Hoggee (2 page)

The storekeeper looked at his wife, and Howard held his breath, waiting.

She frowned. “Otis, we need a boy with a strong back. We'll find one that can lift
and
cipher.” She went back to her bolts of cloth.

“I'm stronger than I look,” Howard said softly, but he knew there was no hope.

The storekeeper shook his head. “The missus don't rightly take to you, lad,” he said. “Lots of canal boys wanting work right now. I'm sorry.” Howard turned away quickly, afraid of the tears pushing at the back of his eyes. “Wait,” the man called. He cut a piece of cheese from a block on the counter and held it out to the boy. “Here,” he said, “take this.”

Howard looked back at him, wanting to refuse, wanting to say the man should save the cheese for the strong boy he would hire. “Pay your own way, son,” his father had often said. “In this old world, it's best for a man to pay his own way.” His father, though, was dead, and the hunger that gnawed at his insides was alive. He reached back, took the cheese, and bolted from the store.

Old Cyrus knew he slept in the barn, had known from that first night when Howard had been turned away from O'Grady's. Cyrus was a crusty old man with gray hair and a long gray beard. He had steel gray eyes, too, and there was no softness in them. He did not like hoggees, but he did like the mules for which he cared. It was because of Molly that Mac O'Hern hated Howard, and it was because of Molly that Cyrus let him stay in the barn.

It had happened before Molly had become Howard's favorite mule, not long after Jack and he had come to work for Captain Travis. Mac had worked for the captain, too, but on a different boat. Mac and Howard happened to lead their mules at the same time into a rest barn. After six hours of duty, Mac was putting Molly away when Howard noticed three open wounds oozing blood on the animal's rump.

He came over for a closer look. “What happened?” he asked Mac.

“Ain't none of your business, as I can see.” The boy turned the animal into a stall, fastened the latch, and started to move away.

Howard put his hand gently on the animal's flank, bent to examine the wound, then whirled to see Mac walking away. Howard reached out to pull at Mac's arm. “You whipped her, didn't you?”

“Told you once! It ain't no matter to you.”

“It is a matter to me! You've no call to hit an animal that hard.” Howard made his hands into fists, but it was too late.

“Maybe you'd rather I hit you then,” yelled Mac. His fist collided with Howard's chin, and Howard fell back hard. For a few seconds everything was black. When he opened his eyes, Jack was there, come from the ship that was unloading passengers, and he and Mac were fighting.

Mac was even heavier than Jack and slightly taller. He knocked Jack onto the station floor and jumped on top of him. Howard scrambled to his feet to help his brother, but Jack had already rolled Mac over and was sitting on him.

Jack lifted Mac's head and slammed it hard into the barn's floor. “You want to apologize to my brother now and then dress the wounds on that mule?”

Mac did not answer. Instead he gouged at Jack's eyes. Jack fought him off, grabbed a handful of hair, pulled it hard, then lifted his head by the hair and pounded it twice into the floor. “Now,” he said, “have you had a change of mind, my lad?”

Mac said nothing, and Jack lifted his head again. “All
right, all right,” the boy muttered. “I'm sorry. Now let me up.”

Jack did not turn him loose. “Say, ‘I'm sorry, Howard.' And say it like you mean it.” He lifted Mac's head again.

“Wait,” he said. “I'm sorry, Howard. I really am.”

Jack got up then. “Now clean that wound,” he said, pointing to the mule.

After watching Mac dress Molly's wound, Howard and Jack went back to their boat. When they stopped at the main barn on the return trip for fresh mules, old Cyrus had demanded to know what had caused the injury to Molly's rump.

Howard, following his brother's lead, had claimed not to know. It was an unwritten law that no hoggee told on another. But they heard later that when Molly kicked Mac hard as he tried to put her in the barn stall, old Cyrus fired him. “When a mule don't like a hoggee,” the old man said, “the hoggee has got to go.” He scratched his head. “Hoggees just don't be as important as mules in this operation.”

Somehow Cyrus had learned the story about Molly and Mac. “You be the one as fought that worthless hoggee over hitting Molly,” Cyrus said when he found Howard asleep in the barn.

“I am,” Howard answered Cyrus. Then he remembered to give credit where credit was due. “It was my brother who licked him, though.”

Cyrus looked at him a minute before he spoke. “Well, you sleeping here, it's no matter to me, boy, but mind you don't let Captain Travis see. It would rile him something fierce, put him in a regulation pucker. He ain't likely to fancy giving hoggees free sleeping quarters
of a winter, him having paid you a goodly amount and not wanting to see your face till almost spring.”

The boy knew that old Cyrus would rather not have seen his face, either. On the morning of the sixth day, the man questioned him. “You look peaked as a sick baby. Have you filled your belly at all this week, hoggee?”

Something in the old man's voice surprised the boy and made him unwilling to trouble him, so he nodded his head to indicate he had eaten and busied himself with folding his blanket and hiding it under the straw.

After that, Cyrus would bring a leftover biscuit, a morsel of salt pork, or a bit of cold potato from time to time. Once, to Howard's amazement, he brought a molasses cookie. “Don't be depending on me for vittles,” the man had warned. “I've got them enough that depend on me, my daughter and her girls. I've no wish to have another mouth to feed.” He studied Howard, and he shook his head. “You ain't likely to live till spring, boy.”

Howard just nodded. The next morning he began to make marks on the manger in Molly's stall as a record of the days. This morning, before beginning to carve his story, he counted the marks. Six in a row with a seventh across it to mark a week. Four weeks of marks and three more days. So it was December now. Jack would be back in March, when days were warm enough for walking but before the canal was fully thawed. They always walked back to Birchport in the spring. There was no money then for the stage or the canal boat that they used to go home. Besides, the canal boats would not have begun to run yet. They found barns to sleep in on the journey, their feet sore and bleeding by the time they reached the town.

He would be glad to see Jack, but he wondered if he would have to confess about the winter. Would it be possible to deceive Jack, to let him think the winter had passed well? He doubted it. Jack could usually tell when he tried to keep secrets. Besides, his clothing was already very loose. No, Jack would know the truth. He would not chide, would not say blockhead. Instead, Jack would close his eyes briefly and shake his head. That was what Jack always did when faced with Howard's blunders—except, of course, for the fire.

That time, that terrible time when Howard had left a candle too close to a curtain, Jack had yelled at him. When they were all out and staring with unbelieving eyes at the flames, Jack had screamed, “Nitwit! Now you've done it! Where will we live now?”

His mother had cried and said, “Howard, how could you be so careless?”

Even lying there on the floor of the barn, so many miles from his home village, he could close his eyes and draw in that horrible sharp smell that lived in the ashes after the rain fell on them.

Howard was glad then that his father had not been alive to see the blaze. Even his father's patience would have given away.

Howard thought of his father and the gate. At nine, Howard had left the gate open, allowing the cow to wander away to the neighbor's garden. His father had managed, even with the consumption almost finished with him, to walk over to apologize to Mrs. Stempson.

Howard had run for the cow. His father, leaning on the yard post, had closed his eyes, slowly shaking his head. Howard supposed Jack had learned that shaking
from their father. “You've got three little sisters will be depending on you. There's a need to grow up now, son,” he said. “Like Jack.”

Howard had bit at his lip, and his father, aware that his words had stung, had added, “You and Jack both. You've got to hunker down to the business of being men now.”

Jack had hunkered down. They had left school that year, Jack gladly, Howard sadly. It had been at school, just a few months earlier, that Howard had experienced something remarkable, something special and sweetly secret. Howard had been at his desk when the schoolmaster stopped to put a hand on his shoulder. “You'll pass your brother in your studies next year, Howard, my boy,” the master had said quietly. “You're more of a scholar than young Jack.”

A flood of disbelief had rushed through Howard, had filled every blood vessel and made his heart beat wildly. Pass Jack, two years older, stronger, faster, always-at-the-ready Jack! No one had heard the master, Howard's seat-mate being absent that day, and Howard had told no one. Sometimes at night while lying in the bed he shared with Jack, he had gone over the scene in his mind, even moving his lips to silently form the teacher's words: “more of a scholar than young Jack.”

When the term ended, the teacher had given Howard a book,
The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington.
Howard had treasured the book; but too self-conscious to show anyone, he had hidden it in the cowshed. After the house had burned, he took it from the shed and said he had found it on the road. He had it now in his haversack, buried under the straw in Molly's
stall. After the house burned, though, Howard had no longer gone over and over the teacher's words in his mind. No use to remember kind words. All his hope for the future had burned with the house, leaving him with the unrelenting smell of smoke.

There had been no next year at school for Howard. He had not passed Jack, would never pass Jack. Undoubtedly, Jack would move up in the world of canallers. He could see Jack as a captain, owning his own boat and wearing a smart uniform, waving to Captain Travis. But would he, Howard, have to work, even as a grown man, as a hoggee for his brother? Howard had never known of a hoggee who was a grown man. What became of canallers who did not advance? Maybe they starved during hateful winters.

The days dragged by, one like the other. Sometimes when the wind was not quite as harsh, the boy would leave the barn to wander about the village. Birchport, named for the trees with white bark that grew about the place in abundance, was a true child of the canal. All its businesses faced the waterway, with only narrow strips for carriages. A traveler could step off a boat and be, almost, inside a Birchport shop. Before the canal, there had been no town at all. It was strange to see the empty canal dividing Main Street down the middle.

After a quick walk past the businesses, he liked to go by the academy for boys and even the big stone building with the sign that read, “Phipps Union Seminary for the Education of Girls.” Once he crouched behind a bush next to a window that was opened slightly at the bottom. Pressing his ear near the crack, he could hear a
girl's voice reading. Howard could not follow the words well enough to understand what she was reading, but he could tell by the rhythm of her voice that it was a poem. Those stolen words were, he knew, as close as he would ever get to being a scholar.

Howard was surprised when the hunger pains lessened. He had not known that his body would grow used to not eating. Now his head felt strangely light, and he wanted only to sleep. He knew, though, what his body needed, and he made it part of his carved record.

It became his custom to go at night to the back doors of the inns where he had once sought work. He would stay in the shadows until the leftovers were thrown out, then fight the waiting dogs for bits of food. So he was able to stay alive.

One mild afternoon with no snow on the ground, Howard came upon three girls on the path that led from old Cyrus's house to the barn. They had baskets of walnuts they had picked up from somewhere. Howard was interested. If he could find the tree, there might be nuts left, and his stomach was totally empty.

The girls were dressed alike, in calico dresses, and their long, fair hair was pulled back to hang down their backs. They stopped dead still when Howard approached, and they stared at him with identical big blue
eyes. The oldest looked to be about Jack's age, but it was the second tallest who spoke.

“You're him Grandpa says lives in the barn,” she said, and her voice was not friendly.

“Yes,” he said.

“Leave us alone,” the girl said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We don't want nothing to do with you.”

“You needn't be so crabby,” he said. “I had no plan to disturb you.”

The girl who spoke and the younger sister whirled away from him toward the house, but the older girl stood unmoving, staring at Howard, her blue eyes wide. As Howard looked at the girl he saw something in her eyes, something he could hardly bear to see.

This, he knew, was no ordinary girl. He wanted to ask what sorrow filled her heart and spilled over so clearly into those blue eyes. Maybe she, too, had burned her family's home, or, he wondered, could there be something even worse?

Suddenly, the girl who had done the talking turned back and grabbed her sister's hand, pulling her away. The taller girl looked back once over her shoulder. Howard opened his mouth to call to her, but he did not know what to say, so he stood still and watched the girls disappear over a hill.

Howard never found the walnut tree, nor did he see the girls again for a long time, although he watched for them on the path and in the tiny yard around Cyrus's house. He thought often of the oldest girl and wondered about her sadness.