The Boys in the Trees (17 page)

Sam always talks when we’re working together and sometimes he tells me things about when he was a boy, growing up in the next town. He had an older brother named Peter and a younger one named John and they were always in trouble, sneaking off to the river with their fishing poles instead of chopping wood or unloading sacks of grain from the wagons. Almost every day their father had to pick up the leather strap, bend them over his scarred oak desk, but Sam says that never made any difference. He asked me once if I had brothers and sisters, and I knew it would be easier if I said I didn’t, but that seemed a terrible thing. So I told him I had four, and tried to think what I would say when he asked me more. But he didn’t ask more, so I needn’t have worried.

Sam’s father was a grocer first, but then a photographer too, and even I had heard of him. When I worked in Dr. Robinson’s house, Mrs. Doctor wanted a portrait taken, and of course no one in this town was good enough, only Joseph Ryan would do. That was some years ago and it’s strange to think that maybe Sam was there too, adjusting a fold in Mrs. Doctor’s dress, turning little Eaton’s head this way and that. Sam and his father had some kind of falling out and he came to Emden to set up on his
own; it’s not so many miles but he says he hasn’t been back, that there were too many harsh things said. His brother John runs the grocery now, and Peter is off in New York doing something, so he doesn’t see them either. If I’d known him better when he told me all that I would have said something, would have made him see that a family’s not a thing to be so lightly thrown away.

•  •  •

My sister Millie took it hardest, when our mother didn’t come home and instead it was Miss Weir and a policeman taller than any man we’d ever seen. Miss Weir wrinkled her nose and kept her mouth shut, except to tell us that our mother had gone away and we were to come with her. Millie was sitting on the floor, holding the baby, and from where she was they must have looked like giants, blocking out the little bit of light from the door. She squeezed the baby so tight it began to wail, and that made Jim start too. But the policeman squatted down; he was still big, but not so enormous, and he chucked Jim under the chin and told him that if he stopped crying, he’d show him a bit of magic. Then he did something with his hand and pulled a peppermint from Jim’s ear and gave it to him to suck, and that was the end of Jim’s tears, and I suppose that was the moment he was lost to us. He was only little; he can’t be blamed.

In the carriage Miss Weir put her face close to mine, her long teeth, and said,
Do you know how old you are, dear?
I was so astonished that I blurted out
Eight
, but when she asked if I knew my birthday I put my lips together, my head down. She asked Millie the same questions, but Millie understood, and didn’t say a word. Jim didn’t know, and the baby hadn’t had a birthday yet.
Well then
, Miss Weir said, over the rattling wheels,
Let’s say today is your birthday, all your birthdays, and when we get home we’ll
have cake to celebrate
. And we did have cake, in the room with the long tables, where the rows of children sat quietly. After we’d cleaned a plate with more food than we’d ever seen at one time. Millie and I were terribly sick in the night, and I worried about Jim, off in the boys’ side, who must be sick too. And I worried about the baby, even though it didn’t have cake, but we never saw the baby again.

•  •  •

Sam’s house had been a photographer’s before, already had the skylight that brightens the front room studio and lets in drips when it rains. It belonged to a man named Simmons, a man no one knew much about, except that he had a scar on his cheek and a fine baritone voice for singing hymns. He was there for some years and then he wasn’t, and when someone noticed that, no one could remember how long it had been.

The town clerk packed up some things he’d left behind and rented the house to Sam, saying they’d see, in a year or two. It was already longer than that and Simmons’ things took up space Sam needed in the dark-room, so one afternoon when the rain drummed down he carried the boxes into the studio and I made a space between the bowls plinking with rainwater. There were bundles of small mounts for visiting cards, and one box inside a larger one was filled with ladies’ caps and bonnets, some made of straw and some curled up on themselves like small dead animals. There were milk white plates, all prepared for the camera, and boxes of spoiled ones, some exposed, some not. A good black coat that looked like it might fit Sam, but he wouldn’t try it on. One box had winter scenes, and some of them were of this house, with icicles hanging from the eaves. A few of the frozen
river with no houses in sight, somewhere a cold walk away. Underneath those, wrapped in a red cloth, were five or six negative plates, ready to be printed, with dates marked in the corners like all the others. I turned them this way and that, but I couldn’t make out what they were. Sam took one from me and held it up, turned it around, and then his cheeks went red, the tips of his ears.
I think
, he said,
I think they’re his—private parts
. I stared at him while the idea worked into my understanding, and when it did it was so peculiar that I started to laugh, Sam did too, and we laughed until we had the worst pain.

Sometimes, in the house, I think of Mr. Simmons, and where he might be in the world. What it was that made him walk away, not caring who would find what he left behind. I imagine that he closed the door in early morning, when the mist sometimes curls and rises from the river; maybe he sang as he walked, but there was no one to hear his voice growing fainter and fainter. And I think that it’s something like that, like a thick mist has swirled up and when it thins to nothing everyone is gone and I have no idea where they might be, how they will be living. Except for Miss Weir; she has disappeared too, I suppose, but I know where she will be, what she will be doing. I can picture her, standing straight in her dull brown dress, telling us to fold our hands and pray. Or leading some child away down the dim hall, with a firm grip on its ear. The head bent away and the feet scrabbling, trying to keep up to her swishing pace.

There was a painting in the room Miss Weir called her parlor, the room where she had her gleaming desk. A painting of a whiskery man, a hard-jawed woman, a little girl with ringlets, holding a doll and sitting on some kind of stool between them.
My parents
, she said, when she saw me looking, and that meant
that she was the little girl with the full mouth, the rosy cheeks. I wondered, looking at that little girl, if she could ever have imagined that she would grow up to be Miss Weir, and I wondered what she thought about, all those hours sitting on that hard stool, trying to keep still, the yellow-haired doll smiling in her hands. Perhaps it was because of that I believed her, when she looked at me with her brown eyes and said that of course my mother knew, would be able to follow us later. When she told me that the crossing would be an adventure, that there was a wonderful new life waiting for us all. From the things Sam has told me I know that nothing in the world is just what it seems, that there are laws operating underneath, and hidden reasons. Even the purest-looking things, a scattering of sunlight, or the soft green of new leaves on the trees. But long before I met Sam, I knew I’d never believe anything so easily again.

•  •  •

I learned things faster than Sam thought I would, and more of them, and he was pleased with that because it gave him more time for the work he really wanted to do. The portraits he takes in the studio pay the rent of the house, pay for supplies, although it’s always a struggle. But Sam doesn’t want to be like his father, content with that. He’s more interested in shadows and light, the shape of a rock rising out of the river, the splintered boards of a fence by the station. Last year Mr. Lett hired him to photograph all the buildings Mr. Marl owns in Emden, the businesses, the houses and the empty land. The photographs were presented to Mr. Marl on his birthday, and apparently he was very happy with them. Now Mr. Lett has given Sam another commission, hired him to take more photographs of the town that he will have made into a book. Mr. Lett says that he will give this book
to men he knows of in the city, to help persuade them to build factories here, to give more money for his railway, money for other things. It seemed strange to me that anyone would do that for a place they’ve never been, but Sam said they would, if they thought it would bring them more money. He develops those photographs himself but shows me when they turn out like he wants. He’s almost finished, and when Mr. Lett pays him we will be able to settle with Hatch, and maybe a few other places. If there’s enough money, Sam wants to order some dry plates already prepared, from a place he’s heard of in New York.

Mr. Lett with his loud voice has come by once or twice, and he’s pleased with what Sam’s done, but also impatient. Some of the views I have trouble recognizing, even when Sam tells me. It looks like quite another town in his photographs, the buildings higher and the street in front of the shops bustling with people. Sam explained how he had placed the camera, the angles he used, and how one morning he gathered up every person who would come with him and put them in a group outside Linton’s dry goods. It puzzled me, what he said, and I asked him how that was any different from covering up lines on a sitter’s face, from coloring lips, or changing their shape to be more pleasing. Sam always says that’s the wonder of photography, a record of the world just as it is instead of someone’s idea of it, and I know that was one of the arguments he had with his father, things he was asked to do.
It’s different
, he said, and he said that there was a purpose to these, that it was just a matter of showing what was already there, of showing it in the most appealing light. I still didn’t see the difference, and I wanted him to explain so that I could understand, the way he’s explained so many things. I didn’t even realize I was making him cross until he said,
What would you know about it
, and walked away.

The next day I asked if I could come with him, when I saw him packing things ready. There was not much work to be done in the studio, and I said that I could help carry things, set them up, that I wanted to see how he did it. A beautiful day for the two of us to be walking across the footbridge together, and I remembered something Lucy had said.
Does he ever take you out?
she said.
To a concert at the church, or even for a Sunday walk? Ask yourself that
, Lucy said. But here we were, on a sunny morning, walking through town together for all to see.

It was market day, and Sam wanted to photograph the new shed, the bustle of wagons and animals and people in high spirits. We could hardly hear ourselves over the bellowing of the cattle, and I made Sam laugh, telling him the first time I was sent with a bucket to milk a cow. Never having seen one, except in the distance, from the railway train that brought us from the ship to Miss Weir’s New Home. The cow was at the first place I was sent, and I had to leave Millie crying, climb up in the buggy with the sack that held my extra dress, some underthings, and a comb. They were not unkind to me there. I had my own bed, and the woman plaited my hair in the mornings. But I was no use to them at all on the farm and that was what mattered, nothing to do with how they might have liked me a little. When they brought me back to New Home I was full of things to tell Millie, but she was gone, and no one would tell me where. No one ever told me.

The place I was sent after that was not good, but the Doctor wrapped me in a blanket and took me home with him. Eaton was just a baby, and I knew quite a bit about babies, so that was all right. But sometimes in dreams even now I’m sitting in a room with Millie, and I wake up feeling so happy. On those days I think that I will somehow travel to New Home, that I will sit
on the hard bench inside the front door and refuse to move until someone tells me where she went. If I’d told the Doctor, he might have done something, and I don’t know what I was so afraid of then. If I told Sam, even all these years later, he would have a plan in a minute, and once or twice I’ve been on the edge of it. But he would wonder why I’ve waited so long, would maybe think me foolish, or hard. He wouldn’t understand that there are worse things than not knowing.

•  •  •

People love to talk in this town and they have no trouble finding things to talk about; even the kindest seeming can be harsh judges. After the man Heath shot his family there was nothing else people wanted to hear about, everyone trying to find reasons. Women who had given me looks but never met my eye asked me things, because of living next door at Mr. Cowan’s for a time, but I didn’t have anything to tell, not really. Once I saw the older girl back by the raspberry canes with a knife in her hand but that wasn’t anyone’s business, and anyway they had plenty to talk about without it. Some said that Heath had stolen money from Mr. Marl, that it was something to do with the shame of that, and others said he was mad, or evil. The wildest stories floated around and maybe one of them was true or maybe none were, but I never did see that knowing a reason would make any difference. It was a terrible thing to happen, of course it was, a shocking thing. But hard things do happen every day to someone, things that are not at all their fault. You could spend your whole life wondering, and what good would that do? There are things even Sam, with all his Science, can’t know.

•  •  •

Sam’s hair is wild brown curls and it looks like he’s been running his hands through it, even though he doesn’t very often do that. Sometimes when he’s trying to keep his temper, like with the lady in the big hat who brought her little dog, or sometimes when he’s staring at the pictures he’s taken for Mr. Lett, trying to decide which ones to show him. Once I cut Sam’s hair, in the studio, under the skylight. The sun pouring through was warm on my face and hands, and he shuddered when the wet curls fell on his bare shoulders.

The first time I saw Sam angry was that day of the lady with the hat. After I cleaned up the mess the little dog left in the hallway I made us tea, but he couldn’t sit still to drink it, pacing and talking but not really to me. Saying he’d had enough of it, enough of everything here. He still talks like that from time to time, says he’ll write to his brother Peter, says New York is the place he should be. I try not to, but sometimes just before I fall asleep I picture the two of us in New York, on a street with tall buildings, crowds of people in fine clothes. I know what Lucy would say to that, know what she thinks, for she’s told me often enough. I can’t explain to her how I can believe and not believe at the same time.