The Unnameables (21 page)

But right now, more than anything, he was angry.

He crashed through the kitchen door. Boyce had to grab the table to keep from falling out of his chair, he was so startled.

"You!" Medford yelled. It felt good to yell. "You let them take me to jail, let them send me away, and all the time you're carving
that?
"

He kicked over a chair, kicked it again so it slammed into the cookstove. He grabbed Boyce's mug, hurled it against the sink where it broke into bits. Before he knew what he was doing, he grabbed one end of the kitchen table, heaved it up and overturned it. The wooden woman flew through the air, still laughing, and crashed against the cabinet under the sink. Boyce jumped up just in time to avoid getting the table in his lap.

Prudy and Earnest burst through the door and stopped dead, gaping at the shambles and at Medford, standing there trembling and glaring at Boyce.

"Medford!" Prudy gasped. "What's gotten into thee?"

Boyce retrieved his carving, cradled it in his arms. "This got into him," he said.

He laid the carving gently down on the counter next to the sink. The ends of the rockers had broken off. The woman's chin was gone, the uproarious mouth dented. She'd lost her fingers and the knitting needles were in shards on the floor.

"I made dozens of fancy carvings, years ago. This is the one I didn't burn." Boyce reached out to touch the crater that used to be the woman's chin. '"Tis Alma." He half turned toward Medford, not quite enough to look at him. "Sorry, boy. Guess I taught you everything I know."

"That's Alma?" Medford said. He moved closer.

He remembered her, in a way. She was somewhere inside him, so deep it was hard to reach her. Not a person so much as a feeling of safety, a hum in the rhythm of a loom, the squeak of her rockers on the kitchen floor.

"Her rocking chair used to be right here," Medford said, pointing to a spot near the cookstove.

"Aye," Boyce said.

Medford took another step closer.

The damage to the carving couldn't disguise the liveliness of it. There were places where Boyce's blade had gone wrong: an ear cocked funny, one leg too short. But the way Alma was sitting, her chair barely able to hold her, the way her head was thrown back in joy ... the wood had been speaking to Boyce in a way it had only occasionally spoken to Medford. He wished Boyce really
had
taught him all he knew.

"She hated that I carved these things," Boyce said. "Made me burn them. I told her I burned this one but I couldn't somehow." He squatted and started picking up shards of knitting needles and rockers, piling them in his hand as if they were Useful.

Medford realized he was standing on part of a chair rocker. He moved his foot, throat aching from everything he suddenly wanted to say to Boyce.

"This is the only one you have left?" he whispered.

"Aye."

"You can fix it."

"Maybe."

"You can make another"

"No."

Boyce tipped the wood shards out of his hand onto the counter beside the damaged carving, all he had left of his late wife. Medford's anger was gone as if it had never existed, leaving behind an emptiness too painful for tears.

Silence.

Except for heavy breathing from Prudy.

Finally, she exploded. "Fix it, thou sayst? Make another? Medford, Boyce, hast thou lost thy senses? This thing be—"

"Unnameable. I know." Boyce turned his back on Alma and contemplated Prudy as if she were a decaying log of Platewood. "Which brings up the question of how Medford got out of jail. And what all three of you are doing out of bed at two o'clock in the morning."

Wham!
A blast of wind slammed into the house, rattling the windows. Everyone grabbed for something to hold on to. But nothing else happened.

"All four of us," Earnest said.

"Let's make tea," Boyce said.

While the tea was brewing, Medford, Prudy, and Earnest retrieved the journals from Boyce's garden. Then they sat down with their tea and told Boyce everything that had happened that night. Medford told them all about Jeremiah Comstock, about Capability C. Craft being "a fake."

About there being no Capability C. Craft in the first place.

Boyce sat expressionless until they reached the part about Deemer burning red journals in his sitting room stove. Then he got up and took a turn around the room, still expressionless. He drained the last of his tea and set the mug down as if he were squashing something under it.

"Let's read them journals," he said.

We shall have done with Elites and the Tyranny of Ancestors. Each shall be Named for a Useful purpose and rewarded for today's Industry. 'Tis a New World.

—Journal of Samuel Carpenter, 1722

A
NOTHER MUG
of tea by his side, the fire built up in Boyce's sitting room stove, Medford picked up where Jeremiah Comstock had left off.

Twenty-eighth day of the Sowing Moon,
Jeremiah wrote.
I he Jeremiah Weaver now, and my Name in the Booke as such. Pa is still Comstock, as he says he ever will be. Ma is Weaver. They ain't speaking.

How did their names get changed? They must have held a Town Meeting the way Samuel Baker had wanted.

Sure enough, in the very next paragraph:

We had walked to the Meeting Hall early in the forenoon, more than 150 Souls. Resolve Mitchell put the Compendium Book on a new stand made by Horace Clarke. Samuel Baker recalled to us how
Mainland explorers found this Island—difficult to approach but uninhabited and Sweet. How a group of them, growing to some 35 men and women, agreed to leave the Colony for a new life here, without rank and with women having their say. They brought people of all necessary crafts, among them farming, physick, pottery, weaving, carpentry.

"I got somebody here telling about when they all changed their names," Boyce said.

"Me, too," Earnest said.

"What's wrong with us knowing about that?" Prudy asked.

Nobody had an answer.

Medford went back to Jeremiah.

Up to now, Samuel said, we have needed few Rules to guide us, just advice from the Compendium Book about Cookery and Tonics and Farming. But we have learnt new things which we should write in the Booke ourselves, and we must protect ourselves from Disorder which could be the Death of us all.

Samuel made his Naming proposal. Said he would be Samuel Carpenter and Resolve would be Resolve Farmer. He said there should be Carvers and Weavers, Potters, Tanners, Bakers and such. Tailors, too. Pa asked what if there be too many Tanners and everyone laughed for Elmore Watson hath eight children, and he the Tanner.

"They were afraid we'd have too many Tanners," Med-ford said.

"Dexter by himself's too many for me," Boyce said.

Samuel's mouth got small and he said he was not to be made Mock of. But Pa said 'twas a serious Question and Resolve said someone should choose who was Tanner and the rest would be something else. Pa asked who chooseth, and all muttered about that.

Samuel said there should be a Council formed to decide and rules made. And children would take the name of which Craft they chose to follow, any new craft and name to be decided by the Council.

No one argued 'gainst that. They voted 92 in favor, 51 against, 6 not voting.

"The vote to change the names was ninety-two in favor, fifty-one against," Medford said.

"That's part of the trouble, I'm guessing," Earnest said. "Deemer doesn't want us to know some of the Originals didn't like the Naming."

Ma voted against like Pa did, but when the time came to write the Names in the Book she went up and bade me do so too. When Pa upbraided her she said a Vote's a vote and 'tis done now. Pa and several others kept their old Names, but as we left for home Elmore Tanner (who had been Watson) called out to Pa, Good night to ye, Jacob Potter, whether or nay.

"Someone's out there," said Prudy, who was sitting by a window.

They all stood up, not sure what to do. Was it Deemer? The Constables?

"Bweh-eh-eh!"

"Goatman!" Medford yelled, rushing for the door. "In here!"

The Goatman's robe was torn on one side and he had dead leaves all over him. He was soaking wet, which made him even stinkier than usual.

And the dog was with him.

"Hoo," Boyce said when the two of them were in the kitchen and the smell had time to register. "Ain't that something."

"I fa-a-are well," the Goatman said.

"Glad to hear it," Boyce said.

"He likes tea," Medford said. "Goatman, what was that bit of wind before?"

"I hi-i-it the ground but it was water."

"Where's Master Learned?" Prudy asked.

"Meaning Prune Face," Earnest said.

"He hit the water, too," the Goatman said. "More tha-a-an I did because he couldn't see."

"But where...?"

The Goatman shrugged. "In the woods. Over the-e-ere somewhere." He waved his hand toward Peat Bog.

"He's in the bog? A ... a wet place, marshy, with..." Medford gestured to indicate a mound of peat and marsh grass.

"Ah. The wallow, you mean. We were the-e-ere but he was out the last time I saw him. I don't know now. The two bi-i-ig flatfoots are looking for him."

"The Constables? How did they get involved?" Boyce asked, shoveling tea into his teapot in such a frenzy Med-ford wondered if there would be any room for the hot water.

"They heard him ye-e-elling, I think. The-e-ey were looking for him when I left."

Medford reached out to brush the dead leaves off the Goatman's back. Boyce made kind of a gurgling sound—did he think the Goatman would bite? "We thank thee, Goatman," Medford said. "Thou hast done us great service."

The Goatman beamed. "Bweh-eh-eh." He gave a tremendous shiver.

"He has to get that wet robe off," Prudy said. "Get him a blanket, Boyce."

Boyce looked at her as if she'd asked him to lend the Goatman his skin.

"Boyce," Prudy said. "He's freezing. He'll get sick."

"I don't ge-e-et sick," the Goatman said. He sneezed, spraying droplets everywhere, and reached for his sash. But it was back in the jail, so he blew his nose on his sleeve.

"I'll get a blanket," Boyce said.

The Goatman retreated into the sitting room to get out of his robe and wrap himself in the blanket. The rest of them huddled around the cookstove watching Boyce pour hot water into the teapot.

When the Goatman reappeared swathed in a woolen blanket (dyed dark brown to hide the dirt), Boyce poured tea for everyone. The Goatman grabbed the tea strainer before Medford could stop him and lapped it out with appreciative grunts.

"I tha-a-ank thee," the Goatman said to Boyce, handing back the strainer.

"Don't mention it," Boyce said faintly. He dumped the strainer into the dishpan.

The tea was so strong Medford could feel his teeth rotting as he drank it. The Goatman drank his right up and held his cup out for more. "Be-e-est yet," he said.

Medford gave the dog some water and they returned to their chairs.

"Bweh-eh-eh," the Goatman said when he saw the journals scattered all over the room. "These are what Prune Fa-a-ace was burning? Wha-a-at's in them?"

Medford told him about Jeremiah and the Naming vote.

"So these flatfoots ma-a-ade up all your names long, long ago?"

"Not mine," Medford said. "Unless I become a Carver, which will never happen now."

"Who sa-a-ays?"

"Can we get reading?" Prudy asked.

"Bweh-eh-eh," the Goatman said, but then he caught the look on Prudys face. He and the dog settled down on the floor in front of the sitting room stove. The Goatman stared at the flames behind the stove's Mainland glass door, then closed his eyes.

Everyone else was reading with renewed haste, flipping through journals, skimming pages. The clock on Boyce's mantelpiece read half past three o'clock. Medford was surprised to find that he wasn't sleepy. He was so keyed up he might never sleep again.

Boyce wasn't concentrating. Every time Medford turned a page, he caught Boyce staring at the Goatman with the owl-eyed look of someone who'd just woken up. The air around the stove was pungent from the drying robe, the drying Goatman, and the drying dog. It all did take some getting used to, Medford had to admit. Smells didn't seem to bother him so much now. Maybe his nose was dying.

On one page turn, Medford found that Boyce was staring at him instead of the Goatman. Boldly, Medford looked Boyce in the eye.

Boyce shifted his gaze to the flames dancing in the stove. "We don't know each other real well, do we, boy?" he said softly.

Know each other? What did that even mean? "Guess not," Medford said, but only because he couldn't think of what else to say.

Prudy kept her eyes on the page in front of her but Medford could tell she was listening. Earnest was oblivious, intent on his reading.

"What's poems?" he burst out at last.

"Poems?" they all repeated. They'd never heard the word before.

"Durward Constable," Earnest said, "1830. Lessee..." He flipped back a couple of pages. "
I be all of a dither today,
" he read. "One of the Learneds—Merit Learned, it says here—made this Durward Constable arrest someone named ... oh, here it is, Cordelia Weaver.
She hath created the Unnameable, I know not in what form,
Durward says."

Cordelia Weaver, about to be banished. Medford kept his face as bland as Myrtle Cook's Sickbed Custard but he could feel Boyce looking at him.

"I guess Cordelia was weaving in colors, sometimes stitching by hand to make the cloth look like a tree or a flower—I can't imagine what that would be like, can you? Anyways, they had a Town Meeting about it because she wasted time gathering berries for dye and wasn't making anything Useful."

"And they sent her away," Prudy breathed.

"Aye," Earnest said, "but old Durward, he wasn't sure her weavings were so terrible. Listen to what he says here:
To my shame, I could not stop looking at them. I said 'twas disbelief that drew my gaze. But as I sit here tonight I admit they did give me pleasure of an odd sort, a calmness of heart and joy like a westerly breeze.