Tree By Leaf (10 page)

Mr. Grindle was behind the counter. When he saw who she was, he leaned toward her, his round eyes bulging with curiosity. He asked how the family was, out on the Point, and Clothilde said they were all well. He asked if they didn’t mind the isolation, and she said No, they didn’t. He asked if they weren’t bothered by strangers out there, and Clothilde, knowing now what the secrets were his eyes were wondering about, said No, they weren’t bothered by strangers. That was true, too. Mr. Grindle gave up, then, and asked her what he could do for her. She asked him for a fowl, ready for the pot. He fetched one out from the back room where an icebox kept meat and poultry fresh. He held the pale plucked
chicken by its limp neck, waiting for her approval. Clothilde nodded, so he went to the marble counter and cut off the head and feet with a cleaver.

He didn’t talk with her while he did that, as if his thoughts were miles away. He wrapped the bird in stiff butcher’s paper, and tied it around. Then he handed it to her.

“But you haven’t weighed it,” Clothilde reminded him. “You haven’t marked it down in your book.”

“Oh yes,” he said, taking it back from her. “There’s a boat out,” he said, to explain his oversight.

“Not in this weather.” Clothilde had lived here long enough to know why he was worried. “He’ll wait out the fog,” she suggested. “Was he out before it came in this morning?”

Mr. Grindle shook his head. “He was expected back at dawn. He should have been back by first light. The fog came in around midnight, Paul Dethier says.” Mr. Grindle’s eyes focused on her then. “Paul was up with his bad stomach.”

As Mr. Grindle wrote Clothilde’s purchase into this book, his wife returned. At the sound of the ringing bell, Mr. Grindle and Clothilde both looked around. Mrs. Grindle pursed her thin lips and shook her head.

“Lou told me, Mr. Small was out away last night,” Clothilde said.

“It’s my sister’s husband’s boat,” Mrs. Grindle answered, as if she was scolding Clothilde. She was a scolding kind of woman anyway, so Clothilde didn’t pay much attention to her tone. “As if my sister didn’t have enough worry to keep her awake nights, there’s Joseph Twohey has to go running those risks. And in that man’s company And now look what’s come to them—going out on a Sabbath evening, for that purpose. There’s been a judgment on him, that’s for sure.”

“That’s a harsh thought, Mrs. Grindle,” Mr. Grindle said. “With the child listening to you, and all.”

“It’s the Lord’s truth I’m speaking, and it’s no more than you’re thinking yourself,” Mrs. Grindle answered, but she closed her mouth over the subject.

Clothilde guessed that everybody in town must know about the smuggling of whiskey, but nobody talked about it. When she thought of Jeb Twohey, who would never now be able to give his family the help on the farm or boat that children should, she thought she understood why people didn’t talk. “Fog’s lifting,” was all she could think of. She picked up the wrapped chicken.

“Dont you count on it,” Mrs. Grindle answered, her lips pursed.

Mr. Grindle wished Clothilde a good day and she left the store, her exit marked by the ringing of the bell hung over the door.

Outside, the sky had closed in again, covering the village with fine moisture. Clothilde looked down the hill toward the long harbor, where steep hillsides framed the still water. From its mouth, a cloud of fog swirled toward her. She hurried down the steep path to meet it.

Out on the end of the long wooden dock, high above the lowering water, she waited for the fog to reach her. Fingers of fog blew toward her, white tendrils reaching out. The air on her face was cold, moist. The cloud rolled toward her, hiding everything in its path, until it wrapped itself around her. She could see nothing there, nothing but thick streaks of fog moving, encircling her. She was alone there in the fog, alone in the world. The foghorn wound its mournful note around her. Clothilde knew better than to try to walk back to land; she stood still, savoring the mysteriousness and the safe danger. Sense of direction was one of the first things you lost, in such a fog. She might easily, thinking she was going back along the
dock to the land, step off it and fall the fifteen feet to the water below. If she were not unconscious after the fall, she might call out for help—but in fog, voices were almost impossible to locate.

Clothilde shivered, at the thought, at the chill in the air; but it was a pleasurable fear. As long as she didn’t move, she was safe.

As the cloud moved on by, carried along on the breeze, the mist around her lightened and she could almost see the shapes of the hillsides that enclosed the harbor. Then, with only a few thin, reluctant fingers wisping back at her, the fog was gone. Clothilde turned around and saw two figures, standing together at the start of the dock, beside a pile of lobster traps. It was as if the figures had come out of nowhere, as if they had just materialized there. The two figures stepped forward, hands clasped, one tall, broad-shouldered, the other short and pulling forward. It was Jeb Twohey, and his mother.

Mrs. Twohey didn’t look much like her sister, except for the pursed expression of her mouth. Her thin neck rose out of the coat’s dark collar and she barely noticed Clothilde, except to nod her head.

“Good morning,” Clothilde answered. She shouldn’t have said that, she knew right away. She
didn’t know what you said to a woman whose husband’s boat was hours late coming in, with a fog at sea. Jeb held onto his mother’s hand like a four-year-old who was afraid of getting lost and being talked to by strangers. The high-necked sweater he wore looked too large for him, and his damp hair lay flat on his head. “Hello, Jeb,” Clothilde said. She’d never spoken to him before. Mrs. Twohey didn’t let people get close enough to Jeb to say anything. Clothilde didn’t know what to say to Jeb, either, and she doubted that he even knew who she was. There was nothing strange in that, since he had been gone to war by the time her family arrived at Speer Point, and he’d been kept hidden away since his return to the village.

Jeb nodded his head, looking back at her over his shoulder, again, like a four-year-old being kept close by his mother. His eyes went to the package she was holding. “It’s a chicken,” Clothilde told him, even though he hadn’t asked. She thought he was wondering what it was, so she told him.

“It’s dead,” he told her.

Clothilde stared into his eyes. She didn’t know what to say, it was so strange to hear that deep man’s voice coming from that face. Jeb’s face looked empty,
as if there were nothing inside it. Finally, Clothilde said, agreeing with him, “Yes.”

Mrs. Twohey, holding tight to Jeb’s big hand, ignored them. She was peering into the white mists at the mouth of the harbor.

“Yes, it’s dead,” Clothilde repeated.

Jeb looked at Clothilde’s face then, his eyes meeting hers, as if he expected her to say something else, to deny that the chicken was dead. But why would she do that? She wondered.

“It’s less work to prepare if the butcher does the slaughtering. Less work for my mother,” she explained, as if he were a little child.

Jeb Twohey’s eyes stayed staring into hers and she had to look back at him. She saw tears gathering there, and spilling out. The foghorn sounded, and he cringed back against his mother with his eyes still on Clothilde.

It was crazy behavior, no question; but if what she had seen in her dream had been anything like the truth, Clothilde could understand his misery. For all that he was so big and broad, Jeb Twohey should never have had to go to war. She knew, as if she could see right into the black swirling fog of his brain, that nothing could ever make him right again.

Clothilde wanted to get away, but she didn’t know how to. She ought, she thought, to say something, but she didn’t know if you were supposed to mention what people were really worrying about. There were so many things you weren’t supposed to say outright, but she didn’t know what else to talk about and until she had made at least one comment, she couldn’t leave.

“I think maybe the fog is lifting,” she finally said. She said it to Jeb because Mrs. Twohey’s narrow back was facing her. Mrs. Twohey made a small humphing noise that might have been a response, but Jeb answered her. “The things that grow upward like the sunlight. The things that grow downward like the rain.”

“Hush you now,” Mrs. Twohey said, turning around to look at him and then turning back to look out to the harbor’s mouth, as if she was too tired even to scold.

“But it’s true,” Jeb said. His masklike face gave Clothilde no clue about what to answer. “Things grow so quietly,” he explained.

“Yes, that’s true,” Clothilde agreed. “I have to go home now. Good-bye, Jeb. Good-bye, Mrs. Twohey.” She hurried away. When she looked back from the
end of the dock, Jeb was still watching her. She raised a hand but, although she knew he saw her, he didn’t raise his hand in answer.

Poor Jeb Twohey, Clothilde thought. But it was more than a thought. It was a force of feeling pushed up through her like the force that drove rocks up through the surface of the land. She had seen Jeb before, with his blank face and his awkward way of walking, but she had never spoken with him, or looked at his eyes, so she had not known what queer, simple words he used. Before she hadn’t tried to hear the disjointed ideas that floated around inside his head, floating around in that thick black fog. She was so lost in thought that she almost ran head-on into the men who were coming down the hillside. “Steady now,” a voice said, and she looked up to see Tom Hatch among four others.

“I’m sorry.” Clothilde stepped aside to let them pass. The others went on, talking about the lifting fog, but Tom Hatch stayed with Clothilde. He was a small man, thin and wiry, but he gave the impression of being larger than he was. He had thick curly dark hair and quick brown eyes.

“We might be able to take a boat out,” he told her, as if she had asked him what he was doing. “To make
a search,” he added. “If it’d been me, out last night, I’d have headed for a harbor, if I could, when I saw the fog. I’d have anchored, to wait it out. Or I’d might have headed out away, into open water.”

“Then what good will a search be?” Clothilde asked. She didn’t know why he had stopped to tell her this.

“Because there’s other things could happen, and they might not have had either of those choices. So it might be, some kind of help is needed. If the fog’s in truth lifting.”

“I can’t tell if it is or not,” Clothilde told him. The heavy sweater he wore would keep out both damp and cold, so she suspected Tom Hatch wasn’t sure either. Something made her ask: “Why weren’t you in the war, Mr. Hatch?” He had been available to help them when they first moved to Speer Point, helping them make the skiff seaworthy and teaching Nate how to use it. She had occasionally seen him in the village, but he’d never been in uniform.

“Yuh, but I was. In the Coast Guard—they needed men who know the coast.”

“Oh,” Clothilde said.

“It kept me near to home, some of the time, when we weren’t hunting submarines. My brother went to France.”

“Oh,” Clothilde said.

“He didn’t come back.”

“I’m sorry,” Clothilde said.

“Yuh. I was the lucky one, whether I deserve it or not.”

“I guess that’s why you’re going out now,” Clothilde said. She didn’t know where that idea had come from. The voices of the men called up from the dock, calling him down to join them.

“Mebbe so,” Tom Hatch answered.

“I wish you luck,” Clothilde answered.

“So you might tell Lou, if she’s fretting, that we’ll do whatever we can, miss.”

He was running down the hillside before she could answer. Clutching at her package, Clothilde went back up to the village street.

When she reached the top of the hill, Clothilde could see the whole of the village, the Grindles’ store with its wooden porch and post office flag hanging limp, the big square farming supplies business the Dethiers owned, the blacksmith’s barn, and the shingled church across the street flanked on one side by the minister’s house and on the other by the cemetery.

Clothilde turned to look down at the dock. It looked like the men were going to go out in Tom Hatch’s boat; the figures on the dock were climbing down the long wooden ladder into a dinghy. She put the wrapped chicken down and took off Nate’s coat. The air was growing warmer. Her arms full of coat and chicken, she turned to go home.

“Clothilde? Clothilde, wait.”

Polly Dethier was hurrying down the street toward her. What would Polly Dethier want with her? In that flowered yellow dress with the ruffles on her
starched stiff, and her hair in long curls that shone like hawkweed.

Polly had eyes the color of Michaelmas daisies and a little pink mouth. She was fourteen and she had a figure. “Hello,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.” When Polly smiled, a dimple appeared on her cheek. Her skin wasn’t browned by the sun, but dusted with the sun’s color, creamy gold. “Hasn’t it?” she asked.

Clothilde didn’t say anything. She felt plain and brown and like a little girl. She didn’t have anything to say, and Polly hadn’t asked her any question anyway, nothing that needed an answer. Clothilde held the wrapped chicken close to her chest and looked at Polly’s pretty face.

“How are you?” Polly asked. “Do you miss school?”

“No.” Clothilde shook her head.

“How’s your family?” Polly asked.

“Fine.”

“I guess,” Polly said, holding Clothilde there by talking to her, “they’re going out to look for Mr. Twohey. Did you hear about that?”

Clothilde nodded. She shifted her feet. She didn’t have anything to say to Polly and Polly didn’t have anything to say to her. They were the closest to each
other in age at school, but they weren’t friends.

Clothilde thought Polly would go on about her business then. She didn’t know what Polly wanted, and neither, apparently, did Polly, who just stood there for a while before she finally said, “Isn’t summer boring? Except for socials and Independence Day, what is there to do but sit in the shade.”

“We have plenty to do,” Clothilde said. She couldn’t imagine Polly Dethier’s life away from school. She didn’t want to ask any questions, but she was a little curious about what it would be like to be Polly. If she was going to have to stand here talking with the girl, she might as well satisfy her curiosity. “What do you do?”