"

A tiny metal coil took flight from Earnest's watch. He retrieved it. "I wanted to find out what happened to Essence," he said. He tried to fit the coil back into the watch but it took flight again.

"What do Medford's carvings have to do with Essence?" Prudy asked. "Earnest, stop fooling with that thing and look at me."

Earnest rescued the errant coil and gave her a patient-elder-brother look. "Prudy, if I'd said, 'Let's break into the Archives and find out what happened to Essence,' would you have done it?"

Medford had to admit Earnest had a point.

"With Medford in jail, we had a way in and a reason to go up there," Earnest said. "And see how well it all turned out."

"Medford could have been banished!"

"But he wasn't, was he? And now he'll carve what he wants to and Essence is back and ... all's well." Earnest set to work reinstalling the coil.

"By all the Names, Earnest," Prudy said, "you took us apart just like that watch."

For dinner, Ward and Bailey brought vegetable stew, biscuits, and late corn from Cook's. Ward woke up the Goatman and sat down to eat with them. Bailey took his portion down to the Constables' room.

"He feels bad that he said the Goatman smells," Ward explained, then lowered his voice so only Medford could hear. "Also, he liketh not the smell."

While they ate, Medford and Prudy tried to think up ways to keep the Goatman on Island. None of them made much sense, since they all involved the Goatman hiding and not calling down any blasts of wind and no one thought he could do either for very long.

The Goatman was silent and broody, although he did manage to eat everyone's discarded corncobs as well as all the napkins.

They napped and talked, talked and napped all afternoon. The Goatman plucked some of the taller grass blades growing outside the window and played a slow tune, lilting but lonely. It sounded like winter.

When everyone else was sleeping, Medford's brain kept revisiting the moment when he'd tipped over Boyce's kitchen table, sent Alma flying. He imagined himself stopping first, yelling at Boyce but not destroying the carving.
Why didn't I do that?

He knew he should go over and make sure Boyce was all right, share his anguish over the carving. But he told himself Boyce would want to confront this alone and in silence, the way he confronted everything.
What could I say to him, anyways?

"Hoo," Prudy said. "What's that smell?"

"Sti-i-inky!" The Goatman sat up.

"No argument here," Earnest said.

Everyone crowded to the window. They took turns standing on the bench to pat the dog and have their faces licked.

"I'll let her in," Medford said, heading for the door.

Prudy sniffed her hand. "I wouldn't," she said.

The dog seemed content to lie down next to the window, gazing in at them. "She's a very smart dog," Prudy said. "We took her over to the Fishers' bait shed and she knew just what to do."

"Smells like she did it again," Earnest said, coughing.

Medford lay down again, trying not to think about the Alma carving. Instead, his brain skipped to...

"Earnest, how did Essence get here this morning?"

Prudy and Earnest exchanged a glance. "Remember the light we saw in the radio room last night?" Earnest said. "That was Pa. He radioed the Mainland Traders in the middle of the night, asked them to bring Essence over this morning."

"But why?"

"Pa thought she should tell what she knew," Earnest said. "Good idea—I would have done it if I'd thought of it."

"'Tis so unlike him," Prudy said. "Don't you think so, Earnest? He never actually does anything. Usually all he does is talk."

"And usually to someone who already agrees with him," Earnest said.

"You sound as if you don't approve of him," Medford said.

"I love him," Earnest said. "I like talking to him and I like listening to him. He's smart and he's good to have around. I don't think of him acting on his words, that's all."

"Until now," Prudy said.

"Maybe," said her brother.

Medford had always envied Prudy and Earnest their lively, interesting father, especially after growing up with silent Boyce Carver. Yet Boyce had had that Alma carving hidden under his bed all these years.

And now Medford had broken the Alma carving, perhaps beyond repair.

He had to see Boyce. Now.

"I'll be back," he told the others.

He found his foster father in the workshop, doggedly sanding spoons. Alma was on a table in the corner with a new chin.

"Don't touch her," Boyce said. "The glue's drying."

"She looks good," Medford said. He meant it—you could hardly tell she'd been damaged unless you knew what to look for. But he knew that for Boyce—and for him—that carving would never be truly whole.

"What will you work on next?" he asked.

"Bowls," Boyce said.

"That's all? Bowls? You can carve what you like now."

"If you mean Unnameable carvings, no, I can't. I promised Alma. She'd hate that I taught you to carve the things."

"You didn't. You always told me to avoid the Unnameable."

"I don't know, Medford." Boyce put his sandpaper down in the exact place where he always put it down. "I don't know."

"Truly, Boyce," Medford said. "I started seeing things in the wood, that's all."

Boyce shook his head. "I saw you with that seabird wing years ago, and I thought, 'Oh, the Book, I made him see that.'"

"You told me things were beautiful for their Use," Medford said. "That's all."

"Maybe I shouldn't have said 'beautiful.' 'Tis a dangerous word. But maybe just being around me made you do it. Maybe 'tis a contagion after all."

Medford had a startling thought. "Is that why you made me move out? You thought you were teaching me wrong?"

"Didn't do much good, did it? Look at all them things you carved."

"I think Alma'd say 'twas all right now," Medford said. "Now that they're runyuins."

"No, she wouldn't," Boyce said. "And one Runyuin in the family is enough."

Medford was back in jail and snuggled under his blanket before he thought about Boyce using that word, "family." He'd never used it before and might not again.

Once was enough.

When a Neighbor is to embark upon a Voyage, 'tis Right and Proper to provide such sustenance as thou canst spare from thine own Larder and Stores.

—A Frugall Compendium of Home Arts and Farme Chores by Capability C. Craft (1680), as Amended and Annotated by the Island Council of Names (1718–1809)

T
HE MORNING
dawned clear and chilly. Ward brought biscuits with butter and honey and ate with the group. At the end of the meal he collected the napkins and gave them to the Goatman.

Medford wasn't breathing well. He thought about what his life had been like before the Goatman arrived—just five days ago. The sick feeling in his stomach every time he carved something Useless. The fear that someone would find out. The loneliness.

"Where will you go now, Master Goatman?" Prudy asked.

"Ba-a-ack he-e-ere," the Goatman said, goatish. "Thi-i-is time I'll go to those barrens you ta-a-alk about. I'll hi-i-ide and practice on the wi-i-ind."

Medford could see from Prudy's face that this wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. "The first wind that comes up they'll all turn out to find you," she said. "I don't know what they'll do then."

Medford envisioned the Goatman trying to make his way back to Island over a late-autumn sea. Or foraging for himself on snowy Mainland, still exiled from his home.

They met Boyce, Twig, Clarity, and Essence at the wharf. Chandler had towed the Goatman's sailboat over from the beach below Medford's. Everyone stood on the float, silent, while Chandler tied the sailboat to the Trade motorboat for towing out to sea.

Myrtle Cook bustled down the ramp and handed Medford a covered basket. "For thy friend with the horns," she said, eyeing the Goatman from a safe distance. "'Twill last him to Mainland, I think."

Astonished, Medford peeked under the cloth. The basket was half full of cheese biscuits. Freshly laundered cloth napkins filled the other half. "That-that's nice of you, Mistress Cook," he stammered.

She blushed. "Ward says he's a nice enough fellow. Just ... funny-looking and windy, and he can't help that. And we know things we didn't used to. That ain't all bad."

Millicent Brewer arrived next with three bottles of root beer. She handed them to Chandler, who stowed them in the sailboat. Prosper Weaver arrived with blankets. Freeman Trade strutted onto the float and handed Boyce an imported compass. Boyce handed it to the Goatman, who sniffed it.

Comfort Naming brought a sun hat with the brim cut out on the sides and ties added for each of the Goatman's horns. She gave the hat to Medford, glanced sidelong to see where Freeman was standing, and turned away from him, only to run into the Goatman. She jumped backward with a squeal, and Chandler caught her before she tumbled into the water.

"Best get this voyage under way," Chandler said, steering Comfort toward the center of the float. "Don't know how much more of this we can take."

More Islanders arrived. So many of them tried to crowd onto the float that Chandler posted Bailey at the top of the ramp to block latecomers, who then lined the wharf and shore instead.

Finally, all was ready. A hard lump formed in Med-ford's throat. He hoped he wouldn't get teary in front of everyone. The dog came over to lick his hand. He knelt down to scratch her ears and chest, breathing through his mouth.

"Ca-a-arver Boy," the Goatman began.

But then Verity let out a yell that could be heard from one end of a hayfield to the other. She pointed to the shore.