The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (11 page)

“You go on up and get to bed, Maddie. I’ve got to let out some of that whiskey I drunk before I climb any more ladders. I’ll add my drops of gold to the bay after you’ve gone. Good night.”

“Bun nwee.” He watched her climb, her skirt hoisted, till she reached the top, waved down at him, and disappeared. Then he stumbled across the rocks to the water’s edge and relieved himself in a long and satisfying arc. “Pissin’ in the wind,” he muttered. “Here I stand, on a bun nwee, pissin’ in the wind.” He stood for a long time staring up at the moon. It was now high and bright over the water, more white than yellow.

“‘Buffalo Gal, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight. . . .’” He walked clumsily over to the ladder and grabbed the sides. He sang softly and cursed loudly as he clambered closer to the top and finally up over the edge. On solid ground at last, he stood with his arms open wide toward the water and the wind. “‘And we’ll dance to the light of the moon.’” He laughed and stepped forward as though to do a jig, accidentally kicking the empty glass that he’d left on the edge and sending it over the cliff to shatter on the rocks below. “Damn,” he said, peering down and catching glimpses of moonlit shards. “There mighta been a drop left.”

He turned unsteadily away from the edge, facing the barn, which was bright gray with moony light. Dalton was standing in the open doorway, mute, watching him. Bill stopped for a moment, startled, then waved but didn’t speak. Dalton did not move, though Bill knew he was looking at him. He felt the eyes of his son watching all the way back up to the house and right on in. “Funny damn kid,” he muttered as he fell atop his unmade bed. “I go down with my boots on.”

The next morning Maddie roused Avis early, prodding her shoulder as she whispered, “Petite Avie. Get up now. We are going in the boat. Dalton says come.”

Idella was awakened, too, by the voices, but she didn’t move. She listened till they had sneaked out and down the stairs, too excited for silence. When she heard the front door close, she got up and looked out the window. Dalton was standing, tall as Dad almost, with his hand on top of the ladder.

Maddie and Avis, a basket of food between them, ran happily toward him. Their skirts blew against their legs in the windy morning. Maddie looked lighter than Idella ever thought possible, and girlish. She wasn’t much more than a girl anyway. Sixteen years old, maybe. That wasn’t quite a woman to her mind, and it wasn’t a child. It was somewhere in the middle.

“You two stay in the boat, goddamn it, and do what Dalton says.” Dad was out there, too. Idella could hear him, but she couldn’t see him. “Don’t you dare join the fishes, Avis!”

“We won’t! We will! We won’t!” Avis was laughing and jumping. Dalton took the basket and helped the girls down over the side, then slowly disappeared after them. Idella kept watching. Dad strolled up to the cliff edge now, his hands in his trouser pockets. He stood, rumpled and un-tucked, for a long time. Then he pulled a suspender up and walked back toward the house. Idella heard him come in.

“You up?” he called.

“Yes.” Idella went to the top of the stairs.

“I been thinking maybe we could go to town, you and me. Everyone else is on holiday. Let’s bring Maddie back a birthday surprise. What do you say, Idella?”

“I guess.”

“You think you could pick out something she’d like? I wouldn’t know what a young woman needs. We’ll all get a little something. You want candy?”

“Candy’d be good.”

“Pick out candy for you and Avis and then something nice for Maddie. Maybe a brush or a mirror. She’s doing things with her hair.”

Idella nodded. She would like a new brush herself. She wondered if Dad would think of that when it was her birthday. She felt a little old to always be picking out candy, though she did enjoy the hard red ones that came on sticks in the shapes of animals.

“Let’s go, then. Let’s do it. Cows are milked and chickens are fed. Get dressed, and let’s get going before they need it again.”

 

Idella noticed the tall man standing in front of the case of pipes and tobacco pouches from the time they entered the store. He looked up at the jangle of the cowbell over the door and kept watching and listening to them the whole time. What caught her eye first was the way his hat covered one ear but not the other and that as he listened he moved his chaw of tobacco from one side to the other of his mouth. He caught her eye once and smiled. After that she looked in any direction but his.

“Bill Hillock! Come to post another sign for a housemaid?” Mr. Wheeler was wiping his eyeglasses off with a dust rag, but he could tell it was Dad, probably by the way he walked into a place, so tall and straight. “I’m gonna start charging you a fee.” The men always teased each other before they did business.

“We got us one that’s fixing to stay on, I think. She likes the goddamned wind, if you can believe it.”

“You can keep her supplied with wind, by God.” Mr. Wheeler carefully put his glasses back on, bending the wires over one ear and then the other. “I don’t know how you people stand it out there on that cliff come winter. It’d blow the skin off my old bones.”

“What are you two going on about?” Mrs. Wheeler came from the back of the store carrying a bolt of fabric. “Hugh, give me a hand with this wool—I can’t get it back up on the shelf.” She looked at the man standing in front of the pipes. “Can I help you?”

The man smiled. “I’m not sure yet. I’m thinking.”

Mr. Wheeler laughed. “Oh, don’t be doing too much of that. I hear it can be dangerous!”

“What would you know about it?” Mrs. Wheeler shot back, smiling. She turned to the man. “Let me know if I can help you. What you see is what we’ve got, if you’re looking for a new pipe. I’ll open the case if you want. Men seem to need to hold them awhile before they make a decision.”

“Watch what you’re saying, there, Frieda. It’s not just pipes they like to hold first.” Dad made out like he was going to put his arms around her, and she brushed him away.

“You damned fool, Bill Hillock.”

“That wouldn’t apply to your housegirls, now, would it?” The man spoke to Dad, his one cheek still swollen with tobacco.

“What’s that you said?” Dad asked.

“I say, that don’t apply to your hired girls, now, does it?” The man smiled. “That you got to hold ’em before you make any decisions?”

Idella felt how abruptly the feeling of fun had changed. No one spoke. Everyone looked at the man. Finally Mrs. Wheeler turned and smiled at Idella. “Idella, dear. What brings the lady of the house to town today?”

“We’ve come to buy a birthday present.” Idella smiled back, relieved.

“A present? For Avis? Is that why I don’t see her hand in my candy jars? You leave her home so you could get her a surprise?”

“It’s for the hired girl,” Idella whispered. “It was her birthday. And I don’t think she’s ever had anything nice. I’m going to help choose.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got for hairbrushes and little mirrors.” Dad put a hand on her shoulder.

Idella could tell that the strange man was listening to their conversation. She could feel him watching. As Mrs. Wheeler handed each mirror to her, she urged Idella to lift it up and get a feel for it and take a look. “You don’t want one that’s watery. You want a good clear reflection. And no spots on the back. Some of ’em are better than others, but I don’t get much say in what they ship up here. We take what we can get.”

Idella examined the one she most wanted to own herself. It was bird’s-eye maple, with lovely little round marks in the soft pale wood. The mirror itself was oval and beveled at the edges. She looked shyly at her reflection, at her unsatisfactory brown eyes. When she turned the mirror slightly away from the sunlight coming through the front window, she saw the man in the hat watching her. He smiled. She put it down. “This one,” she said. “This is the one.”

“You want the brush, too, Bill?”

“Why the hell not?” Dad said. “Wrap them up while Idella picks out her candy.”

The man with the hat suddenly walked past them and over to the store’s open front door, leaned his head out, and spat hard onto the sidewalk. He made such a loud spewing noise that they all stopped what they were doing or saying. Then he stepped back in and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, his cheek still bulging. The tobacco had a sour smell that took some of the pleasure out of choosing the candy. She could smell it when he came up behind her.

“Pick enough for the lot of you,” Dad said.

“Them’s fine boots you got on your feet, sir.” The man with the hat spoke again to Dad.

“I like ’em.”

“They got made just for you, it looks like?”

“Could be. What do I owe you, Hugh?”

“Can I look closer? At the stitching?”

“You can see it pretty good from where you’re standing.”

“Whyn’t I put it on your monthly tab, Bill. Pay the first of the month after the herring start their runs.”

“Thanks, Hugh. I appreciate the kindness. It’ll fall out easier in a month.”

“What if the mirror cracks?”

“Excuse me?”

“What if the mirror cracks when the hired girl looks into it?”

Idella was watching the man’s face keep changing. His smile got bigger but his face got meaner. He was taller than Dad, and thicker. The boots he wore were old and cracked and hardly worth putting on, by the look of them. Two colors of laces.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. And it’s none of your damn business if it does.”

“I had me a pair of boots just like them, I think. Just like ’em. Down to the stitching. Five-dollar boots. They got stole from me. Goddamned bitch of a girl run off with my boots.”

“Is that so?”

“You ain’t seen her? Fat cow of a thing. Slow and stupid.”

“Can’t say that I have. Only cow I got’s in the barn.”

Something was being said between the men that wasn’t in the words. Idella could feel herself clamping down, holding even her arms down close to her sides.

“You don’t have a cow by the name of Madeleine round the house, now, do you, little girl?” Idella turned away from him. She was afraid. “You sure are a quiet little bird.”

“Come on, Idella, pick out the candy. We’ll weigh it out and go.”

 

“I am part of the wind here!” Maddie opened her mouth wide to it. Her hair flew all about her face.

Dalton smiled across at her as he rowed. “No lobster pots to drag up, Maddie?” He pointed with an oar to one of his buoys.

“No lobsters.” Maddie shook her head. “I have seen too many.”

“What’d you do in there?” Avis was grabbing up bits of seaweed and throwing them at the gulls overhead. “When you worked in the lobster factory?”

“The water always boils when the lobsters are coming. More and more seawater they bring on wagons to boil. More and more lobsters they cook bright red, in the big, big pots.” She opened her arms wide to show the size of the huge boiling pots. “It is so hot and so full of steam in the factory. They cook the lobster and clean and can right away or the meat goes bad.”

“What’d you do?”

“I cracked back the tails.” She demonstrated with a sharp twist of her wrist. “The shells are hot and sharp. The salt, it eats at the hands, and they bleed. I hated it.”

“Dad throws their bodies on the fields,” Avis said. “They smell way worse than cow patties.”

“Forget the lobsters,” Dalton said. “We’ll just ride to nowhere.”

“It is somewhere to me. I’ve never been on water before. Only land. Only ground.”

“Apple of the ground!” Avis shouted. “
Pomme de terrre!
That’s ‘potato’ in French, Dalton.”

Maddie laughed. “
Très bien,
Petite Avie.”

“You’ll be a potato of the water if you don’t stop rocking the boat.”

They rowed and drifted happily. Maddie sang a song for them in French, very softly. The girls sat on the boat’s bottom and closed their eyes, letting the sun warm their faces while Dalton rowed them gently across the water.

“It is so nice,” Maddie whispered dreamily, “to float on the water like feathers.”

“I’d be dead if I couldn’t be on the water.” Dalton looked out at the horizon. “I’ll get to the other side someday. I’ll get off the farm and out of here.”

“You want to leave?” Maddie opened her eyes. “To me this is beautiful, your life.”

Dalton looked at her. “You come from someplace belowground, Maddie, if this is a good life to you. I’m not staying in this nowhere all my life. I’m getting out. That’s what I’m pulling up lobsters for. To sell ’em to the factory. To get the hell out.”

“What about Dad?” Avis asked, squinting up at him. “Who’ll help him with the farm stuff ?”

“You, Avis. He’ll hitch you to the plow. You’re stubborn as a mule.” He laughed. “You look like one, too.”

“I do not!”

He pulled up the oars and let the boat drift. “Where’d you come from, Maddie, that you’ve never been on the water?”