The widow's war (13 page)

On the short walk to Nathan’s house Lyddie saw nothing of the road or the trees or the houses or the sky; she saw nothing but a gray wall of anger before her eyes until she reached her son’s house and rapped on the door. Hassey opened it. Lyddie took only enough time to note what she might have noted anytime before: instead of a mahogany skin an oaken one, instead of a broad, flat nose a narrow, beaked one, instead of a soft brown eye a gleaming black one.

“I would see my son,” Lyddie said.

Hassey stepped back without argument.

Lyddie swept in. The family sat in the best room, Nathan reading to them from the Bible. Lyddie stared at Mehitable’s swollen womb and could not move her eye along. Nathan clapped the book shut and rose.

“Have I not made myself clear? You’re not welcome in this house.”

“I’m not looking for welcome. I’m looking for seven and sixpence, taken from me with Edward’s desk. It was in the drawer.”

“There was naught in the drawer.”

“Then allow a sharper pair of eyes to look, as it was most definitely there.”

“All right, Mother, I’ll look again, if it pleases you.” Nathan left the room.

Lyddie addressed her daughter. “Are you well?”

“As you find me.” She looked down, and up. “And you, Mother?”

“I am not unhappy. I wish only—”

Nathan returned and handed Lyddie her letter book. “This was all that was found of yours, Mother.”

“There were seven and sixpence in that drawer. In a brown leather pouch with a white bead on the cord.”

“I’m sorry, I found no money. Perhaps that neighbor of yours—”

“’Twas the neighbor gave it me. My pay for nursing. You may take the desk and table and hutch as yours; you may not take my pay for nursing.”

“An interesting point. I wonder how the law applies it. Your wages would belong to your husband if he were living, but in this instance, if I were charged with feeding and clothing you while you continued to make an independent income of some sort—”

“My husband is dead, Mr. Clarke, and as we all well know, you neither feed nor clothe me. The wages are mine.”

“Perhaps Jot—” Mehitable said.

“’Twas no Jot in this,” Lyddie said. “Look at your husband’s smile and you will see every penny in it.”

“Good evening, Mother,” Nathan said. He crossed to his chair, picked the Bible off the seat, and sat down.

“I would not have thought it,” Lyddie said. “Truly, I would not have thought it. That you would steal from your wife’s mother and smirk about it in front of her and in front of your own children. I’m
sorry, indeed, I’m greatly sorry, that another child will be born to a father such as you.”

“Oh!” Mehitable cried. “How can you speak so to him?”

“Ladies, please,” Nathan said. He turned back the pages of the Bible. “We were at Isaiah, but I think we might now try Paul. ‘Let your women keep silent in the churches.’ I might add, ‘Let them keep silent on the Sabbath as a whole.’”

Lyddie turned to Mehitable. “Daughter, I wish to say this only. I will not lay blame for his actions at your door, and I ask you not to lay his at mine.”

She walked out of the room, out the door, and into the road. She heard footsteps behind her and whirled with a single wish, but it was Bethiah who ran toward her. Lyddie caught her up and squeezed her fiercely; the girl squeezed back and melted away as if she’d never come.

The shilling and sixpence sat in a cup in the middle of the plank table. Around it Lyddie collected what items she could spare to sell, totting each up as she set it down: white dish, two shillings; pewter plate, ten shillings; brown mug, one shilling; teapot, one and six…Lyddie stopped there. She might sell all her goods, eat off a board and drink out of a boot, but the money would still run out before she did. She would have to make her way in the end, so why not do it now and keep her belongings?

Make her way. She thought of the women she knew who had done so: Widow Baker ran an inn, but Lyddie could imagine Nathan Clarke’s response if she usurped his two-thirds of the house toward that end. Widow Crosby at Eastham ran a tavern, but only because her husband had done so, and when he died the selectmen allowed her to continue so doing until some months later she married her best
customer, and he took up the deed while she continued the pouring. The Widow Selew, who had been willed life use of her house entire, opened a store in her front room, but in order to open a store, one needed money to stock it. The other single women in town, widow or spinster, lived with their families and earned their keep by spinning, weaving, or nursing, but Mehitable had not required any of this from Lyddie, and with a pound of wool at Sears’s store charged at a shilling four pence, Lyddie would have to risk all her funds to card and spin and knit a pair of mittens in hope of selling them at two shillings the pair. She went to bed no further ahead, in fact, a good deal further behind, than she had been that morning.

The salt tang of the flats at low tide woke Lyddie, and her immediate hunger dissolved what little remained of her pride. She put on her most worn skirt, took up her hoe and the tow sack she’d brought Rebecca’s clothes home in, and headed shoreward. The sky was barely gray, the beach as empty as she’d hoped to find it. She sat on a drift log, removed her shoes and stockings, pulled her skirt between her legs, and tucked it in her waistband. She waded through the channels and out to the high bar, digging at holes like the poorest Indian, having little idea what hole meant what type of creature, but after twenty minutes she had six clams for her dinner. She straightened her back, and in so doing she realized that the tide had come in fast around the single high bar; now, to reach shore, she’d have to wade through thigh-deep water. She stepped into the current. It caught at the cloth between her legs, tugging it loose, the billowing skirt acting like a drag and pulling her feet from under her. She went down and away, into the cold, the current taking her, numbing her, the water far deeper than she’d imagined. Her clothing pulled harder, like Edward in the weeds; they wanted her down, under. She swallowed water.
She thrashed and shot her mouth clear, but the trade was to sink deeper afterward; she thrashed harder and sank deeper and she saw the end to it, all of it, but after one blink of sheer relief she rejected such an end. She would not die over six clams. She would not exit life before she’d seen her daughter safe in it. She would not leave Nathan Clarke free to do as he pleased with a house that had once been home to her.

She heard a shout from shore. She thrashed harder, and it brought a louder shout, and with it her sense of direction. She rested a minute and as she did she sank, and in sinking, her foot touched bottom. She pushed off, not with the current and not against it but across it; she felt sand again and pushed again, and continued bouncing until she could stand.

Sam Cowett and Jabez Gray were slogging through the water toward her.

“’Tis the widow!” Cowett said.

“Bloody hell!” Gray said. They each caught her by an arm and half carried her shoreward, to collapse on the same log that had launched her. They wrapped her in some sacking off the boat and pumped her with questions. How long were you in there? Are you numbed through? Are you wet in the lungs? Can you walk?

But neither man asked what she was doing in the water.

Lyddie emerged from her room in flannel gown and wool stockings, her hair streaming down her back like seaweed. Jabez Gray had gone; Sam Cowett sat on the barrel looking over the sparse collection on the table.

She offered him a portion of her dwindling supply of tea and bread, but he refused it. She was hungry, but more exhausted than hungry; he got up and she sat hard on the barrel. Cowett looked
around and located the brandy bottle on the upended crate. He tipped the coins out of the cup, poured a stiff measure, and handed it across. Lyddie drank, one sip, then a second.

“If you’re thinking I threw myself in after my husband you’d be mistaken,” she said. “I was out for clams. I dug out every hole and found but six.”

Cowett walked to the fire, picked up her bread peel, smoothed out a patch of ash, and drew a shape that looked something like a keyhole. “That’s the hole you’re after.”

“Thank you. I’ll remember next time.”

“And the tide. ’Tis at the neap now. Not the time for clamming.”

Lyddie took another sip of the medicine. It had just begun to warm the inner parts, but not the outer.

“Do you plan to stay?” she asked.

“Till you’ve come the right color.”

“Then perhaps you’d like to see if there’s another barrel in the barn.”

He left and was gone some time. When he came back he had a ladder-back chair over each shoulder.

“I’ve no need of these. What I’ve need of is a woman to set up a pot and scour me out mornings.”

“For the price of two chairs?”

“The chairs are loan. For the other, I’ll pay a shilling.”

The door rattled. Cowett strode over and tossed it open. Deacon Smalley stepped back, startled.

Cowett turned to her. “What say you, Widow Berry? A shilling a day for setting me right mornings?”

“Yes,” Lyddie said.

Cowett left.

The deacon looked after him and back to Lyddie. “So. You work for him still.”

“As I would eat, yes.”

He looked around the room, spied the brandy bottle on the table, and looked harder at Lyddie. “You’re ill?”

“I’m wet. A small mishap at the shore this morning. Sit down, Mr. Smalley. Would you have tea?”

“No, thank you. I’ve come at the direction of the reverend. You were not at meeting.”

“No. I was waylaid.”

“You’ve missed several, Widow Berry.”

“Indeed.”

“We—the reverend and I and others of the church fathers—have great concerns over your conduct, Widow Berry.”

“If your concern is in regard to my missing meeting—”

“It is in regard to meeting, it is in regard to your disrespect of your son, it is in regard to your relation with this Indian.”

Lyddie set down her cup, warm enough now, and not from the brandy. “You may tell the church fathers that I’m duly chastised about meeting and will strive to attend better. You may tell them they may take up my disrespect of my son at the same time as they take up his failure to honor his obligation to me. You may tell them nothing of the Indian, as it’s not their business. Is there more?”

“There’s a good deal more. You put yourself at grave risk, in this life and the next, if you continue without the Lord, if you continue in your willfulness, if you continue in the company of heathens.”

“And I see the greater risk in starvation.”

“You might return to your son’s any time you sign the proper papers, and there you might eat your fill. ’Tis naught but pride keeps you here.”

“So, ’tis not the church fathers who send you here, but Mr. Clarke? But of course, you would like my house for your daughter. You should enjoy having her so near at hand, would you not?”

“My dealings with Clarke are not your concern.”

“As my dealings with him are not yours. As my dealings with Mr. Cowett are not yours.”

“I am deacon of the church. I arrive at an early hour to find him handling your door as if it were his own and you undressed in his company.”

Lyddie rose. “I am undressed, as you call it, in your company as well. Best you take yourself off before that’s all over town, too.”

A rich, bruised color suffused the deacon’s face. “You’ve been warned, Widow Berry.”

He left without good-bye.

Lyddie refilled her cup and drank it down.

Lyddie set up the Indian with stews and pies and bread, swept out and scoured down, fed the chickens in exchange for eggs, trading some mending for three laying hens, and added one and six to her week’s pay whenever she did a washing. The deacon’s visit had had a certain perverse effect on her; from that day forth she didn’t attend another meeting, but she still observed the Sabbath by not working, until one Saturday Cowett said, “Another two shillings if you come on the morrow.” Lyddie worked the Sabbath and felt nothing but richer.

The days passed into weeks, dragging May into June by the heels. The viburnum bloomed. The strawberries reddened. Eben Freeman came. He stood and looked around and sat and looked around and stood and burst out roughly, “Widow Berry, you must know what’s said about town.”

“What is said, Mr. Freeman?”

“How can you be unaware? You shun your church, you shun your friends and family, you seclude yourself for over a month with this Indian, they think…well, good God, what might they think?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“You and the Indian. A rumor flies. Of him. Here. With you.”

“You have this from Deacon Smalley?”

“I have it from all the town! My sister told me of it. The miller told me of it. ’Tis tossed about at the tavern.”

“Well, then, it must be true.”

“You’d do nothing to help yourself, Widow Berry?”

“What would you like from me, Mr. Freeman? My assurance that I do not lie with the Indian? Then you have it. Will that do?”

He stared at her. “You’re greatly changed, Widow Berry. You’re very greatly changed. I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Nor I you. And if you’ve come from my son with the aim of forcing me to give up my employment with Mr. Cowett—”

“I? Come from your son? This is what you think of me?”

“What should I think of you, Mr. Freeman, having just learned what you think of me?”

He had the sense to fall silent, but soon enough he began again, although in more subdued tone. “I think nothing ill of you, Widow Berry; I never have and I never could do. I’ve spoken badly. I came with no intent but to warn you of the harm aimed at you.”

“But how can they harm me? Unless they drive me away from Mr. Cowett and my sole source of employment?”

“But don’t you see? That very employment allows them this weapon against you. There are other means to make your way. If you allow me to help you to regain your keep from Clarke by law—”

“And leave me in debt to you and fighting Clarke every month for my wood and rye? Do you forget? ’Twas you described how it would be.”

“You have no other recourse.”

“I have my employ with Mr. Cowett. And I’d sooner count on Cowett than Clarke.”

“Count on Cowett! You don’t begin to know the man; you don’t know what moves him. He has grudges to feed, old and new. He’s ruled by them.”

“And I thought you a friend to him.”

“He has no friend in this town.”

“Well, then, it makes us two.”

“You would say this to me?”

Lyddie didn’t answer.

Freeman stood up. “My sister awaits my report on your condition. It will not be a happy one. I see now you have been corrupted by him, if not in one way, then in another equally as damaging. Good-day to you, Widow Berry.”

“Good-day, Mr. Freeman.”

After he had gone Lyddie sat, half shamed and half angered, the anger fed by the shaming, both warring inside her. It all warred inside her. Was Freeman indeed a friend to her? What poor opinion must he hold of her to say all he had said of Cowett? But what of all his early kindness and defense of her? Even today, he had heard what was said around town and instead of believing and staying away he had come to warn her. Or had he half believed, the half that believed then coming straight to her to hear her denial? But even if that were so, the fact of his coming here spoke to a certain courage no other had possessed, including her daughter. And speaking of her daughter, where did she fall in this? Mehitable had believed her husband over her mother once before; Lyddie could put no faith in her in this matter. And after this last visit, perhaps she would be foolish to put any faith in Eben Freeman. Lyddie was surprised to find that the second thought gave her almost as much pain as the first.

Lyddie returned to Cowett’s late in the day to collect the linens she’d left on the grass to bleach; she found the Indian just in from
fishing, and she followed him inside to set out his supper. Long, gold rays followed her through the door and across the clean, bleached floorboards; the smell of sassafras but not sassafras was strong and she found it soothed her. Cowett talked of a fine day at sea and his hope for the morrow; once he’d put away his sack he turned and gave her one long look, then another.

“Are you well?”

Lyddie nodded. She set down the meat pie.

Cowett pointed to it. “Will you share?”

Lyddie accepted.

She accepted other suppers. For several weeks she ate, cleaned up the remains, and left immediately after; but one night near the end of June she lingered. They’d been talking of the Indians. She asked him: who were the Indian gods? And his answer had bewitched her. The two biggest were Kiehtan and Hobamock, the first delivering good, the second evil. Kiehtan created the heaven and earth and the sea and all its creatures, all the Indian humanity springing from one man and one woman, as did the Christian’s, but the Indian sent his prayers and gifts to Hobamock, to keep on his good side—hence the Christian perception that the Indians worshiped the devil. Hobamock was the more powerful; Hobamock would send or not send their wounds and droughts and diseases. Lyddie asked where these gods dwelled, what version the Indian might have of a heaven or a hell, and Cowett referred to a vague place in the west, where good and bad went together, but from there the bad were sent away to wander. Lyddie asked what sins sent man to wander and Cowett listed among them adultery, but then explained that married or no, Indian men and women were free to leave one mate and try another whenever they wished it.

“Then where lies the sin?” Lyddie asked.

“When the trying comes before the leaving.”

Lyddie considered. There were scandals in every Cape Cod village, and Satucket had its share of them: Abigail Gray had been got with child while her husband was at sea; Keziah Doane and Winslow Myrick had each left their spouse to set up housekeeping in Yarmouth; it was rumored, and denied, that the youngest Cobb had got a child on the family Negro, Sarah. But Lyddie believed herself the first Englishwoman in town to be paired with an Indian. She tried to sort the crimes along the Indian rule, but she could only vouch for the last, the one that had never happened, as free of any trying-before-leaving. If one counted dying as leaving.

Lyddie looked up and found Cowett watching her. She flushed. He said, as if he could read color as he read words, “You hear what they say of us.”

She nodded.

“It troubles you?”

“Some.”

“Enough to stop you coming?”

“’Tis been said already. What good would stopping now do?”

He nodded.

She said, after a minute, “It doesn’t trouble you.”

He shrugged. “Naught to lose.”

Lyddie considered. And what had she to lose? She had lost her daughter and her last friend. She looked across the table. Her last white friend.

Lyddie got up to go, and Cowett followed her into the yard on his way to the barn. The sun’s last glancing blow filled the tops of the trees in the woodlot. Lyddie pointed toward the trees. “Did you divide, then?”

He nodded.

“And do you regret it?”

He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. He
turned her to the east. “That way to Namskaket Creek.” He turned her south. “There to the Great Long Pond.” He turned her west. “And there to the Sauquatuckett, or as you say, Satucket River, or Stony Brook, or Mill Creek.” One more turn. “And north to the bay. My great-grandfather sold all of it to the English for fifty-eight pounds. Why trouble over half a woodlot?”

Lyddie made no answer. In fact, she barely breathed. Cowett’s hands had stayed on her shoulders, as if he’d forgotten them there, and no doubt he had forgotten himself, thought he was standing in the yard with his wife, as Lyddie could think she was standing so with Edward. But no, she could never take this Indian for Edward. She could sense his great size behind her even if she couldn’t see him, she could smell that sassafras smell that she’d never smelled on Edward. He shouldn’t be touching her. But of course she shouldn’t be letting him touch her. And still she stood there with breath held and knees locked because it had been so long since she’d felt the heat and weight of a man’s hands on her, so long since she’d been so physically connected to any living thing, white or Indian.

With great effort of will she stepped out from under the hands. She said, without turning, “But your great-grandfather kept this piece.”

“He kept it.”

“And gave some to Edward’s great-grandfather. Why?”

Cowett made no answer.

“I must go,” Lyddie said. She stepped away, deeper into the wood.

He called after her, as if nothing had happened at all, “’Twas a fine pie.”

And Lyddie called back, “Thank you.”

Lyddie slept little and arrived late the next day, after Sam Cowett had gone. She put the house to right in a hurry, set him out a cold meat
pie, a loaf, and some pickled greens for dinner, and left before he returned.

After she’d finished her own baking she took Edward’s ax out of the barn and went into the woodlot to see what she might do on her own about wood for winter. A piece of old fence lay on the ground, and she set to hacking it apart with the ax. When she stopped to get her breath she heard a noise and turned around to see Sam Cowett coming through the trees toward her.

He took the ax from her, cut up the fence with dispatch, took two small, wind-felled trees down to log size, and helped her to stack the lengths on the edge of the woodlot nearest the house.

When they were finished she said, “I’ve a fresh-baked mince pie by way of thank-you,” and stepped toward the house, but he caught her elbow to stop her.

“Some things get done without pay, neighbor for neighbor.”

“Yes. Well, then. Thank you.”

He continued to hold her arm, and when his thumb slid across the hollow inside her elbow she understood what a fool she’d been to imagine he’d thought nothing had happened in the woods; the whiteness of her skin wouldn’t stop him from feeling its heat just as the darkness of his hadn’t stopped her. But the thumb slid to the hollow and stopped there, its message clear: it was up to Lyddie which way they went now. If she moved in one direction one thing would happen, and if she moved in another nothing would happen at all. She could smell the Indian’s sassafras smell, and she wanted above everything to move into it and let it wrap around her, let those competent hands move over her flesh as they had moved over Rebecca’s. What held her? God? Edward? Deacon Smalley and the Reverend Dunne? Not God. The speed with which she could dispense with God shocked her. She’d lost the prayers first, then meeting, then the Sabbath altogether, and if God didn’t hold her, what could Deacon Smalley or the Reverend Dunne matter? But what of Edward? No. If
Lyddie’s doings on earth mattered anything to Edward now, which she doubted, he would understand this one act above all others. So if Edward didn’t hold her now, who did?

Eben Freeman. The name came up by surprise, but once up, it stayed. Lyddie had told him she didn’t lie with the Indian, and he had believed her.

Lyddie pulled back. Cowett’s hands tightened briefly on her arm, just long enough for the old bolt of fear to find her, and then he released her.