A Difficult Boy (28 page)

“A new horse?” Silas repeated.

“Maybe two. A fellow in West Springfield has a pair of geldings for sale: fine, high-stepping animals. Coal black, and so alike you'd think they were twins. They'd be quite a sight drawing a carriage. Maybe a barouche, eh? So my girls can ride in style.” Florella and Zeloda squealed with delight, and Mrs. Lyman beamed. “I've a mind to buy one of them, or maybe even the pair, if I can get his price down.”

“And what about the mare?” Silas asked.

Mr. Lyman brushed some crumbs from the tablecloth. “We'd have to sell her, of course. No sense keeping three horses. She's fit enough to bring a good price, don't you think?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ethan saw the tip of Daniel's knife quiver.

“If it's profit you want, you could keep the mare for breeding and the geldings for driving,” Silas suggested.

Mr. Lyman's thumbnail rasped along his chin as he considered the proposition. His eyes flickered the way they did when he was summing up a customer's bill.

Daniel set his knife down next to his soup bowl, pressing the blade's butter-smeared end into the tablecloth. His other hand picked his roll into fragments.

Mr. Lyman finally shook his head. “No, no. I'm better off selling her. I'll make some inquiries. It shouldn't be hard to find someone who'll want her.”

“I'll buy her,” said Daniel.

Spoons crashed into bowls. Mrs. Lyman's glass of raspberry shrub teetered and nearly spilled.

“What did you say, boy?” Mr. Lyman's voice froze the diners in their seats.

“Sir,” Daniel added hastily. “I'll buy her. Sir.” His face glowed nearly as red as Mrs. Lyman's raspberry shrub.

Mr. Lyman snorted a laugh. “And with what do you propose to buy her?”

Daniel's swallow was nearly audible. Ethan watched a damp trickle creep down Daniel's temple, along his jaw, and under his collar. “When I leave,” Daniel said deliberately, as though trying out words for the first time. “I'm to have me wages when I leave. I'll pay for her out of that. And if it ain't—” He cleared his throat. “If it isn't enough, I'll work for you until it is. Sir.”

Mr. Lyman stared down the length of the table with raised eyebrows and creased forehead.

Daniel stared back, his neck and shoulders taut with his struggle not to duck his head and let the shaggy copper forelock shadow his expression. A muscle quivered under his eye.

The storekeeper broke his stare first, turning toward Silas, then toward Mrs. Lyman. He tugged at his ear. One side of his face slanted suddenly upward, an eyebrow lifting even farther, a corner of his mouth tilting up and parting. His hand thumped the table, rattling silverware and crockery.

Although Ethan had expected an explosion, the noise still surprised him. He hadn't thought Mr. Lyman could laugh so hard. Mr. Pease's braying laugh soon joined in, followed by Mr. Wheeler's soft wheezing chuckle. Zeloda snickered. Even Mrs. Lyman contributed a dry breath of a laugh. Silas and Lizzie exchanged a blank stare.

Finally, Mr. Lyman wiped his eyes with his napkin and spoke. “Now, boy, it's not that I don't credit your ambition and foresight, but your indenture runs another five years. It's not just the cost of the mare, but five years of the mare's board you'll have to pay, never mind farriers' bills and Lord knows what else. You'd be more prudent to wait and use your money to rent a place or buy a cow, or some sheep, or some tools. Something useful.”

“I don't want a cow. Sir.” Daniel's words were soft, but clear.

“Well, then, if you're that set on having a horse when you leave, you'd do well to wait. Then you can have the full value of your wages without losing anything for that mare's board. Get your horse then.”

“I don't want a horse. Sir.”

Frowning, Mr. Lyman leaned forward. “Now, wait a minute, boy. Isn't that what we've just been discussing?”

“I don't want a horse, sir,” Daniel repeated. “I want Ivy.”

Ethan hovered in the empty barn, waiting for Daniel to emerge from the house. It seemed he'd been shut up with Mr. Lyman in the study for hours. Finally, Daniel came out. He pulled his cap low over his forehead, so Ethan could see only the grim line of his mouth.

“What'd he say?” The question stuck in Ethan's throat, but he had to ask it.

Daniel padded through the barn. He stopped in front of Ivy's stall, empty now that the mare was out to pasture with the cattle. He stood with his back to Ethan, his hands gripping the top edge of the waist-high partition. “Only that I'm a fool.”

“But he'll owe you the money when your time's up. Why can't he just give you Ivy instead?”

Daniel's knuckles whitened. “There'll be no money for me, lad. He showed me the numbers in that black book of his—not that I could make any sense of 'em. He says I'll be lucky if I'm not owing
him
when me time's through.”

“But how—?”

“Breakage. Damages. Clothes and such.”

“But he's s'posed to give you clothes.”

Daniel stretched his arms apart as far as he could. “Lad, ain't you learned by now that ‘s'posed to' don't come that
close to ‘is' around here? He's s'posed to give me one set'a clothes a year. What I get is . . .” He plucked at his ragged shirt and looked down at his broadfalls, whose cuffs stopped well above his ankles. “And if I'm not tending 'em proper, that's me own loss, ain't it, now? Though it's the proper dandy I'd be if I had everything he's got writ down in that book of his.”

“What're you going to do?”

“Same's always, I s'pose. Wait. Wait and see.”

“Have you thought of what to do yet?” Ethan's pitchfork quivered with its sopping load of manure. He heaved the burden to the top of the manure pile. A wave of heat rose from the exposed center of the pile and flapped at his face, matching the heat from the sun that scorched his neck and shoulders.

“Maybe I would if you'd give me some peace to think, instead of asking me twenty times a day if I've thought of anything.” With a fierce grunt, Daniel plunged his own fork into the pile as viciously as if he were stabbing a dragon to the heart.

“You're not thinking of stealing her, are you?”

Daniel leaned wearily on his pitchfork. “I been thinking of naught else all week, lad. But then I think of getting caught, and I lose me nerve. It'd be safer if I hunt for her when I leave.”

“But that's not for five years!” The fork slipped in Ethan's sweating hands, dumping its load onto Daniel's toes.

“What's the point in me staying all of that now?” Daniel flapped his bare feet free of the dung. “No. I'll go after her soon's she's sold.”

“Won't Mr. Lyman stop you? Your indenture—”

“Maybe he'll be glad to be rid of me. Maybe he'd not be
thinking me worth the bother. Maybe it'd be different now.”

“Different from what?”

“From when I run away before.”

“Oh.” Ethan stuck his fork into the pile and left it there. He rubbed his palms on the seat of his trousers. “What happened then?”

“What do you think? He thrashed me and Silas half to death, he did.”

“He beat Silas, too?” Ethan said, astounded.

“Aye. It was two years or so after I come.” Daniel planted his fork in front of him and gathered his fists at the tip of the handle, where he propped his chin. “Silas lied, said he'd sent me on an errand. He thought maybe it'd give me time to get clear. But Lyman found me and dragged me back. After he'd done with me, it was Silas's turn. His own son lying to him over a bit of Irish trash—that was too much for him, I fancy. Silas just took it without a word. And there was a bloody lot of it to take. He was so still afterward, I thought he was dead. Lyman did, too, I fancy. There was such a look on his face, I think he scared himself by what he done. He carried the lad inside and put him to bed. Silas couldn't work for nigh on a week. His da never touched him after that, not that I saw, anyway. But Silas never gave him cause to, neither.”

“But you and me, we're just bound out. Silas is his son.”

“I forgot. Your da don't believe in thrashings, does he, now?” He lifted his cap and swiped his hair back. Sweat had turned his hair into rusty damp spikes that stuck to his forehead and temples. It stood up in greasy ridges before his cap flattened and hid it. “You never knew any lads that got thrashed by their own das?”

“I—I guess.” Ethan thought of some of the boys at school, who talked of switchings and strappings as casually as they spoke of chores and meals. But the ones who came to school
with blackened eyes and swollen jaws, or who walked as if the mere touch of their clothes hurt them, those were the ones who said nothing at all.

“Lyman thrashed him same's he did me. Worse, sometimes. Maybe himself expected better from his own son, so it made him that much angrier when Silas done wrong. It's a wonder Silas didn't get all the sense knocked out of him. Not that he had much of it, when it come to being hit.”

“What d'you mean?”

“I learned pretty quick to bite me lip so's I'd bleed a bit, then fall down and moan some, so it'd satisfy himself and he'd leave me be. All the things I taught you,” Daniel said. “But Silas'd stand there like a post and take it until he couldn't stand no more. Never made a sound, never put up his hands nor made a move to spare himself. I never could figure out what he was at. Trying to show his da he wasn't afraid, maybe. Or maybe he was just hoping he'd get killed and that would be the end of it for good and all. I don't know.”

Ethan shuddered. “It's—it's crazy.” Not just Mr. Lyman's rages, but Daniel's and Silas's acceptance of them.

“It's discipline,” Daniel said. His palm slid down the fork's handle, popping it loose from the earth with a little downward slap and catching it neatly as it bounced back up again, spattering a spray of dirt and manure around the boys' ankles. “So Lyman says, and ain't nobody who'll deny him.”

“But Silas—”

Daniel looked over Ethan's shoulder. “Hush, lad. It's Silas himself coming up behind you now. No doubt wondering why we ain't gone to fetch up the cows yet.” Daniel bent back to cut thick clods of manure from the base of the pile and toss them up to the hollow in the middle, where they'd pulled the mound open.

“Paddy?” Silas called.

“Give us a minute, Silas,” Daniel said. “We're near done turning the dung heap. Then we'll go for the cows.”

“No, that's fine. It's early yet. That's not what I wanted.” Silas kicked a clod of manure back into the pile. “Keep Ivy in tomorrow morning and clean her up well. Mr. Ward's coming for dinner, and he wants to have a look at her.”

Ethan and Daniel exchanged wary glances. “Mr. Ward?” Daniel said.

“He's thinking of buying her for his boys to ride. Might do them some good. That older one especially could use some responsibility to take the mischief out of him.”

“The older one,” Daniel repeated numbly.

“She'll only be down the road,” Silas said. He seemed more interested in examining the dung at his feet than in meeting Daniel's eyes. “Maybe Mr. Ward will let you visit her.”

That evening, after the boys went upstairs to bed, Daniel thrashed about on the mattress, kicking at the sheets, punching the bolster, unable to settle down. It wasn't long before he pulled his trousers on and crept downstairs and out into the moonless night. Ethan peered through one of the tiny side windows that overlooked the barnyard. A shape a little less dark than the night stole from the house and slipped into the barn. Ethan shivered, wondering what would become of Daniel once the chain that bound him to the Lymans was broken.

Daniel thrust his arm under Ethan's nose. “What d'you think of that?” he asked, almost proudly.

Ethan started back in disgust, then forced himself to examine the swollen welt that arched across Daniel's forearm in a rainbow of painful color. Daniel rotated his arm, revealing a matching arc of bruise on the other side.

“Who bit you?” Ethan asked. But there was only one animal whose mouth was that shape and size. “Ivy! Ivy bit you?” His scalp tingled with horror.

Daniel was almost grinning. “Don't be daft. She's a lamb; you know that. But you really think it looks that way?”

“Oh, yes.” Ethan breathed a little easier. He reached out a hesitant finger to touch the mark. It was puffy and slightly hot. Daniel sucked in his breath and flinched away. “It's real!” Ethan said.

“Of course it's real, you dolt! I couldn't hardly paint a false one on, now, could I? If himself found that out, he'd be giving me plenty of real ones for sure. Now d'you think it looks a proper bite or not?”

Ethan nodded. “But how will that help keep Ivy?” His eyes met Daniel's, gray-green and solemn and unblinking.

“You'll see soon enough. You still got that sling of yours?”

Ethan nodded. “Why?”

“I need you to be doing me a wee bit of a favor.”

“What sort of favor?”

“Well, could you maybe arrange to be having a bit of a bellyache this afternoon? So no one'll be wondering why you're not about.”

The sun beat down on Ethan as he lay on the chicken shed roof, watching the men come out of the house. Mr. Lyman and Mr. Ward talked merrily, laughing and puffing on their cigars. Silas and Joshua and Daniel stood a little apart from the men and from each other, their posture wary.

Daniel disappeared into the barn, returning with Ivy on her lead. The mare seemed to read Daniel's mood. Her ears twitched, and she moved with nervous, mincing steps. Daniel walked her around so that the men had to turn their backs to the chicken shed to examine her.

Ethan picked up a pebble and readied his sling.