More Than You Know (16 page)

thought of roads different from the few she walked so often. The chance

to get out South Street on her own would be a great adventure, to see

what new houses there were and what folks she would see.

She was a strong girl and a fast walker. It was still mud season, but

the roads were drying fast in the days of sun they had had this week, and

there was plenty of traffic. She walked all the way from the village to the

neighborhood on the Neck, where she met Ellen Cole, an old friend from

the island school whose family had removed to the main. They were

excited to see each other and had a thorough visit.

Ellen insisted Sallie stop up to the house to say hello to her mother

and see the new hats the milliner had just finished for them. The milliner

came up from Portland spring and fall and spent a week or more living

with one family or another, making hats for the ladies of the area for the

season. When she had finished at the Neck she would move up to Dun-

dee, and from there on over to Franklin. This never happened on the

island, and Sallie was thrilled to see the new styles. She tried on both

Ellen’s hat and her mother’s, memorizing details of both to tell Claris

when she got home.

It was much later than she’d meant to stay when she came to start

for the village. The sun was high, and she knew the tide would be turning.

If it set them getting out of the mouth of the harbor, her father would

be angry and the return trip would be long. She walked faster, but she

was getting tired and thirsty.

As soon as mud season was over, there began to be peddlers on the

road, and they were very welcome, except for the Gypsies. There was

always a tinker and tinsmith or two who could mend your old cook pots

or sell you new ones. There were Micmac Indians selling grass baskets,

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often very beautiful, and there were the dry-goods men, with wagonloads

of cloth and ribbons and fancy glass buttons from Boston. Sometimes

these peddlers would even hire a boat to sail out to the island, but not

very often, and to Sallie the sight of a peddler’s wagon held the promise

of high excitement. Almost everything they used every day was homemade;

for store-bought there were the tools and household goods that Abbott’s

carried, the same year in and year out, but the peddlers brought the latest

things from the big cities. At least they claimed they did, and Sallie

believed them.

She was beginning to be apprehensive about how late she was when

she heard a wagon coming along behind her. She didn’t relish her father’s

black mood and sarcasm if she made him miss the ebbing tide. She turned,

hoping she might see a relative or acquaintance, but it was a wagon drawn

by a small sorrel horse with a paper flower pinned to its bridle. The

wagon had staves arching above the flat bed so it could be tented over

with canvas in bad weather, but today the tenting was rolled up, and Sallie

could see as it pulled up beside her that the wagon was full of row upon

row of shiny new shoes.

She was staring at the shoes long before she looked at the driver.

There were ladies’ button shoes and men’s work boots and shoes and

boots for children, and house slippers in all sizes and even shoes in colored

leather. When she got around to looking at the man, she saw a pleasant

face, neither Gypsy nor Indian, with a large mustache. He was offering

her a ride.

“It’s a hot day for April,” he was saying. She could tell that he was

noticing her shoes, her only good ones, which were not made for hiking.

“Climb up, old Bob won’t mind. I’ll be glad of the company.”

She was tired, and the sun was indeed hot. And she’d never in

her life been in the vicinity of so many new and stylish shoes. She

climbed up.

The peddler clucked the horse into a trot and turned to look at

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Sallie. “Saw you looking at my shoes,” he said. “You were looking at

’em, weren’t you? Saw you looking.”

She agreed that she was, hoping it hadn’t been rude to do so. They

jogged on for several minutes.

“Fine looking girl, looking at my shoes, and I could show you

shoes,” he said in a burst. He seemed excited. “Fine bosom too.” He

turned to look at her square in the face. Sallie was bewildered. The horse

was going along at a good clip, and the countryside seemed to be whizzing

by. She didn’t much like the way the peddler smelled.

“Fine bosom, fine looking girl, want to see my shoes? Want to

show me your bosom, I’ll show you my shoes?”

“Put me down,” said Sallie. “Stop right now, I’m getting down.”

“I’ll stop when we get where we’re going,” he said and slapped the

reins hard on the horse’s back, making it go even faster.

Sallie moved as far from the man as she could go without falling

off the seat and said once more, very loudly, “Stop! I want to get down!”

“Wants to get down, I’ll put you down. I’ll stop when we get where

we’re going,” he said. This man is crazy, Sallie said to herself. I’ve never

seen a crazy person, but this is one. Her heart was pounding so that the

blood hammered in her ears. This man could kill me, she thought. There

are people who do such things. He could carry me off and kill me and

no one would ever know. With her right hand, she reached behind her

until she grasped a shoe, and she threw it out of the wagon. She reached

and threw another. She threw another and another until she couldn’t reach

any more with her right hand. The wagon was slapping along the road,

and the shoes were in the dust behind. Watching the man from the very

corner of her eye, she reached with her left hand, found a shoe, and threw

it. She reached for another, and this time he saw her.

His hand whipped around and caught hers with the shoe still in it.

As he did this, his eye moved to the road behind, and he saw the shoes

lying along it. He yelled a word at her she had never heard before, and

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so didn’t understand, and hauled on the reins, sawing at the horse’s mouth.

The minute she dared, Sallie threw herself out of the moving wagon.

She landed in soft mud. A rock caught her in the ribs, and her

wrist hit hard and bent backward, making her cry out once. Then she

was up and running as fast as she could, waiting to hear hoofbeats gal-

loping after her, but she heard nothing but the blood in her head. Finally,

when her lungs were burning, she looked back and saw the peddler driving

his horse the way they had come, going back to pick up his shoes. She

kept running, fearful at every point that he would overtake her and kill

her, but he must have finally retraced his way and taken another road,

perhaps fearing she would reach Dundee first and tell what had happened.

She did reach the village at last, and she was so exhausted and

frightened that she hadn’t even noticed yet the throbbing pain in her wrist

and side. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears, her skirt was covered

in mud, and her shoes were broken. She stood by the town pump and

breathed in great gasping gulps, then bent to wash her face with one hand,

and to drink the pure cold water.

William saw her coming up Union Street and cried, “Sallie! Mother,

she’s here! Sallie—what happened?” He ran down to meet her, asking

again what had happened to her, but all she could do was put her arms

around him and cry.

Later, when she was properly washed and comforted, and her aunt

Mary had made her drink a cup of hot sweet coffee, she told the story.

Uncle Jonathan wanted to go out looking for the man and beat him up,

but Sallie said she couldn’t bear to see him again. Mary and Alice could

hardly breathe for fear and relief at what had almost happened to her, at

what might at any moment happen to any of them. All the while the

Osgoods were listening to her and petting her and telling her what a

strong brave girl she had been, her father sat outside on the porch step,

looking at the sky and saying nothing. Once in a while Sallie saw a look

pass from aunt to aunt, a glance toward the porch and then a shake of

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the head and a glance toward heaven. Danial had been waiting there for

an hour before Sallie came, but he wouldn’t come into the house.

When finally the aunts were convinced that she was calm again, and

safe and had broken no bones, they packed up the things they wanted to

send to her mother and let her go. Sallie and Danial walked away from

the house, Sallie with her egg pail full of presents and Danial empty-

handed; the boat would be loaded and ready to sail when they got to the

dock, so she would know she had kept him waiting.

He had still not said to her that he was frightened by what had

happened to her or glad to have her back. When they got to the town

wharf, he stopped to look at her before they stepped down into the sloop.

“Weather coming,” he said.

Oh, thought Sallie, briefly angry. Weather. The sky was the Bible

of the island sailor. Children come and go, but the Scripture is forever.

She looked down the bay and saw that indeed a threatening green-black

passage from Jeremiah was coming from the east, and she got down

quickly into the boat and stowed her things.

They sailed toward home in a freshening breeze. They were taking

green water over the bow by the time they passed the north point of the

island. Sallie’s muslin dress and light wool shawl were waterlogged before

the rain began to fall, which it did as Danial made his first pass at the

home dock. Sallie had seen her mother on the rocks in the wind watching

for them, but by the time they had made the boat fast and climbed to

the pathway, she had gone inside.

Claris stood by the window with her back to them as they came

in. Her posture was as eloquent as any words. I must stand here alone,

far from the fire, watching this terrible sky, while you, you who drove

the person I loved most on this earth to his death in just such a squall,

you have my one living child on the bay somewhere, in peril, you unfor-

given and unworthy of forgiveness.

As the door closed behind Danial and Sallie, Claris turned to face

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them. They stood drenched, held by her gaze, which was almost yellow

in anger. Sallie wanted to take off her sopping shawl and lay the wet

letters and presents on the bench for Claris before they were ruined, but

she didn’t move.

“She had a run-in with a peddler,” said Danial. “Took her up on

the road from the Neck and then wouldn’t let her down. She had to

jump off and run away from him. She’s some torn up, but your sister

says nothing is broken.”

Claris looked from Danial to Sallie. Her weight shifted. Finally she

moved to Sallie, took her wet shawl, and looked at the swollen wrist and

painful abrasions on her palms and her torn dress.

She looked back at Danial. She looked like a dog in a fight who

is quivering to close his jaws on the opponent’s throat but is prevented

by some inner primordial prohibition that governs the conflict.

Finally she turned back to Sallie. “I thought you had more sense

than to take a ride from strangers,” she said, and that was all she ever

said to her about it.

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Finally the tide made us move up the beach. It had turned,

and the clam hod was up to its handle in water. Conary fetched it and

brought it up the beach to
Frolic
and left it in the shade beside her,

then covered it with seaweed. I doused the fire and collected the things

we had brought, all the signs of human activity, and put them back in

the boat. Then we put on our shoes and Conary led the way to a path

that went up the bank into the woods.

It was steep at first; we had to scramble up rocks barely covered

by earth and moss, and sometimes we had to pull ourselves on sur-

rounding bushes to keep from sliding back. Sometimes long thin

branches would whip across our faces and sometimes we had to go

almost on hands and knees to get through the bracken. I remembered

what Conary said about the island having been cleared at the turn of

the century. It didn’t seem possible.

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“What made this path?”

“Don’t know. Deer, probably.”

The undergrowth thinned some and gave way to bigger trees.

This path had a clearer floor, and walking was easier. We were still

climbing. Then with an abruptness that seemed almost magical, we

stepped out onto a meadow, open and shimmering. There were out-

croppings of rock here and there, and low ground cover, some I knew

to be blueberry bushes and something silvery that looked like heather.

This was the meadow we had seen from the water, and I knew Conary

had been here before. He was smiling the way you do when you’ve

arrived at something you looked forward to but feared it wouldn’t be