Touch (31 page)

As soon as we started walking, we began with the questions, trying to ferret out his surprise.

“Have you captured a fairy?” Virginia asked.

“No,” my grandfather said. “But I’ve seen them out in the woods. Don’t let anybody tell you differently, and don’t believe that all fairies are friends. There are many that will lead you into danger.”

“Is it a spun-sugar castle? Is that what you have for us?” I asked. “Tommy Rondeau saw one in Havershand last winter, and he said it shone like there was a fire inside.”

“I knew his grandfather. Good man.”

“Is it spun-sugar? Is it?” Virginia bounced against him as we walked through the trees.

Jeannot looked back at her and shook his head. “Now, stay behind me or you’ll be worn out.” He broke trail through the snow—knee-high for him—and we followed. We had been walking for near an hour already, and I thought it would have been easier to walk along the river itself. The snow was scoured clean off the ice from the wind, but then again, that same wind cut hard like knives across the open floor of the valley. Though we had to wade through the snow, the trees grew like a wall toward the river, opening to let us pass but keeping tight enough together that the wind was dampened. “No,” my grandfather said, glancing back at us. “How could I carry a spun-sugar castle without it breaking?”

“Is it—”

Jeannot cut me off. “It is what it is and you’ll see it in a few days.” He turned abruptly to face us. “Enough now. All morning you’ve been asking, and all morning I’ve been not answering.” He gave a sly grin. “Besides, I think we’re here.”

Virginia and I looked around, staring at the ground and turning in circles. Finally, Virginia looked at my grandfather. “Where?”

“May I have the ax?” Jeannot reached out to me and I reluctantly surrendered it.

“See this?” My grandfather reached up with the ax and pointed high up on a tree where a pair of deep gashes rode near each other. “That blaze used to be near my knee last time I was at this creek.” He looked down again and shuffled his foot, feeling for something, and then he used his foot to brush snow back from the ground. “Stand back,” he said, and then he swung the ax against the ground.

When it hit, the ground shattered and buckled. Virginia and I both gasped at the violence before we realized that my grandfather had smashed through ice, not dirt and snow. He stumbled a little, and for a moment he looked like he was going to pitch forward into the hole that seemed to be growing at his feet, but then he scrambled back to where Virginia and I stood.

“Hadn’t expected it to buckle so easily,” he said, and as the words came out of his mouth the hole suddenly elongated and the ground opened like a thread pulled from a seam, racing in both directions through the woods. The sound of the ice breaking and crashing into the running water below was a cracking shock that made Virginia cover her ears.

We stood and watched, and even my grandfather seemed impressed with what a single swing from the ax had wrought. “Here’s your ax,” he said, handing it back to me.

“My father’s ax,” I said.

My grandfather glanced down at me and then nodded. “Of course.”

We watched as chunks of ice washed clear, until a creek seven or eight feet across flowed before us. The water moved quickly, urgently, rushing down through the woods and to the river below, though I wondered what it would do when it reached the Sawgamet. Would the water spill over the surface of the frozen river, or would it find its way beneath the hard covering and add to the dark swirling below?

My grandfather pulled a polished wooden bowl from one of his coat pockets and then crouched by the river. “Come here before it starts to freeze up again,” he said, and then he dipped the bowl into the water. He took a sip, laughed, and then handed it to Virginia.

“It’s sweet!”

“I told you it would be sweet,” my grandfather said. Virginia handed the bowl to me and I took a sip for myself.

“But it’s like syrup,” I said.

My grandfather rocked forward so that he was kneeling and shook his head. “I know. Do you think I would have had us walk for an hour through the snow just for the same water we could have taken from the river by your house?”

He dipped the bowl in again and drank it down, and then filled it for Virginia and then again for me. My cousin and I started to laugh, and so did Jeannot. We drank and laughed, making so much noise that at first we did not realize that the laughing excitement we heard from behind us came from something else.

My grandfather pulled the ax from my hand as he turned, and the creature stopped, only a few steps away. I felt the sharp fear of my cousin’s hand pulling on my coat and heard my own gasp.

The creature’s laugh turned into a maniacal giggle. Its blue eyes, looking through thin, greasy hair hanging over its face, were almost as pale as its ice-colored skin. Tattered scraps of cloth hung from its waist, and it stood barefoot in the snow. It tapped its fingers against its legs, calling attention to its hands. I—and I was sure my grandfather and my cousin—fixated on the gleaming fingernails that jutted from its long, thin fingers.

I heard my grandfather’s voice, a low whisper, speaking to us. “A mahaha. The tickler.”

Virginia let out a quiet sob, and I knew that she was thinking of the stories her father had told us of the mahaha.

It took a step forward and started to reach for Virginia until my grandfather’s voice caused it to stop. “The water,” my grandfather said. “It’s sweet. You should taste it.”

Jeannot handed me my father’s ax and then pushed Virginia and me behind him, moving forward and spreading his hands in a gesture of munificence. “I’m just trying to be fair. I brought the children all the way out here just so they could taste this water. It would be a shame if you didn’t try it yourself.” Keeping his eyes on the mahaha, he knelt down, cupped a hand in the water, and then brought it to his lips. “Cold,” he said, “but it’s sweet. Like syrup, like candy.” He rose to his feet again and motioned to the water. “You should try some.”

It gave a low cackle and then stepped toward the water. As it bent over, it placed its hands on the ice that rimmed the edge, the claws sending up shavings of white.

My grandfather waited until the creature’s lips were almost touching the water before he gave it a hard shove. It let out a laughing scream as it fell into the water, and almost
immediately it was swept along in the current and disappeared into the trees.

My grandfather touched me on the head and then picked up Virginia. She was crying, hard, gulping sobs, and he held her tight against his chest. “There, there,” he said. “As long as you know how to handle them, they’re more stupid than scary, really. Ask them to take a drink, give a little push, and away they go. Your father’s father told me plenty of useful things about what comes in these woods.”

I spun the ax handle in my hand, the blade turning and catching the midmorning light that filtered through the tops of the trees.

Virginia slowly stopped crying, and my grandfather put her back on the ground.

“There used to be more of them,” my grandfather said. “There was a time when mahahas were almost common, but like I said, they pan out on the dumb side. They’re a kind of snow demon. They tickle you until all your breath is gone. Leave you dead, but with a smile.”

Virginia started to sob again, a loud howling, and Jeannot gave me a look of surprise and then he tried to quiet her. “Hush,” he said. “It’s gone and won’t be back, I promise.”

He wrapped his arms around her and offered her a jam-filled biscuit, more of the sweet water, tried singing to her, rubbing her back, but she would not stop crying, and as his coat stained with her tears and snot, he shook his head. “Don’t cry, Virginia. If you stop crying, I’ll show you tonight what I brought with me. No need to wait until Christmas, yes?”

She took a few heaving breaths and then wiped her nose on
her sleeve. She looked at me and then back at my grandfather. “Promise?” He nodded, and then she did, too.

Virginia started walking in front, covering the same ground we had trod on the way here, and as I began to follow her, my grandfather put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me.

“Tonight,” he said, “I’ll show you what I’ve brought back. I’ll show you that there are more things than scary stories in these woods, that there are miracles out here.”

“My grandmother?”

“I told you,” he said. “I came back to raise the dead.”

F
ATHER EARL AND I TALKED
for a short while before he headed off to sleep. Neither one of us could bear to wait; the funeral is to be held in the morning. And now it’s time for me to go to bed, myself. It’s gone past two in the morning, the house long silent.

I do understand that on this night, the night of my mother’s death, the night before my mother’s funeral, I should be thinking of her, not these stories of my grandfather and grandmother, of my father and sister slipped below the ice, hands nearly touching, of the woods and witches and ghosts. But my mother, more than anyone, would have understood. Though she was not born in Sawgamet, she understood the nature of
the cuts, the ghosts that can tie you to a place—as they did for her—or drive you away—as they did for me.

It’s fair to say that these ghosts are what have kept me away for so long. A funny sort of providence, my stepfather said, but that is not why I have finally returned to Sawgamet after more than two decades away. I would not have returned if Father Earl had not asked me to, if he had not said that Sawgamet needed me—that he needed me—to come back. I am not like my grandfather—I don’t have the faith, or the strength, to raise the dead—but I have come to believe what my mother began to believe soon after my father and Marie went through the ice on the river: memories are another way to raise the dead.

WE RETURNED FROM
the woods with my grandfather, and though we did not collude or set out to deceive my mother, neither Virginia nor I saw fit to talk about the mahaha or the stream filled with sweet water. My grandfather must have said something, however, because that evening, after my mother finished the last of the dishes, my grandfather brought his contraption out of the bag and neither my mother nor my stepfather seemed surprised that we were not waiting until Christmas night, a more traditional time for miracles.

A crank ran from a metal box that was attached to a polished board. A series of wires connected the box to a glass globe, and when my grandfather first started to turn the crank, the globe sputtered and glowed weakly.

“That’s it?” I said, trying not to display my disappointment.

“It’s an electric lantern,” my grandfather said. “Just wait.”

My stepfather had banked the fire in the stove and screened it off, snuffed the candles and the lanterns, and the darkness in the cottage was encompassing. As my grandfather turned the handle harder and faster, the glass ball began to shine with a startling and flickering brilliance, a tiny sun contained in glass upon the table.

My mother glanced over at me and then took my hand, and I thought of the way she had so often held my father’s mangled hand.

And then, for some reason, my grandfather slowed, the sound of the turning crank dimming in concert with the light, and we were all left in the dim whisper from the stove, the memory of light dying in the glass globe.

“Jeannot?” My mother leaned forward. “Jeannot?”

My grandfather stared out the window and then turned slowly to me. “I thought—” His voice caught and then he looked down at his hands. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I might need more than one of these lights to chase off the darkness that candles and lanterns couldn’t break. I didn’t think … With all my searching it can’t be as simple as this.”

He looked at me. “I just thought I would show you the light. Show you what is coming to Sawgamet. Lights like this, trains, moving pictures, what is set to replace the darkness of these woods. But I didn’t think …” He trailed off and then touched the crank with his hand. “I didn’t expect it to be tonight.”

And then he clapped his hands together and stood up with a sudden energy. “It’s time,” he said. “She’s out there. She’s waiting for me.”

“What are you talking about?” my stepfather said.

“My grandmother?” I asked.

“Haven’t you been listening to me?” my grandfather said, his voice soft and gentle, a small smile on his lips. “Yes, of course it’s your grandmother.” He glanced at me and then back to the window. “She asked me to bring her light, and now she’s waiting for me.” He slapped his hand on the table and then stood up. With a quavering voice, he said, “It’s time for me to go. I’ll not be coming back this time.”

“Do you have to?” I asked.

Jeannot looked pityingly toward me, at my mother, and then at my stepfather and Virginia in turn. “Have you no idea what love means, how long you can carry it with you? What your grandmother meant to me, what I have done and would do for her? Why do you think I came back here? To where I could never forget her? Where I see her in every rock, every tree, every bird?”