Death Watch (18 page)

“Who would buy a can of meat from 1824?”

“Hm,” Mother Peale admitted, “I can’t say it’s been flying off the shelf.”

Silas looked at the kind old woman, at the deep lines of her face and the small hump on her back. “I have heard of you, you know, Mother Peale,” said Silas. “I remember my father mentioning you when I was young.”

“Well, I would not be surprised,” said Mother Peale. “There are many rumors about me, and your father spent enough time at my table eating my food.” She leaned in close to Silas. “What did you hear?”

At that, John Peale, her husband, seemed to wake up. He smiled and turned to speak to Silas, although he didn’t get up from his chair.

“Did you hear she’d been in prison, boy?”

Silas shook his head.

“She was, you know,” said her daughter.

“Did you hear that she owns an ivory horn from a sea cow and that she stirs her cauldron with it to raise storms?” Mr. Peale asked again.

“Also true,” said Joan Peale, and laughed.

“Or that she can speak a dozen languages?”

“Now that’s a lie!” shouted Mother Peale. “Seven and no more.”

Silas smiled. He liked the Peales enormously and already felt like a part of the family, even though he’d been in the store only a few minutes. These were the kind of people he always knew he’d like but never met in Saltsbridge. People with interests. People with pasts.

“Silas,” asked Mother Peale, “since you’re here, would you mind taking a few things back with you to your uncle’s?”

“Sure,” he said, but Mother Peale saw by his face he took no joy in being at his uncle’s and wasn’t keen to go back to that house quite yet.

She brought out a large box of assorted candies, and a bag with some bottles in it. They clinked together as she lifted the bag to the top of the counter and pushed it toward Silas. Looking at the candy, she said, “I guess your uncle must be glad you’re there.”

“I suppose.”

“Well, Uncle Umber is sure filling up the candy bowls for company.”

“Maybe,” said Silas, but then, thinking about it, he added, “He must be eating it all himself, because I haven’t seen any candy bowls in that house.”

At the mention of Uncle Umber, some people in the back of the store began whispering. Joan Peale said loudly, “Okay, Silas Umber, here is your uncle’s order. I’ve got it all right here.” She raised her hand slightly as if to stall the talk.

“Don’t forget the gin!” someone yelled from the back.

And before Joan could holler back there to shut up, someone else shouted, “Uncle Umber don’t drink.”

“All right then!” said Joan loudly.

The man who helped with stock said, “Umber’s got company. Who the hell do you think is eating all that damned candy he orders? Just put an extra bottle of gin and some more scotch in the box with the candy, and I’ll take it all over. Save us a trip when he sends for more hooch tomorrow.”

“No need for that, Will Garner,” Joan said, as she gestured with her head and shoulders toward Silas. “Amos’s son is staying at the Umber place. See? Here he is. You don’t mind taking this stuff
back with you, do you, Silas? Your uncle will appreciate you bringing it home. I’m afraid he doesn’t much care for coming here.”

Someone in the store said, “Proud. Charles Umber’s always been that way, even when Mr. Bowe fired him.”

Joan Peale turned to glare at the crowd, but it was too late. Silas had heard everything, and everyone around him looked embarrassed.

Silas looked down at the boxes, saw all that alcohol, and knew then that his mother would not improve here in Lichport, and worse, that his uncle not only approved of her drinking, but seemed to be encouraging her to continue.
Why
? Silas would have thought this was one thing on which he and his uncle might agree. Uncle was orderly, precise. When his mother drank, she was sloppy, slovenly, her words rough and inconsiderate as they tumbled out of her mouth without thought. There must be another reason his uncle didn’t mind his mother being drunk all the time—

“Why don’t I walk with you back to your uncle’s house and let Will get back to stocking the shelves?” Joan swept Silas out the door, as she pulled a little wagon with the boxes of candy and the bag of gin behind them.

Once they were walking, she asked, “You doin’ all right since coming here? I can’t imagine how it must be coming back to Lichport, your dad missing and all. And living in that house—”

“I’m okay,” Silas replied. “A little lonely, maybe. I’ve got a lot of time to myself. I used to think that’s what I wanted, but now, well, I have a lot of time to think, that’s for sure. Maybe too much. I guess I’d like to know more about the town. More about my dad and how he spent his time here. I’d sure like to know if anyone here knows anything about what happened to him.”

Joan paused, as if choosing her next words very carefully. “Silas, if I knew anything about what happened to your dad, I
would have told you the minute I laid eyes on you. Fact is, no one knows. Some got their ideas, but no one has ever liked your uncle much, so he’s an easy target for suspicion. There are folk you could ask, maybe after you get to know the town a little better—” She seemed to think better of saying more along those lines and instead asked, “Silas Umber, did you know you once had kin all over this town? Do you know where your mom was born?”

“Where?” asked Silas.

Just before they turned left down Coach Street, Joan Peale pointed past Beacon Hill and to the left and said, “You see those dark trees past the hill?”

“Yeah.”

“On the other side of those trees is Fort Street, and it was there your mother was born.”

“On Fort Street?”

“Oh yes. If it were daytime, you might be able to see the chimney of the house a little above the trees. And at the end of the street are the gates to the Arvale estate, where most of your folk once lived, long, long ago. Yes, Fort was a very grand street once. Richest folks in town lived there. Only people of quality. Do you know much about your mother’s people?”

They turned onto Prince Street.

“Only that they had money, and didn’t think much of people who didn’t.”

Joan Peale laughed. “That’s true enough. They were an old Lichport family. Gone now, almost every one of them. They were quite the party-givers, back in the day. They liked rich company and showing their belongings and pretty daughters to advantage. So when the town turned downward, they were one of the first families to pick up and go. Funny how you and your mom are living here now. I’ll bet you could even live in that house if you
wanted to. I’ll bet it was left to your mother. Of course, now that she’s living with your uncle, she’d have no need of it.”

“I asked her about whether or not she had a house here. But she told me her family’s house burned down, and that was one of the reasons they all left for Boston and New York,” Silas said, as he wondered whether this was another of his mother’s many lies about to be revealed.

“Well, you can see it for yourself sometime; the house is still there. People used to leave flowers on the porch. On some of the porches of the other houses, too. But no one has visited Fort Street in a long time, I think.”

“Why would people leave flowers on the porches?”

Joan merely said, “You should ask your mother.” With that, she put her arm around Silas’s shoulder and walked him back to Temple Street.

“Ah!” Uncle exclaimed when Silas came in with the items from the store. “He leaves a man of the house, but comes home as the help! How endearing. Silas, do run those things back to the kitchen, won’t you? But you may leave the candy on the steps, and I’ll take it upstairs later.”

Then his mother chimed in.

“So you went to the store? At this hour?”

“I met the Peales, and Joan Peale walked me back. She told me about Fort Street.”

Dolores Umber was up out of her chair with surprising speed for a woman who’d been drinking all evening.

Uncle spoke quickly, to defuse the coming storm. “Oh yes, not such a nice neighborhood now. All those abandoned houses.”

“Then why do people leave flowers on the porches?” Silas asked.

His mother’s face went absolutely pale. She asked, “You didn’t go into any of those houses, did you?”

“Are there flowers? Still? How queer,” Uncle interjected. “People have such strange customs even in these enlightened times. Still, how quaint, no? Flowers for those who have passed on, yet remain fixed … in the memory.”

“No, I didn’t go in. Joan just pointed out the street to me. But why wouldn’t they leave flowers on the
graves
of dead people? Why on the porch of a house?” Silas asked. He sensed that he was close to something his mother definitely didn’t want him to know about.

“Obligation …,” Dolores muttered as she dropped back into her chair and tipped the contents of her nearly full glass down her throat. She promptly poured herself another.

Uncle cleared this throat and said, “It’s nothing, Silas, just one of our strange, enduring Lichport traditions. Some old practice, I believe. Some of the families here brought their odd beliefs with them from across the sea and held tight to them. We’ve always been a little … different here, my boy. In any event, the flowers are just a curious way to say ‘farewell’ to the past. That’s all it really is when you get right down it.”

“Why would anyone say ‘farewell’ to a house?” Silas pressed. “I mean, what’s the point of—”

Uncle interrupted and said, through slightly clenched teeth, “As I said, strange folk, hereabouts. Even in these modern times you may still observe, on our fair streets, the most remarkable eccentrics and vagabonds.”

Dolores spoke up again, her eyes closed and her lips pulled tight.

“On and on and bloody on! Doesn’t anything in this miserable town ever end?”

D
OLORES HADN’T WORN HER PEARLS
in a very long time, certainly not since leaving Lichport a year after her son was born. Her mother had given her the strand of luminous little moons, just as her grandmother and her great-grandmother had done, from mother to daughter right down the line. She had been obliged to wear them on “State Occasions,” on those days when the entire clan gathered together en masse: weddings, funerals, holidays, and the dreaded
visitations
.

She woke early and put on her best dress, the black taffeta with a deep V collar that she’d once thought looked very fine on her and still showed off the pearls. She put on shoes with proper heels, then looked at herself in the long mirror. She didn’t smile, but she was pleased with what she saw. Of course, she reminded herself, this was not a social call. A drink would help. She was tempted, but told herself she could have a double the minute she got back to the house.
Keep your head about you. Keep your head high. Walk over there and come back and it’s done
.

Since the first moment she’d set foot back in Lichport, Dolores could hear her mother’s voice, waking and sleeping, every moment, a constant harangue in that high, slow whine about her obligations to the family.

“Dolores? Dearest heart? I don’t care what you
think
about any of this. It’s what you
do
that matters. Think what you like,
but you will keep up appearances and remember your obligations. He is still family, Dolores, whether you like it or not. If you are in Lichport, you will pay a call at that house, without fail. Visitations are an
obligation
.”

She couldn’t bear the lecture any longer and knew there was only one way to get that voice to be quiet. So Dolores was going to Fort Street, to the house where she was born.

Before going to bed, Silas stood outside on the front porch to get some air, and, looking to the corner, saw that Bea was there. He walked down Temple to meet her. She smiled as he approached, and as Silas got next to her, she began walking too. Neither of them spoke. Bea drew even closer to his side, though she did not touch him. They walked in silence, pleased to be in each other’s company, making a complete circuit of the block, up Fairwell, around Prince, down Highland Street along the cemetery fence, and back onto Temple, arriving again in front of Uncle’s house. Silas looked up, hearing a door close somewhere inside the house, and when he looked back, Bea was back at the corner, where he’d first seen her. She waved at him and vanished up Fairwell Street. He smiled to himself and went back inside and up to bed.

Silas woke up early the next morning from the most vivid dream he could ever recall having.

He was standing in a high-ceilinged hall, before a long carved table set with silver, and in the hundreds of chairs around the table, Silas’s kin were seated, rows and rows of all those from whom Silas was descended. He could feel that immediately. These were relatives and ancestors. Living and dead both. Hundreds gathered together to eat, each in clothing from their own time and land. The walls were hung with faded crewelwork tapestries, complicated stitched depictions of cities, towns, and great ancient houses, and with that curious insight that
attends the dreamer, Silas knew these were the places where his relations had once lived or lived still. The largest tapestry, hung behind him, showed the most bizarre house Silas had ever seen, a great manor with centuries of additions, towers, and long-galleried wings stretching off, back and farther back in the forced perspective of the weaving, almost more city than house. Above the main door of the house on the tapestry was stitched, small but legible, the word
A R V A L E
.