Froelich's Ladder (14 page)

Moments later, Miss Sarah appeared with a picnic basket, its contents covered by a linen napkin. She wore an apron, a bonnet, and a denim skirt—the outfit he was most accustomed to seeing on her occasional visit, and which she’d worn even during their schoolhouse days. A year older than Binx, she’d tutored him when he fell behind in his subjects.

“Good morning, Binxy.” From the look on her face, he could guess at his sorry state.

“Good morning, Miss Sarah. How are you?”

“Another day older,” she said. With a cursory glance at the meadow, she inquired, “Where’s Gordy?”

“He’s off somewhere,” Binx fibbed. “Fetching water. He’ll be right back.”

His lie was obvious; seen from another person’s perspective, there could be no denying Binx’s abandonment. The fire had been extinguished, the remnants of yesterday’s breakfast lay scattered in the grass—and also, to Binx’s surprise and dismay, the upturned commode remained spilled on the dirt, now smeared with rain.

Miss Sarah took another look-see, then said, “Really—just us? Then let me tidy up while he’s gone. There’s no reason for you to be uncomfortable.”

“Please, don’t,” Binx insisted. “I—”

“You hush.” Collecting dirty utensils from days past, she stashed her picnic basket at a prudent distance. “Not another word on the subject. Tell me, have you had your breakfast yet?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll get the fire started. If Gordy comes back, he can join us.”

Rather than face her, Binx continued to stare at the commode. With absolute, unequivocal certainty, he knew he’d seen it restored. He could also recall having kicked it over, but the former image was the more vibrant of the two: the simple elegance of its bone-white porcelain, the gentle curve of its turned lip. All that remained now was a day-old mess, with a cloud of flies for Miss Sarah to contend with.

How bad did Binx look, for what little attention she was paying him? He could feel her eyes shying away whenever she turned toward the stiles. The past twenty-four hours had been unkind to him, that much Binx already knew, but was his appearance much improved on a normal day? Quite suddenly, and fervently, he wished that Miss Sarah had stayed home this morning.

“Perhaps it’s best that Gordy’s away,” she casually observed, as she gathered wood from the nearby log pile. “I can’t remember the last time we spoke alone. Hiram wanted to come, too, but I told him to make an appointment. He has so many questions. He wants to interview Gordy about the ladder.”

“Your cousin,” Binx mumbled, recalling Gordy’s enthusiasm from the day before. “The newspaper reporter.”

“
Former
reporter,” Miss Sarah stressed. “In Philadelphia. I’m not sure who he’ll work for here. Maybe the
Oregon Spectator
?”

“Is that why you’re here? To ask for an interview?”

Smiling, she said, “No—Hiram can manage his own affairs. What he
can’t
do is make himself useful around the farm. I was hoping to ask Gordy to slaughter a pig for me.”

Binx didn’t respond to her supposition. Having lied about Gordy’s whereabouts, he felt pained anew by the possibility of his death. Gordy was gone, Froelich was gone—even Lord John, Binx suspected, had been the product of his diseased mind. Meanwhile, Miss Sarah was having trouble lighting the firewood. It was still damp from the previous night’s deluge, and refused to ignite. Finally, after producing much smoke and little warmth, she managed to nurture a flame, wiping her hands against her apron and grunting contentedly.

“I told him I didn’t know very much,” she continued, curating their conversation as if Binx were an active participant. “Hiram, I mean. He asked when the ladder was built and I said I didn’t know—before I was born, I said. He asked how it was balanced and I mentioned you. But when he asked about your father and your uncle, I had to plead ignorance.”

Though Binx had been listening for a question, he’d yet to hear one. Still, Miss Sarah continued to watch him expectantly, so he mentioned, “Harald held the ladder.”

“Your father? I remember him a little. He was big, like you?”

Nodding unhappily, Binx blinked his eyes when the campfire smoke blew in his direction.

“What about your uncle, then? He must be smaller, for you to hold him on your back. My mother used to tell stories about Froelich—how he’d play practical jokes, like jumping out of trees at people. Is that true? Was he funny?”

At this point, Binx had reached the limits of his humility. He was aware of how bad he must smell. He didn’t want to spend any more time discussing Froelich’s antics, or Harald’s stature, nor did he enjoy her persistence on the subject. But just as he was summoning up the words to say so, Miss Sarah began to dig a trough for the contents of his commode. Using a spade from the woodpile, and working on her hands and knees, she produced a shallow hole—nothing too fussy, just deep enough to dispose of the mess. Without so much as a sour face, she scraped the ground clean and covered it over.

“There,” she said, tossing the spade aside and touching her forehead with the back of her hand. “You were saying?”

“Um,” he mumbled, having lost some of his vitriol. “Funny? Yes, I suppose so. He, uh—sometimes he wouldn’t tell me it’s about to rain, just to see me get wet.”

Miss Sarah frowned. “That doesn’t sound funny.”

“No, maybe not, but it’s Froelich’s idea of a joke. Or sometimes he’ll drop things.”

“From up there?” she said, shielding her eyes against the sun. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

Binx didn’t have an answer for this, so instead he shrugged. It wasn’t that he was doing a poor job of representing his uncle; rather, Froelich’s behavior was oftentimes lacking. If Hiram wanted to paint a sympathetic portrait of him, he’d just have to be creative.

For her part, having seen to the fire and tidied the meadow, Miss Sarah now unwrapped her picnic basket. She poured a Mason jar of sausage gravy into the skillet—unwrapping a bundle of fresh biscuits, three or four of which she piled onto a plate. Binx’s stomach whinnied like a spooked horse.

“We needn’t wait for Gordy,” she said. “Sausage gravy’s your favorite, isn’t it?”

Binx nodded, licking his lips. When Miss Sarah handed him a plate, he immediately devoured it, momentarily blinded to any social niceties. Taking a tiny bite of biscuit for herself, she moved the skillet to the edge of the flames.

“So, you inherited the ladder from your father. When was that?”

“Dunno.” Slowing down a bit and muffling a burp, Binx surmised, “The spring before last?”

“What happened? He became too old?”

“Froelich dropped a chisel on his head.”

As soon as the words had left his mouth, he realized what he’d done. Sneaking a glance at Miss Sarah, he confirmed her stunned silence—so Binx finished chewing his food to avoid further explanation. When she still didn’t utter a word, just ogled him expectantly, he sighed and lowered his plate.

“You know what a chisel is?” he asked. “Froelich had one he considered lucky—though what made it lucky I really couldn’t say. One day, just a normal day like today, it slipped from his hands. Gordy and I were setting snares, but the sound we heard—it was awful, like a rock striking a melon. We came running, but by the time we got here it was already too late. Harald’s eye had turned red and the side of his face was all swollen.”

“That’s terrible!” Miss Sarah exclaimed—which, upon reflection, was probably true.

Things had proceeded swiftly from there. Even while the strength had ebbed from Harald’s body, Binx had faced away from his father, positioning himself rear to rear, as if the stiles had been a pane of glass and the two of them were mirror images. They’d never discussed the possibility of Harald’s death before, nor how such a transfer would take place, but Binx had moved without hesitation. Given a gentle nudge of his posterior, Harald had angled the ladder away from himself … and toward Binx. Thus tilted, the change had been made. It had never been conceived of as a permanent solution; Gordy hadn’t been big enough, and Harald had been close to death. From Froelich’s perspective, the change had been a matter of degrees. To Binx, the difference had been more substantial.

“Harald died the next day. He lasted through the night, but he never spoke another word—not to us and not to Froelich. We never told him, either,” Binx said, scuffing his foot in the dirt.

“Who—Froelich? But didn’t he hear the sound?”

With a feeble snicker, Binx admitted, “We said it was a chicken.
I
said—I told him the chisel hit a chicken, thanks very much. He wasn’t sympathetic.”

“So he doesn’t know?”

Again, Binx scuffed his foot. The gravy was congealing on his plate, but he found that he’d lost his appetite.

“Then, if you never told him,” Miss Sarah pressed, “does he still think your father’s alive?”

“Of course he does—he thinks
I’m
Harald! He thinks we moved the ladder because, I don’t know, it was blocking the sun. I can’t even remember our excuse. He complained about it for days—on and on, about how we should’ve warned him, and how we owed him a new chisel. We kept thinking up different ways to say it—but eventually enough time had passed that we decided not to. Anyway, what did Froelich care? Lotsee was dead and he
still
hadn’t forgiven Harald. For God’s sake, he’d spent nearly half his life up the rungs!”

Binx stopped to
catch his breath. The missing detail, of course, was Froelich’s absence, as well as Gordy’s effort to find him and his subsequent disappearance. He’d already said more than he’d intended, but finally the truth was out. Poor Harald, dead and gone these past two years, killed by the very brother he’d wronged. Poor Froelich, alienated from humanity, victim to whatever fate had befallen him. Poor Gordy, whereabouts unknown. And poor Binx; most of all, poor Binx.

The fire was burning low again. Retrieving another log from the pile, Miss Sarah tossed it on the pyre, filling the air with sparks.

“Monster.”

She spoke the word with such sadness, it almost sounded like an apology. The accusation hit Binx hard. Not that he disagreed, necessarily, but Miss Sarah had always been sweet on him.

“You don’t understand,” he pleaded. “I didn’t know what else to do! Maybe if there’d been someone to ask—”

“Not you,” she interrupted. “
Him
!”

Blinking his eyes, he was slow to comprehend. “You mean Froelich? You think
he’s
a monster?”

“Of course I do!” she fumed, snatching the tin plate from his hands and noisily adding it to the existing pile. “Anyone who’d murder his own brother—”

“To be fair,” Binx clarified, “he didn’t
mean
to murder him.”

“No? What’s he expect to happen when something falls—that it’ll bounce? I’m sorry, Binxy—I know he’s your uncle, but what he’s done, how he’s acted, it’s utterly vile. He just—I don’t—have I ever told you the story of my mother, from before we were born?”

When he shook his head, Miss Sarah continued, “Froelich and your father had some kind of argument, shortly after they’d arrived. Froelich was walking through the woods when he met my mother, picking mushrooms. She was already wed, but my father had gone South for the night. Well, Froelich took a shine to her. He said they should run away together, that he’d fallen madly in love.”

Playing with the strap of her bonnet, which appeared to be chafing her throat, she ultimately pulled the whole thing off. Miss Sarah’s hair was fine as corn silk—much like her own mother, Binx imagined, when she was young.

“She said no, of course,” Miss Sarah chuckled. “But do you know what Froelich offered her? By way of an engagement gift? Firewood. He said he’d found an immense tree—the biggest tree she’d ever see. He said they never needed to be cold again, or scared of the dark. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? She was a married, Christian woman!”

This last morsel was too big for Binx to swallow. Had Froelich been out gallivanting, even while Harald was carving the Very Big Tree? Tossing his plate on the ground, he said, “So, what? What shall I do—ask Froelich to beg forgiveness?”

“It’s not my place to say.”

“But what would
you
have me do?”

“Nothing, Binxy,” she murmured. “I don’t expect anything from you. I’m just here to ask Gordy for help.”

With that comment, an awkward silence developed between them. Miss Sarah proceeded to stare at the trees, as if willing Gordy to magically appear, while Binx contemplated his discarded plate. And somewhere far above them, the Rübezahl clung to the ladder, even now surveying the extent of his domain.

Having never visited the Logging Camp before, Josie was uncertain where it began. At some unspecified point, she’d traveled inland from the coast and had gotten herself lost among the trees. The air had become drier, like raw silk between her fingers; when she’d sneezed, there’d been blood on her hands. The moss absorbed any hint of sound, while far overhead an eagle pinwheeled in the periwinkle sky.

She’d assumed there’d be some invisible line to cross, whereupon the laws of Oregon (made and enforced by men like Uncle Francis) would be ceded to mob rule. How large a mob that might actually entail, and what sorts of laws they might choose to enforce, were the stuff of dark fantasy. But perhaps the line wasn’t invisible, she found herself thinking, so much as it was self-enforced. One moment she felt certain she’d arrived—seeing a man, listless, beneath a tree. But the next minute she’d encounter a signpost, pointing the way toward California. Despite the occasional caravan she passed, shuttered against a polite knock, there was nobody to ask and nothing to consult. Just the quiet company of ancient things.

Perhaps her official arrival at the Logging Camp coincided with the hole in her shoe. She’d stepped in a relatively benign puddle, and water had seeped between her toes
. Josie cursed herself thrice as she removed the offending boot—first, for walking through the puddle, which she easily could’ve avoided; second, for removing her stockings on the beach; and third for the pebble she now held in her hand. Pink, rounded, and smooth, she’d been walking on it these many miles to distract from her hunger. Holding the boot upside down, the hole appeared as big as halfpenny.