More Than You Know (21 page)

ell between the pantry and the backhouse.

What the rug loom was to Claris, the animals were to Sallie. When

she wasn’t working at the boardinghouse, the place she wanted to be was

the barn, where she groomed the horses and talked to them, and petted

the cow, and sometimes just leaned against it and felt it breathing. She

had all kinds of pets out there too, Mercy wrote her mother. Raccoons

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and a raven, and a family of barn cats. Mercy wrote to her mother several

times a week, about her classes and her scholars, and about this very odd

family and their ways. The letters were later subpoenaed for the trial.

They told of how Mrs. Haskell seemed in a way to be trading

places with Mercy, in that when Mercy came home Mrs. Haskell would

leave for the schoolhouse, and there she would stay until dark and some-

times after. Mrs. Haskell liked to be alone there. Meanwhile there was

Mercy, alone in another woman’s house, and it was her first time boarding

and she didn’t know what was right for her to do. If no one had cooked

the supper, should she? If she wanted to sit in the parlor for the evening

light, might she light the stove in there? There was not much stock of

preserves or pickles in the cellar, but if there was nothing else for supper,

might she open a jar?

What she didn’t write about was the afternoon in February when

she was sitting in Mrs. Haskell’s rocker in the kitchen preparing her les-

sons. Danial had come in and put his wet cold mittens on the stove shelf

to dry and set about lighting the lamps. Then he turned to her as if he’d

been practicing this speech in his mind and said, “I guess we got the

place to ourselves.” As if we didn’t most of the time, Mercy thought.

Then she saw he was starting to undo his trouser buttons.

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Finallyallthewarmcolorsfadedoutofthetwilightandthere

was nothing left of the day but deep blue shadows. We stopped skip-

ping stones because we couldn’t see them sink anymore. It was getting

colder too, and as the darkness deepened, I began to be afraid again.

What if we did have to stay here all night? I thought of Edith. I thought

of supper. I thought of my brother, and the fuss at home.

“We’ll be all right,” said Conary. “It’s just going to be black as

pitch for an hour or two till the moon rises.”

“Could we make a fire?”

“We could, if we hadn’t left the matches on the boat.”

“Oh.” I looked out across the dark reach. I turned my back to it

and looked at the black hulk of the island. We seemed perched be-

tween the two, on this narrow strip of rocks.

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“Does anyone use that old boat hull for anything?” I saw again

the rotting lobster boat in the brush above the shore.

“Yuh. Hunters use it some in the fall. They leave gear in there

they don’t want to truck out here every time they come. They usually

clean it out pretty good by the end of the season, but there might be

a match there.” We made our way across the rocks and up the bank

to where the boat carcass lay, cradled in brush with its prow still facing

out to sea. There was a crude ladder against the hull by which you

could climb aboard. Conary went first. I was frightened the boat would

shift under his weight or the wood would give way as he stepped onto

the ancient deck, but it seemed to be sound.

“Would anyone mind us prowling around here?”

“Don’t think so.”

I was stalling. I was a little afraid of the ladder, and of tres-

passing. “Does someone own it?”

“Yuh.” There was nothing for it. I tried the ladder and it held

me, so I climbed into the open cockpit of the boat.

“I own it,” said Conary. He hadn’t meant to surprise me. He just

hadn’t thought of mentioning it. “My sister and I do.”

“You mean, the boat?”

“The boat and the cove. And some land. That meadow up there

on the ridge.”

“That beautiful meadow?”

“You liked that, eh?” He smiled. “I like it. My grandfather left

it to us.” He opened the door to the boat’s cabin and let himself

down into it. It seemed black as a tomb in there; I watched from the

doorway. The cabin had one narrow bunk against the wall and some

shelves and a hanging locker. It smelled dank, and it was barely big

enough for one person to stand in. I guess it was unusual for a work

boat to have much of a cabin at all. Conary found a rusty fork and

a kerosene lamp on a shelf. He checked everywhere but there were

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no matches. In a cubbyhole under the bunk he found an old thin

blanket.

“Doesn’t even smell too he bad,” he said. Taking the blanket,

we made our way back down to the beach. The night was dark, but

starlight reflected on the water made enough of a glow that we could

see to climb down the rocks without breaking our arms, though I got

pretty torn up by wild raspberry brambles. We went back to the log

where we’d leaned together in the sun and eaten steamers. Conary

made a tent of this blanket around us both, and when he felt how cold

my bare arms were, he wrapped his arms around me too. I sat very

still.

“You own that meadow.”

“Yuh. We own about twenty acres, I guess. When we were little

my grandfather hauled that old boat up onto the shore for us to use

as a playhouse. We could explore all day. There was a tumbledown

sawmill up the shore where the creek comes out that he said was ours

too.”

“Did your people live out here?”

“No. Some Osgood ancestor bought this chunk at some point,

but they never used it.”

“You’re related to them too?”

“Osgoods? Most everyone in the village is. You probably are

yourself.”

That was true. At least I was related to the Friends. I asked him

if we were cousins, then.

He said, “Could be. My mother’s grandfather was an Osgood.

He was captain of a ship called the
Randall D
that was lost at sea.

And I remember my mother took me and Mary to visit a tiny old

creature called Alice Crocker, who she called Auntie, who had a son

named Osgood. That’s about all I know. My father doesn’t spend a

lot of time keeping up with the relations.”

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We sat silent for a bit, and Conary laid his cheek against mine.

“You’re still cold.”

“I’m all right.”

“I felt you shiver.” He stood up, leaving the blanket all for me.

“Look the other way, will you?”

“Why?” He started to take off his clothes, and I quickly looked

the other way.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to get matches.”

“Conary—that water is freezing!”

“I’m the stupid nit left them on the boat,” he said, though it

wasn’t true. A second later I heard a splash. Connie’s clothes were in

a pile on the beach, and he was swimming toward
Frolic.
It made my

skin creep just to think of how cold it was; I thought there was a real

chance it was the nicest thing anyone ever did for me.

He reached the boat, riding peacefully in the blackness. He pulled

himself halfway onto the bow, grabbed the painter we had rigged, then

dropped back into the water. I heard a tremendous kicking fuss, and then

the boat started to move toward me. I could see Connie’s wet black head

in the water, moving like a seal’s before the bow. When he got to where

his feet could touch bottom, he maneuvered the hull between us and

pushed the bow up onto the sand. With a sweep of his arm he grabbed a

tattered flannel shirt from the tiller well and threw it to me as I pushed

the blanket across the bow to him. The shirt still smelled of sun and the

clean sweat smell of him; he’d torn the sleeves off at the elbows to keep

them out of his way when he was handling tiller and sheets by himself.

I put it on, feeling suddenly sheltered. Soon he followed me up the beach

wearing the blanket and carrying the bucket that held our supply of

newspaper and matches and the hatchet. As soon as he got his dry

clothes back on, he split out some kindling from a piece of driftwood

and in minutes had a fire going.

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We sat close together warmed by firelight, waiting for the moon.

A black bird, darker than the night sky, skimmed into the cove and

with hardly a sound settled on
Frolic
’s stern where she floated near

the water’s edge.

“A shag,” Connie said. “She’s out late. She must be surprised

to find she isn’t alone here.”

“What’s a shag?”

“To a straphanger? Cormorant.” Connie seemed perfectly glad

of this stranger in our midst, but I wasn’t sure I was. I’d had enough

dark figures floating around half seen.

Connie asked, “Did you ever dream about being able to fly?”

“Always. For years. Did you?”

“Yuh.”

“Did you ever dream about living out here?”

He smiled. “Always. I still do. I’d like to build a cabin up in

that meadow, and have a landing here, and fish and farm. I’d like to

try raising sheep, like they used to on the outer islands.”

“You wouldn’t find it lonely?”

He smiled again, maybe with surprise. He said shyly, “I hadn’t

thought to do it alone.” There was an embarrassed but sweet silence

between us. I was intensely aware of his bare arm, the flesh still cold

from the icy water, inches from mine. I thought about a house up on

that ridge behind us. The quiet. The sunlight. Blueberries and clams

and firelight. Teaching a baby to swim in this cove.

The cormorant suddenly shook herself and rose from the surface

of the cove with a flurry of black flapping. She rowed the air furiously,

disappearing into the darkness. Conversation stopped again. I wanted to

be somewhere light and safe. I wanted to go home. I wanted my mother.

Conary whispered, “I’ll take care of you if I can.” I nodded. I

knew it. A log shifted suddenly in the fire, and the noise startled us

both.

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“Conary?”

“What?”

“The thing we saw—that weeping noise. Is that the same noise

you heard in the schoolhouse?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Me too. That’s what was in the kitchen, and in my bedroom.

And once I saw it watching me from the hall. What is it? Is that a

ghost?”

After a time, he said, “I don’t know what else it could be.”

“What
is
a ghost, then?”

“I imagine,” he said finally, “it’s a creature that won’t take no

for an answer.” I watched his profile. He looked at the fire. He said,

“My uncle had a dog named Smokey once. He found him on the

mountain when he was a pup, too small to be weaned. He would have

died if Uncle Paul had left him there. He was a pitiful little thing with

big eyes. They cleaned him up and bottle-fed him and let him sleep

behind the stove so he’d be warm and wouldn’t miss his littermates.

He had huge paws, even when he was a baby. When his eyes settled

down to a color, he had one brown and one blue one, and he grew up

huge. My aunt believed he was half wolf.

“Smokey lived for my uncle. He followed him everywhere, slept

at the foot of their bed. When he got to be three or four, he began to

turn mean. Started growling at people who came near the house. Bit

a hired man once who touched my uncle’s toolbox. They tried to train

him out of it, but he couldn’t understand how to be any other way.

“When he started growling at my aunt in the house, Uncle Paul

put him outside and made him live in the yard. When Uncle Paul

would go into the house last thing at night, Smokey would howl and

whine outside the door and fling himself against it for hours. They

tried shutting him in the barn, but he upset the chickens so they

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stopped laying. They tried chaining him outside, and he just howled

all night. Nobody got any sleep. Finally, my uncle came out one morn-

ing and shot him.”

A glowing log broke in half, and two blazing embers rolled away

from each other, sending sparks into the night.

“It didn’t stop him,” said Conary. “They still hear him whining

outside the door on cold nights. Last winter when my uncle got pneu-

monia, the dog howled and howled every night until Paul was up and

around again. Thing’s been dead nine years.”

The dark bay lay flat and empty. Somewhere—no way to tell

how near or far—a loon called.

“So,” I said, “what we keep wandering into is something that

happened in the schoolhouse.”

“Something that’s
still
happening, I’d say,” said Conary.

“It has to be the murder.”

“Except that didn’t happen at the schoolhouse.”

“Well
something
happened there. It isn’t a spelling bee gone

wrong.”

Conary laughed. Then more soberly, he added, “Tell you what,

I’d give a lot to make sure I never get within fifty yards of that thing

again in my life, whatever it is. Was.”