A Northern Light (31 page)

"Martha!" Belinda chided, tugging on her arm. Martha shrugged her off.

"And then there's Emmie Hubbard's land," she said. "Twelve acres. Nice the way it nestles in between the Loomises' land and your father's, isn't it? Funny, too, how it just happens to be up for auction next month."

"Oh, who cares, Martha? Whyn't you go poison the punch or something?" Fran said.

My blood froze up inside me. "What are you saying, Martha?"

"Emmie doesn't pay her taxes on time for four or five years running and nobody cares. Now, all of a sudden Arn's auctioning her land. You don't wonder about that?"

"Only because there's an interested party," I said, remembering Aunt Josie and Alma Mclntyre steaming Emmie's letter open. "Someone inquired. Someone from the city looking for cheap land."

Martha smiled. "Oh, there's an interested party all right, but he's not from the city. He lives right in Eagle Bay and his name is Royal Loomis."

Fran burst into laughter. "You sure are a horse's ass, Martha. Royal doesn't have that kind of money."

"No, but his mother does. Iva's been saving for two years. Skimming a quarter here, fifty cents there off the egg money or the butter money. She stitched up two quilts over the winter and sold them to Cohen's. She took in sewing for the summer people, too. She's the one who pushed Am to slap a lien on Emmie. She wrote his boss down in Herkimer. Said it wasn't fair that Emmie got to slide all the time when everyone else paid their taxes."

"Why'd she do a thing like that?" Ada asked.

Martha shrugged. "She's got her reasons. She's also got herself a nice little bundle and she's giving it to Royal so he can buy the Hubbard land and farm it. And like I said, a few acres as a wedding gift from your pa, Mattie, and Royal's pa, too, would round it out nicely, wouldn't it?"

I couldn't answer her. The words stuck in my throat like burrs.

"Thought you were so smart, didn't you, Mattie? You, with your head always shoved in a book. Royal says you know a lot of words, but you don't even know how to please..."

"Martha, you say one more word and I'll slap your mouth right off your face," Fran said. "I swear to God I will."

"Come on, Martha, let's go. Dan's waving for me," Belinda said. She pulled on her friend's arm again and they left.

"Don't you mind her nonsense, Matt. She made it all up. She's so jealous over Royal, she's pissing vinegar," Minnie said.

"Discourse!" It was Weaver. He'd come up behind me.

I looked at him, dazed. "Gossip," I said dully. "Embroider. Fabricate. Tell lies. To others. Or yourself. Especially yourself. "

"
What?
That's way off, Mattie. I'll give you another shot. You miss it again, you're dead as a—"

"Oh, go away, Weaver!" Minnie snapped. "This is girls only!"

"Jeez, Minnie, bite my head off, why don't you?"

"Go on! Get lost!"

All the pride I had felt earlier, over Royal carrying the pies to me and people seeing him do it, vanished like a spooked doe. I felt sick. My friends could stick up for me and say all the nice things they wanted; it didn't matter. All I could hear was Royal's voice telling me, "Your pa oughtn't to clear those northern acres of his ... he's got good blueberry bushes up there..." I felt such a fool for thinking that he might try to see past plain brown hair and plain brown eyes to what was inside of me. Or value what he saw.

"Come on, let's get some dessert. Cook won't know. Fireworks are going to start soon and I'm dying for a bite of that shortcake," Ada said, trying to jolly me.

"I'm not very hungry—," I began to say, but Minnie cut me off.

"Oh, Mattie, don't fret so. You'll have the last laugh when you're married with ten children and your own house and farm and she's still a sour old maid picking up the hymnbooks after her father's service."

I forced a smile.

"Hey, Matt, is Cook going to let you watch the fireworks?" It was Royal.

We all looked at him—myself, Minnie, Ada, and Fran. Not one of us said a word.

"Jim'll wonder where on earth I've got to," Minnie said, rushing off.

"Cook wants us, Ada. Come on," Fran said, following her.

"Guess I must've stepped in manure," Royal said, watching them all go.

I looked at the ground but didn't see it. I saw something that had happened the day I'd rushed home to nurse my sick family. Something I'd forgotten about until now. I saw Tommy Hubbard. He was struggling with Baldwin. He was crying and hitting the calf. Someone had hit him, too. He had an ugly red welt under his eye. Royal hated Tommy. And Emmie. And all the Hubbards.

"Royal..."

"What?"

"Martha Miller just ... she just told me some things."

He snorted. "You believe what she says?"

I looked up at him. "Royal, are you the one fixing to buy Emmie Hubbard's land?"

He looked away and spat and then he looked right back at me with his beautiful amber eyes. "Yes, Matt," he said. "Yes, I am."

"Jeezum, Mattie, you're in for it now!" Fran said. "Why'd you leave the broom out in the middle of the kitchen?"

"I didn't! I swept the floor and put it away!" I was folding napkins in the dining room, readying the tables for tomorrow's breakfast.

"Cook just tripped over it and dropped a whole pot of consomme. She said for you to get in there right away."

"But I didn't..."

"Go
on,
before she comes out here after you!"

Fran disappeared back into the kitchen. I just stood where I was, a lump growing in my throat, thinking how an earful from Cook would make a perfectly awful end to a perfectly awful day. 7^/was my word of the day. A standard of perfection, or something existing only in the imagination, was its meaning. The dictionary must have been playing a joke on me. There had been nothing perfect or excellent about this day. It was the fifth of July, my birthday. I'd turned seventeen and no one had remembered. Fran and Ada knew the date very well. So did Weaver. And not one of them had so much as mentioned it. I'd been blue about it all day. I'd been blue about other things, too. About the rotten things Martha Miller had said to me at the party the night before. And the fight I'd had with Royal. Right after I'd asked if he was the one buying Emmie's land.

"I don't want to talk about that," he'd said.

"Well, I do," I said. "Why are you doing it? It's not right."

He took my arm and led me away from the tables and the people and the noisy brass band playing "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." We walked a little ways into the woods.

"Why do you want to buy Emmie's land, Royal?" I said as soon as we were alone.

"Because it's good land. It'll make good growing land, good pasture, too."

I said nothing for a minute, trying to work up my courage, then I asked him, "Is that the only reason?" I was afraid of the answer.

"No, Mattie, there's another..."

I looked at the ground. Martha was right. It was Pa's land Royal wanted, not me.

"...I want Emmie Hubbard gone."

I saw Frank Loomis's hairy behind in my mind's eye and Emmie bent over the stove. "Royal, you ... you know?"

"For god's sake, Mattie. Everyone in the whole damn county knows."

"I didn't know."

"That ain't hardly a surprise. You're too interested in what Blueberry Finn and Oliver Dickens and all the rest of them made-up people are doing to see what's going on right around you."

"That's not true!"

He rolled his eyes.

"Royal, are you buying that land for us? To live on?"

"Yes."

"I don't want it, Royal. How can we start a life there knowing we took it away from a widow and seven children? It's all they've got. If you buy it and kick the Hubbards off, where will they go?"

"To hell, I hope."

"But Lucius..." I didn't know how to say it, so I stopped. Then I started again, for it had to be said. "That baby ... he's your half brother, isn't he?"

"None of Emmie's brats is any kin to me."

"He can't help how he got here; he's only a baby," I said softly.

He looked at me like I was Judas himself. Then he said, "What if it was your pa, Mattie? Taking the first milk of the year over to Emmie's when you and your sisters hadn't yet tasted any? Lying to your ma, leaving her standing in the barn crying? You think you'd give a damn what happened to the Hubbards then?" His voice had turned husky. I saw that it cost him to say these things. "My ma ... she can't leave the house some days, she's that ashamed. Them books of yours tell you how that feels? You keep reading, maybe you'll find out." And then he walked off and left me standing by myself.

I was upset the rest of the night. I didn't even hear the fireworks going off, and when the party was over and everything cleaned up and it was finally time for bed, I couldn't sleep. I'd stayed awake, turning it all over and over in my mind like a puzzle box, but I couldn't find an answer to any of it. I didn't want to see Emmie kicked off her land. She was a trial, but I liked her and I liked her kids. I loved Tommy. He was around so much he was almost like our brother. I felt for him and his family. We only had one parent, too. It could've been us in their shoes if Pa didn't provide as well as he did. But I could also understand Royal's feelings. If I were him and it were my father paying visits where he shouldn't and my mother crying, I'd want Emmie gone, too.

The kitchen door banged open again, startling me. "For pete's sake, Mattie, Cook wants you! Come on!" Fran ordered.

I put down the napkin I was holding. The lump in my throat got bigger. It was unfair that I was in trouble for something I hadn't even done. And on my birthday, too. I opened the kitchen door expecting the rough edge of Cook's tongue, and instead I got the shock of my life when twenty people yelled "Surprise!" at the top of their lungs.

Then there was singing and Cook emerged from the pantry bearing a white sheet cake with a candle stuck into it and
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MATTIE
written on it. I grinned ear to ear and thanked everyone and made a wish, and then there was ice cream and lemonade to go along with the cake, and a bouquet of wildflowers that the girls had picked.

Cook called for a toast and Mike Bouchard said he'd do it. "Dear Mattie," he began, holding up his lemonade, "I love you much, I love you mighty, I wish my pajamas were next to your nightie. Now don't get mad at what I said, I meant on the clothesline and not in the bed." I turned beet red. Everyone hooted and laughed except Cook. She slapped the side of Mike's head and made him go sit on the back steps. Ada and Fran teased me and told me what a hangdog face I'd had all day, then said how clever they were for keeping the surprise a secret.

After the little party, Cook bawled at everyone to get back to work and Mrs. Morrison handed me a sugar sack. "Your father left it with the milk this morning," she said.

Inside the sack was a tiny painting of my house with the yard around it and the pines and maples and the garden and cornfields at the back. It was beautiful and made me feel yearny for home. The note inside it read: "My ma made this for you. Happy Birthday. Tommy Hubbard." There was a homemade card in the sack, too, decorated with pressed flowers and hand-drawn hearts. My sisters had all written nice messages on the card except Lou, who told me I lived in the zoo, smelled like a monkey, and looked like one, too. There was a small tin of butterscotch candies from my aunt Josie and uncle Vernon. And under all that, wrapped up in the same sort of brown paper I recognized from Mr. Eckler's boat, was a thin, flat package. I opened it. It was a brand-new composition book. There was no inscription, but I knew it was from my pa. It was a nice thing for him to do and it should've made me happy, but instead it made me want to cry.

"Oh, Mattie, you've got a visitor," Fran said in a singsong.

I looked up and saw Royal in the doorway, looking as awkward as a hog on stilts. I was partly glad to see him, partly worried. I wondered if he was still angry about our falling-out and had come to get his ring back.

"Why, Royal Loomis!" Cook said. "You here to bring me more of those nice strawberries?"

"Uh, no ... no, ma'am. I ... uh, brought this"—he held up a package—"for Matt."

"Well, I'll want some tomorrow morning, then. And mind you come here first, not Burdick's. I don't want anyone's leavings."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Like some cake? There's a few slices left over from Mattie's party. Mattie, get your guest some cake. Get him some ice cream and a glass of lemonade. Sit down for a spell, Royal."

Cook was a dreadful shameless flirt. I fixed some refreshments for Royal and sat down next to him. He pushed his package across the tabletop. "For you. Its a book," he said.

I couldn't believe it. He might as well have said it was a diamond necklace.

"Is it really?" I whispered.

He shrugged, pleased by my reaction but trying not to show it. "I know you like books."

My heart lifted. It soared! Martha was wrong about Royal. I was wrong about Royal. He did care enough to look down inside of me. He didn't like me for my pa's land; he liked me for me. He did! To think that Royal had gone to a store—maybe to O'Hara's in Inlet or Cohen's in Old Forge—and picked this out. Just for me. My fingers trembled as I undid the string. What had he chosen for me? What could it be? An Austen or a Bronte? Maybe a Zola or a Hardy?

I opened the paper and saw that it was a Farmer. Fannie Farmer. A cookbook.

Royal leaned forward. "Thought you might be needing that soon."

I opened it. Someone else's name was written on the title page. I flipped through the pages. A few were stained.

"It ain't new, only secondhand. Got it at Turtle's. It's got different sections, see? Meats and poultry ... baked things..."

I could see in his eyes he wanted me to like it. I could see that he'd tried and it only made it worse.

"Why, Mattie, isn't that a nice gift?" Cook said, poking me in the back. "So thoughtful. And practical, too. Girls nowadays do not know how to cook. I hope you told him thank you..."

"Thank you, Royal," I said, smiling so hard my face hurt. "Thank you so very much."