The Root Cellar (13 page)

“I’m not going back. Ever!”

“Oh, Rose, of course you will! Them folks is good. You’ll catch on to how to get on with ’em.” Susan pushed back a strand of her bright brown hair and smiled.

Rose sighed quaveringly. Susan’s soothing voice and kind words at least restored her to calm. She remembered why she had come. She fished into the pocket of her jeans for Will’s song
and handed it to Susan. “Did it work?” she asked eagerly. “How long have I been gone?”

“It’s a week since you come last.”

Rose breathed a happy sigh. “It’s a week for me, too.”

Susan gave the song back to Rose. “You better keep it for now. Will said you brought good luck when he wanted so bad to talk to the birds. And it worked to bring you now, so mebbe, if you keep it, it will bring us both luck, and Will, too.”

“Then you keep my rose.” Rose put the song back in her pocket. “Susan, I saw Will’s name on a list in Oswego.” She told her about Mr. Ancaster and Fort Ontario.

Susan had only one thing to say. “He didn’t find no list that said when they come back.”

“No, but he said that didn’t mean they didn’t come. It only means they didn’t come when most of the others did. Susan, what we have to do is go to Oswego and find out.”

The idea had sailed into Rose’s head so swiftly and neatly that she had hardly time to notice it before the words were out. “I had a booklet, but I left it in the car with the copy of the list. It told where all the battles were. I can remember quite a lot of them. But we can find out more if we go over to the fort again. They’ll know. And we can go to see Stephen Jerue’s family.”

“Rose, we can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“It’s too far.”

“It isn’t. I’ve been there. I’ve just come back from there.”

“I never been farther than Soames. I can’t go.”

“Susan, what if Will is sick or wounded and can’t get home and can’t let us know, and they could tell us at the fort where to look? Maybe Stephen Jerue is home already and he can tell us.”

Susan looked doubtful.

“What if not going means we never see Will again?”

“I’ll go,” said Susan. Her eyes were large and fearful. She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously. “I’ll go,” she repeated. “But whatever’s the missus going to say?”

“It’s for Will, isn’t it? We’ll go across Lake Ontario on one of those schooners and we’ll find the Jerues. I’m sure they’ll help us. Then we’ll find—Susan, we don’t have any money!”

“I got some.”

“Go get it.”

Although she was now three years younger than Susan, Rose suddenly realized that she, not Susan, knew what had to be done this time. She knew that she had to take charge now or they would never leave Hawthorn Bay, never find Will, never be able to face any danger or difficulty that might lie ahead. It was as though Susan, too, understood. She hesitated for a moment, then ran off into the house.

She was gone long enough for the last of the afternoon to fade into evening. An oriole trilling his three liquid notes flitted higher and higher into the shadowy leaves of the big maple tree. A chipmunk scurried along the rail fence that separated the garden from the rest of the back yard. Susan came out of the kitchen. Her face was stiff and white. Her mouth was set in a straight line. “Will’s ma’s raising an awful ruckus, crying and carrying on about how Will wouldn’t never have gone if it wasn’t for Steve’s bad influence. As if anyone could make Will Morrissay do a thing he hadn’t the mind to.”

“Does that mean you won’t go?”

“I’m coming and, what’s more, I made her give me five Yankee dollars.” Susan opened her fist and showed Rose a handful of money. “And I got more. At the bottom of my trunk. Forty dollars—Yankee, too. Ma and Pa saved it from their wedding trip in the States and left it for me to get married with, but I figure mebbe this is more important.”

“Then we can go. All we have to do is get a ride on a ship.”

“First thing in the morning we can go on up to Jamie Heaton’s. Like as not they’ve got a load going to Oswego. Rose, would you mind saying you was a boy, like me and Will thought the first time we saw you?”

“Why?”

“Well, you know. Boys get paid more mind to and, what’s more, I’d be safer.”

“How come?”

“Folks will think I got protection. And, anyway, nobody’d believe you’re a girl in them britches and your hair all cut off.”

“All right. I don’t care. You can say my name is David.”

Rose slept that night in the barn. She was up and ready when Susan came for her at dawn. Susan had on a blue and white checkered dress and a small black bonnet with a pink flower in it. She looked neat and pretty. She was carrying Rose’s overnight bag in one hand and in the other a small square straw one of her own.

Gratefully Rose took her bag. “I forgot I left it here,” she said.

They took turns rowing up the bay, eating bread and cheese as they went. They startled a big blue heron away from his breakfast. He gronked crossly at them as he took off, his huge wings pumping up and down like some great prehistoric bird. From somewhere behind them a loon called in his high fluttering tones. “It isn’t like any other place in the whole world,” sighed Rose. Susan nodded.

Within ten minutes they heard men’s voices and soon pulled into sight of a wharf where a small sailing ship was being loaded with grain.

“It’s Arn Colliver. I expect he’ll take us,” said Susan. Her voice was tight and nervous. “Captain Colliver,” she called, shipping the oars and tying the boat to the wharf. “If you’re going to Oswego, me and my friend—David—want to sail with you.” She climbed up onto the wharf. Rose scrambled after. “Will, he ain’t come home yet from the war and I figure to go looking for him.”

“Well now, Susan Anderson, can you trim a sail?” asked the captain. Without waiting for an answer he walked away from them down the plank into the ship.

“Isn’t he going to tell us if we can come?” Rose was worried.

“He’ll take us. When the wind comes up.” Susan perched tensely on the edge of a large wooden box. Rose followed suit, watching the short bulky figure of Captain Colliver as he moved about on the deck of the ship, overseeing the loading of the grain from the wagons drawn up to the wharf and for half a mile behind. It was a long, low ship with three masts and a single cabin on the deck. The grain was being loaded into the hold below. One by one the wagons were emptied, the farmers “geed, hawed” and “giddapped” their horses, leaving the captain, and the three boys and the man who made up his crew, to level the grain.

“That’s Billy Foster and Joe Heaton and I
don’t know the other boy. Hank Bother’s the cook,” Susan told Rose. “The two boys belong to our Church. That Billy Foster was an awful one for making trouble when he was a little feller. Him and Will’s brother Adam, they was a pair of terrible teasers. If it hadn’t of been for Will there’s times I might have run off. I come to Morrissays to work when I was nine. Them boys made things miserable for me. I used to hide back in Bothers’ woods and Will, he’d come and find me and make Adam leave off.”

The sun got hotter and hotter as they talked. Finally, just before noon, a breeze started up and Captain Colliver came out of the cabin. “All right, lads,” he called. “Looks like a wind’s coming up. Let’s get going.” He shooed away several cats and a large dog and nodded at Rose and Susan. “Come aboard, you two.”

“This here’s David,” said Susan. Captain Colliver nodded brusquely but said nothing. “Island folks is like that,” Susan told Rose later. “They don’t pry into a body’s business though they’re busting to know things.”

The girls went down the gangplank into the schooner and sat down on a coil of rope. With the captain at the wheel giving orders, the three boys untied the ropes that held the ship and with long poles pushed away from the wharf. They drifted slowly out into the lake and hoisted a sail. As the wind caught the sail the captain
straightened the schooner, the boys hoisted the remaining sails, and they were away.

There was the odor of fish, the musty scent of the grain below, and the sharp smell of fresh coffee brewing in the cabin. Rose felt the cool wind against her back, lifting the hot hair from her head. She smiled at Susan. Weakly Susan smiled back.

At noon they ate pork and onions and potatoes and rhubarb pie. By this time the neighbor boys had made Susan acquainted with Robert James, an Oswego boy who said he knew Will’s cousin Steve. While they ate, Robert spoke of Steve and the other boys who had gone to fight in the war. “The regiments have been coming home since April,” he said, with awe in his voice. “We’ve been having some mighty celebrations for them. The 147th come in July and there wasn’t more than a hundred and forty-seven of them to come neither. The 110th ain’t home yet.”

“What about the 81st?” asked Rose tensely.

“Is that them Steve Jerue went off with? They was the ones that was first into Richmond. They took a company of coloreds with them. It must have been something for them colored fellers to march into that rebel town and raise the old stars and stripes over it! Boy, I wish I’d been there!”

“What do you mean, ‘colored’?” asked Rose.

“The slaves.”

“Oh. Have they come home yet?” Rose persisted.

“I believe they come home only the other day, but I ain’t talked to any of them yet.”

Rose and Susan looked quickly at each other, then as quickly looked away, their eyes saying maybe, maybe, not daring more.

After dinner Susan, who had got over her initial nervousness, insisted that she and Rose help, so they scraped and washed the tin cups and plates.

The voyage took all night. Wrapped in blankets, Rose and Susan slept on deck. Rose woke once in the night. She heard the water slapping against the sides of the ship and the ropes creaking as they pulled in their blocks. She looked up and saw the immense blue-black sky sprinkled with bright stars and fell back to sleep, wondering if the whole adventure was a dream.

In the morning she woke to find they had reached Oswego harbor. To the east was Fort Ontario. Farther in along the waterfront were warehouses and huge grain elevators. In the distance, church spires rose high over the town. The harbor was full of barges, tug boats, and sailing ships at anchor.

“Here, give a hand to haul in on this.” Robert James threw her an end of rope. Shoulder
to shoulder with the boys, she leaned back, her feet apart, and pulled with all her strength as the schooner slid up against the wharf.

After they had docked, Robert offered to guide them to the Jerues. “That’s good of you,” said Susan gratefully. When she offered passage money to Captain Colliver, he pushed her hand aside gently. “Many’s the sail I had with Bob Morrissay in his day. I guess I can help out where his boy figures.” Susan nodded.

They followed Robert along Water Street where Rose and Sam had had lunch in the restaurant with the pink geranium in the window. The street was crowded. Women wore long, wide hoop skirts, with shawls over their shoulders and straw bonnets on their heads. Men had narrow-legged dark suits, high shirt collars, and on their heads tall silk hats or flat straw ones. Rose was fascinated, but there was no time to stop and look. Robert wove his way through the morning crowd of dock workers and shoppers, like a needle darting through cloth. They caught only a glimpse of the coal yards, the starch company, and rows of interesting-looking shops as they flew by.

Robert stopped at the bridge that spanned the river dividing the town. “We had a banquet here,” he said proudly. “Right here on the bridge. When the 127th come home. They was so badly done the whole town gave them a
banquet. There was near two thousand people all sitting at one long table. It ran the full length of the bridge. My dad says we ain’t likely to see anything like it ever again.”

They crossed the bridge and walked away from the center of town up along streets that Rose remembered from her walk with Uncle Bob. She looked over at Susan to tell her and saw Susan’s pale, set face. With her eyes she followed where Susan was looking and realized, for the first time, how many soldiers there were. While she had been caught up in the wonder of Oswego and the people in their curious 1865 clothes, Susan had been watching for Will in every face. And she had forgotten. And there were so many—some marching smartly along with a wife or mother, their uniforms fresh and spruce, others in faded uniforms, their faces drawn and hollow-eyed, others without an arm or leg—so many, and she too began to search every face, trembling with the realization that the war over might not mean that Will was all right.

About halfway along a wide, shady street they came to a huge, brown clapboard house with a screened porch around it and flowers along its walk.

“Here’s Jerues’,” said Robert.

“I didn’t know they was rich,” said Susan in surprise. “It’s a big house.”

“They keep boarders.”

At that moment a woman came out of the house and down the steps, carrying a shopping basket on her arm. She was a tall, stout woman with a comfortable kitcheny-looking face. She had on a bright purple flowered dress with a hoop so large the dress stuck out at least a foot and a half from her body all around. On her head was a large yellow straw bonnet decorated with velvet daisies and bright red cherries. “You looking for someone?” she asked.

“We’ve come to find Will Morrissay,” said Rose.

“Will?”

“I’m Susan Anderson, Mrs. Jerue.” Susan stepped forward nervously. “You know me. I works for Morrissays over to Hawthorn Bay in Canada.”

“My land, child! Of course I know you. What on earth are you doing here?”

“We’ve come to find Will,” repeated Rose.

“Will?” said Mrs. Jerue in bewilderment. “Why are you looking for Will? Where’s he gone?”

“We thought since Will and your son Steve joined the army together, maybe they came home together?”

A group of children had collected on the sidewalk. Robert James said good-bye and went off. Nobody noticed.

“You mean to say that my nephew Will Morrissay went and joined up? And never said a word about it, and Stevie neither? Not even in one of his letters? Oh, my land. It must have nearly killed his mother.”

“Ain’t they here?” asked Susan faintly.