3stalwarts (134 page)

She gave without objection to his arms, but her head she kept bent over the shirt. Her fingers drew the needle from the cloth and began stitching.

“First,” she said in a low voice, “I cleaned the roof, after I’d hung out the bedding, and then I cleaned all the floor and moved the trunks. I didn’t get done till nearly dinner time.”

“How was dinner?” he asked when she paused. He was intensely curious now to find out how she occupied her time.

The twilight in the loft, with the muffled quiet of the street outside and the spring-scented breeze drawing across them, made the day mysterious.

“It was all right. Mrs. Charley isn’t a cook like Ma Halleck, I guess, and she appears all the time to be distracted.”

“What did you have to eat?”

“We had some corned mutton and samp cake. Mrs. Charley hadn’t ever heard of capers.”

“Were the children too bad?”

“Just noisy. Mrs. Charley tried to make them wash, but it didn’t do much good. Mr. Charley brought in a book and read out of it, but I didn’t understand much of it. And anyway he read to himself most of the time. Mrs. Charley talked about people that live here and complained that flour cost so much.”

“What did you do afterwards?”

“Henderson said he knew where there were some Mayflowers and asked if I would like some. I said I didn’t know what they looked like, but I would like some very much. He said he knew there were some near, so we went to get them. Don’t they smell sweet? He picked a bunch more and took them to the lady Mrs. Charley washes for to sell them.”

She twisted the thread round the button and bit it off close. Her eyes met his sidewise. She bent for another button, put it in place, and anchored it.

“Then I finished cleaning and made us a place for our clothes, and then later I sat down here in the window to sew and look out.”

“Were you watching for me?” he asked.

“Yes.” She turned over the shirt and sewed from the back, by touch.

“Stop sewing,” he said. “Throw the damned thing away.” He snatched it from her and tossed it across the room. He heard her sharp breath and saw her quick glance at her thumb. A spot of blood domed slowly where the needle had caught.

Jerry’s dark face bent over it, flushed and excited.

“Let me have it.”

He sucked the blood away, and inside of himself he was glad. His arms tightened.

“Did you miss me?”

“Yes. But I kept busy.”

“Kiss me, Mary.”

She bent her face obediently and as he drew her closer a wave of tremulousness passed over her. Her eyelids quivered as they closed. And yet when he let her go she seemed as usual to withdraw into herself.

“You haven’t even asked me one question,” he said accusingly.

Her eyes opened wide, and the faint pucker came between her brows.

“Didn’t you care, Mary?”

“I was afraid you mightn’t have found anything.”

He loosened his hold and looked across at the distant window. The arms of the old maple in the yard beyond were just visible. Mrs. Charley’s voice was shrilling.

“Alva, wash your feet. My land, where have you been treading?”

“I don’t know, Ma. Honestly. I just went down by the mud flat and then me and Josey Wood was playing Castle King behind Bellinger’s barn.”

But the voices were removed from their quiet room. Jerry did not turn his head. His words came slowly, as if he found speech difficult.

“I happened into luck, Mary. I met a man that’s got a contract for all the locks on this part of the canal they’re going to build.”

“Yes.”

“It’s the Grand Canal. It was being passed by the Senate when we came through Albany. Do you remember, when I left you on the corner to go get food?”

“I remember that,” she said in a hushed voice.

“I heard them talking about it then in the coffeehouse. It will run from Albany to Buffalo, three hundred and sixty-three miles!”

“Yes, Jerry.”

“I don’t suppose you know what that is— locks, and things. But this man —his name is Caleb Hammil— is going to give me three dollars a week to start with, and then five if things are all right.”

“That’s fine, Jerry.”

“It’s going to mean I’ll be away a lot of the time. We’ll have to scout for timber. And when the work begins I’ll be out west a lot— the first lock’s fifty miles from here. Will you mind being alone?”

“No, Jerry,”

“But you’ll miss me, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

Here and there through the town they heard hand bells rung for supper, and under them there was a sudden noise of feet— Mr. Charley coming out of his store, Mrs. Charley shrieking to Henderson to tell the Fowlers supper was on the table, and the bare soles of the boy’s feet as he crept up the stairs, and his head poked over the floor.

“Ma says supper’s ready.”

Mary had sprung up, and now Jerry hurried to wash.

The Charley family were assembled when they reached the kitchen. Mary’s and Jerry’s chairs were together on Mr. Charley’s right. The little bookseller was helping large slices of corned mutton, over which he poured a vinegary syrup from a small pitcher. Mrs. Charley helped the plates to boiled potatoes. There was a glass of beer at Jerry’s place— which a neighboring small Charley eyed curiously. His smutted cheeks kept puffing with a hidden breath, as if he were barely able to keep himself from scudding off the froth. For those that wanted it, Mrs. Charley poured tea into deep brown saucers.

In the presence of a new male boarder, the boys were unaccountably quiet. Mr. Charley helped himself and said, “Well, young man, did you find any work?”

Jerry nodded. Two tallow candles in their individual basins lighted the kitchen. He could see the remnant of clothes in a basket half hidden in a corner. The baby’s cradle was out of sight beside Mrs. Charley, conveniently placed for her foot to rock it if the child should waken. But noise meant nothing to the baby, and it snuffled away as placidly as a well-fed little pig.

“Who’re you working for?”

“Caleb Hammil.”

“The contractor. What’s he going to do now?”

“He’s got a contract on the canal. Locks and aqueducts.”

“Greek to me,” said Lester Charley. “But it sounds like a lot of work.”

“It’s a big thing to tackle,” Jerry said, accepting a buttered slab of bread from young Henderson.

“What are you getting?”

Jerry told him.

“That’s good pay. Well, I had an idea you’d have luck, young man.”

He raised his eyes to meet Mrs. Charley’s expected comment.

“Luck!” she said sniffing. “When did you ever make three dollars a week? He went to look for it, that’s how.”

Lester Charley grinned to himself.

“Alice,” he said soberly, “you know if I went out for a job like that you’d lose half your pleasure in life. There’s nothing you like better than working to keep me comfortable, and then complaining about me to everybody.”

She sniffed.

“A person has to say something.”

“I suppose so,” said the bookseller, with a sigh. “Apple pudding? That’s nice of you, my dear. It’s a difficult dish to make. Next time I’d recommend more cinnamon.”

“It’s awful expensive nowadays, Lester,” she said apologetically. “But if you want a little extry to sprinkle on I’ll get it.”

“Thank you, I would.”

He grinned sardonically at Jerry, but his eyes twinkled at his wife while she sprinkled on the cinnamon.

“I suppose you’ll be away a lot with Caleb,” he said to Jerry.

“Quite a lot.”

“I can’t reduce the rent,” Mrs. Charley said defensively.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

She sighed with relief.

“Alva, you get me some wood for tomorrow morning.”

Alva lowered.

“Me and Robert was going fishing for bullheads.”

“It won’t take you long to get in the wood.”

“Bullheads are chancy, Ma.”

“Alva,” said Mr. Charley, “if you don’t get it I shall have to.”

“Do as you’re a mind to,” said his mother, “but if the wood ain’t in tomorrow morning, you’ll get a trimming.”

“Ain’t it time Purly was getting it in? He’s big enough,” suggested Alva.

“No.”

Alva resigned himself.

The rest finished their supper to the sounds of the boy’s groaning in the woodshed. He came staggering in with a small armful that would not have disturbed a boy of half his size.

“Now I’m all of a sweat,” he grumbled. “And if I get the ague in the cold, I guess you won’t be sorry.”

Nobody paid him any attention, and a moment later they heard his voice whooping down the street for Robert.

“Catching bullheads must be very fascinating to Alva,” observed Mr. Charley. “I never liked them as fish.”

He got up to go out for his evening session at Bellinger’s, pausing to light his pipe at the kitchen fire. Jerry declined his invitation.

He had not looked at Mary all evening. But now he met her glance in the smoky tallow light. She lowered her eyes. His hands were trembling.

He waited for her at the trapdoor and watched her through and closed it. It was quite dark in the room. Beyond the window he saw the stars down the long reach of the valley. Peepers in the swamp filled the air with a continual rhythm. A whippoorwill was singing in the middle of Genesee Street. He undressed slowly, feeling the breeze on his bare body. The bed strings creaked under Mary’s weight.

“Mary,” he whispered. “Don’t you love me?”

He put out his hands. And as he touched her he knew that all evening he had been aware of her excitement. She moved into his arms and the feather tick surrounded them. She was alive and strong. He saw again the drop of blood and tasted it again between his lips. Far away, from Herkimer, he heard approaching the bells of a teamster’s wagon hauling west.

7

“Bourbon”

“We turn right, here,” directed Hammil.

Jerry turned the horse. The great cob had brought them six good miles an hour since seven o’clock that morning. They had had breakfast in Mother Carey’s inn at Westmoreland, waited on by one of her pretty daughters. There were seven of them, whispered Caleb, each one lovely as a waxwork, and some gentlemen travelers called them Mother Carey’s Chickens. He’d heard tell they were a bird, like a kind of plover, that lived on the ocean and brought dreams to sailors. The inn was a small, low-ceilinged house, with windows giving on the road; and they had had the dining room and a brisk fire to themselves. Only when they were com-ing out did the night stage from Batavia draw up and the sleepy travelers unbundle stiffly. Caleb had had ale and steak, and Jerry eggs and ham and apple pie. The inn had a peculiar deadness in that early hour; even the girl’s light footfalls echoed.

But the sunlight had flowed over the land as they drove on; and Jerry had received his first impression of the western country. The road rolled over low, round hills, straight as a man could lay it. In the valleys they had been lapped in the cool of dawn, with the spring creeks frothing down through knots of balsam trees and alder. And from the next hilltop they had seen the sunlight cresting the land, for mile upon mile, as far as sight could stretch. Fields were neatly squared off and ploughed to the fences. One herd of cattle showed a clear strain of Hereford. They came in from pasture with their white faces dew-washed from the sunrise browse and their horns glistening like silver. The farmyards were awakening: the strenu-ous crowing of roosters; the blat of sheep; the trundle of the pump-wheel; and the children on the front stoop staring with murky morning eyes.

But the cob traveled past with the sweep of dawn in his reaching stride. His shoulders worked smoothly with the levelness of flowing water. His square quarters thrusting back the pike, he held his head high; and his ears were pricked as he breasted the land. The wheels racketed over stony patches, and the wagon kept up a steady mutter against the road.

Hammil said, “He’s a masterful horse. I’d ought to give him a name.”

He settled himself comfortably on the seat and drew forth a stogy. From time to time, almost with the mileposts, he suggested names and again discarded them. Duke, he said, and Earl, and Prince— good horse names; and then he decided that they didn’t suit the land the horse was bringing them through. John and Elisha and Nimrod were good Bible names. Nebu-chadnezzar, but that was too long. He had thought to call a boy Joab, if he ever had one, but maybe his wife wouldn’t like it in a horse. What were some Irish names, if the brute was Irish, as John Jones supposed? All the good ones he could think of had a “Mc” between the thills. Balboa was a Span-iard, and the Spanish were a rotten people— half Mexican, he made no doubt. He took the task seriously, his fat red face absorbed. Indians had high-sounding names, but, excepting the Oneidas, they were a treacherous race, and the Oneidas were sottish people now, over-thirsty, lazy. Look at their lands there on the left. Babies running naked like young pigs. There was a man drunk, and noon only half-risen. Skenandoa was an eloquent man, and a powerful one in the Rebellion— he’d stood by the settlers handsomely against the Mohawks. You could see his red house off the road beside the creek— there in the peach trees. Oneida Creek would need an aqueduct where the canal was going to cross it. Skenandoa was a good name for a horse. Skenandoa, even if he was an Indian. You could see LeFevrier’s house, if you looked. He’d married an Indian woman— a thing that came queer in a white man, but the French were an impartial race that way, so long as it was a woman and she had a dowry; he’d sent his sons to college— Amherst, Hammil thought— on the money his brown wife had brought him. Indians could live up to a white man,— the women, in their early time,— but when they got old they went back to Indian ways. The Madame chewed snuff and lost her teeth, they said, so the Colonel kept her out back of the house and gave her snuff and whiskey. A foreigner’s trick. Lafayette was the only foreign man that ever amounted to shucks. Lafayette was a good name for a horse; but Lafayette was a little man, and look at that brute leg it for the hill! Breakneck Hill, they called it. Jerry had better hold him in going down. There was a turn halfway, and teamsters always cramped across a turn. They didn’t care if a wagon banged itself, the lousy bullies.