The Unnameables (12 page)

This was Prudy. He'd known her all his life.

"He has seen you with your hair up," he said. "I carved a ... something Useless."

Prudy's eyes were blue granite under ice. "Let's see it," she said.

Medford went and rummaged around under his bed.

And then Prudy, braids down, stared back at Prudy, braids up.

Outside the kitchen door, the dog sat up in a hurry to scratch her ear with her hind foot. Her foot kept sliding off her ear and slapping onto the floor,
Scritch, scritch, scritch, whap—scritch, scritch, scritch, whap.

The Goatman did not speak.

Medford did not breathe.

Earnest took one look at Prudy's face (the live one—he barely looked at the wooden version) and decided this would be a good time to crawl into the foundation and examine the sink piping from underneath.

A Honeybug buzzed in and settled on a piece of fruit in the bowl Medford kept on the counter beside the sink. It was the Sweetwood bowl, the first he'd ever made. He kept it polished but he kept it in use.

"This isn't the only one of these things thou has made, is it?" Prudy asked.

"'Tis not," Medford said.

"I want to see them."

The Goatman, apologetically silent, helped carry the other Useless Objects out from the bedroom. There were still more in bundles on the rafters but Medford didn't say anything about them. This would be quite enough Useless Objects for one afternoon.

Prudy had a white, closed-to-trading look on her face. She didn't touch any of the carvings, just peered at them
and into them. Medford held his breath when she came to the unfinished seashell bowl, breathed again when she reached in to touch Pinky with a trembling forefinger. "My shells," she whispered.

She'd see, Medford knew it now. She'd see that he was thinking of her when he carved that bowl.

Then she noticed the horn. He could tell because somehow her braids got straighten She whirled and confronted the Goatman. "What brings you here?" she demanded, forgetting Book Talk. "To Island, I mean. To Medford. There have been others before you, we know that. And other ... objects like these."

The Goatman backed up a step. "This is where the wi-i-ind blew me."

"Did you make Medford do this?"

"I've been carving these things for years," Medford said, feeling oddly insulted. "That one's not even finished yet."

She gave him one agonized look and he knew he'd blundered. She walked out the door. When Medford followed she was pacing around on the grass as if walking off a cramp. The dog watched closely in case Prudy did something that involved food.

Medford sat down on the porch steps and waited. And waited.

Prudy walked the length of the front yard, walked it again. A couple of times she rubbed her hand across her cheek. If it had been someone else, Medford would have
thought she was crying. She was not, however, chewing on a braid. She was upright, stiff. A Learned.

She turned abruptly and marched straight toward Medford. He stood up because it seemed safer. "How long hast thou been making those things?" she demanded.

"Years. Almost from the beginning."

"You ... thou wast making them when we still went to Bog Island?" It was the first time either of them had said that name in almost a year. "All that talking we did and you said nothing?"

He didn't have to respond—she knew the answer. It had never occurred to him to burden her with the knowledge. He hadn't meant to keep secrets from her.

He wished she would cry. He wanted to stroke her cheek, tug on a braid—anything to get that hardness out of her eyes.

"Did Boyce teach thee?" she asked.

"I taught myself."

"Medford. How couldst thou teach yourself—thyself—to make such ... such Unnameable—"

"You think I'm lying? And they aren't Unnameable. They're Nameless, aye—"

"Of course I think you're lying. Thou hast been lying to everyone for years. To Master Learned, to me."

"I never lied to Master Learned. And it wasn't so much lying as ... just not saying."

"'Tis the same thing," Prudy snapped. "Secrets are
just like the Unnameable. Only ... only secret. 'Tis bad enough that my own mother behaves so..." She stopped, gulped, then plowed ahead. "And as for these things being Unnameables—Medford, what else can they be? Master Learned says a Nameless thing is ... is a thing no one bothers with, a weed or a seabird. They harm no one. But these things—"

"You think my carvings are harmful? Exactly who is harmed, Prudy?"

"You, for one. You ... thou hast been working on those things when you should have been working on something Useful like my father's bowls. Just like Merit Learned said about ... about Cordelia."

"I told you, I'm almost finished with Twig's bowls. The third-to-last one is right—"

"That's not the point, Medford, and you know it." Prudy's hands were balled up into fists on her hips. Her back was straight. Her legs were straight. Medford couldn't see them, but he was sure her braids were two straight lines down her back.

"Well, then, what is the point?" he said. "Why all this fuss? You're perfectly happy talking to a Nameless man with horns."

"This is different and if it weren't, then you ...
thou
wouldst not have lied about it," Prudy shot back. "My shells, of all things!"

"Your shells—so what? You think Master Learned will blame you? And you'll be gone like Essence, is that it?"

"'Tis not ... It just can't..."

She's run out of answers
, Medford thought.

But then she raised her hands like Councilor Learned quieting everyone down after the dinner break. She was pale enough to be Deemer, too, and her eyes made Med-ford shiver in all the heat of his anger.

"Enough," she said. '"Tis wrong, Medford, and thou knowst it. I am a Learned and my obligation is clear, Master Learned says. Thou hast made the Unnameable and it hath conquered thee. For thine own good—"

Prudy snapped her mouth shut. She turned and stalked back to the road.

"What are you going to do, Prudy?" Medford called after her.

She didn't answer. She didn't look back at him. She marched south toward Town.

Master Tanner and I disagree on a Useful name for the Oak Tree. I would call it after its Fruit, the Acorn. He wishes to call it Tanningbark after its Use in his tanning solution. I believe Master Carpenter supports Master Tanner, so there's an end on't.

—Journal of Samuel Farmer, 1751

W
HEN MEDFORD
returned to the kitchen the Goatman was sitting on the rug by the stove, the squirrel bowl in his lap, Earnest standing beside him. Earnest had his watch in his hand, a sign that he was uneasy, but he hadn't started to take the watch apart. Yet.

The cover was off the bowl and the Goatman was poking at the little creature curled up inside. "This is what Ki-i-iller ate. I would like my uncle to see this."

Earnest looked everywhere except where Medford was standing. "I'd best be going," he said to the stovepipe. "She sounded upset."

"Aye." Medford sat down in the chair by his workshop door. He surveyed the carvings cluttering the kitchen.
He'd better hide them again before ... before what? What would Prudy do? Would she tell Deemer Learned? Boyce? And what would they do?

"I'd best be going," Earnest said again, this time to the sink. "I'll be back ... sometime ... with that oil for the pump."

The pump. On top of everything else, Medford couldn't get at his well water.

"Sorry about no water," Earnest told the door latch. He pocketed his watch.

"I can haul from the stream," Medford said.

"Aye." Earnest jiggled the door latch, which was a little loose. To Medford's relief, he did not reach for his screwdriver. "These carvings. They be ... skillful."

"My thanks."

"Unnameable."

"If you say so."

"I wish thee luck."

"I thank thee."

It didn't sound as if Earnest would be back very soon. The porch creaked under his feet. The steps creaked. Then the world was silent.

There was little point in hiding the carvings, when you thought about it. If Boyce or Deemer Learned demanded to see them, Medford could hardly deny their existence. No one would think Prudy was making up such a tale. If she said there were Unnameables at Medford's, there were Unnameables at Medford's.

But what if Prudy didn't tell? Earnest would keep quiet unless someone asked him a direct question. What if Prudy thought about it on the way back to Town and decided to do the same? Then what?

He imagined hiding the carvings away again, life going on just as it had before.

Prudy would come by next week, probably with Earnest. She would look him in the eye and give him Old Prudy's mischievous smile.

Except that New Prudy would keep an even sharper eye on how much work he turned out. Every time he fell behind she would think—she would know—that he'd been working on something Useless. Something Unnameable, she'd say.

She wouldn't be able to stand it, this secret plus Cordelia Weaver's cloth man. She would have to tell someone about something.

And then thou shalt he Gone.

His brain and pretty much every other part of his body were screaming,
Get up now and hide those objects! Better yet, burn them. Now, before 'tis too late.

But somewhere, hidden deep, a voice said,
You'll just make more of them. If not tomorrow then next week. Time to face it. Time to stop hiding.

Medford thought about Essence Learned sitting in the motorboat with her stern father. That could easily have been him and Boyce. He looked around his cabin. He realized that he loved the place, loved taking a cup of tea
into the workshop early in the morning, a day of carving ahead of him. The smell of the sea on a summer day. The dancing light in the woods when he and Boyce were scouting trees. He couldn't live anyplace else. "I'm not going," he said.

"Good," the Goatman said. "Le-e-et's have tea."

The Goatman went outside on some mission. Before long, sharp banging sounds drifted in from the yard. Med-ford peeked out and saw the purple figure hunched over an outcropping of ledge near the woods. He was using a rock to whack at something.

Medford decided he didn't want to know what the Goatman was doing. He moved the teakettle to the hottest part of the stove, added a couple of small logs to the firebox. He left the door to the firebox open.

His carvings covered every inch of the kitchen table. He picked up the rolling pin with the ears and eyes. He squatted before the open fire, weighing the rolling pin in his hand, eyeing the flames.

He thrust the rolling pin into the firebox and shut the door. He stood up, feeling like someone else. He picked up the seashell bowl, which now would never be finished. He could make another fancy rolling pin, maybe, when it was safe. But his hand wouldn't hold the knife the same way, nor would it be that particular piece of wood with the shapes trapped inside it, alive as any creature.

The reality of it hit him like a blast of wind.

Medford dropped to his knees, grappled with the
firebox door, hauled the rolling pin out of the flames. The ears were a little dark, the rest of it hot but not yet singed. He dropped it on the table, shook the heat out of his hands, and burst into tears.

As he stood there snuffling, tears rolling down his cheeks, he knew that whatever anyone thought of them, these carvings were him. He wiped his eyes and shut the firebox.

He wished he could go back two days, to when he was secret and safe. When hooves belonged to Greater Brown Beef Creatures and horns to actual goats. On the other hand, the Goatman might be the only friend he had left.

The porch creaked. The Goatman teetered through the door, carrying something in the lap of his robe. He dumped it into the sink with a loud and rolling clatter. When Med-ford went over to look, the sink was full of every kind of nut he'd ever known: Tanningbark and Gum Tree Nuts, Sweetnuts, a few Roasting Nuts, all of them shelled.

"How did you find all those?" Medford asked. "You weren't gone that long."

"It's what I eat," the Goatman said. "I will ma-a-ake nutcakes."

Medford wasn't sure he wanted to eat anything cooked by a person who ate dish towels. And yet not hurting the Goatman's feelings was becoming important to him.

"I need..." The Goatman made a grinding gesture with his hands. "I need to turn them to dust. Powder. Flour, I gue-e-ess you'd say."

Medford got out his mortar and pestle and showed the Goatman how to use them. He made tea for them both. Then he cleared the table of his Unnameable carvings (even he was starting to think of them that way). He found spots for them on windowsills, shelves, and the tops of cupboards. He wasn't going to hide them under the bed anymore. The next day he might even bring down the ones hidden in the rafters.

He wouldn't hide anything anymore.
Trouble doth not depart. Face it, thou.

"I. Need. Large. Wet. Leaves," the Goatman said, his words following the rhythm of the pestle. "I. Need. To wrap the cakes. And bake them in. The ashes."

Glad to improve the supper prospects, Medford showed him how to use the oven and his Mainland metal baking pans. The Goatman was skeptical. But because Medford showed no inclination to go out and gather leaves, he gave in.

"I need goatmi-i-ilk," the Goatman said.

"I have cow's milk," Medford said. "I mean, Greater Horned Milk Creature milk." If he couldn't act Bookish, at least he could talk that way.

Out at the springhouse, he surveyed his stock of butter, eggs, and milk, which was getting low. He was out of bread now, too. He'd have to go to Town for more.

If Town didn't come to him first.

He'd better finish Twig's bowl tonight. He'd work on it before supper.

Sanding—mindless work, taxing to the muscles and yielding immediate results—turned out to be a cure for inner turmoil. He stopped wondering what Prudy was saying to Deemer. He concentrated his whole being on each rough spot on the trencher. The chisel marks faded and the wood took on the creamy texture Medford loved.